(LYRIC PROSE)
QAZVIN 1978
ASHLEY HAJIMIRSADEGHI
QAZVIN 1978
ASHLEY HAJIMIRSADEGHI
Baba breathes the curling smoke of his cigar in and out and leans back in the ceramic chairs provided by the café. He must think he is a dragon. Perhaps he believes it, hollowly puffing out another melancholic cloud, and someday someone will come and slay the beast.
Back then I should have refused to go. He would die a year after I left Qazvin for Baltimore. Car accident. He wasn’t wearing a seatbelt; pronounced dead at the scene. His body would be left on the streets for three days as riots broke out across the nation.
To me he is just Baba, a man who burns his tahdig and sprinkles it with shriveled cherries and the man who fed my baby sister squashed persimmons he plucked and mashed himself from the drooping tree in our backyard. He is the Baba who insists I must go abroad to seek out bittersweet liberation from monotonous Qazvin. He is the man who scouted mismatched states in America, hoping to find the right one for his son.
The cigar is dropped in favor of a cup of chai with dunes of sugar settled at the bottom of the milky tea. Shattering silence--Allah, Allah, are we all going to die? Allah, Allah, where have you gone?
“Allah is a great god. We are blessed, my son. We’ll be fine.”
A mother and her daughter enter the café, their eyes skimming over our exchange. They merely see a father scolding his son over scalding cups of freshly grounded chai and don’t take notice of how our backs are bent from uneasiness. The little girl is laughing, her cocoa hands reaching for her sand-covered hijab, and she tugs absentmindedly at it.
Baba leans over the table, eyes glimmering hazel and the mountains looming menacingly in his dilated pupils. A group of religious men with weathered copies of the Qur’an enter. Their voices carry over the small café; the tea in our cups tremble with the vibrations.
“You are never alone. Allah is watching over you.”
The mother loses her grip and drops her teacup. Glass shards bounce off cracked tiles. Her daughter shrieks, hopping away on one foot. The girl’s hijab comes loose and floats silently downwards. Another scream. The religious men stand up, their copies of the Qur’an thumping against the wooden table. They wrench the now sobbing girl away from her flailing mother and they seem to whisper the same broken phrase:
“We’ve found a sinner!”
Allah, Allah, I feel so alone.
Back then I should have refused to go. He would die a year after I left Qazvin for Baltimore. Car accident. He wasn’t wearing a seatbelt; pronounced dead at the scene. His body would be left on the streets for three days as riots broke out across the nation.
To me he is just Baba, a man who burns his tahdig and sprinkles it with shriveled cherries and the man who fed my baby sister squashed persimmons he plucked and mashed himself from the drooping tree in our backyard. He is the Baba who insists I must go abroad to seek out bittersweet liberation from monotonous Qazvin. He is the man who scouted mismatched states in America, hoping to find the right one for his son.
The cigar is dropped in favor of a cup of chai with dunes of sugar settled at the bottom of the milky tea. Shattering silence--Allah, Allah, are we all going to die? Allah, Allah, where have you gone?
“Allah is a great god. We are blessed, my son. We’ll be fine.”
A mother and her daughter enter the café, their eyes skimming over our exchange. They merely see a father scolding his son over scalding cups of freshly grounded chai and don’t take notice of how our backs are bent from uneasiness. The little girl is laughing, her cocoa hands reaching for her sand-covered hijab, and she tugs absentmindedly at it.
Baba leans over the table, eyes glimmering hazel and the mountains looming menacingly in his dilated pupils. A group of religious men with weathered copies of the Qur’an enter. Their voices carry over the small café; the tea in our cups tremble with the vibrations.
“You are never alone. Allah is watching over you.”
The mother loses her grip and drops her teacup. Glass shards bounce off cracked tiles. Her daughter shrieks, hopping away on one foot. The girl’s hijab comes loose and floats silently downwards. Another scream. The religious men stand up, their copies of the Qur’an thumping against the wooden table. They wrench the now sobbing girl away from her flailing mother and they seem to whisper the same broken phrase:
“We’ve found a sinner!”
Allah, Allah, I feel so alone.
Ashley Hajimirsadeghi is a freshman at the Fashion Institute of Technology. She has previously won 22 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards for poetry, including a Gold National Medal, Silver National Medal, and was selected as one of six students to receive the prestigious Civic Expression Award.
