‘Massoum,’ she finally said, ‘are you happy?’
I was stunned, I didn’t know what to say. I was always confused when asked this question. As my silence grew longer, she shook her head and said, ‘Oh dear! It seems there is no end to your troubles.’
‘I am not ungrateful,’ I said. ‘I just don’t know what happiness means! But I have many blessings in life. I have my children; two healthy boys. And my husband is a good man, even though he is not with us. I work, I study… remember my undying dream?’
‘You are still not going to give up,’ she said, laughing. ‘This diploma isn’t all that valuable. What do you think I have done with mine?’
‘I received my diploma a long time ago. I am now studying Persian literature at Tehran University.’
‘Are you serious? That is excellent! You really do have perseverance. Of course, you were always a smart student, but I didn’t think you would still be studying with a husband and children. It’s good that your husband doesn’t object.’
‘No, he has always encouraged me.’
‘That’s wonderful! Then he must be a wise man. I should meet him.’
‘Yes, God willing, in ten or fifteen years!’
‘What do you mean? Why? Where is he?’
‘He is in prison.’
‘May God take my life! What did he do?’
‘He is a political prisoner.’
‘Are you serious? In Germany I often hear Iranians, the guys who are members of the Confederation and others who oppose the government, talk about the political prisoners. So your husband is one of them! People say they torture them in prison. Is it true?’
‘He hasn’t said anything to me, but I have often washed blood off his clothes. Recently our permission to visit him was again revoked, so I don’t know what condition he is in now.’
‘Then who supports you financially?’
‘I told you, I work.’
‘You mean you have to single-handedly manage your lives?’
‘Managing life isn’t that difficult, it’s the loneliness that is tough. Oh, Parvaneh, you can’t imagine how lonely I am. Even though I am constantly busy and don’t have a moment to rest, I always feel lonely. I am so happy I have finally found you. I really needed you… But now you tell me. Are you happy? How many children do you have?’
‘Life is all right,’ she said. ‘I have two daughters. Lili is eight and Laleh is four. My husband isn’t bad. He’s a man like all other men. And I have got used to life over there. But with Father gone, I can’t leave my mother alone any more; especially now that my sister Farzaneh has two young children and is busy with her own life. And you can’t count on the sons. I think we will have to come back and live here. Besides, my husband, Khosrow, had already been thinking about us moving back.’
Parvaneh and I had more to share than we could manage in one day. We needed many long days and nights. We planned for me and the boys to go to their house on Friday and spend the day with her. It was a wonderful day. I talked more than I had ever talked in my life. Fortunately time and distance had not severed our friendship. We could still talk to each other more freely and comfortably than with anyone else. Opening up to others had always been difficult for me and the need to keep Hamid’s life a secret had made me even less at ease with people. But now I could reveal the most secret corners of my heart to Parvaneh. I had again found my friend and I would never lose her again.
Fortunately, Parvaneh’s move back to Iran was quickly arranged and after a short trip to Germany her family relocated to Tehran. Her husband started to work and she found a part-time position at the Iran-Germany Society. I now had another person I could lean on. Parvaneh had shared my life story with her husband and having been moved by it, he somehow felt responsible for me and my sons. Our children grew to like each other and became good playmates. Parvaneh was constantly planning events for them and took them to the cinema, to the swimming pool, or to the park. The presence of Parvaneh’s family brought a different nuance to our lives and I started to see new joy and excitement in my dispirited sons whose days had become even lonelier and more unstructured after Faati gave birth and could no longer spend as much time with them.
Another year passed. We could again visit Hamid regularly and once a month I took the boys to see him. But after each visit they were out of sorts and it would take a week for them to return to their normal selves. Massoud would grow quieter and sadder, and Siamak would become wilder and more highly strung. Hamid looked visibly older each time we saw him.
I continued to go to university and took a few credits each term. I was now an official employee at the agency and although I still didn’t have a bachelor’s degree, I was doing more specialised and advanced work. Mr Zargar still watched over me and confidently gave me assignments. Mr Shirzadi and I had remained close friends. He was still disagreeable and bad-tempered, occasionally starting fights and arguments that made him more miserable than anyone else. I tried to lessen his deep sense of pessimism towards everything, assuring him that he had no enemies and that there was no hidden motive behind what people did and said. And to all this he would reply, ‘Fear banished trust from my mind, my only beloved is suspicion.’
He was not comfortable in any gathering, he would not join any group, he detected the footprints of traitor politicos in every action, and he believed everyone was a mercenary and a paid minion of the regime. His colleagues did not mind his company, but he always kept himself on the sidelines.
I once asked him, ‘Don’t you get tired of being alone?’
In response he recited one of his poems about being sorrow’s friend and loneliness’s beloved, his hopelessness being as eternal as the sun and as vast as the ocean.
One day Mr Zargar jokingly said, ‘Come on! Why do you take everything so hard? Things are not as bad as you think. These problems exist in every society. The rest of us are not satisfied either, but we don’t make a mountain out of a pile of hay and we don’t grieve all the time.’
Mr Shirzadi replied with one of his typical poems about how no one understands him.
After he started a heated argument with the director-general of the agency, stormed out of the man’s office and slammed the door behind him, everyone gathered around to mediate. ‘Give in a little,’ someone said. ‘After all, this is a government agency, not your auntie’s house, and we have to tolerate some things.’
Mr Shirzadi yelled in verse that he would never bend and bow his head.
I intervened. ‘Mr Shirzadi, please try to stay calm. You can’t just walk out of this company. You have to be able to hold on to some job.’
‘I cannot do it,’ he said.
‘So what are you going to do now?’ I asked.
‘I will leave. I must leave this place…’
He not only left the agency, but soon he left the country. The day he came to collect the last of his belongings, he said goodbye to me and added, ‘Give my regards to your hero husband.’ And he asked me to recite a poem to Hamid: that they take to the gallows those who speak the truth.
With Mr Shirzadi’s departure, calm was restored at the agency. Even Mr Zargar, who apparently did not have a problem with Mr Shirzadi, had towards the end seemed unable to tolerate him. Still, his memory, his profound sorrow and the torment he suffered stayed with me for ever and drove me to do all that I could so that my children would not turn out to be as bitter and as disheartened as he was.
At home, I tried to create an environment in which my boys would not forget laughter. I started a joke-telling contest. Anyone who could tell a first-hand joke would receive a prize. We would mimic and imitate each other; I wanted them to learn to laugh at themselves and at their problems and shortcomings. We tried speaking with different accents. I encouraged them to sing, to turn up the volume when they played music on the stereo or the radio, to listen to upbeat music to which we would dance. At night, despite being so tired I could barely move, I would play games with them and tickle them until they were f
aint with laughter, and we would have pillow fights until they would agree to go to bed.
It was exhausting, but I had to do it. I had to keep that gloomy environment lively, I had to make up for my hours of absence, I had to inject joy into them so that they would never look at the world through Mr Shirzadi’s eyes.
Soon after her marriage, Faati gave birth to a beautiful girl with sky-blue eyes. She named her Firouzeh (turquoise). The boys adored her, especially Massoud who was always eager to play with her.
Mrs Parvin’s husband passed away and she found peace and freedom; especially because she had managed to transfer ownership of their house to herself prior to his death. Still, she never spoke well of him and never forgave him for what he had done to her. After his death, she started spending much of her time with us. She stayed with the children if I had to work late and did most of the housework so that I would have more time to rest and to spend with the boys. In a way she felt responsible for my fate and my loneliness, and tried to make up for it.
On Mahmoud’s recommendation, Ali asked for the hand of a reputable bazaar merchant’s daughter. They became formally betrothed and plans were made for an elaborate wedding to be held that autumn in a hall that served men and women guests separately. The match was to Mahmoud’s liking and he promised all sorts of cooperation and assistance, agreeing to all the idiotic conditions the bride’s family laid down; all of which were more like ancient trade practices than arrangements for a marriage.
When Father complained, ‘We cannot spend this much money… what is all this nonsense?’ Mahmoud simply replied, ‘The investment will soon pay off. Wait and see the dowry she will bring and the deals we will make side by side with her father.’
Ahmad had completely left the family circle. No one liked to talk about him and everyone tried as far as possible to not even speak his name. It had been some time since Father had thrown him out of the house. ‘Thank God, he doesn’t know where you live,’ Father said. ‘Otherwise, he would create more scandals for you and come to you for money.’
Ahmad had crashed at such great speed that everyone had given up on him. Mrs Parvin was the only one who still saw him and she would secretly tell me about him.
‘I have never seen anyone so determined to destroy their own life,’ she said. ‘What a shame. He was such a handsome man. If you saw him now, there is no way you would recognise him. One of these days, they will find his corpse in a street gutter somewhere in the south part of town. The only reason he is still alive is because of your mother. Don’t tell anyone; if your father finds out he will really give her a hard time. But the poor woman is a mother and he is her beloved son. In the morning when your father leaves the house, Ahmad comes over and your mother feeds him, cooks kebab for him, washes his clothes, and if she can, she puts some money in his pocket. To this day, if anyone tells her Ahmad is a heroin addict, she will rip out their guts. The poor woman is still hoping he will recover.’
Mrs Parvin’s prediction soon came true. But along with himself, Ahmad destroyed Father, too. In his last stages of decline, Ahmad did anything for money. In a desperate moment of need and poverty, he went to Father’s house and was busy rolling up a carpet so that he could take it and sell it when Father arrived and got into a tussle with him. It was more than Father’s weary heart could take. He was taken to the hospital and we spent several days behind the doors of the intensive care unit. Father’s condition improved and he was transferred to an ordinary ward.
I took the children to the hospital every day. Siamak had grown taller and he could pass himself off as older than he was so he easily got a visitor’s pass, but even with a thousand tricks and plenty of begging, Massoud saw Father only twice. During his visits, Siamak would just hold his grandfather’s hand and sit next to him without speaking a word.
We were hopeful that Father would recover, but unfortunately he suffered another massive heart attack. He was returned to the intensive care unit where twenty-four hours later he surrendered his life to his life giver. And I lost my only support and refuge. After Hamid was sent to prison, I felt lonely and isolated. After Father’s death, I realised that his presence, even from a distance, had cast a cover of safety over me and that in my darkest moments the glow of his presence had brightened my heart. With Father gone, the bonds that had tied me to his house grew weak.
For a week, I could not stop my tears. But my instincts soon urged me to become aware of those around me and I realised that my tears were insignificant compared to Siamak’s profound sadness and silence. That child had not shed a single tear and was ready to explode like a balloon that did not have room for even one more puff of air. But Mother groused, ‘What a shame! With all the love Mostafa Khan gave this child, he didn’t cry a single tear when they put that man in his grave. The boy didn’t care at all.’
I knew Siamak’s emotional state was far worse than it appeared. One day I left Massoud with Parvaneh and I took Siamak to visit Father’s grave. I kneeled down beside the grave. Siamak stood over me like a dark and gloomy cloud. He was trying to look away and remain detached from the time and space he was in. I started to talk about Father, about my memories of him, about his kindness and the void his death had left in our lives. Slowly, I made Siamak sit down next to me and I continued to talk until he suddenly started to cry and poured out all the tears he had kept inside him. He cried until night fell. When Massoud came home and saw Siamak crying, he too burst into tears. I let them pour everything out. They had to rid themselves of all the pain that had piled up inside their small hearts. Then I sat them down and asked, ‘What do you think we should do to honour Grandfather’s memory? What does he expect of us and how should we live for him to be pleased with us?’ And in the course of all this, I, too, realised that I had to try to go on with my normal life while forever holding on to my memories of him.
Three months after Father’s death, Ahmad, too, rushed to the world beyond in the same wretched manner as Mrs Parvin had predicted. A street sweeper found his body on a road in the south section of the city. Ali went to identify the body. No funeral was held and other than Mother, whose back was bent with grief, no one cried. Hard as I tried to recall a fond memory of Ahmad, I couldn’t. I felt guilty for not being sorry that he had died. I did not mourn him, but for a long time whenever I thought of him a vague sorrow would press against my heart.
Given the circumstances, Ali could not hold a marriage celebration. Instead, he quietly took his wife to the family house, which Father had several years earlier legally transferred to Mother. Depressed and alone, Mother all but retired from life and relinquished the running of the household to the new bride. And thus, the door to the house that in hard times had been my only refuge was forever closed to me.
CHAPTER FOUR
It was mid-1977. I was sensing political unrest in the country. The way people talked and behaved had palpably changed. In offices, on the streets and especially at the university, people spoke more daringly. The conditions at the prison had improved and Hamid and the other prisoners were to receive more amenities. There were also fewer restrictions for delivering clothes and food to them. But in my broken heart I found no glimmer of hope and I could not imagine the magnitude of the events that were taking shape.
It was a few days before the new year, and the air smelled of spring. Lost in my thoughts, I returned home and came face to face with a strange scene. In the middle of the hall there were a few sacks of rice, large tins of cooking lard, bags of tea and legumes, and several other foodstuffs. I was surprised. Hamid’s father occasionally brought rice for us, but not all these other things. Ever since the printing house was shut down, they too were under financial pressure.
When Siamak saw the surprised look on my face, he laughed and said, ‘Wait until you see the best part.’ And he held out an envelope towards me. It was open and I could see a stack of one-hundred tuman bills in it.
‘What is all this?’ I asked. ‘Where did it come from?’
‘Guess!’<
br />
‘Yes, Mum, it’s a contest,’ Massoud added cheerfully. ‘You have to guess.’
‘Did your grandfather go to all this trouble?’
‘No!’ Siamak said.
And they both started to laugh.
‘Did Parvaneh bring them?’
‘No.’
More laughter.
‘Mrs Parvin? Faati?’
‘No way!’ Siamak said. ‘You will never guess… Shall I tell you?’
‘Yes! Who brought these things?’
‘Uncle Ali! But he said I should tell you they came from Uncle Mahmoud.’
I was stunned.
‘Why? What for?’ I asked. ‘Did he see a prophecy in a dream?’
I picked up the telephone and called Mother’s house. She didn’t know anything.
The Book of Fate Page 29
