Song of a Captive Bird Page 6

  “Tell me, Forugh, have you been meeting a boy?”

  I looked up at him, confused. Parviz and I had so far only seen each other once in the alleyway, and that had been for less than fifteen minutes. I felt sure the Colonel knew nothing about my encounters with Parviz, and I was determined to keep my secret.

  “N-No,” I stammered. “I haven’t been meeting anyone.”

  My father stepped closer to me, so close I could feel his breath on my cheek.

  He gripped my shoulder and I dropped my eyes.

  “Tell the truth!”

  I opened my mouth to speak, but no words came out. I could only shake my head.

  He turned away and began pacing the library with his hands clasped behind him. Then, for some minutes, he stood before the half-shuttered window, with his back to me. He didn’t speak. My knees were quivering and I felt like I’d be sick. When he turned around, his gaze went straight to the sheet of paper I was holding. He strode toward me, freed it from my grip, and raised his hand to strike me.

  Over the next weeks, the bruises on my face faded from dark gray to lavender to yellow. I didn’t stop writing, but I was much more careful after that. I wrote my poems in secret and read them silently to myself to memorize them. Afterward, I tore them into thin ribbons and then tore the ribbons into confetti. At night, when everyone in the house was asleep, I climbed onto the rooftop and threw fistfuls of shredded poems into the alley behind our house. But the good ones—or the few I considered good back then—I folded into small squares and hid deep under my mattress.

  * * *

  —

  For Puran, all those tea parties soon led to a marriage proposal. A band of women descended one afternoon on the house in Amiriyeh to make the formal offer. “You’re part of our family now!” The eldest of them, the suitor’s grandmother, beamed. She called my sister to sit beside her on the banquette, slid a ring onto Puran’s finger, and kissed her, once on each cheek. Puran blushed a bright pink. “Mobarak!” the women cried: Congratulations! “Li-li-li-li-li-li-li!” Wedding trills filled my mother’s good parlor. “We must sweeten our tongues!” someone called out. A plate of sweets was passed quickly from hand to hand. Our mother nodded and smiled from across the room. It was done. Puran was now engaged to be married.

  My mother and Sanam immediately began to assemble the trousseau, though the wedding itself was many months off, as the groom hadn’t yet completed his studies. Early marriages now gave the impression of backwardness in all but the most traditional families, but engagements were secured almost as quickly as ever to ensure a girl’s chastity—and her family’s reputation.

  My sister had seen her suitor three times before their engagement, and all three times she’d only seen him across the vast distance of my mother’s parlor. Still, his mere existence, coupled with the pretty ring she’d been given, now alternately plunged her into states of grinning torpor or frenzied bliss. In most ways her life didn’t change at all, but she was now allowed leisurely afternoon outings in the city with her future grandmother, mother, and sisters-in-law. After visiting the boutiques on the Avenue of the Tulip Fields, they’d linger over café glacé and puff pastries in a posh new restaurant there.

  “It’s called The Palace, and it’s got mirrored walls—can you imagine, Forugh!” she exclaimed. “And in the back there’s a lovely sunken flower garden and a European-style band and it’s full, I tell you full, of elegant foreigners!”

  Whenever she left for one of these outings, I stayed behind in Amiriyeh, sulking until she returned. Already, our world was divided between girls with suitors and those without, and I most definitely belonged to the latter category. I didn’t care to marry in the usual manner—I didn’t want to wait about and be chosen by somebody’s mother or grandmother—yet I felt a prick of jealousy whenever my sister recounted her visits to the Avenue of the Tulip Fields and The Palace.

  All the same, Puran’s joy in this time was infectious, and alone in our room we talked late into the night. Marriage to us back then meant wearing low-cut dresses, seamed stockings, and high heels. Bobbing our hair and plucking our eyebrows. Painting on red lipstick, rimming our eyes with a stick of kohl and darkening a mole with its tip. It was true that once they married, our older cousins weren’t allowed to dance at family gatherings except with their husbands, but Puran and I chose not to dwell on such prohibitions. We focused instead on the clothes and makeup we’d wear once we were married women—these and also the mysteries of the marriage bed.

  One day our cousin Jaleh was dispatched to educate Puran about conjugal matters. Jaleh was three years older than we were and herself a newlywed. She wasn’t the prettiest of our cousins, but with her marcelled hair, glossy raspberry lips, and black patent-leather high heels, she cut a thrillingly glamorous figure.

  Jaleh and Puran retreated to the mehmoon khooneh. I was desperate to follow them, but my mother absolutely forbade me, so I had to make do with waiting outside and pressing my ear to the door. An interval of perhaps fifteen minutes passed. Jaleh and Puran whispered so softly that I couldn’t make out a word. Then, all at once, the door flew open, and I tripped and nearly tumbled into the room.

  “Well, well! The walls have mice and the mice have ears!” Jaleh exclaimed. She turned to Puran. “God is all-merciful, Puran. Maybe so merciful that He’ll send even this sheytoon sister of yours a suitor one of these days.”

  Sheytoon—devilish. I’d heard the word often enough, though when my mother called me sheytoon it was always in a harsh tone. I started to answer, but then Jaleh flashed me a wink and smiled. She’d meant it as a compliment.

  I replied with my most sheytoon smile.

  “So what did she say?” I asked Puran as soon as we were alone.

  “She said that a girl bleeds the first time. You know, when her husband…”

  “Go on.”

  “When he does that thing.”

  I nodded. “What happens after that?”

  “She said it wouldn’t hurt so much, and that I’d have to show a proof of blood when it was done.”

  “And then?”

  She bit her lip. “She didn’t say, only that there’d be blood when he was finished and that he’d know what to do with it.”

  I considered this. “What else did she tell you?”

  “She said it gives a man a wonderful feeling to be with his wife on the wedding night.” She bit her lip again and furrowed her brow. “Forugh, what do you think that means?”

  “I’m not sure. Didn’t she explain it to you?”

  “Well, not really, but she said it’ll make him love me.”

  Now, here was something interesting. I could scarcely imagine what this “it” entailed, but that “it” had such awesome powers was totally new. I had to know more.

  “But didn’t she tell you anything more specific?” I asked.

  Puran thought for a moment and then shook her head. The conversation with Jaleh had apparently gone no further.

  We spent the following days poring over this new information, turning it this way and the other, setting it alongside the scraps of knowledge we’d picked up over the years. In the late afternoons, when the day’s heat and cup after cup of tea at last loosened the women’s tongues, my mother and her friends traded gossip, and we had sometimes contrived to listen in. Among the whispers were many stories about the wedding night. We knew that the Night of Consummation, as it was then called, could be the scene of scandal and shame: Brides who failed to show proof of blood could be turned from their grooms’ houses, beaten by their brothers, and disowned by their fathers. Sometimes the girls disappeared on their own, never to return, and afterward their names were never spoken, not even by their families. Especially not by their families.

  Banishment—it was a terrifying prospect, much more so for all we didn’t understand about the circumstances that occasioned it, but for now my sister and I threw over such stories in favor of this: the promise of love and, through love, freedom.

 
; * * *

  “What did you think of the poem?” Parviz asked me the next time we met in the alleyway.

  I’d barely managed to persuade my sister to keep a lookout on the rooftop so we could meet in the alley behind the house. I was turning sixteen soon. “Please, Puran!” I said. “It can be your birthday present to me this year…” She finally relented, but this time she swore that if more than fifteen minutes passed and I didn’t return, she’d abandon her post and leave me to my own fate.

  I pressed my lips together and thought for a moment. “Well, when I read it,” I said slowly, “it was as if I was hearing a real person speaking to me.”

  “Yes,” he said excitedly. “Nima does away with all that old-fashioned phoniness and posturing. No more overblown symbolism, superficial emotions, or hackneyed phrases.”

  “That’s exactly it! He writes about what matters to him. About his life and the people he knows. And when it’s ugly or strange, it’s honest. True.”

  We were both silent for a minute.

  “What would you write,” he asked, “if you could write about what really matters to you?”

  “I’d write about this moment,” I said without hesitation, nodding toward the street. “This old alleyway, the cracked walls of that house over there, that rooftop up there, and I’d write…” Here I paused. “I’d write about you.”

  This last bit made his face redden. “You should write about those things, Forugh, all of them. And,” he said, reaching into his jacket pocket and handing me a book, “you really should read this.”

  I read the book through that same night. Like the first poem he’d copied out for me by hand, the poems in this book had neither meter nor rhyme, but the speaker’s voice and the simplicity of his images startled me. A fresh energy was at work in our country’s poetry in those years, and it was this energy I encountered in Nima’s poetry. These were poems about ordinary people, written with the cadence of ordinary speech. They cut right to the heart of the matter, to the essential facts of the world.

  Reading Nima for the first time, I realized my poems hadn’t really been mine at all; they were all imitations of one master or another, Sa’adi, Hafez, or Khayyam. It was a discouraging thought and it could’ve stopped me from writing altogether, and for some days, in fact, I wrote nothing but only read and reread Nima’s poems. I pored over them, made notes in the margins, underlined my favorite parts.

  In those days, I had a small black cloth-bound notebook left over from my school days, and I used it for all my compositions. One morning I pulled it from its hiding place beneath my mattress, took up a pen, and began to jot down some words. Faces, scents, old city scenes. My memories and my feelings. Then for the next hour or so, instead of writing, I went through and crossed out what felt unnecessary or untrue. I read the lines aloud to find the natural stresses, again and again paring away the words, images, and punctuation to get at the truth of what I meant. Of course, I was mimicking Nima, following his rhythms and conjuring his symbols, but at least now I could see what was weak in my poems and also what I could do to really make them stronger.

  After several days of these experiments, I finally chose the poem I liked best and offered it to Parviz. All the next week, I wondered what he made of my writing. I was sure he thought it was awful—a feeble imitation by a silly, ignorant girl. On the day of our next meeting, I was so sure of my failure that I very nearly didn’t go. But the first thing Parviz did when I stepped into the alley was to fix me with those wonderfully languid eyes and say, “They’re good, Forugh. Better than good.”

  “Do you really think so?”

  He nodded. “I really do. They’re a little sentimental in places, sure, but there’s something different to them. I think it’s got to do with your being a girl, writing…well, from a girl’s point of view. But it’s more than that. There’s an honesty in your poems. Anyway, you should write more. Write all you can.”

  I went dizzy with happiness—that’s the only explanation I can think of for what happened next. Without even bothering to check if anyone might see me, I raised myself on my toes, threw my arms around his neck, and then kissed him full on the mouth. It lasted just a few seconds, but it was our first time kissing like that, on the lips. Afterward, he pulled away slightly and studied my face. “Sometimes you look like a mischievous little girl, and then there are moments when you are…something else.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well,” he said slowly, “the opposite of an innocent young girl.”

  “The opposite of an innocent young girl”—I puzzled over this phrase later. Did it please him or not? I couldn’t be sure, but from how he’d said it, and from the way he’d looked at me afterward, as if he’d spoken too much and now regretted it, I gathered he didn’t think it was altogether a bad thing.

  * * *

  —

  “I’m going to meet him in the city,” I confessed to Puran later that night.

  We were lying in bed and the room was completely dark.

  She pulled herself onto her elbows. “Forugh! You can’t! Someone could see you together, and if anyone found out and told—” She stopped. The prospect of our father finding out was too awful to speak aloud. “Don’t do it, Forugh! I’m begging you not to meet him again!”

  I sighed and pulled the covers up over my head.

  But Puran would not give up. She sprang over to my bed and leaned over me. “Please be careful, Forugh,” she whispered frantically. “Promise me you won’t go anywhere with him alone! The alleyway’s bad enough, but promise me you won’t go anywhere with him in the city where you might be seen together!”

  I sank deeper into the sheets and ignored my sister. I’d always been the rebellious one, and now, as I plowed toward the consequences of my rebellions, things would change between us. Break us up in ways we couldn’t stop. They already had.

  I was sixteen and knew nothing. I thought, at that moment, my heart might burst from love.

  6.

  I spent hours planning our rendezvous. Of course, I could never leave the house on my own. Ten stolen minutes in the alleyway with Puran keeping a lookout from the rooftop was one thing, but a whole afternoon? I couldn’t think how I’d manage it. And then it struck me: the movies. I’d go with Fereydoun and Puran, but just before the movie started I’d duck out on my own and make my way to The Palace. I knew it wasn’t very far from the movie theater. It might take some work convincing my brother to keep his mouth shut, but I figured I could slip him a few tomans and that would do the trick. As for my sister, she continued to beg me not to meet Parviz, but I was sure she’d never betray me.

  It was winter then, just after Yalda, the longest night of the year. The days were mostly temperate, suffused with sun, but that day a brisk wind blew through the streets and alleyways. I’d never gone so far into the city by myself. There wasn’t much time—just an hour and a half until the movie ended and I had to be back inside the theater—and I squandered half of it just getting myself to the meeting spot. I was too nervous to hire a droshky, and so I walked the whole way. I kept getting lost and I had to ask for directions three times. By the time I reached the red awning with The Palace written in black cursive letters, I was almost three quarters of an hour late and there was no sign of Parviz.

  I paced the sidewalk. A breeze whipped at my skirt, and the perspiration on my neck chilled me. I’d come all that way on my own, and now he’d left. If he’d come at all, that is. Stupid, stupid, stupid, I chided myself. I’d borrowed a pair of white gloves from Puran’s trousseau—for their prettiness, but also to hide the lack of a wedding band—and now I plucked anxiously at the pearls set at their wrists.

  I felt a tap against my shoulder.

  “Forugh!”

  I spun around, and there he was. Parviz, with his sad eyes and his sweet, shy smile. His bow tie was perfectly even for a change. Smiling, I stepped toward him and gave it a little tug.

  “I was waiting for you inside,” he explained. “
I figured you weren’t coming, so I was about to leave.”

  “Of course I was coming!” I said, smiling broadly and cocking my head toward the entrance. “Now, let’s go in, while we still have time!”

  He took my arm under his and together we entered the restaurant. Once inside, I eased into my seat and looked around. The Palace was even better than Puran had described it, with a sunken garden full of gardenias and tuberoses; round, cloth-covered tables with candles and a single red rose at each one; and a gleaming parquet dance floor and a full European-style band.

  “Café glacé,” I told the waiter, with as much nonchalance as I could muster, to which Parviz smiled and ordered the same.

  I was wearing a dress I’d sewn myself: white with a sweetheart neckline, capped sleeves, and a full skirt that just skimmed my knees. That day, I wore it with a red cardigan and bright-red kitten heels. “Cover yourself up!” my mother had ordered me before letting me out of the house, and for once I obeyed without a word of protest. The heavy black coat I’d pulled over my outfit now lay on my empty seat in the movie theater.

  I’d felt very pleased with myself, setting out with my hair loose and glossy and my skirt swishing from side to side as I strode toward The Palace, but as I took in the scene around me, my confidence waned. The women all seemed so very sure of themselves in their silk day dresses and rouged cheeks and made-up lips. I glanced at the couple sitting at the next table. A blonde in a sateen sea-green dress with a full skirt and tight bodice was smoking a cigarette. A farangi, a foreigner. I’d seen foreign women in the streets before, but only rarely and always from a distance. This woman was so close to me, just a foot or so away. She smelled of lilacs and roses, as heady as spring. I couldn’t wrench my eyes away from her. She slowly crossed and then uncrossed her legs. When she glanced up and caught me looking, her gaze told me she was wholly accustomed to being admired. What would it be like, I wondered, to go through your days like that?