Persian Girls: A Memoir Read Online Free Page A

comfortable with one another, shared the kitchen, the courtyard with its rectangular pool. They used the pool’s faucet for ablutions before their prayers.
    We sat on a sofreh spread on the rug on the ground. It was a pleasant spring day. The air was filled with the fragrance of flowers, mingling with the scent of spices—saffron, turmeric—used in the food.
    They bought the ingredients for the food mainly from vendors passing through the alley, carrying their merchandise on round wooden trays on their heads. They called to people, “Come and quench your thirst with the best ruby red pomegranate juice.” “Come and taste the biggest and freshest figs with red flesh inside.” “Come and see the freshest and tastiest herbs you can imagine.”
    They prepared everything from scratch. They stripped the wheat, then crushed the grains between the two round, heavy stones of a grinder. With the flour, they made pastries and cakes. They made their own pickles, a variety of them, and their own vinegar. They ordered specific cuts of meat for khoresh es and kabab s from the butcher on Khanat Abad, who was known for being meticulous in observing the halal rules on slaughtering animals. The women loved the cooperative creation of the food, which came out differently each time.
    As we ate, the three of them focused on me; Hamideh’s two daughters were married and on their own, and Ezat Sadaat, like Maryam, was unable to get pregnant. They said they hoped I would have many children when I grew up, as having children was a woman’s best fortune.
    I was happy in the company of my aunt and the other women. But as the day wore on and I could hear the hooting of an owl on the eaves, my heart beat with sadness, thinking of the shrouds they had been preparing earlier in the day.
    Since there were no phone lines in Maryam’s neighborhood, people just dropped in. A rap on the door with the bronze lion-head knocker meant visitors, including my other aunts and their children, who stayed for lunch or for tea and pastries. The house became vibrant with the women’s conversation, stories exchanged, while we children ran around the courtyard, chased the butterflies, or played hide-and-seek. My cousins often stayed the night, as I sometimes stayed in their homes. We went to the roof and our male cousins helped us fly kites. In the evenings the sky was filled with kites of various shapes that neighborhood children flew, some tangling with one another.
    Monthly, my aunts and neighborhood women came in to hear the aghound s whom Maryam invited to her house to give sermons. For the occasion she covered the walls of the living room with black cloth and set out an armchair for the aghound s to sit on. The aghound s came one after another and their sermons mainly revolved around various events related to the Imams’ martyrdom. The women sat on the rug, leaning against cushions. They cried at the suffering of the Imams, which the aghound s recounted in great detail and in dramatic tones. After Maryam paid the aghound s and they left, the women let their chadors slip down. Maryam served them tea from a large samovar, with a teapot on top of it, standing in the corner of the room, and as they drank they talked.
    The women, like the aghound s, talked about the events that happened nearly fifteen hundred years ago as if they had just taken place. They spoke of Prophet Mohammad and Ali and Yazid, and Umar, their differences, degrees of justice and generosity. They referred to Ali, Mohammad’s son-in-law, who they believed should have succeeded Mohammad (an issue that divided them from the Sunnis, who didn’t). They condemned Umar, the caliph who succeeded Mohammad instead.
    I didn’t miss the presence of a father. Other girls rarely had real relationships with their fathers and almost never spoke about them. Fathers were distant figures in the lives of Iranian girls—except when it came to rules and punishment.
    Tehran streets were filled with adventures