al-majus

The image of my newly born, premature, already motherless mother forgotten on top of a pile of mattresses in a closet for three days left me clinging to her as a child whenever she would tell me this tale. What loneliness, what cruelty! There is a part of me that still wonders whether she was not perhaps intentionally, or at least semi-intentionally, left there, though she always used to protest these suggestions with a cool click of the tongue and a nudge of her chin.

My mother’s stories were never framed as tales of victimhood or neglect, but as triumph in the face of tragedy and chaos. There was never a sense of self-pity, never any tears. She often laughed at some of the strangest details, as did her sister, and the dark humour still runs strong in their side of the family.

In Andersen’s The Princess and the Pea, a prince and his mother test a self-proclaimed princess’s royal lineage by placing an uncooked pea under her mattress. The mattresses pile up and the princess, proving her privileged fragility, suffers a restless night.

In my mother’s tale, she is the pea. The uncomfortable truth shoved away in the darkness. And the mattresses don’t pile up, but are pulled from underneath her, one by one. The test is thus not one of delicacy but of strength.

“If I could have given them a big bilakh, I’m certain I would have,” she used to chuckle at me with a wink.

written by Alaleh Mohajerani

first published on Substack on May 15th, 2026