own little room in the evening, when Esmat happened to be in a pleasant relaxed mood, if she had had a “good day” and a few shots of aragh sagy afterward, she would get out an old daf, a large tambourine, and beat some rhythms so Faty could dance. The other poor families would gather around for free entertainment, clap their hands to the rhythms of Esmat's daf and chant a few folkloric songs. That also allowed Esmat to advertise her moonlighting, luring married men to bed late at night to offer them the sweetness of her body, and soon afterward retrieve the money from their tightly held pockets.
Chapter Three
In the late afternoon on a mid-spring day, after Esmat hung all the clothes on the line, leaving them to dry in the sun, she was given some delicious leftover food by the lady of the house. Sitting under the shade of a weeping willow tree in the backyard, she and Faty gorged themselves.
The woman of the house was a meticulously groomed lady – a ravishing, ostentatious woman of pushing fifty who embodied “modern” Iran in all its crude contradictions. She was cheerful but desperate to be entertained by anybody by any method. With her husband, a successful government official at work all day, she had four of her friends, all photocopies of her, flaunting their newly-shaped faces (thanks to numerous plastic surgeries), jewelry, and Western-styled dresses, as guests in her living room. She had run out of gossip and didn't have the slightest clue how to entertain them.
After Esmat and Faty finished their food and it was time to leave, the lady stepped out to the backyard and paid Esmat. She hesitated for a moment and nonchalantly asked her, “You know, you people know a lot of folk songs. ... Do you sing? I mean can you sing some songs for us?”
“Can I sing? Of course, I can, aziz! I will sing like a bolbol for you, and I tell you what! I can play daf better than anybody you known,” she responded enthusiastically, over-exaggerating quite a lot for her singing and musical talent. She then asked the lady, “Do you have a daf?”
“Yes, I do,” she responded happily.
She led Esmat and Faty into the living room and introduced them to the other ladies. She showed Esmat and Faty a place near the door on the floor to sit, not on any furniture, then went to another room and returned with an old daf. She handed it to Esmat and demanded, “Now, play some rhythms for us.”
Like a skilled daf player, awe-struck Esmat began the rhythms with a song, lyrics that rhymed awkwardly – sort of rap songs, mostly composed with comical words, crackling in her throat. When she ran out of city songs, she sang some desert folklore songs that those ladies had never heard. To prolong her performance Esmat ordered Faty, who was strangely unafraid and not shy, to dance. She obeyed immediately and even had sparks of joy glittering in her little eyes. Little Faty moved her feet and curled her chubby hands, synchronizing her movements with the beat while keeping a big smile on her face. She twisted her body from the waist down imitating a voluptuous belly dancer while the guests clapped their hands in rhythm for encouragement. The beat, the movement, the urging and the shininess of the room placed Faty in the clouds, weightless and wingless, flying, soaring like an angel.
After several more songs and dances everybody applauded enthusiastically, primarily for Faty, and congratulated Esmat for having such a precious talented daughter and suggested she should encourage Faty, perhaps even send her for dancing lessons. At the end of all their compliments and advice, all five ladies dug into their purses and handed little Faty money, colorful paper money.
Once they left the house, Esmat snatched the money from Faty’s little hands. As she counted the bills, she was stunned to find out that it was more than ten times the amount she received for washing clothes.
The notion of using her own untapped talent along with Faty's to earn their living, instead of being a rakht shoor, struck her like a pleasant shock. The idea, as farfetched as it seemed, lodged itself in the back of her mind and took on greater weight with every passing minute. It didn't leave her alone all the way home or even over half a bottle of aragh sagy, nor later under the weight of the ugly and stinky body of Mash Abbas, the butcher, who was so tight with his money that always bargained over two rounds of going at it for the price of one because he would always have his orgasm in less then five minutes, regardless how much roasted dombalan, lamb’s testicles, he ate.
Early the next morning, when Esmat woke up, she found sleepy Faty next to her. She stretched her tired body and gazed over at the innocent face that looked like an angel’s. She whispered, “Oh, my God! I can't believe it. I got me a gold mine.”
The following week, Esmat began her new career with the same vigorous determination with which she had once sought a husband, and no obstacle could stop her from realizing her dream.
Life was sweet and easy for Faty. It flowed on smoothly and routinely, in spite of an occasional flare of temper by Esmat. Their entertaining ability and quality spread quickly – all by word of mouth. Esmat would take her to parties, weddings, birthdays and circumcision parties; first, around where they lived, but later, when her reputation mushroomed citywide, invitations came from all over the city. Wearing nice, soft, shiny colorful dresses, Faty would dance her heart out, sometimes until early dawn.
In the past, Esmat’s touches were only slaps to punish little Faty but as their entertainment career got under way and money began to pour in, she stopped beating her baby and began touching her tenderly.
Esmat began to take better care of her own appearance as the money started to roll in. She purchased numerous new dresses, washed her hair more often with perfumed shampoo, reshaped her eyebrows, separating them by plucking the hairs in between, wore makeup and even went on a crash diet. She lost a great amount of weight but soon stopped the dieting when her breasts began to noticeably sag. She remained pleasantly plump. Her hands never touched another piece of dirty laundry regardless how much more her clients were ready to pay for her service – not hers, not her daughter’s and certainly no one else’s. However, she continued to accept customers at night but at a higher price. When more flow of cash kept coming her way, she took her baby to have her teeth straightened after taking care of her own first. Faty's body and face shone with health and cleanliness, fair and delicate, and white as porcelain, all in less than a year.
An important event happened the night Faty turned six. Her mother surprised her by telling her that they would sing and dance in a nightclub in an underground saloon on Lalehzar Nou Street. This was a sort of night club where all the truckers and cabdrivers, butchers, grave-diggers, blacksmiths and every good-for-nothing, two-bit city hoodlum competed for a few over-the-hill-dancers, with tree-trunk-thick thighs and huge sagging breasts, who would prostitute on the side to supplement their incomes.
The place was jam-packed with men of all ages; smoke and noise had already filled the place when Esmat and Faty arrived late. Their hearts were full of hope and their stomachs swarmed with butterflies. To calm her nerves, to do away with her stage freight, Esmat downed a few shots of aragh-e keshmesh-e dow atesheh, a two-flames vodka extracted from raisins (one notch better in quality and in strength than aragh sagy), before she sang and played three tunes while Faty performed her dances. Little Faty became so deliriously excited that she even joined in singing with her high-pitched squeaky voice. The second they finished their routine, the audience showed their overwhelming enthusiasm by showering them with bills and coins, and they didn't stop as Faty and Esmat bowed once and left the stage.
The talented mother and daughter cheerfully counted the money backstage while the loud applause and whistling continued generously. With all the excitement and appreciation expressed by the intoxicated customers, the nightclub owner asked Esmat to return the next night to perform. It more than pleased her when she heard the unsolicited request, for unbelievably, it represented an enormous opportunity, a vision of a new life for her. A golden dream was unexpectedly turning into an unbelievable reality.
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