UNFULFILLED- Three- ~~~The Others

Jalal was commander of the house. Without having served in military, he acted like a Colonel or General. His family to him was below him and they needed to obey his orders as if they were in military. He showed no emotion for the suffering of Mehri or his children. He believed that his second marriage should be accepted as a normal act by his first family. He had changed over night. He was now in that constant mood that had always frightened his children; but in past his children knew that kind of state of mind was temporary. Having a double personality, these days he chose the temper that was hated by his family and was loved by his second wife, Sima.

The second wife, Sima was a miracle to him. She poured light all around him and herself; like making an invisible wall between the two of them and the first family. She called his first family "The Rest" audaciously. Neda, who used to be his light and comfort, as she was to her grandparents, being the youngest of all the grandchildren from both sides, was not allowed to enter his study anymore. The grandchildren were all boys except Neda and Maryam, the daughter of Mehri's brother. Maryam, her cousin, was Sohrab's age; however, she was Neda's best friend. She told Neda one day:

"If you're waiting for your father to change and this love affair loses its color, you're waisting your time..."

How well Maryam knew her family and her. Neda was certain that Sima was poisoning her father's mind against his first family. Neda was not allowed to criticize her father for what he had done to them all. How could it be possible for a man like her father to change this much and this quick almost over night?

The very first day when father brought Sima home without even being embarrassed, Neda's heart pounded violently. She just could not concentrate anymore on her writing or school. One thing father did though that seemed almost fair in their situation. He let Mehri, his first wife to keep their bedroom on the first floor. This was the bedroom they shared for over twenty years. He furnished a room on the second floor for his new bride. This room was across from his study. Neda's room was next to his study. They practically never used this room and within years it had become like a storage room. He hired some people to clean up the room and painted it and used one of his most beautiful Persian Rug in there. He bought a very beautiful bedroom set for this room. Nobody knew it was him that choosing the color or it was his new bride that was telling him since she had never been in the house until the day the room was completely finished with furniture, red covering for bed, and dozen of red roses to finish it up. They used the second floor's hallway as a second living room with antique furniture. This was not a normal hallway but it was square shape with window which faced the garden area.

The day that he, single handily finished all the work on the second floor, he slept in this new bedroom by himself. The next morning was the day he brought home his second wife. He began sharing this bedroom with Sima and never went to see Mehri, his first wife again as most men with more than one wife do. The Koran said that a man who was financially capable, could have up to four legal wives as long as he treated them all equally. He was financially able, thanks to Mehri's money, but there was no equality in his behavior and the way he treated his two wives.

Neda longed old days, her rapport with her father, his love for her, his passion for his family, and above all his allowing her to use his books and to talk to her about them. They were all gone. Memories of childhood and her father's interaction with all of them, brought Neda a strange and poetic touch and a relationship with Mansour, one of her father's friend, who also helped him in the business. For some odd reason, Mansour visited them almost every evening now, and even for more astonishing purpose, father did not mind this visits. He rarely came to their house before. But now he visited them almost daily. Neda and Mansour were becoming close to each other. In fact, father was encouraging it.

Her mother noticed everything and knew exactly what was happening. One day, she took Neda aside to have some privet conversation with her.

"I see that you and Mansour are always talking with each other." Mehri began, trying not to irritate her opinionated daughter.

Neda thought for a moment. She knew that her mother was right, yet since it was her mother who was giving her a warning, she objected it as most teenagers her age would do.

"Yes, we're not doing anything wrong. Dad is not objecting it. We just talk!"

Mehri responded as if to herself:

"Don't you see what your father plan is? He wants you to fall in love with Mansour so he can marry you off. You're the only one who makes him uncomfortable!"

Neda broke in rudely:

"Mom, you're paranoid. Since you can't do anything about your situation, you think everyone has a plan. I don't think dad is having Mansour to come here for this reason! He used to come here before."

"Not every evening sweet heart! Don't you see how your father is pushing you two together. You're only fifteen years old. Mansour is twenty years older than you. He doesn't have a real job. He hasn't finished his college. He still lives with his parents. He..."

"Mom," Neda broke in: "I really like him. You're just so delusional..." Then she left her mother and went to her own room.

To Be continued

UNFULFILLED- Three- The Others

Learning about her husband's infidelity, Mehri was appalled. She trembled as though with an invisible blow. She practically twisted in pain and broke out in sweat and also against her normal tranquility into a series of hateful and sour words as she ran out of the room. The mysterious, yet amicable veil which appeared to be wrapped around this family had fallen. No one ever knew any flaw about them. People imagined that behind this serene and enigmatic shroud was the grandest, most tender, and possibly the ultimate impeccability.

The tormented restlessness of childhood reappeared worse than what it had been for Neda before. It reached such a climax that she feared she might fall apart under that unendurable and excruciating pain and twist. To see her mother's tame feebleness, even in her young age, was not acceptable to Neda. She could not bear her mom's groaning, and feeling sorry for herself. Mehri used her daughter, Neda, to complain about her situation instead of showing some courage to complain and show her disgust to her husband, Jalal. Instead of telling him that she wanted a divorce and she wanted her inheritance back, what was rightfully hers, she would go to Neda's room and would say all those things to her daughter. Neda, only fifteen, thoughtfully told her mother more than once:

"Why don't you get a divorce? Why don't you do something? "

Mother's response was:

"I can't get a divorce! I have two children. What can I do? He won't give Sohrab and you to me! I have no money!"

Neda responded almost with hostility:

"First of all Sohrab is nineteen years old; and dad can't make me to live with him. I make his life miserable. He willingly wants to get rid of me anyway because I'm the only one with guts in this home that tell him things. The other day, he threw me out of his room. And secondly, why did you give your money to him in a first place? You just put your money in a tray and handed to him as though serving him tea. Now the money is all in his name; and you have nothing!"

Mehri wished she had the wisdom of her fifteen years old daughter; but it was too late for money issue.

"What could I do? How could I have known? No one in our either families is ever divorced! I married him to stay with him always!"

She wiped her eyes with he corner of her skirt, and then with an ominous venom continued:

"Besides, he won't divorce me. He doesn't want other people know about our problems. He just want to have another wife..." Mehri stopped here since her silent weeping had changed to a loud cry. Neda wished to tell her mother that "always" did not exist. Nothing was for always.

Sohrab, her brother, did not discuss this menacing subject with his mother, or father, or even Neda at all. He was drawn into himself and was trying to avoid everyone. Besides taking some classes to prepare himself for college, and still working for the father, he spent most of his time either in his room or out with his friends. Neda wanted to talk to her brother like old days, but Sohrab would not want to get involved in anything that had to do with their parents' problems; therefor, he refused talking even to Neda since the affair of their parents was hard to avoid. Nobody knew whose side he was since he refused to talk and get tangled in this ugly web.

Talking to mother was useless. Neda's anger towards her parents was immeasurable. Mehri's two brothers lived their own lives and had no worry for their only sister. Both of them were married. One of them did not even live in Tehran. Their wives mostly were gravitated towards their own families. Mehri had no sister. Both her parents were dead, her mother when she was pregnant with Sohrab and her father only last year. She practically had no women friend to talk to and tell them about this terrible misery in her life. She had dedicated her life for the last twenty years to her marriage and children. She had married Jalal at age eighteen. Now she had become like an old handkerchief that her husband had crumbled and threw it out after using up all her money, wealth, and youth. She had no skill to work, never had worked, just as women in her era and family type never had. She saw herself as a victim. In the last few weeks since the news of her husband's infidelity was broken, she had aged so much that no one could believe that she was only thirty eight years old. She continued praying, as though the great God would come to her rescue. However, her praying these days always began with a flood of tears. She started questioning the God's fairness for her grievous misfortune.

On the other hand, Jalal, who at age forty nine had found a new kind of love and excitement in Sima, the twenty nine years old woman, who was the daughter of a friend, did not pay attention to neither what Mehri felt or suffered from, nor what his children thought about him. Sima was a virgin woman. No one knew why she was not married yet. People called her an old maid behind her back. She was a beautiful woman and had a very respectable family. It was a mystery why she was still unmarried; a mystery that Jalal's family would never find out about it. Sima's parents did not mind that their daughter would become the second wife of an older man with another wife and children.

To Be Continued

UNFULFILLED_ Two- ^<>^<> The Family

She said to a friend many years later, who had asked her how she began writing poetry:

"I read a lot. My father loved poetry. My grandpa loved to read to me. They started reading to me when I was only four years old. Then I began reading myself. I read whatever I got my hands on them; and somehow I needed to discharge all those knowledge. I don't know what I wrote those days were poetries or not, but I like to think they were. They were reflection of me. They were me. They were sincere and simple, not complete, because I was not complete myself. I had not yet found my style and and myself in the world of my feelings and thoughts."

One time at school, her composition teacher accused her that she could not had written what the teacher read. She added even "no way". She even blamed Neda that she had stolen that writing perhaps from some books. Neda was so offended that she did not know how to defend herself. It was the teacher's word against the word of a twelve yeas old girl. She was so frightened that she even did not tell her parents about it. She had sleepless nights. The next time she saw that teacher, she simply told her:

"If you don't believe that I wrote that composition, why don't you give me any subject you want and I write about it right here in front of you!"

The teacher did. She did not like to be challenged by a tiny girl. Neda wrote ten pages of her best writings yet in front of the teacher and handed it to her. She got high marks for it. The whole school found out about it. Even the principal got involved. Everyone supported her; nevertheless, she simply began hating that teacher and that class. Her parents never discovered about it. She only told her brother, Sohrab.

One thing changed her life forever though. It also changed the lives of the entire family. Her father was in love with another woman half his age. The commotion caused by this was more than what Neda could handle. This was after the death of grandpa, so she had no place to go, to escape the screaming match between her father and mother. Her father's openness about his affair and her mother's submission made her think that she was in love, too. She got married at age sixteen mostly for just getting away from that turmoil in the house; so that was how she thought.

The day she found out her father's unfaithfulness to her mother, she was fifteen. The disarray this exposure had made was more devastating than any thing she knew in her short life. That was a sad day, an inauspicious day. She just had heard the news that her first poem would be published by a magazine. As overwhelmed as she was, she heard the other news. The thrill lost its glory. She would quit writing if everything would go back to the way they were. She wrote a poem when the yelling and screaming and fighting between her mother and father finally subsided. She named it "LOST SOUL".

"Walking among the walkers, confined.

Looking among the observers, blind.

So much sadness in me, and I'm voiceless.

So much uproar at my side, and I'm spiritless.

In my thoughts, no more feelings or passion.

In my heart, no more thrill or compassion.

I'm a vast field without green.

I'm a tall mountain without sheen.

Inside me burned so much light.

Now they're sea of sadness in my sight.

Old and bitter story is my friend.

I'm the walker at dusk to the end.

The wave of darkness and silence,

Draw life out of me like suspense.

I walk among the walkers, confined.

I count the homes I've left behind.

I look among observers, blind.

I hear the sound of life, undefined."

To Be Continued

UNFULFILLED- Two- @@@ The Family

Neda had kept her books and notebooks of years past. Her wealth was all these papers, books and clothes that she had accumulated within years. She did not have the courage and the heart to get rid of them. Looking at the them, often times inspired her to write. One day she found a notebook which belonged to her first grade. She found a sketch of a girlfriend that she had drawn then. Looking at this page made her to think about that girl, she did not even remember her name or what happened to her. It had perhaps been a momentary knowing and her love of drawing which had caused her to draw that sketch. This childish drawing reminded her of the lost days of her life. Strangely it renewed everything in her mind but only temporary.

Before entering her teenage years, this thin, frail child lived a double life. Sometimes she was like a boy, climbing trees with her brother, breaking windows with rocks, and doing everything boys her age did. But other times, she was just a girl who liked to dress up and play with dolls that her mother had made her. When she was in that mood, most of the time she nagged and cried a lot with slightest disadvantage and discomfort.

However world turned completely gray when she had her very first period at age thirteen. She did not understand it. She did not know what it was. She did not want it. She was not informed about it. When her mother found out about it, she told her that now she was matured. Neda was bewildered. She thought people became mature when they were much older; besides she did not like the pain that accompanied this bleeding which according to her mother was the sign of adulthood. She ran to her room and wrote a poem. She named it "My First Day of Maturity":

"In the dim shade,

Exhausted light laid.

Suddenly the window was filled with night;

A night overwhelmed with fright;

A night poisoned with my breath.

A night smelled only of death.

A night...

I listened...

In the street, fearful, dark and apart,

Someone smashed my heart;

Like a rotten thing

In that inauspicious evening.

I listened...

My veins swelled from the storm of blood.

And my body screamed and bowed.

I listened...

To the thunder which glistened.

A stubborn fly in my room

Sang, and my air it consumed.

I listened...

I recall...

My first day of maturity in fall

When all my body was in shame,

It shivered innocently with flame;

In the dim shade,

When the light yawned and prayed."

*

When Neda entered high school, her love for literature and poetry increased over night. This was the time that she rained her father with questions and spent a lot of time in her father's study. Anything she did not understand, she showered him with her doubts. She read everything her father allowed her to read. She also read the books that her father did not want her to read. "You're too young to understand them!" This was the time that the urge of writing poetry in her increased daily. To her that compulsion was a need like hunger or thirst. She saw no choice but to write.

At this period, often times she wrote five to eight poems a day. She wrote in the kitchen, at dinner table, in her room, in her father's study, walking to or from school and even in the classroom when the teacher was not looking. The surroundings, anything that happened, simple or complex, everything and everybody were her subjects. Looking through the window, hearing the children play in the alley, changing of the seasons, they were all proper motivation for her to write about.

To Be Continued

UNFULFILLED- Two-[`]`] The Family

Mehri somehow influenced her children by her extreme goodness, beauty of her soul, and religious belief. She was a woman with its complete meaning to the eyes of an Iranian man, a guileless, unassuming woman. Sometimes she was even childish, always tender hearted, and often naive. She would and could not see evil in people. She believed all humans and the world in its entirely were in good manner and order. She was a candid and true devotee of Muslim Religion; and except the prohibited time for women, like when they were period, she never missed her five times daily prayers, or the fasting in the month of Ramadan.

Then it was the grandpa, her mother's father, before he died. Neda adored him. All his grandchildren called him Agha which meant Sir. She had five grandchildren, three boys and two girls. Each of his three children had a son; and then one of his son and Mehri also had a daughter. The other granddaughter, Maryam was Sohrab's age and her father, was Mehri's older brother. Neda was the youngest grandchild. She had a special place with grandpa. Agha always read her stories, sometimes even made up stories in order to see the excitement in Neda's face. He was single; His wife, Mehri's mother had died of breast cancer even before Neda was born. Not like many other men that they would marry again, he had stayed single. He had taught himself how to cook and shop and...

He was so good at knowing many stories, especially the ones from the Shahnameh (The Book Of King) by the great Persian Poet, Ferdousi. He would read those odes with so much passion to Neda, as though he was an actor. She always wanted more. When he finished one story with his own style of reading, as though he would become the character of the book, Neda would beg for more.

"Please Agha, read more!"

She never stopped asking for more even at age fourteen right before grandpa died. It was apparent that grandpa loved Neda in a special way and more than his other grandchildren; and everyone knew it. His sons and their wives complained about it and accused him of favoritism; but he was not a man to be swayed by this kind of petty talk.

Neda spent a lot of times like Summer and holidays at grandpa's. He was leaving alone until death took his life. Neda's visits were always welcome news to him. He taught Neda to help him cook dinner; and they would sit in a yard under a mosquito net in Summer time and had their dinner. Mehri, his only daughter, would go there once week to clean up his house. He welcomed other grandchildren but Neda was the one who had her own room there and spent days and weeks there.

He was so contented with his books and grandchildren, specially Neda, that life could not be any better for him. His daughter, Mehri was a big help. His sons very seldom visited him; or their wives never helped him out; but that was not the case with Mehri. Without his daughter's help, he would perhaps had to hire a servant to come and clean the house. He would come to Mehri's home for dinner a lot. He had a very good relation with his son- in- law, Jalal. They exchanged ideas about Persian poetry and World's Politics. Neda enjoyed his company no matter he came to her house or she went to his.

After spending time with Grandpa when Neda returned home, she dreamt about all the stories that grandpa had read to her. Sometimes she pretended that she was the hero of those stories or odes. She would become princess or the queen, and sometimes she would become the maid servant just to feel how it felt to be in that low level in the palace. Grandpa's death put an end to all those made up characters. It appeared that grandpa's death was the end of her childhood and the beginning of her adulthood when all her misery would soon begin.

She could never forget her childhood. Breeze, light, rain, and birds occupied her early years. She became light in a breezy afternoon, and flew like a bird to sky to see how rain was made. her imagination was so beyond every other child, her age, that when she told her friends at school about her flying to sky or becoming light or a bird, they could not understand her. Most of them made fun of her. Some of them called her crazy. None of them thought that one day she would become the greatest poetess of their era.

In her early teenager years, she used to go to her mother's chest, where she kept all Sohrab and her childhood clothes. She searched in the pockets f those clothes for the trace of childhood memory. Her mother kept all their clothes from childhood. She could not get rid of them or donate them to charities. Neda might have taken after her mother in looking back to past and remembering and reliving them in her early writings. Some how touching those clothes, that some day in past were hers, would bring her back the memories that gave her a sensation of shock. Suddenly she would see herself as a child again, innocent, naive, and without disturbing thoughts.

To Be Continued

UNFULFILLED- Two {~}~ The Family

Jalal knew the order in which the bookcases were arranged with his books. Just like being in a library or book store, all his books were organized alphabetically or by the subject matter. He could find what he wanted even with his eyes closed.

They were better off than many other families financially. However, Jalal made his children work for their pocket money or lunch money for schools. This was an unusual act for an Iranian father; nevertheless, he always had his way for everything. When his children were of age that they could earn their allowances, he made Neda help with chores around the house and Sohrab help him in his business in bazaar. Jalal's idea of raising children and making them independent, was a psychology of self reliance. His self credence was the same both for girls and boys as strange as it might sound in their culture for the time they lived. He said when people worked for their money, they would value the things they have a lot more than when everything was given to them. Therefore, when Sohrab and Neda were at the ages they could help out, he made them to do so and paid them. The children then could keep the money and spend it in any which way that they wished. He always thought a working person was much more honorable than a non working person! But when it came to women, he considered their work at home, including raising children, cooking, shopping, cleaning,... as hard work as a man's work outside of the house.

He provided the best that he could for his family; nevertheless, he made them work at least for part of it. This early training would save Neda in her future endeavor.

Neda's mother, Mehri, was a very simple woman, almost unimportant. However, this homey woman taught her more about love and life than any person in her life even her father. Mehri lived in past and the glory her wealthy family had. In fact it was her father's wealth that provided Jalal, her husband, with enough money to begin his business at the beginning of their marriage when her father was still alive. she lost her mother to breast cancer not long after her marriage. In fact, she was pregnant with Sohrab when her mother passed. There was not much of the cure for cancer those days. Just the word "cancer", itself, meant death sentence. She lost her father many years later. Neda was fourteen when her favorite grand father died. Her father's inheritance was divided amongst her two older brothers and her. However by the Muslim law, the two brothers inherited twice more than her. But even though she got only half of what her brothers did, she became a very rich woman. Again, Jalal, her husband invested that money in the business without even including her name any where! Everything they had belonged to Mehri; but all of them were in Jalal's name. He even did not ask his wife how to use the money. He just took it. That was considered his right; they were married; therefore his wife's wealth, even inheritance, belonged to him. So his philosophy of self reliance was something that did not apply to himself.

Sohrab and Neda were too young to know about any of these; and besides no one ever told them anything. All they knew, was that grandpa had died. Neither of them knew how their father, the man they loved and feared so much, took advantage of their mother- the kind hearted, simple woman, who was crying so much those days!

To Be Continued

UNFULFILLED- Two~`~` The Family

However there was another side to Jalal's personality which frightened both his children and even Mehri, his wife. When he was in that mood, his face was often veiled with a strange and masculine roughness which was not unnatural for an Iranian man. On those occasions, he was bitter, and coarse. He showed that he was the man of the house, meant the boss of the house as most men were; with a conventional face which on those episodes was masked to cover real him. These kind of sporadic behavior made people, especially his family to avoid him. When it came to his children, they were mostly unnerved by his as though he was a different man not the loving father they knew.

His children, Sohrab and Neda, in those special episodes that he was not in his loving self, would also change attitude. As soon as they heard his foot step coming home from work in the evenings, they knew by the sound of his walking, the way he would throw his briefcase on the chair or remove his jacket or loosen up his tie, if their father was pleasant or in one of his tirades. They hid from his view and never came out to say even hello when he was angry for no obvious reason known to his family. Nevertheless, the same father, like being two different men in one body, most of the time was entirely loving; it was like a demon who had captured him, suddenly left his body. When his mind was free of beasts, he would want his children by his side always, especially Neda, his little girl. Sometimes he mentioned her name by adding, "my true love". He would be kinder to his wife, Mehri. He would praise the food. He would admit that he was a very lucky man. Who was the malignant spirit taking over him sometimes? Nobody knew knew about double personality, or at least none in this family heard about it. If they apprehended such thing, they would call Jalal the perfect example of a man with a beast possessed him somewhere in the layers of his brain; or a man who had good and bad days and did not know how to handle the bad ones; therefore he would blame his family for no apparent reason. When the demonic mask was removed from his face, his love for his family, particularly Neda was immeasurable. At these times, one could see tears would well up in his eyes. He would take off his glasses which had very thick lenses and pretending that clearing his nose, use his white handkerchief to clean up his teary eyes.

His love for poetry, however, was his only escape from his daily routine. His amusement was reading books and seeking knowledge. He had only high school diploma but what he knew about Persian Literature, poetry, and the World's Politics would qualify him to have a debate with any professor on those fields.

His study which he called it office was on the second floor of the house. It was the biggest and brightest room. The master bedroom was on the first floor. They had two more rooms on the second floor which one of them was Neda's. The hallway of the second floor was square and big. It had a window which faced the yard which they called it garden. They had made a small living room from this square shape hall way; a sofa on one side and a love seat and a chair on another side of it. There was also a full bath there that nobody used it except Neda. No one used the second floor living area; it was mostly like a show case with their antique furniture. Sohrab's room was down stairs, a small room that was not supposed to be a bedroom, but that was what he wanted. The extra room on the second floor was mostly filled with stuff that they never used.

Jalal's study had two windows, one on the south side and one on the east. They were covered with two layers of curtains. The first layer, closest to the glass, was white lace drape and the second one over it was a thick, lined drapery fabric in Burgundy color. It matched the color of the furniture and the Persian Rug in the middle of the room. The furniture were leather. Jalal used the drapes always according to his mood. Sometimes he had a lot of lights in the room while other times he made the room as dark as he could during the day.

The room was furnished with an oak, antique and very large desk. There was a love seat on the opposite side with a small coffee table, made of oak in front of it. They were bookcases, all custom made, all around the room, even behind the desk and love seat. The book cases were all the way to the ceilings. There were even book cases were the windows were, beneath them. All of them were filled with books; in fact some of them had double stacks of books.

To Be Continued