The Last Living Slut by Roxana Shirazi Read Free Book Online Page A

relatives as they drove to the edge of town to dump boxes and boxes full of dangerous papers in the secret black waters of the river. All the freedom fighting, the turmoil, the blood spilled to liberate us from the Shah’s dictatorship had only put us in a far more dire situation.

Chapter 13
    I Decided that I would try it with Two Boys, While in The Next Room War Songs Blared out from The Television.
    M y baby brother came along, chubby and dribbly, smiling a fat, toothless smile, on March 21, 1980. It was Eideh Norooz , the non-Islamic holiday that also marks the first day of spring and the New Year.
    My stepfather rushed my mum to the hospital that day, leaving my grandmother, aunts, uncles, and me waiting for news. We sat around the Haft Sin table. Haft Sin, meaning seven Ss, refers to seven specific items beginning with the letter S in the Persian alphabet that must be placed on the table during Norooz. Each of the items symbolizes a different concept: Sib are apples symbolizing beauty, senjed is a dried fruit that symbolizes love, sir is garlic, sabzeh are wheat sprouts grown in a dish for the occasion, somagh is the cooking spice sumac, sonbol is the plant hyacinth, and sekkeh are coins symbolizing prosperity. Decorated eggs, a mirror, lit candles, and a goldfish also crowned the table.
    In all the excitement surrounding the new baby, I forgot about the holiday gifts. I didn’t need any—my brother, that chubby little bundle of sunshine, was the best present in the world. That day, I wrote my new brother a letter telling him how much I loved him and that he was a natural-born beauty.
    Six months later, war erupted between Iran and Iraq. Air-raid sirens began shrieking like caged beasts. The sirens screamed every day. They scared the shit out of me, making me think we were about to get bombed, slaughtered.
    All day, every day, military songs blared from our TV. The government wanted each male citizen—even old men and teenage boys—to fight the Iraqis. They promised martyrdom, an automatic free pass to heaven. We could not turn away from the broadcast images of families waving good-bye to their sons. A few boys from our street left to fight Saddam. Their mothers wailed hysterically from the pain of the sacrifice their sons were making for Islam.
    During this time I took frequent walks to my grandmother’s house, either after school or in the early evening, as the grieving dusk prayers boomed from the mosque’s loudspeakers. Doom and fear hung thick and stagnant in the air as more and more men were called to war. The dusty nights were bleak, the street vendors increasingly desperate.
    Walking beyond the main street, with cars violently whizzing past, angry drivers screaming, and armed men in Jeeps looking at me funny I’d smell the aromas of cooked liver and freshly baked nooneh sangak. I passed the pastry shops with strawberry-glazed cream puffs and crumbly confections in the windows. Dolls with spider-leg eyelashes and exotic animal toys with drum sets slept in shops, closed for the night. Teenage boys, likely just days away from war’s brutality, pedaled bicycles along the sooty streets. The rich little girls held tight to their daddies’ hands by florist shops crammed full of funeral wreaths and bridal bouquets.
    I would run to my grandmother’s house, pressing my head against her heaving bosom and big belly. I breathed deeply, inhaling her love. It was a small, safe place in the world. I no longer missed my real father: My new dad taught me how to ride a bike, holding on to the back and running behind and letting go only when I told him to. He taught me how to dine like a lady, but he also slapped me when I was bad.
    One day, as I played with my bike in the yard with my mum and dad, my first daddy appeared, tall and slim with his film–star–tinted glasses and lovely lips. Avoiding eye contact with me, he walked right up to my new father. His whisper was dry and straight to the point: “I don’t want