writing
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Leila Mishmast
The story of my great-grandmother, Khanum Bozorg. Written in two vignettes, No. 1. Before her three sons and three daughters gave her grandchildren, Khanum Bozorg was not Khanum Bozorg at all. She was Leila Mishmast and she was a “fire-whirl.” At least that’s what her mother used to call her. Her mother’s entire life revolved…
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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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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…
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Notes on The Persian Princess and the Pea
The image of my newly born, premature, 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…
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The Persian Princess and the Pea
Mahin Banu’s Baby. Written in four vignettes, No. 1. Smoky silhouettes of Mahin Banu’s death lingered for some time in the Moftakhar household, acting and re-acting the events of that solemn day on the walls in a macabre shadow play. Aware of the chaos that was sure to ensue, Mahin Banu’s eldest sister, Badr al-Zaman,…
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Aban, 1943
The story of my grandmother, Mahin Banu (Persian for “lady like the moon”). Written in three vignettes, No. 3. “I don’t want this one,” Mahin Banu whispered to her miniature mother over tea. She was pregnant with her third child and was convinced it was another girl. How she knew she was bearing a daughter…
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Baby Bites
The story of my grandmother, Mahin Banu (Persian for “lady like the moon”). Written in three vignettes, No. 2. Mahin Banu’s imagination, though impressive, was still only second to her temper; a peppery teenage temper that could bite and scratch and claw out the beast. But it wasn’t a patient mother or a loving father…
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Mahin in the Wind
The story of my grandmother, Mahin Banu (Persian for “lady like the moon”). Written in three vignettes, No. 1. Mahin Banu had a dark but lustrous imagination, which unlike her static coiffures, ran windswept and untamed. One winter afternoon, as the curly trees and clouds of Tehran blew across the city, Asqar Aqa came home…
al-majus 