Wedding Song (13 page)

Although the horrific tales were etched on my memory, I still needed to believe in the goodness of the people living side by side with us. Somehow I wanted to believe that if I knew them better the rumors would prove false. I begged my parents to allow me to watch the parade on the night of Ashura, the last night of the mourning period. I had heard much about this night through rumors from those who had dared to be present at the ceremony. Mostly, we cowered in our homes, doors locked, never answering a knock, jumping anxiously at the slightest noise.

Only once, when I was six years old, did I have the chance to venture out on this most solemn night. The men were away working. We, women
and children, were too afraid to stay at home by ourselves. Before dark that day, my grandmother, my mother, my unmarried aunt, and I left our house, which was too close to the parade route, for Aunt Shams’s house. She lived deeper in the maze of alleyways in the
mahaleh
with her husband’s extended family.

That night we were all bolder. Maybe the sheer number of women together gave us courage. My aunt and her sisters-in-law gave everyone black
chador
s to wear. There was one folded in half for me. We walked through the dark alleyways to another main gate, trying to look inconspicuous, walking solemnly like Moslem women.

The orders were not to talk at all. The hint of a Jewish accent could bring trouble. Trying to act invisible, the older women directed us to a large tree close to a gate so small that even I had to bend down to exit the ghetto. The tree provided a sense of security, allowing us to huddle against it and feel less noticeable. All this preparation and the anticipation of a potentially dangerous event caused my heart to pump blood faster even before the march started.

The total darkness of the street was eerie. A few street lamps usually broke the blackness with their yellowish glow, but on that night these were turned off. Women’s black
chador
s, and the men’s dark clothing made the darkness even deeper. The silence of hundreds gathered on the parade route added to the blackness of the night.

The flickering of dim lights in the distance announced the approach of the parade. Soon hundreds of men, their faces invisible in the darkness and their battered bodies wrapped in white burial shrouds, moved down the street. It was a march of the living dead. They shuffled their way to the tomb of the prophet looking for victims’ body parts to take for Imam Zaman, the Imam of the “time to come.” On the Day of Judgment, as it was told, limbs would come together to return the righteous men to the Garden of Eden. The symbolic act of gathering the bloodied body parts was to remind God of the sacrifice of the best, of the holiest. In return, God would resurrect the invisible Imam through whom man himself would be returned to life.

The human shrouds stretched in groups of twenty or more across the wide street, walking slowly, chanting Arabic verses from the Koran, reciting melancholy Persian poetry, announcing the night of Ashura in a haunting murmur. They carried long candles that slowly melted, giving little light. In the total darkness, the two sources of light became one; the
Earth joined the heavens. The twinkle of the small flames connected the street with the black sky of Shiraz, covered with stars.

As the last of the dead passed, our small group came to life. Moving away from the tree, we found our way to the small gate, bent down one by one, and merged with the greater darkness of the
mahaleh
.

That grim darkness of the
mahaleh
, not just of fearful nights but of poverty, disease and illiteracy, made an environment from which my father wished to free his children. He desperately wanted to prevent us from adopting the dialect, the accent, and the body language of our denigrated people, to let us grow up not in dirt alleyways but beside tree-lined avenues.

He supported his two brothers, who studied medicine in Tehran, and was proud of them as if they were his own children. They fulfilled his own dreams of learning a trade that could not be taken away, an accomplishment that neither I nor my siblings would ever match. Consequently, we grew up in constant need of his approval that never came, and, in the shadow of the ideal uncles, we struggled for love and approval that rarely materialized.

During my childhood, the visits of these beloved uncles created excitement in our monotonous lives. At the end of one spring term, they arrived from Tehran with special gifts for us: a box of pastel-color toothbrushes, and tubes of what I then learned to be toothpaste. I brushed and brushed my teeth with the minty paste, then I ran around with my mouth wide open to feel the rush of air against its coolness.

They also brought me a fancy white dress with wide ruffled straps, a most beautiful dress, perfect for my first-grade pictures. I couldn’t wait. Aunt Fereshteh trimmed my bangs to get them out of my eyes, and curled my hair. I felt like an
aroosak
, a little bride, a Persian doll. I ran down the street to my father’s shop, right next to the photography studio. I fluffed up the ruffles around the skirt, shook my hair to feel the long curls, and wished my aunt had not wiped the lipstick off my mouth. I felt as if I were a flower girl at Queen Farah’s wedding to the Shah.

My father was melting bits of gold with a jeweler’s torch to fuse a rose-shaped ornament on a bracelet. He looked up from underneath his metal face-shield with a look of surprise. “I can’t believe your mother sent you out looking like this,” he said. “Who saw you? Anyone you recognized?
What will the community say about my daughter prancing around immodestly? Go home!”

My first-grade picture
.

I turned my back to leave, biting my lower lip, swallowing hard the lump in the back of my throat.

“No, wait,” my father said. He removed his apron, turned off the jeweler’s torch, hid the gold in a drawer underneath his bench, and asked my uncle to watch over the shop.

I tried to straighten my hair, feeling naked. The apprentices stared at me from behind the glass divider and smiled. I didn’t like their smiles or my uncle’s.

Baba put his jacket over my shoulders, chaperoned me home, and waited for me to wet my hair.

My mother giggled when she saw us. “I didn’t think he would like that,” she told me. “Not my fault,” she told Baba. “Your sister did it.”

I thought she was happy that my aunt’s work had been for nothing. I kept the dress on since it was the only nice garment I had, and walked back to the studio with my father, this time conscious of people’s looks and whispers, wondering if it was about me.

At the studio, I climbed on a high stool, crossed my ankles, and held the corners of the dress as I was told. The photographer’s greasy head disappeared underneath the black skirt of the camera. I looked at the glass lens in the darkness, trying to sit up straight.

No one said, “Smile!”

A few months later, as I was passing by the photographer’s studio, I saw my picture blown up to a poster size, hanged from a metal frame over the sidewalk for everyone to see. The black and white picture was retouched with shades of pink. There I was with my hair severely pulled back, zigzag bangs, where my aunt’s scissors had slipped, and a very serious look. I was proud of it every time I passed by. My father too enjoyed the picture, even though the photographer had not asked his permission to display it. I enclosed the picture with the first-grade application forms at age six.

Because Mehr-ayeen was a snobby school that rejected most Jewish kids, our family and friends tried to discourage my father from applying. Although it was a public school, the principal feared that its proximity to the
mahaleh
would entice too many Jews; and, if accepted, they would tarnish its image as an elite institution.

The day Baba took me for a first-grade interview felt like Rosh Hashanah. I watched my father shave the stubble on his face and the bushy hair under his armpits, wash his neck and behind his ears. He put a piece of cloth on the tip of a toothpick and scraped the wax from inside his ears. He dressed in his dark brown Shabbat suit and polished shoes. Then he brushed back his newly cut hair, and I thought he was the most handsome father.

My mother gave me a sponge bath in the yard and braided my hair tight in the back. She cut my nails and checked them for cleanliness and made sure I was wearing clean socks and underwear. I put on my fancy dress with a shawl for modesty.

My mother’s longing eyes followed us as we left without her. My father walked tall and erect. His mustache twitched as he bit his upper lip, trying to control his facial muscles that slipped into a smile.

I was torn between having to skip to keep up with his long strides or taking bigger steps.

“Act with modesty,” he scolded. “It’s improper to run like a farmer’s girl after chickens.”

I obeyed, taking little steps, but ran every few minutes to catch up. I was as excited as he was.

We crossed Lotf-ali-khan Street, a newly constructed street that ran like an arrow through the heart of the
mahaleh
, dividing it in half. The construction had been costly and labor intensive. Since the Jewish families refused to drink from the city water running through ditches, they each had a well in their homes. While destroying the Jewish houses to make room for the modern road, the engineers faced the nightmare of filling the sinking holes where the wells had existed for hundreds of years. This unexpected obstacle added to the cost of the construction immensely, infuriating the workers who thought it a Jewish sabotage. At the same time, the project angered the homeowners, who were not adequately compensated. The Jewish community felt exposed and vulnerable as the ghetto was divided by a major thoroughfare, and was no longer within a common walled-in perimeter.

The new street, one of the very first paved roads in Shiraz, was jammed not only with cars and taxis but also with mules carrying food and spices and pedestrians trying to avoid bumping into each other. I could not possibly cross the chaotic street safely by myself.

My father and I finally approached the iron gates of the school. As we waited for permission from two gendarmes to enter and approach the office, I kept busy watching the activities in a small quilt workshop nearby. Two workers in loose pajamas bottoms and once-white undershirts rested their backs against the walls of the shop as they beat cotton,
boing, boing
, with a harp-shaped gadget. A cloud of cotton dust circulated in the dark shop as two other men on their hands and knees captured the cotton in a blue satin casing with large needles and rapidly quilted flowers and geometric designs onto its shimmering surface. I didn’t see the guards coming back to let us in.

My father grabbed my arms. “You’re covered in dust! Look at you!” He brushed my clothes with his handkerchief.

We went through the large doors. I stopped in the walled-in yard to look at the playground, the classrooms surrounding the courtyard, two stories of brick and glass. It was so big, so clean. We climbed the stairs to the office.

The principal was too busy to meet with us, a woman behind a small desk announced. She wore her hair in a low ponytail. The corner of her lips moved downward as if she had swallowed something rotten. She continued reading the stacks of paper on her desk without looking at us. I watched my father lose a few centimeters in height, but he did not acquiesce. He didn’t seem to be surprised at the unfriendly reception. This was a country of haggling and bargaining, in which my father was a master.

“Let me visit Mr. Principal, for just a few minutes,” he said with a bow and much humility. “I took the morning off, and the child’s heart will be broken. I beg respectfully.” He bowed again.

“Let’s go, Baba,” I begged. “I will go somewhere else. It’s okay.”

“Don’t act like a stupid donkey,” he whispered.

We waited by the door until the principal left his office. My father jumped, bowed in front of him again, and, holding his two hands together in respect, begged for a minute of his time.

The principal looked at us with a sigh of resignation. He was shorter than my father but looked tall. He pointed his finger at me. “She is too young.” He turned to leave.

My father followed him, waving my birth certificate. “But she is six years old. I was told by your secretary that she had to be six. She
is
six years old.”

“No room this year. We’re full. Why don’t you sign her up at the Jewish school? She’ll be more comfortable there with your own people.” He threw the words at us in a rapid blast uncharacteristic of proper Iranian behavior that demanded deliberate speech.

“No,” my father said. “We are closer to Mehr-ayeen, and this is where I want her to study.”

The principal stopped by the doorway, sighed again, and shook his head. He adjusted his tie and coat, looked straight at my father, and said, “Come back next year. We’re full for now.” He took a side glance at me and walked away.

My father didn’t pursue him. “His father is a dirty dog,” he spat. “A true Moslem would not do this, breaking the child’s heart.”

That was the last time I wore my nice dress. It was too fancy for everyday use; then I outgrew it.