but she eluded his grasp with all the naz she had in her bag of tricks, driving him to the edge of sanity. Burning in a fever of passion, powerless, standing in the middle of the room, panting and trembling like a thirsty dog, his brain non-functional, he could no longer take Esmat’s titillating eshveh. He knelt down as if he were consenting to his defeat in this game of love and was willingly prepared to surrender his body and soul for a piece of Esmat. He opened his arms and begged, “Come to me ... I can’t stand it anymore, aziz-e man. ... I can’t live without you anymore, maman-e man [my beauty].” He paused for a gulp of air before saying, “Come to me, bolbol-e man [my nightingale].”
Holding her breasts in her palms, pushing them upward, targeting his heart with both barrels of her nipples, she walked toward him in slow crossed steps like a peacock hen in heat until she reached his mouth and watched him kiss her erect nipples so gently; and then, grinning, she watched him going absolutely wild, struggling to take her entire large breast in his mouth, sucking, going from one to the other.
She allowed him to lay his coarse hands on every curve of her soft body, caressing. When she could no longer stand it, she buried herself in the half-circle of his muscular arms. Gently, he sucked on her swelled lips, lowered her to the floor and nervously hurried to make love to her. She disappointed him by firmly refusing to submit herself to him.
Both naked as newborn babies, he was now about to go out of is mind; full crazy with passion. She was aroused but controlled, calculative and shrewdly manipulative. She was thinking: I have him where I want him. My fish is hooked. All I have to do now is reel him in gently.
He was as hot as an oven and steaming like a locomotive, and the precious seconds were ticking away. Before losing all that good steam completely, she begged him to close his eyes. He obliged helplessly, expecting that she was about to do something erotic or surprise him by a new exotic sexual way of getting on with the urgent business. She offered nothing of the sort. Instead, she rose and fetched a copy of the holy book of Quran from the mantel and put it in front of him on the floor.
When he opened his eyes, as he was told, she demanded, “Put your hand on the book and swear to its holiness that you will never leave me for another woman.”
With sparkles in his eyes, willingly and timidly, he obeyed her like a child. Doing exactly as he was instructed, he placed his right hand on the holy book.
“I swear I will never leave you ziba-e man [my beauty],” he managed to whisper.
Little did she know that in the condition the poor fellow was in with all the testosterones racing up and down his body, he would have surely cut off his right arm if asked; swearing on a single copy of the holy book of Quran or even a stack of them did not pose a problem.
Only then did she give herself wholly to him without any reservation; she enjoyed his touch, his warm skin, his body odor, and cherished his long and short powerful strokes. Afterward, with her head resting on his wide hairy chest, listening to the pounding of his heart, she felt that he was the first man who had ever touched her heart and soul and satisfied her body completely.
Unknown to her then, the love she felt for him at that moment was never to be replaced by any other for the rest of her life. That was when he became her inseparable lover. From then on, a night didn’t turn to dawn without having her warm and soft naked body next to his.
When their relationship reached a stage were every curve of her body was etched in his mind, and he could smell and taste her breasts even when he was alone at work, when he craved for nothing except her company, he knew that that kind of closeness and intimacy was prelude to something more; it required a definite matrimonial commitment.
He was exhilarated and proud to kneel down next to a dolled-up smiling Esmat on the floor in front of a mullah, in a very private ceremony, and convincingly say, “Baleh [I do].”
He had for sure become her husband, her lover, her soul mate, and a wonderful generous provider – a dream man for any girl in Esmat’s social class.
Besides breaking her heart and hurting her deeply, Ali-Akbar's tragic death changed everything in Esmat’s life. She camouflaged her pain and sadness with often-uncontrollable anger and vulgarity. When pouring down considerable amounts of aragh sagy and getting drunk didn't ease the pain of her loss, she tirelessly searched for another husband. When all her tricks failed to lure the man she was involved with into the sanctity and security of matrimony, she went to a fortune-teller but not the same one she had gone to previously. She paid a good sum of hard-earned cash to an old Iraqi Arab “witch” to cast a love spell for her into the tightly closed heart of a strong but boyish-looking man, a butcher, who very much resembled her deceased husband. But it was useless. His heart remained shut. He adamantly refused to prove his permanent commitment to her as a lover by swearing on the holy book, let alone commit himself to the institution of marriage. Sipping the last drops of sweetness that oozed from her fat body, he gradually found her bed each night colder than the night before; he stopped seeing her altogether, and memories of him faded from her mind not long after he was gone.
Having Faty as her unceasing responsibility, her attempts to become a maid again were farfetched – an impossibility, or at least wishful thinking. Life left her with no other option or prospect. She became a rakhat shoor, a clothes washer, for affluent families.
Although rakhat shoori wasn't known to secure anybody's future, it at least provided her a steady income that could put food on her sofreh. It also gave her an opportunity to be around people in the upper echelons of society – the rich people who, at times, would comfort their conscience or hide from their guilt and elevate their sense of well-being by being generous and giving their leftover food to the poor.
She cherished her one-room irreplaceable home. The rent was cheap. The room was comfortable, secure and homey, for she had many sweet memories shadow-dancing over the walls of that little room.
Esmat, like millions of others, no more or no less, was trying her best to keep her head slightly above troubled waters, to stay alive, to have three square meals, a bed, a roof over her head, hope in her heart, a little laughter now and then, a chance to raise her little girl, and hope for a better tomorrow.
Faty had dirty, curly, black hair that often looked like a dried-up mop. With all that unmanageable hair covering her skull, her head appeared much larger, size of an overgrown melon. Her thick black eyebrows met in the middle, like her mother’s, making her look older than her age. She had a narrow and upward-tilted nose over a pair of thin lips. Her teeth were all crooked. In spite of her physical deficiencies and lack of proper hygiene, there was still a bounty of sweetness about her that gleamed from her eyes, especially when she smiled, and that was quite regularly. She definitely had inherited her mother’s soft, smooth attractive white skin.
She was a naturally joyous child, especially around other children. She would openly and passionately hate it when her mother would take her to other people's houses to wash clothes. Without exception, she was not allowed to touch anything or play with the children of the house. Gradually, she began to believe she was different from the other children who lived in the northern part of the city – an inferior sort. Ironically, this understanding of her own inferiority at that tender age defied all the psychological hypotheses, for she grew up without carrying any excess baggage as a damaged child.
She could only sit near where her mother Esmat worked putting a large tray full of soapy water on the ground, squatting down, rubbing, twisting and squeezing the clothes with her hands, as if trying to drain the life out of them, rinsing, twisting and then hanging them on the lines to dry.
The only advantage in going with her mother was that she could eat plenty of mouth-watering leftovers, these being the only times her stomach was full.
Once
