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(PART TWO America)
By Nahid Rachlin
Nineteen
I stood by the window of my room in Green Hall, one of the five dormitories that accommodated Lindengrove College’s four hundred students. It was as if years, not just a day, had gone by since I left Iran and only hours since Parviz picked me up from the St. Louis Airport and dropped me off on the campus in St. James. I was so remote now from my family and Ahvaz. The campus, with its colonial and Greek Revival architecture, wide old shady trees, flowers in bloom in rectangular beds, and sets of swing chairs in different spots, looked glorious in the pale, late-afternoon sunlight. I watched with fascination the girls walking about the campus or sitting on the swings. They reminded me of the women I had seen in American movies with Pari, or on the other side of the river. One girl with curly short hair and dimples was an older version of Shirley Temple. Another, with pale blond hair, the color of straw, and milkwhite skin, reminded me of Marilyn Monroe. I couldn’t wait to write to Pari and tell her all about them.
I pulled out a photograph of Pari from my suitcase and put it on the desk. Then I spread the paradise tapestry, which I had brought without its frame, on the back of a chair until I could frame it and hang it on the wall. I didn’t have a good photograph of Maryam-—only a small one with her hair covered in a black chador, only her eyes showing. After taking a shower in the common bathroom, I sat in bed and wrote a long letter to Pari and one to Maryam. I went to bed early, exhausted from the eighteen-hour Hight from Iran. I fell into a dreamless sleep.
I woke late the next morning and made my way to the college dining room. It was nearly empty. I took some food from the buffet and sat at a table with two other girls. I asked one of them, in broken English, what I had put on my plate.
She stared at me for a moment. “Grits,” she said, pointing to a white lump. Then pointing to a hunk of bread, she said, “Corn bread.”
In a moment they got up and left. I lingered in the large room by myself.
I registered for as many courses that didn’t require fluent English as possible—piano, swimming, home economics. In home economics, the professor taught us how to set a table and seat guests. She also taught us “charm”—not much different from taarof in the Iranian culture. We should always say, “Yes, ma’am,” she said, when addressing a woman older than ourselves; we should write a thank-you note to our hostess and it should be phrased in a certain way. At the required introduction to English literature, I could absorb only some of the lecture. The one English course I had taken in high school hadn’t prepared me adequately. Between classes I sat in my room or on a swing chair and tried to understand the assignments and make sense of my notes, poring over my Farsi-English dictionary.
After dinner I went to my room, leaving the door half open to create a draft with the breeze coming through the window. As the evening wore on other students began to come back, holding Cokes or instant coffee, cellophane-wrapped crackers, cheese, and cookies. Some of them stood in the hall in clusters and talked. When the weekend came most of the girls went out together or on dates with boys from nearby colleges. I stayed in the dormitory, studying.
My isolation felt like freedom at first. But soon the reality of the college and my separation from the other students began to hit me.
Beauty contests, mixers with boys the school invited from colleges in the area, sermons in the Presbyterian chapel at which attendance was required no matter what your religion—all just floated around me without meaning. The ideal young girl, one whom the staff and parents approved of and promoted, was a good Christian who dressed properly and was agreeable and sociable. If a student didn’t go on frequent dates with, boys she was “antisocial” or “a loser.” If a student had plans with a female friend and then a boy called and asked her out at the same time, she would automatically accept the date and cancel plans with the girlfriend. If a student dated a boy from outside her religion it created problems. Smiling was compulsory. One girl in my dormitory said, “Smile,” every time we passed in the hall.
The pocket money Father sent me through Parviz shrank when converted from toomans to dollars. The other girls flew home often for family gatherings or to reunite with a high school sweetheart. They had their hair done in expensive beauty salons in St. Louis, then went shopping and returned with packages of hats, gloves, blouses, shoes. They often skipped dormitory meals to buy their own food. The girls who didn’t have cars took taxis everywhere, rather than buses, which ran infrequently on limited routes. They decorated their rooms with their own personal furniture.
I was out of the prison of my home, but I was here all alone. I didn’t have easy access to my brothers. I didn’t know a single other person.
One day toward the end of the semester I found a note from the dean in my mailbox inviting me, along with the three other foreign students on campus, to participate in Parents’ Day. She asked that I stop by her office. The dean was wearing a linen suit, her blond hair set in neat short curls. She greeted me with a warm smile. “I’m telling this to all the foreign students on campus,” she said. “You should wear your native costumes on Parents’ Day.”
I was silent, feeling awkward. I had no costume. She was waiting.
“In Iran, some women cover themselves in chadors, but they wear them on top of regular clothes, similar to what people wear here,” I said.
“Then wear a chador,” she said.
My awkwardness only increased.
“I never wore one in Iran,” I said finally, my voice drowned in the sound of laughter and conversation in the hall.
“I still want you to wear it for this occasion, to show a little of your culture to us,” she said, smiling cheerfully.
To me the chador had come to mean a kind of bondage, as religion had. It felt ridiculous to wear it in this American college. “Maybe I can think of something else to wear,” I mumbled.
“No, no, the idea of the chador is excellent. I’ve seen pictures of women in Islamic countries wearing them. It fascinates me. What is the point?”
“Well, in Islam, exposed hair and skin is considered to be seductive to men.”
“I wish I felt my hair and skin were so seductive that I had to cover them up,” she said with a chuckle. But her attempt at humor only made me more insecure in this unexpectedly alien environment. I was realizing quickly how different this place was from my expectation of America.
That afternoon after classes I walked to St. Louis’s Main Street to buy fabric for the chador. On one side of the street was a pharmacy, a post office, a small department store, a small supermarket, and a diner. Several residential streets branched off it and led to the Mississippi River, a muddy and turbulent body of water, with traffic racing on the wide street running alongside it. I thought of standing on the bank of the Karoon River and looking at the Americans on the other side. Here I was among them and feeling cut off and insecure.
In the department store I looked at stacks of fabric in one corner. I wondered what to buy, a lightweight bright fabric like Maryam and other women wore around the house when a man was there, or the more somber black material they wore outside. Finally I decided on a few yards in blue with floral designs in paler blue. I also bought thread, scissors, and a needle.
Back in my room, I spread the fabric on the floor, cut it in the shape of a chador, and hemmed the edges. It was hard to cut it right; I went very slowly. Maryam used to have hers made by a seamstress. As a child, I chose not to wear the chador. Now cutting one felt almost like making a shroud, as I had seen Maryam and her tenants doing. My mind went to my grandmother telling me that Reza Shah, the father of the present Shah, had forbidden women to wear the chador. The police used to pull it off the heads of women who wore it outdoors. He wanted the world to see Iran as modern. Then the present Shah, who had the same idea of modernizing Iran, as a compromise to please the clergy made wearing it optional. Women like Maryam, who were totally observant, wore it; some, who were less religious, wore head scarves; more Westernized women like Mohtaram didn’t cover their heads. The whole notion of the chador was very strange to Americans; I could tell by the dean’s reaction, yet she wanted me to wear it.
On Parents’ Day I put the chador on and looked at myself in the mirror. I was reminded of the times 1 wore it to passion plays and to a mosque Maryam took me to. I didn’t connect to the chador and the realization had made me sad—at one time Maryam and I were so much alike. Now, here I was in this land of freedom and more or less forced to wear it. I tried to brush off my thoughts, to not be so easily dissatisfied.
I went to the room where the reception was taking place. Framed photographs of various benefactors hung on the walls. As I stood with Margarita, from Greece, who was wearing a full embroidered skirt and blouse; Rachel, from Turkey, in something similar; and Bharti, from India, in a sari, everyone’s eyes focused mainly on me.
“Isn’t that pretty,” one young mother said, with a Southern drawl. “But it must be difficult to move around in.”
“Does everyone dress like that in Iran?” another woman asked.
“No,” I said, “it’s optional; only about half the women wear it.”
“I can’t imagine wearing it.”
Though I didn’t accept the chador, I felt insulted, thinking of Maryam always enclosed in one, by choice.
After enduring more questions from mothers, the foreign students and I left together. Outside, sitting on facing swings, we talked among ourselves. Margarita, dark-haired and plump, was a sophomore; she said she disliked the college and planned to return home as soon as the year was over. Rachel, redhaired and pale, with a quiet manner, said she was happy enough so far, this being her first year. On the plane ride to the United States she had met a man from her own country who attended a nearby college; the two of them spent a lot of time together. And Bharti, thin and dark and serious, was unhappy but intended to stay on until she graduated. I told her I also intended to finish, although I was beginning to feel the college wasn’t the right place for me and wasn’t what I had imagined it to be like.