The Virginal Cousins

The sewer systems were backed up that day, as they had been on any number of days that month, simply because the pumping mechanisms hadn't been designed to accommodate so much crap from so many people. The town, a village-slum hybrid, burst at the seams with war refugees who had streamed in from the province 100 miles south nearly ten years beforehand. No one, once the war was over, had bothered to move away and no one, recognizing this fact, had bothered to upgrade the system. The night air was heavy with the sweet stench of human waste and of baked garbage. The headlights of the taxi fell on a blond billy goat who was employed in the task of locating supper in the mountainous heap of trash outside my brother-in-law's apartment unit. Despite the late hour, scores of small children hung precariously from the balcony rungs, waving excitedly, fruit knives clenched in their hands, and calling to their elders to announce our arrival.

The first day of spring, as always, coincided with the start of the Iranian New Year. The entire country shut down for three weeks and anyone who could afford bus passage, a plane ticket, or taxi fare used the time to travel and visit with far-flung family. Hakim had attempted to purchase plane tickets south for the holidays but had found, not surprisingly, that all flights were booked solid and had been for several weeks. He had stood there, in Iran Air's Shirazi office, wielding his influence like a broken cap pistol, in the vain attempt at wresting two tickets, tout de suite, from some hidden stash left in reserve for important people like him. He had announced that he was a University Professor at Shiraz University, that he had come back to his country to give back to society, and, on top of it all, that he knew a fellow in Customs who could make life miserable for anyone associated with the airlines if Hakim just gave the nod. The ticket agents had giggled at the madman and gone on with their business. We took a taxi to my brother-in-law's house some 10 hours away.

I peeled my hind parts off the back seat of the dilapidated cab and heaved myself onto the dusty road. The baby, who had been fast asleep in my lap, jerked awake at the sound of the welcome trill. Black-cloaked women poured down the stairs, tripping mindlessly over their own grubby offspring who were making their way to the cab to get a look at the American lady and her baby. Hakim shoved a wad of cash at the taxi driver and shooed him away like a housefly, annoyed that the man had not attempted to conceal his curiosity about his foreign wife and trilling family. Iman let out a horrified shriek as the crowd descended upon us and plucked her from my arms. The streets were black save for the soft glow of light emanating from the open doors two floors up. I could barely make out the features of the 30 or so women and children who plastered my lips, cheeks, and forehead with wet kisses and sticky caresses. Having come from a family of anal-retentive Norwegians, I was ill-prepared to handle the physically assaultive Arabs. Seeing the cornered wildebeest look in my eyes and hearing the howls of his eight-month-old daughter, Hakim laughed and called his family off. "People, my wife and daughter are not ice cream cones," he shouted in Arabic, "so please stop licking them."

At the age of 27 I wanted very much to be liked by Hakim's family. He had spent many a happy hour describing his six brothers and sisters, his 98 cousins (just on his father's side), his countless mother's-side cousins, his uncles and aunts, and his 32 nephews and nieces. With the exception of himself and his younger brother, who had yet to marry, he was the only family member who had not married a cousin. As one would expect, there were certain diseases that plagued the bloodline. His older brother and his wife had a knack for producing children with PKU, a genetic disorder involving the inability to metabolize a phenolic acid in proteins, causing retardation in those not fed protein-free diets. Sickle cell anemia was also common. Although thought to be an African-American disorder in the US, the hereditary blood disease was also prevalent among the Arabs and Jews throughout the Middle East. Then there was the undiagnosed genetic predisposition to plain stupidity. Hakim's eldest sister was legendary for giving birth to children inclined to accidentally setting themselves on fire, forgetting to go to grade school for years on end, and stealing impossibly large objects that couldn't be hidden or explained away. With four small children crammed onto my lap, a pre-teen brushing out my long blond hair with the communal comb, and a swarm of others pushing tea and biscuits at me from an assortment of angles, I was feeling less compelled to be ingratiatingly charming.

By midnight I had been paraded before the bulk of the clan. My sister-in-law's mother, one of Hakim's aunts, popped her head in through the open door and gave me a toothless smile. She sat beside me on the salon floor, rested her back against a carpeted cushion, and drove the crowd away.

"Blah, blah, blah," she said in rapid-fire Arabic.

I smiled shyly and responded with one of the few words of conversational Arabic I had learned. I had studied Arabic at the University for two semesters when it became apparent to me that I was going to hitch my wagon to Hakim and his horse. The textbook Arabic I had studied, straight out of the Koran, was about as useful here as Shakespearean English was in Detroit.

"Blah, blah, blah," she continued, waving her arms about and swatting at my thighs for added emphasis.

I grinned and nodded. After an hour or so of lively soliloquy, Hakim passed by.

"My God, what is this woman saying?" I asked him out of the side of my mouth, as if his aunt could possibly understand a single word I had uttered.

"Honey, just be happy you don't understand. You really don't want to know," he replied.

The old aunt grabbed at Hakim's ankle and sighed.

"Blah, blah, blah," she said.

"Well, according to my aunt, you are one of the brightest, most interesting people she has ever met."

The following afternoon Hakim and his brother ran off to a wake. Within that holiday week alone, no fewer than four tribal members had gone to meet their maker. I wondered if some mysterious blight was knocking off the Matoori clansmen or if there was some serious all-male fun to be had out there that required an inventive excuse to ensure attendance. I sat in the salon with my sister-in-law and her three sisters. A German show, circa 1978, flickered on the TV screen while a herd of children ran in and out carrying rusty cans and nail-studded four-by-fours. The programming in the region was positively fabulous because of the close proximity of the Arab Emirates and Kuwait, two countries that regularly broadcast long-forgotten Western cop shows. I had not seen a bareheaded woman on television in over six months so I stared with endless fascination at a helmet-haired Fraulein in a trench coat.

"Tell us what they're saying," said one of the sisters in heavily accented Farsi.

"I don't know what they're saying. They're speaking German and I don't speak that language," I replied.

"Go on. Don't be so selfish. You just can't be bothered to translate," the youngest of the four replied.

I stared at the sisters for a moment or two. They had pulled back their scarves and were running their fingers up and down their part line. Their abhays were spread like blankets across their bare legs. They stared back.

"You see, I'm American and I speak English. Americans don't speak German unless they study it in school. Those people are German and they speak German. I don't."

I smiled and turned my head back to the show, convinced that I had cleared up that little misunderstanding.

"Mahmood, put that knife down right now. You're going to stab your sister again with that thing," the plumpest sister bellowed into the hall.

My sister-in-law, who, like her sisters, had never set foot in a classroom, poked my shoulder.

"Go on. You speak foreign. Translate and stop being lazy."

That evening, well after the cows came home, Hakim returned with his brother. He found me hidden away in the shower room fiddling with the baby.

"Why are you in here?" he asked.

"Because if I have to spend one more minute with thousands of people I am going to be forced to kill myself."

"Honey, you've got to remember that Arabs don't need space. They won't understand your need to be in the bathroom for 12 hours. They'll assume that you're either constipated or that we're having sex in here."

"Sex, sex, that's all these people ever talk about," I grumbled.

I had been stuck in the ladies' quarters for two hours just after dinner. Male visitors from outside the family had come to pay a visit to Hakim. Finding that he was not there, they had opted to wait around until he showed up. This meant that every female over the age of nine was required to remove herself from sight and remain in the back room. About a half an hour into our captivity the one cousin, who had been designated as Hakim's future bride, decided to find out just what she'd missed by not having married him.

"Did you have sex last night?" she asked me point blank.

I blinked several times and cocked my head to hear better.

"Did I what?" I asked, convinced that I had misinterpreted the overweight mother of four.

"You know. Did you do it?" she asked again. This time she rocked her hips back and forth to drive her point home.

"Yes," I replied after I'd gathered my wits, "nine or ten times and God, it's a wonder I can sit."

She gasped with envy and pulled up her five-year-old's dress socks.

"Tell me. Is he really big?"

I glanced at the child who seemed to be just as interested in my answer as her mother.

"Hung like a donkey. Deadly. Like a saber. Would tear you apart."

The women sighed in unison and stared dreamily out the barred window.

Copyright © 2003 The President and Fellows of Harvard College.
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