Working very hard to balance her life, Hana practically had no time left to participate in any social gathering among relatives or even to make friends. Her daily routine, from morning to evening, from work to college, from taking care of the house chores to finding time for her children, would stay the same for another three years when she would finish her graduate study. In her busy, yet solitary life, she drew back more and more from people while being among them. Hamid, in his kind of busy life, did not care his wife's emotional disappearance. For him, she was there, food and comfort were there; and of course sex was there and elsewhere. He loved to travel; and it was always, as he noted, with his male friends. Even then, Hana knew his sadistic unfaithfulness, for she had seen many signs of them. Torn between saving her children and herself by throwing out that morbid man, or ignoring him as though he did not exist; she relearned firstly that women could not divorce their husbands but it was them to divorce their wives, and secondly no matter who the main reliable provider and care taker was, the men had the legal custody of the children. When Gol, her mother, fervidly explained the law of divorce to her daughter, mostly it was not for educating Hana, but it was for her own fear of losing her grandchildren. Hana's logical argument, the way she had known as a teacher, did not soften Gol's adamant viewpoint.
"Listen, honey, I'm telling you, he's not going to give you the children!"
"But mom, he can't even support himself. He's never hold a job more than three months. This is insane. He doesn't even have a home."
"I know. I understand your disgust, but that is the way it is. We're not living in America. This is Iran. Women are nobody!"
"That is not right, mom. How is he going to take care of the kids?"
"Sweet heart, nobody can change the system. Out of spite, he'll take the kids. He is getting a free ride here and he doesn't want to change that. The only way that you can have your kids is to stay married to him, or he wants to give them to you voluntarily. Even then, he has the full custody. He can come back any day and take them from you."
"But this is wrong, wrong..." Hana was completely outraged.
"I know. We're victims; and one more thing, if court sees him an unfit father, they give the kids to his parents not you!"
"What if a man does not have parents; or the parents don't want the responsibility?"
"Then it is his grandparents, uncle, brother, some one from his side of family."
"Mom, I talk to him. Maybe he agrees to give me the children!"
"He won't sweet heart. He uses them to hurt you. For the last seven years, he's lived here and done everything he wanted. He's not going to give up all these, he won't. Believe me, I'm more upset than you. I feel terrible for you; but do you want to lose your kids?"
Hana pondered over that conversation for many days. She knew Hamid very well; and she was convinced he would not want the children; as she was sure his parents would not want them either; however, knowing the spiteful personality of him made her so frightened that she decided to stay with plan two, ignore him. Ironically one of her mother's words kept echoing in her mind: "We're not living in America!" She temporary pushed that tempting thought aside to finish her school, her only weapon against men like Hamid.
She loved school, either as teacher or student; and she had both of them. In one of her toughest courses, the professor teamed up the students according to their intelligence; and Hana was the head of one of them. In her group, there was this young man, silent, polite, and very much into himself. Somehow he reminded her of Saeid, even though he was not tall and bony as Saeid was. In his presence, Hana would draw back to old days, when they had that "Secret Society", and the four boys and she had vehemently discussed the important issues and had believed they could change the society. From those five intelligent but naive people, so much in need for love and acceptance, Saeid had committed suicide, Behroz, her uncle, had chosen a profound and isolated life which no one could enter through it, and the other two boys had disappeared somewhere, and Hana, the only girl, was caught into a sickly net of nihilism.
To Be Continued
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