The Conjugal Visit

She stood on the stool and looked at the mountainsides of northwestern Tehran, at her last sky which was still struggling to embrace dawn. She draws in her last breath.

The Conjugal Visit

When her sister was handing over the white dress to the guardhouse Narges could not stop sobbing her heart out. She pulled her chador tightly around her face and wept uncontrollably.

But Sheida received the dress with delight. She was overjoyed. That night she had a date with Mansour. A conjugal visit. It had been a year since Mansour had last asked for a conjugal visit. For a full year she had not embraced Mansour and had not kissed him.

She had no doubt that Mansour would bring him good news. She wanted to a have a perfect conjugal night with that white dress.

Combing her long and bushy hair would take about an hour. She was the ward representative and had minions of every description around her to do her bidding. One was arranging her dress and another poured her tea while the third one was combing her hair.

They were her minions but they also loved her. She defended their rights when it was called for so they did not mind it that much if once in a while she pushed them around. She was proud but she watched out for everybody.

It was as if she wanted to hide her fears behind her pride, a kind of trumped-up self-confidence. Her speech was powerful in a strange way and impressed everybody. She was not well-read but there were many well-read people who were so impressed by her that they followed her case.

Even her lawyer always praised her. In the courtroom she always talked better than her attorney. Perhaps this was what made the plaintiffs even angrier.

She pretended that she was not afraid of anything but if you looked carefully you would notice a weird kind of tremor in her hands.

Her hands were delicate and she was short but her voice was loud and clear. As she was getting ready she was whispering to herself:

“Too late to wait.
The last word this is.
Too late to wail.
The last moment this is.”

She came to herself and bit her lip.

“What is this nonsense going through my mind?” she asked herself. “Tonight I am getting good news. No, it is not too late to wait.”

Wasn’t nine years late enough?

She had spent nine of her best years in life behind bars. For nine years she had envied the freedom of the birds, the same birds which every day in the prison yard she would throw around seeds for them. The birds flew away over the high prison wall when they had their fill and she would go back to her cell behind bars.

Court appearance after court appearance, interrogation after interrogation and the reconstruction of the murder scene.

Had she really murdered somebody with her delicate small hands?

Had she fought with Mansour’s official wife with her tall and athletic body?

The screeching of the iron gate echoed in her ears. It was Mansour.

****

***

Behind the bars they call them “minders”, although they themselves know better than anybody else that they are prison guards condemned to a life sentence of freedom.

In front of the door to the visiting room Narges had stuffed her chador under her arm and was fidgeting.

“Is this girl Sheida crazy?” she kept asking herself.

“Does she believe that Mansour has managed to get the forgiveness of the family to save her from hanging? If he wanted to get their forgiveness he would not have left her here to rot for nine years. Why did she went so enthusiastically to sleep with a man who is betraying her?

“She wasted the best years of her life for this rickety good-for-nothing guy who is spitting opium juice all the time. Why did she took the blame for the murder in the first place? Now nobody believes her when she keeps denying it.”

She could hardly breath so she sat down on the chair next to the door. In the final nights of a prisoner condemned to death there must always be a minder to watch over her. It is a ridiculous affair. You must guard against the prisoner committing suicide and violating the rules of the game. She is going to be finished off so what difference does it whether the executioner take her life or she herself.

She wrapped her feet around the legs of the chair and pondered about the relationship between Mansour and Sheida. “Well, it is love.”

Love?

Perhaps it was. She did not know much about the meaning of love. But who falls in love with a prison guard? Another prison guard?

Narges remembered the day when Fattah, the neighbor’s son, came to ask for her sister’s hand in marriage. She was all of 17.

How could Fattah do it?

Why did he do it?

Wasn’t Fattah supposed to marry her? Now why her sister? Hadn’t Fattah promised her marriage ten times on the roof next to the cupola? Hadn’t Fattah touched her newly blossomed breasts ten times? Since she turned 14 until the last time that they met the roof was their world. Now her world was reduced to the size of that roof, protected only by its cement walls.

“We would be so lucky if we could get a bride from the house of Haj Morad,” Fattah’s mother had said, “but the bride cannot be Narges. Narges, with her pockmarked face? You better marry Nahid. She is both pretty and tall.”

Nahid was twenty years old, three years younger than Fattah. She was both pretty and tall. In fact all her siblings were good looking and tall. She, the youngest, came out as an ugly duckling. She always believed that she would have a happy ending like the ugly duckling, but it did not happen that way. Even now outside the room for conjugal visits she was chewing her lips because it had not happened like that. It was ten years ago and now her sister is a mother of two.

Well, if her face was not pockmarked, she would have leaned whether love is worth dying for or not. She did not die for Fattah but she still both held a grudge against her sister and felt ashamed because she remembered that her brother-in-law had touched her body, because her brother-in-law had seen the same breasts which had remained small and were now sagging a little.

The screeching of the bed in the room was driving her crazy. The only sound in these labyrinthine cell blocks was screeching—the screeching of metal doors, the screeching of double-decker beds, the screeching of the bed for conjugal visits.

She felt that the prison was the safest place for her. She was afraid of free and happy people outside. In here nobody paid any attention to the pockmarked face of Narges. In a way she held a grudge against people, people who walked together and laughed together. The screeching of the beds for conjugal visit was nauseating her.

***

****

A strange silence descended on the women’s ward; a silence broken only by the outside wailing of the winds of the last month in autumn.

It was all silence and hidden tears. All prisoners, even Narges, wanted to cry. Some had pulled down their chadors or scarves over their faces so that nobody would see their tears.

After nine years they had become like a like a family. Sheida, with all her bad moods and good moods, with all her singing and dancing, had lived with them. In this prison both Narges and Sheida had turned nine. Narges would lose something if Sheida was to go.

But Sheida was laughing and happy.

As Narges was conducting Sheida to her solitary cell Sheida whispered in her ear that “Mansour said that I would not swing. I would get out.”

Narges said nothing. She was certain that Mansour was lying again. “But what if Mansour is telling the truth this one time?”

It makes no difference whether the family forgives Sheida or she swings from the gallows. Narges was not going to see her ever again. Narges always viewed Sheida with envy. She envied her pretty face, her golden hair, her warm voice, and her self-confidence. Now Narges was going to lose something on the inside. Sheida was the goddess whom she had praised many times in her solitude.

Sheida was singing in her solitary cell, and she was singing loudly:

“Your aroma has permeated
my aged robe.
Good to go with you.
Good to go, always to go.”

Narges was walking alone and chewing her lips in the corridor. How happy was Sheida after the conjugal visit. The conjugal visit had overjoyed Sheida. Had Mansour’s black and blue lips energized her? But from his droopy eyes you could see the condition that he was in from a mile away.

***

“Repent instead of this nonsense,” the grumbling and swearing mullah who had come to record Sheida’s will angrily told her. “You have no more time. Ask god for forgiveness.”

Sheida burst out laughing. “Sir, god forgive me for what? For love? For the 9 years of prison that I did not deserve. I am getting out of here, so I have a lot of time. I have a lot of time to forgive God. I have a lot of time for god and the cosmos to pay me back for 9 years.”

The fat mullah who had arrived gasping left gasping. “She doesn’t know these are her final hours?” he asked Narges. “If she knew she would not have blasphemed like that.”

Once again the sound of silence was the only sound that could be heard along the cold and damp prison cells.

***

*****

The tired autumnal twilight was singing a song with the wind.

Dawn was yet to embrace the sky from behind the mountains of northwestern Tehran.

Clothed in white with heelless sandals and her hands tied behind her back Sheida stepped into Evin’s prison yard from behind metal doors.

Sheida’s feet slipped when she saw the gallows.

Mansour was keeping his head bent down.

The lawyer, a few other men with Ladan’s mother and another woman whom Sheida had never seen had lined up. The line to watch her hang was not long but it took a lifetime to pass it by.

When Sheida reached Mansour, she paused a little. She was waiting but after 9 years at last the bent head of Mansour made her believe that she had been deceived

A teardrop ran down Sheida’s cheek.

She stood on the stool and looked at the mountainsides of northwestern Tehran, at her last sky which was still struggling to embrace dawn.

She draws in her last breath.

After he put the noose around her neck the executioner looked up at sky to get rid of what was blocking his throat. Something was blocking his throat.

Mansour kicked off the stool.

Sheida was swinging in the wind.

***

*****

Sheida’s golden hair was shining like a sun in the dark twilight of the last month of autumn. The wind was dancing through her hair, and she was swinging from the rope.

The murder victim was screaming from her grave.

She was the only one who knew that it was the murderer who had kicked off the stool from under Sheida.