The Good Daughter: A Memoir of My Mother's Hidden Life (7 page)

Two

Aroos
(The Bride)

“I was eleven years old when he chose me.”

So far my mother’s voice on the tapes had remained steady, but here the story came out like an unbroken cry. Even after fifty years, when she spoke of Kazem it was in a voice so unlike her usual voice—so choked and yielding—that it didn’t seem to belong to her at all.

D
RESSED IN HER DARK
gray pinafore, a pair of white satin ribbons braided through her pigtails, Lili would have been too busy chatting with her girlfriends to notice the man who came every morning and stood watching her from the street across from the School of Virtue. But he came every day for several weeks, always arriving at the exact hour that the girls lined up outside the gates of the school. He wore a fedora (dove gray felt with a black band), smoked a cigarette or two, and watched Lili until she passed through the gates and disappeared into the schoolyard.

She will be my bride
, he decided at last, and set off toward home and the woman who could make it so.

The year was 1949 and Kazem Khorrami, the eldest son of an upper-middle-class businessman and his schoolmistress wife, was twenty-six years old. Like my grandfather Sohrab, the members of Kazem’s household were partial to Western ways and fashioned themselves accordingly. The women of his family had not worn veils for many years, and the men had long since abandoned their tunics
and turbans in favor of European-style jackets, ties, and hats. The Khorrami family was headed by Kazem’s maternal grandmother, whom they all called Ma Mère—this despite the fact that none of them spoke more than ten words of French, including Ma Mère herself.

But the pull of tradition could be felt even in the chic and modern quarters ruled by Kazem’s grandmother. For years she had been anxious that Kazem take a wife and start his own family. A parade of suitable candidates appeared in the Khorrami compound, the length of their skirts shorter with each passing year. Kazem had warmed at once to their attentions. He’d even chosen several girlfriends from among Ma Mère’s offerings, some of them quite pretty and from good families. But in the end he’d refused every one, insisting on finding his own wife and doing so only in his own time.

When at last he could no longer quiet his grandmother’s pleas, Kazem looked past the permed and perfumed ladies of his own circle and told his Ma Mère to fetch him an eleven-year-old girl from a tribe of
chadoris.

Long before Kazem first saw Lili, Reza Shah had also trained his eyes on the girls of Iran. Soon after he’d been hustled into power by the English and Russians in the early twenties, the shah had put in place a series of laws intended to catapult Iran simultaneously into the modern age and away from foreign influence. Over the next twenty years Reza Shah would go so far as to outlaw the photographing of camels, those timeworn symbols of Oriental backwardness, and to all but defrock the country’s mullahs. But the most contentious of his laws and edicts would concern the women and girls of the kingdom.

Reza Shah would not be the last of Iran’s rulers for whom engineering his country’s future meant remaking its women, nor would
he be the last to meet resistance on this front, but he’d done much to enflame the battle by outlawing the veil in 1936. That year veiled women were summarily banned from schools, cinemas, and public baths. Bus and taxi drivers were ordered to refuse them passage. When soldiers began tearing veils from women’s bodies that year, cursing and beating even elderly matrons who persisted in stepping out in their chadors, many claimed that Reza Shah was keen to fill every street and alley of the country with whores. Until mandatory unveiling laws were eased some years later under the shah’s son and successor, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, this contingent would respond to the royal edict by keeping their women and daughters behind the walls of their homes, and in some quarters of the city it was not unknown for unveiled women to meet with curses, threats, or even a shower of stones.

Khanoom and Lili’s aunts were exceedingly religious and by their own choice never went out at all once the shah outlawed the veil, but until the age of eleven Lili’s upbringing had fulfilled the king’s vision for modernizing Iran’s girls. This was because Sohrab expected no less than a proper Western-style education for both his children—his daughter as well as his son. He’d simply waved away Khanoom’s warnings and pleas, and with that Lili had become the first girl of her family to pass her tenth birthday without donning a head scarf and also the first one to be sent to school.

About this no one, except for Lili herself, would be as pleased as Kobra. Limited as Kobra’s own schooling had been, it still set her apart from most women of their circle, and she would always take special pride in her daughter’s education.

But when the first suitor came for Lili, Sohrab’s attentions had been thoroughly diverted to Simin, the blue-eyed mistress with whom he’d recently set up house in a new uptown apartment. Sohrab was now sending Khanoom a fairly regular monthly allowance and he still made regular trips back to Avenue Moniriyeh to check up on Nader
and Lili, yet his new living arrangements had left his mother, stepmothers, and aunts not only pained but also baffled. Reza Shah had instituted civil marriage, but it was still against the law for a man to live with a woman without at least performing a
siqeh
, a temporary Muslim marriage ceremony. Khanoom and the others guessed that Sohrab would not have had any use for such customs, and the situation had the women of the house sick with worry. Lili’s aunt Zaynab had met Simin once when she’d gone to call on Sohrab at his new uptown apartment and she’d rushed back to tell Khanoom and the others about Simin’s light blue eyes, high cheekbones, and splendid figure. It was the same woman Lili had met that summer she’d spent with Sohrab in the countryside, but Lili chose to keep this to herself. The woman had bewitched him, Khanoom and Lili’s aunts decided, and for that there was no known cure.

In any case, when word reached Sohrab that a suitor had appeared for Lili at Khanoom’s house, he extended no advice whatsoever. Khanoom interpreted his silence as a decision to allow the girl’s destiny to unfold as it would, and in this way Lili’s future fell into the hands of the family elders, her grandmother and two spinster aunts. Better that Lili should be married, they concurred, than for the girl to go bareheaded another year toward God-knew-what was waiting for her in the streets.

“We have guests today,” Kobra announced one morning as she placed the
nooneh sangak
(flatbread) and fig jam on the breakfast table and set about tightening the ribbons of Lili’s braids.

A messenger had come with the news earlier that week: the Khorramis wished to visit with the family on Wednesday afternoon. The young miss of the house should be in attendance at their arrival. Khanoom had divined their purpose at once, and all the next week she had
busied herself in the front parlor, polishing her teacups and her finest brass trays and dessert bowls in preparation for the Khorramis’ visit.

When considering how to best broach the subject to her granddaughter, however, Khanoom did not think it necessary to elaborate on the purpose of the appointment. No need to frighten the girl. What would she know of marriage, anyway? Khanoom thought it sufficient to tell Lili that she should not linger after school but come home straightaway to serve the afternoon tea.

They came as a group, all women. Five or six together. The oldest woman of the party, Kazem’s Ma Mère, appeared dressed in a flowing white dress cinched at her ample waist. Her hair, completely white, had been assembled into a chignon, and the white scarf at her throat was secured with a large rhinestone clip. The youngest guest to appear that day was a girl of sixteen or seventeen. In her gingham dress she seemed too shy and awkward to be a married woman, but she was introduced as their
aroos
, the new bride of a cousin.

“
Masha Allah!
Praise God!” cried Ma Mère when Lili entered the parlor with the tray of tea and sweets. “How pretty you are! Come here to me, child!”

Lili searched the room for Khanoom, and when she saw her grandmother nod and smile at her she took a seat next to the visitor.

“Do you braid your own hair?” Ma Mère asked, fingering the tails of Lili’s braids.

“Yes—except after it’s been washed,” Lili answered. “On those days Khanoom-
joon
or my cousin Soudabeh braids it for me.”

Ma Mère nodded and considered Lili’s hair a moment longer. From across the parlor, Khanoom cleared her throat. “She hasn’t learned to cook yet,” she ventured.

“But my dear lady!” Ma Mère protested. “We have a band of cooks and servants for such things!”

“Her father…,” Zaynab began.

“Yes?”

“Her father will want her to continue her studies.”

“Of course she may continue her studies,” Ma Mère replied with a smile. “We would want nothing else for her ourselves.” She turned to Lili and gestured for her to come closer. “But let’s have a look at your teeth now, my dear girl.”

Lili opened her mouth slightly, and with that the woman stuck two of her fingers inside in order to make a more thorough inspection.

At last Ma Mère returned her hands to her lap. “And your feet.”

Ah, a game
, thought Lili, and drew her toes out of her house slippers. When she looked up, she saw that the old woman’s brows were now knit in contemplation. Even though Lili was just eleven, her feet were already the size of a grown woman’s and larger than was thought desirable in those years.

“We will give you notice,” Ma Mère announced at the end of the visit, and then shot Lili one last look.

“Who were they?” Lili asked when the visitors had left Khanoom’s house that afternoon.

“Guests of your father’s,” Khanoom replied. She said nothing more, but later, when she performed her final
namaz
of the day, she would prostrate herself over her Koran, press her forehead to the cold, gray holy stone, and pray that the party had found in Lili an acceptable match for their son.

One day passed. Then two and three. By the fourth day, Khanoom, knowing as she did that a long interval of silence was customary, had not yet lost her hope or her good cheer, but Lili herself had grown quite anxious. Had the visitors not thought her pretty? For this, principally, seemed the question afoot, the reason for the afternoon’s game.

Whenever she saw that Khanoom was busy in the kitchen, Lili slipped away to Kobra’s bedroom and studied herself in the small
handheld mirror that belonged to her mother. She bore a striking resemblance to Sohrab and had always been much fussed over for this reason. She had his almond-shaped black eyes, full lips, and fair skin. She had two fetching dimples and her hair was a deep chestnut, a shade that is lovingly, if fancifully, described as
talayee
or golden in Iran. She was, she knew, uncommonly pretty.

Lili considered her reflection many times and concluded that the problem had something to do with the big feet that her aunts claimed she’d inherited from Kobra’s family.

But ten days later the word finally came. The Khorramis had accepted Lili. She would be a bride. An
aroos
.

“
Che shansi!
” one of her aunts exclaimed. “What luck! A suitor!” A second aunt hauled out the
tonbak
(a goblet drum) and began playing a wedding song. Many
mobaraks
went round the house, followed by a chorus of ululations.

“We must sweeten our tongues!” Khanoom exclaimed.

When a chickpea cookie was pressed into her hand, Lili began to think of the lovely brides she’d often seen being led through the streets and the musicians and singers following in their wake. She popped the cookie into her mouth and then, imagining herself as an
aroos
in her very own pretty house and pretty, grown-up clothes, she smiled.

Meanwhile, Kobra seethed. She pursed her lips and thought of Sohrab and his blue-eyed whore across town. It had been at Sohrab’s insistence that Lili go round without a veil or even a flowered kerchief to cover her hair. Kobra was sure that no suitor would have come for several more years if her daughter’s head had been covered. And it was a sorry match; Kobra was certain of it. Although as a family the Khorramis were wealthy, Kazem himself earned only a modest salary and owned no house of his own. What security would Lili find in such a husband? But on the matter of Lili’s marriage, Khanoom and Lili’s aunts would have no less deferred to Kobra than
to their servants, and all that was left for Kobra was to curse her own lot and set about accepting her daughter’s destiny.

In the next few weeks the household launched itself into preparations for the
khastegari
, the day when Kazem’s family would appear to formally ask for Lili’s hand. There was a good deal of debate about whether the girl herself should be in attendance and, if yes, whether she should appear with or without her hair covered. In the end it was decided that she should appear briefly to serve the first tea of the afternoon and that she should be wearing a pink scarf over her head. This wisp of chiffon would not only preserve the solemnity of the occasion but have the further advantage of calling up the pretty pink blush of Lili’s cheeks.