Wedding Song Read Online Free PDF Page A

finger at me. “You take care of your mother now.”
    I didn’t know why my mother was teary. Touran had sent her only daughter away, telling her abruptly that she would go to a far-away city as the wife of a stranger. My reaction was hardly sympathetic. Maman shouldhave felt lucky for marrying into my father’s family, leaving her own house crowded with little brothers and an angry mother. Baba always told me that my mother had married above her class.
    My mother reported her wedding story in a clear and unemotional voice like a documentary video. I wanted it to end so I could get back to my own life. I much preferred tackling the rote memorization of the chapters in my textbook. Nader Shah was a great king. He conquered India, smashed their idols, killed anyone who didn’t convert to Islam, established Farsi as the main spoken language. He brought back to Iran diamonds, rubies, strong slaves, beautiful women.
    I had never seen my mother’s childhood home in the cramped ghettos of Hamedan, yet I could envision that house with no running water, a mud stove, and little bodies sitting on their knees by the walls, their mouths open wide crying in hunger or anticipation of food. I pictured my mother as she had described herself. A bucket filled with spring water clanged against her legs and wet her skirt as she headed home along dirt-covered alleyways. Moslem boys blocked her way and dropped horse dung in the water before she turned the corner to her house. Having cleaned other people’s homes all day, her mother stared at the water in disbelief. It was getting dark and there was no water at home to cook for the little ones. Could that have been the point at which my grandmother decided her daughter was useless? Years later, I wondered if my grandmother feared that when she was out, my mother would get raped or kidnapped and converted to Islam. In any case, she was a liability. My maternal grandfather was detached as a husband and a father, so grandmother Touran decided to pass the responsibility of my mother to another man.
    My mother approached her father for help. He shook his head but didn’t interfere. She ran away to her aunt’s house, who took her home and chastised Touran. “Don’t do it! Don’t do what our mother did to us.”
    “Too late!” Touran had given her word. The contract was sealed.
    Maman lowered her head. Her shoulders drooped; she gazed across time, not space as she recollected the events. If I could go back in time, I would hold her tight, put her head on my shoulder, and caress her hair. But being a child myself, I traced the birds on the carpet with my index finger as I learned of my mother’s childhood grief.
    “I threw myself on the floor and begged my mother, ‘Maman, Maman, please don’t send me away, please, please.’”
    It troubled me that she was using the same word for her mother that I called her. I couldn’t think of her as someone’s child. My feet were asleep. I stretched them in front of me and rubbed them. “Maman,
baseh
,” I begged her. “Enough!” My legs tingled. I needed to get up and walk, but my mother kept on talking. She had to recreate the event for me. An army of crows covered the backyard, then rose and swirled away. I wished I could fly. Maman wouldn’t stop. Her words held me down.
    “I kissed her feet. I told her that I would be her maid. ‘Please don’t send me away. I’ll stay home. I’ll clean. I’ll cook.’”
    “
Baseh
,” I said as if to myself. What did she want me to do? I put down my pen on the carpet and slumped. No point trying to study. The smell of a quince stew filled the house with its sweetness, and made me hungry. I wanted to remind her to go to the kitchen and check on it, but I stayed silent. She had to finish her story. So I listened.
    “I will take care of my brothers,” she had pleaded to her mother. “I am your only daughter. I will be your servant. Please don’t let them take me.”
    My mother paused. She stared