Sormé

By Mojgan Ghazirad

It is called sormé in Farsi, the black soot that women use to magnify and beautify their eyes and face. You can name it eyeliner, but in reality, sormé does not “line” the eyes. It is used inside, on the inner pink rim that harbors the eyelashes.

I saw the sormé-dan, the jar containing sormé, first time in my grandfather’s pistachio robe. I was a curious little girl, eager to explore the gifts and gadgets he had brought from the Hajj Pilgrimage. The sormé-dan was a souvenir he’d bought from a salesman in Mecca’s Bazaar. It resembled a pocket watch, a tiny arrow jutting out from the twelve o’clock location. The picture of Mecca’s cubic shrine was engraved on one side of that brass jar and Medina’s emerald mosque on the other. He twisted the arrow and pulled the metal rod attached to the arrow out from the jar. The rod was blackened with sormé. He drew the rod against the back of my hand. A narrow black line marked the touch. Then he drew another line and a tiny little V of a flying bird emerged.  Then another V and another V and soon a flock of birds flew in the peach sky of my skin. He showed me how to apply sormé on the eyes. He separated the eyelid from the eyeball and carefully dabbed the inner rim with continuous soft strokes until the pink line surrendered to a black coat. He didn’t press the rod too hard, just a caressing, tender touch, enough to blacken the rim.

Applying sormé is a delicate task. It’s scary when the sharp stick is aimed at the cornea. One wrong move and it can scratch the eye. But this is how women and men in my country have been applying sormé for thousands of years. If you don’t put your heart in it, you will make a mess of your face. Just like using charcoal on a snow-white blank paper, you have to be mindful of every line that you draw. Even the softest accidental stroke of the hand can fade the boldness of the lines. Just a tiny drop of that fine powder under the lower eyelid is enough to ruin the look of your face. And if you try to clean that betraying dot, it will seek revenge by leaving a tarry hue under the eye: never will the two eyes be the same again. This is the reason many women avoid sormé nowadays. It deserves the attention and delicacy our rushed world lacks.

My grandfather used sormé to heal his clouding eyes. He said, “Sormé sooyeh chasm ra ziyad mikonad.” It is considered by many a medicine more than a cosmetic in the East. Muslims say it was the tradition of Mohammad, the Prophet of Islam, to line eyes with sormé. They apply it during the month of Ramadan and on Eids to pursue the path of the Prophet. Egyptians believe the blackness surrounding the eyes shields them from the ominous rays of sunshine. Indians paint the newborns’ eyes to protect them from the “evil eye.” Persians believe it accentuates expressions of love. Somehow this supreme, black powder brings protection, treatment and affection for the ones who wear it. It has something to do with lining hope for a better future when it adorns the eyes.

I always wondered why Persians believe using sormé accentuates expressions of love. I used to apply the sormé and stare at my face in the tall mirror hanging in my bedroom. I had hard time believing the blackness added beauty to my eyes, though it did highlight them in the constellation of my face. The voiceless powder cried to be seen. Eyes grabbed immediate attention: “Seekers of beauty! Do not sail around and get lost!” Like a bright lighthouse in a deadly storm, the blackness pointed to the light that resided in the sea of inside. Is that why they said sormé accentuated expressions of love?

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“We tread the bazaar, in awe of the colorful shawls dancing in the air and the layered spices that mound in gunny sacks in front of the stores.”

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Persian poets love using sormé as a metaphor for light—in contrast to its stygian blackness. Naderpour, a contemporary poet, says in his Sun’s Sormé poem:

               I was the blind bird of the black forest,

               The whirling winds my sole companion.

               When the night bore down on me,

               I only asked for death in my sleep.

He pictures himself as a blind owl in a deep black forest, sunrays pricking him one early morning in his dark nest. He imagines the sunrays as rods containing sormé. The rods line his eyelids with light and bring back vision to his eyes:

               But it was your warm hands, dearest love,

               Your hand and your infinite fire,

               I was the blind bird of the black forest,

               You brought sight with your sun’s sormé.

In the love poems of Attar, the great mystic poet, winds bring dust from faraway lands, from the land of the beloved. Even a speck of dust from the beloved is a cure, those tiny particles she shakes from her cloak. The wind-brought dust becomes sormé, and makes him see the silhouette of the beloved:

               The dust that morning breeze

               Veers from her door to me,

               Is the sable sormé,

               That brightens the world in my eyes.

There is a secret when stones are crushed to dust. The stibnite or the sulfur compound of antimony is abundant in Iran. For three thousand years, Persians have pried tootiya—the stibnite—from the mountains near Isfahan and grinded the stone in tiny mortars to make the fine black powder. They believe when a stone is pulverized into powder, the idol of grandiosity is broken into tiny pieces of modesty. By applying the powder, the secret in the stones is released and the eyes able to see through the veil of ego. You can see what’s hidden from the eyes. Fables have it that Khosrow Parviz, the great king of the Sasanian Empire, possessed a special sormé that when he applied, he could see through the earth for almost a year.

But while sormé can bring light to the eyes, it can be a silencing sword for the throat. There is an adage in Farsi that says, if you swallow the sormé, you will lose your voice. Bidel, a mystic poet, sings this adage in a beautiful poem:

               My lute of hope is broken and I am silenced forever,

               Of all the colors, I wonder why sormé has stolen my voice.

Sormé is destined to guide one from the glitter in the eyes to the lilting throbs of the heart. But if you use it by mistake on your lips, you will diverge into a dead-end, a hushed-voice chamber, rather than into flowing songs of love. 

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I take my little girl to Tehran’s Grand Bazaar. We come out of the Jameh Mosque after the prayer. This is the first time I have taken her with me to the mosque, and I want to show her how Muslims pray together in Iran. Raised in America, she has never prayed in a mass. She likes the flowers woven in the rugs. She thinks it is poetic that we caress the flowers with our foreheads while we genuflect during the prayer. We tread the bazaar, in awe of the colorful shawls dancing in the air and the layered spices that mound in gunny sacks in front of the stores. We pass a tiny turnery that has hundreds of wooden handicrafts. Every little object in the store is embellished with patterns of petals and twisted twigs. She likes the colors and configurations of the crafts. She pulls me into the turnery and points to a bulb-like jar. “What’s that?” she asks.

The old salesman brushes his grizzled beard and puts the azure-colored jar on the counter. A sharp arrow is pointing to the sky from its narrow neck. Tiny flowers entangled in each other, ornate the surface of the jar. “It’s a sormé-dan, little lady,” the salesman says to my girl. He pulls the arrow out from the jar and a thin blackened applicator appears.

“What’s this for?” she asks. I have never told her the story of sormé. I have abandoned using it since I came to America. The old antimony stone is long forgotten in the mountains of Iran.

The salesman asks for my girl’s hand. She looks at me and I nod. She places her hand on the counter and the old man nears the applicator to the dorsum of her hand. A black line appears. He dips the rod back into the jar and strokes her hand with a soft touch again and again. The magical flock of birds appears on the peach sky of her hand. She smiles. She wants the azure jar. The old man reveals the secret of sormé: the medicine, the evil-eye catcher, the beautifier, the eyeliner, the illuminator, the heart’s pathfinder. He says it accentuates expressions of love, and smiles. He keeps the love-emphasizer for the last. She stares at him with her large, beautiful black eyes. She has hard time believing the old man.

He wraps the sormé-dan in a parchment paper and puts it in a brown bag. He puts two vials of stibnite powder tightened with a cork in the bag and hands it to me. His fingertips have tainted black from handling the vials. He has sormé in his eyes like my grandfather. I wonder if he has visited Mecca and seen the thousands of men who apply sormé after the Hajj Pilgrimage.

We swing back to the bazaar. White pillars of light descend from the domes’ circular openings. Tiny black dust particles dance in the light, twirling up to the dome. Maybe a young lover has passed these narrow alleys and the sudden breeze has swept dust into the bazaar. Maybe the beloved has shaken her cloak near the old wooden gate.

Sunshine stings our eyes as soon as we come out. My little girl squints and tries to find her love-shaped sunglasses in her strapped handbag. Doves fly to and from the mosque’s dome in flocks of thousands. She sails her hands in the air like the doves. The black Vs on her hand merge with the birds in the sky. “Mommy, have you ever put sormé in your eyes?”

I smile and I nod.

They say sormé accentuates expressions of love. It’s the secret pathway to the heart.

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Mojgan Ghazirad is a graduate of The Mountainview Low Residency MFA in Fiction and Nonfiction.

Thoughts on the Hijab on International Women's Day

by Mojgan Ghazirad

Cool breezes of early fall flapped the olive curtains behind him. We were sitting in front of each other in an empty classroom, a desk full of books separating the two of us. I felt nervous about the first job interview of my life. I had recently graduated from high school and Seyed was interviewing me for a teaching position in my own high school. A young radical Islamist in his mid-twenties, he recruited new teachers for the school.

With his quasi-hieroglyphic handwriting, Seyed added a few more books to the long list he’d prepared and handed the paper to me.  He capped his royal blue ink pen with a sharp click and settled back with crossed hands in his seat. He glared at me through his square-framed glasses, waiting to hear something in the final minutes of the interview. I browsed the list. Half of the titles on the list were in Arabic. I wondered how he expected an eighteen-year-old Persian girl to read a complex text in Arabic. I stammered a thank you for the comprehensive list, hoping that would end the uncomfortable encounter.

Seyed took a deep breath when he noticed my unwillingness to ask a question and said, “There is something else, I’d like to say before you leave.”  He brushed the black beard on his protruding chin. “I’ve heard some of your friends who’d been accepted to teach are still appearing without hijab in social gatherings. Don’t you think it’s an act of hypocrisy to behave like a good Muslim in school and appear different in private meetings?”

I wasn’t sure what to answer, but I knew exactly why he was alluding to hijab in his speech: I didn’t wear any type of hijab at home or at friendly gatherings. I liked painting my nails with faint nail colors and wearing colorful scarfs out of school. Nobody wore hijab inside the house in my family and it never occurred to me I needed to cover my hair in front of my male cousins. To me, hijab was the compulsory veil we had to wear in the streets.

On my way home, I got off the metro bus three stations before my usual bus stop. Walking had become the habit of stressful days. I breathed out the anxious thoughts as I trod home through Haft Hose Park. The pines in the park, covered with pinpoint leaves, blushed among the deciduous trees. Plane trees, crouching with their bare boughs, looked homely in that picturesque beauty. I pondered the conversations we’d had during the interview. I wasn’t worried about getting the teaching position at the school. It was supposed to be a volunteer job before I started medical school. What worried me was the notion of hypocrisy in his speech. Was I not a true believer because I didn’t wear hijab?

After the interview, I decided to cover my hair in every circumstance. Seyed’s words had a huge impact on me. I trusted the man whom I believed to be an Islamic scholar. I threw away all my pink and ivory nail colors and wore black scarves everywhere, religiously. I didn’t want to be a hypocrite in my heart. I started to believe a Muslim woman should attire herself in public the same as she appears during her prayer to Allah: clothed all over her body. I felt if my hair was uncovered and visible to strange men, I was committing a sin. I didn’t wear hijab because of the tradition that ran in my family. I chose to observe hijab because of the trust I had in the words of the scholars who established my system of beliefs.

The uncoupling of hijab from my moral ethics happened years after living outside Iran. Erasing hijab from the ideology I was brought up with was not easy, like taking a central pillar out of a high-rise building. It took me many years to uproot the tenets that were sewn into my mind about hijab and to realize wearing a scarf had nothing to do with being a devout Muslim or a good human being.

Today, on international women’s day, I think about the movement started a few months ago by Iranian women who live inside Iran. The Girls of Revolution Street are the women who stand on telecom posts or benches in busy streets, take their scarves off and flag them on a stick in protest to compulsory hijab. Almost all of them have been arrested for breaking the law and appearing scarf-less in public. Aside from their bravery and innovation in protest, they demonstrate the fundamental failure of a government that has struggled to rule Iranian women for many years.

The culture of hijab was endorsed and emphasized in Iran after the Islamic Revolution, and what used to be a tradition in some families, ended up becoming propaganda for the new government. For four decades, the Islamic scholars of the Republic have enshrined hijab as the most sacred value a woman could achieve in her lifetime, making her feel guilty and sinful about uncovering her hair in public. But The Girls of Revolution Street prove how deeply a government-backed doctrine has plunged into bankruptcy.

As an Iranian woman who has wrestled with the concept of hijab for many years, I admire The Girls of Revolution Street not only for their bravery, but also for their ability to withstand the stifling pressure the Islamic Republic has put on them to impose its doctrine. They are the embodiment of hope and bravery for many Iranian women like me. They have resisted four decades of ideological hammering that wants to forge them into law-abiding, hijab-observing citizens. I envy them because they never see themselves as hypocrites. They are sincere in their protest and the protest reveals their honesty, in their desires and their beliefs. These girls have plucked hijab out of the moral values of Iranian women, showing to the world that what matters most to them is not wearing a piece of cloth on their head, but the freedom to choose.

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Mojgan Ghazirad is a graduate of The Mountainview Low-Residency MFA in Fiction and Nonfiction.  

Christmas on the Spanish Steps

by Mojgan Ghazirad

Fifteen years ago when I came to Canada as a student, I remember one of my Iranian friends who had come a few years earlier asked, “Are you going to put up a Christmas tree in your house?” We were walking together in Vancouver’s Broadway Street, ornate wreaths were attached to every light post we passed. Crimson little globes glittered in between the glabrous leaves of holly that embellished the glass vitrines of stores and coffee shops. The Christmas celebration, golden and glamorous, kept me in a state of wonderment and awe. I was new to North America and the festivities around the New Year in the Western world. And so was my daughter, age seven, who kept asking me if we were going to get her a Christmas tree where she could hang the tiny ornaments she’d received from her friends in school. “No, we will continue to enjoy from afar,” I said to my friend as we entered a cozy coffee shop to have hot cider and a cinnamon roll. He laughed out loud at my resistance and said, “Well, I’m sure you will, just like us. After a few years you’ll surrender to your kids.”

A week ago, I had the pleasure of visiting Rome for the first time in my life. Rome, with the magnificent Vatican City, seemed the most desirable city on earth to be in at Christmas time. I strolled along the narrow cobblestoned alleys flanked by hundreds of little pizzerias and pasta houses and coveted the spirit of celebration wafting its way in those tiny shops and restaurants: a waiter erecting a tall branch of spruce at the corner of a pizza house, a young girl with a red and white checkered apron placing gingerbread Babbo Natale in the display window of a gelato bar, a rosy-cheeked little girl pulling her mama’s hand for a red rain boot with a snowman on its vamp.

I remembered my kids asking about Santa and Christmas, and their questions about exchanging gifts. Every time, I came up with an answer explaining that we, as Muslims in America, do not share the same beliefs as Christians, trying to persuade them to turn their eyes away from the glittering gifts. As an Iranian, I told them about Yalda when we get together with friends on the night of December 21st, the winter solstice, and celebrate the victory of light over darkness on the longest night of the year. I clung to the celebration, arranging a colorful table with bowls of nuts, watermelon, pomegranate seeds and sweets and I let them stay awake until late at night. We read the poems of Hafiz and, most importantly, I offered them gifts that were not part of the celebration. I struggled to compensate for the presents they never received under a Christmas tree.     

Last year on Christmas Eve, I was invited to a feast hosted by a friend of mine from high school who I serendipitously found after thirty-some years.  When I arrived, her twin boys were playing with a remote controlled electric train that chugged under the Christmas tree and emerged clickety-clacking and whistling from the other side. They couldn’t speak Farsi and greeted me in English with perfect American accents. My friend had made fesenjoon, an Iranian dish made with walnuts and pomegranate molasses, to celebrate Christmas ‘Iranian style.’ As she ladled fesenjoon on my plate of basmati rice, she asked the same question I’d encountered fifteen years ago. “Do you put up a Christmas tree in your house?” I smiled and praised her artfulness in making such a delicacy with ingredients so scarce in America, trying to divert the conversation to the tasty side of the evening. My friend talked about a visit they had paid to the Washington National Cathedral a few days before. In St. Mary’s chapel, one of the twins had approached her and asked about the figure of Christ on the cross. “Who’s this man on the cross?” he’d simply asked. My friend had given some information about Jesus, which of course, didn’t sound exciting for a five-year-old with no religious upbringings.

After dinner, the twins gathered around the Christmas tree to play with the rattling train. As I helped to stow the remaining food in the fridge, my friend said, “Even if we were brought up in secular families, we were taught the foundations of Islam in school. At least we knew how to pray when we were in dire straits. We had something to hold on to. But my kids, they don’t even know the concept of god.”   

In Rome, I saved the visit to St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City for the last day. There in the Basilica, I melted in front of the Pieta by Michelangelo. There was a peculiar gaze in Mary’s face that seemed different from all the statues that embellished every corner of that magnificent Basilica. “Ecce Homo,” she whispered in my ears. “Behold this unblemished, paragon phoenix of life.” People posed in front of the Pieta, took selfies with their mobile holders jutting out, smiling, craning their heads toward each other, hugging, pointing to Mary and Jesus in her hands. I wondered if they’d heard the words she whispered in the silence of the Basilica. The agony that was etched in Mary’s eyes was a mere reflection of the beholder’s own knowledge and past experience. Only those who knew her aching story could fathom the anguish that was carved in her outstretched arms as she held her son on her lap. I wondered if my kids would have realized what it meant to hold the weight of a complete human being in one’s hands.

At night, I walked all the way from St. Peter’s Basilica to the Spanish Steps to see Rome in her nightly beauty. On one of the landings between the flights of low steps, the city workers were erecting a grand Christmas tree. They had barred the landing with florescent warning tapes, only permitting people to pass through a narrow rim. Tourists glanced at the giant tree as they trudged up the one hundred and thirty-five steps toward the top of the hill. Rome glittered with her shiny cathedral domes and bejeweled streets. Fifteen years and I still revered Christmas from afar. I still wouldn’t erect a Christmas tree in my house, believing there should be a meaning bound to any ritual we add to our lives. What role does an emblem play for us if it’s hollowed out of the historic connotation it has? What will my children learn from me if I put up a Christmas tree in our living room? Wouldn’t their festivities be a mélange of Christmas and Yalda, amalgamated together, inane and empty of a spirit that can redeem their souls when they are lost?

Fifteen years have passed and I moved from Canada to the United States more than a decade ago. Every year, I take my kids to the Ellipse in front of the White House to show them the National Christmas Tree and the fifty decorated trees that represent each state in the country. The mirth of Christmas has seeped into our lives in a subtle, inappreciable way. We share the joy with the Christians of America at the end of the year. There is so much to learn and admire about the essence that flows through the rituals of this holy celebration. But to strip the meaning from the Christmas tree and adorn the barren branches with gilded ornaments, just to be the same as our neighbors, this is what I refuse to do. Our identity is highlighted by the differences we recognize in one another, by appreciating the agony of Mary marveling at the magnitude of her Son’s sacrifice for humanity, and by realizing the glory of a culture that celebrates the triumph of light over darkness on the longest of nights. The luminous candles on the Christmas tree remind us of the birth of a star and the ruby seeds of the pomegranate we savor at Yalda resemble the glow of life. These symbols convey a lore we believe can walk us out of darkness and lead us to the eternal bliss.

I looked down the Spanish steps at the newly erected Christmas tree and admired its halo of light. A fine snow dusted the emerald pine needles and made it glow. The Christmas tree looked beautiful from afar.

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Mojgan Ghazirad is a graduate of The Mountainview Low-Residency MFA in Fiction and Nonfiction.