Diary of a Persian Girl

DIARY OF A PERSIAN GIRL, by Grandma Helen

Through the narrow lane of the cypress trees Malektaj was walking together with her aunt. She had been raised by her aunts and now they were very close and inseperable friends.
Holding her diary tightly under her arm, she walked a few steps ahead of her aunt. Looking up at the tall cypress trees she tried to locate the evening crickets. The air was full of the fragrance of tender leaves. The shepherd's flute rolled music down the hill.
They were in their summer home. Every evening they took the same walk before sunset to relax by the stream.
They removed their light chadoors, folded them neatly and placed them in a fork of a nearby tree.
Malektaj sat upon a rock, her diary in in her lap, and gazed at the sunset. The sun had sank behind the mountain, weaving a wine-colored ribbon along the horizon. Her aunt, stretching on the grass, looked at the sky and said, “Tomorrow is going to be a very hot day, Malektaj.” She closed her eyes to take a nap.
*
* *
Malektaj didn’t hear her, sitting on a rock leaning against a tree trunk, was gazing dreamily at the flow of the running water, and breathing in deeply the cool evening air. She plucked some leaves off a nearby bush, crushed them, and cast them into the running water one after another. The warble of a nightingale was heard from the distance. A breeze, passing through the treetops, swished the leaves.
Whether it was the effect of the refreshing cool air or the enchantment of the twilight—she could not explain, but she felt an inner stirring, something very unusual. But no, not unusual, but rather a distant, forgotten, and disturbing emotion, both a sort of sublimation and a vigorous vivacity. Wholly refreshed, her veins beat with youthful blood. Her heart commenced to pound fiercely. She felt as if she had never been hurt by the poisonous thorns of unpleasant events. She blushed like a schoolgirl, as in those days when she had loved for the first and last time in her life. When she had been set aflame with hopes for the future, when her heart
had been caressed by dream pleasures. But what did it matter that her hopes had never been realized? What did it matter that everything had been a delusion and a transitory dream? She had
felt all that from the depths of her heart and she was content.
*
* *
Malektaj was confused by her inner disturbance. There had been a time when she had been an ardent writer in her diary. She had written ceaselessly, and reading her own writings she had relieved
her past moments, happy and sad. But that seemed to her
centuries ago. It was a long time since she had not written. She
had merely avoided remembering the past and had lost her craving for writing.
Malektaj tenderly kept and carried with her the half-written diary in the hope that someday she might be inspires to resume writing, but in vain.
Sitting by the stream and gazing intently at the running water she thought, “Our life, too, comes like this and flows on, comes and goes without leaving a trace or a purpose.” Then she plucked some more leaves and cast them away on the flowing water. And suddenly she spied approaching on the water a little yellow and blue bird, caught among the rushes of the opposite bank and held there in front of her eyes. Motionless as a statue,
her hands in her lap, green leaves crushed in her palm, Malektaj gazed at the corpse of the bird and shuddered. Bad memories made her shudder. The water flowed on, beating against the wings, tearing them off and carrying them down the river. It seemed to her that she was looking at the picture of her own life and was reading the pages of her own memoirs. A flood of emotion stormed her inside world and she felt an irresistible urge to write again. Hurriedly she opened the book in her lap, but before
writing she had a desire to read some of it.
*
* *
“From the day I was born I was doomed by a whim of fate. I was the sixth daughter to be born to our family. My mother dreaded the thought. Before my birth, my father had threatened my mother, saying, ‘If this one, too, is a girl you shall leave this house. I need a boy child.’ My mother’s heart was atremble. She tried to convince my father that this one would be different from the others. That it would be what he wanted, by all means.
“The day of my arrival swiftly drew nigh. It so happened that my father was away the day I was born. He had gone to the village to check on the crops. My mother was happy that at least that day my father was away.
“At last the fatal moment arrived. And lo! ‘God have mercy,’ murmured my mother, ‘it seeems this one too is going to be a girl. My
pains have the same course. But didn’t everyone assure me that this time it would be different?’
“Thus, I came into the world--a perfect misfortune for my parents. Whisperings reached my mother’s ear, and that much was enough to make her know the truth. She fainted away. When she came to, she cried and refused to see the face of the newly born. ‘Let me alone, I don’t want to, I will not nourish her. Let her die. Don’t let her father know about it until she is dead,’ my miserable mother kept repeating.
“When my aunt saw that it was impossible to dissuade my mother from her resolution, she offered to adopt me. My aunt was childless, and my mother agreed. They signed the papers, and from then on I became the child of my aunt.
“My father was counting the days. He promised big gifts to the villagers and the Dervishes, if the child was a boy. But the news was delayed. By my father’s calculations the event should have already taken place.
*
* *
“The city was a long way off, quite seperate from the village. After long hesitation, and impatient, my father left his work half finished and, ridign his horse, returned to the city.
“When at last he arrived home, three weeks had elapsed since my birth, and my mother was not there that day. The servants related all the details to my father, who now furious, returned to his room in a sullen mood.
“My mother came home trembling, but my father would not see her, and left the house for good. Months later news came that my father had found another woman. He had married a young girl so he could have a boy child. Very often my aunt has told me the sad story of my birth at my request.
“I am now a schoolgirl. They tell me I am very beautiful. My aunt, disregarding all the national schools in the town, has enrolled me in the American Missionary School.
“Under the influence of my aunt I have formed definate ideas about love and marriage. Her life, which was wrecked in an unfortunate marriage, has given a living lesson to me. She has taught me to look upon men with the utmost contempt. ‘They do not deserve your love. They cannot love as unselfeshly as women do,’ she often told me with bitterness, and I agreed with her.