Scattered Pearls Read online

  From the moment I walked in I felt a stranger in this house. It was so warm. The floors were covered with rich Persian carpets, many with matching colours and designs. There were ornaments around the rooms, everything placed with careful consideration. There were pictures on the walls. And there were books. So many books! In my house we had no books except for school books, and perhaps one tattered collection of the poetry of Hafez.

  Shahnaz’s parents were both in the kitchen. Mr Shirazi was at the stove. He was wearing a white apron and cooking what smelt like fried potatoes or chips. His wife was drying dishes and putting them on the table. They immediately stopped what they were doing and came out to greet me with broad smiles. I asked to use the bathroom as an excuse to clean my shoes, after which Shahnaz ushered me into her room so I could help her dress.

  Though I shared very little about my family, Shahnaz had often told me about her parents. Her father was a high school teacher of history and geography. When he finished school he went to university and then undertook compulsory military service. He met Mehran, his future wife, after this, not long after she finished school. She was the daughter of a businessman – a man of ‘new money’. Shahnaz was the couple’s only child – a rare situation in Iran at this time – and she would often tell me how much she was loved, though only now, in her home, did I get a true sense of what she meant by this.

  When Shahnaz was dressed we went back out to the living area. It was getting dark outside but the room gleamed with the light of many lamps. When Mr Shirazi saw us he once again stopped what he was doing. He kissed Shahnaz on the forehead, an act which was at once so natural yet so strange to me. My father had never kissed me. Ever.

  ‘You look so beautiful,’ he said to Shahnaz. He put out a hand and gently touched my face. ‘And so do you, Sohila. Together you are like two mermaids.’

  Shahnaz asked where her mother was, and was answered by Mrs Shirazi’s voice coming from her bedroom. ‘Darling, make sure the potatoes don’t burn. And don’t forget the salt.’

  ‘I won’t forget, my dear,’ said Mr Shirazi.

  Such ordinary banter, yet so foreign to me. Even the fact that Shahnaz’s mother called her husband by name was unusual to me. My mother never referred to Ashgar by name, neither to his face nor in front of others. Never. She only ever used terms like ‘Baba’ (father) or ‘agha zanjani’ (Mr Zanjani).

  There were six other friends coming to the party, not girls from school but from other families known to the Shirazis. As each arrived, Mr Shirazi stopped his work, greeted the new arrival, and asked after their parents and about how school was going. These were not superficial enquiries though. Each was communicated with genuine interest and a clear desire to make his daughter’s guest feel comfortable.

  Eventually Mrs Shirazi came out to the sitting room where by now all of us girls were gathered. She was wearing a short, sleeveless dress of rich, turquoise blue. Her hair was out but swept back, turquoise earrings completing the picture. No sooner had she stepped into the room than Mr Shirazi was once again out of the kitchen.

  ‘How beautiful you are, my darling,’ he said.

  ‘Do you mean I wasn’t beautiful before?’ she asked.

  ‘You have always been beautiful and that is why I fell into your trap.’

  At this we all laughed.

  ‘Mrs Shirazi, how did you capture this big prey?’ asked one of the girls.

  ‘It was very simple,’ Mr Shirazi told her. ‘With just one look.’

  ‘No, my dear,’ said Mrs Shirazi. ‘You were in a romantic stupor. You saw everything just as you wanted to see it. You could not see reality at all.’

  The smell of something burning was suddenly in the air. Mr Shirazi ran to the kitchen and before his wife had a chance to speak, he yelled back, ‘Don’t worry, darling. It was only a few slices.’

  Once again we all laughed. When Mrs Shirazi went to the kitchen to help, some of Shahnaz’s friends commented on how romantic her parents were, to which Shahnaz giggled and hid her face.

  Soon after we were all invited to sit at a large dining table. It was elaborately set with sparkling crockery and glassware. The table was covered with a feast of bowls containing soups, various casseroles, rice, a small barbecued chicken, salads and, of course, tahdig, a Persian speciality of saffron rice with a crispy layer of potato or rice at the base. At the centre of all this was a white-iced and decorated birthday cake. Shahnaz’s parents joined us at the table and we all enjoyed a wonderful meal together with endless talk and laughter. I didn’t say much, but I don’t think the smile left my face as I soaked up the pleasure of it all.

  At the end of the meal we all returned to the living area and lounged on the couches and copious cushions. Mrs Shirazi had turned the lamps down and lit candles around the room, which gave it a magic, shimmering orange glow. I felt I was in a dream.

  As we sat, quiet now after such an abundant meal, I realised there was music playing in the background. I recognised it as folk music, but knew nothing more about it. The only person who played music in my house was my father, and his taste was, well, simple. He would play popular music of the sort commonly heard in the bazaar. It was all loud, with heavy-handed beats and ridiculous lyrics. This music was quite different. It was peaceful, calming. There was an instrument which I later learnt was the tar, a Persian stringed instrument which sits somewhere between the Indian sitar and the Western guitar. And the lyrics were poetic and poignant.

  ‘I think we should have some more lively music,’ said Mrs Shirazi. She stood up and moved to change it.

  ‘Please don’t,’ I said, then dropped my head, having no idea where the courage had come from to say that. It wasn’t me who spoke up – it was someone else speaking from a place deep inside me.

  Mr Shirazi looked at me. ‘Well done, my girl. This poem and this music we have to hear. What do the rest of you think?’

  Everyone sat silently, some nodded slightly. I don’t think anyone else really cared one way or the other.

  Mrs Shirazi shrugged with mock displeasure. ‘Obviously I have become old. And as Hafez says: “When you become old, leave the tavern”. I will organise tea, and perhaps we shall have some livelier music after cake.’

  After tea and cake, Shahnaz’s parents stood up. Mr Shirazi put his left arm around his wife’s waist; he reached out his right hand and placed it gently on Shahnaz’s shoulder. ‘Thank you all for sharing this happy night with us. Shahnaz is my life. As her father I love to see her happy, and wish that she will always be so. But believe me, I have this wish for all of you.’

  With that, Mr and Mrs Shirazi left us alone. We sang and danced and talked, not going to bed until after midnight.

  That night I was tired but I did not sleep. I churned inside. The pleasure of the evening, the richness of this environment, the love of these people – in just one night they had changed me forever. With renewed clarity I realised how much I detested my father. To me he was all pain and sorrow. His loose mouth, his lack of appetite for beauty, his ignorance of the feelings of others. These things made him a monster in my mind. And I realised how submissive my mother was, yet how she retained, inside her, a strength that my father could not sense and would never break. She was so accepting of her own destiny, yet so determined not to accept that mine would replicate hers. I don’t know if I realised it at the time, but on this night I decided that I would not blindly accept my destiny either.

  ~

  We were never a family who did a lot of activities together but there was one thing my father liked to do whenever he could: drive. He would announce, usually at very short notice, that he wanted to take a holiday. It was usually the last thing my mother wanted to do because for her it just involved more work, but of course she did not object.

  These were not comfortable holidays – at least not in the travelling.

  One summer after my uncle Ahmad had bought a green ex-army Willys Jeep it was decided that we should go to the Caspian Sea. This has always be
en the holiday destination of choice for Tehranis who can afford it, mainly because it is the closest large body of water to the city. So the Jeep was piled up with people and possessions: luggage went on the roof and 15 of us – my family plus uncles, aunts and cousins – crammed into every space. Luckily the vehicle had no doors, so my older cousin Jamal was half in and half out most of the time. The roads were not good and the journey took around eight hours, yet my father, sitting in the comfortable driver’s seat, refused to stop unless absolutely necessary. And the only ‘necessary’ stops were when a piece of luggage fell from the roof and had to be retrieved and reattached. The brakes failed at one point but somehow Dad was able to control the car and stop. When we finally got to the end of our journey, my father and the other men had a good time on the beach while my mother and the other women cooked. After two nights we piled back into the Jeep for the long ride home.

  This trip was repeated the next summer, this time in a VW Beetle. There were only twelve of us this time – my family and friends of ours, making four adults and eight children under eight years old – but how we all fitted into this small car remains a mystery. I know my friend Mahvash and I squeezed into the space behind the rear seat. My main memory of that trip is a fleeting one. I was swimming in the sea in a one-piece costume borrowed from Mahvash. I had no swimsuit of my own and was too embarrassed to swim in my underwear. A larger wave than normal came in and my father picked me up; my arms were around his neck and my cheek brushed his. It was the closest physical contact we had ever had, and was the first and last time I remember it happening.

  One other trip to the Caspian Sea was originally going to be to attend the wedding of Laya’s nephew in her home town of Qazvin. There were 13 on this trip, including us, Abdollah, Pooran, their three children and Laya. We left fully prepared, and dressed, for the wedding. However once we reached Qazvin, my father announced that we should not attend the wedding after all.

  ‘This wedding is not good,’ he said, really meaning that he was not in the mood to attend what would be an old-fashioned wedding lasting three days or so. He then said we would go for a drive to the sea instead, another two or three hours away.

  Laya said, ‘No. I am not going anywhere. I want to go to the wedding.’

  My mother reminded my father that we had all been invited and should go, but Abdollah agreed with him and in the end Asghar prevailed. He dropped Laya in the centre of Qazvin and then drove to the sea. We stayed there for one night – with completely inappropriate clothing and shoes – then returned home.

  After the wedding Laya caught the bus back to Tehran.

  ‘Huh! He takes his wife and his brother-in-law with him but drops his mother in the centre of the street,’ she sneered when she arrived home.

  ~

  Norooz is a traditional Persian New Year celebration. It is a two-week holiday period and typically a time to pay respect to elders, neighbours and relatives, and to exchange gifts. Laya always gave me five toman and sometimes my father did too. These gifts were always in fresh banknotes that had a particular smell.

  One year my mother gave me a red velvet dress, sleeveless and knee length, that I loved so much I wore and wore it until it was about to fall apart. This was the year that it was decided we would go to Abadan to visit my mother’s brother Abdollah and his family. They typically came to see us to escape the heat in summer while Pooran, a school teacher, was on holiday, but Abadan was a good place to get warm in winter. However, it was a long way away, over 1000 kilometres. Asghar woke us all at 4 am and after my mother had organised all the packing we left before sunrise. Again I sat in the back section of the Beetle, among the bags, enjoying the unbroken view through the rear window, a blood-red sun rising above Tehran as we left the city behind. It was a magical morning.

  As usual we drove for hours without stopping. None of us was brave enough to ask our father to stop – not even my mother. Thankfully, Asghar wanted to pause in the city of Kermanshah, about halfway, to call on a friend; otherwise he might never have stopped at all. Kermanshah is a regional city famous for its tasty oil and for the nearby Bisotun Mountains, which are home to ancient stone inscriptions featuring some of the earliest known written language in the world. When this friend – actually a friend of my uncle Ahmad – expressed his desire to visit Abadan also, my father invited him and his family to Abdollah’s home. The Iranian culture is generally one of inclusion: anyone is welcomed into a home if they have a need. But still it seemed odd to my mother that my father had not considered that another family of visitors might be excessive for Abdollah and Pooran. We pressed on and arrived in a humid and windy Abadan very late that night.

  In the second week of our visit, the family from Kermanshah arrived in the evening while Abdollah was at work on a night shift. My father took offence when he overheard Pooran’s elderly mother say, ‘Happy me that I don’t have a donkey and don’t know how much hay a donkey eats.’ In other words, she was glad it was not her who had to worry about all these extra mouths. Rather than speak up, Asghar turned to my mother and quietly told her that we would return to Tehran the next day. Shahin packed up and we left at four o’clock the next morning before Abdollah had returned from work. When we arrived home three days earlier than planned Laya, who had stayed behind, asked what had happened. When she was told, she couldn’t believe that Asghar’s ‘delicate temper’ had been so easily affected. ‘For a man who is always swearing at the whole world perhaps you should not be so sensitive,’ she said.

  When I was a little older, perhaps fifteen, there was another trip, this time just to Kermanshah. We were to visit my uncle Ahmad and his family while they were living there on the army base.

  One day they took us to the bazaar and as we strolled around, three-year-old Fariba suddenly disappeared. She had fallen into a dry metre-deep hole on the pavement, completely (and typically) unguarded and unmarked. ‘The child dies! The child dies!’ screamed Shahin, hitting herself on the head as she had when Zari drowned. A crowd gathered in an instant as Ahmad pulled a bruised and unconscious Fariba from the well. He told the crowd to stay back, reassuring them that he was a doctor, and immediately gave my sister mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. As he did so, my mother was calling on every religious figure she could think of to bring her daughter back to life. Slowly Fariba came round. Ahmad checked her over and miraculously nothing was broken. All that was needed was some cleaning up. But it took my mother some hours to calm down.

  On this visit, my mother learnt that Ahmad’s clinic on the army base had a dentist that we could access for free. She had been concerned for a while that my mouth was becoming overcrowded, so asked Ahmad if she could take me to get a tooth removed. The dentist was very young and in fact only a trainee, and when Shahin asked him to remove one of my incisors to make more room, he simply went along with her request rather than suggesting there might perhaps be better alternatives. He gave me an injection and pulled out the tooth, leaving a gap that was clearly visible whenever I smiled. This became a source of much embarrassment and self-consciousness for me for the rest of my teenage years and even into adulthood.

  5

  Emerging

  After finishing secondary school in 1973, my plan was to go to university as soon as possible. Study was really the only way for the average Iranian to lift their social status, so my mother, like many Iranian parents, had always encouraged me to obtain a university degree. Study would also give me time away from home and help me forget the realities of my mother’s situation. However, it was very difficult to get into university. Private universities were more than we could afford and the government-funded Tehran University accepted only one applicant in ten. I had attempted the university admission test in order to study sociology, but without success.

  Where our family were probably regarded as a bit chaotic in Takht-e Tavoos, what with Zari’s drowning, the garage fire and Asghar’s taxi business operating at all hours, after a few years in the manb-e abb house we were now well regard
ed. Our neighbours recognised my mother as a very generous, patient lady, both with her children and with anyone else who needed help. She was never heard speaking ill of anyone, including her husband. And she had raised five well-behaved, studious children. My father was still running two taxis and was working class but he was, to an outsider, well respected by his family. He was not a charlatan, was not a womaniser and did not drink or smoke. In public he had a good sense of humour. He appeared to live within his means, never asking anyone to borrow money.

  In fact, over time, my father had started to build a moderate level of wealth, though this was not because he had a sharp mind for investment or a willingness to take financial risks. If anything, Asghar’s success was a result of my mother’s ability to sense a good property investment – that same sense she had demonstrated as an eight-year-old while trying to encourage her father to buy a block of land.

  In 1948 Shahin had convinced my father to buy an inexpensive suburban block of land in a valley nearby called Dareh. Thirty years later, when they sold it, it would be worth over 30 times its original price.

  An even better venture was the purchase of a block of land in Abas Abad (in Tehran’s central business district), for 36,000 toman, at around the same time that they bought the manb-e abb house. This was like buying a property in Melbourne’s Collins Street. At one point this looked like a bad decision because my father had gone into debt to buy the land only to have it marked for acquisition by the government for a road. However, my mother’s persistence won the day yet again. She lobbied for nearly a year, telling any official who would listen that ‘We have five kids and nothing other than this land’. Finally the route of the road was redrawn. This actually made the property more accessible and its value increased exponentially. Many years later they would sell this piece of land for over one million toman.