Persian Dreams: Book III Nosha: Persian Dreams Book three, Nosha, #3
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Strong and ambitious, the daughter of Baback won't accept the second-class citizenship that her country has traditionally forced upon females.
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Persian Dreams - Maryam Tabibzadeh
Early Praise for Persian Dreams:
Persian Dreams, Tabibzadeh’s quietly powerful debut novel, weaves
the stories of various Iranian women in the early twentieth century
trying to gain rights in a strictly patriarchal society. The story’s hero-
ine, Nosha, wants to become a medical doctor—an ambitious desire
in an era governed by conservative tradition. Tabibzadeh delicately
takes the reader through a personal history of Iranian women’s rights:
from the years of traditional obedience at the mercy of their husbands
and fathers at the turn of the century to the 70’s, when it was com-
mon practice for women to vote, go to college, and choose their own
spouses. Each story uniquely manifests the courage of women brave
enough to protest against a violent, abusive, male-dominated society.
At the same time, the author presents the beauty of Persian poetry
and its role as the voice of an oppressed nation crying for change.
Tabibzadeh’s elaborate and lavish descriptions of places, events, and
characters take the reader into the heart of Persian culture; with the
book’s conclusion comes a real understanding of the struggle Iranian
women have gone through, and the history behind their hard-won
rights so far!
Shahnaz Peyman
Pal Alto, California
A sweeping tale of romance and adventure.
That’s often what we
hear with regard to works depicting foreign lands, broken hearts, and
love unrequited. Maryam Tabibzadeh incorporates so much more in
her achingly visual recounting of life in Iran across the vivid political
and cultural span of the last century. She gives voice to the struggles
of women wanting to be heard, to be counted, and to be loved and
offers answers through the eyes of men shaped by a nation that no
longer exists. The stories - and there are several - are wrapped in the
lilting poetry of Persia. I suggest you read it in a quiet secluded place,
so you can hear the movement of the sand...
Alexis Dobbins
CEO, writeRelations.com
Acknowledgements
I would, first of all, like to acknowledge the efforts of my daugh-
ter, Sheila Mahoutchian, who inspired the creation of this book. She
painted a picture of the day my book would be published and asked
me how I felt about it as if it really happened. This inspiration was
what stirred the book that follows. She also put forth much effort
throughout the process of creating it, from designing both the cover
and interior to overlooking the editing process. I am proud of her
persistence, and her artistic and thoughtful work.
Many thanks to Shahnaz Peyman, Alexis Dobbins and Maggie
Campbell for their early readings of my book and their helpful in-
sights and suggestions. Also to Iraj Shamas for helping my research
on Persian poets in preparing the reference at the end of the book.
Finally I’d like to thank the rest of my family and friends for all
the encouragements and love I received before and while writing this
book. I especially thank those friends who gave me positive feedback
on my Persian publications and the special one who told me, "You
have to write more, because you can make magic come true."
Dedication
I dedicate Persian Dreams to my daughters, Sheila and Tara, whose
encouragements and love gave me the courage and inspiration to
write.
––––––––
Nosha
Nosha did not remember much about the first four years of her life,
but she did remember vividly being five years old, and the darling of
her whole household as the first child of her parents.
Her mother, the twenty-one-year-old daughter of a businessman,
was very beautiful but also always sad looking. Nosha did not know
the word ‘depression’; it was only years later that she understood how
her mother had suffered and what the disease really was. Her father,
on the other hand, was very happy and kind. What she remembered
most about him through her life was the beautiful poetry that he
recited to his children.
Nosha’s parents were not the only adults in her household. The old-
est person in her family was her paternal grandmother, a very strong
woman who lived with them. Even though she looked old to Nosha,
she was always happy. Like Nosha’s father, her grandmother was al-
ways telling jokes when friends or family were gathered around. She
also stayed busy all the time, doing something around the house or
going to see her friends.
Nosha adored her grandmother, because she was very kind and lov-
ing and would take Nosha to visit friends, a wonderful adventure
even though there were no children to play with. Nosha did not mind
the lack of playmates, since listening to the talk of others was always
entertaining enough.
Two other people lived in Nosha’s house with her family. The first
was a tall, strong, black woman, who cleaned, cooked, and looked after
the children when no one else was at home. This woman they called
Naneh (like nanny in English). Naneh worked hard, lifting heavy
things and cleaning everywhere. But Naneh also sang, and danced,
and laughed all the time, and generally was happy despite her hard
jobs.
Naneh was paid a monthly salary, plus food and given clothes on
occasion. Her home was next to Nosha’s, and was tiny in comparison.
168 • Persian Dreams
Naneh had a daughter and two sons. After cooking and serving food
for Nosha’s family, Naneh would take her food home and eat with her
own family.
Also present in the household was the gardener, named Oujan. He
was a strong, tall man with hands rough from pulling weeds all day,
attending to the orange trees, and taking care of the flowers that Ba-
bak ordered for him to plant. Nosha loved to walk in the orchard, so
much that Oujan always called Nosha ‘the gardener’s daughter’. She
liked his gentle teasing, since she knew he considered her as one of
his own, to protect and to nourish and to revere.
Asghar (the butler), was a waiter in a restaurant near the office
where Babak worked. In the evenings, when the restaurant was closed,
Asghar would come to Nosha’s house to help with the shopping, to
fertilize the palm trees, or to pick dates as they ripened.
While he worked, Asghar would talk constantly. To the children,
Asghar would tell stories or jokes. He always talked to Babak about
politics and the news. Asghar always had the most current events and
news on his mind and would spend long periods of time discussing
the events of the day with Babak.
––––––––
The servants, Oujan, Naneh, and Asghar, all had been given nick-
names by Babak, and as far as Nosha was concerned the servants were
all part of the family. Naneh was called Kalontar, a police officer, since
her voice was loud and demanding. Asghar was called Morshed, after
the religious leader of the mystic dervishes, one of many branches of
Islam. His constant discussions were what earned him the nickname.
Oujan was named Darkhor, which means one who eats doors, because
of his healthy appetite. The children adopted these names when they
called them, and guests would laugh, amused, when they visited.
Watching Asghar, Naneh and Oujan, Nosha realized at a very
young age that to be happy, one does not need to have much money.
While some of her mother’s friends were wealthy but always upset,
Naneh was poor but happy. Oujan also did not have much money,
but happily lived among the treasures of the garden and his children.
Nosha, a child who listened and watched, saw that one can be happy
with only a few material things and can likewise be miserable in the
The House
The house was on a two-acre lot, with most of the property taken
up by an orchard of cypress trees. There were four doors in the walls
that surrounded the compound. Two of them were small, old, wind-
gnawed doors; one could not understand why they were there. The
other two doors were heavy and gate-sized. Each of the large doors
had a metal ring attached to it. The family most often went in and
out through the south-side door, which was located in a very narrow
alley made up of other high walls, and the doors of other houses.
The houses in Pasargad always had tall walls surrounding their inner
courtyards, as tall as three meters or taller, which was for the security
of the household and for privacy from the world surrounding them.
The other large door opened onto a garage-like space, which was
called a dalan. Next to the dalan was the courtyard. The courtyard was
covered with stone and concrete on one side and tall, wild, fragrant
rose, pomegranate, and orange trees on the other. A small pool was
located between green orange trees and the ornamental jasmine tree
that bloomed fragrant white flowers every year. Years later, Nosha
discovered a nearly identical structure on the streets of Paris and she
thought to herself, no wonder I liked that courtyard so much!
––––––––
One day when she was in college, Nosha had returned home to find
a concrete above-the-ground pool sitting where her beloved jasmine
tree had stood.
What is this ugly thing?
she asked.
Naneh sighed, "You should have been here to see how much trouble
it was to build it."
Oujan chimed in, explaining how the pool was built, how many
men it had taken, and how loud the normally quiet garden had been.
Both he and Naneh seemed to agree with her that it was ugly and
170 • Persian Dreams
unnecessary.
But why did they build it in the first place?
Nosha demanded.
It had to be done!
Nosha’s mother explained; she was convinced
that a pool was a status symbol, and had fretted until the thing was
built. Everybody has one like this!
That was her mother’s way of life—looking to see what other peo-
ple possessed, and then wanting the same things regardless of what
she had and how beautiful her own property was already.
The east building in the compound consisted of three rooms, a
hallway, and a kitchen. The two larger rooms were connected by the
smaller room, with the walkway running past all three and into the
kitchen. The rooms were a little above the ground, so there were three
steps down to the courtyard.
The room closest to the dalan was a guest room, and contained
a beautiful carpet and expensive furniture, which was so large that
it made the small space seem much smaller. The other large room
was the family’s living area. Like almost everyone in the city, Nosha’s
family slept on pallets at night in the same room where they ate their
meals and relaxed together. If anyone found the family room too
crowded, on most of the days of winter there were metal chairs in the
courtyard and the orchard to sit on and converse. Only during rare
bad weather and rainy days did Nosha feel truly constricted with her
family in that one room.
The third, smaller room in the east building was the pantry; in it
were big clay containers full of rice, flour, dates, oil, and other non-
perishable foods. They were purchased on a per-year basis and each
day Laiya or Talah would get the food out of the pantry and give it to
Naneh to cook. Meat was purchased daily from the market, if it was
not the hunting season. Naneh also cooked fresh bread every morn-
ing, then went to the store to purchase the meat if it was needed.
The east building had plenty of sunshine in the winter months,
which made it the ideal place during the day and into the night. Their
small manghal warmed the room at nights and on rainy days. Most
of the time, though, no more heat was necessary. After the sun had
poured through the three arched windows all day, the room was very
warm and comfortable even during the winter.
The west building had two rooms, and where the east building was
designed to keep the heat in, its western counterpart was designed
Book III: Nosha • 171
to keep the heat out. There were holes in the ceiling overhead and
no door to the outside, except for the front room. The front room
had a door to a back room, the courtyard, and a long hallway. Half of
this hallway’s wall was against the larger kitchen and the other half
had no wall at all, only poles holding up the ceiling. In the summer
months, the west building was cool and made the hot days tolerable.
No sunshine entered either of the two rooms, and the breeze creeping
in from the hallway made them the ideal place to rest in the warm
days of summers at a time that there was no electricity for fans, and
air conditioners were almost unheard of.
Nosha never understood the function of the two kitchens. Was the
purpose to make this kitchen cooler also? She never asked Naneh if
the east kitchen was cooler than the west ones; the woman seemed
happy to prepare the food in the east-side kitchen in the winter and
west-side in the summer.
Grandma Talah
With her perfumed clothes and smile all her own, their grandmother
Talah was the life of every party. Her jokes made people laugh and
her spirit gave them hope. She had gone through so much in life and
still was so joyful. Nosha often regarded the old woman as an amaz-
ing inspiration.
Only when she was talking about her beloved daughter Shiva, who
died while giving birth, did Talah look sad. Instead of speaking Shiva’s
name, though Talah always said Naneh Mordeh, and for a long time
Nosha thought that her late aunt’s name was Naneh Mordeh.
Nosha remembered vividly learning otherwise one day, as her
grandmother talked of her long departed daughter. Nosha innocently
had asked, "How old was Naneh Mordeh when she died?"
Her mother looked up, angry, and told her daughter, "Shut up and
do not talk to your grandmother like that!"
Nosha was stunned. She looked at her grandmother, to see if Talah
would take her side. She did not know what she said that made her
mother so mad, but Nosha knew that, as always, her grandmother
would come to her rescue. This time, however, Talah only sat quietly,
looking at a distant past and could not see Nosha’s inquiring eyes.
Nosha looked at her mother with amazement and asked, "Why?
What did I say?"
"You should not call anyone Naneh Mordeh," was the cold reply.
What? Isn’t that her name?
Nosha begged, completely confused.
No, her real name was Shiva.
But grandma always says... says...
she was scared to repeat it.
Her mother, beginning to understand, explained with a calmer tone,
"Your grandmother calls her late daughter Naneh Mordeh because she
wishes that she had died herself instead. Naneh Mordeh means her
dead mother."
Nosha was stunned, and looked back and forth between her mother
and grandmother, not knowing what to say.
174 • Persian Dreams
She was only twenty-four when she died,
her grandmother whis-
pered. Talah’s voice sounded as though she were reliving that day
and experiencing again all the pain that Shiva’s death had caused. In
Talah’s breaking voice, all the years of missing her only daughter and
first child, the reminder of her first love, were as plain as a bare wall.
Her pain was understandable, and her loss too.
Talah’s story was long and full of ups and downs. The story never
followed any simple or straightforward path; it was full of flashbacks
to now and to then. Good memories and horrible ones all mixed to-
gether with different time periods. Talah seemed constantly to relive
her greatest contentments only to experience over and over again her
deepest despairs.
Nosha knew that her Grandmother Talah was a remarkable indi-
vidual, who knew the ups and downs of life better than almost anyone
else did. Talah also knew how to live with joy despite the fact that life
ends for everyone eventually.
Talah would talk about her own death as though she were planning
a party. She had a suitcase full of expensive cloth materials, a white
sheet of cotton cloth brought from Mecca and several other things.
Sometimes, Talah would take the objects out and show then to her
granddaughter.
This white cloth is what I will be buried in,
she would say, hold-
ing the fabric up and inspecting it for flaws and imperfections. There
were none. Nosha always felt a strange chill when she thought about
how she would one day see Talah cold and lifeless, wrapped in her
precious cloth.
One night, Talah began to tell Nosha stories about her late hus-
band, Nosha’s grandfather. The only complaint Talah had about him
and their ten years of marriage was that he did not pay attention to
money and he spent it as soon as he got it.
They both must have been beautiful, Nosha thought. Both her father
and her uncle were very handsome, with her uncle slightly taller and
a little slimmer than her father. Nosha’s uncle had black hair, and dark
black eyes set on the white background of his skin. Her father was
shorter, an average height for Persian men, but had a very light, al-
most blond hair and green eyes, with skin so white that it was strange
in their little town where most people had a dark complexion. It was
a trait that ran in Nosha’s family. Her grandmother had green eyes
Book III: Nosha • 175
and so did she and her cousins.
Green and blue eyes were not terribly uncommon for people in the
town, but dirty blond hair and skin as white as her father’s were very
rare. Nosha often wondered where her father had gotten his light
complexion. She could not tell the color of her grandmother’s hair
since Talah used henna and other dyes to keep her gray hairs from
showing. All of Nosha’s aunts had the same color hair, since they all
used henna too.
Nosha reasoned that her father might have gotten his looks from
his father. Her grandfather and great-grandfather were foreigners to
the people in the small town when they arrived in Pasargad. Nosha’s
grandfather was known to be from Shiraz, the capital city of Pars
province.
So, how did you meet my grandfather?
Nosha asked.
Grandmother smiled as though it had been only yesterday when
she met him.
"I was sick and he came to see me for my cold. He was nice and
handsome. He talked with a beautiful accent, which was new to me.
He came back to visit me again until my fever went away. Then we got
married and your father and uncle were born. So life was going like
a beautiful stream; although we had our difficulties we were happy.
Yes, happy."
Nosha looked at her grandmother; Talah seemed distant, far away
from the present and immersed in both the past that was pleasant
and good, and another past that was tragic and painful. Talah’s life
was an ocean full of stormy days followed by calm ones. Nosha could
see from her expressions whether her grandmother was telling her
stories about her stormy life or the calmer days. When she was talk-
ing about her grandfather, she could tell it was the tale of her good
times. Still, she probed Talah’s memory.
"But my grandpa was a physician; he should have earned enough
money!" Nosha asked.
Yes, of course,
grandmother answered cheerfully. "But people do
not get sick all the time. He spent any money he earned the day he
earned it so there was no money left for the rainy days, and with the
bad economy of that time, people did not go to the doctor unless they
really were sick!"
Did you get to know your first husband before you got married?
176 • Persian Dreams
Nosha asked.
Talah chuckled, "Oh no, the girls were supposed to cover them-
selves from head to toe at that time. Only after Reza Shah forced
women to abandon the black chadors did any female past puberty
leave her house without a chador. So while a man might see his wife
before the wedding these days, when I was first married you were
lucky if you saw your husband before the ceremony was over. Even in
my time, some people tried to change things. Some men refused to
get married until they saw their bride."
"You mean every girl at those times had to cover themselves from
head to toes like the cleric’s families?" Nosha asked.
Oh yes honey, everyone.
"Even the villagers? They have beautiful clothes and they do not
cover themselves from head to toe."
"No, they always wore the traditional clothes. Only in the cities was
the black chador the norm."
Nosha was confused more now. For sometimes she noticed that the
Persian women were wearing three different kinds of outfits. Her fa-
ther’s friends all from other cities were wearing westernized clothes;
the married ones wore heavy makeup too. They got their ideas about
fashion from many magazines with colorful pages and news about
fashion. Nosha, her sister, and her mother wore western clothes too,
but Nosha’s mother did not wear any makeup. The women in Pasar-
gad wore mostly westernized clothes, but added a chador when they
went out into the streets or when a man who was not a close relative
was in their houses. The chador’s color and thickness varied according
to the beliefs, age, and affluence of the woman wearing them. Finally,
in more traditional families, all the women wore a black chador that
covered their bodies and most of their heads. Some went even fur-
ther and covered their faces with the fabric, by pulling the chador and
holding it up with their hands.
The younger generations, and less traditional women wore very
light chadors made of sheer materials. These garments were wrapped
loosely over the head, covering only part of their hair, and then draped
over the shoulders. Many women chose exotically colored chadors and
the often-translucent materials, which made them even more myste-
rious and beautiful still.
Then there were the villagers, who had their own customs that
Book III: Nosha • 177
varied from region to region. Their clothes were long and colorful.
Their scarves were made of sheer white materials that were drawn
tightly around the head and fastened with a golden pin. But the vil-
lage women left part of their hair out too.
Nosha loved those colorful clothes and once borrowed one set from
one of her classmates. She took a picture while wearing the outfit
and admired the color and the strange fit. But Nosha soon realized
although the villagers’ clothes were more beautiful than her own, they
were not as comfortable.
"Well, if I had to wear chador, I would rather wear the villagers’
clothes than the black chador of the more traditional families of Pas-
argad," she told her grandmother.
One afternoon in the summer when, the air was so hot that no one
wanted to go outside, Nosha heard Talah telling her mother another
piece of her life story, and since she loved to watch and listen, Nosha
sat down by them to hear it.
"He would buy a whole load of watermelons, cut them, and set
them out around the pool, asking me and the children to choose
which one we would like to eat!"
Nosha realized that her grandmother was talking about her grand-
father again.
The whole load of watermelon!
Talah repeated, for emphasis.
How many were there?
Nosha asked.
Twenty or more!
the old woman answered.
But could you all eat so many watermelons?
"No, not really. That is why I am telling you he spent his money
without thinking, and then we had problems later on," came Talah’s
response.
Did you feel poor then?
Nosha wondered.
Talah nodded with a smile, "Sometimes I did. I remember one day
when I wanted to cook the bread but realized that I did not have any
flour. I told Mamreza about it. He said, that unfortunately he did not