Camelia

by Camelia Entekhabifard

  As I listened to him, I watched the thin line of blue smoke rising from his cigarette sitting in the ashtray, an unbroken line that rose up to the kitchen ceiling. He picked it up to take a deep puff, and the line dissolved in all directions. “The situation in our country is so uncertain and unbalanced that any day we might be forced to leave. And if we must leave Iran, your education may be your only currency. An education is cash you can spend anywhere—no one can take it away from you, it’s an asset that can’t be seized. Trust me, when I can’t be with you anymore, it will be your education that keeps you girls safe.” I was crying quietly, the tears running down my cheeks. I wanted to kiss his hands, to hold him and cry in his arms. But my father didn’t like his daughters to be emotional, I knew. He wanted us to be strong. “Okay, go now and wash your face, then concentrate on the new semester. There’s a solution for everything—except death. And you are alive, and I’m still with you, and you can stand up again.”

  When I left the kitchen, I felt I had grown years in that conversation. It was one of the few times in my life that I had seen this side of my father. My defeat had broken his usual strict composure, and he was speaking to me from the heart. My empty days of sitting in solitude and mourning my failure gradually disappeared in the confidence he’d inspired. I went back to my old school, and after a while my little butterflies of poetry also returned to land gently on my shoulder.

  The cultural revolution took place a year after the revolution, and the universities were closed for two years. When they reopened, the Ministry of Higher Education and Learning was formed to investigate students and judge whether they could be admitted to college. Students who were accepted to a university still had to prove that they met Islamic moral standards before they were allowed to enroll. Every year, our neighbors whose sons and daughters had taken the entrance exams would come around begging everyone to speak generously of their children. When they were evaluating Maryam, our fourth floor neighbor in our old apartment in Shahr-Ara, the investigator knocked on our door. He had a beard and thick glasses and cotton shoes. He wouldn’t look at my mother as he questioned her but turned his gaze to the wall, nodding his head and recording his findings in his file. Men who were very Islamic believed that in order to abstain from sin while talking to women, they had to abstain from looking at them directly. It was the same at all the ministries and official institutions. If you were among a few women standing together, it was difficult to guess who was being spoken to, and you had to ask, “Who are you addressing?” Or, “To whom is the brother speaking?” My mother said that Maryam was the most virtuous girl on the block and that her parents were pious and that “this girl doesn’t go running around with anyone but stays at home and studies.”

  The investigators also visited parents’ workplaces and local businesses to enquire after a family’s reputation, how well they observed the hejab, whether they participated in Friday prayers, and so forth. And so the fates of university-bound students were in the hands of their neighbors, many of whom harbored some hostility, spite, or envy. But no matter how well we did on our exams and even in the investigative screening, it was still hard for families like ours, in the same way that it was easy for the families of martyrs, of soldiers at the front, or of prisoners of war. The only variable that mattered in the equation was the number of afflictions suffered in the war. There were special provisions for the war-torn southern provinces, but we Tehranis, who’d done nothing for the revolution, who could claim no martyrs or combatants, we had to resort to flattering those in power. I remember how, as she filled out her forms, Kati would break down. We were classified as region “one,” but Kati would cry that “this ‘one’ stands for last, not first!” Some of her friends even transferred to dangerous war-stricken regions in their senior year just to get into college.

  Luckily, by the time I graduated, the investigations had ceased. There was a new window of hope. Katayun was one of the first students accepted into the newly established Azad Islamic University. So I also submitted my exams for a program in political science at Azad while I was still in high school, during my last year. My grades weren’t high enough for the Tehran campus, but I was passed to the next round where I could be evaluated for up to three alternate cities. I chose only one—the city of Shahreza. I considered this a test, an experiment. My true goal was to apply to an even more prestigious state university the next year. In the meantime, my greatest gift to my father would be for him to see my name in the newspaper among those accepted to Azad. I wanted to give him this sweet satisfaction after my bitter academic failure two years earlier. When I gave him the news that I’d passed the first round, even though I wasn’t accepted in Tehran, he came home from work that evening with a big box of sweets in his hand. Grinning from ear to ear, he kissed me and said, “You’ve made me very proud.”

  We waited impatiently for the daily paper. One week passed since the promised date of the Azad University announcement, and every day the newspapers published a vague postponement. My father asked me about it every night. His restless excitement was contagious. He’d ask, “No news? When are they going to announce the names? Weren’t they supposed to be announced last week?” And I’d reply, “Yes, they were. I don’t know why they don’t announce them. But soon, maybe tomorrow . . .”

  AUTUMN 1991

  One of my fondest memories of my father is of visiting Maman Pari’s house with him, with its red roses, grand old persimmon, and the cobalt tiling above the door that read “Nakha’i.” The Nakha’i are one of the most well-known families in Tehran. My great-grandfather had the honorable title Entekhab-e Lashghar and held a high-ranking post at the end of the Qajar Era, at the time of Muzaferuddin Shah Qajar. One century ago, an Armenian youth fell in love with Entekhab-e Lashghar’s beautiful daughter Zarin Taj and asked her father for her hand. But the match violated religious laws, social conventions, and moral principals, and his answer was no. The Armenian youth hired thugs and sent them under the cover of night to surround Entekhab-e Lashgar’s house. They say that Zarin Taj was so in love that she opened the outer door for her father’s killers. On that night, my five-year-old grandfather was asleep in his father’s bed. Again and again, this is how he would tell the story of his father’s death: “When I opened my eyes, there were dozens of masked men holding daggers and spears standing over us. They gestured for me to put my head under the covers. When I stuck my head out a few minutes later, I saw that the walls were splattered with blood. My father’s body lay beside me just as before, but it had been punctured dozens of times over by spears.”

  My grandfather’s childhood was plagued with nightmares of his father’s tragic death and with harsh treatment at the hands of his uncles and half-brothers, with whom he waged legal battles for years over his inheritance. Disgusted with his family, he decided that he was no longer a Nakha’i, and he fashioned a family name as close as possible to his father’s title of honor, Entekhab-e Lashghar. My grandmother says they sent Zarin Taj to the village of Nurabad, where she was so grief stricken by her father’s death that she suffered a nervous breakdown and died there.

  Every fall, the family hired someone to climb the tree and pick the persimmons. Each of my grandmother’s children would get about a hundred persimmons, sometimes more, for their families, evenly divided on a large copper tray, and my grandmother would ask the gardener to leave a few persimmons up in the tree for the crows and other birds. In the beautiful Tehran autumn, the red persimmons would shine like lanterns from the ashy leafless tree. Then one year the house and the persimmon tree and the apple tree and my swimming pool and the cellar—all of it—was sold. All that is left of the cellar now are my memories of it, the cellar that, in the heat of the summer, was cool and comfortable, and where my father loved to take his midday naps. I’d follow him down there. He would take two freshly picked apples in one hand and a bottle of rose water, a grater, and some sugar in the other. He’d grate the apples and put the rose water and sugar on them, and after we’d
drank the mixture, my father would go to sleep.

  It was autumn at my father’s funeral, and I was holding yellow and white daisies in my hand. The winds came and swirled through my black clothing. Everyone had gone forward to the grave, and I was left back a few steps on the soft earth clutching the daisies in my hand. He had been brought to me so I could look at him, so I could see him up close one last time. His eyes were shut, and where his chest had always given off a reddish hue, he was turning marble white. There was a red line underneath his left eye, evidence of his fall, and his soft black hair, which in his forty-eight years had only manifested a few white hairs around the temples, was wrapped out of sight by a white handkerchief. I had pulled him to my bosom and cried, “Baba, get up, let’s go home!”

  They wrested me from my father and took him away, and lying on the ground, I called out to him in a wail. Then I ran. I clenched the dirt and the daisies in my fist. They lowered him into the ground wrapped in a shroud, with only the triangle of his face exposed.

  I had taken his shroud down from the top shelf of my wardrobe that morning. Some time before, one of my father’s friends was traveling to Mecca and offered to bring back a souvenir. My father asked for a shroud. I had banished this horrifying souvenir to the highest and least visible spot on my shelf, until I had to bring it down so much sooner than I’d ever expected. We had wrapped the shroud in newspaper, and the print shone yellow through the plastic bag as we carried it to Behesht-e Zahra.

  My uncle Ali was arranging stones on top of my father’s grave. As he placed the last stone on his face, I called out and he turned. His face was covered in tears. Behesht-e Zahra was filled with the sound of our friends and relatives wailing and moaning. My uncle stood up. I opened my fists. I put the dirt on my head and the white and yellow flowers on my father’s face, keeping one to remember the day. They had to drag Kati and me off by force. He had to stay, and we had to leave.

  When we returned home for the memorial, my friend Negin approached me. She gave me a newspaper and squeezed my hand. “Camelia, you’ve been accepted. Political science at Shahreza.” I didn’t want to look. It was too late. I stared at the newspaper with empty eyes and then crushed it up in my hands. Very early the next morning we dressed up and went back to the cemetery for the second day of the weeklong funeral ceremonies. The grave was covered with bouquets. I held the daisy in one hand and the crumpled-up newspaper in the other. I cried, “Baba, can you hear me? I’ve got good news for you!” My mother’s tears, and mine and Kati’s started flowing again. A friend of my father’s, Agha-ye Mir Eskandari, murmured to us, “Let’s go. Leave him in peace. He’s tired after all these years. Leave him to sleep in peace.” My father slept in his fresh grave, and the smell of earth and rose water blended with the muted sounds of lamentation coming from all across Behesht-e Zahra. He had to stay, and we had to leave.

  SPRING 1992

  On one of the last days of spring, I walked into the editorial offices of Zan-e Ruz. A weekly magazine, Zan-e Ruz had a six-page section entitled “Thirteen to Eighteen Year Olds.” It seemed a good place to start, and most importantly, one of my mentors at the club told me I could mention her name. Still in mourning for my father, I was dressed in black from head to toe. I stood before the editor in chief’s secretary, clutching a heavy clippings folder full of my published poems and literary pieces.

  “What is your business with Khanum Gheramizadeghan?”

  Making excuses for myself, I said that I was a writer and that I needed only a few minutes of her time. My voice trembled with excitement as I spoke. The office was all glass windows, and I could see women in black chadors writing busily behind their desks or chatting with each other.

  When the secretary granted me entry, I realized that Khanum Gheramizadeghan herself had been watching me from behind the glass. She had a dark complexion and thick prescription glasses so wide that at their highest point they overlapped with the black veil that covered most of her forehead. Like the others, she wore a chador over her veil.

  “Salaam. You have five minutes to tell me your business.”

  Khanum Gheramizadeghan leaned back behind her desk, waiting for my answer.

  “I am a poet. I am a poet and a writer, and I want to be a reporter. Please believe me, I will make a good reporter . . .” I nervously placed my folder in front of her.

  She started to leaf through my work. “We are not hiring. We use freelancers who write regularly. However, work for one week on a trial basis, and we’ll see how you do,” she said and picked up the telephone. “Tell Khanum Parsa’i to come here for a minute.”

  Khanum Parsa’i was a white-faced, pregnant woman with tiny green eyes that seemed even smaller through her glasses. Khanum Gheramizadeghan told her, “This girl says that she has the genes of a reporter. Put her genes to the test.” I didn’t even have a chance to thank her. “OK, OK. Out. Get out, I have a lot of work to do. Parsa’i knows the rest.”

  I went with Parsa’i to the “Thirteen to Eighteen” department. Parsa’i wasn’t wearing a chador, but her long veil covered all of her hair and shoulders.

  “This is not high school. We won’t have any crying or whining. We take our work seriously, and we need a serious and punctual reporter. Take this tape recorder and go to the Exhibition of Exceptional Children’s Art at the Behzisti Center on Khiaban-e Vali-ye Asr and get me a story. On some days we’ll have a driver who can take you, and on some days, like today, you’ll have to go by taxi. Go and come back by noon. And mind your hejab, too. I don’t want to get any calls from the security office. The days when Zan-e Ruz chose Ms. Iran are over. As of tomorrow wear more modest clothing. And no more perfume.”

  My first article was published in the next issue, and less than six months later, I had my own desk and my own title. I started writing weekly articles and special reports, and I’d participate in editorial meetings. But during the first few weeks, Parsa’i would rip my reports in half and then in half again before my eyes and then hand them back to me.

  “This was crap. Go and write it again. Your reporting needs to contain useful, well-supported, eye-catching intelligence, not rumors and chitchat.”

  Zahra Omara’i, special reporter for the magazine, would call me over. “Come on, write a new report, and I’ll check on you over your shoulder. And don’t cry. No one was born a reporter. Everyone starts with their work getting thrown in the garbage.” My writing improved, and I got all sorts of letters from teenage readers. They would write in with feedback or send poems or opinion pieces, which we’d then publish. I was allowed to call or write them with editorial notes if necessary. Others had questions and requested help with personal situations; we sorted these letters and sent them to specialists to offer counsel. When Parsa’i went on maternity leave, three of us, all teenage girls, were put in charge of “Thirteen to Eighteen.” I learned everything from writing and editing to layout and proofreading. Every morning at six thirty, I’d wait outside my house for the car service to travel to Khiaban-e Tupkhaneh, happy as could be.

  When I started working at Zan-e Ruz, there was little variety on the newsstands; only a few papers were on display—Kayhan, Etela’at, Abrar, Resalat, Jumhuri-ye Islami, and Salaam. The Chamber of Censorship Authority administered the press in an official, or at least semiofficial, manner. In any case, the atmosphere was extremely conservative. The Kayhan Corporation, the biggest publishing corporation in Iran, owned Zan-e Ruz. The corporation had been requisitioned by the State after the revolution and its chief administrator appointed by the Imam. Their flagship paper, Kayhan , had the widest circulation in Iran before the revolution and emerged as the right-leaning State paper afterward. People bought Kayhan for its classified section and, especially, its unrivaled obituary pages. How often we had found out about the deaths of friends by reading this newspaper . . . Most importantly, Kayhan was cheap, and its pages were big and suitable for cleaning windows and wrapping herbs at vegetable stands.

  Censoring the news was part o
f the Kayhan Corporation’s policy, and the jurisdiction of the censor extended even to our little “Thirteen to Eighteen” department at Zan-e Ruz. I wrote an article titled “When Will the Date Palms of Khorramshahr Be Green?” after spending the Nouruz holidays in the south, visiting Mandana in Abadan and a friend of my mother’s, Maria, in Ahvaz. My mother, Kati, Kai Khosrou, and I toured the war-torn border cities, gazing at the drowned ships from the bank of the Karon River, crying when we saw the flat landscape of Khorramshahr, famous for its palm trees, without a hint of green. Just as the paper was about to go to press, the piece was pulled. I was admonished for overstepping my bounds by writing a political article. As punishment, my writing was published without my name for the next two weeks.

  During the second term of Hashemi Rafsanjani’s presidency a newspaper called Hamshahri took the drab gray blur of the other newspapers and arrested it under a beam of light. It was the first full-color newspaper in Iran and was more open and intellectual, since it was run by the cultured, immensely popular mayor of Tehran, Gholamhussein Karabashi. From then on everyone in Tehran read Hamshahri. Even the advertising pages in Kayhan dulled in comparison to Hamshahri’s market-savvy design. When I heard that Hamshahri was launching the first daily newspaper for children in the Middle East, Aftabgardan, I applied immediately. It was with great satisfaction that I approached Khanum Gheramizadeghan at Zan-e Ruz and said softly, “As of tomorrow, I will be at Aftabgardan .” And I set my new identification card down on her desk.