Wedding Song (18 page)

One reason that the community was angry at our neighbor was that connecting roofs were the last route of escape during pogroms. By giving his house to a hostile Moslem family, he had also given them access to our roofs, jeopardizing our safety.

The terrace roofs were also our summer retreat to a world above the dust and heat of the narrow alleyways. During the hot summer nights, we slept on the rooftops on mattresses spread on bamboo mats. There were no fences. Parents feared that their young children might wander off in the pitch darkness that engulfed the ghetto at night and fall off the roofs. In the women’s section, I was always squeezed between my mother, grandmother, and aunts to ensure I wouldn’t wander off. But, despite the parents’ vigilant watch, every year the sad stories of a child or two who had fallen to their deaths circulated in the
mahaleh
. Or maybe the stories were made up to scare us into behaving.

The desert temperature fell rapidly at night and the gentle breeze flowed freely over the rooftops. The air was fresh and fragrant high above the old city in contrast to the stagnant air mixed with fine dust and the smell of animal and human refuse in the unpaved alleys. With no industrial or light pollution in the skies of Shiraz, the clear sky was a magnificent panoramic backdrop for the stars shining brightly against its blackness. Neighborhood women found each other in the light of candles and gossiped while cracking watermelon seeds between their back teeth. Men spoke of the day’s business, their fears of the unfriendly neighbors, and the events in the Jewish community.

The flat roofs were delightful but also problematic. On rainy days in spring, or snowy days in winter, large patches of the ceiling collapsed in the common room, forcing the entire household—my grandmother, uncles, aunts, and us—to sleep in one room until the weather was sufficiently warm for repairs. Then, a mixture of mud and straw was hauled to the roof on the workers’ backs, spread evenly, and packed by running the
ghaltak
on top.

A
ghaltak
was a heavy cylindrical stone. It took two men to control its roll. It was often shared by many neighbors and stored on top of a strong joint where the walls met. Pieces of stone and wood braced it when not in use.

Picking up the story as we sat sewing the quilts, my grandmother said that in those days (this is before I was born), the city of Shiraz opened its water reservoir to run through the gutters once a week. Plumbing wasn’t available. The Jews stored the water in open pools often shared by many families in a common courtyard to be used for laundry and washing dishes.

On a chilly day at the end of fall, the water ran through the Jewish ghetto in man-made canals and poured into the pool. The women of my grandmother’s family and the neighborhood had gathered for a wash-day. There were about thirty women, grandmothers who directed the activity, mothers who did the wash sometimes with the help of professional washerwomen, young girls who helped run errands and hang the clean clothes on the trees or wires running between them. Wrapped in their
chador
s, these women sat on low wooden stools around the pool, a wash basin in front of each. They rubbed the clothes on the back of their hands or against the fabric itself. Most Jews used pulverized branches of
choobak
bush to wash the clothes instead of soap, which was made with unkosher animal fat.

As women gossiped, sweet aromatic
sharbat
was passed around to refresh everyone. Once in a while a mother picked up a crying baby and let it suckle underneath her
chador
. Young children played in the dirt with sticks and pebbles. The boys played
alak-dolak:
They laid down little sticks that they hit hard to make airborne and then hit them harder with a larger stick and watched to see how far they flew, a dangerous game with the young ones around. The women shouted at them to keep away. The boys finally left the scene. My father, a young boy then, went with them.

The voice of women sharing stories was the only sound to be heard. Rushing to finish the clothes before dinner, they didn’t notice the absence of the boys, who had found the door to the roof open. Filled with mischief,
the boys hopped from one roof to another. Someone suggested rolling the
ghaltak
. They released the catch and rolled it on the roof. It was fun at first. Then the heavy stone found a life of its own. Picking up speed, it flew off the side of the roof toward the area where the women and children had congregated.

When the
ghaltak
hit the ground, it miraculously missed the entire group below. It hit the side of the pool, broke the tiles, and rolled into the water with a tremendous sound mixed with the screams of women, children, and the horrified boys who watched the scene from above.

Agha-jaan Bakhshi was a neighbor of my grandparents who was famous for his musical ability, especially as a violinist. He was at home that day taking a nap, enjoying the warm rays of sun coming through a window facing the pool. The commotion woke him from a deep sleep. Groggy and shaking, he screamed. “What happened? What happened?”

A woman screamed back with a shaken voice, “
Ghaltak
fell into the pool from the roof.”

Because there is no “the” in Farsi and the language is gender-free, in his grogginess, Agha-jaan thought “
ghaltak
” was somebody’s name. “Pull him out of the water. Did anyone pull him out of the water?” Agha-Jaan asked.

“Too heavy,” another woman answered in the confusion.

Still disoriented from his sleep and horrified that the women had not taken “
Ghaltak
” out of the pool, Agha-jaan jumped out of the second-story window to save it, thinking that it was a child. He broke both legs and arms and had nothing to comfort him, not even his own music, as he was bed-ridden for months.

Nahid and I felt sorry for poor Agha-jaan, but my grandmother told the story in such a hilarious way that we held our stomachs and roared, missing the first few knocks at the front door. I looked out the window. “It’s only cousin Yunes, visiting,” I told my grandmother so she wouldn’t worry about covering herself in a
chador
. I turned around to go downstairs and let him in.

My grandmother screamed, “Wait, wait!” In a swift move, she jumped into bed, took her false teeth out of her mouth, and deposited them on top of the watermelon seeds. “If he sees me sewing, the entire family is gonna think I’m well. They don’t know how I suffer in pain every day! All alone! All by myself, with no one to look after me.”

By the time Yunes and I reached the room, my grandmother was moaning through her bare gums, her face pale, her hair disheveled, her hands shaking, and her speech slurred. She would have been convincing even to me had I not been laughing with her minutes before.

Of course, Yunes used our newly installed telephone to call all the aunts, who came rushing in taxis and stayed all day massaging her back and her legs. My mother made special stews and drinks for everyone. The cousins dropped by one at a time to see how our grandmother was doing. They propped up my grandmother on comfortable pillows as they talked and gossiped. On their way out, each aunt turned to Nahid and me to tell us what terrible grandchildren we were for not taking care of our grandmother. We had giggled the entire time, disregarding the somber mood of the room as their mother lay suffering. Each aunt looked at my mother as they spoke to us, including her in the collective blame. They couldn’t be there. They had their own lives. How could my mother allow her mother-in-law to deteriorate so very badly? Shame!

Nahid and I escorted them downstairs, closed the front door, knelt on the floor holding our stomachs, and laughed so hard that tears streamed down our faces. In the kitchen, my mother clanged the pots together as she washed them. She softly mumbled curses to no one in particular.

My father visited the principal of Mehr-ayeen School again without me six months after our first visit. I don’t know what transpired between them, if he raged or gave a gift, or if he took a more influential person with him. I was enrolled for the following year.

For the first month of school, my father proudly walked me to school every day in my new gray uniform. He stopped by the bakery and bought a slice of sponge cake for my snack. In America, I have learned that sponge cake is a symbol of Passover, filled with cholesterol from as many as twelve eggs that make it fluffy. To me, it is still the sign of my father’s love, on which I gorge myself every Passover without any self-control.

On the first day, I was surprised to find two other Jewish girls in my class, neither of whom I had ever met. I knew all the children in the
mahaleh
at least by appearance. I knew the boy with the football-shaped skull whom we called
khiaree
or cucumber-head, who played a game of sticks
every time I passed by him, hitting me on the head. I knew the snotcrusted faces of the many children playing in the dirt of the unpaved streets, who my mother complained never got sick while her clean children did.

Meena was my best friend next door, of whom Mahvash had been jealous enough to convince me to pray for her death. I knew the kids with a lisp, the ones with crossed eyes, the ones with sores on their legs that were a feast for the flies, and the albino kid, of course, with glassy eyes. So many kids had problems that I assumed that was the way of the world. I knew the little boy from an entertainer’s family, who dressed up as a girl to dance at happy occasions. I knew all the girls in a permanent state of curved spines, who didn’t go to school and carried little babies on their hips. I knew all the boys my age who were
pa-do-ak
, a word literally meaning, “running legs,” who were hired to run errands for shopkeepers. At school, for the first time, I realized that there might be Jews who lived outside the ghetto. Wealthy Jews.

Accompanied by her well-dressed mother, Fariba arrived late on the first day of school, wearing a beautifully tailored uniform. The fabric was a rich gray color, I noticed with jealousy, made of soft wool. I wished I could touch it. My own new cotton uniform felt dull and scratchy. I felt that there was a wall between us that was too high for me to leap over and meet her. Our Moslem teacher, Mrs. Khatami, jumped from her seat to greet them: “
Salam
, hello, Mrs. Doctor, welcome.”

So her father was a doctor. Money and education wiped out some of the Jewish dirt, I thought—first lesson of the day. She made another girl move so Fariba could have an aisle seat, which her mother said she preferred.

During the first break, Mrs. Khatami introduced her to a few choice students, including an American girl. Mary’s hair was yellow, a hair color that I had never seen and thought ugly. Her eyelashes were light, almost white, not giving much protection to the glassy, light-blue eyes. Her skin was the palest I had ever seen, other than the albino boy in the
mahaleh
. My grandmother would have said that she was “without salt, bland.” I thought, “just washed out.” And she spoke Farsi with a funny accent, displeasing to my ears.

She was popular, nevertheless. Mary and Fariba shooed away girls who were mesmerized by the unusual look of the
farangee
among our naturally tan skin and dark hair. I didn’t try to approach them.

That day, my mother took time off from the busy kitchen to collect me. I was disappointed. I had hoped to see my father. Maman’s hands looked rougher than usual, her dress thinner and cheaper. The vacant look in her eyes was the same. Fariba’s older sisters picked her up with hugs and kisses, I noticed. They brought her an English language practice book. I heard them whispering that they were going to teach her the language. I felt a pang of jealousy. I wanted to learn English too.

Our teacher told us to bring three notebooks and two pencils to school the day after. “Don’t come to school without them,” she warned.

I felt as if she was only looking at me.

“You’ll be punished, I promise.” She shook her index finger at us.

Punishment, I had learned already, meant standing in the corner of the class on one foot, the way Eshrat was reprimanded that day. I told my mother on the way home that I needed to stop by a kiosk and buy the school supplies.

She was rushing to prepare dinner. “Wait till your father gets home,” she said. I nagged my mother about the matter all afternoon.

When he came home, Baba gave me money to buy
naan
for dinner before a fast starting at sundown. “What about the supplies?” I asked.

“Get out of here and buy the bread,” he commanded, “before it gets late.”

I went to my mother again and asked if I could use the money to buy supplies.

She shrugged.

I went to Meena’s house and asked her to accompany me to the kiosk a few blocks away and bought half of what Mrs. Khatami had requested, saving the rest of the money for bread. On the way to the bakery, we ran into my father and uncle Morad, wearing pajama bottoms, V-neck undershirts, and plastic flip-flops. How could they embarrass me like that, showing up in their lounging clothes?

“Where’s the bread?” my father asked.

I showed them the notebooks proudly. Morad hit me on the head with the palm of his hand, screaming about how irresponsible and self-absorbed I was as Meena and the people on the busy street watched. I took the supplies back and asked for my money as my father watched from a distance. The owner deducted cash as penalty for the return. This time, my father himself, pajamas and all, rushed to the bakery to purchase the
naan
.

My teacher was not upset to find that I didn’t have notebooks or pencils.
She had expected it; that was the reason they didn’t want kids like me at their school. As the seating was rearranged once more for Fariba and Mary to keep each other company on the same bench, the teacher moved me to the back of the class to sit with a trouble-making girl from the poor Moslem side of the city. “You’re a nice quiet girl. Have a good influence on her,” she demanded. “If Eshrat makes trouble, you’ll be punished as well.”