UNFULFILLED- Thirteen-[-]-[-] The Twist

Neda blurted these words out, and then got up from her chair and without eating left the room.

The Spilled water could not be put back in the jar, as Sima's pregnancy could not be hidden anymore. Father's attitude became much harsher than before. He became less communicative to others, specially Neda, than before. He had a right to another child, he thought. Nobody had an authority to object that; he had a privilege to his first wife's money! Mehri had no validity to ask for some of that money for their son's education. He had a lawful and moral claim to get married again; and no one should complain about it. He had a right to give his daughter into a marriage, almost arranged; no one had a say in it. He had earned his position as a man to be angry at her return. She did not have any right to tell him that his action had affected her for the rest of her life. So life, death, second wife, eternity, ruining one's daughter's life, cheating one's wife from her money, not helping one's son to get education, were all simple matters for anyone like Jalal, who had capability enough to do them. What he had conquered with enfolding arms, silently with no solitude, like compassion holding its breath, was only darkness for others.

That afternoon, Mehri told Neda:

"I don't understand you! You don't act like yourself. I know you still have not recovered from your pregnancy and child birth..."

Neda cut her mother off. She retorted, kindling like a fire at once:

"Don't you care that your rival is pregnant? Don't you care that they took my baby away from me and dad is going to have a baby? Don't you care that he wanted to get rid of me? Now, I'm back, weaker but wiser, more thoughtful yet still dependent!"

Mehri looked into her daughter's face. It was a new face, so delicate in its newness, in its glowing perplexity and dread! She put her arms around her daughter's neck and Neda buried her face on her mother's bosom. It looked like peace, just a simple peace, as Mehri stood folding Neda quietly in her arms. She noticed later where they were standing exactly where Neda had stood only several months back and looking with fright at the bloody water running down her legs. But for now it was peace between mother and daughter at last. The old, abhorrent hostility between them had gone away finally; Mehri's soul was strong and at ease.

They found out that Sima's baby was due in November; that meant that when Neda had given birth to her Ariana, Sima was pregnant. Neda thought and told her cousin, Maryam later when her mother was also in the room:

"Now perhaps dad after losing her grandchild to Mansour, after Sohrab leaving for draft, and after he had lost his love for me and mother, is not to blame for wanting to hide this baby from us as long as he could. Now he's going to have a baby younger than his grand child!"

When Neda was younger, she had always thought that father would be always with her, from then to now and later, and follow her to the end of earth where ever destiny would send her. She conjured up that once father had told her:

"You're always be my baby. I never let you go or marry!"

She was twelve years old then. Now her heart heaved. Now she could not find that place with her father, their special place, as her father used to say.

Sohrab's absence, finding out that soon she would have a half sister or brother younger than her own Ariana, her mother's return to moaning and complaining, Sima's increasing power in the house, and father's unapproachable ways, added to Neda's growing pain. At this point she did not want anything but her own place and leaving this place and everyone. If her father would help her financially at the beginning, as he had done to get rid of her a only a couple of years back, Neda thought she was able to do it. She did not have her diploma yet, but now she had a contract for a book of poetry. The advance payment and the royalty of the book would pay for her living if she kept things simple. Besides Maryam, her cousin had a decent income, too. Her first book's name, she decided would be "ARIANA".

To Be Continued

UNFULFILLED- Thirteen-~`~`~ The Twist

Neda told her brother:

"If you write simple things, then they wouldn't be poems."

She had changed her style from old, typical Persian poets who used rhyme, meter, and equal syllabus to a new style that had not been sued before. She called it, "New Wave". She explained all these to Sohrab and he absorbed all from his little sister with so much fervor. Sometimes Neda practically translated her poems to her brother. On those occasions, he would say:

"Oh, now I understand!"

She loved her brother. She always did. But he finally got his assignment in the infantry somewhere in suburb of Tehran. It was a good deal for someone, who only had high school diploma. By fall, Neda enrolled again in night school to finish her high school. Just having a legitimate excuse to leave home every day and go to school was such a relief for her. Her parents were still treating her like a little girl. She had gone from girlhood to womanhood, motherhood, and back to girlhood again.

Sohrab was gone, so was Neda's heart and soul. The empty place in her stomach was not just showing that she had given birth, but was showing that she had given her baby away, her Ariana; or her baby was taken away from her. Her relationship with Sima for a reason unknown to her had gone sour. She was suspicious that her father had something to do with it. So these days since Sohrab was gone, Sima treated her like a stranger, and mother was back to her old self- pitying, she practically had no one to talk to. Once or twice a weak she would see Maryam, her cousin. She was the only one that knew Maryam's story. How the two cousins' lives were affected by the black law of the land! Their destiny in a dissimilar and distinct way had come together in a web of complexity. Her case was her child that her former husband had the right to her not her; and Maryam's case was that she had given to the want of her fiance only once and lost the chance of having a family of her own forever. The two cousins had become one in the body of women's oppression!

Her mother told her once that she was suspicious that Sima was pregnant. Neda knew all about it. It was not very far away that she had gone through it herself; so she began paying attention to Sima's behavior, her eating, and her attitude in general. She was not sick like her. If she was, no one knew about it. Neda put it in the back of her mind until one morning, very early , when she left her room to go to bathroom, she saw the light of the bathroom was on. She could see the gleamer from under the door. She put her ear on the door. Someone was there. She listened intensely. She heard the sound of vomiting. She ran back to her room; but stayed behind the door. After a few minutes, she saw Sima leaving the bathroom; her father had her robe on his arm. He put it on her shoulders and and positioned his arm around her to help her to go to their bedroom. So they had been hiding this from everyone. How long could they do that?

That morning at breakfast table, Neda gazed at Sima's stomach. Non one noticed that but Sima. She averted her eyes, but it was obvious that she knew that Neda's eyes were on her. Being very uncomfortable, Sima finally said:

"Why are you keep looking at me, Neda?"

Everyone stopped eating. Father turned so red on his face all the way to his neck that it could not be hidden from anyone. Neda continued her stare and finally said:

"You're pregnant, aren't you? How long can you hide it?"

To Be Continued

UNFULFILLED- Thirteen- The Twist

The familiar fragrance of spring filled Neda's lungs as she returned home from hospital. She told herself that one should absorb the scent of the life, but the same person should never remember its features. To her details of everything was boring. Perhaps since the color of life for her was left in the hospital, or taken from hospital somewhere else, not her house, the elements had become irksome as well.

She returned quickly to normalcy from a painful and long pregnancy and childbirth. Some aroma of life returned to her face. She even gained some weight; however, that piece of her which was taken from her by the black law of religion and men had made an empty hole, very deep within her, which was not noticeable to anyone but her brother and her cousin. Sohrab was drafted into the army, which was mandatory for all men unless they had some physical or mental disability, or they were the soul provider for their parents, or even in some cases some would buy their way out of it! He had not passed the big exam to enter the university two years in a row after graduating from high school. Once he told Neda:

"I guess I'm not smart enough!"

Neda did not like her brother to belittle himself in any shape or form:

"You're smart enough. It's just very difficult when only one tenth of the people who take the exam, are expected. That is only ten percent. Why don't you go to a privet college?"

He had thought about that himself. But he did not have the money for it; and father, who had the money, refused to help his son. For the first time, Mehri, their mother, told Jalal:

You took all my money and you don't even want to help your own son and send him to college!"

Of course Jalal did not like the money matter would be mentioned at all; but he knew what his first wife was saying, was correct. Everything he had belonged to Mehri, his first wife, who had inherited from his father.

Sohrab had no choice but to go for his two years draft. He spent the next two years as a regular soldier since he had no college degree. The only thing that the father did after Mehri cried her heart out to use his influence to get their son a good assignment, was to arrange for their son to serve his two years in the suburb of Tehran, not some far away Military base in some horrible place; and to have somewhat an easy task.

Neda suffered very much when her brother left. But that was out of every one's hand. All young men should go to service either before or after college. There was no escaping it. That was the law of the land; what an irony, the same law that too Neda's baby from her.

Sohrab was the only one who understood Neda, talked to her in a level she wanted. he was the only one that deemed his sister was a poet. Before sending her poems to the magazine, Sohrab read them and became her best critics; even though mostly he did not understand the complexity that Neda used in her poetry.

To Be Continued

UNFULFILLED- Twelve- [=][=] The Birth

When Neda was awaken from her short unconsciousness, she was in another room. All her family were there. Her baby was gone. She was still cold.

"You need to eat something, sweetheart." Her mother repeatedly said with her nonstop weeping eyes. Finally Neda shook her head for yes. Sohrab, her brother was standing on her right side and was touching her forehead gently. Maryam, her cousin, was at her left side, touching her hair which was sticky of so much sweat at the time of the delivery. Her father, Sima, and mother were standing at the foot of the bed. Neda took everything in. They were themselves again minus the baby, as if it had never happened. She turned to Sohrab, bringing her hand out, which was under the stack of blankets, and holing his.

"What is her name?"

She saw her brother was crying. Not often she had seen Sohrab cry. He bent and kissed her on the cheek. Part of his kiss touched Maryam's hand, who was touching Neda's face on the other side of the bed.

"Mansour agreed to name her Ariana." To hide his mounting anger, Sohrab deliberately said those words as loud as he could.

Neda repeated the name "Ariana" a few times. She tried very hard not to cry. She had ruined so many things that at that moment she desired only death. She wanted to think that Ariana never really existed or lived; that she had come from some unknown realm and then disappeared immediately to another strange destination. She wanted to believe that Ariana had never been inside her, or was born from her; she would always be a dream, a phantom that came to this world and left it like the stars of the night. But her swelling breasts told her a different thing. The pain in her breasts told her that there was a hungry mouth somewhere yearning to suck on them.

Neda felt sorry for her family, even her father, who was more in fault than any one else for this horrific scene in the hospital. Her heart was palpitating to see Sohrab's cry, or Maryam's effort to hold her cry, her mother loud weeping, and father and Sima's desperate look. She turned to her mother.

"What is wrong with my breasts? They're hurting?"

Mehri's wailing raised as though she had heard the news of a death of someone close to her. Others were surprised that Neda talked about her breasts in front of her father and Sohrab. But only Maryam understood that the victim of this scene, Neda, was trying to divert others' mind to something else. After mother was calm enough to speak, she said:

"It's normal honey. It's the milk that coming to breasts..." She could not continue. Sima took over and said:

"They're going to give you, I guess an injection, something to dry your milk. It'll go away in a few days."

Neda thought that not only they took her baby, now they would take her baby's food. Her Ariana would be raised with artificial food and artificial mother.

She knew in what strange heaven she was suffering and what dull hell she was leaving the secret of this parted joy! The contract she had with the Magazine did not mean anything now; but she would continue writing. She would tell people of her suffering in her poetry; and she would live even though a part of her, a major part of her was gone forever.

When everyone went home, except her mother, who was staying with her, she asked her to bring her a piece of paper and pen. She agreed to eat a little of the hospital food. Her first meal of a mother without a child. Then she wrote about the birth of her daughter:

"I think about the greatest bliss;

Only one word echoes like a spring kiss.

My baby, my flash came to life.

Sorrow and pain were now my strife.

Hospital bed, doctor in white and haze,

Bright light, pain, pain, and daze.

Screaming, nails gashing palm of my hand;

Blood was pouring like a storm of sand.

He was standing like an angle of death,

With a mask on face, to take my last breath.

I traveled to the dream world, acted brave;

Dream flew away, reality was in rave.

Me, the naive girl of mom and dad,

Was becoming a mother, how sad!

I couldn't understand, I didn't want to.

It was pain, pain of one becoming two.

I was intoxicated with love,

Like a gracious, blissful dove.

I saw the horizon, far in blue air,

A sudden breeze moved my hair.

It caressed my skin, I felt my root;

Falling in love before they took my fruit!"

To Be Continued

FULFILLED- Twelve- {~}{~} The Birth

Sohrab turned to his father and said:

Mansour is very good in impregnating women! Look at his wife!"

It was obvious that his new wife, Mitra, was pregnant. How funny, how productive this man, who had ruined Neda's life was!

In the delivery room, all Neda could understand was that something was wrong. However, her mother's desperate love for her diverted her mind somewhat. Mehri was cleaning the sweat from Neda's face, holding her hand and did not mind that her daughter was pushing her nails into the palm of her hand. She had no strength left to push as the doctor and the nurse kept asking her to do. The doctor was wearing a white jacket and he had a white mask covering his mouth and nose. The nurse's uniform was light blue and she also had a white mask on.

"Push, just a little more!" Neda was not sure who was the one saying that; was her mom, the doctor, or the nurse; or all of them at the same time. She was just too tired, too weak, to listen, to help, to even cry. This all had started in the middle of the night. She took a glimpse of the clock in the room. It was twelve noon. They injected some drug into her IV. The doctor said:

"I am inducing you. I can't hear the baby's pulse. If this doesn't work, we have to do an immediate cesarean."

She could hear all these, but she could not comprehend them. She heard her mother saying:

"Why don't you do the cesarean now?"

She did not hear the answer the doctor gave her mother, or maybe he did not answer at all. She heard that they were talking about her water being broken many hours ago, but she did not hear the rest. Her mother was still next to her, holding her hand, kissing her forehead, touching her hair, talking gently to her, encouraging her to help the doctor. She did not know what that meant.

But suddenly there was this egregious push that was coming from her waist down, the greatest pain, something beyond her wildest imagination, something beyond any human endurance. The nurse with the blue uniform was pushing her stomach. She was almost at the top of her. She was pushing so hard that Neda began screaming as hard as her voice would let her. Her family outside, along with anyone else heard this last screaming. Sohrab began crying.

"Push a little more. It is coming, it's coming!" The nurse stopped pushing her stomach and got down the delivery bed and went and stood next to the doctor. Suddenly there was a silent; even Neda, herself, stopped screaming. Something was coming out of her.

Concurrently, at the foot of the delivery bed, in the nurse's able hands sparkled the life of a baby, like the small vacillating flare of light on a night stand, who had not breathed a moment ago, but who with same privilege and significance as the rest of human race would live and produce others in its own shape and image. In the quiescence, there came a conspicuous answer to Neda's questioning eyes, a cry so dissimilar to mellow voices that had been speaking in the room; a bold, demanding, aggressive cry of the new being, who had so unfathomably arrived from some mysterious dimension.

Neda saw the blue and bloody baby. The doctor took it from the nurse's hands. He held the baby by its feet and slapped it in its back. Neda did not know why! But when she saw some nasty stuff came out of its mouth, then she knew. The pain, all of it was gone, as if it never was. Neda only contemplated on the baby. The nurse ran out of the room. The doctor stuck something inside the baby's nose. Her mother was crying. She had already heard the baby's cry, yet she still did not know what her baby was. Before she could gather her strength to ask the doctor, he, himself, said:

"It's a girl!"

Was it not custom to put the baby on her stomach? She finally asked for it. It was her mother who answered:

"No, sweet heart! We better not!"

She, who had been hot and sweaty only a few minutes ago, now felt so cold that she felt she would freeze to death. The nurse returned to the room with couple of blankets as though she knew that the mother would be cold after the child birth. The blankets were soft and warm; but she could not stop trembling. She looked at the crying baby and her heart sank. She began a silent cry. Her mother and the nurse joined her in crying. Her mother was loud, the nurse was quiet. The doctor looked at Neda and thought about the very difficult delivery she had had. He said in his speaking mind: "Hell with the law..." He placed the baby on Neda's chest. Sohrab and Sima were now inside; and against the regulation of the hospital, Sohrab took some pictures. Neda used her very last energy before fainting to smell her baby, to listen to her heartbeat, and try to remember them for the rest of her life. Then she said in a voice barely audible:

"Can we call her Arianna?"

To Be Continued

UNFULFILLED- Twelve- ~~~ The Birth

Mehri ran upstairs, where her husband and Sima's bedroom was. Both were sleeping. She banged at the door. They always locked the door from inside. Jalal opened the door. He had only his underwear on. He looked at Mehri through his foggy eyes, Puzzled.

"What is it?"

"It's Neda! Her water is broken! Get dressed. We must go to the hospital right now!"

In less than five minutes, everyone was awaken. All were getting dressed; but it was only Jalal and Mehri who were taking Neda to the hospital. Mehri had put a towel between Neda's legs and covered her with a blanket. Sohrab carried his sister to the car and very gently laid her in the back seat. In the last moment, Sima also joined them. Sohrab said that he would follow them with his own car.

Sima sat in front of the car; Mehri and Neda in the back. Neda was almost in her mother's arms.

"You can cry baby. It's okay." Mother spoke what she thought. Sima had turned half of her body to face Neda and Mehri. For the first time Sima's presence did not bother Mehri. There was no time for jelously. All her thoughts were on her daughter. Jalal, who was driving, every few seconds looked at the rare view mirror to see his first wife and his only daughter. He was shaken and upset. The expected event, had turned like an unexpected horror to him. He knew that soon he would be a grandfather and according to the law and the divorce agreement, he had to call Mansour so he would be in the hospital; and then when the baby would be born and would take his first birth on earth, he had to hand the baby to him right away. "Why did I agree to this? What have I done? What Have I done to my child?" He thought to himself. But he knew the law of the land sometimes was even hateful to men, like him. It was the same law that had allowed him to take a second wife and to ignore the first one! He felt ashamed of himself for the first time. All these things went back to his action of marrying a second wife.

Mehri also forgot that the baby belonged to Mansour. She kept saying:

"Sweet heart, it'll be okay! It'll be joy soon."

Neda revolted by her mother's comment. How could she talk about joy while she was dying. Her abhorrence was too strong to be called joy. It was a convulsion which the terrible strain of pain, now almost constant, made an ugly scene. Neda could not call it joy until she would be recovered of this pain and pressure; and she could breath easily.

When they were in the hospital, they saw Sohrab was already there. He had gotten there before them. The doctor was there, too, and getting ready to meet screaming Neda in the delivery room. The hospital staffs immediately put her on a gurney and rolled her to the delivery room. The pressure that the baby was causing her from inside , made the bed dirty with her going without being able to control herself. She could no longer stay silent or act normal. She let her cry and scream fill the hospital. They allowed Mehri, her mother, to stay with her in the delivery room. Jalal had already called Mansour reluctantly. After all he was the man of honor no matter how to interpret the word 'Honor'. In Half an hour Mansour and his wife Mitra were in the hospital.

To Be Continued

UNFULFILLED- Twelve- The Birth

Neda believed she was a poet. She had a contract. There was no time limit on it. She would write and publish as long as she wanted. It did not matter that she was just a few days or a week away from delivering her baby. She wanted to end this long, painful, and out of ordinary pregnancy; and to began to move towards being an official poet of this magazine. She was not sure which one she valued more, the baby, or the contract? She thought the contract weighted more since it would open the future of greatness for her; if she could only know! She believed as a poet she had a quick mind and soul. Everywhere she looked, she knew that the poet in her was so fast to feel that ingeniousness like a hard playing with well ordered assortment on the strings of emotion, a soul in which cognition passed quickly and spontaneously into feeling which shimmered back as a new organ of knowing.

In the next few days, Neda was back to her old habit of not eating and being sick again. Her mother repeatedly told her that kind of sickness she had had because of pregnancy was very rare and unheard of.

"A pregnant woman only get sick for the first few months!"

Neda'a answer to her mother had always been the same:

"Do you think I'm faking my sickness?'

One morning, to be exact, April thirteen, Neda woke up not by a nightmare or wanting to write something, but by this excruciating pain that took her breath away. She sat on the edge of her bed. The physical need for sleep had over taken her the night before; when the abundance had validated and exalted her spirit and left her almost helpless and unresisting to the condition which surrounded her, the pain. But now, she was awaken by a pain unlike anything she had known for the last nine months! She put her robe on to go and call her mother. By this time the pain was gone. She got up anyway. Even with the exuberant sleep she had had the night before, she felt very tired. It was only five in the morning. She began making up her bed. But as she was walking around the bed to smooth out the bedspread, another wave of pain took over her. This time it was longer, harder, and more viciously unbelievable. It was so bad that she screamed but not loud enough for anyone to hear. Suddenly she recalled her aunt Zari's description of labor pain and delivery:

"The pain comes in intervals, first not real bad with longer distance between them, and then much harder pain with shorter distance!"

So this should be it. She ran down the stairs to her mother's room, opened the door. Her mother was sound asleep. She said in half whisper: "Mom, mom!"

Mehri opened her eyes. it seemed that she was dreaming. Suddenly she sat on the bed. Neda was standing in the middle of the room in the darkness before dawn and looking at her legs. Mother put the light on. There was this warm, bloody fluid running down her legs. She was shocked, sick to her stomach. She collapsed on the floor.

To Be Continued