The Last Living Slut (5 page)

Chapter 6

I Soon Realized that It was Opium that was The Love of My Father’s Life, and that He’d Gradually Become Bored of Me.

I
wasn’t aware of what a father was until I began to notice that other children had a man as another parent and I did not. There was a tall, thin, quiet man with tinted glasses and a mustache who came to visit me once in a while. He was nice to me, but I didn’t know how he fit into the tightly woven pattern of my family. He stuck out in my family like a salted pretzel stick in a candy store. He was unlike anyone I had ever met.

Whenever my father visited our house, I’d grow shy and hide from him. My grandmother was nice to him, but I noticed that he and my mum hardly spoke. It didn’t cross my mind to wonder why he didn’t live with us the way other Daddies lived with Mummies. I figured he must have liked me since he made an effort to talk to me. But my childhood instinct told me that he did it out of obligation, not because he wanted to. So I scowled and didn’t say much back to him.

He was good-looking and distant, like a film star. And he was quiet and always seemed unhappy. So I put on my best dresses hoping he would notice and want to spend more time with me. As I became aware that he was my father—my daddy, someone who should love me—I acted coy and dressed prettily because that’s how girls got the things they wanted. He would pick me up for scheduled visits and take me to the nearby park,
Haft Hoz
(Seven Lakes), to buy cooked liver from the street vendors and go on the mini Ferris wheel. Once, when my stomach was upset and I had diarrhea, he took me to the bathroom; I was very embarrassed that he should see me in such odious circumstances.

Often, my father took me to his sister’s house nearby, where he lived with his mother and younger brother. I remember thinking that my three cousins were noisy and naughty children, not refined at all. But I loved playing with my girl cousin, dressing up in chic ladies’ dresses and heels. Still, I never smiled in the photos we took on those visits. “Who’s this girl here scowling like a donkey?” my father would drawl, pointing at me in the pictures. It was the only time I saw him express anything close to emotion.

I adored my father’s family: my aunts and uncles and cousins. They were lovely, kind, and fun to be around. But I just didn’t feel like smiling. I was a bad child, like my dad said. My father’s family enjoyed simple things, like watching movies and eating food together. It was an alien Disneyland. Simple pleasures and laid-back indulgences constituted the family foundation, unlike my mother’s home where everyone was a political activist.

Though my father’s visits came less and less frequently with time, I still waited for him at the door, ready in my best flowery cotton dress, my tight ringlets freshly shampooed and clipped out of my face. When he didn’t show up, I would chastise myself. “I’m not pretty enough,” I’d think. “I’m too boring for him.” Eventually, my grandmother would shout at me to give up and come in.

“He probably got ill or something,” she’d say. “Maybe there was an accident.”

“But when he telephoned, he said he was coming. He
will
come.” I believed in him, because surely my daddy was a nice man. He had to be. I never cried at the huge wall of hurt and disappointment that secretly overwhelmed my heart when this man who was supposed to be my father didn’t show up or call when he promised. And on those rare occasions when he did, he was grouchy and silent.

I soon began overhearing the adults talking about opium, and how it was something that men did—especially older men, like taxi drivers. I soon realized that opium was the love of my father’s life and that he’d gradually become bored of me, because I was a nerdy girl who was not fun.

But my father wasn’t the only adult in my life, and I found comfort in other adults, who often told me I was a pretty girl. I began to seek attention from other males—boys my own age or older relatives. I grew determined to make them like me by becoming the most beautiful girl they had ever seen. This soon formed the backbone of my sense of self. It became my armor and made me happy.

The less I saw of my father, though, the more I longed for him. I closed my eyes and fantasized that he would pick me up and smile, take me to interesting places and laugh. He became a fantasy figure, like the seasoned movie star he resembled. Eventually, though, I grew tired of waiting for him, and my fantasies turned to the soldiers on television.

Chapter 7

T
he first time I masturbated was winter, just before the revolution. I was about five years old, and there was a constant stream of men in uniforms invading my daily life. The spectacle of the savak, who terrified me, gave me a delicious dark thrill that hit me in my gut in a way it wasn’t supposed to. I found myself attracted to the soldiers on the streets and on TV, parading with authority, with power.

One afternoon, it came exploding out of me. I was watching the news. The marching troops were so awesome, so powerful, that I gave in. Crawling under the
korsi
(a low table covered in blankets with a heater attached), I squeezed my eyes really tight and pictured soldiers walking up to me one by one as I lay naked on a dirt road. They each leaned over and looked at my body, admiring it and wanting me. I got a funny feeling in my tummy when I thought of that. A dangerous, powerful explosion washed over my little body and made me feel like a queen. A feeling of urgency overwhelmed me. So I put my hands in my panties and touched myself where it throbbed. I had found a secret and it would take me to a place of ethereal and majestic beauty—my beautiful secret world. I felt higher than anyone else. I felt invincible.

All my first cousins were boys. They teased and chased me constantly, and I began to love it more and more. They were the first people I’d found whom I could actually seek out to receive male attention. I began dressing deliberately in my best girlie clothes, swaying my hips and flirting as I walked out on the street to play. I had a huge crush on the slightly older twin boys who lived next door. In my attempts to get them to like me and want me, I did what worked: I acted coy and needy, even though I was really quite a tomboy.

One summer afternoon, while all the adults slept, I asked the twins to teach me to tie my shoelaces. I sat at the bottom of the stone steps leading to the second floor of our house, and slid up my skirt to reveal my bare legs. As they stood over me, I lifted one leg up to them so they would see all the way up to the top of my thigh. Then, slowly, they taught me to tie my laces. Their skin felt hot on mine. And I felt loved.

Chapter 8

He Shows Me Cartoons and Takes Me Places. My Dad never does that. And so I gave Him Sex in Return.

I
walked up the massive jaw of stone gray steps. Up, up, to the second floor. Looking down, I saw my candy-pink nail-varnished toenails poking through my plastic slippers. Still I carried on, my heart beating with excitement and the dirty shame of the duty I had to perform. I was a bad girl. I would go to hell. Definitely. I was five years old.

The man was renting the apartment from my grandmother. He was single and full of energy. He had thick black-rug hair and was playful with me. His name was Mr. Karimi. I played with him all the time. In the afternoons, he let me ride in his white Peykan car, which shook and prattled, the engine’s wet purring guzzling greedily around the sunny, sleeping neighborhood.

My grandmother was sleeping downstairs. My mummy was at work at the university. I couldn’t wait till she came back with the duck bread. I wanted to go outside. I was dying to steal some fruit from the neighbor’s persimmon tree. The fat bellies of the pregnant fruit were ready to burst. I wanted to pick monkey flowers with the other girls and chase the twin boys next door.

I didn’t know why I liked Mr. Karimi. His room was dark and he prayed all the time. I didn’t understand why. He always said I should pray with him, and sometimes I did. I loved the smell of the Mohr. It smelled like the heavenly damp clay of the rain-soaked ground. I loved the safe feeling of throwing the slippery chador around my head and body, and I loved praying to God. It was peaceful. I’d learned all the prayers by heart, but only the shorter children’s versions.

Karimi finished praying and smiled at me. Then he called me into the room. A golliwog sat on the shelf with a big head full of tight, black curls. Its puffed-up lips were like two sausages, and it had a pair of bulging eyes inside a nodding head. Karimi turned the wall projector on. It was Bugs Bunny. He drew the curtains shut and closed the door, then locked it with a key. In the silence I heard only the warm humming of the projector and the thumping of my heart.

Karimi sat me on his lap facing the wall. On the screen, Bugs Bunny jumped up and down like a demented yo-yo.
I love cartoons. Karimi must like me.
He let me watch them because he liked the special place between my legs, the soft, squishy place where I weed from. His fingers felt too thick and there were too many of them. He was so unhygienic—didn’t he know that place was germy? His fingers were going to smell.

I heard a
zip
. The cartoon was so colorful. So full of crazy characters. I wished it had a princess in it. Karimi’s breath was hot as he whispered things against my neck that I didn’t understand. There was something between my legs. It was what boys like my cousin had. I thought Karimi must love me. We were doing something bad. I would go to hell. I would definitely go to hell.

Karimi finally stood up and unlocked the door. He went to the bathroom, washed his hands, came back, and put some socks on. The cartoon was over. I could go now. The room smelled like holy rose water.

I don’t know which came first anymore, my childhood sense of sexuality or the lodger upstairs.

Karimi had moved in because my mother wasn’t earning enough to take care of us. One day I heard her telling my grandmother that my father had taken the money she had hidden under the carpet to pay for his opium.

Karimi had a black mustache just like my father. But he was tall and wore crisp white shirts. He smelled like sweat, but I liked him. He was kind to me. When I sat in the passenger seat of his car, I felt like a spoiled rich girl.

Karimi did many things for me, and I started to spend a lot of time with him. When I went in search of his companionship every afternoon, I knew what was going to happen—and yet I did it, again and again: Facing Mecca, he taught me how to recite the Qur’an and say the afternoon prayer, kneeling on the mat, pressing our foreheads against the Mohr, and muttering it under our breaths. Afterward he’d take me to his bedroom. He’d always lock the door. The projector hummed warmly. I was scared. Frightened. Never had cartoons triggered such adrenaline in me. The bedroom of this man was where I belonged and it would be unnatural for me to leave it. No one was ever going to help me. When he put me on his lap, however, my place was confirmed in the flames of hell—and I knew that too. I was a bad girl. Tainted. I knew then that this was my destiny.
I must love it. I must love this. This—it is who I am. He loves me; he takes care of me; he shows me cartoons and takes me places. My dad doesn’t do these things.
His fingers would slip into my panties. I wanted to vomit from fear, but I gave him love instead.

I sat still afterward until he washed his hands and told me to go downstairs. He didn’t even have the courtesy to show me girlie cartoons like
Cinderella
, only Pink Panther and Bugs Bunny—and I hated him for that.

Chapter 9

T
hough a sliver of me got off on the sexual contact with Mr. Karimi, I knew what he did was disgusting and unnatural. What made me happy was playing sexual games with the boys and girls my own age.

During afternoon siestas, the nightly gunfire, and whenever panic erupted in the neighborhood, I got together with my cousins and neighbors, male and female, and played our games—
mummy and daddy
or
doctor and nurse.
Skirts would be lifted, tiny trousers would be unzipped, and we would show each other our down-there, each of us examining, touching.

I began to feel more sexually aware of my body, and because of this, whenever my grandmother took me to the local public bathhouse, I became rigidly shy and self-conscious of my nakedness.Our shower was nice enough, but going to the public bathhouse was like being reborn in body and soul. It was a ritual event, where everyone went for hours to luxuriously scrub and steam themselves as they exchanged gossip, drank ice-cold Coca-Cola, and exfoliated until their skin sparkled.

After collecting our fluffy white towels from the clothesline, my grandmother would fold the family’s freshly washed underwear into a cloth sack. I would take my baby doll, get her dressed, wrap her up, and then we’d walk through our alley and down the hill. When the wailing of
azan
(prayer) from the mosque opened up, my heart would burst quietly with peaceful happiness. At that moment, as my grandmother held my hand in the Persian dusk, I felt a divine euphoria.