The Good Daughter: A Memoir of My Mother's Hidden Life by Darznik Jasmin

Author:Darznik, Jasmin [Darznik, Jasmin]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: BIO026000
ISBN: 9780446558648
Publisher: Hachette Book Group
Published: 2011-01-27T08:00:00+00:00

As galling as Nasrine Khanoom’s proposal had been to her, and as horrible as the prospect of marriage was overall, if it were not for her brother Nader’s sake Lili might never have found the courage to take a job.

She’d sometimes glimpse women on their way to work in the city. It was true that there were not many of them, but with their pocketbooks, shift dresses, and high heels they seemed a smart and beguiling set. But no woman in her own family had ever worked outside the house, and to judge from the reaction of her aunts she might as well have been setting out to sell herself on the streets. “They only work because they have no choice,” her aunts noted darkly. They redoubled their matchmaking efforts and begged her to stay at Kobra’s side until a husband could be found for her.

But the thought of marriage was still abhorrent to her. What’s more, she’d never had much of a talent or fondness for sewing, and she also felt sure that by working in the city she could earn a better wage with which to support her brother’s studies, an expense that Kobra’s earnings alone could never support. On a cousin’s advice, therefore, Lili finally took a job as a cashier in a sundry shop near Tehran’s central police station, a sprawling concrete compound that also housed various divisions of the shah’s army. So far as she could make out, she was the only woman within miles of the site. Perched for eight-and ten-hour shifts behind the wooden slats of her booth, she sat counting out change and scribbling receipts. In the dead hours she busied herself with calculating her modest earnings, most of which she sent away to Nader in tissue paper–thin airmail envelopes.

For weeks she secretly admired the young uniformed officers who dropped by the shop. At the end of the day there was no shortage of policemen, soldiers, and lieutenants eager to escort her home. Some of them were so earnest in the appeals, made such heartfelt mention of their own unmarried sisters back at home and their duties to her as honorable men, that she was quite often tempted to accept their offers. She’d always chosen to go home by bus, however and more than once she’d found herself wishing for a veil to deflect the more aggressive offers she attracted on her way to and from work each day.

Then one day she met the General.

“This isn’t a good place for a woman to stand by herself.”

His eyes were green. Lili blinked, straightened herself, and cleared her throat.

“Excuse me?” she asked.

“A young lady, especially one so lovely as you, shouldn’t stand by herself on a busy street like this.” He nodded toward a limousine parked across the street. “I will accompany you home in my car.”

She’d never before been propositioned by an officer of this rank, and when her eyes fell to the row of beribboned medals on his breast and he took her hand and told her to get into the car she knew there was no use protesting.

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