AIAW Featured Writer: Roya MovAfegh

Author and writer Roya Movafegh

(Excerpt from Chapter One, based on a true story by Roya Movafegh)

According to the laws of Sharia in Iran, if a Muslim man is murdered, his family may be compensated according to the price of one hundred camels. If the same crime is committed to a Muslim woman, her family is entitled to fifty camels. If a Baha'i is murdered, no camels apply.

I am of the People with No Camel.

The People With No Camel

I lie in this desert of no name and feel the night sky pulling me towards its limitless depth. Sparkling diamonds scattered over black velvet, I see some move and catch my breath. Why have I not seen this sky before? The city lights block our view they tell me.

Do you see me? Do you see where we're heading? Tell me your secrets. You know mine.

I close my eyes, yet the images of the day appear before me—a day unlike any other.

A glimpse of my mother at dawn... "It's time," she had whispered. I had been waiting for this time. Time to be another person, to leave those I love. To leave Iran. Time, which manifested itself in my grandfather's tears. Smothered in his firm embrace, I could only hear his trembling voice, his failed attempt at words. Through his muddled sounds, I pieced together what he had meant to say: our special name one last time. The name he had made up and reserved for all his grandchildren. I had prepared myself for my mother's and grandmother's tears, not my grandfather's. In them, I understood that we were truly leaving, for real this time. We were leaving my grandparents, our friends, the sounds of bombs falling, of missiles firing. We were leaving behind the day I trembled from fear in the middle of the street during a bomb raid, as my father shook me to regain my senses. We were leaving behind good-byes unsaid, for we had only learned about our moment of escape the previous afternoon.

Above all, we were leaving behind the daily anxieties, wondering when the Pasdaran would raid our home or the homes in which we took refuge.

Throughout the silent taxi ride to the airport, occasionally interrupted by my mother's gulping sounds of tears she was determined to hide, my mind lingered back to Papaji, my grandfather, a man of few words, ample logic, and moderate emotions. I was certain that my grandmother, Mamaji, was still crying. Her tears were not unfamiliar.

Our arrival to the airport grounds steered my thoughts away from my grandparents onto the ascending airplanes. I joined my younger brother, Joubin, who was pasting his forehead to the side window. We covered the foggy glass beneath our breaths in 'foot prints', made by the side of our fists and fingers.

Three years had passed since our last flight in 1978, when we had flown back from a month-long visit to Vienna, the birth place of my brother and me.

Like everything else, much had changed since the Islamic Revolution. My mother and I hadn't had to wait in the 'WOMEN' line at the airport back in 1978. Now, a black veiled security guard called for me to approach. Her voice demanded authority, her eyes were void of warmth. She searched my body, much like one would search for valuables from a fresh corpse, and I in turn searched for a sign that would tell me that she was once a girl like me. At the end, it seemed that neither one of us found what we sought. I waited by the sideline until my mother, too, passed through the hurried and unkind hands of the guard.

During our flight to Zahedan, Joubin called out "Mommy" to show the results of the light-producing button by his seat.

"Tell him to call you 'Mother' instead of 'Mommy'," came our father's whisper to our mother. "How about I call you Nanneh?" said Joubin, leading to laughter we had all needed.

I looked at him as he continued his fascination with the light button. He doesn't understand what's happening, I thought. He doesn't know that soon his name will change. He's five. He thinks we're going to build sand castles near our grandparents' villa in Shomal. Mom and Dad can't tell him that we're escaping to Pakistan. He may tell if questioned by authorities and all would be over. I understand. I'm ten and I understand.

I did understand, the basics. Life in Iran had become unrecognizable to most of us, though a welcomed change to those who suffered under the Shah's ruling, mainly those with few means.

Not a single day had passed since the Revolution without an array of small printed faces covering the pages of newspapers; faces that had met the firing squads or the knotted ropes of those who betrayed the Islamic Republic. Their crimes ranged from previous associations to the Shah's regime, to speaking or acting out against the new Islamic government. The Pasdaran would find their 'obstructers' of the Islamic Republic mostly through home raids.

News articles without faces, told of lashes granted to those who sullied 'Islamic Laws' in other ways, like playing music or cards, owning alcohol, or inappropriate dress. Like the story of the father and daughter who had been arrested after swimming in their garden pool. They had received lashes for wearing bathing suits, for exposing skin to one another. The fifteen year old daughter had fainted after receiving a number of lashes and the father had begged to receive her remaining counts, in addition to his own.

Life in Iran as Baha'is changed too. The thirteen decade promises for our extinction suddenly amplified under the Islamic Regime. Our executions were reported in the state owned newspapers, but not our stories—those were shared personally between households. I'm glad we live in Tehran, I often thought as I sipped my chaee, while listening to what befell our relatives and friends. At least here, our homes aren't burned as much as in the smaller cities or villages. We knew of many who had become homeless, dispersed amongst family and friends who had space for this child or that grandmother.

At least Mr. Saraj had some warning. There had been a rumor. His Muslim niece begged him to store his valuables at her home. He brought one box. The only piece not destroyed by the fire that consumed everything his family had owned. When he opened that box, his niece sobbed uncontrollably. The box was filled with Baha'i books.

Roya Movafegh

REVIEWS:
"I was deeply transformed and touched by this unusually told tale of courage and perseverance. Unsentimental and yet with uncanny accuracy, her journey captures the conflict and confusion of our former Iran and still emerges with the grace of a true Persian woman. Interwoven between flights of fantasy, Movafegh speaks of freedom untasted in the East or the West." –
Shohreh Aghdashloo (Emmy winning actress and Oscar nominee of "House of Sand and Fog") "Against the backdrop of the Islamic Revolution, Roya Movafegh carries us with one unforgettable young woman and her family on a gripping journey into the unknown, opening a brilliant prismatic window on the power of faith and delivering a deeply affecting tale of memory, culture, and identity".
Neda Armian (film producer, Rachel Getting Married) "The story has every element imaginable and most importantly it's current, it's contemporary, it's relevant, it's urgent as nothing has changed to this day for The People With No Camel in their motherland. An important debut novel from a luminous author"
Shidan Majidi (Broadway Producer and Director)

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