UNFULFILLED- Eleven- @@@@@ Free of Chain

The April breeze sometimes soothed Neda's aching skin. Not that she did not like the outdoors, but because she was not well, too heavy, and too much in pain, she barely could go out into the yard. Almost most of this month, she had stayed in her room and fostered her particular state of mind, her disappointment, and her anger. She had become familiar to her mood, which was in a way comforting. Her tendency these days was surprisingly not anger but it was despair. Her life was passing by swiftly like when one would look from a window of a train to the fields, while the moving object would be the train, the fields were the ones looked like passing by. All she knew that her like was broken and unfulfilled dreams were the broken pieces. It seemed just like yesterday that she was deceived by the beauty of life! But she still had her poetry, her books! These, no one could take away from her. She had sent some more poems to different journal and magazines. Now, she had more than twenty published poems. She was even paid some money. The other day she got a letter from a magazine. They wanted her to have a contract with them. She would be a regular contributor. In the application she lied about her age. It said if she was under eighteen, her father had to approve and sign, too. She wrote that she was almost nineteen, not seventeen or eighteen. She had just turned seventeen. She signed the contract without saying a word to her family. In the age part, she thought if her father threw her out of home at age sixteen by a deceptive marriage and ruined her life for ever, she would not need his permission to sign a contract, or to make a little money. Now she would be a regular contributor; she would be paid a small amount of money for each poem. This was something hopeful.

She knew what she wrote was only for herself and besides she had no choice but writing. It was an unavoidable impulse with her. Writing always took over her. But this was a new sensation; someone else or other people were interested in her writing and finding them worthwhile. That someone else did not know she was pregnant; she just had turned seventeen; she was about to give her baby away. Would it have made a difference? Would they still want her writing? But how couldn't they? In her poetry, she was always alone; but now something had happened. She was sharing her deepest feelings, fear, anxiety, ... with others!

It was an overwhelming sensation; as she was sharing her body with her baby, now her art was received by all. The longing she had for a long time was now replaced by this acceptance and this contract which she had kept a copy of it for herself. Neda's lips parted to a smile but her eyes did not change. They still had their distance and seriousness. She had joy for the contract she had signed, sorrow for the uncertainty of her life, and extreme fear of the child birth. All these mixed emotions crawled around her in the empty space she occupied. The sound of living was heard, but she only heard the silence.

She could hear the voice of her unborn child. It was the most dignified, noblest voice of all. She listened passionately. What is her baby, a boy or a girl? Her mom thought she would have a girl; she, herself, thought she would have a girl; however the voices told her of its fear not its gender!

She just was a baby herself not long ago. She ran off from school and fell in trap of marriage. Now every sorrow to her was a new one. She had never dreamt of them. She had not known them. She questioned this force "Does every woman in the world face this pain?" She thought if they did, how could they carry on? And that was what she portrayed in her poetry, pain. She let pain flew in her poems even more these days. Her poems, she would realize later in her life, were the open would of the intellectuals in her time.

One of these nights, she was so drawn in learning about herself that she slept but a few hours; nevertheless, she was unconscious of her surroundings, unaware of the conditions of the tangible world, existence. She could still not eat a meal mostly without vomiting. She could not sleep peacefully, serenely; but this night unconsciously, she felt better. Her soul, she felt, was completely independent of her body.

The morning after, she saw a glow on her cheeks which was new. She saw the old sparkle in her eyes and she felt stronger. Her mother noticed the change, how strange!

"Are you feeling better today?'

"I feel wonderful; and I'm hungry."

"That's something new!" Mother said.

She ate with a new appetite. She felt great. She did not vomit. She had finally come to terms with her situation after nine months of pregnancy. For the first time since her divorce, She understood Mansour. He could not tolerate her; and he despised her. Now she knew why. Everything that she treasured and was proud of, he hated. He abhored her strong mind. He was better off with Mitra, a woman who could understand him. And the baby, she would think about it when the time was there.

Feeling stronger after the first enjoyable breakfast she had had during her pregnancy, she decided to write a poem about her short marriage. She named it, "FREE OF CHAIN".

"If I only feel the virtue and ache,

If I only resist the craving,

If I only never fake,

If I only move without raving,

I could retrospect the tormented king;

I would taste and smell the spring.

If I could only ignore the wind's whirl and roar,

And forget the griefs that remain;

I will come to a light that shines at shore;

And I will see that I am free of chain."

To Be Continued

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

Neda had Sima, Sohrab, and Maryam to talk to; but she truly did not have anyone to voice her deep emotion to! These disturbances were so new to her. She had told everyone that she was happy to give her baby away only a month ago. She was not sure of it now.

Physically she was still incapable of moving around too much; and had to rest most of the time. Her doctor's opinion was that her uterus was too small to carry the baby. He had said that he might perform cesarean; that he might do that before the due time.

Everybody visited her in her room. Her mother was so envious to find Sima there most of the time, that she barely showed up except to bring her food. She would cry and complain that even her own daughter liked her rival more than her. Sohrab always had his evening meals with Neda in her room. Maryam, her cousin, visited her a few times a week. The only one, who never entered her room was her father. In fact, since the day that he had taken Neda to sign the divorce paper, she had not seen her father. What an irony, living in the same house, having his library next to Neda's room, having is bedroom with Sima just across the hall from her room! It was a strange situation! What happened to all that love he had showered her with when she was just a little girl? She missed all those days extremely.

Her physical condition could not be seen on her face. No one saw the irritation of her pregnancy on grimaces of her face. She could not move easily, yet her face had become like a landscape which shadows always stayed longer and lights were more temporary.

She was always alone internally even when she was with others. She felt the vanishing of the world which had closed itself to her at such a young age. She considered herself a sick woman for she was not able to do what she had always done. But the strange thing was that when her family forgot the she was sick, she became more annoyed than before. Day after day, week after week, she felt less resisting and more accepting to her situation, until at last without realizing, she forgot who she wanted to be, or even who she was.

This pregnancy was a long preparation for calamity she never attempted to forget; and that was something which she considered the worst that had happened to her. In the evenings, seldom, she had dinner with her family, something she had recently started. She did not stay in the room with them for long. Right after dinner, with Sohrab's help, she would go upstairs to her room and would stay alone, gazing through the window to the twilight rays which were fading away one by one. In the midst of this great darkness that slowly was befallen her, her soul was busy with reflecting of what she pictured she would see and face when the baby would arrive! She had been thinking almost everyday that her falsity was as much as Mansour's or her father's. Her audacity, ability, and sure suffering seemed to flash with a certain light in her mind every evening. Silent, tired, and waiting, her eyes and ears turned inward to hear, see, and feel this child which now made her feel so different.

She was told about child birth: "The most gruesome!" Her mother said to her: " The most grotesque!" Her aunt Zari said. Both women told her with detail about the horror of the child birth. " A pain that is not like a tooth ache, or period cramp, but something from another world, something dreadful that no one could explain it until you go through it!" So how wonderful! Why did they never tell her about other things, like sex or how to prevent pregnancy? Why did they never educate her about anything and sent her innocent and naive to a monster! If the child birth was this horrible, why aunt Zari had three children and her mother two?

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

UNFULFILLED- Fifteen-ᚖᚖᚖ The Silent Heart

Days followed nights. Sohrab and Maryam came to Neda's apartment often in the evenings and for dinner. Neda turned out to be a good cook. Kasra, her editor, was almost there every day and evening. He had become very close to Neda. Their friendship was more than editor and a client, especially for Kasra. Some nights that was real late, Kasra stayed and slept in Sohrab's old room. They had no intimacy. They would if they wanted to but they did not. No one ever asked kasra about his life, parents, if he had any sisters or brothers, his education, how he got to the editing business, or where he lived. Those were not the things they cared to talk about. For Neda, her publisher had sent him to her, and that was good enough for her. One evening when Neda saw Maraym so happy in her little life and big marriage, she said to her:

"What happened, Maryam? I thought you never wanted to get married!" When she said that, for some strange reason she blushed like a rose of spring.

Maryam took Neda's question seriously and began defending herself:

"I don't know. I thought so, too. But when I got to know Sohrab, how could I not love him, or marry him? He is the best!"

Sohrab waved his hand with a loud laughter to show that he was not the best. Maryam continued without hesitation:

"What about you and Kasra? Are you two...?"

Neda cut her off before she was able to finish:

"No, no, we're just friends, aren't we Kasra? He is so valuable to me. I need his help. Someone has to organize me and that is him. Besides he is very good in editing all my mistakes; and believe me I do have a lot of them. He can figure the things that I write all over the place better than me." Neda looked at Kasra for affirmation.

"She is right. We are not made for marriage. We can be together from now to eternity and not be married." He paused for a moment and then continued:

"You, Neda has broken all the rules at such a young age. That is why among all her fans, she also has many enemies. I don't think she cares what people, even her own family, say about her. She does what she wants as long as she can create; and if a day comes that she can't create, then it doesn't matter anymore." Kasra widened his eyes and exhaled a soft stream of admiration for his boss and friend. Sohrab's face wreathed in smile:

"That is my little sis all right. I knew it from beginning, from the time that she was a little girl!" They all laughed.

They were days that Neda was happy without knowing why. She was delighted to be alive and breathing; she was ecstatic when her whole being was one with sunlight, the colors, the fragrance, the copious warmth of sunny days. Time like these, she liked to wonder alone to strange and unfamiliar places. She would find many sunny, sleepy little corners, so perfect to dream and to be alone and unmolested. She wrote the "THE SUN OF TOMORROW" in one of these deviated outing:

★

"The color of dusk wraps around sun.

A lonely tree in the vast lawn

Craves water and find none.

◎From the gloomy sky flees light

Towards the far horizon with spite.

Rain of light pours of red tulip of night.

◎The gray night opens its wing

To carry life on its wing.

Wild wind run and swing

◎To a silent humming, cities retire.

On the roof of night, stars inspire.

The wine of moonlight, I desire.

◎It is midnight and a cloud in vast sky

Abuses the moon with its threat and sigh;

And the old crow mock beautiful butterfly.

◎In the bosom of this night, I get a surprise.

The glow of your eyes becomes my prize.

Like sun of tomorrow that I never despise."

★

After everyone was gone, almost always when she was not in high spirit, she felt depressed rather than being soothed. Just a while ago, she had laughed, drank wine, smoked and had fun with the three people she dearly loved. A little glimpse of domestic harmony which had been hers for a few hours, gave her no regret, no longing. It was not the condition of her life that shockingly elevated her; but it was the hopeless dream of finding her daughter; and she could see her life but an alarming and hopeless weariness.

To Be Continued