A story from the life of Diana Nayeri
In the midnight I was talking to my
father, I told him about my divorce. Father was in Iran and we used to speak
once in a month. He was worried about me after my divorce, because in Iran a
divorced woman has to face many difficulties in the whole life.
But he coated a niece saying of Rumi,
telling me that I will be happy again. The sound of the counting of his beads
was coming to my ear. He uses to keep the beads with him everywhere. They
contain 33 beads- same as the number of arches present under Isfahan’s Si-o-She
Bridge. According to few Muslims, this is also called the age of the
inhabitants of Paradise; and also my age at the time of my Divorce.
I, my mother and my brother escaped from
Iran in 1987. Since then I’ve seen my father four times. He admires Mevelvi
verse and he had a thick mustache. He works as a dentist and always tries to
live happy. This is so much difficult for him travel outside Iran because of
his horrible English, and his inability to eat things other than the Iranian
dishes.
Father stopped calling me after; we had
conversation on the bus. All the members of my close minded family stopped calling
me after hearing about my divorce. I was
alone in Iowa for two years in graduate school. In those times my only family
member taking care of me was my mother, who phoned me and wrote me from
Thailand whenever she got time.
On few occasions I saw my
father using face book. He used to post poetry mostly. Then he started
uploading photos of beautiful women, perhaps thinking he was saving them. I sent
him a message with anger telling him not to upload such things. Once he tagged
himself in a picture of me and a girlfriend. After few days he shared a video
clip of my Iowa class fellows singing around a fire. I gave him another angry
message to stop him from sharing. But he didn’t reply.
After few years I again fell in love. I
became pregnant. I and my beloved were not married, but we were so happy to
become parents. My partner was also divorced.
After one month my mother sent me an email
titled, “Your father.” It began: “After four years or more I talked with your
father.” She told me that, “You had misunderstood something few years before
and that your father wanted to explain on phone.”
Father
called me after few days. I complained him that why de didn’t contacted me for
years. He told me that at that time, seeing my angry messages he broke his
computer. From that day he had got no computer.
I tried to memorize that when did
I told him, such a thing. Then he made me understand that I expressed my anger
on him few years before on face book and he was resented from me for that
reason.
I told him
that I don’t memorize such an accident. He joked saying that “that was an
important accident.” Then I told him about my pregnancy, and he became so
happy. He told me few niece quotations of Jalaludin Rumi, about life, and told
me to call him necessarily after knowing the sex of the child, for he wanted to
select a name of his own choice.
Before closing
the phone he again suggested me that I should try to live my own life happily,
and making rules for others make people unhappy.
After few
days the doctor told me that I was having a baby girl. When I told my father,
he told me a list of few hilarious names like ‘Hourvash’ , ‘Mehrandokht’ etc. By
force I stopped the giggle. He also told me that these are like common in
Iranian tradition and English people.
I accepted
his choices and noted them.
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