What The Doves Said: The Shenaas-Nameh Book Three By Mojdeh Marashi Copyright 2011 Mojdeh Marashi Published by Mojdeh Marashi at Smashwords Third Story In "What The Doves Said" Series This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. TABLE OF CONTENTS What The Doves Said The Shenaas-Nameh Notes About The Author The Shenaas-Nameh My mom is shuffling the contents of one of the drawers in the kitchen. She is wearing a beautiful green blouse, her favorite color. Her hair, naturally wavy, is cut short framing her face, and her glasses are sliding down a bit. She looks like when she was in her early sixties and I was still living at home. “Hi Mom. What are you looking for?” “Tape, scotch tape. I thought I had seen a roll here,” she says without looking up. “Sure, there is one there. It might have moved to the back of the drawer. What do you need tape for?” “My Shenaas-Nameh. It is falling apart.” “Oh, I wanted to keep it as is. The way you left it.” “But I meant to glue it together,” she says as she picks her head up, adjusts her glass, and looks at me from behind the thick glasses, which make her beautiful brown eyes bigger. “Mom, it’s fine as is. Let’s just leave it. It won’t fall apart. I promise.” “All right. Whatever you say,” Mom says and disappears softly. Mom comes and goes as she pleases. Sometimes it feels as if I have control over her appearance since she usually comes whenever I think of her or call her name. But I am not able to stop her from leaving. It seems like she leaves as soon as she feels her work is done. I pour a glass of water for myself and go back upstairs to Mom's Shenaas-Nameh. Mom’s Shenaas-Nameh finally arrived this morning, all the way from Tehran, half a globe away, via a friend of a friend - a humble proof that my mother was here, in this world. It is a small booklet, roughly the size of a hand, with only a handful of pages. Mom has it protected by a ready-made brown plastic cover that is starting to tear along the binding. The Shenaas-Nameh is a document similar to the social security card we have in the States, except it records much more than just one's birth date, yet it does not entitle the owner to any benefits. On the first page of Mom's Shenaas-Nameh, expired now since she has passed away, I read her given name out loud the way she used to read it: Ashraf-o-Sadat Sadat-e Marashi. There was so much pride inherent in her annunciation of the first and last name, both included the word “Sadat,” proof of her lineage to the Second Imam of the Shiites – the Muslim minority who make up the vast majority of Muslims in Iran; and more importantly, for the family name “Marashi,” traceable over 900 years back in Persian history, the name that made her who she was, and I who I am today. Next, on the first page of the document, is a place for the names of Mom’s father and mother. I try to picture my grandfather, though he died years before any of us grandchildren were born. He was a good looking, kind and gentle man, fluent in several languages, with intelligent light brown eyes, and a great talent for creating wealth – enough for the entire family to enjoy for decades to come – a successful merchant who loved his only daughter enough to overcome his disapproval of her getting married to my dad. Then I read my grandmother's name – Gilaan. She was the first of four children born in Gilaan, a northern province by the Caspian Sea where her father, a statesman, was stationed for a short while. The in-love young couple, my great-grandparents, had decided their newborn was the best souvenir to bring back to Tehran and therefore gave my grandmother the name Gilaan. I love that name. Grandma was tall and beautiful, with amazing skin, but more importantly she was charismatic. She was the matriarch of the family, like many women before her in my family, and the first feminist I knew – years before I learned what feminism was. The picture in Mom’s Shenaas-Nameh at the top left corner of the page shows her in her fifties. The photo must have been taken around the time she and Dad went their separate ways. Behind her forced yet warm smile, deep in her beautiful intelligent, light brown eyes, I can see the sorrow and the fear of the uncertain future awaiting her – a life she did not expect, was not ready for, nor deserved. My mother was Yeki-Yek-Dooneh, which loosely translates to “the one and only” because she was the only girl, born to a family that, for centuries, had adored girls and treated them as equals to boys, if not better, as if they were princesses. My mother had numerous qualified suitors, all discouraged by my grandfather, who believed that none of them were good enough for his only daughter. But then she was left alone, without a partner, at a stage in life when she needed one the most. I pick up my head and there she is again. Mom is sitting in front of me on the floor in my bedroom. “He warned me. He said he didn’t think this man would be the right choice for me,” she says as she leans toward me to see her own picture. “You mean your dad?” I ask even though I know the answer. I am hoping my question encourages her to tell me more. “My dad was not the type to force his way. He told me it was my choice. But he warned me multiple times.” Mom drops her head, staring at the pattern on her dress, a pretty grayish blue background with tiny pink flowers, the dress she has on in one of the pictures I have of her when she was in her early twenties. She seems to have become younger since I last saw her in the kitchen. “My father said: ‘It is your choice. Personally, I don’t think he is a suitable husband. He is much older than you and comes from a different background. He seems a bit rough and has a temper. You, my dear, are young, good natured, gentle, and sweet. How is this going to work? He is in the Army, always in different cities. You will be lonely, you are my Yeki-Yek-Dooneh, you were a princess all your life. How is this going to work? Don’t fall for his looks or the uniform. Beauty fades away. You get used to the uniform. Think, my dear daughter. Think hard and long before you say yes.’ My dad, your grandfather, was right. We were very different. But your dad was good looking, tall, handsome, and very charming, especially in that uniform! And I was young and impressionable.” I remember my grandmother, Gilaan, telling us girls, her granddaughters, not to marry and just have fun, quite a remarkable statement at the time. Now, that I think about it, Mom’s marriage and how it turned out must have had something to do with my grandmother’s opinion regarding marriage. Gilaan’s own marriage was very successful. Mom had some money, thanks to my grandfather, but not enough to maintain her standard of living, after the divorce, which included domestic help and a closet full of high fashion pieces, not to mention sending me to the best private schools and buying me everything I needed. Mom had expensive taste and would never buy junk. “Don’t buy anything unless you can buy the best” was her mantra when it came to shopping. But of course she was too proud to even think of getting help from my dad. Below Mom’s photo in her Shenaas-Nameh “Tehran” is stated as her birthplace. I am reminded of when I was six years old, and she took me to her childhood neighborhood, considered old Tehran now, in the southern part of the city. The streets were narrow and lined mainly with newer buildings, except for a few houses that had survived the passage of time and their owner’s appetite for “modern” structures. I love the architectural style of the old houses since it is attuned to the climate and the lifestyle of the occupants. We walked through mazes of narrow streets and then stopped in front of Mom’s childhood house, a large khaki colored building with an arched entrance leading to a pair of wooden doors decorated with large flower-shaped nails. There was a small opening in the door, which Mom said was for identifying the person before they opened the door – sort of like the peepholes we have on doors nowadays. There was a doorbell, though fortunately the owners had also kept the old metal doorknocker, stylized to resemble a lion’s paw. Mom’s childhood house had survived the so-called modern wave of architecture in the old neighborhood. “Dad used to have a special knock, a rhythmic one, da-da dad da da-da. I was always the first to run to the door and open it for him,” Mom said as she knocked on the door like her father. The people who lived in the old house let us in with a big, wide smile – Persians are famous for hospitality. If you drop in on someone around lunch or dinnertime, they will insist you stay and eat with them even if they haven’t prepared enough food. At least this is how it used to be when I was growing up. "We love this house,” the woman who opened the door replied when Mom asked how come they had kept the old house the way it was. “My brothers and I all grew up here, got married here, and now I live here with my family. We rent out the other house. We would never even think of demolishing this house. It has been like a lucky charm for all of us." Mom had told me about these fantastic old houses and now I was seeing one up close. I was only six years old but perhaps the love of architecture was in my blood, since I remember how excited I was to see the old house - though Mom’s wonderful stories about her childhood must have had something to do with it as well. Mom had explained everything to me: typically these houses consisted of two buildings, or rather two separate houses. The smaller house, called Birooni, which loosely translates to “the external (house)” – was accessible from the main entrance. The Birooni was considered a less private house built for socializing and other public affairs, such as business meetings, or religious feasts. The other building, called Andarooni – which loosely translates to “the internal (house)” – was the main house, where the family lived. My six-year old eyes were feasting on the architecture. Each house had its own yard with a pond in the middle. There were two sets of doors, one connecting the two yards and one connecting the two buildings. We entered the Birooni, passed the yard and used the connecting door to enter the Andarooni. Usually a much larger house, the Andarooni was built with the family's privacy in mind. The walls were tall and lined with shrubs or trees for additional privacy. Here, a row of Sarv trees (Persian Cypress) near the walls created a narrow passage around the yard, perfect for escaping the afternoon sun or hiding from everyone else. All the downstairs rooms opened to a large porch via gorgeous wooden double doors, decorated with colored glass, encased in rich dark walnut wood. Each house had a large pond with a fountain in the middle of the yard. The water in the Andarooni’s overflowing pond was gently pouring out onto the ground with each gush of the fountain. I loved the smell of the water on the ground in Mom’s childhood house. In one of Ezy’s stories, the heroine enters the large pond in the middle of the yard to rescue a young man, imprisoned by a witch and held in a torture chamber underground. It felt like this was the perfect pond for the heroine to emerge from with the rescued young man - though all I saw in this pond were goldfish. “I had my friends come to this room to play when they visited,” Mom pointed to a large sunny room downstairs. “We played inside and then brought the rug to the porch to eat our lunch outside.” In my mind’s eye I saw the girls, sitting on the porch on a colorful small Persian rug, whispering and giggling while eyeing my good-looking uncles – I had three. My grandmother, Gilaan, was watching the girls from inside through the lace curtains, as she sometimes watched me when I was playing in the yard. The servant surprised the girls by entering the porch with a tray of tea and sweets. The girls stopped giggling at once and sat up straight. I saw my grandmother smiling behind the curtains. I look at the Shenaas-Nameh in my hand. None of the stories Mom had told me about the old house, nor any of her other childhood memories, are recorded in it. Not even the one about a neighborhood boy she had a crush on when she was only thirteen, years before she fell in love with Dad. Mom must have been very brave for telling her father about him. And my grandfather must have been quite open-minded for his time, since he had surprised Mom by first thanking her for coming to him with the story, then telling his Yeki-Yek-Dooneh daughter that the boy was not good enough for her but that she had to find out for herself. My grandfather then made Mom promise that she would not meet the boy without letting him know. Maybe here in the States a story like that is not unusual – though I doubt that since the story is over 80 years old. But in Iran, the story is rather atypical. Yet the Shenaas-Nameh omits all these wonderful stories. It doesn’t even note if one had a happy childhood or a miserable one. I notice Mom looking at her Shenaas-Nameh with a hint of worry in her eyes. It looks as if the Shenaas-Nameh might slide out of my hand. I adjust the document and she smiles. “I had a great childhood. None of my friends were treated as good as me. My parents never punished any of us. Not even when we acted stupid and naughty,” Mom says, tucking a strand of hair behind her ears. Mom did the same with me, she never punished me not even when I broke her antique vase as I was playing soccer in the living room. I am reminded of a story from Mom’s childhood when she and my uncle disappeared for a short time. “My mother, your grandma, was very busy that day. I was six and your uncle was four. We heard the street merchant selling candy. We ran to the street to buy some sweets without telling our mother. I was wearing a pair of gold and ruby earrings, which caught some guy’s eye. He tricked us into believing he had better candies. We believed him and followed him into a quiet alley. He then bent down and took one of my earrings off. I protested and started to scream.. He got scared, picked me up and started running. Your uncle, despite being only four, ran alongside him and kept yelling at the man to put me down. I too, screamed, and started punching him with my small fists. At that point, people started to notice us and came to our aid. The man finally put me down. But we, your uncle and I, pulled at him and demanded he return my earring. Some people were closing in on him so he took my earring out of his pocket and wrapped it in the handkerchief he got from his other pocket, and handed it to me. He maneuvered between the people who were trying to catch him and disappeared. People brought us home once they knew who we were. Our mother was in the street, pale and frightened, asking passersby if they had seen us. I felt awful when I realized the man had given us a piece of rock instead of my earring. My parents, however, were not upset. They said we had learned a valuable lesson and Dad bought me a new pair of earrings, even prettier, the next day.” Mom has told me this story many times. I smile and turn the page to find a table for recording one’s marriages in the Shenaas-Nameh. There is no mention of one’s crushes on the neighborhood boy, nor the first real love, nor the first kiss, and not even the first time one made love. Instead the Shenaas-Nameh has multiple rows to record each marriage. The Shenaas-Nameh doesn’t care if the marriage was the result of someone falling in love, interested in digging gold, worried about the ticking biological clock, lacking better opportunities, or being forced into marrying someone they didn't love – which still happens around the world. I am puzzled by the numerous rows for recording marriages. How many times does an average person marry? I spot Dad’s name on this page of Mom’s Shenaas-Nameh alongside his Shenaas-Nameh number, but nothing about where and when they met – just a place for the date of their marriage. “The divorce is not in her Shenaas-Nameh,” I remember my birthmother once told me many years ago. “He wanted to have the chance to get back together with her.” I look through every page of Mom’s Shenaas-Nameh, even though I know the divorce should be recorded right next to the marriage to mark its end. But I can’t find any reference to it, to my parents’ divorce. My birthmother was right after all. How did she know? Did Mom know too? What document did my parents sign when they went for the divorce? How could Dad remarry then? I wonder if I can ask Mom about it but when I look up, she has disappeared again. She does that all the time. I thought she would have stayed longer this time since she seemed worried about her Shenaas-Nameh. The painful memory of meeting Dad’s new wife for the first time rushes over me. I am ten years old and standing at the front door. It has taken me months to make it this far. Mom didn’t want me to come. She is still not happy about it but has given me permission to visit nevertheless, mainly because of my dad’s persistence in asking me to come over. I had known this door as the entrance to my home, but only for a few short months. My arm knows well it needs to go up and ring the bell, but it refuses to do so. It feels heavy and useless at my side. This must be what Grandma felt after her stroke, or at least this is the best comparison I can think of with my ten-year-old brain, about an arm that has never failed me before. I take a quick look at my watch. Dad is always on time, down to the second, and has taught me to be the same. Mom is punctual too but unlike Dad, she is not vocal when someone is late. I still have a few minutes so I step aside from the door and look around. I am hoping my arm will feel better once I have given it a few minutes to gather its strength and courage. It is late afternoon on a summer day and the street is quiet. Across from where I am standing, in the house on the other side of the street, live the only kids in the neighborhood with whom I had talked while I lived here. I remember that spring day vividly. I was standing in front of the house waiting for my cousin holding a dark green jar in my hand. The neighborhood boys got curious, came over, and asked what was in the jar. A rush came over me. I was new to the neighborhood and had no playmates. I had wanted to make friends with the kids in the neighborhood ever since we had moved here a couple of months ago. This was my opportunity. The fact that these boys were older felt even better and made me feel important. Proudly, I held up the bottle so the sun could reveal its contents: two skinny animated snakes sliding around against the wall of the green jar. “Snakes!” they shrieked. “Where did you get these? They are alive!” I felt big, significant, and special. The boys, a foot taller than me only a minute ago, seemed much shorter now. A wide grin spread on my face. "My dad got them for me." "Where did he find them? Isn't he worried they may bite you?" the taller boy asked while the other boy, the one with curly hair, held his hand out. "Can I hold your snakes?" "They are not poisonous,” I said as I handed the jar over to the curly-headed boy. I loved sharing. When I was three years old, in a distant relative's house, I gave three of my intricate silver bracelets, the ones Mom had special ordered for me from Isfahan, to the girl sitting next to me only because she had said they were pretty. When I was five, I gave all my dolls to our orchard keeper’s daughter, Mehri, because Dad had mentioned she wished for a doll. All through my school years, I shared, or should I say gave away, all my snacks to my friends and classmates. Mom would pack more snacks every day in the hopes that I would save some for myself, but the circle that formed around me in the schoolyard during recess seemed to grow each day. The slender, shiny creatures slid their bodies against the inside of the jar. They whirled around and around, looking for a way out. I felt sorry for them. I asked Dad if we could release them into the yard. But he said no because they would die outside the jar, or worse, might bite someone. I wasn't convinced. They seemed too tiny to bite and too strong to die. “What would they eat?” Dad had asked me. I didn't know but was certain the snakes could survive outside the jar. We had not fed them since they had arrived a week ago. I had asked Dad if we could at least open the jar and throw in some food for them, but Dad said no. He was worried they would get away. In one of Ezy’s stories there was a clever girl who never ate, or at least that is what others thought. She got a prince who couldn’t stand the sight of a woman eating, to fall in love with her. What others, and especially the prince, didn’t know was that the girl had a hideaway full of great edibles. I turned the bottle around wondering if my tiny snakes had a hideaway full of food too. My snakes ended up dead after all. I came home from school one day and the green jar was gone. Dad told me he had taken them to a pharmacy to put them in alcohol. I could go see them if I wanted to. I had seen those grotesque jars in the pharmacy window before. They were filled with a yellowish fluid covering a motionless, perfectly preserved snake coiled at the bottom. I had often stood and watched those snakes for a few minutes before they turned my stomach. Those snakes were all big and ugly. My snakes were tiny and cute. It took me a long time to forgive Dad even though being raised to be logical, I understood Dad’s reasoning. He wasn't going back to our citrus orchard by the Caspian Sea, where he had found the snakes, for a couple of weeks. By then my snakes would have died of hunger. So it was better that they die at the hands of the pharmacist, quickly, I suppose. Dad was too logical, kind of like Mr. Spock from the Star Trek series, which explains why Mr. Spock, and not Capitan Kirk, was my favorite character. The neighbor’s boys are not here today. Perhaps they are sitting at home watching cartoons or drinking Sharbat from a tall glass like I had done before I left home – mine was sour cherry. Standing outside Dad’s door in the heat is getting to me. Mom would be upset. She thinks I get sick if I stay in the sun too long. In fact that was one of the excuses she gave Dad for not wanting me to come here – the one she would admit to. I turn towards the door. I am here so I might as well go inside. I gather my courage and ring the bell. A few seconds later there is an obnoxious buzz that opens the door. I push it open and go inside. Three steps up is another door by which Dad is standing, waiting to greet me with hugs and kisses before he takes me inside. The hallway looks almost the same with the burgundy color rug, though it is laid a bit crooked – Mom would have straightened it out. I steal a quick glance to the left at the mehman-khaneh, the formal living room. My heart breaks to see all the furniture covered with old, grubby white sheets, like a dead person’s house. My mother's beautiful Formica coffee table, trendy yet classy, just like herself, struggles to show its slender legs from underneath the shabby sheets. I remember the day my parents brought home the new furniture. I was five or six and we were living in Shemiran, a northern neighborhood in Tehran, with a huge yard that was actually a beautiful garden. The set included a charming loveseat and four armchairs, all in a deep red that complimented their modern birch wood handles. The fabric had an interesting texture, with a pattern of small geometric shapes made by tight clusters of tiny loops against the flat surface of the fabric. This caused the sofa to look different shades of red depending on the direction of the light, which created hours of fun and discovery for me as I examined the color at different times of the day. The round Formica coffee table was made of two separate tables in the shape of Yin and Yang, or a pair of rounded paisleys. One was red and the other one matched the color of the chairs’ armrests. I had so much fun with that set. The texture of the fabric tickled me if I sat on it in my shorts instead of trousers. But now, all that beauty is hidden under a tacky layer of old sheets – something my Mom would not have allowed. Underneath the hidden beauties lie the gorgeous matching pair of Isfahan rugs. I loved those rugs more than any other Persian rugs in our house. Why didn't Mom take them with her? We got those when I was four. I remember vividly. We had traveled to Isfahan and visited one of Dad's old friends. The city was magical and the store was amazing. I used to study all the patterns of our rugs and try to memorize them. They became my playground or rather my own city. I would pretend the borders were streets and the flowers were buildings. I would take my toy car round and round the city to pick up all my dolls one by one from school, shopping, friends’ houses, and the playground. In Dad’s friend’s store I saw infinite imaginary cities, some piled on a wooden platform in the center of the store, some pinned to the walls, and some on the floor. I wanted them all, especially a pair made of silk. They were small, perfect for Mom to throw on the balcony for me to play on. They were soft and the silk shimmered slightly in the light. My dad's friend was so taken by a little four- year-old's appreciation for his rugs that he offered to give me the pair of rugs, something my parents would not accept. Instead, we bought the warm beige colored pair of Isfahan’s with gorgeous dark red flowers, which in turn became the theme for the mehman-khaneh and selecting the red colored furniture. My mother had impeccable taste. Dad guides me into a room, my old bedroom, the one with big bright windows opening to the porch and the yard. It is chaos in this room now. The burgundy colored table I used as a desk with its matching comfortable burgundy chair, my child sized armoire with the little puppy painted on the door, and the glass box for my dolls - though I used it mainly for my toy cars – are all missing. Instead of my bed, there now stands Mom’s ironing board with a still steaming warm iron on top and a shirt halfway done with its sleeves hanging. A thick blanket lies on the floor by the door, folded for Dad to sit on. My dad, sitting on the floor, on a blanket, like an old man? The same Mr. Formal who always wore a suit and looked official as if he were going to an important Army meetings? On the other side of the room stands a closet with its door slightly open, revealing its ugly contents – old-fashioned women's clothing hanging over a stack of garments at the bottom. Across from the blanket where Dad sits, there is a twin bed – one that reminds me of The Princess and the Pea since it is piled with mismatched bedding. The room is a mess, as if someone wanted to prove to me that I am not an important enough guest for them to tidy up. Though I misunderstood their message and felt sorry for them since obviously they didn’t have time to tidy up. They deserved my sympathy for having such poor taste. Dad gestures me to sit down, and I sit on the floor as close to his blanket as I can. He asks me how I am and I nod “okay.” “I’m fine. You’re the one who needs rescuing!” I want to scream. A few minutes later, she comes in and I see her for the first time – the woman who has replaced my mother – the one who has hit the jackpot. Maybe I am having a nightmare, I think to myself. “How could you?” I want to shake Dad and ask him. Instead, I just say “hello” as I eye the woman who looks like one of the witches in the Golden Book series I used to read. I am trying to be open-minded but I can’t help myself. She is Mom’s age or perhaps older, with very long wavy hair that could have looked acceptable, except it is frizzy and dyed jet black. Her voice is squeaky and she has a gold tooth – how tacky, I think. I can’t understand what made Dad marry this woman. I don’t want to seem high-brow – and this is not about me – but in my ten-year old head, the women who came to our house to clean were often classier than my Dad’s new wife. I simply could not understand why my Dad had picked this woman as his new wife. “Here you go, Dad,” a thin teenaged boy says as he enters the room with a pillow that he extends to Dad – my dad. The boy grins victoriously at me but in a way that Dad completely misses. Stunned by having found a new brother, an ugly and mean one, I look at my dad for an explanation. “Why is he calling you Dad?” I want to ask but don’t. I am my mother’s daughter after all and know well how to hide my true feelings. I show my disapproval the only way I can, by not eating or drinking anything at the house. Mom didn’t want me to eat there anyway – something my dad did not like nor understood. Mom had just read a newspaper article about a woman who poisoned her stepchild. What Mom had missed was that Dad’s wife had no reason to poison me since I was not in her way. I was not living with them nor was I entitled to anything Dad had – I was not his legal child. All the way home I try to release the big painful bubble growing inside my throat, but I can’t. I feel betrayed and sad. I know now how Mom feels. At home, I tell Mom the whole story, thinking she would be mad too. But she doesn’t seem bothered and tries to make me feel better instead. “Honey, your dad loves you very much. This boy didn’t have a father ever since he was little. Your dad probably allows him to call him Dad to make him feel better. He is not going to take your place. You have a big heart. Maybe you can have some empathy for this poor kid.” Now, I would have probably screamed at Mom for being gullible and teaching me to be just like her. But at ten, I worshiped Mom and wanted to be just like her. So I forgave the boy for the time being. I even felt sorry for him for years to come until I finally understood the game that mother and son were playing. Mom was an angel. I have never met anyone as forgiving as her. Mom was never mad at the woman who took her place. She felt sorry for her – to marry for money was beneath my mother. The funny thing is that my dad didn’t have much money – at least not as much as people thought. Dad had great furniture and a house full of valuable Persian rugs and beautiful objects – courtesy of Mom who selected them and even paid for many of them. So he appeared rich. Additionally, Dad had a pension, and in Iran your spouse receives your pension after you die. My dad was over seventy when he married the second time. Mom and I ended up living a good life. She managed somehow. Mom always got me what I needed and more. Dad, on the other hand, had a rough time growing old, especially once he became dependent on the witch he married. I was here in the States but apparently the witch treated Dad very badly during his last years when he needed help and craved tenderness the most. My mom would have taken care of him like a loved one. A couple of years after Dad passed away, his wife was coming back from a trip where she had just collected Dad’s pension, and died in a horrible car accident on a mountainous road. The driver lost control of his vehicle and sent the car and its passengers down a cliff. Everyone was pleased, but Mom was genuinely sorry when she heard the news. She said no one deserved to die like that. I sometimes felt as though Mom was not from this world. I am reminded of what one of my parents’ friends said after hearing about the accident: “You get what you deserve.” It makes me grin. “I didn’t raise you to be mean. Revenge does not become us,” Mom says with a frown as she looks at me from the top of her thick glasses. I knew she could not be gone long – not until I am done with the Shenaas-Nameh and she is sure it is still in one piece. “Mom!” “Everyone made a choice. I made a choice to leave. Your dad made a choice to start a new life. And --” “Mom, please stop. I am not a child anymore. I know why he did what he did.” “You do?” Mom doesn’t expect this. She has forgotten that I am now close to the age she was when she left Dad, and that all these years I have collected little facts. Perhaps she doesn’t know I found out that my dad’s sister’s greed was behind the divorce – something Mom knew but hid from me. Dad’s sister was after the little money Dad had and was worried that he would leave it all to Mom and me. The greedy woman used to live in a different city but once she moved to Tehran, everything changed in our lives. The evil woman, ironically super religious too – which goes to show you that religion does not make you holy – started bad-mouthing my poor mother behind her back every chance she got and encouraged Dad to leave us. My mother was always kind to her. She encouraged Dad to help her and her kids. Mom even took care of the wicked woman’s son while she, Dad’s evil sister, was living with her second husband and supposedly didn’t have room for the boy. “Everyone I lend a hand to turns around and bites my hand,” Mom used to say. I tend to agree with her now. The actions of Dad’s sister don’t mean Dad was innocent in all this. To me, he had no excuse. He should not have listened to others when it came to his life and the people whom he said he loved the most. After all these years, I have come to the conclusion that behind that strong exterior, Dad was hiding a timid personality. “I don’t want you to think of your Dad this way. He loved you very much. He was a good man,” Mom says, reading my mind. “Really, Mom, are you that gullible?” I am somewhat angry with her now mainly because I see myself in her. “Will you close that Shenaas-Nameh? It is falling apart.” That is my Mom, changing the subject whenever she doesn’t want confrontation. Then it dawns on me that I cannot change her. She is the sweet, gullible Mom that I dearly love – the one person who has loved me unconditionally all these years and has made many sacrifices for me. So what if she is too trusting “The world would be such a great place if everyone were as simple and open as you are,” my husband reminds me from time to time when I complain about being credulous. “It is others who have to change themselves to be more like you. Don’t change yourself.” His favorite story for demonstrating my naiveté - sorry, simplicity - is of a video store visit. We were both looking through a different shelf for a good comedy to rent when I announced that I'd found one. “This is really funny.” “It is? How do you know?” he asked, expecting me to say I had read or heard about the movie. “It says here that it is hilarious,” I pointed to the back of the box. We – Mom, me, and most people in my family – are simple. We don’t understand the games others play. Why would you want to understand?” Mom asks. “People who play those games need to feel good and secure about themselves. I don’t feel insecure and I know you don’t either.” She pauses for a second and then says: “Someone has to take those sheets off my beautiful furniture. I feel as if I am in a morgue.” Mom sighs as she gets up and disappears again. The mehman-khaneh of my childhood house is back to normal now. The angel I call Mom has done her magic and our furniture looks inviting again. One of my toy cars has just found a parking spot under the Yin and Yang coffee table. “Where are you coming from?” I ask the passenger of the car. “Memory lane, on the other side of the city,” the young girl in a blue tee shirt and jean shorts replies, pointing to the other side of the rug as she pulls on her mom’s jacket. The woman has impeccable taste: a dark brown suit, beige top, and brown movie star like stilettos. I wish I could wear those heels. My son is calling me from downstairs. “I am here. In the bedroom.” I hope he is not going to be as gullible as I am, I think to myself. Mom appears again, shakes her head the way she always did when she didn’t want to just laugh at me. “You turned out okay, didn’t you?” is what she wants to say. The last page of Mom's Shenaas-Nameh is empty. She didn’t have a child and therefore all those rows reserved for names, gender, and birth time and place of children are left blank. The very last page has an ugly stamp to mark the end of her life – officially. “But I am always here with you,” she reminds me with her loving smile. Notes This is the third in a series of five books to come. If you have enjoyed reading this story, you can find additional information about this book and the future ones at mojdeh.com Copyright by Mojdeh Marashi 2011 About The Author Mojdeh Marashi is a writer, translator, artist, and designer whose work is deeply influenced by the ancient and modern history of Iran. Her stories merge the world of magical realism in Persian literature that she grew up reading, the reality of the world she lives in today, and the utopia she dreams about. She was born in Tehran, Iran and moved to U.S. in 1977. She is the translator (from Persian, with Chad Sweeney) of The Selected Poems of H. E. Sayeh: The Art of Stepping Through Time (White Pine, 2011). Her fiction was published in the anthology Let Me Tell You Where I’ve Been: Women of the Iranian Diaspora (University of Arkansas, 2006). She holds an MA in Interdisciplinary Arts as well an MA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. She lives in Palo Alto, California.