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Raw Walnuts H NEGIN NEGHABAT To my mother and to her mother Crack the hard shell of walnuts, throw the shell away and place the walnuts in a jar of water. Change the water every few hours, and repeat this for several days.Eventually,the thin brown skin gets soft and can be peeled off easily.With only the bare, white part of the walnut remaining,add some salt,and try tasting the“raw walnut.”For me,this taste brings back memories of a time when I still had a nation and the sense of belonging. H The bad odor of city smog and exhaust fumes from congested cars filled the air.My grandmother was irritated by the strength of my grip as she was leading me, my hand in hers, through narrow alleys, across busy roads, and past overcrowded shops. Then, I started crying because she didn’t hold my hand back with the same strength I held hers. She finally did. Maybe I was feeling the frailty of my life in Iran as it was coming to an end, and it was this feeling that pushed me to hold on as well as I could.Maybe this was why I fixated on vigorously holding Mami’s hand. Or maybe I was, in fact, just an unusually difficult child, as I was led to believe. We crossed large streets, lingering our way through the masses of cars that seemed to be standing still in the typical traffic of Tehran.The incessant honking of cars,their drivers’cursing,and the constant complaining of people standing by are the sounds I hear after all these years, like the sound of the ocean captured in a seashell. We got trapped in the traffic,our way across the street blocked by the side of a large,gray van with a horizontal,metal door handle exactly at my height.I was urged to hold on to the metal handle with the same 132 NEGIN NEGHABAT vigor as I held on to Mami’s hand; and I did. Suddenly, the van started moving;I still refused to let go until I was pulled back by Mami’s hand. Her loud shriek was followed by a worried,angry lecture over the danger I had put myself in. We walked almost daily to the bazaar,where she bought vegetables, fruits, and the like. People’s smiles and compliments there, in my first country, stood in such massive contrast to the cold, harsh treatment I received in the country that eventually became my second home— Germany. At the bazaar, we enjoyed the attention of merchants and other customers. I remember Mami’s bargaining skills, still, as if it were only a few days ago.Now,her behavior strikes me as deeply confident when I think back to those days or, really, any days I spent with her. Mami was a remarkably beautiful woman, not just then, but at every age. I remember the attention we would receive as a compliment to her beauty and confidence, but also to her wit and eloquent language. It was normal that I was thought to be her daughter rather than granddaughter , and she didn’t make efforts to clarify this misconception. I also became used to receiving compliments, and it spoiled me to the point of feeling insulted for the rest of my life whenever I did not receive my due attention. The walnuts from the markets of Tehran did not come in a jar of water, but in their original green shell, the shell that later turns brown. They were real “raw” walnuts that were kept fresh by the merchants, typically wrapped in large amounts into wet cloths.Peeling off the brown skin was difficult for me then because I was less than five years old. But someone always helped me.We usually bought small plastic bags full of these nuts—of course, only during the season for raw walnuts. Mami was always very attentive to weight issues. She and my mother didn’t want me to eat a lot of nuts.They are very calorie-rich, and I had always been a little fat.“Walnuts and Nutella are the reason she’s chubby,”Mami would tell my mother,and while raw walnuts were only seasonal, Nutella—a European chocolate paste—was available to me all year long because my mother worked for an Austrian company. H RAW WALNUTS 133 [3.129.39.55] Project MUSE (2024-04-26 08:18...

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