“Death is a camel that sits at everybody’s door.” This is what we Persians say about dying. The camel sat at my grandmother’s door when I was thousands of kilometres away. I was in Sydney to be precise, where my wife Aida and I now lived a quiet western-style suburban life, away from all the turmoil my work as a journalist in Iran could bring. Two weeks after Grandma died, I received a long-distance phone call from my mum: “Dear, I’m sorry we didn’t tell you, but Dá passed on.”
Dá was the woman whose house in Mamolan, a small town in south-west Iran, was where I spent most of my summers. A stone-walled home, right in the middle of a row of houses built on the hillside, stretching from the main road to the top of the hill. If we arrived in the afternoon, Dá would be sitting on the top step of the two steps connecting the ground to the door, smoking her shisha. I could see her smile all the way from where I stood, my hand in my mum’s, before we started the breathtaking climb. When we finally reached the house, Dá would hug me, kiss me, and then carry me all the way through the hallway that connected the door to the yard, where the lemon tree shadowed over a small pool. There, was home.
Grandma’s house was the refuge from the horrors of my childhood – I was the only child of an ill-fated marriage that should have never happened. My dad wasn’t a family-loving man: that would be the best way to describe it without being disrespectful. He had a temper and a heavy hand to support it. Everyone knew this, but he was an old man from a big city, with a big car and a big house, and my mother was a young girl; one of eight in a struggling family from the countryside. It was near-impossible for my mother to divorce my father, and there wasn’t much her family could do to protect her in those days.
Kian Farzam. Source: Supplied
Dá was strong and opinionated, sometimes to the point of annoyance. My dad may have been the king of his castle, but when we were on her turf, he was just a serf, not even strong enough to gaze into her narrow green eyes. That was when she’d embraced me in her sweet smell of soap. I felt safe. I felt loved.
When we finally reached the house, Dá would hug me, kiss me, and then carry me… There, was home.
Before I left Iran, I went back to Dá’s house to say goodbye. This would be the last time I saw her. By that point, a long time had passed since my childhood. I was a grown man and she was smaller, withered. She held my head in her hands and kissed my forehead. “I will never see you again,” she said with a lump in her throat. I laughed, not realising she would be right.
When the phone call finally came, my grandmother had been dead for two weeks. I was left in darkness on purpose, for my own good. “He can’t make it back in time anyway,” my mum said. “Let’s tell him when the funeral’s over and everyone has calmed down…”
Maybe everyone had calmed down when they told me via Zoom, but their forced smiles were a tragic contrast to the black clothes, puffy eyes and hoarse voices that highlighted Grandma’s absence.
In western culture, the family can keep the body of the deceased for days, so regardless of where they might be in the world, relatives often have time to join the burial. I guess it’s in our nature: we have to see something before we lose it forever, otherwise the void feels deeper. We call it closure.
In Middle Eastern culture however, the body of the deceased needs to be washed, shrouded and buried within 24 hours. So even if you are informed right away, the ominous phone call means you have already lost the chance to find your closure – you have to live with that void, deep and dark and painful, till your own end. That was how I felt about my grandmother.
Grandpa would rub his calloused hand on the tattoo and wink at my grandmother teasingly…
Persians say, ‘earth is cold’, meaning when you put someone in the ground, all the affection and warmth you felt for them, all the pain and grief you have for losing them, will gradually fade away. We get used to people not being around anymore. Life goes on, turning our deep voids into scars.
One year after her death, I went back to visit my grandmother’s grave – a black marble stone with her name on it in large letters: Mah-Nesa. Her name means ‘Moon of Women’, moon being the symbol of beauty in Persian culture, making her the most beautiful of the women. Suddenly, I remembered the tattoo on my grandpa’s arm. It was a picture of Layla and Majnun, the most famous mythical lovers in the Middle East, and it was dated with the day he married Mah-Nesa on the Persian Calendar: 6/2/31. Grandpa would rub his calloused hand on the tattoo and wink at my grandmother teasingly, embarrassing her in front of us, his grandchildren. “Silly old man,” Grandma would say smiling, shyly, knowing how much he loved her. We all did.
“Love you, Dá,” I said at her grave, wiping my tears. “Silly old man,” she would say if she saw me like this. I laughed. Couldn’t feel the scar anymore.
This article has been published in partnership with Sweatshop Western Sydney Literacy Movement.
