These diary series stories show us a young girl who wants to discover the world and fights some obstacles in this way.
The Princess’s Leopard Skin Coat
Final Version Translated by Elisa and Rahmat
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Whenever I went anywhere on my own, as I rang the bell, I’d feel very nervous.
“Who is it?”
I had to say my name. But it was so difficult. There was no point in saying the name on my birth certificate. I couldn’t even think of it. No one had ever heard of this name. But I would repeat this name to myself. Whenever I was on my own I would repeat the name frequently so that I could say it whenever I needed to, but it seemed so difficult to say. I felt there was something weird and unfamiliar about it. Everyone had made up a name of their own choosing for me and they called me by that name.
My grandmother on my father’s side whom we called ‘Grandmama’ would stress the ‘h’ and call me ‘Shah-ri’. My mother made it easy for herself and simply called me ‘Shari’. My oldest brother would add the Shirazi ‘oo’ ending to my name and call me ’Shariyoo’. To this my father would kindly add the ‘k’ the people of Abadeh used to make a name diminutive, so I became ‘Shariyook’. Then he’d make it even more playful, so it became ‘Shariyookeh’. Our neighbors on hearing all these many different names felt free to call me by whatever name they liked. ‘Shahroo’, ‘Sharoo’, ‘Sharshari’, ‘Sheri’.
Bibi Goli would shorten it to ‘Sharbanoo’ and when she was in a hurry she changed it to ‘Sharboonoo’. Some of the boys in our family would call me ‘Shervin’ as a sign of respect.
One day when I came home from school, my grandfather was in our place. He was the only one who neither shortened nor changed my name. He took the trouble to pronounce all four syllables, so it became ‘Shah-re-ba-noo’. He hugged and kissed me. He smelt of cigarettes. The smell was bitter, but he was sweet. He stroked my hair and said,
‘Greetings, Shahrebanoo’, my wonderful red rose’.
That was his way. Every time grandfather saw me, he would give me a new title but the more beautiful these titles were, the more spiteful my brother became. When my grandfather left, my brother said,
“Greetings, ‘Shahre bi noor’(a city without light)”
I just turned away. There was no point in responding, as it could even make things worse. I frowned and tried to ignore him but he wouldn’t give up.
“Ex-cel-ent! ‘Shahre bi noor’, you royal fool”.
I didn’t know how to answer him. I got a lump in my throat. I got up and went out into the alley.
In our household it wasn’t acceptable to object to anything. So if you don’t like the food you had to play around with it at the sofre (tablecloth1), while the others were eating and afterwards you had to find something else to fill yourself up with. ‘I don’t like this food’ and ‘I don’t want that food’ was not allowed. When you weren’t allowed say ‘no’ to food, how you could object to the way your name was said?
Once I tried not to respond to any of the different nicknames so that they would call me by my real name.
But things got worse. When they realized that I wasn’t going to answer, they raised their voices and said, ‘Shari’! ‘Kari’? ( Shari, are you deaf?)
I said to myself that I had to change my name at all costs. I started thinking about my classmates’ names. Some of their names were really beautiful, ‘Mitra’, ‘Jila’, ‘Roya’, ‘Leyla’. Especially those names with two syllables that ended with the ‘aa’ sound, seemed particularly beautiful to me. They sounded really grand.
The long ‘a’ sound at the end gave them a kind of grandeur. But my name ended with a long ‘oo’ sound that no one could be bothered to pronounce.
That day when I got home from the school, I saw my grandfather had come to see us again. Every time he came to the bazaar (market), he would pop in to see us.
He was sitting on the edge of our pond and he was smoking. The fountain was switch off. I sat down next to him in the shade of the pomegranate tree. I placed my feet in the skirting around the pond and quickly opened my dictation book for him to look at. On every page shone a bright red score of twenty. Under each score my teacher had written ‘Well done’ in her beautiful handwriting. As I’d got twenty for every dictation, I didn’t need to rewrite any of them. When my grandfather wanted to leave, he put his hand in his pocket, and said,
“Bravo, very well-done. Here is another twenty rials for the light of my life, Shahrbanoo.”
He put a big coin in my hand. The coin was brand new and it glittered in the sunshine. He took his ivory cigarette holder out of his mouth and said,
“It’s this year’s coin.”
I looked below the king’s image. It said 1352. On the other side of the coin was written 20 rials. I put the coin in my pocket. I could buy so many things with it. Whenever my mom and dad gave me any money, it wouldn’t be more than two rials. If they were feeling really generous, they would give me five rials.
I wanted to go to Mashti Mohamad’s store. There I could buy twenty lollipops. I could already taste the sweetness of the lollipops in my mouth. I had just got to the door, when my brother’s voice turned the sweetness in my mouth bitter.
“You country bumpkin! Twenty rials is too much for a village girl. One can buy many things with it in the city.”
I went back inside the house. I thought that enough was enough and that I couldn’t put up with this any longer. They kept making fun of my name. I told myself I had to change my name, so I thought, what would I call myself? But no name came to my mind. I realized how hard it is to choose a name.
That Tehrani girl who had come to our school, had a name that attracted everyone’s attention. It was the first time that I had heard the name ‘Sheila’. At break time, the children who wanted to make friends with her, followed her around the yard. They offered her their snacks. But most of the time she ignored them. I also wanted to be friends with her. But I wasn’t able to join the crowd who followed her around and tried to win her over. As she passed by me, I turned a cold shoulder and she did the same to me. But it was not just her name that stood out. It was also her Tehrani accent, her shiny black shoes and her leopard skin coat. Perhaps it was this coat that made her name was so fascinating to us.
There was no shop in Abadeh selling a coat like hers.
We never even wore coats. In the winter all of us wore jackets which our mums had mostly knitted for us.
Every Saturday morning (the first day of the week) I would write everyone’s name in the register. As I was the perfect and my handwriting was better than others, our teacher had left it to me to write the names in the register. When I got to ‘Shahrbanoo’ I couldn’t bring myself to write it. I had just written ‘Sh’ when all of a sudden I wished my name was ‘Sheila’. I thought that although I couldn’t have the leopard skin coat, I could at least give myself the name ‘Sheila’. Yes. Why I shouldn’t I be called ‘Sheila’? So I wrote ‘Sheila’. The ‘Sh’ in Shiela went with my real name. At the end it has an ‘aa’ which makes it sound grand. It only has two syllables, so no one could make fun of it.
At the beginning of the first lesson our teacher read the register to see who was absent. When she got to my name, she paused. She turned to me,
“Have we got a new student?”
I stood up and stuttered,
“Uum ...well.... actually my name has changed.”
She pushed her round glasses up with her finger and stared at me.
“Has it also changed in your birth certificate?”
I didn’t answer. My knees started shaking. I held on the bench to stop myself falling. She put her fist under her chin and rested her elbow on her table.
“Did you go to the registry office?”
Again I didn’t answer. The teacher drew a line across my beautiful new name and she wrote Shahrbanoo’ above it.
When I took our register to the school office, the headmistress who was sitting in the corner of the room called me over. She had her usual plain clothes on. The bell had gone and all the teachers had left.
“Is it true that you wanted to change your name?”
I stood there in silence. I couldn’t even stutter. From the tone of her voice it was obvious that she wasn’t expecting any answer. I tried to fix my gaze on the ground. But I couldn’t. My eyes were drawn to the globe on the table. The headmistress had placed her fingers on the side of the globe and was spinning it.
“Did you know your name is the name of ‘Imam Hosein’s’ wife, the mother of ‘Imam Sajad’?”
The globe started spinning again. That day our teacher had taught us about the earth’s rotation.
“Furthermore it has Iranian roots.”
I couldn’t spot Iran on the globe. If I had found Iran, I would have known where I stood on this earth.
“It was Shah Yazdegerd Sasani’s daughter’s name, the one they say became ‘Emam Hosein’s wife’.”
I was hoping she would finish soon. But the problem was that I couldn’t guess whether she was finished with me. When she said,
“Sometimes people don’t appreciate what they have,” the globe started rotating very fast and seemed to go crazy. Now it was impossible for me to find my place on this globe. Iran had disappeared and was lost in amongst the other countries. I stretched my hand out towards the crazy globe to calm it down. Perhaps then I could find my place.
“Don’t! Don’t touch it! Why don’t you put the register away?”
I wished I could say, “If ‘Emam Hosein’ had made such fun of his wife’s name and kept changing it all the time, she would have also resented it and done whatever she could to change her name.” But our headmistress was talking in a way that required no answer. The first and last word was hers.
“Do you think it‘s a joke that anyone can change their name whenever they want. Do you want to launch a new fashion in the school?”
She locked her drawer.
“Instead of all of this, concentrate on your homework and study hard. Remember you are in fifth grade now.”
That sounded like that was her last sentence.
It seemed to be a good opportunity to get away. I threw a glance at the globe that had now calmed down.
But I still couldn’t find Iran. I quickly found the right place for the register and put it back. The headmistress carried on talking.
“This year you are taking your final exams. You must come first in Abadeh.”
As I left the office, a cold wind blew on the sweat on forehead and made me feel cold. I thought, I had to change my name at all cost. I didn’t want to be the best student in Abadeh with this name.
I found the registry office. It was next to the ‘Saderat Bank’, at the second roundabout. I entered the registry office through a narrow corridor, leading to two rooms.
I went into one of them. There were shelves full of files all around the room. The man sitting behind the desk was drinking tea. I handed him, my birth certificate which I had sneaked out of my family’s document chest, over the files piled up on his desk
He didn’t look at my birth certificate. He looked me up and down.
“Well, what do you want?”
“It’s my name, I want to change my name”
He opened the birth certificate. He muttered my name to himself, ‘Shahrbanoo, Shahrbanoo.’
“Shahbanoo. Okay, ‘Little Queen’. So what’s the problem with your name?”
“It’s that. That’s the problem. I mean, I want to change my name.”
He turned to his colleague sitting at the other desk.
“They named her after a queen, but she is still not happy.
His colleague replied from the other side.
“You must come with an adult.”
But how could I talked about this at home. I was about to burst into tears.
“For God’s sake, please change my name.”
“We only change obscene names.”
“What ob-ee-names?"
“That’s it. If you want to change this name, you have to bring a letter from the court.”
Court! I thought that whoever goes to court ends up in prison. I felt scared.
After that I decided to put up with all my different names. But the children wouldn’t stop teasing me.
“How are you Tehrani lady !”
“Miss ‘Sheila’ really suits you!”
افتاده ها تبق تبق ، سگه ها به دورش وق وق.
“Hark, Hark, the dogs do bark. The posers are coming to town…” (adapted from an English nursery rhyme.)
That day we had an arithmetic exam and I got the highest mark in the class. At break time, some of my classmates were hanging around in a corner. One of them shouted, “’Shariyooke!’ Her mark is ace!”
I was furious. If I had not thought about changing my name, now my classmates wouldn’t be making so much fun of me. According to the headmistress my name had Iranian roots and it was the name of a princess. I was looking for an opportunity to tell my classmates what the headmistress thought of my name.
But I was afraid that they wouldn’t believe me. After the break the headmistress came to tell our class off as our teacher had complained to her that we had not studied hard enough. I thought about asking a question to get the headmistress started on the virtues of my name. So as the headmistress finished talking, I raised my hand and asked,
“Is it true that ‘Shahrbanoo’ was the name of a Shah’s daughter?’’
The headmistress smiled and said, “Yes, she was the daughter of Shah Yazdgerd III, who became Emam Hosein’s wife. Her tomb is on the hill in the ‘Shah Abdol Azim’ shrine. Bibi Shahrbanoo’s tomb has become a famous pilgrimage place. Many people go there to have their prayers answered.”
One of the students asked, “So, does that mean people have knotted lots of ribbons around ‘Bibi Shahrbanoo’ to get their prayers answered just like what you do in the ‘Shah Ghandab’ shrine.
The headmistress said, “People everywhere have their own beliefs. I haven’t been there. But I wish I had gone there once to ask for a blessing.”
One of my classmates asked, ‘Where is this ‘Shah Abdol Azim’ shrine?”
“It’s close to Tehran, in the ‘city of Rey’.”
While we were eating, I said to my mother, “If we go on a holiday this year, let’s go to ‘Shah Abdol Azim’ shrine.”
My brother said, “Why is it you’re thinking of going on a pilgrimage?”
I said, “According to the headmistress apparently there is a shrine called ‘Bibi Shahrbanoo near there. I’d like to see it.” And I looked scornfully at my brother who was always making fun of my name.
“A shrine?”
“The princess (’s grave), the daughter of the Sassanid king. Everyone goes there to have their prayers answered.”
“When did you start having wishes to be answered? It’s too soon for you to tie a ribbon to a shrine for a blessing.”
The next morning as I got up, I felt my hand was itching. My eyes hadn’t opened yet that I started rubbing my hands together. I felt something between my fingers. I panicked. I threw the quilt aside and looked at my fingers. Ribbons had been tied around each one of my fingers, and each of my toes. My brother who was staring at me said,
“Don’t get a fright! The old witches wanted you to answer their prayers. Why should they go all the way to ‘Shah Abdol Azim’ when they can come here to your shrine, ‘Bib Sharboonoo’, daughter of the Shah.”
Instead of washing my hands and face or thinking about going to school, I just thought about how I could get back at him. My hands were sweating. I could have undone the knots one by one, but I fetched the kitchen knife to cut them off. I wanted to get rid of them quickly. The knife slipped and cut my hand. Now my hands were not only itching, one of them was hurting as well. As I was taking the blood stained pieces of cloth off my fingers, my gaze fell on the glass shelf of the wardrobe. There were my brother’s playing cards nicely arranged on the shelf. With my hands still covered in stained and bloody ribbons, I brought the playing cards out. I wanted to shred the cards with the knife kitchen. They were so hard it was difficult to cut them. Then once again the knife slipped and cut me in a different place. I wished I had picked the knife up and cut off his long nose. I wished I had shaved off his curly hair. Then I thought that I would tie up all the ribbons together and use them to hang him from the pomegranate tree in the yard. No, no, I would climb up the ladder to the roof and hang him from there.
I was busy tying the ribbons together with my blood stained hands, when ‘Grandmama’ came towards me.
She picked up the ribbons and calmed me down and sent me to school. I was crying on the way to school when I saw my uncle.
“Why are you crying?”
As I sobbed, I told him what had happened and showed him the ribbon that I still had in my pocket.
“He shouldn’t have done that. I’ll sort him out. I’ll buy you a new set of playing cards instead.”
“They were his playing cards, not mine.”
“Okay, I’ll buy you something else. You just tell me what you need.
Suddenly something came into my mind. If only I had a leopard skin coat, how grand I would look in class. What did ‘Sheila’ have apart from this leopard skin coat? Furthermore my name might then appear more beautiful and the others would leave me alone.
What joy it would be to show it off to all the family.
I would become a real princess. Perhaps when my brother saw me wearing this leopard skin, he might also stop ridiculing me.
My uncle said, “ Leopard skin or snake skin! What do I know! I’ll buy whatever kind of coat you want.”
When I woke up the next morning, I thought about when my uncle brings the coat and I put it on. I’ll also tell my mother to buy me a pair of black shoes.
I will wax them and make them really shiny. Then everyone in the street and at school would point me out to one another. But I would ignore them and walk past them with my nose in the air like Sheila. Then I thought about what princesses used to wear. I was sure that none of them could find a leopard skin coat like the one that my uncle was going to buy for me. Little by little I started thinking that somehow or other ‘Bi Bi Shahrbanoo’ is answering my prayers. I thought if I actually go to her shrine, she surely will answer all my prayers.
That night when my uncle opened his bag, I was full of joy. But instead of the leopard skin coat, he took out some yellow and black hanks of yarn and he told my mother and Grandmama to knit them into a leopard skin coat for me.
Grandmama sneered and said, “I’ve never heard of such a thing. How could you knit a leopard skin coat.”
My mother said, “It’s alright. We can knit it in stripes.”
My brother said, “So it will look like tiger skin. Anyway, the tiger is the leopard’s brother.”
Then he burst out laughing. “If the yarn was white and black, then it would look like a zebra.”
My sister asked, “What is zebra? Is it a kind of donkey?”
My brother said, “It’s not a donkey, you silly ass. You should hear its braying.
My sister got angry and said, “You’re a donkey, not me.”
My uncle was about to burst into laughter when he saw I was close to tears. The smile on his face froze. My mother put hands through the hank of yellow yarn and Grandmama started rolling it into a ball. I was lying down and I was looking at the way my mothers’ hand were moving. Her wrists were going up and down as if she was driving a car and she was turning the steering wheel.
That night I dreamt I am wearing my leopard skin coat and I am holding the steering wheel of the Shah’s car in my hand. The car is going like a rocket, taking me up to the moon. I am holding the balls of the yarn above the moon. I am dropping the balls of the yarn onto the smoke trails of the rocket. And I am tying them to my brother’s hands and feet. I am shaving my brothers’ hair with a knife and I am singing him a song, “Baldy, baldhead, potato head …I don’t care you have no hair”. Then I tie the other ends of the yarn around the moon. My knots are much tighter than the knots on the cloths he tied to my hands. From the moon I look at him amongst the stars. He is shaking his hands and feet, trying to loosen the knots, but he can’t. I put my hands into the pocket of my leopard skin coat and I say to him, “Are you still going to call me ‘Shahr bi noor’(the dark city)? Stop braying! Answer me! Are you enjoying yourself in the city of light?”
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