Leyla Saeydeh (excerpts)

for Saeydeh

Saeydeh… freshly landed from her native Iran combined all in one the beauty of Isfahan, the coolness of the bad ghirs of Yazd, and her jade green eyes enhance the rose pink colour of her lips more than all the roses in Koshan…

All the boys wanted her… there was no one who didn’t fall for her charms… but the beautiful Scheherazade wouldn’t kiss and tell… she had fled Iran fleeing an arranged wedding with a suitor that didn’t suit her…

A bubbly brunette… rough diamond… waltzes into my classroom one day and takes the whole place by storm… a complete Iranian revolution ! Iran is fashionable and all the men are making way standing in a queue for her… before her… much to their disappointed the belle only speaks Farsi… and I am the only other person to speak Farsi… all the men’s eyes are on her… and on me ! Wild and peaceful fate…

My every move… my every word falls under the closer scrutiny…

Saeydeh is old enough to be my daughter and I deal with her as such… still I have to admit I understand that as beautiful and charming as she is… she has everybody wrapped around her little Persian finger…

Needless to say she has put the language class under nuclear fusion pressure…

Days come and days go… lessons come and lessons go… and Saeydeh ever more beautiful breaks more hearts… more often than not much to her ignorance for all she cares about is her freedom… Saeydeh is unspoken for… she hasn’t yet met Mr Right… Saeydeh’s heart is up for the taking but she hasn’t found who to give it to…

Time marches on and the year is drawing to an end and so is our course… Saeydeh’s fan following is at its peak… and every man is rolling in the deep… the lions in the arena are no longer pussyfooting but prey to their hormones… and patience has run thin…

What to do ? What is to become of Saeydeh ?

Where will she go if they let her go ? What if she simply went back to Iran ? Lost… squandered… wasted forever…

Saeydeh waltzed out of the classroom and out of our life… just as she had waltzed in… waltzed into our lives… which left us felling all the emptier… all the sorrier… for ourselves… some of us all the worrier… Saeydeh had left us… feeling sorry for ourselves… taken off to over sheltering skies…

Saeydeh met the man of her life…

Love was waiting just around the corner of summer that year…

They say love is never too far and love will always get his man… and woman… and it certainly did…

She and her engineering husband were very happy together still Saeydeh had to ward off her old demons… memories cobble cluttering memory lane… in he hope that one day… one fine day… the Iranian sun would shine again in a cloudless sky for Saeydeh… if ever…

All this was taking p lace so far from Saeydeh’s earlier life… Saeydeh’s new life hadn’t been able to invite her parents… to share her happiness…

Later… latter happiness didn’t mean happiness all round… parents she never talked about… only the happiness of her childhood… nostalgia… Saeydeh counted and recounted the stories of her early life… her husband would sit and listen for hours on end of her telling of her happy days then… he only wished he could speak Farsi and get to know her culture better…

Three years… two kids… one boy and one girl to complete the family… growing in happiness… the kids were soon off to school Saeydeh went back to dreaming about her happy days when as a child… over and over and over again in her head her thoughts were turning back to Iran… much to her husband’s sorrow to see her in such a state…

Jesse CRAIGNOU