The day had arrived. I was both excited and scared. An elaborate meal was being prepared in our huge kitchen. Our “receiving room” (otaagh pazeeraee) had been swept and dusted and the doors to that wing of the house, usually closed during our daily life, had been left open, so I could see the beautiful red carpets and the elaborate furniture from where I was sitting. I could also see all the fruits and pastries arranged on the coffee tables, knowing full well that no one was to touch anything until the guests had arrived.
Though this was one of my mother’s usual lunches with the women of our family, this was also a special day for me. I was looking forward to the arrival of Khaleh Shireen, my mother’s aunt who was really like a grandmother to me. When she arrived I ran to see my mother receive her, take her coat, and guide her to the guest rooms, where she was seated at the top seat of the room, a place of reverence and respect reserved for the eldest.
I was hiding in a corner, watching what was taking place, not wanting to be noticed. I knew they would start looking for me soon enough, for a ceremony awaited me. I still remembered how they had come looking for my older sister last year and had taken her into the room after lunch. I was trying not to remember her yells and tears.
Khaleh Shireen was a tall and gorgeous old lady. Well, thinking about it now, she couldn’t have been that old at the time, since she lived a long and prosperous life and passed away in her eighties a while back. To me, however, she looked old. Her beautiful long hair, brightened by henna, was gathered in a long braid all the way to the middle of her back and a big smile was forever perched on her lips, making her squint her eyes. Her deep throated voice and laughter was at once a reminder of life and uninhibited expression, and a little scary and intimidating for me, a girl of ten.
My mother’s beautiful lunch spread served and taken away, my oldest sisters started serving tea and fruits to all. This is when they called my name. I was by now back to being scared again, fearing pain. I could hear my mother calling me, but I was stubbornly sitting in the corner of our family room behind a curtain, the farthest corner of the house from the guest room.
The curtain shifted and I saw my mother, standing there. She was looking at me with her beautiful eyes, framed in her long dark eyelashes. She said: “Nazy Joon, are you hiding? Are you scared? I can’t lie to you, it will hurt a little bit, but not too much. I thought you really wanted this. It’s O.K. sweetie, Joonam, if you changed your mind, or if you’d like to wait, we can forget it or we can do it another time.”
We walked into the room and someone told Khaleh Shireen that Nazy was ready. She reached in her bag and pulled out a smaller container, her kit. I sat in my mother’s lap, where my entire small frame was covered and held warm with hers. She held my hands and said soothing things in my ears. The opened alcohol bottle spread an unfamiliar smell in my nose. It all looked so serious to me. Khaleh Shireen pulled out her already threaded needle, disinfected the whole simple apparatus in alcohol, and looked at me with a serious face. She said: “Nazy Jaan, you will have to keep your head steady, no big movements honey, O.K.?” And frightened as I was, I shook my head in agreement.
Truth be told, I did scream like a banshee and cried a lot, too, more out of fear than pain. But I never forget the joy of walking around the rest of that day, proudly sporting two rings of blue thread in my ears. I had become a woman at ten.
*****
In the summer of 2005, my 15-year-old son announced that he was going to get his ear pierced. I protested feebly and then I asked him if I could go along. He agreed, no small feat for a teenage boy who normally would rather be caught dead than with his mother on his personal adventures. I was grateful. We went to a tattoo shop on Berkeley’s Telegraph Avenue, where a cute girl covered in tattoos and pierced jewelry all over her body administered the piercing. Just before the piercing expert entered the small stall, I asked my son if he had had a change of heart and he said not. Afterwards we went to have pizza, making a little celebration out of the experience. All the while that day I was remembering a distant day in the house of my childhood, where another celebration had been in progress; this one for me.
*****
I was devastated to see that image on the first page of Iranian.com. I couldn’t bear to look further, I couldn’t bear to click on it. I don’t know where in this world, in which tribe, and in which family those pictures were taken. I won’t say it wasn’t in Iran, for other than a vague and recent knowledge of the heinous practice of female circumcision, I don’t know too much more about it.
Instead of dwelling on the ugliness of it all, protesting its existence as an Arab, African, Central or South American cultural phenomenon, or whether or not this was happening in Iran, too, I retreated into the beautiful and peaceful memories of my own childhood, where women gave love, gave support, gave wisdom, and gave joy to the young girls of their families.
The Iran I grew up in, the Iran which lives forever inside of me, represents a nation and a family that loved and revered its little girls, sent them to school, taught them to think and work, and to celebrate being a woman. Those teachings came in handy for my generation which has been fighting unfairness and inequality of the recent decades with all its might, tooth and nail, and lest anyone is disheartened and mistaken about its outcome, though suffering occasional setbacks and losing some battles, has been winning the war with flying colors.
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