A Night to Remember
When my sister Gilda was born, as was customary in our tradition, my parents held a large party to celebrate her arrival on the sixth evening after her birth. It was summer and the party was held in the garden. There were cooks and waiters; there were musicians. It was altogether a fun party. My mother was ensconced on a bed in the middle of everything. She was dressed in a beautiful silk hand-embroidered nightgown with a matching jacket.
It was a young crowd of people, laughing, singing and dancing. The servants were also enjoying themselves. They had almost nothing to do since it was all catered. They stood on the side watching. At one point in time, being a little girl, I got tired and sleepy. My mother told Ashraf, Nora’s nanny, to take me upstairs to bed.
In the summer, we all slept on the terraces on the third floor. We had iron post beds with cotton mattresses up there for each member of the family. During the daytime, the mattresses and bedding were rolled up to keep them clean. They were unrolled just before we went to bed.
Summer nights were cool and it was glorious sleeping there, gazing at the black velvet sky scattered with a myriad of stars glittering like diamonds. It was magic. That is one of the things I greatly miss about Tehran. Ashraf resented missing out on the party and in her mind, she was Nora’s nanny, not mine. In a huff, she carried my sleeping self up to the third floor and placed me on top of the springs of the bed without bothering to unroll the mattress and hurried back down.
I do not know how long I slept, but at some point, my long hair got tangled in the springs of the bed. I woke up. I couldn’t raise my head because of the tangles. It was pitch dark! I could hear the sound of the music. I was terrified! I screamed and screamed and screamed, but no one could hear me above the sound of the music. At some point, there was a lull in the music and someone came to my rescue. Because of that incident, I was sick for a very long time afterward with a high temperature. To this day, I have not forgotten the dark black sheer terror I felt that night. I still feel my heart trying to burst out of my chest from sheer fear. They never got rid of Ashraf as they should have. Nora was too attached to her. I disliked her intensely and learned to stay away from her. To this day, I feel a sense of revulsion whenever I think of her.