REBOUND

Monster? Really??

Nazy jaan,

I have been a silent admirer of your writings (both poems and prose) for a while now. This story, however, touched me very deeply and in a personal way, because as I was reading the story I kept recognising myself in Marjan’s sentiments and desperation, all the way to the ending, including her conclusion. 

It is one thing, however, to silently wonder if one is in deed a monster, but it is an entirely different thing to read it at the end of such a touching story. A monster? Really?

I mean it is clear, as you have so eloquently and skilfully painted the picture, that Marjan is not having a good time, and she probably wants to start feeling normal and whole again. So how is it monstrous if after a period of “mourning”, she agrees to go on a date with a man who COULD have potential, and even ends up sleeping with him in the hope that she might fall in love again? 

Love is a gamble, and it is seldom in our control whom we fall in love with. So I am wondering if Marjan’s conduct in this story is rather fair in the sense that she can now at least say that she tried to give this man a chance, instead of dismissing him off-hand. After all it’s the guy who has been pursuing her, not the other way round.

To be honest this is more a question that I would like to put out here, especially to the male readers. If a man knows that a woman is single but her heart is with someone else. Knowing what he knows if he really likes this woman, would he rather she not agree to go on dates or sleep with him?

You see, think men think that they can still win a woman’s heart if they are given a chance – and maybe sometimes they do – so they still insist, despite all the warning signs. Isn’t it more respectful to at least give them a chance before saying, no you are not the one, especially if one thinks that there MIGHT be some potential, which is what I understood from this story?

I am not sure if “monster” is the right word, although I have occasionally used it on myself, feeling guilty.

Thank you again for your writing and looking forward to your next piece.

Much ado about nothing

Ajab: Nice to see you again.

The best teacher of all is the 'bloodied nose'. Life teaches the same lesson over and over again if we refuse to learn. Each fall becomes harsher and harsher until we start to lose our home, our kids our life, our body parts - literally. So, best to learn from each fall and 'graduate'.

It is one thing to be a teen pining over the BF who still has 'feelings' for his ex-GF yet, completely another to be a woman in her ripe years, who, while in the arms of a 'sweet lover' pines to be held by a two-timing bastard who probably screamed his first wife's name when he climaxed. Masochism - the hallmark of the fallen Madonna. Save us please. Let's all grow up - shall we. Take off the shackles of false chastity and 'borrowed' dignity. Marjan is not a monster. She is a fake.

Since I don't keep Iranian company as much, I find it intriguing that specimen such as Nazy describes truly exist in flesh and blood and are walking planet earth AND have made it into their 30s, 40s and maybe even 50s unscathed. How can life pass anyone by? Even princesses wake up to become Queens eventually. Na Agha - these are fictitious characters - masks in a masquerade. Mental virgin-wannabes despite what's been going on down below.

Een khordane zardaloo - pass dadan dareh haloo.

I am aghast at the cruelty of it - the immaturity, the lack of consideration for self and all the people around this character - Marjan. Women like these hog the good guys; piss on them, use them and the 'real ones' are left mopping the mess.

Mr. Ajab: You ask if I have a solution. The solution for the Iranian man looking for a relationship apparently is to either go to Iran and bring over a 'simple' Golshifteh (sans drama) - or look among non-Iranian community for a real woman who acts her age. Latinas are real - as are latinos! Good Iranian women are aplenty - however what they are most definitely NOT interested in is to mop up the messes the Marjans have left behind. Life is too short.

As for solution for women such as Marjan I have none sir other than introspection. It is never too late to face oneself in the mirror. Perhaps I would start by buying each one of the characters a mirror and have them explore their faces. Then they need to write down their stories in itsy bitsy gory details and read it and read it and read it until they see the pattern emerging from what they have done to men and what men have done to them. There is always a pattern and if they look closely, just maybe they will be able to see the similarity to their homelife in Iran. Was Mommy arm-candy? Did Daddy have a sugar on the side? Did a new piece of furniture mysteriously arrive every time Mommy and Daddy's bedroom door was closed and Daddy was screaming like a banshee? Was the gardener in the bedroom more often than in the backyard? Who said what to whom and why? And how did all of these characters act? Did they say one thing and do another? Did they tell little Marjan to save aberoo despite plates and pictures being thrown across the living room? Did they give her the confidence to have self respect; or did Mommy tell her to snag the husband and do the dirty on the side? And how did little Marjan take it all in - weaving into the fantasy world each little girl has of the prince awaiting her debut into adult life?

So, ladies, by all means share with the audience here the good bits of the written story of the life. If there is little comfort and plenty of pain, then head over to the therapist with the sole purpose of having the map of your past deciphered and in doing find your peace. The answer is within you- seek and you shall find.

Mr. Ajab: I am not a guru and neither are you. I don't claim to have the market cornered on knowing men or women. I am a 46 year old who made some very wise and some very unwise choices in men, women and life and now enjoy quite a tapestry of experiences which I intend to share with my kids and eventually my grandkids.

I have lived life knowing that it wasn't a rehearsal and most definitely a one way street. The freshness of youth may be gone in us oldies but if we refuse to welcome the wisdom of age - we will be left by not one but many Majids despite being told by them that we are desirable and beautiful and sexy. The middle years welcomes better use of the errogenous zone which resides solely in between our ears. So we need to act our age and reap the benefits.

Peace

A word about True love.

We can slice and dice this story and its characters anyway we want to, but one thing stands out for me, is that those who object to the way nazy has created and shaped her characters, are experiencing their own conflicts trying to define what is real and true love and what has roots in self-pity and low self-steem.
You are living in a Big, and unreachable dream if you think true love is not associated with pain and is all that good and beautiful stuff that brings with itor rather is supposed to, especially when it come to loving another humanbeing. It does take a bit of work.
Perfect and True love is nearly Unattainable, in a realistic sense, and to expect that true love to be only given when both men and women are emotionally healty enough or know their boundaries,Literally means you will never have the chance, at least on this earth and in this life, to find it.
So basically, take what you can reasonably and decently call a meaningful and mutually respectful relationship on its way to becoming a loving relationship and make the best of it and enjoy as long as it shall last.
I find it so dissapointing when some ladies, always dream and speak of true love and the love that brings happiness, Yet find things more believable when they see the exact opposite, namely a short and brief physical encounter in the middle of the night.

I am of the mindset that there is no such thing as "i t takes one to forget one", yeah, i am the traduitional kind or whatever, and i do think some pain is necessary while loving (it comes with the territory) But if you want to do it, do it with dignity. After all, the pain lasts only as long as we like to hold on to our feelings and finding someone or not would not make much of a difference.

I think what marjan did here, was rather logical, than having had some revenge sex and a one night stand with a fellow. I don't mean to adhere to the most hard-core and strict principle of "no sex before marriage" of our culture, but it stand to reason that knowing someone for at least a few weeks or even months, becoming familiar with him and getting to know him, is more of a legitimate reason to engage in such activity, rather than a revengful quicikie!.

Bag or no bag, you are spot

Bag or no bag, you are spot on. I agreed before that these are teen drama in middle-aged bodies stuck in the 70s melodrama.

But I've seen these ladies with my own eyes! These are real people and their problems are real; to them. They do suffer from low self-esteem and when Nazy tries to sugar coat them they sometimes come out being like cotton candy!

In reality I think this is a good forum and good series to find out how we can shake sense into these ladies and warn them of the life that is passing them by.

Do they not have the right wanting to experience these things if they have not experienced it in their teens?

If they want to go to clubs every Friday and Saturday night, dragging their middle aged American raised boyfriends with themselves, and later complain about men not wanting to do anything exciting, what are we supposed to say? Do we summarily judge and dismiss them or do we have any solutions to offer?

Great

Nazy jan, this is so goooood.

weekender

Those are true stories, mind you ? I have heard them many times from my own friends and every body else heard them from their own friends too, as their comments prove here. Where did you get this idea of " superficial and lack depth" then relating to her as " lacking experience"? I find your words very offensive, at least lacking depth and consistency.

Bag or no bag: I couldn't

Bag or no bag: I couldn't have said it better myself. She is a fantastic writer but her character developments needs a lot of work. Most of her protaganists are superficial and lack depth, perhaps because the author herself lacks experience in this area, therefore, can't be insightful.

Fact or Fiction - Truth or Dare

Nazy Khanoum;
With all due respect for your excellent writing; I am inclined to believe that either your friends are not telling you the whole truth about their encounters or you are taking writer's liberty and leaping into fantasy with your characters. Having said that - I must say this is a charming complex tale - particularly pleasurable to those of us who crave to associate pain with love.

True love is not painful. True love sets everyone free; the lover, the beloved, the one who stays, the one who leaves. True love delights. True love is the dance of the soul. True love can only be given and received by men and women who have healthy self-esteem and clear boundaries. True love will occur within intimacy which is way beyond sex though sex is part of it.

Your characters my dear lady have no self-esteem, have zero emotional availability and they lie. True love cannot exist anywhere but in truth.

What you have here, I venture to guess, is a bunch of frustrated Iranicans - socially displaced, devoid of true community anchors, and no guiding light other than bare bones morality jargon of the 70's Iran. So, they fumble in the dark - they fall in love with separated men who use them and lose them , they reject perfect men, use them and lose them and - they call in sick over a break up. What you have here is teen drama in middle-age bodies.

I would have found the story more believable if Marjan engaged in anonymous sex to drown out Majid's thoughts - you know a 'revenge fxxx' or if the guy she ends up dating for three months before bedding him is ugly or doesn't have a job or is a closet gay or married already. Do women really land gorgeous men on the rebound who can cook, clean, smell great, make them come, make them coffee, call them and care for them and NOT know that they are being used? I want one of those - please (to go) :)

As for the mirrors analogy as Marjan thinks of herself in the relationship with Majid she will have seen a girl that was not good enough to be cherished; settling for the crumbs of a relationship. And as for the image she sees with the 'perfect man' - well, she does not feel she deserves him and most probably doesn't deserve the 5-layer cake she has been lucky to land. Afterall, since when has it been proper etiquette to boink and run? Sex without cuddles afterwards? How uncouth. Tears in the bathroom? Over what? Because she was treated like a lady? Get real.

I am beginning to think the second guy is a bigger loser than Majid. What sort of self-aware, self-respecting man allows this sort of princess to piss all over him and still wants to know she is OK getting home.

Oy Vey!!!

More later - now I have to work. :)

Nazy, thank you

All too true.  I think the ending was lovely.  Sad, obviously--no kidding--but lovely.  Real life is so much messier than so many of us want to admit.  There comes a time in life when you finally throw off all the external admonitions of, "Good girls don't (fill in the blank)!"  and you start to give yourself permission to live your own life--as damnable by others as it may be.  Obviously no one is walking around saying, "Sleeping with just anyone is the best way to live..." but geez, Marjan is no little girl who shouldn't be able to have sex.  Cultural pretense to the contrary, plenty of Iranians--and Americans, and Canadians, and Fins, and English, and Somalians, and--you get the picture--have SEX without the benefit (?) of marriage or even of a serious relationship.  That's LIFE. 

However, it is true that for women, sexual connection very often equals emotional investment--not always, as you see by the second relationship in this vignette--but for men, it often does not equal emotional investment.  For men, sex can be just that: sex.  For women, it takes a lot of dealing with the condeming voices in her head (parents, society, religion, other women, men...blah blah blah) to give herself permission to have sex with someone without marriage as the object.  Some would say that "liberation" is being a slut; I disagree.  But then, I was a teenager in the 1970s so I have had a lot of cultural reason(s) for my thinking to have changed (evolved? degenerated?  It's all in the way you look at it.).

Keep telling the stories, Nazy.  I could add a few of my own and those of others I've known.  We all could, no doubt.

ZA

By the way, not that Nazy's

By the way, not that Nazy's writing doesn't deserve kudos, she does and she writes very well. But sometimes I get the feeling like I'm watching Zoolander!

You know the scenes where Ben Stiller dares Owen Wilson to a runway walk-off?! This sometimes feels that way where we may be challenging Nazy to a write-off! Let's have that Nazy, I challenge you to a write-off! shall we?!

I think it is ok to sulk and

I think it is ok to sulk and become a basket case after your first real breakup, 2 at most. You can learn from it and move on and know how to treat your next relationship and fare better if it fails.

But in many cases I see this drama unfold over and over again. It is as if the woman is putting up a show about how "devasted" she is! As if being "devasted" makes a difference for the guy who has left her or gives him a guilty feeling.

Na joonam if you sulk more or stay in bed more or feel "devasted" longer they won't give you a prize! Learn to live as an individual and not dependent on others.

There is one thing to be emotionally attached and enjoy a relationship and another thing to be emotionally "withdrawn" and given up on everything else. It is not a show it is your life!

Wow!

Excellent work. You should write for Newyorker magazine. You really take the reader with you.

Dear Friends

I don't know which one is more rewarding--getting my friends' stories written down, or hearing your range of thoughtful reactions to them. It's all been a remarkable experience for me.

I had to combine two separate pieces of the series here, inspired by No Handbag's notion that what we see in another might very well be a mirror image of ourselves. The truth is that Majid had met Marjan on the rebound from his own relationship. Though he had never heard Homayra's advice, he had taken it! He was taking one to forget one. This had had a devastating effect on Marjan, who "couldn't compete and couldn't prove." Homayra's advice didn't work for neither Majid, nor Marjan. Marjan did to the new man in her life, exactly as Majid had done to her and now this guy couldn't compete and couldn't prove. I know it was a sad story, all of them are, and this is depressing me! Gloom and doom, doom and gloom! Baba, what did I ask in that very first episode?

"And, after all, how hard can it be to find someone? Most of us are looking for only one person in our lives, no more. If you think about it, there are more or less the same number of men as there are women in this world, give or take a few (million!). Doesn’t it seem mathematically possible for every man or woman to be able to find a mate and to live together happily ever after? Then why is so hard? Why is it so complicated?"

I don't like it when my characters do all kinds of bad stuff to each other and at the end of it all, feel crummy, too!  Why can't they just feel great after breaking someone else's heart and kicking them out of their lives?  That way, at least, ONE of them would be happy!  Sheesh. 

Back to the mirror thing, I think that without talking on Majid's behalf or about his feelings, just by taking the mirror analogy one step further, it's not hard to see a man who picked up a girlfriend along the way to get over his pain and emptiness, and feeling scared and overwhelmed with her love which far exceeded his investment in the relationship, he broke things off and ran away, sitting somewhere feeling really sorry and guilty about all this.  Yikes!  Big mess! 

Souri Jan, your comment touched me.  Thank you. 

Feshangi Jan, you always humble me with your compliments and your sensitivity.

IRANdokht, you are hillarious!  Loved the "memo" notion!  This comment is getting too long.  At some point I will come back and tell you about the affairs I have seen between perfectly beautiful young single women and married men at work.  I will tell you what those guys told those women to start the affair.  They could be funny stories if they weren't so sad.

Come and rejoin the discussion whenever you can.  Thank you all.

Nazy jan

Your story is so romantic and beautifully sad , that I send it to my friends (with your permission)

Personally, i don't approve this way of trying to forget someone by sleeping with others. As Marjan truly speaks for, it won't change anything or diminish the sadness.

But when I discuss it with my friends, especially two of them, they say that when a deep & important relationship ends like this, you need the support and affection of someone. They say it is like you feel a hole in your life and you can't fill it just by thinking or dreaming about the one you had lost. It is then, that they go after an intimate and physical relation which prove them, that they are still loved.

I don't know how it feels. Betrayed or betraying the other ? I haven't been trough this, but most of the time, they say they get some kind of release following by the sense of regret right after and feeling the hole again.

All in all, I loved your story. It was very touching. 

You are a very great novel writer :D)

Nazy jaan

I loved your story.

I had never been inside the head of a woman in love before and you managed to take me there. I feel very sad for Marjan.  

Feshangi

This kind of sufferings are

This kind of sufferings are direct results of a generation that has become void of values and identity. A confused generation that has lost touch with its own roots and is now seeking advice and learns from TV series such as "Sex and the city" and other such junks.

Since when it was OK in our culture to date and sleep with a man to forget an other?!!

IRANdokht

Yes, women can mourn much much longer.

The comment about "separation" was hilarious (unfortunately very true, but hilarious).

This story was great. I

This story was great. I loved reading it, it didn't matter how long it took, I was devouring every word.

The ending was a big surprise. I didn't expect Marjan to make that conclusion... it probably wasn't the same thing with him though. I doubt he felt so many emotions when he was with her or with his wife.

One thing I learned a long time ago is that if a man is claiming to be "separated", most likely his wife has not received the memo yet.

One thing is really bothering me now: are women really that romantic? I don't recall having mourned any relationship for 5 months...

great story!
thanks

IRANdokht

You will never know how deeply

your story has touched me. I really can't even express the words.

WOW

Nazy jaan,I have to read it again !.until then:

sepaas