Persian Girls: A Memoir

by Nahid Rachlin

  Then, in the holy city of Qom, theology students who were demonstrating against the scheduled opening of liquor stores there were attacked by the Shah’s paratroopers and SAVAK. The violence only led to more demonstrations, not just in Qom but in Tabriz, as well. Government forces killed hundreds of people. Khomeini publicly attacked the Shah’s rule, calling it tyrannical. He called the Shah “Yazid,” who, according to Shiites, was a dissolute leader who had ordered the assassination of Hussein. Yazid was condemned and ridiculed in the passion plays Maryam used to take me to.

  “What do you think of Khomeini?” I asked Jalal in his bookstore.

  “I don’t want the clergy to take over, but Khomeini does have a point about the Shah catering to America,” Jalal said vehemently. “The Shah’s reforms are superficial. Look how we live. It’s no better than a jail cell.”

  I was confused. I hated the Shah’s tyranny and all the power he allowed the SAVAK. But I liked his modernization ideas. The same was true of my feelings about America—I didn’t like their having helped create the SAVAK, but I yearned for the personal freedom I would be allowed in that country.

  At school Mrs. Soleimani told us that the Shah’s recent amendment to the voting laws, allowing women the right to vote, wasn’t really enforced, since men told their wives, daughters, and sisters not to vote, or dictated to them whom to vote for. Anyway, she continued passionately, how could anyone vote meaningfully, since so much about the candidates was hidden from us?

  The class fell into silence. These weren’t issues anyone talked about in public. But I was stirred up by what she said and nodded my approval. Indeed, news of the new law had barely reached girls. No one I knew talked about it or acted on it.

  At school a few days later I spotted Mahvash talking with two other girls. Their heads were bent together, their voices hushed. I joined them.

  “Mrs. Soleimani has been given warnings by the principal,” Soroor said. “I overheard a conversation between them.”

  “What kind of warnings?” I asked, my heart sinking.

  “A SAVAK agent told the principal that Mrs. Soleimani was brainwashing the young girls.”

  Tooran joined us. She was a nervous girl who kept to herself most of the time and I was surprised that she approached us. She had arrived in the middle of the year because her father, who worked at the Educational Ministry in Isfahan, had been transferred to Ahvaz.

  Suddenly she started to cry. She said that police had come to their house, searched all their books and every document and paper, and arrested her father. She had no idea where they had taken him. This was her last day at school. She and her mother were going to Tehran to see if they could do something to track his whereabouts. He could be in Evin Prison.

  The bell rang and everyone scattered to classes but Tooran said good-bye and left the school.

  On my way home that afternoon, I came across a demonstration in Pahlavi Square. A crowd, all men, were holding banners demanding improvement in their lives: “Workers Break Your Chains,” “Fight for Equality,” “Americans and British Are Stealing Our Oil.”

  As I walked past them, I could hear their voices over a loudspeaker. Government employees demanded higher salaries. Others protested rising prices, which were controlled by the government. Some wanted subsidized housing. They were zealous, desperate, risking arrest.

  At home the radio in the salon was on and Father was sitting next to it, concentrating on every word. As soon as he saw me he gestured to me to come to him.

  “Nahid, I’m telling you now very firmly, you have got to watch what you say, what you read. Do you understand?”

  I nodded and went to my room, the sound of the radio broadcast fading away.

  Eighteen

  One day Mrs. Soleimani was gone. She had been forced to resign and no one knew where she was. The school’s atmosphere was more somber than ever and I mourned her absence.

  Then there was the day, not long after Mrs. Soleimani disappeared, when I went to Tabatabai Bookstore to talk to Jalal and find new material to read. It was a dusty October day with no breeze blowing and no sign of rain, which hadn’t come yet that year. The air smelled of petroleum. I gave a start at the sight of the bookstore. One window was boarded up and another window-pane was shattered, its pieces on the ground. Though the pane was broken, there was no way to see inside the store because thick cardboard covered the break. I felt personally assaulted. I sat on the step of an old abandoned house across from the store and wept uncontrollably. I could only imagine what had happened to Jalal. Most likely he had suffered the same fate as his father. I didn’t know his last name or where he lived, even though we had had so many conversations. I had no way of even inquiring about him.

  What was happening in Ahvaz was only a fragment of what was happening across the country. Then Khomeini was arrested. After being imprisoned for two months, he was put under house arrest in an isolated suburb of Tehran.

  At lunchtime Father was waiting for me outside my school. “Come with me, I need to talk to you,” he commanded.

  My heart began to pound. He led me to the restaurant in Melli Park. After he ordered he said suddenly, “I’m going to let you go to college in America. Parviz advised me to do that.”

  I stared at him, incredulous. So Parviz had been influenced by all the letters I wrote to him and was coming to my aid.

  “He knows a women’s college not far from his medical school in St. Louis,” Father said. “They offer a few scholarships each year to foreign students. You’ve performed well at school, so you have a chance.” As if my going to the college was already finalized, he went on to say, “You must promise you won’t try to imitate American girls, their ways. And under no circumstances should you get ideas in your head about American men. You’ll come back. There are men here who like educated women.”

  As I walked back to school, I tried to understand what was happening. Father was afraid of the kind of books I read, the stories I wrote, of the fact that I broke rules. He knew I would put up a bigger fight than Pari if he tried to marry me to someone he and Mohtaram selected.

  Soon after that talk he gave me application forms. As I filled them out, I was confident I would get into the college and with a scholarship. But my situation had changed so suddenly that I couldn’t quite trust it. I was excited one moment and despairing the next that Father might change his mind about sending me there. My future shone in colors that changed continually as if refracting light through a prism.

  A few months after I mailed the applications Father came into my room and handed me two letters. I read both of them quickly. The first letter from Lindengrove College said:

  . . . We are happy to inform you that you have been accepted . . .

  The second one said:

  . . . You have been awarded a scholarship, covering room, board, and tuition . . .

  I looked up at Father and noticed a faint smile on his face. Perhaps in spite of everything he was secretly proud of my being a good student. He went on to outline the steps I would take. He was getting the necessary papers together for me and by the end of the summer they would be ready and I would then leave for America.

  Mahvash was my only friend who understood my desire to go to America. She herself was going to Tehran to study at the university and then maybe also find a way to pursue her interest in ballet. She would live with her older married brother and attend classes.

  I had had no contact with anyone who spoke English. Oddly, foreign languages weren’t a part of the curriculum in the high school. Except for some words I had absorbed watching American movies, I had no knowledge of the English language. I started taking the English course offered after the regular class hours at my school. I bought a Farsi-English dictionary and looked up words.

  Soon Maryam and Aziz came to visit. Maryam had finally returned from Karbala to take care of some affairs connected to her house and to see her family.

  “I have a suitor; he’s young and well educated. I don’t know wha
t he wants from a widow like me,” Maryam said as she sat with Aziz, Mohtaram, and me in the salon.

  “Some men like widows, value them for being experienced,” Mohtaram said to her sister. “Can he afford to take care of you?”

  “I don’t need his money,” Maryam said.

  “You’re a widow, in a vulnerable position,” Aziz said to her. “It’s good to have someone to look after you.”

  “There was no joy in my life when Fatollah was alive,” Maryam said.

  “Still, it’s better to be married. All your sisters are married,” Aziz said. Turning to Mohtaram she added, “Your brother Ahmad knows Rahbar well enough and praised him highly.”

  “Rahbar would take me to Dubai,” Maryam said, softening. “He works for a caviar export company and has been transferred there. He wants to have a wife to take along.”

  “I’d be so happy for you to get married,” Mohtaram said.

  “Honestly, my life is more peaceful without a man.”

  But Maryam’s face was glowing, and I could sense a stirring in her heart for this man.

  “I’m so glad you’re going to university. I never had that chance,” Maryam told me when we were alone. “I know you’re a good student, always were. I remember the day you came home with a crown on your head.” After a pause she added, “But I hope you’ll return. When you have your own home and are independent we’ll be able to see a lot of each other.”

  I nodded and said nothing. I was thinking that I would never come back to Iran if I could help it. Then I felt sad as that would separate me further from Maryam.

  At the end of the visit Aziz embraced me tightly and said, “You’re going so far away, God be with you.”

  Maryam and I cried as we kissed, knowing this was good-bye for a long time to come.

  Pari managed to come home to say good-bye to me.

  Perhaps she didn’t want to complain too much, so as not to ruin this happy occasion for me. It was as if she had finally resigned herself to Taheri.

  “I’ve struck a bargain with Taheri,” she said. “I promised I won’t resist getting pregnant and he promised to let me take courses in theater and cinema at the School of Dramatic Arts and be in their productions. Their plays and movies have only a certain kind of audience who wouldn’t overlap with the people Taheri knows.”

  As for Majid, Pari said she had heard from a friend that he moved out of Ahvaz. That was all she knew. She still thought about him, but she was trying to stop.

  “Nahid,” Pari said softly. “Remember how Taheri threatened suicide if I didn’t marry him? Sometimes he turns that around. Once he told me if I leave him, I’d be in serious trouble.”

  “Pari . . .”

  “It’s all a bluff, as his threatening suicide was,” she said, reverting to a more cheerful tone. “I’ve made some friends at the school. That helps a lot.”

  We parted in the same tearful way as I had with Maryam. In spite of Pari’s more optimistic manner and tone, I couldn’t help feeling upset for her. I was getting out and she was still in her prison.

  I never said good-bye to Manijeh. When she visited she stayed close to Mohtaram as usual, never interacting with me directly. More often, Mohtaram went and visited her at her new home. But now that I was leaving, our mutual hostility was like a crevasse I wished I could somehow bridge.

  A few days before I was to leave, Father sent me to his friend Mr. Boroojerdi, a pharmacist who also exchanged currency. He was going to give me the best rates from toomans to dollars. Father was giving me some money to take along; after I arrived, he would send me pocket money through Parviz, who was going to meet me at the St. Louis airport.

  On the way to Mr. Boroojerdi’s office I came across another demonstration. Hundreds of men and, to my surprise, some women, too, were shouting, “You can’t silence us forever.” “Open the jail doors and free our sisters and brothers.” They looked angry, determined.

  When I arrived at the pharmacy Mr. Boroojerdi pulled two chairs together and we sat across from each other.

  “I’m very glad that your father is sending you to university,” he said. He was about Father’s age, had a pile of gray hair and an erect posture. His manner, in contrast to Father’s, was mild and congenial. “My own daughter studied in London for a few years. Then she returned, wanted to be with us. But this is a terrible place for an ambitious and outspoken girl.”

  The demonstrators passed the pharmacy, their voices drowning out ours. “The American Shah is hoarding the oil money.” “Americans, the oil eaters, must leave,” they shouted daringly.

  “Americans have been exploiting us and giving the Shah too much power, but still America has a lot to offer a young girl like you,” Mr. Boroojerdi said.

  “It’s been my dream to go there.”

  As I packed on my last day, rapid, tropical rain poured down. I placed the clothes I liked well enough and the photographs I had collected of family and friends in a large navy vinyl suitcase. For the first time in years I felt lighthearted. A tightly sealed door had started to open and I was finally walking out.

  Before I left for the airport, Father came into my room and said, “It’s good for you to go to university.” Then, as if his kind remark had to be followed with a harsh one, he said, “Go, go, you’ve been causing so much worry, trouble.” His face looked haggard and his usually erect shoulders were stooping.

  His cold words hit me like pieces of hail. I leaned my head against the wall so that he wouldn’t see my tears.

  “I can’t take you to the airport, I have work I must do,” he said. Then I heard his footsteps receding.

  Mohtaram started shouting from the other room, “Go pick up Farzin, she’s crying so. I’m exhausted.” I picked up Farzin and, leaning her on my shoulder, rocked her until she calmed down.

  I didn’t hear Mohtaram coming in. She startled me with an avalanche of words.

  “Each time I became pregnant your father and I searched for names, fantasized about the baby. Would it be a boy or a girl? What would it look like? I prepared a room, set up the crib. Then labor, giving birth, nursing, watching the baby grow. Each child was so different from the others, unique. Life was snuffed out of three of them. Hoveida with his light curly hair, Asghar with slanted eyes like an Oriental, Mina with dimples in her cheeks.”

  As she talked the row of thin gold bracelets she always wore jingled on her wrist. “One day Mina became yellow, her face, arms, and legs stick thin. She knew she was going to die. She said, ‘Mother, I’m going to go to another world.’ ”

  “You gave me away.” The words just flew out of me.

  In the deep silence that followed I could hear Farzin gurgling, the echo of the music from a movie at the Sahara Cinema.

  “My dear sister craved a child. And she felt she wasn’t a woman unless she had one. Her husband was so old, maybe it was his fault. But everyone blames the woman when she doesn’t get pregnant. . . . How quickly children grow. You look away for a moment and look back and they’ve grown.” Then, for the first time in the years that I had lived there, she pulled me to her. Holding me tightly, Mohtaram kissed me.

  When we pulled apart, I looked at her face. I had a feeling I was seeing only fluctuating reflections of her—who she was, what her true feelings were. I wanted to ask her questions but I was so full of contradictory emotions that I couldn’t talk. I left the room. In a few moments I saw her leave the house, taking Farzin and Farzaneh with her.

  In my room I pulled out a photograph of Mohtaram and me that I had packed. I stared at it, riveted. I had been told that the photograph was taken just before my grandmother took me away. In the photograph Mohtaram is holding me, an infant, on her lap. She looks pretty with her hair cut neatly to the nape of her neck, wearing a white dress with a low neck, and white high-heeled shoes. Was Mohtaram painfully disengaging herself from me then or had she always, for some reason, been detached from this one child? If she had fallen in love with me in those early months of my life, would she have
changed her mind and not given me to her sister?

  Ali accompanied me to the airport in a taxi. The rain had stopped and sunlight glittered at the treetops and on the surface of buildings and houses. I was leaving this home and going where I deeply wished to be. Free, free, free, I sang to myself.

  PART TWO

  America

  Nineteen

  I stood by the window of my room in Green Hall, one of the five dormitories that accommodated Lindengrove College’s four hundred students. It was as if years, not just a day, had gone by since I left Iran and only hours since Parviz picked me up from the St. Louis Airport and dropped me off on the campus in St. James. I was so remote now from my family and Ahvaz. The campus, with its colonial and Greek Revival architecture, wide old shady trees, flowers in bloom in rectangular beds, and sets of swing chairs in different spots, looked glorious in the pale, late-afternoon sunlight. I watched with fascination the girls walking about the campus or sitting on the swings. They reminded me of the women I had seen in American movies with Pari, or on the other side of the river. One girl with curly short hair and dimples was an older version of Shirley Temple. Another, with pale blond hair, the color of straw, and milk-white skin, reminded me of Marilyn Monroe. I couldn’t wait to write to Pari and tell her all about them.

  I pulled out a photograph of Pari from my suitcase and put it on the desk. Then I spread the paradise tapestry, which I had brought without its frame, on the back of a chair until I could frame it and hang it on the wall. I didn’t have a good photograph of Maryam—only a small one with her hair covered in a black chador, only her eyes showing. After taking a shower in the common bathroom, I sat in bed and wrote a long letter to Pari and one to Maryam. I went to bed early, exhausted from the eighteen-hour flight from Iran. I fell into a dreamless sleep.