Camelia

by Camelia Entekhabifard

  My cousins, Mahta and Gita, were two perfect ladies, greeting and kissing the mourners with solemn faces. Gita had been married the year before, and Mahta had just finished high school. They knew how to delicately salt a cucumber and how to descend the stairs in style and how to gracefully cross their legs. They had practiced walking with books balanced on their heads. They were raised to be courtly, but courtly days were gone. Mahta, with her white face, used to always say as a child that she’d marry the Shah’s son. But where was Reza, the Shah’s son, today? Was he thinking of us? Mahta kissed Kati and me, and then she said, “Children in the back room.”

  Every day that we visited that whole week, the children were all stuck in the same back room. If I ventured out to talk to my mother or father, Mahta or Gita would stop me and bring me back again. I was tired and bored as I watched Bita, my aunt’s youngest daughter, playing with a toy that looked to me like a makeup kit for Barbie. When I was her age, I would also carry my Barbie dolls from room to room in a blue basket, happily telling myself stories. My fat cousin Omid, with his drooping stomach, had been kept content with all the meals coming from the restaurant Sarv. Sinking his teeth into some chicken, he asked us skinny girls to give him our leftovers.

  Then I suddenly remembered something and snuck out once more to the front. All the lights were off and a rowzekhan was singing in anticipation of the seventh day after the passing of my uncle. I stumbled through the commotion, tripping over the feet of weeping women.

  “Today is my birthday.”

  “What?” my grandmother asked softly.

  Straining my voice, I said again, “It’s my birthday.”

  When the singer came to sensitive verses and sang “father” or “orphaned children,” the sobbing would swell. It was January 16th, and everyone had forgotten me, again. My grandmother blew her nose and whispered, “Happy birthday, but you see, your uncle is dead.”

  “Zari dear, these are Musayyeb’s things. I don’t know anyone who could use them. If you know someone in need of them, take them as a kheirat for Musayyeb.” My widowed aunt was packing up the house to move to a smaller apartment on Kucheh-ye Mahmudiya. Their large old house on Khiaban-e Fereshteh had a warm, carpeted basement that made a perfect hiding place when we’d play and an old courtyard with jasmine bushes clustered around the trunk of a pine tree. But I didn’t like their salon. It was dimly lit with thick velvet curtains. Even thinking of it gave me nightmares.

  After Friday dinners, my aunt would summon the spirits. My father called her “Turan, the ghostbuster.” She said that on Friday evenings the spirits were free. She’d lay a sheet of paper covered with drawings and inscriptions flat on a small table. It must have been some kind of conjuring spell. Then she’d turn off the lamps and light a candle, and Mahta would send the children to the back room. We could hear my aunt’s calm, strong voice.“Oh spirit who art here in this room, we greet you in peace. Oh spirit who art here in this room, kindly give us a sign.”

  We would sneak out to watch from behind the door of the salon, but when the tea glasses started to quiver on the table, my blood would freeze, and I’d run back before the spirit could appear in front of our eyes.

  My father told us that my aunt was moving because the house wasn’t safe without Uncle Musayyeb—that they were afraid of thieves. But my aunt told my mother and me that she’d heard the sound of the hooves of djinn and that at night they’d hear the rattling of glass cases coming from the salon.

  I swallowed hard.

  “Why? Are the spirits you called still in the house?” I asked. My aunt narrowed her eyes and said, “Evil spirits dwell in houses. Haven’t you heard of evil spirits? You can’t reason with them. And besides, this house has a very long history.”

  My eyes popped out of their sockets. What if a spirit should seize me one night by the neck when I went to use the toilet or get a drink of water? Then what would I do?

  My aunt turned to my mother. “Zari, that old pine tree in the courtyard? Thirty years ago a little boy hung himself from it. He lived here with his grandmother.”

  “Who told you that?” my mother asked casually.

  “I’ve heard the sound of weeping and moaning coming from the courtyard at night for years. My next-door neighbor Khanum Tasheyyud will back me up. She knows!”

  I asked, “The tree with the jasmine sprouting up around it? A kid . . .”

  My aunt interrupted me. “That is precisely why spirits are attracted to this house.” She pointed out a thick book on the table with the title Speaking with the Spirit World and a ghostly figure on the cover. “I want to establish contact.” My aunt went on with excitement. “For thirty nights you must grip a pen and press its point onto a sheet of paper and close your eyes and concentrate. Then you can ask questions, and your hand will start to move by itself, guided by the spirits, and they will answer.” Then she winked at me and said, “Your little cousin Bita is reading the book, too.” She smiled, and I could see her sharp silver-plated teeth.

  When we got home, my mother began sorting through my uncle’s things. I asked her, “Maman, is Aunt Turan telling the truth?”

  “About what?”

  “About the spirits in the sideboards of their house . . .”

  My mother interrupted me. “Your aunt is a little cuckoo.” She pulled a pair of leather shoes out of some yellow tissue and stared at them. “These shoes, they’re the shoes that . . .”

  SPRING 1999

  “Did you know my uncle? Agha-ye Musayyeb Vafa’i? He was your father’s personal calligrapher.”

  I was in the United States, in Virginia, interviewing Reza Pahlavi. For me this was the most important question in the world. As a child, I had stood in front of his photograph at the museum at the palace at Sa’adabad and asked, “Do you remember us?” In the picture, Reza was a little boy in shorts standing in front of his toy car in the gardens. Today a young man in a white button-down shirt sat across from me. I had waited years and traveled a long way for this moment. I had waited ages for his answer. Shouldn’t there be someone who hadn’t forgotten us?

  Reza politely stared at his hands and tried to give a sincere answer. “Yes, yes, I do remember something. But I don’t remember his face very well.”

  I pressed the button on my tape recorder and started the interview for my newspaper. The next day in New York I put a new photograph of Reza Pahlavi in an envelope for my mother and wrote: “To all those who have waited. To Uncle Musayyeb and his waiting brown shoes. To my father who sleeps peacefully in section seventy of Behesht-e Zahra, waiting for the mullahs to fall. To my uncle who died suffering on the staircase up to the roof, his eyes burned by the sun. To those who were never able to tell us when these dark days would pass. To my childhood spent in hope and longing. And Mother, to your youth, full of regret. This is Reza Pahlavi today.”

  chapter four

  Cool Summers of the Peach

  FALL 1999

  In otaq sahm-e tu nabud

  Ke penjereh ra va gunjeshkan ra

  Asheq budi

  Dar tabestanha-ye khonuk az halu.

  Sahm-e tu az mordad, sayeh-i ast

  Ba ketabi be ruye zanuvan-e kudaki.

  This room was not your fate

  When you were in love

  With the window and the sparrows

  In the cool summers of the peach.

  Your fate in August is a shadow

  With a book on your childhood knees.

  —Mandana Sadeqi

  I stood at the mirror murmuring a poem by my friend Mandana. She had written “Camelia in Chains” for me while I was in prison and had mailed it to my mother about two months ago. It was the first thing my mother handed to me when I came home. Throughout our adolescence, Mandana and I went together to poetry festivals in cities around Iran. She was from Abadan, in southern Iran, and we had met in 1990 at the poetry and short story evenings held by the Club for Creative Literature and the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults in Mashh
ad. I applied a thick layer of green eye shadow. The color suited me, and I opened the Chanel rouge case. My face was pale. I put mascara on my eyelashes and lipstick on my lips. I recited her poem to myself: Sahm-e tu az mordad, sayeh-i ast / Ba ketabi be ruye zanuvan-e kudaki . . . (Your fate in August is a shadow / With a book on your childhood knees . . .).

  In my heart I said to Mandana, “I remember that child with the book on her knees. And today, again, I am going to the Club for Creative Literature . . .” But my appointment was not to read poetry. That morning, the phone had rung, and I’d picked up the receiver. A familiar, firm, and measured voice had said, “Salaam aleikum. Don’t forget—one o’clock this afternoon, at the club.” Then a dial tone had emanated from the phone in my hand.

  I had left prison only yesterday, looking like a hairy monster—my eyebrows had grown together like when I was in grade school, while I lost half the hair on my head. My face was covered with red splotches, and none of my clothes fit. I’d actually gained weight as I lost muscle, sitting alone every day in my cell. I went directly to the hairdresser with my mother. She didn’t want to show me in that state to any guests who might stop by. The staff of the beauty salon shrieked when they saw me but then tried to pretend I hadn’t changed all that much. They wept with both happiness and disbelief, and the other customers couldn’t understand this emotional outburst. But after two hours of frantic effort by experts, I looked only a little better.

  The day before my release my interrogator had come to set our “appointments” on the outside. And to deliver his ultimatum: I would be released on the condition that I sign my tak nevesi and begin spying for the Ministry of Intelligence. It seemed that he’d made me scrawl my signature thousands of times. As he reminded me of our dates, I just nodded my head. I was burning inside. As always, I was seated facing away from him, my eyes blindfolded. But he could see my hands as I signed.

  “Good. I’ll see you the day after tomorrow. Bear in mind that you must observe your hejab well and definitely come wearing a chador.”

  “At the ministry who shall I say I am coming to see?”

  In a mocking tone, he said, “Who said anything about the Ministry of Intelligence?”

  Meekly I answered, “Anywhere you say.” I kept my tone quiet, acting as if I were confused. And I honestly was confused—I expected I would be made to prove myself and that the first place I’d report would be the central office of the Ministry of Intelligence. I’d written a role for myself to play, and I told myself that I would have to keep it up until I was truly free. My freedom meant more than a conditional release from Towhid Prison. I believed I could somehow keep playing the role until I was a free journalist again, until I could live free from threats to my safety and to the safety of my family. And pretending I was in love had inspired real love. In my heart, I wasn’t ready to give up the role. I didn’t want to become a spy, to criticize and investigate my colleagues. My stomach turned at the thought, yet I agreed to everything. I had entered into an agreement not to be “me.” I melted at the sound of my interrogator’s voice. I let him mold me into a new person, the person he wished me to be: a soldier waiting on the orders of her commander.

  He smirked. “Is the Club for Creative Literature building good?”

  Was he making fun of me? I knew he wanted to hear my voice again on the outside, to see my attitude toward him after I’d been released. And I knew both of us couldn’t wait to face each other for the first time, to look into each other’s eyes. My desire mixed with my fear. I was afraid of what the future held, of how far and where I could go with this man, and how I could control the situation. But though I felt these fears, I didn’t want to consider them. I pushed them away.

  “At the club, come to the guard post and say that you are Khanum Zarafshan. Keep your face covered tightly. They will show you the way. Good-bye. Be a smart girl, and when you’re out of here, always think about that blindfold.”

  It was the building where I had spent all my teenage years . . . The office of the literature teachers . . . Our poetry readings . . . How was it possible that this was the secret location of the Ministry of Intelligence?

  The taxi I had called stood waiting. The girl that looked at me from the mirror today was not the girl I had been yesterday. It was a new face, but I did not want it. I took one last look at myself, then took a deep breath, and tucked the chador in my bag. I couldn’t go out with a black chador in front of my neighbors. Drowning in perfume, I got into the Peykan. At Khiaban-e Vozara, took the chador out and muttered an explanation to the driver—“The hassle of government offices”—and put it on so tightly that only my eyes peeked out. I shuddered at the idea of running into any of the fine poets who had been my literature teachers—Agha-ye Sha’abani or Agha-ye Ebrahimi. If I met their eyes, I wouldn’t be able to keep up my performance.

  I crossed the avenue and stopped in front of the guard post. “My name is Zarafshan. I have a one o’clock appointment.” With total surprise I realized that even the guards were expecting me. They directed me toward the building and the security office inside, but I could have found my way with my eyes closed; I had walked this path hundreds of times on my way to classes. But what was I doing here today? In the security office, a young man with a beard scanned my face, as I kept my head down and wondered at his plastic sandals. I could only think of the lost pleasant evenings when I’d crossed this hall before.

  “Please go in.”

  I closed the door behind me. It was heavily padded with leather on both sides, so no sound could escape or enter. My heart was beating furiously. He was standing facing the window with his back to me. I said, “Salaam,” and he turned.

  I had uncovered my face. The chador was still on my head, and I was wearing a black silk head scarf and an ash-colored overcoat, the top two buttons of which I had undone. Without a word he stared at me in shock. Suddenly, he started screaming at me.“Aren’t you ashamed to come here made up like that? I thought you had become a human being! Out! Satan out!” Still yelling, he continued, “Oh God, the man outside, what will he think about all the makeup this one is wearing?”

  I was stunned. He marched behind me and opened the door and said something to the little man with the sandals. Furious, he barked at me to go and wash my face.

  In the bathroom I turned on the cold, sweet, refreshing water, and watching myself in the mirror, I cried for my foolish mistake. I wiped away the green eye shadow with a paper towel. It wouldn’t come off, and there was green up to my eyebrows. But I scrubbed my face the best I could and pulled the chador back on. As I passed the sentry again, I felt that maybe he was laughing. But I didn’t look—I told myself I didn’t care.

  I knocked cautiously before turning the door handle. He had opened the window and was fanning the air with a newspaper. He said he was suffocating from the nasty smell of my perfume, that it had contaminated the whole building with its syphilitic smell. Angrily, he motioned for me to sit. I didn’t know how I should react—this was not the scene I had imagined. I kept apologizing, saying I was sorry for not knowing how I should be dressed. I told him I’d wanted to look fresh and cheerful, not like someone depressed to see him. But my excuses weren’t enough to calm him down. He was so angry, he said, “For a minute, I thought it was the devil at the door. I thought I had trained you well. But you’ve failed.”

  Both of us were left with a bitter taste in our mouths. It was a terrible start; I was crying and begging his forgiveness. He told me, impatiently, “It’s enough for today, you’d better go. Just go! I will call you tomorrow. And never show up like that again. Is that clear?” I nodded my head and jumped up nervously like a rabbit, then went home to plan my next move.

  chapter five

  Madame Camelia

  1982-1986

  We were at war. Iran had been declared an outlaw state. Imports from many places were prohibited, and domestic production was not sufficient. There was a shortage of everything from food to clothing, fuel, and even stationery
. Many goods were rationed, and the government distributed a small booklet with white pages to be stamped to every family in every neighborhood. Stationery was available only on the black market, but students could present their Basij booklet to the cooperative and receive notebooks, pens, pencils, and erasers for a set government price. The cooperative notebooks had thin paper covers, and the pages were coarse. Our handwriting looked smeared and crowded between the lines. In a word, they were ugly, and I could not awaken any desire within myself to write in them. But a look from my father was all it took—the important thing was to pay attention to schoolwork. “Lots of other children can’t afford even these notebooks,” my father would say.

  As soon as new coupons were issued, everyone rushed to stand in a long line. Even with the rationing, provisions were scarce, and if the cooperative ran out, you’d have to go to the black market. But in one respect our family was very lucky: Shir-e Pak factory where my father worked was a dairy producer. To get a bottle of milk, people lined up at five in the morning, and even then it was reserved for the very young or the very old. Butter was considered a luxury, and most people never even saw its color for months. We had as much butter, cream, and milk as our hearts desired. Our neighbors would come to depend on my father, and a few extra sticks of butter or packets of milk were enough to keep us popular.