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.

Learning the Ways of the World

April 1971
Tadjrish,Iran

Through the window, the light of the courtyard had a bright glow, alit with midday sun reflecting off the brick and tile all around. A canopy of green leaves and delicate white flowers burst up from slender trunks like bouquets of wildflowers erupting from big squares of fresh spring dirt in neat rows. I spied her there, my sissy, under one of the trees, her auburn ponytail following the curve of her back. She was hunched small and balanced on plastic shoes, the sharp angles of her shoulder blades moving rhythmically through her red t-shirt. I marked the spot with my mind where I was going to plant my feet down next to her, planned my route through the house, and was there already before my feet could carry me.

“Watcha doin?” I asked, studying her profile and the wisps of hair that fell around her ear. I looked down to watch her fingers clawing at the ground. We’d stepped off the paving and were crouched at the base of one of the trees, my smaller body shaped like a mirror image of hers, squatting small like we’d seen our grandmother do so many times before. I rested my chin on the soft dimples of my knees.

“Watcha doin?” I asked again.
“I’m digging for almonds.”
“Oh.”
I looked again at her fingers in the dirt. “How come?”
“Huh?”
“Why ya digging all-mans?
She looked at me and rolled her eyes. “You can eat ‘em.”

My cheeks flushed with shame of all the things in the world that I did not yet understand.
“Can I help?”

“Uh huh.” She nodded her chin towards her toes. “I found three already.” I studied the jumble of creamy-colored almonds, speckled with dirt, lying on the ground between us.

Sissy’s fingers discovered another one poking out from under a couple of twigs and leaves.

“Yuh eat ‘em?” I asked.
“Yeah.” She lifted the dirty pod to her mouth, fingernails blackened with dirt. I watched her chew it down.

“We can find more. You dig over there and I’ll run and get a bowl we can put ‘em in.” She rose and ran off and I listened as her footsteps followed her into the house. I popped one of the tender white nuts in to my mouth. It was sweet and smooth on my tongue.

By the time my sister had returned with one of Grandmama’s plastic bowls, I’d found two more almonds along the base of the tree, and I plunked them in the bowl with the others she placed there. Pretty soon we had a dozen and couldn’t find any more, and I followed my sister through the kitchen door as she delivered the bowl of almonds to our grandmother.

“Baricallah!” Grandmama remarked with praise, and planted a kiss on sissy’s forehead. In response, my sister beamed - she offered to Grandmama a Persian smile that seemed to stretch all the way across her face and made her pale skin glow, her nose crinkling and eyebrows raised – the kind of smile she only gave in Iran, and saved especially for Grandmama.

That night after dinner a small dish of almonds were brought out to the table. I marveled as I watched my family sprinkle salt on the tiny pods and pop them in their mouths – the world, so full of mystery, offered up almonds from the ground, and Sissy had known how to find them, confirming for me once again that she was the smartest girl in the world.

The 13th Day of Norooz

Friday, April 2nd, 1971
Tadjrish, Iran
Sizdeh Bedar

From my father’s diary:
The 13th day of Norooz – The period of visitations is over. This is the traditional picnic day. Everyone leaves the city in a kind of mass exodus for the countryside….

For the two weeks following Norooz there was a bustle of guests, grownups spending long afternoons talking Farsi over tea and sweets. Some days there would be car rides to the homes of others, but most days I was allowed to stay at home to be ruled only by the schedule of meals, the unpredictable weather, and the arrival of dusk which marked the time to be ready for bed. The weather was still cold, some days cloudy and raining, punctuated by beautiful crisp spring days throwing a sharp sunlight in to the dust clouds we stirred up in our soccer games. Sometimes my half-brother, Ramin, would join us, sometimes it would be my cousins. Often, any child that happened down the road would be invited in to our game. I felt wild, inspired by Lygeia’s bold movements, content to observe the world at her heels to watch the older children kick our ball across the dusty road outside our courtyard door. When she ran too fast for me, I stood with my back against the stone wall, my hands cushioning me from the sharp places. When the ball came near enough I was allowed to chase it down and throw it back in to the circle of children, my face flush from the excitement of my moment in the game.

Sizdeh Bedar, the 13th day of the new year, was a cloudy and wet day, and we woke to learn that there were big plans in store for a party, a picnic outside of the city. My grandmother had prepared a tremendous pot of soup, steamy and fragrant, and the food was packed in to my grandfather’s idling car. Another car arrived, and my father, mother, sister, Aunty Mehry and the baby and I climbed in, bundled in heavy winter clothing. I sat on my mother’s lap in the front passenger seat, and listened to everyone sing festively as we drove through the crowded streets of Tehran, surrounded by other cars as packed as ours, honking and joyful, everyone in a party mood, defiant of the brooding clouds above us that only grew darker. As the drizzle became rain, and grew to a pelting, rhythmic beating on our windshield, my mother’s mood grew quieter and I descended in to a deep sleep.

BANG. A crash and we all heaved forward, and in my half-asleep state I felt my mother’s arms tighten around me. A tiny scream erupted from my sister in the back seat followed by whimpering, and loud voices. Bang again and my mother’s arms tightened further. I could hear my Aunt Mehry and Lygeia crying. My mother’s voice sounded angry, and then I opened my eyes.

White, everything outside was white, and steam had formed on the inside of the windows. I woke to a chaotic scene, snow, cars all around us. I held on tightly to my mother. Minutes passed, half-an-hour, and we could not move, wedged in to a 6 car pile-up, a blizzard attacking our picnic plans and trapping us inside our car. My father, in the back seat, pushed his door open roughly and disapeared in to the white whirls of snow. Minutes later, a rapping on our window, and my mother rolled it down bringing in a cold and wind that assaulted our skin. I burrowed my face in her chest and let tears pour from my eyes, letting my cry drown out the sound of her voice. More doors opening, slamming and I was lifted through the open car window, torn from my mother's arms. Squinting, my tears felt icy cold on my cheeks and the world looked like a white swirling cloud. I felt hard pellets attacking my eyes from all directions and couldn’t see whose arms held me tightly and carried me through the driving snow. Bitterly angry, I struggled and screamed, until wet and miserable I was settled into another car. Once I felt brave enough to open my eyes again, I discovered I had been in my father’s arms all along, and released a flood of new tears onto my father’s already wet coat.

From my father’s journal:
A man alone in a car stopped and took us in – the Major stayed with his crushed car – and we began a difficult journey to Karaj as our “angel of mercy” could not make his windshield wipers work. For 3 ½ hours we crawled through the howling storm bumper to bumper towards Karaj, when we stalled for 2 hours just outside of the city. We decided to walk in to town. With our shoes and clothes splashed with mud and snowy slush, we made our way past hundreds of stalled and frustrated cars. It was 5:00pm before we made it into Karaj.

The blizzard had subsided, but had left snow everywhere, melting in to muddy puddles at the side of the road. In my father’s arms I held tightly to his neck, and complained bitterly against the cold.

“I gotta pee” I whispered in his ear, and he lifted me down so that I could squat at the side of the road. My sister clung to Aunt Mehry, and Aunt Mehry clung to her baby Maryam, wrapped completely in a white polyester blanket, her tiny feet poking out the bottom. We were a motley crew, a wet disheveled mess, but we held out hope of finding Grandpapa’s car somewhere in the Karaj square.

From my mother’s version:
We were in the Karaj square and there was no sign of Baba’s car. We were in a horrible state. Suddenly my cousin Parvin and sister-in-law Mehry got very excited. “Stop a car, stop that car!” and I began waving my arms in the air until the lone driver in the blue Mercedez came to a stop. “Can you help?” I asked him. “We have children. We need to get back to Tadjrish. We had a bad accident on the Karaj highway and we’re all very cold.” He was very gratious and agreed to help. Your father sat with you in the front seat and tried to hold a conversation but the fellow didn’t speak much English. It was a few minutes in to the ride when I noticed that Mehry and Parvin were giggling and whispering to one another, and then began to notice that the cars around us were slowing and the passengers were pointing at us. Who is this guy? I asked and Mehry and Parvin told me he was a famous TV star named “Cardon”. I hadn’t heard of him since I’d been living in the US for the past 5 years, but he was well known by everyone except your father and I.

From my father’s journal:
Roshan had flagged a car and I thought we were in a taxi – but lo and behold we were in the car of “Cardon”, one of Iran’s most famous artists and TV personalities. This gracious man drove us all to our door in Tadjrish. The drive was punctuated by people passing us in screaming delight at seeing the famous Cardon. But WE had him to ourselves! At home, that night, with everyone reunited, we had a happy carnival with food and drink, a delight by candlelight and song that lasted in to the late hours of the night. Thus had come our 13th day of Norooz, on the heels and wind of a storm, and a calamity to bring us an omen of life, a reminder that to expect and know joy one must be bitten too by despair.