Scattered Pearls Read online

  The annual routine of the lives of women like Shahin and Laya revolved around food. In summer the women would make torshi, a sour preserve of vegetables, pickles, onions, pepper, garlic and herbs. This would be put away for winter, stored outside in a large ceramic pot about half a metre high. One year the torshi was ruined by my brother Hossein, probably about three years old at the time, when he removed the lid from the pot and urinated into it! The women also made tomato puree from five or six wooden crates of tomatoes which were mushed up by hand. These tomatoes had such a rich red colour. The pulp would be pushed through colanders, leaving a smooth paste, and that paste was poured into countless large jugs for storage.

  ~

  In about 1960, after selling out of both his metal shop and the bicycle shop, my father started a business in which he owned and operated taxis. It was a dubious business in an industry almost devoid of regulation. The general calm of the street was always being broken by my father’s banging and swearing as he worked on his cars in the street or garage, and by the foul-mouthed chatter of him and his drivers at all hours. My father, like many Iranian men, loved cars – he used to call a new car arroos, meaning ‘bride’. However his cars did not seem to love him back. He was constantly cursing when a car wouldn’t start or because a spanner would not do what he wished it to do or because a tyre dared to get a puncture. Even more noise was generated by a heavy roller door on the garage which was always getting stuck. Whenever my father came home, he would honk his horn repeatedly as he arrived, then keep honking until one of us children, or my mother or Laya, rushed out to force open that door so that he didn’t have to get out of his car. There was a metal tool – perhaps a crowbar – that we used to pull the door back down again, adding to the clamour. Then late at night, other drivers would return their taxis, banging on the door and talking loudly.

  The garage had once been a very nice room across the hall from Ahmad’s sitting room. It was well proportioned, with a big window overlooking the street. For a few years it was rented to a single lady called Mrs Tooba. I must have been young then as I don’t remember her at all; my mother says she sold fabrics. When Mrs Tooba moved out for some reason, my father and Ahmad decided that this room had another benefit: easy access from street level. So they knocked down the wall and window and replaced them with that large roller door. All at once the best room in the house became a garage for the repair and maintenance of cars, complete with tools, oil, rags, chains, screwdrivers, hammers, spare wheels and so on. The neighbours were not impressed but I guess this was in the age before you had to ask permission to do these sorts of things.

  One evening when I was about eight years old, my father and uncle Ahmad were working in the garage, doing something to a car. I could hear my father swearing, as usual, cursing a hammer for not doing what he wanted it to do. My mother brought tea for the men, retreating quickly with her hands over her ears to escape the language. My father’s swearing was not only incessant but it was also extremely foul. One of his favourite phrases was khar-kosteh, which loosely translates to ‘fucking bitch sister’. It shames me just to write it, but he used it in any company without any shame at all. It was always strange to me that my mother never told Asghar to watch his language, especially when, as in this instance, my six-year-old brother Hossein was in the garage with the men.

  It was Ramazan (the Persian equivalent of the Arab ‘Ramadan’), and my mother and Mahin were preparing to break their fast (they were the only people in the house who fasted). They had made tea, placed cheese and bread on a cloth, and had just sat down to eat when frantic shouting could be heard coming from the garage.

  My mother jumped up and ran. ‘Hossein!’ she yelled. Her first thought was that my brother had trapped his hand beneath the car, or been hurt in some other way.

  Then the shouting became clearer. ‘Fire, fire, fire!’

  Everyone ran towards the garage, despite the heat and fumes coming from the door. There was a lot of smoke, and Ahmad and my father were jumping here and there but not really doing anything useful. Flames could be seen in the corner, near the roller door, reaching right up to the ceiling. Hossein ran out of the garage into the hall and my grandmother immediately pulled him and me out of the way.

  ‘Has someone called the fire brigade?’ asked Laya.

  Ahmad shouted, ‘Shahin, Mahin. Go and bring water!’

  The two women ran out the back of the house to the pond. They filled buckets with water, and ran back up to the garage. The men threw the water, then the women ran back to refill their containers.

  The shouting continued. One of the men turned off the power at the switchboard, drenching the scene in almost total darkness. Perhaps because of this, they decided to open the roller door, but of course the fresh air only made the flames worse. Smoke and fire seemed to be everywhere, against the backdrop of a murky dusk. For over an hour, Shahin and Mahin – both of whom had been fasting all day – ferried water from the back yard to the garage, negotiating the six steps down to the garden and back up over and over again. All the time, the two men stayed at the garage. No one ever did call the fire brigade but eventually, somehow, the flames were doused.

  Thanks to the solid construction of our home, the fire didn’t have any effect beyond the garage. However, the garage was completely blackened by smoke, and some parts of the render came loose. Amazingly, there was not a lot of heat damage as, for all the noise and acrid smoke, the fire itself had mainly been contained to the bench where it had started. As we learnt later, my uncle had been rinsing a shirt in petrol to clean oil out of it, and drops of the fuel had spattered onto the flame of a lamp. The bowl of petrol had been the source of most of the fire and smoke.

  There was a vocal gathering on the street afterwards as a large group of locals paused to take in this new eyesore on their genteel street and gossip about their crude neighbours.

  Later a painter came to repair the garage. He had a ladder and stuck two sheets of paint swatches high on the wall. My cousin Nazi and I were watching him, fascinated by similar swatches spread around the floor. He asked us if we wanted to see the colours on the wall. He guided me up the ladder, holding me from behind so that I didn’t fall. However this ‘holding’ was very close – too close – and not nice. Afterwards he did the same thing with Nazi. This memory only returned to me many years later. Lucky for him none of my family came into the garage to check on what he was doing.

  3

  Shahin: a life of wealth and poverty

  My mother’s mother was Alam-Taj, the daughter of a well-connected craftsman and furniture maker, Eisa Khan. He is reputed to have built furniture for the royal family and he became a very wealthy man in the early part of the 20th century. Alam-Taj was the only child born to Eisa Khan and his first wife Fatemeh. Despite the family’s wealth, Alam-Taj received no education and was illiterate throughout her life – as was common at the time for girls at all levels of Iranian society.

  Before my great-grandmother had any more children, Eisa Khan took a second, younger wife. Bibi would bear him eight more children. At this time it was not uncommon for an Iranian man, if he had the means, to have more than one wife living under the same roof. However, Fatemeh was a proud lady and wanted to leave. She and Alam-Taj went to live with Fatemeh’s sister Robabeh, who was also from a wealthy background, having married a high-ranking government official in the ministry for roads (razarat-e rah). Unable to bear children herself, Robabeh had been very fond of Alam-Taj from the day she was born and raised her as her own daughter after Fatemeh died when Alam-Taj was about 13 years old.

  When Alam-Taj was about 16 or 17, she was married to Abol-Ghasem, a hairdresser and chef who worked at the nearby Vaziri Hospital. Alam-Taj soon became pregnant and, with her husband, moved back to her father’s house where she would be able to receive a high standard of medical attention. My mother was born in this house in 1931 on the same day as the daughter of the prophet Mohammed. Alam-Taj gave her new baby the same name – Fatemeh –
which, of course, was also her mother’s name. However, for most of her life everyone called my mother by the more modern name Shahin, a name used by her aunts who felt Fatemeh was too religious and old-fashioned.

  For the first two years of her life, Shahin lived a very comfortable existence. She was, after all, the grandchild of a wealthy and highly respected Tehran gentleman. Alam-Taj had no need to work and remained at home doing domestic duties, including caring for her new daughter. Abol-Ghasem also had no need to work really, but his pride did not allow him to live a genteel life. Each day he would walk to the hospital with his small leather bag of hairdressing tools and cut the patients’ hair.

  Abol-Ghasem had a reputation for being a very kind man. Although his parents were working class, he had received a few years’ education and was literate – something quite rare at the time. This gave him some standing with those around him, not least because he was able to assist less- educated people to write letters. However, after his marriage he soon tired of being referred to as damad-e-sar-khoneh, which translates as ‘a groom who lives in the house of his in-laws’. In the culture of the time this was something to be looked down on – it implied the inability of a such a man to live independently. After a year or so Abol-Ghasem applied for a transfer to another hospital, the No. 1 Army Hospital, which was in the area of Yusef Abad, north of central Tehran. When the transfer was granted, he applied to rent a small house near the hospital. The house was within the walls of an ancient castle called Ghal-e Yusef Abad that had been subdivided into very basic housing – single-room houses without even basic services like sewerage or running water. Alam-Taj and Abol-Ghasem moved to this house soon after their son, Abdollah, was born. By now, Shahin was two years old.

  So it was that Alam-Taj left behind the wealth of her family and began living a much more rudimentary existence. She would never live the ‘comfortable’ life again, and nor would my mother. However, Alam-Taj maintained a connection to her father’s household. For some years she cleaned the room of Hassan, one of the now-adult sons of Eisa Khan and Bibi. Later, Alam-Taj became ill after a bad fall – she tripped over a tree root and had some sort of fit, her body shaking and foam coming from her mouth – and she would travel to Eisa Khan’s house so that Hassan could take her to the doctor. (The effects of this fall stayed with Alam-Taj for the rest of her life.) Alam-Taj also retained relationships with her half-sisters Farzaneh, Golnar and Nahid (one year younger than Shahin). When Eisa Khan eventually died, all his wealth was passed down to these three women and the other five of Bibi’s children.

  ~

  Shahin’s father had one weakness: opium. He was not alone in this: opium, either smoked or chewed, has long been the drug of choice in Iran. It is used furtively, as to be a known user is to be disdained – to be called ‘hayfe nan’: not worth the bread they eat. Historically it was used by the elderly but usage gradually crept down to younger and younger age groups. Even today, the rate of opium use in Iran is the highest in the world. Abol-Ghasem was eventually taking opium daily, spending most of his leisure time in a stupefied condition. Because it did not stop him working, the family weren’t driven into abject poverty, but it did mean that he was laissez faire in ways that held the family back. Shahin told me once how Abol-Ghasem had received a substantial amount of back pay in one lump sum – enough cash to fill a suitcase. While only eight at the time, she recognised an opportunity to make the most of this money.

  ‘Why don’t you buy a block of land?’ she suggested. ‘Every metre is just a few qiran [cents].’

  But by then Abol-Ghasem could hardly think beyond his addiction.

  ‘What good is land for us?’ he retorted. ‘We are sitting here now, and one day we will be sitting somewhere else.’

  Instead of investing, he spent most of the money on opium.

  Opium also may have contributed to Shahin not starting school at the expected age of seven. Education was becoming more common at this time but it was certainly not universal, and there was no school in Ghal-e other than an unofficial (and reputedly ineffective) classroom run by the grandmother of one of the residents. The next year, Abol-Ghasem was confronted by Alam-Taj’s half-brother Hassan, who asked why the girl wasn’t going to school.

  ‘She should be going to school,’ said Hassan. ‘And Abdollah must start next year too.’

  ‘But there is no school in Ghal-e,’ said Abol-Ghasem. ‘We would have to move back to central Tehran.’

  ‘Then that is what you must do.’

  When Abol-Ghasem raised the issue of Shahin’s age – she would now be one year too old to start school and the Ministry of Culture might not allow it – Hassan said he had contacts and would fix it.

  Perhaps because he had been educated himself, Abol-Ghasem understood the value of literacy. He applied for a transfer back to his original hospital and found a single-room house to rent in the central suburb of Sina. The house was much as they had had in Ghal-e. A small yard was shared with four other homes, there was no running water and no electricity. Lighting was provided by kerosene lamps. There was no decoration save for the thin carpets – gileem, the poor-man’s Persian rug – on the floor.

  Shahin was enrolled in an all-girls school while her brother started at another school at the same time. Shahin’s uniform was a grey dress of orbak, a heavy, durable linen-like fabric; the skirt was loose and hung below the knees. She wore white socks and a white ribbon in her short hair, and she did very well, finishing the year at the top of her grade with perfect scores in every subject. She did the same the next year, in grade 2. However, her extra maturity was starting to show, both physically and mentally, and she wanted to skip a level and start the following year at grade 4. When the principal refused, Shahin simply decided that she would not go to school any more. Her parents – powerless in the face of their stubborn daughter – submitted to her resolution. Shahin’s formal education came to an end.

  From that point on, Shahin stayed at home. Invited by some neighbours, she attended Taziyeh, a traditional Persian passion play about the life and death of Husayn, grandson of the prophet Mohammed. She went to performances of this play a number of times and, along with the rest of the audience, cried when Husayn died; she’d come away feeling emotionally drained. She later told me that she thought she was brainwashed by Taziyeh. It was little more than a soap opera, with very tenuous links to actual history, but Shahin started going to the local mosque and fasting at Ramazan.

  She also spent time with her well-off step-aunties, Farzaneh and Golnar. Sometimes she stayed at Farzaneh’s home where she did some housework and helped with younger children. With its beautiful furnishings, modern plumbing and electric lighting, this house was a stark contrast to Shahin’s home in Sina. She particularly loved the many mirrors on the walls. There was also a radio, and sometimes when Shahin found herself in the house alone she would turn it up and sing along with famous singers like Marzieh (a Persian equivalent of Dame Joan Sutherland).

  Take my cage, make my heart happy

  I do not say release me from the cage

  I say, take the cage to the garden and make my heart happy

  She sometimes sang these words while working and Farzaneh would say ‘bah bah’ – well done, well done. Shahin also remembered visiting Golnar’s elegantly decorated house, which was then in central Tehran above her husband’s soap and cologne factory. The two aunts sometimes took her to the cinema, to cafés or to the shops. Once they took her to Café Majles, where only the elite gathered.

  Unfortunately, none of this helped Shahin to become more educated. Thankfully she did teach herself to read; with a lot of perseverance she learnt to read the complex works of Hafez, the most famous Persian poet – something many literate Iranians cannot do.

  ~

  But for a twist in her own mother’s fortunes, my mother could have had a standard of living much closer to that of Farzaneh and Golnar. When I was about ten, I was introduced to what might have been – although I never thought abo
ut it in those terms at the time.

  We were to visit Golnar, whose family now lived in the northern suburbs of Tehran. My father drove for about half an hour until we reached an area of very large houses on very large blocks of land. Eventually we turned off the road and drove through two enormous wrought iron gates, down the main driveway and onto a large circular drive, stopping in front of a vast building that I would soon learn was the main house. And what a house! It was like something you would see in an English novel: two storeys high, as wide as our street was long (or so it seemed to my young mind) and with a central front door that a giant could have used. Walking through the front door, I didn’t know where to look. A few stairs rose up to a landing dominated by a framed mirror that seemed to be twice my height. Around the entrance hall were marble statues, classic leather chairs and antique tables; on the tables were generous bowls of nuts, fresh fruit and pastries, and vases of the most beautiful flowers I had ever seen. The floors were covered by exquisite red Persian carpets while, in the rooms off the hall, all the windows were dressed with deep-red velvet curtains trimmed with gold baubles.

  I met Melahat, one of Golnar’s ten children. The same age as me, she was the most beautiful person I had ever seen, with large oval eyes, perfect teeth, an even more perfect nose and absolutely flawless skin. She was a little more chubby than I was, but that only served to emphasise the fact that she seemed to have stepped out of a Botticelli painting.