All of us—my children, the friends who occasionally visit us, I myself—are scared stiff of the downstairs neighbor. Our lives as foreigners in Paris are full of hidden anxieties. To begin with, we feel guilty for having taken up space that rightfully belongs to the natives, yet hidden beneath our apologetic smiles and submissiveness lurks an anger that stings and lies in wait for revenge. Humiliated, we painfully swallow our pride—a pride that has been instilled in us over the past two and a half millennia, a confidence that we descendants of Cyrus the Great, even in defeat and despair, are superior to the rest of the world (why, God only knows), and if we have fallen on hard times, if little is left of our past glory and splendor, you Western exploiters are to blame.
Even if this accusation is false, one thing is true: the cause of my current misery is the woman who lives downstairs and haunts our chaotic life like an evil spirit, omnipresent. We don’t dare walk, talk, or laugh. Having only recently arrived in this city, unfamiliar with the hows and whys of life in the West, having been hurled to this side of the world from the bosom of our family and friends, from a spacious house with a sprawling garden, we roam around like sleepwalkers and wonder how we can live in such tight quarters without disturbing our neighbors and being in anyone’s way.
The children have turned into wild beasts. One is five and the other is four. They are nervous and agitated and they express their anxiety through earsplitting screams and by kicking and punching anything and everything in sight. My son hits my daughter, I hit my son, and our neighbor pounds on our door. Sometimes she bangs on her ceiling with a broomstick or a long pole, or shouts out the window, “Be quiet!”
Then, to be sure we have gotten her message, she comes upstairs to lodge a complaint in person. My timid gaze remains glued to the floor, my voice trembles as I awkwardly mumble a few words, my hand lingers outstretched in greeting, while my shaky legs are ready to beat a retreat and my body stays helplessly frozen in place. This is all proof of my guilt. I promise the downstairs lady that those inhuman sounds will never be heard again, that the children, even though they have not yet had dinner (who cares?), will immediately be sent to bed with a kick in the butt and a smack on the head, and that I myself, with my feet never touching the floor, will fly to the end of the hallway like a weightless mosquito and will stay under the mattress or if necessary under the bed for three days and three nights in deathly silence, and that I will make every effort to comply with the laws of the land and to observe the customs of the people of this city.
The downstairs lady does not believe a word I say. She again confronts me, again raises her voice, again glowers at me, again flares her nostrils, and in between her long sentences she huffs and puffs and hoots and howls and with all these sounds that resemble thunder and lightning she makes me understand that the situation is worse than ever and that war will continue to rage.
Our tiny, modest apartment is in the heart of Paris, on the fifth floor of a building that overlooks a church with several trees in its courtyard and a few sparrows and fat pigeons fluttering around under its eaves. The trees and the well-fed birds somehow remind us of our garden in Tehran and temporarily erase from our minds the memory of the woman downstairs. In addition to these superb advantages, our mousehole has a two-meter-long balcony where we entertain guests, relax, and enjoy some fresh air. We have crammed this sprawling garden with as many pots of geraniums and petunias as possible, and in the evenings, weather permitting, we sit in our green space, among the fragrance-free flowers, and leisurely savor large, tasteless cucumbers. If a friend happens to drop by, we invite her to join us in our make-believe garden so that she, too, can share our joy and forget her longing for the motherland.
The lady downstairs, or as the children have nicknamed her, Madame Wolf, disapproves of our use of the balcony and expresses her displeasure by intermittently screaming, “Quiet!” Her command is so forceful and authoritative that our voices choke in our throats and our smiles freeze on our lips. We give up sitting in our garden and sheepishly close the balcony door. I tell myself we have to be patient. Coming from a country ruled by hardline, anti-West mullahs, we are in no position to argue. We have been accused and found guilty of unknown crimes. Perhaps in this country people do not sit outside on their balconies and chuckle and giggle with their friends and they do not waste precious time in idle chitchat and casual folly. If they ever want to see a friend, it is probably to discuss politics or literature or some other weighty matter, and they do this in a café and settle the issue over a cup of strong coffee. My reasoning is convincing to me, but the children are oblivious to it all. From the warm and loving embrace of their grandmother and aunts and from boundless love and affection, they have been exiled to a cold, dreary, and unemotional place and they cannot understand the reason for such great injustice. They love the sound of the telephone and the doorbell ringing. They even prefer the presence of Madame Wolf to the silence and seclusion of our new home.
People here do not easily open up their homes to others. First, they carefully look through the peephole to see who is behind the door. Then they ask who you are and what exactly you want. When they have made certain that you pose no danger, they undo the door chain, unlock the top and then the bottom lock, and in the interim again look through the peephole and again ask questions until finally they cautiously open the door a crack. If you have gone to their home without prior notice, they will quickly send you away, and if you are there on an urgent matter, they will deal with it right there at the door and send you off.
Our front-door has no chain, no bolt, and no peephole. As quick as the wind, without asking any questions, and excited to have an unexpected guest, the children fling open the door and invite whoever it is to come in; even Madame Wolf. I prefer Madame Wolf to come in, sit, relax, and have a cup of tea, and even if we have complaints and grievances, I would like us to find the right moment to bring them up and discuss them. But the lady downstairs has no time for any of this. She comes. She knocks. She yells. She leaves. The lady concierge is the same way. She comes. She knocks. She delivers the package that has come in the mail. She leaves. Exchanging greetings and pleasantries are not customary.
Our next-door neighbor is a middle-aged woman. She is not foul-tempered, has no complaints against us, and does not pound on our door. In fact, she seems ignorant of our existence and her mind does not register our presence. Once in a while, I run into her in the hallway or we ride together on the elevator. Neither of us speaks. If I say hello, she will respond. If I don’t, she says nothing. She leaves early in the morning and comes back late at night looking drained and exhausted. Her solitude troubles me. Imagining someone this isolated and alone in her own country makes my heart ache. The lady downstairs is alive. She is full of vitality. She is set against us and this itself is some sort of a relationship. There is not one second when we are not aware of her presence and there is nothing we can define or describe in our life that is independent of this knowledge.
I have enrolled the children in the local kindergarten and it is a relief to keep them away from Madame Wolf for a few hours every day. I wish the kindergarten were open until late at night and on Sundays, too. Taking the children there is not easy. They don’t want to go; they are terrified of the teachers who speak a language they don’t understand. The mornings are dark and often rainy. We don’t have a car and have to walk the length of one avenue and three side streets, and the children weep most of the way. By the time we get to the second street, my son’s daily stomachache starts. He writhes and clings to my leg and wants to go back home. I feel sorry for him, but as soon as I consider taking him back to the apartment, our neighbor’s face suddenly appears before me and overrides my maternal compassion. In the mornings, my daughter is sleepy and groggy and practically catnaps all the way to the kindergarten. She sits down on the stairs in front of every single house on our route and yawns. If I let her, she will fall asleep right there. The only way I can get her to continue walking is with the lure of chocolate and candies. As soon as she sits down, I show her a piece of candy with a colorful wrapper. She leaps up and for the love of sweets runs two or three meters. But the instant she devours it, she again sits down and snoozes. Finally, I grab the back of her collar and drag her the rest of the way. The rain is a big nuisance, too. The children refuse to stay under the umbrella and are soaked to the skin by the time we arrive at the kindergarten. I worry that they will catch a cold and that the sound of their coughs and sneezes will reach the sensitive ears of the lady downstairs.
If Iran was not at war, I would go back home. If it weren’t for my fear of the bombs and rockets, I would not stay here a single day. But in truth, the real battlefield is here. We are always either retreating or evading and an invisible machine gun is constantly aimed at us. Saddam Hussein is on the other side of the world, but Madame Wolf is only a few steps away, sitting in ambush. And like prisoners of war, we have put our hands on our heads and with humiliation and shame we have surrendered to her. In fact, what makes us so obsequious is our inability to speak or understand the French language. The enemy attacks with a sword of words and we remain defenseless.
The lady downstairs has come up with a new strategy, a lengthy official letter—similar to a writ of execution—in which she has issued seven or eight key directives. Immediately cover the parquet floors with heavy carpeting so that there will be less noise when you walk. Avoid wearing shoes (especially those with high heels) and wooden slippers. Do not sit out on the balcony. Do not talk in the bathroom or the kitchen because the ventilation ducts carry sound. Do not take showers or flush the toilet early in the morning or after nine in the evening. Do not slam the closet doors. Do not make any loud sounds, such as laughing, sneezing, coughing, and hiccupping. And the final directive, underlined in red, emphasizes the need for us to spend less time at home and to go out more often.
It seems I have no choice but to comply. I immediately cover the floors with thick wall-to-wall carpeting. We walk barefoot and our conversations have turned into murmurs and whispers. Friends who come to visit us take off their shoes at the door. Our fear has infected them, too. We have accepted the fact that we must be cautious and silent and deny ourselves the freedom to live as we wish. We have gradually forgotten that we are human beings and that every individual is free within the four walls of his or her home. We have quickly and without argument obeyed the orders dictated to us and we have submissively accepted Madame Wolf’s tyranny.
Madame Wolf is aware of her supremacy and with every day that passes she sharpens her fangs even more. Of all the directives she has issued, the last one is the most difficult to obey—“spend less time at home.” Where can we go? Most of my friends are artists and writers and don’t have spouses and children. They are not wealthy and don’t have the means to entertain guests. They live in small rooms crammed with books and papers or easels and canvases. Their homes are not well-suited to children. And the few friends who are married and have children are so fed up with their own kids that they cannot bear to have more of them around. As a result, our only escape is to go to the park. There is a shabby one on our street. It is a haunt for old women and Arab housekeepers, and late at night, drunken beggars gather there to divvy up their day’s earnings. I hate this park. It depresses me. The children’s only entertainment there is to play in the sandbox or to go up and down a dilapidated slide. The Luxembourg Gardens is beautiful, but it is far away and going long distances in Paris’s unpredictable weather is difficult with two small children. By the time we get there, it usually starts to rain. Coming from a sunny country, we are still not accustomed to carrying hats and umbrellas and we are often caught off guard and end up standing for hours under a store awning, waiting for the rain to stop.
My happiest hours are when the children are asleep, the lights downstairs have been turned off, and I have three or four letters from friends and relatives in Tehran or scattered around the world. I don’t read the letters as soon as they arrive; I wait to read them in bed, late at night, with a cup of hot coffee and a hearty cigarette. The first one is from Lili who lives in Tehran and is, or pretends to be, happy and content with her life. Her children are going to school, have two thousand friends, play in the garden or roam around the streets and squares of their neighborhood, and they are not scared of the war and the bombings. Lili works, she doesn’t mind wearing hijab, and every night she goes to a party or has dozens of guests at her house. The second letter is from Dariush A. It is so sad and bitter that I want to cry. He is out of work and out of money. His son is a fugitive, his friends have fled the country, and he has such a grim view of the future that it terrifies me. The third letter is from Mr. K. It is a precise and concise report of all the bad news. His nephew has been executed by firing squad, his mother has twice tried to commit suicide, inflation is wreaking havoc and soon everyone will die of hunger, and every night Afghani laborers raid people’s homes and decapitate women and children, young and old. Moreover, the Russians have come to terms with the Americans and Iran’s Balkanization is certain, and his gardener’s sons have joined the Revolutionary Guards in the Mahmoudieh district and they want to confiscate all his assets and belongings.
The last letter is from my mother. It is several pages long and reads like the screenplay for a shoddy Iranian movie—it is full of contradictions and inconsistencies. According to her, people are extremely fortunate and extremely miserable. There is no end to the parties, outings, and entertainments. Everyone is always together, eating, drinking, and they are all grateful to the Islamic Republic. Then the page turns and the sentences that follow speak of the intolerable hardships people are suffering. There is no electricity, no water, no meat in the market, there is plague, there are no doctors and no medicine, there is no safety and security, there is no police force . . . inflation, high prices, and famine are ravaging the country, there are two meters of snow on the ground, there is no fuel, the weather is deadly cold, and worse of all, she must endure loneliness and separation from her children. At the end of the letter, she again curses and cusses at the West and boasts that in Iran people have everything, that living in their own city they are their own boss and not indebted to and at the mercy of Westerners, and that all those who went abroad have made a grave mistake. Then she reverts back to the parties and feasts and in the end she suddenly and very true to character announces that she intends to sell the house and everything she owns and that she will find a hole in some corner of the world where she can spend the final days of her life in peace and quiet.
It is late. I can’t sleep. My daughter has chickenpox and she is burning with fever. I am worried and I don’t know whom to turn to for help. I want to write, but my brain doesn’t work. I leaf through the book I am holding. I read one page and realize that I have not registered a single sentence. It has been raining nonstop for two days. I wish someone would stop by.
The children are asleep. They both have a fever. I tell myself I should go back to Iran. At least in my own city I have a mother, an aunt, and an uncle whom I can turn to for help, and there will be no one living above me or below me. There, I am not afraid of my neighbors and I can jump up and down in my own home as much as I like. I can laugh. I can wail and weep. I can dance. Dariush A. is the only person who is urging me to stay in Paris. “My dear,” he writes, “who says you will be free in your own home? You will not be able to breathe, talk, think, dress, eat, or even defecate in any manner other than the one prescribed by the government and in accordance with Islamic norms. Even mating and dying are not free of rules and government control. Every moment of your life will be preregulated.”
I jump at the sound of someone knocking on the front door. Who could it be? The doorbell doesn’t work. The person is now banging on the door. It must be bad news; I am sure of it. My heart is pounding. A thousand thoughts rush through my mind. Something has happened to my mother. My brother has been arrested. It is the police. It is a friend on the run. I drop my book. My foot gets caught in the bedside lamp’s wire. I quickly pull a long shirt over my nightgown and run to the door. “Coming! One minute,” I say in Persian and in French as I open the door. What? It’s Madame Wolf. At this hour of the night? She is usually asleep by now and we have given her no reason to come and knock on the door. I stand there confused. I feel I have turned pale. My heart is still pounding in my chest. I am frustrated by my own awkwardness and the way I am stammering. Madame Wolf bristles as soon as she notices how shaken and nervous I am.
“What is going on?” she roars. “What are you doing?”
“When?”
“What is all this racket?”
“What racket?”
I have been conditioned to believe she is always right. I think the children must have woken up and are jumping up and down. I run toward their room. There is total silence. There is absolutely no noise in the apartment and the downstairs lady is wrong. She is wrong and I can say so to her face. This is a matter of two plus two makes four. It has nothing to do with fluency in the French language or knowledge of the culture and customs of the West. This has to do with simple human logic. This time, I will not give in to her. I am right and being right is a great advantage that gives me power and courage. I hold my head up and raise my voice.
“What noise?” I ask.
Madame Wolf did not expect a rejoinder and is not used to being questioned. She pokes her head inside the apartment and takes a quick look around.
“What noise?” I ask again in a louder voice.
Madame Wolf looks confused and her unprecedented hesitation makes me bolder. An old visceral rage surges in me and spreads through my body like a fever. I feel hot. I start to sweat.
“What noise?” I holler so loudly that Madame Wolf leaps back in shock. She did not expect such anger from me. I become even more daring and take a step forward. This time, I glower at her and stare into her eyes and for the first time I see her for who she really is: an ordinary woman, about my age, approximately the same height and weight as me, with short, brown, greasy hair. Unlike most Frenchwomen, she is not neatly and elegantly dressed. There are two deep lines on either side of her mouth that make her look bitter and surly. She seems tired and tense. She is pregnant. She looks like all sad women who go to work at the crack of dawn and at night pass out in front of the television.
In broken French, I explain that the children are sleeping and that I was in bed. I struggle through a few more muddled sentences in an effort to make myself understood and then, frustrated and self-conscious, it suddenly occurs to me to speak in English, a language I am fluent in. The French mock Americans and with haughty airs refuse to learn English. But their contempt is only superficial; deep inside, they are impressed and infatuated with America and Americans.
I open my mouth and a torrent of words gush out. I feel as if I have grown wings and can fly. No one can stop me. I float in an ocean of words, my thoughts and words become one. I no longer have to trim my phrases and speak in short, simple sentences. I want to pontificate. I am drunk with the power of my speech. I can curse in English, and I do. I don’t know if Madame Wolf understands what I am saying, but I don’t care. The tone of my voice, my blazing eyes, and my aggressive gestures make the lady downstairs understand that she has to get lost and that if she ever shows up at my door again, the biggest piece left of her will be her ear. The filthy, miserable, stupid piece of shit. I flail my arms and raise one foot as if I am going to kick her. As I roar and soar, Madame Wolf seems to shrink and shrivel. I swell, I become taller, and I grow two sharp teeth like Dracula’s fangs.
Madame Wolf looks like a small lamb about to be slaughtered. She lets out a short shriek and runs for the elevator. I will not relent. God only knows what I am ranting. Captivated by my own power, I want to go upstairs, knock on all the doors, and order everyone to shut up. I want to tell all the tenants that they are not allowed to talk or walk or sit outside on their balconies.
Gasping, the lady downstairs jumps into the elevator the second its door opens and she disappears. There is no sign of her the next day and the days that follow and the next month and the months that follow. She seems to have melted and vanished into the ground. Much later, we run into each other in the hallway near the building’s entrance. We both quickly look the other way and walk away from each other. The only memory of her that lingers in my mind is her large stomach and her tired eyes. She is in the final days of her pregnancy.
In the absence of Madame Wolf’s daunting presence, life becomes normal. We walk in the apartment with our shoes on and we talk comfortably and without dread. On sunny days, we even sit outside on the balcony and we are not afraid to laugh. The children are calmer. We go out when we want to and if we stay out it is by choice and not by force.
Summer arrives. It is almost dawn when an infant’s shrieks wake me up. I listen carefully. The noise is coming from downstairs. I smile. Madame Wolf is trapped. Now, it is her turn to shish and shush and to go without sleep.
Years pass and I am still thinking about going back to Iran. The children have grown up and no longer cry and sulk because they have to go to school; they walk there and back on their own. They are less apprehensive and Madame Wolf’s presence has become just an old memory.
It is a typical autumn Sunday. The sky is overcast and a biting wind is blowing. The children are home and we have guests coming in the evening. I go out to buy a few things from the Arab grocery store that is open on weekends. I walk past the dreary neighborhood park and I catch sight of Madame Wolf sitting on a bench, staring into the distance. She has raised her coat collar against the cold. There is a half-open book on her lap, a half-extinguished cigarette between her fingers, and her hair is as usual greasy and disheveled. Her right leg is stretched out, her foot is turned inward, and her shoe has slipped off. A little girl is sitting on the ground in front of her. Madame Wolf looks so broken and depressed that I feel sorry for her. Why is she sitting in this miserable park in the cold and wind? Remembering days gone by, I recall her letter of commands. Without a doubt, a neighbor has ordered her to keep her child outside the building as much as possible. Another Madame Wolf has sharpened her teeth for her. Thought of this depresses me. In this modern building overlooking a church and a courtyard, dozens of wolf-like sheep are sitting in ambush, blaming each other for their miseries; tired, hopeless wolves with petty desires and illusory dreams, waiting for better days.
I wonder if things could have been different. Could they?
Two or three drops of rain fall on my face. I walk faster. The lady downstairs is still sitting there, looking dazed and perplexed. A drunken beggar is lying unconscious under a tree. Or perhaps he is dead. No one looks at him. I think about the reception I am hosting and my guests who will be arriving soon. I hurry to the grocery store and in my haste to read my shopping list, I forget the question I had asked myself only a moment ago.