UNFULFILLED- Fourteen-❢❢❢❦❦ Beyond Grace

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As she was still pushing to find a way among that big crowd of people, trucks, and tanks so she could be on the other side walk, she noticed that she was still in the middle of the street, right in front of a big truck, filled with people, men, women, and children; all carrying some kind of banner, some bearing weapons, some children on the shoulder of their fathers. The odor of people and machines were mixed. It made her almost sick to her stomach; reminded her of the days of her pregnancy, the days that any odor had made her to vomit.

But suddenly right there, among that terrible stench, she conjured up something from way back, from when she was in the hospital. She had seen her baby only for a few moments. Now she recalled that she had noticed something in the baby's half open eyes then, something like love for her. Strangely it was an unexpected discontent and weariness and painful discovery to be loved like that as she had seen it in that short few moment she had with her baby and in her half open eyes. It was an unfamiliar and terrible sensation since she knew what the black law of the land had done to her, took, or better yet, steal her baby for ever. There was something else she had seen in that half open eyes, a little mark, like a dot in the iris of her eyes exactly like the one she had. They told her that hers was a birth mark. So Ariana already had something from her.

Ever since that moment of birth, she had thought only about her daughter, her future, her point of view about her real mother if she ever knew about her, and knew that Mitra was not her real mother. Neda was too terrified to have a clear perception of what Ariana thought about her now that she had found out. She was even horrified to find out how Ariana had thought about her when she was a toddler, a teenager, or even an older teenager if she knew about her real mother! Had she hated her if she knew the truth? Had she known what happened to the woman who gave birth to her? Had she cared to know? Had she even known that Neda existed? Would she love her now the way she did at the time of birth? Did all these nineteen years of mystery, secret, and hiding had affected her so drastically that even if she knew the real truth now, she would and could not forgive her? Did all the nineteen years of not seeing each other enable her to accept Neda, her real mother, with open arms? Would she believe her when she would hear the true reason of the divorce and the circumstance under which it happened? Had Mitra treated her like her own child? Had she been a good mother to her?

All these years, Neda had tried to avoid these questions and moreover what had happened to her daughter to no avail! Now, she was right in the middle of the revolutionary crowds who wanted to change the regime to another which was most certainly would turn out disastrously. Now she was going to see the half open eyes of a baby, who was born more than nineteen years ago and soon she would find out for herself how those eyes looked like now!

At birth, she knew that her baby was a new spirit, whole and complete, a new reflection and idea, and a new love. At the time, she recalled, it almost unnerved her. The baby was her first and only born from a man she hated. How was it that she loved her so much and hated her father even more?

She remembered when they ripped her baby from her and before she fainted, she said to herself:

"You, Mansour, I hope you would be colder than a lonely child! I hope you would die in the cold of hatred!"

Rain started falling. She did not have the right shoes on. She felt that water was filling her shoes; she felt that the bottom of her pants were all wet. She tried to pull her scarves higher over her head to protect her face from rain; nonetheless, people were shoulder to shoulder. There was not a centimeter of space between people from her to raise her hand and to do what she had thought. Her mind deviated from past and birth to rain and where she was caught and how late she would be to see Ariana! Would her daughter wait for her? Would she know why she was late?

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After dinner, Sohrab and Maryam went for a walk. Kasra also left. Neda cleared the table and then sat on a chair by the dinning table. She thought how her life would be when Sohrab and Maryam would leave her in a few months when they would be married. The wedding would be right before the beginning of schools in September. She knew that most likely they wanted to live separate from her, to have their own little place! She knew that was the right thing. But what about her? Would her parents (Father) return to torture her, to dominate her life, to order her to come back home? She made up her mind that her answer to their demand to return home would be no, no, no! There was no way that she would go back to her former life in a home with her father, Sima, a child, half sister. She was not far from twenty two years old. She had lived on her own for two years now.

She went to the bedroom and got her book of poetry. She lay down on the bed and wrote a poem. She named it: "Beyond Grace"

ᚖ

"Into a world of white washed Walls

Where the dead and dying lay-

Wounded with bayonets, shells and balls

Some one's darling was borne one day.

Some one's darling, so young, so brave,

Wearing still on her pale, sweet face,

Soon to be hidden by the dust of grave-

The lingering light of girlhood grace."

ᚖ

It was an obscure April night. She thought Ariana would be five years old in a few days. "How does she look?' Does she know about me?" An unvaried shroud, so gloomy, of cloud muffled the whole expense of the sky from Zenith to Horizon. Neda walked to the small balcony in from of the living room window. She had set a small rod iron table and three white, rod iron chairs on the balcony. One of her book was on the table. But now lay motionless while it was caressed all morning by the sun rays, and now was harassed by the rain and storm. Its cover was raised slightly as though acknowledging the fondling by sun of the morning. Neda found herself like that book. She needed caressing by sun, by moon, even by a man...

To Be Continued

UNFULFILLED- Fourteen-❡❡❡ Beyond Grace

Neda's editor, Kasra, an attractive, young man, about thirty, came to her apartment almost everyday. Neda's writing like her mind and soul was scattered and all over the place. sometimes she wrote at the side border of a book she was reading. Kasra was the one worked with her on her dispersed, and dispelled writings for hours, which soon they would become manuscripts. Neda returned the favor by asking him to stay for dinner. Evening meals were not only food for nourishment, but it was getting together of all these young people after a day of work to talk with each other, to have a little laugh, or drink wine, a glass or two. When the evening meal was over and everyone was done with his or her work, mostly they sat around and talked about Neda's success at such a young age. Kasra told them how the publishing world worked. He told them the publishers were all business men. They were after making money. For them, there was no place for a really good writer that nobody would read her or his writing; even though Neda was not only among the good writers but people bought her books.

"There are a lot of good books that never are published." He would say to them.

With all the rumors and controversies that surrounding Neda's personal life, they kept publishing her books as long as she would attract people's curiosity. Kasra everyday brought with him the cut off pieces of newspapers, magazines, or literary journals that had said something about Neda. Those pieces were mostly untrue things about her life, not her poems. Sometimes they all laughed of so many untrue events that people had sworn to seen about Neda. Like this woman, who wrote a lot, was saying that she knew where Neda was meeting her secret lover. However every so often Kasra would find some nice thing about her. Neda started a journal. She glued all these cut off articles about her in that book, good or bad; and she arranged them by date not by their nastiness. Everyone was surprised that she was not offended what people told about her. Those passages that people had written about her were important to her for the sake of history. As young as she was, she knew that she would be a part of future history of Persian poets, a book that was not written yet! That was why she made that journal. They were not important to her for their contents. One evening she told the other three:

"I don't care what they say about me; as long as they read my poems, I am happy."

Maryam and Sohrab always laughed when Neda talked like this and told her that her life experience which had practically started at age fifteen, had made her skin thick.

Neda and Sohrab had not seen their father for two years now, They had not seen Sima or their little half sister, Mina, either. Their mother, Mehri, and Maryam's mother, Zari, now would come only once a week and always together. Every thing was normal in the sense of what normalcy was in Neda's view. A conformity that had had a big price for Neda. She had paid dearly to be where she was while she could had had this without marriage and a baby.

Then it came an evening that Maryam and Sohrab got engaged. Kasra, Neda's editor was there, too, for the party. He brought flowers for Maryam and cut off piece of article for Neda. They were also were celebrating Sohrab's graduation for the two years college. Neda made a cake; it was much harder than she had thought. By now she had mastered the art of cooking, but this was the first time she made a cake. The cake broke in several places when she was taking it out to put in a dish she wanted to serve. She patched the cake with the icing and fresh fruits.

Neda gave money to Sohrab so he could buy a ring for Maryam. They had all become very straight forward people. They never hold anything back. They said what it was in their minds. While cutting the cake, kasra unexpectedly said:

"I read this article that in Western countries, cousins don't get married. It says because of their blood line, it is not good for cousins to have children." He was blunt, especially now when they were celebrating the cousins' engagement. Neda thought it was tackles of Kasra to say such a thing at such an evening.

"I've heard it, too." Sohrab began. "You know here in our country, cousins have gotten married for ever; and frankly I don't care. I have yet to see a deformed child because of the marriage of two cousins!"

"Just thought to tell you what I've read." Kasra answered as if to himself.

"Enough Kasra!" Neda finished the subject and poured more wine in every one's glasses. She picked up hers and made a toast:

"To Sohrab and Maryam, and let's their disagreements wouldn't be so much!" Every one laughed, and sipped their wine.

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To Be Continued

UNFULFILLED- Fourteen-~<~< Beyond Grace

Sohrab's two years college was almost over. He would become an English teacher for junior high school. This was a new system of education that the Shah had implemented it. There were no more six years of elementary school and six years of high school. This new system was five years elementary, three years secondary or junior high and the last was four years of high school. Sohrab would be teaching right in the middle, the secondary school. For high school, one should need a bachelor's degree at least. His income from teaching would not be a lot, as it was custom everywhere in the world. Teachers were never paid good money for the hard work they do. They mostly did it for the love of teaching. But the way Neda figured it out, after getting confession from Maryam that she was in love with her brother, if they would ever marry, the combination of both income would be enough for a simple life. Neda knew them both. she knew that they don't want anything but simple life. Besides Neda knew if she had extra money, she would give it to them. But she never thought what would she do as a single, widowed twenty two years old woman living alone by herself. No one in her family, even Sohrab would think about it right away. "We think about it later!"

Secrets were out. Sohrab and Maryam, who had never talked about their love openly, now were acting more than two cousins. They did not have to hide their affection for each other living with Neda since they knew she loved it and praised any kind of true love. Now they were officially lovers.

One evening Maryama told Neda while laying on her bed and Neda was getting ready for bed:

"Oh that thing! What am I going to do about it?"

Her voice showed a true sadness. Then as if she was not clear enough, she continued, this time with firmer voice:

"Well, what do I do if we get married? How will I say to Sohrab that I am not Virgin?!!"

Neda began a big laugh :

"If my brother is that kind of man, you better not marry him at all, but you know he is not!"

The next day, Friday, everyone was home. Neda and Maryam were cooking together. They always had a nice meal for Friday (a holiday in Muslim countries). During the week, Neda cooked for everyone. She was happy that she had watched her mother's cooking and had learned a lot. Besides she constantly called mother and asked her questions about cooking. She began to love cooking and the process it took to prepare meal for people that she loved. To her cooking was like a form of art. Since their separation from their parents, her appetite was back and she loved to eat, and eat good meals. Her cooking, according to her mother and aunt Zari was very good and getting better.

This particular Friday, at dinner table, while the three of them finally sat to dinner, Neda looked at Sohrab, then Maryam; and without consulting Maryam, she suddenly said:

"Sohrab!"

Sohrab raised his head from his eating and looked at his sister. He saw a glimmer in her eyes like the days of their childhood when she had done some nutty thing like touching something she should not in his room.

"What Neda?"

"Maryam isn't virgin!" Her sudden statement, so matter factually, almost made Sohrab and Maryam to chock on their food. The color left Maryam's face. Sohrab's eyes seemed larger than normal. He looked first at Neda and then at Maryam, and said:

"If you're trying to find out what kind of man I am, you should know by now; and I think there are many other things that you can come with to test me! But even if she is not, so what! Her past is hers not mine. Her present and future are mine. Besides I knew it!"

The surprise of saying, "I knew it" was so shocking for both women that they stayed quiet, and independent from each other, they decided to close this chapter of Maryam's life. No one ever talked about it anymore.

To Be Continued

UNFULFILLED- Fourteen-❡❣❦❧ Beyond Grace

If nothing could change mother from the "look at poor me", woman that she had become, her children thought, perhaps if they would become successful in this parting from family, she could.

"Mother told Neda one day:

"Your life, as moderate as it is from the rest of the world, from us, it is making me, I believe, perfectly happy; but like everything else in my own way that your greatness will make me great, too."

Neda believed her then; but she knew her mother's wretchedness would move backward and forward. She thought about her childhood, about everything that had happened to her and brought her to this point. She recalled when she was a little girl, there were times that she felt so unwanted like her mother these days. "I guess everyone feels this way at some point of their lives!" However, her mother's had begun when father took another wife. The days of her childhood that she deemed undesirable, rejected, and even was called cold more than once, she conjured up that she broke her little money box and took all the money that she had, mostly were coins, and went to the store. She bought presents for herself. She brought them home and wrapped them in beautiful papers that she had taken from her mother's closet and gave them to herself. At home, she told that her friends had given those to her; and at school she told her classmates that her family had done so. She thought if other children and her family saw how many presents she had gotten for her birthday, or New Year, or ... they would think that she was very popular and they wanted to be her friends! But it did not work that way. Her classmates had figured her out. They told her so to make her embarrassed and because they were hateful and mean spirited like most children at certain point of their lives. They told her that she was strange and weird. Where were they to see her now, to see how famous she had become at such a young age, the same weird, and strange girl!

Autumn came. Then it was winter, spring and summer which followed in the order that nature wanted them to, as they always would! The threesomes now were more like friends than relatives. They lived peacefully under one roof. But something new was happening which Neda had known it even before the other two, who were involved. The players of this new event did not know it yet. But Neda knew it even before the real participants. She had an eyes of the poet, heart of a poet; and she knew that her brother and cousin were falling in love with each other. The way they looked at each other at the dinner table, without even knowing why, a small touch of their bodies in passing one another, the way they listened to the other with so much interest, all these, indicated to Neda that she was right. What had happened to the promise that they had given each other not to ever fall in love?

One night, in their joint room with Maryam, she asked her in her own style of straight forwardness:

"Are you falling in love with Sohrab?"

Maryam, who was lying down, stretching herself from a day of hard work and standing on her feet, suddenly sat up on bed, confused, harassed, and petrified.

"Why do you ask such thing?"

"I'm not blind. I love it. Love is beautiful. Tell me you are; tell me you're in love with Sohrab! I know they say that first cousins should not mix up, but love is more vital. Love is life!" Neda was very excited. The thought of her brother and Maryam, her beat friend and cousin, in love was delightful to her.

Maryam thought for a moment.

"I think I am!"

Neda rose up from the chair which was behind the small desk they had fit with difficulty in the room, where she was writing. She threw herself on Maryam's bed and began kissing and hugging her. Things that she was saying to Maryam were mostly meaningless, inaudible, and funny; but they were the true feeling of happiness that she was sharing with Maryam. Both of them were laughing loud and making strange, girlish noises. The door of their room suddenly opened. Sohrab was standing inside the door way and looking at her sister and cousin with confusion. He loved them both; but at that moment, he did not know what their silliness was all about!

To Be Continued

UNFULFILLED- Fourteen-❣❣ Beyond Grace

Neda was becoming famous, yet infamous. There were many articles had already written about her in every literary journals. Some people thought she was too young to be a good poet, some praised her for what others hated, others chastised her, women envied her; nevertheless, females bought her books more than males. Neda welcomed praises and ignored criticism. She became a household name since she had left her parents home, almost overnight. However some of the disapproving remarks about her had nothing to do with her poetry, but her life style, her freedom, her divorce, and almost everything that she worshipped. No one yet had written anything about her child. She prayed that the existence of Ariana would never be known by these unmerciful people!

In a few months after she was able to send her bother to college, she bought a type writer. She taught herself how to type, but she only used two fingers, one from each hand. She began sending her manuscripts typed written now instead of hand written.

She wrote merely naturally and cleverly, but ingeniously and without pretense. She attached no value to her ideas. She wrote about energy. She said that energy based on love and love would not come as legacy; there was no forcing love. She believed in a higher power that brought the energy to everything; but this higher power was not the God of Islam or any documented religion for her. This energy came from nature, from sun and moon, stars and planet.

People bought her books, though they did not know why! Her poetry, each and every one of them, were connected to each other; each one of them was the continuation of the one before it; yet each one by itself was meaningful and stood apart.

In her writing, she always saved something to fear, as long as there was something to love. Words like Love, fear, courage, will..., were words that she used the most. She connect fear to love. There was no love without fear, and outside fear, there would not be love. But when she wrote about love, it was not love between men and women; although people who read her writings thought that was what she meant. But how could she? She did not know anything about love between a man and woman. Without saying or speaking her name, it was Ariana, her daughter that portrayed love for her. It was with a wrench and pang that they had taken her child from her, and it was with a mother's emotion and love that she wrote her poems. She had carried the sound of her daughter, her breathing, the touching of her cheeks, the smell of her newly born body mixed with blood with her; and these she transferred to her poems.

Both Sohrab and Maryam were frightened that people would find out about Neda's child through her poetry. She disagreed. She was smart enough to form Ariana like a lover than a child. Then she wrote with ease. It eventually became her style. She wrote about an unknown lover that was hard to reach; but in fact that lover was her child. All poets wrote about love. So she felt safe. She knew, in fact, she had found out later that they had registered her in the hospital with a different name. Father had covered all his track very well. So according to hospital doccuments, Neda had never been in the hospital, or had given birth. There was no where in the country that anyone could know that Neda had given birth. Would anyone question Mitra, Mansour's wife, in future that how was it possible that she had two babies four months apart in age from each other? They all knew that at time of Ariana's birth, Mitra was pregnant. Did they bribe the authorities to get a birth certificate for Ariana in a way that would not betray them for the act of stealing her baby? Or had they gotten Ariana a birth certificate that showed her older, perhaps five, six months older? Neda did not know the answer. She was sure that her father knew; but she was not talking to her father, so there was no way for her to find out.

To Be Continued

UNFULFILLED- Fourteen- Beyond Grace

All her life, Neda was accustomed withholding thoughts and emotions which never voiced themselves in her writing. They had never taken the form of struggle. They belonged to her and were hers alone. She contemplated about the conviction which she had a right to it and it related to no one but herself. This new place was rented in Sohrab's name, since single women could not rent or lease unless they were old, grandmothers, widowed with older children and grandchildren. Here for Neda freedom was so heavenly that she could not stop thinking and then talking about it to Sohrab and Maryam. Why did she have to go through four years of despondency? To get to this freedom she had gone through a child that she could not see, and a dishonorable badge of divorced woman that she could not change! Wasn't that strange?

Their income was almost adequate. Neda's from the sale of her book and magazines, Maryam's from her job at the beauty parlour. Sohrab yet to find a job. He had worked for his father, had gone to service, and at the moment he had no job or perspective. But the two women loved him so much that they did not mind to pay his share, too. He had the greatest fight with his father before moving out. Jalal told him with all the anger that he could gather in his voice:

"Don't you ever come back here or the store anymore?"

Sohrab answered with a derisive smile on his lips:

"With pleasure!"

They parted. Mehri and her sister- in- law, zari, the two mothers visited them a few times a week. Life for them had become also easier by their children leaving them. But no way they would admit that to anyone especially their children! Besides, now the two mothers had some place to go. Mehri was almost jealous to her daughter for her courage; but she never mentioned it. She wanted to stay in a good relation with them, so she would not lose this freedom of leaving her home to go their home for visit. The two fathers, Jalal, and Mehri's brother, Maryam's dad, never went to see their children.

After they settled down, and when Neda got an advance for her second, upcoming book, she gave the money to Sohrab so he could go to the two years college of teacher training for becoming a teacher. He always wanted to become a teacher. He loved to teach and that was what he would do when he would graduate. So this was not out of desperation for him. Now he was a full time student. Maryam's job was full time; but she was paid only commission. She left home early in the morning and did not return till late in the evening. She had to work real hard to make good money. Her only day off was Friday, the holiday in Muslim countries. The apartment was Neda's during the day. She worked at home. Her writing became more clear, and mature. She used both free style and old style in her poetry. The publication of her second book was imminent. She had an argument with her publisher about the name of this book and they finally agreed on "SECRETS".

Now that she was free, she openly smoked. She had gotten into the habit of smoking after they ripped her baby from her; but no one knew about it in the other place. In this place, no one objected since both Maryam and Sohrab smoked, too. There was some strange connection between her smoking and writing which made her poems so much more cultivated. None of them minded to have a glass or two of wine with dinner. Not long after moving out of the claws of their father, they lived their lives entirely free.

To Be Continued