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And Her Hair Went With Her
by Ms. Virago
1:
It would be the last public stoning of a woman in the village of Rashemi, two hundred miles southeast of Tehran, the solid, craggy heart of Iran. Solemnly, fathers, sons and brothers lined a dusty pit with palms and fingers tightly wound around thick chunks of stone. It would be the last time a father, with an impossibly strong arm wrapped uncompromisingly around his daughter's shoulders, would guide his offspring to the edge of the shallow ditch.
Her family name was Nasr, but her first name, the name her father had made a golden word as he whispered it into her mother's ear four minutes after she was born, the name her mother snapped at her like a whip when she caught her playing outside as a child with no headscarf wrapped around her head, the name the first boy she might have loved sighed into her ear as they made love for the first time in a kitchen closet at a gathering of families, the name her father had whispered when he had walked in on them making love for the third time, in a bed, letters falling with the finality of iron on the floor, with such disappointment, with such fear, with such mortality, was Tirajeh.
Mothers, sisters and daughters had no part in this circle, unless they were at the bleeding heart of it. Her mother and sister were clutched together inside a tightly sealed house streets, blocks and miles away. Their tears streaked their faces, like rain that streamed down the sides of tin houses. There was no rain today, only a hot fistful of sun raising its arm with vindication into the cloudless sky. Her shoed toes teetered dangerously on the edge of the pit; with a breath and thin, gentle fingertips at her back, her father nudged her into the deep circle, his last act of kindness.
She stepped in, determined not to lose her balance as her feet shuffled to the bowl of the ditch. Her arms snaked around her fettered body like rope, attempting to quell the trembling of her every muscle. In the precious moments before her entrance into the pit, she had made solemn promises to her young, fourteen-year-old self that she would die quietly and with great dignity. Had she known anything about dying, or perhaps even what it is like to die by the stones, she would have known better. But this is what she was supposed to learn, she had realized, she should have known better. A pity she would not have the opportunity to know better, instead of this anguished punishment of what she had and had not known.
And here she was, living the penultimate moment of her life at fourteen and cowering at the bottom of a shallow pit. As words began to be read by a man she could not see, it seemed that every pore in her body opened in a scream. Sobs wrenched from her throat, thick, salty tears poured from her eyes and snot dribbled from her nose. Her mind flew like a bird to a thousand different places—to her mother, who had always taught her as well as she could, to her father, standing stoically with stones in his big hands, to Ghassan, the boy she was dying for, and to her sister, her beautiful sister, who had always taken Tirajeh's thick, unruly hair and attempted to braid it into thick rope.
The voice stopped speaking. She heard the shifting of men's feet.
A stone, out of nowhere, flew from the circle, bouncing off the bone of her shoulder and landing on the ground with an anti-climactic softness. She cried out, her lips attempting to stop her vocalizations, and then began to hyperventilate as another stone snapped into her back. Then, a flurry of stones barraged her as her knees gave way and she crouched like the child she was, her hands covering her head.
Ghassan's face was in her head. Where was he? Was he casting stones? Her sister's face now. Who would take care of her? Would she be all right? Her mother's smile, bright as sunshine as she combed Tirajeh's unruly hair. Then, all images dissolved into the sobbing mantra: I don't want to die, not today, not today, not today…
Her scalp began to burn as though each strand of her hair was a brand. A thick stone nailed her skull in the back of the head—she almost lost consciousness, and she fell onto her hands and knees in the dirt. And then it happened—in that brief, teetering moment between the conscious and the unconscious, between life and death, the dark rage of her soul took flight.
Her hair ripped from her scalp, tearing through the thin fabric of her headscarf, growing and twisting like a snake falling through the air, like vipers uncoiling from their hiding spots in the dirt. Black, thick, prehensile vines shot out of her head, fast as lightning, to snatch flying stones from the air. They released their holdings, the stones falling lifelessly, harmlessly, to the dirt. Tirajeh's eyes were half-lidded, only knowing half of what was occurring around her. The cries from the men surrounding her were thick with fear.
Like swords, every strand of hair from her head tightened and sharpened, each thick length of it rising to each man's throat. It glinted vindictively in the sun. Her executioners staggered back, and the hair followed.
The hair pulsed, drawing back like a viper ready to strike. And then, time stopped.
A fuzzy, gauzy strength surrounded every fiber of her being. Her hair shuddered before losing its form, falling limply to the dirt, retreating slowly back into her head. Tirajeh's scalp burned as though it were on fire, her body trembling as though she were encased in ice. She collapsed to the ground.
A man with thick, red eyes was leaning over her. For some reason, she felt no fear before she felt herself slip, slip, and was gone.
The men surrounding them—a red-eyed man, a tall woman with red hair and woman with astonishing white hair—raised their fists full of stones again.
The red-eyed man picked up Tirajeh carefully. Stones flew. They stopped in mid-air, suspended as though floating in water, before dropping to the ground.
"Ours," said the white-haired woman as the three took Tirajeh to a plane that seemed to appear out of nothing but air. And then they were gone.