AIAW Featured Writer: shirindokht nourmanesh

Shirindokht Nourmanesh - Writer

Inside a San Jose movie theater at the beginning of “Twister,” my body starts trembling. I feel nauseous and frightened. As the Dolby sound system echoes the blast of a tornado careening towards Helen Hunt’s character, the noise is so real and so familiar that it feels like an air raid, or what we used to refer to as a bombardment. (A bombardment is different from a missile attack which usually leaves nothing behind after the impact).

Years later, in my constant endeavor to deal with bouts of melancholy and mania, I dare to translate a highly complicated mystic poem by Tahereh Qurratul-ayn, with the hope of finding in her words the one I had lost contact with in my youth.

Seeing you face to face
I will define the fine
torment of thine love.

To see thy face
-- oh! my beloved
I have become the wind
wandering
from one tree to another
from one hill to the next
from the earth to Heavens.

***

There is a constant murmur in the dark room while shadowy figures have their faces burrowed into each others’ ears whispering into the night. The drapes are pulled back, drawing my attention to the gloomy ambiance. I sit up and ask: “What is it?” “Nothing,” a whisper says, “go back to sleep.” I crawl next to the silhouettes and hug my knees in the cold of the night. My mom is by my side. “It’s the Iraqis,” she says and sighs a deep sigh, pouring out her grief.

A hand points to a tiny little brilliant dot moving slowly toward Tehran on a straight line—sure and gentle—taking its time. I stare at the shining dot that moves without any sense of hesitation toward the capitol city. Blood rushes to my face and my heart starts fluttering in irregular spasms.

Others wake up too and one by one join us at the foot of the window. We all sit in the cold darkness of the room and gaze in silence at the little moving dot landing gently in the vast-wicked black. For a moment, it vanishes in the gloomy horizon of the night and then turns into a little fireball. Immediately after, we hear a small distant pop, like a champagne bottle cracking open—a triumphant hit. I shiver. Is it our house that is ruined, or is it that of the others’? Is it possible that a friend, a family member, a relative is losing the last of his or her blood?

In the small cabin of our family ranch on the outskirts of Tehran, I release a little sob while about twenty of us, young and not-so-young, have our sleeping bags next to each other; the older ones are frightened, disappointed, and upset, while the youngsters dream sweet dreams of their lives without school.

There is not much time left before the majestic dawn peeks from the crown of Mount Damavand. It is 4:30 AM. Friday, March 11, 1987. A dog howls at the arrival of the morning, and the sun gradually rises from the east, from Tehran, and reveals a gory scene. This day marks the end of the third phase of the so-called “War of the Cities”—a malicious attempt by the Iraqi army to attack civilian targets. Thousands have died while in bed, at work, on the street, at parties. Just a few days earlier, some forty teenagers were killed during an air raid while enjoying themselves at a birthday party in the Geesha District.

We return to Tehran during a very short truce to see if there is anything left of our house. Our car is one of the few traveling on the road to Tehran. The capitol city with more than ten million inhabitants looks like a cemetery, deserted by its residents and left to the cats who roam freely, unfettered by all the destruction. Upon our return, before we make sure our house is still standing, I gather a few books—Khayyam, Brecht, Rumi, (not that there is room for love)—the first thing we do is to check on my cousin who, in his childish stubbornness, has refused to leave town. One of the missiles, we hear, was aimed at the Tavaneer Gas & Electric Company right in his neighborhood.

He is alive but terribly shaken. He explains that just a few minutes before the missile hit, he was on the phone with his best friend chatting the night away—probably trashing girls they have dated—when he decided to end the conversation and get a glass of water from the refrigerator. The missile hit the ground while he was in the kitchen. Smashed into the wall, he gained consciousness after a few seconds, ran back to his room to find the sofa he was sitting on a few minutes earlier shredded by the flying glass and runaway shrapnel.

***

The fourth phase of the “War of the Cities” begins two days later. A neighbor of my aunt’s witnesses his son’s head, while playing soccer in the street—not the head of course, but the boy—ripped off of his body due to the surge of energy that radiates from the point where a missile hits the ground.

We escape again.

Shortly after, a missile hits an elementary school near the area where we have taken shelter, killing hundreds of small children. The funeral procession is heart-wrenching; hundreds of tiny little coffins are carried over the shoulders of the silent, tearless mourners.

A few days later, Saddam’s forces use chemical weapons on Iraqi Kurds. Impossible, one might exclaim, how can one use force on one’s own people? Upon learning about the use of chemicals, we start to panic. If Saddam is insane enough to commit such crimes on his own people, imagine what he can do to us. There is a certain fear and, at the same time, a kind of curiosity about what would happen if we were to be injured by, say, mustard gas. I mull over the situation—always arriving at the same conclusion that if I die, I die; but what if I stay alive after a chemical raid? How am I going to deal with a deformed face, with burnt skin, melted flesh?

Is this my first encounter with vanity?

It is amazing that with all the terrible thoughts that might accompany such a situation, one still feels the urge to keep on going, living life—no matter how short it might be—to its fullest. While my younger brother and my cousins are enjoying their time off from school, trying to learn how to ride horses at the ranch or running after each other without any other purpose than having fun, my sister and I decide to go back to Tehran to attend classes at the university. We take the bus and are surprised to find out that the classes are in session and there are actually quite a few students attending the lectures given by the faculty.

I vividly recall the sound of the red siren—signaling an air raid or missile attack—being broadcast on the speakers for all the students to hear. Our professor, who learned his impeccable English without spending even one day out of the country, stops the lecture, keeps his distance from the window and stands in front of the lecture hall leaning against the wall with his hands in his pockets. He puffs his cheeks out in his usual manner that makes him look like a toad in heat (a continuous subject of our ridicule). This time though it is not an amusing gesture. We sit motionless. Everyone knows the drill. Duck under the tables or run out of the room—do something, anything—but instead we just sit there in gloomy silence, pens and pencils in hands, books spread open in front of us, actually looking bored. It takes a minute for the missile to hit the ground. The deafening thunderous sound moves through our bones, shaking every fiber of our beings. The building shakes while we wait for the white siren to clue us that the raid is over. Puffing intensely to inhale the grisly air, Dr. I-don’t-remember-his-name takes up his lecture where he left off on the ethics of translation.

A few days later, I realize I am about twenty-two and have never danced in my life. So, during one of our days of exile to the outskirts of Tehran, while listening to music I decide that since the prospect of life is not as bright and hopeful as I want it to be, and that since I am so close to death that I can feel its icy whisper on my neck, I may as well start dancing. I put Michael Jackson’s latest album Thriller into the tape player and to everyone’s amusement start dancing to the Beat It. My father, who never fails to remind us of his mastery in the Cha Cha and other ballroom dances, says I am actually very good. For me, this celebration of life marks my readiness for passing on.

***

I have volumes of books I take with me in our escape from Tehran during the “War of the Cities.” The books help me and my family move through the anguish and hopelessness that comes with war. I read Hafiz at night, seeking his guidance—as he is known to be a seer in Persian literature—searching for solace in his beautiful, centuries-old verse and trying to figure out how to be a decent human, to develop greater compassion for others despite the viciousness that surrounds me.

Is it literature keeping me alive?

At the end of the eight-year Iran-Iraq War, when the Iranian death toll reaches one million, I couldn’t care less for the Iraqis (not even bothering to find out about the number of their casualties). A few years later, while watching the tumbling of Saddam’s statue in Baghdad, I am overcome with joy—the same feeling I felt when Khomeini died in Tehran—but, at the same time, I cannot stop thinking and actually worrying about the Iraqis. “Limbs of a body” Sa’adi says, “humans are.” I can see in my mind’s eye what they go through on a daily basis; I can now feel their pain and sorrow. It hurts to see pictures of crying men and women on TV, images of burned children on internet video. It hurts more to see the dirty, yellowed boots of young American soldiers coming back home.

***

At a reception for Salam Pax, the world famous Baghdad Blogger, arranged by the Center for Literary Arts at San Jose State University, I approach him to ask if he had been in Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war. He confirms that he was, but does not fail to mention that what has been going on in Iraq today is totally different from what he and I experienced during the eight-year war and that it is far worse than what we can imagine. We talk a bit and share some memories and anecdotes. When I step forward to hug him, he responds with a warm embrace. We hold each other for a while, conscious of the fact that we are erasing the animosity and bitterness put in our hearts by powers out of our hands.

Intoxicated with Shiraz wine, I leave the reception with his autographed book in my hand, while I cannot help but think that it has been the written word generously pitching light into my darkest moments in life, saving me from myself.

Shirindokht Nourmanesh

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