So she was not even allowed to see, to touch, to kiss, to hug her baby. Her intuition told her that she would have a girl. She felt the kicking, the turning, the hiccup of the baby. Her stomach had grown in just this month as much as all the others. Maryam told her one evening:
"You don't look pregnant when someone look at you from back. It is just all in the front."
She did not know if that was a good or bad thing! All she knew and wanted, was that spring approaching. The baby's movement and kicks were increasing, too. Neda's only escape from all the brawl in the house was her occasional conversation with her brother. For some odd reason, Sima was not friendly with her anymore. It just stopped one day. She believed her father had something to do with it. So if it was not for Sohrab's support and kindness, and Maryam's visits at least twice a week, Neda did not talk to anyone, did not see anyone. Sometimes she spoke about her feeling about the baby with Maryam. Of course Maryam could not understand this new attraction of Neda. How could she? She never had been pregnant! The two cousins exchanged their feelings with each other; however, afterwards, Neda's sick dread would always return. Then she would feel this unfamiliar desire to sleep for ever, till eternity; but again how could she? All these pains, physically and emotionally made her aware that she needed to turn these negative agonies to power. She had to take on dominance; to take hold of her life, and to do the best she could under the current condition that she was.
In her room, she often smelled the nostalgic grass fragrance that came through the open window of her room. She always opened the window when she knew nobody was coming, since they would punish her verbally for having the window open. "Do you want to kill your baby?" And her answer would always be: "What baby? Do you want to kill me?" The breezy aroma somewhat removed the weak corrupt winter smell of her room. Every early afternoon, when the sun was at its pick and warm, she would gingerly go to the yard and would sit on the only bench. She called it, "Memory Bench!" Sometimes she felt her breathing would turn oppressed under the sun rays' domination. She thought: "Who am I? What is this mental weight I carry with me, this pain, like my unborn child? Is it worthy of enduring it?" She felt that life had punished her by making everything so impossible for her. She felt that she was born at a wrong time, wrong generation, wrong culture, and wrong country! Her life and its prospects had carried her into all these vain decisiveness; therefore, she felt because of these conditions, life was punishing her. All these made her afraid, although long ago, she had decided not to be afraid. Once her father had told her that there was something attractive about women who were afraid. She decided not to be afraid. But now fear would come to her as bits and pieces and would take all over her emotions and would not let her to save some of her feelings for love!
Neda was worn out. Her childhood seemed so faraway; and she still had a long way to go to adulthood. Her life of recent months or the beginning of her marriage appeared to her like a long journey with no end. She reflected only a few years back, when she was considered still a child, sitting on the bench of their garden, surrounded with spring perfumes. She recalled coming from school and telling her mother that she was starved. "It is not dinner time." Mother had always answered; nevertheless, she always made her a piece of warm Barbary bread with butter and sprinkled a little sugar on it. How delicious that simple snake was! She would sit in the living room, next to grand father's clock with a picture of eagle painted on it and ate that simple snack. How beautiful and simple life was! She waited for her father to come home so she could ease into his room to ask him all kinds of questions about his books. Oh, they all seemed so faraway. She felt that she had no identity anymore. The child that she was, curious, hungry, hopeful, playful, sometimes dressing up like a princess, sometimes acting like a tomboy, now was a woman of the history books. It was not her, not the Neda she knew. That Neda was gone, the one that everything was a motivation for her to write, to feel, to breathe. Now that Neda was no more!
To Be Continued
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