Camelia

by Camelia Entekhabifard

  My friends and I would stand in the bakery line after school. Bread wasn’t rationed, but the first duty of bakeries was to produce enough bread to send to the soldiers at the front. Civilians would wait hours to be sold no more than twenty pieces of thin lavash each. Iranian food is almost always served with lavash, so that was enough for only a few days for a typical family of four. Normally, several members of the same family would wait together to buy enough bread to last the week. My friend Mahtab would hold my place while I ran home to warn both our mothers when our turn was coming up. My mother would give me a twenty-toman bill (two hundred rials) in case she didn’t get there in time. We’d read our textbooks in line and ravenously eat the aluche-ye kisa’i we had bought from passing vendors, which, in the words of my mother, was “the dirtiest food in the world.” We listened to the other people in line whispering carelessly about the eminent demise of the regime and the numbers of war dead and the news from the Persian-language services of foreign radio stations. Gossip ranged from the rising prices of sugar and qand to the rumored illnesses of government leaders.

  People used nicknames for all the leaders. Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani was known as Akbar Kuseh (Akbar the Shark) since he didn’t have much of a beard, and Ayatollah Montazeri, who was expected to succeed Khomeini was Gorbeh Nareh (the Tomcat), and Khomeini’s son was Ahmad-e Gerian (Crying Ahmad) because on days when Khomeini met with the people, he’d stand off to the side with a sad face. Ali Khamene’i had lost the use of one hand when the offices of the Republican Party were bombed, so he was named Ali Yekdast (One-Hand Ali) or Ali Geda (Ali the Beggar) for how he’d gesture with only one arm, his palm upturned like he was asking for pocket change. But people only complained in the bread line, keeping their grievances among friends. When they wrapped their hot bread in their handkerchiefs and turned into the twists and turns of the alleys, they’d look nervously around to make sure the unsympathetic ears of the “sisters” and the “Komité-lings” hadn’t been listening.

  They kept an eye on us alley after alley, everywhere we went, and could appear suddenly in shopping centers, in front of girls’ and boys’ schools, and even at private parties and family affairs. The government jammed the Persian-language foreign radio with ear-splitting noise, but the internal Iranian radio was a pack of lies and propaganda, so ignoring the static, we’d turn our ears every night at eight o’clock to Radio Israel. We would go cautiously into the salon, the room from which the least sound would leak outside. Everyone would squat by the radio listening intently. But there were other ears at work in the dead of night, listening for the familiar music through cracked windows and doors, and suddenly shadows would fall on the walls of the courtyard.

  When we had parties, my father would check the street outside every half hour to make sure the Sisters of Zeinab and the brothers weren’t about to stage a raid on our house. My mother, my sister, and I would keep our head scarves and overcoats close to our chairs so we could put them on immediately if needed. The words “they’re here” would throw a party into disarray, as guests ran for the door. Anyone who’d been drinking would swish cologne around in their mouth, and women and men would quickly separate. But there was never enough time to get rid of corroborating evidence. The armed Pasdars would burst inside and the Sisters of Zeinab would round up the women before they could throw away the prohibited playing cards, alcohol, music cassettes, videotapes—anything that would boost the severity of charges in court. Family gatherings were routinely broken up, but it was especially bad if mixed groups of young people were caught. Teens caught drinking were in some cases publicly flogged, and girls could be sent to the government hospital for verification of their virginity. Girls who failed the exam were forced into an engagement with whichever boy they’d been caught with. Anyone arrested could be kicked out of their high school or university, and for an extra measure of humiliation, the boys had their heads shaved to the scalp with an electric razor.

  It became obligatory for women to wear the hejab in the middle of 1981. Shopkeepers put signs in their windows that read, “We reserve the right to refuse service to women without hejab.” And menacing jeeps appeared roving around Tehran, monitoring public decency. My father would say, “If you touch your head scarves in front of them, you’ll catch their eye. Pretend you don’t see them when you’re in the street.” I called them “Tripods.” The Tripods was a series of science fiction novels—The White Mountains, The City of Gold and Lead, and The Pool of Fire. As a child and as a teenager, I must have read this trilogy a hundred times. Tripods were fearsome three-legged beings that would lay waste to Earth. In the books, these metallic overlords enslaved humans by putting caps on their heads that would make them instruments under the tripods’ control. These books inspired me during the gray years of Khomeini’s rule. I can still shut my eyes and lose myself in the story, as the hero, a fourteen-year-old boy, escapes and finds his way to other freedom fighters in the white mountains of the north. I’d put the book down on the couch and stare out the sitting-room window at the white Elburz Mountains to the north of Tehran, and I’d ask myself, “Are there freedom fighters waiting up there for me?”

  The official names for the Tripods would change over the years, but in essence they remained the same. The squads were first called Ya Sar-e Allah!, then their name changed to the Authority for the Detection and Prevention of Vice, then the Vice Squad, the Guidance, and so forth. My mother tells me that today they’re called the Thunder. On the back of their jeeps, “4WD” was written for “four wheel drive,” but they’d say this stood for four slobs (W for velgard) whose wives are sleeping around (D for dawyus). Two armed Pasdars sat in the front of the jeep and two women in the backseat. One of the Pasdars was the driver, and the other was the guardian of the sisters. When men resisted arrest, the escorting brother would get to shine, dragging the captive into the car and kicking him in the process. In accordance with Islamic law, the sisters couldn’t lay their hands on an unrelated man.

  We rarely left home except for simple outings to the restaurant Eskan, the arcades of Meidan Argentine, the Surkheh bazaar, and Khiaban-e Jordan. When the ominous white cars appeared, our hearts would throb in our breasts, and despite my father’s warning, our hands would unconsciously gravitate to our head scarves. If we were wearing colorful clothing, we’d try to hide behind one another. The sisters, wrapped in chadors, veils, and black gloves, would come crashing down on your head like a nightmare. It was possible that they’d let a glimpse of exposed hair slide, but nail polish and makeup, never. Sometimes they contented themselves with our tears and pleading as long as they didn’t find anything in our handbags like cassette tapes or “obscene” pictures of Hollywood movie stars or expatriate Iranian singers, like Fataneh, Moeen, or Andy and Kouros from Los Angeles. We’d beg for forgiveness and put ourselves down a thousand times while listening to their speeches about the fires of hell and how letting one strand of hair show implied disrespect to the blood of martyrs. And if they took you with them . . . The booming voice of my father rang in my ears, “If any of you go with them, you won’t ever be coming home.”

  When I was twelve and thirteen, we all wanted to be punks. To be a punk, I needed pants with their cuffs rolled up and crazy-colored socks. Our punk rock spiritual leader was my sister’s friend Kristian, an Armenian girl. Her mother made the homemade vodka that my father and his friends bought and called by the code name Sabaquz (a made-up word). Kristian could dance like Michael Jackson and told us all about having a real boyfriend, like the enticing secret behind “kissing like the French people.” She wrote “Madonna” and “UB14” (for UB40) on my yellow binder, and I’d parade around the schoolyard with the English facing out. I made a fake gold bracelet from the strap of my mother’s handbag and wore it next to my big round watch. It was everything to me to be “with it” and to be seen by the boys cruising past my school.

  My favorite way to spend Thursday afternoons, when school let out early for the Friday holiday, was to visit my
uncle Manuchehr, because he lived in the coolest district of Tehran. Gisha was lined with stores, and boys would drive their sports cars back and forth down the avenue. As soon as our father buried his head in his backgammon game with my uncle, Kati and I would poke my mother in the ribs. “Say it!” “Say it!” was our way of asking permission to go out and stroll past the shops. My mother would escort us out and then she’d turn executioner: “Fix your head scarves! I’m in no mood to deal with you being arrested! Get in front of me!”

  One Thursday in Gisha I had rolled up the cuffs of my pants to show off the bright striped socks that my cousin Fariba had knitted for me. And I’d pushed up my sleeves and undone the top buttons of my overcoat, flashing the color of my blouse. Young people walked through the crowded streets checking each other out, sometimes exchanging phone numbers. That day, my mother remembered something she needed at Kayhan’s Pharmacy, and she pulled us all in with her. I was restless and poked my head out to watch a traffic jam under the overpass, and I accidentally made eye contact with a woman in a black chador, then lowered my eyes to read “Guidance Patrol” on the side of her car. I quickly retreated back to sit with my sister and brother in the back of the drugstore, but within moments someone tapped me on the shoulder. I thought at first that she was just asking directions. “Excuse me, please speak louder,” I said. Then I turned and looked at her. Chador, veil, black gloves! She commanded, “Come outside with me.”

  I whimpered for my mother. It was too late for me to arrange my head scarf, unroll my pants, or anything else. My mother followed, protesting, “WHY do we have to go outside?” The Guidance Patrol vehicle was pulled up right in front of the door. A second woman had gotten out and was opening the car door so they could put me inside. “Why? What have we done?” my mother asked. The bitch pointed and said, “Do you not see the state in which your daughter has brought herself out in public?” She pointed at my socks and said, “Could she have gone out wearing anything more vulgar than this?” People stopped around us to watch, but we knew no one would intercede on our behalf.

  Suddenly Mother turned to me and screamed, “You! You went out looking like this when I wasn’t looking?” She started beating me, yelling over her shoulder, “This girl is killing me! It’ll be good for my nerves when you take her away. I know her father will shut her up after that!” As her blows rained down on my head and back, the Sisters of Zeinab changed gears to rescue me from her abuse and calm her down. My mother wept while the women asked me if I wasn’t ashamed to go out looking like a punk when I had such a good mother and if I knew that “punk” was just another word for trash. They searched my purse, but all I had was a handful of change and a pocket mirror. I kept nodding, my head and eyes down, as I fixed my clothes and scarf. I was stinging with shame with dozens of people watching me. “Now you’re a lady.” Finally, they left. “Idiot!” my mother and Kati said in unison. I started crying and complained bitterly about the beating. My mother pinched my arm hard and said, “It worked, didn’t it?”

  The ancient tradition of Chaharshanbeh-ye Suri was forbidden. The new government wanted to replace Iranian culture with Islamic culture as Iranian culture was considered imperial. They wanted to erase the connections people felt to their past. For centuries, Iranians would build fires on the last Wednesday before Nouruz, the New Year, and jump over them to cast their bad fortunes into the flames. Then they could start the new year with a clean heart and an abundance of hope for the future. At sunset on Chaharshanbeh-ye Suri, the Tripods would roll out from their bases to take control of Tehran, but nothing could deter people. Our neighborhood held the largest celebrations. Kati and I would go through the alleys of Gisha to find the hawkers who hissed, “Bottle rockets! Firecrackers!” The guy would scan behind him for plainclothes police, then quickly ask, “How many?” We’d buy sparklers and handmade “grenades,” plastic bags of gravel and combustible powders. You’d have to throw these grenades really hard for them to explode. The next day, the local newspaper’s accident blotter would be filled with reports of people who were blinded, had their hands blown off, or were even killed.

  To scare us, the boys would throw grenades at our feet, and to show that we weren’t scared, we’d take grenades out of our purses and throw them right back. The hot gravel would strike my hands and cheeks. My cheeks would be burned, but I had no choice; Chaharshanbeh-ye Suri was a battle, and we had to keep it going. At sunset the inner lanes filled up with so much smoke that the Tripods didn’t dare enter the dense clouds. They parked and waited to strike. One year, a boy named Farid blew up a one-pound grenade that rattled the guts of the mobile patrol unit waiting at the mouth of Kucheh-ye Zanbaq, our little street. As our fireworks flared higher, their backup arrived from headquarters, and they attacked. Everyone quickly flew into the nearest house with an open door. The Tripods were left stranded among the bonfires and smoking heaps of ash. Only a few spectators from outside the neighborhood fell into their clutches. In the courtyards we stayed up till after midnight, eating nuts and setting off the rest of the sparklers and hurling the grenades over the wall onto the street. As we jumped over the bonfires, my sister and I would sing: “Dunya mal-e mas’,Dib geleh dareh . . . Siyah-I ru-siyas’, Dib geleh dareh” (The world is ours, the devil is unhappy . . . The darkness is ashamed, the devil is unhappy).

  Mother’s Day was observed on the birthday of Mohammed’s daughter, Fatima Zahra, and at school they gave prizes to girls named Fatima, Zahra, and Sadiqa (another name by which the Prophet’s daughter is known). On Nurse’s Day, the birthday of the sister of Imam Hussein, the Zeinabs of the school got prizes. News programs broadcast on Seda va Sima started inventing terms such as “Zeinab-like” or “Yasser-esque.” The government was encouraging Islamic names against popular taste, but they remained unusual in my generation. In the modern and well-to-do Tehran of the 1970s, someone’s name demonstrated their level of education, cultural sophistication, and beliefs. Arabic and religious names had long been out of fashion, especially in big cities. Even if someone had a traditional name, they would often go by modern names instead. They all had pretty much the same story: on the night before they were born, their mother or father or some relative had dreamed of a masum or imamzadeh, and in reverence the family decided to use that name on their child’s identity card. But they still called their child by whatever name had been chosen before the blessed dream. My classmate Fatima called herself Helga, and my cousin Fatima was called Maryam. Our downstairs neighbor was Raqia, but her husband called her Shahla, and my co-worker Farnaz burst into tears when it was accidentally revealed that the name on her identity card was Sadiqa.

  In 1979, the new Islamic government decided to change the culture by propaganda and by force. It became forbidden to choose certain names for newborns. Among them was Camelia. I smiled to myself at the thought that there wouldn’t be any more girls named Camelia. For once, I took pleasure in these extreme measures. My little brother was born in March 1982, and my father had to fill the official’s pockets with one-thousand-toman banknotes before he would make out an identity card in the name of Kai Khosrou Entekhabifard. Kai Khosrou was a Shah of ancient Iran. As Kai Khosrou grew up, he really did look like one of the ancient rulers from the portraits in the Shahnameh. With his thick eyebrows, which grew together in the middle, and his black eyes and olive skin, he had that somber, proud look of a king.

  God knows how many times Kati and I were chased by Kai Khosrou with his toy plastic sword. He’d stand on a chair or the table, yelling, “King Kai Khosrou banishes you little girls!” Following that announcement he’d pose dramatically, brandishing his sword before jumping down to run after us. I was nine years older than him and Kati twelve years older, but we were rendered defenseless by the stroke of his plastic sword. We ran around the living room calling for our mother to “stop that crazy king!” As he grew older, many of Kai Khosrou’s friends called him “Khosrou” for short, but my family always called him by his full royal name. We wanted people to recognize
my father’s brave choice at the registry office.

  In my third grade classroom at the Nehzat-e Islami girls’ school, there were two students who the Omur-e Tarbiyati loved to torture: Camelia Entekhabifard and Satgin Yaghmai. My sin was the Westerness of my name and Satgin’s was the un-Islamic meaning of hers. At the beginning of the school year, the teachers from the Omur-e Tarbiyati opened their attendance books to introduce each student and remind them about the observance of hejab and prayer. Group prayer was mandatory in schools, and they lowered our marks in discipline and religious education whenever we were absent or misbehaved during prayers. I lied along with the others, bending down and getting up and going through the motions of reciting the prayers. Affectation and lying were the first things we learned in school, along with great caution in the questions we asked and the answers we gave. My last name begins with an alif, so was listed at the beginning of the role call. I braced myself as the teacher would raise her voice and ask, “What—what-elia Entekhabifard? Who is that?” Everyone laughed loudly, and I stood up. I held my chin up and said, “Camelia. Camelia Entekhabifard.” She would mockingly reply, “And where are we from? Are we Armenian?”

  She knew that I wasn’t Armenian. Religious minorities were permitted to leave before the Qur’an and Islamic education hour began. Besides which, the Omur-e Tarbiyati were well informed about their students and their families’ beliefs before school started. Anything they asked that first day was just to ridicule us. I answered, “No, Camelia is the name of a flower, and we are Muslim.”

  She had been waiting for me to say that we were Muslim to launch into a rehearsed speech. “There are hundreds of beautiful, expressive names to be found within Mohammed’s family, and we have to go and choose an infidel’s name for our Muslim child?” She concluded by suggesting I volunteer to turn in my identity card and pick out a new Islamic name. I silently sat back down, my classmates gaping at me. I was petrified with worry that when the new regime issued identity cards, I would be forced to change my name. But Satgin was in a much more difficult situation. Her father, Kurush Yaghmai, was a famous pop singer before the revolution. When the teachers questioned her name, she’d quickly say, “It’s Persian, meaning ‘Kurush’s wine cup.’” They’d cast their faces up toward the sky, as if in total incomprehension. Her name had gone from bad to worse. Wine from the cup of the great Persian king Kurush! Satgin would always sit back down in tears and say stubbornly that she loved her name and would never change it.