She's amazing, My Beloved Iranian Lesbian, my former best friend.
Resilient, dedicated. Mildly insane. Têtue: Opiniâtre, obstinée, qui ne veut pas démordre de son idée, opinion, ou volonté. Generous. Occasionally rude, in a studied way. There is nothing haphazard in her world, in her behaviors.
She's the only person I've ever physically attacked. Trust me, if you ever assault someone, particularly someone you love, the details stick with you. The heat of that summer night, the humid South. The concrete. I think a lot about the concrete.
What shall I name her for the purposes of writing about her? After diddling around with an Iranian Baby Names site, I've decided on Ravan, soul, spirit.
Right now I imagine her... souffrante, en colère. We have beat the Horse of Exile to death in ancient conversations. She aches to do something. She lies about what she has actually done. Iran is her country, her home; She wants to be there, marching, yelling, singing. effecting change; She wants to be The Revolutionary Force.
I wish she could be satisfied.
It was very soon after we had met each other through our classes and official "hanging out" sessions at the French Department. She was someone you noticed -- a beautiful girl with shiny, shiny, thick, thick black hair, prayer beads always intertwined between long fingers. She was surprisingly hippy, full-hipped. For a dancer, and she insisted she was a dancer, having taken Master Classes in Paris.
Our first encounter, though, came when she and Oussama decided to cheat on a test. It pissed me off, and me being pissed off amused the hell out of them. I received the standard lecture on cultural difference, and probably would have not cared were anyone besides Oussama involved. Oussama was a dickwad.
Anyway.
Our friendship was fun, heady. We drank, we smoked. We pretended to be somewhere that mattered, doing something important. She was living with her sister, who had come to the States ahead of her, before the Revolution.
So she would usually come over to my apartment, which was an easy 10 minutes from university.
I remember letting her cut my hair. (Why? Why did I cut my hair? Inevitably, the summertime gets to me, and the dampness at the nape...) I remember smoking some pot. Listening to music. And suddenly she was talking.
It was like vomit.
It all came out, and not exactly comprehensible, but the grandes lignes were clear enough.
She claimed to be a terrorist, to have blown up a tank by attaching a bomb to its undercarriage, to have gone to a camp to train. I believe this was a grand lie, but she was intense about it, it stirred her. It was what she wanted to be true.
It was so much more interesting than her life in plaid school uniforms and cut-like-a-bowl hair, faithfully documented by badly coloured snapshots, head shots. It was so much more fascinating than her well-to-do family, her mother a university Sanskrit scholar, her father a judge, appointed by the Shah.
She needed to have blown up that tank.
Instead, her parents had forcibly put her on a flight to Germany, then France, when the violence erupted back then. Her father stopped going to the court, and waited at home for someone to come and take him away. They never came.
Her grandfather, she said, was the theoretician of the Iranian Communist Party, and was in and out of prison. He eventually was beheaded.
Taking a closer look at the wealthy family, educated and liberal, looking at their reality? Fascinating. She and her sister had different fathers. This was known, and as it so often goes: This was not known. Years later, long years since the children had flown away, Ravan's mother moved her old lover into the house. An interesting woman -- overwrought and yet so calculating.
Ravan spit it all out, all her need, all her shame -- at not being there, with the compatriots, with the fellow revolutionaries.
She began to beat her head against my living room wall.
I sobered up in record time.
It made a sickening thud sound.
I told her to stop. I warned her that I would not tolerate her injuring herself on my living room wall.
And eventually, I opened my front door, that gave onto a concrete patio, went back in, picked her up and threw her out the door, onto the concrete. Then I shut the door, and stood, my back to it, hyperventilating and crying.
These many years later, I imagine she still is overwhelmed with want, with self-hatred, with so much frustration.
A year or so later, Ravan and I rented a house together. It was a year of great fun, hilarity, questionable moral judgments -- the time of my life. She fooled us all, though. She would leave the house with me, when it came time to go to classes. No longer taking language courses, we would still meet up in the French Department, do lunch, chitchat with the profs, then go off again, each to attend to her seminars, classes, and labs.
Ah, but she was no longer enrolled. It was a great act. The thing was, she only cared about French lit -- but the Iranian government dictated that she major in something truly useful, by which she could be of service to her country upon her return. This was part of the conditions placed upon her receipt of a student visa.
She tried! Accounting, biology -- she really tried, but she flunked them all. Okay, so a part of her flunking was her failure to attend even a single class.
It turned out that her bank was nothing but the emblem of the western Satan to her. Reason enough to write overdraft after overdraft, right? Stick it to the evil American corporations.
I noticed an accumulation of thin envelopes addressed to Ravan from her bank. She had a stack of letters at least several inches high.
I would come home in the afternoon and there would be huge bouquets of fresh flowers, bottle of Rémy-Martin on the dining room table. The best of everything, and always too much.
When I was finally able to laugh again, the funniest thing of all were the many gifts!
It all came out the day I went to the Mom and Pop grocery around the corner from our house. Pop was doing the check out and was giving me nasty looks. We'd never had any problems, so I eventually interrupted his slamming my purchases into bags every which way, and asked what was wrong.
"She's not welcome here no more," he fairly sputtered.
And yes, there on the cork board next to the register was a returned check of Ravan's. Usually pretty strict with the student population, she had charmed him to the point of ultimate embarrassment.
I walked back home with my groceries, and found Godiva chocolates and, as usual, a huge bouquet of fresh flowers, that day, a selection of imported tulips.
Once her sister and I managed to convince her that not only was the banking industry the Emblem of the Western Satan, it was also going to hold her responsible for making restitution on all her bad debts. I explained that the Sheriff was likely to show up at our door at any time, and that he was going to haul her off to Hell.
At that time, I drove an impeccable 1965 baby blue Cadillac. A freaking luxury liner.
What fun we had, driving around to all the vendors, me waiting in the car while she was forced to go in, confess, apologize, and pay off her bad check(s). There was something endearing and hilarious at her continued attempts to convince us that such-and-such company owed it to the world to suck up her failed payments, as they did nothing but subjugate the workers...
Yes, we slept together, once. It wasn't right, or it was excessively right. I have never been sure which. We had an even more interesting time when we both slept with one of the French profs -- a sad alcoholic of a man who was a thorough swine. I don't know why we did it. Again and again. I remember the tension of having him and his children over for dinner (they were visiting from out of town, as they lived primarily with their mother). Ravan and I both hit it off with his daughter, and then felt, well, oh-so-icky.
Long ago, she found a wonderful woman who is her true love, and succeeded in not one, but several, careers. She went back to school and excelled -- in journalism, political science... and French lit. She became a realtor. Her sister made her an aunt, twice, a role to which she is dedicated and masterful. The two of them have long supported their parents back home.
She was very brave in coming out to her family, to people whose culture doesn't much permit sexual difference.
After a decade or so, she got her green card.
I have one of my single pot wonders cooking on the stove -- a chicken and brown rice curry creation, with cabbage and carrots. Beaucoup garlic. Wonderful aroma, fantastic taste. It's about all I can manage without shoulders, and it fits my sulking mood, as I think of Ravan, my amazing and incredible Beloved Iranian Lesbian, my former best friend.
I think of her and know she is thinking of her land, her home, her people -- and tanks rumbling down streets, and young girls running quickly, bombs in hand.
Resilient, dedicated. Mildly insane. Têtue: Opiniâtre, obstinée, qui ne veut pas démordre de son idée, opinion, ou volonté. Generous. Occasionally rude, in a studied way. There is nothing haphazard in her world, in her behaviors.
She's the only person I've ever physically attacked. Trust me, if you ever assault someone, particularly someone you love, the details stick with you. The heat of that summer night, the humid South. The concrete. I think a lot about the concrete.
What shall I name her for the purposes of writing about her? After diddling around with an Iranian Baby Names site, I've decided on Ravan, soul, spirit.
Right now I imagine her... souffrante, en colère. We have beat the Horse of Exile to death in ancient conversations. She aches to do something. She lies about what she has actually done. Iran is her country, her home; She wants to be there, marching, yelling, singing. effecting change; She wants to be The Revolutionary Force.
I wish she could be satisfied.
It was very soon after we had met each other through our classes and official "hanging out" sessions at the French Department. She was someone you noticed -- a beautiful girl with shiny, shiny, thick, thick black hair, prayer beads always intertwined between long fingers. She was surprisingly hippy, full-hipped. For a dancer, and she insisted she was a dancer, having taken Master Classes in Paris.
Our first encounter, though, came when she and Oussama decided to cheat on a test. It pissed me off, and me being pissed off amused the hell out of them. I received the standard lecture on cultural difference, and probably would have not cared were anyone besides Oussama involved. Oussama was a dickwad.
Anyway.
Our friendship was fun, heady. We drank, we smoked. We pretended to be somewhere that mattered, doing something important. She was living with her sister, who had come to the States ahead of her, before the Revolution.
So she would usually come over to my apartment, which was an easy 10 minutes from university.
I remember letting her cut my hair. (Why? Why did I cut my hair? Inevitably, the summertime gets to me, and the dampness at the nape...) I remember smoking some pot. Listening to music. And suddenly she was talking.
It was like vomit.
It all came out, and not exactly comprehensible, but the grandes lignes were clear enough.
She claimed to be a terrorist, to have blown up a tank by attaching a bomb to its undercarriage, to have gone to a camp to train. I believe this was a grand lie, but she was intense about it, it stirred her. It was what she wanted to be true.
It was so much more interesting than her life in plaid school uniforms and cut-like-a-bowl hair, faithfully documented by badly coloured snapshots, head shots. It was so much more fascinating than her well-to-do family, her mother a university Sanskrit scholar, her father a judge, appointed by the Shah.
She needed to have blown up that tank.
Instead, her parents had forcibly put her on a flight to Germany, then France, when the violence erupted back then. Her father stopped going to the court, and waited at home for someone to come and take him away. They never came.
Her grandfather, she said, was the theoretician of the Iranian Communist Party, and was in and out of prison. He eventually was beheaded.
Taking a closer look at the wealthy family, educated and liberal, looking at their reality? Fascinating. She and her sister had different fathers. This was known, and as it so often goes: This was not known. Years later, long years since the children had flown away, Ravan's mother moved her old lover into the house. An interesting woman -- overwrought and yet so calculating.
Ravan spit it all out, all her need, all her shame -- at not being there, with the compatriots, with the fellow revolutionaries.
She began to beat her head against my living room wall.
I sobered up in record time.
It made a sickening thud sound.
I told her to stop. I warned her that I would not tolerate her injuring herself on my living room wall.
And eventually, I opened my front door, that gave onto a concrete patio, went back in, picked her up and threw her out the door, onto the concrete. Then I shut the door, and stood, my back to it, hyperventilating and crying.
These many years later, I imagine she still is overwhelmed with want, with self-hatred, with so much frustration.
A year or so later, Ravan and I rented a house together. It was a year of great fun, hilarity, questionable moral judgments -- the time of my life. She fooled us all, though. She would leave the house with me, when it came time to go to classes. No longer taking language courses, we would still meet up in the French Department, do lunch, chitchat with the profs, then go off again, each to attend to her seminars, classes, and labs.
Ah, but she was no longer enrolled. It was a great act. The thing was, she only cared about French lit -- but the Iranian government dictated that she major in something truly useful, by which she could be of service to her country upon her return. This was part of the conditions placed upon her receipt of a student visa.
She tried! Accounting, biology -- she really tried, but she flunked them all. Okay, so a part of her flunking was her failure to attend even a single class.
It turned out that her bank was nothing but the emblem of the western Satan to her. Reason enough to write overdraft after overdraft, right? Stick it to the evil American corporations.
I noticed an accumulation of thin envelopes addressed to Ravan from her bank. She had a stack of letters at least several inches high.
I would come home in the afternoon and there would be huge bouquets of fresh flowers, bottle of Rémy-Martin on the dining room table. The best of everything, and always too much.
When I was finally able to laugh again, the funniest thing of all were the many gifts!
It all came out the day I went to the Mom and Pop grocery around the corner from our house. Pop was doing the check out and was giving me nasty looks. We'd never had any problems, so I eventually interrupted his slamming my purchases into bags every which way, and asked what was wrong.
"She's not welcome here no more," he fairly sputtered.
And yes, there on the cork board next to the register was a returned check of Ravan's. Usually pretty strict with the student population, she had charmed him to the point of ultimate embarrassment.
I walked back home with my groceries, and found Godiva chocolates and, as usual, a huge bouquet of fresh flowers, that day, a selection of imported tulips.
Once her sister and I managed to convince her that not only was the banking industry the Emblem of the Western Satan, it was also going to hold her responsible for making restitution on all her bad debts. I explained that the Sheriff was likely to show up at our door at any time, and that he was going to haul her off to Hell.
At that time, I drove an impeccable 1965 baby blue Cadillac. A freaking luxury liner.
What fun we had, driving around to all the vendors, me waiting in the car while she was forced to go in, confess, apologize, and pay off her bad check(s). There was something endearing and hilarious at her continued attempts to convince us that such-and-such company owed it to the world to suck up her failed payments, as they did nothing but subjugate the workers...
Yes, we slept together, once. It wasn't right, or it was excessively right. I have never been sure which. We had an even more interesting time when we both slept with one of the French profs -- a sad alcoholic of a man who was a thorough swine. I don't know why we did it. Again and again. I remember the tension of having him and his children over for dinner (they were visiting from out of town, as they lived primarily with their mother). Ravan and I both hit it off with his daughter, and then felt, well, oh-so-icky.
Long ago, she found a wonderful woman who is her true love, and succeeded in not one, but several, careers. She went back to school and excelled -- in journalism, political science... and French lit. She became a realtor. Her sister made her an aunt, twice, a role to which she is dedicated and masterful. The two of them have long supported their parents back home.
She was very brave in coming out to her family, to people whose culture doesn't much permit sexual difference.
After a decade or so, she got her green card.
I have one of my single pot wonders cooking on the stove -- a chicken and brown rice curry creation, with cabbage and carrots. Beaucoup garlic. Wonderful aroma, fantastic taste. It's about all I can manage without shoulders, and it fits my sulking mood, as I think of Ravan, my amazing and incredible Beloved Iranian Lesbian, my former best friend.
I think of her and know she is thinking of her land, her home, her people -- and tanks rumbling down streets, and young girls running quickly, bombs in hand.
photo credit: Kirsten Hammer
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