Echoes from the Other Land

"Glass Slippers"

Ava Homa (c. 2010)

Glass Slippers

“Someone’s coming!”

“Just one?”

“Uh-huh!”

 “Alone?”

“Yes.”

“Is it Yusuf?”

“A woman.”

Something falls inside you. You put your hand on your sister’s back, and wait for her to step down; but she raises herself higher, on tip-toes. Staring at Sara’s head, turned away from you, you want to ask her what else she sees, but your tongue, dry and stuck to the roof of your mouth, fails to move. Sara has her head pressed against the thin steel bars of the only window in the electronics shop storeroom. She raises her chin and peers through. Your place is three houses down from here, off the narrow alley into which Sara is peering. This block is honeycombed with dilapidated houses and a few apartments.

“Sara.” You manage to say her name, but in a voice barely recognizable as your own.

“Shhh!”

You draw back your hand from her back. Your fingers feel cold and a bit tingly.

“Hide your head!” Sara turns back quickly and you put your hand again on her back.

She sits on an old radio, pulling your sleeve to sit you down on something as well, something that makes a harsh creaking sound in the room’s clutter of electronic debris. It might have been a working TV once. You stare at her lips nervously, bidding them to tell you what the woman who passed through the alley looked like. Her eyes are inattentive, and she says nothing.

But who can move in this cramped room? When you breathe, your breath hits some electronic thing and makes an annoying crackling sound. Perhaps Yusuf is home and has called this woman over? He must have called her from his store. You imagine her with a large body; Yusuf likes big women. You feel the black chador that chastely covers your petite body, and gingerly slide a hand towards your small breasts—but you are in shape, your belly is flat, your face is cute, that’s what everyone says. There is the clack of high heels as her footsteps pass by the window, and you look down at your scuffed running shoes. From today on, you vow to be more feminine.

“Okay.” Sara steps up on the crate again and pushes her face against the bars. The electronic objects rattle against each other, disturbing your nerves further.

“What’s she like?” you ask hesitantly.

“Horrible!” Sara turns and frowns for you.

“Let me see,” you reply, gaining courage.

“Wait!”

“Please, Sara!” Your insides are churning. She peers intently out the window. “Sara, please.”

“Shhh! She’s going into your house now,” she murmurs.

You get up and want to push her aside. You need to see with your own eyes, for yourself. Sara is trying to squeeze more of her head through the rods and you want to scream at her to get out of your way.

“She didn’t,” Sara says surprisingly and turns back towards you, shaking her head. “She didn’t go to your house after all.”

You clasp hands together and take a step forward eagerly. “What’s she doing?”

“She walked out of the alley,” Sara says, peering through the bars again.

“You sure?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Was she pretty?” you ask shyly, blood running into your face.

 “Ha ha . . . so?”

You shrug to yourself, embarrassed. “Just . . . watch for her. She might return,” you say, pretending that you can handle the situation and that you are not relieved because she simply passed by your door without knocking.

“Obviously she’s not from around here, maybe not from Qom even. And she can’t be on a pilgrimage. What’s she doing in this neighbourhood?” Sara pulls herself up to the window again.

“Why? What was she wearing?”

“Dressed like a classy whore! Jeans, a short manteau, a thin headscarf, highlighted hair, light purple makeup . . .” Sara is spitting out these words.

Is she visiting some other poor woman’s husband? You swallow, frozen behind Sara, unable to stand or sit down. The room is dark except for the beam of light from the tiny window. The crackling of the junk at your feet and against your hips is bothersome and you try not to move, not even to breathe. You wonder why the old man has gathered so much rubbish. Why on the earth do human beings collect garbage? What is the difference between a storage closet and a trash room?

Your father’s basement was like this. Your mother used to put every unnecessary thing in the basement that smelled sour and damp. But you liked the smell. The ceiling was not cobwebbed like this one. It was a good place to hide as well, when your father or when one of your seven brothers was not in a good mood. Going through the boxes every now and then, finding old forgotten textbooks, notebooks, clothes, and toys used to be one of your hobbies.

The day Yusuf and his family came to your house to ask for your hand in marriage you hid with Sara in the basement to spy on them as they passed through the yard. You were scared to death: if you did not like the boy—and Sara already did not—who would dare protest your father’s and brothers’ choice? Your father would rather see you dead than reject his landlord’s son.

That day you and your sister put gunny sacks over your heads and went to peer out of the corner of the broken window in the basement. You did the same when Morteza came to ask for Sara’s hand, although Sara did not let Morteza meet you until her wedding day because she was concerned that her fiancé might change his mind and ask for the younger daughter’s hand. When Yusuf and his family passed through the yard, Sara did not leave the broken window and did not let you see. You pleaded with Sara, but she did not budge from the window. You implored her to talk about him at least. All she said was, “He is so different from Morteza.”

It was love, like in the movies, at first sight. You fell for Yusuf’s eyes, the blackest eyes. You married without extravagant ceremony and then lived in an old house Yusuf’s father had rented to his son. Yusuf still works in the same barber shop next to his father’s store where your father is a retailer. When Yusuf is around, you rarely hear his footsteps or voice. Yusuf has never yelled at you or laid a hand on you, has never bullied you. He knows poetry by heart, cares for sparrows, feels pity for the fish imprisoned in the small pond of the yard, and loves flowers. You love him.

“Did you tell him you’d return soon?” Sara asks.

You stare at the wrinkles drawing down the corners of her mouth.

“Hey!” she says.

“He didn’t ask. I didn’t say.”

“He sure doesn’t waste any time.” She tilts her head, hand under chin. Her scarf and manteau are dusty.

“Aren’t you tired?” you hear yourself asking.

“Wait a bit. They’ll come, eventually.”

The air tastes stale. You swallow. “Perhaps he won’t.”

“They will, both of them, but not together, one by one.”

You wipe the dust off the back of her manteau as she struggles to push her head back between the window bars.

“He might be concerned about the neighbours,” you say.

The crate topples and Sara immediately steps off, spins around, and almost loses her balance. You hold her arm. Sara pauses for a moment, juts her head forward, and raises an eyebrow: “Are you suggesting they might’ve gone somewhere else?”

“No!”

“What?” she seems irritated.

“Nothing! I just thought he might not . . . maybe he doesn’t want to have her in there . . . our house.” You have no idea how that sentence jumped out of you, the last two words pronounced so quietly you could barely hear yourself. Why is your voice so high, like a mouse’s?

“How can you be such a bloody fool? If he didn’t like to have her in the house, he wouldn’t keep the lady’s lipstick and blue bra in the closet!”

Oh, the bra was padded but not very big; it could have been yours if it was new, if you didn’t smell another woman on it. You turn towards the dark centre of the storeroom. Time feels mercilessly slow. “Would you give me another of your painkillers?” You are quite sure this headache will never leave. She takes her bag from her shoulder and hands it to you. Grabbing two pills, you swallow them reluctantly. From the window, above Sara’s head, you notice the edge of a new building. You had just glimpsed someone looking your way, from the fifth floor. You even saw the corner of a skirt, you think. The blue curtain moves aside again: blue, his favourite color. He bought you that silk dress last month. Yusuf does have exquisite taste. He bought a pair of glass high-heel slippers. “For my Cinderella,” he said tenderly. He told you he had been thinking of saving up for the dress and slippers for over three months. It was his birthday and you had baked him a cake.

 “I should’ve bought you something, Yusuf, not you me,” you said, blushing.

And you were over the moon until you stupidly told your sister about what you found in the closet between his underwear. Oh, he combed your hair and asked you not to cut it short anymore, and then he asked you to put blue coloring in your hair. Mother hates it; that’s why you tie your headscarf tight in front of everyone, even women. Well, you have a husband now: when he tells you to colour your hair, you obey him, and your family has no right to comment on that, nor does anyone else. But Yusuf entreated you not to let anybody, especially your brothers, know because they would say Yusuf is not man enough to forbid his wife to make herself up like a whore. So you pleaded with your mother not to tell your brothers.

“What day is it today?” Sara asks, fingering her lower lip.

“I don’t . . . know.”

Sara puts an old, big, broken vacuum under her feet and steps up on it. You want her to talk. You hate the silence. As you look around at the pile of electronics in the darkness your heart palpitates. What day is it? You have difficulty remembering which year you are in. When did he buy you the blue dress? The glass slippers? He styled your hair gently, then asked you to wear makeup. He told you to use an eye shadow to complement the dress. Then he fetched blue mascara. He said the eye shadow was very light and he coloured your eyelids, and then added some more colour to your eyelashes. You noticed that the mascara case was not new but you didn’t mention it. The salesman might have deceived him. Never having seen him so excited, you swooned under his delicate hands as they skilfully painted your face. You felt for the first time that he cherished you. Fixed on his lips you coyly wet your own with the tip of your tongue, and leaned in for a long kiss. He disappointed you but continued to look at you and to say how beautiful you were, even prettier than on your wedding day. He hated that red makeup; only then you understood why he was so upset on the day of your wedding.

 “Sahar!” Sara turns to you, deep in thought. “Maybe they went into the house before we got inside the storeroom.”

“In that short time?”

“Yes.”

You go numb.

“You have the keys?”

You nod.

“Give them to me.”

You take the keys from your bag, trying to keep your hands steady.

“Follow me,” she says.

Sara pushes through the broken samovars, telephones, and other junk. Your chador gets stuck to the wire of an old hair dryer, and for a moment holds you back. Sara looks at you, hands on hips, and shakes her head. You tug the chador, tearing it. Once out of the storeroom and in the store, you smile and nod your head to thank the old, deaf man fixing a TV. He smiles and you see a golden tooth in the left corner of his mouth.

Sara runs to your house and you follow her. At the gate, you pause and look at each other, breathing heavily. You lean on the wall and pray that no one will pass through the alley just then. Sara opens the door quietly. Your feet weigh a ton, they hardly move. Loud music is the first thing you notice as you enter the yard. The music could be coming from one of the neighbours, but it is not hard to recognize his favourite love song, “Dance Beautiful.”

“There you go,” your sister smirks, walking slowly alongside the wall and you quietly follow behind her. Sara grasps the knob of the main door and you expect it to be locked. It is not.

The trembling has spread to every part of your body. Together, you pass through the front corridor and reach the living room door. You want to open it right away, but your shaking prevents you. Even Sara looks pale and the loud music beats in your head. Sara is swearing under her breath. Even at that moment, when you are about to be certain that Yusuf has actually wronged you, her swearing at him is intolerable. You feel miserable. “I’d rather my man lay a hand on me than cheat,” Sara cries.

You look at Sara at the threshold of the doorway, her big mouth and the wrinkles around it; she could swallow a man in a second. You go a step forward, grasp the door handle, not wanting to turn around and see her face anymore. It seems like no one is speaking inside; maybe he is home alone, maybe he simply did not feel good enough to go to work. Finally, you open the door but cannot move forward—Sara pushes you in.

There is a woman in the room in your blue dress and glass slippers. She has long blue hair and is dancing in front of the large mirror in the living room. The woman turns to you; her heavy, repulsive makeup makes her look like a hooker even though her face is under some tulle. She seems familiar, but you fail to recognize her, you cannot see clearly. Sara steps forward, mouth open. The woman takes the blue wig off and looks down. Sara screams. You do not realize what is going on and you look at Sara and hear her saying things that you don’t understand. The woman takes off your glass slippers, which are too small for her feet. You look into those familiar, the blackest eyes and rub your own.

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