The Shipwrecked (22 page)

You look at the man and try to reciprocate by a smile. He is still looking at you approvingly. You are aware of a woman, young and attractive, sitting on the bench nearby. She is smiling at you. At you or your adventure?

“I don't know what he is trying to say,” you address her, trying to sound exasperated by the encounter.

“Be careful, lady,” she responds. “They're a gang.”

“A gang?” you utter in disbelief.

She is wearing a pink silken headscarf that charmingly frames her attractive face. She shakes her head authoritatively.

“You see,” she answers. “As one of them distracts you, another one snatches your purse.”

You are loathe to believe it. The man is still standing there, but he makes no more gestures. He looks alarmed. The woman smiles, revealing a perfect set of white teeth.

“Look, take out your cell phone,” she whispers, “and say you are calling 110,
⁴
Then watch what he does.”

Involuntarily, you produce the cell phone from your handbag. Loudly enough for the man to hear, she says: “Call 110.” The man turns around and walks toward the street.

The woman points to a motorcycle parked at the curb. “He's going to get on that cycle,” she says. You watch as the man jumps on the motorcycle and speeds off.

You lean back on the bench. Now you are aware of the intense heat, traffic noise, and the screeching children on the jungle gym. Perspiration runs down your face. You slip the cell phone back in your handbag and take out a pack of cigarettes. And the lighter? There is no lighter.

“I'm a smoker, too,” says the woman, “but I leave my cigarettes and lighters at home when I come here.”

You ask some passersby. They don't have lighters either.

“I'm sure you can find one in that little shop,” the woman suggests.

The shop is at the end of the park. You must carry yourself on worn-out legs for fifty yards or more to get to it. Right there at the presence of male customers, you light your cigarette, indifferent to their gaze. Slowly you return to the woman on the bench and she welcomes you with a sweet smile. You feel at ease sitting next to her.

You draw heavily on the cigarette, and light another one with it after three or four puffs.

Weary of the noise, heavy traffic, and polluted air, you remark, “How everything has changed!”

“Things change almost every second,” she says.

“In those days this street was filled with trees.”

“There are no more trees left. It's all concrete, traffic,” she says. “And all sorts of gangs,” she adds, as an afterthought.

You cast a glance at the traffic-choked street and remember the days when it was crowded with pedestrians. You think that you are not like a barrel but a ladder, a ladder many used to climb up to luxury stores, to a sound and safe seat, and well-stocked bank accounts.

“Do you always smoke so much?” the woman asks, with a note of concern in her voice.

“Only when I think of the past,” you answer.

“Memories?” She says. In her big, bright eyes you
notice a shimmering of tears. You are afraid they may flow down her cheeks.

“But you are not that old to remember those days.”

“We all have memories of this town,” she says, a touch of melancholy in her voice.

“But memories differ from person to person.”

“That's right. I was a child during the bombardments,”
⁵
she says, staring into the distance.

“It wasn't only bombardment,” you interject.

“Yes, I know,” she concedes. “It was an internal battle. All that street fighting.”

“One thing is sure—there was more security in those days,” you assert. “We don't have that anymore.”

“Yes!” she agrees emphatically. “For a while now I've stopped taking a handbag with me when I am out and about. I just carry my keys and cell phone in my pockets.”

She then looks at the children playing in the park. Something like a spark glimmers in her eyes. “We must watch out for them especially,” she says.

In a pleasantly soft voice, she recounts some stories she knows about this town: solitary women who have been assaulted and robbed, children who have been kidnapped, young people who have become drug addicts.

You are thirsty. Very thirsty. You wish you were floating in a pool of ice water for relief from this cursed heat burning up your body, your brain. You touch the woman on the shoulder.

“I'm so thirsty. What would you like to drink?”

She lifts her face to look at you. You notice her prominent cheek bones and long eyelashes almost touching her eyebrows.

“I shouldn't trouble you . . .” she says as she makes an attempt to rise. You respond with pressing down on her shoulder and walk toward the shop. Gradually, her soft voice, and her winsome smile replace the noises and the heavy traffic.

So the world isn't all ugliness and smog, you decide. It is still possible to sip on some refreshment with a stranger and enjoy her company.

She takes a sip from her drink with some relish. You ask, “Do you come here often?”

“As often as I can, usually early in the morning, while the air is still fresh,” she answers.

Her cell phone rings. She produces it from her coat pocket and lifts it to her ear in one continuous, graceful motion.

“Hello? . . . Hello? . . . Hello? . . .” She speaks into the mouthpiece. “I got cut off,” she tells you, shrugging her shoulders.

You feel an urge to ask for her phone number, chat with her over dinner at a small restaurant nearby.

“It hit the spot,” she says, referring to the bottle of soda, which she places on the ground near the bench.

Her cell phone rings again. Again, she is unable to keep a connection. She turns to you smiling, disarmingly, alluringly.

“Do you live alone?” you ask, somewhat concerned that you may have been too nosy.

“Yes, if the gentlemen let me,” she responds. You both laugh at the implications of the rejoinder.

You exchange addresses and phone numbers. You enter hers in your cell phone.

The beginning of a friendship, you tell yourself. This calls for a celebration with couple of sodas, later dinner in a restaurant, and then, who knows? Perhaps an invitation to her house?

You have been waiting for five minutes or so at the shop for your turn to get couple of sodas. Now you get the bottles and pay for them with the loose change in your pocket. From the distance you see no one on the bench. You hurry back, holding a bottle in each hand. You look around, hopefully, expectantly. No one in sight, no one.

You reach in your handbag for your cell phone to call her.

No cell phone.

No wallet.

No ID card.

You have been robbed.

MONIRU RAVANIPOUR
is one of the most prominent writers of postrevolutionary Iran. She is the author of several distinguished novels, including
Heart of Steel
,
Gypsy by Fire
, and
The Drowned
. Her collections of short stories,
Kanizu
and
Satan's Stone
, were translated and published in the United States. A former Brown University fellow at the International Writers Project, Ravanipour now lives in Las Vegas and is affiliated with the Black Mountain Institute at the University of Nevada.

¹
The historic tree-lined Pahlavi Avenue was renamed after the 1979 revolution in honor of secular, democratically elected prime minister Mossadegh, but with shifting political fortune, it is now called Vali Asr, a reference to the twelfth Shia Imam.

²
Shapour Bakhtyar (1914–1991), the last prime minister of the Shah's regime. He was murdered in Paris by the elements of the current rulers of Iran.

³
Abolhassan Bani-Sadr (b. 1933), the first president of the Islamic Republic. He had a falling out with the dominant figures of the regime and was impeached in 1981. He had to skip the country to avoid execution. Currently he lives in exile in Europe.

⁴
The Iranian equivalent to 911 service in the United States.

⁵
A reference to the Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988).

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I WOULD LIKE
to thank the Feminist Press, and Gloria Jacobs, the former executive director of the press, as the sources of inspiration and support for this project. Special thanks to my friends in Iran, who helped collect many short stories for consideration in this volume. I am grateful to Faridoun Farrokh and Sara Khalili for their excellent translations, and the invaluable help and spirit of cooperation they brought to this project. My special thanks and gratitude to all of the writers in this collection. I am particularly grateful to Moniru Ravanipour for her excellent guidance on the translation of her short stories. I express my deepest gratitude and appreciation to all involved.

ABOUT THE EDITOR

Fereshteh Nouraie-Simone
is a historian and professor at American University School of International Service. She is the editor of
On Shifting Ground: Muslim Women in the Global Era
.

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