Free Wedding Song by Farideh Goldin

talk about what made them happy, but mostly of their hardships. Looking back, the idea was quite modern, a natural support group down the street on the way to the market place, where women could
dard-e-del
, speak of the ache in their hearts, where they could share their miseries and be comforted by the knowledge of the other women’s hardships.
    At these gatherings, I ran errands for my grandmother, bringing refreshments and cleaning the dishes filled with the shells of watermelon seeds. If my mother was not at home cooking and cleaning, she sat there invisible, silent. She was an outsider, and by extension I feared that I could be one as well. For my mother to share her secrets, to tell of the ache in her heart, she would have to talk about the people present, my grandmother and the rest of my father’s family. Complaints about one’s in-laws were the most basic
dard-e-del
, the essence of mental health, the one most expected to be discussed with one’s family and friends. My mother had no family around and was not allowed to establish close friendships. Since we were well known and respected in the community, any complaints from my mother would spoil the aura of stability, integrity, and if not happiness, at least harmony of the family.
    For generations, our ancestors had been given the honor of serving as community judges, bringing the community together and solving problems in order to keep away from the Moslem courts. But that umbrella of justice did not protect my mother. She lived in silence for much of my childhood, lost in her unspoken thoughts.
A Day at the
Hamam
    Silently, my mother gave me baths in our backyard on summer days. When the heat rose off the bricks in shimmering waves, when my feet burned even through my shoes, she dumped well-water in a large basin and left it in the yard to warm in the desert sun. I sat naked on a low wooden stool, letting her scrub me with the rough cloth of a
kiseh
, a square glove used as a wash cloth. Dead skin peeled in black rolls. Her touch was the measurement of her inner turmoil. If I was being skinned, I sat quietly,knowing that she was going to be silent as the volcano inside her heated. If she was gentle, I asked her to sing me a song.
    “
Arousaké khoshgele man
,” she sang. “My beautiful doll wears a red dress/ She sleeps on a blue velvet bed.” She folded the soaked, pulverized leaves of
konar
in my hair, massaging my scalp. “My doll, wake up, wake up/ Go to sleep at twilight/ Now it’s time to have fun, jump rope and run.”
    Sometimes when she washed herself in the yard, scrubbing her rough heels with the pumice stone, I could hear her singing it to herself.
    When the weather turned cool, she washed me in the kitchen. The garden filled with orange and tangerine trees separated the kitchen from the main building. Maman pulled the water out of the well in the kitchen and warmed it in cooking pots on top of mud stoves. Her cheeks puffed as her mouth sucked the air in to blow on the glowing charcoal. Her eyes turned red and watered. A thick smoke swirled around the dark kitchen and found its way out of the paneless windows. The log burned bright orange.
    I sat on a stool shivering instead of rubbing the pumice stone on my heels.
    “What’s with you?” Maman screamed. “You’ll catch pneumonia if you don’t hurry up.” She put a pot of warm water next to me. I poured it over my head and felt the
konar
slide down my back, cold and slimy where the pulverized leaves were fine, and the rest remained in my hair, coarse and grainy. I hugged my knees for warmth and watched the water find its way to a shallow drain that carried it to the yard.
    “You wasted all that water.” She sighed as she poured a cup of water on my hair. “Hurry up. Rub it out.”
    “It’s gone,” I lied. My teeth chattered. I grabbed the towel, dried myself and pulled a dress over my head. It stuck to my damp body. The water dripped from my hair, found its way through my collar,