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THE WILD CATS OF TEHRAN

by Debra Kamza

"Peeshee!" Reza called up to me; "I want you to join me for a moment in the kitchen."

"What?" I asked, breathless from having raced down the stairs at the urgency in his voice. He was standing before the open utility courtyard door with a large photograph clenched in his hands.

"Do you remember Linda?"

"Linda? Ah yes, the seductive American woman who stole your virginity? What about her?"

"You told me not to burn her picture on the altar of your jealousy. I believe you were just being civil. I will burn her picture in your honor and mine. I must remove the taint of her from my life."

I nodded, understanding and accepting such a need and yet wondering just what it was about it that rang so untrue. "Sounds very therapeutic."

Impassively, I watched while he struck a wooden match, set the photograph of Linda afire, and threw it onto the stones of the courtyard to burn.

"Well?" he turned to me expectantly as the ashes blew away.

"Well what?"

"What about Mark? Don't you want to burn your pictures of him?"

"I did that before you ever asked me out the first time, Reza. The sight of his face in photographs with or without me made me unreasonably angry, caused stomach cramps and all that."

"What about that other guy?"

"Who?"

"The one in the only photograph you have in your briefcase. He is wearing a uniform. Who is he?"

"Oh, you mean Kenny. I was engaged to him before Mark."

"Were there others too?"

"No. Just him . . . and that relationship was completely chaste. We lived too far apart for it to be otherwise. We just wrote to each other mostly. Besides, he was a gentleman. The only reason I didn't marry him after all was that he told me his career would take him away from me for six months out of every year and I wanted a close companionship out of marriage."

"Ah," Reza said, blandly, offering me his hand. He led me into the storeroom, where I had left my briefcase sitting open. From it, knowing exactly where to reach, he pulled out the photo of Kenny and solemnly handed it to me. "Will you burn it now?" he asked.

"No," I said, "Absolutely not. I don't have any bad feelings about Kenny. In fact, I find it reassuring to look at an all-American face once in a while. Besides, although I never stopped loving him -- as a special person in my life, you know -- it certainly has no reflection on my present relationship with you."

"If you loved me, you would burn it."

"If you loved me, you wouldn't ask me to. Look Reza, you're the man I married. I do love you, but I'm not burning up the good things in my past along with the bad."

"I will help you." This time, his voice held an ominous note and his eyes were glued sternly to mine as he reached out to try and snatch the photo back.

I was by the door. I ran upstairs with the photograph and hid it under the carpet in the company room. Then I ran back to our bedroom and hurriedly moved some things around so to appear as if I had hidden the photo in there.

Two seconds later, Reza was towering in the door like a Mediterranean storm.

"Where is it?"

"Where is what?" I asked, batting innocent eyes at him as I pulled on my white marnai and rolled out a prayer rug. "I was just getting ready to pray when you interrupted me the first time. Excuse me please?"

"Where is it?" he repeated.

The fact that I was already chanting the first words of the prayer gave me an excuse to ignore him. He let out a low animal growl and started tearing the room apart around me. The closet went next, then the hall and Company room, while I recited my prayers with forced calm.

He was mad as a Spanish bull at his failure to find Kenny's photograph. As soon as I had uttered the last words of the prayer and rolled up my prayer rug, he grabbed a handful of my marnai shrouded hair and started slapping me around like a Ping-Pong ball. It was eminently worth it, though: why should I burn the picture of the one romantic figure in my life that had never wronged me? I was the one who ended up with the bruises but, perversely, this was a battle in which I felt victorious. Reza hadn't managed to destroy the last vestige of good in my past.

In my early teens, I knew a girl who had once dabbled in witchcraft and begged her to tell me what magic she actually knew.

"Oh," she said, amused at my curiosity, "it's mostly just rituals and such. It's a religion, you know." I must have looked disappointed, then, because she gave me a playful pat and added, "I did learn how to astral project, though. I can go anywhere in the world any time I want."

She went on to tell how it was spiritual form of travel rather than a physical one. To do it, she would focus on an upper corner of the room, fully relaxed and awake, while trying to imagine viewing her own body from that spot. When the image went from mere imagination to crystal clarity, she said, her spirit had left her body and was free to travel.

"Doesn't the body die without its spirit?" I asked.

"A silver thread connects it to the spirit," she explained, "Only when the thread breaks does the body die."

"So how far, exactly, does this thread stretch?"

"I don't know," she shrugged, blushing, "I've never astral projected farther than my own house. I'm scared to go any further, although I know that I could go anywhere if I really wanted to."

I didn't believe her but I was intrigued enough to go home and try her method. It didn't work beans for me. I dismissed it as a tall tale told in pure fun

Now in Iran, trapped in a hopeless situation and effectively cut off from my family, I had almost forgotten the incident. All I knew was that I wanted out of a bad situation and there was no reasonable physical means to do it.

One night while I lay sleepless and crying quietly beside my sleeping husband, I stared out the small window above and behind my head. This window had a depressing view of the high-walled service court. All I could see from my viewpoint was the ugly brick walls extending, shaft-like, to a tiny patch of sky. Whiteness flooded down the shadowed brick so that I knew there was a full moon out even though I couldn't see it or even very many stars: epitome of a pit with me at the bottom looking up. There were unseen tomcats yowling at each other on the unseen rooftop.

The unseen moon was what bothered me most, though. Up there was the same night sky that my parents, friends, and countrymen could see. It seemed like the only tangible thing I had brought with me from home, save for my books. How dare it be hidden from me? I wasn't thinking of escape in conscious terms anymore: I had internalized it. Become the thing itself.

Suddenly, I was rising. Still horizontal and wide-awake, I floated up off the floor mat and out through the window as if it were open (this part of the window was, in fact, fixed shut). Stale, warm, house air simply gave way to tingly cool, relatively fresh, night air. Then I floated up past the ugly brick walls toward a widening patch of starry sky.

A pair of tomcats on the roof below howled baleful warnings at each other and soon started fighting in a blur of vicious teeth and fangs while a demure white female sat casually washing her paws a short distance away. I was actually watching them from above! They had all been yowling out of my sight long before this. I was looking at the full moon above me and the flat rooftops and utility court far below me in the same instant. That was the oddest thing: being able to see 360 degrees, three dimensionally, in all directions at once. Yet, at the time, it felt so natural that I hardly noticed: I felt so free!

I continued my steady ascent toward the moon -- which drew my most immediate interest -- as the city widened beneath me; the perfect geometric grid of Tehran's streets glowed white and orange. A soft breeze blew through, rather than on or against, me. There were city lights spread out for miles, becoming a fine sprinkle amidst the black desert expanse. The moon grew larger. The city became a speck of blurred light lost in the desert. Occasionally, there were other specks of light, but none so bright.

My mind struggled to frame this weird experience. I was certain that I was wide-awake, as wide-awake as I'd ever been in my whole life! The moon was so close. My body wasn't with me. I could go anywhere! Or could I? In a flash, I remembered my friend the teenage witch. Was there a silver string tying me to my body that would break if I went too far? Anyway, my baby son was down there somewhere and I couldn't think of abandoning him. Couldn't think of any prospect more horrible or defeating.

Terror hit me and I started falling as I thought of this. Tumbling down into the vertical shaft of the utility court, I glimpsed my own corpse-like, wide-eyed, body blindly staring out the window seconds before I fell into it. Ironically, my hands were crossed over my breast as I had left them, like an Egyptian mummy. Mummy all wrapped up not allowed to be a mommy. The impact of landing flung my arms out. Reza got clubbed over the head. He woke up wanting to know why I had hit him.

Breathlessly, I told him every last bit of my experience. He gave me a sour look and moved out into the hallway to sleep, leaving me alone.

Reza still searched daily for an English-speaking companion for me. One day, he came home to excitedly tell me, "I met an black American muslimah when I was waiting for a bus and begged her to come meet you. She was at least willing to talk to me until she heard that you were white. Then she said that you two wouldn't have enough in common. She refused to come."

I almost cried to hear it.

"Perhaps I will see her again," he hastily reassured me. "Next time, I will talk her into coming."

A few days later, he told me, "There are British women here in Tehran. Would you like to meet them?"

"Lord, Reza, of course I would!" I told him, almost jumping up and down.

At the entrance to a broad, sunlit, alley off Shahedet Square, we got out of our taxi and knocked on a door a little way in. A beautiful young woman in a flowery bright chador opened the door to us. "Salaam ali kum!" she said, then, in very British accented English, "You must be Debbie. I'm Josie."

Reza left me with her, promising to return in a few hours and Josie gave me a hug and beckoned me into the courtyard. It was a large bricked patio opening into a lovely orchard and flower garden. The house, in the bend between orchard and patio, was four stories high. I followed her through a side door and up a flight of stairs to the top floor. Her apartment was spacious, very Western, and full of over-stuffed, doily-bedecked furniture. Here, she whipped off her chador to reveal long blond hair and hung it, with my own headjob, on a coat rack by the door.

"Your home is beautiful," I commented, "Do you have it to yourselves?"

"Oh no." Josie told me. "It's my in-law's house. They live on the ground floor. Other relatives live in between."

"Oh dear," I sighed, sympathizing, "How is it for you having your in-laws so close? We share the same house with my husband's parents and we don't get along at all."

"Well, I get along with mine. They're very nice, in fact. I love having them so close."

She told, in a round about way, how it was normal for families to live even closer together here than this in England. That was why she really didn't have a problem with it.

I guessed we didn't have much in common, but I liked her anyway. She did seem genuinely happy. She was such a breezy person to be able to accomplish that in a violent, dirty place like Tehran. Such fortitude!

"Do you drink tea?" she asked.

"It's unavoidable here," I laughed.

"Good. I'll go make us some. My friend Susan should be here in a while, too."

She bustled into the kitchen.

"Do you have children?" I called after her. She finished putting a copper teakettle on the stove and came back out to settle into the overstuffed armchair across from me.

"Oh no, my husband and I have been trying for going on seven years. I'd so love to have a baby! I had a miscarriage a while back ago and was so depressed about it that my dear husband went and got me a newborn lamb from his uncle's farm to mother. Its own mother had died. I fed it from a bottle and it used to follow me all over the house, crying like a baby if I was out of its sight. I was really heartbroken when it died several months later. I don't even know why it died."

Maybe we did have something in common after all. I smiled and told her all about Henry, the pet chick my husband had brought home to me a several months past. How Reza had told me not to get too attached because it would be killed and eaten when grown but I'd refused to believe it and I did get attached. The adorable little bird followed me everywhere in the courtyard, jumping into my hand when I put it down, jumping into my wash basin when I was scrubbing Ruhollah's diapers, always having to be rescued, always totally cute and lovable, brightening my world immeasurably. How it was never slain for supper after all because it mysteriously died in its cage one night.

Susan, another breezy, blond, British girl, soon came.

After introductions, Josie brought out steaming hot cups of... "Coffee?" I asked. "How did you manage to buy coffee in Tehran? That's quite an accomplishment!" Coffee wasn't usually available in Tehran at all and, when it did make a rare appearance, it was way too expensive for the common folk to afford. Susan and Josie were giggling into their cups.

"That's tea, Dearie," Josie sputtered out. "We Brits like it strong. Don't even like to scrub the pot in between brews. That weakens it, you know. Just add new leaves to the old. Would you like me to lighten yours a bit with some boiled water?"

I shook my head, smiling, embarrassed, but when she offered me lemon, honey, and cream, I gladly accepted. It wasn't that I didn't like the tea. I so very much enjoyed the fact that it was fully different from Persian tea that I wanted to emphasize the difference; maybe pretend I was drinking coffee. I liked Persian tea too, but sometimes having it the same every day only served to remind me of my captivity here. It was nice to let my mind drift away from that.

Susan was also married to an Iranian. She was in her mid thirties, had three children, and, like Josie, was astonishingly happy here, even with her in-laws. They told me of other happy British women here as well. I could hardly believe what I was hearing: happy, women, and Tehran all together in one statement? They had to be joking!

"Do you know any American women here besides me?" I asked.

The women glanced at each other. After a long pause, Susan said, "Yes. We have anyway. There's none of them here now."

"Where's your baby?" Josie suddenly asked. "Your husband said you had one."

"They . . . my mother-in-law won't let me take him out alone." It was hard not to grind my teeth admitting as much. No matter, the subject had been deftly turned. After this, we returned to the safety of small-talk. I didn't get to hear about the other American women until another visit entirely.

According to the British women, the American women never made it here. They always ended up being institutionalized, running away, or committing suicide. I could understand that. Took warning from it too. What completely eluded me was how different the British women must be that they generally managed to survive quite well.

In the months that followed, I was allowed occasional visits with Josie but was never allowed to take Ruhollah with me. Maman forbade it.

I never even thought to invite Josie to Maman's house. It wasn't mine and, to me, it was such a horrid place that I wouldn't have owned up to it if it was.

At six months' old, Ruhollah got a walker, a gift from one of our in-laws. He made such efficient use of it that we had to leash it to a chair leg just to limit his reign of terror. He was so comically, dangerously, good at finding trouble: racing around, running things over, reaching for the samovar, and shoving all kinds of interesting items into his mouth.

He was just as mischievous out of his walker as in it, and almost as fast. If he saw anything lying on the floor, even across the length of the room, he would get this frown of concentration on his face. Then he would start sneaking up on the object, moving faster and faster as he drew nigh, both crawling and rolling, and then pouncing to gleefully shove it in his mouth before anyone could stop him. Stopping him at all meant spotting the glint in his eye before he started toward the object.

He was such a funny little guy. He hopped like a frog when I stood him up, holding his tiny hands, to walk him. On my lap, holding him thus, he would happily bounce for an hour at a time, all with a look of exquisite pleasure on his face, giggling and cooing up a storm or saying, "Ou-ou-ou!" in very serious, deep voice.

Ruhollah's long-lashed eyes were as wide as a thoughtful owl's and dark as the night itself. His head was a mass of soft, wild, curls. Beautiful. He was so cute and far more precious to me than anyone could have guessed by the cautious distance I kept from him in the presence of others. Out the corner of my eyes, I watched him with secret delight and sorrow mixed.

It broke my heart to seeing him growing up so fast, so endearingly, and still feel the tangible presence of the barrier that had long since been erected between us. Fearful of being scolded for who-knew-what-next, I still only held and played with him when the rest of the family wasn't looking.

The nights grew colder. Snow fell in the southern part of Tehran, close to the barren slopes of the pink mountains. The days were still sunny, but crisp now. Breath came out in frosty smoke. On the streets, vendors sold roasted beets, turnips, and chestnuts to warm the passerby. Maman set up the corsi again.

Clothes hung out to dry quickly froze and were dotted with tiny black specks of air pollution from all the heaters and burn barrels being fired up, not to mention the usual automobile smog.

Maman refused to dry anything in the compact washer-dryer. It worked, she said, she just didn't like it. I couldn't understand her thinking on this or any other issue. If it rained or snowed too much to dry things outside, they would be hung inside. Too often, there would be lines of white diaper flags across the living room. It drove me crazy.

The physical world was getting closer as well as colder since my out-of-body experience. I had tasted freedom and refrained from taking it.

As if in teasing reminder of that near escape from Iran, cats began insinuating themselves on my life.

Iranians don't generally keep cats as pets in Iran, though they will keep the alley cats fed, if necessary, in the winter months. This is both to keep them in town to control the rodent population and to ensure that they won't try to attack and eat small children.

These people were as frightened of cats as they were of dogs. Reza was always warning me about how wild Tehran's cats were; not at all like the tame, sweet, pussy cats I was used to.

One of our Armenian next-door neighbors was a cat lover in spite of the national trend. She fed dozens of cats at her front door. Only now, did I happen to notice this. Coming back to the green door with Reza after an evening walk, I saw her at her door, surrounded by purring, leg rubbing, meowing cats. It was the sort of pleasing sight I had missed seeing since leaving the United States: a fellow animal lover.

"Salaam ali kum, Honume," I smiled and went over to her.

"Ali kum salaam, Junam," she beamed back at me, looking, if anything, even more delighted than I was. I realized then, that I had never seen a member of Reza's family ever give, or return, a greeting to her.

I complimented her on the beauty of her cats and asked if I could touch them. She gave assent with pleasure. The cats were shy, but coax able and sweet. I had one purring contentedly by the time I glanced up and saw Reza standing frozen at the green door with a look of horror on his face.

"Honume-jon," he said to me rather than her (I couldn't help noticing he didn't use his usual nickname, Peeshee, for me), "Don't touch that filthy animal!"

I blushed, embarrassed at my husband's impolite reference to our neighbor's pet and rose with stiff reluctance.

"Babaksheed, Honume," I told the still smiling lady, "My husband doesn't like cats. As for me, I think they're beautiful. You're lucky to have the friendship of so many."

"Yes," she said, "Hodah has blessed me. Oh, you are getting cold, Junam! Won't you and your husband come in and have some tea with me?"

Thinking fast, I supposed that, whatever his current problem was, Reza would consider it impolite to refuse the woman's offer. So, confident in Reza's assumed social conundrum, I cheerfully thanked the woman and opened my mouth to accept.

Reza took three swift strides and latched roughly onto my arm in the same instant. "Naher, merci, Honume!" he hissed at her as he dragged me back to and through the blasted green door.

The lady didn't even look affronted, only sad. A smile trembled on her lower lip. She was used to this.

I never did go so far as to have tea with my cat-loving neighbor. Frequently, though, I would pretend to have to use the privy in the courtyard and slip stealthily out the green door to go over and see if she was home. Her name was Sarai, I think. If she were home, I would stand and visit with her and her lovely cats for a few minutes. Then I would hurry back to Maman's house before anyone had a chance to realize I was gone. Running errands around the block for Maman gave me added opportunities to visit Sarai and her cats.

Sometimes the cats came to me. One snow dusted evening, Maman bade me go and fetch some fresh bread from the corner bakery. As I stood waiting in the long line, shivering in the chill air, I felt something soft move against my heavily stockinged legs. It was a little half grown calico cat with huge, bright eyes, purring and trembling and begging to be cuddled.

Happy to oblige, I took it into my arms. Even Sarai's cats had never allowed me to pick them up like this. I felt really honored. The sweet creature snuggled lovingly against me as I removed one glove to stroke its long, soft fur, cherishing the warmth we shared in the face of this cold, star-pricked, night.

All around me, people stared in frank disapproval mixed with trepidation at having a cat (or cat-lover?) in their midst. One woman, looking concerned for me, softly said, "You should be careful, Honume, cats are wild creatures. You can't trust them."

I didn't get the chance to even answer that. The sleepy, content kitten was warm by then and suddenly let out a yowl as if to verify the women's point. The now ferocious mini-demon clawed and bit my heavily coated sleeves and leapt from my arms. It managed to leave a single, long scratch on my exposed hand. I was speechless with astonishment.

The woman didn't tell me, "I told you so," she simply looked it; then went quietly back to minding her own business.

Shortly after this incident, a cat walking on our courtyard wall pricked its foot on the barbed wire and fell down, howling. I had just opened the house door in that same moment and the frightened creature dashed past me into the house and up the stairs. I gasped, as did the men in the living room. Maman, coming from the kitchen, let out a blood-curdling scream. Finally, something -- a frightened kitty! -- had really gotten under her skin. This was better than the day of the scorpions.

Belatedly I realized that only half Maman's screaming was out of sheer fright; the rest was displeasure at me for letting a cat in. She was sure I had done it on purpose. The others soon took her part. It was too much yelling for me to take in all of its separate components. Anyway, I was far more interested in the cat: I wanted to be the one to catch it and calm it down; maybe even make a pet of it.

We all went chasing after the cat. The crazed creature tore through the house like a Loony Tunes Tasmanian Devil. It clawed its way up and down the curtains and over furniture in the Company room. It climbed in and out, and knocked off rope and hooks, all the clothes in our wardrobe room. It hissed and leapt straight at anyone who had the temerity to temporarily corner it. Its constant, nerve-racking, shrieking yowls were impossible to tell from Maman's own.

I decided that this particular cat was more than frightened. It was rabid. Had to be. Also, it would not a good pet make.

We opened all the doors and windows in the house and, at long last, drove the possessed critter out. Then we spent the rest of the evening around the corsi, nursing all of the cat bites and scratches we had acquired.

"You see?" Reza told me, "What did I tell you about cats?"

Silently, I thought, well what do you know if this is the only way you ever see them? I knew that most cats had a far nicer side to them. I had too many years of experience with domestic cats to have learned as much now as Reza assumed I would.

Hardly a week passed and there were more cats in our life. I noticed a female cat carrying kittens from the neighbor's rooftop to ours one day. The next day, she was wandering up there without the kittens, yowling mournfully, while, from somewhere, came the occasional, pitiful mews of her lost kittens.

For two nights, the mewing penetrated our dreams. Reza couldn't sleep for all the cursing he exerted over those cats. Maman and Agha, likewise, did a lot of complaining. I seemed to be the only one actually worried about the kittens for their own sake. When Agha and Reza went searching in all the house's various outdoor nooks and crannies, they cursed dangerously over their failure to find the noisy things.

One day, when the men weren't home, I went out to the utility court to get a metal canister of tallow that Maman had asked for when I heard the mewing again. This time, it was from someplace very close and, as a quick search soon proved, not in our utility court. The mother cat appeared on the roof above me and began her sad yowling again.

As I stood there gazing up, I briefly wondered if the kittens were tucked into eaves or something. Then I dismissed the idea. The roof clearly didn't have eaves. It was flat, but now I noticed that the far court wall extended all the way to the next building, whereas the house corner did not. There was a gap of about three feet between our house and the one in front of it, and it was walled off only as far as the first story. The cat must have dropped her kittens down there as she carried them about the roof.

I gave Maman the canister she wanted and went running up the stairs. I didn't dare tell her what I was up to.

In the company room, I grabbed up several furniture covers, made a rope, and looped it across my shoulders. Then I opened the back window -- which was in the corner of the utility court -- and, leaning as far out as possible, managed to grasp the lower roof edge of the adjacent building. Trying not to think about the twenty-some foot drop I would suffer if I missed, I swung myself over the courtyard and up onto the roof. So far so good.

Ironically, I found a long wooden stepladder lying on top of the roof. Considering my handmade rope, though, I crowed at the sight of the handy thing. I didn't care a fig for my jailer's possessions, but I wasn't looking forward to getting deservedly yelled at for wreaking havoc on them, either. Now I wouldn't have to.

Skirting the utility court, I looked down into the crevasse between buildings and saw seven mewing kittens, their eyes newly opened, far below and clearly out of reach of their crying mama. Deciding to take the scolding after all, I untied one of the sheets, and lowered the ladder.

The kittens were incredibly wild. Every time I grabbed and thrust one into my sheet-cum-kitty-bag, I got scratched. Even once in the bag, they furiously tried to tear their way out. By the time I had them all, I also had several long bloody streaks down my arms to show for it.

Still, I was enormously satisfied with the fruit of my efforts: I had felt so sorry for the poor mama cat and her "helpless" little kittens. Now, certain that she would follow the mewing of her kittens, I could lead her to a safe place -- in the alley perhaps -- before releasing her kittens to her. I didn't want them falling into the crevasse a second time.

"Debbie june," Maman called the moment I had reached the bottom step with my feisty bundle, "What is that struggling inside of my furniture cover?"

Reluctantly, I showed her.

Her eyes grew wide, but she forbore bawling me out this once. Instead, she got a cardboard box and silently helped me transfer the kittens to it before taking her sheet back.

Reza found us in the kitchen just as we were closing the box. My heart sank. I knew how he felt about cats. I was sure he would kill them, and tried to make him think the mewing and tiny, angry yowls, were coming from someplace outside. Maman didn't bother to interfere with my attempted ruse.

Reza didn't buy it anyhow. Pushing me roughly aside, he peered cautiously into the box and then took it up. "Mubarak boshei on finding the kittens, Honume Jon. I will take care of them now."

"No!" I cried out, "Please let me do it. I'll reunite them someplace with their mother where they won't bother us."

"If you give them back to their mother she'll lose them about the house again and we'll hear her yowling for every night to come. She was exceedingly stupid to lose them in the first place. I will make certain her loss is permanent this time."

"Oh please don't kill them," I begged him.

He trod off down the hall to the front door with them and, only there, turned back and said, "It would be better if I killed them, but, if you prefer, I will let them live as long as they can in this cold."

Reza was gone for over an hour. He came back without the kittens.

"What did you do with them?" I demanded, already heartsick with premonition.

"I took a taxi to the far outskirts of town and left them in a dump yard where the wild dogs will find them and their mother will not," he answered in a tone of crisp satisfaction.

All I could do is stare at him. Who was this heartless brute I was married to? I didn't talk to him for a long time after that and fell ever more deeply into the depression that had been eating at me anyhow.

During the night, as he slept there beside me, I found release in shedding quiet tears; as if I could possibly hope to cry away all the pain. Of course, it wasn't just the cats; it was everything. I thought I might finally attain contentment in this place if I could simply stop feeling and become an inhumane beast like my husband had turned out to be, despite my love for him and the sporadic comfort gestures he made me. All that time, I put so much effort into keeping my sobs quiet; I didn't realize that Reza was even aware of my nightly sob sessions. I was wrong. One night, he opened his eyes and stared at me.

"Peeshee Jon," he said, ever so gently, "Why do you cry every night? What can I do to make you happy? Haven't I done everything a man can do?"

This Iranian male was an extraordinarily obtuse being. Couldn't he see that the majority of what he done for me was make me as completely miserable as it is possible for a human being to be? He continued coaxing, though, begging to know what troubled me, and, although I couldn't believe his professed ignorance, I told him everything that had distressed me since coming to Iran. It was old news to him. He knew I wanted to either go back to the states or, at the very least, move away from his mother's house.

In a split second, the tender concern in his eyes changed to lunatic sparks of fury. Abruptly, he rolled over on top of me and bit my cheek, clinging to it with his teeth like a rat hound. When I screamed in pain, he released my cheek only to twist the tie of his red velveteen bathrobe around my throat.

The discomfort was desperation. The pain was beyond any I had ever known. I strained, eyes bulging, hands trying futilely to pull or scratch away his hands. There came a sharp, painful, deflation in my chest as my throat constricted. I couldn't breathe! My whole head felt hot and swollen with the futile effort of trying to draw breath. Darkness, deeper than the room around us and flecked with sparks of white, crept around and closed the vision in my gaping eyes.

One tiny spot of vision remained. In it, I suddenly saw a blur of claw-like hands gripping at Reza's shoulders and heard Maman's voice, as if from the end of a long tunnel, screaming at Reza.

Forcefully she pried his hands off my throat pulled him off me until, at last, I could draw a grateful, if ragged, breath. Then she chewed him out and ordered him to come downstairs to sleep with her and Agha. Quietly, he obeyed.

The next day, when Reza's sisters and their children came over for lunch, they exclaimed over the bruised and swollen bite mark that took up my whole cheek.

"What bit you, Debbie June?"

I wondered if it weren't obvious what sort of animal had bit me. Over in the corner of the room, Reza blanched and ducked his head. I shot him a pointed glare.

"A . . . peeshee did this," I said, pretending to founder for the correct word for "cat" in Farci -- which, as I well knew, was "ghorbei" -- and coming up with the word for "kitty," the mutual nickname Reza and I had long held for each other.

Reza had a good squirm, but managed to save face. As for his sisters, oddly, they appeared to accept this obvious lie and never said another word about it.

Debra Kamza Career wise, I'm an Admin IV for a large Aerospace company calibration laboratory in Redmond, Washington. Ampbreia Weiss is the full pen name under which I've published most of my poetry (my own little protest at the way a woman's name/identity changes every time she marries), though I have occasionally used mymore common legal name as well. For LOST IN FOREIGN PASSIONS, I haveopted to use my surname of the time when most of these events took place: Kamza.
Her work has appeared in the Poetry Center, THE AMERICAN POETRY ANNUAL, Sparrowgrass and others.