A Visit to Maman Jun's old House

This visit obviously happened before the operation, but I have only been able to write it up now that I can sit at my desk for longer than ten minutes at a time.

Haj Nasser’s blacksmith workshop was at no. 214, 24 Metri Avenue, Shahrerey (Shabdolazim). This twenty-four metre wide avenue, hence its name, radiates to the east of Shabdolazim square and ends at the ancient fortress of Qal’eh Gabri. Haj Nasser married Maman Jun (my mother-in-law, God rest her soul) and moved to Shabdolazim in the mid 50s. After a few years he managed to buy a house plot at no 214, where he had the workshop built, with the house at the back.
I learnt the story of the house in scraps, from bits of memories Maman Jun recalled now and then. At the end of the long corridor that ran the length of the workshop and opened up to the front yard was a small room and the toilet. When I first visited the house in 1989, the small room was used to store Haj Nasser’s work-clothes (too dirty to be let into the house) and to house two washing machines, one AEG automatic and one top-loading, twin tub machine with the instructions in English and Arabic.

Why did Maman Jun have two washing machines? I asked. She used the twin tub for her everyday laundry: she filled up the tub manually, making sure it didn’t overflow, set it to wash and went back to the house, only to return in a bit to change the water. The AEG machine was only used on special occasions, such as washing bedlinen, so that it would last longer. (When Maman Jun passed away in 2002 and Haj Nasser moved to a flat, the AEG machine moved too, until, upon his death in 2007, it was given away to a family friend.) This small store room was the birthplace of Mansoureh, my sister-in-law, while the main house was still being built.

To the left of the yard was the outdoor toilet, with a washbasin just outside the toilet and a jasmine tree climbing round the water pipe on the wall. But Maman jun’s favourite part of the yard was the ornamental pool, lined in green, orange-veined alabaster with a little fountain in the middle. This pool was sometimes transformed into a flower bed, whenever Maman-jun fancied flowers rather than water, and after some time it was turned into a pool again.

The house was sold in the spring of 2002, and with it went a lifetime of memories. The buyer only bought it for its central position: Aqa jun’s sooty blacksmith’s workshop is now turned into a dazzling shop selling chandeliers, crystal and fine china. One evening Mansoureh and I went to buy a gift for a friend. I could hardly believe that this was the very same shop where Aqa jun spent his whole life working.
‘And what about the house?’ I asked the owner.
‘It serves as the shop’s storage area.’
‘Can I go round and have a look? I asked again.
‘By all means; this is your own house,’ he said. He opened the side door on to the yard corridor.
‘Are you coming?’ I asked Mansoureh. She nodded no.

The yard was not as I remembered it. It was now covered by cheap, corrugated plastic sheets, to keep out the dust, and stacked to the roof with carton packaging. I tried to make out where the yard ended and the room began.
The large living room window had no frame anymore, but the marble window sill where I used to sit in the absence of chairs was there, covered in dust. Boxes filled the room too: it was hard trying to remember where the fitted cabinet with Aqa jun’s documents had been; Maman jun’s chest of drawers; the mantelpiece which carried her wedding mirror and candlesticks and which she eventually had removed because it served as a dumping ground for keys, pens, loose bits of paper, the detritus of everyday life (Hossein still carries the family tradition using a bronze bowl on top of the shoe cabinet).
The living room light was on. Maman jun’s lampshade in the shape of a flower still hung there, in the middle of a decorative plaster motif.

I pulled my scarf down towards my forehead and made a hasty exit.