They took pictures of everything they saw to make the folks back home envious, and perhaps to erase Zee-Zee’s memory of her doomed love and substitute it with the splendor and glamour of new memories. But all the entertainments and amusements Zee-Zee experienced in Europe couldn’t erase the memory of Faramarz from her mind, and in her lonely hours only those memories remained her companions. Only by whispering the newly learned quatrains of Omar Khayyam could she prevent herself from falling into a deep depression.
When they returned to Iran, they looked, different, almost unrecognizable. As for “classy” Helen, she even spoke differently by inserting a word or two of English, French, or German into her Persian sentences. And the club-goers, the fun-seekers, had felt the absence of mother and daughter and cheered them wildly again once they reappeared on stage.
A debilitating high fever and sore throat caused by a severe case of influenza in late autumn forced Helen to remain in bed one night, and Zee-Zee had to perform at a nightclub alone. She only sang a few love songs, with cheap, meaningless, shallow lyrics, neither Persian nor European – made-up tunes, accompanied by drums and an electric guitar. The sounds, to qualified ears, were nothing but noise pollution, but to others they were the sweet sounds of modernity, the gift of the industrial revolution, coming through the lips of an artist – a sexy young woman. She took only a few steps, twisted her body a little but was well-received by the drunks, who actually applauded her half-covered breasts, her round buttocks wrapped in a tight dress and her thighs exposed by slits cut to her hips. From that night on she no longer needed her mother on stage with her nor missed her presence.
She was twenty years of age and at the prime of her beauty and fame, a goddess worshiped by any male above the age of puberty, and the epitome of an entertainer.
On the advice of Helen, who had lost her position in the band, Zee-Zee hired a songwriter, a young man in his late twenties. He was the son of a rich man who had gone to America to study engineering, had failed, but had learned a few popular songs. The young man had brought back an electronic synthesizer – a sort of magic music box. He “composed” a few so-called modern songs with simplistic and monotonous rhythms and superficial lyrics for her, and the drunks in the nightclubs responded enthusiastically.
With the appearance of television in Iran, visual exposure became more important. Zee-Zee was a real star, if not the star of the entire Middle East. Her colorful photos appeared on the covers of most magazines, and people cut them out and plastered them on the walls of practically every little shop around the country.
Although Zee-Zee never again cared for a man, she agreed to marry a wealthy nightclub owner, mainly to free herself from her mother’s control and to advance her career.
The groom was so drunk and under the influence of so much taryak on their wedding night that the act of lovemaking was unbearably repulsive to her. The act only became slightly tolerable and gradually somewhat enjoyable when, under the weight of the man, she closed her eyes, reached into the well of her memories and retrieved Faramarz’s face. The groom didn’t have the slightest clue what was going on, nor did he care. At the top of his wish list was a famous beautiful wife, a luscious doll, for whom he could buy jewelry, expensive cars, mink coats and houses. He wished to own someone special, someone he could show off, to possess a beautiful woman that would reflect the power of his manhood and the extent of his prosperity. It didn’t matter to him a bit whether she was going to be his sexual partner, mutually enjoying the act of lovemaking. All he sought after was a gorgeous doll to alleviate his sexual desire with. Besides, she was good for business. For Zee-Zee, marriage had only one advantage, to rid herself of Helen and all her toxicities, a mother who had betrayed her. She achieved that by right away moving to her husband’s new mansion, to experience the comfort and security of married life.
If there is any truth to the fact that money has a corrupt influence on people, Helen, with all that money in her purse, proved it by being more vulnerable to corruption than ever. She stayed home, to only entertain her admirers whose numbers were fast dwindling. In her lonely hours she would smoke taryak, and when she couldn’t stand the time it would take to prepare the taryak paraphernalia, and the longer time for its grey smoke to give her the high, she shot up heroin. Nothing, of course, could substitute for her the joy and pleasure of having her “baby” next to her. To cope with her depression, she consumed more drugs, only to go into a deeper depression; and a few months later, on a lonely hot summer depressing night, she died of an overdose.
The entire nation mourned her death. Her funeral was a social phenomenon. A record-breaking crowd of more than two hundred thousand people, mostly men, attended her funeral in Tehran. A nation lost an “artist” – a “writer, composer and singer” of the most popular song, “Is This Ass Crooked?” Shaking her fat bottom on stage she’d then respond: “Who says it's crooked?” to hear the uproar from the audience.
In a society where its citizens were not allowed to express their political and social views openly, some articulated, people used Helen's funeral as an excuse to “bravely” demonstrate their defiance in the streets for the Shah’s regime.
Meanwhile, gorgeous Zee-Zee accumulated and collected in the collection book of men many admirers, a young generation saw her as a symbol of success, fortune and fame, a personification of good living, a leading citizen of the “Great Civilization” promised by the Shah. For the older people, especially the affluent, she was the embodiment of sexuality – a perfect example, an emblem of what the acquisition of wealth was all about.
Zee-Zee's price for performing at rich people’s weddings substantially increased as she became more the main attraction on government-controlled television. There was a long waiting list for her performances in events. Meanwhile, her marriage soured before any meaningful relationship could be developed between her and her husband, and soon their hours together were tainted with more misery. Her wealthy husband found another young girl who was willing to give of herself more and demand less in order to become a famous nightclub entertainer. And with the absence of Helen in her life, Zee-Zee, who had tasted a bit of personal freedom, could no longer tolerate the control of a man who had failed to touch her heart and who had meant nothing to her. She welcomed the news of their sudden divorce. In fact, she thought of it as a golden key to open another door to more careless living. She received a large sum of money and property as a settlement. The news of their divorce captured the headlines of the evening papers and satisfied the curiosity and the interest of a nation that was allowed no other news except the constant praising of a self-appointed egomaniac ruler, the Shah.
With a flock of drug-addicted friends around and without Helen to manage her finances, Zee-Zee spent money unwisely, and every two-bit charlatan that came across her path cheated her big time in one business scheme or another. Soon, her bank accounts began to dry up. She started to sell her belongings; her mink coats, cars and houses had to go. She submitted to another marriage, this time to a rich old land developer whose kinds were popping up rapidly, who had thrown a hundred thousand Tomans on the stage one night during one of her performances a year earlier. He lit her cigarettes with thousand-Toman bills, sent her bouquets of flowers and openly admitted to being in love with her, so much so that he could no longer conduct his business properly.
Her second husband, a new breed of bourgeoisie that could be found on every street corner, had started as a bricklayer a decade earlier. But with the magic of petrodollars pouring into the country, he had become a big land developer by building matchbox houses one on top of the other, without observing any building code, and selling to a frenzy of buyers, great consumers who were beginning to subscribe the proposition that