of his prosperity. It didn’t matter to him a bit whether she was going to be his sexual partner, mutually enjoying the act of lovemaking. All he sought after was a gorgeous doll to alleviate his sexual desire with. Besides, she was good for business. For Zee-Zee, marriage had only one advantage, to rid herself of Helen and all her toxicities, a mother who had betrayed her. She achieved that by right away moving to her husband’s new mansion, to experience the comfort and security of married life.
If there is any truth to the fact that money has a corrupt influence on people, Helen, with all that money in her purse, proved it by being more vulnerable to corruption than ever. She stayed home, to only entertain her admirers whose numbers were fast dwindling. In her lonely hours she would smoke taryak, and when she couldn’t stand the time it would take to prepare the taryak paraphernalia, and the longer time for its grey smoke to give her the high, she shot up heroin. Nothing, of course, could substitute for her the joy and pleasure of having her “baby” next to her. To cope with her depression, she consumed more drugs, only to go into a deeper depression; and a few months later, on a lonely hot summer depressing night, she died of an overdose.
The entire nation mourned her death. Her funeral was a social phenomenon. A record-breaking crowd of more than two hundred thousand people, mostly men, attended her funeral in Tehran. A nation lost an “artist” – a “writer, composer and singer” of the most popular song, “Is This Ass Crooked?” Shaking her fat bottom on stage she’d then respond: “Who says it's crooked?” to hear the uproar from the audience.
In a society where its citizens were not allowed to express their political and social views openly, some articulated, people used Helen's funeral as an excuse to “bravely” demonstrate their defiance in the streets for the Shah’s regime.
Meanwhile, gorgeous Zee-Zee accumulated and collected in the collection book of men many admirers, a young generation saw her as a symbol of success, fortune and fame, a personification of good living, a leading citizen of the “Great Civilization” promised by the Shah. For the older people, especially the affluent, she was the embodiment of sexuality – a perfect example, an emblem of what the acquisition of wealth was all about.
Zee-Zee's price for performing at rich people’s weddings substantially increased as she became more the main attraction on government-controlled television. There was a long waiting list for her performances in events. Meanwhile, her marriage soured before any meaningful relationship could be developed between her and her husband, and soon their hours together were tainted with more misery. Her wealthy husband found another young girl who was willing to give of herself more and demand less in order to become a famous nightclub entertainer. And with the absence of Helen in her life, Zee-Zee, who had tasted a bit of personal freedom, could no longer tolerate the control of a man who had failed to touch her heart and who had meant nothing to her. She welcomed the news of their sudden divorce. In fact, she thought of it as a golden key to open another door to more careless living. She received a large sum of money and property as a settlement. The news of their divorce captured the headlines of the evening papers and satisfied the curiosity and the interest of a nation that was allowed no other news except the constant praising of a self-appointed egomaniac ruler, the Shah.
With a flock of drug-addicted friends around and without Helen to manage her finances, Zee-Zee spent money unwisely, and every two-bit charlatan that came across her path cheated her big time in one business scheme or another. Soon, her bank accounts began to dry up. She started to sell her belongings; her mink coats, cars and houses had to go. She submitted to another marriage, this time to a rich old land developer whose kinds were popping up rapidly, who had thrown a hundred thousand Tomans on the stage one night during one of her performances a year earlier. He lit her cigarettes with thousand-Toman bills, sent her bouquets of flowers and openly admitted to being in love with her, so much so that he could no longer conduct his business properly.
Her second husband, a new breed of bourgeoisie that could be found on every street corner, had started as a bricklayer a decade earlier. But with the magic of petrodollars pouring into the country, he had become a big land developer by building matchbox houses one on top of the other, without observing any building code, and selling to a frenzy of buyers, great consumers who were beginning to subscribe the proposition that the only road to happiness was to live like those “lucky” Westerners, in high-rises, and to consume Western products as much as possible.
The new push toward the gate of the “Great Civilization” promised by the Shah gathered more momentum. Now, the entire nation was passionately in love with their latest model cars and their TV sets. The younger generation of the affluent was trying to live in the fast lane by showing a great appetite for the glory of rock ’n’ roll. Iran had to import it, like everything else, so her youth could dance to its beat, the beat that represented the rhythm and lifestyle of an industrial nation, not of an old agricultural society with a culture almost as old as the history of man. TV shows were popular only if they exhibited sex, twisting bodies, shaking buttocks and breasts of women, wearing shiny revealing dresses. The music and lyrics were no longer important. The more impudent the song, the more demand there was for it, and Zee-Zee provided it on TV for the entire nation.
In the absence of any feeling, Zee-Zee’s second marriage was based solely on economic necessity. Her new husband took care of her debts, bought her things to replace those goods she was forced to sell, took her around the world and even provided her with drugs. Regardless of all these possessions and consumption, she remained unhappy. Soon her husband got tired of dishing out all that cash and getting nothing in return. It resulted in another messy, publicized divorce with a much larger settlement than the previous one, and more headlines, to satisfy the erroneous curiosity of a nation destined to plunge into the chaos.
Zee-Zee's price for each performance rose even higher, to thirty thousand Tomans for a few songs. There wasn't a night turning to dawn that she didn't appear on TV, an unhappy young woman with a forced smile on her lips exhibiting the only thing she thought she had to offer: her well-shaped body covered with not much fabric and a mask of sexuality on her otherwise sad face. She was the outstanding artist of the “Great Civilization.” She was the symbol of a true artist, a model of womanhood, an example of progress – a typical European doll.
The nature of the profession in which she was so deeply immersed had offered her no wisdom to distinguish the difference between love and lust, true friendship and self-indulgent sexual desire. Taking care of her urgent need for emotional security and saving herself from brutal attacks of loneliness, she thought she was in love with a musician and his music – a drug addict. She married him. And when his presence didn’t fill the void, she spent hours in solitude, smoking taryak in his absence. She continued doing so with him. She desperately needed the blanket of taryak’s sedation to cover her misery. Soon, to no surprise of either of them, their relationship soured and broke down, resulting in yet another divorce and more headlines.
Six months before the revolution, her business slowed down as nightclubs lost their customers. Many were ordered to shut their doors by the government to appease the demands of the religious leaders. With no income, Zee-Zee resorted to Helen’s way of making ends meet, by allowing men to purchase the right to the warmth of her cozy bed with their cold cash. She knew well that when they left they wouldn’t leave even one drop of love, or an ounce of caring, as the going price for the joy they received, not even as a little souvenir under her pillow.
Chapter Five
The ripples of discontent grew into dangerous waves of rebellion. Unaware of its adverse effects, the regime-owned television station aired government propaganda in an effort to deceive and calm the dissident and discontented masses. An old society with its ancient values was in the process of violently re-evaluating the results of its amateurish participation in the game of modernism.
Zee-Zee was confined to the four walls of her home during the turbulent days that led to the bloody revolution of February
