Safe is Halfway Across the World
“Otaghet boo adam gerefte” (your room smells like human). This is a classic Ariana expression meaning your room is getting stuffy. Before I can sit up on the bed, she walks to the back of the bedroom and opens the room’s only tiny window. “And clean this mess, will you?” pointing to the bedroom floor. We go back and forth between English and Persian.
It’s been this way ever since I can remember. When I was growing up there was a label above the kitchen sink that read “English” to remind her to speak English with me. Something she failed to do with my younger sister. I hated it then. I’m grateful now. I am fluent in both, yet I don’t have a mother tongue. Persian/English Pinglish is my first language. A special language for Maman and I.
She’s lingering now. I suspect she’s waiting for me to share more of the doctor’s visit or of my day. I keep staring at my phone pretending to text. She’s standing at the edge of the bed sniffing the air judgmentally. She finally gives up and goes to the kitchen leaving the door of my bedroom open. I get up, close the door and it slams louder than I intended. There is a giant round Lord of the Rings puzzle glued to the back of my bedroom door. My personal way of shouting “You shall not pass” to any unwelcome intruder. I live with my parents, which is not unusual.
Most of my friends still live with their parents. But as soon as that bedroom door closes, my territory begins. My queendom has a dark blue wall adorned with gold glitter stars, another wall is painted in uneven stripes of bubblegum pink, and white and purple, the third wall is laminated dark brown wooden panels and the last wall is my canvas, where I paint giant sunflowers and mermaids that I colour in with eyeshadow. When visiting my room after this “redecoration” my grandmother said it looked like the Sultan of Brunei’s Harem. She was referring to the beaded curtain hanging directly in front of the door and the green satin canopy above my bed. It wasn’t meant as a compliment, but I took it as one.
There is a giant bookcase above my desk and two large chairs on the adjacent wall. Or had I moved the piano in by then? At one point, I move the piano to my room so I could practice every day without disturbing the family, but it just ended up being another expensive addition to the collection of Shahrzad’s failed attempts. One of the chairs is missing a cushion. That cushion is laid out in the tight space between the chair and the bed, normally covered with a blanket and tiny faded yellow space heater. The room has hardwood floors and no rugs, very unusual in our Persian-rug covered home. The bedroom is often cold so this corner is where I do most of my living. My studying, reading, thinking, texting. I like my queendom best after dark. Tucked into my corner, I listen to another sleepless night in Tehran.
Cars and crickets, this city is urban and country living combined. I stand by the closed door and listen for a few seconds for reactions to the slamming. Silence. I walk to the back of the room and throw myself on the bed, which is not really used much for sleeping and sob. My crying is uninhibited, loud and dramatic. A performance. Not an act really. I am not pretending to cry. But it’s a performance, a ritual, a last resort in way of communicating with those who don’t speak my language. The idea that I am exhibiting teenage temper tantrums at 23 doesn’t occur to me. I want Maman to hear it. I want her to know she’s not welcome to my pain. I want her to know she has failed as a mother. That she is no comfort to me. Not that it’s at all hard.
My crying is loud even when I don’t want it to be. I am extreme after all. Maman often says my crying sounds fake. “Hamishe mese madar morde ha gerye mikoni” (you sob as if your mother has died). Ah, death of a mother. The biggest tragedy in the minds of Iranians. In bed, face down, I rub my feet together as if trying to dig into my own skin and disappear. I want the ground to open and swallow me, to feel the walls of the underground around me keeping me safe and away from harm. Safe.. what a distant feeling. Safe is halfway across the world in his hometown, in Pittsburgh, where he has promised to put his arms around me. I’ve never met Safe, but all I wanted to do in that moment is to let him.
Secret Garden Bookstore
I’m sitting on the bench in our “Secret garden” waiting for my best friend Noo. This garden is not secret at all. It sits on the corner of Leyli road, a narrow dead-end alley off Khodami Street, which is a long major street with a lot of traffic right in the middle of the city. Noo and I discovered it one day walking to her house from school. “It’s OPEN!” she almost screamed. She was referring to the bookstore across the garden that she and I had passed by hundreds of times but had never been able to get into. For about a year we wondered what kind of person could own such a place. What kind of person would build a garden in front of their bookstore? We knew they had built the garden because the street lamps outside the bookstore matched the ones in the garden but were different from the lamps on the rest of the street. There was also a plaque on one of the garden walls with a poem about the bookstore owner, but we didn’t discover that until later. The poem was written in admiration of the efforts of the bookstore owner to transform Leyli road. The poem said he had made the world a better place by creating beauty on his little corner of the earth. It wasn’t a fantastic poem, especially if you were familiar with Persian poetry and I wondered what the bookstore owner made of it. He who had spent his life in the company of great literary works and collected books for a living, what did he think of the extra syllable squeezed into the last verse? Our noses pressed against the glass through the wire metal screen, we tried to make out the title of the books. “They’re in English. They’re originals.” I said. “And French,” Noo added, wiping the dirt off the window with her palms and squinting to get a better look. “Do you think he’s in France?” “He must be,” I say matter-of-factly. Once we had even written a letter to the owner and slid it under the door into the bookstore. “Dear Bookstore Owner, We walk by your store every day on our way to school. Unfortunately, it’s always closed and we have never been able to see it from the inside. We love books and hopefully we will get to visit your shop soon.”
Sincerely,
Avid readers Shahrzad and Nooshin
I don’t quite remember why we never went back to the bookstore after that first time. Maybe because it closed again. Maybe the magic would have gone away if we had visited multiple times? Or maybe because the bookstore owner was disappointingly ordinary? I have such a fear of ordinary. But the garden remained our special place. Secretly tucked away in the busiest corner of town, almost invisible to the unknowing eye. It was on that bench that I told Noo about my first time. “Did it hurt?” She was sitting on the bench looking up at me perched on the arm rest. “I don’t think so. I told you, I was drunk. I don’t really remember much of it” “Oh,” she said her voice concerned. “Are you sure it happened?” “Shirin told me that he told Omid that it did.” “Are you going to see him again?” “Definitely not,” I said in a reassuring tone. It was on that bench that Noo told me she had decided to quit architectural school and switch to English literature. “I think that’s wonderful and brave. And I know you will do great,” I had said. And it was on that bench that I update Noo on my latest conversations with the boy who lives in Pittsburgh.
I hand Noo my phone. I see her eyes darting from side to side as she reads the texts, her voice barely comprehensible under her breath.
He wrote: I’m finally getting out of the country this summer.. going to Ireland.. I don’t know why but I wanted to tell you
She wrote: Ireland Wow.. My cousin went recently and fell in love with it. I’ll also be in Europe this summer. I’m glad you told me this.. (I messaged you on WhatsApp, guess you don’t use it that often..)
He wrote: Hey I reinstalled whatsapp. Where in Europe are you going?
She wrote: Italy and France.. You still can’t talk to me for fear of jeopardising something, I get it. Still, it was great to hear that you’re finally going to Ireland. Have fun!
He wrote: I can talk to you. I want to talk to you. I miss how we used to talk way back
She wrote: Why are being so cold?
He wrote: I don’t know, I feel like I’ve lost your trust as a genuine person.
She wrote: You have. But you can always earn it back or at least try.
He wrote: Or maybe I’ve lost the trust in myself that I’m genuine.
She wrote: Shut up! You’re being dramatic now!
He wrote: I don’t mean to be dramatic. And its not something that I’ve just started thinking about today. I feel I changed dramatically through college and then again when I got thrown into the workplace
She wrote: Well of course you’ve changed. We all change, it’s not necessarily a bad thing. I’ve changed too, in many ways. For one thing, I’m more of a realist now but I still dream and I still believe I will meet you one day..Do you still cook?
He wrote: Yes. Maybe sometimes you can share Persian recipes.
She wrote: Do you still paint/draw?
He wrote: Only in my notebook at work when I’m bored in meetings
She wrote: I sing! I love it! Took vocal lessons for a year.. I’m totally in love with my own voice.. Is that very inappropriate?
He wrote: Haha nope. I wish I was. I love to sing, I would trade my art for a decent voice. I’m pretty sure you made me sing for you once too.
She wrote: Oh god.. I just remembered.. For my birthday.. I was drunk.. Aww, thank you for doing that for me..
It takes Noo 10-15 minutes to read through the pages and pages of text that follow. She hands me back the phone and looks up. We sit in silence for a few minutes and listen to the traffic that surrounds us. “Are you going to continue talking to him?” “Absolutely!”
Option 2:
She wrote: I have the most common eye colour in the world. You have the rarest.
He wrote: I don’t think mine is the rarest. Well, I don’t feel that unique
She wrote: You don’t? I judge you a little for not feeling unique
He wrote: You, you are unique. How is the job?
She wrote: It’s ok.. I’m behind on work and instead of working I’m entertaining guests. If that’s what you mean by unique then I suppose you are right
He wrote: I want to hang out with you, but I’ll let you get back to your guests
She wrote: They’ve left now. You there?
He wrote: I’m here
She wrote: I’m a little scared and just wanted to make sure you’re there
He wrote: scared of what?
She wrote: I just don’t want to be alone tonight.. Knowing you’re there makes me feel better.. Almost safe.. Go back to whatever you were doing.. Just check in on me once in a while until I fall asleep.. Can you do that?
He wrote: Of course I can do that 🙂
It’s after midnight. The house is quiet. Dirty dishes are piled in the sink and I am sitting at the dining room table typing in a word document on my ex-boyfriend’s old laptop, only stopping to look at the wordcount. 700 more to go. This is a pattern. My parents go away and I throw a little party. Dishes pile up in the sink and cigarette butts leave little black marks on the balcony ledge and I go back to the old laptop again. I feel a little guilty leaving the house in such a mess for Shahnaz Khanoom to clean tomorrow, but I don’t have time for guilt. I have a deadline. So, I sit and focus on the review. Charming little restaurant newly opened in the center of Tehran… And it’s always in the middle of all this, when I sit and quiet my mind to work that she appears and starts to sing..
-Love is a many splendoured thing, love lifts us to where we belong, all you need is love.
-Please don’t start that again.
-All you need is love.
-Seriously, don’t start that again.
– Noooo, your line is “a girl has got to eat.”
– I don’t have time for this.
– We’ve got plenty of time, my dear.
– What is this? What are you doing?
– I’m singing.
– I can see that. But we’re supposed to be working. We’re already behind and I want to finish this so WE can go to sleep.
-Well, I don’t want to sleep. I want to be in a musical.
– Can you be serious for a second. The deadline is TOMORROW and I am freaking out!
-Well, stop freaking out and come and sing with me! You say, “a girl has got to eat” and I say..
– If you’re not going to help at least shut up and let me concentrate.
– Oh, but I am helping. I am helping lift your spirits.. With love! Because all you need is love. Now you say..
– Enough! This is a mess and it’s because of you that we’re stuck in this mess.
– What mess? We’ll get it done. We always do.
– No, I always do. If it were up to you, then we’d get fired, which wouldn’t matter. You know we’re a joke because of you!
And with that she disappeared leaving me alone with the quiet of the night. At this rate, it would take another 700 minutes to finish this joke of an article. At least tomorrow I have the pre-school, the only one of my four jobs that makes me feel productive and valuable. I take a deep breath and start typing again. Forty minutes later, I close the laptop and look at my phone. It’s 3:35 am and I have to be up in 3 hours. No texts. I’m off to bed.
When I was 11, I told my friends I was mad. I told them my mother had taken me to the doctor and determined that I was crazy. It was a lie. I hadn’t been to the doctor. I hadn’t been told I was crazy, but I recognized a voice in my head that I couldn’t yet express. These writings reflect those conversations with that voice.
The above image is a painting by by artist April Jakubec, who gave permission to the featured writer for it to be used as a featured writer photo for this feature. Please learn more about April Jakubec and her work, here: https://www.unboundvisualarts.org/april-jakubec/
In 2020, Shahrzad Sajadi completed the Herstory Writers Workshop/Coalition for Community Writing fellowship. She has held Herstory workshops with women in rural villages in Iran, refugee youth in informal settlements in Lebanon and scholars at UMass Boston. She is a PhD candidate at the School for Global Inclusion and Social Development. Her research involves studying systems of exclusion in Massachusetts jails and informal settlements in Lebanon. Inspired by her namesake Scheherazade the storyteller, she often uses storytelling and narrative methods in her research.
Madwomen in the Attic 
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