Memoirs of Marzieh Hadidchi (Part 4)

2017-8-15

Memoirs of Marzieh Hadidchi (Dabbagh)

Edited by: Mohsen Kazemi

Tehran, Sooreh Mehr Publications Company

‎2002 (Persian Version)‎

Translated by: Zahra Hosseinian

Marzieh, Reciter of Elegy in Maktab[1]

Because of the circumstances and conditions of that time, doing some works by women was unaccepted by people and even sometimes was denounced. Due to my special morals, I was so interested in being informed of everything and sometimes I did things that seemed odd to others. In the first ten days of Muharram, for example, I gathered all my friends and family members and formed a group. We made flags and large steel banners and began beating our chest, singing dirge, and reciting elegies in the alleys and streets, and mourning for the tribulation of Zainab (AS). After one or two hours, we went for lunch in one of the neighbors’ house. After lunch, we went back to continue our mourning. During the holy month of Ramadan, we went to the houses of relatives and friends and awoke them for Sahur. And at the time of Morning Prayer, my cousins and I went to the roof and called out Adhan all together.

As I reached the age of puberty, I had to naturally avoid some childish naughtiness and dealt with learning more serious issues such as studying.

In one of neighborhoods of Hamedan, there was Maktab which was run by a woman, known as Aji Mullah. I went to Maktab and began studying on my parents’ advice. After three or four months, one day Aji Mullah distributed exam papers among students, but did not give me any. "Why don’t you give me the exam paper?" I asked with protest. "Your father and the father of two other students have bound me to teach you only reading, not writing." Given my spirits, hearing that was very hard for me. At that moment, I didn’t reveal my anger and sadness, while I had a lump in my throat. After the end of the class, I rushed into the house. My body was warm and burning and my face had been flushed by anger. When I saw my father, burst into tears and asked, "Why? Why we girls shouldn’t learn writing?" My father stroked my head and replied, “It’s better for girls to be only able to read. It isn’t advisable to learn writing. Because they may write or respond a letter wrongly ..."

My father’s reason was not acceptable for me at all. I did not expect such a view from him as a wise, enlightened, and learned man. I begged and pleaded, but it was useless and he stuck to his guns. I told my father that you are dominant over us and no problem will happen, but he did not accept again.

This behavior and reaction was my first and the most serious stress. When I was disappointed in my father and saw him on the wrong position, I thought of another solution. I should put my decision for studying into practice secretly. Since my father had a paper and book store and sometimes he bound books, we always had plenty of paper straps in the house for burning. Therefore, I secretly took a few of them and at night, when everyone was asleep, sneaked in the basement. I turned on a light and started writing from a book with pencil which I had taken from my friends in Maktab. After finishing my work, I burned the handwritings, buried the ashes, and was sure that it will not be leaked out because the basement was so dark that even my mother and older sister scared to enter it alone during the day. 

My curiosities had reached to a level that in my father’s view it was not advisable for me to continue my study. This attitude of my father coincided with an event. My father gave us a certain amount of money each week as pocket money, according to his special order and plan. We saved all of them for spending in some occasions (for example buying clothes for Nowruz). 

One day, I took one Rial of this collected money and gave it to a carriage driver and asked him to pick me to the Maktab. When I was getting in I saw one of my friends and invited her to get in too. Unfortunately, in the middle of the way, my friend’s father saw us in the carriage. He angrily stopped the carriage, grabbed his daughter’s hand, and got her off. I went alone. When arriving to the Maktab, I saw my friend’s father has arrived there earlier, while has taken her daughter’s hand, and had told the entire story to Aji Mullah.

The foot whipping was awaiting us!

One foot of me and one foot of my friend were tied firmly up to the bastinado. Two of our classmates took each ends of bastinado and then our sole was whipped by a switch. For them, punishing us was a lesson for others. But it was not the end of the story. Aji Mullah wrote a letter to my father in which she told "your daughter should not come to the Maktab again. She is very ambitious and acts unconventionally which has a bad and negative effect on the other students."

By receiving this letter, my father prevented me from continuing my studies at Maktab and began to teach me the Qur'an, Nahj al-Balaghah and Mafatih al-Jinan at home. Before that, of course, he had taught me something about ablution, tayammum ("dry ablution"), prayer, and fasting.

These events not only were not deterrent obstacles for me, but sank me into thoughts of countless questions about discrimination between boys and girls, as well as the existence of different social classes, and so on, to find a way for removing cultural barriers and disorders. Thus, more and more, the bed and space of my mind became more open to these issues, so that I could be prepared for a transformation in life. 

In a cold winter day, I went to a place, called Manouchehri and located out of town, to wash clothes. After finishing the washing, I put them into a bucket and returned home in snowfall. The coldness penetrated to my bones. When I got home, my fingers had frozen and stuck to the bucket handle and didn’t separate. The clothes were frozen too and it was not possible to hang them on cloth-line. I went under the Korsi with the bucket, until the ice of my hands and clothes thawed out little by little. When I saw this harsh and hard situation for washing clothes, I was obsessed with an idea that isn’t it possible to make a device or a box in which the clothes to be washed automatically?! And very soon, I saw this pre-imagined mental picture in the form of washing machine.

To be continued…