Escape From Paradise: A Novel

Edition

Chapter One

Listen to the sound of reed,

As it blows its complaint:

Reciting the tale of separations!

From the time I was cut,

From my reedy bed in the marshland,

And molded to a reed,

Men and women have wept,

Listening to my lament!

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Whoever remains apart from his roots,

Enduringly seeks for the day of his reunion!

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Rumi

The man with his shaggy appearance was in his late twenties. He wore an untidy green army jacket, wrinkled grey trousers and a pair of worn-out sneakers. He walked cautiously as if seeking prey or haunted by someone, through the narrow, freshly painted and carpeted hallway on the third floor of the Jahan Hotel.

The medium-sized three-story hotel was an old building. Although renovated recently, it still maintained its three-hundred-year-old historical charm. It stood proudly on the north side of the ancient city of Tabriz, remote from the hustle and bustle of the city’s center, in northeastern Iran – a country embroiled in the devastating turmoil and aftermath of its February 1979 revolution.

Even though close to two-thirds of his face was well hidden under a few weeks’ worth of dark curly beard, his rectangular face was a mirror of intense expression. The skin on his forehead and cheeks was soft, smooth and chalk-white.

The bloody hurricane of an Islamic revolution with its rigid and narrow fundamentalist nature had passed over the country and was instantaneously changing the political, social, and cultural landscape of the society. It was unexpectedly impacting the way people dressed, looked, and behaved in public. Seemingly, the bearded man was no exception. Like many people who tried to conceal their true identities shortly after the revolution, he grew a beard to remain unrecognized, to hide behind the mask of a crude and rugged revolutionist in an effort to be considered part of the new establishment, a devout Muslim, a fierce soldier of Islam.

Despite his unkempt, dirty long dark hair, nervous shifty brown eyes, and skinny body, there was nothing else noteworthy in his appearance to attract anyone’s attention. Certainly, at least in appearance, he was no different from a lot of other jobless young men roaming the streets of the shock-stricken city, but if they were considered inconsequential in the previous regime, the social atmosphere caused by the revolution was now offering them a golden opportunity. They were impatiently waiting for their turn to jump on the bandwagon that could, at least, offer them the security of conformity.

Noticing a sensation that felt like the wiggling of an insect in his stomach, he nervously knocked on the door of room 312 at precisely five o'clock on the morning of April 15, 1980, and could hardly wait for a response. To occupy his mind, to control his exaltation, while shifting his weight from foot to foot restlessly, he muttered under his breath the incoherent words of an old forgotten song that used to be his favorite. The barely audible exhausted voice of a woman, as if echoing from the bottom of a deep well, came from inside, Come in. After a short pause, the man heard her soft voice, It is open! He turned his head, looked down the hallway with caution before reaching for the doorknob. He opened the door just slightly, slipped through the door’s crack sideways and inconspicuously entered the room.

It appeared as if the isolation offered by four walls of the room changed his demeanor entirely. He rubbed his palms together in anticipation and could hardly control his excitement, as if he had been looking forward to seeing her all night. Or perhaps the reason he was so delighted was that all the pandemonium and often life-threatening underground work was now behind him, and the rest of the upcoming task appeared to be a piece of cake.

The man found her fully-covered by a raven-black chador with only her drained face showing, wearing no makeup, looking as plain and ordinary as a woman of her age could, sitting on the edge of the bed lethargically waiting. Under the thick shroud of fatigue and anxiety, and with her pale face, she looked as if she had lost her capacity to grieve. She was in her late thirties and had balanced features: big brown eyes, full lips, narrow nose, high cheek bones, and naturally full arched black eyebrows.

Ready to go? the man inquired, pleasantly, but with eyes constantly scanning the room.

Oh, I’m ready as I’ll ever be. Let's get this thing over with, she replied, sounding subdued and withdrawn.

Then, let’s get your things together and go. There are other people waiting in the lobby, he said in a soft voice that could be mistaken for timidity.

Still noticeably under the influence of taryak, opium, smoked plentifully two nights earlier, along with countless shots of imported Russian aragh, vodka, drunk the night before, she staggered and could hardly maintain her balance as she rose and walked around aimlessly. Her body motions didn’t bear the slightest resemblance to those of someone getting ready to leave.

Finding her disoriented, he rushed to help her in gathering her few belongings, jamming them into a brown suitcase and a black leather handbag. Packing done, holding her arm with one hand and carrying her suitcase with the other, he patiently helped her leave the room. With necessary pauses in their steps, they approached the stairs to the lobby, where more than half a dozen people were eagerly waiting on that fine early April morning.

Except for two couples, the rest were totally strangers to one another. They were gathered to start a clandestine journey – an escape from a land entangled in turbulence to the freedom they hoped and dreamed was waiting for them beyond the Iran-Turkish border. Perhaps, the singular thing they had in common with each other was the gloom and despair on their faces and the weight of fear in their hearts. And certainly the only thing that sustained them so far was the hope they kept alive in their hearts.

Anxiously waiting in the lobby was a young beautiful, green-eyed woman in her thirties who sat quietly but bolt upright on the edge of an old couch. Her face radiated an obvious aura of sobriety. Her soft skin was unblemished and bright as white porcelain, even though she wore no makeup. The green scarf over her blonde hair was a few shades darker than her eyes. At her side sat a boy and a girl in their early teens, both with an obvious resemblance to the woman. To her left sat a tall lanky attractive man in his early sixties, silver-haired, with proportionate manly features. With his calm and composed demeanor, he was the sort of man whose exterior demanded immediate attention and respect. Across from them another tall man, almost the same age as the lanky man, and a fully covered woman with dark clothes, were sitting on another but smaller old couch. Next to them sat a slight, seemingly stressed out, grayish man, also in his early sixties, with a bulging potbelly that covered his belt. A short dark-complexioned man in his late forties, his head wrapped with gauze with a large spot of dried blood clearly visible on the left side, sat quietly on a nearby chair. Most of his face was covered with an untrimmed black beard. He held his head shyly down, staring at his knees – an obvious attempt to keep things to himself and avoid attention.

Somber, appearing determined and rather self-assured, a tall young man in his late twenties with a wispy beard and shaggy, curly brown hair stood next to a slightly younger, slender, and attractive woman in a corner near the entrance. No matter how nonchalantly they tried to present themselves, they were still unable to present a convincing outwardly calm bearing to cover their anxiousness. For protection, support, or for a display of affection the woman was comfortably leaning on the man. Except for him, everyone else in the group looked tired and lethargic. The mood was conspicuously nihilistic.

The lobby was so quiet that the buzzing of a bunch of confused and stubborn flies around the room was clearly audible. The people waiting in the lobby appeared to be wrapped in their own blankets of anonymity, with faint hopes that those covers would help take them across the border to unknown places – places they assumed, hoped, would be safer than the intolerable living conditions in their homeland – a homeland where the recent turmoil had not only sharply limited their ambitions, but had brought life-threatening danger to their very existence. Some had already lost their strength to think, and others deliberately didn’t want to think that where they were hoping to go could be nothing but an illusion – a big mirage.

Mismatched and misplaced as they appeared, it was obvious that they fearfully were trying to avoid eye contact. They appeared as if they were determined to keep the few sparks of hope for freedom that flickered in their hearts to themselves. Whenever they inadvertently caught one another’s eyes, it was a look tainted with obvious mistrust.

Except for the red-eyed, sleepy man behind the desk, who never even attempted to cover his big mouth when he repeatedly yawned, there was no other hotel employee in the lobby so early in the morning. Now and then, between his yawns, he nonchalantly cast insignificant glances towards the people in the lobby.

The bearded man and woman from upstairs slowly entered the lobby to join the others. As they approached the bottom of the stairs, it took some effort and his assistance for her to cover her tired face with a black veil to avoid being recognized by the others.

He released her arm, approached the group, and motioned the young man and woman standing near the entrance to join the others. In the manner with which they all reacted to his demand and gathered around him apparently anxious to hear what he had to say, it was apparent that they all knew him well from their previous encounters with him.

Please listen carefully. I’m sure that this is the day you have all been waiting for. A minibus and a driver waiting outside, the man with the curly beard spoke authoritatively, as though he had issued this directive many times before. His voice was harsh but clear and to the point. His eyes shifted uncontrollably as he spoke. We're all gonna get on it. I don't want anybody to do anything out of the ordinary. We don't want to be noticed. The city is full of Revolutionary Guards. I only know a few of them; the rest can get crazy ideas and cause us a lot of grief. I hope you understand what I’m telling you.

He paused and looked around with a piercing gaze for signs of understanding. They nodded and he went on, You go first with your children, but don't rush, he pointed to the blonde woman.

She rose quietly, helping her children. Clutching their few belongings, they left the lobby with hesitant steps. He then sent out the lanky man who had been with the woman and the children, followed by the woman he had helped down the stairs, the elderly couple, the young couple, the little old nervous man, and, lastly, the man with the bloody head wound – all by simply pointing his finger.

They were all quietly seated in the old bus when the bearded man rushed in and joined them, surveying them quickly while flashing a smile at the driver. The blonde woman sat with her daughter while her son occupied the seat behind her with the tall lanky man beside him. Except for the two couples, everyone else occupied seats alone. No one spoke a word. They could almost hear each other’s hearts beating. The air was saturated with fragments of uncertainty and fear.

Assured that all the passengers were boarded, the bearded man left the bus unexpectedly to join an old couple on the sidewalk. He placed his arm around the man, pointed to the couple they had accompanied to the lobby, shook the man’s hand and returned to the bus hurriedly. With a motion of his right hand he signaled the driver to move, Let’s get going, man! The driver pushed the long stick shift into first gear and slowly released the clutch. The bus made a scratchy noise and began to move forward. The couple on the sidewalk, with moist eyes, wordlessly waved goodbye to their friends.

The bearded man sat on the seat behind the driver, a young man in his late twenties, also bearded, dressed in battle fatigues, who very much resembled a Revolutionary Guard. The bearded man placed his hands on the top of the driver's seat, leaned over and whispered in his ear.

Dawn’s milky light in the eastern sky was slowly sweeping away the night's lingering darkness. Moments later, the eastern horizon brightened with the coming of sunrise, shining brilliantly, promising a beautiful day. Straight above, the sky was a radiant light blue, but it turned darker blue as it stretched along to the west. The streets were wet from an early morning April shower from clouds that had blanketed the night sky until the coming of dawn but now no longer lingered. The pavements looked washed and clean. The air was soft, slightly chilly, perfumed with the fragrance of honeysuckle from vines hanging over many houses’ walls along the way, accentuated with the earth’s wet odor. The empty and eerily quiet ghost city of Tabriz looked its best, still sleeping under the safety net of the imposed curfew hours. The city dazzled the eyes, shining in the morning sun, as shiny as it must have undoubtedly appeared to Marco Polo, who was amazed by its beauty when passing through Persia on his way to China, centuries ago.

Small groups of rugged looking Revolutionary Guards in military vehicles waved at the bus driver from almost every corner, each time giving some comfort to the passengers, assuring them they were in good hands. Several blocks further, the bus stopped abruptly at the corner of Shah Esmael Boulevard and Satar Khan Avenue. Two obviously friendly Revolutionary Guards, both bearded, one in his early twenty, the other one slightly older than the other, with automatic weapons hanging over their shoulders, casually boarded the bus. After shaking hands with the guards, the bearded man offered a seat to the older guard, sat next to him, and started a friendly conversation in a low tone of voice.

The other guard stood upright in the aisle, filled his lungs edgily with air, and suspiciously examined all the passengers before sitting on an empty seat across from them. His intense examining gaze added more fear to the hearts of the passengers, which were already full of fright and anxiety.

No sound was in the air except the monotonous, invasive roar of the old bus’s engine as it kept weaving through the streets of the old city that was waking from its long night’s sleep. The coming of the bright morning light had completely erased the night’s darkness by now and was shining on the city’s washed-up face.

Once they put a few miles between themselves and the last of the city buildings, heading northeast, the bearded man abruptly interrupted his whispered conversation with the guard. He rose to his feet, bent slightly, and looked outside, checking their progress by the landscape. He faced the worried passengers and announced loudly, Listen to me please. ...You're gonna’ be taken through the city of Shabestar, over the north shore of Lake Rezaeih, to the west of the city of Salmas. This brother (pointing to the younger guard) is gonna be with you up to that point. There you'll be handed over to a guide. From that point on, it'll take three days of hiking to reach the border. I hope you’re all in good shape for the hike. I'm gonna get off near Salmas. You got any questions you better ask now. His glance drifted over the passengers, expecting for some questions.

Despite so many questions racing through their minds, such as, what is our chance of success? What if we get caught? Would they kill us all?, no one dared utter a word. Their silence signified that they were perhaps holding tight onto the last shreds of expectation – hope – that they would soon be freed from the chaos revolution had brought into their lives.

He sat and continued his conversation with the guards, this time, intensely haggling and arguing over the shares of revenue from their ingenious underground enterprise. Furrowing his brows in an expression of disapproval, the older guard seemed to run out of patience. He snapped his fingers, demanding his share of the revenue – the bribe money. Disappointed at not having other options, the bearded man promptly pulled out a bundle of bills wrapped with a rubber band from the inside of his untidy jacket pocket. He hesitantly handed the precious bundle to the guard whose frown suddenly changed to a wide grotesque grin as he laid eyes on all that colorful cash.

The lanky man and the tall elderly man were the only ones who alertly witnessed the transfer of the money. Their disgust was silently but clearly reflected on their faces.

The bearded man then left his seat and sat next to the woman whom he had helped in the hotel. Drowsy, she looked like she was between naps.

Are you okay? he asked with a kind voice.

The question woke her. Startled, she straightened her posture and, without looking at him, she replied softly, Yes, I am.

Oh, I’m sorry I woke you.

That’s all right.

Is there anything I can do for you? he asked with the same tone.

No ... you've done enough ... thanks a lot ... I won't forget it, she said in a sincere voice. For the first time in many years, she genuinely meant what she said to a man.

I've some business in Salmas. Otherwise, I’d come with you to the border ... and even to Turkey, to help you get on your way. You know, another group’s coming through ... I gotta take care of them. He hesitated for a moment and spoke in a friendlier and more reassuring tone, You don't have to worry about a thing, the guides will take good care of you. It’s part of the deal I have with them. After a long pause, signifying as if he has run out subject, he finally asked, Do you need any money?

She lifted her veil, glanced at him and let a faint smile part her lips, and only then replied, No ... but thanks. She reached up to his face with her visibly trembling right hand and touched him gently, as though trying to imprint his face on her mind – a mind that was cluttered with scattered of the most unpleasant memories of recent tragic events beyond any soul’s forbearance.

You know what? This ... this sweetness is, for sure, the only good thing I'm gonna miss about this goddamn place, this shit hole, she murmured in his ear. Then the thought went through her mind. I need this small crumb of sweetness, otherwise how in hell will I make it with all the pain and hurt about to burst inside me? Her thought was followed by some incoherent whispered words, only to console and comfort herself.

He reached for her hand and held it in his and felt her warmth. Sitting next to her, he couldn't help but think of the good old days, her golden days, when it would have been a great honor just to be seen in the company of such a celebrity in public. Conversely, she felt comforted that a stranger, who had acted so beastly towards her the night before, could now be so caring, for she was certain that he expected nothing in return for the warmth and kindness he was abundantly offering her. For the first time in a very long time, as far back as her childhood, she felt genuine pleasure at having someone around – especially a man – someone who dug deeper, to find more than first impressions suggested.

He left her after a long hour of affectionate and pleasant conversation to sit behind the driver again.

Once she was alone, the last residue of taryak, with its mysterious and potent sedative power still going up and down her veins, caused her mind to wander, putting her in a twilight zone, the expanse of a never-never land that exists between hallucination and reality. Drifting backward to the dark labyrinth of her past, a past crowded with sorrows, she searched for a few sparks of happiness. She was frantically looking for the events and places that surrounded those happy moments, even though they were infrequent occurrences in her tumultuous life. She wanted to retrieve them, to look at them, as sober-mindedly as her present condition would allow, find those few scarce moments of joy. She had to reach way back to her early childhood, but once she reached that subdivision of her life, she could still hear the echoes of her mother’s domineering voice. The voice that carried harsh words kept bouncing against her head’s walls until every word registered in meticulous clarity in her mind.

From the day you were born, you've been nothing but a pain in the ass! Esmat, known as Fat Esmat to everyone, shouted at her little girl. Didn't I tell you, just sit there and don't move?! Goddamn you! Sit and don’t move or I'll kill you! Did you hear what I said, you little shit?

Her mother’s threatening words scared her so much that she could only respond by nodding. A minute or so later, when the echoes of her mother’s threatening words dissipated and were forgotten in her joyful young mind, she moved slightly. Esmat noticed her move. She rose, walked to where her little girl was trying to fight boredom by playing, and smacked the side of little Fatemeh’s face viciously with her coarse wet hand. A lump in the little girl’s throat broke loose, and two streams of tears moved steadily down her face. Esmat pounded her little girl verbally by shouting at her again, Stop that, you little bitch! I don’t want to hear any noise from you again! Just sit there and shut the hell up!

Swallowing her pain, the little girl made a whimpering sound and wiped her runny nose and tears with the sleeve of her dirty old shirt, but the tears refused to dry up – they kept coming.

Now, many turbulent years and ten thousand heartbreaking disappointments later, lonely, pondering the trials and tribulations of her life, she searched through the fragmented events of her childhood. She curled up on the bus seat as if she were the same frightened hurt little girl, the sweet child. Riding the emotional waves of her past troubles and miseries, no other passengers noticed her when she put her thumb in her mouth, lay down on the seat in a fetal position and gradually slipped away, not into the sanctuary and serenity of sleep, nor did she ascend into the harsh realm of wakefulness. But, with the residue of the elixir of taryak still in her veins, she was weightlessly suspended in the twilight zone in between.

Chapter Two

Little Fatemeh, Faty, as everyone called her in those innocent days, was a five-year-old happy, little shabbily-dressed girl, the only child of Esmat, from her second marriage that had ended in an unexpected tragedy. Her young husband of only two years, Ali-Akbar, a dark-featured medium height southern man, a skilled stonecutter by profession, had been crushed to death under tons of huge boulders falling from an old crane that collapsed when Faty was only six months old. Protecting himself against any liability, the greedy owner of the business falsely blamed the tragedy on Ali-Akbar's negligence and unyieldingly refused to pay any money when Esmat repeatedly asked for the customary compensation for her husband’s tragic death. She became enraged when her repeated threats didn’t dent the owner’s decision about the matter. She felt the weight of vengeance in her heart so intensely that the thought of throwing a bottle of sulphuric acid in the owner's face didn’t escape Esmat's mind for a long time. She was truculently tough enough and mean enough to carry out that appallingly evil thought. It was obvious that the intensity of the hatred that lingered in her heart for her Ali-Akbar’s boss clearly signified the depth of a totally opposite emotion, love, she felt for her deceased husband. Only the passage of time poured layers of ashes on her hot and burning hatred, cooling it somewhat, but she was unable to completely erase its residue for the rest of her life.

Esmat was born in the small farm town of Taft, a village west of the ancient desert town of Yazd, to a farm worker's family, a Middle Eastern version of sharecroppers as old as the land itself. She had a round face, diminutive eyes that could hardly be seen, covered with heavy eyelids. She had a small round nose and rosy red cheeks. She had thick and naturally red lips, and black eyebrows with no space in between that made them look more like a man's mustache than a woman’s eyebrows. With all the strenuous work she had performed over her life, her arms were sizably thick, muscular and powerful. She possessed large swaying breasts and thighs – she was as thick and strong as the trunk of a hundred-year-old oak.

As nature has never been one hundred percent generous by giving all the beauty to one woman, conversely it never compacts all the ugly features in one either. In Esmat’s case, if she had a lot of unattractiveness in her entire features and body, she had one outstanding trait going for her and that was her skin. It was soft, smooth as porcelain, and an indescribable shade of white that once seen naked and touched gently by a man, any man, would compel him to come back for more, much more, repeatedly more.

Fat Esmat, as she was called behind her back, had carried the excess weight of muscle, bone and pure fat; as far back as she could remember. Her massive head was covered with wild black curly hair that hardly looked natural. But ironically, there was something attractive in her fat body. It was proportionate and symmetrical, attractive enough that men with strong sexual drives and/or loose morals were drawn to her like bees to flowers.

She had an unmatched, stormy and violent temper that was a backup for her gustiness – another quality about her. But with her large and strong body, whenever she was provoked, she would wrap her chador around her waist, wave her arms in the air, and scream and roar like a wounded tigress. She could scare men and women alike to death with her thunderous voice and her violent temper.

She worked alongside her father, with her sister and two brothers, almost as soon as she could walk. They worked from sunup to sundown, day in and day out, seven days a week – backbreaking labor, for an absentee landlord, always on the same farm. The entire family received some wheat and nominal cash in advance each year to tide them over until the next autumn when the owner calculated the results of the harvest, always lopsidedly, and offered them one-fifth. Almost every year, after all the expenditures were deducted, they still owed the landlord, forcing them to remain on the land like the deep-rooted stumps of old dead trees. This was a feudalistic system, the ill-proportioned scheme practiced for centuries across the entire country. An inventive system in which the farm owners throughout the country could insure the workers’ indebtedness thus fastened them to the farm for generations to come.

After her father's death, when she was sixteen, a few suitors came along and asked for her hand in marriage, and even though her mother insisted that she accept, each time she found some excuse and refused. To pursue a better life, she moved to Yazd in search of something shining like a rainbow from afar. Later, when the city of Yazd failed to realize her dreams, not offering her an opportunity for a better future, she took a risk and moved to catch the rainbow in Tehran; a city overcrowded by overconfident men, and, women, who would invent all sort of reasons to marry them. She rented a small room in a twelve-room adobe house located in the southeastern section of Tehran, a ghetto near the old Messgar-abad cemetery, poor people’s burial place. A different family, almost all destitute, from lower echelon of the society, each migrating from various parts of the country, occupied each room, with multitudes of bare-footed, barely-dressed, and loud children, running around from sunup to sundown.

It was while living there that she met and married Gholam, her first husband, and gave birth to Faty. Although it was only a dingy little place with a large folded mattress against the wall and practically no other furniture, she still called it home, a cozy warm place that was solely hers. She always considered that her simple home, the four walls and a roof, with no fancy decorative pieces of furniture, offered her more comfort and happiness than the Shah’s palace, Niavaran.

When excited, she would sing loudly in her husky voice, I'm hot like an oven in the winter, a cool breeze in the summer. She was utterly profane, but her vulgarity seemed to be a part of her defense, more a protective mechanism than an inherent part of her psychological makeup. Her vulgarity along with her sexual attitude offered a sort of titillating perversion that attracted men, ironically married men, who found her vulgarities sexually quite provocative – something they couldn’t get at home. They didn’t expect their wives to talk like whores and even if they did, it would have turned them off more than on.

Most married women didn't hesitate to despise and often hate her indiscriminately, but aware of how far she would go to hurt them, they were always petrified to confront her. This hatred developed over a long period of time. After her second husband Ali-Akbar died, when her search to find another good man hit a brick wall, she allowed men into her room, always very discreetly, late at night, for a quick sexual encounter at a fixed price. This was a sort of second job – moonlighting. She never considered herself a prostitute, differentiating herself from that oldest profession by claiming, Whores go after men, but for me, men come after me. They're crazy for my plump curvy body, my soft skin and these big boobs. Poor bastards can't help it. I give them sweetness. ... What do you think their goddamn wives give them? Nothing, honey ... nothing but snake venom.

Esmat’s first husband Gholam, a good hard-working carpenter, left her after they had been married only eight short months, but eight sweet and memorable months. To make more money, he headed south to drive trucks for the Americans during World War II. He hauled military supplies from the southern port cities of Bandar-e Abbas and Bandar-e Boushehr in the Persian Gulf to the border city of Astara, in the north near the Russian border.

The treacherous, very often impassable mountain passes of Kotal-e Mullah Felfely, Kotal-e Malu, and Kotal-e Peerezan, between the port cities and the city of Shiraz, had become the graveyard of many of those ill-fated drivers. Most of those poor drivers didn't even know how to shift the gears on those big trucks let alone negotiate the sharp turns of the narrow road through the rugged and unforgiving boulders in the high altitude. No driver’s license was required. Any able-bodied man was hired, and after a day’s training they were sent to the port cities to pick up a loaded truck with weapons and ammunition and drive it north to the Iran-Russian border. Because of the existing black market for American dollars (in which drivers were paid) the pay was considered exorbitant by any standard, but due to the job’s tremendous risk, it was truly a driver’s ghaymat-e khoon, the price of his blood.

Gholam never sent her any money and that was painful for Esmat, nor did he ever send her a short letter of a few warm words and that embarrassed and hurt her deeply. He never returned and that was humiliating for Esmat, especially when her neighbors stared at her and she would read sarcasm and taunting in their eyes. And now and then, the neighbors’ jeering or mocking remarks about the whereabouts of Gholam brought her sleepless nights.

And so it happened that in the early spring of 1945, she consciously assumed Gholam dead after not hearing from him for two long and lonely years. An old hideous-looking, evil-eyed gypsy woman read her palm a few years later. She told her that the man she was waiting for had a chubby black-skinned lover in the remote southern port of Bandar-e Langeh in the Persian Gulf. Esmat disregarded it, called all her fortune-telling bullshit and found more comfort in considering him dead than alive. "If my man isn’t next to me in bed every night, if his skin isn’t rubbing against mine, honey, I don’t give a shit if he’s dead or alive. If not aziz-e man [my darling], he’d be better dead than alive," she would often reason, whispering to herself, in her lonely hours, more to ease the pain of missing him than the belief in such an ice-cold truth.

With no source of income and no special skill to support herself and her child, she began to work as a maid or as a cook for upper middle class and rich families. But, besides having no grace and never at ease, she had a serious and irresolvable problem, almost an incurable disease that made it difficult for her to hang onto that sort of job for any length of time. That was, in addition to being naturally big, with huge muscles and bones, covered with the enormous amount of glut of fat she carried around she had an uncontrollable urge to eat anything that she could get her hands on. In addition to that incurable shortcoming, she was also extremely and unbearably sloppy. Not being able to hang onto any job, there were many nights when she and her deprived child laid their heads down on their pillows with empty growling stomachs. But those nights didn’t last long once Ali-Akbar entered her life, first as a lover, then as a faithful husband and a generous provider.

Ali-Akbar was a remarkably strong young man, who could lift the front of a car or could bring down a brick wall with one tackle – after pouring down a few shots of aragh, of course. In that remarkably powerful body, one could hardly find even one single mean bone. He had a soft spot in his heart for plump women with light skin soft and watermelon-sized breasts, thick thighs, and enormous round buttocks. He compensated for his lack of good looks and charm with the goodness of his heart and his ceaseless passion for sex.

Always smiling, he was mild-mannered, well liked by everyone, even though he always dressed in shabby clothes that never indicated success. He put up with Esmat's flares of temper. He loved her huge body and treated her tenderly. It was as if he could see some precious gem buried deep beneath all that flab, a piece of jewelry no one else could see.

Being younger than her and tremendously strong, he could stand the violent jerking and clenching of her body when she became sexually excited, working herself toward a climax. He would crawl between her thighs, missionary style, whenever the opportunity presented itself, which was way above the average. Afterward, to heighten his sexual ecstasy, he would beg Esmat to tighten her tree-trunk thighs and legs around his body and squeeze as hard as she could. The best damn way to get rid of the pain in my bones, he would philosophically articulate with a deep sigh of relief, followed by thunderous laughter.

With the experience of a few men under her belt, Esmat had known how to hook this one, reel him in slowly, land him in her bed, and possess him for good. She had gone to buy a sausage sandwich in a shop that also served aragh and beer in the neighborhood. She noticed that she was the target of an intense stare from a young man, who was trying to undress and devour her with his look. She had responded to his lustful stare with a smile and soon accepted his invitation for a walk, which gave her an opportunity to gather detailed information about him. At first, she pursued him persistently like a shadow. She then lured him to bed, giving him generously as much sweetness as she could muster from her plump sensuous body, until he could no longer live a night without lying next to her. When she thought he was hooked, she pulled back, staying out of his sight for a while. He came running to her like a saturated-with-hormones teenage boy who couldn’t stay away from his first love, begging, as if he had gone utterly mad.

Determined not to lose this lover under any circumstances, she planned everything thoughtfully and nothing was left to chance or luck.

She sent Faty to stay with one of her neighbors for the night. Having the room all to herself, she used her imagination and creativeness to the fullest, arranged an outlandish romantic feast for him that she had never done for anybody before. She spread a sofreh, a rectangular white clean tablecloth, on the floor, placed two candles in the brass candlesticks that she borrowed from her neighbor, two red roses in a tall glass, and a steaming browned roasted chicken on a large plate in the middle. For drink, she chilled two bottles of bootlegged, hundred proof aragh sagy, cheap vodka, extracted from raisins, a sort of aragh that no one except underprivileged men could stand because of its sharp taste. To ease the taste of the aragh in his mouth, or as a chaser, she provided a bowl of cool yogurt mixed with chopped cucumber and mint.

Ali-Akbar gently knocked on Esmat’s door around eight o’clock that night and waited anxiously. When he heard the soft sexy voice of Esmat, saying, "It’s open. Come on in, aziz," he most probably thought a nightingale in the Garden of Eden was speaking to him. He found Esmat sitting near a sofreh like a pinup girl on calendars – a sofreh decorated with colorful food and drink that was exclusively set for a special visitor. He took off his jacket and placed a passionate kiss on her lips. As he tried to explore her body with his hand, she gently refused his advance and forced him to sit next to her.

Wearing pink see-through chiffon, Ail-Akbar’s favorite color, revealing as much of her soft white skin as she could, she hand-fed him piece after piece of tender-cooked chicken, and acted with naz and kereshmeh, coquettishness and flirtatiousness, and as hard-to-get as she knew how. She then handed him shot after shot of ice-cold aragh sagy to wash his food down, and spoonfuls of yogurt and chopped cucumber to erase the bitter aftertaste of the aragh sagy.

When his stomach was full up to his throat with roasted chicken and his veins were overflowing with aragh sagy, she rose and began to perform an extraordinary dance, stripping down to the little pieces of underwear she had on. She gracefully took a few small steps and twisted her waist lustfully with all the eshveh, teasing, she could muster. The collective movements of her legs, arms, hands, chest, shoulders, head, and even the subtle motions of her fingers, were beckoning, performed to disarm and attract Ali-Akbar.

Loaded with lust that was brewing in him fermented by watching every sensuous move of that great plump goddess of beauty, he was about to lose his mind. The last piece of fabric on Esmat’s voluptuous body was a cherry-red thin string panty. She peeled that tiny piece of garment off in slow motion and rotated it in the air around her finger. The dim candles’ light illuminated a black beauty mark the size of a quarter between her naval and pubic hair. Besieged Ali-Akbar couldn’t take it any longer. He stood up, swaying and shaking, ripped off his clothes like a madman and tried to wrap his arms around her, but she eluded his grasp with all the naz she had in her bag of tricks, driving him to the edge of sanity. Burning in a fever of passion, powerless, standing in the middle of the room, panting and trembling like a thirsty dog, his brain non-functional, he could no longer take Esmat’s titillating eshveh. He knelt down as if he were consenting to his defeat in this game of love and was willingly prepared to surrender his body and soul for a piece of Esmat. He opened his arms and begged, "Come to me ... I can’t stand it anymore, aziz-e man. ... I can’t live without you anymore, maman-e man [my beauty]. He paused for a gulp of air before saying, Come to me, bolbol-e man [my nightingale]."

Holding her breasts in her palms, pushing them upward, targeting his heart with both barrels of her nipples, she walked toward him in slow crossed steps like a peacock hen in heat until she reached his mouth and watched him kiss her erect nipples so gently; and then, grinning, she watched him going absolutely wild, struggling to take her entire large breast in his mouth, sucking, going from one to the other.

She allowed him to lay his coarse hands on every curve of her soft body, caressing. When she could no longer stand it, she buried herself in the half-circle of his muscular arms. Gently, he sucked on her swelled lips, lowered her to the floor and nervously hurried to make love to her. She disappointed him by firmly refusing to submit herself to him.

Both naked as newborn babies, he was now about to go out of is mind; full crazy with passion. She was aroused but controlled, calculative and shrewdly manipulative. She was thinking: I have him where I want him. My fish is hooked. All I have to do now is reel him in gently.

He was as hot as an oven and steaming like a locomotive, and the precious seconds were ticking away. Before losing all that good steam completely,