Camelia by Camelia Entekhabifard

Author:Camelia Entekhabifard
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
Published: 2010-06-18T04:00:00+00:00

When Mandana and I began writing to each other, she came to know everyone in my family. She sent a card for my mother’s birthday and comforted us when my father died. When Kati was getting married, it was Mandana who took my hand and said, “You’re tired, sit down. I’ll help in your place.”

Mandana wrote me horrifying accounts of the refugee camps in Bandar-e Abbas. Of a girl who’d become pregnant by her father-in-law. Of the poverty and decay and displacement. Of Khorramshahr and Abadan. Of the siege of Abadan when her brother Bahman was lost, and she and her mother searched the drawers of all the morgues one by one. Of her memories of her neighborhood in Abadan and her longing for the war to be over so she could return to Kucheh-ye Parvaneh.

On the day she returned, she wrote me that her house had been hit by mortars and bullets, and their furniture had been looted. “This is a burned city. Like our hearts. We have been welcomed back by a burned city.” My father had come home late, and we sat around him so he wouldn’t have to eat dinner alone. I had been crying for Mandana, and he told me to bring the letter and read it to him.

“Camelia, I am writing you from Kucheh-ye Parvaneh. From a street deserted by all signs of life. I am writing you from Abadan. From the city of the suffering, of those who sit in the blood and the dirt. My heart is swollen and decayed like the corpses cast out into the windswept lifeless desert. Our house is a ruin with three walls. My childhood bike still stands in a corner of the basement after being burned a thousand times.” My father listened with his eyes fixed on the television, but he was looking at Mandana and her burned city. His throat was choked with sobs.

Everyone was silent, mourning Iran’s scorched earth. “The people of Abadan defended the city with empty hands, and our sons and brothers fell to the ground like flowers in the fall. My friend, believe me, today the date palms are broken. Tell me, when will our youth, our date palms, when will they be green again?”

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