Camelia (18 page)

“Not a chance. Don't even bring it up. You father will skin all of us
alive.” My mother was washing dishes in the sink, and I was whining incessantly.

“I said don't talk about it.” Then she shouted, “Get out of the kitchen!”

Once my father said no, it was impossible to change his mind. Everyone said it was unthinkable that my hardheaded father would give his daughter permission to go to Mashhad by herself on a two-week-long bus trip. I had been invited to the National Youth Festival of Writers and Poets. Students from all over Iran would gather in Mashhad to listen to one another read their work. My school surprisingly hadn't said a word, not one. They, in fact, were quite pleased. The Club for Creative Literature had promised constant supervision and secure dormitories, and that boys and girls would be kept strictly separate, except during the public readings.

That left my father, and I had only three days left to get the consent letter signed. A light bulb went off in my head—Uncle Manuchehr! He was the only one who spoke my father's language. I went to the phone booth with a two-rial coin and invited him over. My father was closer to Manuchehr than to his own brothers. Manuchehr was about five years older, and they had been friends since childhood. When all my father's family was opposed to his marriage with my mother, Manuchehr was the one who went to my grandmother's home to propose on his favorite cousin's behalf, and ever since then he and my father had always stood behind each other.

Though my father wasn't religious, he was traditional, and he didn't trust the new ruling social class. He didn't want me, his daughter, out alone in the world with these kind of people. He believed that all the urbanized, educated, intellectual people had fled or been killed and that the nouveaux riches of the postrevolution society were disgusting poseurs. They were unknown to him, and he didn't want us to fraternize with them. “There is no more respect for women in this country,” he would say. “You have to stay
away from these kinds of people.” But I wanted so much to meet other writers my own age, to make new friends, and have the chance to learn from them. And my uncle Manuchehr knew exactly how to lead into the subject when he visited. Then I presented the invitation, and incredibly, my father consented.

How lucky I was! My father began looking at me with new pride and respect in his eyes. “My daughter, bring your book of poems!” he would ask in front of our guests. Nervous and embarrassed, I'd rush through a broken and unintelligible delivery. “Bah, bah, bah, bah, bah, bah, bah,” my father would murmur with approval. The bemused audience, not having understood a thing, would have no choice but to nod their heads appreciatively.

Then once, when we were alone, he asked again, “Bring your notebook.” My father was sitting in the just-watered courtyard smoking a cigarette.

“Read.” I read the poem haltingly.

“Dear daughter, a good poet must have good delivery. The way you read, no one is going to take you seriously. Poetry must be read calmly and with great feeling. It must be read with conviction. Try again.” His words stayed with me as I practiced diligently and memorized my poems, and my shyness turned into self-confidence.

With a thousand good-byes and
salvats
, I boarded the bus and set off with my face to Mashhad and my back to Tehran. We passed through Feiruz Kuh, Gunbad-e Kavus, Shahrud, and Quchan, stopping to sleep in a different city every night. My father had advised me to sit in the last row of the bus, so I did. And he had advised me not to eat meat on the road, so all I ate was bread and yogurt or cheese. In the end I caught a cold, but as night fell and we drove into Mashhad, I was full of energy. It was after midnight by the time the driver told us to stand up to greet Imam Reza, the eighth Shi'a imam. In the distance the dome of his shrine shone bathed in spotlights.

“
As-salaamu aleik ya Musa bin Reza!
” (Praise to you, Imam Reza, son of Imam Musa!) we called out to the golden dome.

Our instructor, Azar Fakhri, who had held my hand and let me rest my feverish head on her shoulder, said, “After we have supper, we'll go to the shrine at three o'clock in the morning.”

Our dormitory was enormous; girls were spread across the floor, asleep, with a few whispering softly to one another. They gave each of us newcomers a blanket and a pillow. Designed to receive caravans of pilgrims, the house, like others in Mashhad, had a large salon, a fully equipped kitchen, and multiple bathrooms. The boys were housed elsewhere, far enough away that there couldn't be a chance for contact between us. I picked a spot in the corner and pulled the blanket over my head. At three o'clock, when Azar called me to go to the shrine, I couldn't get up. A girl with big black eyes and dark skin looked up at Azar and with a south Iranian accent said, “Don't worry about her. You go. We'll look after her.” And then she turned and smiled at me.

And so I met Mandana from Abadan. Mandana was a victim of the war, and she lived in a refugee camp in Bandar-e Abbas. She introduced me at breakfast to dozens of others, including Vida from Shiraz and Nasrin from Azerbaijan. With my pink valise full of clothes, I felt I'd turned overnight into the spoiled little rich girl from Tehran. The rest had nothing. I gave the pocket money my father had given me to the group leader for safekeeping and kept my suitcase hidden behind a cushion. No one had any money, and I looked completely out of place in my modern blue jeans and yellow tunic blouse. I refused for days to change that outfit and draw attention to my packed valise.

On the way from the dormitory, we cheered when we saw flags hanging from streetlamps announcing our program: “The First Annual Nights of Poetry and Short Stories Series—Fall 1987, Ferdowsi Hall, Mashhad.” Our beloved mentors, distinguished poets Asadullah Sha'abani and Ja'far Ebrahimi, introduced us one by one. I read my poetry with increasing feeling, my voice rising—until I saw my
friends in the audience pointing behind me. My veil had gotten stuck on a lit candle and was now smoking. One of the instructors came up and put out both the candle and my veil. We all laughed long and hard for the rest of the night. My veil had a hole in it bigger than a two-toman coin. Nasrin later sent me a letter from Azerbaijan with a caricature of me reciting with a headdress trailing smoke.

When I came home, my mother took one whiff and said, “Ayeesh! Your clothes stink! Why didn't you change your shirt?”

“It just wouldn't have done!” I called out from under the shower.

 

When Mandana and I began writing to each other, she came to know everyone in my family. She sent a card for my mother's birthday and comforted us when my father died. When Kati was getting married, it was Mandana who took my hand and said, “You're tired, sit down. I'll help in your place.”

Mandana wrote me horrifying accounts of the refugee camps in Bandar-e Abbas. Of a girl who'd become pregnant by her father-in-law. Of the poverty and decay and displacement. Of Khorramshahr and Abadan. Of the siege of Abadan when her brother Bahman was lost, and she and her mother searched the drawers of all the morgues one by one. Of her memories of her neighborhood in Abadan and her longing for the war to be over so she could return to Kucheh-ye Parvaneh.

On the day she returned, she wrote me that her house had been hit by mortars and bullets, and their furniture had been looted. “This is a burned city. Like our hearts. We have been welcomed back by a burned city.” My father had come home late, and we sat around him so he wouldn't have to eat dinner alone. I had been crying for Mandana, and he told me to bring the letter and read it to him.

“Camelia, I am writing you from Kucheh-ye Parvaneh. From a street deserted by all signs of life. I am writing you from Abadan. From the city of the suffering, of those who sit in the blood and the
dirt. My heart is swollen and decayed like the corpses cast out into the windswept lifeless desert. Our house is a ruin with three walls. My childhood bike still stands in a corner of the basement after being burned a thousand times.” My father listened with his eyes fixed on the television, but he was looking at Mandana and her burned city. His throat was choked with sobs.

Everyone was silent, mourning Iran's scorched earth. “The people of Abadan defended the city with empty hands, and our sons and brothers fell to the ground like flowers in the fall. My friend, believe me, today the date palms are broken. Tell me, when will our youth, our date palms, when will they be green again?”

Seda va Sima, the television station, appeared on our doorstep about a week before the February memorial celebrations for the revolution. They asked to see “Khanum Camelia Entekhabifard.” It was a Friday. We had eaten our
chelow kebabs
, and my father was sleeping in his bedroom downstairs. My mother brought out tea and pastries, and they explained that they were producing a program for the commemoration that featured the country's successful and distinguished teenagers. The Club for Creative Literature had recommended me, Camelia, girl poet and painter.

Then they asked, “Do you have any poetry about the revolution or the Imam?” I immediately answered, “Yes, of course. I have a poem written for the Imam.” There was no way I'd pass up this opportunity. That settled it, and they toured my bedroom to decide whether they should shoot there or at the studio.

Later, I opened my poetry notebook. Which of these were for Khomeini? None of them. But was there any other way to grow up
in Iranian society? Everyone lied and so I lied, too. When my father woke up from his nap and heard what had happened, he was beside himself with joy. We didn't tell him that they had wanted poetry glorifying the Imam. He was only given a one-sentence summary: “They want to do a show on Camelia.”

At the studio, there were other teenagers like me sitting and waiting with their parents for their chance to record their spots. We each had ten minutes to present whatever talent we possessed in front of the camera. The boys in front of me started by rehearsing, but when Seda va Sima started shooting, they slipped up dozens of times. The director, Khanum Parvin Shemshaki, would cut and have them start over from the beginning. When my turn came, I decided to pull out all the stops. “Would you like to run a test?” they asked me. I shook my head. I had a few of my watercolor paintings in one hand and my poetry notebook in the other. I had picked out one of the poems I most loved reading. They pulled my veil as far forward as they could. The director had sharp eyes. “Please take off your bracelets,” she said. I took them off. “Ready . . . Begin!”

I read my poem carefully, introducing it as “for the Imam . . .”

Then I showed my paintings to the camera one after another. I spoke for ten whole minutes without a glitch. Khanum Shemshaki said, “You were terrific, kiddo. That was great. Great delivery. Confident. You're a born newscaster.”

At sundown on one of the ten days of the Bahman celebrations, the program was broadcast, and quite accidentally everyone happened to be home. My father was sleeping, and I ran to wake him up. We quickly stuffed the blank video cassette we had bought to record the occasion into the VCR. My little family watched the screen attentively as my ten-minute segment was shown all over the country. Out of the corner of my eye, I looked at my father. He seemed thoroughly engrossed in the program and was beaming with pride. I knew that winning this celebrity had required deception on my part, and that I would never have been accepted in the popular crowd and on television without lying. I learned this well in school, faking my prayers in front of the Omur-e Tarbiyati each morning, pretending in order to get through the day. Yet, seeing my father's face, I was satisfied.