Thirty Seconds of Silence

INTRODUCTION

YALDA CELEBRATION

D

ecember 2018, Herndon, Virginia. It was the night of Yalda, one of the most ancient Persian festivals, celebrated on the longest night of the year, December 21. That's the date that marks the point when nights start to shrink shorter and days start to grow longer. Yalda celebrates the arrival of winter, the renewal of the sun, and the victory of light over darkness. Many countries, like Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan, and some Caucasian states, like Azerbaijan and Armenia, share the same tradition of celebrating Yalda. Red and green are the original colors of Yalda. I noticed here in the United States those are the same colors of Christmas, and Yalda is celebrated only a couple of nights before Christmas Eve.

Friends and families get together around some stunning korsis. A korsi is a low, round table covered by a large Persian-patterned tablecloth. We can easily sit on the floor around the korsi. Sometimes a small traditional charcoal heater keeps our feet warm under the korsi. On top of this stunning traditional table, we put flowers, red candles, and colorful seasonal fruits, like pomegranates, watermelons, and berries, and also some dried fall fruits and nuts.

Gathering around on the floor represents humbleness, unity, fellowship, and joy. Yalda is the rebirth of the sun, and we celebrate it by singing songs and reciting poems by the great Persian poet Hafiz. Yalda is a perfect time to get some advice from Hafiz. His poems guide you to understand life better. Although they can be recited at almost any occasion, Yalda is a particular night for Hafiz!

We were gathered in the beautiful house of our close friends, Mina and Farid, with almost twenty-five other people. The table was set beautifully. The dinner was fantastic; the vibe and energy were so uplifting. We had so much fun singing, laughing, and dancing. The men played games at another table while bragging about their luck and superior skills in defeating their opponent. Young girls and boys were playing and laughing. Women still sat at the korsi, telling funny stories about their children and husbands. Everyone looked well groomed and joyful, just like on Christmas Eve.

One of the women suggested that Bruce, one of the guests, knew a little about palm reading. We had known him for some time. He was a retirement-aged man who sat quietly in the corner, observing everything. He spoke only when someone started a conversation with him or asked him a question. I knew he was an educated man who had written some articles for newspapers. I had also read a few of his poems before. But reading palms?

Some people believe in palm reading, and some don’t. I had never tried it before, since I’m not a believer. As the women gathered around him, asking about the possibility of him reading their palms, he made it clear that he was not a palm reader or fortune-teller, and this was not one of the regular activities he practiced. Bruce said he had done some research about palm reading while he was a college student, and he’d done it just out of curiosity back then. But those women insisted, and at last he agreed, saying, I am doing it just to pass some time tonight. The ladies agreed.

I watched him as he read almost everybody's palm. Most of the points he addressed were general knowledge about each person, but sometimes he paused, made some encouraging recommendations, and gave words of advice. You could tell that he was an experienced man and didn’t want to say anything unrealistic. He was basically guiding each person in a positive direction as he pointed to some truths. It looked more like a life-coaching or counseling session.

I was the last one at the table. He started to observe my palms for a few minutes, and it took so long for him to say a word. He was studying my palms like he was reading a map from all directions. I looked at friends, smiling and waiting to hear another broad statement. He moved his glasses on his nose and said with concern in his voice, You lived only for the first six years of your life. You’ve been walking on the edge of blades since then.

That was harsh to hear. I said, You mean eggshells?

He said, I mean blades.

I was not sure how to respond to that statement, and I was curious to know what he meant. I looked at him inquiringly, and he continued, People either love you or hate you for who you are.

Looking at my past experience, I knew he was right! But Yalda was all about joy and enjoyment, and I just wanted to make it a fun conversation, so I asked him teasingly, That sounds serious. What should I do, then?

He looked directly into my eyes and, with confidence in his voice, said, Start writing your story. It's worth hearing.

He left me puzzled and confused by that short, straightforward statement. I hadn’t expected to hear it on such an entertaining night. Yalda was a chance to forget all about our pains and conflicts and to enjoy our time.

The palm reading didn’t matter; what's important was the remarks he made at the end. That particular conversation reminded me of the one I’d had with John about two years ago. They both gave me momentum, a force and sense of obligation by advising me to write my story. I suddenly remembered the conversation I’d had with my mother years ago. When I told her over the phone that I was planning to write our family story, her response was, I’m afraid it's too late. Baba is gone. I got an uneasy feeling. I felt the urgency to fulfill that promise before Mama was gone as well. That was an awakening moment for me, and I felt I had to start writing my story. You may love or hate my story, but I need to tell it.

1

MY CHILDHOOD

"Q

uit putting baby clothes on those poor chickens. Leave them alone," said Mama as she carried a brazier of flaming charcoal inside the summer cabin to get dinner ready. It was a mild summer afternoon, and the sun was getting ready to set behind tall, generous mountains. We had played all day long, and we were tired. We started taking the baby clothes and skirts off the chickens. My seven-year-old sister, Golara, and I had put on a fashion show with those chickens, and we’d laughed for hours watching them walking and grazing. I was six years old, and I enjoyed playing with my sister. Although we had many chickens, only three of them were our pets and had names. My chicken, Pa-Pary, was a chubby, black-and-white bird with feathers on her legs. Baghali was a tall, slim chicken with reddish-brown polka dots; she belonged to Golara. My eleven-year-old brother, Karim, had a reddish rooster named Ka-Koli. To be honest, now that I think back, those chickens looked just like us three.

Karim led the chickens into their coop and made sure the entrance door was secured. A couple nights ago, jackals had taken some of our neighbors’ chickens. Our farms were so extensive that no fence or boundary was enough to protect our animals or us. This was the place where humans and animals learned to coexist. There were many kinds of animals inhabiting this vast meadow. We saw snakes, scorpions, lizards, and all types of big bugs, like beetles, and of course many kinds of birds during the day. But nighttime was the animals’ domain here, and we just heard their howling and growling. There were foxes, jackals, wolves, boar, and deer, and it was said even panthers lived on top of the mountains. My father owned a portion of the territory called Palangan, which directly translates to panthers’ land. In the past, many Iranian tigers lived in the region, but today only a few remain there. It was a forty-five-to-sixty-minute trip to that region from our summer location. I had overheard my father and his friends’ conversations a few times about the times they’d gone hunting for deer and seen a palang.

One early morning, one of our neighbors, Javid, had dragged the body of a big wildcat, perhaps a cougar, to our cottage. He was proud of how he’d been able to take that cougar down for making trouble for their animals. We had heard its growling from a distance the previous night, but we didn’t know it had actually attacked Javid's animals.

In spite of all the issues of this sort, this place was a serene place, and all creatures learned to live and enjoy a peaceful and harmonious life together as long as their nature allowed them.

Mama headed out to get some fresh water from the creek to make tea before Baba came back from the mountains. She told us to go with her and wash our hands and faces and to get ready for dinner. She told Karim to let the lizard go. That lizard was Karim's imaginary cow; he had used it to plow his little pile of wheat today. Watching that lizard run so fast and stir and spill all that wheat around had made us laugh so hard. It was nothing like a calmly chewing cow. Karim loosened the string around the lizard's neck carefully and set it free, knowing tomorrow he would find some other amusing toys in nature to play with. The lizard scuttled away without even looking back.

Sometimes Karim caught a big shiny beetle and tied a very thin string around one of its back legs, then joined all the other boys who prepared and trained for the Race of Flying Beetles. He had to take good care of that beetle and keep it in good condition—healthy, shiny, and energetic. He got it to practice a few times before the actual tournament started. This was a significant tournament that happened in summers only. They bet on winning beetles and traded them based on their agility, score, size, and color. Sometimes they trade them for other items like a good slingshot, or even a decent jaw harp.

Girls, on the other hand, had their own tournament, called Rig-Ghotour, or Raining Rocks. It's a game with unlimited levels that start with two sets of three rocks, six rocks in total. The number of sets grows as the players move to the upper levels. At the last few levels of the game, they have to play with fifteen to twenty sets of rocks—about forty-five to sixty rocks for each person. This game requires a lot of calculation, attention, and hand-eye coordination. The girls have to manage their own rocks while their opponent lays almost the same number of rocks on the field. Just throwing and shuffling those rocks is a difficult skill that I never got a chance to learn.

The older girls would allow us younger ones to start with a much simpler game called Yek-Ghol, Do-Ghol, meaning One Chain, Two Chains. This simple game has up to twelve chains or levels. You need only five rocks to play the primary game. This simple game is the base to prepare you for the big tournament. The girls walk around the patches of the meadow to handpick every single stone. Each rock is unique; no matter how many players race or how many stones are played, each person knows every single rock she has collected. It's like each piece of rock has a story behind it, and the girls grow a strong bond with those storytellers of nature. Some of those stones even have a special charm or attraction. The girls can get a handful of other rocks by trading with those special ones.

These tournaments were not the only games boys and girls participated in when I was a child. There were a lot of creative team games that boys and girls played without any specific toy, or they could simply create their own toy if they needed to. We had a quiet little cultural life as kids. We had our very own musical band. Each kid grabbed a bucket and two sticks, and we played music and sang for hours. Some older kids even created their own flute using hollow bamboo sticks or made some instruments by wrapping strings around some metal buckets. The jaw harp was something we had to get from the market, and almost everyone had one. And Baba made a set of swings for us using chains on a big walnut tree, making our official playground.

Sometimes we had to face some critical matters in our young group. I remember the time when we lost our little bird, Rana, an oriole. Orioles live on the fig farms and eat figs and tiny insects. They sing and can imitate different rhythms; they don’t mimic words, just the rhythms. Rana was an excellent companion to my thirteen-year-old brother, Rahmat, who was blind. That bird was his wholehearted companion. While we were running and playing, Rahmat would carefully roam throughout the field with Rana sitting on his shoulder. They traded some of the rhythms that Rahmat practiced at his music school. He was the only kid among us who played an actual musical instrument, the tar. He played the tar very well, and he had such a heavenly voice. A tar is a string instrument very similar to a guitar but smaller and bulkier, and perhaps more complicated. Rana picked up some of those rhythms and imitated them. Rahmat was so sad at losing Rana. To give Rahmat a little comfort, we called all our cousins and neighbors’ children on that day and conducted the most proper and respectable funeral we could hold for a companion bird like Rana. We were just practicing life as children in this peaceful meadow, Singing