prayed, “O, God! Let one body emerge from the other. Let one life separate from another.”
My mother had witnessed this ritual a few times, once walking out in disgust as women tried to drown the screams in their own laughter. She made my father promise that she would give birth in a hospital. She didn’t tell him that she didn’t want the women to stare down her open legs as they cracked watermelon seeds. Instead, she convinced my father that the midwife’s dirty hands and unsanitary conditions at home could infect both her and their child. To the family’s chagrin, my father sided with her.
Even in hospitals, it was essential for women to help one another in childbirth. Mothers followed their daughters through the pregnancy, labor, and birth, and were often present in the birthing room. My aunt Shams once helped her daughter give birth when the doctors at Namazi Hospital,a newly built modern facility, were busy and didn’t believe that my pregnant cousin knew that her baby was ready to see the world.
Years later, when I was visiting one of my aunts at the same hospital where I was born, I witnessed the birthing of a baby. The dark waiting room was filled with women from the surrounding villages. It smelled of the fresh soil of wheat farms, the pungent sweat of horses and sheep, the greens of fava bean pods. As the head nun screamed at a Ghashghai woman from a nomadic tribe outside Shiraz that it was not yet her time, the women of her family surrounded her in their multi-skirt costumes and long colorful head covers, reached under the layers of red, green, and gold fabric around her waist, and pulled out a screaming, slippery baby, right there, squatting over the dirty floor. The nun ran to them in her long dark robe, her hair covered in white fabric, her face tired and weary from long hours on her feet, and pushed them away as if they were primitives who had rushed God’s work.
Since my maternal grandmother lived far away and was herself pregnant with her sixth child, she wasn’t there to help my mother with my birth. My father’s aunt Khatoon-jaan, with henna-covered hair and multiple braids hidden underneath a long kerchief, kept my mother company at the hospital. She hung onion bulbs and salt crystals on the door post to keep away the evil eye. From her bed, my mother watched her. Just outside, she could see Moslem visitors getting ready for morning prayers. They washed their arms and legs in the freezing water of a pool, spread their prayer rugs under the leafless orange trees, and barefooted they bowed in the direction of Mecca. A blind priest stopped by to convince my mother to seek comfort in Christ.
One damp rainy day, when my cloth diapers wouldn’t dry, Khatoonjaan sat cross-legged on the cement floor of the hospital room, spread her long skirt about her, and held a diaper over a brazier filled with hot charcoals. When the fabric caught on fire, she threw it on the floor and stomped on it, coughing from the smoke. It was Shabbat and touching fire was forbidden. She fasted every day for a week for the sin of disobeying the commandments and gave her meager earnings as
tsedakah
to the poor. Khatoon-jaan never forgot the incident. Ten years later, when I visited her to say goodbye before she left for Palestine, she cried and hugged me tightly, while reminding me of her love toward me and of the sin she had committed for me. She asked me not to forget her.
The year I was born, 1953, was to be remembered by the historians of Iran. Electrical lines were finally stretched on the tall walls of the
mahaleh
. Little bulbs, with their dim yellow light, changed the shape of shadows in the alleyways. Baba bought a radio, a large square box that sat on the mantel in the common room like a special guest, covered with a pretty doily. It was an amazing change for my family. During World War II, my father had run to the British embassy every day to listen to the news and report back home. Now he could listen to the
My mother had witnessed this ritual a few times, once walking out in disgust as women tried to drown the screams in their own laughter. She made my father promise that she would give birth in a hospital. She didn’t tell him that she didn’t want the women to stare down her open legs as they cracked watermelon seeds. Instead, she convinced my father that the midwife’s dirty hands and unsanitary conditions at home could infect both her and their child. To the family’s chagrin, my father sided with her.
Even in hospitals, it was essential for women to help one another in childbirth. Mothers followed their daughters through the pregnancy, labor, and birth, and were often present in the birthing room. My aunt Shams once helped her daughter give birth when the doctors at Namazi Hospital,a newly built modern facility, were busy and didn’t believe that my pregnant cousin knew that her baby was ready to see the world.
Years later, when I was visiting one of my aunts at the same hospital where I was born, I witnessed the birthing of a baby. The dark waiting room was filled with women from the surrounding villages. It smelled of the fresh soil of wheat farms, the pungent sweat of horses and sheep, the greens of fava bean pods. As the head nun screamed at a Ghashghai woman from a nomadic tribe outside Shiraz that it was not yet her time, the women of her family surrounded her in their multi-skirt costumes and long colorful head covers, reached under the layers of red, green, and gold fabric around her waist, and pulled out a screaming, slippery baby, right there, squatting over the dirty floor. The nun ran to them in her long dark robe, her hair covered in white fabric, her face tired and weary from long hours on her feet, and pushed them away as if they were primitives who had rushed God’s work.
Since my maternal grandmother lived far away and was herself pregnant with her sixth child, she wasn’t there to help my mother with my birth. My father’s aunt Khatoon-jaan, with henna-covered hair and multiple braids hidden underneath a long kerchief, kept my mother company at the hospital. She hung onion bulbs and salt crystals on the door post to keep away the evil eye. From her bed, my mother watched her. Just outside, she could see Moslem visitors getting ready for morning prayers. They washed their arms and legs in the freezing water of a pool, spread their prayer rugs under the leafless orange trees, and barefooted they bowed in the direction of Mecca. A blind priest stopped by to convince my mother to seek comfort in Christ.
One damp rainy day, when my cloth diapers wouldn’t dry, Khatoonjaan sat cross-legged on the cement floor of the hospital room, spread her long skirt about her, and held a diaper over a brazier filled with hot charcoals. When the fabric caught on fire, she threw it on the floor and stomped on it, coughing from the smoke. It was Shabbat and touching fire was forbidden. She fasted every day for a week for the sin of disobeying the commandments and gave her meager earnings as
tsedakah
to the poor. Khatoon-jaan never forgot the incident. Ten years later, when I visited her to say goodbye before she left for Palestine, she cried and hugged me tightly, while reminding me of her love toward me and of the sin she had committed for me. She asked me not to forget her.
The year I was born, 1953, was to be remembered by the historians of Iran. Electrical lines were finally stretched on the tall walls of the
mahaleh
. Little bulbs, with their dim yellow light, changed the shape of shadows in the alleyways. Baba bought a radio, a large square box that sat on the mantel in the common room like a special guest, covered with a pretty doily. It was an amazing change for my family. During World War II, my father had run to the British embassy every day to listen to the news and report back home. Now he could listen to the
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