Between Lives by Nilofar Shidmehr

Author:Nilofar Shidmehr
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oolichan Books
Published: 2014-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

Racing Back to the Time When My Daughter Was Born

I am at the gym on Life Fitness,

my daughter’s arrival from Iran

only six days away—

my girl who arrived

in this world twenty-three years ago.

When I start exercising, my heart

rate is at 100: the same as

a hundred-year-old’s

working to her maximum capacity.

On the chart, I look at the rate

for young hearts like my Saaghar’s: 160.

And then I think about my own heart,

about how it’s going to race

the moment when Saaghar will emerge

from Customs—dragging a bag

and looking for the woman

from whom she had emerged—

an umbilical cord dragging

behind her—a cord

that had to be cut

for her life to go on.

I continue to go on running

on Life Fitness and my heart beat

picks up, echoing in my mind

hers from more than two decades ago,

coming through the stethoscope at my gynecologist’s:

it sounded as if I had a horse inside me,

galloping full force ahead in my veins,

the rhythm of her hooves ringing

in the curves of my skin.

That sound sewed me to Saaghar,

despite an unwanted pregnancy

because of a slight displacement

of the diaphragm my gynecologist had placed

one day after our wedding— the same trusted woman

gynecologist who had also confirmed

the existence of a hymen without which

there could be no marriage.

Another doctor, however,

Mr. Aaryaanpour, had arrived at the delivery room

after ten hours of excruciating pain,

because he had decided to ignore

nine phone calls from the head-midwife, begging him

to leave the gambling party he was at

and immediately attend to his patient

whose cervix was not opening enough

for the baby to come out.

He was the one who cut me open

and delivered that beating heart inside me,

who then transformed to a bruised

black-haired baby.

My husband had forced me to change

that once-trusted-woman-gynecologist

in the seventh month, because she had suggested a C-section,

and gave her professional opinion

that I was not a good candidate for natural delivery.

My sister-in-law, Ashraf, had insisted

that a woman who did not experience pain

at childbirth could not be a good mother.

Her words became the seeds

of a small dispute which grew

larger every day and after nine months

was delivered in the shape of a premature divorce.

Ashraf then said that a bad mother

is not entitled to the custody

of her brother’s child and had to, without delay,

be separated from the newborn.

From my husband’s mouth, her words

were thrown at me like stones.

The blows were so severe that I cannot

even remember how with my remaining

strength, I managed to pull myself out from that hole

of pain and escape, so today, on February 23, 2013,

more than twenty years later,

I am in Vancouver on Life Fitness

running again with all my strength

to get my heart beat closer

to my daughter’s: to 160.

The chart on the machine informs me

that the more people age, the more

their heart rate and their age match up:

this is good news for me, I’d imagine,

my daughter’s heart and mine

perhaps are closer now compared

to the time she was yet undelivered—

at that time no matter how much my heart

beat fast, it could not even get close

to the dust rising from the hooves

of that horse that I imagined

was inside me, galloping forward.

But now that there is a hope, an opportunity,

an opening, I

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