with elaborate and dramatic bows and gallant gestures.
“Saba, bring me my sack,” says Khanom Mansoori, the Ancient One, who has been left in charge of the girls while the other women run their own household errands. Saba’s father trusts the old villager to teach his daughter respectable, womanly ways. But even at nearly ninety years old she projects a childlike mischief. Saba thinks it’s the combination of her deceptively tiny body and all the trouble she must be dreaming up in the hours she spends pretending to sleep. She pulls her shrunken face into a wrinkled scowl and—desperate for amusement and suffering from failing ears—pretend whispers to an eager Saba, “I have a new you-know-what! Bring Ponneh and get rid of the adults .”
This is Saba’s favorite sort of summons, because it means an afternoon with the only Iranian magazine she likes to read: the prerevolution copies of Zanerooz . Today’s Woman. Though the magazine covers serious topics now, such as women’s rights, in the Shah’s time it focused mostly on fashion, hair, and gossip. Each issue contained one tantalizing story called “Fork in the Road” about love triangles, or estranged husbands, or the midnight creeping of lecherous stepfathers who assumed girls didn’t talk, followed by a good revenge. Pages of delicious scandal and temptingly forbidden descriptions.
Ancient and bored, Khanom Mansoori likes the cheap thrill of racy stories she cannot read with her own fading, untrained eyes. Who can blame her for enlisting a pair of curious fourteen-year-olds as co-conspirators when she is left unsupervised with them, and when her equally ancient husband isn’t around to entertain her?
On this September afternoon, when Saba is trying hard not to let the autumnal Caspian vapors erase her memories of Mahtab, she reads Ponneh and Khanom Mansoori a story about a young man with two lovers. One is beautiful, the other charming. One is quiet, the other exuberant. One makes him want to go on adventures around the world, the other makes him dizzy with romance and contentment. The story enraptures Saba, by the strange contrasts and the rivalry. Whom will he choose? She glances at Ponneh, who rolls on her back and settles against a wall of colorful pillows.
“Khanom Mansoori,” Ponneh wonders aloud, “which do you think the boy should choose?” Saba places a finger between the pages and closes the magazine. She too wants to know, but she would never have asked.
Khanom Mansoori nods her small roundish head and says, “What does it matter what I think?” She smacks her lips together and her eyes begin to close.
“I think it matters,” says Saba. “Come on, pick!”
“Well,” Ponneh interrupts, “I think he shouldn’t choose. I think the girls should decide for him. He should marry neither or both. That way they can still be friends.”
Saba considers this for a moment. She decides not to let Ponneh finish and returns to the article. These stories always end with an unsolved dilemma. What would you do? the author goads. When they reach the end, old Khanom Mansoori tells Ponneh and Saba her own love story of a husband who has doted on her for seventy years. In return, the girls tell Khanom Mansoori about the unfairness of being fourteen and loveless.
Beautiful Ponneh with her almond eyes laments over being forced to tolerate a budding unibrow until she is married or, by some miracle, allowed to pluck early. Saba complains silently, never aloud, that her Persian nose has grown unwieldy and her body is starting to curve. She has pockets of fat, so graceless, and she is sprouting— becoming tall—while Ponneh is dainty. She too wishes she could pluck the tiny hairs around her eyes and lips, and that she wasn’t so dark, with her black eyes, black hair, and olive skin. Ponneh’s skin is the color of porcelain and her eyes an impossible shade of hazelnut.
And then the old lady, though half asleep, says something to make them both sit up.
“Saba, bring me my sack,” says Khanom Mansoori, the Ancient One, who has been left in charge of the girls while the other women run their own household errands. Saba’s father trusts the old villager to teach his daughter respectable, womanly ways. But even at nearly ninety years old she projects a childlike mischief. Saba thinks it’s the combination of her deceptively tiny body and all the trouble she must be dreaming up in the hours she spends pretending to sleep. She pulls her shrunken face into a wrinkled scowl and—desperate for amusement and suffering from failing ears—pretend whispers to an eager Saba, “I have a new you-know-what! Bring Ponneh and get rid of the adults .”
This is Saba’s favorite sort of summons, because it means an afternoon with the only Iranian magazine she likes to read: the prerevolution copies of Zanerooz . Today’s Woman. Though the magazine covers serious topics now, such as women’s rights, in the Shah’s time it focused mostly on fashion, hair, and gossip. Each issue contained one tantalizing story called “Fork in the Road” about love triangles, or estranged husbands, or the midnight creeping of lecherous stepfathers who assumed girls didn’t talk, followed by a good revenge. Pages of delicious scandal and temptingly forbidden descriptions.
Ancient and bored, Khanom Mansoori likes the cheap thrill of racy stories she cannot read with her own fading, untrained eyes. Who can blame her for enlisting a pair of curious fourteen-year-olds as co-conspirators when she is left unsupervised with them, and when her equally ancient husband isn’t around to entertain her?
On this September afternoon, when Saba is trying hard not to let the autumnal Caspian vapors erase her memories of Mahtab, she reads Ponneh and Khanom Mansoori a story about a young man with two lovers. One is beautiful, the other charming. One is quiet, the other exuberant. One makes him want to go on adventures around the world, the other makes him dizzy with romance and contentment. The story enraptures Saba, by the strange contrasts and the rivalry. Whom will he choose? She glances at Ponneh, who rolls on her back and settles against a wall of colorful pillows.
“Khanom Mansoori,” Ponneh wonders aloud, “which do you think the boy should choose?” Saba places a finger between the pages and closes the magazine. She too wants to know, but she would never have asked.
Khanom Mansoori nods her small roundish head and says, “What does it matter what I think?” She smacks her lips together and her eyes begin to close.
“I think it matters,” says Saba. “Come on, pick!”
“Well,” Ponneh interrupts, “I think he shouldn’t choose. I think the girls should decide for him. He should marry neither or both. That way they can still be friends.”
Saba considers this for a moment. She decides not to let Ponneh finish and returns to the article. These stories always end with an unsolved dilemma. What would you do? the author goads. When they reach the end, old Khanom Mansoori tells Ponneh and Saba her own love story of a husband who has doted on her for seventy years. In return, the girls tell Khanom Mansoori about the unfairness of being fourteen and loveless.
Beautiful Ponneh with her almond eyes laments over being forced to tolerate a budding unibrow until she is married or, by some miracle, allowed to pluck early. Saba complains silently, never aloud, that her Persian nose has grown unwieldy and her body is starting to curve. She has pockets of fat, so graceless, and she is sprouting— becoming tall—while Ponneh is dainty. She too wishes she could pluck the tiny hairs around her eyes and lips, and that she wasn’t so dark, with her black eyes, black hair, and olive skin. Ponneh’s skin is the color of porcelain and her eyes an impossible shade of hazelnut.
And then the old lady, though half asleep, says something to make them both sit up.
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