Wedding Song (6 page)

In our house, my grandmother Khanom-bozorg was the head of the household and received the daily spending money from my father early each morning. Baba worked long hours, sometimes not returning home until midnight, and if he had a light day, he went to the movies secretly and alone. My grandmother was dismayed that her daughter-in-law didn’t have the skills to cook; my mother grumbled that she had been washing, cleaning, and ironing all day for my father’s siblings. Not being able to juggle the needs of the two wailing women, Baba abided by the cultural rules of respecting and obeying elders.

At the same time, Morad wanted to separate from my father and open his own business. My father refused. They were to work together to support the rest of the family, my father insisted. Frustrated and resentful, Morad targeted my mother, encouraging my grandmother to be more strict with her. When winter came, my grandmother gave Maman Morad’s tattered coat to wear at home and told my mother to save the one she had brought with her from Hamedan to wear in public to save face.

Desperate and lonely, Maman stole a pencil and a sheet of paper from her sister-in-law and wrote a letter to her great uncle Dr. Sayed, telling him that since he was responsible for her marriage, he needed to help her out of it.

To her mother she wrote, “Please come and take me away or I will die in this foreign land.”

But no response came to these letters or the ones after. Then, one day, many months later, a letter arrived telling her that her husband’s house was her home and that she had no other home. She leaned against the door and cried. She put the letter to her nose to see if any scent of her
mother remained on it, but it smelled like the ink of a scriber in the bazaar. She folded the paper and put it in the pocket of her dress. She read it again when cooking, and her tears, added to the turmeric and the sesame oil, flavored the chicken. My grandmother noticed the letter and asked Maman to read it aloud. Maybe Khanom-bozorg thought the letter contained some gossip from the Jewish community of Hamedan; maybe she hoped it would have regards for her. When my mother refused, she warned my father. He read the letter, threw it in the fire, and demanded the right to check Maman’s mail.

“I submitted to my fate,” my mother told me. “What else could have I done?”

My grandmother was alarmed by my mother’s open unhappiness and watched her movements, so that the community wouldn’t discover the problems in the family. They had to save face. The walls thickened. The doors closed.

My mother’s isolation impacted my life in many ways. I grew up not knowing most of my mother’s relatives, including my maternal grandparents. I had lived in the United States for over twenty years, when I was introduced to some of the relatives on my mother’s side. Once I heard my mother’s brother Avi, who is three years younger than me, talk about his sister being “so nice.”

“Which sister? You mean Maman?” I said, confused.

“No, my other sister, Aziza.”

My mother had a half-sister and no one had ever bothered to tell me. My uncle said that Aziza lived in Los Angeles with her daughter Mohtaram. “Don’t you know Mohtaram, Parveez, Eshagh, Jamsheed, Maheen, and Farzaneh, her children, your cousins?” he asked.

I felt empty. During my childhood and teen years, I had felt sorry for myself that I did not have a
khaleh
, a maternal aunt. My friends felt sorry for me as well, a sorrow laced with a touch of grandiosity. “You don’t have a
khaleh
, what a pity!” A good friend told me as she slapped her cheeks with both hands.
Khaleh
s, she told me, were much better than
ameh
s, the paternal aunts, because they loved their sisters’ children and spoiled them.

I wanted to be spoiled too, to have someone to run away to from time
to time. I was angry that my mother had six brothers but no sisters. Now, after so many years, Avi informed me that I had a large family that no one had bothered to tell me about. I had been to Los Angeles the month before and, as I found out later, just ten minutes away, not knowing about their existence.

My mother’s sister
.

When I made arrangements for my next trip to Los Angeles, visiting my
khaleh
was my top priority. I called her from Norfolk to introduce myself and to tell her that I would like to visit. Her daughter Mohtaram picked up the phone. Their phones, I learned later, were connected so she could monitor her mother’s calls. She was delighted and gave me directions to her apartment and the promise to take me over to my aunt’s.

I couldn’t find the steps to her second-floor apartment and instead rode the dilapidated elevator, trying not to panic in the enclosed cubicle. The walls closed in on me, and I felt my breakfast of soft cheese and walnuts coming up in my throat as I smelled foreign spices aged to a noxious odor that clung to the walls and the tattered carpeting. I leaned against the metal structure and tried to control my breathing. I have never liked confined spaces; they rot the living.

The elevator stopped with a jolt. The doors opened, and the smell of Iranian, Indian, Afghani, and Israeli foods floated freely in the breeze down the corridors, aromatic, pungent, mouth-watering.

Wearing a long dress and carefully applied makeup, I hesitated for a minute outside Mohtaram’s apartment before I knocked. The door opened a crack, and a woman in her sixties with short, teased hair dyed a reddish-yellow took a peek through the opening. She looked at me with surprised and questioning eyes. I wondered if I was in the wrong place.

“Farideh,” I introduced myself. “Mohtaram
khanom?
”

Her eyes lit up; her body relaxed. “O, my God! I can’t believe Rouhi’s daughter is here. I can’t believe it.” She kissed me on both cheeks. “May I be sacrificed for you. Your steps should be on my eyes. You don’t know how happy I am to see you.”

She asked me to sit in an ornate, imitation French-antique armchair with a matching sofa and dining room chairs covered with heavy plastic. The oversized furniture overwhelmed the tiny apartment. She asked me what I would prefer to drink, sour cherry or quince drink.

“Just water, please.” My tongue felt woolly.

She brought me all of them and trays of fruit too. I chewed a piece of watermelon and let it sit on my tongue for a few seconds before swallowing it as I scanned the walls covered with family pictures like so many other Iranian homes I had visited. In Iran, her family would have lived with Mohtaram or nearby. Now in Los Angeles she could keep her children and grandchildren with her as photographs hung on every centimeter of the walls. Mohtaram explained that the separation was because of all the traffic, because of the long distances across the highways, and because of their busy schedules that kept them away.

The clocks run faster in America, I knew.

I pulled out pictures of my children and husband for Mohtaram to see.

“
Mashalah
, what wonders God has fashioned. What beautiful girls!” Her eyes opened wide as she covered her mouth with delight.

I showed her pictures of my brothers’ weddings in Philadelphia, my sister’s family in Washington, my youngest sister in Israel. I was trying to make up for lost time. I handed her a picture of my mother, taken two years earlier in Israel.

“Is this Rouhi
khanom?
” She stared at my mother’s picture.

Maman was in her house dress, her hair matted, a big smile on her face.

“Her beauty is gone,” she said, “such a pity.”

I resented that she noticed the aging, the burden of life on my mother.

“Your mother was the most stunningly gorgeous girl. She was taken to the hairdresser before her wedding to curl her hair, which framed her face and hung around her shoulders and back in long tubes. She was so beautiful!” Mohtaram said enviously.

My mother had natural curls. Imagining her with a Shirley Temple hairdo, I wondered why they gave her a perm. I remembered the burn on the right side of my mother’s head, next to her ear, where the hair stylist had left the hot iron for too long.

“She was a child,” I mumbled, not knowing why. Mohtaram knew how young my mother was married off. I didn’t need to remind her.

“You know your aunt Aziza wouldn’t speak with her father Agha for the longest time?”

“No. Did they have a fight?”

“Aziza was angry at her father for marrying such a young girl after her mother passed away. People think she was mad at Touran
khanom
, your grandmother. That’s not true. She would yell at Agha, “Why did you have to ruin the life of such a young girl?’”

I was surprised. My grandfather needed company. It wasn’t so unusual for a man to remarry after his wife died. Mohtaram seemed to read my thoughts.

“You know, my dear, he had no money. Why did he marry a fifteen-year-old, then give her seven kids he could not feed? Your grandmother had to work every day to provide for the family. See what happened? She had to give your mother away as a child because she was overwhelmed. Your grandmother—may God remember her in favor—was a good, hardworking woman.”

Mohtaram’s saliva gathered around her mouth and sprayed in an almost invisible mist seen only through the sunlight coming from the patio door. I wanted to know more about my mother.

“Mohtaram
khanom
, do you remember my mom in Iran? Do you know how her life was?”

“Some things are better not known.” She shook her head.

I didn’t insist.

Mohtaram brought out her photo albums decorated with Iranian scenery, the open spaces around Band-e Amir, an ancient dam over River Kor, in gold and enamel. The pages were stuck together, the pictures yellow,
their borders crumbled from absorbing the glue that kept them in place. She showed me pictures of cousins, aunts, and uncles whom I didn’t know. I touched their faces, trying to recapture the weddings and family gatherings that I had missed. I felt like a stranger.

“Can we go see my aunt now?” I hoped for a connection there; maybe if we touched, our bond would reveal itself through the shared blood.

I was anxious on the short walk to my aunt’s house. Her door was ajar and a long security chain held it together, which Mohtaram reached to unlock. The chain didn’t provide security. My cousin noticed my perplexity.

“I have no choice but to lock her in. She walks out, gets confused, and goes to other people’s apartments. I come and check on her every day. I bring her food. Sometimes I take her to my place for lunch. Two nights a week, I sleep here. The others come and visit every Wednesday. She is lonely, I know, but what can I do? In Iran, family was always around. Here, we struggle. Who knew this would be our fate, living in
ghorbat
, away from home in our old age.”

Frustrated with the chain, I helped her open the door. An old woman stood bent over next to a sofa covered with a beige fabric to keep it clean.

“It’s burning.” She pushed on her lower abdomen. “It hurts.”

“It’s okay,” Mohtaram reassured her. “Your acid is high. I have been trying to get hold of your doctor. This is Rouhi’s daughter. She has come a long way to see you.”

Aziza looked at me from underneath her thick glasses, and I didn’t know how to react. Then she burst out into a deep cry, reaching with both hands for me. I took a big step and held her tight, crying myself. She smelled old and medicinal. Her grasp was tight and her bony hands didn’t let go of me for a long time. Her shriveled frame was hidden in my embrace, her head rested on my chest, and I felt the wetness of her tears through my dress mixing with my own perspiration in the hot room. I caressed her disheveled hair, white and coarse, sweaty from the exertion of her slightest moves. My tears fell on her scalp, which showed through the thin silver fuzz. I bent over and kissed her on both cheeks, and she kissed me back. Her face rubbed against mine, wet and soft, and tickled me with a few old-age hairs growing on her chin.

Between the sobs she repeated, “I can’t believe I am seeing Rouhi’s daughter. I can’t believe.” Her accent was unfamiliar.

“Sit down Aziza
khanom
,” I told her, not sure of what to call her, not
daring to call her
khaleh
. An aunt is more than a physical being; she is a relationship, but I was seeing mine for the very first time at age forty-five, when she was ninety years old and forgetful. She sat on the edge of the sofa with her hands folded on her lap. Her bare feet on the carpet, the toe-nails thick, yellow, and cracked, piggybacked on each other like a row of fallen dominos.

“I have some pictures for you,” I told Aziza as I sat next to her. I showed her my daughters’ pictures, and she sobbed some more. I gave her pictures of my mother, grandmother, and grandfather. She was confused.

Mohtaram explained it to her again. “This is a picture of Touran, Rouhi’s mother.”

“Is Touran here?”

“No,” I said, “in the picture.” I didn’t tell her that my grandmother had been dead for a long time. I pulled out old pictures of my maternal grandmother holding my youngest uncle at the time, with my twelve-year-old mother standing next to her. As I expected, she recognized them; they were frozen in time, as she had last seen them. Then I showed her a recent picture and told her that this was my mother today. The light came back in Aziza’s eyes.