UNFULFILLED- Eight- <><><>The Others

Neda decided to go back again the next day and the days that followed. She saw him leaving the school with the same woman every day. One day she stopped a student who was running and asked him while pointing to the woman:

"Do you know her?'

The student looked puzzled; nonetheless, he answered Neda without stopping:

"Yes, I know her. She is our history teacher."

Neda wanted to ask more questions, but the he was gone. She felt a cold tremor in her entire body. she did not understand it. She never loved Mansour, but the question was why then to be upset? She did not know what to do, or what she should do! She stayed long enough to see that Mansour and that woman went towards a blue color Fiat car in the parking lot of the school. They both threw their books and bags in the back of the car; and she sat in the driver seat, and he, next to her, and they drove off. It was obvious that he had found another woman.

He was rejected and disappointed with no hope to salvage their five months marriage. He had met Mitra, a young widow teacher in the cafeteria of school. They had become friends very quickly. It seemed as though they were match made in heaven. Mitra was thirty years old. She had an eight years old son. Her husband had died of cancer five years back. She was from Shiraz, the city of flowers and antiquity. Her parents still lived there. After the death of her husband, she had decided to stay in Tehran, against her parents' will, and to continue her teaching career. She had a small apartment not far from school.

Neda did not know that they were already engaged. Mansour had promised her to divorce Neda before they get married. He was already living with her although such things in their culture was unheard of; but they had kept it very secret. No one at school knew that he was already married and his wife was pregnant.

He had left his home with Neda a rejected man to gain another woman who understood him, adored him, and respected him. He knew that without respect there would be no love. Neda had no respect for him. Mansour had found himself debased with Neda but highly motivated with Mitra. He had left Neda extremely offended and found someone else much superior to Neda. He finally gained what he had lost!

Surprises were not good things; and this bombshell for Neda was beyond shocking. As sick as she was, she went to school almost everyday at the closing time. One day that they didn't have the car, she followed them and discovered where they lived. She even saw the other woman''s son. She saw how they were holding hands while walking. Now two weeks had passed from the day that Mansour had left her. He did not call her or cared that she was pregnant with his child. He had found someone better than her. Neda thought of all these things with throbbing anxiety. Marriage had drained all her energy and power. How could she love again? The terrible thing was that he took the first step to end this not her. This truly bothered her. He had wounded her soul by marrying her; now he was murdering all she believed by his betrayal. Everything was gone. This marriage was like a crime and the result of it was this thing in her womb that she did not ask for it, or wanted it.

She was completely unnerved by this bleak terror, by abstruse fright, disconnected with everything and everyone. She needed help, strength; however, the help she craved was for her emotions not for her physical conditions.

One afternoon, after three weeks, she decided that she should talk to Mansour. She had found this sudden zest for conversation. Besides her family now was so suspicious that they constantly quizzing her about Mansour's whereabouts! She decided to talk to her family after she had her own conversation with this unfeeling man. She finally made up her mind that the next day would be a day that she would confront him outside the school and would ask him to come home to talk. She did not want him; but she did not want this situation either. That evening she felt just a little stronger. She sat in front of a mirror and looked at her pale face. What she saw in the mirror was a woman she did not know; a searching woman! She wrote after many weeks:

"I say good day

To the sun of today:

To my inside scream;

To the cloudy eyes in my dream;

To the plants that painfully grow;

And take me to a season of woe.

And to the migrating bird,

Who sang a tune unheard,

And brought me perfume from a far farm;

And enchanted me with its charm.

And to my mom;

Whose love used to make me numb.

And I will resemble her,

In the old age of despair.

I say good day.

*

I come, I come.

Earth says: 'Welcome.'

My hair becomes perfume of a tree.

My eyes become dark but free.

I come with flowers in hand.

On the entrance of lane, I stand;

And I see a searching woman

In the journey that she began.

To her I say: 'Good day.' "

To Be Continued

UNFULFILLED- Eight- *****The Others

Neda did not fight with Mansour any more. She did not see any sense to animate this man to something, to anything. The only things that mattered to him, were things that were not related to her. But on the other hand, her silence was worse than argument. They both knew the degree of disaster they both were caught in; and he knew he could not have anger from her anymore. His mind was not programmed for her quietude. He did not handle her silent. He had planted rage in himself to face her agony. But in this foreboding silence, he lost his balance while not being able to change her technique of defense. He was just a kind of person that every one knew him well but nobody cared for him. Everyone was happy to see him, and no one remembered him afterwards. He had wounded Neda by his indifference, but he had injured himself more. Her emotion was lamentable, his was futile. They had nothing to say to each other because she did not communicate and because he did not care.

But things could not stay that way. Their lives were like living in death or hell. They both needed an explosion, a thunder, and a fight. One morning Neda noticed that he was packing a suitcase before going to work. He was a teacher now. She stayed unspoken in bed, pretending to be asleep. After he left, she got put of the bed and searched his closet. He had taken almost everything, all his clothes, he did not have many, all his personal hygiene. He did not return that evening or the next. She did not tell anyone in her family that Mansour had left her. Two days passed. She saw her mother and her brother both days, yet she said nothing. When the second night, her brother brought food for her and saw that she was all alone again, he began quizzing her about the whereabouts of Mansour. She acted calm. She decided there should be no hysteria, no drama.

"He wanted to stay at school a little late to prepare himself for some exams his students will have."

Sohrab believed her since she was not crying; however, he was also suspicious. But it happened again. This time she said that he was seeing his mother. The next quizzing came when she was at her parents. Then everyone questioned her.

"We haven't see Mansour for awhile!" It was Sima, father's second wife. Father, as always was silent. Mother, as usual was in a different world. It was Sohrab, who looked at her in the eyes and told her straight forward:

"What is going on, little sis?"

And again Neda pretended that nothing was amiss. Sohrab drove her home almost every night. He would always go inside to check the apartment. His suspicious was unbearable. He could not stand it anymore.

"Go home Sohrab. I'm going to leave the lights on for when he returns home. I just go to bed. I'm tired."

One week passed. Before telling anything to her family, she needed to find out for herself where Mansour had been. She knew he did not have much money to stay in a hotel. She knew he was too proud to go to his mother and sister's home.

Curious and somewhat worried, after a week of not hearing a word from him, she went to school where he taught in the afternoon at the closing time when they let out students. She stood far back, heard the ring of the closing of school day. Surge of the students running down the few steps that would take them to the freedom of buying ice cream, talking, and... Then she saw him leaving the school building. A woman was with him. Neda was shivering behind a tree she was standing. She needed to see how this would end. Was this just a casual talking of two teachers, or something more sinister?

"Who is she? Another teacher!" At the beginning she was not much concerned. She went back home, but the woman, the other teacher had left an impression on her that she could not explain. Her mind said: "Oh, she was just another teacher!" Her heart said: "How intimately they talked to each other?!"

To Be Continued

UNFULFILLED- Eight- (_)(_)The Others

The next day Neda's mother took her to their family doctor. Neda, who always had irregular period, did not remember when her last one was. After examining her and doing a pregnancy test, the doctor said that she was definitely pregnant; perhaps about four to five months. And then he said that most likely she would have the baby sometimes in January.

"It is hard to know since you don't remember your last period. Even before you married you always had your periods every so irregularly. That even makes it harder. Besides I am just a regular doctor. Perhaps a gynecologist can do better than me."

Neda shook her head while crying:

"I'm not going to go to another doctor."

"But you must. I can't deliver babies. Well, I have a few times, but that is it. You must go to a specialist so he can properly take care of you."

"No, I won't!"

Her mother and the family doctor looked at each other and decided to let it go for now; but he said for final advice:

"My best guess is that you perhaps got pregnant right way; so we go from the date of your wedding. I am just going to ask you to take these vitamins that I write. In fact I have some here in my office that I'll give to you. You must eat. I know you don't feel like it, but not eating won't be good for you and your baby."

Going home from the doctor's office, Neda told her mother for the first time how unhappy she was:

"Mom, it was a mistake. I am sure dad set me up; and you never came to my rescue." Then she continued with her hysterical cry in the taxi that was taking them home.

"None of you foresaw this disaster. Sohrab noticed it, but then forgot about it!" Her anger mixed with her crying was unbearable for her mom to endure.

Mehri, whose own life had turned completely upside down, told her daughter that under the new circumstances, separation or divorce were out of question.

"You must tolerate this. You have no choice, sweet heart. If you weren't pregnant, perhaps your father would consider it, but not under this condition."

Neda cried harder and mumbled:

I don't want to be like you. I'll have an abortion."

The taxi driver looked in the rare view mirror at the mother and daughter who had put their personal grief on display.

Mehri reminded her that in their country, abortion was illegal.

"It's just illegal, especially as far advanced as you're. The only possible way for abortion is when the mother's life is in true danger."

Neda thought about how could she endanger her life so she could have an abortion. What she did not know, even though she had highly improved mind for her age, was that she was still a child. Even for an adult woman without her husband's consent, abortion could not be performed even if the mother's life was in danger. She did not know that a woman could not even get a passport without her husband or father's approval. She just had forgotten that women were the second rate citizens. An uneducated, good for nothing man had more rights than a woman who was a medical doctor.

That night in her own apartment, she felt that she was all alone in this obscure sea of sadness. Her beautiful soul suddenly wanted to destroy everything admirable around her. She wanted to be rescued from this fishnet she was caught in. The only people she thought might help her, were her cousin, Maryam, and her brother. It would be nice to talk to a woman friend who genuinely liked you, who understood your situation. But realizing that her cousin's words, being a young, unmarried woman, did not have any weight with her family, she decided to talk to Sohrab. She recalled the kind words of Sohrab on her wedding night. She was certain of his true love for her. If her brother could not help her, no one could!.

The sickness was unbearable. It appeared to her that now that everyone knew and she knew herself that her condition was not only her unhappiness, her indisposition became worse than before. The physical change in her ability felt horrible. Her entire system had changed. Food did not taste good. What was the sense of eating when she vomited right away and could keep nothing down even for a half an hour? there was only one thing that taste good to her and she could hold it in her stomach, and that was ice cream. Now her freezer was filled with buckets of ice cream, mostly strawberry ice cream. She normally had a bucket of it in front of her while studying. She did not care anymore that she was a broken down pregnant teenager, who had gone to a marriage so her father can have a peaceful life with his second wife. Her determination to get her high school diploma was the only prospective she had in her life then. The ice cream would melt and became like a pink color milk in front of her on the dining table; but she would not see it. No one could stop her love affair she had found with ice cream.

Mansour most of the time, did not dare to force himself on her; and without drinking wine which she could not anymore because of her pregnancy, there would was no way that she could go through it. But every once in a while while she was asleep, he would take her like a hungry dog. In those occasions, the scene that Neda made, could be heard around the block. After those sneaky ones, every time he gave her a hint, she became hysterical and broke down and threatened to run away. Most nights, she ended up to sleep on the sofa. She blamed marriage and love making on her current situation. She pondered how selfish her husband was to ask her for a thing that she was not capable of giving it. She thought that egocentric people only considered their own distress and displeasure were more important than anything else in this world! How could not they see other people's irritation and pain?

Mansour, who had only one more semester of college left to finish, thought that he was a real scholar; therefor, he could not enjoy his life because what he knew where only the things he was taught, nothing more or less. He had never learned about simple concepts of life, people, emotions, short comings, and joys or sorrows. He saw this simple parade of life, but never was freed his own hungry self, never completely understood the splendor of things, never had his conscious passionately converted into animated thoughts, into fervor of an excitement, or a drive for accomplishment; he was nevertheless apprehensive, not lively, and he was definitely was short- sighted.

To Be Continued

UNFULFILLED- Eight- [=][=] The Others

When school started in September, Neda who was feeling sick, got even worse. She was feeling ill in her stomach for a while now; but she had always thought when some one's soul was sick, her body would break down, too. Every morning she woke up, nauseating, and vomiting. She began the morning with no appetite. She used to love breakfast. In fact, breakfast had always been the best meal of the day for her. Now not only she could not eat in the morning, she felt sick, very sick all day. She began losing weight. Finally one day her mother, Mehri, took her attention from herself and looked at her daughter with curiosity. She noticed the blue ring around her eyes one evening when they were having dinner at their home.

"What is wrong, honey? Are you sick?" She asked Neda in front of everybody. Neda raised her head from staring at her food with disgust and looked at the gazing of her family.

"Are you talking to me, mom?" There was a film of tears glistening in her eyes.

All of the sudden, everyone looked at her and for the first time they all noticed her pale face and puffy eyes and her thin body. Mehri noticed that she should have asked that question when she was alone with her daughter. A sudden terror, yet joy shivered Mehri. However since everyone had suddenly become interested in Neda's sickness, Mehri said:

"Yes, honey, I was talking to you. You don't look like yourself at all..."

Mansour was the one who answered Mehri instead of Neda. Perhaps he wanted to show to Neda's family that he cared:

"I've noticed it, too. She refuses to tell me what is wrong with her! Maybe she tells you..."

Neda unexpectedly broke in tears. Now that all had noticed, she, herself discovered that she really was not feeling good. It was not only the sickness of her soul, but also the sickness of her body. Since she refused to answer her mother, Mehri turned to Mansour and asked him:

"Have you taken her to the doctor? What are the symptoms?"

"I don't know!" He began. "She goes to the bathroom and lock the door from inside. She won't tell me anything. But I know that she vomits."

Suddenly Sohrab, Neda's brother brought both his hands with force on the table.

"She is pregnant. You got her pregnant!"

The word "pregnant" had never entered Neda's mind. She was feeling sick for a few months; but she related this physical sickness to her emotional affliction. No, it could not happen to her! How could she endure this? She was so frightened to hear the word pregnant, that all her family saw it in her eyes. She put her hand on her forehead and smoothed her hair back and wiped the bead of sweat that were covering her face. Outside a precipitous thunder smothered the sky and the light in the dinning room became murky.

A tormenting struggle was happening in Neda's heart. Her eyes were rainy with a violent agony, with a fierce hatred, and with a strong yearning for love. Her brother now was standing behind her chair and massaging her shoulders. Sima, father's second wife was also standing next to her chair. However, her mother, father, and husband did not move. They were all in shock. They were not sure this stupor was a joyful one or an agonizing one. It was Sohrab, who at this point hugging his sister's head standing behind her chair, who said:

"Mom, you're a woman; you're her mother. Why didn't you know? Don't you think it's enough to feel sorry for yourself and think a little about your own child?"

Mehri said nothing. For Neda, this was a tragedy at the time that she had made up her mind to break this marriage for ever! It seemed though that real catastrophe of life always would happen in an inauspicious manner and time. This disaster most definitely afflict pain on her by its coarse affect, by its deficiency, and by its complete lack of style. She knew it would leave her a terrible impression just as indecency would transform her.

To Be Continued

UNFULFILLED- Eight- ~`~`~ The Others

Neda took the hot tea with her to the bedroom and sat on the chair by the window. Suddenly she felt cold in the hot August night. She did not understand this constant change of her body that made her cold in a very unseasonable way. She picked up her grandmother's shawl from the back of the chair and wrapped it around her shoulders. She sat there in dark, holding the hot cup in her hand and listened to Mansour drunken breathing. She could neither think about anything nor wanted to think. Nonetheless, the fragments and images of different thoughts formed in her mind one after the other. Those anticipations had neither a beginning nor an ending; and those fraction of ideas did not connect with each other. As she was sitting on the chair, shivering for unknown reason to her, she found out that she was dozing. What was it that shivered her? Was it the wind outside or her heartbeat? Perhaps it was her fear and misery! A sudden concept flashed in her mind. She would end this misery for herself and for everyone else involved by taking her life! A joy came to her for finding a solution. But as she had discovered this resolution in anguish, she could not find a way in her mind how to do it. She stood up in front of the window, pulled up the blind a little and gazed into the dark to the one tree in front of her bedroom window. It moved violently. She realized that although the thought of suicide had come to her at the time of the most wretched anxiety, and in spite on the bottle of Valium that her parents had gotten her from the doctor for her extreme anxiety during the days of preparation for wedding, and now it was flashing in her mind, she had said a profound lie internally about taking her life. She had just discovered something about herself. "I'm not brave enough!" She was not aware that this new unearthing might have been an indication about the future greatness in her life; the rebirth and reawakening of new things!

Gradually she refurbished her life. It was as though a new birth, a slow transition from the world of the dead to the world of living! It was like a friendship with what was and what was not.

All she knew from this short experience, this hurried union, was that marriage was not like anything else she knew. The closeness that marriage brought to two total strangers was awful. Neda thought about love that did not exist in her marriage! What would it be like if she loved Mansour?! Would love make it more tolerable? No, there was no way to transport life, to observe any distinguished point from the beginning of this uniting, what made it real, its duration, its complex and pointed existence! All these were impossible thoughts to her. She felt as she dreamed alone, she should live alone, too.

All these discoveries about life, marriage, loneliness to the end, and the whole essence of what was and was not, were Neda's gradual reawakening and revival, her undisturbed transition from the world she knew to another world that she would come to know; her grasp to this new absoluteness which formerly had been totally unknown to her. To do what she knew the best, and her soul yearned to carry it out, she needed to cut completely from everyone and become a loner through and through; since in her society for a married woman especially to a man like Mansour, who did not care about her soul, she had no chance of doing what she longed to do. All these thoughts brought her to the conclusion that she needed to break this new chain of slavery and free herself. She needed to go against the will of these strong people around her and to become a pioneer, and she intended to do just that. But how would she start? And if she did, in what way?

To Be Continued

UNFULFILLED- Eight- ~~~ The Others

Mansour, the unresponsive man was hard to deal with. The abhorrence of this life was insufferable for Neda and inflicted unbelievable pain on her. The words "inflicting pain" might sound too strong, but not strong enough for what she felt. People normally would call the newly weds' struggle only a trivial, only an adjustment period, but in this frivolousness, the ever lasting hatred was seeded and the infinite happiness was lost. They both could look around with her pale face and his disappointed mind to the suffering this union had created. They even came to decision that sweetness could not exist.

In her deliberate struggle, she would sit away from her family or anyone else who might ask her a question about her married life; while the day became evening and evening was darkened be night fall. A few times her brother and her cousin questioned her state of mind! She always tried to escape those curiosity so as not to answer since she knew even if she lied, it would be mixed with her tears. Conflict within her would change constantly. Her mother, whom she needed most, could not even see her misery since she, herself, was always miserable. Neda tried to avoid her mother since not only she would not get what they used to have, but her mother complained about her own life and agony.

Neda's emotions always began with extreme anger as though she wanted to scream; then they ended with her containing her disgust and fury and buried her scream.

Formerly her poems had been like an escape, perhaps from life. She used to feel that without her poetry, life would be so gloomy. Now she needed them so life would not be so uniformly disgusting and boring. For her, poetry was part of life itself. She would not imprison herself so much to writing if she had a friend who would listen not judge. To her, poetry was all of her life, and all the moments of life were when she wrote. She had always thought when someone dedicated herself to some form of art, first she got to know herself by dedicating her soul to that art, then she should get out of her shell and watch herself as part of the existence until she could put into use the universality of all her understanding, thought, and feelings.

Because of poetry, she was called abnormal. Now poetry was her real mate and friend. She was a woman now not a girl or human being. She wanted to say things that she could not in ordinary talking because others wanted to close her lips and extinguish her breathing in her chest; so poetry was her breath, her talk, and her scream.

The newly weds had slowly become like two objects in each other's eyes; while their souls were still aware, and their hearts were still desirous. She was puzzled and abhorred with this strange situation which was so far away from all she cared for, so hatefully foreign from all she wanted, as though all the happiness in her life were hiding behind bushes like many enemies without she knowing them; and they were ready to attack her.

She did not dare to discuss her disastrous situation with her family. She did not know what to do herself. However she thought about different paths to free herself. What she did not know was that any ending would not be available by waiting and doing nothing; but it would be reached only by a sudden explosion. The thought of an acute eruption and blow out to end this misery came to her one night sitting on the chair in bedroom next to the window. That terrifying thought brought beads of sweat to her face. She got up and began walking in the room. A glimmer from street gave the room a little shade of light. She looked at Mansour, in the depth of his sleep. One of his leg was uncovered and showed his hairy nakedness. Neda wondered if he had always slept this way or this was something he did to irritate her. She went to the living room, then to the kitchen. She tried to make some tea for herself in dark. She wanted to be quiet. She murmured some words while waiting for water to boil: "How can I sleep?" She decided that the reason for her constant insomnia was her terrible life. Her justification seemed reasonable to her. Water was boiling now. She poured the boiling water in a glass cup and put a tea bag in it. What she really wanted was a well prepared tea on samovar, but that would take time and required for her to put the light on.

To Be Continued

UNFULFILLED- Eight- The Others

Their marriage was three months old. They fought almost everyday. However some days the fights were more hateful and spiteful than others. On those days Mansour left home; but he always returned, most of the time drunk. Neda watched with horror the greediness with which he ate, and did everything else. He always brought food from some restaurant home and never offered her any. She looked at him from the bedroom so as not to be seen. Now he openly drank straight vodka, sometimes almost half a bottle with his food. She hated the way he ate and drank almost every night before going to bed to assault her. When he ate, he made a lot of noises since he wanted to be noticed by her.

She thought: "Why can I hear the grass grow, the leaves of trees move and I enjoy them, but when I hear him, I try not to notice it because it makes me sick." But she was noticing it.

Every time he left home, she told herself: "If he returns, I'll be okay, if he doesn't, I'll be content."

He was trying intentionally to show her that he did not care for her or of their fighting. " Come on, let's fight." He knew how sensitive she was about men who drank excessively and particularly when he wanted intimacy in his drunken state. Therefor he made sure that he drank every night. He knew that she was watching him from bedroom. For that reason, he would wear a grimace of a chilly smile on his face for her to see. He would leave all his dirty dishes and empty bottle of whatever he was drinking on the coffee table for her to clean off. She always cleared them off in the morning.

At night, he always would throw himself on bed with his drunken attitude, ignoring she was perhaps sleeping. The smell of vodka on his body nauseated her. He always came to bed completely naked. All these gave Neda such an aversion that she wished she could run away, disappear, or even kill herself. It was war; and he was winning this war. He took her every night; sometimes even a few times before the dawn of a new day would come. He slapped her face when she tried to resist him or to get up from bed; and then he put his hand on her mouth so neighbors could not hear her scream for help. The things he did to her was like a savage boor or barbarian. Soon after he would fall asleep, if Neda would make an attempt to get up, he would wake up and assault her again. So she waited for a long time until she was sure he was soundly asleep. Meanwhile she quietly cried for her doomed life, for the choice she had made. She damned her father. When she was sure that he would not wake up, she would get up gingerly from bed, wrap herself in the pink and red, crochet shawl that belonged to her dead grand mother. She would go to the window and sit on the chair she had placed it next to the window. She listened, frightened, and wretched to outside noises, but all she could hear was his drunken snore. She had an internal cry for help. She needed help to endure this night and its nightmare as every night that had passed and the nights to come. She needed guidance to bear this life which her own effort to solve its problem had come to standstill of dread. But she knew nothing would happen until she would become brave. She wished she could talk to Sohrab, her brother; but she also knew getting Sohrab involved meant tragedy. Staying sleepless for her and sleeping without any problem for him not much speaking could not resolve her dilemma.

To Be Continued