Read Online Camelia by Camelia Entekhabifard - Free Book Online Page B

where we’d gathered to celebrate the holiday. The women had tied their chadors at the waist to have their hands free in the crush of the crowd, and some of them were crying and beating their breasts. Everyone was supposed to gather in the husseinya , and Khomeini would speak from his terrace. But the adoring first had to line up, pushing and shoving, so the Pasdaran could issue them entry passes to see the Imam.
    I was once blessed by Khomeini when my uncle Ali stole me from Mader-jan’s home. My mother was away—perhaps to visit another relative in Jamaran. My uncle asked Mader-jan for a veil to put over my head and told me we were going to buy candy at the Mohsen Agha grocery store. I knew where he was really taking me, but I pretended that I was fooled, knowing how angry my mother would be when she found out. Uncle Ali ignored Mader-jan’s warnings. With lots of “ Salaam aleikum Baradar ,” we passed the gates into the Imam’s courtyard. At my uncle’s request, the Imam himself appeared in the courtyard and put his hand on my head and prayed.
    Back at Mader-jan’s house, my mother crouched on the terrace like a wounded tiger. As soon as we appeared, she tore into my uncle. Kati had been out with my mother, and in private she later told me she wished she could have met Khomeini, too. My mother
cursed wildly at anyone and everyone around her that day, twisting my ears in a firm grasp, and promising that if I said a word to my father, he’d have our scalps—and we’d never be able to come back to Jamaran to visit Mader-jan again.
    Since Khomeini had moved to Jamaran, the village had become “Khomeini’s house.” All day on the celebration of the birth of Mohammed, what my mother called “the idle masses” had been knocking on our door to use the bathroom, to take a drink of water, or to change their babies’ diaper. It was impossible to refuse them. The strong smell of human waste rose from the far corner of the yard, where people lined up for the toilet. My uncle was in the Imam’s special guard and brought by a stack of passes to Khomeini’s rally. My mother shrugged her shoulders. She didn’t need the passes. As people left our courtyard, they turned to her and said, “Hajj Khanum, how fortunate you are to be close to Agha-ye Khomeini. May you be rewarded by the Imam-e Zaman.”
    The neighboring garden had been taken over by revolutionary forces as a base for the units guarding Khomeini. These provincial soldiers with their green hats would sit up on the roof behind antiaircraft guns. But aside from keeping an eye on the skies and the Imam, they found something else to occupy their time, namely, peeping at my grandmother’s house. Through the thick of the leaves of the walnut tree that stretched up toward the heavens, you’d see the face of a soldier hoping to catch a woman changing her clothes or something similarly exciting. But sadly, the house had only two old women living in it, my grandmother and her friend Nargess Khanum. And these were not the sort of women to venture out without a prayer chador. And if my mother ever glimpsed a shape turned toward the courtyard, she’d cry out, “Motherless bastards! Was the point of your revolution that you could come stand on the roof and look at women’s bodies? Rotten pieces of shit!” Then they’d slip away like phantoms, scared off
by her insults. But an hour later there’d be another shadowy figure on the roof. . . .
    On the morning of the anniversary of Mohammed’s birth, our courtyard was overflowing. As soon as it was announced that the Pasdaran would start issuing the required passes to the rally, people rushed forward like a herd of frightened sheep. A group went by carrying something I couldn’t see, wailing and crying, “Ya Hussein!” The Imam Hussein was one of the sons of Ali, the first Shi’a imam; he had been killed in an