The Last Living Slut

by Roxana Shirazi

  By the time the sound of noon prayer wailed from the nearby mosque, the neighborhood buzzed with activity. The first to arrive was the salt seller, an old man who hobbled through the alley croaking “Namaki! Namaki!” (“Salt seller! Salt seller!”) and selling the raw rock salt he carried in a sack on his bent back. A few women would bring out scraps of dried bread, leftover food, or sometimes unwanted clothes to exchange for a piece of rock salt. I remember feeling lucky that I wasn’t as poor as the salt seller, whose skinny face would break into a humble, toothless grin as he collected the goods and sauntered off to the next street.

  We played until the traders arrived at noon with their cartfuls of merchandise. In the winter, the beetroot seller wheeled his cart to a stop at the top of the alley. I would run to get coins from my grandmother. Peeling off the dirty outer layer of the cooked beet would expose the steaming hot flesh beneath. My teeth sliced through the chunks and I let the hot juice wash over my gums. The tamarind man was there year-round, selling us lovely sour-salty tamarind. In the spring came a man with gojeh sabz—small unripe sour green plums—which we would sprinkle with salt and eat until our stomachs ached.

  Sometimes, in the middle of a hopscotch game, the cinema-rama man would appear. He’d wheel in a big box. We’d put coins in, look in a peephole, and be transported to another world. A world of corseted ladies with pink boas, fancy lace, and exotic hairbrushes. When the time ran out, we’d beg the adults for more money so we could exist just a little longer in Shahreh Farang (foreign city). I’d peer into it so deeply that my left eye would be bruised. And then my coins would run out.

  “You can’t have money for this and the wheel!” my mother or grandmother would say, looking up from their work cleaning fresh herbs for dinner. I loved the mini Ferris wheel that rolled into the alley once or twice a week. It always drew a massive crowd, even though the top of the wheel rose only ten feet off the ground. It felt grand to sit in those old moldy seats in the sky.

  Throughout the day, the sound of mournful prayer from the loudspeaker of a nearby mosque served as a fearful reminder to pray to God. In our home, my grandmother would promptly put on her chador and turn to face Mecca, the holy city. A deep and respectful silence would fall over the neighborhood as the grownups gathered their prayer mats and Mohr—a small chunk of holy clay that supposedly came directly from Mecca.

  Some days, during the siesta that followed, I played alone in my grandmother’s garden. I felt like a princess there: the garden was my court, the fruit trees ready to serve me. A pomegranate tree, which opened her baby pink flowers in summer, showed the world she was ready to bear autumn fruit. Next to it stood a sour cherry tree—my favorite. Lifting the hem of my dress, I would pluck the tiny cherries and gather them in my skirts. I was greedy for that fruit, even more than the blackbirds who competed with me to fill their bellies first.

  At the end of the garden wall rose the tallest fir tree I had ever seen. Its trunk was so wide and its branches so dense with pines that it provided a shield for me and my cousins’ childhood games.

  On the left side of the garden were the roses—pink, yellow, and white. Puffy roses. Scarlet buds pursing their lips to the sky in a kiss. Right in the middle of the yard was a small round pond filled with goldfish and green slimy moss. Often I would undress and float naked under the water, holding my breath as long as I could to feel the slither of the fish and slippery moss against my chest and tummy. My cinnamon ringlets were soaked but, soon enough, the crisp Persian sun would toast them dry as I sunbathed naked on the concrete.

  “Put some panties on! Bad girl!” my grandmother or mum would scold in a loud whisper if they caught me. But I loved the feeling of my body exposed in the water and the sun. I wanted to be free.

  When the adults awoke from the siesta, it was time for early evening tea, which was exactly like breakfast. In the summer we enjoyed tea in the garden. Then, in the evening, everyone put on fancy clothes to go mehmooni, visiting relatives’ houses to eat, dance, and have a good time. My mother usually took me to see her sister and my cousins in Foozieh, a seedy part of town that smelled like sewage. We stood by the road and shouted our destination at the orange taxis speeding by—the customary way to flag down a cab—until one stopped and we climbed in, sharing a ride with others headed that way.

  Most of the men in my mother’s family were political prisoners, leaving the women alone with their children and forced to stay with their parents or in-laws. My aunt’s husband was a political prisoner along with my uncle and my mother’s cousins. Day and night, the adults would sit talking about the political situation. In the 1970s, Iran emerged as one of the oil giants of the Middle East and the Shah established himself as a monarch, with a plan to Westernize our society. By 1973, Tehran was considered one of the world’s most innovative capital cities, with religion operating on the fringes. Scores of villagers and farmers filtered into Tehran to take advantage of the prosperity promised to them by the Shah. But government corruption ensured that the promised trickle-down of wealth only pooled around government officials and friends of the Shah. The gap between rich and poor rapidly grew wider.

  Soon, due to a lack of jobs and housing, an abundance of shantytowns, teeming with disenfranchised villagers and farmers, sprouted up around Tehran. As unrest spread through the citizenry, the ruling body hardened into an even more stringent military dictatorship. The Shah imprisoned anyone with opposing views, and stripped away civil liberties and the right to strike. Freedom of speech and the press were eliminated, and anti-Shah activity was punishable by torture, imprisonment, and even execution. The Shah activated his own secret police—the savak—who ramped up terror by raiding homes believed to house anti-Shah literature and arresting all suspects encountered on the way.

  In this turbulent political state, dozens of resistance groups sprang up, many of them with multiple branches. Their ideologies may have differed in their particulars, but they were united in one objective: to overthrow the Shah’s military dictatorship and bring freedom and social equality to the people of Iran.

  As public unrest and anti-Shah demonstrations increased, so did the gunfire in the streets. My grandmother’s house began to turn into a base for intensifying political activity. The savak raided houses in our neighborhood daily. And life became more hazardous.

  Chapter 6

  I Soon Realized that It was Opium that was The Love of My Father’s Life, and that He’d Gradually Become Bored of Me.

  I wasn’t aware of what a father was until I began to notice that other children had a man as another parent and I did not. There was a tall, thin, quiet man with tinted glasses and a mustache who came to visit me once in a while. He was nice to me, but I didn’t know how he fit into the tightly woven pattern of my family. He stuck out in my family like a salted pretzel stick in a candy store. He was unlike anyone I had ever met.

  Whenever my father visited our house, I’d grow shy and hide from him. My grandmother was nice to him, but I noticed that he and my mum hardly spoke. It didn’t cross my mind to wonder why he didn’t live with us the way other Daddies lived with Mummies. I figured he must have liked me since he made an effort to talk to me. But my childhood instinct told me that he did it out of obligation, not because he wanted to. So I scowled and didn’t say much back to him.

  He was good-looking and distant, like a film star. And he was quiet and always seemed unhappy. So I put on my best dresses hoping he would notice and want to spend more time with me. As I became aware that he was my father—my daddy, someone who should love me—I acted coy and dressed prettily because that’s how girls got the things they wanted. He would pick me up for scheduled visits and take me to the nearby park, Haft Hoz (Seven Lakes), to buy cooked liver from the street vendors and go on the mini Ferris wheel. Once, when my stomach was upset and I had diarrhea, he took me to the bathroom; I was very embarrassed that he should see me in such odious circumstances.

  Often, my father took me to his sister’s house nearby, where
he lived with his mother and younger brother. I remember thinking that my three cousins were noisy and naughty children, not refined at all. But I loved playing with my girl cousin, dressing up in chic ladies’ dresses and heels. Still, I never smiled in the photos we took on those visits. “Who’s this girl here scowling like a donkey?” my father would drawl, pointing at me in the pictures. It was the only time I saw him express anything close to emotion.

  I adored my father’s family: my aunts and uncles and cousins. They were lovely, kind, and fun to be around. But I just didn’t feel like smiling. I was a bad child, like my dad said. My father’s family enjoyed simple things, like watching movies and eating food together. It was an alien Disneyland. Simple pleasures and laid-back indulgences constituted the family foundation, unlike my mother’s home where everyone was a political activist.

  Though my father’s visits came less and less frequently with time, I still waited for him at the door, ready in my best flowery cotton dress, my tight ringlets freshly shampooed and clipped out of my face. When he didn’t show up, I would chastise myself. “I’m not pretty enough,” I’d think. “I’m too boring for him.” Eventually, my grandmother would shout at me to give up and come in.

  “He probably got ill or something,” she’d say. “Maybe there was an accident.”

  “But when he telephoned, he said he was coming. He will come.” I believed in him, because surely my daddy was a nice man. He had to be. I never cried at the huge wall of hurt and disappointment that secretly overwhelmed my heart when this man who was supposed to be my father didn’t show up or call when he promised. And on those rare occasions when he did, he was grouchy and silent.

  I soon began overhearing the adults talking about opium, and how it was something that men did—especially older men, like taxi drivers. I soon realized that opium was the love of my father’s life and that he’d gradually become bored of me, because I was a nerdy girl who was not fun.

  But my father wasn’t the only adult in my life, and I found comfort in other adults, who often told me I was a pretty girl. I began to seek attention from other males—boys my own age or older relatives. I grew determined to make them like me by becoming the most beautiful girl they had ever seen. This soon formed the backbone of my sense of self. It became my armor and made me happy.

  The less I saw of my father, though, the more I longed for him. I closed my eyes and fantasized that he would pick me up and smile, take me to interesting places and laugh. He became a fantasy figure, like the seasoned movie star he resembled. Eventually, though, I grew tired of waiting for him, and my fantasies turned to the soldiers on television.

  Chapter 7

  The first time I masturbated was winter, just before the revolution. I was about five years old, and there was a constant stream of men in uniforms invading my daily life. The spectacle of the savak, who terrified me, gave me a delicious dark thrill that hit me in my gut in a way it wasn’t supposed to. I found myself attracted to the soldiers on the streets and on TV, parading with authority, with power.

  One afternoon, it came exploding out of me. I was watching the news. The marching troops were so awesome, so powerful, that I gave in. Crawling under the korsi (a low table covered in blankets with a heater attached), I squeezed my eyes really tight and pictured soldiers walking up to me one by one as I lay naked on a dirt road. They each leaned over and looked at my body, admiring it and wanting me. I got a funny feeling in my tummy when I thought of that. A dangerous, powerful explosion washed over my little body and made me feel like a queen. A feeling of urgency overwhelmed me. So I put my hands in my panties and touched myself where it throbbed. I had found a secret and it would take me to a place of ethereal and majestic beauty—my beautiful secret world. I felt higher than anyone else. I felt invincible.

  All my first cousins were boys. They teased and chased me constantly, and I began to love it more and more. They were the first people I’d found whom I could actually seek out to receive male attention. I began dressing deliberately in my best girlie clothes, swaying my hips and flirting as I walked out on the street to play. I had a huge crush on the slightly older twin boys who lived next door. In my attempts to get them to like me and want me, I did what worked: I acted coy and needy, even though I was really quite a tomboy.

  One summer afternoon, while all the adults slept, I asked the twins to teach me to tie my shoelaces. I sat at the bottom of the stone steps leading to the second floor of our house, and slid up my skirt to reveal my bare legs. As they stood over me, I lifted one leg up to them so they would see all the way up to the top of my thigh. Then, slowly, they taught me to tie my laces. Their skin felt hot on mine. And I felt loved.

  Chapter 8

  He Shows Me Cartoons and Takes Me Places. My Dad never does that. And so I gave Him Sex in Return.

  I walked up the massive jaw of stone gray steps. Up, up, to the second floor. Looking down, I saw my candy-pink nail-varnished toenails poking through my plastic slippers. Still I carried on, my heart beating with excitement and the dirty shame of the duty I had to perform. I was a bad girl. I would go to hell. Definitely. I was five years old.

  The man was renting the apartment from my grandmother. He was single and full of energy. He had thick black-rug hair and was playful with me. His name was Mr. Karimi. I played with him all the time. In the afternoons, he let me ride in his white Peykan car, which shook and prattled, the engine’s wet purring guzzling greedily around the sunny, sleeping neighborhood.

  My grandmother was sleeping downstairs. My mummy was at work at the university. I couldn’t wait till she came back with the duck bread. I wanted to go outside. I was dying to steal some fruit from the neighbor’s persimmon tree. The fat bellies of the pregnant fruit were ready to burst. I wanted to pick monkey flowers with the other girls and chase the twin boys next door.

  I didn’t know why I liked Mr. Karimi. His room was dark and he prayed all the time. I didn’t understand why. He always said I should pray with him, and sometimes I did. I loved the smell of the Mohr. It smelled like the heavenly damp clay of the rain-soaked ground. I loved the safe feeling of throwing the slippery chador around my head and body, and I loved praying to God. It was peaceful. I’d learned all the prayers by heart, but only the shorter children’s versions.

  Karimi finished praying and smiled at me. Then he called me into the room. A golliwog sat on the shelf with a big head full of tight, black curls. Its puffed-up lips were like two sausages, and it had a pair of bulging eyes inside a nodding head. Karimi turned the wall projector on. It was Bugs Bunny. He drew the curtains shut and closed the door, then locked it with a key. In the silence I heard only the warm humming of the projector and the thumping of my heart.

  Karimi sat me on his lap facing the wall. On the screen, Bugs Bunny jumped up and down like a demented yo-yo. I love cartoons. Karimi must like me. He let me watch them because he liked the special place between my legs, the soft, squishy place where I weed from. His fingers felt too thick and there were too many of them. He was so unhygienic—didn’t he know that place was germy? His fingers were going to smell.

  I heard a zip. The cartoon was so colorful. So full of crazy characters. I wished it had a princess in it. Karimi’s breath was hot as he whispered things against my neck that I didn’t understand. There was something between my legs. It was what boys like my cousin had. I thought Karimi must love me. We were doing something bad. I would go to hell. I would definitely go to hell.

  Karimi finally stood up and unlocked the door. He went to the bathroom, washed his hands, came back, and put some socks on. The cartoon was over. I could go now. The room smelled like holy rose water.

  I don’t know which came first anymore, my childhood sense of sexuality or the lodger upstairs.

  Karimi had moved in because my mother wasn’t earning enough to take care of us. One day I heard her telling my grandmother that my father had taken the money she had hidden under the carpet to pay for his opium.

  Karimi had a
black mustache just like my father. But he was tall and wore crisp white shirts. He smelled like sweat, but I liked him. He was kind to me. When I sat in the passenger seat of his car, I felt like a spoiled rich girl.

  Karimi did many things for me, and I started to spend a lot of time with him. When I went in search of his companionship every afternoon, I knew what was going to happen—and yet I did it, again and again: Facing Mecca, he taught me how to recite the Qur’an and say the afternoon prayer, kneeling on the mat, pressing our foreheads against the Mohr, and muttering it under our breaths. Afterward he’d take me to his bedroom. He’d always lock the door. The projector hummed warmly. I was scared. Frightened. Never had cartoons triggered such adrenaline in me. The bedroom of this man was where I belonged and it would be unnatural for me to leave it. No one was ever going to help me. When he put me on his lap, however, my place was confirmed in the flames of hell—and I knew that too. I was a bad girl. Tainted. I knew then that this was my destiny. I must love it. I must love this. This—it is who I am. He loves me; he takes care of me; he shows me cartoons and takes me places. My dad doesn’t do these things. His fingers would slip into my panties. I wanted to vomit from fear, but I gave him love instead.

  I sat still afterward until he washed his hands and told me to go downstairs. He didn’t even have the courtesy to show me girlie cartoons like Cinderella, only Pink Panther and Bugs Bunny—and I hated him for that.

  Chapter 9

  Though a sliver of me got off on the sexual contact with Mr. Karimi, I knew what he did was disgusting and unnatural. What made me happy was playing sexual games with the boys and girls my own age.