The Saturday Night School of Beauty by Mehran Marsha

Author:Mehran, Marsha [Mehran, Marsha]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: AmazonCrossing
Published: 2015-09-08T07:00:00+00:00

“The Haji Firooz, the New Year’s clown, was a local musician, a man who played at various tea shops around Hamedan. Once a year he would dress up and play that tambourine. He knew who I was and he knew where I lived.

“There was no doubt that he would soon tell my aunts what he had seen in the backseat of the American architect’s car.

“David and I spent the night at the apartment where he was staying. The night was filled with both the joy of being together and the fear of being killed the next day by either my relatives or an angry mob. It was common in Hamedan for fanatically religious people to take justice into their own hands, and to punish with death anyone identified as a slut, a whore, or an infidel. I did not know what David was thinking, but I knew that my life as I knew it had come to an end.

“When I woke up, it was late the next morning. David had packed and gone. No trace of him was evident. I went quickly downstairs to the reception desk. The clerk told me David had checked out earlier in the morning. I rushed to my grandmother’s house. I was so naive about it all. I gave no thought to what was waiting for me. I just knew I was scared and angry.

“My lover had gone. The whole town knew about it, thanks to the Firooz. The men from one of the tea shops went looking for him, meaning to bring him to justice. When they found out he had already left town, they got even angrier.

“The men of our neighborhood were yelling for blood, they were so angry. Not that having sex with an Iranian girl was illegal or anything—there were plenty of American men getting themselves Persian brides back then—but it was still a point of pride. I was from a Qajar family, one of the oldest in town. Not to mention that my grandmother had died the previous morning, so it was a double insult.

“I could hear the wailing again even before I slipped inside those green gates, but what I wasn’t prepared for was what I saw in the courtyard. There, in one corner of the walkway, was a large bonfire, burning bright. All the guests who’d been at the wake were gone, and there were my two aunts. In the courtyard, wailing. They were throwing things into the fire. For one moment, I thought it was the Wednesday Fire Festival, the one that you jump over on the Wednesday before New Year. My grandmother had jumped that fire only a few days ago, I remembered. She had held her skirt and leaped, chanting the good-luck wish, asking the flames to give her strength for another year. I had done the same, rolling up the cuffs of my bell-bottoms, closing my eyes so that I could show my faith in being guided to a safe and cool spot on the other side, without looking.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.