Through the Courtyard Gate

March 20, 1971
Tadjrish, Iran

I woke on Norooz morning, the 20th of March, with my new white dress and matching white Mary Janes laid out on the chair next to my crib. I felt the cold marble of the floor bite into the soles of my feet as I jumped down and slipped on the tiny cloth slippers.

“Mommy!” I called out as I emerged into the kitchen through the swinging door. I found her and my grandmother and the maid, Zahra, sitting at the small table and surrounded by colorful plastic bowls heaped high with cut greens. My mother looked up from her cutting board, her hands wet and speckled green with sabzi.

“Can I put my new dress on now?” I wanted to know. I half expected to hear the same answer I’d heard every day until this one. No, the new dress waits until New Years Day.

“What are you doing up so early! Everyone else is still asleep Roia joon, try to stay quiet. Yes, I’ll help you with your dress, but then you are going to have to stay out of the dirty corners of the courtyard, can you do that?” This was an immensely difficult promise, with this new day still spread before me yet to be explored, but there was only one answer to give so I nodded. I had to wait, shifting from one foot to the other, my bladder full from the long night, as she washed her hands at the sink and dried them with the flowered towel hung on the wall. After an icy trip to the outhouse, the dress, still stiff and giving off the musty smell of the store where we’d found it, was unwrapped from the plastic and removed from the hanger. I lifted my arms as my mother slipped off my nightgown and I stepped into the dress with my hand resting on my mother’s shoulder to steady myself. She turned me with one strong hand and buttoned me up the back. My feet ached to feel the cool white socks and the firm hold of those Mary Janes, but knowing that I was not allowed to wear shoes in the house I carefully placed them by the screen door for when I would go out.

Over the course of the morning, as my father and grandfather, my uncles, and my sister rose from sleep, I watched with newborn eyes as the day unwrapped before me, in spite of me, in a bustle of activity. My grandmother brought objects out of drawers and boxes and placed them on the dining room table and then disappeared to change in to her best clothes. The tabletop display of seemingly ordinary objects was given great importance and I circled the table over and over, my eyes barely higher than the tabletop, my fingers curled around the table edge. I studied the objects I could see from the edges - a mirror, a leather-bound book, a bowl of colored eggs, a plate of bright green grass reaching up in tiny spears and wrapped with a bright blue ribbon.

Mid-morning, as the smells of fried fish and steaming basmati rice filled the house, my father lifted me up into his arms and carried me back to the dining room display. From my father’s arms I studied the objects on the table from this new angle. I spied a bowl of chocolates and another with shiny coins, and bowls of powders and pastes in varying shades of browns and reds which gave off salty, sweet and sour smells all mixed up in the air. A shallow bowl of bright orange goldfish created a colorful and constantly moving centerpiece.

“See the picture in the frame?” He pointed with his free hand at a framed black and white photo set to one side, a photo of a sculpted face with high cheekbones in a blurry field of white. “That’s your Uncle Khosrow, your cousin Nooshin’s father back in California. You know him, right?” I pictured his face in my mind, I heard his deep voice and saw his jet black hair as part of my memory of home. I nodded. “Grandmama puts pictures of loved ones on our special table, family that can’t be with us on New Years.”

Voices suddenly rang out loudly through the house, “Farhad koo? Farhad, where are you? Go on, out the door, it’s almost time! Mehry, go pick up the baby! Roshan, bia! Baba, kojaii? Bia digeh!” My grandmother’s voice beckoned each of us from the far corners of the house so my father helped me on with my shoes and we walked together out to the courtyard.

“I’m going out! Tell me when!” my Uncle Farhad said from across the courtyard as I caught sight of him handing baby Mariam to Aunt Mehry and he slipped out the courtyard door and into the alley outside.

I tugged on my father’s arm and he bent over so I could whisper in his ear.
“Where is Diyee Farhad going?”

“Your Mommy says it is good luck for Farhad to be the first to walk in at the New Year. He does it every year. He’ll come right back in.” There was an aura of privilege and confidence that surrounded my Uncle Farhad and my mother both, a birthright that seemed to make the world kneel before them. I could hear it in the volume of their voices in the courtyard, in the way everyone would shift and turn to them when they entered the room. I could sense it when they would recite poetry or tell jokes and crowds would hang on their every word.

A hush fell as my grandfather, a few feet from the courtyard door, studied the Russian watch hanging from his wrist, and with his ringed hand counted out the seconds as if with an invisible baton.

“Se, doh, yek!... Aide shomah mobarak!” they all called out in unison, Happy New Year! and all eyes fell on the door even as their voices still hung on the air. I studied the silence, holding my breath, and when I heard the sound of knuckles rapping on the wood door I squealed with joy, clapping my hands. My uncle strutted through the opened door, taking long strides, his chin high, his sideburns like dark shadows on each side of his face. I dropped my father’s hand to run to him.

“Happy New Year!” He shouted, as I wrapped my arms around his legs. I felt others up close as I nuzzled my nose in to the wool of his freshly laundered suit, the sound of familiar voices all around me. “Aide shomah mobarak! Aide shomah mobarak Mama, Baba! Happy New Year!

“It’s good luck again this year for us all,” my Grandpapa said, pulling me off my uncle and lifting me up to kiss each cheek. I wrinkled my nose at the smell of his cologne. He was such a small man; he and my grandmother, the both of them like a match set of tiny people barely taller than my sister, his hair so white, like cotton set atop his head, and hers black like a frame around her face. He set me down and took my hand as we all headed back to the dining room for the presenting of gifts. It was an odd sight, my grandfather back again dressed in that suit and tie, like his son that had just walked through the courtyard door, cocky and proud.