FINDING ME

by Zohreh Sadati

What happened in my childhood has been hovering over me for years. Facing it is an important part of my healing and understanding of myself.

I still remember the day that boy asked me to go to the basement of my father’s house with him. I was a child, only seven years old. There was a window on the right side of the basement, which had a long corridor that connected the courtyard to the exit door. Outside the basement were flowers, trees, and sunshine. I always enjoyed watching this scenery. The sun was shining that day, too, but I was not facing the sun and its light. I was facing the wall of the basement and later the room where the chickens were picked. I followed the boy and he asked me if I wanted to sit on his feet. I just looked at him and he grabbed me, and then I had this weird feeling of something in between my legs, and my dress didn’t cover my legs and back anymore. I couldn’t see him, but I think he had a smile on his face. I lost track of the time, but I remember I thought that it must be some sort of a game. I tried to understand what was going on, but I knew that I had never felt something like this before. He was about 15 years old, and I knew him. ⁓

Right after it happened, I didn’t talk to anyone, but after a couple of months I told some of the other girls, and they said that this had happened to them, too, but in different ways. I wish I could have told my family, but I didn’t dare to tell them. I was a child, usually having a lot of fun with other children in the family. I spent time with some boys from the neighborhood and played in the street in front of my father’s house in my hometown in the north of Iran. My father was a serious man, second sergeant major in the army, and everybody knew that, so we were safe. I was full of energy and I just followed the game like a boy and was not afraid of anything. We had this game about touching the wall between our yard and the next. The game took place at midnight and the one who dared go all into the darkness to touch the wall, was the winner of the game. Sometimes I was scared, but also excited to do what the boys did.

I had a rabbit at the time, and after the incident in the basement I tried to discover the rabbit’s private parts in an attempt to understand my feelings about what that boy had done to me. I watched little children’s bodies for the very same reason. But it all left me none the wiser. At the time I also developed a dislike for going to the toilet to pee, so I did it in the hall on the carpet. But I didn’t tell anyone. I would sometimes find the sensitive part of my body, but for years I didn’t touch them with my fingers. They were forbidden places. I remember a man in the street showing me his private parts, and I was scared and ran away. Back home my heart was pounding, but I still couldn’t tell my mother anything.

I tried to drown in my loneliness, just playing with stones and spending time in the yard alone. I went barefoot, removed earthworms from the ground and put water in the holes dug in the ground so that the crickets would come out. I caught them with my fingers and put them on the trunk of the tree and watched them every day. One day I saw their dry skin left on the trunk and heard them singing on another tree. When I was nine years old, I started reading a book about the Imam’s Innocence, the Quran, and other religious books that I found in my father’s library. I looked for the meaning of life, something that would make me happy and release me. But I still didn’t tell anyone what had happened to me. And I was not released. ⁓

Accidentally I ended up in theatre when I was 16 years old, and making art liberated something in me. In acting I could show myself to other people. I started university in 2010 to study theatre. Five months into my studies I lost my father, and things escalated. I lost myself in a deep depression and tried to find a way to survive. I didn’t go to university and

I didn’t see the sun for six months. I stayed in my room all the time, smoking cigarettes. The doctor gave me diazepam and strong sedatives, and I used some of them for sleep. I couldn’t sleep at all. I was scared to go to sleep and die, and it all felt like long trances with many nightmares about my own and other people’s future and past. Before he died, my father had given me a notebook and suggested I write everything I wanted, so I started writing about daily life, and later I wrote poems. My first writing was full of sadness and no hope.

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I had two roommates at university. One of them, Elahe, was a godsend. She would hold my hand until I went to sleep, but in my sleep, I would be short of breath with nightmares. I did not have the strength to physically move, so she had to shake me and pull me out of my sleep and nightmares. Elahe stayed with me most of the time and took care of me outside the house until my mother suggested hiring someone to protect me in the street walking from home to university, because when I saw people, I would panic and sometimes I would scream in their faces. One day Elahe found me in my room with blood on my hands. I had cut my arms with a pointed pen and was crying, but I didn’t feel any pain, so after slapping my own face several times, I fell into a deep sleep. ⁓

After a few months some guy tried to make love with me, but it didn’t work out. One day, when my mother came to visit, I told her that I couldn’t have relationship with anyone, and she said that she understood completely. She owed it all to the loss of my father and stayed with me because she thought I might commit suicide.

I thought of suicide many times and I had nothing to lose. I had already lost myself. I had the idea that men only wanted me for sex and beauty, and I was at an age when my soul and body were thirsty for love more than ever. I drank too much, and I didn’t trust my friends. Some of them hurt me and used me, and after that I tried to commit suicide with pills. I didn’t know what was happening to me and I lost my faith in God. I couldn’t eat, I had problems with my stomach, I lost about 12 kilos, and my hair fell out. I saw various doctors, but they couldn’t find a reason for all of this, so I finished university and left the city with a lot of problems and depression.

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I came back to my father’s house in 2014 after three and a half years, but I couldn’t stay there, because everything reminded me of him. Then I went to Tehran, and I called my mom to tell her that I didn’t want to come back home, because I didn’t love my home and I just thought she didn’t love me. She was confused and sad, but I told her that now I had to act independently and work and continue my life in Tehran. So, I decided to start a new life with a few things in my doll’s suitcase, a notebook and some winter clothes to stay warm in Tehran where I got a job as a waitress.

After being treated with medication until 2016, I recovered significantly. I worked at the restaurant for about seven years. That was my life. ⁓

When my father died, I lost my safe space, and this, along with the sexual abuse, has affected my relationships. I wanted someone to play the role of a father for me and treat me like a little girl. I wanted so hard to love a man, but at the same time my mind couldn’t separate them from my thoughts of a father figure. In Tehran, I tried to have sex with different men, and often after making love I said I couldn’t do it anymore. I was not looking for sex but for love, or maybe even for myself. One of the men kicked me out of his house before dawn. Another tried to tempt me to have sex on the floor, because he believed that the bed was for him and his girlfriend. I was chased away with anger and curses. I was hugged, accused of lying. Some of them said to take care of myself. Others that they still loved their wives or girlfriends.

I still had problems with my stomach, but a doctor in Tehran diagnosed me with Helicobacter. I had lost my stomach villi and my stomach valve due to stress, fear, food consumption, alcohol and cigarettes.

I lived in a house in Tehran from the end of 2016 until the middle of 2020. It was on one and a half floors in the basement of an apartment. I didn’t have enough money to pay for it, so my boss gave me this house to live in and reduced my salary. Somehow, I hoped that this house would cure me and enable me to accept or face my fear. I had no choice, I had to continue living in Tehran to fulfill my dreams. And then I decided to set beauty and elegance aside, not to touch my body hair, wear simple clothes and immerse myself in poetry and photography, but I still attracted men, and I didn’t know where to take my loneliness. I tried to paint, study English, and photograph people on the street and work in theatre and film for a while. One night, all the lights in the area went out and I didn’t know what to do, so I ran outside and into the street hardly wearing any clothes. I Panicked and called a friend for help. he told me to just talk to him on the phone while going into the house, then light a candle and wait for the light to come back.

I started reading photography magazines and tried to go outside for street photography to get back on my feet again.

In 2020, right in front of the same small apartment, a man attacked me with a big machete and stole my mobile phone. The attack caused serious mental damage, so I left my home and work with all my belongings and went to my friend’s house in Tehran. I spent about five months with panic attacks and did not leave the house.

Eventually I feel that I am finding a way to find peace. But I am still vulnerable, and my panic prevents emotional connections. A few things I have been able to do to disrupt my mental pattern are to quit chewing gum, not watching the clock or television, or using white sugar. I immediately remove from the cycle what becomes a habit. When my fear comes to me, I often talk to myself to convince myself that I am present in the now and nothing is threatening me. If the intensity of fear and panic is strong, I can’t speak at all, only my eyes are open and staring at one point. Sometimes small things break me and make me sad, like a loud voice or verbal or behavioral abuse. Most people don’t want to hurt me, but it happens. I’m afraid of myself and the path I’m on. If I lose someone and maybe feel that people don’t care about me, my anxiety comes back full range. But I have accepted myself and the love I have for those around me, those who take care of me. Still, when fear and loneliness dominate, I take refuge in things that calm me down.

Recently, I have been thinking of someone who once kissed me, and I kissed him back in a street in Tehran. It was snowing and everything was covered in white. It was neither too bright nor too dark for me to be afraid. My heart was open for him, and his arms were open to hold me. I saw him as a human being. My body needs to learn the truth and trust the heart of another person. Love is important to me. Although I can’t always tell what is vulgar, evil, strange, bad, or good. The reflection of my childhood is hovering over me. Telling the truth about it is my priority. •