Only then did she give herself wholly to him without any reservation; she enjoyed his touch, his warm skin, his body odor, and cherished his long and short powerful strokes. Afterward, with her head resting on his wide hairy chest, listening to the pounding of his heart, she felt that he was the first man who had ever touched her heart and soul and satisfied her body completely.
Unknown to her then, the love she felt for him at that moment was never to be replaced by any other for the rest of her life. That was when he became her inseparable lover. From then on, a night didn’t turn to dawn without having her warm and soft naked body next to his.
When their relationship reached a stage were every curve of her body was etched in his mind, and he could smell and taste her breasts even when he was alone at work, when he craved for nothing except her company, he knew that that kind of closeness and intimacy was prelude to something more; it required a definite matrimonial commitment.
He was exhilarated and proud to kneel down next to a dolled-up smiling Esmat on the floor in front of a mullah, in a very private ceremony, and convincingly say, “Baleh [I do].”
He had for sure become her husband, her lover, her soul mate, and a wonderful generous provider – a dream man for any girl in Esmat’s social class.
Besides breaking her heart and hurting her deeply, Ali-Akbar's tragic death changed everything in Esmat’s life. She camouflaged her pain and sadness with often-uncontrollable anger and vulgarity. When pouring down considerable amounts of aragh sagy and getting drunk didn't ease the pain of her loss, she tirelessly searched for another husband. When all her tricks failed to lure the man she was involved with into the sanctity and security of matrimony, she went to a fortune-teller but not the same one she had gone to previously. She paid a good sum of hard-earned cash to an old Iraqi Arab “witch” to cast a love spell for her into the tightly closed heart of a strong but boyish-looking man, a butcher, who very much resembled her deceased husband. But it was useless. His heart remained shut. He adamantly refused to prove his permanent commitment to her as a lover by swearing on the holy book, let alone commit himself to the institution of marriage. Sipping the last drops of sweetness that oozed from her fat body, he gradually found her bed each night colder than the night before; he stopped seeing her altogether, and memories of him faded from her mind not long after he was gone.
Having Faty as her unceasing responsibility, her attempts to become a maid again were farfetched – an impossibility, or at least wishful thinking. Life left her with no other option or prospect. She became a rakhat shoor, a clothes washer, for affluent families.
Although rakhat shoori wasn't known to secure anybody's future, it at least provided her a steady income that could put food on her sofreh. It also gave her an opportunity to be around people in the upper echelons of society – the rich people who, at times, would comfort their conscience or hide from their guilt and elevate their sense of well-being by being generous and giving their leftover food to the poor.
She cherished her one-room irreplaceable home. The rent was cheap. The room was comfortable, secure and homey, for she had many sweet memories shadow-dancing over the walls of that little room.
Esmat, like millions of others, no more or no less, was trying her best to keep her head slightly above troubled waters, to stay alive, to have three square meals, a bed, a roof over her head, hope in her heart, a little laughter now and then, a chance to raise her little girl, and hope for a better tomorrow.
Faty had dirty, curly, black hair that often looked like a dried-up mop. With all that unmanageable hair covering her skull, her head appeared much larger, size of an overgrown melon. Her thick black eyebrows met in the middle, like her mother’s, making her look older than her age. She had a narrow and upward-tilted nose over a pair of thin lips. Her teeth were all crooked. In spite of her physical deficiencies and lack of proper hygiene, there was still a bounty of sweetness about her that gleamed from her eyes, especially when she smiled, and that was quite regularly. She definitely had inherited her mother’s soft, smooth attractive white skin.
She was a naturally joyous child, especially around other children. She would openly and passionately hate it when her mother would take her to other people's houses to wash clothes. Without exception, she was not allowed to touch anything or play with the children of the house. Gradually, she began to believe she was different from the other children who lived in the northern part of the city – an inferior sort. Ironically, this understanding of her own inferiority at that tender age defied all the psychological hypotheses, for she grew up without carrying any excess baggage as a damaged child.
She could only sit near where her mother Esmat worked putting a large tray full of soapy water on the ground, squatting down, rubbing, twisting and squeezing the clothes with her hands, as if trying to drain the life out of them, rinsing, twisting and then hanging them on the lines to dry.
The only advantage in going with her mother was that she could eat plenty of mouth-watering leftovers, these being the only times her stomach was full.
Once back in her own little room in the evening, when Esmat happened to be in a pleasant relaxed mood, if she had had a “good day” and a few shots of aragh sagy afterward, she would get out an old daf, a large tambourine, and beat some rhythms so Faty could dance. The other poor families would gather around for free entertainment, clap their hands to the rhythms of Esmat's daf and chant a few folkloric songs. That also allowed Esmat to advertise her moonlighting, luring married men to bed late at night to offer them the sweetness of her body, and soon afterward retrieve the money from their tightly held pockets.
Chapter Three
In the late afternoon on a mid-spring day, after Esmat hung all the clothes on the line, leaving them to dry in the sun, she was given some delicious leftover food by the lady of the house. Sitting under the shade of a weeping willow tree in the backyard, she and Faty gorged themselves.
The woman of the house was a meticulously groomed lady – a ravishing, ostentatious woman of pushing fifty who embodied “modern” Iran in all its crude contradictions. She was cheerful but desperate to be entertained by anybody by any method. With her husband, a successful government official at work all day, she had four of her friends, all photocopies of her, flaunting their newly-shaped faces (thanks to numerous plastic surgeries), jewelry, and Western-styled dresses, as guests in her living room. She had run out of gossip and didn't have the slightest clue how to entertain them.
After Esmat and Faty finished their food and it was time to leave, the lady stepped out to the backyard and paid Esmat. She hesitated for a moment and nonchalantly asked her, “You know, you people know a lot of folk songs. ... Do you sing? I mean can you sing some songs for us?”
“Can I sing? Of course, I can, aziz! I will sing like a bolbol for you, and I tell you what! I can play daf better than anybody you known,” she responded enthusiastically, over-exaggerating quite a lot for her singing and musical talent. She then asked the lady, “Do you have a daf?”
“Yes, I do,” she responded happily.
She led Esmat and Faty into the living room and introduced them to the other ladies. She showed Esmat and Faty a place near the door on the floor to sit, not on any furniture, then went to another room and returned with an old daf. She handed it to Esmat and demanded, “Now, play some rhythms for us.”
Like a skilled daf player, awe-struck Esmat began the rhythms with a song, lyrics that rhymed awkwardly – sort of rap songs, mostly composed with comical words, crackling in her throat. When she ran out of city songs, she sang some desert folklore songs that those ladies had never heard. To prolong her performance Esmat ordered Faty, who was strangely unafraid and not shy, to dance. She obeyed immediately and even had sparks of joy glittering in her little eyes. Little Faty moved her feet and curled her chubby hands, synchronizing her movements with the beat while keeping a big smile on her face. She twisted her body from the waist down imitating a voluptuous belly dancer while the guests clapped their hands