Читать книгу Escape From Paradise - Majid MD Amini - Страница 5

In the late afternoon on a mid-spring day, after Esmat hung all the clothes on the line, leaving them to dry in the sun, she was given some delicious leftover food by the lady of the house. Sitting under the shade of a weeping willow tree in the backyard, she and Faty gorged themselves.

The woman of the house was a meticulously groomed lady – a ravishing, ostentatious woman of pushing fifty who embodied “modern” Iran in all its crude contradictions. She was cheerful but desperate to be entertained by anybody by any method. With her husband, a successful government official at work all day, she had four of her friends, all photocopies of her, flaunting their newly-shaped faces (thanks to numerous plastic surgeries), jewelry, and Western-styled dresses, as guests in her living room. She had run out of gossip and didn't have the slightest clue how to entertain them.

After Esmat and Faty finished their food and it was time to leave, the lady stepped out to the backyard and paid Esmat. She hesitated for a moment and nonchalantly asked her, “You know, you people know a lot of folk songs. ... Do you sing? I mean can you sing some songs for us?”

“Can I sing? Of course, I can, aziz! I will sing like a bolbol for you, and I tell you what! I can play daf better than anybody you known,” she responded enthusiastically, over-exaggerating quite a lot for her singing and musical talent. She then asked the lady, “Do you have a daf?”

“Yes, I do,” she responded happily.

She led Esmat and Faty into the living room and introduced them to the other ladies. She showed Esmat and Faty a place near the door on the floor to sit, not on any furniture, then went to another room and returned with an old daf. She handed it to Esmat and demanded, “Now, play some rhythms for us.”

Like a skilled daf player, awe-struck Esmat began the rhythms with a song, lyrics that rhymed awkwardly – sort of rap songs, mostly composed with comical words, crackling in her throat. When she ran out of city songs, she sang some desert folklore songs that those ladies had never heard. To prolong her performance Esmat ordered Faty, who was strangely unafraid and not shy, to dance. She obeyed immediately and even had sparks of joy glittering in her little eyes. Little Faty moved her feet and curled her chubby hands, synchronizing her movements with the beat while keeping a big smile on her face. She twisted her body from the waist down imitating a voluptuous belly dancer while the guests clapped their hands in rhythm for encouragement. The beat, the movement, the urging and the shininess of the room placed Faty in the clouds, weightless and wingless, flying, soaring like an angel.

After several more songs and dances everybody applauded enthusiastically, primarily for Faty, and congratulated Esmat for having such a precious talented daughter and suggested she should encourage Faty, perhaps even send her for dancing lessons. At the end of all their compliments and advice, all five ladies dug into their purses and handed little Faty money, colorful paper money.

Once they left the house, Esmat snatched the money from Faty’s little hands. As she counted the bills, she was stunned to find out that it was more than ten times the amount she received for washing clothes.

The notion of using her own untapped talent along with Faty's to earn their living, instead of being a rakht shoor, struck her like a pleasant shock. The idea, as farfetched as it seemed, lodged itself in the back of her mind and took on greater weight with every passing minute. It didn't leave her alone all the way home or even over half a bottle of aragh sagy, nor later under the weight of the ugly and stinky body of Mash Abbas, the butcher, who was so tight with his money that always bargained over two rounds of going at it for the price of one because he would always have his orgasm in less then five minutes, regardless how much roasted dombalan, lamb’s testicles, he ate.

Early the next morning, when Esmat woke up, she found sleepy Faty next to her. She stretched her tired body and gazed over at the innocent face that looked like an angel’s. She whispered, “Oh, my God! I can't believe it. I got me a gold mine.”

The following week, Esmat began her new career with the same vigorous determination with which she had once sought a husband, and no obstacle could stop her from realizing her dream.

Life was sweet and easy for Faty. It flowed on smoothly and routinely, in spite of an occasional flare of temper by Esmat. Their entertaining ability and quality spread quickly – all by word of mouth. Esmat would take her to parties, weddings, birthdays and circumcision parties; first, around where they lived, but later, when her reputation mushroomed citywide, invitations came from all over the city. Wearing nice, soft, shiny colorful dresses, Faty would dance her heart out, sometimes until early dawn.

In the past, Esmat’s touches were only slaps to punish little Faty but as their entertainment career got under way and money began to pour in, she stopped beating her baby and began touching her tenderly.

Esmat began to take better care of her own appearance as the money started to roll in. She purchased numerous new dresses, washed her hair more often with perfumed shampoo, reshaped her eyebrows, separating them by plucking the hairs in between, wore makeup and even went on a crash diet. She lost a great amount of weight but soon stopped the dieting when her breasts began to noticeably sag. She remained pleasantly plump. Her hands never touched another piece of dirty laundry regardless how much more her clients were ready to pay for her service – not hers, not her daughter’s and certainly no one else’s. However, she continued to accept customers at night but at a higher price. When more flow of cash kept coming her way, she took her baby to have her teeth straightened after taking care of her own first. Faty's body and face shone with health and cleanliness, fair and delicate, and white as porcelain, all in less than a year.

An important event happened the night Faty turned six. Her mother surprised her by telling her that they would sing and dance in a nightclub in an underground saloon on Lalehzar Nou Street. This was a sort of night club where all the truckers and cabdrivers, butchers, grave-diggers, blacksmiths and every good-for-nothing, two-bit city hoodlum competed for a few over-the-hill-dancers, with tree-trunk-thick thighs and huge sagging breasts, who would prostitute on the side to supplement their incomes.

The place was jam-packed with men of all ages; smoke and noise had already filled the place when Esmat and Faty arrived late. Their hearts were full of hope and their stomachs swarmed with butterflies. To calm her nerves, to do away with her stage freight, Esmat downed a few shots of aragh-e keshmesh-e dow atesheh, a two-flames vodka extracted from raisins (one notch better in quality and in strength than aragh sagy), before she sang and played three tunes while Faty performed her dances. Little Faty became so deliriously excited that she even joined in singing with her high-pitched squeaky voice. The second they finished their routine, the audience showed their overwhelming enthusiasm by showering them with bills and coins, and they didn't stop as Faty and Esmat bowed once and left the stage.

The talented mother and daughter cheerfully counted the money backstage while the loud applause and whistling continued generously. With all the excitement and appreciation expressed by the intoxicated customers, the nightclub owner asked Esmat to return the next night to perform. It more than pleased her when she heard the unsolicited request, for unbelievably, it represented an enormous opportunity, a vision of a new life for her. A golden dream was unexpectedly turning into an unbelievable reality.

By now Faty had learned two dozen songs by listening to radio and was accomplished in several dances: the simple waist and buttocks twisting, with the meaningless curling of hands above the head, called the Tehrani dance, which looked like someone trying to screw a light bulb into its socket; the fast artistic footwork of Lezgy, Caucas, Georgian and Kurdish dances; and the favorite of all men, the sexually arousing belly dance. She had memorized the lyrics of several rhythmic love songs with a few slightly profane words thrown in as spice. To her the dancing and singing was not work; it was shameless pleasure and fun – the best way to please her mother at first, and then others and, unknowingly, she had coined an identity for herself.

As Faty grew older, her mole-sized breasts swelled with the sweet juice of youth and became round and big enough to fill up the palms of any adult male, even with enormous hands. The more nightclubs she and her mother performed in, the more fame and fortune poured down on the garden of their fantasies, nurturing the bloom of every bud of their dreams. Their names sounded unfitting and inappropriate for their profession, so Esmat metamorphosed to Helen and Faty, Zee-Zee, to have a more European ring. The new names made them feel as if they had become entirely different people, who had never existed before. With new names they felt their rearview mirrors shattered, they were well protected from their acrimonious past. With no past and no sad memories to chase them, or to hinder their advancement on the road to a bright and glorious future, life began to be more exciting than Esmat had ever dreamed.

They even sang a few rhythmic songs with cheap street language lyrics on the radio one Friday morning when every ear was glued to the sound box. That helped them land a job at the prestigious Shekofeh-Nou Nightclub, where the pay was beyond their imaginations.

Since the press did not have the freedom to publish social and political events of true importance during the Shah's regime, and people who dared to write the truth were jailed and their pens were broken, no valuable material worth reading appeared in the daily or weekly publications. Instead, not one week would pass without Helen and Zee-Zee's pictures appearing on the cover of some weekly magazine – Zan-e Emrooz (Today’s Woman), Weekly Etelauat (Weekly Information), and a host of other publications.

Zee-Zee was only fifteen, but was on her way to becoming a symbol of womanhood in a society that was always preoccupied with its tumultuous past, a past that was wrongly perceived as “glorious,” intoxicated in its aimless present and paranoid and frightened of its unknown future.

Helen bought a three-bedroom house on the city’s north side, where the cool breezes from the Alburz Range soothed the skin in summertime, and where most of the rich and famous lived. She moved to the new house with no intention of ever going back to her old neighborhood. She stayed away from all her previous neighbors as if they had all contracted the plague or some other incurable disease.

When she was known as Fat Esmat, she was fat, poor, and if not ugly to the eyes of the general public, surely unattractive to a certain class. But she was always in demand by a different class of men who were mainly attracted to, among other things, her big body, the texture and the color of her skin, her profanities and perverted way of lovemaking that they couldn’t expect from their wives. If in the past she was destitute and didn’t know what to do to make herself eye-catching to men of distinction, now that the money was pouring in every which way, she knew exactly what to do to make herself increasingly in demand to rich men and even to men of some stature. Now “Helen” wasn’t a sleekly looking model type, but she was proportionately and symmetrically “chubby,” seductively “plump,” and, thanks to the magic of modern beauty salons and all those bottles and jars of chemicals, she had become increasingly voluptuous and attractive – a famous woman who could easily travel within the circle of the nation's wealthiest. She had many rich men hanging around like bees around a freshly bloomed flower. They relentlessly pursued her everywhere. She mixed business with pleasure and made a fortune in both fields. She only slept with rich and generous men, who gave her expensive gifts, men who paid to prove their manhood to others and especially to themselves. In contrast, Zee-Zee never showed any interest in men. She had grown tall, endowed with her mother’s large breasts, her hair was bleached blonde and artfully made up. Her mouth that had resembled a rosebud when she was in her early teens had blossomed to a full-bloomed rose now, glistening with a light shade of red. She was beautiful, innocently sensuous, and more pleasing to the eyes of men than was her mother. Many men were interested in the promise of her awakening sexuality and some of those, ego-driven, became even hungrier for her when they experienced her disinterest, regardless of the expensive gifts they offered.

With a few years of sporadic attendance at elementary school, Zee-Zee had learned how to read and write by the time she was eight, and now in the lonely hours of her teenage years, she showed a great interest in reading all sorts of books, especially classical poetry. Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat became her favorite, and she memorized many of the great poet’s quatrains and often sang them in her solitude.

Helen was very grateful for Zee-Zee’s lack of interest in men. With no competition from her daughter, she freely developed her lucrative profession on the side, which was intended to secure an independent future for her and her future progeny. After each performance, she would take Zee-Zee, “her tired baby,” home. She would make sure Zee-Zee ate the right quality and quantity of healthy food and went to bed on time. She would then accept men. Although men’s appearances were different from the sort she used to serve when she was poor, in essence they were the same; with a fistful of petrodollars, thanks to OPEC, they were at times even more rude and crude.

She never sipped another drop of Iranian brewed aragh sagy, or aragh-e keshmesh-e dow atesheh. Instead, Johnnie Walker Black Label on the rocks, straight shots of imported Russian aragh, a few glasses of aged French red wine or bubbly French champagne became her favorites.

The decade of the 70s appeared to pass with supersonic speed, while Esmat and Faty had the world in the palms of their hands, permanently secure beyond all standards, living among the clouds. With her increased wealth, Helen purchased a brand new Mercedes Benz 600, hired a chauffeur, a maid, and a private secretary. The flow of fortune and fame was unstoppable. She bought another, bigger, more luxurious house, new furniture, jewelry and more European dresses. Acquiring wealth was no problem; money seemed to grow on trees. Like autumn leaves it fell on the stage in the evenings and between her thighs at night. Her only problem was that she couldn’t spend it fast enough. She had come a long way from her past life of deprivation and poverty.

Wealth overhauled Helen’s exterior completely. In the past if she consciously had to defend herself with her profanity and fake external roughness; now she softened and sweetened her words, filtering them first in her mind before passing them through her lips. Of course, now and then, when sexually arouse a few profane words, in compromising positions, sounded exciting, like spice to make her more deliciously palatable.

Wealth had done its magic. No one could imagine this new Helen as Fat Esmat of only a few years ago. Everything about her looks, manner, voice and movements signified a woman of high class – a symbol to be envied by the rest – a woman to be emulated by others.

One night a wealthy unattractive Arab from Kuwait with a lot of unrepaired pockmarks on his dark brown face approached Helen in a nightclub. He confessed his love and desire for Zee-Zee and offered a blank check to Helen if Zee-Zee would marry him, give up show business and live in his palace like a queen. Helen took a good look at the man and refused instantly, lying, telling him that her baby was engaged to a rich young man from good stock, soon to be married. Knowing that Arabs love Persian women, especially the “chubby” ones, she showed him a sample of her own body by pulling up her skirt to a few inches above her knees. She let him peek and touch all that soft and smooth skin that the man had never seen on any woman on the other side of the Persian Gulf.

The man went on fondling Helen’s thighs, inching his hand toward her vagina, while kept bargaining, hoping he could strike a deal with her and lure her to bed. She refused his offers, but allowed him to come close, sample her by touching her shapely thighs and kissing her cheek and touching her breast, hoping to raise her ultimate price. The man, immature in the art of picking up a woman, didn’t have a clue about the game he was getting himself into. He was about to lose his mind with the hors d'oeuvres Helen was “generously”offering, and, being overloaded with hormones and petrodollars, he wanted to indulge himself with the main dish. He extended an offer of one hundred thousand dollars if Helen would join him for a one-week trip to the south shores of the Persian Gulf in his private custom-made 727 Jet. She accepted the offer coquettishly, received the money in advance, and told him she would join him in Kuwait in two days then went to his hotel. Once they arrived in his room in the Continental Hotel, Esmat refused to get naked, only pulled her skirts half up, lay on her back – and let the man receive enough pleasure for his money. Helen never set foot in Kuwait and never saw the Arab’s palace or any other parts of Kuwait.

She would brag about her high value to her other customers often, but kept it a secret from her “tired baby.”