tehran
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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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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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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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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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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…
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White Mulberries
The story of my great-grandmother, Khanum Bozorg. Written in two vignettes, No. 2. Ever since she fell off her horse and broke her nose into a calligrapher’s mim, Khanum Bozorg lost the ability to smell and taste food properly. She couldn’t tell the difference between rotten meat and fresh meat, wouldn’t know it by the sweet…
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Shuku and Niku
Mahin Banu’s Baby. Written in four vignettes, No. 4. Shuku propped the bisque-faced doll up on her lap. It was an ugly doll. Nothing like her delicate, golden-haired bébé. Flat, black eyes covered half its vacant face. Its painted eyebrows stretched from one temple to another, like the shadow of a bird in flight. Its…
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For Name’s Sake
Mahin Banu’s Baby. Written in four vignettes, No. 3. Every woman who married into the Moftakhar family was given a new name and a laqab, a descriptive title that replaced however unadorned a past a girl may have had in her father’s household, with the silver-threaded (albeit slightly moth-eaten) flourishes of her husband’s home. Over…
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Notes on At Mohtaram Khanum’s
Families rise and fall, and pridefulness and humility wax and wane, two moons dancing around the same hearth. If I could draw how I see late-modern Iranian society (and I admit, my view from here is limited), it would be as a pyramid of piled-up noses all looking down on one another. The Iranic Bakhtiari…
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At Mohtaram Khanum’s
Mahin Banu’s Baby. Written in four vignettes, No. 2. Mohtaram Khanum lived in Shahbdolazim, in the ancient city of Rey. Home to the shrine of Shah Abdol-Azim, Rey was reconnected to Tehran under Nasser ed-Din Shah Qajar by the Tehran-Rey railway – known affectionately by locals as the machine dudi, the “smoke machine” – and…
al-majus 