The Alley of Love and Yellow Jasmines (4 page)

The Hijinks of Goldie

A
t age fifteen, I was allowed to go out with my friends in the early evenings. I liked to entertain my friends by imitating them and famous actresses. We would go to the Paramount Theater, a lavish theater in the heart of Tehran and architecturally reminiscent of the European theaters I saw in movies. That afternoon they were premiering
Cactus Flower
, starring the strikingly beautiful, and refreshingly funny, Goldie Hawn, alongside Walter Matthau and Ingrid Bergman.

After the movie was over, we were all out on the street, deciding where to go next. I was imitating Goldie, and my friends were laughing. I suddenly lost control of my body and fell hard to the pavement on my left side. I tried to get up immediately to avoid further embarrassment, but I could not move my legs.

My friends put me in a cab and took me home. I was diagnosed with a severe heart ailment known as rheumatic fever. Our family doctor suggested complete bed rest and large doses of penicillin, including daily injections.

My father exhausted every avenue at the Ministry of Health, where he was now in a leadership role, to take me to the country’s best and most well known heart hospital, which was located outside Tehran, near the holy city of Qom. The head of the hospital, Dr. Saleh, had graduated from Boston University in Massachusetts.

I was moved to the hospital for a week and left alone for the first time in my life. I could not have visitors, except for my parents, who could visit only once a day and stay for only thirty minutes. The doctor said I should not get out of bed and should not get excited under any circumstances. I could not watch TV nor listen to the radio. I could not even read books or magazines. The nurses were really nice and injected a high dose of penicillin into my body, four times a day, starting at dawn. I despised the hospital and cried my eyes out, no matter how friendly the staff was.

But I did love the view from my room. That was all I had to distract me. The tips of tall trees, against the vast sky, displayed an unimaginable variety of colors. The sky was cobalt blue at dawn, and then turned into a light, satin blue later in the morning. It was pure gold at noon, emerging into a rainbow of bright colors right before sunset, ranging from dark orange to dark purple, then changing into gray, which finally gave way to the darkness of night.

I often imagined myself at a huge welcome-home party with all my family and friends at my side. I wished I could go back in time and sit on Grandma’s lap, feel her warmth, and hear her melodic voice making up stories to keep me seated. I imagined myself dressed elaborately in white chiffon next to my husband, passionately in love with me. He did not have a face yet, but I could see a pair of loving eyes smiling at me. Then I dreamed of designing my wedding dress, drawing imaginary lines in the air, choosing the right fabric in my mind, picturing the final result.

Finally I was sent home, but under one condition: I had to be cared for by a trained nurse in a similar environment. The second floor of our house was turned into my nursing headquarters. My bed was in the middle of the main living room, the largest room in the house.

Being at home was almost heavenly compared to being in the hospital. My brothers went to school during the day and came to see me afterward. I still could not watch TV and was dying to find out if Dr. Richard Kimble, in
The Fugitive
, had been captured yet. My brothers and I watched it religiously.
The Fugitive
was our favorite TV series, and I had missed a lot of episodes. I talked to my brothers and promised them that I would not get excited if they briefed me on the story each week, so after every episode, they would sneak into my room and give me the good news that the fugitive was still at large, looking for his wife’s killer, the one-armed man.

Miss Susan, my literature teacher, had told my parents that she would help tutor me and came over every other day. She was beautiful and extremely kind, just like in fairy tales. Her visits gave me the hope of returning to school, though I was told that I would have to repeat the grade the following year. I did not mind. All I wanted was to walk again and to live life to its fullest.

After eight months, I was well enough to get on my feet and was told to take short walks. My cousins came over to take me for my first one, through the alley to my favorite cozy café, Paris, where they served coffee with pastries. I left the house, dragging my feet on the ground and holding on to my cousin’s arms. Everything seemed new to me. It was the same alley, but somehow it looked different—it was that much more beautiful. In fact, I loved everything about life and its creatures at that very moment when I started walking again.

The alley was covered in yellow jasmines, climbing up the brick walls in the spring. The scent of yellow jasmines in my nostrils and the last rays of the sun, glistening through the branches of the trees, made me want to live more than at any other time in my life.

Life becomes meaningful in comparison only. I did not know how lucky I was until I had experienced the sorrow of the hospital.

AFTER I WAS
well on my feet, we went to my Uncle Jalal’s ranch in northern Iran. He was a landowner and merchant who owned acres of cotton fields. Jalal and his family lived in a ranch close to a little town called Bandare-Gaz. His wife, whom we called “Auntie,” was a kind, generous, and pious woman. She wore a scarf around her face in the presence of men. She did not make her daughters do the same. They had nine children, six girls and three boys. My uncle was traveling most of the time; therefore the burden of raising the children in a small town fell on Auntie’s shoulders. The girls were well mannered, fun, giggly, and pure. They were similar to the girls in
Pride and Prejudice
or
Sense and Sensibility
, with the same lifestyle and environment. My brothers and I loved visiting them, and thankfully they loved having us.

Uncle Jalal would pick us up from the train station and take us to the ranch in a big old Chevy. Once there, my brothers would run off with our male cousins and I would immerse myself in my female cousins’ world. We would wake up early and run around the vegetable and herb gardens in the huge backyard. We were free to pick our favorite edibles but had to wash them thoroughly in the cold, luminous water of the valve in the front yard.

Still a tomboy, I loved joining the boys in their activities, which included hanging out by the train tracks. We would place our bodies straight out on the ground, put our heads on the rail, and listen carefully for the whistling sound of the approaching trains, trying to figure out how far off they were.

AUNTIE PROMISED TO
take us to the only movie theater in the town to see a special screening of
Gone With the Wind
, but first we had to visit with her fabric vendor who was coming with fine imported fabrics. Most of them were imported from Russia. The girls and I were all over the fabrics and kept asking the merchant for tips on fashion, as if he worked for
Vogue.

“What is the ‘in’ color this year?”

“What is out of fashion this season?”

The poor vendor had no clue what we were talking about and kept telling us that he didn’t know, all the while assuring us they were the “finest fabrics” and “made for princesses.”

We went to the theater right after he left and were a bit late for the movie; the lights had just gone down. Auntie and Mom sat us in the middle and
Gone With the Wind
started. I had never seen anything like it before. This was definitely larger than life, let alone larger than cinema.

The grandeur of the scenes, elaborately shot, had given birth to an epic, which not only blew my teenage mind away but also stayed with me for years to come.

I was mesmerized by Scarlett’s love, perseverance, self-righteousness, and feistiness. I was puzzled by Ashley’s state of denial and taken by Melanie’s selflessness and endearing qualities. Finally, I was furious at Rhett Butler for being such a heartless, foolish man. (Never mind how my perception of the film has changed throughout the years, to the point where I now see that Scarlett is the heartless and selfish character, and not Rhett, who is truly in love with her.)

Watching it then, in the modest town theater, made a huge impact on me. I realized how much I wanted to become a serious actress. Before I went to sleep that evening, to the sound of chirping crickets, I made a vow. I promised myself that I was going to become an actress, no matter what, and to name my daughter, if I were lucky enough to have one, after Scarlett’s heritage: Tara.

6

Fatima’s Warning

D
espite all the air pollution caused by the newly built factories around town, and despite surveillance of the SAVAK unit looking for student activists, my generation enjoyed what seemed like a period of stability in Iran. Tehran was growing fast. Tall apartment buildings were being erected here and there. The architecture around the city was becoming more eclectic. Georgian mansions would lie next door to scaled-down versions of America’s White House. The new town was being built around the old town. It was hectic to drive. God forbid you didn’t remember how to get to a friend’s place.

YEARS AGO, EVERY
time Nasrin and I wanted to go out and play hopscotch in the alley, Fatima would appear from nowhere, warning us that we should not go out unaccompanied. She said Tehran was not safe, but we didn’t believe her.

“Don’t you understand?” she would say. “Trafficking gangs will cover your heads with potato sacks and will sell you for one Ashrafi [a gold coin] at the gulf and you will never see your homeland or your family again.”

Fatima never forgot the past, but somehow she never allowed her ill-fated destiny to take away her kindness and her love for humanity.

A FRIEND OF
my father’s told him that it would be wise for us teenagers to become familiar with computers, and so my father took me to after-school classes. He thought it would be a good idea for me to start studying computer science and learn typing in order to help me become a doctor. I studied the COBOL programming language and keypunching. I was discovering a new world and its codes. I was enthralled. In retrospect, it felt like watching James Cameron’s
Avatar
for the first time. There was no doubt that computers were the future and working with them would prepare me for my higher education.

The computer classes were held in the late afternoon until the early evening, right after school. I then made the fifteen-minute walk home through the neighborhood at six o’clock, which was sunny and fun during the spring and the summer, but became dark and scary in the winter.

One January evening, I had taken longer to gather my belongings and left the school much later than the others. The school alley was empty when I got out of the building, and everybody was gone. It was dark, and a couple of tall and narrow lampposts were the only source of light.

I was wrapped in heavy winter clothing, and the alley was blanketed in snow. I could barely see ahead, but I kept walking and turned onto the main street when I noticed a car, a Volkswagen, moving slowly near me. I slowed down and kept a keen eye on it. The car stopped, and the man next to the driver got out. I started walking as fast as I could in the heavy snow, but he grabbed my shoulders and held my hands tight behind me. Fighting for my life, I kicked him hard in the crotch with my winter boots. He let go of me and grabbed himself in pain. Then the driver got out, and I shouted “Help!” at the top of my lungs.

The two men were forcing me into their car when I heard a policeman whistling. It was a miracle. He came from out of nowhere and was not even on his post. He just happened to be on his way home. The kidnappers jumped into their car and left me in the middle of the street. The policeman took me home, and when my father saw me with him, he knew something bad had happened. My brothers were furious, and the neighborhood was in shock. Fatima soon learned of the incident and told every single detail to every child in my family, no matter what their age. She said to me, “Shohreh, you are the lucky one.”

My parents were devastated, but there was nothing we could do. My father asked me if I still wanted to go back to school. My brothers were younger than me and took a bus from school straight home and my father worked till late at the ministry, so I had no one to walk me home. I immediately said yes. If there is one thing that I have learned from my father, it is “Success can only be achieved if you overcome fear.”

7