Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Rural Iranian Women!

3 comments:

Debashish Bose said...

:)

Reminds me of my grandmother.

Pedestrian said...

BEAUTIFUL!

Naj said...

:) actually reminds me of my grandmothers too!

My father's mother was a formidable woman. She had married early and was so in love with my grand father that when he died of a stroke while praying, she burned all of his pictures, even his passport so to not be reminded of him!

Anyways, this grandmother refused to leave her home, and until the day that she was hospitalized with a pneumonia, lived in the middle of a large garden with nothing protecting her other than a big staff not unlike that of Moses!

She was very traditional and her "god" was Abolfazl! She was epileptic and she thought her epileptic auras were visitations by her saint Abolfazl (A brother or cousin of Imam Hossein who was killed by Yazeed, not sure!) But, I remember that listening to her stories, it was ALWAYS the women of the family who were "brave" and who stood up for their "soft and gullible" husbands. In fact, most husbands would be dead, and so these widows HAD to be brave facing a man's world!

She was burgalirized several times (basically every time she came to visit us or my uncles who lived elsewhere); she had also caught a few thieves herself, with her unyielding staff!

The one thing she feared was cancer! the one time I saw her scared was when she had suspected she had breast cancer.

Last time I saw her, ...

I didn't see her on death bed ...

better to take to my grave the image of her tall body but hunching back, her big eyes, her henna-colored long hair, her "treasure box" keys always hanging from her neck, the wines dancing around the mud pilars in her garden, the creek flowing in fron of the blue door of her house, the willow hunching to the creek ... I refuse to remind me that my grandmothers are dead ... and they died so long ago, when I was so far ... and I was their first grand child ...