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.
