The Trousseau and Other Reminiscences
When I was quite a young girl, in the first and second grade, our school was located in the south of the city on Khiaban Jaleh, in Tehran. Many of the older students only knew that school. By the time I got there I was only able to attend first and second grade before the school moved its location.
It was an old established area. The homes were older, the population there was quite old-fashioned and religious. Their women did not venture into the streets unless accompanied by a male escort after sunset. They wore chadors, covering themselves from head to toe in modesty. I think they lived on compounds that consisted of several family members. Their world and ours was so vastly different. A man was allowed to marry three wives in the Moslem religion. If he was wealthy enough, he did marry his three wives. Of course, that produced numerous children and each wife needed her own home. I was unfamiliar with their thoughts and habits. We did not seem to be from the same city nor even from the same planet! We were so different in everything we did, or even thought!
At any rate, we traveled back and forth from the north of the city to the south of the city each day to go to school. Papa’s chauffeur, Gholam Reza drove us.
In this part of the city everything was different. We had regular ice cream, but they had delicious Persian ice cream that was out of this world. It was made with cream, saffron, pistachios, and rosewater. They had handmade lollipops shaped like roosters attached to rough pieces of wood. You probably could get splinters on your tongue and lips as you licked the candy; we had lollipops tightly wrapped in cellophane. They had a kind of contraption like a huge standup metal view master on four legs where one looked through dirty glass ports as the vendor turned the pictures and told exciting tales of Persian kings and the heroes of yore. The vendor would call in a singsong voice,
‘Shahre farange inja Rang o ba rang inja. This is fantasy land that is here Filled with delightful colours here…’
The children, clutching their coins in their grubby little hands, eagerly waited their turn to witness the wonders living in this contraption. Four children would peer into the ports on each side of this box of wondrous tales, as the man turned the pictures and spun out his heroic tales. Of course, Mama would never allow us any of this, but Gholam Reza treated us on occasion. If Mama had found out, poor Gholam Reza would have been in deep trouble. She would have said the lollipops and ice cream were extremely unhygienic and that we would get trachoma if we so much as put our faces anywhere near the glass ports of the picture show. Since we had no idea what trachoma was, we were not alarmed.
Oftentimes, on our way back from school, the traffic would come to a standstill. The traffic of seventy-something years ago differed from the present-day traffic. Carts pulled by donkeys led by men mixed with horse-pulling droshkeys in that old-fashioned travel mode, and cars all shared the cobbled streets. The sound of honking cars, braying donkeys, and neighing horses was the symphony of the roads. Add to that a procession of perhaps twenty or so men, each wearing a cushioned soft crown on top of their heads. On top of these, a large round wooden pallet was balanced where a bride’s trousseau was carried on its way to her new home. On one pallet they displayed her clothing, on another her bedroom set, her silver mirrors and combs, her perfumes and luxury items, her jewelry, all the way down to the pots and pans and other necessities needed to begin her new life as a married lady. Traffic came to a standstill as everyone stopped to witness this happy event. They would start ululating, cheering, and singing as they watched the procession of the bride’s trousseau pass by! I loved these sights. They were so old-worldly, so exciting! We did not have anything to compare to this on our side of town, or even close to that! Their world was so colourful and our neighbourhood was so prim and proper. Ours paled in comparison. Nothing was as exciting in our end of town! I felt so deprived.
Sometimes Mama would come along to pick us up. Then Gholam Reza would have to park the car and patiently wait as Mama took us shopping. That was an experience in itself. One such trip was to the shoe store. It was the same children’s shoe shop that we frequented over the years as we grew up. We would be lifted onto high leather-covered chairs. The salesman would take off our shoes and gently place our little feet on the footrest. He then would measure the length and width of our feet with the apparatus attached to the footrest. Once he established the size of our feet, he took out a variety of shoes. Mama took quite a long time choosing what kind of shoes we needed. Since Gilda was quite small yet at the time of this story, the shoes were only for Nora and myself. Each season we would get two pairs, one for school and one for best.
Each season she would have Khadijeh come over for about a week to sew for all of us, even for Mama. Mama would get silk nightgowns and slips. We would get everyday dresses, skirts, and blouses. Khadijeh would make us nighties and underwear as well. We loved Khadijeh! We swarmed about her like bees to honey. She was pretty and sweet. We never noticed her great handicap until we grew older and became more aware. One of her legs was much shorter than the other and she had to wear a special shoe. That was why she never married. To me she was beautiful, sweet, and kind. I could not understand why her leg mattered when she was such a wonderful person. What cruelty!
We had different dressmakers for different clothes. Bébé Chic was the best of the best and for special occasions. Shefika would make our better clothes, for holidays and visiting, and Khadijeh of course made our day-to-day necessities.
What a different way of life that was to how we live now. Things have changed drastically since we came here forty years ago. Back then we wore suits and dresses with stockings and pumps. No lady would wear pants unless they were tailored. Now clothes are so casual one wonders if the clothes worn are meant for underwear and sleepwear rather than outerwear! Perhaps the people wearing it forgot to change in the morning when they got out of bed.
The other day I was at the hair salon when a woman walked in. I am in my seventies. She was older. I am slightly heavy and matronly. She must have weighed over two hundred pounds. She wore a pair of short shorts with lumpy flesh jiggling unattractively from everywhere. She sat down with one leg resting on the other knee, just as a man would sit. Her shorts crept up. It was not a pleasant sight. Wasn’t she aware of the grotesque picture she presented, I could not help but wonder?
How could things have changed so much in a matter of forty years? Why have we become so lax in our manners and our way of life? But then what do I know? I used to have a very dear neighbour who has since passed away. She once said in a tired old voice, “I think it’s time for me to leave this earth. I cannot make sense of anything anymore.” That’s how I feel sometimes. I am like Rip Van Winkle. I feel I have woken up into a time that I do not recognize many things anymore.