The Trunk - parts one and two

Oakland, California
Fall 1974

My memories of Iran had already faded by the time I was seven years old so when the trunk arrived one fall day in October I was awestruck. It arrived on our doorstep like a long forgotten relative, encased in metal and lacquered wood, shredded rope wrapped around its belly and our address plastered to its top in my father’s careful script. The heavy iron handles lay flat along its sides like tiny round arms, worn and smooth in my hand. This was the lost trunk that my parents had sent ahead before our return. They had considered it lost, gone forever, and yet here it stood after having had travels of its own.

It must have taken both my parents to lift that trunk. I imagined them holding those heavy handles, surprised by the weight of them, and then a noisy heave as they brought the trunk over the threshold. They would have carried it slowly through the dark hallway and down the carpeted stairs to our rumpus room, calling out to each other when they turned the corners. But I wasn’t there to see any of that. It was already enthroned in the deep shag of our rumpus room floor by the time I got home from school, and it lay in waiting to be opened, mysterious and silent. It’s silence and weight did not whisper, but ached with a tired groan, finally still and finally home.

My father’s massive canvases stood leaning against one wall, their colorful geometric faces hidden and only the blond wood frames and frayed canvas edges exposed. The black upright piano with its bench settled underneath it stood ignored challenging the old zenith TV on its rolling cart as if it stood a chance to claim my attention. Instead, both sat waiting for me to awaken them from sleep. But that trunk, surrounded by our big corduroy pillows, that was new – unexpected, uninvited even.

Iran had become an “other”, foreign, strange, the half of me that was oddly-colored and smelled of celery stew and rose water; the half of me that I tried to ignore. My year there when I was three and four was like a closed chapter of one of my father’s library books – black and white pictures of artifacts and statues, flashes of memory, paper schoolbooks and pots of steaming rice; the bright orange of a glass of fresh carrot juice. Iran was the sound of my mother’s shouts in to our kitchen princess phone on New Years Day; her voice desperately reaching, searching, through the phone, her loud voice, shouting through smiles and tears, in the language that was familiar yet incomprehensible to me now. Iran was the phone inevitably handed to me to hear a tinny distant voice calling my name in answer to my small hello. The awkward silence when I didn’t know what else to say.

And when this trunk was finally opened it brought forth all these things in a flood that made me breathless, even without words. Its heavy rope was cut with our kitchen knife and fell away to expose the heavy padlock that had been hidden underneath. Within minutes my father produced the small key and the top was lifted. Stale air mixed with the smell of sweet moth balls lingered in my nose as I stretched my neck to peer inside. Its dark gut was still and full. My mother, chatty, exuberant, welcomed each item from its depth as she gingerly removed them– small folded rugs with bright patterns, tiny sheep skin hats that I could hardly believe I had ever worn, a tin samovar with small matching tea cups, clothes, wraps, shawls and stiff beaded shoes of gaudy colors. I stood away and poked at these things with outstretched fingers. Everything was scratchy against my skin and the old, weighted smell was so strong it assaulted me and filled the room, seeping around corners and in to the next rooms. I gladly disappeared into the kitchen to make her a cup of strong black tea and leave her with these smelly and unexpected relatives.

When my mother was satisfied that she had unfolded each item, caressed each with nostalgia and longing and then refolded them with the same creases, she began returning them back to their waiting vault. The trunk which witnessed this whole scene was eventually closed with a slam and my mother sprang up from her squat with a light step, chatty– both of my parents seemed to welcome this trunk home. As for me, I was wash with relief when it was all over: the foreigness of these things only served to remind me of my own unexplainable foreigness. The trunk finally took its rightful place amongst the old boxes in our garage and I felt more at ease with its place there, hidden and unseen.