i think sculpture class has really gone to my head.
The Most Pleasant Place in the World
Another story from my recent trip to Iran......
One week we had all gone out shopping for 4 days in a row. When you go shopping in Tehran, from midday to about 5 pm, you need a lot of energy. Walking in the same shoes, the same clothes, looking and buying, and having to hold on to everyone's hand, not to mention how literally fried your brain feels after while. It gets really hot, you need to watch where your walking at all times and you have to constantly do the Cha-Cha in hesitation when you cross the street where the only rule is “Don't get hit because no one will stop for you.” I loved how fast and busy Tehran was, but it would take mostly everything I had right out of me and I would practically faint when I first stepped back into Maman jun's house. Even though I would binge with the food I was served each night I was still hungry, losing weight quickly, and I was terribly exhausted all the time and i didn't have enough energy. I was still getting used to their hard life. But one thing really bothered me...I wouldn't be able to sleep at night.
I would lay on the floor because I had come to like it, I was so comfortable, finally resting my muscles after an entire day of tensing them up and just letting gravity do what ever it wanted to my vertebrae. But I just wouldn't sleep. I was in a happy time in my life, everything was content except for this temporary insomnia. In day light I was hungry and tired and barely holding myself up, as if I had just gone through a paper shredder. Then I was told that we were going to a wedding. A wedding. Then I knew that I haven't been cut up enough, I haven't been pushed around enough, and I haven't struggled or sweat enough just yet. This was another thing I just wanted to go see and feel. So we went through the heated shopping again, trying on dresses until I finally found the one for me. Again my feet were hot and my back wasn't tender anymore. Then I had to go to the hair dresser. I'd never been before. They pulled and pinned and curled and sprayed every strand on my head. I remember looking really pretty, but the pain was terrible. I can still quite vividly feel having to keep my hair the same way until the wedding night, I would be lounging around the house with what felt like little imps in my hair tugging at my scalp every now and then.
So when it was time to suck in my insides and slip on that torture-device-of-a-dress, I had to pretend like I wasn't hurting so bad, I had to like the shoes I was wearing, I had to look pretty for 7 hours or more. As I lined my lids and groomed myself I would stare in the mirror. My outline looked like an angel, but since I knew myself better than anyone else in the world I could see through the transparent cheeks and glittery eyes, the angel looked so abused and torn up. The taxi came to the door then it was off to the wedding. A night full of little conversations, swooning in awe for the beautiful bride, even more binging in the food....and the dancing. Oh god. All of that dancing I was forced to do. On a Persian carpet with all the other single women and men with their cousins, uncles, aunts, moms and dads. My hips and my frame and my feet and my neck throwing out all of these movements to show all those adults what I could do. Occasionally dancing with another older man, sometimes clapping with another women, catching money being thrown in the air, being video taped. The heat, the different scents, tasting every one's breath. Trying to over come the pain in my ears from the loud music and trying to see where i was going with the lights flashing this way and that way, I was in the middle of all of that, and I thought “So this is what it's like, to be with all these people, just dancing, just having fun, I never guessed all those MTV music videos were so accurate.”
I was dancing around a good looking guy for about 5 minutes or so until I noticed I was starting to shut down, I started to feel, what the only thing could think of, a Chinese dragon in my head, spinning and trying to knock down the walls of its jail in my skull. “Am I on drugs? Who could have put something in my drink?” It was really strange, I started seeing things from days before, like Fateme's smiling face from shopping, the hot sidewalk, I was hearing things, I was going crazy, I was really shutting down. I slow my dancing and start to fade in and black out.
I can see the guy's face, the one I was dancing with, the Iranian smile jerks into a frown and it's the last thing I see until all the sudden I see my feet and another pair of nice shoes next to mine walking some where. I feel an arm or two holding me up from under my rib cage and I feel them let go and sense myself falling back wards but my tail bone hits into a chair and then my head falls back and I see the sky, and I can taste my hair on the tip of my tongue. My neck is stretched back while my head is a clumsy anchor on the support of some wall underneath my spine. I can hear warped Farsi, some yelling then I see all these men around me, as if I really was some sort of fallen angel. They all looked so curious at me saying all those little worlds I barely understood. Handsome faces with different features like a giant boy band. It all reminded me of my dad still because of how foreign those men seemed to me. My head started pulsing up and my arms were asleep. Was I really tripping on something? Then I see my second aunt push her way between the men and up to my face. She says some thing reassuring and asks if I was ok. I kind of gesture with my hand but I could only swing my arm around since it only felt like a piece of dead meat coming out of my shoulder.
I know a lot of time passed by until everything was over but I still didn't fall asleep. I was just watching everything. I saw all the men sitting with me, helping me to some car, I didn't know where everyone else was, only these men petting my waist, my shoulder, and my arm, guiding me this way and that. It felt like they knew me. I couldn't tell if I was being molested or taken where I wanted to be but as I sat in the dark, inside a car with what I know is one of the men in the drivers seat I had guessed that we were waiting for other people to come in so we could drive to where ever was home. Then I realized I had my Islamic wear on again. My scarf and my montoe. Then I was sure I was never molested, but more taken care of or pulled to safety. I turn my head and I see my second aunt again sitting right next to me. She pulls my head on to her shoulder but I fall near her bosom, yet nothing about it seemed awkward. She said with her accent “Sleep. You Sleep ok?” I just nod my head a little to say yes. Her collar bone, her soft flesh, I could feel it under the cloth upon her body. It was soft, like a feather pillow, like a bed. Her silk scarf touched my cheek and I felt a cold comfort from it. Other people were in the car. I could hear “Dokhtare Maryam? Are? Chi shode be oo? Khabe?” “Is that Maryam? What happened to her? She sleeps?” And I was....I was finally sleeping. This woman, I didn't even know her but she is in my family, she knew who I was. I was so close to her but I finally had sleep behind my eyes. This woman's shoulder was the most wonderful place on earth and i wanted to sleep there forever.
