Camelia (20 page)

My whole body hurt. I had waited days in a vacuum, through the harsh interrogations, imagining Faezeh or Golriz, my friend from a human rights organization, appearing like angels to save me. And now, from among all the voices that surrounded me, the strongest voice came from inside me, saying that if I ever wanted to get out of here, I had better help myself.

I buried my head in my hands and had a conversation with myself. I was a good actress. I had starred in leading roles in plays
in high school. I loved the theater, but drama wasn't an acceptable pursuit to my parents. I had always told myself that I'd get another chance to prove my brilliance on the stage and that it would be the greatest performance of my life. I knew that building up my focus would take days or months, and I resolved myself. I took a deep breath and plunged into my role.

 

Every night and every morning, when I was alone in my cell, I'd close my eyes and meditate. My painting instructor, Feiruzeh Gul Mohammadi, had taught me this invaluable art of gathering energy and channeling it toward a specific goal. I was focusing my energy to work on the mind of my interrogator. Feiruzeh was a dervish, and steeped in those principles, she channeled her overflowing energy and light into the creation of her art. At the end of her watercolors class, we would sit cross-legged and meditate as Feiruzeh asked us to find a point within ourselves and concentrate. “Your eyes will open themselves to the images that will be embodied in your paintings.” She inspired me, and over the New Year's holidays I even went to find the dervish in the main Tehran bazaar who sat from the first twilight till dawn writing Sharaf ash-Shams prayers on the backs of yellow carnelian stones. I didn't have my carnelian ring with me in prison, but I closed my eyes and envisioned the outcome I most desired: to be free. Free as I was when I sat in my painting classes during the summertime, watching the butterflies circling the sunflowers in Feiruzeh's beautiful garden, or when I sat by her fireplace in the winter as the snow fell heavily outside. Where were those days, when did they disappear? I longed for the freedom of my youth that was gone forever, but I still hoped for a day free from threats and fear, a day I could send flowers to my mother to thank her for giving birth to me, when I could simply sit and say to God, “I am happy.”

Each day that I meditated in my cell, I became more and more
absorbed in my role. I had decided that I would get out of prison and that the very man who came every day to interrogate me would come to my aid. I had to store up an immense amount of energy in order to attract his attention. We never saw each other's face. My face was to the wall, and my eyes were blindfolded. Only my hands were free to move about, and I had to channel all of my energy into my hands. My role was to fall in love and make him fall in love. My freedom rested with the performance given by my hands.

Feiruzeh's soft voice was in my ear. “Camelia, be calm and think about the enormous energy you have inside you. Become strong. With this energy, you can change people.” I remembered the pilgrimage we took together. Thousands of Iranians made this trip to the mosque of Jamkaran near Qom on Tuesdays, which the Shi'a believe is the day of the Imam-e Zaman. In the minibuses that carried Feiruzeh's class, all of us young women, to Jamkaran, there was more life and energy than I could now have thought possible.

According to legend, when the Imam-e Zaman first went into hiding his
babs
would take letters from his followers and bring them to his presence. Before the imam's third
bab
died, he proclaimed that he was the last
bab
and that from then on the imam would be hidden in a well. The original well used to contact him is a pilgrimate site in Iraq, but after the revolution and the eight-year war, it was impossible for Iranians to visit it. So out of their love for the imam, a new pilgrimage site was chosen within Iran's borders. One of the spiritual leaders of Qom claimed to have seen the Imam-e Zaman in a dream, and the vision told him that his dwelling was in a dry well in Jamkaran. Inspired by the blessing, he built a mosque and encircled the dry well with an iron railing, and the pilgrims throw their letters and offerings down into the well. We had been told that the caretakers of the mosque would gather all the letters in a sack and pour them into running water, believing that
the imam would read them.

It was evening when we arrived at the mosque. Powerful projectors lit up the courtyard and the veranda of the mosque, and loudspeakers broadcast special prayers. Feiruzeh had told us that if first-time visitors focused, they would see the Master, the Imam-e Zaman, in some form. I had read accounts of pilgrims who had glimpsed the imam for an instant at the mosque or en route to Jamkaran, and so I made sure to keep looking. Feiruzeh and I unrolled our prayer rugs in the courtyard of the mosque to pray. I concentrated on trying to distinguish the Imam-e Zaman from amid the crowds. I saw no sign of him. We were surrounded by salt flats and there was only the raw earth and the wind throwing sand and dust into my eyes.

My mother had written a letter for me to throw in for the imam. An enormous number of women were crying and praying around the well; everyone wanted to touch the iron railing. This was the women's side, and on the eastern end of the courtyard was the men's section. I broke away from the group and pushed forward. The well was so full of letters that they were spilling out from the gaps between the rails. I thrust my mother's letter deep inside. That peculiar scent they call the “fragrance of Mecca” rippled through the air, the intense smell of cheap rose water perfume. By the time I could pull my hand back out of the railing, my chador had slipped off and fallen to the ground. When I had made my way to the side of the crush of the crowds, I fixed my chador. As I clutched the seam under my chin, I could smell red roses on my hand. My eyes were burning.

I held my hand up to Feiruzeh's nose. “Bah, bah, bah, bah,” she said. “So he picked you out of all of us? The Master has taken the letter from your hand.”

A few months later, we had a gathering at our house, and my mother told our guests the story. She said that the Master had read
her letter and given her an answer.

I was astounded. “Maman, what did your letter say?”

My proud mother said that she wasn't allowed to say but added, “There is a Chinese proverb that says, ‘The scent of a rose never fades from the hand of the one who gives it to you.'”

 

Alone in my cell, I looked at my hands, and a poem by Forugh Farrokhzad came into my mind:

At Dabirestan-e Hoda it was fashionable to be in love. My cousin Elham told me she'd stumbled upon two girls kissing in the bathroom, and I had caught two girls kissing each other's breasts behind the wall of the courtyard. The vice principal, Khanum Haj Seyyed Javadi, had a loyal group of wildly infatuated admirers. She was unmarried and had singled out a few girls from the school for friendship, walking with them during free periods. One of the objects of her affection was Elham. The vice principal's admirers would hunch together behind her and walk along somberly through the courtyard.

I had a few admirers of my own in the freshman class, who would write me love letters and stick them on the pull-out tray of my desk. They would write poems about how they were proud to be my friend, writing about my hair and my eyes, asking for my photo. Hoda was at the center of the class and culture clashes in Tehran in the 1990s. The institution of public schools and the abolishment of private schools after the revolution had thrown together wealthy students coming from old money and new money and those from the poorest neighborhoods. Girls from upper-class families in my neighborhood, Shahrak-e Gharb, who could afford to go skiing in the winter, wore fancy sneakers, and took private piano lessons, now sat in class alongside girls so poor they came to school in the winter with cotton shoes full of holes and nothing to wear over their uniforms. These girls came from Farahzad, where their parents were seasonal workers who picked the white berries that region
is renowned for or collected cow and sheep dung to dry for winter fuel. They lived in one-room shacks on their boss's property and guarded the orchards. They walked a long way or took a bus to get to Hoda, and yet, instead of seeming angry or jealous, they looked up to and adored us Shahrak-e Gharbi girls as if we were celebrities. My sweet and polite cousin Elham, whose parents were both doctors, was their deity. Sometimes Farahzadi girls would smile at me through our classroom window when they were on break, and sometimes I'd wave back at them—but they never dared to speak to me. Niknaz, who was in my year and was something of a tomboy, was the girl with the most devotees. In the grade above us was Nava Rouhani, a fourth-year student—she came in second.

The notion of girls being in love was taken very seriously. With all of the clandestine romance at Dabirestan-e Hoda, there was no place for my presumptiveness in writing poetry, even poetry celebrating the freedom of Iranian soldiers released from Iraqi prisons. And so I stood, shuffling my feet in the principal's office. “Khanum Haj Seyyed Javadi, bring Entekhabifard's file. Camelia.”

My heart stopped beating. In a weak voice, I asked the principal, “Please, excuse me, Khanum Hassani, I still don't understand what I've done wrong.”

“When you've been expelled you'll understand that this filthy business has no place at school. When your family gets wind of this, they'll know how to deal with you.” Then she ignored me as she went about her daily business. Even my studious cousin Elham's protests had had no effect. My mother had forced me to move to Hoda, away from all my old friends at Fayazbaksh, in the hopes that Elham's influence and example would make me an obedient student. Elham kept looking over at me with a worried face, and I knew in her heart she was cursing her bad luck at having such a pain for a cousin. I motioned her to go back to class.

Principal Hassani was a nasty old girl without a drop of mercy
or kindness in her blood. Dark-skinned with a blotchy face, a mouth that always reeked, and a black mustache, she wasn't the respected principal, but a demon charged with guarding the gates of the hell they called high school. And we, the damned, lived in fear of her, both inside and outside of school. In the still of the morning in Shahrak-e Gharb, she'd patrol the deserted side streets, silently and mysteriously, in her white Mercedes. Or she'd lurk around the neighborhood, waiting to jump out and grasp the wrist of any of her students she caught with a boy or with their hair showing from under their veil or laughing or even standing in a public phone booth.

“Guys, it's Khanum Hassani!” The second any of us saw a white car, we'd call out the alert, and everyone would run into the alleys to hide behind the flower bushes or a tree. At the wheel, wrapped all in black, she'd lurch out like the angel of death. If she saw us, we were done for. She was almost fifty and had never been married, and we prayed that some generous man would come along and soften her stony heart by the kindness of love. But no one showed up to ask for her hand.

The “infernal inspectors,” the hall monitors, who were Khanum Hassani's envoys, found the poem after searching my schoolbag. One of the little bitches unfolded the sheet of paper and gave me a probing stare. I opened my eyes wide and stared back. “It's not a poster of Madonna! It's poetry.” She studied the page in wonder. Impatiently I said, “Haven't you ever read poetry before? It's a love poem.” At the words “love poem,” the situation burst into flames. I was defenseless, she had me backed into a corner.

I kept my head down as Khanum Hassani asked me to explain exactly
for whom
I had composed this ode of love. I raised my chin and said, “For those who have been freed.” I had written the poem that summer for the Iranian prisoners of war. Two years after the end of the war with Iraq, the first group had been released and
returned via the border at Qasr-e Shirin. It was a cause for national celebration.

Brimming with pride, I asked my father if we could go to welcome them. “The town isn't open to travelers yet,” he said, “and I'm sure only officials and the prisoners' families can attend.” So, again, I experienced an historical moment with rapt attention to the TV screen. I wept with joy as the prisoners came home to Iran. I felt I was there with them, with the overcome mothers welcoming their sons and the prisoners leaning out of their buses to kiss the wellwisher's upturned hands and faces, with the crowds carrying flowers. I, too, was a part of their triumph, right beside them in front of the television, unable to control my emotions. When my mother came home to my tears, she thought there had been some kind of accident. I told her, “The prisoners have returned to Iran.” My poem read: