Wedding Song (8 page)

In this cool common hallway between the two houses, Mori-jaan held her own court on summer days. Her grandchildren put a colorful
kilim
on the freshly swept clay floor in the corner between the door to her house and the hallway wall. She sat in her usual place by the door every morning, leaning against a mountain of pillows. Her dog, named Hitler by the neighborhood kids, lay by her left side. To me, she looked like a queen who had tamed a monstrous lion. The dog, with its light brown hair and thick mane, almost resembled a huge kitten. She was cuddly and sweet when her tamer caressed her back, but the beast horrified everyone, including my parents, when they encountered her away from her owner.

Mori-jaan’s powerful presence, her confidence, and her show of authority intrigued me; she was an ancient maternal symbol. To preserve her dignity and modesty, she pulled a large kerchief over her hair whenever she heard footsteps. But minutes later, it slipped down to her shoulders, leaving her hair disheveled. Strands of silvery hair escaped her tight braid, pulled away from her head in a halo, and made her look like an electrified female Einstein.

A narrow wooden bench obscured Mori-jaan from the stares of passersby. From this hideaway, she enjoyed the cross breeze. Her floral
chador
covered her shoulders and draped most of her body as she puffed at her waterpipe. I wondered what gave her eyes the power to humble everyone around her, the strength to quiet anyone she did not want to hear, the ability to pull words out of women who were too hesitant to speak.

Her daughter-in-law, a new bride, periodically refreshed the tobacco in Mori-jaan’s
ghalyan
with a new batch, replaced the charcoal with hotter pieces, and exchanged the warm, tainted liquid at the base with cold fresh water. She drew a puff to make sure the tobacco was burning with a perfect aroma before handing it back to her mother-in-law.

Watching Mori-jaan’s bride with envy, my grandmother praised the woman’s obedience and devotion, saying, “Look, she walks backward
when in the presence of her mother-in-law.” She sighed as she looked at my mother.

Mori-jaan smoked first and then honored the rest of the women. The gurgling of the water at the
ghalyan
’s base was mesmerizing, a soothing sound that rarely stopped. The genteel
taarof
and niceties were the only sign that the instrument was changing hands.

“Hope your hands are not aching,” said my grandmother before taking a puff.

“I’m not worthy of your kindness.” Our next-door neighbor reached out to touch Mori-jaan’s hand and then kissed her own fingers as if the old lady’s grace had been attached to hers now.

“Your shadow should not decrease over us,” added another woman as she raised herself slightly and bent forward in a bow.

Although my grandmother Tavous was the head of our household and received much respect as the widow of the last great rabbi of the community, she did not have as much clout as Mori-jaan. Wisdom and respect, in those days and in that part of the world, came mostly with age.

Women dropped by to pay their homage on the way to the vegetable stand or the bakery. There was always good chit-chat and sharing of gossip. The women sat there attentively. In the hallway, they could learn who would be marrying whom, how much dowry a daughter had taken to her husband’s home, or how a new bride was pleasing her mother-in-law. It was also a fine place to try to match young men and women.

One woman said, “You know, Nasreen, the daughter of Mashallah, would be a good match for Saeed, Rahman’s son. Both fathers are jewelers.”

The other added, “They say he wears glasses; his eyes are no good. Who would want their daughter to marry a man who is disabled?”

A third joined the conversation, “Well, that’s not right. His mother, Bagom-jaan, was here yesterday, and she said that he is
gherti
, wears glasses to show off. They are supposed to make him look
farangee
. The young kids nowadays think anything American is the best. It is a different world. Who knows, maybe Nasreen would like it too.”

Yet another woman said, “And since when are girls supposed to like or dislike their suitors? Look at the Moslems—the first time a woman sees her husband’s face is when he lifts up her veil in front of the
mola
who is marrying them; and I say that’s the way it should be, or otherwise there
would be chaos. It has always been the job of the fathers to evaluate the boy and the girl to see if they are good for each other, to negotiate the terms of marriage and God forbid a divorce.”

Women came to talk about what made them happy, but mostly of their hardships. Looking back, the idea was quite modern, a natural support group down the street on the way to the market place, where women could
dard-e-del
, speak of the ache in their hearts, where they could share their miseries and be comforted by the knowledge of the other women’s hardships.

At these gatherings, I ran errands for my grandmother, bringing refreshments and cleaning the dishes filled with the shells of watermelon seeds. If my mother was not at home cooking and cleaning, she sat there invisible, silent. She was an outsider, and by extension I feared that I could be one as well. For my mother to share her secrets, to tell of the ache in her heart, she would have to talk about the people present, my grandmother and the rest of my father’s family. Complaints about one’s in-laws were the most basic
dard-e-del
, the essence of mental health, the one most expected to be discussed with one’s family and friends. My mother had no family around and was not allowed to establish close friendships. Since we were well known and respected in the community, any complaints from my mother would spoil the aura of stability, integrity, and if not happiness, at least harmony of the family.

For generations, our ancestors had been given the honor of serving as community judges, bringing the community together and solving problems in order to keep away from the Moslem courts. But that umbrella of justice did not protect my mother. She lived in silence for much of my childhood, lost in her unspoken thoughts.

Silently, my mother gave me baths in our backyard on summer days. When the heat rose off the bricks in shimmering waves, when my feet burned even through my shoes, she dumped well-water in a large basin and left it in the yard to warm in the desert sun. I sat naked on a low wooden stool, letting her scrub me with the rough cloth of a
kiseh
, a square glove used as a wash cloth. Dead skin peeled in black rolls. Her touch was the measurement of her inner turmoil. If I was being skinned, I sat quietly,
knowing that she was going to be silent as the volcano inside her heated. If she was gentle, I asked her to sing me a song.

“
Arousaké khoshgele man
,” she sang. “My beautiful doll wears a red dress/ She sleeps on a blue velvet bed.” She folded the soaked, pulverized leaves of
konar
in my hair, massaging my scalp. “My doll, wake up, wake up/ Go to sleep at twilight/ Now it’s time to have fun, jump rope and run.”

Sometimes when she washed herself in the yard, scrubbing her rough heels with the pumice stone, I could hear her singing it to herself.

When the weather turned cool, she washed me in the kitchen. The garden filled with orange and tangerine trees separated the kitchen from the main building. Maman pulled the water out of the well in the kitchen and warmed it in cooking pots on top of mud stoves. Her cheeks puffed as her mouth sucked the air in to blow on the glowing charcoal. Her eyes turned red and watered. A thick smoke swirled around the dark kitchen and found its way out of the paneless windows. The log burned bright orange.

I sat on a stool shivering instead of rubbing the pumice stone on my heels.

“What’s with you?” Maman screamed. “You’ll catch pneumonia if you don’t hurry up.” She put a pot of warm water next to me. I poured it over my head and felt the
konar
slide down my back, cold and slimy where the pulverized leaves were fine, and the rest remained in my hair, coarse and grainy. I hugged my knees for warmth and watched the water find its way to a shallow drain that carried it to the yard.

“You wasted all that water.” She sighed as she poured a cup of water on my hair. “Hurry up. Rub it out.”

“It’s gone,” I lied. My teeth chattered. I grabbed the towel, dried myself and pulled a dress over my head. It stuck to my damp body. The water dripped from my hair, found its way through my collar, and slipped all the way to my legs. The orange trees had no leaves. My nails were blue.

Maman wrapped a kerchief around my head. “Who’s going to take care of you when you get sick? Look at that wet hair! Can’t even dry yourself!”

I ran to the house feeling dirtier than before I had the bath, my scalp itching as if I had lice. I wondered why we couldn’t go to the public baths like our neighbors. Mahvash, my second cousin who lived on the other side of the wall, always bragged about her visits to the
hamam
. She told me that the all-day affair was so much fun, and she couldn’t believe that I had never been there.

In a few weeks I got my wish. I was five. A chill had set into our valley. Flocks of birds still covered the skies on their migration to the Persian Gulf, but the mountains surrounding Shiraz were dusted with an early snow. My mother needed to go to the
mikvah;
my grandmother had heard about a wedding party heading for the bathhouse; and my two single aunts needed to be presented to the public.

We gathered around the samovar for tea and buttered bread one morning when my grandmother announced, “We’re going to the
hamam
tomorrow.” I wanted to run next door and tell Mahvash, but there was much work to be done. Going to the
hamam
was not a simple task. Like everything else in our lives, it had its own rituals.

That day, the women made lunch and dinner ahead of time and put them on a slab of ice under a big colander. My mother made
koofteh
, giant meat balls with rice, meat, and herbs. My aunts washed and patted dry tarragon, basil, and spring onions. I squeezed fresh lime for a big jug of limeade. My grandmother prepared a waterpipe. She wrapped the
ghalyan
carefully among our clothes, along with the best pieces of charcoal and the tobacco she had prepared herself. I packed pumice stones,
konar, gelezard
, henna, and a few
kiseh
s. My grandmother hired the washer-woman to come to the baths around noon with our lunch, fresh bread, and the waterpipe and all its accompaniments. That night I was so excited about my first trip to the
hamam
that I barely slept.

Very early the next day, we left our house in the
mahaleh
and crossed the main street that divided the ghetto. Few cars, but many horse-drawn carriages and donkeys carrying fruit and vegetables to the market crowded the dirt road. We passed bathhouses that served Moslems only during our half-hour walk to the Jewish
hamam
, where we entered through two large doors.

The first thing I saw was the
mikvah
. “What is that?” I wanted to know.

“Nothing,” my mother said.

“How deep is it? Can you swim in it?”

“No.”

“Maman, are you going to drown in there?”

“No.”

“Is it not too cold? Why does it have leaves and stuff floating in it?”

“That’s
enough
.”

“Are there any lizards in there?”

Silence.

“Aren’t you afraid of getting in it?”

My questions were endless and I was told that if I continued being such a
verag
, I would be sent home. I shut up then and decided not to jeopardize my good fortune. I would watch and listen, and that would be good enough for me.

We stopped by a small room next to the entrance to pick up our utensils from the frowning bath keeper. His hair and even his thin mustache were greasy as if he didn’t know about the bathhouse himself. His left ear stayed glued to a radio whose sound was barely audible. A rolled mattress was set against the wall with bubbling plaster, crumbling in the humidity of the bathhouse. He and my grandmother haggled over the price.

“Charging so much for what?” my grandmother said. “Last time you ran out of hot water and we froze.” She put a few rials in front of the
hamami
and wrapped her
chador
tighter around herself.

“You use too much water. I can’t give you but one pail.” The man cracked his knuckles. His thick nails had rough edges. He picked up a small knife and dug underneath them to dislodge the dirt.

My grandmother gave him another few coins for a beaten-up aluminum pan for hot water, another for cold, and a bucket with a rope tied to the handle for pulling the water out of the water hole.

The dampness seeped through my dress as soon as we stepped inside. Wide columns and arches supported the vaulted ceiling of the main building. A few small, fogged-covered windows on top were the only sources of light. When my eyes got used to the darkness, I saw the two water holes at the end of the hall, one for cold and one for hot water. I had pulled water out of our well in the kitchen for cooking many times, and, therefore, I was efficient in retrieving water for bathing. Nonetheless, every time I dropped the bucket in, I worried that its weight might pull me down. I was short and did not have much leverage dangling through the window. I competed with a stream of naked women who lined up by the hole to draw water, and, as I looked around, I appreciated my grandmother’s forcefulness in securing a spot away from the busy area for us.

She had eyed a spot close to a pile of burning coals to warm the
hamam
and told us to claim it, and when the others around complained, she used her usual tactic, “Do you know who I am?” She gave them a long stare, and put her henna dish by the column. “I’m the widow of the great rabbi.” The other women moved a few steps away.

Like everything else in our lives, social standing in the community determined
one’s space in the bathhouse. The farther one sat from the door and the traffic, the higher was her position in the society. I didn’t question the class difference. I assumed that it was our right. In the same way, most people with lower status in the community succumbed to it and did not try to sit in the higher position. They made themselves comfortable by the drafty door and in the line of the traffic.