UNFULFILLED- Eleven- >^<>_ Free of Chain

The mechanical succession of days and night Made Neda's heart to ache. The passing of the time was like a compulsory servitude, a repetitive moving of hours; and they were all so hard for her to endure.

Anything she looked at was the same as before, yet they all had changed. Today and yesterday were the same; yet there was a great ocean between them. She tried hard by herself to figure out this great difference. It came to her as a shock. Things of past were simple, natural, colorful, and bright. Things of today were dark, polluted, and lonely. Was she being frightened mostly loveliness, like her father used to say that there was something lovely about a woman who is frightened? Future was unknown and scary; therefore, she could not borrow from it to help her through this ordeal of present time. She thought as complicated as her life had been at such young age, for sure her future should have its own tribulation!

New year and its brawl was over and gone. Oh, how much she used to life the Nou Rouz, the beginning of the spring. The aroma of violets that each spring her mother planted in the yard, the tulips, the lilies, the irises which all spurted out of earth and made everything lovely with their mixed perfumes. She saw through her window that the birds were returning. She used to put food for them all over the yard; but now she could not go more than once a day down the stairs; and even that one was with so much difficulties. Sometimes Sohrab, her brother would carry her in his arm, so she did not have to ascend or descend the stairs. The birds' calm and yet powerful movement impressed her. Even these little creatures were stronger than her. She envied their strength; she envied their uniqueness.

She had between two to three more weeks left of her pregnancy. The doctor said that he could not be sure since Neda had always had a very irregular periods. There was a mysterious future, two weeks, or three, did it matter? How would she feel when it was all done and Mansour and Mitra would take over her possession! Was the baby a thing? She had carried it; she had gone through the pain and misery of it! Shouldn't she have a fair share of it? What was this feeling that was taking over her? She had said that she did not want it; she did not care for it! Had she said lies?

The future was a mystery to her. She never tried to fathom it. Just by itself the present was meaningful and telling. From the beginning of her courtship with Mansour to the end which would be the birth of her baby and handing it to him in a tray seemed like a dream, like it never had happened. Now she saw that she had lost that which she held; that she had rejected the newly impassioned, newly kindled human being she had fed for almost nine painful months; that they demanded her to give, the black law of the land ordered that she should give away this thing that was hers and hers alone. She almost did not want to give birth.

To Be Continued

UNFULFILLED- Eleven- <><> Free of Chain

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

UNFULFILLED- Eleven- {_}{_} Free of Chain

Neda began reading materials about child birth that Maryam, her cousin, had found them for her. The first thing she read after learning how a woman would get pregnant, was about child birth. "Something like death that would take place in gloominess with no solid ground under feet, without any view, without any onlookers, without commotion, with no distinction, without wanting triumph, without the unbelievable solicitude of death, without believing your own honor, and less right of your enemy!" Actually this was not the exact words that she read, but these were the way she translated those words.

She sighed. Was she reading a manual or a sad novel? Was she reading about birth or death? If all these comparisons of child birth to death were real, then to Neda, life was a greater puzzle than death from what she had told, read, known, and learned so far. This pregnancy had been like a long road that kept going without an end, kept stretching without an exit, just like her life, just like her dreams!

Spring used to be her favorite season when she saw the leaves coming to life after a long winter drowsiness and hibernation, when the trees would bloom with blossoms and the grass would turn light green. Winter was not far from ending; actually it was far from ending, yet it had not ended. Waiting for spring made her impatient. She would count days and weeks waiting for spring, the first of Farvardin, the Nou Rouz (New Year). She gazed through window at winter evening of transparent clearness with an innocent young moon above the sky tops. She wanted to to fill up her lungs with the pure luster and not to be communicated a word with anyone, who were clustered around the bed until she was finally alone in her own room.

She remembered the last she had seen Mansour. It was as though the beginning of their courtship. His return to her parent's home, the way he opened the door, drained the home from the flowing sound she had conjured to keep herself company with in this house of terror. In the dark void of her room, glittered with old flashes of light, beneath her eyelids, she felt the tingle of her own hair on her cheek. She welcomed the alien touch on her hair, on her lips; only things to tell her that she was not alone.

With spring nearing, the doctor told her the doctor that she would have the baby in a month. So everyone was preparing the house for the New year. There were backing, shopping, buying presents, and spring cleaning. She could not participate in any of these preparation. She was at home and sick most of the time. She was in pain and miserable. Mother was busy getting the home ready for the Nou Rouz. Dad and Sima acted the way they always did. They thought it was Mehri's job to do everything. Nobody was thinking about Neda. She wanted so much to buy baby clothes; but her mother told her:

"What is the sense? They'll take the baby away from you in the hospital!"

To Be Continued

UNFULFILLED- Eleven- Free Of Chain

The winter frost covered the earth, which was hardened with the dark frost. The cold air made Neda shiver through each limb of her body. Her outward life was uneventful, mostly boring; but that was not the case of her inner life. She found herself standing on the pick of a vast rock, uncertain of her isolation from all human. The fact that she was pregnant was laughable to her. To her it symbolized the righteous stance she was dying to achieve. Sometimes she felt the baby; it was like something was tickling her from inside. She had no one to share this thrill with. It was a different kind of ecstasy she had not known before. Was she falling in love with her unborn baby? She was not sure of that! She never knew that sensation. No hypocritical meaning was attached to this new ardor. It was pure and simple. Her own soul nowadays was simple, which only led roaming by a passion that was foreign to her. Would she about to acquire the habit of giving her heart and soul to this baby that she did not ask for it, but she had paid a high price for it?

She recalled her father's talk with Mansour when she had seen him for the last time. She could not believe that her father had told this ordinary and practical man very unconventional and unpractical things. She had thought that her father was not distinctive after her marriage but not before; but he now again had become exceptional after she heard him say:

"Her love for you was so great that she could have done wonderful things; and even the things that were never dirtied her! You received this lovely gift, while you did not have the graciousness to sustain it. You're small and unimportant. From now on you can do not one good thing because you never looked at life the way you should. You crushed my daughter's loveliness with your stinking pride!"

Neda was bewildered by her new emotions. Her father had defended her in such a beautiful manner; and yet he did not talk to her or checked on her in her room ever since the divorce. What had she done that her father who defended her so wonderfully, did not want to talk to her? Was it her return? Was it her pregnancy? But on the final analysis, her father did not have even a good relation with his second wife, Sima these days! She knew it because Sima would spend a lot of time with her and would tell her secrets about her life with Jalal.

But the most puzzling thing to Neda these days was her emotion towards the baby she was carrying, whom at the beginning, she had despised. She had delightfully had signed the divorce paper and even waved her visitation right. She knew no matter what, according to the law, Mansour would have the baby unless he denied his right. But mothers had always visitation rights. She remembered that her father asked her:

"Are you sure you don't want to visit your child?" Her answer was a firm no. Why was it then that she dreaded the day that the baby would be born and she had to hand it to Mansour and his new wife? Would Mitra, Mansour's wife, would be a good mother to her baby? Would he be a good father to her baby?

To Be Continued