When I first started writing, and we’re talking twenty plus years ago, I wasn’t the least bit interested in establishing myself as any kind of expert or to attract ideal clients. I simply wanted to better understand a complicated chapter in my life. To figure out what made me tick because I hadn’t a clue. And to capture the essence of a few key people who impacted me during that era. Which is why I focused on memoir.

This past week, I read on Facebook that one of those key people had died. Sally, who was the same age as my mother, was the first Western friend I made when I lived in Iran. In many ways I think she saved me. Par for the course because she had a habit of rescuing women like me.

I thought I would share a snapshot of her with you. Just so you know why I loved and admired her. What it was about her that, in part, inspired me to pick up the pen.

 

 

“You remember the Hadji who runs the grocery store in Afifabad?  The one that puts milk aside for Sylvia and me?” she asked at the stoplight while we watched a flock of black-cloaked women carrying heavy grocery sacks scurry across the street. “Well, he told me about an American woman who started shopping there a few weeks ago. At least he thinks she’s American. She’s always with her husband. He thought she lived up towards Tapeh Television. I left my telephone number with him so he could give it to her the next time she stops in.”

The unlicensed vendors were out in full force, their wares spread on blankets along the busy sidewalks, or hawked from scrap metal carts.  With the will and a hundred toumans in hand, I could have jumped out of Sally’s car right then and there and bought a wide-toothed comb or a hot fried samosa, all before the light turned green. The signal turned. “Think she’ll call?” I asked. A motorcycle with a man, a woman, and three young children wedged between them, overtook us at the next corner. We moved parallel to one another, the woman’s black chador snapping in the wind behind her like Superman’s cape.

Sally cast a sideways glance in my direction as she took a hard right onto Zand. Three empty milk bottles clanked at my feet. “An American girl who’s not allowed out alone?  Not a chance.”  She revved the engine. “You ask me, we oughta check out the situation in case she needs help.”

“Why would you just assume the girl’s in trouble?” A small pickup truck loaded with mattresses and wooden chairs pulled away from the curb into the line of traffic. Sally slammed on her brakes and then swerved around it. She honked her horn and shook a fist at the driver. An unshaven man in a white felt tribal hat stared back with unadulterated awe. “Anyway, if she’s new, she wouldn’t be walking around the stores on her own without knowing Farsi. I didn’t go out without Hakim or his niece for a really long time.”

“Look, kid. When you’ve been here as long as I have,” she shifted gears, “you get a sixth sense for this kind of thing. Believe me, there are plenty of Western women held captive in the hills of Shiraz. I know. I’ve run into lots of them over the last thirty years.” Her eyes darted back and forth between the rearview mirror and the busy road ahead.

At the flashing yellow light, Sally careened left down a narrow road that led towards an unfamiliar neighborhood. I was pretty good at getting around town by taxi, at standing on street corners shouting out the amount of money I was willing to pay to be brought to a particular destination, but I was lost when it came to navigating the back alleys that spread like poison ivy. I couldn’t help but admire Sally’s mastery of the complicated layout. She was one of the few expats with access to a car and the guts to take on the kind of traffic that would have had me parked on the sidewalk crying for my mother.

Sally maneuvered the car past a butcher’s shop where a requisite fly-covered carcass dangled from a hook in the open doorway. “Sheesh,” she said, slapping at her forehead. “Remind me to stop and get some sheep’s lungs for the cats on the way back.”

“I don’t get you.”

“What? The cats like lungs. What am I supposed to feed them?  Little Friskies?”

I shook my head. “Your taste for intrigue. How you can read cloak and dagger crap into a foreigner shopping for milk with her husband.”

“That’s what Reza always says. He says, ‘Sally, you’ve got your nose in places it doesn’t belong. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you’re working for the CIA.” Instead of turning right towards her house, where we were supposed to have lunch, Sally veered left. “And I say, ‘Reza, if I were working for the CIA, where’s all the money? Tucked away in some Swiss bank account?” She laughed at the thought of this. “I’m not working for the CIA. No way I could hide the money and live here with it. But I don’t mind keeping the man off balance a little.” Sally headed up a steep hill. Tapeh Television, that’s where we were going. I could kiss all thoughts of lunch goodbye. “It’s not a bad idea to keep your husband guessing. Some mystery is good for a marriage, that’s what I always say.”