walk past the playground on mv wav to down— / town Tucson, I overhear
two girls teasing a third: Jake and Ella sitting in iris KISSING First
comes love, then comes marriage, thm comes a baby in a baby carriage!
Curious, I stop mid-stride and turn my attention to Ella, the redheaded
girl getting teased. She looks forward to falling in love; I can see it
by the coyness in the smile on her freckled nine-year-old face. I shake
my head in wonder, in open-mouthed awe. I think, as I so often do: This
would never happen in lean. None of it. Nine-year-old girls in Iran do
not shout glee-fully on playgrounds, in public view of passersby. They
do not draw attention to themselves; they do not go to school with boys.
They do not swing their long red hair and expect with Ella’s certainty
that romantic love is in their future. And they do not, not, not sing of
sitting in trees with boys, kissing, and producing bake, In rl,. Wain,
Iran, them is nothing innocent be a moment such .„-‘,1!)i And so I
quickly lift the Pent. K1000 that ha, , my neck and snap a series of
pictures. This is what I hr,;1/4 myon, range lens: Front teeth only h;
capture with . grown in. Ponytails. Bony knees. Plaid skirts, shot.,
plan skirts. That neon-pink Band-Aid on Ella ‘s bare arm. I blue out the
boys in the background and keep my fc.eos only on these girls and the
way their white socks fold down to their ankles. The easiness of their
smiles. They are so unburdened, these girls, so fortunate as to take
thee good fortune for granted. Ella sees me taking pictures and nudges
the others, so lower my camera, wave to them, and give them my biggest,
best pretty-lady smile, one I know from experience causes people to
smile back. And sure enough, they do. I wave one last time and then I
walk on. I am changed already, from just this little moment. These
fearless girls have entranced Me. and I know that when I study my
photographs of these recess girls. I will look for clues as to what sort
of women they will become. I hope they find romantic love. And
passionate kisses, and men who look at them with eyes that see all the
way into their souls. Then I know they will be happy, and I know they
will be whole. First comes love, then comes marriage. A childhood chant,
a cultural expectation. Americans believe in falling in love with every
fiber of their being. They believe it is their birthright; certainly,
that it is a prerequisite for marriage. This is not so where I was
raised. In the Islamic Republic of Iran, marriages are often still
negotiated between families with a somewhat business degree. I did. dale
Marriage by seeking ay./a*: It isn’t that Iranian men necessarily make
bad husband.. Like rn, dear father. many are kind and gentle and
interested in their wives its people. not just and of their children.
Then again, some are not. There are family teas. ift-givi,, and dinners,
but a woman often spends no time alone with her fiance before her
wedding. So it is. as one might say in America, a crapshciot. A woman
goes into her husband’s shroud, in death. family in a white gown and she
leaves it only in a white That is our culture. And that is our future,
inescapable for most girls. Inescapable. it had begun to seer, even for
me. On the occasion of my twenty-seventh birthday, my par-ents hosted a
celebration dinner for me in their he north Tehran apartment. We
typically do not celebrate birthdays in a large fashion, but it had been
a troublesome time for me and they hoped to bring or happiness. In only
my fourth year of teaching, I’d recently resigned my position, against
the advice of my parents. And this after I’d dreamed so long of being a
teacher, a teacher of young girls. Increasingly since I’d begun, I
suffered stabbing headaches, murderous stom-achaches. My constitution
simply wasn’t strong enough to bear the demands of being a teacher of
young girls in a reli-gious regime. Once I resigned, my physical
ailments diminished, but so did my world. I rarely left home; the
streets were hostile and I had no destination, no dreams, to carry me
forward. Not Yet twenty-seven, I felt the weariness of someone who’d
lived one hundred joyless years. I fell into a horrible depression. like
quality. In most modern fami-lies, girls have some say in the matter.
They can discourage they gathered together ?v.d for birthday
celebration, all the people they knew could me Vinu and Leila, my dear
friend `. laugh’ There were ‘ my way througho’firiad.”.R university
with whom I’d giggled concerts. There were IvIecihr,set important, Ali
maiyedfaiithee:.’„ ,,braortmheornia,n,d,hh:ellieendansh;p with my
parents wasciteetn,ques AG Agha hired my father as an engineer way able.
The roots of their friendship ran long and tionably the stroke of grace
that made their livbeascikn wIrhane,benaer: many would consider hiring
him because of his Western ways, and Ali Agha had guarded my father’s
job ever since, Besides that, we vacationed with them and celebrated
holi-days with them and treated them as if they were our 0, family. They
had one adored son, Reza, twelve years older than me. He’d been living
in London for a long time, although Homa Khanoum kept me apprised of his
doings. “You know, Agha Reza returns from London next month,” she
announced on this night as we gathered around a sofreh in our dining
room and ate a celebration dinner of lamb kebab and saffron rice. “He
has accepted a job at the Free University and is ready to settle down
and be married. A professor, you know.” I felt Minu and Leila’s eyes on
me, but I averted my gaze from them and smiled politely at Homa Khanoum.
I tried to hide my heavy heart, tried to suppress the instant
realization that this, then, is how it would happen. I no longer had to
lo other marriage wonder. I was cocooned in rny father’s house with no
job and Fhe were the’ prospects. My parents loved Agha Reza as n. own
son.
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