A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea (27 page)

n 1979, when the girls were nine, the Hafezis put them through some bad things for the sake of their religion. Before that, the family had lived peacefully in Tehran and Cheshmeh, just the four of them, with their doors mostly closed. Once in a while I saw their Christ-worshipping friends come and go, and a few of us helped Bahareh in the house, but that was all. After the revolution, they had to live differently—in more ways than just tossing out the short shorts and doing without foreign chocolate squares. Now the secrets of the house became a point of trouble. Their heads began to smell like lamb stew, as they say, tempting for predators. But Agha Hafezi wasn’t the kind of Christ worshipper who advertised, and he soon realized that the best way to hide was out in the open. Unlike cowards in big cities who shut themselves up in their houses, thinking they were safe, he welcomed villagers into his sitting room. If he was ever accused, an entire village could honestly say, “I’ve dined in his home. He has a Koran and Muslim friends. If he was Christian,
I’d
know it.” It was a clever thing, oiling the bread of the neighbors, turning them from spies and informants into friends.
During the revolution, there weren’t any street riots or protests in Cheshmeh, only radio broadcasts and new rules for living—no foreign logos, no more non-Muslim music. Soon, in the bigger cities,
pasdar
s began to appear everywhere in their olive uniforms, piled four by four into camel-colored jeeps, taking people to the offices of the
komiteh
—the police force that sprang from the mosques in 1979 and started telling people that everything was a sin. It got worse and worse over the years. Your ankle is showing? Sin! Your nails are red? Sin. You have a tan? You must have been naked in sunlight. Sin! Sin! Sin! If you have your sunglasses on top of your head, you are posing too much. If your jeans are inside your boots, you are too exposed. Imagine that. I joked that if they made nose jobs a sin and levied a fine, there would be big money from Tehran. Bahareh fumed against all this. Most of us were too afraid to speak and were glad to be living in a quiet village with fewer
pasdar
s. Gradually, over several years, women felt the chafe of the mandatory headscarf and long, dark manteaus. Even here, where hair coverings are part of our traditional dress, and we still wear colors without trouble, there is a feeling of loss for not having chosen our modesty. I sense this even from the very religious. For the most part, we villagers are noticed only when we travel to the cities or sell straw handicrafts in box stands by roads near the seaside. In big cities, anything can happen. Once, when Ponneh was only thirteen, she was stopped in Rasht because her manteau was buttoned on the side—more fashionable even though it covered everything. Nothing was ever enough for them. They wanted to turn us to dust.

If you ask someone from the North, someone whose life moves with the sea, they will tell you that one of the worst new rules was about the beach. Before the revolution, we used to go with our families to the sea, eat together, swim together. Women wore shamefully small swimming costumes and changed in beach huts that smelled like wet bamboo and reed mats. Then they began putting huge curtains, old pieces of dirty cloth full of holes and tears, across the beach to separate men and women, husbands and wives, daughters and fathers. Sometimes they divided the beach by the time of day— mornings for men, afternoons for women. Either way, no more swimming with family. No more fun. Women had to swim fully clothed. They were told not to draw attention to themselves. Little girls watched longingly as boys played in the water in shorts, never taking care to be quiet. Maybe that’s why on the day Mahtab was lost, the Hafezi twins thought they would have a better time swimming at night.

Between 1979 and 1981, we heard about riots from friends in Tehran. We heard about tortures and executions and shootings into crowds. People disappeared sometimes, never to return. The Shah fled. The clerics took over, hanging pictures of Ayatollah Khomeini everywhere, filling the streets with posters of bloody fists and “Death to America.” In the early days of the revolution, schools were closed and the Hafezi girls were locked in their room, reading their books and listening to their foreign music.

During that first month of not knowing, when the world outside was changing and the girls were shut up in their big, big bedroom, mullahs from Cheshmeh and Rasht started visiting the Hafezi house. Agha Hafezi felt the need to invite them, these new cleric kings, to keep them close and happy. Mullah Ali was one of them, but he was different because he had known Agha Hafezi for years. He lived in Cheshmeh and made himself the grease that kept Agha Hafezi’s sharp edges from grinding against the mullahs’ ears. He offered up loud jokes, laughing at his own stupid wit and telling long-winded stories from the Koran. It worked because none of the mullahs asked extra questions, and after a while, only one or two of them ever came back. If they had discovered the family’s secret, Agha Hafezi would have been jailed or killed because the family weren’t born Christians like the Armenians or Assyrians. They were converts from Islam. If a Muslim killed them, it would be no sin. Of course Mullah Ali knew. So did I. But wise old storytellers like us know that it would be bad for everyone if that were made public.

Hidden in their fancy prison, the girls made up their own revolution songs and war slogans. For months, the jinns and
pari
s from another time gave way to martyrs and heroes and blood and rifles. One day, at the dinner
sofreh
, Mahtab said that the lamb had been martyred for our sake, and Bahareh told her to stop talking nonsense and eat. If you ask me, the loss of good stories in favor of all that war and revolution garbage was the worst part of it. To Bahareh, the worst was the loss of her house, no longer private, no longer hers at all. She became angry. She lost her temper more often with the girls.

There is a rumor that Agha Hafezi spent two weeks in prison in those days. Maybe it’s true. He was gone once for that long and came back with his hair shorn off. When he returned, he listened to all of Saba’s music and let her keep only one English-language tape of children’s songs. He made a show of the new rule in front of the mullahs and other guests, even though he had never been strict with the girls before. But you know what they say, he who has been bitten by a snake is afraid of black and white.

Ei vai,
the trouble this American music caused! I don’t see why those girls were so crazy for it—and once it was banned, they craved it more. That day in her room, I heard Saba crying in her mother’s lap, and Bahareh told the girl that the revolutionaries were wrong. Every beautiful or fun thing isn’t a sin and God loves all people’s music. Jesus loves women’s loose hair, she said, and foreign books, and especially artistic talent. True art, she said, is God’s greatest creation. Then she told Saba she might as well throw away the tape of children’s songs too, because if no one cares about it, then it is pointless, with no power or meaning. She sounded sad, like she wanted to run away.

Later Saba managed to dig up some of her tapes from the garbage outside.
“Nothing’s gonna change my world,”
she hummed a hundred times that year, so we all learned its meaning—and later too, as she rode in her baba’s car, on a bad, bad day full of green scarves and blue manteaus and brown hats that separated her from her sister.
Mark my words, God will never forgive Bahareh for her impractical ways, for teaching her daughter to search for meaning in illegal nothings.

ccording to the customs of women from the North, it is bad luck to cut fabric on a Tuesday. Traveling on Mondays brings ill omens, and if you sweep on a Wednesday, you will have jinns in your house. It is not advisable to clip your nails on Fridays or in the evenings, and when you do, the clippings should be wrapped in newspaper and hidden in the cracks of the walls. Since being married, Saba has found a new place among the women of Cheshmeh, sharing their bawdiness and their tales, their sweets and their superstitions, in an entirely new way. They live by a thousand unexplained rules. But now that Saba has learned to listen, she can hear reason behind every one.

“I can’t sweep, Agha jan,” Saba’s neighbor says to her husband as she reclines with a book of poems. “Do you want to invite jinns?”
“I can’t mend your clothes today,” the Mansooris’ granddaughter, Niloo, says to Reza’s older brother, Peyman, as she points to the calendar on their wall. “Tuesday.”
It seems that in the old days the men of Rasht struggled to comprehend the need for a day of rest. “The wives are at home all day,” they would say. “They have too much rest.” But the women soon discovered that even though their husbands did not understand fatigue and moderation, they did understand jinns, omens, and bad luck. And so a series of fortuitous discoveries were made. The laziest women made the most astonishing finds: if a person sneezes once, she must drop everything she is doing and wait for the second sneeze— even if it takes all day. Otherwise . . . jinns. And the jealous wives discovered that if a man leaves the house in the morning and he sees a woman in his path, he must go back into the house and start over.
Saba sits in her front yard and reads about these rules in an old book she found in her mother’s collection. She loves Abbas’s front yard. The high walls painted white. The small fountain with goldfish. The low benches tucked beneath the roofs of Spanish-style covered walkways. Along the rough walls pocked by jutting straw and clumping paint, massive jars of ten-year-old pickled garlic, each tall enough to reach Saba’s thighs, are lined up like sentries. They have been prepared and left there by Abbas’s first wife. Beside them hangs a massive portrait of a long-dead family patriarch. A colorful
ghali
, a small rug sometimes used on the backs of donkeys, cushions Saba’s favorite bench where she likes to read or watch the fish in the fountain. She imagines that Abbas’s first wife was a superstitious woman.
After a while she meanders back to her room where her latest books and newspapers await. She has been reading more foreign news lately. The publications are usually out of date, but she is interested to know what
The New York Times
and
The Economist
have to say about her country. She picks up an article from an April
New York Times
, brought to her by her faithful Tehrani. A reporter named Judith Miller quotes a diplomatic source: “The revolution is finally over.” Saba snorts and reads on. The article talks about the
komiteh
officers and their recent merge with the regular police. It talks about how women no longer wear the unfashionable
maghnaeh
, the triangular academic Super Scarf required (along with a manteau) for school. It says the
pasdar
s are pulling back and there are no more photos of Khomeini in the streets. “Well, that’s good of you to tell us,” she says aloud—certain that there are still more than enough photos; even one in her father’s office—and envies the female reporter whose name is the only clue about her. Probably she is like Mahtab, headstrong and ambitious. A real journalist.
Later someone knocks on the door. She ignores it at first. But the banging grows louder, and Saba puts down the book she is skimming—a highly illegal political one about American government called
Electing a President
that Dr. Zohreh lent to Ponneh and that Ponneh, too embarrassed to admit that she could barely read high school Farsi, let alone English, asked Saba to read and summarize. She creeps down the steps leading from the front door of Abbas’s house into the yard and wraps herself in a speckled shawl.
She opens the gate to find Ponneh in a travel chador, struggling with two large bags. Saba takes one and shuts the gate behind her. “What’s going on?” she asks.
Ponneh’s face is paler than usual and she looks frightened— or shocked. She doesn’t say hello, and her eyes are wide and dull. She moves mechanically, feverishly, rummaging through the two black bags as soon as they are inside. “We have to hurry,” she says, and digs to the bottom of the bag. “Is your car here? You’ll have to drive us.”
“Have you gone crazy?” says Saba. “Where do you think we’re going?” When Ponneh doesn’t answer, she presses. “Does your mother know you’re going somewhere?”
Ponneh still lives in Khanom Alborz’s house. Her mother rants, raves, and grieves daily by her ailing daughter’s bed. She maintains that if her precious eldest child must suffer like this, then the least Ponneh can do is bear a fraction of her pain and wait her turn to marry. Ponneh’s voice is resolute. “We’re going to stop something bad from happening.” She pulls out a video camera from the bag, and then an old photo camera.
To Saba’s ears, her friend sounds so deranged that she wonders if she shouldn’t just take her arm and force her into the house. Ponneh finds a roll of film. She loads the camera and avoids Saba’s worried stare.
“They’re hanging someone today,” she says. “And we’re going to document it.”
“What?”
A nervous laugh escapes Saba. She shakes her head and starts toward the house because now she is sure that Ponneh has lost all reason. “You’re insane.”
“Saba, please,” Ponneh begs. “Please, I
have
to do this.”
“I thought you weren’t involved with them,” says Saba. “You said you didn’t join Dr. Zohreh’s group. I’ve told you that it’s dangerous.”
Though Saba refuses to join the group, she has visited the shack by herself many times now, to be alone, to think of her mother and Mahtab. It is hidden by acres of forest, and in warmer months, it smells like fresh fish and garlic—seaside aromas that no longer frighten her like they did when she was a child but provide an almost sweet sort of ache. From the window on a clear day, she can make out the outline of the sea through the trees. Sometimes she drives down to the seaside. She walks up the boardwalk to a tiny fish house perched precariously on a rocky pier, orders the catch of the day with garlic pickle, and watches the wooden houses hovering above the waves on their tall, slender stilts, like women lifting their skirts as they stand in the surf. The terns fly close to the mountain house and Saba has seen them, with their sinful red mouths, their defiant white feathers against that shock of black on their head. She has even touched one, fed it with her hand until it was scared away by the sound of a car. Saba likes being alone there, in a secret shack in the mountains, sometimes walking toward the sea, eyeing it like a mysterious lost love . . . humming about a dock and a bay.
Ponneh tries to thrust the camera into Saba’s hands. “Look, I need your help.”
“I don’t want to be involved in these things, Ponneh,” Saba protests. She suspects that ever since the beating, Ponneh has allowed Dr. Zohreh’s pamphlets and the photos and other illicit documents into her house. Her behavior, her allegiance to this unknown cause, is almost cultish; she follows the group’s news clips with the loyalty of a teenage movie fan. Saba wonders if she feels cleansed each time she reads their essays, if she imagines herself lurking in a corner somewhere, catching a member of the moral police in some brutal act. Saba feels none of this longing to save the world. Because what will happen after? Will it change anything? Will it be enough to erase the thought that she, Saba Hafezi, wealthy-widow-in-waiting, is not a good person? That she is a disobedient child, an unfaithful soul, a cruel wife to a feeble man? Can it take away those paranoid flashes, when she’s alone in a smoky stupor, that she might be a girl who was so greedy for her own life that she let go of her sister’s hand in the water? Saba imagines herself crouching behind a wall or in a deserted alley, waiting for evidence to send abroad, getting caught and paying for her crimes. Enduring blows like Ponneh did and becoming one of the beautiful things
pasdar
s despise.
No,
she thinks. She has already paid.
Now Ponneh is staring at the camera in her hands, and all Saba can see is the top of her face and the bridge of her nose. Ponneh begins to shake. “I have to,” she whispers.
Saba takes a step toward her friend. “Ponneh jan, how can you possibly stop this from happening just by taking pictures? Can’t you see that you’re being crazy?” She wants to help, to show Ponneh the importance of being careful. Hundreds of executions happen every year in Iran—maybe even thousands—either in prisons or in public. Though there has never been one around Cheshmeh, and though she has never seen one, Saba knows from her father that when judges choose to hold an execution out in the open, it is often for a moral crime, a weak soul the crowds can judge while bearing witness to what can happen to those who want too much. No one at this event will feel Ponneh’s pain. No one will be her friend. It is best to stay away from such spectacles.
“No,” Ponneh snaps. “No, I didn’t say I would stop the hanging. I said I’m going to stop
something bad
from happening. And that’s letting my friend die for no reason.”
Saba tries to swallow, but there is something lodged in her throat. She starts to speak, but doesn’t want to ask. “What friend do you mean?” she says finally.
“Farnaz,” whispers Ponneh. As soon as the name is out, her shoulders begin to shake. She fumbles with the camera, then stops and wipes her nose on her jacket sleeve. “They’re murdering Farnaz in public today, for being indecent. For . . .” She trails off, past whispers and on to sickly gasps. “They say she slept with many men and that they had four witnesses. How can that even
be
? And they said she had enough opium and cocaine to count as trafficking. She doesn’t even smoke cigarettes, let alone— Anyway, it happened so fast and Dr. Zohreh has been trying to get her out, but they made up so many charges. They want to hang her because of her work—” Her knees give way and she reaches for something. “Oh God, it’s my fault . . . maybe they know things.”
Saba puts an arm around Ponneh’s waist and leads her to a bench in a corner behind the flower beds, next to a tree and the guest-room window.
“Was there anything else . . . Did they ever see
you
with her?” Saba tries to be rational, but there is a tightening in her chest, like wringing out a wet cloth. The familiar sour taste of fear fills her mouth.
Ponneh shakes her head. “I think they only noticed her after she refused a marriage. The man became obsessed, like Mustafa, and started following her everywhere. . . . But she only likes women.” She scratches her thumbnail and mumbles, “I thought you could give the pictures to your video man . . . You know, to show to Americans.”
Saba stares wide-eyed at the two bags. She tries to find comforting words, but she can’t think of a single thing to say. She only has questions. When was this decided? How long has Ponneh known her friend was in trouble? “What’s in the other bag, then?”
“More cameras,” says Ponneh, her face flushed. “I went around collecting them. The first one I borrowed was broken. The next one was old and took bad pictures. I had to go to Rasht to develop them and they came out all black. So I borrowed all these because maybe you know which one is best. You’re always playing with movies and this and that . . .”
Saba squats in the middle of the yard beside the other bag. She rummages through the contents and chooses a camera that looks functional. “I don’t know. It’s hard to tell. I only push a button on my VCR. You know I’m no photographer. Besides, you’re not going.”
“It’s two hours away, in a
deh
closer to Tehran. We should leave soon.”
“Ponneh, do you hear what I’m saying?”
Ponneh sniffles, shakes her head. “What about the video camera? Does it work?”
“Video? You want to get video of an execution? Are you suicidal? There will be
pasdar
s everywhere.”
“I can hide it. Look.” Ponneh slips the discarded video camera under her chador, balancing it so that only the lens is exposed through a slit under her arm. “These rags are good for something.”
Saba lifts herself up. “You can’t save her,” she says.
“It’s not about saving her,” Ponneh snaps, her voice shrill. “It’s about making her death count! What do
you
know about it, anyway? Even if I couldn’t tape it, I have to be with her. Do you know what it’s like to have her die—
die!
—for the sake of something I saw as just playing around?
That’s
the real reason they hate her so much. I
have
to go.”
There is no arguing with Ponneh. Saba already knows what her friend is thinking. If Ponneh could find some way to dignify the bruises on her own back, to make the experience of being beaten for red shoes mean more, she would happily do it. A silence follows. Ponneh seems to drift into her own private place, Saba thinks of all the ways this day could end—a lashing? One of them in prison, or worse, vanishing from a prison? Maybe Evin, with its ever-silent stone walls that swallow up letters and phone calls from those left behind. Who knows what Ponneh is thinking. Her stare is catatonic, and she whispers Farnaz’s name the way Saba imagined she would do when her sick sister finally left the world.
“It’s all my fault,” Ponneh says, glassy-eyed, her tone cold, prophetic. “She’ll die because of me.”
And now Saba isn’t thinking about Farnaz. She can only hear Ponneh’s words—the grief for the loss of a sort of sister. Soon her mind fills with Mahtab and she knows that Ponneh is right.
Why should this be so difficult?
she asks herself, trying to trick her body into being braver. She has seen death again and again. She’s the bad twin, the one with the thousand jinns. She can handle the most brutal things, and there is no way she is letting Ponneh do this alone.