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.