alalehbanu
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A Fine D’Artagnan
Salty Eye, Sweet Play. Written in Four Vignettes, No. 4. “You always get to be D’Artagnan!” cried Morteza. “Well, I am the oldest,” said Mehdi. “No, you’re not. Niku’s the oldest.” “Niku’s a girl! A girl can’t be one of the three musketeers!” “D’Artagnan isn’t one of the three musketeers, Mehdi,” said Niku coolly, leaning…
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Notes on Hammam Days
There is a Persian saying, بکشید و خوشگلم کنید (bokoshid o khoshgelam konid), meaning “kill me and make me beautiful” that immediately sprang to mind when I was researching the ingredients in vajebi, a traditional depilatory powder used in Iran. The ingredients in traditional vajebi are calcium bicarbonate, arsenic sulfide and clay. In recent years,…
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Hammam Days
Salty Eye, Sweet Play. Written in Four Vignettes, No. 3. Thursday afternoons at the public hammam were hot and uncomfortable and to be avoided at all costs. Besides the white veil of steam that cast a certain mystery over the otherwise simple old bath house, the hammam was not half as romantic as the European…
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Notes on The Ameh Shokat Doll
Or rather on “the eye.” In my family, the eye, cheshm in Persian, was not evil; it was shur, salty. A salty eye could be directed at anyone, either intentionally or unintentionally. Although often springing out of Envy’s poisonous bosom, it could also be transmitted quite innocently, in passing, from a half-sincere compliment bestowed out of thoughtless civility. Every so…
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The Ameh Shokat Doll
Salty Eye, Sweet Play. Written in Four Vignettes, No. 2. Niku licked her new doll on its button eye. It was as cold and tasteless as the shop windows she and her brothers stuck their lips against on Jaleh Square, and it was her last hope. For weeks now, she had overheard neighbours and relatives…
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Notes on Fet-Fet
Or rather on Persian halvah. Halvah is a confection of Persian origin with an Arabic name (Arabic root ح ل و or ḥ-l-w, meaning “sweet”) with varieties that stretch from Northern and Eastern Africa up to Eastern Europe and the Balkans, down all the way through West, Central and South Asia. Persian halvah is a paste…
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Fet-Fet
Salty Eye, Sweet Play. Written in Four Vignettes, No. 1. “That child has a salty eye, I’m telling you.” The two neighbours who wore too much makeup crossed their fat nylon calves and exchanged lipstick-smudged theories between bites of lipstick-smudged halvah. “Sameni women have always brought on bitter ends. It’s all the black they wear. …
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The Rook
Divinities: Tishtrya, God of the Rains Month: Tir Zodiacal Constellation: Cancer Manthra: To Tishtrya, the bright and glorious star; to the powerful Satavaesa, made by Mazda, who pushes waters forward; to the stars, made by Mazda, that have in them the seed of the waters, the seed of the Earth, the seed of the plants;…
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Notes on White Mulberries
If real events are the bones of these stories, and my shall we say, “embellishments” make up the rest, then this particular tale of Khanum Bozorg’s death is perhaps best described as an inner ear. There are only three tiny truths buried in this little vignette: one, Khanum Bozorg was my mother’s primary caretaker when…
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Notes on Leila Mishmast
I know it’s a strange political moment to be sharing what is essentially a princess story, but it’s the next chapter in a book written some twenty years ago, and seeing as I’m sharing tales from the family hearth, at this particular junction in the story and as part of the historical record, I’m afraid…
al-majus 