UNFULFILLED- Twelve- [=][=] The Birth

When Neda was awaken from her short unconsciousness, she was in another room. All her family were there. Her baby was gone. She was still cold.

"You need to eat something, sweetheart." Her mother repeatedly said with her nonstop weeping eyes. Finally Neda shook her head for yes. Sohrab, her brother was standing on her right side and was touching her forehead gently. Maryam, her cousin, was at her left side, touching her hair which was sticky of so much sweat at the time of the delivery. Her father, Sima, and mother were standing at the foot of the bed. Neda took everything in. They were themselves again minus the baby, as if it had never happened. She turned to Sohrab, bringing her hand out, which was under the stack of blankets, and holing his.

"What is her name?"

She saw her brother was crying. Not often she had seen Sohrab cry. He bent and kissed her on the cheek. Part of his kiss touched Maryam's hand, who was touching Neda's face on the other side of the bed.

"Mansour agreed to name her Ariana." To hide his mounting anger, Sohrab deliberately said those words as loud as he could.

Neda repeated the name "Ariana" a few times. She tried very hard not to cry. She had ruined so many things that at that moment she desired only death. She wanted to think that Ariana never really existed or lived; that she had come from some unknown realm and then disappeared immediately to another strange destination. She wanted to believe that Ariana had never been inside her, or was born from her; she would always be a dream, a phantom that came to this world and left it like the stars of the night. But her swelling breasts told her a different thing. The pain in her breasts told her that there was a hungry mouth somewhere yearning to suck on them.

Neda felt sorry for her family, even her father, who was more in fault than any one else for this horrific scene in the hospital. Her heart was palpitating to see Sohrab's cry, or Maryam's effort to hold her cry, her mother loud weeping, and father and Sima's desperate look. She turned to her mother.

"What is wrong with my breasts? They're hurting?"

Mehri's wailing raised as though she had heard the news of a death of someone close to her. Others were surprised that Neda talked about her breasts in front of her father and Sohrab. But only Maryam understood that the victim of this scene, Neda, was trying to divert others' mind to something else. After mother was calm enough to speak, she said:

"It's normal honey. It's the milk that coming to breasts..." She could not continue. Sima took over and said:

"They're going to give you, I guess an injection, something to dry your milk. It'll go away in a few days."

Neda thought that not only they took her baby, now they would take her baby's food. Her Ariana would be raised with artificial food and artificial mother.

She knew in what strange heaven she was suffering and what dull hell she was leaving the secret of this parted joy! The contract she had with the Magazine did not mean anything now; but she would continue writing. She would tell people of her suffering in her poetry; and she would live even though a part of her, a major part of her was gone forever.

When everyone went home, except her mother, who was staying with her, she asked her to bring her a piece of paper and pen. She agreed to eat a little of the hospital food. Her first meal of a mother without a child. Then she wrote about the birth of her daughter:

"I think about the greatest bliss;

Only one word echoes like a spring kiss.

My baby, my flash came to life.

Sorrow and pain were now my strife.

Hospital bed, doctor in white and haze,

Bright light, pain, pain, and daze.

Screaming, nails gashing palm of my hand;

Blood was pouring like a storm of sand.

He was standing like an angle of death,

With a mask on face, to take my last breath.

I traveled to the dream world, acted brave;

Dream flew away, reality was in rave.

Me, the naive girl of mom and dad,

Was becoming a mother, how sad!

I couldn't understand, I didn't want to.

It was pain, pain of one becoming two.

I was intoxicated with love,

Like a gracious, blissful dove.

I saw the horizon, far in blue air,

A sudden breeze moved my hair.

It caressed my skin, I felt my root;

Falling in love before they took my fruit!"

To Be Continued