Women Without Men: A Novel of Modern Iran

Zarrinkolah

— 61 — Zarrinkolah was twenty-six and a prostitute. She lived at Golden Akram’s brothel in the city’s notorious red-light district. Akram, the madam, had seven gold teeth. That was why some people called her “Akram the Seven.” Zarrinkolah had lived there since puberty. In the early years she had three or four customers a day, but now at twenty-six, she serviced twenty, twenty-five, even thirty customers a day. Several times she had complained to Akram about the pressure of work, but all she got was a tongue lashing, and once even a beating. She had learned her lesson. Zarrinkolah WWoM_v4.5.indd 61 11/3/11 1:51 PM — 62 — Zarrinkolah was a jolly person by nature. She had always been cheerful—from the time when she received three or four guests a day until now when she handled twenty or thirty. She even expressed her complaints as jokes. The women liked her tremendously. During lunch breaks she would crack jokes or carry out comedy routines , and the women responded with peals of laughter. On some occasions she toyed with the idea of leaving the house, but the women had pleaded with her to stay. Without her, they said, the house would be cheerless. It was possible that some of them had egged Akram on to beat her. In reality, she was never serious about leaving; she had no place else to go but to another establishment like this one. At nineteen she had had a real chance of leaving when she had a suitor. He was an ambitious bricklayer who dreamed of becoming a contractor. Unfortunately, before he could carry through with his proposal, he had his skull split by a shovel in a fight. By now Zarrinkolah was resigned to her fate, although she complained from time to time. But for the past six months Zarrinkolah had been experiencing a serious problem with the way her mind worked. It all started one Saturday morning. She got up, drank a glass of water, and was getting ready for breakfast. “Zarry,” she heard Akram shout from downstairs. “You have a customer and he is in a hurry.” Usually, there were no customers in the morning, except those who had stayed overnight and fancied extra treatment before they left. So what? Zarrinkolah had thought to herself that morning, to hell with customers WWoM_v4.5.indd 62 11/3/11 1:51 PM — 63 — so early in the morning. Before she could give voice to her thoughts, she heard Akram’s voice again, louder and sharper this time, “I’m talking to you, Zarry. The customer is on his way.” Zarrinkolah gave up on breakfast. Angrily she went back to her room, threw herself on the bed and parted her thighs. The customer came into the room. It was a man with no head. She was so frightened she couldn’t scream. She submitted to him frozen with fear. He finished his business and left. That day all her customers were headless. She kept it to herself afraid that she might be accused of being possessed by evil spirits. She had heard of another woman afflicted with evil possession who would let out blood-curdling screams around eight o’clock at night scaring away customers at the peak of business hours. The woman had been turned out of the house and had disappeared without a trace. Zarrinkolah had assumed that the time the spirits visited was eight at night. She thought of singing at that hour to ward them off. For the past six months she had been breaking into song at eight o’clock. Unfortunately she had a poor voice and could not carry a tune. “You slut,” a traveling musician, frustrated by her singing off key, had barked at her. “You have no voice and you’ve given me a headache.” After that Zarrinkolah had taken to going down to the basement washroom to practice out of earshot. Akram the Seven was watching her bizarre routine, but didn’t mind it as long as she served her daily quota of customers and did so cheerfully. WWoM_v4.5.indd 63 11/3/11 1:51 PM — 64 — After a while, a fifteen-year-old girl was recruited to join the house. She was painfully shy. One day Zarrinkolah beckoned her upstairs to her room. “Listen to me, kid,” she addressed her, “I have to...