What The Doves Said: The Shenaas-Nameh (Book Three)

hat The Doves Said:

  The Shenaas-Nameh

  Book Three

  By Mojdeh Marashi

  Copyright 2011 Mojdeh Marashi

  Third Story In "What The Doves Said" Series

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  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  What The Doves Said

  The Shenaas-Nameh

  Notes

  About The Author

  The Shenaas-Nameh

  My mom is shuffling the contents of one of the drawers in the kitchen. She is wearing a beautiful green blouse, her favorite color. Her hair, naturally wavy, is cut short framing her face, and her glasses are sliding down a bit. She looks like when she was in her early sixties and I was still living at home.

  “Hi Mom. What are you looking for?”

  “Tape, scotch tape. I thought I had seen a roll here,” she says without looking up.

  “Sure, there is one there. It might have moved to the back of the drawer. What do you need tape for?”

  “My Shenaas-Nameh. It is falling apart.”

  “Oh, I wanted to keep it as is. The way you left it.”

  “But I meant to glue it together,” she says as she picks her head up, adjusts her glass, and looks at me from behind the thick glasses, which make her beautiful brown eyes bigger.

  “Mom, it’s fine as is. Let’s just leave it. It won’t fall apart. I promise.”

  “All right. Whatever you say,” Mom says and disappears softly.

  Mom comes and goes as she pleases. Sometimes it feels as if I have control over her appearance since she usually comes whenever I think of her or call her name. But I am not able to stop her from leaving. It seems like she leaves as soon as she feels her work is done. I pour a glass of water for myself and go back upstairs to Mom's Shenaas-Nameh.

  Mom’s Shenaas-Nameh finally arrived this morning, all the way from Tehran, half a globe away, via a friend of a friend - a humble proof that my mother was here, in this world. It is a small booklet, roughly the size of a hand, with only a handful of pages. Mom has it protected by a ready-made brown plastic cover that is starting to tear along the binding. The Shenaas-Nameh is a document similar to the social security card we have in the States, except it records much more than just one's birth date, yet it does not entitle the owner to any benefits.

  On the first page of Mom's Shenaas-Nameh, expired now since she has passed away, I read her given name out loud the way she used to read it: Ashraf-o-Sadat Sadat-e Marashi. There was so much pride inherent in her annunciation of the first and last name, both included the word “Sadat,” proof of her lineage to the Second Imam of the Shiites – the Muslim minority who make up the vast majority of Muslims in Iran; and more importantly, for the family name “Marashi,” traceable over 900 years back in Persian history, the name that made her who she was, and I who I am today.

  Next, on the first page of the document, is a place for the names of Mom’s father and mother. I try to picture my grandfather, though he died years before any of us grandchildren were born. He was a good looking, kind and gentle man, fluent in several languages, with intelligent light brown eyes, and a great talent for creating wealth – enough for the entire family to enjoy for decades to come – a successful merchant who loved his only daughter enough to overcome his disapproval of her getting married to my dad. Then I read my grandmother's name – Gilaan. She was the first of four children born in Gilaan, a northern province by the Caspian Sea where her father, a statesman, was stationed for a short while. The in-love young couple, my great-grandparents, had decided their newborn was the best souvenir to bring back to Tehran and therefore gave my grandmother the name Gilaan. I love that name. Grandma was tall and beautiful, with amazing skin, but more importantly she was charismatic. She was the matriarch of the family, like many women before her in my family, and the first feminist I knew – years before I learned what feminism was.

  The picture in Mom’s Shenaas-Nameh at the top left corner of the page shows her in her fifties. The photo must have been taken around the time she and Dad went their separate ways. Behind her forced yet warm smile, deep in her beautiful intelligent, light brown eyes, I can see the sorrow and the fear of the uncertain future awaiting her – a life she did not expect, was not ready for, nor deserved.

  My mother was Yeki-Yek-Dooneh, which loosely translates to “the one and only” because she was the only girl, born to a family that, for centuries, had adored girls and treated them as equals to boys, if not better, as if they were princesses. My mother had numerous qualified suitors, all discouraged by my grandfather, who believed that none of them were good enough for his only daughter. But then she was left alone, without a partner, at a stage in life when she needed one the most.

  I pick up my head and there she is again. Mom is sitting in front of me on the floor in my bedroom.

  “He warned me. He said he didn’t think this man would be the right choice for me,” she says as she leans toward me to see her own picture.

  “You mean your dad?” I ask even though I know the answer. I am hoping my question encourages her to tell me more.

  “My dad was not the type to force his way. He told me it was my choice. But he warned me multiple times.” Mom drops her head, staring at the pattern on her dress, a pretty grayish blue background with tiny pink flowers, the dress she has on in one of the pictures I have of her when she was in her early twenties. She seems to have become younger since I last saw her in the kitchen.

  “My father said: ‘It is your choice. Personally, I don’t think he is a suitable husband. He is much older than you and comes from a different background. He seems a bit rough and has a temper. You, my dear, are young, good natured, gentle, and sweet. How is this going to work? He is in the Army, always in different cities. You will be lonely, you are my Yeki-Yek-Dooneh, you were a princess all your life. How is this going to work? Don’t fall for his looks or the uniform. Beauty fades away. You get used to the uniform. Think, my dear daughter. Think hard and long before you say yes.’ My dad, your grandfather, was right. We were very different. But your dad was good looking, tall, handsome, and very charming, especially in that uniform! And I was young and impressionable.”

  I remember my grandmother, Gilaan, telling us girls, her granddaughters, not to marry and just have fun, quite a remarkable statement at the time. Now, that I think about it, Mom’s marriage and how it turned out must have had something to do with my grandmother’s opinion regarding marriage. Gilaan’s own marriage was very successful.

  Mom had some money, thanks to my grandfather, but not enough to maintain her standard of living, after the divorce, which included domestic help and a closet full of high fashion pieces, not to mention sending me to the best private schools and buying me everything I needed. Mom had expensive taste and would never buy junk. “Don’t buy anything unless you can buy the best” was her mantra when it came to shopping. But of course she was too proud to even think of getting help from my dad.

  Below Mom’s photo in her Shenaas-Nameh “Tehran” is stated as her birthplace. I am reminded of when I was six years old, and she took me to her childhood neighborhood, considered old Tehran now, in the southern part of the city. The streets were narrow and lined mainly with newer buildings, except for a few houses that had survived the passage of
time and their owner’s appetite for “modern” structures. I love the architectural style of the old houses since it is attuned to the climate and the lifestyle of the occupants. We walked through mazes of narrow streets and then stopped in front of Mom’s childhood house, a large khaki colored building with an arched entrance leading to a pair of wooden doors decorated with large flower-shaped nails. There was a small opening in the door, which Mom said was for identifying the person before they opened the door – sort of like the peepholes we have on doors nowadays. There was a doorbell, though fortunately the owners had also kept the old metal doorknocker, stylized to resemble a lion’s paw. Mom’s childhood house had survived the so-called modern wave of architecture in the old neighborhood.

  “Dad used to have a special knock, a rhythmic one, da-da dad da da-da. I was always the first to run to the door and open it for him,” Mom said as she knocked on the door like her father.

  The people who lived in the old house let us in with a big, wide smile – Persians are famous for hospitality. If you drop in on someone around lunch or dinnertime, they will insist you stay and eat with them even if they haven’t prepared enough food. At least this is how it used to be when I was growing up.

  "We love this house,” the woman who opened the