Camelia (22 page)

 

It was autumn at my father's funeral, and I was holding yellow and white daisies in my hand. The winds came and swirled through my black clothing. Everyone had gone forward to the grave, and I was left back a few steps on the soft earth clutching the daisies in my hand. He had been brought to me so I could look at him, so I could see him up close one last time. His eyes were shut, and where his chest had always given off a reddish hue, he was turning marble
white. There was a red line underneath his left eye, evidence of his fall, and his soft black hair, which in his forty-eight years had only manifested a few white hairs around the temples, was wrapped out of sight by a white handkerchief. I had pulled him to my bosom and cried, “Baba, get up, let's go home!”

They wrested me from my father and took him away, and lying on the ground, I called out to him in a wail. Then I ran. I clenched the dirt and the daisies in my fist. They lowered him into the ground wrapped in a shroud, with only the triangle of his face exposed.

I had taken his shroud down from the top shelf of my wardrobe that morning. Some time before, one of my father's friends was traveling to Mecca and offered to bring back a souvenir. My father asked for a shroud. I had banished this horrifying souvenir to the highest and least visible spot on my shelf, until I had to bring it down so much sooner than I'd ever expected. We had wrapped the shroud in newspaper, and the print shone yellow through the plastic bag as we carried it to Behesht-e Zahra.

My uncle Ali was arranging stones on top of my father's grave. As he placed the last stone on his face, I called out and he turned. His face was covered in tears. Behesht-e Zahra was filled with the sound of our friends and relatives wailing and moaning. My uncle stood up. I opened my fists. I put the dirt on my head and the white and yellow flowers on my father's face, keeping one to remember the day. They had to drag Kati and me off by force. He had to stay, and we had to leave.

When we returned home for the memorial, my friend Negin approached me. She gave me a newspaper and squeezed my hand. “Camelia, you've been accepted. Political science at Shahreza.” I didn't want to look. It was too late. I stared at the newspaper with empty eyes and then crushed it up in my hands. Very early the next morning we dressed up and went back to the cemetery for the second day of the weeklong funeral ceremonies. The grave was covered
with bouquets. I held the daisy in one hand and the crumpled-up newspaper in the other. I cried, “Baba, can you hear me? I've got good news for you!” My mother's tears, and mine and Kati's started flowing again. A friend of my father's, Agha-ye Mir Eskandari, murmured to us, “Let's go. Leave him in peace. He's tired after all these years. Leave him to sleep in peace.” My father slept in his fresh grave, and the smell of earth and rose water blended with the muted sounds of lamentation coming from all across Behesht-e Zahra. He had to stay, and we had to leave.

On one of the last days of spring, I walked into the editorial offices of
Zan-e Ruz
. A weekly magazine,
Zan-e Ruz
had a six-page section entitled “Thirteen to Eighteen Year Olds.” It seemed a good place to start, and most importantly, one of my mentors at the club told me I could mention her name. Still in mourning for my father, I was dressed in black from head to toe. I stood before the editor in chief's secretary, clutching a heavy clippings folder full of my published poems and literary pieces.

“What is your business with Khanum Gheramizadeghan?”

Making excuses for myself, I said that I was a writer and that I needed only a few minutes of her time. My voice trembled with excitement as I spoke. The office was all glass windows, and I could see women in black chadors writing busily behind their desks or chatting with each other.

When the secretary granted me entry, I realized that Khanum Gheramizadeghan herself had been watching me from behind the glass. She had a dark complexion and thick prescription glasses so wide that at their highest point they overlapped with the black veil
that covered most of her forehead. Like the others, she wore a chador over her veil.

“
Salaam
. You have five minutes to tell me your business.”

Khanum Gheramizadeghan leaned back behind her desk, waiting for my answer.

“I am a poet. I am a poet and a writer, and I want to be a reporter. Please believe me, I will make a good reporter . . .” I nervously placed my folder in front of her.

She started to leaf through my work. “We are not hiring. We use freelancers who write regularly. However, work for one week on a trial basis, and we'll see how you do,” she said and picked up the telephone. “Tell Khanum Parsa'i to come here for a minute.”

Khanum Parsa'i was a white-faced, pregnant woman with tiny green eyes that seemed even smaller through her glasses. Khanum Gheramizadeghan told her, “This girl says that she has the genes of a reporter. Put her genes to the test.” I didn't even have a chance to thank her. “OK, OK. Out. Get out, I have a lot of work to do. Parsa'i knows the rest.”

I went with Parsa'i to the “Thirteen to Eighteen” department. Parsa'i wasn't wearing a chador, but her long veil covered all of her hair and shoulders.

“This is not high school. We won't have any crying or whining. We take our work seriously, and we need a serious and punctual reporter. Take this tape recorder and go to the Exhibition of Exceptional Children's Art at the Behzisti Center on Khiaban-e Vali-ye Asr and get me a story. On some days we'll have a driver who can take you, and on some days, like today, you'll have to go by taxi. Go and come back by noon. And mind your
hejab
, too. I don't want to get any calls from the security office. The days when
Zan-e Ruz
chose Ms. Iran are over. As of tomorrow wear more modest clothing. And no more perfume.”

My first article was published in the next issue, and less than six
months later, I had my own desk and my own title. I started writing weekly articles and special reports, and I'd participate in editorial meetings. But during the first few weeks, Parsa'i would rip my reports in half and then in half again before my eyes and then hand them back to me.

“This was crap. Go and write it again. Your reporting needs to contain useful, well-supported, eye-catching intelligence, not rumors and chitchat.”

Zahra Omara'i, special reporter for the magazine, would call me over. “Come on, write a new report, and I'll check on you over your shoulder. And don't cry. No one was born a reporter. Everyone starts with their work getting thrown in the garbage.” My writing improved, and I got all sorts of letters from teenage readers. They would write in with feedback or send poems or opinion pieces, which we'd then publish. I was allowed to call or write them with editorial notes if necessary. Others had questions and requested help with personal situations; we sorted these letters and sent them to specialists to offer counsel. When Parsa'i went on maternity leave, three of us, all teenage girls, were put in charge of “Thirteen to Eighteen.” I learned everything from writing and editing to layout and proofreading. Every morning at six thirty, I'd wait outside my house for the car service to travel to Khiaban-e Tupkhaneh, happy as could be.

When I started working at
Zan-e Ruz
, there was little variety on the newsstands; only a few papers were on display—
Kayhan
,
Etela'at
,
Abrar
,
Resalat
,
Jumhuri-ye Islami
, and
Salaam
. The Chamber of Censorship Authority administered the press in an official, or at least semiofficial, manner. In any case, the atmosphere was extremely conservative. The Kayhan Corporation, the biggest publishing corporation in Iran, owned
Zan-e Ruz
. The corporation had been requisitioned by the State after the revolution and its chief administrator appointed by the Imam. Their flagship paper,
Kayhan
, had the widest circulation in Iran before the revolution and emerged as the right-leaning State paper afterward. People bought
Kayhan
for its classified section and, especially, its unrivaled obituary pages. How often we had found out about the deaths of friends by reading this newspaper . . . Most importantly,
Kayhan
was cheap, and its pages were big and suitable for cleaning windows and wrapping herbs at vegetable stands.

Censoring the news was part of the Kayhan Corporation's policy, and the jurisdiction of the censor extended even to our little “Thirteen to Eighteen” department at
Zan-e Ruz
. I wrote an article titled “When Will the Date Palms of Khorramshahr Be Green?” after spending the Nouruz holidays in the south, visiting Mandana in Abadan and a friend of my mother's, Maria, in Ahvaz. My mother, Kati, Kai Khosrou, and I toured the war-torn border cities, gazing at the drowned ships from the bank of the Karon River, crying when we saw the flat landscape of Khorramshahr, famous for its palm trees, without a hint of green. Just as the paper was about to go to press, the piece was pulled. I was admonished for overstepping my bounds by writing a political article. As punishment, my writing was published without my name for the next two weeks.

 

During the second term of Hashemi Rafsanjani's presidency a newspaper called
Hamshahri
took the drab gray blur of the other newspapers and arrested it under a beam of light. It was the first full-color newspaper in Iran and was more open and intellectual, since it was run by the cultured, immensely popular mayor of Tehran, Gholamhussein Karabashi. From then on everyone in Tehran read
Hamshahri
. Even the advertising pages in
Kayhan
dulled in comparison to
Hamshahri
's market-savvy design. When I heard that
Hamshahri
was launching the first daily newspaper for children in the Middle East,
Aftabgardan
, I applied immediately. It was with
great satisfaction that I approached Khanum Gheramizadeghan at
Zan-e Ruz
and said softly, “As of tomorrow, I will be at
Aftabgardan
.” And I set my new identification card down on her desk.

I'd go to
Aftabgardan
in its chic new uptown building in the morning and attend classes at Azad Islamic University's College of Political Science in the afternoon. My classes were full of students who'd been accepted to the university without taking entrance exams as part of the television station Seda va Sima's allotment. Some were known TV personalities, news announcers, or sports commentators. A woman named Faezeh Bahremani, a visiting student from our school's Karaj campus, caught my attention. She'd show up in a white Renault, then fold up her chador and drape it over the back of her chair before the class started. I liked her attitude—none of the other girls dared remove their chadors in class, even though it wasn't mandatory to wear one.

There wasn't enough space for the university to place men and women in separate classes, so the rooms were segregated down the middle, the ladies seated on the right and the gentlemen on the left. Even when the women's side was overflowing and the men's side had empty chairs, we would squeeze in uncomfortably to avoid any unnecessary interaction with the opposite sex. Even the stairways were segregated and patrolled by Disciplinary Committee spies. If for some reason you needed to talk to someone across the divide in class, you always spoke loudly and obviously so everyone witnessed your innocent request to borrow a book or swap notes. We could be dismissed from our studies at any moment if the Disciplinary Committee reported misbehavior. In this atmosphere, Faezeh's actions struck me as brave.

Faezeh often borrowed my notes when she couldn't come to class. However, I still didn't realize who she was until another girl in class told me. I promptly spread the rumor. “Did you know that she's the daughter of President Hashemi Rafsanjani?” I whispered
to my friends from Seda va Sima. “That's the president's daughter.” They looked at her in disbelief. That she would be in our school wasn't all that significant, but her behavior certainly was. Her father had been Khomeini's close associate, and here she threw off her chador. We expected the president's daughter to cover herself up to her eyes like the other revolutionaries. I was amazed when I'd see her drive to school wearing only a scarf, putting on her full chador in her parked car to walk up to the school. “Go tell her to show you her identity card,” someone said to me.

“Excuse me, Faezeh?” She lifted her head from her notes.

“Yes?”

“Could I see your identity card for a second?” I asked in a bold voice. “They don't believe that you're Faezeh.” I knew I was being rude, but I wanted to prove how relaxed I could be with the president's daughter. By using Bahremani as her last name, the part of her full family name her father didn't use publicly, she had a little protection from scrutiny. Now I was being nosy and exposing my friend to gain popularity points.