"We were the only girls in the extended maternal family. The women-to-be....The women before us were Grandmother, Aunt Zarrin, and Mother. And where were they now? At motherhood, a place with suffering to the north, suffering to the south, suffering to the east, and suffering to the west.
"Motherhood was a melancholy affair. Mothers were martyrs. Everyone knew it. And no one expected less of them. Men suffered and sacrificed themselves only in poetry for the sake of love. In real life, women were the ones to perform those legendary acts.
"Every year on Mother's Day, the national radio broadcast this special message: 'Salutations upon all mothers, the promised paradise is under your feet!' Mothers would be delivered to happiness only upon death. So they rushed the inevitable. In sickness, it was Mother who, fearlessly, leaned close to me, stroked me, and whispered, 'May Mother never see your pain. May your aches leave your body and enter mine instead. May I die and never see you ill....' When she ran out of words of affection, she recited poetry, those tributes to motherhood she cherished....The most rhythmic--one we both knew well--was a poem about a son in love, who was ordered by his beloved to cut out his mother's heart as the proof of his devotion. But running to his beloved, the boy hurt his foot against a rock, and the still-beating hear of his mother lamented: Alas, my dear son's foot is hurt! Alas, my dear son has taken a fall!"
--Roya Hakakian, Journey from the Land of No: A Girlhood Caught in Revolutionary Iran
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