Faramarz

Mahvash transferred to our university during my junior year. She had a larger frame than the girls in our group. She also carried a few extra pounds. As soon as she stopped by our table at the Student Center, we all thought of the women in the “Sex-e-Aab-Gooshti” movies of the 70’s! She was “working-class” sexy! She also had an accent from “somewhere out there” in Iran that made her seem rough and un-polished.

She was different from the girls in our group. These were the good girls from the good families of northern Tehran, the kind of girls that you could introduce to your parents.  And you always mentioned their last names. “Oh, you must be related to Mr. so and so”, a parent would say. “Yes, that’s my uncle”, she would answer proudly. They were so nice and wholesome, but yet so Pastorizeh! Mahvash was nothing like that. She was all raw and un-sophisticated.

She was in the poli-sci class with my roommate Babak and also with one of the main leftist student organizers on campus, Parviz (Sandinista). She followed Babak to our table at the Student Center soon after the semester started. Babak introduced her to everyone. The girls at our table looked her over disapprovingly. She sat on our side of the table with the guys. We asked her where she transferred from and as she was answering, she looked like that she was in heat! She had a melancholy look on her face. Sexuality was oozing out of her pores. Her eyes looked deep into your eyes and almost melted them. She needed a man, any man!

As we learned quickly, she was fun to be around as one of the guys, but nothing more. So my roommates and I quickly decided that we needed to find her a boyfriend. That way we could keep her around, have fun, and did not have to pay a price for it!

Morteza became our prime candidate. He had just come to the US to get his masters in mathematics. He was small and shy and lacked social skills for a person in his late 20’s. We called him Morteza Gonjishkeh (sparrow!) He always listened intently as the guys were talking about their dates. To him, dating a blond woman was like conquering and defeating the Western Civilization! It was a far away dream. I don’t think that Mahvash ever noticed him.

It took a while to convince Morteza to chase Mahvash. “What you need to do is buy a bottle of wine, leave it outside her apartment door and then call her from the public phone in the lobby and say that you are her secret admirer. Then tell her that you would have loved to share the wine with her, but you understand if she says no. And then tell her that you’d hope that she would think of you as she drinks the wine by herself.” I proposed.  “Buy a bottle of Lancer and put a ribbon around the neck. Girls love that kind of stuff!” Somebody chimed in.

We didn’t see either Mahvash or Morteza for a few days. We were not sure if Morteza had succeeded or was strangled to death! Then they walked in together to the Student Center. As Morteza left to get some coffee and cookie for her, we started asking her questions and leading her down the path to tell us the story. She just laughed and didn’t say much until someone said “He is a little chili pepper, isn’t he?” She laughed again and said:  

فلفل نبين چه ريزه،  بشكن ببين چه تيزه

That was the quote of the day for us!

She lost interest in Morteza after a couple of weeks and started sitting at the leftist students’ table on and off. That I could not understand. She had nothing in common with them. The leftist students on our campus looked down at anybody who had a social life. To them, we all should have stopped everything else and just talked politics and got involved with what was happening in Iran. And if we allowed them, they would have lectured us about the harms of going out to the clubs and having fun. It was all about serious politics.

A while later, my roommate Babak spotted Parviz’s Camaro in the parking lot of Mahvash’s apartment building. He decided that it was too good of a story to pass up. He went up the stairs and knocked on the door. About a minute later, Mahvash opened the door. She had just come out of the shower. Her hair was wet and she wore a towel around her chest that barely covered her thighs. And sitting quietly on the edge of the sofa was Parviz! He pretended that he was reading a book and totally unaware of Mahvash, and whatever else that was going on. Babak stayed long enough to make sure that Parviz was not going to get away with this. It was amazing to see how someone with basic primal instincts like Mahvash could so easily expose the hypocrisy of some of these pseudo intellectuals.

She soon gave up on the leftists. They were too boring for her. A couple of weeks before the finals, she stopped at our table to chat. We teased her for a while and then asked her how her love life was. She sighed and said in that distinct accent:

“God, I hope that some bad ass black guy would come along and thoroughly clean my pipes!”

اى خدا،  يك سياه ِ نره خرى پيدا بشه كه يك فصل حسابى ترتيب ما رو بده

We just couldn’t believe that those words came out of her mouth!

I don’t know if she ever got her wish. But these days, many years later, whenever I get together with my college buddies and have a few drinks, at some point, somebody would say with that distinct accent:

اى خدا، يك سياه ِ نره خرى پيدا بشه كه يك فصل حسابى ترتيب ما رو بده

And we all laugh!