Iran, Freedom of Expression Series: Let my Voice Speak for You

June 13, 2009


The scent of her mother’s cream lingers at her nose as the girl brushes the back of her hand against her lips. Her throat is dry: she has not had any water to drink since her morning tea. She knows she should not be here. Her mother, were she to find out, would surely collapse in fear. Escape from the house without permission would normally mean a sharp slap from Baba. But the severity of the punishment she would receive, were she to linger too long, made her teeth chatter and her fingers clench more tightly around the ten thousand Rials in her sweaty hand.

She has never seen Valiasr Street so full of strangers. Normally crowded with cars, it is now crowded with people, a sea of colorful headscarves and dark heads, and spotted with the bright green of the resistance movement. Their common breath, the deep inhalation and then the release of their chants comes in waves, pulling her in closer. Her ears ring with their voices in her ears. At 12, she had acquired enough height to see eye to eye with these people, so open-mouthed and insistent, but she cannot understand what they are saying.

The week before, she and her mother were picking through the cilantro, pulling off tasty leaves from stems with green-stained hands. “I want to grow up to be a doctor, Mama,” she had said. “A doctor, Azar?” her mother had replied, her forehead furrowed. The resulting silence confirmed that it was all the girl would say about the matter. She had planted the seed, hoping it would grow and bloom in her mother’s mind.

She clutches the knot of her headscarf under her chin, and watches as a woman in chador wades past on the fringes of the crowd. Her mouth and cheeks are covered by a white surgeon’s mask, leaving only her tired eyes and heavy brow exposed.

“Khanoum,” the girl shouts to her and the sound of her own voice barely reaches her ears over the bullhorn. “Khanoum! Where is everyone going?”

The woman’s head turns and she sees the child. “We are marchng towards our future.” Her voice escapes from behind the mask like the scent of her mother’s stew emerging in lacey clouds from under a pot’s lid.

“Khanoum! But what is everyone saying?”

“They say whatever they feel like saying. Go home, child. Let my voice speak for you.” The woman turned and waded in to the crowd.

At my house, I am silent. I seek out quiet corners to do my studies. I must evade notice by my brothers or else they will taunt me for keeping my head in my school books. Silence and obedience, or shame, these are my choices.

The girl heard the high pitched sound of an electric scooter in the distance. She knows that these scooters carry basij, young men with sticks in their hands. These sticks search out bones to break. Like the way her eldest brother twists her arm behind her until it feels like it will snap off her shoulder. She knows that these sticks, these scooters, these men, seek to silence these streets. She feels a shout erupt from her open mouth. Her teeth are bared.

Screams erupt and the crowd breaks from its procession to disperse in every direction. The girl turns to run, but her right shoe catches at the edge of the sidewalk and falls off her foot. Returning home without her shoe would give her away and mean facing her father and her brothers with an explanation that she cannot give. She hesitates. For just a moment she considers turning against the crowd to find it, but feels herself suddenly folded in to the black cloth of a woman’s chador. She is swept away and barely feels her feet touch the ground. People knock against her; she sees fear in their eyes. Her dry throat barely lets her swallow as struggles to take a breath. An elbow in her side and a sharp stone under her bare foot both remind her of the softness of her pink skin when she steps out of the tub on wash day.

The scooter engines are louder now, and she turns her head to catch a stick swing and hit a man’s head. Screaming and shouts erupt over the buzz. She recognizes the boney back of the basij, his stick red with the man’s blood. She knows that back. She knows the t-shirt that he wears straight off the laundry line because it is his favorite. She knows the seams and the weave of it, because she washed it with her own hand the previous day.

The bullhorn is still shouting. The woman is breathing quickly in her ear. “Go child,” the woman says to her. “Run.”

This piece was written for Iran, freedom of Expression Series. For more information, visit this link.

Photo credit to Olivier Laban-Mattei of AFG and Getty Images

On June 3rd 1971, my father left Iran for Europe and on July 18th my mother joined him in Rome. For 20 days Lygeia and I were left in the care of our grandparents in Tadjrish.

Over the 10 months we had lived in Iran, I committed to memory the changing landscape of our inner courtyard garden. I watched my Grandfather grow sick and almost die, and then, miraculously, claim a second chance. Ten months was a lifetime and I knew no other life.

August 7, 1971

En route to Zurich Switzerland

At 30,000 feet we had lost all sense of time and place. My sister’s wadded cardigan was pressing marks into my flushed cheek so I shifted my elbow out of the crack between the airplane seats and readjusted my head. The rumble of the jet’s engine interrupted my sleep – I was tired and bored and wanted this in-between world to give way to whatever was coming next. Through the ochre of closed lids I listened for my sister’s voice, but both she and our escort, Uncle Hossein, who wasn’t really our uncle at all, were quiet. Uncle Hossein spoke no English or German, so Lygeia had translated for him when the stewardess came by to offer blankets and pillows. He wasn’t as bold and confident as he had been at Grandpapa’s parties. Instead, he seemed strangely timid in stockinged feet and a black suit, having to ask my sister to get him a glass of water.

Hours later I was back in my parents' arms and dozing off and on through a cab ride. I was placed on my feet and led with half closed lids through a carpeted foyer, and on to an elevator (ding!) to my parents’ hotel room. For once, I did not argue who should push the button - I was far too tired to care. We would stay one night before a train ride to Frankfurt and another long flight across the Atlantic and back to the mythic Home. Home? The word rang flat. I waited for my mother to place the large iron key in the keyhole, and turn the lock in the hotel room door.

“We have a surprise for you,” my mother said, and pushed open the door.

“A surprise?” Lygeia asked and rushed over the threshold as the light was clicked on. I followed her past the large bed where my parents were to sleep, and through another doorway in to a smaller room where two twin beds sat side by side. The curtain was pulled open and the afternoon light poured down on an array of toys, purses and trinkets on each bed, of glorious reds, blues, yellows and greens – dolls with flowing dresses, a plastic purse of bright yellow and red, a Spanish flamenco dancer with a gown so full that her tiny plastic high heels were all but invisible to my eye. I dropped my father’s hand and rushed in with Sissy, wanting to grab it all at once into my arms. “For me? All for me?” I asked.

“This bed is for you Roia. That bed is for your sister.”
“Oh!” Lygeia squeeled, and we both rushed in to finger the cloth of the swiss apron we were both given, and the ruffles and the hair of each doll. From headboard to foot, it was a fantastic array, like Christmas, and the presence of these inanimate trinkets soothed me and reminded me of the awesome power of my parents to provide for me – to find me when I am lost. The weight of each doll in my hands was like another anchor to remind me of Home.

I turned over the flamenco dancer and studied her tiny shoes, her underclothes. I felt the plastic of my colorful and shiny purse. My mother and father eventually disappeared in to the next room to put down the suitcases but I hardly noticed.

“Sissy, look at this one!” I said with a grin, holding out the purse for her to see. She looked up briefly and went back to studying the long blond hair of the doll in her hands. She’d made room for herself on her bed, and had sat herself down amongst her prizes, her long legs extending off the end of the mattress.

Later that evening we sat at dinner in a dimly lit hotel restaurant. I had my new purse tucked tightly under my arm as I fell asleep in my chair. I let myself be carried back to our room for a long sleep in between cool sheets.

-end

Join Persianchyld at this event: Sunday, March 7th at 4:00pm

"NOROUZ: CELEBRATING A GREEN YEAR IN IRAN
AND DEFENDING THE VOICES OF FREE SPEECH"
A Literary Reading by Association of Iranian American Writers
Poetry by Farnaz Fatemi, Shideh Etaat
Fiction by Laleh Khadivi (author of The Age of Orphans),
Siamak Vossoughi, Shokoofeh Rajabzadeh
With Musical Guests, Hossein and Sarah of the Persian Fusion Band
"Aleph Null"
Sunday, March 7, 2010, 4-6 pm
Maude Fife Room, Wheeler Hall 315, University of California, Berkeley
Suggested donation: $5 students/$10-20 others
Fundraiser for the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)

(Berkeley, CA) – The Association of Iranian American Writers will host a literary reading and musical performance in honor of Norouz, the Iranian New Year, and in recognition of the powerful role of writers, artists and journalists in Iran’s "Green Movement." Donations from this event will be made to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), an international organization that has been working since the June 2009 Iranian elections to free jailed journalists and journalists who have had to flee Iran to avoid persecution.

The afternoon of readings and music will take place from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. at the Maude Fife Room located on the third floor of Wheeler Hall, room number 315 at UC Berkeley. Nazy Kaviani, AIAW member and a representative of CPJ, will report on that status of jailed Iranian journalists. Bay Area Iranian-American writers will read from their work, including poetry and fiction that highlights the intersection between Iranian culture and American life. Aleph Null, a Persian jazz fusion group whose music combines Middle Eastern and Asian influences, will also perform. Books by AIAW writers and CDs by Aleph Null will be available for purchase.

The reading is hosted by AIAW with the co-sponsorship of the UC Berkeley Department of English, Department of Near East Studies, Omid Advocates, United4Iran, the Iranian Student Alliance in America (ISAA). AIAW is a national organization dedicated to promoting the work of fiction and non-fiction writers, poets, journalists, photojournalists, and artists who work with words. More information on AIAW is available at: http://www.iranianamericanwriters.org.

Sweet surprise

From the back seat of the taxi, I am barely big enough to see out the dirty windows: squares, rectangles and blocks of concrete reach up in to a grey, muddy sky. Heads turn to follow us as we wind sharply through noisy Tehran streets, honks blast, voices call out, my mother yells directions to the driver. I watch the long ashen tip of her cigarette pulse red, visible from the open passenger window, and feel the smokey breeze, passed back to me, brush against my forehead.

With a force that throws my shoulders forward, we have pulled over and stopped. Brief stillness, and then an eruption of voices, grown-ups, bills counted and passed to the driver, and my father's arm reaches across me to open the door. I hesitate, and then step down to the sidewalk in buckled patent leather shoes, careful to avoid the dirty canal of water directly below my feet.

The smokey air of the taxi has dissipated, but the breeze that blows by me now holds its own smells, both sour and sweet, aged. People stream by as I reach for my father's hand, the scene is black, dusty suit jackets and muted colors broken only by brightly colored headscarves tied under chins. A shrouded figure passes closely, with a hand holding that of a small boy. How can this child know his mother from any other figure, this sea of strangers, with only the one hand to know her? I ask myself.

I am tugged forward towards an open door. I know we are supposed to meet someone - whom, I don't know. I am a follower and subject to the whims and distractions of adults. I have no reason to expect otherwise.

There is darkness inside, as our eyes adjust, which soon gives way to tall chairs, a long bar, and the slight sting of more smoke. I feel my father's hands lift me into his arms, and he sits me on a tall padded stool. My fingers search for edges to cling to. On the other side of the bar is a flurry of activity, people moving quickly, and a machine rumbling very loudly, dripping a vibrant orange liquid in to tall glasses. The smell of sweet carrots. I watch, my head cocked slightly, as the men with dirty aprons work around the machine, sometimes blocking my view. Eventually, one turns and places a glass of orange liquid in front of me. It's of carrots, I know this. Warm saliva begins to pool in my cheeks as I wrap my hands around the cool, tall glass.

"Roia," my father says. "Try this."

Care

First my father and then my mother were gone, but I do not remember the leaving. I do remember the absence of them though, the strange calm that settled over me when I believed that my life had irreversibly adapted to new routines, different fingers to sift through the tangles in my hair, different lips to kiss my forehead when the lights were turned off at night. How long would they be gone? I had no way to understand these things. As always, my sister was my rock, and I was calmed by her steadfast confidence, and soon just stopped asking the questions. It had been 8 months since we had arrived in Iran which was a lifetime of days and naps and dinners and breakfasts in the courtyard. The crisis of my grandfather's illness had passed as mysteriously as it had come. Life was constantly redefined.

The phrase “jeesh dahram” earned me a trip out to the toilet room which was across the courtyard outside and not in the house. I never visited that drafty room alone, unable to reach the slender chain that hung from the bare bulb above my head. I had long since adapted to the low crouch over the white porcelain hole in the concrete floor, and the strain to see over my pants wadded at my knees to watch the stream of yellow emerge from my body. I would say “tamom,” when I was through, and then felt warm water being poured over my bare skin from the long arched spout of a plastic water pitcher.

In Iran, just as there were not toilet seats, there were also no bathtubs. I became accustomed to taking showers with my Aunty Mary and baby cousin, clothes shed outside the door and water beginning to fall all around me in a tall tiled room with a drain as big as my hand in the middle of the cool floor. Aunty was thin, and she stood over me, as she held my baby cousin’s slippery body close to her breasts.
“Come on, joonam, you’re not afraid of water are you?” Her voice echoed off the dripping walls of the cavernous water room, and tried to lure me from where I stood. With her arms full of squirming baby skin I knew that, for the moment, I was in charge even though I was fearful of the way that water burned my eyes when it dripped down my face. I did not move my feet as I watched how their silhouette against the high window made their faces dark, and steam swirled around them. I felt the warm water circle around my toes as it moved across the floor. I waited until my turn to be in charge was over, and baby Mariam was handed to the towel and arms that emerged in the doorway. I let myself be picked up and lifted to the soft breasts of this woman, draping my arms over her shoulders and nesting my eyes in to the warm skin of her neck.

“It’s not so bad, is it, my dear,” I knew she was saying to me in her voice that was different from my mother’s, and for the time it took her to wash my back with her scratchy cloth, I was her baby, and I belonged to her. I let her place me back on my feet, and looked past her long dripping lashes into her brown eyes as she picked up each foot, resting it on her crouching thigh, and moved the sudsy cloth between each of my toes.

Prayer

Dear persianchyld readers:
My apologies for not writing for several months. There have been big changes in my life - good ones - and I now plan to start up again. Thanks for hanging in there with me.

Tadjrish,Iran
June 1971

It was thirst that drove me down that dark hallway. As I passed the bedroom doorway I caught her shadowy figure out of the corner of my eye – my grandmother, with her back to me. She stood facing a blank wall, ghostlike, wrapped in her thin cotton chador adorned with a delicate pattern that I knew would be gathered closely under her chin. I cocked my head to one side. Her prayer reached my ears and it made me stop and linger there with my small fingers wrapped around the doorframe. I watched her raise her hands, palms up, as high as she could reach, and then cover her face with the invisible prayer. Then, quiet again, she knelt down and touched her forehead to the gather of beads on the small prayer rug at her feet. This odd ritual was repeated multiple times every day and I found her there often, as if asleep and in a dream state, following some mysterious pattern with half-cast lids. Entering the room and standing in her line of sight would not awaken her – I had tried that already – since she could tune out every person and sound around her and only listen to the sound of her own voice. Her feet were bare, and I could hear the soft crack of her bones as she rose from her prostration and stood tall and still again. There was strength in her stillness that I struggled to understand, a strength that seldom surfaced, but that made me stare at the rounded shoulders and the backs of her heels that poked out from under the light cloth.

Grandmama was a small woman - I could tell because my big sister was almost as big as she was. My grandmother’s voice never echoed off the walls like my mother’s could and she usually moved quietly about the house, shuffling in soft house slippers, tending to my grandfather’s needs, prepping the dinner, or brewing the tea. My Daddy had left Iran the week before, and it seemed my grandmother was putting me to bed as often as my mother now. The pads of her fingers always felt cool and soft on my face when she brushed my hair aside.

The routine began again and she shrank back down to the rug. I took a step to continue on my way to the kitchen, but the floor creaked loudly and I froze there, afraid to move. My eyes fixed on the curve of her back but I did not see her look up, did not see her break her trance to peak at who might be watching her. I did not move in the same world as Grandmama when she prayed, and it would take her another 20 minutes at least to complete the steps, and the prayers and to fold her chador in the prayer rug with the beads and the heavy leather bound book that she read from. My glass of water would have to wait, so I pivoted around to head back to my room, to climb on to my sister’s bed and wait.

A slice of America

Tadjrish, Iran
May 22, 1971

A table was delivered shortly after we arrived back at home from our trip to Mahabat: a rectangular table with six matching metal chairs that my mother had ordered for my birthday party before we’d left. I watched as my uncle removed the chairs from a mess of cardboard and plastic, with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, squinting as the smoke reached his eyes.

Tall, pointy party hats were placed at each place setting, an army of beaming clown faces of blue, red and yellow smiling at attention. These things were very difficult to find in the Tadjrish bazaar: balloons, paper plates, colored napkins, party hats – and as the children filed in to the courtyard that day, children of adult friends of my parents and cousins, they crossed over in to my world, a little slice of America of my mother’s creation, within my grandmother’s stone walls. Throughout the day, American music played from the courtyard radio while mothers doted on children and fathers sat on garden chairs and smoked cigarettes with my grandfather, their long legs stretched out in front of them.

My grandparents traveled to Qom the next day, with my grandmother's brother, on a holy pilgrimage for a day of prayer. We were staying behind because it would be a strenuous hike, many hours on foot to shrines and tombs under the hot sun.

“Yah Yah, stay at home my brother,” said my great-uncle Diyee June. “You don’t need to come. The great Imam Ali would not want you to push yourself too hard. You look tired already – stay at home and rest.”

My grandfather had no intention of being left behind.

Grandpapa took his place in the waiting Peugeot, and I set about waiting out the long day till they would return. The sun finally inched its way across the sky and disappeared over the walls, but it was long after dark when I heard the car pull up. My mother followed the sounds out the gate to greet them, but when she emerged back in to sight, she was half-carrying my grandfather, his shoulders hunched and downcast. He didn’t speak, no winks or smiles, and he was helped into his dark bedroom and out of his clothes. To the sounds of hushed voices I was sent to bed, only to find my grandfather still in bed the next morning during the hour that he was normally enjoying his breakfast with me. My grandmother and my mother took turns visiting him in bed, making clear broths, and by lunchtime he was back in the Peugeot to see his doctor. This went on for days – no one left the house except to take my grandfather back and forth to the hospital until on the fourth day my grandfather did not return.

“Where’s Grandpapa?” I wanted to know.
“He’s sick, baby jon, the doctors are trying to help him.”

A week had gone by since my birthday and things had not returned to normal. My father’s departure date was only a few days away - but without encouraging news from the doctors about my grandfather’s condition there was little talk about it. Then, on the day my father was scheduled to leave Iran, we said our tearful goodbyes only to have him home again a few hours later because of a problem with his exit visa. Then, the morning of my father’s second attempt, on June 2nd, the phone rang in the early morning. My grandfather’s kidneys were failing him, he was unresponsive. My uncle feared that Grandpapa would not last the day. The adults spoke sharp words, batting them back and forth with furrowed brows, and the kitchen filled with the smoke of their cigarettes. I stayed away and played at the garden pool, trailing my fingertip in the dark water, hoping to hear the sound of a car bringing my grandfather back to me.

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Originally uploaded by Roia

He was unwell, so weak, and when he could leave his bed he would remain in the plastic chair for long hours, dropping off to sleep.

Sunshine

Tadjrish, Iran
Summer 1971

I watched my grandmother, squatting before a huge bowl of greens, picking through them with her delicate fingers. Preparation for dinner began just after breakfast, and could last throughout the day.

“Poffak Namakee?” I asked my grandfather. Most often he would oblige, pulling himself out of his chair with his cane and disappearing in the house to get this coat and hat. I ran behind my grandfather in to the house, calling out “Sissy! Ganpapa’s taking us fo’ Poffak Namakee!” skipping through doorways to find her. “Sissy!”

She emerged in the doorway. “He’s gedding his coat right now!” I said excitedly.

She pulled the door closed behind her and we both found our shoes by the kitchen door.

With my grandfather and my sister steadily making their way up the side alley alongside our tall garden walls, I danced, I skipped, and I made quick tottering circles around both of them. My mouth watered and I hummed to myself, and ran ahead to be the first to reach the doorway of the tiny shop. “Com’on!” I shouted back to them, hopping impatiently. The shopkeeper was there and he smiled down at me with his funny crooked smile, dark gaps where teeth should have been.

“Salom koochooloo,” he said - he always said - and I always gave him a “salom” back which always made him chuckle. There was not enough room to step in this shop, for it was only big enough for this man and his bright packages, small boxes and the big metal vat that held the Poffak Namakee. 

I loved to watch as he made me a white paper cone and scooped the cheesy puffs in to it until the orange peeked out the top of the paper. I always got mine first and could barely wait until that cone rested in my hand before I reached in to put the first one in my mouth. Closing my eyes, I let the warm, salty powder dissolve on my tongue, turning my tongue orange, and I sucked on the puff before I let my baby teeth grind it down. When I opened my eyes again, my sister was being handed her paper cone and my grandfather was placing two coins in the shopkeeper’s big palm. Our walk back down the alley was slower and my grandfather’s pace, as he leaned in to his cane, suited me fine as I stopped every second step to bathe my mouth once again in sunshine.

Flashback

January 1971
Tadjrish, Iran

It is winter and we are going to a party at Uncle Hussein’s house. My father arrived from the U.S. only a few days ago and is snapping his camera as we climb the hill behind Grandmama’s house to the busy street blocks away. The streets are wet from a recent rain and the concrete and grey clothes of passing strangers contrast with the bright red of my winter coat . My mother is in chador and its black billowing folds dance behind her as I skip to keep up with her step. I am really excited to be going to a party because I love them so much – the chaotic crowds of strangers that gravitate to my mother as I hold close to her leg, the music that erupts, the loud voices, the children that move in groups unnoticed. My sister and I will dance in this crowd and fill our bellies and minds with more than warm stews and rice, we will be one with the craziness and will feel we belong in it.

We arrive at the main street and my father points to it, the bus that will take us to Uncle Hussein’s house. We will ride this bus? I ask. It is taller than any bus I have ever seen, and it is red like me. We board and pay our fare and I see the curly stairs behind the driver. We must climb the stairs and Daddy, you must hold my hand as I climb them. These steep stairs shake and jolt as the bus pulls away from the curb. My father steadies me as we climb the last step and emerge at the top, sitting at the first empty seat we can find. My sister, my mother, and my Uncle Firooz join us, and I kneel on the seat so I can place two flat palms on the cold windows. The world flies by below us and the red bus and I are like birds swerving and diving past trees, buildings and cars. We are birds flying to a party at Uncle Hussein’s house.

My mother taps my father’s shoulder to let him know it is time to climb down the stairs and off the bus. I don’t want to go but I obey and my father lifts me into his arms so we can climb off quickly before the driver sweeps away from the curb again. At the curb we follow my mother’s black shape up a narrow street to a tall concrete building. She rings the bell and we wait feeling the icy air penetrate our clothes. My sister stamps her feet and blows in to her fists. I see a cloud of steam escape her mouth. Finally the door is opened with a loud buzzz and we enter the building’s entryway. We’re riding the elevator to the 3rd floor and my sister is allowed to push the lit up 3 button that will take us there. It looks like a clown’s nose that 3. I don’t like the clowns at the Barnum and Bailey with their scary faces that don’t look regular. I usually hide from them but I don’t now because it is only a button and anyway, we are in a tiny elevator and there is no where to hide.

Uncle Hussein’s house is not so big, not like Grandmama’s house. There are so many people already there that our entrance is hardly noticed at first. We remove our coats and remove our shoes. I move a little closer to my sissy because I know she is braver than me and will talk for me when I can’t find my words. My parents are busy kissing all the people, both cheeks for each, and they make a circuit around the entire living room as guests rise from the pillows on the floor in their stockinged feet. I’m called over to have my cheeks pinched, hard (ouch!), and they feel hot. They look down at me and smile and I smile back because I don’t mind so much. The sing song of Farsi is like a lullaby, one that embraces me. It is the language of my mother so when the words pour out they speak of her and the way she holds me when I am sleepy. I like the feeling so I like these people too. They are all my mother, they are all my family.

My sister and I roam and find the sweets in small bowls on the low glass table. I pick up the white nuggets between my fingers and pop them in my mouth. They taste like crystal to me as my teeth grind them down. Breathy flutes are singing on the stereo, a song that winds up and down and up and down, followed by strings and a woman’s voice. Drums follow. I want to march to the beat and twirl with the woman’s voice and I do this in the center of the room, for what better place to do this than the center of the room? And what better moment than when I feel it most? My sister doesn’t dance – but she watches as I do. With the sweetness still in my mouth, the music swirls around me and I smile deeply for the moment. Sissy sees other children coast by, a group of three, or were there four? I reach down to pick up another sweet and when I turn back she is gone, riding the wave of children than has just passed. That’s okay. She’ll circle back. I join my mother and sit in her lap as she waves her hands around, a cigarette wedged between two fingers. She is talking to the woman next to her and taking puffs in between her long rambling sentences. She likes it that I am sitting with her and I am content for a few minutes until I am not content anymore and decide to go in search of my sister.

I swim between tall grownups, their voices rising and falling around me, I have my eye on the kitchen door which is a few feet away and I can hear the water pouring out of the faucet as some women are washing dishes. I also hear the hiss of a round cage sitting on a low table and its sound draws me closer. It reminds me of the tiger cage at Barnum and Bailey, the cage that the brave man enters to talk to the tigers. Inside this tiny cage is a bright object that glows red like my coat, red like the bus. It feels hot as I get closer, but the color and the memory of our bus ride draws me in. I reach my hands out because I want to touch the red, but the cage meets my palms first and a seering pain, cold like ice but cutting like a sharp knife, tears in to my hands. I scream. I scream. I scream. I have already let go of the cage, but the pain has not let go of me and I fall back on to the floor holding my burning hands in front of me. Make it stop, make it stop! There are people all around me, why can’t they make it stop? I am lifted in to arms and carried to that pouring water and the two women part so I can be brought down to run water over the pain. The tears are pouring down my face and I see the water running over my hands which are red and puffy. My screams fill the kitchen and I know there are lots of people that I don’t know around me, until I feel my mother lift me into her arms. I don’t want to take my hands away from the water because it gives me relief from the cold, cold pain that tears through me. But I want her to hold me tightly and not let go and she does. After a few more minutes I calm down and my cries are hiccups that wrench through my stomach. I shake uncontrollably, but my tears are subsiding. All these grownups are crowding in to the kitchen and watching me as I wash my hands and I look around in to their faces. I see my father, my sissy and my Uncle Firooz, I see Uncle Hussein.

My mother shouts out commands and a woman brings a cake of butter. She puts a big smear of the slimy butter in my palms and rubs it in and I scream because it feels like my hands are back on the cage, back on the burning red object, the red bus, my red coat, my pinched cheeks. The tiger cage. I pull my hands away with all the strength I can muster and reach for the water still pouring out of the faucet.

It is decided that we are leaving and wet rags are wrapped around my hands which doesn’t feel very good at all. My red coat is wrapped around me and I am carried out to the waiting elevator. A taxi is waiting outside and I am sitting between my mother and father. It’s dark already and we are driving for a long time. I didn’t get to eat my dinner so my stomach rumbles. “I’m hungry” I tell my mother, and she looks down at me with sad, sad eyes, eyes that want to give me the world, eyes that are so present that I forget my hunger and lean in closer to her.

When the taxi stops, my father pays and we all get out. This isn’t home. “where are we going?” I ask softly in to my father’s ear as he lifts me in to his arms. “The doctor needs to see your hands,” he replies.

The hospital is bright, so bright that I squint and bury my face in my father’s shoulder. My hands hurt so much, the cloth that had been wet at Uncle Hossain’s is now dry and rough against my tender palms, but the brightness assaults me even more and I forget about my hands for a moment. Just a moment. My sister is told to sit in the waiting room with Uncle Firooz and I am carried through the big doors. I know that children are not allowed in hospitals unless they are sick. When my sissy was in the hospital I was not allowed to visit her there. I begged and begged, but I was not allowed in the building, left to wait outside that big Russian hospital with Aunt Mehry. But this time I am carried in, invited even, even though I am not wanting to be there at all.

“ I want to go home!” I cry and once again the tears roll down my cheeks. He holds me closer until words are exchanged and I am carried in to a small room where there is a man with a white coat waiting. I am sitting on my father’s lap and the man unwraps the cloth from around my hands. I am alarmed that there are puffy bumps all over my palms, and the skin is red and raw. This scares me and I cry louder. I don’t pull my hands away from this man because these are not my hands, these are not the hands I had eaten sweets with an hour ago. The doctor takes my hands in his but his skin is hot and now I do want to pull away. Where is the rag? My father holds my arms in place so the man can look closer at the puffy bumps, touching them, is he cutting them with his fingertips? Why are his fingers so sharp? My eyes fill with tears so that I cannot see clearly, the man’s white coat and my red, red hands are swimming in the tears that have filled my eyes. I feel woozy and my stomach begins to hurt. When the man finally goes away I reach up for my mother and she takes me in her arms, saying soothing words in to my ear. “Baby jon, my poor baby jon.” I am her baby jon.

My hands are washed which alternates between feeling soothing and painful, but then another person in a white coat arrives and sticks a long needle in my arm. It pokes me and I scream because the needle is inside me. I am spent, so exhausted that by the time the needle is taken out I feel my lids heavy and the pain in my hands recede. I am floating now and need to sleep. I am no longer here.