Us&Them: A Novel 9781503602199

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US&THEM

Also by Bahiyyih Nakhjavani The Woman Who Read Too Much The Saddlebag Paper

US&THEM A NOVEL

B A H I Y Y I H N A K H J AVA N I

REDWOOD PRESS Stanford, California

This is a work of fiction and so the reader is warned against it; any resemblances to actual persons, whether living or dead, or to actual circumstances, whether past or present, are entirely coincidental. It is also a satire and so the reader is encouraged to laugh at it, except when disposed to weep, since every effort has been made to distort, to pervert, and to exaggerate the truth in these pages. The author and publisher hereby disclaim any liability caused by the reader’s refusal to take these recommendations under consideration. Stanford University Press Stanford, California ©2017 by Bahiyyih Nakhjavani. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press. Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Nakhjavani, Bahiyyih, author. Title: Us & them : a novel / Bahiyyih Nakhjavani. Other titles: Us and them Description: Stanford, California : Redwood Press, 2017. | Description based on print version record and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not viewed. Identifiers: LCCN 2016042359 (print) | LCCN 2016042071 (ebook) | ISBN 9781503602199 (e-book) | ISBN 9781503601581 (cloth :alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Iranian Americans--California--Los Angeles--Fiction. | LCGFT: Novels. Classification: LCC PR6064.A35 (print) | LCC PR6064.A35 U8 2017 (ebook) | DDC 823/.914--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016042359 Designed by Bruce Lundquist Typeset at Stanford University Press in 11.75/16 Baskerville

CHAPTERS

1. Us

1

2. Apocalypse

5

3. Transit

17

4. Immigration

30

5. Waiting

35

6. Lying

40

7. Tea

52

8. Anecdotes

58

9. Assimilation

63

10. Green

72

11. The Association

81

12. Art

87

13. Neighbours

94

14. Endangered

103

15. Losing the Plot

113

16. Shopping Bags

118

17. Conference

131

18. Garden

139

19. Revolution

149

20. Laundry

152

21. In-Laws

164

22. Walls

170

23. Weddings

180

24. Divorce

184

25. Real Estate

194

26. Carpets

200

27. Economy

209

28. Hairdresser

213

29. Phone Call

221

30. All in the Family

234

31. Imitation

239

32. Fenugreek

242

33. Honesty

246

34. Them

261

US&THEM

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US

to come out for quite some time. Such an obvious subject, just waiting to be exploited. Such a plum of a theme. We knew it would boost our confidence, and our confidence certainly needed boosting, after everything we had been through. It was a personal story, of course, but we believed it captured the zeitgeist of the age. There are millions of us, after all, covering the entire gamut of humankind: men and women, young and old, radicals and conservatives, pro-this, anti-that, and everything in between. And we are literally everywhere too, scattered over the planet, in Europe and in Australia, in Canada and the US. Why, we have even taken up residence in China, Latin America, and certain parts of Africa, as well as the United Arab Emirates, although some of these countries hardly count, of course, when it comes to the publishing industry. Interesting, that: how small the world is when it comes to the publishing industry. But wherever it did come out, and in whatever language, we were sure the book would have a wide readership. Our story would become a best seller, a blockbuster; it would take the world by storm. It would move from long to short lists, from WE HAD BEEN EXPECTING THE BOOK

1

talk shows to lecture tours, and the author, whoever he or she was, would become a household name however difficult it might be to ­pronounce. We did speculate about that for a while; we did worry a bit about the author, we have to admit. It was bound to be a woman, we concluded, whether she wrote well or not; Iranian women do tend to receive all the media attention these days. And that did rather bother us, to be honest; that did rather goad our pride. There has been an unreasonable amount of attention given to female artists, scientists, actors, astronauts, lawyers, and suicides over the last several decades. But you can’t have it all your own way after a revolution, can you? Besides, female or not, the author would have to deploy the first-person plural in such a book, and that would draw a veil over the matter. The first-person plural is mandatory in such situations. We use this point of view in Persian to show our modesty, to demonstrate our humility. At times, it has to be admitted, we also use it to evade responsibility. But that is another issue. The point is that the effacement of self is as vital to Persian syntax as it is to our identity. Our speech patterns will be recognized immediately as Iranian by the erasure of personality. And doesn’t recognition matter more than gender in the last analysis? It was time we received that, no question. We had been waiting for some kind of recognition, some kind of serious attention—other than what we regularly received whenever we passed through immigration—for a long time. The main question was: what form would the book take? Fiction? Factual analysis? Some of us hoped for cutting-edge commentary, a sociopolitical survey about The Original Aryan: Then and Now. Others thought a literary masterpiece would be more chic, a dazzling debut novel called The Exiles of Malibu or something, a story that captured the long damp winter of our deracination. Most of us just wanted a simple heartfelt tale with a name like Scheherazade in the Suburbs, perhaps, a sob story about impossible love or family dysfunction, stirring immediate empathy in the first ten pages and providing a comforting, sentimental end. We would even have been 2

satisfied with a self-help manual, ten easy-to-read chapters and a difficult subtitle like Generational Repercussions of Post-Diasporadic Syndrome. Anything really, so long as it was about us, the final word about us. We were excited about it. We anticipated its appearance from day to day. But nothing happened. We waited, for weeks, then months. But still nothing. Elections were rigged, reformists placed under house arrest, youth scraped off the pavements and denied education, university curricula erased from hard drives and forced underground, and no book appeared. Nothing. We scoured the reviews; we rummaged the archives. But our story had not been written. Not even historically, let alone currently. Not even briefly, in The Economist. Not even in French. We, the Iranians in the firstpersonal plural, were simply not in print. It was devastating. There was plenty of evidence of first-person singular Iranians on the bookshop shelves, but we were not the focus of attention. Subjective stories abounded in the chain stores, but these were not about us, the real “we.” They were about individuals we could barely identify with, a country that no longer existed, a past of aesthetic sensibility belonging to the academic few, or a place for the very rich, the very religious, the very feminist, or the anti-feminist, the anti-religious, the anti-rich, even. There were biographies of those associated with the Peacock Throne. Or conspiracy theories about the fall of Mossadegh. Or the true confessions of those who still remembered Hitler and our oil in WWII. Or the fictional memoirs of pivotal figures of the Constitutional Revolution. But none of these stories was actually about the hydraheaded, contradictory, paradoxical us, the multiple, first-person plural us in Toronto and Sydney, in Bogotá and Beijing, speaking Persian all over the world. We began to doubt ourselves. Were we a figment of our own imaginations? Was our multiplicity a false construct and mere illusion? Had we been deceiving ourselves, misplacing our expectations? But surely not! There was concrete evidence that our story 3

was universal, the impact of our exile international. Had we not had a visible influence on the property market worldwide, especially in London and Toronto, especially in relation to renovating bathrooms and improving the plumbing in showers? Perhaps we were just not sexy enough to sell ourselves, not sensational enough to capture media attention. But the very idea was preposterous! Weren’t our women some of the most beautiful in the world, our politicians the most quotable? As for commercial clout, our entrepreneurship was renowned, our skill in the bazaar second to none; our carpets and kebabs have become cultural icons everywhere we go. And we have more PhDs per capita now, in the fields of medicine, law, and engineering, than any other immigrant community, except perhaps the Chinese; more nuclear scientists and computer experts among our sons than is probably good for us or for them; more daughters playing football and handball, becoming bus drivers and documentary filmmakers. We have invented our own unique brand by achieving every stereotype in the book! How could we lose confidence in our story? We realized that if we did not take the matter in hand our very existence would be at risk. We would lose trust in ourselves and not just in our story. There was only one alternative, we concluded, only one choice left, in the circumstances. We had tried all the other options: we had depended on others, waited for others, expected others to take on the responsibility for the book to come out. We had accused everyone—monarchs and mullahs, foreigners and heretics, even women writers—for its failure to appear, and there was no one left to blame. So we could not waste another moment: one sole solution remained. If we wanted the world to know about us, we had to do something about it ourselves. We had to reassemble our scattered lives, re-member our limbs and organs, reunite our separate identities, and author our own stories. It would be a grand reunion! 4

A P O C A LY P S E

for the family reunion in March, we were dismayed, as well as surprised, we can tell you. We had no wish to bump into that young woman again, not now, not after all these years. Besides, she wasn’t young anymore, was she? We hadn’t been in touch since she had left the country, over two decades ago, and certainly didn’t want to revive our friendship. She had broken off relations and had stopped corresponding when she went to Paris. That family had always been dysfunctional. It wasn’t only the Revolution that had screwed them up. She was going to stay with that brassy sister of hers in Westwood, apparently, the blond bimbo with her flaky husband and two brats, whom we try to avoid as much as possible. We saw them at a wedding recently; it gave us quite a turn, because the boy is the spitting image of their dead brother, except for size. Half the age of our friend, but twice as fat. They said the old lady was coming from Iran to celebrate the Persian New Year with her daughters. That took us aback. We heard that she’d lost her marbles after what happened to her son. Just imagine an old Persian biddy who’d lost her marbles sprouting

WHEN WE HEARD THAT SHE WAS COMING OVER

5

Naw Ruz lentils in Westwood. Great symbol for a fresh start. Fine kind of reunion it would be. Father dead, mother deranged, brother disappeared, and a couple of sisters barely speaking to each other—one so desperate to be American that she’d dipped her brains in bleach and the other who had turned lesbian or something to prove how French she was. It had been a relief to us that the younger one never came back to the US. Once our articles began to appear, and we received the award for the book, we went out of our way to avoid meeting her friends and relations. Not that she had ever had that many friends in Los Angeles, it is true, but the General had held some sway in Tehrangeles during the last years of his life, and the older sister still lived here, still gadded about Bloomingdales on those impossible heels. Thankfully, she had no connections with the academic community and so we mercifully lost touch, broke off from mutual acquaintances, avoided meeting. Especially after the memoir came out. It would have been too embarrassing. The most hyperbolic and extravagant display of taarof—that acrobatic assault of verbal courtesy so characteristic of Iranian discourse—could not have saved us from awkwardness had we met. We’d been their kid brother’s closest buddy, after all; we’d been his best friend in Tehran. So we certainly didn’t want to see the sisters again. Sure, we’d been close in the past. We’d spent hours at their house after school, playing games under the willow in the garden. But it had been because of our friendship with their kid brother. Whatever the gossip might be, we certainly had no sort of special relationship with those girls, not at all. In fact, the first time we met the younger one after leaving Iran, we hardly recognized her. We were still living on the East Coast at the time, and had come down to the nation’s capital to attend a Congressional hearing, in an expert capacity you understand. Very confidential. It was not long after the hostage crisis and we 6

were on the up and up, confidentially speaking. And there she was, standing at the metro entrance, covered in khaki from head to foot and handing out leaflets to the uncaring. We didn’t give her a second glance at the time. It’s all written in the books, she was saying: the apocalypse is foreordained. Another nutter, we thought, brushing past. There were plenty of them around those days, lobbying for attention during the bitter war between Iran and Iraq. But this one was familiar, unfortunately. She recognized us too, that was the worst of it, and she spoke to us in Persian. An Iranian can always recognize an Iranian in a crowd. Something to do with the mouth, the movement of the lips. The nose. The last days have come, she gleamed at us; retribution is at hand. We are not religious, we lied. Meeting someone you know from before, completely crazy at a metro entrance, is unnerving. Since when had that young rebel taken to the veil? She had been inclined towards Marxism when we’d known her. That business with her brother must have turned her head, marching off to martyrdom in the middle of the war. He had disappeared in the Kurdish mountains when their father was dying in Beverly Hills, but we heard that the mother was still expecting him to return, like the Messiah. It looked like the sister was nuts too. Poor kid. Catastrophe is inevitable, chaos is unavoidable, she was telling the people behind us. And how’re you doing, by the way? she called, as we turned away. But we didn’t answer. We weren’t interested in her catastrophes. The apocalypse had already occurred as far as we were concerned; we’d gone through enough chaos to last us a lifetime, thank you very much. Our education had been aborted in Iran, partially completed in Britain, summarized in Canada, and now needed to be concluded without further interruption, at graduate school in 7

the US. But we had to earn enough money to pay back our astronomical loans at the end of it all. That was our doomsday scenario. So we pressed on towards the escalators. The ground was littered with her pamphlets, dropped by people as indifferent as ourselves. What a comedown, we thought. Her family used to be rich, unlike ours; she’d had connections and was given the best education money could buy. Unlike us. What had turned her into a fundamentalist? Must be some kind of weakness in the blood: first the brother, now her. It had been a terrible blow to hear of his fate; he had been a favourite friend at school, one of our closest chums. We had confided hopes, shared dreams, exchanged poetry with one another. But we abandoned him when the war began; we escaped conscription and fled from Iran when he was drafted into the army. We felt a little guilty about that. We felt guilty about shrugging his sister off too. There were violet shadows under her eyes that brought back painful memories. It seemed unlikely that we’d ever meet again after the metro encounter, but a few weeks later, we found her waiting on the platform itself, pressing more handouts on people. Fervent. Evangelical. Obviously fallen in with the wrong crowd, we thought. Several organizations had sprouted up since the Revolution, so-called governments in exile, opposition movements of one kind or another, the Judean People’s Front and all that, rounding up recruits among the desperate. There are so many ways a minority can exploit the masses. That’s what the Congressional hearing had been about, actually: exploiting fear constructively. It had been a great boost to our career, to become an advisor on how to handle the rising Assyrian hordes. But now we were the desperate ones, because there she was again, sidling up to us again, taking advantage of the late suburban train to ask us how we were doing. Again. As well as can be expected, we shrugged awkwardly. Still breathing. Hanging in there. It’s not the end yet! we said attempting humour. How about yourself ? 8

When you are oppressed by your government and robbed by your compatriots, she began, surely it is a sign of the end? The brutalities in broad daylight, the acts of intimidation on a daily basis prove it. A new time is at hand, she said, earnestly. Is that so, we laughed. Sounds more like the same old times to us, we told her, trying to dodge past as the train doors hissed open. We found her intimidating, quite frankly, disconcerting with that pale face and the ugly khaki headscarf. We dropped her leaflets onto the rails as we slipped into the carriage. But she followed us. To our dismay, we saw that she had stepped into the train too, just before the doors closed. She was pressing her flyers on other passengers, passing leaflets up and down the aisles, and holding up fuzzy pictures of naked bodies between the ­stations. That was the worst of it. How could a good-looking young woman like that, and from a decent family too, with connections in the army and the court, be waving photos of naked bodies under the noses of total strangers! She was not alone ­either; there was a team of them. When a couple of cops came in at the next stop and started rounding up her “colleagues,” we looked away, relieved and mortified, ashamed and guilt-ridden to see her being hustled off the train. You don’t have to be religious to be responsible, she screamed as she was dragged along the platform, her headscarf slipping. It was frankly shocking. The next time our paths crossed, we were on the other side of the country. We had been invited to give a paper, run a seminar, organize a colloquium on the West Coast, and we bumped into her by accident, on campus, at the end of the summer term. She was serving in one of the canteens, dishing out lasagne to the students, though what her older sister must have thought of that, we could not imagine. They were the two extremes: the older one in her Westwood mansion, getting her legs waxed and her nails done every 9

week; the younger one working in a cafeteria, pushing pulp food and propaganda on students. The General must be rolling in his grave, we thought. People said she hadn’t even attended his funeral. She came and sat at our table. Her kid brother’s best friend, after all, before we gave him the slip. We had sworn eternal ­fealty to each other before he offered to fight for the Lord, so we could hardly give his sister the brush-off again, could we? Not in these circumstances. The students were drifting off, the pace of work was slackening at the canteen, long time no see and all that. Besides, her headscarf was no longer khaki coloured, but blue now and made of silk. Her sister’s influence? She was still insisting on Armageddon, though, still harping on the apocalypse. If Western governments cannot stop the violation of human rights in our country, she said, if foreign powers are paralyzed by their anxiety for votes, their fear of body bags, then there is no alternative but for us to act in our own best interests. Her cheeks were flushed. Was she wearing a little makeup for a change? There was something different about her face. Rather attractive. But still fanatic. We have to topple the regime, she glittered. Take advantage of the least crack, the smallest fissure to destroy the system. Chaos is inevitable, violence unavoidable. We are not interested in politics, we lied, scraping at our plates. She sounded like some kind of latter-day Bolshevik. A pity. She was quite pretty really. What you’re saying, she rounded, is that you don’t mind if chaos and violence reign in your country so long as you are out of it. We did not say any such thing, we retorted. We just don’t think that we can do anything from here, that’s all. Change depends on the Iranians inside the country. Iranians are cowards wherever they are, she countered. Change can only occur if you retaliate, if you resist. And to hell with the consequences. 10

We were appalled. We don’t believe that ends justify means, we replied, loftily, and excused ourselves before she could say any more. But as we shuffled off to dump our cold lasagne in the bin, we could sense her watching us, could feel her mocking gaze penetrating our shoulder blades. Our ends had certainly justified our own means when we abandoned her brother to his fate all those years ago; we hadn’t given a damn for the consequences when we dared him to march to his death in the mountains. Had our cynicism provoked his idealism? Had our words incited the folly of his subsequent actions? Did that mean we were in some way responsible for his imprisonment, his likely death? And were we now supposed to make up for it? There is something distinctly unpleasant about being called a coward especially when you are trying to make a name for yourself in academia. It had been a mistake to tell her that we had an office on campus, a carrel in the library. She would not leave us alone after that. We were afraid our colleagues in the department would notice. People eyed her each time she came by, gauging our relationship. We really did not want our friends to see us hanging around with a woman in hijab. There was enough paranoia in the air as a result of the hostage crisis without adding to it, and we could be thought terrorists simply by association. It was one thing to be an expert and another to be suspected of being a fifth columnist. One time we actually risked rudeness and did not answer the door when she came knocking; another time we asked to be excused, claiming pressing commitments. But she returned a few evenings later, just as we were about to go home. She had used words and arguments at first; now she bombarded us with the photographs. There they were, the horrors she had been flaunting in the metro: mutilated babies, gassed children, women howling in the dust over the bodies of young 11

soldiers, tortured prisoners, disfigured girls, bones exhumed from mass graves all tumbling out of the folder under her arm. That did it. We could not shut the door in her face. But since we were about to leave the library, we could not ignore her now, either. We offered gallantly to walk her home. It was late, after all; the light was fading and that campus is always rather seedy after dark. We could hardly give a young woman the cold shoulder at this hour, especially the sister of our best friend from school. Besides, she wasn’t wearing a headscarf that evening. In fact, her hair had henna glints under the street lamps and there was an aura of perfume about her. We decided to flirt with her, experimentally, if only to avoid being evangelized. Mother still in Iran? Yes. And brother? No. We glanced at her profile in the pause, remembering the lovely boy. Women had never been our cup of tea before. But you can’t ignore those left behind, she said, swinging round to look at us full in the face. She really was beautiful, with that gleaming hair, those blazing black eyes. You can’t turn your back on them, she whispered. Their degradation is your degradation, their distress your distress. If their human rights are being trampled on, then you’re complicit if you do not protest against it. There was a quiver in her voice, an unsteadiness that was unnerving. Her passion was frightfully sincere. No, we had not thought of it that way. Yes, perhaps we were complicit. We were trying to find a way to calm her down. But she had not finished with us. If you are that complicit, then you must be awfully callous, she rounded, trembling, and if you are so callous, then you deserve the racism that’s being levelled against you in this country. We were shocked. We could not back away now, either, we said, and at that moment we saw—sweet heaven!—tears shining in her eyes. We had not realized till that moment that this girl might actually be suffering. 12

It was an apocalyptic moment, alright. Although we disliked being called callous to our faces almost more than being considered cowards behind our backs, we had to admit, under the street lamp, that human rights did deserve attention. We agreed this might be a cause worth supporting. By the time we reached the bus stop, we were offering to do our bit for our country. When she gave us the leaflets, we accepted them. When she asked for our signatures, we complied. In fact, as the bus rolled up, we even told her that we’d write an article to support her cause. But we drew a line at headscarves. We would have liked to breathe the heady perfume of her tumbling locks forever, and taken her in our arms. We bent closer to her. If universal mayhem and worldwide conflagration are at hand, a headscarf won’t give you much protection, will it? we quipped, and then we quickly kissed her on the cheek, before turning away and swinging aboard the bus. This is not about protection; it’s about solidarity, she yelled after us. It had only been a little peck on the cheek, but her voice was loud. Everyone on the bus stared at us as we lurched to our seats, feeling awkward and embarrassed. Women are so complicated. When we overtook her on the road, she never turned, never waved. So much for solidarity in suffering, we thought angrily; we were humiliated, discomfited by her dwindling figure; we were haunted by her perfume, the odour of our own armpits. We wondered if she had said all that stuff about degradation because she felt guilty too, about her brother. If he had not died—yes, she reminded us awfully of her brother—where might he be now? And that was when we realized the difference. It wasn’t just the lack of a headscarf. It wasn’t the presence of makeup and the aura of perfume. It was her nose. Whatever her ideological opinions, that girl had had a nose job! Well, at least California had done that much for her, we thought, suddenly feeling sour and stuffily academic and prematurely old. The bus gears crunched as we left her behind in the darkness. 13

But we did not throw her leaflets away: we made notes on them. And when we saw a bunch of students bombing one another in the cafeteria a few days later, with paper planes made from her flyers, we felt humiliated on her behalf. She was right about the racism. She was right about being held hostage by prejudice. Yes, it was easy to be complicit in acts of oppression towards others; it was easy to support tyranny without realizing. There but for the grace of You Know Who, and all that. If she had not fallen in with the wrong crowd, if she had pursued her education, there would have been nothing to stop her from being in our place now. She was certainly bright enough, articulate enough, possibly even ambitious. If she had had half a chance, she could have been the expert, the advisor, the special consultant invited to Congressional hearings. They like using Iranian women for those sorts of things. We came up with some theories about millennialism based on her propaganda and wrote an article, quoting her materials in the appendix. But we did not meet her again. In fact, the sister of our dear friend from long ago left the country soon afterwards, under something of a cloud. There had been a disagreement, a standoff between the girls. They had quarrelled over politics, apparently, or perhaps money. The brother was still AWOL and the mother had used up the family fortune trying to look for him; the older sister was already in debt and the younger one had come a cropper with the immigration people. Something about her political affiliations. We knew all about it, of course, because of our own political affiliations. It was after that last encounter with her that we started writing our best seller about her brother, the memoir of the martyr soldier betrayed by his own family, the book that turned us into a celebrity overnight. So naturally, the news of her return for the family reunion all these years later has surprised us rather, dismayed us even. And you 14

can surely understand why? You can appreciate our position? We don’t fancy bumping into her in Westwood or seeing the old lady again after all the money we made by turning her son into a fictional character. We’re not interested in recriminations from that quarter; we have no desire to be vilified, or have our reputation undermined, or defend our research at this point in our careers. That girl could be very hard-nosed when she wanted to be. She could cause trouble. She is one tough cookie as they say in the States. Despite her tears. We made a few phone calls to certain friends of ours with connections, just to make sure. She had aroused the suspicion of the CIA: had her records been cleared? Her organization had links with terrorists: was it exonerated? To tell you the truth, we were quite relieved to learn that she was still blacklisted. That was a weight off our minds, we can tell you. We did not want a court case on our hands. Admittedly, it had not been strictly factual, the memoir. It was just very personal, you understand, very intimate. We had to take a few liberties for the sake of the story. Regarding the younger sister’s role in her brother’s disappearance, for instance. How he died at the hands of her organization. How she might have been complicit in his imprisonment. Little details to indicate her direct responsibility for his suffering. Didn’t she admit as much, after all? Didn’t she share in the guilt? We may have exaggerated a bit— some critics said it was a form of therapy—but if we embellished his millennialism slightly, and extrapolated a few sexual inhibitions from his virginity, it was only poetic license. They call it creative nonfiction these days, we believe. Besides, it helped sell the book, didn’t it? In spite of everything, however, we believe, in all modesty, that we fulfilled our promise to her. Or rather, to her brother. We did our bit for her cause. And his. After that first paper attracted attention in scholarly circles, we began to give public lectures on the 15

subject, and published articles in the press. And with the memoir, our name was made. The word apocalypse was translated into Farsi, because of us. We are considered experts in the field now. It is not that we have espoused her cause, exactly; it’s just that our careers depend on it. It’s not that we believe all this stuff either; it’s simply that Catastrophe Psychology 101 pays the bills. We are, according to the latest review, the last word on the subject.

16

TRANSIT

THE RIGHT THING TO DO ,

the sensible decision would have been to accept the wheelchair offer. But she had refused. “I’m not a cripple!” she had retorted, when Mehdi suggested it. “And that’s my last word on the subject,” she added. It was not, of course. He did say it would make their journey easier, she gave him that; he did mention that when changing planes, wheelchair assistance really made a difference in Europe and the US. But she had assumed, from his sneer, that this was just another one of his political slights against Western civilization. Mehdi was vigorously anti-Satanic, and always mocked the West as being in its decrepitude, impotent from the waist down and senile the rest of the way up. But when he went so far as to point out that she herself was arthritic, and had a weak heart, and was suffering from poor eyesight, Bibijan protested that she was not dead yet, thank you very much. “And I don’t need a hospital trolley as long as I still have legs on me,” she had added, stoutly. “I want to arrive at the Naw Ruz party on my own two feet.” 17

The elderly Iranian lady marooned in Rome airport peered down critically at her bloated legs. Well, they were still on her, she thought, eyeing these appendages with disapproval, but that was about all you could say in their favour. After five hours in the plane, her feet and ankles looked as if they belonged to Elephant Woman, the way they stuck out from where she was sitting in a far corner of the deserted departure lounge of the airport, and there were still twelve hours of flying left. She hoped she would be able to walk on them when she reached her destination. She glanced around. No one else was walking at this hour, although she was under the impression that she had just heard footsteps somewhere. There were very few other people in the terminal building and they were all asleep. Besides Fathi, who was snoring on the row of red plastic chairs beside her, there was a huddle of teenagers lying on top of their duffle bags at the far end of the hall and a middle-aged man sprawling nearby with a newspaper over his face. No one moved. The sound of footsteps faded. It must have been her heart. Bibi took a deep breath and squinted at her newly acquired digital watch. It blinked back 02:35, in oversized numbers to accommodate to her deteriorating vision. Two down and four left to go. Yes, her stoicism about the wheelchair had been ill advised, and her travelling companion, Fathiyyih, who was supposed to have helped her in transit, had been no use at all. Although Fathi could weave in and out of the congested streets of Tehran with impunity, cursing taxi drivers, haggling with bazaar merchants, and bribing her way through government offices, she had no idea how to steer her mistress through the labyrinth of duty-free shops at an airport. Despite being able to see better than Bibi, she had been unable to decipher the gate numbers. In the end, they had collapsed in this corner of the hall, for no better reason than to be close to the toilets. But anticipation of Naw Ruz mitigated all the discomfort of travelling for Bibi; it alleviated all the miseries involved in being 18

stranded in such a place at such an hour. “We have a surprise for you, Bibijan!” Goli had said on the phone. “There’s going to be a grand reunion! You’ll have to come over for the New Year this time!” Goli had been begging her mother to come to America for a quarter of a century. Ever since the death of the General soon after the Islamic Revolution, his eldest daughter had been ­issuing invitations: “Come for Naw Ruz this year, Bibi! Come to California for Naw Ruz!” The New Year festivities were important in LA: there were all kinds of events held in Tehrangeles each March, all sorts of concerts and parties celebrating the pre-Islamic past of Persia, the vernal equinox. Out with the old and in with the new. It was even more exaggerated than in Iran. But the old lady had always found new excuses to decline her daughter’s invitations. First the hostage crisis made it impossible to apply for visas to America. Then the bureaucracy of the Islamic Revolution had frozen her husband’s assets, because of his associations with the previous ­regime. And finally, as the war with Iraq dragged on, and Ali never returned from the front, there was invariably an unfortunate case of flu at the last minute, the need for an eye operation, a slight deterioration in her heart condition. But the real reason concerned her son. Ali’s fate had never been confirmed. As long as she did not know if he were dead or alive, Bibi just could not leave the country. But this time Mehdi urged her to go. Using the honorific title “lady” which, like so many other aspects of old-world courtesy, sounded like a mockery in his mouth, he insisted the time had come. He had been the one advising against her going away before—“Khanum will only be eligible to receive compensation as long she lives in the marital home.” He had warned her, that because of the General’s close links with the old regime, her oneeighth entitlement to a widow’s pension would be confiscated if she left—“Khanum will lose everything the minute she quits 19

Iranian soil!” He had also cautioned that going abroad could jeopardize her chance of ever finding Ali again—“Khanum has to be here to sign the papers!” As long as she was in the country, she could launch inquiries and write appeals to find him—“For a small fee, Khanum.” The bottom line was that she had to stay in Iran to pay the bribes. Now, however, despite his pronounced political prejudices, Mehdi had given her to understand that her financial situation demanded US intervention. “There is no choice, Khanum!” He had tried to protect her in the past—“But, it’s become difficult now, Khanum, very difficult!” As a result of her particular case—“New regulations, Khanum, applicable retroactively”—the pension had dried up and even the insurance due to the elderly without support was going to be withheld. There was nothing for it. “I did everything possible, Khanum, everything, but these people are crooks.” Despite the fact that he had sacrificed himself for her and her family—“Absolutely sacrificed myself, Khanum!”—her affairs required the help of her son-in-law Bahman from now on. “The American economist can sort Khanum out,” he said, with that sliding, shifty look he adopted when expecting extra compensation. Bibi sighed. Whenever Mehdi called her Khanum, she knew he was up to something. But she also knew she was herself to blame for this situation. She shifted uncomfortably in the seat, her legs hanging like sacks of concrete, her heart clicking away like footsteps in the distance of her sunken bosom. She felt drained. Mehdi had been leeching off her for years. The General’s rent collector when there was still rent to collect, their chauffeur in the days they still had a car, and her go-between, dealing with banks, lawyers, and officials ever since, had made himself indispensable to Bibi in order to milk her dry. And now he had effectively sent her packing. “Direct from Rome to LA, and Khanum can be assured that this humble servant will take care of everything in her absence, everything, for the sake of Ali, may my life be a sacrifice 20

for him!” And so he had moved one of his “wives” into the upstairs rooms of the big house to take care of everything, before she had even left the premises. The old woman leaned back in her chair, shielding her eyes from the glare of the fluorescent lights overhead. For the sake of Ali, indeed. Forsaken Ali. Many soldiers like her son had disappeared in the course of the brutal war with Iraq soon after the new regime had been established; many were still unaccounted for, even twenty years later, when most people had forgotten what that war was all about. But every once in a while, over the decades, news would come of another small group of POWs freed from some remote mountain camp in Kurdistan, of another Missing in Action prisoner flown to Turkey for repatriation. And Mehdi knew about such things. Bibi had depended on his links with the intelligence services, his connections with the Revolutionary Guard, and had been more than willing to pay for his insider information about prisoners still unreleased from the POW camps. If she was stuck in Rome airport in the middle of the night, with her finances in disarray and Fathi snoring at her side, it was because she had allowed him to cheat her. For a reason. Footsteps again. Click, clack, clickety-clack. Either in her head or her stupid heart. She should get up, walk a bit, she thought; she should stop thinking about Mehdi, stop worrying about money and the house. Her eyes burned with exhaustion, her legs throbbed uncomfortably. She swung her elephantine feet a little, rocking the row of chairs, hoping that the swelling in her ankles would subside. Having finally accepted her daughter’s invitation to come to America after all these years, she did not want to embarrass Goli at the Naw Ruz party. Or shock her grandchildren. Or scandalize the General’s friends in Los Angeles. Or upset anyone else who might be coming to the party as a surprise. In fact that was what had finally convinced her to accept the invitation. Goli had said, “And there will be a surprise for you, Bibijan!” 21

Waves of excitement surged in the old woman’s breast at the thought. A grand family reunion. Friends and family together for the first time in half a century. A surprise! She groped back at her watch. 03:06. Still three hours to go. It turned out that Mehdi already knew about the Naw Ruz party—“We could not tell Khanum, could we, or it wouldn’t be a surprise!” He had applied for a special visa for her too, with the help of her son-in-law, Bahman, so she could enter the United States of America—“As a family dependent,” he emphasized. He had been corresponding with Bahman, apparently, without telling her—“Oh, for several months, but we did not wish to raise Khanum’s hopes.” What else had he not told her? What other hopes might be raised? Because when she said how much she was looking forward to seeing her family at Naw Ruz, he had looked very knowing—“Ah, Naw Ruz is the right time for families to be together.” As a matter of fact, he had just learned of a group of extradited prisoners who were being flown to a UN base in Turkey in the next few weeks—“Specially for Naw Ruz!” he had crowed. The returnees, as he called them, would have the choice of coming back home to Iran or being reunited with their families abroad— “After medical treatment, of course,” he squinted. Would Khanum like him to make a few inquiries? “For a small fee, of course,” he had added, adjusting his crotch in a way that made Fathi blush. Was it possible? Could it be? It was because her colour had risen and her breathing grown laboured with the palpitations, that Mehdi suggested the wheelchair—“It would be easier on Khanum’s heart.” It would be better to travel business class too, he added—“Lufthansa. Safest plane in the air. These Germans,” he leered, “they won the real war, you know; just look how they dominate Europe. And you can stay in their special lounge. Free tea,” he had urged Bibi. But the ticket was expensive. He left her in an agony of indecision over the price. That and her beating hopes kept her awake for several nights. Then, as if 22

in an act of special favour, he suddenly came up with a solution. He had found a cheaper flight, he said, that would also take care of the wheelchair dilemma. But there was just one small problem about it, he added—“Just one little inconvenience.” Otherwise it was the perfect solution. That was typical of Mehdi. He had a vengeful nature. Sometimes Bibi wondered if he were not employed part-time in the high-walled detention centre of Evin, torturing political prisoners who were considered a threat to the regime. He created all sorts of distressing situations for which there seemed no remedy, until he himself suddenly offered a tantalizing solution, a solution which lasted just long enough to raise one’s hopes again and which he then whipped away at the last minute. It was what he had been doing for the past ten years regarding Ali. “There’s no solution, Khanum: you have to sign the statement so that we can take the matter to court for compensation.” She refused to sign, of course. She would never sign any paper that presumed her son dead. “But if Khanum can provide the means, this servant has found a simple solution to pursue a new avenue of search regarding those missing in action.” And she provided it, naturally. His solution for the flight seemed equally simple at first glance. Alitalia was more economical than Lufthansa. Bibi could fly from the Imam Khomeini Airport to Rome, and catch a direct flight to Los Angeles the following day. “No need to change airports. No need for wheelchairs. And “eight million rials would be saved,” he purred. The only problem was timing, he continued, a small hitch, a slight inconvenience with the flight schedules. They would be arriving in Rome late at night, and would have to wait till the following morning for the ongoing flight. “Khanum has a choice,” he reassured her. He could either book her into the nearby airport hotel for a couple of hours, for another six million, the same amount as it might cost to find out more about those missing in action—“Unless,” he added, with a 23

meaningful look, “Khanum would sign the order to release the compensation funds?”—Or they could simply remain in the transit lounge through the night. “I assume Khanum prefers transit? Six million rials is a lot!” Bibijan felt the weight of those rials press heavily on her bladder at that moment, and the footsteps grew louder in her brain. Clickety-clack, click, clack. Yes, she might prefer transit. But no, she had once again refused to sign court papers that would provide her with compensation money, on the grounds that Ali was presumed dead. Mehdi had shrugged. “It’s Khanum’s choice,” he had ground out, revealing yellowed canines. “Khanum is free to choose. In this great country we are all free to choose. Khanum should take her time and think about it.” And then he had bowed himself out, obsequiously, hand on his heart, and slammed the door. Click clack. Her own heart throbbed uncomfortably at the recollection. This erstwhile chauffeur of her husband’s, this middleman on whom she depended, had filled out in recent years. He had turned into an oily, bearded creature who knew far too much about prisoners. It was not the first time he had raised her hopes only to disappoint them. And probably not the last time he would use her grief to tap her purse. She could measure her losses along the holes of the belt around his expanding waist. As Bibi shifted from side to side, looking for a comfortable position, Fathiyyih rolled over heavily beside her. The girl was lying lengthwise on the bucket seats, her face wrapped up in the blanket, under the unrelenting lights. It was how they treated the prisoners in Evin, according to Mehdi: permanent light all through the night so the guards could watch everything they did. If Fathi rolled over again, she would fall onto the floor and wake up with a jolt. But if she did not wake up, who would watch over the luggage when Bibi went into the washrooms? She really ought to relieve herself. She peered down at her watch again, ill at ease. It winked 03:21. 24

The choice Mehdi had offered her between a hotel and the transit lounge did not mean much to Bibi. It was a long time since she had flown anywhere, decades since her husband had taken her to Europe, an age ago since she had stepped onto a plane in the footsteps of Soraya and the Shah, wearing Grace Kelly sunglasses and a white flouncy skirt with black polka dots. Vaguely she recalled their winter visits to the ski slopes of Europe, their summer stays on beaches and in casinos, their absurd shopping expeditions in London, Paris, and Milan. The General had been addicted to shopping. They had certainly been in transit on all these journeys. The whole country had been in transit, come to think of it. It hadn’t bothered her at all at the time. The choice meant nothing to Fathiyyih either. Her travelling companion and personal attendant came from a village in Mazandaran and had never even been inside a plane, let alone in transit before. Bibi hoped America would not turn Fathi’s head. She also hoped her daughters would be kind to the poor girl. She sighed. Fathi was a responsibility but also a necessity, whatever Goli and Lili might say. She was a liability too, thought Bibi, as well as loyal. Her skirts had ridden up to her knees when she rolled over, revealing a pair of rumpled black socks on rather hairy calves. Just as well they were flying cheap. Although he had clearly disapproved of her decision not to pursue the court case, Mehdi had complimented her on choosing the transit option, next time he had passed by to confirm her final travel plans. “Anything to save money in these difficult times,” he said, with his unpleasant grin. Fathi would be sure to make Khanum comfortable, he said; she would settle Khanum somewhere convenient—“a nice, cozy corner near the toilets with some cushions and the blanket.” Fathi would set her up. But there had been no cozy corner and Fathi was the one under the blanket. Mehdi had been right about the wheelchair but wrong about transit. As it turned out, they had to go through 25

immigration and customs on arrival at Fiumicino Airport; they had to haul their baggage off the carrousel for security reasons and come out into the rather tacky departure lounge of the airport in order to wait here for the ongoing flight. When she realized this, Bibijan had wondered, briefly, if the hotel option might not have made more sense, but the thought of struggling out of the building with all their luggage, finding an Italian taxi driver who did not cheat them in the middle of the night, and driving for miles to reach a bed, only to have to turn round and come back again four hours later, just did not make sense. It was too late for a hotel and too early to board the plane. So they just had to sit here in limbo until morning and then pass through the whole process of customs, immigration, and security all over again. The old lady sighed and peered at her wrist. 03:52. Perhaps the sound of footsteps was coming from her watch? She lifted it to her ear. The clicking and clacking seemed to be getting closer, but perhaps she was just imagining her bodily functions. Her bladder was ticking too. She marvelled at Fathi’s capacity to sleep. It was just as well, thought Bibi, for she could not have coped with the girl’s fears at such a time, her exaggerated worries about mugging, theft, and murder. There was little basis for such conspiracy theories here, unless one were to suspect the person who suddenly appeared in her line of vision. Click clack, clickety-clack. Bibi blinked and stared at the source of the approaching footsteps. From the blur at the far end of the hall, a pale young woman in leopard-skin leotards and high leather boots was drawing nearer, and nearer, communicating fiercely with a mobile phone. Fathi would have expected her to be carrying explosives, probably in the boots, but there weren’t enough people to bomb in this place, and besides, the more urgent concern for Bibi, at that moment, was going to the toilet. But how could she go now? How could she leave Fathi alone, asleep, with a potential bomb in the vicinity? The girl would panic if she woke up to the sight of a 26

terrorist marching about in leopard-skin leotards and high leather boots and her mistress nowhere to be seen. Fathi was still called “the girl” in the family, after all these years, although she was probably in her late thirties by now. The General had come down from Mazandaran with her the summer Ali was born. A village child, with a mole near her lip, and nits in her hair. “Playmate for Lili,” he had said, remotely, “so she won’t be jealous of the boy.” Although his wife had guessed the reasons why he had unofficially adopted this toddler whose chin stuck out just like his, Bibi had said nothing, of course. Reza Shah had abolished the veil three decades before but it made no difference to polygamy; a man, according to Iranian culture, always had his needs, whether they were sanctioned by religion or not. She handed the frightened little creature over to the gardener, with instructions to shave its head, wash it with carbolic soap, and dress it up in Lili’s cast-offs. Fathiyyih, as they called her, had been raised in the house with her girls from that time on. She had played with them, looked after their baby brother with dogged devotion, learned to fetch and carry for their mother, and finally become a sort of personal maid, though no one admitted as much. Although she turned out to be somewhat slow-witted, she had always been trustworthy and willing to help. In fact, she had proven to be the most dependable of Bibi’s children. The old woman grew restless at the thought of her children. The eldest had married and gone to LA when she was barely twenty and was now blond, with enormous breasts, if the ­latest photographs were to be believed. The second had become a Marxist in Paris and apparently photographed nude women now, with hardly any breasts at all, and for money. And her son—? Bibi felt an imperceptible shudder pass through her. Were they really going to be all together again this Naw Ruz? Was it possible that they might be reunited at Goli’s surprise party? A sudden sharp spasm seized her heart, as that old familiar key of grief turned in its rusty wards. 27

She grimaced, pursed her lips, and glanced down, apprehensively, at her watch again. 04:11. She could not put it off any longer. The young woman clucking into her mobile in her clocking boots had mercifully returned to the far end of the hall, taking her high heels and the threat of bombs away with her. It was the time to go. They did keep repeating in these international airports, that passengers should not leave their bags unattended, but Fathi wasn’t a bag, after all, though she sometimes looked like one. Bibi would just have to abandon her. Even though Fathi, she thought with a twinge of shame, had never left her side all these years. Fathi had stayed by her, from the beginning of the Revolution, all through the Iraq war, and the long years of waiting ever since. Simple Fathi, stolid Fathi, snoring with her mouth wide open: she was the only one who had remained at Bibi’s side through thick and thin. The old lady clutched her handbag close to her and struggled to the edge of her seat. She waited for a moment, mustering her strength to pull herself upright on the two bloated legs that she had foolishly thought capable of carrying her all the way from Tehran to LA. But just as she was about to heave herself upright and walk stiffly into the toilets, she heard the footsteps again. Click, clack, clickety-clack. They came nearer and nearer. The young woman in leopard-skin leotards suddenly reappeared from behind her. She may not have been carrying explosives, but to Bibi’s dismay she was making straight for the toilets this time. Her face was pale, her hair was spiky and black, and her heels clattered loudly as she headed for the door. “Andiamo andiamo,” she was saying, as she reached out a hand and pushed through the swing doors. The old lady blinked hard. Were those nails really green? The girl disappeared without further explosions taking place and Bibi slid back into her chair, her immediate objectives defeated but her emotions strangely stirred. Her heart was beating 28

uncomfortably. The young Italian had looked so like her granddaughter, Delli, just taller, older perhaps, but oddly similar. Goli’s eldest was much given to nail polish; she wore different colours in all the photos. But this young woman was wearing green on all her fingers. Green varnish! The colour of spring. The colour of Naw Ruz and emeralds and Imam Ali. That flash of green at the girl’s fingertips seemed miraculous to Bibi. It seemed like a sign, a portent, a proof of the future and of dreams fulfilled. It seemed to anticipate the imminence of youth and courage and hope. But oh! so painful! Her heart felt the pain of all that hope. Might Goli’s surprise be Ali, after all? Was her son going to join them in America, green as the girl’s nails, alive as her hopes at the prime of his life? Was she being reasonable to believe in such a thing, or to imagine that he would even pass through immigration?

29

I M M I G R AT I O N

T H E BU S I N E S S S TA RT S R E A S O NA B LY E N O U G H .

The immigration officer is young, she is blond, and she has one hell of a fancy coiffure. Her hair has been swept across her forehead, from east to west, like a wing, inviting us to follow suit. But it falls directly in front of her eyes so that we cannot quite see where she is looking. She chews slowly, methodically, on some very pink gum but asks us to look directly at the camera when she notices us staring at her mouth. She measures us, carefully, one eyeball after the other. There is no puff of air, to gauge the tension, to test the texture of the cornea, to identify our potential for becoming incipient glaucoma patients, but we wonder whether her camera sees how blind we have been all our lives. “What is the purpose of your visit?” she drawls, in Australian English. We have been practising all along the queue. We have been repeating the words to ourselves as we shuffled forwards, slowly, with all the other aliens, as the line twisted round and turned back on itself, unfolding inch by inch, like a slow, hesitant boa constrictor. We have rehearsed it the entire length of the impassable 30

fibre band stretched between us and them. And now we open our mouths, and say it. “To es-see family,” we reply. Damning the accent. Wishing we spoke better English. The young woman has the face of a twenty-year-old but the body of a matron of forty, or someone who has recently given birth to twins. Her breasts can barely stay inside the starched front of her pressed suit. Does she ever worry about whether she really belongs in this country and where she would go if she doesn’t? It seems unlikely. The suit must help with all those brass buttons. So must the swivel chair. She is squeezed so tightly into it that we cannot imagine her ever getting out. “Where will you be staying in Sydney?” The young woman does not look at us when she speaks. She starts rifling through the passport in a desultory fashion. Is she lingering on the photo, double-checking it against mug shots of criminals hidden under the desk? Is she calculating our age? We try to imagine her bedtime reading. It is difficult. We try to imagine her bedtime without reading. Or just her bedtime. But the suit takes too long to unbutton. “Your address in Sydney?” the young woman repeats. We have written the address on the immigration form she is holding between her fingers, but suddenly, in a panic, we cannot remember what is on it. We crane to the right, to the left to see it, but her hands are hidden behind the ledge of the desk; the form is out of sight. We grip the ledge with whitened knuckles, feeling the sweat rising. Why do these people always ask you to ­reiterate what you have clearly written down? We guess we must not look so good, bleary-eyed, unshaven, after a fourteen-hour flight. We begin to rummage in our bags, our pockets, the insides of our coats, our jackets, for the scrap of paper on which we had written the address to show the taxi driver after customs control. It seems unlikely we will ever get to customs control or see our suitcases 31

again at that moment. And suddenly, we feel utterly homeless, abandoned. We are miles away from Tehran. But this is not the right place to feel abandoned. We try to pull ourselves together as we retrieve the address and smooth the paper out. We have been warned, by a cousin of ours who fell foul of the US immigration at one time, that people who work in these positions have been trained, probably by retired Mossad agents, to pick up anxiety pheromones from a thousand leagues away. We must look confident here; we must appear at home. We must let this blond young woman, who is bursting out of her buttons, quickly know that we are not abandoned, not at all. We have family, we have relatives, we have innumerable friends in high places as well as in Sydney, Perth, Brisbane, to say nothing of Paris, London, and LA. We have all the right connections and the right visa too. We are legitimate and there’s no way she or anyone else in this country is going to send us back or forwards for that matter to some Papua New Guinean island with a bunch of foreigners. And we stumble over the pronunciation of the street name, sounding hopelessly Iranian. Foreign. The young immigration officer flips through the passport pages, chewing her gum from side to side. “How long will you stay in this country?” she says, glancing up at us briefly through her hair. We have been told to lie. “Three months,” we reply, a tad too high, too chirpy. “Just to see family,” we unnecessarily add. Why did we have to say that? Stupid. If she had asked us whether we were going to visit any other cities in Australia we would have probably echoed Sydney, Perth, Brisbane. But we have been advised, by that same cousin who was chased out of America, to say as little as possible to these people. We try to make up for the mistake by smiling. But she has pulled the passport closer and is really staring at the photo now. She probably thinks we’re a forgery because you are not allowed to smile on passport photos anymore and we have aged since that one was taken anyway. We try to look 32

relaxed instead, but it produces an expression of anguish these days. And being unshaven really doesn’t help. The immigration officer probably thinks we are mixed up with some kind of extremist group. She has already gauged the opacity of our stroma, the fibres of our pigmented epithelial cells, but we hope she cannot register the beating of our hearts, the intensity of our fear. The young woman chews slackly, in silence. Finally, she flips to an empty page in the passport. She picks the stamp in her right hand and flattens the passport page with her left. We find ourselves praying. Thank goodness. Thank heavens. Once that stamp comes down, the visa will be there, in red, in reality. Thank God. We are ready to become believers, to sacrifice ourselves, prostrate ourselves at her feet, and raise the call, “Allah-u-Akbar—!” We would die for that stamp. But just at that moment she pauses, the palm of her hand caressing its handle. It is one of those vertical, metallic mechanisms, with a wooden handle and a guillotine interior that chops down on the page in one single, swift blow. Execution. Immortality or annihilation. No half measures. Immigration is not conducive to agnostic propositions. We stare at the stamp mesmerized. We wonder if it is locked or kept open, whether it is ready to use, or in a so-called parking position. “Where was your port of embarkation?” she asks. The stamp is poised. We are bewildered. Embarkation. Dis­ embarkation. Is she talking about getting on the truck for the long midnight ride to Zahedan? Or walking across the Pakistan border? Or flying from Quetta? Or how we finally left for Lahore after waiting in the little corrugated hut on the frontier for three weeks for our passports? Does she realize she is asking to know when we embarked on our despair? “Where have you come from?” she specifies. “Which country?” For a blinding second we have absolutely no idea. Despair is everywhere. 33

“Iran,” we stammer. “You have just travelled from Iran?” asks the girl, lowering the stamp. Not on the page. It is a statement turned into a question by the inflections of her voice. We panic. Of course we have not just travelled from Iran! What have we just said? Why, there isn’t even a direct flight from Iran to this place, wherever it is. “No,” we hurriedly tell her. “We’ve just come from Frankfurt. Via Singapore,” we unnecessarily qualify. “We have come on the Lufthansa flight.” First mistake. Never admit to the truth, no matter how banal. She has already replaced the stamp on its delicious little, remote little, inaccessible little red ink pad. “But you are from Iran?” she tells us sternly. Another statement that ends in a rising terminal. Only this is not a question. “You are Iranian,” she accuses. As though we had been hiding the fact. As though it were not written all over the passport she is holding in her hands. As though that wretched document does not clearly state that we were born in Iran, and so of course we come from Iran, as do all our brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles and cousins who also had that dubious privilege within the last half century, including those trapped and committing suicide on the Papua New Guinean island and the ones who died or not in Iraq and the others who got kicked out of America and the elderly relative of a good friend of ours who has been stranded in Rome airport because of a strike for the past three days. As if we could be anything but Iranian when we are this dumb, this stupid, this tongue-tied. “Well, yes,” we qualify, “we’re from Iran but not today.” That does it. The young woman glances at us sharply. “One moment, please,” she says, and we are signalled to step to one side, and wait.

34

WA I T I N G

F I R S T W E WA I T E D TO G O BAC K .

It was the only thing to do in the circumstances. When you get up in the morning, take a shower, and then exile intervenes instead of breakfast, your one thought is to return home, if only to finish the glass of tea abandoned on the table. That’s how we felt when we were forced out of our country. That’s what we wanted to do when those rogues took everything over and began to undermine all that we used to identify as our own. We wanted to go back, restore our world, retrieve our lives, and carry on from where we had left off. But instead of going to work that day as usual, we found ourselves being hustled into taxis, grabbing buses, begging rides on broken-down trucks, and then, after weeks of waiting in a godforsaken shack in Nowhere-i-stan, paying exorbitant prices to board a post-Soviet plane or an inflatable dinghy that finally brought us to this or that or the other country, island, jungle, camp. And as insults invariably attract further injuries, we had to pay for our fingerprints, sell our distinguishing marks, provide the names of our grandfathers and grandmothers in triplicate in order to stay where we did not want to be. When we finally arrived wherever 35

we happen to live now, months after we had brushed our teeth, we were stripped of our identities even though we had hung on to the shirts, shoes, underclothes we had put on that faraway morning. So we could not wait to go back to our own bathrooms, if only to wash the black ink off our fingers and remember who we were. That’s how it was for the first decade. We sat around in the capitals of the Western world, waiting to wake up from the nightmare, waiting for the ordinary day that never dawned, for the daily grind we had so taken for granted, to once again resume. We were appalled to find ourselves forsaken in this other time and place on the basis of some arbitrary family connection, some random link with old friends. How could anyone be expected to live in these dull rooms, under these rows of neon lights, waiting for the number on the paper we were holding to appear on the overhead screen? How could we bear to sit for so long in these grey corridors hoping for an interview with an immigration officer who would decide whether we would be American, Canadian, Swedish, or from New Zealand, instead of Iran? Or stand in these queues until the begrudging one-month visa was finally stamped that would delay our inevitable departure from one unwelcoming place to some other? Of course new underpants and new toothbrushes were bought while we waited, but new languages were less easy to acquire. Even after we learnt the grammar and vocabulary, we could not hear the meaning between the words. Nor did we feel inclined to listen. We resented the differences, the absences, the lack of certain vowels before particular consonants. Where were the worn slippers that used to welcome our feet as we swung out of bed in the morning, that bottle of cologne in the bathroom cupboard waiting to be used, the scratch of the familiar brush, thick with lather on the stubbled cheek? We became sentimental. We waited for the tears to flow. And so they did. They did. For the second decade, we felt sorry for ourselves. We mourned, we lamented. Even as we established ourselves in our host countries, 36

rented apartments, acquired jobs, we compared ourselves with well-established relatives and saw ourselves as victims, as martyrs. We gained weight, lost hope, became morose, or garrulous. We let our hair grow long, go white, and acquired metal-rimmed glasses and beards. Or else we turned blond, had nose jobs, hid our hurts under the hearty smiles of wedding parties. But whether we met in bars or coffee shops, frequented shopping malls or could only afford groceries from the local Persian supermarket, with expiration dates that had passed, our main objective was to gossip gloomily, to talk mournfully, to exchange sad information about what was going on at home. We waited for news. And of course, it had to be bad as well as sad. Bad news was good: it gave us hope; it proved how right we were about how wrong the regime was in Iran. It meant that things could not go on the way they were for that much longer. We shared the horror stories—of beatings, of imprisonment, of torture. We exchanged the reports about the arbitrary arrest of innocent bystanders, the denial of fair hearings, the confiscation of properties, the censorship of newspapers, the shutting down of schools, the restriction and harassment of women, the desecration of graves. We relished every rumour, every unverified report, every so-called statistic about the increase of corruption and venality, the decrease of humanity in our country. We wanted the news to get worse, the atrocities to become ever more unendurable, so that our disillusioned people would become as fed up as we were. We wanted them to shrug off the system that was keeping us out. But by the third decade, we were getting impatient with the pace of change. How long would this go on? When would the tide turn? We resented immigration restrictions and border controls that limited our freedom of movement in and out of our host countries. Just because we were beginning to do well, economically, why did the home security personnel have to assume that we had explosives in our hand luggage? We chaffed against these ignorant foreigners 37

who could not distinguish between us and Arabs and Afghanis, as if we were the potential source of all acts of terrorism. We called for conferences and workshops to discuss our frustrations, analyze our syndromes. Some of us went overboard and wrote blogs. Enough was enough! We were equally impatient with our compatriots for accepting this oppression. We analyzed every political speech, reviewed every news item about our country in light of the impending downfall of the regime. Change was imminent. Crisis was inevitable and it was bound to occur soon. We became pompous, portentous in our pronouncements. We waited for our prophecies to come true. And when nothing happened, we became disillusioned despite our growing comforts in our new homes; we became bitter about who had actually promoted this Iranian regime in the first place. Some of us even began to entertain conspiracy theories. The Western press was missing the point as usual. The Western powers were impotent, or worse. After all, Westerners bore some responsibility for this sorry state of affairs. They had played fast and loose with our natural resources, exploited our strategic position, interfered in our country’s independence in the past. So they, after all, were to blame for the present situation. Why did they not do something? Why were they just watching as the situation grew worse? Sanctions were not enough. Economic pressure was not enough. Something radical had to be done. Why were they not stepping in? We waited, with increasing irritation, for the West to finally intervene. And when it did not, when blame did not take us back home, and self-pity and victimization came to nothing either, and grandchildren were being born with motherless tongues, and old friends had died in foreign cemeteries, there was only one possibility left. By the beginning of the fourth decade, we realized that we had to become political if we wanted to end our exile. We had to establish a new government and force the old one out of Iran. There was 38

nothing for it but to do what had been done to us: we had to seize power by hook or by crook, take over the leadership of the country by bargain or by bribe. Politics was the key, politics was the only solution, and whoever thought otherwise was naive at best, or just self-serving. The only problem was, which kind of politics? What sort of government? How could we be sure that new rogues would not replace the old scoundrels, that this revolution would not turn out to be as corrupt as previous ones? We had to find the right system to replace the wrong one. Who, in the final analysis, could we trust? It was a dangerously moral question, almost, in fact, a religious one. After the fifth decade, we realized we might be waiting to trust ourselves.

39

LY I N G

WE CAN TELL THE GIRLS ARE LYING ,

because they are being so polite on the phone. Goli on one side, dripping with sweetness and light, apologizing, exaggerating, repeating how much, how very much, and Lili on the other, expressing regrets, oozing respects, saying so much, so very much, both of them pouring taarof and hypocrisy across the Atlantic, while we stand chopping mint and cucumbers in the kitchen. “Fathi, we forgot the mahst-o-khiar ! Get the yogurt out, quick, and chop the mint and cucumbers. Everyone’s waiting for the feast to begin!” It’s three days since we arrived in Goli’s house in America, two days since Lili was supposed to come from Paris, one day since Bibi buried her tears in the overstuffed vegetable drawer at the bottom of the fridge, pretending to look for the forever lost parsley, and a few hours since Goli set the table with frilly doilies and tarnished silverware, flicking blond hair over the gold-rimmed plates. And now, after more than midnight in Iran, with the real new year over and done with hours ago, here we are, with our feet in Los Angeles and our hearts in Tehran, chopping the last cucumber into the last dish 40

of mint and yogurt in this foreign kitchen, while everyone sits in the dining room next door, waiting for the Naw Ruz feast to begin after it’s technically over, at least as far as we’re concerned. All we want, at this point, is to lie on the floor and go to sleep till Judgement Day. But suddenly, there’s the phone ringing. Ringing and ringing like the trump of doom. That wakes us up pretty quick, we can tell you. That brushes the blur from our eyes fast enough. The apocalypse is better than any alarm clock and Goli is Gabriel, clicking down the corridor on those impossible heels to pick up the ringing phone in the hall. And so the lying begins, bouncing from one side of the world to the other— “Oh Lilijoon, your place is so empty! We miss you so much, so very much!” “Oh Golijoon, I wish I could have come, I wish so very much!” And as they lie, we’re trying so hard not to lie down and go to sleep that we slice off the tip of our thumb. Blood. Judgement Day. All over the floor. We must have made a noise or it was the clatter of the knife dropping because although Goli keeps talking, there’s a sudden hush in the dining room and even Mr. Bahman shuts up. He hasn’t held his tongue since the airport. There is a shuffle and a cough and the door opens. Bibi peers round, enormous eyeballs floating behind huge spectacles. “Are you alright, child?” she asks. It’s an excuse, of course, she wants to get away from that ­plastic-covered table where Ali is not sitting, where Delli doesn’t want to be sitting, where Mr. Bahman should not be sitting, because he’s lying through his teeth. Bibi prefers to eavesdrop on Goli in case she is telling the truth to Lili at last. The poor old bat can’t see the blood on the floor, but she can distinguish lies from truth a thousand leagues away. “No problem,” we lie, sucking on the thumb. And we beg her to go back to the jolly party, to please not wait but to serve 41

the food: the steaming rice in the great, oval dish, glittering with dill and ­coriander, and the shiny broad beans, the round wheel of herb and spinach kookoo redolent with fenugreek and dill, and the smoked fish and saffron that’s filling the whole house with fragrance. “Goli’s just coming,” we lie, “and you should serve the rice while it’s hot.” Goli is not coming; she is pacing the corridor between the kitchen and the dining room, with its walnut veneer buffet and the brass samovar, which her American friends think is made of gold. And no one is interested in eating, especially Delli who is playing with her fork, and her brother who is squirting ketchup all over the golden saffron, we’ll be bound, but it is not our place to judge. We don’t sit at that fancy table in the company of the family and eat the traditional Naw Ruz meal. And it’s not our place to linger at the side table either, with the traditional Naw Ruz symbols displayed on the block-printed tablecloth, all starting with the letter “S” in Persian: mirror for sky and candle for fire, apple for earth and goldfish for its creatures, vinegar for patience and garlic for healing, sumac for sunrise, and, beside the sprouted lentils, a blooming hyacinth in a little blue pot that makes Delli wrinkle her nose and complain of a headache. Our place is in the kitchen: that’s where we always eat, that’s how it was in the time of the General, and that’s how it was in Tehran with Bibijan, and that’s how it is, even here in America, once this chopping is done. Only now the yogurt is like the flag of Iran: green as the mint and cucumber, white as the rice that Bibi is serving with a shaky hand, and red as a martyr’s blood. “You should be here,” Goli is telling her sister. “Bibi was expecting you.” That’s half true and half not, like a fish that’s half rotten. We know this conversation well. Goli’s “I think Bibijan needs family right now” actually means “Well, she’s your responsibility too, you know,” and her little flutter of “Oh I’ll manage somehow” is just 42

her way of saying “I can’t take it anymore!” Lili’s “I can see you really need support at this time” means “You brought her out of Iran, so lump it!” and her “How wonderful to think of you altogether!” means “Thank God I’m not there!” We’ve heard what they’re not saying too. We can hear the chink and clink of it clearly enough. We can decipher Goli’s “You’d better do your share or you won’t see any of the money,” and Lili’s “Go choke on that bloody money, I want none of it!” in their very silences, because they never utter a word about money when we’re around, do they? Oh no, they have to lie about money in our hearing. Especially their mother’s money. They want to prove who loves Bibi more, who’s missed her more, who’s more ready to sacrifice herself more for poor Bibi, the mother they abandoned in Iran, and so who deserves more of her money. “Oh, she’s such a darling,” says Goli on the phone. “I can’t tell you how happy I am to have her here; you can’t imagine, Lili, how much I want to do for her.” But at the end of the day who’s done it all, who’s been going to the bazaar for Bibi and haggling with the butcher for Bibi and bribing the chemist for Bibi’s heart and eye prescriptions and standing in the queue for her eggs and oil, even during the war, with all the sanctions and violations, running from office to office, with this paper to be signed and that paper to be stamped and another form to be completed and one last to be notarized by some greasy jurist, with fumbling fingers and a rasping moustache and mutton fat on his breath—all so that Bibi can get her pension before Mehdi steals it, all so she does not have to sign the court order for the martyr money he wants? Of course we can’t say and they don’t say, and they keep on lying and we keep on chopping, and the difference between us lies in the width of a thumb, no more. These so-called sisters may bleed in other places, but never their thumbs. It’s all very well for them, these no longer so-young ladies, living it up, lapping it up, lording it in Paris and Los Angeles; it’s all 43

very well for the daughters of the General, one with an American nose writing “For Mother XX” in English, for heaven’s sake, on the back of a blond photo, and the other winning prizes, people clapping, standing ovulations for pictures that bring disgrace on the family; it’s fine for them to be mocking their father’s memory and shaming their mother’s sight and ignoring what has actually happened to their brother. But at least we’ve done our duty by them. Praise the Lord, you can’t say Fathiyyih hasn’t done her duty to the General’s family. So we pretend everything’s fine, just fine, wrap a paper towel around the thumb and keep hacking at the bleeding mint. We stick to the rules, we lie and say nothing about the money, because you never talk about money in front of the “girl.” It’s enough to make you weep and no onions around even, for an excuse. The rules for lying are simple. First: you must always agree with what people are saying, no matter what; second: you must never say no, never contradict what people have said, no matter what; third: you must never come up with any facts when people ask you questions, never give a straightforward answer, no matter what. And finally, you have to find ways to avoid answering at all; you have to dodge and duck and defer as long as you can; you have to postpone and prevaricate and pretend you know nothing. You have to turn the question into a joke. Ali? Why, we thought he’d joined the hidden Imam in the bottom of the well. Let us know when it’s Judgement Day and we’ll give him a shout to come up and tell the truth to the world. “Iran?” bellows Mr. Bahman from the dining room. “Ya goddabekidding Bibijan!” And he belts out a fake laugh. “Who’devver wannago back there?” Laughing is the best way out of it for some. If you get asked an embarrassing question, you’re just supposed to smile and turn away, and if the person asks you again, you’re supposed to giggle and shrug your shoulders, and if they are rude enough to repeat 44

the question three times, like Mehdi, like Mr. Bahman, you can laugh out loud, as if that were the joke, saying, “Oooh! Aren’t you just the cleverest thing! Who can trust you with a secret?” Mr. Bahman laughs a lot with his oily LA friends who know all the rules in Iran even though they stay out of it. He laughs a hell of a lot, especially when he’s talking about his brother-in-law, Ali. “It’s one or the other: you can’t be both dead and alive. Except in Iran!” And he laughs so much at his own cleverness that Bibi knocks over a glass of water. Consternation all round. Mopping up operations, they called it during the war years. “We have es-special places where we keep people dead and alive in Iran,” he continues. “We call them prisons!” Mr. Bahman is quite a joker, a real wag he is. But the girls are not the joking types: Lili’s humour is as sour as a three-day bowl of curds and Goli has the wit of rice pudding. So they use politeness instead, they dodge and duck with slick civil­ities, slathering smooth courtesies on each other like slabs of chicken fat, sidestepping questions, evading answers, and sprinkling so much oil on the words that they slip and slide around and finally mean the opposite of what they say. “Lili dear,” Goli is saying on the phone, “I told her it was all for you, a surprise party to welcome you to America.” There is a clatter of cutlery in the dining room and Delli whines that she cannot eat any more. Bibi’s spoon must be heaped with rice over her plate. “Well, that’s what I hoped, but she missed the point as usual,” continues Goli. “The poor old dear. You know she’s doing that more and more,” she adds. Yes we certainly do know, and Lili knows, and Mehdi and Mr. Bahman know too. Everyone, even the children, know why Bibi left Iran and why she spent yesterday weeping, jet-lagged, into the fridge which is probably why Delli is fiddling with her fork and cannot bear the thought of swallowing a single mouthful of that 45

rice right now, not a single grain of it, nothing, because her plate is brimming with lies. “And you’re not even here to help her get over it,” coos Goli down the phone. Get over what? Being cheated? Tricked? Lied to and milked of money so that her son-in-law can save her with a card that isn’t even really green? “Are you sure?” Goli insists. “Even if you come a little late?” The silence proves that Lili is sure, very sure, she’s one hundred percent sure. So is Delli. She is one hundred percent sure that she wants no more rice thank you. “It just makes my heart bleed,” continues Goli. “She’s terribly upset about it.” There’s good reason for Bibi to be upset, but for all her bleeding, Goli still doesn’t mention the money. She probably hopes Bibi doesn’t know about it, and is afraid that Mehdi will hear about it, and worries that Lili will say something about it, but she probably hasn’t guessed that Mr. Bahman has already spoken to us about it on the way from the airport. So we keep chopping anyway. Red cucumbers. “Frankly Mehdi’s to blame,” says Goli. “He gave her false expectations.” Neither of the girls can manage Mehdi’s colossal expectations. The man’s a barefaced liar with a sense of entitlement second to none; he’s one of those ahleh-bond-baazi Basijis, hobnobbing with boys in the band. Been at it for years, has Mehdi, the maggot in the General’s marrow, sucking off his rotting carcass, and he’s not going to be pleased with this latest little arrangement, we can promise you, oh no, he’s not going to like it one bit, which is why Mr. Bahman doesn’t want him to know, of course, which is why Mr. Bahman says we’re so important, “You’re so important Fathi,” sitting in the front seat of the car with Bibi sleeping in the back, tired out from the long journey, and us wide awake 46

and looking at America for the first time, so green so lawn with such straight white teeth in Mr. Bahman’s mouth saying, “You’re very important to us Fathi; it wouldn’t be possible without you.” That’s more than the girls ever said to us. They don’t know how important we are, and Mehdi mustn’t know either, which is no problem, because he thinks we’re dumb, but Mr. Bahman knows, “I trust you, Fathi,” because we know how to keep quiet which is more than can be said of him, talking nonstop all the way from the airport, telling us what he’s going to tell us but that we must tell no one, especially Mehdi, about Bibi’s money. “I have friends, Fathi, who know about these things, right here in LA.” Does he now? It’s a good thing we’re not the talking sort, not the telling kind, because not everything that is known can be told, not everything that is told can be understood, even though it’s nonstop babble on the inside, no holds barred under the head­ scarf, running hot and cold on the brain. But thank God for the veil. We keep it tight under the chin, tied with a ruband, covered by the chador, even in America; we keep it as close as when we had to go out into the Tehran streets, even if the words wanted to burst out on the way, spit straight out in the face of the General each time we passed his photograph on the old walnut cabinet in Bibi’s living room. Or what used to be her living room until Bibi started sleeping in it after the upstairs of the Tehran house was rented to Mehdi’s sigheh, his so-called temporary wife, and not exactly rented either because he took it over, didn’t he, just came and took it over one fine spring day last year, surprise, surprise, Naw Ruz surprise, him and that holier than thou woman, with her ugly little boy, just took it over like he’s been taking over all the rest, bit by dirty bit. Though who are we to judge, knowing what we know, knowing what we had to go through at the hands of the old man. Mehdi no doubt has his reasons too, he’s had his fair share of the General’s boot. Still, who has to cope with him and his garbage stacked up in 47

front of the door, and his bed squeaking, and the television blaring, and their brat screaming, with a hiss and a jab and a threat in the ear and the not so funny ha-ha joke of “Who’ll be out in the street if she doesn’t get along with Mehdi, hey?” Because it’s us, isn’t it—us? The first-person plural. Fathiyyih the modestly multiplied. Mehdi’s a master of the joke technique; he’s just like Mr. Bahman when it comes to bullying and bargaining his way out of a situation. Jokes are that man’s forte. Crude, coarse, below the belt, but they do the job, as he smiles his silly smile and changes the subject, and you realize after all the vulgar suggestions and dangling hints, that he hasn’t actually given you any information. He loves that sort of power. But he can’t get round us, oh no. We manage Mehdi, we’re the general managers in that family, and we do it by playing dumb. We never get upset, never shout or get angry; we don’t use jokes, but we do dumbness well. We look blank: “Who’s going to America?” ducking under the headscarf. “Do French people kiss in the streets, Aga Mehdi?” squinting up all coy. He likes being called Sir. “Please, Aga Mehdi, will I be unclean if I sit in a plane seat which is still warm?” God, she’s so stupid this Fathiyyih, so ­D-U-M-B. We’ve kept them all in the dark for years by playing dumb, because there’s so much we must not listen to even though we hear it, so much we must not understand despite being attentive, despite being available, so many instructions we have to follow but so little we should witness, so little we should see, and of course we must remember nothing, none of the squabbles the tantrums the shameful outbursts the arguments about making claims and faking certificates and demanding compensation money, and the only way to do all of that is to play dumb, completely stupid. That’s how we’ve kept our secrets all this time. Mehdi doesn’t know our secrets, the girls haven’t a clue, but we suspect the old lady has guessed. Bibi is no fool. That was why her hand started shaking when the phone rang and Goli rose from the 48

table a few minutes ago, and that is why the water glass toppled over and the rice spilled across two generations as Goli clicked and clacked down the corridor. The poor old dear was trying so hard to be brave, trying so hard not to cry, holding back so much hope like it was a fart, desperately trying not to think that the phone call might, it just possibly might be about Ali, that when Goli cried “Hi Lilijoon! Happy Naw Ruz honey!” she turned her back on Mr. Bahman talking about how foolish it would be to return to Iran and pushed open the kitchen door on Judgement Day, to ask “Are you alright, child?” And we knew it was only to get away from Mr. Bahman telling her how lucky she was to be an alien in America, because that had been one too many, one great big fat lie too many. Goli had promised Bibijan a surprise, but the surprise had turned out not to be Lili, not to be Ali either, but to be the grand gift of a Green Card that Mr. Bahman was offering his mother-in-law, surprise surprise, at the Naw Ruz party, the dazzling gift of permanent residence in the United States which Bibi didn’t want. And we suspect she has an inkling about the money behind it too, which we must never tell Mehdi, even though Mr. Bahman’s lies are as bloody obvious as this thumb. “Your company would have made all the difference to her,” says Goli. But perhaps Lili is getting tired of lies. She has succeeded, it seems, in interrupting the Atlantic. At least for a moment. “Honestly, Lili,” interrupts Goli, defensive now, “I mean it, she’d much rather be with you than me. It’s why she came out of Iran, just to see you again.” The biggest lie of all. A long silence after that one, in the corridor and the dining room and across the oceans of the Western world. Mr. Bahman’s grand surprise, his one hell of a surprise, has not had the desired effect, and we suspect that Lili may want to know the truth, the awful truth that none of us can admit. You 49

have to give it to her: Lili lies to others when she needs to, but she tells herself the truth. “Well, it was the only way I could do it,” her sister retorts. “You know the situation. If you can think of a better solution, tell me, why don’t you? I can’t perform miracles!” It was the closest Goli ever came to speaking the truth. But Bibi lies too. Even Bibi. She lies like a regular trooper, just to keep believing that Ali is not dead, because there is no confirmation, no certificate, no evidence to prove he’s gone, is there? Not yet. And don’t we know it, haven’t we been acting deaf in dusty offices and playing dumb with dirty jurists to make certain of it for years, haven’t we made damn sure that Bibijan doesn’t attend the court hearings Mehdi sets up for her or sign the documents to establish a defunct in the family? We can tell you who’s defunct in this family, dead, deceased, over the expiration date, offering the pious prayers of a faithful believer to guarantee it, and showing the downcast eyes of a modest virgin to confirm it. We’re the biggest liars of all, submitting this sum to a fellow with a dirty turban and that sum to another with a three-day’s beard and a final bribe to the one groping for God knows what under his damned robes, while the scoundrel’s pretending to pray for Ali—all this we’ve lied for, for years, to make sure the boy’s name will never be among the lists of the dead. The only one who doesn’t lie in this family is the girl, Delli. No wonder she doesn’t want to eat meals at this dreadful table. No wonder it makes her sick to look at the mountain of demolished rice and the kookoo in ruins on the round gold-rimmed plate and the smoked fish disembowelled and the lace doilies spotted with grease and yellow saffron. We’ve broken the truth into tiny pieces at this table like the fragments of Bibi’s heart; we’ve spilled it all over the cloth like the tears she’s shed; we’ve been eating and drinking lies for years, trying to deceive each other and ourselves about Ali and this money. But since everything that is known 50

cannot be told, and since everything that is told cannot be rightly understood, and since everything that’s understood will never be all that can be said and depends on where and when and who we say it to, we say nothing, nothing yet, to Delli. We just scrape the red line from the edge of the white bowl and bring the yogurt, cucumbers, and mint into the dining room. “Eid-e-shoma mobarrak,” we say, gaily, holding the bowl high. And everyone claps and chants the silly rhyme Bibi used to chime when they were little, as Goli comes back to the dining room with a strange face and cracks out the nonsense response. “­Chesm-e-shoma secharak,” she says. And we wonder if Lili has asked, or she has told, or they have guessed the truth about Ali at last. Yes, if only for his sake, we’ll bring Bibi’s money out of Iran without Mehdi finding out, and hand half of it over to Mr. Bahman in the US without the girls finding out, and go back and forth with the empty plates between the kitchen and the dining room, between Paris and LA, with no one ever finding out that this money depends on a terrible lie, a great fat lie about Ali, a juicy lie cooked up on the inside by Mehdi and kebabed on the outside by Mr. Bahman, each wanting to suck off the same blood. And we’ll keep it up, dear God, for as long as You want; we’ll lie for as long as You require. We’ll keep mum till You cast off Your veil on Judgement Day and the whole world sees Your face. Because we suspect You may have been lying to us all along too, God. You’ve been playing games with us behind that veil, haven’t You? And we believed. The whole blessed country believed. We even thought Ali was a believer, that poor sweet boy. We thought he believed in the war that took him to Iraq. Only he saw through Your lies from the start. He and Delli are like the heretics of Evin who’d rather starve on the black bread of Your truth than grow fat by lying.

51

TEA

THEY HOPED IT WAS NOT TOO EARLY TO BE PHONING .

Goodness, what a surprise! They hoped it was not too soon after—? Breakfast? we laugh. Or the war in Iraq? Cue for brief hilarity to ease off the shock of hearing familiar and forgotten voices, to avoid distressing subjects. They did not mean to impose. They just happened to be in the region, so they wondered if they could pass by. Just to pay their respects. After all this time. How wonderful, after all this time, we echo, trying to remember the last time. Trying to forget the last time. So sorry we lost touch, we say. You know how it is. Long time no see, they reply. Yes, they knew. How it was. The silence was dreadful. And broken simultaneously. It would be lovely to see you, we say, but only if it’s convenient, they say. They cough. We cough. Another dreadful pause. An abyss of betrayals. Graves. We struggle to the surface. Of course, we reply. It would be more

52

than convenient. Truly wonderful. How did they find our number by the way? They had just been visiting Iran, actually. Old friends. They managed to go back from time to time, to see family in Tehran. The in-laws, if we recall. We certainly do recall. How could we forget the in-laws. If only we could forget the in-laws. We long to forget—To hear the news from Iran, we say. Only to say hello, they repeat, as if to specify limits. No news from Iran being good news. They would love to pay their respects. If it wasn’t too presumptuous. How could it possibly be presumptuous? we say, gaily, picking up the cue. We so looked forward to seeing them. It would be such a privilege, they echo, jumping on the same old bandwagon, after all this time. The privilege would be ours, we reply, automatically. Would they come for a meal? What day would be best? Oh no, they didn’t want to trouble us for a meal, they say. Just a cup of tea. But surely more than tea, we insist. When could they come? They say that they had been thinking of coming ever since they had left Iran. They had so much wanted to see us after fleeing the country. Did they say “fleeing”? Do they mean us or them? We feel like fleeing now. They really understood now what we’d gone through, they continue; they would have loved to come over sooner. You should have come sooner, we say, wondering what, if anything, they had understood. We would have been delighted. You would have been welcome! Such an honour. The honour is entirely ours, they say, it is ours entirely. Such an honour.

53

So when—we ask? Would we have the pleasure—? They say it was a last-minute plan. They just happened to be nearby today. Camping with the family. On holiday. Camping, not “fleeing.” How awful. No showers. No proper toilets. Oh what fun, we lie. To think of seeing you today. Where were they? They had been told by friends that we lived near the camping site—Well, we remembered the General’s family, surely? Why, so near, we say, hurriedly. We were not particularly eager to talk about the General or his family. Please, no Generals, no families, no politics, no religion. Nothing about prisons for God’s sake. If they were camping, we add, brightly, then why not come for tea this afternoon and stay for dinner? Oh, no, they say. They would not think of imposing on us for dinner. There were too many of them, they say. There couldn’t be enough of you, we laugh, slightly startled. How many—? Well, all the children, of course, they say. In a big van. We remembered the children, surely? They were so little when we left, of course— Of course we remember the children! We take a deep breath. Charming little creatures. It’ll be like the old days with the children! Ah, those old family picnics up in the hills, in the north of Tehran: the purling streams, the kebabs over the coals, the children playing under the birch trees, running after butterflies—But in that case, we add, you absolutely must eat with us. Tea is not enough for growing children. It is ample, they say. The children were already grown. Nothing but tea. But it’s been so long, we insist. How old? How many—? We hoped they would not mention all the others, the cousins, the nephews, the General’s son.

54

Three, they say. Toddlers then, teenagers now, which is why they wouldn’t think of imposing. You could never impose, we say. So we expect you for dinner then. They ask us to please accept their apologies. They could not possibly stay that long. Their in-laws needed to get back home, they say. Or else it would be another night out and they were quite tired after this trip. Ah, we say, are the in-laws with you too? Yes, their in-laws from Iran, they say. They had gone there specially to bring them over. They were all together. With the children. In a van. Well, all the more reason to eat a proper meal with us, we say, panicking. Celebrate the family reunion. Fortify yourselves before you take to the road. What a grand idea to be showing this beautiful country to your in-laws! We expect you for lunch then, instead of dinner, we say, so you can be on your way after some tea. But their in-laws would be mortified, they say, to cause us trouble. They wouldn’t want to be a burden. Especially after all that happened—Well, best not remember. They have never forgotten the good old days. It is not a burden at all, we say, rather stiffly, remembering the bad ones. Not at all. Really, they couldn’t accept, they say. They really couldn’t. We would be most offended, we say, if they didn’t. They would not dream of offending us, they say. To eat with us would be the greatest honour. But would we please allow them to invite us out to lunch then? What! we cry, offended. Coming all the way here after all this time and taking us out? And bringing their in-laws too, our dearest friends from all those years ago? They must be our guests, in our home. It would be our privilege.

55

But please, they say, was there no restaurant nearby, no hotel where they could invite us out for a meal? They were, in fact, looking for a hotel— A hotel? we query. For the night, they reply. We thought you were going back home—? we begin. Your inlaws, they are staying with you, aren’t they? Isn’t that what they had said? Well, that’s what they had originally planned, they tell us. But if they were going to have the joy of seeing us, if they were going to have the privilege of coming round to visit us after all this time, then they would definitely be here another night. In a nearby hotel, they repeat. The children would stay in the van, but their in-laws usually stayed in a hotel. It helps to have a bathroom when camping out, they add, sagely. We take a deep breath and insist that they stay the night with us. You must, we say. No question about it. We have a bathroom, we add. And a shower. We honoured them with such kindness, they say. Would that they might sacrifice their lives for us. But they really wouldn’t dream of causing such trouble. No trouble, we assure them. Were we sure it would not be an imposition—? No imposition, we say. Would we promise not to tire ourselves on their account—? No question of tiredness, we say. They could arrange everything when they arrived— Just tell us when you plan to arrive, we say. They beg us to remember that their needs are simple. They never taarof. We are simple too, we say. We abhor taarof. So when—? If they could just be certain that it would not be too much trouble— 56

We cannot wait to see you and your in-laws, we say, grimly. And the children too. For lunch and dinner and also the night. But when—? It would be the greatest privilege in the world, they say. If it would not impose on our hospitality too much. Bread and cheese was really ample. We promised. Bread and cheese. And nothing else, they say. Nothing else, we echo. They would be happy to sleep on the floor. No need for more, they insist. Except bathrooms, we add. As a joke. They don’t get it. That would be immeasurably kind, they say, gratefully. And much needed. So where are you now? we ask, wondering how much needed. They tell us that they just happen to be driving up our street. Oh, we say. Up our street, we say. How wonderful, we say. Just round the corner in fact, they tell us. They were looking forward to having tea with us very much, to talk about the old days, about Iran— So you’re in time to join us for a little breakfast too, we sigh. Please, they say, please, that would be too, too presumptuous! Not at all, we say. Come over for breakfast, we say. Just bread and cheese and fruit. And jam, we add. And ah yes, and of course—Tea.

57

ANECDOTES

WE HAVE A STAND ING ARRANGEM ENT F OR TEA ON FRIDAYS .

After the mandatory afternoon nap, which we all deny needing and none of us can do without, we meet up at Starbucks, and share tea and anecdotes. We wouldn’t miss it for the world. We are dropped off by our daughters: one on her way to the psychiatrist, the other on her way to get a pedicure. Or we catch a taxi with the help of our sons-in-law: one from the apartment, the other from his law office. Or we simply walk, very slowly, from our respective residences, until we get to where we are going which is not quite where we want to be, but near enough as a compromise. Near enough to thank our lucky Starbucks, as we tell each other, that we’re still breathing when we get here. Near enough though not ideal for a little chat, once a week. It was a habit we had established in Tehran in the good old days, and it is sacrosanct. Of course, there used to be more of us in the good old days. There were our military friends, the colonel, the general, the air force fellows. Then there were the oil chaps, with jobs down in Ahvaz, Dezful, the Gulf region, and one who was sent off as a representative to Algeria for a while, until the war there brought 58

him back. And finally there were those of us from the bazaar: the jeweller, the carpet merchant, the taxi driver who became a softdrinks mogul. But it was always tea we took together in Tehran, in the traditional coffeehouse, the old ghavheh khaneh: sticky sweetmeats and tea, and sometimes ice cream and shredded sherbet or faloodeh in the summer, until one of us became diabetic. And we used to smoke the ghalyun there too, the old hubble-bubble, and a couple of Lucky Strikes until one of us began coughing. Every single Friday afternoon, until we retired, every single week until we left the country, we would while away the hours, sharing anecdotes, discussing the ways of the world before wending our way to our respective homes. It was a fine specimen of nineteenth-century architecture, that old coffeehouse, constructed in a square that backed onto the Bagheh Ferdows, with rooms all round and the little rill running across the courtyard. Lovely, the sound of that water coming down from the snows of Damavand, before it dissipated into the sewers of the lower town. In summer, we used to lounge on a couple of couches under the fig tree in the courtyard behind the building. In winter, we had our own special alcove near the stove in the front, its walls heavy with leaning frames, loaded with dim and spotted photographs of gilded kings and queens. We disassociated ourselves from the decrepit opium suckers, of course, huddled over their stinking pipes in the back, but we liked sipping our glasses of hot sweet tea and discussing politics and religion there in the front. It was the carpet merchant who enjoyed the philosophical stuff. Now we have to make do with sticky Starbucks coffee, at the risk of dialysis. Or else submit to the indignity of peppermint teabags, in the name of virtue. Now, we have to perch side by side on the brightly coloured plastic stools, digging bony elbows into the Formica, unless we are lucky enough to acquire a table far away from the loud music. And now we only share anecdotes, tell each other trivial stories while we wait for the cappuccino or the tea 59

to come, cupping our ears in the cradle of our palms. The coffee is thick and sickly with milk. The peppermint tea is never hot enough, never sweet enough, and tastes of paper. And there is no smoking allowed. But it is still something to look forward to, this Friday meeting with old friends at Starbucks, even if it is a bit of a letdown. If truth be told, we usually anticipate each other’s company all week just to fall silent when we are together. There is so much not to say now, of course, so much not to talk about. The hostage crisis put a stop to politics, because it turned out we’d been backing the wrong side. The war put a stop to metaphysics, because you can’t be talking in abstractions while chemicals are being thrown at your compatriots and turning them to rubber on the hillsides. And religion put a stop to poetry. As we waited in line for our visas and bribed our way onto the last planes, as we tried to settle in with our daughters and sons, our brothers-in-law and maternal cousins in these odd little unwalled wooden American houses, we became quieter and quieter. We lost residency in language and the Green Card did not help. Our few scraps of English were enough to go by, but it isn’t a language to be trusted, is it? Not one you can use to talk about those left behind. There are certain subjects we go out of our way to avoid in any language, actually. It is an unspoken rule. We skirt round prisons, for example, and torture, depending on how strong we’re feeling at the time. Religion is naturally taboo too and if we venture into politics, it tends to be cynical. The carpet merchant used to talk enthusiastically about the future of our country and paid a high price for his optimism. So we never utter his name. Idealism of any kind should be strictly avoided these days. In order to keep things light and superficial, therefore, we share stale gossip, we repeat the anecdotes that are doing the rounds. Our discussions are circumstantial, never analytical; our news is incidental rather than political. And we indulge in a great deal of nostalgia, 60

of course. Ah such sentimental sighs, such moisture in the eyes as we remember the sweet red tea and the ghalyun in the coffeehouse! And the old photos, do you remember the photos, we ask: a young Shah getting married to the princess of Egypt in the alcove; the pouting beauty queen next to the tarnished samovar; the gilt frame, containing a flyblown portrait of the previous king in his military, which used to lean out from the wall. Whatever happened to those pictures, we wonder? Where are they now? We do not mention the missing who used to sit with us in the alcove, the disappeared next to the samovar, those vanished from under the frame jutting out from the wall. We never say a word about the arrested and gone forever one blue morning. We talk about architecture instead. We compare buildings, old and new. Ah, that beautiful coffeehouse! Is it still in use, do you suppose? We hear they’ve been demolishing many heritage buildings. Remember that lovely Qajar palace in the old town? we murmur, wiping our gummy eyes. And the little house so beautifully renovated in Shiraz with tinted glass in the upper windows? We sigh, our gaze shifting to the cold urine-coloured tea, wishing we had opted for the cappuccino. It is a shock to hear they’re even bulldozing graveyards these days. Well, well, we murmur feeling rather unwell, as we prod the sad island of peppermint pulp in our saucers. You have to be careful about anecdotes, mind you. Very careful. You cannot go around repeating every one that you hear. There are some you simply do not want confirmed. One story was circulating soon after we left Iran, which we naturally never mentioned to each other, then or since. We’d been told no concrete facts, of course, hardly any details and there was apparently no proof of arson, but a fire broke out in the bazaar soon after we left. The old section of the market was consumed by flames, high arches damaged by soot, the walls blackened. One of the old chaps we knew burnt to a crisp, they said, all his carpets gone up in smoke. An accident, they called it. 61

It’s enough to put you off tea forever, we say, making wry faces over our saucers. But how lovely to be together. How nice of you to come. We look forward to next week. We are very polite to one another as we make ready to depart. We are full of the old formalities and so, although we’re not practicing Muslims, not at all, we cannot avoid referring to God’s will in parting. See you again next week, inshallah.

62

A S S I M I L AT I O N

O U R N E W F R I E N D WA S N OT ,

as she pointedly informed us, practising. It was almost the first thing she said as we settled around the table on the terrace of the Café Lichtberg. We were nonplussed; it is rather unusual in Berlin to announce your religious beliefs to relative strangers before even ordering coffee. Since we were supposed to be discussing a film, the unexpected announcement came across as singularly abrupt. The tone of our friend’s voice was also peremptory, almost defiant. There was an awkward pause. We avoided each other’s eyes. Did she want us to know that she was, nevertheless, a Muslim, practising or not? Should we be assuring her that we were not entirely godless either, despite being old émigrés? Why did she feel the need to raise the subject, sitting in the sunshine, minutes away from the S-Bahn? It was an ominous start to our collaboration on the film project. We concentrated on choosing sugar cubes, stirring coffee for rather too long. The spoon made an uncompromising clatter when we put it down. “These clerics really have a lot to answer for,” she continued, sensing, perhaps, the need to fill the breach that she had herself 63

created. “They’ve made materialists of us all. I’ve become an atheist since leaving Iran, you know.” Ah, so that was it. She wanted to show us that she had assimilated since coming to Germany. Perhaps she was seeking our approval. We murmured something anodyne and encouraging. But her mouth was compressed into a thin line. She probably thought we were philistines because we had been here for so long. Or maybe she assumed we were prejudiced against all immigrants recently arrived from Iran, on the assumption that they were religious fanatics? Perhaps that is why she continued in this vein, instead of speaking about the film we were supposed to make, going out of her way to condemn religion in general and the version of it as practised in Iran, in particular. She was clearly a committed disbeliever, a cynic with possibly fundamentalist opinions. “It’s disgraceful what religion has done to our country,” she concluded, stiffly. She seemed determined to prove herself entirely secular. At least that is what we assumed she wanted to prove. As a matter of fact, the film was about assimilation, about migrant secularization so it may have been the reason she was so exercised by the subject. As established filmmakers abroad, we had been commissioned to make a documentary for our friend’s newly established organization. It was to focus on immigrants living in the capitals of Europe, and highlighted the challenges faced by women, including Iranians, in alien cultures. It explored how some of them had thrived and others were trapped in their homes, dependent on their husbands, ignorant of the language and struggling with issues they could not understand. It questioned how far the host country was responsible for their isolation, their Westernization, their potential radicalization. But when it was finally completed, it concluded with a surprise scene of a Moroccan girl saying her prayers in her living room. We had not discussed this possibility with our friend during that initial meeting. It was 64

a beautiful image, a serene resolution. The young woman’s soft uplifted palms, white against a dark robe, looked like a pair of turtledoves. Shortly after the documentary was shown in a film festival at the Arsenal, our friend called to say her cousin from Iran had just arrived and would like to meet us. We felt nervous. Had the cousin seen the film and liked it, or was she indignant that Iranians who had left the country could presume to describe what their compatriots were going through? Perhaps she had only seen the segment of the film with the young wife praying in her sitting room and thought it blasphemous? Or maybe she had been so offended at being compared with Arabs and Turks that she missed that resolution? We did not know whether we had given offence or how to respond without doing so. The main problem was to follow the proper protocol in the circumstances. Normally, since we had extended the first invitation, it was up to our friend to host us this time. But she seemed to expect us to arrange an event. We knew she lived in the less fancy part of town, in east Kreutzberg, and perhaps felt awkward about inviting us there from bourgeois Steglitz-Zehlendorf. But she made no suggestion either to meet us in a neutral setting in the city centre. Would that have been a discourtesy to her newly arrived cousin from Iran? We were at a loss. Finally, in an attempt to square the impossible circle, we invited our friend, her husband, and the cousin to our home for a special private party some weeks after the public celebration of the film’s success. At the last minute, however, the husband suddenly declined. Change of plans. Most unfortunate. Please accept his apologies. And we guessed why, the minute we saw the cousin. She was veiled from head to foot in rigorous grey. Her face was sallow, unadorned, her features unsmiling and severe. No doves fluttered from her palms. It was clear from all she did not say that she was most suspicious of us and had disliked the film. 65

If she had even agreed to see it. Just as well we had not gone to the Café Lichtberg; goodness knows what the waiters would have thought of her, or what she would have thought of the waiters. She glowered across the table at us and barely opened her mouth throughout the meal. Even to eat. We wondered why she had come. Had she really wanted to meet us? Perhaps our friend had imposed this invitation, as a sort of test. On her or on us? Why hadn’t she prepared us for it? And for what, if anything, had the cousin been prepared? What had our friend told her about us? That we had assimilated? That we were atheists, apostates, members of a perverse sect? That we were secular royalists supporting the previous regime, which was why we lived in this part of town, surrounded by lovely lakes and water­ ways? She was clearly sizing us up. All through the meal, she sat like a dark cloud at one end of the table while the conversation limped across languages at the other. Finally, when it petered out, she rose to leave with a look of visible relief. Perhaps she thought us unclean, or in some way corrupted. Perhaps she wanted to get away before becoming assimilated too. She was clearly suffering as much as we were from the strain. We did not meet our friend for several months after that. Whatever the purpose of the last encounter, it led to a withdrawal, a retreat into silence; imperceptibly she removed herself from our circle. Had we said something wrong, done something to cause offence? Or had the cousin warned her against us because of the assimilation problem? Certainly it could not have been because of the film, which had surpassed all expectations and even gone on to win an award. But despite that, or maybe because of it, trust had been broken. We were not sure in which direction, because if truth be told, we felt a little put out too at this point, a little hurt, even. She was the one who had pushed her cousin onto us, after all; she had received our hospitality. And never a word of thanks! 66

But maybe life had simply intervened. We were all occupied at that stage with growing adolescent children, with their passing or not of exams. And our friend was doubtless facing similar concerns, similar worries about the success and failure of her children. We had daughters of the same age, but one of hers frequented the bars on Simon-Dach-Strasse, so we had heard, and had started “going out” with a Bavarian boy. We could imagine her feelings. We would not have liked our daughters to do that, not quite yet. We may consider ourselves open-minded, but the minute our daughters start fraternizing with foreigners, we Iranians revert to type. We may think we have been Westernized, but actually we prefer our girls to leap directly from childhood to maturity and marry Persians with substantial incomes. It’s at such times that one’s cultural values reassert themselves. And it has nothing to do with practising anything. When we met again, by accident, at a cultural event in the Tempelhof neighborhood sometime later, we noticed with surprise that our friend was wearing a silver cross around her neck. A rather large one, at that. And so close to the Iranian Islamic Centre too! An ideological statement? we asked, in jocular mode. Just jewellery, she flushed. “And I also don’t mind showing people that I’m not fanatical, even if I am Iranian,” she added defensively. Clearly, assimilation to a secular faith had not protected her sufficiently from this possibility. But as the conversation continued, it turned out that her daughter’s boyfriend also came from a religious family. Bavarian Catholics, very bourgeois. Perhaps the cross helped in that quarter? Assimilation took many forms. But would this not cause tensions in her own family? we wondered, remembering the cousin. Oh, hadn’t she told us? That cousin of hers had gone to America soon after we met, she said; she no longer wore the veil. Did that make her more or less of a fundamentalist? we wondered. 67

We were not sure but suspected that her cousin would not melt in the American pot so easily; she had an indissoluble core. We Persians are like the Chinese when it comes to questions of assimilation. We keep up appearances, but take a certain amount of pride in cooking in our own pots, if you know what we mean. We do the absorbing rather than being absorbed. But what would her Muslim relatives in Iran say if her daughter married a Roman Catholic? we asked. Oh, there was no question of marriage, she assured us, her features suffused with anxiety. Besides, many Iranians were becoming Christians now. Hadn’t we heard? We had not. Couldn’t we guess why? We didn’t dare to presume, given the astonishment implied by her eyebrows. Well, she concluded, with that familiar air of superior knowledge, they were so fed up with the regime that they were converting to all kinds of religions these days; it had become quite a problem. A problem? Our brows must have risen slightly too, because she became more defensive. “Well it’s not just Jews who want to undermine the regime, you know!” There was a pause, during which the ground shifted under our feet, definitions teetered over our heads, and words slid recklessly down the slopes of meaning. Had we heard that right? We re-­established our balance with difficulty. We could not agree with her more, we said, hurriedly; we were of the same opinion entirely. We did not think Christians were anti-Muslim, whatever the current administration might suggest; we did not think all Muslims were fundamentalist either, whatever the current regime in Iran might infer; and some of our best friends were Jewish. Besides, there she was, wearing a cross and defending Islam! How great was that! It wasn’t, apparently, as great as the widening gulf of comprehension between us. We were irrevocably separated by a common culture, a shared language, and our attempt at humour did not 68

carry across the divide. Our good-byes were somewhat strained as we parted on the edge of the Tempelhofer Park. We drifted off, wondering how we could have been so stupid and when she had become so duplicitous. What did she actually believe, in the last analysis? And why did she feel the need to justify it, to us of all people? Surely she had been in the country long enough by now not to be so insecure? But perhaps it was simply because her religion was reactive. Maybe she trusted us enough, we told ourselves, to test her theories against our friendship. Sometimes you need others to prove to yourself who you actually are. After that, our paths did not cross for a long time. Our children grew up and left home; so presumably did hers. We were experiencing the usual marital problems; so possibly was she. Like many Iranians, her husband finally went into real estate, at the lower end of the market, having failed at the higher one. And it was while we were in the process of buying an apartment in east Berlin that we heard of her again, quite by accident, through a plumber. He was the friend of another Iranian acquaintance: someone who had been married to someone we used to know, who was the daughter of someone who had fled the country after the fall of the Shah and happened to be distantly related to someone—that same cousin in grey serge—whom we had met before. The usual Iranian grapevine of connections. But the news he gave us was not good. Our friend had been diagnosed with cancer. She had suffered the miseries of chemotherapy. She had been through a hard time since we last met. All this and nothing said, nothing known. We were smitten with guilt. How could we have allowed so many years to pass without communication? What kind of friends did we think we were? If anyone had broken trust, it was us. We had been so out of touch that we had not even been there to extend some support. What was the use of making films about the 69

loneliness of immigrant women if we ourselves did nothing to help each other in times of need? We were abashed. We were mortified. We phoned immediately, talked volubly, made plans to visit, and arrived bearing gifts, flowers, chocolates, something like love. We apologized. So did she. We said there was no reason to do so; we were at fault. Oh, but so was she. How was she? Thinner. How did she feel now? Better. Where were her girls and what had been happening to them? One of her daughters was pursuing her career in France, and the other was now engaged to be married to the young Bavarian. But our friend was no longer wearing the cross around her neck. “Do you know about crystals?” she asked us, with a brittle smile. And immediately embarked on a lively presentation of auras, crystals, acupuncture and how to clean your liver through baths and diets and colonoscopies, through magnetic waves and the healing of hands. She believed that her hands could heal. Yes, she could diagnose people and then release them from disease simply by touching. Would we like her to touch us? She could show us how it worked. We drew back, disconcerted. There was a sharp light in her eye betraying prophetic ardour and fragility. There was an unfortunate absence of science about her opinions, which did not bear close scrutiny. We were not too keen on being touched or released, frankly. And we did not trust her theories. Neither did her youngest daughter, we discovered, the girl who was engaged to the Catholic, the one who had been studying to become a doctor. Sadly, our mutual friend had become alienated from her daughters; they were no longer on speaking terms, it seemed. She had clearly converted to a different religion and did not believe in allopathic medicine. “I am a Buddhist now,” she concluded, primly, assuming that starched expression we knew all too well. “It is the only Way.” But it was clear, from the set of her mouth, that it was the only 70

way she could avoid tears. She had been very close to her daughters and now she had lost them. They were assimilated, and she was not; they had become Europeans, and she—? She was not sure she cared for their assimilation. One was shacked up with a married man in Paris, with no prospects of a family life, and the other was going to raise her children as Catholics, far away in southern Germany. We Iranians have difficulties enough coping with the changing sexual mores of our children, but to have to admit to their estrangement is the worst of all. It was hard. It was worse than cancer. It did not take much imagination to know that her heart was broken. We only met one time after that, before leaving Berlin. We had wanted to invite our friend and her husband to supper, to say good-bye, but the only time they were free was during our month of fasting, which coincided with the Ramadan period that year. Given her chequered medical history and uncertain spiritual beliefs, we were not sure whether to offer her a drink or not. But she pre-empted us. She let us know, with that same air of strained superiority, that she would not be drinking, since the sun had not yet set. It was the law of her religion. We were not the only ones who followed our faith, she said, stiffly. Didn’t we remember she was practising? She was an Iranian, after all, and a Siyyid. Related to the Prophet Himself. Her assimilation, we realized, was complete.

71

GREEN

BIBI HAD ALWAYS BEEN PROUD OF H ER SIY YID ANCESTRY .

Her maternal grandfather used to wear a green turban to prove his prophetic lineage, and as a child she had thought that her eyes were green because of it. That was why she loved emeralds. The jewels had been a wedding gift, a dowry accrued over the years as the General acquired his properties and his daughters. He had started giving her emeralds as a young bride: “Keep these always,” he had murmured on their wedding night, fixing the clasp around her neck. And he had added to the jewel box with the birth of each child: earrings and a brooch garnished with seed pearls for the first, a bracelet and a matching necklace with sapphires for the second, and innumerable rings. “Wear them and think of me,” he told her, looping pendants into her ears when Goli was born. “You’ll soon put on more weight,” he muttered as the bracelet clanked round her wrist after Lili’s birth. The massive stones hung cold and heavy on her collarbone; the green jewels stretched her lobes. But after Ali, the last of the emerald rings finally became too small to fit her finger and everything ended up in the vaults of the bank. 72

Her son turned out to be so different from his sisters, both in appearance and demeanour, that the General stopped giving his wife emeralds from then on. He used to say, with his short bark of a laugh, that he was not even sure the weakling was his. Bibi knew her husband had his blind spots; they were obvious. But it pained her that Ali was one of them. The man had an unpleasant habit of rejecting his children and reappropriating his gifts. “Don’t give the emeralds away,” he had advised Bibi in the early years. “Don’t let anyone wangle them out of you.” But, at the end, when the old regime collapsed and he was already ailing, it was the General himself who did the wangling. The brooch and the earrings served as a bribe to get him out of the country during the hostage crisis. The necklace paid for his first set of hospital bills once he reached LA, and the bracelet contributed to his funeral costs. The emeralds turned out to be a shrewd investment for himself, and his children were forgotten. Bibi wondered, sometimes, whether her son had disappeared simply because her husband could not bear to look at him. But perhaps she had her blind spots too. She had been so anxious to keep Ali alive and so opposed to receiving martyr money by admitting his death that she had sold most of her emeralds to Mehdi’s advantage. But the jewels had not been enough to bring back her son or protect her daughters, and being a Siyyid had not preserved her sight either or kept her eyes green. Weeping had clouded them long before the cataracts had done so. There was hardly a night, since Ali had gone missing, that Bibi had not sobbed herself into her dreams. And the night of her first Naw Ruz in America was no exception. The waiting room of the celebrated lachrymologist was filled with people suffering from different tear disorders. Despite the defective lighting, which either flickered on and off or dozed into a cloudy dullness, Bibi was able to make out at least half a dozen patients already sitting round the room, waiting for their turn. 73

A dumpy young woman on her right launched into conversation immediately, as soon as Bibi sat beside her. She had a rather low brow, small, dull eyes, and a considerable shadow on her upper lip; had it not been for her volubility, she would have reminded Bibi of Fathi, who had just returned from the United States to Iran. But Fathi would never have been so disconcertingly forthright about her problems as was this little moustachioed woman. She told Bibi outright that she had blocked ducts. Permanently blocked, she added, without shame, as though it were not bad enough that they should be temporarily in this condition. It was due to the increased desertification of the planet, she explained, and the wind farms set up in Manjil and Rudbar. Her red eyes were inflamed with sand that kept drifting into the corners of the canthi. She had tried a garlic douche every two hours but found that it was useless. “Nothing helps,” she concluded, sadly, “not even onions.” The patient on Bibi’s left had a similar problem, but her ducts were clogged with wool. It had started just after the war in Afghanistan, she murmured, where her son had died. Her ashcoloured voice sounded so like Lili’s that Bibi was at first inclined to doubt her story; the woman seemed too young for bereavement. But the ash-coloured shawl she was wrapped in and the ash-­ coloured puttees round her legs all seemed to prove her sincerity. Bibi guessed that all these articles had been hand-knitted which she confirmed, meekly and with un-Lili-like timidity, although Bibi had not said a word. It seemed that poor vision and lachrymal dysfunction enhanced the telepathic powers. Or perhaps it was the coincidence of dead sons that did it. “Ten minutes of wool-gathering every morning,” the woman sighed, sadly. “The only way to focus on what I am doing.” On the wall opposite them was a glossy poster of an enormous eyeball. Bibi blinked away her tears to see it. It had been cut into two perfect halves, vertically, and had been opened up like a hinged photo frame, with the cornea sliced off on one side and 74

the retina exposed on the other. In the middle of the retina, at the back of the eyeball, was a mass of rainbow-coloured nerve endings and tangled blood vessels. It looked like a split watermelon, with all that pink jelly under the white slice of the cornea. Or perhaps a multicoloured pumpkin cut in half with its sinuous ­fibres exposed at the back. Bibi turned away but, despite her weak vision, it was difficult to avoid seeing the eye once she knew it was there. Perhaps, she thought hazily, knowing something to be there was another definition of telepathy. Or sight. A child was sitting immediately beneath the poster on his mother’s lap. He was too young to be in such a place and perhaps too old for a lap, but he was evidently suffering from a disorder quite different from that afflicting the women on her side of the room. Bibi noticed that instead of blocked ducts, the little boy’s tears flowed unimpeded; they were rust-coloured and had stained his cheeks. His mother, who kept trying to make him sit still, wiped his face continuously with handfuls of tissue. “It’s like haemophilia,” she told Bibi, in aggrieved tones. “Once he starts, he cannot stop.” The boy was mute and uncomplaining as his tears flowed down, but each time his mother pulled him close to scrape the tissues over his skin, he whimpered and struggled to be free. “I’ve tried everything,” she protested in exasperation. “Powered bleach. Liquid detergent.” Nothing could be done to staunch the tears apparently, but she felt the doctor should at least do something to remove the stains. “Like prescribe skin whitener,” she declared. She was like Goli, Bibi thought, whose tears were typically shed over stains. There was no physical resemblance between them, and Bibi could not tell, in the dim penumbra of that room, whether the woman had bleached her hair or not. The weeping boy bore no resemblance to her obese grandson either, except for the fact that he was sitting on his mother’s lap. Goli had a tendency to baby her boy. Nor was there any sign of Delli in the room, which encouraged the 75

hope that her granddaughter may have escaped the epigenetics of tear flow. Bibi had a soft spot for Delli; she did not want the poor girl to be eroded away from the inside by all the tears she had not shed. Turning her gaze away from the mother and child and glancing towards the window near the door, Bibi made out a dark outline against the glare. There was a fourth patient sitting there, she realized, with his back to the brightness of the outside world. As she blinked to accustom herself to the shimmering haze behind him, she saw that he was an elderly man, with a distinguished demeanour and snow-white hair. But after a minute or two, her eyes closed involuntarily, with a stab of recognition. “You have the most beautiful green eyes, madam,” said the General, leaning forward decorously towards her. Bibi did not answer her husband. She was terrified in case he detected her identity and could also read unspoken thoughts. But he simply stared at her, blankly, for a moment and then turned away. She understood then that he was totally blind. Although he had never seen her for who she was during his lifetime, Bibi was dismayed to see what had happened to the General since he had died. Unlike the others in the room, he had evidently damaged his optic nerve by retrospection: he had stared at his past so intently that he had lost sight of future consequences and could no longer see the link between cause and effect. In fact, he saw even less of her now than he had during his life. “I was always too present for him,” she realized, looking away from her husband hurriedly. And he had always cultivated reasons for his absences, she remembered, that neither of them had believed. “Now we both can’t see,” she thought sadly. Perhaps they had blinded each other, unwittingly, with their lies. Suddenly her name was called. She felt relief and terror at the same time. How come she was the first to go, though the last to come into the room? As she rose to her feet and took a hesitant step forward, she wondered if those who had been waiting longer 76

than she had would be offended by this preferential treatment. But was it a sign of privilege or impending punishment? Had she been given priority only because her case was worse than all the others’? And worst of all, had the General heard her name? Would he now try to follow her? But no, she thought, as the cold air hit her face through the open door of the doctor’s office: the chill was emanating not from the corpse behind her but from the man towards whom she was walking. As Bibi shuffled into the consulting room of the l­achrymologist, she wondered how she was supposed to communicate with him. She knew, without being told, that he was a Lithuanian, like the specialist with whom her daughter had set up an appointment the day before. Goli had warned her that the great man would not waste words. But as she walked towards him in her dream, she was grateful for it. Verbal parsimony in such circumstances would prove whether or not he was a good physician. The lachrymologist ushered her into his room in total silence. He was a recent immigrant like herself, she realized. Perhaps that justified his taciturnity; he was simply unfamiliar with the language. Or perhaps he had squandered so many words over the years that he had none left spare, like her with the emeralds. He indicated, with a flick of his wrist, where she should sit on the examining table. And then he turned away to wash his hands. Bibi found it difficult to heave herself up on the snowy slopes of the table; it was like climbing a frozen mountainside, like scaling a glacier, and it seemed to take forever and left her struggling to breathe. But when she reached the summit, the doctor finally spoke. “Lie down and look straight up,” he instructed, icily. That was when she recognized him, by the soft blur of milk on his upper lip: he was just someone’s son, like any other. Had that faint line been left there when the tide of childhood went out? she wondered. Or when it froze as he grew older? She had forgotten how Arctic were the conditions of aging and migration. 77

“Look directly at the light, please,” barked the man. “I can’t,” Bibi mumbled, wincing in pain, trying to open her eyes. The doctor understood Persian, apparently. “It’s the only way I can help you,” he said. He spoke Farsi with a grating reluctance that reminded her of her grandchildren. “It is the only way to remove these stones that are impeding your vision. Now if you will permit me—” And as he began to dig the emeralds out of her eyes, Bibi woke up with a breathless cry, and found herself in California. Her eyes were dry. The drops which Goli had given her the day before just made them burn the more. But Bibi was grateful that she had not dreamed of her son. At least, he was not suffering from tear disorders. She lay there dazed, for a moment, blinking the blur away and trying to adjust herself to her surroundings. As she gradually separated the grimy curtains from the penumbra of dawn filtering through the window, she remembered. This was Delli’s frilly bedroom and these were the sounds of America filtering through the walls. There was the hum of the huge tank-like refrigerator in the kitchen, and the yapping of a neighbourhood dog in the distance, and an inhuman snarl curling up like smoke from the TV den below, confirming that her granddaughter had spent the night watching horror movies, again. Delli seemed not to sleep at night. Perhaps she was also afraid of her dreams. And as Bibi lay there, wiping her gummy eyes, she also remembered the Naw Ruz party, remembered Bahman’s surprise, and Goli’s broken promise, and suddenly knew that she really had, she finally had, she had irredeemably left Iran. And her artificial tears ran down. When Ali disappeared on the battlefield, marked for martyrdom and paradise, Bibi had sworn she would never leave Iran without her son. Not till he’s been found, she told her daughters. Goli and Lili had urged their mother to sell the General’s assets and come to the West before it was too late, but she had refused to budge. She 78

was glad when her husband’s wealth was appropriated so that his daughters would not squabble over it; she was glad that his properties were all seized so they would not quarrel over them. So when they mentioned the emeralds, she told them, flatly, that she had sold every single one to look for her son. All green, she said, all gone. It caused some estrangement as well as putting an end to the discussion. Goli was offended that her mother should think she was more interested in her jewels than her well-being. She protested that she didn’t give a damn about the emeralds, but please would her mother stop letting Mehdi suck her dry? Lili visited several times, ostensibly to haggle with Mehdi, but Bibi knew that there were also political reasons for her coming. Ali is dead, Lili kept telling her mother; stop waiting for a ghost. But she herself was a ghost of her former self by then and had become mixed up in dangerous politics. Bibi did not question her; she did not want to know what she was doing or had done; she could not wait for her to leave. She was afraid that Mehdi’s links with the Revolutionary Guard, which might perhaps track down her son, could prove fatal for her daughter. She preferred to think of Lili in Paris rather than in prison. But despite what she had told her daughters about the emeralds, she still had a few left, with which to keep Ali alive. Year after year, she sold her rings to grow him in her imagination, from an adolescent boy into a beautiful young man, from the child that he was when he left for the war, to the prime of his life, when it was over. She never allowed him to suffer from chemical poisoning on those bleak mountainsides. She never let him ride his bicycle into the ranks of Iraqi soldiers or throw one last futile hand grenade at their stunned faces. And she refused to find his mangled body among the heaps of the dead. As long as she still had one or two emeralds left, she would not sign any judicial papers that would confirm him gone. When Goli promised her a family reunion, Bibi decided to sell her last emerald to buy her tickets to come. She believed Ali would be here. But when Bahman’s surprise turned out to have nothing to 79

do with prisoners freed from camps in Kurdistan, she had been devastated. It had been difficult to hide her dismay when she learned that she had come all the way to America just for a Green Card. “Just?!” She did not know where to look that night, between Goli’s gulps and Bahman’s bluster, between her granddaughter’s refusal to eat another grain of rice and her grandson squirting ketchup all over it. The rest of the Naw Ruz party had been squandered on explanations, why this un-green card was worth its weight in gold, how it had been acquired at great cost and effort, and what a splendid thing it was that she could now live in the United States of America as a dependent. “Mexicans would kill to be in your position,” Bahman had said. But Bibi did not want to live in America. She did not want to be a dependent. She would have been happy to give her Green Card to any number of Mexicans whether inclined to murder or suicide. Her heart was breaking and her eyes were full of stones. But despite her burning eyes, the old woman, lying there in the milky morning light, suddenly saw everything very clearly: the swag curtains across the windows, the garish paper lamp shade covered in red lip kisses above the bed, the teddy bear on a shelf of children’s books, and Delli’s posters of pale girls swooning in the embrace of vampire lovers. It was all very obvious and simple: she saw that her granddaughter Delli was not, by any stretch of the imagination, entirely Persian. Her galloping heart slowed down and began to beat more regularly. Maybe that was the solution. If Delli was not quite Persian, then perhaps she did not have to be completely American. If her granddaughter could avoid being locked in one box, Bibi need not be trapped in the other. Maybe we can escape being either/or, this or that, us or them, she thought hazily. In fact, perhaps Ali’s survival depended on how he too had resolved such absolutes and faced such choices. 80

T H E A S S O C I AT I O N

I T H A D S E E M E D S U C H A G O O D I D E A TO S TA RT W I T H ,

such a good choice: l’associazione culturale, a place for young and old to mingle, an opportunity for friends to share the heritage of the East with the West in this rather unfashionable quartiere of Rome. We needed to get together like they did in Florence, in Bologna, and the Municipio III, to talk about the arts, to keep alive the poetry and the music of our land, to remind ourselves what it meant to be Persian. Do let us avoid the word “Iranian” which has acquired such suspect interpretations, such unpleasant associations. They use it in the Municipio III to evoke ancient glories, we suppose, but we would rather avoid it for the present, and besides our young folk are more interested in the future. Haven’t we endured enough political disputes? Haven’t we grown sick of religious rows? We do not wish to waste any more time on sterile discussions or engage in ideological quarrels. When your country is in the grip of a theocracy, the last thing you want is to be theological about it. Only art could heal these hurts, restore these wounds. There were many reasons for us to establish some kind of a cultural gathering in this part of town, far from the heart of Rome. 81

We needed some place that could nurture the love of our own language among the young, that would preserve the legacy of Persian history for the next generation. It was all very well trying to discuss street art and graffiti with our kids, to listen to them listening to the music we could not listen to, but what about our literature, our philosophy? We wanted to share the “real” Iran with our neighbours; we wanted to give the Italians a glimpse of that “true” country of the heart from which no exile was possible, no separation ­conceivable—! We adopted this as our motto and sent out an appeal for subscriptions. There was an enthusiastic response. The applause was practically audible across the quartieres. Contributions flowed—we are a generous people—and funds were assured, at considerable self-sacrifice, for at least two years. An organizing committee was appointed and, after some months, a meeting place was acquired. Granted, it was a bit dark, a bit depressing, because it was no more than a disused warehouse after all, in the back streets behind the main Termini, but the rent was reasonable, and we could always look forward to upgrading as the program picked up. That, at least, was the argument we presented to the subscribers when some expressed disappointment with the place, as compared with the fancy premises in Municipio III, and others retained a stubborn preference for somewhere closer to the kebab restaurants on via Tagliamento or Bartolomeo Bossi. But those areas were exorbitantly expensive, of course. And rather too close to the Embassy for comfort. Despite the spirited debate that ensued regarding the location, enthusiasm for the association itself remained high, and so we forged ahead. Some people contributed carpets to make the place a bit more friendly. Others provided tea, sugar, an electric samovar. The safety regulations were slightly, shall we say, adapted to install a makeshift kitchen in the back of the premises, so that refreshments could be served. We all agreed this was essential. An 82

enthusiastic Italian neighbour, of a certain age, who had visited Afghanistan in less certain circumstances and was now studying Zen and wearing rather too many earring studs, offered wall hangings to support our efforts. They weren’t exactly right, culturally speaking, but it was the motive which mattered not the studs, and how could we refuse when it is against our culture to cause offence? What was more problematic was the program itself. What subjects should we discuss? Which kind of art? What sort of literature? Where were the poets and writers and musicians who would come to this part of town? We could not agree. The debate about the future activities of our new associazione culturale continued for several weeks. Then months. Winter passed and the spring festival of Naw Ruz was celebrated with rather more than the usual warmth of feeling that year. Emotions rose, along with the threatening summer odours from the drains, but decisions had still not been made. Speeches, however, were given, tears were shed, voices resonated in the warehouse. And then, just before we all expired in the heat, it was finally decided, for the sake of maintaining a sense of humour and keeping the peace, that the first topic for the autumn program would be the tradition of satire in Iranian culture. Although it was too late to choose a speaker, we thought the theme was sufficiently lively to engage us all in discussion, sufficiently, we thought, nonpolemic to start the ball rolling in the right direction, sufficiently literary to avoid politics and religion. And it was bound to attract the younger generation. It was a disaster, of course. Satire is nothing if not polemic and what else is there for Iranians to be satirical about at this time, but politics and religion? Negative criticism was expressed. The discussion unravelled into argument, tangled into offence, and tore everyone to shreds. Some felt that satire gave too negative an image of Iran and thought it was politically incorrect from a diasporadic point of view; others said it could not be negative enough if its impact on Iranian politics was to be corrective from a national 83

point of view. A few were upset because it made light of serious issues and bordered on the blasphemous; several were prepared to launch a jeremiad against the perpetrators of ­jeremiads. And everyone agreed that it was an invitation to indulge in stereo­types, the last resort of the impotent, not even a serious art form; they accused the organizing committee of having violated the association’s trust and compromised its aims by choosing such a theme. Worse still, none of our youth came to the event. It was too soon, too late, at the beginning or end of term, they told us, lamely. But in fact it was because we were their parents. Perhaps their absence was just as well, given the fierce disagreements, the angry remarks tossed about that evening, in the malodorous warehouse in the unfashionable Pigneto district, festooned with moth-eaten Afghani cloths. Our indignation was aroused, our sensitivities exacerbated, we almost came to blows. A few of us actually withdrew our subscriptions and threatened to join the Municipio III group. As we wound our separate ways home, dodging the prostitutes on via Giolitti and the dismal Pakistani immigrants along Prenestina, we resolved to keep strictly to aesthetic themes after this, to discuss beauty rather than truth from now on. As a result, emphasis was placed on the nostalgic rather than the noteworthy, the sentimental rather than the significant arts. The eminenze grigia in the exiled community expounded on wellworn issues, repeated what had already been said before, on several previous occasions, at other events, in the Municipio III. And speakers were invited whom most of us had never even heard of and did not specially wish to meet: minor poets, failed filmmakers, unpublished novelists with compromising names who left outrageous heating and hotel bills, and for whom we found ourselves coughing up train fares and other extraneous expenses. Fewer and fewer of us participated in the association evenings, and even though we paid their subscriptions, our young people never showed up. They said it was just for fuddy-duddies. 84

Finally, when there were only about six regulars left, including the Italian neighbour obsessed with Zen and Afghanistan and those who had faithfully not joined the group in Municipio III, we decided to disband the association entirely. It had been a flop, a drain on our resources, a poor choice and a bad idea. We could not pay the rent for the storage space any longer and gave back the carpets and the wall hangings. It was impossible to reimburse the travel costs of speakers, and the electricity bills were astronomical. Besides, the tea had grown mildewed and a fuse was permanently blown. And so we sent out a sober note to our members, stating that due to lack of interest and insufficient support of the arts of the “true” country of our hearts—from which no exile was possible, no separation conceivable—we were reluctantly informing them that our association was going to be dissolved. We would be grateful, we said, if we could make one final request of our dear compatriots: would anyone offer a last charitable contribution or be willing to forgo the repayment of last year’s subscriptions to pay for the bills and the charges still outstanding? And suddenly there was an outcry, an uproar. A flood of messages poured in, expressing shock, indignation, outrage. Bank transfers and cheques followed. Letters came containing—­surprisingly—­ support. Dissolve l’associazione culturale? Dismiss our cultural heritage? Of course it must go on! How could we think of doing this, denying our fellow countrymen and women this essential right? How dare we give up this one space where we could express ourselves freely? Was it not enough to be exiled from our country? Was it not enough to find ourselves in this foreign land, deprived of family and friends? Where else, except among those snobs in Municipio III, could we discuss the books of up-and-coming Iranian writers no one else had heard of, have discussions about up-and-coming Iranian film­makers whose names no one else could pronounce, hold exhibitions of upand-coming Iranian artists, even if we didn’t think all that much 85

of their work? But that was the whole point! Where else could we argue about ideological attitudes, disagree about religious interpretations, debate freely about politics and diverge in our opinions of the truth? Where else could we gossip, quarrel, criticize, backbite, take offence, and slander each other in our mother tongue—except in a cultural association dedicated to Iran? Perhaps it had been a good idea, after all. We could hear the cheers resonating ominously, echoing portentously, applauding the greatness of Iranian art and culture once again, across the unfashionable quartieres of Rome.

86

ART

HERE IT IS, THE EXHIBITION FROM BEAUBOURG ,

of our great Iranian artist. World class, as you say. Forced out of the country by a bunch of old men with towels wrapped round their heads, according to the gutter press. Well, you can’t always believe the press, and that’s a racist remark if ever there was one, very politically incorrect, but we’re not surprised you’re going back for a second look. When old men start making pronouncements about a young woman, she obviously merits some attention, right? Of course, an artist of her calibre deserves attention wherever she comes from, as you would say. But this is an Iranian woman. That makes her extra special. It’s true, we knew her from before. Friends of the family. Business associates. But we do mix in cultural circles too, you know. Photographers. Filmmakers. Why, some of our best friends are artists. There has been far too much negative press about us in the West, and it’s about time people realized how refined we Iranians are. There’s more to us than fundamentalism and nuclear power, you know. There’s more to our culture than bombs and terrorism. We are poets, philosophers, musicians; we excel in all sorts of fields. High achievers. As you say, the exhibition proves it. 87

Well, yes, this woman has been out of the country for a long time, it is true. She wasn’t there during the worst of it. But perhaps the less said about that period the better. It was a difficult time. The collapse of the regime, the Shah abandoning his people, the hostage crisis, and then the war. Yes, it was a dark episode for everyone. And her work reflects it, even if she wasn’t there. She does a lot of black, doesn’t she? Black backgrounds. Black foregrounds. Black undergrounds. Tehran noir, they call it. A political statement? Well, perhaps. Religious commentary? We’re not really sure. Some people say it’s feminist. That’s one thing about black: it’s certainly adaptable. The announcement on that Franco-German channel made a big deal about her use of black. We heard about the reviews. Obscurity and the veil, etc. Shadows that reveal the light, and so forth. She was interviewed by that French intellectual fellow, wasn’t she, the one with long hair? And did you see “The Dark Daughter of Persia” headlines in Die Welt? Goodness knows what her mother made of that article; we hear she arrived in France just before her dark daughter launched this exhibition. Oh, the Iranian grapevine, you know. News travels. Even across the Rhine. She is not the only Iranian who’s made a name for herself in Europe either. Italians love Iranians. So do the Spanish. And even Sweden has made a big deal of us recently. But according to one German journalist, this woman still considers herself an Iranian, first and foremost, despite the fact that she lives in Paris. She’s a spokeswoman for her country, apparently, a credit to her culture. First and foremost. So they say. We’re proud of her, of course we’re proud of her, why shouldn’t we be proud of her, such a well-known artist? But you have to admit, her style is rather special. Different. Our modern artists, those who’ve left the country, do rather like to shock. Some of the pieces are, how shall we put it, rather disturbing, don’t you think? Disconcerting. Not all that Iranian, frankly. Definitely not Persian. 88

We prefer a more classic style, you know, a more restrained expression, whatever the underground fad in Tehran might be these days. No harm in expressing yourself, of course, but this young woman always wanted to provoke more than to express. Her sister took after the father’s side of the family. This second one was always her mother’s favourite until the boy was born. Jealous little cat. Locked him in an armoire once, the servants said, full of naphthalene and winter coats. Almost suffocated the kid. They told us that she terrorized her older sister too, with stories of jinn under the bed and of Savak waiting to abduct her after school. No wonder that poor bimbo never learned to spell. Anyway, as you say, early relationships play an important role in an artist’s development. Yes, there was always a lot of tension in that family. The torn veils say it all. We have our own theories, but we wouldn’t want to gossip about old friends, naturally. Or speak ill of the dead. The General did his best for his family: a responsible husband, a generous father, but not exactly an easy man. Authoritarian with his wife and as mean as you please with his son. Perhaps that’s where our artist got her angry streak. She doesn’t give a damn about her mother, you know; leaves the poor old lady to fend for herself while she gads about with her women friends. It’s shameful. She was mean towards her brother too, the kid who got mown down in the war. They even say—well, speculation can be libellous and the General had many enemies—but they do say that her jealousy may have gone as far as fratricide. She was capable of crossing the line. What was it the Belgian reviewer said? “La ligne farouche de sa lumière manquée”? Her work proves it. Definitely something “manquée” and “farouche” about her lack of light. We can’t speak German but Die Welt called it “verpasst ihr Licht” or something. All those angled shots on the women. Yes. A lot of blurred anger, as you point out. Angry, and sort of—blurred. You think that’s an Iranian trait, do you? But you’re not implying that fratricide is also Iranian, we hope? We wouldn’t wish to 89

disagree with you, of course, but we’ve noticed that suffused anger is fashionable everywhere these days, not just in Iran. Blurred violence has become quite chic. Isn’t it why you Americans like guns? The ads prove it: all those sulky looks, no one smiling anymore. And it’s particularly stylish to show your anger if you’re an artist, they say. Especially against mothers. Yes, our Iranian artist always had problems with her mother. And the reviews have been uniformly positive about her negativity. The problem is, do artists in the Iranian diaspora still count as Iranian artists? Is their anger actually Iranian, if you get our drift, even when they’ve been living in Sweden or in France or in Germany or the US all these years? Or is anger simply inherent to exile? We do wonder about these things. Yes. We get angry about these things too, sometimes, though we’re quite good at keeping it under cover, hiding it, fudging it, whether we’re in Iran or out. Maybe that’s what you mean: Tehran blur. But so long as her work isn’t adding to the negative press about our country, we don’t mind. We find negative press rather tiresome, especially in light of all these recent terror attacks. Of course, we’ve been told that her art is terribly brilliant, even though it is based on negatives. Lots of stark contrasts, as you say: white, black. Now that certainly is a Persian trait: to see the world in blacks and whites. Very absolute. Very Iranian. Racist? Well, it’s true that the old photos she combines with the new ones are black and white too. The blur of the past, the dazzle of the ­present. Maybe that’s what you mean about her body of work: it’s all dazzle and blur. It gives us a bit of a headache, actually. To be absolutely frank with you, we have not always been, how shall we put it, altogether attracted to her body of work. No. Her body was never quite our cup of tea, even though she was pretty when she was young, attractive in her own way, as well as clever. Quite dazzling. The other sister was the blur, dumb before she was blond, as they say. But this one’s main allure was the so-called suffering mind. And 90

body, of course, the exhibition proves that: torn veils, lacerated bodies, dead babies—she certainly suffered. And so did we. We bled for her, we really did when we heard how badly that French chap treated her, and there was the other nasty episode with the radical cult that really sent her off the rails for a couple of years. But suffering, as you know, is a national trait for us Iranians. Her mother also suffers; heavens, how she suffers over that son of hers. And as you can see, our artist suffers too. She may not be Iranian in other ways, as we’ve said, but she’s fully representative as far as suffering is concerned. She does that exceptionally well. Of course you do realize that the story of her being chased out of the country was sales spin, not suffering? She wasn’t chased out at all; she chose to leave long before the Shah’s downfall. But the pitch about suffering certainly helped promote her: the censored eye, the persecuted artist. She knows how to sell herself. Oh, please don’t get us wrong, we’re speaking metaphorically, of course. We don’t mean to imply actual prostitution, though God knows what her mother thinks. It’s frankly scandalous. The poor woman must be mortified. But that girl always was ambitious. Once she fixed her eye on a prize, there was no budging her. It happened when she wanted to leave Tehran and finish her studies in France too. Her mother begged her not to leave, literally wept her eyes out. Her father put his foot down, but it always diminished the man when he did that. She would not leave him in peace until she got her way. Quite a match for his obstinacy. But he should never have given her the use of his fancy apartment off the Champs-Élysée. There she was, criticizing the Shah, claiming to be a Marxist, and milking her old man for all he was worth. Of course the apartment off the Champs-Élysée was sold decades ago. And they say the old man died of prostate cancer, but in our opinion—well, it’s not in our culture to advertise that sort of thing—but you can’t avoid it, can you? It’s all over her work: torn and lacerated bodies and babies and then, of course, castration. 91

Hard to ignore that. Enlarged to volcanic proportions. All over the Potsdamer Platz. Blazoned across Beaubourg. Inflated in the Tate and superimposed over everything. It doesn’t look all that super to us, quite honestly. An Iranian woman shouldn’t have that sort of attitude towards her father, even if she is an artist. It’s bad enough to abandon one’s mother in Paris, but it’s quite shocking to see such lack of respect for one’s father. But art elevates, isn’t that what you people say? Castration is one step away from sublimation? Ah. Well. We wouldn’t be qualified to know about such things. It’s true her work is avant-garde, but we have been rather struck by there being more avant than garde, if you know what we mean, and perhaps a little too much of the derrière. No wonder you’re going back for a second look! Yes, she’s certainly had success on all fronts and has made her mark, whichever way you look at it. A female Damien Hirst some call her. An Iranian Judy Dater. If she could really be called Iranian. It’s one thing making a name for yourself as an artist but it’s quite another bringing disgrace to your country. Why go to such lengths to shame our nation? Why violate our cultural values in the name of art? We don’t mind advertising our grief or even dramatizing our victimhood, but we never wash our dirty linen in public. Never. Oh please don’t think us too harsh. We wouldn’t dream of slandering our own. But if truth must be told, her photographs have caused a bit of a scandal in our community. She has her critics. Some of us think she has gone a bit too far. Quite overboard, in fact. These mullahs know a thing or two; they recognize deviancy when they see it. They chased the Shah out of the country, and we’ll never forgive them for that, but that was just reactionary antiAmericanism, and possibly justifiable, if you’ll forgive us for saying so. It’s women like this who are the real enemies of the state, and they know it. It’s women like this who should be under lock and key. In fact, our prisons today are filled with women like this, feminists, prostitutes, poets, artists, so-called free thinkers and they 92

ought to be kept there permanently, in our opinion. She almost fell into the clutches of those mullahs once, during her political phase, when she was travelling to Iran undercover. In fact, we don’t mind telling you, confidentially of course, that it might have been better all round if she had. Better, that is, for us. Not that we support them, you understand. We are not religious ourselves, not at all. We can be positively anti-clerical when required. But you don’t have to support a regime to sympathize with its politics. Why, we’d be willing to bet there are thousands in our country as well as yours who would agree with that. So no, we won’t join you this time. Not at this time. It’s true, we haven’t actually seen the exhibition yet, but we’d rather give it a miss right now, if you don’t mind.

93

NEIGHBOURS

S O M E M O N T H S A F T E R T H E NAW RU Z PA RT Y I N A M E R I C A ,

at which Ali never materialized and to which Lili never came, Bibi went to France to stay with her second daughter, the artist. An agreement had finally been reached by the sisters, after several heated phone calls, which included many references to Mehdi and Bahman: Bibijan was to remain in Paris for six months during the summer and return to Los Angeles when the weather grew cold, and Fathi was to bring her money out of Iran, at the start of each visit and stay for a week in each place, with the sisters. But the first time Bibi stepped into this shoe box of an apartment on the top floor of the ancient building where Lili lived in Paris, with its shower that dribbled mouse’s urine and its purplepainted toilet smelling of cheese, she was ready to leave that same night. As difficult as it had been for her in Goli’s home, with a husband who clearly found her presence burdensome enough to spend most weekends away, and two children who didn’t like talking Persian or her cooking, this was worse. The hot summer air in Lili’s apartment smelled of stale smoke and pigeon droppings, and when she opened the balcony door leading off from the tiny 94

kitchen that morning, Bibijan found herself walking straight outside, just to breathe. And the first thing she noticed, once out, was that there was nowhere else to go. The kitchen balcony led to nothing: it was so narrow that only one person could stand on it at a time. The rest of the flat was narrow too, consisting of a series of tiny rooms leading one into the other: a bedroom, a sitting room, a dining area with a tiny kitchen in the corner, and a bathroom and toilet at the far end of the corridor. The second thing she saw, looking down into the courtyards, was a naked man, smoking. Bibi gulped in a cloud of raw nicotine, and backed immediately into the apartment again. Good thing Fathi hadn’t arrived from Tehran yet. Her daughter mocked her. “You won’t find a garden blooming on the top of a building in the Marais, you know,” she said. Lili was smoking, surrounded by a blue cloud of irritation. Bibi could tell that she was put out about Fathi coming the following week. She resented Fathi. She had argued with Goli over Fathi. Why Fathi? When? For how long? And just because you’re too chicken to go yourself ? she told Goli. After which there had been a long pause and she had added, that well, Goli couldn’t expect her to go, surely? “And what on earth did you expect would be out there anyway?” she now called out, as Bibi stumbled back indoors. The old woman had half hoped to find another room, perhaps, leading off from the so-called cuisine americaine; where on earth was Fathi going to sleep in this mousetrap of a flat? And besides breathing, she had wanted to see the view from the balcony; she had wanted to check on the neighbours. It was her way of feeling at home, seeing the neighbours. But the man who was living three floors down from Lili was a knife sharpener, as well as naked. What kind of a neighbour was that? “If he’s the young one, it could be the knife sharpener’s son,” her daughter replied, as if that excused him. “Or perhaps his apprentice.” And then she told her mother, somewhat testily, that 95

Fathi would just have to sleep on the floor of her bedroom for the moment. She would ask the landlord about renting a chambre de bonne one floor up in the attic, just for the week that Fathi was here. Bibi found Lili’s view depressing. Her kitchen balcony faced north and was surrounded by a rusty railing. There was an ill-­looking mop and a dirty bucket leaning in one corner, and an abandoned flower­ pot in the other, together with a nail-bitten broom. The flower­pot had been used as an ashtray and so her daughter’s remark about the garden was clearly defensive. The remains of the plant that had given up growing in it stuck out of the blackened soil like a dead man’s amputated arm, but the living man, who was stripped to the waist on his rooftop terrace below, was sitting under a row of vibrant bamboo plants in the new sunlight, glowing. “Oh, that one,” Lili qualified. “It’s probably the knife sharpener’s lover; I’m not sure which of them smokes.” She liked to scandalize her conservative, religiously inclined mother. The remark was supposed to be a joke, a poke, a tease, only the old lady didn’t find it funny. Perhaps she was just too old. Perhaps she had stayed in Iran too long. And Lili clearly felt that Fathi should not have left at all. Her daughter’s sense of humour had changed since she had become French, thought Bibi sadly. The building in which Lili lived, constructed in the late seventeenth century, was old too. Everything in it was crooked, everything sagged. The ceilings sloped, the overhead beams were a constant threat, the floor dipped and rose and gave Bibi vertigo. Lili told her this was what made the place interesting; the Marais was a chichi place to live, she said. But her mother preferred convenience to chic. The building backed onto others of the same vintage, and was paralleled on each side by a huddle of apartment blocks without balconies. So there was actually no view at all from the third storey, except rooftops, washing lines, and the courtyards below. The only hint of a neighbour was the knife sharpener on his sunlit terrace, and a large black van parked at the back. 96

It belonged to a company that used the double courtyard down below as a parking lot: a taxi, ambulance, and hearse service. “To cover all eventualities,” Lili added coolly. Bibi thought it in very bad taste that her daughter should live flanked by a funeral parlour on one side and a knife sharpener on the other. It was shameful as well as ill omened. Where on earth could one look, she thought, glancing uneasily to the right and left, except at the glimpse of green below. The row of bamboo plants was tall and thick; the fresh young shoots thrust up like eager spears. She was fascinated by the way the leaves swayed and glistened, catching the light on the rooftop. The smoking man was sitting in the crosshatched shade, under a canopy of green knives. “Maybe it’s the sharpener himself,” said her daughter, inhaling fiercely. “Hot work, filing knives.” But as she watched the old woman leaning over the balcony railings, she called out again, “Look out! He could be dangerous!” She meant that to be a tease too, funny ha ha, to cover up her anxiety, and when Bibi came inside, she laughed again through smoke, saying that it had been a joke, just a joke. But it wasn’t. Bibi turned away, for the sake of respect, not to register its lack, not to see this difficult daughter of hers stubbing the cigarette out in the kitchen sink. Lili smoked too much, in her opinion. It was just as bad in this country as in Iran, as far as cigarettes were concerned, but at least some people did it out of doors here. When she asked who the other neighbours were, apart from those who sharpened knives and drove the dead and the dying around, Lili did not know. She had no idea who lived below her, or above the taxi and hearse service, or who was renting the apartments adjacent to the knife sharpener’s shop next door. It amazed Bibi that you could live cheek by jowl for years and be completely ignorant of who people were. “Why would you want to know?” growled her misanthropic daughter. The old woman sighed. All she knew was that she was missing 97

home at that moment, missing Fathi, missing her neighbours. Lili had become antisocial too, since coming to France, but the two sisters were identical in this regard for there had been no neighbours in Los Angeles, either. Goli had something called “Neighbourhood Watch,” but it did not mean you were friends with people; it just meant you spied on each other, you on them and they on you. Bahman seemed to have a running feud with the neighbours; when he wasn’t away, surfing, in the place that sounded like a Canadian animal, he was arguing with them about the cat yowling on one side, the dog encroaching on the other. He had threatened to shoot the cat. It was normal to do that in America, apparently. There were guns specially sold for that purpose. In Tehran, Bibi had been friends with all her neighbours and their cats; she had been on talking rather than shooting terms with them. Some she had known for decades. Good people, kind people, closer than family almost. One reason she had finally left Iran was because it was no longer home without her son. But she had felt homeless in the West, without her neighbours. It was not until three days before Fathi was due and one day after Lili had a loud row with the landlord about money, that Bibijan, finally overcoming her jet lag, noticed the noises. The neighbours below her daughter’s apartment were noisier than any she’d ever had in Tehran. The shriek of drills in the knife sharpener’s establishment was like a dentist’s. It perfectly echoed Lili’s grinding resentment towards Fathi. The landlord had told her that it was too short notice for them to rent the maid’s room in the attic, but it might be free from next month, which was too late for Fathi. It would, however, cost extra because it was a little quieter on that side which would be better for Bibi. But who needed to sharpen that many knives? “Murderers,” muttered her daughter. The taxi and ambulance service used industrial vacuum cleaners that whined and blasted like Lili’s temper too. Although the 98

hearse had not been called out yet, the blare of the radios and the gust of the siren caused Bibi’s heart to seize in panic every time she heard them. It was like nails being scraped across the walls, across the naked flesh of the black and white women staring down at her from the walls. When she first saw her daughter’s larger-than-life photographs, her mother was concerned for Fathi: she would be shocked outright; she would be appalled at the sight of their nipples. Although the faces of the naked women remained implacable, it seemed to her that their bodies buckled and cringed at the noises from outside. Why turn the volume up so high? “To cover the screams,” scowled her daughter. She had become cynical too, in France, thought Bibi. But why? On what grounds? Bibi turned her back on the photographs to avoid seeing the scars of history, raked across the naked flesh. Was it her fault that Lili had left home so soon, so young? She had lost her youth radically too, and brutally. Something nasty, an event that did not bear thinking about, had happened to her at university in France. But whatever it was—and Bibi had never asked, never wanted to know—whatever Lili had endured in youth, she had not been subjected to screams. Her daughter had left Iran long before the Revolution. She had never experienced the war, had never endured the deprivations of sanctions. She hadn’t even been there when Ali disappeared. Although it’s true, she visited afterwards, several times, wearing a veil that reeked of fear and fury. Bibi bit her lip. She did not want to dwell on the past, on the unmentionable losses of her daughter, on the fate of her vanished son. She did not want to think of the disturbing times in Tehran. But she could not help remembering some of her neighbours who had also disappeared and others who had screamed. Now, their bitterness may have been justified; they may have had just grounds for cynicism. There was the elderly couple living next door whose home had been broken into in the middle of the night, and a young man at the end of the road who went to work one day and 99

never returned. His wife was abducted too, some weeks later; they said it was because she had been teaching underprivileged kids to read in the lower end of town. They were apostates, Fathi told Bibi, ducking under her headscarf as if the very word might contaminate her. They were spies, aliens, undermining the regime, she said. Bibi couldn’t believe it. Spies for whom? For what? But the facts were covered up, the information suppressed. Fathi thought they must surely have been communists, terrorists, Zionists, Kurds, Christians, Bahais, Afghans, Sufis, homosexuals, or all the above. Mehdi advised her to ask no questions if she wanted to see her son back. It had all been silent, suffocated. But when, some months later, the elderly couple next door were hauled off in the middle of the night too, they had called out for help. They had screamed. It had been impossible for Bibi to sleep after that. Things happened in Iran which did not bear thinking about, she thought. But she could not help thinking about them now. Bibi unfortunately had plenty of time to think in the tiny apartment in the Marais. Perhaps Lili’s cynicism was her fault after all; perhaps she should have been more concerned about her daughters and less obsessed with her son. To calm the agitation of these thoughts, she took to the balcony again, and rested her eyes on the bamboo garden below. The knife sharpener, or his apprentice or perhaps his lover or maybe his son, was beautiful to watch, long-limbed and limber in his movements. Like the journalist from Bandar Abbas. The young man had come looking for his parents a few days after the elderly couple’s arrest; he had travelled by bus, all the way from the south. The old people had been very proud of him; he wrote for the papers, they said. A journalist. The year before, at Naw Ruz, they had shown her, their trusted neighbour, his photograph: a fine young man, with his wife beside him and a little girl holding a dish of sprouted lentils. Which was how she recognized him, six months later, standing distraught in the middle of the street, holding a shoe. 100

Which is why she had allowed herself to be infected by Fathi’s suspicions. She was afraid. She had done nothing to help him. It was dangerous in Iran, in those early days of the Revolution, to be seen talking to people who stood distraught in the middle of the street. Especially journalists. It was unwise, so soon after the start of the war, to be seen consoling those who grieved. If they were true Muslims, they should be proud of their dead. As she should be, of her disappeared son, Mehdi warned. She had too much to lose. Don’t take risks, he had said. Ali was still unaccounted for and she could jeopardize her compensation for his death. The General had recently died and she needed to protect her widow’s pension. So she stayed indoors until she thought the neighbour’s son had left. She did not send Fathi down to him; she did not invite him indoors. And no one else did either because when she finally left the house to go to the market, there he still was, in the middle of the street, a grown man, weeping. She blinked away the memory hurriedly and wiped her eyes. There had been rumours, some months afterwards, that the young man had been attacked in his car, murdered in broad daylight in Bandar Abbas. On the same baseless grounds. She had no idea what had happened to his wife and child. No, it did not bear thinking about. She should have stayed in California, where you didn’t even see your neighbours, because good grief, there was this one again, airing himself as if he were completely alone! She peered over the rusted railings to where the knife sharpener’s apprentice or lover or son sat with his legs wide open under the thatch of green below. The fact that she didn’t know who the fellow was made the young man’s proximity all the more unnerving. Neighbours in Europe were too alien to be living so close. Bibi peeped down at the young man furtively. His tanned chest was covered with a thick pelt of black hair. Blue tattoos snaked across his belly. He must be about the same age as Ali would be now. But what surprised her most was the book in his hand. He had 101

stopped his filing and grinding and whetting in the sweltering workshop and had come out on the rooftop, not just to smoke and air himself, but to read. What on earth would a knife sharpener read? “Crime fiction, probably,” answered Lili, impatiently. She was on the phone again, but it wasn’t with Goli this time. She had a busy social life, this French daughter. She had things to do; she had people to meet. She was the member of a cultural association whose activities she had promised to take Bibi to, so she could get to know some other Iranians in the quartier, she said, so she could have friends in the neighbourhood. She wanted her mother to get out of the flat, to stop brooding, to have a life, as she put it. She herself definitely had one now, in spite of having lost it before: she was fully occupied with her interviews and art exhibits, her conferences and her cultural goings-on. Bibi felt she was a burden on Lili, a mother who had intruded from the past, to stay for inconveniently long in the present. What was it called, when you strangled people’s hopes in the future? Crime indeed, but not fiction, she thought sadly, her thoughts drifting back to her vanished neighbours, and their missing son. Those murderings and massacres had not been imagined; those abductions, desertions, and arbitrary arrests had really happened. The crime had been hers, not theirs; she had betrayed her neighbours’ trust. She had turned a deaf ear to their screams just as she had to her daughter’s vulnerabilities, when Lili had first left Iran. The last thing she wanted now was to be introduced to her compatriots in this quartier. They would remind her too painfully of all that she had left unsaid, all she had lost and left undone. That night, she dreamed of the knife sharpener’s apprentice. She dreamed that she had crept out onto the balcony in Lili’s flat and was spying on him when he suddenly turned round and looked up at her. And she realized then that he was Ali, her own boy, with the blue marks of a whip across his heart. And she woke up to the scream of the ambulance siren. 102

ENDANGERED

H E WA S S U P P O S E D TO B E WA I T I N G F O R U S AT T H E S TAT I O N .

Was he lost? Or were we? People came and people went—a young woman wearing a cherry red coat; an elderly gentleman struggling with a wheel-less suitcase; a pair of youths plugged into music, walking blindly into us, until they swerved at the last minute and loped down the steps to the metro—but none of them were Persians. There was also an old woman who hurried into the toilets with an air of disconcerting urgency. But no one was there to greet us on behalf of the Iranian Cultural Association. We placed ourselves and our instruments in the middle of the marbled concourse, as close to the arrival platform and as far from the smelly public toilets as possible. And waited. We were actually more bothered by the logistics than the toilets. Our concerts had been far better organized in Sweden. The combination of Spanish and Iranian definitions of punctuality were disastrous. We wondered if we should take a taxi straight to the hotel. But the train had come in earlier than scheduled. Our host might show up just as we were leaving and it would be the height of discourtesy to go before giving him a chance to appear. Besides, 103

the arrangements for our brief sojourn in Barcelona depended on him: he knew all the concert venues, the radio interviews. We had been told that he was in charge of our program. He had to come. We wondered what sort of Persian he was: the old, carpet-­ selling type or the younger, Spanish incarnation? Having been trapped by the importunities of the former during our cultural tours in the past, we hoped for the latter on this occasion. Though we were not looking forward to the low-slung sports car he would probably be driving or the size of his TV screen. Nevertheless, we preferred a swanky, modern flat to gilt mirrors and carpets and imitation Louis XV furniture. If our host was the old sort of Persian, we did not want to stay in his home. We felt endangered by that species. There seemed to have been some disagreement about where we would stay. The Association first informed us it would be one place, only to change plans at the last minute and propose another. We dreaded competition in the Persian community and would have much preferred a hotel, but when we suggested it, we were told that visiting artists always stayed with this particular gentleman because his home was so big. All the most important guests who were invited to the town by the Iranian Cultural Association stayed with him, we were told. That sounded even more ominous. But you can’t look distrustful when you are waiting to be picked up at a station; you can’t look suspicious, when bearded, foreign, and surrounded by odd-sized baggage. You have to look bright, cheerful, and professional. So we wiped the worry off our faces and smiled in an unfocussed but significant way at people drifting by. No one stopped. No one responded. Then we started to look at the passersby more closely, more expectantly, poised for recognition, hoping to make eye contact. But people looked away. We definitely looked suspect even if we were trying hard not to be suspicious. There was clearly something wrong with our image. Were we too young, too male, too bearded? 104

What was our host’s image? Perhaps he was one of those young professional types too, breezing by with a laptop slung over his shoulder, in such a hurry to prove his busy-ness that he missed seeing us. Perhaps he was a lawyer, an engineer, a computer scientist brought up and educated here, who had carved out a Spanish identity for himself in order to be as different as possible from his Iranian father. Perhaps he had been asked by the Cultural Association to do his duty but did not want to meet us any more than we wanted to meet him. Maybe he actually had no interest in classical Persian music of the sort we performed, and feared we were the old species. We glanced nervously, to the left, to the right. The delay was becoming more and more disquieting, the odours from the public toilets increasingly offensive. We were anxious to move our santours and tars further off. But our host had been told to come to the platform where the train was due to arrive. If we moved away, we might risk missing him. We were trapped and it was getting later by the minute. The train’s arrival time had passed. It was probably no longer even indicated on the board. Did this stupid Persian know the time of the interview? Did he realize that a journalist was due to speak to us at a hotel in midtown in less than an hour? The only information we had been given about this part of our promotional tour was the name of the host, the name of the journalist, and the name of the hotel. We decided that if the Persian did not show up in the next few minutes, we would catch a cab and go to the hotel on our own. We could not risk being late for a journalist just because of an incompetent committee. Why were Iranians so bad at administration? Why were they so unreliable, so incapable of proper organization? The fellow was too much to keep us waiting like this! Besides, we did not want to be holed up in the purple-carpeted flat of some parvenu dot-com kid, or stuck in the mansion of some nouveau riche businessman. We would definitely book ourselves into the hotel. And as we turned away to leave, we saw him approaching. 105

A stout little man, waving frantically at us from the other side of the station. A short, fat, breathless individual, sweating profusely, wading rather than walking in our direction. His coat did not meet around the barrel of his paunch, and his arms were working furiously, like oars, as he rowed himself across the gleaming expanse of the marble floor. He did not look like a lawyer, an engineer, or a computer scientist; he did not even look like a businessman. And he certainly wasn’t young or remotely Spanish. From his uncertain progress and grim manner of locomotion, it looked as though he were suffering from pain in the left hip, rheumatism in the knees, and a general stiffness of the joints. But his iron-grey hair was still thick and slicked back with oil like a gigolo’s, and his beaming smile of welcome was unbearably familiar. He crowed out our names in greeting. His front teeth protruded alarmingly; his hyperboles were all we dreaded. “I was on the other side of the station!” he cried. “Since ten o’clock this morning! Welcome! Welcome!” he added. It was a reproach, couched in the most exaggerated terms of respect. He had been waiting for us far longer than we had waited for him. He extended his arms to embrace us. Our hearts sank. You could smell ghormesabzi on him from a thousand leagues away; why do so many Persians of a certain age reek of garlic and fenugreek? He had the air of a down-at-heel travelling salesman or secondhand car vendor. His shoes creaked as he walked, or rather ambled beside us, and the cuffs of his sleeves had evidently seen better days and more bleach. We suspected he had passed through many other ports of call before washing up on these shores, for his Spanish was almost nonexistent and his English even worse. He spoke to us in the Farsi of traders. He had left Iran decades ago but still exuded Persian-ness, was steeped in it, soaked in it, pickled in it, brewed. He stank of the Grand Bazaar, the Bazaar-i-Bozorg in Tehran. Were it not for the fact that he was clean-shaven, he might have just left the old country yesterday. 106

And he overflowed with cordiality, oozed joviality, showered us with hospitality, liberality, affability. He suffocated us with kindness and goodwill. Although we were younger than he was, he claimed our suitcases with one hand, and since we insisted on carrying our instruments ourselves, waved his mobile phone in the other. “My wife has called me three times to ask when we will be coming for lunch!” he said as we set off. “She cannot wait to welcome you to our humble home!” We tried to cover our dismay by mouthing courtesies. How wonderfully good of him, how extremely kind of him, but he must surely know that we were expected in the foyer of the hotel in half an hour? Unfortunately there would be no time to pass by and pay our respects to his dear wife before the first interview. Perhaps he would be so good as to drop us off at the hotel as soon as possible; did he know where it was? Of course he knew. No problem. He knew everything. No problem. He knew the hotel, the journalist, the name of the radio program, absolutely no problem. He probably knew the receptionist as well and each of the hotel maids too; it was all under control. He also knew, as he was at pains to point out within five minutes of making our acquaintance, our fathers, our mothers, multiple sets of our antecedents going back three generations, several cousins, an aunt in Toronto, a sister-in-law in Perth, and didn’t we have relatives in Paris and LA? The daughters of that military gentleman whose wife was a distant relation of his mother’s second cousin? And wasn’t there a son who died in the war? Such a nice boy; he’d met him when he was little, at the grand family wedding in Tehran years ago, before—you know—Yes, we knew that he knew them all. But he had not known where to wait for us when we stepped off the train. He had been standing at the other side of the station because, you see, there was another exit from the same platform at that end, he said. So very sorry that we had been kept waiting. In the meantime, where was his car parked? 107

He seemed to have forgotten. By the time he remembered and we carried our musical instruments and suitcases all the way to his battered red Fiat, several blocks away from the station to “save” as he put it, on the parking fare, we were absolutely determined to pay for our own rooms in the hotel. We could just imagine, after squeezing all our luggage into the little car—“only my wife’s,” he apologized, because his son had “taken the Benz” to Madrid that weekend—and from the terrifying unpredictability of his driving, what his house and furnishings would be like. We could just imagine the tiered lace curtains, the too-low tinkling chandeliers over the plastic sheet spread over the stained lace tablecloth in the dining room, the walnut veneer and gilded furniture, the obscene piles of carpets everywhere, including in the kitchen. We could smell the fried ­onions in the bathroom and hear the jabber of the TV which was permanently on in the lounge. No, this species of Persian was unsupportable. We would not survive his hospitality. We would book ourselves into the hotel. It was the only way. It took a while to find the hotel. He asked three people, including a taxi driver, for directions, before swerving back and forth across the traffic lanes, crossing a busy intersection on a red light, and finally jolting to a stop, with our musical instruments rocking in the boot, in the no-parking area in front of the hotel door. At that point there were only ten minutes left before the interview. We begged him to feel free to go home and have lunch with his wife. No need to wait for us, we urged. He refused. Nothing would make him even consider it. Not for a moment would he think of abandoning us. “Of course I will wait for you!” he insisted. “It is my privilege; it is my honour. To wait for you. To have you bring the classical arts of Iran to our city. To hear you speak at our Cultural Association. To listen to you play Iranian music on the radio! I will park the car and wait until you are ready.” 108

Our hearts sank as the journalist drew near. There was no time to even check into the hotel, no time to book rooms for ourselves before the interview began. And besides, our host still had our suitcases in the boot of his car. He was not going to relinquish the santour and the drums, the tar and the pipes for a moment. So all we could do, as the journalist called for a coffee and started the questions rolling, was to hope that we would resolve the matter later. And all we could think about for the next hour, as the journalist asked us to talk about everything other than Iranian music, about the political situation in Iran and about the role of the clergy in Iran and about the situation of women in Iran and about the plight of political prisoners in Iran, was our luggage, trapped in the boot of the little red Fiat, that was not in Iran, but was circling round and round the block in search of a parking place in Barcelona. Once the interview was over and the journalist left, we looked round for our host. He was nowhere in sight. Had it not been for the fact that he still held our suitcases hostage, we might have even been relieved; we might have tried to give him the miss, as it were. But in the end, there was no choice. We had to find him, because we had to stay with him. And not just because of the suitcases. There was no room in the hotel. In fact, there was no room in any hotel in Barcelona that weekend. By a curious circumstance, fifty-five thousand travellers had coincided with our two-day visit here. They had arrived from the four corners of Europe and the United States to attend a world fair dedicated to the buying, the selling, the marketing, and the technological improvement of mobile phones. The city was crawling with agents and developers and representatives of mobile phones. And they had taken up every single bedroom and bathroom in all the hotels of Barcelona. In fact, had we really been attentive to our careers, we would have known about this and instead of coming to this city just to play for a bunch of homesick Iranians, we would have arranged to sell our music as a ring tone jingle to one of the mobile phone companies. 109

We finally found our host seated in a corner of the deserted hotel dining room, clutching his own mobile. No, he had not returned home in the interim. Nor had he had any lunch as yet. Four hours had passed since he had begun his long wait for us in the wrong side of the station and in spite of the Spanish custom of eating late, he must have been starving. His wife had probably called him repeatedly to find out when he was arriving. The rice was no doubt soggy or burned by now, the khoresh certainly overdone. She must have asked him where the heck he was, what on earth we were doing, why in heaven we were taking so long. And he must have had to pacify her, console her, and counsel her to patience. She was probably having hysterics. When he finally drove his little car jauntily onto the pavement outside the hotel to pick us up again, he was wheezing with exertion. We clambered in, feeling a miserable mixture of frustration and shame. We had really put this poor fellow out. We had put his wife out too. With this species of Persian, you can never win: you are either infuriated by them or you feel terrible about their rheumatism and their self-sacrifice. Heaven knows how far away this poor man had had to go to park his car in a congested city brimming with mobile phone representatives, or how much he had been obliged to pay for the privilege just so we could dodge the impertinent questions of a journalist who, as expected, was more interested in our politics than our music. We felt abashed. We had not asked him where he lived. Since we were playing at a concert in downtown Barcelona that evening, immediately after the Association gathering that was due to take place in just two hours, we had assumed his house was within the city limits and that we were being put up there in order to facilitate our return. But as our host wended his way through the industrial outskirts of Barcelona and headed onto the main auto route, we realized that his home was in another town altogether. No wonder he had not popped back for lunch while he was waiting for us! Where the hell 110

was he taking us? Who knows when he had left that morning or how long he had spent in the traffic to meet us at the station. As it was, having already spent half an hour to reach the highway, we drove a further half hour, in the rain, before we reached his house. And he spoke nonstop all the way, repeating everything he had said before: about the privilege of our company, about the honour of having us stay in his humble home, about how eager his wife was to welcome us. She had been cooking for three days, he said. And their little grandson was so excited to meet us, although his father, their own son, was unfortunately unavailable. He travelled all the time, their son, selling computer systems; he literally lived in the “Benz,” on the go, since the divorce. Yes. A sad business. His wife had left him. Just upped and gone. And so the grandparents looked after the child now, took him to school and picked him up again, because their own boy really wasn’t so good in his head since that wretched woman had left him. The doctors prescribed medication but he just drove around. Just drove around. We winced as he skidded off the highway at that point, with a loud protestation of gears. The rain was pelting down. He apologized that his wife had not come to pick us up with him. She had wanted to, of course; it would have been an honour for her. An honour. But because of the child, you know, it was not possible. And he also had to apologize for the house, he said. He began to explain about the house, as we wound our way through a wasteland of deserted construction sites. He told us that he had built a very large house some years before, fine architect, latest standards, best designs. His wife had spent a fortune on furnishings. Ran around shopping in all the capitals of Europe, buying the best fabrics in London, the finest antiques in Paris, all the tile work and bathroom fixtures from Brussels. The Belgians do good plumbing. But in the recent financial crisis—well—it was not the first time either. He had already lost his fortune in Iran during the last years of the Shah. He had to start from scratch, in Dubai 111

and again in Hong Kong; for a while he had even run a Persian restaurant in Phnom Penh. And finally, having salvaged what he could to establish his construction company in Spain, he had now lost every­thing again in the recent crisis. His grand house had just been requisitioned by the bank. Of course he had not wanted to say anything when the Association asked if he would host us. He and his wife had so looked forward to this opportunity. It was their honour, their greatest privilege. But he hoped we would not mind that this was not their house? It was just a rented property, he said, belonging to his son. But he hoped we would be comfortable here. It was a little far. But he would drive us back, of course, for the bookshop and the Association meeting. It was a little small. But he would never forget, never, how we had come all this way to their humble home. We told him it was our joy. We thanked him from the bottom of our hearts. We assured him that we would never forget this visit and said how much we looked forward to meeting his dear wife. And as he crawled to a halt and then abruptly stalled before the dripping porch of a bedraggled suburban bungalow, from which the odours of ghormehsabzi were wafting, we realized how few like him were left. He was a national treasure. He was an endangered species. And there was not one note of traditional Persian music we would ever play, not one stroke on the tar, not one breath of the flute, that could compare with the plaintive songs he symbolized.

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LOSING THE PLOT

with a drum roll of a ­sunset—or was it a sunrise?—which faded into the plaintive chant of an opening rose. It was a splendid climax. We like the grand finale of a sunrise or sunset. We love a film resolving in a rose. All our fears melt with that lovely image, all our hopes blossom with that stirring sound. There’s something characteristically Iranian, classically Persian about those symbols. You really can’t go wrong with them, as far as we are concerned. Of course there is the reed too, that other metaphor of ours. Yes, we can’t do without the reed. More anguished than the rose, more visceral than the sunset, expressive of suffering, of martyrdom, of existential pain in the old poems: T H E O L D F I L M E N D E D, A S S U C H F I L M S D O,

—rude hands grasped me, slashed me to the core, brute fingers plucked me from the soft river floor— Such images are appropriate to our heritage, our religion, our history. They recall the anguish and ardour of the nightingale, that ultimate icon of our culture and our art. They remind us that the

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golden lion, on whose back the sun of the old regime rose and set, bore aloft a curved and cruel scimitar. We are referring to the older regime, naturally, the Qajar regime of the nineteenth century, the one before the one most people now call old. Or rather what we used to call old, before we became it ourselves. People think that Persians are good at plots. They think we are masters of storytelling, the “and then and then and then” of Scheherazade. But it’s metaphorical logic we prefer. Metaphors are our forte. We love the way metaphors and similes shift and change, ignoring consequence, reversing temporal direction. Conspiracy theories we have no trouble with, but we’re not so hot on plot, at least in the narrative sense. What we look for in a film are the roses and the sunsets. And the reed: —my skin they flailed till I was raw, my lips they split, my throat they cruelly tore— And we certainly had metaphors in that film about the really “ancien regime,” that film that ended with the rising sun. What was it about? Ah, there you are, you see. We have forgotten the plot, unfortunately. Plots are frankly what we’ve lost in recent years; we just can’t keep up with cause and effect. But images, yes: they stay with us. What we remember is how elegantly the metaphors were reflected and reversed, how beautifully they were echoed and mirrored, from first to last. Those old films were less about who, what, and where, and more about how far the metaphor could be extended. And they were certainly pushed as far as they would go in that film about the Qajars—the frock coats, the tall caps or taj, the rows of polished brass trays in a market stall and the twinkling copper lamps in the bazaar, innumerable wall-eyed people standing on roofs to watch men about to be blown from the mouths of cannons or branded with red-hot irons or shod like horses and made to run through the dusty streets—that old world was beautifully captured by the film 114

we’re telling you about, the film about the dying of the rose, the crying of the reed: —for when you’ve cut and stripped me, burned and split me, dip me in the ink of gall; bend low to hear my plaintive wail— It was a fine film, with the old-style actors all dressed in beautiful robes, pacing up and down in formal gardens where roses were well represented even if they were clearly artificial, standing beside rippling fountains whose waters drowned out the dialogue but never mind, because it was the paisleys on the costumes that counted, it was the inarticulate music of the long soliloquies, ­intoned in rolling couplets underneath a blaze of chandeliers that we appreciated, or the way the actors postured and ordered, in eloquent rhyming verse and with hand gestures of great solemnity, the lighting of the cannon fuse or the placing of burning brands on the open palms of the condemned man sitting motionless before them in his snow-white robes. They enunciated properly, those actors, spoke in careful undulating cadences, whether addressing their sovereign in particular, or the garden in general, or the prisoner who was about to be whipped through the town on bleeding feet. One was never shown feet in these films, naturally. Or blood. One just heard the wail of the lamenting reed, the questioning and answering: —And so in spite of all you’ve done and all I have endured, say this: that though my love for you has killed me, cut me off from bliss, only with tears of separation in my eyes, can I at last see true reunion and recognize . . . — What was to be recognized didn’t matter. Why there was suffering was neither here nor there. These films were memorable because 115

of the complete lack of consistency, the absence of logic. We cannot bear the justified violence in films nowadays. Our old rose and reed films were like dreams, soothing to watch even when people were executed. They were deliberately slow, those lingering sunsets, those torches lit and raised to the lip of the waiting cannon. The reed wept without recourse to lastminute rescue. The sun suffered its demise without undue haste. The rose was a perfect non sequitur as it bloomed and faded for no reason. Prisoners died flat on their faces and caused no further trouble to the conscience. What mattered was the aesthetic connection between the brandished scimitar on the sovereign’s standard and the curved crescents on the embroidered robes of the Grand Vazir; what counted was the link between the bloodred roses on the bushes and the people thirsting for blood on the rooftops. The man tied to the mouth of the cannon had no part in the dialogue. Those films were songs rather than stories. They were pictures rather than plot. They were not like the jigsaw puzzles one watches in the cinema these days where you have to fit the heart-stopping, car-chasing, rat-racing pieces together in your head as you sit there in the dark; where questions are asked running around the streets in traffic jams but are never answered; where the guilt of trying to kill and not be killed is never wholly established; and where the action takes place in crowded corridors because in the last analysis, everyone is equally to blame. We cannot understand these domestic dramas full of inarticulate dialogue and choked monosyllables in a cramped flat that end in an explosion of family dysfunction and the sound of scraping chairs. We cannot take the strain. In those old films we did not need to remember who said what to whom, or which of the characters was responsible for whether it was a tragedy or comedy, or when the contradictory meanings of love or justice would suddenly make sense of the story. There was basically no story. 116

Cause and effect were not the main issue in those films; sequence and consequence were irrelevant. You didn’t need to have understood a thing as the titles rolled down the faces of separated lovers, like tears. In that old Qajar film, we just needed a sunset. Which faded into a rose. Or the chant of an opening rose that melted into the drum roll of the sunset. And of course—although the details blur after a while—some thief or criminal or heretic or simply hopeful person, had to be blown from a cannon as the plaintive reed reminded us: —how much there is to say, how few can hear it, how great the love we yearn to show and how little is understood, for who can bear it—? The new Iranian films show us situations that are unsustainable, conditions that are unbearable. The circumstances depicted in these films confront us with impossible choices. The choices not only cause bewilderment and dismay to the characters in the story, but confuse us too, confound us as well. And the characters portrayed are so familiar that they demand immediate recognition. They are us and we are them. Their plight is our plight, their plot, ours. And every cunning twist in that plot line, every serpentine turn of it, every dilemma it provokes and lack of resolution it ­invites, reminds us, over and over again, that we have lost it. We have really lost the plot these days.

117

SHOPPING BAGS

She had suggested it, she had even insisted on it, she had defied Bahman to ensure that it happened, but the plan was unsustainable. Within the first few weeks, she could see that Bibi would not be able to spend half the year in Paris. And it was mainly because of Fathi. Fathi was all over the place, underfoot, underhand, and in your face the whole time; Lili could not bear it. There were other reasons besides Fathi, of course. Even though the landlord had relented in the end about the use of the chambre de bonne, her flat was small, the space too cramped for Bibi. And though she was able to keep the extra room on a sixmonth rental basis, to store her mother’s suitcases if nothing else, Lili was acutely conscious of how inadequate her home was for an elderly person, how impractical and uncomfortable. Despite the imposing entrance of the building, despite the grand doors and the majestic carved stone lintel under which they passed from the street, a narrow seventeenth-century attic apartment in the Marais was not exactly ideal for an elderly lady from Tehran. Lili had barely noticed the inconveniences before, but with Bibi

I T WA S N OT G O I N G TO WO R K , L I L I R E A L I Z E D.

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there, she was aware of every little thing that made life difficult for her mother. The flat was surrounded by traffic, even at night. When garbage trucks were not festering past at five in the morning, then street cleaners were chewing up sodden gutter rubbish at midnight. Lili herself took refuge in these comings and goings; the turmoil stopped her thinking. She liked the distraction of pigeons labouring under the eaves, the repeated hiccough and stutter of the fridge under the kitchen counter, the whining and grinding from the neighbouring courtyards. But the noises seemed to bother Bibi: she might be blind but her ears were acute. The flat was also in an awkward location. Bibi wanted to shop almost every day and the nearest supermarket was a difficult, twenty-minute walk away. Their shopping expeditions involved a long backwards stagger to Lili’s apartment, with heavy bags, on narrow pavements covered with ordure and Japanese tourists. And once they entered the interior cobbled courtyard of the building, it was even more challenging. For there was no lift and the steps up to the third floor were round a spiral staircase made of worn-out wood that sloped recklessly. “They’ll be the death of me,” sighed Bibi, leaning her head against the wall of the stairwell. And then she added, one more time, that these steps were a very poor example of architectural planning compared to the escalators in the Tehran metro. Lili bit her tongue. The Tehran metro was Bibi’s reference point for all things clean and efficient: the opposite of everything she had seen in Paris. Such a marvellous metro system! So easy to use and understand! Why even Fathi had figured it out. Her ­mother’s repetitions drove Lili up the wall. She said the steps would be the death of her the first time she staggered up to the flat and she repeated it, ad nauseam, each time they went shopping. Lili gritted her teeth and kept climbing.

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When Bibi had suggested they go shopping yet again, at the crack of dawn on the morning after Fathi left for Iran, Lili had groaned aloud. “Not again, Maadar Jan!” she begged. “Not with the fridge still stuffed with leftovers, for God’s sake!” Fathi had spent the whole week cooking up a storm; she had loaded Lili’s tiny freezer with different varieties of khoresh sauce for the next few months, as if no food in France was good enough for her, as if no one else was capable of looking after Bibi but herself. And although Lili had tried to make sure that her pantry was amply supplied in anticipation of the visit—tea, sugar, jams of all sorts, and even eggs—it turned out that the old lady liked a certain kind of sugar cube which Lili had not bought and a certain kind of tea which Lili did not have. She was most unimpressed by the dusty-looking teabags. So perhaps Fathi had been right after all. Lili was incapable of being a good daughter; she did not provide sufficient courtesy and care. Bibijan had fallen asleep very late the previous night, because she had insisted on accompanying Fathi to Charles de Gaulle airport. Lili would have liked to dump the girl on the bus, quite frankly, and send her off to the airport alone; she had argued with her mother that there was no need, but Bibi had said it was nothing to do with need, it was a question of courtesy and care. They owed it to Fathi, she said. By the time they had returned home, it was well past midnight and Bibi had been woken up early by the pigeons whirring and clacking outside the windows. She had stumbled into the living room, rousing Lili as she groped about blindly in the fridge for fruit. “Fathi told me we were running out of fruit,” she said, timidly. There was only one apple left in the fridge. Bibijan could not start the day without fruit and it definitely needed to be more than an apple. Cherries, grapes, plums, peaches, and apricots, yes. Even pears and melons, maybe. But apples? An apple was too bleak a fruit for the mornings, too farangi and foreign and frankly 120

unappealingly European. “We’ll have to buy a few basics,” she said, sweetly, to her yawning daughter. “Fathi told me we needed a little more fruit before she left.” Lili’s drowsiness evaporated into bad temper. “Not more, Maadar Jan!” she groaned. There was never enough fruit in the fridge to satisfy her mother. But what irritated her even more than yet more shopping, was the reference to Fathi. Yet again. Quite apart from haggling with the landlord to get her the chambre de bonne and living in a flat that stank of her garlic one whole week, it was the way Fathi had raised the money issue. On her last day in Paris, all hush hush, when Bibi was in the toilet, Fathi had suddenly given Lili an envelope full of cash. From Iran, she said, for Khanum. It was Khanum’s money and should be used for Khanum’s needs. “You can buy her fruit with it,” said Fathi. Lili’s pride had been stung. How dare Fathiyyih tell her what to do with her mother’s money! It was bad enough depending on her to retrieve their funds from Iran, but that did not give her the right to give instructions too. Lili took Fathi’s words as a reprimand; she interpreted them as a reproach for not having looked after her mother’s needs more adequately all these years, as a veiled rebuke for having made a fuss over paying for the extra room upstairs. She was so offended that at first she refused the envelope. But when the prolonged flush of the toilet announced Bibi’s imminent return, Fathi forced it back into her hand hurriedly, mumbling that these were Jinab-i-Bahman’s instructions, insisting that she had to obey. “Jinab-i-Bahman knows all about it,” she hissed urgently, “and that’s why Aga Mehdi mustn’t be told, so please, Lili Khanum, please promise me not to let Aga Mehdi know about this money please, or Jinab-i-Bahman will think it’s my fault!” Lili had no intention of promising any such thing, but she was so taken aback by the force of Fathi’s insistence that she accepted the envelope without another word. Best not to let Khanum Jan 121

know either, the girl added, her face darkening as Bibi came into the room. Although, she whispered irritatingly, it was for her expenses. Meaning fruit in the morning, thought Lili, twisting round in her sleeping bag and watching anxiously as her mother hunted for a kitchen knife to cut the apple. Not only was the fruit inappropriate but the knife was even more of a worry in the hands of an elderly Persian woman who could hardly tell the blade from the handle. And on the subject of inappropriateness, since when had Bahman become a “Jinab”? Or Mehdi an “Aga”? These formulas of respect had never been applied to either gentleman before. And how on earth had “Sir” Bahman found a way to extract money from under “Master” Mehdi’s nose? Both men were crooks, in Lili’s opinion, and neither of them would take kindly to being hoodwinked. The only satisfaction was that if anything went wrong, Fathi would get it in the neck. Fathi would get the blame. Lili rolled over again and tried not to look at Bibi blindly cutting the apple with the blunt knife. It was a very strange state of affairs, being paid by Fathi to buy Bibi the right fruit in France, with dirty banknotes from some hole-in-the-wall Iranian money changer. It made her very uncomfortable, this envelope. She was going to have to raise the subject with Goli again. The first time they spoke about Bibi’s money, they hadn’t got much further than mutual accusations: each blaming the other for not going to Iran to face up to this issue of the pension, each condemning either Bahman or Mehdi for cheating their mother. Goli denounced Mehdi but refused to take any responsibility for the money herself because of their father’s links with the Shah; Lili questioned Bahman’s motives but washed her hands of the affair because of her political past. So in the end Fathi had proven to be indispensable: unsupportable but indispensable. And of course she had always been incomparable. Incomparable Fathi, Unparalleled Fathi, Fathi the Unique. Although Bibi made no comment about the greasy teapot she finally retrieved that 122

morning from behind all the pasta packages in the pantry cupboard, her daughter could feel the unspoken comparisons. Fathi had not been there last night to do the washing up; Lili had done it, which was why the pot was greasy. Fathi would have made sure she had fresh fruit to eat in the morning; Lili hadn’t done that, which was why there was nothing but an apple available. And Fathi was gone, and now Bibi had been left at the mercy of Lili, who hated going shopping. It was the false sweetness couched in her mother’s disapproval which stung the most. “It won’t be much, I promise, Lilijoon. Just some basic supplies.” Lili sighed at her mother’s “basic” and turned away in order not to see Bibi reaching for the kettle with trembling, liver-spotted hands. The tea leaves she preferred to the bags would clog up the sink; the extra fruit she wanted to buy would weigh down the bottom drawers of the small fridge; the drawers would then slip out of their plastic grooves and block the drainage hole at the back; and as a result, the floor would be flooded under the faux rustic counter of the cuisine americaine, seeping into the one carpet Lili owned in the living room. Nothing she had done was good enough, and everything she would try to do would add to Bibijan’s discomfort. Lili turned like a corkscrew till the sleeping bag twisted round her body. “Basic supplies!” she grunted, pinioned on the couch with her back to her mother. Goodness knows, she had done her best. She had given Bibi the only bedroom, and was sleeping on the living room couch so that her mother could be near the toilet at night. She had cleaned up the bathroom and thrown quantities of disinfectant down the drains to get rid of the smell. She had redecorated the toilet, and although she had done this rather badly and particles of purple paint left by the roller had already started flaking off the walls, revealing a virulent yellow underneath, she had tried to cover up the blotches with her photos. It may have been an exercise in selfdefeat, but she had tried to prepare the flat for her mother. When 123

Bibi protested feebly that she could sleep in the living room herself, or in the hot and stuffy room under the eaves vacated by Fathi, Lili felt so crushed by her disapproval that she lost her temper. “I’d rather you emptied your bladder without an accident,” she said, roughly. That put a stop to the taarof. She knew Bibi would be bewildered by such a response. Her mother would have expected a more traditional answer, a more courteous mode of address from the daughter whom she had not seen for so many years. She would have wanted to be reassured that Lili loved sleeping on the couch, that it was an honour to give up her bedroom, that it was no trouble at all, so long as Bibi, may her soul be sacrificed for her comfort, was comfortable. That’s what Fathi would have said. But Lili could not stand the verbal hypocrisies of the Persian language, its hyper­bolic flourishes that hid the unspoken reproach and stinging criticism beneath the words. Her mother probably assumed that she hadn’t even bothered to change the sheets just because they were a mud colour, and wrinkled from the launderette. She was probably wondering, thought Lili, watching over her shoulder in despair as Bibi fumbled with the teabag strings, what she’s done to deserve a daughter who slept in brown sheets on the top floor flat with a purple toilet and did not even offer to make the tea for her. When her mother asked, in a martyred voice, if she’d like some too, Lili retorted, sulkily, that she only drank coffee. In fact coffee made her feel bilious; she only drank it to defy her mother. She watched in agony, through half-closed lids, as the old woman lifted the trembling kettle and poured boiling water onto the offending bags. Fathi would never have let her do this; Fathi would have prepared everything for her, would have cut up the apple, set up the teapot on the makeshift samovar of the boiling kettle, and prepared her breakfast for her. But Lili was rolled up naked in the sleeping bag. If she had tried to help, her tattoo would have added insult to injury. Bibi would have been appalled to see her in the 124

same state of undress as the posters on the walls. It was unbefitting for such a mother to see such a daughter parading around with a poorly rendered heart indelibly hammered under her left breast. “You’re probably just counting the days before you leave me, aren’t you!” she said, miserably, as Bibi put the kettle down with a sigh. And she hid her head under the pillow in order not to see her mother groping beneath the kitchen counter for the wrong sort of dried raisin instead of the right kind of sugar cube to hold between her teeth as she sipped that glass of awful, cloudy tea. Yes, Bibi would leave soon enough. Absurd as it was to bring her here, difficult as it was to cater to her, she would go back all too soon, thought Lili, feeling a ridiculous urge to cry. Bibijan’s presence reminded her forcibly of old separations. She had been absurdly young when she left home. After her sister’s extravaganza wedding and flamboyant departure for the States, Lili, who was barely fifteen, had begged repeatedly to go too. She had nagged her mother, argued with her father, and insisted that she too be allowed to go to the West. It wasn’t fair that Goli could and she couldn’t, that Goli would be free and she should stay behind. She wanted to read philosophy; she wanted to write film scenarios; she wanted to study at the Sorbonne. She demanded to go to Paris. But at the eleventh hour, when all the arrangements had been made, when her father’s friends on the Champs-Élysée had been contacted and she was set to leave, she suddenly panicked. Freedom was all very well as long as it was denied. Restrictions were easy enough to resist as long as they were imposed. But when her parents actually let her go, the wind suddenly went out of her sails. She realized that she did not want to leave Iran at all. She dreaded the idea of being met by strangers, hated the thought of their grand, gilded apartment in Paris, loathed the prospect of being introduced to their adenoidal son who was probably pretending not to be a homosexual and suffered from piles. Lili had a strong imagination and a tragic bent. 125

The night before her departure, she had faked period pains in order to lie close to her mother’s bed and hold her hand. Bibi was bone-tired from nursing her little son who had been sick the previous week, and she was weary of Lili’s histrionics. She told her daughter, rather sharply, that she should pull herself together and act her age. But, in the end, she succumbed from sheer exhaustion. Lili had slept in a narrow cot beside her mother and clung to her hand all night. Each time Bibi had tried to pull it away, she had cried. And the next morning, she had cried again, saying that she did not want to leave, did not want to live alone. At that point, Bibi lost her patience. “Stop being so silly, Lili,” she had said severely. “That’s quite enough fuss! You wanted to go, so now you’re going. Or do you prefer to tell the whole neighbourhood what a coward we have for a daughter?” Lying rumpled on her couch twenty years later, Lili flinched at the memory. Courage was a quality on which she particularly prided herself; she had spent the last two decades trying to prove that she was no coward. But in spite of Pascal and Voltaire and Jean-Paul Sartre, that bright girl, with her head of cloudy black hair and her huge, luminous eyes, had lost faith in herself. She tried to acquire toughness in order to leave her mother only to blame her mother in order to show how tough she was. Now, as Bibi tottered back into the bedroom with her glass of tea, saying that she would get ready to leave for the shops in a few minutes, Lili announced, loudly, that she was going back to sleep for another hour till they were open. “Stop being so silly, Maadar Jan,” she growled. “It’s far too early to go to the supermarket. Do you want the whole neighbourhood to know you’re constipated?” And she buried her head under the pillow again to stifle her vulgarity. How quickly we give up on ourselves, she thought; how soon we learn the arts of desertion! 126

Lili had been inordinately clever as a child and even pretty, if photographs were to be believed: prancing round the white marble veranda, dancing in the garden of their grand Tehran house, posing by the pool of water filled with carp, holding a fake fishing rod in her hand. Ali had been the baby ghost on the edges of these photos, and Goli, who was trying to act grown-up, was rarely in them. So Lili stole the show. The General may have doted on his firstborn, but Lili was her mother’s favourite. Until Ali was born. Lili was the centre of her attention. Until Bibi had a son. After that, the middle child in the family had been relegated to obscurity. Even Fathiyyih, who had been adopted by the General ostensibly to be her playmate when the new baby arrived, had more of a place in the house than she did. Fathi, Fathi, Fathi, always Fathi! There she was again, even in Lili’s dreams. Being reminded of her failures wasn’t the worst. Wrenching herself from her mother’s arms wasn’t the most difficult. The rock bottom for Lili was to have been displaced by Fathi. For when she had finally pulled herself together at Bibi’s reprimand all those many years ago, when she had walked to the car to go to the airport to fly to France to live all alone, Lili had found Fathiyyih waiting for her, as well as Mehdi, the chauffeur. Fathi was already lugging her suitcase into the boot, hauling her heavy bags into the car, dear kind Fathi always there when needed, always willing to help. But in spite of the lamentations of departure, she thought she saw a glint in Fathi’s eye, a smirk in the corner of her mouth as she waved good-bye. Looking through the rolled-up window at the girl her father had adopted from the provinces, Lili felt she had lost her place. She had been dispossessed by Fathi. And she was carsick all the way to the airport. “D’you suppose they recycle corpses down in that pompes funèbres?” Lili yawned, as the sound of the grinding garbage truck filled the room sometime later. 127

The nap was over, the tears dried, and the tea beyond tepid: Bibi was more eager than ever to buy some fruit to budge her bowels. But Lili was still lolling on the couch, smoking a cigarette, drinking her coffee without brushing her teeth. What could a mother say to a daughter who refused to dye her hair or shave her armpits? “I suppose the flowers could be plastic,” Bibi offered, as if in apology. “Well,” persisted Lili, “it hardly accounts for that kind of din.” She shuffled into the bathroom and stubbed her cigarette in the washbasin. Lili took pride in living as well as speaking rough. She was poor on principle and insisted on wearing cheap clothes, using cheap decor, and living in a cheap apartment, in what used to be an industrial zone near the Bastille. She had warned Bibi as soon as she arrived, that this was not like Goli’s house in Westwood; it may have been the chichi Marais but it wasn’t one of the fancier parts. It was, she said pointedly, all that she could afford. What she did not tell Bibi was that the rent was controlled, and had not been raised for years, so she was paying hardly anything to live there. But in spite of her Marxist leanings, Lili loved masquerading as an exiled Persian princess. When they went shopping later that morning, Bibi noticed that her daughter tipped lavishly. “It’s how we did things in Iran,” she told the fruit seller, after asking for an inordinate amount of grapes. “My mother is accustomed to catering for a large crowd,” she added with a sad smile. “We used to be rich before the Revolution, you see.” And the fruit seller, who had a particularly soft spot for Mademoiselle Lili, heaped enough grapes in the bag to feed a simian army. But as they heaved them back up the stairs to the flat an hour later, it felt as if those bags were filled with far more than grapes. Lili had the impression that she was carrying twenty years of heartbreak and loss round the corkscrew stairwell, from floor to floor. In fact she was carrying Fathi, her resentment and guilt over 128

Fathi. So when Bibi announced in mid-stairwell that it would be the death of her, Lili, who had already arrived at the top, suddenly wondered if it was because Fathi had gone. “The absolute death,” Bibijan gasped, leaning her white head against the wall. “I told you it was a ridiculous idea,” Lili snapped, looking anxiously down below. Her mother’s eyes were closed; there were dark circles round them. Her heavy spectacles had half slipped from her nose and the cloud of white hair around her sallow features accentuated the pallor of her skin. She looked ill. Lili cursed under her breath. She dumped the shopping bags in front of the door of her flat and threw her bag on the ground. Bibi was prone to angina attacks, her articles, according to Fathi, were clogged. If anything happened to her now, it would all be Lili’s fault. Her own heart constricted at the thought of being responsible for her mother’s death. She was the one who had insisted on this untenable arrangement. She was the one who had demanded that Bibi come to France every six months. If she is leaving Iran for good, she had told her sister on the phone, then let her spend half her time with me at least; why should she be marooned in America? She’ll be better off here, she said. And when Goli replied that she’d have to “raise that subject” with her husband, when he came down from surfing in Malibu, Lili had railed against America and its dumb politics and its stupid corporate speech and its absurd reduction of everything human to economics, as though Bibi were an item on the budget of a company of which Bahman was the chief executive officer. Because “the bottom line,” as Goli put it, with devastating inelegance, was that it all depended on how much money they could get out of Iran. So everything boiled down to money again, and who was going to bring the money out of Iran. Everything invariably came back to Fathi Fathi Fathi! 129

For God’s sake, don’t, muttered Lili under her breath, as she ran back down the stairs again. For the love of God, don’t, she gasped as she reached the old woman. For pity’s sake, don’t tell me that you wish Fathi were here to help. “Give it to me, Bibijan! Let me carry it,” she choked, snatching the shopping bag from her mother’s gnarled fingers, as Bibijan sagged, wheezing, against the wall. “Here, lean on me. Let’s get you back on your feet—”

130

CONFERENCE

and she was already on her feet. Before the floor was even opened to questions, there she was again, leaping forward, reaching for the microphone, ready to speak. The main presenter, the keynote speaker for this occasion and an ­author of stature both in the literal and literary sense, drew her large bulk back at the sight of the woman, as if to avoid a missile. The chairman, a wispy professor from the local university, tried to intervene and failed. The audience cringed. It was not the first time the woman in the front row of the auditorium had tried to hijack this three-day conference, to talk about human rights. Our hearts misgave at the sight of her. She was one of our own. But we were ready to deny it, because of her shocking behaviour, her appearance. She had shaved her hair off; she looked like a cancer patient. She should never be dominating the floor like this, even if she were a cancer patient. We have always respected certain rules, whoever the leaders in our country, whatever the regime in power. We have always disapproved of a certain sort of female visibility, objected to a certain kind female volubility in public. How could this woman violate the taboos? How could she T H E C L A P P I N G WA S BA R E LY OV E R

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draw attention to herself like this? Who had invited her to attend such an event? It was a pan-European cultural conference, the general aim of which was to promote multiculturalism in literature. All the superstars were there, many with a high political profile and a strong celebrity presence: Nobel prize winners, internationally renowned writers, intellectual gurus, television presenters, some even with American accents, all doubtless with transport paid, hotel costs covered, perks included, and four-digit honoraria. And now this woman. Standing up again. Hopping between languages on the microphone. Drawing attention to her linguistic agility in this condition of—nakedness! We know it has become chic to shave off one’s hair these days—an erasure of gender by women, a denial of balding in men, an act of solidarity with AIDS patients, perhaps—but she was an Iranian! We lowered our eyes as the chairman whispered to the main speaker. We felt acutely ashamed. “Mr. Chairman, might I take this opportunity to emphasize, once again—” The conference was ostensibly to promote support for the literary arts at a European scale, and there was no obvious political objective to this seemingly anodyne event. Of course, we pride ourselves on our literary tradition. Iranians are born poets; metaphors bloom off our lips as naturally as kisses on the mouths of the French. But despite the simultaneous interpretation going on in a variety of European languages, even Luxembourgish, with everyone talking equally bad English, it was clear that literature was the last thing on this woman’s mind. That head of hers was blooming with more than metaphors. She was politically motivated, there was no doubt about it. We suspected her affiliations; we believed she was dangerous. We glanced at her askance, striding about, waving that microphone. “—that culture needs the air of freedom; it cannot thrive under a dictatorship—” 132

Part of the impact was the egg-smooth scalp. Would it gleam like that if she had shaved off her hair, or—and we felt a tight knot of anxiety at the thought—or was she bald because she was indeed undergoing chemotherapy? What if she were really ill? But to advertise the fact is not the kind of thing a proper Iranian woman should do either. Hair is important to us. The reason the current regime wants our women to cover their heads is precisely because it is so important. We don’t like it when our women let their hair grow white; we think it is unbefitting for a well-brought-up Iranian woman to publicize her age or her illness. If this woman were a cancer patient, she should have been wearing a wig. Or a headscarf. But we suspected that she may have shaved that head of hers intentionally, just to make an ideological statement. Even a fashion statement. She was either copying the intellectuelle engagée model to prove that ideas could change the world, or imitating the postmodern designer look, to show that fashion too could take a stand. In either case, she was a fake, a sham, and was trying to draw attention to herself. Unforgiveable. “As others have recently reminded us, we should never forget even if we forgive—” Another reason she dominated attention was because she practically boomed when she spoke. The microphone shrieked and popped in response. A decent woman would not shout like that; a well-brought-up Iranian woman would not expose her voice in such a manner. It was the height of bad taste! We prayed for a technical breakdown to intervene, to stop her from bringing scandal to our country, our people. We have our pride. But her voice was so strident that she did not need the microphone at all; her words rang out across the entire auditorium. “—which is why cultural factors play a part in this debate. Which is why I would like to repeat—” The trouble was she was also fluent. The effortless flow of her speech simply compelled people to listen. And since she knew 133

several languages with an almost offensive facility, she was simultaneously translating everything she said. Her German appeared to be excellent, her French impeccable. Her accent was unimpeded in the former and free of that awkwardness most of us labour under in the latter: her “deux” was not “doh”; her “plus” was not “ploo.” Since many of the international speakers present depended on translators, she had the advantage over them. She was pushy, she was crass, but she was also persuasive. In fact, we could not deny it, she was eloquent. We had to admit that the woman in the front row was impressive. She was also determined to impress. You did not have to like her bald head or to agree with her mission to know that she had one. She made sure you remembered it. “—the significance of the role played by Iran in this matter—” There! She said it. She had attracted this opprobrium to herself for the sake of Iran. She was being pushy and crass, she was hijacking a discussion about European culture, to speak about Iran. We were caught between disgust and reluctant admiration for our compatriot. Wasn’t it rather brave of her to turn aesthetics to such overt political ends, to raise social issues in a literary context? Other than the unmentionable few, or one particular one more than a century ago, such boldness is rare among us. There had been women singers during the late Shah’s regime, it is true, but they had never been so radical. Women writers of the twentieth century had made their mark too, but they had never been bald, and their impact had been on the page rather than on ­society. Even the Sylvia Plath of our culture had to die before she became a literary icon. But had the time come round at last for an Iranian woman to talk about politics in a literary conference? Perhaps it was finally chic to do so, and stay alive. “—the violation of human rights in Iran must be stopped as soon as possible!” At this point, to our dismay, the chairman did manage, with a physical deftness not often witnessed among academics, to wrest 134

the microphone out of the woman’s hands. We were surprised by our dismay. We were also dismayed by our surprise that people had started rolling their eyes when the woman in the front row started, for the third time, to insist on Iran’s influence in some or perhaps all matters, political, religious, commercial. As the chairman made his way back to the podium with his trophy, she continued speaking without its aid, about the oppressed in her country, about innocent civilians dying in an unjust war, about women and children being killed by chemical contamination, about the need for Western democracies to intervene, urgently, now, at all costs, before opposition leaders and political prisoners died of eating the black mildewed bread in Evin. Her voice rang out like a clarion call in spite of people shifting in their chairs. The only thing which put a stop to her was a brief shriek from the mike as the chairman finally succeeded in bringing the discussion back to literature. He kept tight hold of the reins from then on. We sat back in our seats in turmoil, our minds reeling, our hearts pounding. We had been jolted. We had been touched to the quick by those last words. Since leaving Iran we had tried to avoid thinking too much about the war, the prisons. But how could we hear about the need for literary exchange between European countries when our innocent compatriots were dying from chemical warfare, when women and children were gasping for air in the Kurdish mountains, poisoned in the prisons of Evin and Rejai Shahr? She was right, this Iranian woman, with her unbowed head! She was reminding us of reality, of the real meaning of civilization and culture, of the true purpose for such a gathering of the illuminati of Europe! She was drawing our attention in the middle of all this literary talk to the unbearable conditions being endured by our people under the present regime. How could we thank her? We found ourselves tumbling down from our seats at the end of the question and answer period, incoherent with emotion, blinded 135

by tears. We surged towards the centre of the auditorium, borne on the waves of enthusiasm and concern. The bravery of our compatriot in seizing the floor and in raising the level of discussion infected us with courage. How right she had been to insist on such important topics in such a place! How noble of her not to care what people thought of her. Come to think of it, didn’t we know her, or someone like her? Hadn’t we recently heard from the mother of a friend who said that a friend of her mother’s had told her of an Iranian artist who had won an award for some daring photos of terminally ill patients which played on the similarity between conflict and disease? This woman was probably suffering from cancer herself; she was undoubtedly undergoing chemotherapy too, or was actually an AIDS patient. She was a heroine among these self-serving dilettantes, these intellectual snobs who lived in a bubble of their own making! We pushed our way through the crowds who had gathered round the podium to shake hands with the Nobel Prize winners, the renowned writers, the intellectual gurus, the television presenters. We sought out our Iranian heroine, tried to reach her, thank her, ask for her autograph. How beautiful her eyes were, how exquisitely fragile her head now seemed, not bald because of cancer, but shaved in solidarity with prisoners, dying or abused in Evin. She was wearing a pair of long, turquoise earrings that accentuated the elegance of her neck. She was dressed modestly, but with a peacock theme embroidered on her jacket. She was exquisitely Persian. But no, we realized, after brief introductions, she wasn’t the person we thought she was; she wasn’t the woman we knew. Never mind. There were other connections. Perhaps she knew an old friend of ours, who knew her mother very well? No, she said, looking over our heads, she did not know her mother’s friends. But it’s such a coincidence, we insisted, because thanks to her mother, to whom we sent our best regards, we had heard the story through 136

our mutual friend of an elderly lady who had just left Iran and was spending some months in Paris with her daughter, who had also lost a son in the Kurdish mountains and who had suffered for years, not knowing his fate. Just as she had been describing. How interesting, she said, looking less and less interested. Yes indeed, we said. So many had gone missing; so many had disappeared in this and other undeclared wars. And that is why we wanted her to know that we really supported her cause. We offered our services to promote it, which is easily said. We sacrificed our lives for her, which is easily done in Persian. How wonderful to hear you speak, we murmured. How impressed we were by your words. How proud we are to be your compatriots. What can we do to help our country? But she seemed preoccupied, distracted, especially when we sent our compliments to her respected mother. Although she appeared to be listening, it occurred to us, as she scribbled her signature on the program, that she actually wasn’t hearing a word of our fawning admiration, our gushing praise. She wasn’t interested in our friend who was her mother’s friend. Or in the old lady who was the friend of the friend of her mother, who had recently left Iran and had lost her son in the war. Her eyes were wandering over our shoulders as we spoke, seeking contact with someone else. If she happened to look up and smile briefly, it was because she had caught the attention of someone else. And when she finally glanced back at us, she barely saw us; when she excused herself with a perfunctory farewell, it was with evident impatience. She appeared to have other priorities than Iran at that moment. But what about the oppressed in our country, the innocent civilians? What about the women and children, poisoned by chemical weapons? And the friend of the friend of her mother’s whose son had disappeared forever, a boy whose bones had either been scattered on the Kurdish hills long ago or who was dying of tuberculosis, at this very minute, eating the mildewed bread in Evin with fifteen thousand other political captives, and prisoners of conscience? 137

We realized, as we watched that beautiful, bald head move swiftly away from us into the milling crowd, that she frankly had no time for all of that just now. Her train was leaving for Frankfurt, for Madrid, for Berlin or was it Munich, in just half an hour. She had a busy schedule ahead in Basel, in Rome, in Geneva and London. She had interviews already lined up and waiting in Paris and Stockholm. She could not waste a single second more. And before leaving, she had to talk with the main speaker, seize the attention of the Nobel Prize winner before he was whisked off to the airport, establish personal ties with important journalists while they were still in the auditorium, make sure that people here would remember her name, register her aims, note her coordinates and identify her, for future conferences and colloquia, as the best speaker, the best presenter, the best spokeswoman for Iran. The woman in the front row had no time for us. She was busy building her career, promoting her professional identity, carving out her corner in the literary marketplace of human rights, and we could tell that her price tag would be impressive. If she could prove that she had spent time in prison herself, or had any kind of association with prisoners, she would soon be in the five-digit category for a single appearance—not counting transport and hotel costs. If she got onto a best-seller list or made it into the film world on this subject, then the sky would be the limit. She would soon be in league with the Olympic stars, conference hopping on the backs of oppressed women and children, leapfrogging over the scattered limbs and bleeding torsos of innocent civilians, and forging her future by treading on the heads, whether shaved or not, of hundreds and thousands of prisoners incarcerated in our country.

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GARDEN

hidden behind high walls inside invisible courtyards, and the exclusive ones belonging to elegant buildings beyond barred gates, and the cultural ones that were only open for concerts at certain hours on special days, there were not that many gardens in this part of Paris. In fact, there was only one close enough to walk to from Lili’s apartment in the Marais. It was a public park filled with stunted trees and dog excrement, in spite of the recent regulations regarding ­ramasse-crottes, which as her granddaughter Delli had patiently tried to explain, should be referred to as “poop-scooping” in America, not “shit-picking.” Bibijan was unimpressed. Any society which amputated trees or required the harvesting of defecation in public parks could hardly be called civilized in her opinion. And yet this, as her Parisian daughter would say, was la belle France. Bibijan was very anxious to be thought civilized in la belle France. She never came to the Place des Vosges when Fathi was visiting, because she did not want these people with their urinating dogs to think they were Turks. She did not want these brutal little children skipping dangerously around puddles and waving umbrellas I F YO U D I D N OT C O U N T T H E P R I VAT E O N E S

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in the air—for there had been a smattering of rain—to mistake Fathi in her headscarf for an Arab of some kind, or a Moroccan or Algerian or Tunisian. But as soon as Fathi had gone, and she was alone, Bibi made an appointment with the hairdresser and prepared herself for a visit to the park. It was her special outing of the day, when Lili was away on her artistic trips; it was her chance to meet people, make friends. “Come away, mon cheri, come away,” called one of the grandmothers, doing nothing whatsoever to stop the child who was poking at a puddle with an umbrella. Bibi was sad that Fathi’s presence in Paris had upset Lili so much. But at least it had brought her two daughters closer. They had been on the phone to each other almost every day during the week the girl was staying with them. It was unfortunate that Lili seemed to be talking about money all the time and the additional rent for the chambre de bonne and even more unfortunate, after Fathi returned to Iran, that the phone calls became fewer and more discordant. The night before, Lili had lost her temper with her sister and had called Goli an idiot, saying she was blinder than Bibi, and ought to know what kind of surfing Bahman was really up to. “He’s no different than Mehdi,” she had snapped. Afterwards, she had apologized to her mother, which was unusual. Bibi knew something serious was going on then, because Lili wasn’t the apologizing sort. She had excused herself saying she had too much work to do and had no time for this sort of nonsense. She did not tell Bibi what the nonsense was, just that she had to concentrate on her artwork, that she had several interviews lined up, and that someone was making a film about her. She would have to leave her mother to her own devices for a few days, she said, with a brisk nicotine-smelling peck on the cheek. And then she had gone, to Rome, to Ankara, leaving the fridge stuffed with food. Bibi missed her bristling presence in the flat. 140

She had grown lonely after three days and had ventured out to the hairdresser’s to meet a few people. Dimly, through her thick lenses, Bibi saw that one of the benches was partially free, with only a single occupant. She approached it hopefully, but as she drew near, the elderly Frenchwoman sitting in the middle threw such an indignant glance at her that Bibi hesitated. She was only going to sit on the corner, but the woman seemed to think she was intent upon a takeover and making a bid for independence. She was only wearing a Hermes headscarf, duty free, as a protection against frizzy hair, but this apparently made a French colony of her. She pushed the scarf back casually and tried to smile. But the Frenchwoman looked pointedly away. She had blue tinted hair that obviously did not frizz, although she may have used the same hairdresser as Bibi; she was probably one of the grandmothers too, because she barely glanced at the children. She gave off an air of stale cologne and disapproval as Bibijan sat down gingerly beside her, feeling foreign and resigned. There was nowhere else to sit anyway, given the pile of pigeon droppings on the other end of the bench. So much for her hope of meeting people. It had to be admitted that la belle France was not always clean. Although Bibijan had spent almost six months with Lili, she still did not feel at home in the Marais. Not that she had felt much better in Goli’s place, where the tension between her daughter and son-in-law was palpable and the children did not like Persian food. Lili was doing all she could, but her flat was still not home. Not just because of the smell of the drains, and the difficult business of climbing all those stairs to the top of the crooked building. Not only because of bending down double to get things out of Lili’s tiny fridge which kept freezing the vegetables and letting the meat go rotten. But also because of Lili’s photographs on the walls. Her daughter had made a name for herself as an Iranian “artist” recently and was being invited to speak on the radio and 141

give presentations on French television. She had visited various European capitals the previous year, to exhibit her work and air her opinions. Her rise to fame had coincided with a certain interest in Iran’s human rights records, so she had become a popular figure on talk shows too. A self-portrait recently published in the culture section of Elle showed her veiled in her bed cover, a faded ghalamkar print in which she had cut holes in strategic places. Bibi found it very embarrassing. She had also photographed herself crucified on bamboo rods between a pair of Afghani burkas. She used models as well, for her political artwork, only Bibi could not understand why, in God’s name, they all had to be naked. Lili’s art was cold. But the real difficulty for Bibi was the coldness of the culture in general. In fact, Lili’s photographs captured the problem perfectly. The faces of her French models were uniformly sullen, their looks cold and hostile; they stared at the camera, or at Lili, either with a glare of defiance or an air of suspicion. Was it because her daughter was foreign? wondered Bibi. The bodies of these models were exposed aggressively too, as if they were intent upon violating all viewers who were clothed. They gave one the feeling, just like the Frenchwoman was doing on the bench beside Bibi, that one was a threat and that the only way to respond to threat, was to threaten in turn. Bibi found threat even more difficult to deal with than dog and pigeon shit. The old lady tucked her skirt close on the bench, and pulled the edge of her Californian seersucker coat around her knees. Her ankles had puffed up as usual and looked like blue and purple sausages inside their tight nylon sheaths. She felt chilly under her skirts and very upset that the scarf did so little to stop her hair from being buffeted by the stiff autumn breeze. France was also cold in other ways. “Bonjour,” she nodded, timidly, to her neighbour. It sounded like “Bunjeer”; she could never get a handle on the accent. The Frenchwoman turned slightly away, ignoring her. In fact, she 142

looked rather nervous, as well as disapproving. And who could blame her, trapped in the middle of a seesaw of a bench, with an elderly Iranian in a headscarf sitting at one end and a pile of pigeon droppings at the other? Bibijan had discovered, over the past six months, that the French and Americans were equally sensitive to criticism. They were easily offended and seemed equipped with a radar, like the sort used in airports, that buzzed at the slightest hint of disapproval. The Americans let you know it, every time you passed through immigration; their questions about how long you had been out of their country clearly implied that you ought to return to yours. The French exuded it with the faint shrug of a shoulder, the bare sneer of cologne; the inference was that if you expressed even the mildest dislike of dogs or pigeons, then you shouldn’t have come here in the first place. Bibijan’s French and English were minimal, but she had to be careful that no syllable stepped out of line, no norm of tense or sense was violated. Using words was just as risky a business in these countries as it was in Iran. “Just a formality, Khanum,” Mehdi had insisted. “You don’t have to be concerned about every word. It only means more money every month, that’s all.” But Bibi had refused to sign her name to words that killed her son. That would be tantamount to murder. You had to be careful with words. Trees were proof of it, she thought, gazing around the Place des Vosges. There was no free press for trees here. They were pruned fiercely every year, despite their attempt at silence. Their shade was restricted to a narrow circle on the gravel path. Their trunks were hemmed round with metal spikes. None of them was allowed to grow any higher, any wider, taller, broader, or thicker in the trunk than the others, and they were clipped into cubes or rectangles on all the streets. Having too many leaves or too few, reaching out too far or not at all, put a tree in imminent danger. 143

Bibijan experienced an odd stress in this country on account of the trees. She felt trapped inside her daughter’s apartment but coming out into the park was also constraining. She hoped she would not die in France. “Khanum should not worry for a moment,” Mehdi had said. “A bureaucratic formality, that’s all. It does not mean he’s dead. It will make no difference.” She had still declined to sign the paper that would make her the mother of a martyr. She had thrown away the juridical form establishing her dependency on the state based on her son’s sacrifice for it. It meant less means, more constraints, according to Mehdi. It meant she would have to be careful with money as well as with words. But that was easier than killing her son. Bibi settled her bag on her cold knees and sighed. She hated the subject of money. She guessed it was the reason why Lili’s conversations with her sister had become so acrimonious lately. Bibi did not like to be a burden on Lili, especially over this business of the chambre de bonne. But maybe it wasn’t money at all, because they had been talking about Mehdi the last time. And about Bahman. “If Khanum refuses compensation funds, she will have few resources left in Iran,” Mehdi had warned. “She may have to become her son-in-law’s dependent.” It was blackmail. The last thing Bibi wanted was to be Bahman’s dependent. Although Mehdi’s solution had been unacceptable, the thought of handouts from her son-in-law was equally unthinkable. Later, in America, Goli had assured her that her husband had come to some arrangement with Mehdi, that she still had enough of a pension left after all, and that Fathi would bring it from Iran for her every six months. But when she had tried to question the girl, Fathi played dumb, like she always did when she was lying. Bibi suspected it was because the sum was paltry. She sighed again, at the thought of burdening her daughters. She didn’t particularly want to die in America either. All the General’s 144

brass buttons had been flattened into a plaque half covered with grass in the cemetery and she certainly did not want to be flattened next to him. Even an overclipped tree was better than that. Her French neighbour with tinted hair flinched at the sigh. It was clearly intolerable to hear a foreigner sigh, not only once but twice, and she must have interpreted it as criticism towards the Republic, for she rose abruptly at that moment, and moved away. Bibi was flustered. She wanted to apologize but didn’t have the words. It was useless anyway because of her accent and lack of vocabulary. “O-rava” she called out faintly, as the Frenchwoman turned on her heel and ground across the gravel, but it was clear from the woman’s enraged back, as she stalked on towards the gate, that the effort towards reconciliation and politesse had not been enough. Bibi felt too weary to sigh again. She would raise the subject of the chambre de bonne with Lili who was coming back that night. She would insist on paying a portion herself. It was not only the narrowness of the pavements, the congestion in the streets which gave her palpitations in the Marais, but also the socialism, the equal rights for root and branch in the Place des Vosges. Lili might be an up-and-coming Iranian photographer, but how much money could be made from nudes at the end of the day? “Attention, cheri, attention aux autres!” wailed a grandmother from across the park. But still nothing was done to stop the manic behaviour of the child. Just as well there was a bit of sun today, thought Bibi, trying to cheer herself up with a shiver, though it might have been wiser to bring an umbrella. She squinted up at the blur of the sun. Hardly a tree in the Place des Vosges offered much protection, ­either from rain or shine. It was as though the municipality wanted to dissuade the public from sitting here, as though there was a limit to how long one was allowed to linger in this place without a French permit. It wasn’t this threat exactly or the howling 145

children and the dogs that forced you out. It was simply because there was no chance of taking root here. It was a park, after all, not a garden, thought Bibi. Gardens needed time; they needed place. But time and place had been uprooted for Bibi since she left Iran. Although there was grass around the Westwood house, Goli wasn’t the gardening sort and Bahman preferred the beach. And although Lili was now attempting to grow mint and tarragon on her balcony, she did not have green fingers and the plants shrivelled up whenever her mother went to America. Bibi remembered gardens in the north of Tehran where the trees rose so tall that they carried the cool evening breeze in them, where the pools were so deep that you had to watch out in case children reached in to sleep in them. She remembered rows of potted geraniums along the wall of her father’s house, breathing their spice into the air when the gardener watered the sun-baked bricks behind them. She remembered the fragrance of jasmine drifting through the open window of her mother’s sewing room to perfume the buds and blossoms of the carpet at her feet. It did not take much to grow a garden in Iran. One geranium from her childhood, one pungent knot from a woollen carpet offered her more than this whole parched park in the middle of the Place des Vosges. How was she to keep her hopes green and alive for Ali, now that she had left Iran? “Khanum’s daughters will help her find him,” Mehdi had leered, unhelpfully. And she knew he was punishing her for refusing to sign the court papers. He knew very well her daughters had neither time nor place for such hopes. Perhaps it had something to do with the guillotine in this country, Bibi thought vaguely. The French seemed to be in constant dread of horticultural mutiny. If a tree expressed too much hope, its fingers were cut off, so only the knuckles could sprout. If it didn’t learn from that, the whole hand was amputated the following year, and it was left with bleeding wrists. If it 146

persisted in stretching out, its arms were sawn at the elbows. You didn’t notice the inhumanity so much in summer; it was only in autumn that the reign of terror during the previous spring became evident. Bibijan was glad to go to LA in the winter, not only for the climate, but also because of the trees. She hated this obsession with cutting, with pruning. The loss of limbs was bad enough but the cutting off of heads was one step away from the loss of memory. She had to admit, however, that la belle France did not have a monopoly on that. She shivered. Forgetting was something she had been trying to cultivate herself since leaving Iran. The past had become more vivid than the present the further she left it behind. It was disconcerting to have to come this far away in order to be reminded of events back at home so long ago. She had seen some trees in the past, even in Tehran, that had been amputated right up to their armpits for believing in growth, for imagining height; she had seen some— Jews, Zoroastrians, Baha’i heretics—razed to the ground for their differences. Take that, you pernicious creature, and that, and that. Long ago, during the month of Muharram, her father’s tailor, who dared to be different, had been whipped to death against the scarred trunk of the old plane tree, before her very eyes. “Come away, my darling, come away,” cried the grandmother of the child who was now trying to beat a dog with the end of his umbrella. But the little boy was in paroxysms of excitement, deaf to his grandmother’s exhortations. Bibijan turned away in agitation from the source of the squealing, the calling. There was not, after all, that much difference between Paris and Tehran. Cut them down and uproot them, crush them and confine them, came the cry with the Friday call to prayer. Deprive them of education, deny them their livelihoods, destroy their hopes, and let them die. But even then it wasn’t over, for when they’re dead, screamed the pulpit, dig up their bodies, desecrate their graves. Yes, after the Revolution they had actually 147

bulldozed part of the old cemetery. Total erasure. And suddenly Bibi did not want to die in Iran either, because of all those broken tombs, those shattered graves. Her memories were running rampant. She needed to prune them, cut them down, control them. She did not want to watch the drama of the raised whip and the sudden slap, the long shudder and the pleading yelp; she could not bear to hear the long, painful howling. Had her father’s tailor survived the reign of the Shah, he would probably be in prison now, along with all the others, young and old and hopeful as her son, and possibly for the same reasons. Trees did not move away. Even when subjected to atrocities, they stayed. Or died for the sake of the garden. But Bibijan had been uprooted. When Fathi returned to Iran, she had been left restless in France, and filled with a nameless remorse. She was also feeling increasingly cold, she realized. It would soon be time to return to LA. So she brushed down her seersucker, smoothed her headscarf, and rose to go. But perhaps she would just pop into the supermarket first to cheer herself up and buy a few basics for Lili’s return. Shopping always helped one forget the unpleasant things of life. There was enough of Fathi’s money left after all, whatever its source, to buy some extra fruit.

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REVOLUTION

T H E S H O P P I N G C AU S E D I T .

That was what really did it, that’s what started it all: not going shopping. No more piling up of namebrand scarves and fancy shoes. No more trying on of jumpers and short skirts with the excuse that it was a gift for some niece on their return. No more dithering over one or other Jaeger coat, only to buy both at last. No, we said. No more wads of cash in your handbags. They simply could not understand. How could we explain that this was a revolution and not just another shopping spree in Europe? But why not make it one? they replied, brightly. That would be so much more fun than exile. We had a very difficult time dissuading them. Oddly enough, the rest of it was less of a problem. They seemed unperturbed by the thought of leaving everything else behind. Naturally, the journey was a cause of some concern, the lack of showers, the uncertainty of destinations. But once there, the absence of deluxe furnishings seemed to cause them less anxiety than expected. They took their jewellery with them, naturally, but they abandoned the Louis XV look-alike sofa and the matching chairs we had arranged to reupholster so carefully, and did so, 149

indeed, with an alacrity that was almost distressing. They gave up the Villeroy & Boch without so much as a sigh. Yes, it involved a certain degree of sacrifice, especially for you, they added, pointedly, because you, they repeated with objectionable emphasis, liked those large-scale dinner parties, didn’t you? We could not deny it. Well, we didn’t, they said. It was as though they could not wait to escape. Yes, of course they would miss Iran, but there was always Persian TV and DVDs, they added, inconsequentially, and one could buy china elsewhere, especially during the sales. In fact, we thought sourly, the reason they were so lighthearted about letting everything go was because they were probably anticipating its replacement during the sales. The trouble was that they had only thought of London or Paris in the past as places to shop. Each midwinter and again every summer’s end, they used to fly from Tehran for the special sales, like migrating birds. Their arrival marked the changing of the seasons and their departure a need for ever-larger suitcases. At first, they had been content with bedsits in rented Kensington, with dirty gas rings and the smell of oily eggs in the basement breakfast room. Then they wanted to acquire those Victorian terrace houses that were later sold for a mint to the Saudis. Later, they expected more classy accommodation, the gilded cage of the Dorchester, or the Hotel Colbert in the 5th arrondissement. But wherever they stayed at night, their days were spent in the changing rooms of big department stores. That’s what Europe was for them. It had to stop. Harrods was no longer feasible; Lafayette was out of the question. The idea of buying clothes in Vuitton and Hermes all day was simply not an option anymore. We’re not going to Europe for the sales but for visas, we told them, severely. They would have to give up competing with the wives of sheiks in the shops. In fact they were not going to spend any time in the shops at all and would have to hold their tongues about sheiks and their wives when they saw them. No more scathing comments about 150

Arabs in London; no more bad-mouthing Algerians in Paris; nor more crude jokes about Turks in Frankfurt or Libyans in Rimini. You are going to have to change your habits from now on, we told our womenfolk, sternly. When you change yours, they had retorted. And that is what started it, the wrangling, the sniping. That is what led to the family troubles later on, the so-called honesty that led to such bitter arguments. How could we have prepared ourselves for such upheavals, such domestic commotions? How could we have protected ourselves from these appalling divisions and suspicions? Had we guessed what disorder would threaten our peace in fleeing to the West, would we have even left Iran? But no one could have imagined such things before they occurred. No one would have dreamed it. Even if we had been cautioned ahead of time, even if we had been advised of the gravity of making this mistake, we would never have believed it. We would simply not have understood that a simple interdiction to shop would go as far as separation and divorce. Only years later, when it was all over, did we realize what this might mean. Only after the acrimony and the alimony did we understand. It was when we found ourselves alone at dirty café tables, leafing through abandoned political flyers, hanging around student cafeterias, waiting for leftover lasagnes, having taken on the only jobs we could find, unloading merchandise, unpacking supplies in supermarkets as people filled their trolleys all around us, that the penny finally dropped. The real revolution would be to stop the shopping!

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LAUNDRY

T H E R E W E R E M A N Y C RO O K S I N H E R FA M I LY ,

but her brother had been the only fool, thought Lili, watching the khaki-coloured sheets going round and round in the dryer. She hated doing laundry. The worst thing about the Revolution had been that it forced her to do her own laundry. Lili had celebrated the collapse of the old regime with Marxist fervour, but from the moment she spurned her father’s money beside the oyster stand on Boulevard St Antoine, and abandoned his gilded apartment on the Champs-Élysée, she had never been able to afford a washing machine or dryer. She may have chosen a bohemian lifestyle, but she was rather fastidious about her laundry; she may have wished to show that she was one of the people, but she did not like sharing their dirt. The Revolution compelled her to admit the limits of her political theories by leaving her at the mercy of the neighbourhood launderette. Ali’s folly was not unique to him alone though, she thought, watching the towels slap wetly against the porthole of the dryer. How many thousands like him had died for some supremacy fallacy or other, thinking they were the first, the last, the best, the 152

only, and the chosen? How many other ardent boys had willed their own deaths without even being able to wield a gun? It was a strange irony, that of all the children of the General, the only one to follow in his military footsteps should be the least inclined to fight. Ali had gone to war for the silliest reasons, and yet had ended up on the hillsides of Sulaymaniyah, engaged in serious combat with the enemy. That was more than their father had ever experienced, thought Lili in disgust. The General had started his career as an army truck driver and slithered up the military greasy pole on the strength of profits earned by smuggled ammunition. Some soldier! He had earned his medals by handling bribes during the last years of Reza Shah. Of course, Ali had been too young to know any better when he was marched off to be martyred; he had no knowledge of  the world, unlike his father. And his folly was partly licensed by the fact that he was a dreamer, a poet. She’d always had a special bond with her brother: he had been her advocate at home and she had always defended him against the aggression of other boys at school. There was one particular boy, older than Ali, whom she suspected of paedophilia. Yes, he couldn’t be blamed for what he did. If anything, the family was responsible for what had happened to the child. If he had been swept up by religious fervour, it was their fault, not his. Besides, he’d been brainwashed by broadcasts all through those early months of the war. There was hardly a day that passed without a harsh, crackling voice trumpeting apocalyptic imminence at every corner of the city, blaring supremacy fallacies from a thousand loudspeakers: first, last, best, only, chosen ones to die. Lili shuddered at the recollection. She had not been there, but she had been listening. She had not lived through it, but she had heard it all. It had almost made her lose her mind. Frankly, the entire population of Iran may have lost their minds. And whether or not Ali really believed all the nonsense about the country being cleansed 153

from corruption by the clerics, he had certainly gone off thinking that his sacrifice would restore Iran to its former glory. Or rather its future greatness. A fool, thought Lili, walking restlessly up and down between the dryers. An idealist. But not a crook, like some. She scowled at her brown sheets whirling round in their Sufi dance. Her politics had been as limited as Ali’s religious fervour, its psychological influence as damaging. But her mistakes had left her a cynic instead, made her suspicious of money. Especially the stuff Fathi brought out of Iran. After Bibi boarded the plane for America the previous afternoon, she had phoned her sister to confirm their mother’s arrival times, and had asked her, yet again, about the money. What was it? Where was it coming from? Goli had been more vague, more flustered than usual. “Every­ thing will be fine, just fine,” she gabbled. “Honestly, Lili, don’t worry about the money.” Lili was not worried. She was simply suspicious. Whose cash was this? “Bibi’s pension, of course,” Goli trilled. “Bahman used his business connections to fix things up. He knows lawyers in LA who know jurists in Tehran who have connections, you know, I mean the right connections; I explained already, Lili. He finally found a way to liberate Bibi from Mehdi’s greed.” Liberate? The word in Goli’s mouth was a joke. She didn’t know what it meant. Lili laughed so hard she had a coughing fit on the phone. Her sister deferred to her husband for all financial decisions, trusted his judgement for all administrative matters; she was one of those helpless Persian women who adopted the ­veneer of the West, mimicked the poses of the West, copied and parroted all the follies of the West, while remaining thoroughly Persian. Even after all these years. Lili was sure that Fathi could never extract Bibi’s widow pension out of Iran without Mehdi 154

knowing about it. And even if she tried, Mehdi would never have let Bahman get away with it. “It’s a chance to escape from that scoundrel after all these years,” Goli was saying. She gushed on and on about what a scoundrel Mehdi was. Bahman’s Green Card, she claimed, would save Bibi from such scoundrels; it was Bibi’s only option. “Her last chance, her final refuge,” Goli concluded, as though the US were the ideal home for the terminally ill suffering from autoimmune diseases like Mehdi. “Get real, Goli!” Lili had said, echoing her Americanisms in spite of herself. But Goli was inaccessible. Deaf. “Oh it is perfectly real!” she chirped back. “This is a bona fide Green Card!” Except she called it “bone fido” as if she were offering residency rights to a dog. Lili was disgusted. Her sister’s sappy sentimentalities went beyond the infantile sometimes; they verged on the criminal. You can’t hint at surprises to an old woman who had been through a Revolution and lost a son in a war. You can’t give Senior Citizen Showers, with pink gift-wrap round a tinselled Green Card, to a mother who had sacrificed everything to find her boy. And you certainly can’t settle her in some old people’s home in California and imagine you were doing her a favour. Lili suspected that Goli was covering up for her husband with all this chatter about liberation and final refuges. “Can I speak to Bahman?” she finally asked, between coughs. “He’ll give you a call when he gets back from Malibu,” Goli said, her voice growing shrill, “and Fathi comes next week anyway,” she added, inconsequentially. Lili didn’t see how that would help. She had no desire to talk to Fathi. “Oh, she knows everything,” Goli said. “And Bahman will call you, promise.” But he didn’t. And Lili didn’t phone back. It would just fuel 155

Bahman’s prejudices. Her brother-in-law had a low enough opinion of their family already. He called his wife a drama queen, considered her sister a liability, and thought their mother a deluded spendthrift. And in some ways he was right. First there had been all the bribes in the futile search for Ali. Then there had been the General’s hospital fees, that sick albatross around his neck. And now Bibi was becoming a dependent too. Lili did not want to give her brother-in-law any more excuses for feeling persecuted by their family. So the morning after her mother left for the US, she bundled up Bibi’s linens and plodded to the launderette, feeling martyred herself. She and Bahman did not get along. Years ago at the start of the Revolution, she believed he had tried to get her arrested on a visit to California; the police had come to the house to question her and she had never been back to the country since. Her father would have called it punishment for her folly. She considered it proof of Bahman’s perfidy, which was why she had been so upset about the Green Card. Even though dragging Bibi to France had been no solution, Lili would never have seen her mother again had she stayed forever in the US. It was all very ugly and suspicious. But Bahman, with his Green Card, wasn’t the worst crook around. Mehdi’s crimes against their mother were legion, as Goli had protested rather too much, even though she herself was equally criminal, pretending everything was fine, just fine. And Fathi, with her opacity, her complicity of silence, was no better. And what about her own offences? Lili gave an involuntary shudder. When she had returned to Iran, risking her life to cross the border during the war with Iraq, she had been breaking all kinds of laws. She had been smuggling money out of the country too, as well as hiding personal secrets. She had had an abortion and thrown herself into politics in blind revenge; she had even donned the veil to hide her heartbreak. Lili doubled up, coughing at the recollection of her shames, her crimes committed in the name of justice. She had put her mother as well as herself in danger. 156

And now she was itching for a cigarette. But that meant going out into the street and it was raining. The launderette was just one block away from her apartment and usually bustling with French types, but it was blessedly empty today, the only noise in it coming from the churning of her own thoughts and clothes, the only vapour from her spiralling doubts and the dryer. She was alone. Perhaps no one would know if she smoked in here? But would this be yet one more crime? She coughed. Against herself ? Lili forced herself to think of her mother instead of the cigarette. Bibi wasn’t stupid, even if Goli called her ga-ga, she thought, blinking at the whirling dervishes through the porthole. She had survived post-apocalyptic Iran and was well acquainted with Mehdi’s tricks. If Bahman was really up to something, she would guess it surely, she would know. The old lady was quite acute enough, despite deteriorating vision, to see straight through her daughters. Lili had no doubt that she was aware of Goli’s weaknesses, as well as her own. When she was saying good-bye to her the day before, she had a distinct impression that her mother was reading her like a book. As Lili leaned over to kiss her cheek, Bibijan had pulled back to scrutinize her. “Don’t lose more weight before I see you again, my little mouse,” she blinked, her eyes swimming. “I don’t want all that I love in you to disappear.” Lili had instinctively drawn away. It was not only because of the faint attar of rose on her mother’s skin, which made her realize that she herself probably smelled strongly of cheap tobacco and possibly marijuana, but also because her mother’s expressions of love were painful to her, couched as they always were in the language of respectful tenderness. As soon as Bibi had arrived in Paris, Lili had started dreading her return to LA. And now that she had finally left, it was as though she had only come to prepare Lili for a greater going. Her presence brought with it the pressure of expectations, but her absence, even in anticipation, was 157

much worse. Now, staring at the relentless cycling of sheets and towels, she suddenly panicked at the thought that Bibi might die in America and she would never see her again. She felt trapped. The space between the machines and the launderette vitrine was narrower than a grave. Lili wanted to break the glass and jump out onto the pavement, shiny with rain. It was true that Bibi had grown visibly weaker during her stay in France. When she swayed through the departure gates at Charles de Gaulle the day before, Lili saw how fragile she had become, how vulnerable and old. Bibi was walking with difficulty on her stumplike legs, as she passed through immigration control. She fumbled for her passport like a blind person, delaying everyone behind her in the security queue. Watching the little figure anxiously over the heads of the crowd, Lili wondered if she would ever come back, if she would ever see her mother again. Would she have one more chance of glimpsing that wispy crown of white hair at the arrivals, bobbing towards her instead of away, behind her luggage cart? After the final wave good-bye, Lili had suddenly remembered, with a stab of chagrin and a surge of guilt, that in spite of Fathi’s last-minute reminders, she had forgotten to ask for wheelchair assistance for Bibijan. And she recalled that Goli had not done so either, when their mother travelled over from the States. The thought was unbearable. She was furious with herself, even angrier than she had been with her sister, or with Bahman, or with Mehdi, even more disgusted than she was with Fathi. There was no point in comparisons: they were all as bad as each other. Lili’s craving for nicotine had become unbearable, and she could no longer even blame Goli for it. She had to get out of this place. It was intolerable to ponder her mother’s death surrounded by all this turning and churning. She grabbed her shoulder bag and pushed the door open, abandoning her sheets to the mindless machine. On past occasions, when she had done this, she had found her clothes dumped out by someone else who wanted to use 158

the facilities. But there was no one to swindle her out of the dryer today. No criminals, no cheats, no rogues or sharks or double-­ dealers here except herself. She fumbled in her bag for her lighter and stepped out onto the wet pavement, gulping lungfuls of the polluted city air with relief. It was raining cobwebs on her face, like invisible tears, as she inhaled. “She’s still better off here than with those cuckoos in California,” muttered Lili to herself as she walked, exhaling the smoke in another coughing fit. But she knew it was not true. If Ali had been around, he would have understood that Bibi could not have survived in America or France, long term. He would have found a better solution than either being beholden to Mehdi or dependent on Goli and Bahman. He may have been a fool but he would have protected their mother. He would never have let anyone trick her, cheat her, exploit her, siphon off her pension and suck her dry. He would have stepped in and intervened, Lili was sure of it: he would have redeemed her. But Lili could not. Even at the height of her own revolutionary folly, when she was accosting people with pamphlets on a daily basis, she had never been so naive as to believe in redemption. Crisis, catastrophe, and cataclysms maybe, but never redemption. If you are going to redeem someone, you have to believe there was something worth saving the person for, she thought, staring moodily at the passersby, huddled under glistening umbrellas as they jostled past her. She didn’t. Ali had been the redeeming sort, he could save people. His believing capacity was immense, magnanimous. He would have found reasons to forgive even Bahman, thought Lili, wryly, just as much as he would have pitied Goli. Imagine being married into a family like ours, he would have said: with a wife who is post9/11 America on the outside and pre-Islamic Revolution Iran on the inside, and a father-in-law that’s rotten with royalty all the way through. What else can the man do but run off to beach picnics 159

with the boys in Malibu? Yes, Ali would have understood his brother-in-law and been a better uncle to Goli’s two kids too, than she had ever been their aunt. And above all, he would have remembered the wheelchair, not as Fathi would have done, to prove his greater concern for Bibi, but simply from love. Ali had always been good at love. Lili shook the rain off her shoulders. Well, for all his love, he was probably dead now, she thought glumly. If he were not incarcerated in some prison or camp, his bones were bleached on a mountainside, eaten clean by kites and ravens long ago. Was it better to think of him surviving to grow old and bitter like her? Or would she prefer to kill him off young, an idealist? But it was just as unbearable to imagine Ali dead in the rain as to brood over Bibi dying in the stuffy launderette. Lili threw the last quarter of her cigarette onto the puddled pavement polka-dotted with chewing gum and flattened it under her heel. Her brother might be free of his family’s crimes, she thought, ruefully, but his felon of a sister would certainly have benefited from his continued presence in the world. In fact, they would all have been better off if he were still around, she thought turning back towards the launderette. All of them—including Bahman—might have come out a little cleaner in the wash, if Ali had remained alive. Without him, they’d lost the plot. She stepped out of the rain and stared grimly at her clothes still swirling behind the porthole. Would it never end? First her father wheeling and dealing. Then Mehdi stealing money from under Bibi’s nose. And now Bahman actually telling Fathi his unfathomable secrets? Well, Lili muttered, glancing impatiently at the dryer, it couldn’t go on any longer; Ali would have put a stop to it. The dryer suddenly emitted a sharp nasal buzz and fell blessedly silent. Lili wrenched the door open, cursing as two pillowcases and a towel tumbled down onto the floor. Yes, it was dirty money, she thought, diving to pick them up, and her sister was keeping 160

secrets from her too. She was disgusted by the idea of her clean sheets and towels touching the ground and shook them out furiously. We’re all Zoroastrians underneath it all, she thought, obsessed with purity. When she had questioned her the previous evening, Goli had been full of similar non sequiturs. “You’re so suspicious, Lili!” she had said, her voice rising hysterically. “Why should I have secrets? You’ll have to ask Bahman when he comes home.” But Ali had had secrets too, she remembered, beating the imaginary grime off a towel. When her brother’s picture reached the family, from the mountain camp on the borders, she knew something was going on there as well. Lili struggled against the memory as she tried to fold the queen-size duvet cover while keeping it off the floor. The child soldiers who bicycled into the front lines of the Iraqi army were cannon fodder; their extreme youth was expected to stun the enemy into passivity just long enough for them to lob a few hand grenades before being mown down. Few survived. The photos taken of them before operations began were intended for tombstones. They were sent back to their families with the details of the time and place of death. But Ali’s picture arrived with the information that he was “missing in action.” It showed her young brother dressed in army fatigues, with a white band around his head, his eyes shining. His lips were clamped tight and there was a bruise smearing his chin. Lili did not say anything to Bibi when she saw that photo, on her first trip back to Iran, but she suspected her brother’s mouth was full of broken teeth. She had a sinking feeling that he had told his commanding officer of his intentions and been punished accordingly. Ali would have refused to throw the hand grenade. Lili started to cough again as she stuffed her clean laundry into the dirty clothes bag. Ah well, she thought, gasping for breath, purity is relative in this world and suffering as common as dirt, especially in the army. And pain was not exclusive to Ali any more 161

than crimes were restricted to her family. Not that it exonerated them. But there was a unique folly her brother had been hiding which had been dangerously clean, frighteningly pure. No one in the family could have guessed it. If his mouth had not been filled with blood, Lili was sure that Ali would have been radiantly smiling in the photo. Unlike most of his comrades in arms, he had felt no anger towards the Great Satan. His eyes were not shining with hate. That was precisely what was so wrong. He had no intention of fighting the Iraqis ­either when he was marched off to the mountains of Kurdistan. His aim had been to conquer himself, to purify himself. It was the true meaning of the word jihad for him. He had taken Islam so seriously that he had actually believed in the end times, the return of the Messiah, the promised Qa’im. He was preparing not to kill the enemy nor to attain paradise in the process, but to recognize the hour in which he lived, as he put it in his last letter to his mother and sisters. He wanted to be worthy of the privilege of this day. Who could have imagined he could be such a goddam fool? Not even Fathi, who was the most religious of them all, not even Bibi who was given to mystical experiences which Goli called “being ga-ga,” none of them would have taken idealism that far. God’s fool! Lili muttered, furiously, as she headed out into the rain. As if they hadn’t been sufficiently guilty of the usual kind of folly in this family—paying bribes to hide their father’s links with the previous regime, denying associations with illegal organizations, cheating their mother of her money—as if all that wasn’t bad enough! But if Ali had gone even further, if he done something even worse, if, as she suspected, he had actually changed his religion, it was no wonder they had never heard from him. That would have been the ultimate folly, the greatest infamy. That would have meant he was condemned for apostasy under the present government, which was even worse than being a prisoner of war. Even if he had survived the prison camps, even if he had 162

not died under torture or been summarily executed without trial, he could have been locked up in Evin for decades, for being an “infidel,” for being one of “them”— But if he could simply qualify as some kind of a crook rather than a fool, thought Lili, grateful to the rain for hiding the tears that had started coursing down her cheeks, if he were in some way responsible for this money which Mehdi had tried to appropriate and Bahman had managed to get hold of instead, and which Fathi was now bringing out of Iran every six months—if it had anything to do with Ali’s faith—why then, there would be no death to mourn, no martyrdom to grieve: only a life well lived.

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the Eastern ones and the Westerners, and we can promise you, the first lot cause all the problems. Getting into moods at every moment. Taking offence at the drop of a hat. Forever overreacting to inferences. Inventing reasons to be hurt or assuming that we are. So sensitive you can’t say a thing to them without risking insult. Communicating with the farangi girls is frankly much easier. With them, at least, you know where you are, in spite of the language barrier: it’s straightforward, it’s blunt, they say exactly what they mean. Everything is cut and dried with them. But with our Persian daughters-in-law, God help us! We have to walk on eggs the whole time and imagine all the things they aren’t telling us. It’s like pulling hair out of milk, it’s like having cats under our skin. It’s exhausting. Naturally, we could never confide in the foreign wives of our sons, not properly, not heart-to-heart, you understand; there is no question of that. The farangis are much colder people, fish-cold in fact, water-in-the-blood cold, and that’s not only because they’re Swedish, Norwegian, German, Arctic. It isn’t just because they do not speak Persian either. We’re not prejudiced that way, you know, 164

not narrow-minded like some. In fact, we are the first to admit that they made a big effort to learn Farsi in the beginning, bless them, when it was all honey this and darling that and finally joonie; they did their bit, tried their best, banged out the Bábá Áb Dád primers. But well, what can we say? You can’t make tea from spinach, can you? And we don’t hold it against them, not at all. No, not for a moment. Besides, the worst with them isn’t the lack of language: it’s the missing links, the gaps of understanding, of comprehension. These farangis just can’t read between the lines; they simply can’t register an innuendo. They have absolutely no capacity to pick up on the unspoken. In same ways, it’s a blessing, of course. It’s an advantage that they don’t always understand what we are saying. You know what we mean! And at least there’s no taarof with them, no endless compliments, no twisting into insistent knots to say what you don’t actually believe. There’s none of that with the foreigners. But in other ways, it’s hurtful, you know. They can be quite tactless at times and take candour to such extremes that you wonder whether they lack imagination or are simply stupid. No courtesies, no compliments, everything at surface value. A “no” is no and a “yes” means they should fix it. Fixing things is what farangis are good at, but that’s where it ends. There you are, half-blind, feeling for your cane, and they ask, “Do you need anything?” And of course you say no. And it doesn’t go one inch further. Of course, they bend and pick the cane up for you when it clatters to the floor, that’s not the point, but then off they go with a peck on the cheek and a cheerful good-bye, dumping you for the rest of the afternoon. As if the cane was really all you’re not asking for— But in spite of that, it’s actually worse, if you don’t mind us saying, it’s even more difficult to cope with our own girls. The Western women might say the bare minimum but they mean it. At least, we assume they do. But with our own girls, it’s all hot air. Oh, they’re darlings, don’t get us wrong. Our lovely Persian daughters-in-law 165

are beautiful women, wonderful mothers, good cooks. They can set a magnificent table; in fact they’re in constant competition over it. They dress well, though we have to say it’s a bit over the top sometimes, the height of those silly heels. They adore their children too, though we do think they are rather lax with them. How are we supposed to communicate with these great lumbering boys who can only exchange monosyllables about ice hockey, or these chicken-bone granddaughters who can’t utter a word in Persian? But their mothers do the best for them, they love them, there’s no question. It’s when they start insisting on how much they love us too, how much they worry about us—that’s what makes us want to die in a hurry. You can’t imagine the obligations they put us under! It’s humiliating. They are always embarrassing us in public. They talk about our failing eyesight in the middle of supermarkets. They mention the arthritis, and the ticky heart in front of guests. They even raise the problems involved in our living alone when visiting the doctor. It really does upset us. So insensitive. So calculating. They’re only doing it to show the world how caring they are, of course; they are only trying to advertise what good concerned daughters-in-law they are. That’s why they make such a palaver. Please don’t get us wrong. We think the world of all our daughters-in-law, we really do. They’re all good women, Persian or not: they come from decent families, ours as well as theirs. We are not the sort of women who are forever carping, criticizing, judging the wives of their sons, not at all! We aren’t biased for or against, like some Iranian mothers-in-law we know. Why, we would hardly have consented for our wonderful boys to marry, would we, if we had not approved of the women they were marrying? We wouldn’t have let any of these girls get near our sons! But the bottom line is that we have absolutely no intention of living with them, not any of them. Eastern, Western, it makes no difference: daughters-in-law are all the same. We could never, on 166

principle, live under their roofs. And it isn’t just because of the grandchildren that we say this, though they have tried to suggest that we have favourites, that we make comparisons, which is absolute nonsense because young people are all the same these days, don’t you agree? All equally disrespectful, badly behaved, illiterate. Nor is it because we are estranged from any of our sons, God forbid. They’re wonderful boys: successful doctors, brilliant lawyers, even if they’re too busy to phone, even if they never have time to visit, we’re not complaining. Are we complaining? We under­stand perfectly well how busy they are. We’re proud of them. And it’s certainly not because of their roofs that we wouldn’t want to live under them. They all have fine roofs, lovely homes, big comfortable kitchens, good insulation to make up for the high ceilings, proper showers as well as those useless baths. They are all grand places, in spite of the time our sons spend mowing their wretched lawns every weekend, yes, thanks be to God, they’re doing well, very well. But there’s just no question of us losing our independence. We might have failing eyesight, but we still have our own homes, our flats, our apartments, our little studios, whether they are in Oslo, Frankfurt, Montreal, San Diego. It doesn’t matter where but we are determined to keep it that way. We can see them raising their brows and rolling their eyes each time we say it, of course: the farangis looking all solemn and serious and talking about fire insurance and questions of liability; the Persians sighing and wiping their eyes and looking martyred. Don’t think we don’t know what they’re thinking. Over our dead bodies, we say, when they talk of it. We would rather die than be put into one of these old people’s homes. Imagine finding ourselves stuck with a bunch of Swedes, and Alsatians, and Finns in wheelchairs! Imagine being expected to play cards, or bingo with Bostonians, or whatever else they do in these places. Kill us first, we say, and then bury us after. Not before. 167

And of course, that’s when it begins all over again, the discussions about wouldn’t we rather stay with them, and why wouldn’t we like to live with them, and doesn’t it make more financial sense to move in with them? The farangis, long-faced as mules, suggesting that we make lists, consult pros and cons, and look at the bottom line; the Persians, tearful and inflated, declaring love, vowing selfsacrifice, asking if they have offended us, and would we forgive them? You know, for all the gush and the prattle that spills from their mouths, you really can’t believe a word they say. The thing is that in spite of all their protestations, we can’t ­really be sure our lovely daughters-in-law would be at hand when we need them. The Persian ones, we mean. We simply can’t trust them, you see, to know what to do if, you know, who to call, when, you understand, something serious happened. It’s always been that way, from the beginning. They’re really incompetent. And so—it’s difficult to put into words, to be honest, it’s really hard to explain—so if there is no alternative and we absolutely have to live under the roof of one or other of our daughters-in-law, well, that’s why we’d choose the Persians hands down. Yes, we would. And it has nothing to do with the fact that they’re our kind. Honestly, they are not anyway. Our people came from Tabriz and these girls have families in Shiraz, in Isphahan, in Mashhad, in Yazd; they couldn’t be more different; they are not our kind at all. No, it’s another reason. The reason we would prefer to stay with the Persian girls in the last analysis is simply because the Westerners are so damned competent, that’s all. They are so unbearably efficient. Whenever it comes to the practical side of things, the farangis always know what to do. It isn’t just the question of a cane here or there: it isn’t only the groceries, the rent for the apartment, and all the rest. But the Westerners are the ones who keep up with all our physical appointments, you see: the dentist, the eye doctor, the heart checkups, the health insurance. So if anything happened, they would know 168

exactly what to do. They would rush in to save us. They would drag us off to hospital. They would let the doctors stick tubes in us. You know how hospitals are in these Western countries. These farangis would not let us die. But our dear compatriots, our darling Persian daughters-in-law would weep, get into a tizzy, create a great palaver, but God bless them, they would let us go.

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suave, smooth, obsequious, and smelling strongly of aftershave. He had put on weight, she noticed. She had already seen that he was tending towards fat six months before, when she first arrived from Iran, but he appeared to have expanded in confidence as well as girth since then. He was beaming at her, just as though she really was his mother, who was dead. Although Bibi had always rather tolerated than genuinely liked Bahman, she allowed herself to be embraced by him as she emerged through the arrival gates, because she did, in fact, feel half-dead. Her heart was beating with the irregularity of a government-jammed TV program where the images kept rolling on the screen and sliding into diagonal strips. She was in a daze after the long journey from Paris and the gruelling experience of passing through US immigration and the struggle with customs all over again. It was only while she was engulfed by his odours that she came to her senses. Since when had her son-in-law permitted himself to hug her in this familiar fashion? He had always bowed before, with his right hand pressed against his heart, in respectful deference. He had kept 170

a discreet distance from her, ever since the earliest days of their acquaintance, according to the customs of the East, and she had obeyed the same codes, keeping the walls up between them. Kissing was gender specific in Iran. But everyone seemed to be doing it in America; they all kept throwing their arms around each other. Bibijan had never felt the need to put her arms around Bahman, even when he became her son-in-law. She had treated him with regard but never with familiarity, and he had responded with decorum, in kind. In fact he used to be shy. But something had changed here. The proximity of Bahman’s fruity aftershave and his bulk suddenly woke her up to where she was. America had torn down the walls. Although this was her second visit to the US and Bibijan was now officially a resident alien in the country, the outer walls were still firmly in place. It had taken hours to pass through immigration. Even though she was in possession of a Green Card, she was treated as less legitimate and more suspect than the nonresident aliens in the parallel queue, many of whom sailed through as tourists without any trouble at all. But the officer who interviewed her took his time scrutinizing all the documents that Bahman had prepared for her before she left the US. He was most unwelcoming. He wanted to know how long she was staying and where she intended to be in the country, why she had left Iran and what she had been doing for the past six months in France. He required proof of everything to let her into America: age, motives, recent dreams, supplementary vitamins. He also wanted to know when she would return, at which point Bibi no longer knew which country he expected her to return to. He seemed highly sceptical of her intentions, as though little old Iranian ladies were never who they said they were, as though she had made herself up, like a story. By the time she arrived to where her suitcases were turning round and round in solitary isolation on the carrousel, Bibijan wondered if she were a story. She was increasingly unsure of her 171

existence. Everything seemed like a dream. When the officers in the customs hall questioned her about the Chanel scarves and Parisian chocolates she was bringing into the US for her daughter and her grandchildren, she began to doubt if they were adequate gifts, and was not certain they were real either. And when she finally emerged through the arrival gates and found herself not at midnight in Paris but midafternoon in Los Angeles, Bahman looked the most unreal of all. Since when had this son-in-law of hers ever worn multicoloured shirts, like that? Or shorts, which showed his fat knees? Since when had he kept his hair so disgustingly long, in a ponytail behind his balding head? It was a bad dream. But when he embraced Bibi, she was jolted awake. “How ya doin’ Bibijan?” he bawled, in English. “Long time no see!” He had never addressed her with such coarse familiarity before and in an alien tongue! She suddenly felt a pang of nostalgia for that weedy young man with drooping eyelids and his right hand pressed against his chest, sycophanting like a lapdog at the General’s heels. Bahman talked nonstop, his Persian peppered with childish vocabulary and American phrases. He used to have a slight British accent in the old days, dating from his studies in London, but he seemed to have shed that and his skinniness completely. At Naw Ruz, he had only spoken to her about the Green Card, and she hadn’t noticed his speech patterns because she had not wanted to listen to what he was saying; besides Goli did most of the talking on that visit. Bahman had been shifty-eyed and shambling in his new XXXL American shape. He had merely told her, what a coup it was to have made an alien of her, how much it cost to deny all those Mexicans what she now had. Her immigrant status, he had assured her, was radically expensive. In Iran, in the old days, Bahman would never have opened his mouth to his mother-in-law on the subject of money. When he married Goli, he had been concave with deference towards the General who had made it perfectly clear who held the purse strings 172

in the family. He had been one of those limp Persian youths, with a head cocked to one side and hands cupped over his genitals, who said nothing, fixed his eyes modestly to the ground when spoken to, and only murmured compliments and vapid courtesies when invited to speak. But although he had gained weight and his words were now laden with the cost of parking, the price of ­petrol, the rise in airfares, and the radical expense of Green Cards, they seemed to carry even less substance than before. They were like holes in the ozone. She did not understand the connection he was making between films and the money he was putting into the slot machine. “It figures,” he was saying, “given the budget of blockbusters. Masses of action movies in this underground parking, Bibijan!” he breezed. “Just saw Fred Cooper from The Cash Flow paying a parking ticket! Son of a gun!” Bibi had no idea what he was talking about. What figure? Who had the cash? And where was the gun? Her son-in-law had a rather high-pitched, goat-like snigger, which he had stifled behind a bow tie in the past. But America had made him confident as well as largely incomprehensible. He had cast aside his tie and sniggered freely now. He also talked. He shepherded her through the bustling crowds and air-conditioned halls of LA airport, chattering without a pause. He wheeled her through the revolving doors and into the brittle sunshine outside, speaking compulsively. He kept it up all the way across the road to the sixth floor of the parking lot, where his car turned out to be a massive, black, four-wheel-drive vehicle, which looked like a hearse. She had difficulty lifting her bloated legs into it, so Bahman helped her up, prattling nonstop. “Angela Colney drives a Range Rover, black DUB rims, DIRECTV satellite and everything; I’ve seen her on Pacific Palisades going to Malibu but to be honest, Bibijan, I prefer the Mercedes G-Class myself,” he said. 173

She sank into her seat, exhausted, and closed her eyes. Perhaps he was taking pills; they said Americans did that to be happy. It was a huge relief when the door slammed on his perpetual smile. There was something odd about his teeth too; when had they ever been so straight and so white? As Bahman began piling her suitcases into the boot, Bibijan prayed that he would let her sleep on the way back. But he didn’t. He talked about cars she had never heard of. He talked about movie stars she had never seen. He kept it up, all along the Marina Freeway and then up the 405. Bibi had not remembered how far Westwood was from the airport, how dull the highway, how long it took during rush hour, but nothing could have been as far from her experience or as unintelligible as Bahman’s words. She tried to concentrate on the details of his new hobby— “Surfing is an art and a science, Bibijan”—on the new regimen his diet guru had given him—“Wheatgrass juice in the morning, goji berry tea at noon”—but when the late afternoon traffic slowed them to a crawl, she gave up and stopped listening to the reasons why massage was so—“Awesome, Bibijan, just awesome.” She also stopped looking at him, because his fat thighs were offensive to her, in their loose Bermuda shorts. If the veil was necessary for modesty’s sake, then Bahman ought to be wearing one, she mused, half dozing as he droned on and on. The naked ladies on Lili’s walls had actually bothered her less. One law for women, another for men, thought Bibi as she drifted off. It was all rather silly. She had been a girl of seventeen when the veil was abolished by the old regime and was well past sixty when the new one forced her to put it on again. One law making you cover your face and another making you show it, she thought hazily. And always men deciding, always men prattling on and on about what women ought to wear or ought not to do. Bibi would have liked women to pass a law forcing men to wear long trousers in the presence of their mothers-in-law. 174

She had been eager to put a hat on her head, in the days of Reza Shah; it was a black saucer with a scrap of spotted netting hanging halfway down her face. Even though she felt upside down at first, exposing her mouth and covering her eyes, she did not mind showing her lipstick to the world. Her family were enlightened. Her father had owned one of the few cars in the capital. Even though they were Siyyids, none of her uncles had been clerics or claimed ancestry with maggoty Qajar princesses; they had been poets, writers, intellectuals, active in the Constitutional Movement, leaders of thought. So when Reza Shah decreed that Iranian women should abandon the veil, she was ready for it, she was happy to toss it off. Some of her old aunts, the spinster half sisters of a generation before, stayed huddled up in their houses from that time on, and never took another step out of doors. But she sauced herself up in a hat and waltzed into the street. Soon afterwards, she had met and married the General. The thought of her dead husband jolted the old lady awake. Bahman was still talking. He had moved on from surfing and dieting and was now stuck in massage. He had a private masseuse, he was telling her, using the French word with a Persian accent so it sounded like “jah-sooz,” the Persian word for spy. But who was being spied on? Bibi blinked herself awake and stared out of the window. They had stopped at a traffic light. Bahman left the subject of massage briefly, in order to announce that they would soon be home. Now, that was a word, thought Bibi. Home. What did it mean here? What did it mean anywhere? They were driving through city streets and had left the highway. They were turning into what Bahman called the residential section of Westwood. Residence was another word for home. “Are you a permanent resident of the United States, ma’am?” the immigration officer had asked. She had no idea. Was Westwood, where Goli lived, a permanent home? It was like a park, she remembered, with 175

stucco houses surrounded by moats of grass, an American version of the Place des Vosges with careful trees on every side. But how permanent was it? Bibi stared out of the window as they slowed down before what looked like the residence of the President of the United States. That’s it, she realized, as the car swung into the driveway, her heart reeling round at the recollection. Goli and Bahman’s house: a huge, white, pillared thing sitting back from the road on a slight rise of grass. The first time Bibi had set eyes on it when she arrived from Iran a year before, she really thought that Goli was living in the White House, or had Gone with the Wind or something. She had been impressed by how grand it looked. But now, after six months in Lili’s flat in the Marais, her eldest daughter’s house, bought with the General’s marriage money, just looked pretentious. She hadn’t noticed it so much before, but compared to France and Iran, where gardens were kept like women behind walls, this house with its palladium front and green lawn, was dreadfully naked, exposed to the world. She stared through the car window in a daze, as the engine idled and her son-in-law continued talking. She could not register a word that he was saying. At first she assumed it must be about himself again—why weight loss was linked to surfing, or how riding the foam brought him tranquillity of mind—and then she realized he was talking about the house, saying something about selling it. Money again? It was really very embarrassing to have to listen to Bahman talking about money. “But where are the walls?” gasped Bibijan. In addition to insensitivity, her son-in-law had acquired a certain stupidity; he had forgotten that no one in their right minds would want to buy a house without walls. Whoever happened to be passing by on the street could see straight into the garden. Total strangers could look right through into the living room, the dining room, even the bedrooms. Goli had not put up proper 176

curtains, either: the windows were festooned with flimsy, transparent swathes of nylon, which swagged ineffectually across the glass in three scalloped tiers exposing all the happenings inside the house to the outside world. Bibi remembered that they were decidedly grey, those curtains, and needed cleaning. Neither of her daughters was all that house-proud: Lili living in Bolshevik squalor and Goli dependent on Filipino maids she could no longer afford. It was her fault, thought Bibi, sadly; she hadn’t taught them to look after themselves. It was the General’s fault, for accustoming them to the illusion of luxury. But that didn’t solve the problem of the walls. That was America’s fault, pretending to be so open while being so closed to anybody who was not American. “How can you sell a house without walls?” she stammered aloud, aware from the odd way Bahman glanced at her that what she had just said did not sound completely right. Her voice sounded odd to her too. Shrill. Must be the jet lag. She sat bolt upright, trying to wake up and arrive in America as her son-in-law stepped out of the monstrous hearse of a car and walked over to her side. But she could not get out; she could not go down; she simply couldn’t budge, as he stood there, holding the door open for her. And it was not just because she was so high off the ground or because her legs were so bloated and swollen that she could barely stand on them. It was because Bahman was still talking. And although she did not want to look at him in case she saw his naked knees, she had finally registered that he was not speaking about the house anymore. He was not talking about money either, thank heavens. He was back to talking about himself. But what was he saying now? Bibi could not bear to hear it, did not want to know. She was suddenly tired, very tired. She kept her eyes fixed on that naked house where her daughter lived exposed to all the world, as her son-in-law stood there, in his Bermuda shorts and Hawaiian shirt, open to all the world, saying something so stripped 177

of sense, so bare of consequence, that although she understood his words, their meaning crashed and disintegrated on the shores of her world. Bahman had apparently lost himself. So he had decided to look for himself. He was now finding himself, or perhaps bits and pieces of himself, scattered like driftwood on the beaches of California. She gathered that people often lost and found themselves here; it happened all the time. If Ali had been lost in California rather than in the wilds of Kurdistan, someone would have presumably found him by now. A Ukrainian or was it Russian masseuse had found Bahman surfing with his friends, he confided. He, in turn, had found her in a hot tub “just like in ‘Funny or Die.’” They were now on a regimen of wheatgrass together. Being found after being lost had greatly boosted Bahman’s confidence. It took up all his mental space. “Love is awesome!” he told her, in English, rippling with self-assurance. There are certain things no man should ever say to his motherin-law about himself. And Bahman was saying them. There are words too awesome to cross that barrier. But he was crossing it. Bahman was tearing down all the walls that had ever been between them and this was apparently why he would not be coming into the house. He was dropping her off, like a parcel, and then going surfing. He didn’t live in the White House anymore, he told Bibi, brightly. He hung out, and he didn’t mean laundry, high snigger, with the kids, and he did not mean his children either. More hilarity. He meant his buddies in Caribou. His surfing friends. His old cronies from Iran who had lucrative connections with business partners back at “home,” by which he meant the country he had left two decades before and no longer knew, his chums who were “into”—and he said it as though it were a kind of bath or swimming pool—“into the law.” They were his good friends who had 178

sorted out her money—that dreadful word again—so that scoundrel Mehdi wouldn’t get his hands on it; they were the ones who had introduced him to the Ukrainian “maa-soze.” “Bibijan, I’ve never been so happy in my life, to be honest!” He was so happy, in fact, so very very happy that Bahman was going to divorce her daughter. He was very sorry, but he couldn’t take it anymore. And Bibi, gazing at him, with swimming eyes, suddenly realized that he had been lost because of them, corrupted, because of them. The General and his money had ruined the boy. Somewhere inside this fat and infantile man was a shy, skinny bridegroom who had simply wanted a wife who would give him a daily massage.

179

WEDDINGS

W E D O G O A L I T T L E OV E R B OA R D S O M E T I M E S .

Weddings are important for us and we go all out when it comes to getting married. Perhaps it is because weddings remind us of who we are, who we were, where we come from. They’re like funerals that way, except there’s dancing. And it’s true that although a lot else has changed in our lives, our weddings are no different here than they were back in Iran: the same extravagance, the same fanfare. Weddings remind us of the old country. We’re a bit like the Greeks in that regard, though you’d never like to say so, for fear of causing offence. We like to remember our past glories, however poor our present circumstances. We like to demonstrate our care for the next generation too; we like giving our kids the best we have. And we like to show others that we have quite enough to do it, thank you, that we don’t scrimp, we are not miserly. In fact, that’s really what our weddings are about: they advertise our wealth to the world. But they can also be a real waste. You’d think we had nothing better to do with our money than throw it at people about to make the mistake of their lives. We’ve been to weddings where thousands 180

have been spent on the bridal gown and the bridesmaids’ dresses, hundreds of thousands on the catering as well as drinks, over a million on the hall and the entertainment, the security services and the insurance. Because of course you never know what might go wrong with a wedding. We attended one in LA a while ago, where the bride was carried into the reception room lying in a coffin. There she was, adorned in white lace and lilies, with her eyes closed under the glass lid, the picture of Sleeping Beauty. Or Snow White after the poisoned apple. And after the oohs and the aahs and the gasps and the flashes from the cameras, the groom came in, with a puff of red smoke, costumed like a vampire, a cross between the Twilight movies and Bride of Frankenstein or something. That caused even more oohs and aahs and flashes. He was supposed to lift the glass lid of the coffin, kiss his bride, and lift her out. Only by then, given all the oohs and aahs, and because of her breath and the moisture from the flowers, the lid was sealed tight. He could not open it. He tried again and again. But it was clamped shut. Vacuum sealed. He panicked. She panicked even more. She didn’t need the kiss of life, we promise you: she started screaming which only made matters worse. They had to break the glass with a hammer. A real waste of money that was. So yes, considering all the pomp and luxury on display in LA, the show and the folly, we might as well be in the elegant outskirts of Shemiran, up in the northern suburbs of Tehran. But we have Hollywood here, which gives Iranian American weddings that added shine. We’ve seen some pretty fancy weddings here too, we can tell you, that frankly put the Oscars to shame. And some near misses. It’s not only in America where marital extravaganzas get Iranians into the local press, however. It goes on everywhere. There was this other wedding we heard about, a nocturnal one in Stockholm, which took place in the snows of early spring. It was the last Tuesday of the year, before Red Wednesday or 181

Chaharshambeh-suri after the Persian New Year. That’s the night when we have bonfires, throwing away the old year, purifying the new, and all that. It’s why they chose that night for the wedding, the whole point being to emphasize the Zoroastrian rather than the Muslim aspect of the ceremony. We’re rather sensitive about these matters, you know, since the Revolution. So wanting to be Persian rather than Iranian, the young couple decided to top off their vows with the traditional fire jumping; they wanted to do it as a sort of symbol, leaping out of their past into their future, as it were. Well, he jumped all right, but she didn’t leap quite high enough, if you catch our drift. It was the veil. First-degree burns. There was also at least one wedding that turned into a funeral, according to the grapevine. It happened quite recently, in Hamburg. The couple were, shall we say, on the mature side. It was a second marriage for one and the third for the other, so we were told. He was a wealthy widower, quite old actually, and she was a divorcée, not exactly young. Anyway, he had a heart attack during the ceremony. It was a real shock, because he’d always kept himself real fit. She’d been his masseuse, you know, came over and did him three times a week so he’d keep trim. And he looked just fine, really magnificent considering his age; he looked absolutely in top form until he sort of turned purple in the face and started to wheeze. It was really awful. Right there in the middle of the living room with all the guests. But she refused to call the ambulance until the mullah had said the necessary. She insisted on the verses, the mirror, the whole wretched business. Finally when the basics were over, she rushed him to hospital and signed his comatose body into emergency, still dressed in her bridal gown. And the following afternoon, she presided over the funeral as his wife, even though the civil ceremony had technically not taken place. It was the shortest marriage we’d ever heard of, but at least it did not involve a divorce. Those are 182

getting more and more frequent among Iranians, you know. They did say her lawyers were sent for and reached the hospital just in time, but not for a divorce. The court case is still on between her and the old man’s kids. We heard recently that she may be engaged to one of the lawyers. Now that’ll be quite the wedding. And we can just imagine how much will be spent on their insurance. The lengths to which some Persians go for the sake of matrimonial novelty is extraordinary. And it has nothing to do with sighehs either, those temporary wives you can buy in Iran with the blessing of a mullah for the price of a ticket to the football stadium. The problem is that some weddings throw more than money around. There was a recent affair we were told about, in Spain or somewhere Catholic, where the groom filed for a divorce immediately after the wedding on grounds of nonconsummation. He said it was a way for them to prove their love for each other. He said a legal annulment would allow him to woo his bride and marry her all over again. He wanted to show how far he was willing to go to demonstrate his absolute commitment to the girl. It didn’t work, of course. She had enough sense to save on the expense and the divorce was absolute. But the worst divorce case we ever heard about took place in Beverly Hills. Nasty business that, fraud case in the courts, scandal in the papers. They say it was so acrimonious that it led to a suicide. Or was it a murder? At any rate, somebody certainly died. We had attended the wedding long ago so that’s why we knew all about the divorce. The wedding, which had taken place in the old days at the time of the Shah in Tehran, had been an extravaganza to top them all. Three nights of feasting and dancing, one hundred white doves released from the rooftops, and enough shirin polo to provoke diabetes in a whole generation. To end up in LA law courts after all that, with dead in-laws on your conscience, is a real waste of money in our opinion.

183

DIVORCE

I T TO O K U P A L L T H E S PAC E I N T H E H O U S E .

When she walked into her living room, after meeting Bahman at the lawyer’s, Goli saw that the fake white Louis XV furniture had already been pushed to one side to make room for it. The pictures of Persian girls plucking their interminable lutes had been taken down from the walls in anticipation of it. Even the carpets had been rolled up in the bay window area, overlooking the ragged lawn, so that it could lay claim to the entire parquet floor. The divorce had moved in and taken over, before the house had even been sold. From the living room door, she could see, through the window opposite, the makeshift “For Sale” sign, which had been hammered into the uncut grass. It had an improvised appearance from this perspective that did nothing to enhance the value of the building. The face it presented to the street displayed the agent’s logo and the words “In Homes We Trust,” written in bold red, white, and blue. But from behind, the sign looked like nothing more than three sticks of plywood held together precariously by a couple of nails. It neither inspired confidence in the agent nor in the constitutional nature of their transactions. It only confirmed her husband’s treachery. 184

Goli leaned against the doorjamb on collapsing heels, staring at the devastated living room. She knew the mortgage lawyers could not be blamed for this. The estate agents could not be held responsible either, even though it was their sign outside. And she could hardly blame her mother, just because Bibijan had arrived from France in the middle of the mess. She was tempted to say it was her sister’s fault, but Goli also knew, after what had just happened in the lawyer’s office, that Lili had been right all along. Only her husband could have treated her so disgracefully. Only Bahman could have cheated on her like this. He even said the carpets were going to be cleaned! Her feet burned, her back ached, and her cheeks stung with humiliation. How could he have done this to her? And in a way that gave her no recourse but to accept? How could he have deceived her without her even realizing it? Had he started it years ago, when her father was still alive, plotting it all out, calculating everything, telling her nothing, just as he did with the Green Card and Bibi’s money? She had been ready for infidelity—that was to be expected—but not fraud. And to learn of it now, by mistake, in front of an American lawyer! To discover his betrayal in such a place and time and be shamed like this in front of a foreigner! He knew very well that she would never lose face by arguing with him in public. In some ways, Goli had never left Tehran. She had been brought up in a culture that expected her to be obedient, amenable, and submissive as a woman, and in a family that expected her to be a good Persian wife, like her mother, accepting without question all manner of incomprehensible “male” behaviour, just as her mother had done. So even here, even in a country where wives could be men, even with all the afternoon soaps and blond hair and Botox, there were still areas of her life that stayed untouched, preserved intact with the mothballed embroideries, the tarnished urns and silver platters of her wedding gifts, locked away in her basement. But 185

now, after the disgraceful episode at the lawyer’s, as she staggered down the interminable boulevards, and struggled across the congested intersections, and limped past the Pizza Huts and Texaco stations and exercise labs and ju-ju-juice lounges and do-do-do-ityourself car washes all the way up Wiltshire Boulevard, Goli found herself irredeemably in LA. She felt she had taken up residence in an afternoon soap. She walked for almost two hours, her mind reeling with questions about what Bahman had just done. How could she have been so stupid? So dumb? For so long? She had not realized the irrationality of it, at first, attempting to come all the way back home to Westwood from West 7th Street in Central LA in her impossibly high heels, but she could no more have driven in the same car with that man after discovering what he had been up to than go on living with him. She could not bear even to breathe the same air. She had been in such shock that she hardly noticed her blistered feet, her twisted back, until she was accosted by a beggar as she stepped into the intersection at San Vincente, a few blocks away from the Museum of Art. It was just a poor druggie, lurching towards her with swimming eyes and breath that reeked, barely a man at all, but at the thought of the mandatory dime he was demanding, she panicked. She didn’t have a dime! Clutching her fake Gucci bag tight under her arm, she ran across the street on a red pedestrian, without looking to the left or right. Her heels as well as her heart were bursting as he wailed after her, “Hey, look where you’re going, lady!” and she was almost knocked over by a taxi. But she hadn’t even the presence of mind to flag it down. She hadn’t the fare for the ride anyway. When she reached the other side, she turned round and looked back at the tramp, with the traffic swirling between them, and realized that he had been warning her against the oncoming cars, not asking for money. For he was smiling at her then, giving her the thumbs up. Beggars of the world unite. She felt utterly wretched. 186

What would the General have said? “Don’t feed the habit,” he would have snorted, as if the poor, helpful druggie, warning her to stay alive, were an Iranian opium smoker. And what would he have thought of his eldest daughter walking the streets of LA? “Don’t ask for trouble,” he would have said, as if she were competing with the prostitutes in Tehran. He was very proud, the General, very patronizing. “Remember who you are,” he would have advised, “and stay away from the riffraff.” As if he hadn’t been riffraff himself, thought his daughter. As if this son of a butcher masquerading as a military hero and playing the sugar daddy all her life hadn’t finally left her deep in debt. Goli’s rage dissolved at the thought of her father. The tears she had held back all afternoon suddenly rose in her throat. What good had family honour done her at the lawyer’s office? It was precisely because she could not forget who she supposedly was that she had ended up trapped between present and past, strapped on the rack between Iran and America. Classic position for a wellbrought-up girl to find herself, stretched out like a plucked chicken between pride and shame. She had been trying to maintain the illusion of family honour when both honour and family were lost. They called it ghayrat in Persian, this stupid need to keep face, this uselessly proud stiff upper lip, that had let her so floppily down. Goli threw off the broken heels with a sob, and limped towards the mantelpiece, dropping her handbag into an upturned chair along the way. The raffia work had been ripped to shreds by her daughter’s confounded kitten. The fireplace was tacky too and fake, the mantelpiece constructed for photos rather than fires; it was as flaky as the white baby grand at the far end of the living room on its chipped rococo legs, used as goalposts by her son in his football phase. The garish fringed shawl that used to hang over it had been bundled up and wrapped around the photos. The picture of her little brother Ali, with his enormous smile, was hidden in its folds, like a virgin in a veil, but her wedding photograph was still in pride of place on the 187

mantelpiece. There she was, a teenage bride in her puppy fat almost twenty years ago, bursting out of her satin dress; there she was like a prize pig at a fair, her father’s right hand clasped round her left one. She had been ripe for the plucking. And the cheating. The General had the habit of keeping his left hand hidden in his jacket in formal photographs. Seated, he was an imposing man, with robust shoulders and a broad chest designed for display, but once upright, he proved somewhat diminutive, with watered-down buttocks and effeminate feet. He was seated in the wedding photo, naturally, with his eldest daughter behind him in her overblown pompadour of a dress. She had placed her right arm, plump and satin-sheathed, around his shoulders, as if protecting him, while he had imprisoned her left against his decorated chest. It should have been the other way around, thought Goli, with a pang of self-pity, leaning against the mantelpiece as she stared at the photo. Her father should have been protecting her; why hadn’t he? She laid the frame flat with another sob. The mascara ran down her cheeks onto the glass and she let the tears splatter onto her father’s face. She had recently watched an afternoon soap where that had happened, except the girl had been crying onto her boyfriend’s face. It made her sob even harder to think of herself, the daughter of the General, crying like the heroine of a soap. The General had been very proud of marrying his daughter off to one of the old Qajar breed. “A clever boy, that one,” he had confided, when she had pouted coyly, all those years ago in Tehran, protesting that she did not to want to marry. “No money in the family,” her father said, “but these people have class. He has a degree, you know, from a university. In London. He’ll look after you well.” What would her father have done, if had he lived to see how well this son-in-law had looked after her? What would he have said about this clever boy using his London education to screw her out of a home? It had been the General’s gift to his eldest daughter at her wedding. He had made that clear to her husband. The 188

Persian super­market in LA was owned by them jointly, a business start-up for Bahman, but the house belonged to the girl alone, so that she would have no worries. And neither would her husband, if he took care of her. It was a bargain, sealed with an affidavit. But the deal had somehow left her a debtor. Bahman said she owed him money now. The General had always scoffed at the idea of wasting money on insurance. But when he fled to the United States on one of the last planes to leave Mehrabad Airport during the hostage crisis, he was already a sick man and needed urgent medical attention. His daughter’s house served as collateral against the loans which Bahman so cleverly arranged to cover the endless medical bills, the protracted hospital stays, the expensive surgeries performed on the dying man. By the time he came to his painful end, after months of home care, his daughter was bankrupt. Of course, the medical bills were not all the General’s. Bahman had also spent a fortune on his teeth. He had every single one of them filed down to tiny sharp points and then paid an astronomical sum for brand-new, shiny new, shockingly white new replacements. And Goli had a breast job done, as well as her nose: all the Iranian women of her age were doing it; why shouldn’t she? You gotta exert your independence, her girlfriends said, who participated in selfassertion workshops. She gave the workshops a miss but asserted herself anyway, exerted her independence. Bahman had not been impressed. To be honest, Goli, he told her, they feel artificial. Her boobs, he said, just didn’t blow his mind. She could have slapped him. Which mind? And what did he know about it anyway? Big boobs were all the rage in Beverly Hills and besides, her girl friends told her she looked cute. You look real cute, honey, they’d said, especially in heels; you gotta wear heels to balance the bust. But being cute had strained their budget as well as ruined her feet. They could barely cover the funeral costs after her father died. And there was soon as little left in their joint account as in 189

Bahman’s mind. He started muttering darkly about the mortgage. He talked so much about collaterals over dinner that Delli stopped eating. He gave Goli sheets of paper covered with columns and filled with five-digit numbers until she started to feel like a Third World country. Or Europe after the war. Something had to be done, he said. Goli couldn’t argue with that. They would have to sell the house to pay off their debts, Bahman insisted. She had been shocked there was no alternative. What about selling the supermarket? A question of economics, he shrugged, the supermarket was a moneymaker; best keep that. But after she had reluctantly agreed to the sale, after the estate agents had hammered their sign in the lawn, after she had even rolled up the rugs which he promised to get cleaned, and pushed aside the furniture so a company could wax the floors that had been neglected for the past fifteen years, he suddenly proposed a different solution. At the last minute, he suggested that they consult an American lawyer, the friend of a friend of very good friends of his, who could sort something out for them. She had been so relieved, so grateful. She thought they were going to the solicitor’s office to adjust the mortgage rates, to increase the loan. So much better, Bahman had said, breezily, to keep the house in the family. How clever he was! Her father had been right after all. But when the lawyer placed the papers in front of her, with his square-tipped, hairless fingers, Goli realized something was very wrong. This was not about the mortgage at all. It was not even about a sale. It was the transfer of a title deed. She was being asked to sign away her rights to the house! “As agreed,” said the man, glancing at her across the desk. It appeared that Bahman had already readjusted the mortgage several times in the past. Behind her back. Without telling her. He had done this on the basis of the affidavit signed on the day they were married. Which he had notarized. In English. Now the time had come to pay him back for his financial services to the family. 190

“As I believe you have agreed,” repeated the lawyer. This saltless butter American was nothing like the oily Persian lawyers Bahman usually cultivated. Goli had often served sweetmeats and tea to these so-called partners of his, in exchange for their empty compliments and false charms. But she could see instantly, from the lawyer’s pale yellow uncharming glance, how different he was from the sleazy business friends through whom her husband communicated with Mehdi in Iran. There would be no way of backing out of this situation. “This call is being recorded for your own security; please hold the line.” If she were to object to the lawyer’s proposition on the grounds that she did not know, she had not been told, her husband had not explained, she needed time to think, to ask questions, to consider her options—then she would pay dearly for it. “We value our clients; your trust is important to us.” She knew that whatever she said would be held against her, like in the detective stories, and would add interest on the debt. Sitting ramrod straight in the lawyer’s chair, Goli felt marooned in an alien world. “You have agreed?” he was saying. She could not answer, in this no-man’s language. So her husband spoke on her behalf. Yes. Of course they had. Agreed. “So please sign here and here,” the American indicated with his clean, square-tipped, manicured nail. She could not look at Bahman, sitting beside her on another planet, as her pen hovered. “On each page, please, and your initials at the bottom right-hand corner,” concluded the lawyer, pointing to the row of dots, and Goli wrote her name there, as though it belonged to somebody else. She felt dry and old and Arctic. There was ice in her head where the words should have been; there was a chill mist in her mind that froze her tongue, but her right ear, closest to Bahman, burned. There he sat with his breezy Pacific tan, smiling broadly at the lawyer, chatting about surfing parties and moving up to Malibu. What could she possibly say? She was certainly not going to argue in public. She was not going to contradict her husband in front of a foreigner who probably 191

didn’t know the difference between Iranians and Talibans, Persian cats and Afghan hounds. Bahman had banked on her behaving like a good girl. Maybe he had no national pride, no loyalty towards his country, but she was still the General’s daughter. She drew herself up stiffly and did the only thing she could, in the circumstances: she signed away her rights to the house in total silence, declined to shake hands, and then turned round and walked all the way home. What else was a well-brought-up Persian girl to do? The clever Qajar crook had not followed her immediately. He had taken his time, stroking the manicured pale-fingered hand of the foreigner, no doubt, licking his saltless palm. And she had walked a considerable length of the way along the boulevard before he drove up alongside her. He told her to get into the car at once. She refused. He started tooting his horn, shouting at the traffic lights, cursing her for being a fool. She ignored him. She could not even bear to look at him, his ponytail, his “Dude” shorts. He had yelled something about Bibi too, as if it wasn’t enough to be dragging her into the gutter: he pulled her mother into it too. She had not registered exactly what he was saying until she heard Bibi’s name. Then she realized that other pedestrians were looking at her strangely, and Bahman was telling the whole world that he was sick and tired of her and her mother and her sister and her whole wretched family, that her father was a prick, that her mother was an idiot, that her damned sister had always been a liability, and that he wished her sainted brother, who had been a millstone round his neck for years, was well and truly dead. He had had enough of the lot of them, he said; he was going to Malibu and not coming back. Good riddance, she had yelled back. It was not until she found herself staring down at the photo of herself in her wedding gown under the splatters of mascara, that she realized what had happened. Her father hadn’t protected her at all. His so-called bargain had let her husband siphon off the value of the house for decades. And her mother had been no help; she 192

had allowed the General to cheat her too. In fact, Bahman had been fairly honest, saying that selling was the only solution: it was true because he had already mortgaged the house to the point of no return and the supermarket and its flat were all they had left. That was why the carpets had been rolled up in the bay area, and the furniture was upended, and the “In Homes We Trust” sign was in the middle of the lawn. It was just his duplicity over the title deeds that was the last straw. He had put her at the mercy of that American lawyer, held her hostage to a system she did not understand, placed her in a situation where boobs were no use when it came to self-assertion. That was worse than leaving Iran, worse than any change of regime. Goli threw her wedding photograph across the room like they did in the afternoon soaps. But it wasn’t the hero of the series who came striding in to take her in his arms at that critical moment. It was Delli, roused from her vampire film by the sound of shattering glass. It was her gawky, graceless daughter in a sloppy black T-shirt and flip-flops who came to the rescue. She ran upstairs shouting, “Whatisitmomareyoualrightdon’tcrymomdon’tcry!” just like an American. And Goli, sobbing into her shoulder, was shocked back to reality. For Delli knew. It was written all over her pale face and shadowed under her almond eyes. She knew that this was no home in which to trust, that her parents’ divorce had taken up residence long ago, and there would be no place to live but the flat over the Persian supermarket. It should have been the other way around, thought Goli in anguish, as Delli rocked her in her pin-thin arms and she wept into the shoulders of this scrawny, too-knowing teenager. It should have been mother protecting daughter, it should be her shielding Delli, rather than the reverse. By following in her own mother’s footsteps, she had betrayed her child. And she wailed, not over her father’s folly or the affidavit she had signed on her wedding day or Bahman cheating her all these years or his last greedy trick over the title deeds, but her own weakness, her stupidity. 193

R E A L E S TAT E

W E T H O U G H T S H E WO U L D D I E A F T E R LO S I N G H E R H O U S E I N I R A N .

It had meant the world to her, that house on the cool slopes of Damavand, north of the capital. She had been very attached to it; it had been her dream home. She had no children but she had put her heart and soul into decorating that place. Giving it up had been harder for her than leaving the country. She went into a serious depression, no question about it. We heard there had even been a suicide attempt at one point. All because of a house. Naturally, we worried about her. She was just one more attractive Iranian woman with poor education and a good dress sense, spoiled rotten by a dead father and now proving a liability to her husband. Buying and selling may have been in her genes, as it is in ours, but she had no idea how to earn a living and no recognizable qualifications when she arrived in this country. All she could think about was houses, without having the money to buy one. She knew nothing about the London property market either, how complex it was, how risky; she had no idea about stamp duty and building societies. It takes more than a taste for luxury and elegant clothing to acquire a roof over your head here, let alone acquiring a lucrative job. 194

We tried to help, of course. We introduced her to friends, to people she could consult. We suggested solutions: typing and driving lessons, language and secretarial courses. We offered her names of support groups, addresses of yoga classes. Many of us had been in the same predicament when we first came here. Like us, she had spent the last years of the old regime living in her wallto-wall marbled mansion in northern Tehran, doing her shopping for Hermes in Paris, buying Guccis in Milan. Like us, she had fled to the West to join her scattered relatives at the outbreak of the Revolution, leaving behind the sunken-tubbed bathrooms, the hot and cold gilded swans and tinkling chandeliers. But while some of us had rallied and a few of us even recuperated our losses or at least reconciled ourselves to living without, she did none of these things. Even as her husband’s business prospects diminished and her marriage deteriorated, she continued to dream of the ideal house she had given up and could never afford to buy in London. Within two years, she was divorced. It was inevitable, we told each other, given that the scoundrel had only married her for money anyway. Good riddance to him, we said to her; you’re better off without the leech. She went into mourning then, which was inevitable too, given our national propensity to dwell to excess on loss and death. But when she also found herself unemployed, suicidal, and on the verge of homelessness, it was not inevitable at all. We were scandalized when we heard about it. Where was her self-respect, her pride? A woman like that may be ill-prepared to support herself, but where were her relatives to rally round and protect her? Ironically enough, it proved her salvation in the end. Had she not been so desperate to escape the cramped flat above the kebab shop in Barnet, she might never have achieved what she has now. Had she not started visiting the estate agents in Belgravia, dressed to the nines, to the dismay of her family and friends, had she not begun to wander around Eaton Place and Sloane Square 195

obsessed by the “For Sale” signs, she might never have found a job in the property market. She was quick to learn, once she started. It needed only a few sightings, only a handful of viewings, and she was able to distinguish herself from the Russians, the Saudis, and the Greeks. She quickly established that she was not that sort of purchaser, even though she was Middle Eastern. She was more interested in selling than in buying. We were shocked at first. We were scandalized to learn that she had been pretending to buy just so she could sell. But we judge her less harshly now, especially since she’s begun to do so well. You’ve got to admit, it takes more than mere incentive to achieve such success, given the kind of gossip that was circulating in the Iranian community since we are, admittedly, inclined to backbite. It takes more than guts, even. Frankly, it takes despair. She certainly had her share of that. When it comes to using suffering as a spur, Iranian women are unparalleled. You’ve got to give it to them: they are unique in this regard. When there’s no point in worrying, they simply imagine disasters as a stimulus to survival. But give them concrete cause for anguish and they could construct an entire civilization out of it, let alone a house. Provide them with good reason to be melancholy, and they could generate nuclear power from it. Our ladies are the backbone of our society, we’ll say that much for them; their despair has become our mainstay, there’s no doubt about it; it’s been the veritable bulwark and buttress of our lives since we left Iran. Why, where would the majority of us be without their misery? What could we have possibly done without the torment suffered by our sisters, our daughters, and our wives? Iranian women, like this one, have an astonishing capacity for self-invention in extremis. It was not long before she was asking all the right questions as she was shown around multi-million-pound properties in Mayfair and Park Lane. She had graduated beyond gold swans and skating 196

rink bathrooms by then and wanted to know about the plumbing, the boiler, the state of the roof tiles; she scoffed at the in-house casinos and the swimming pools in the basement and required detailed information about insulation and under-floor heating ­instead. She knew exactly how old money and new fads could be combined, especially when viewing unique freehold houses in exclusive cul-de-sacs, minutes away from the residences of various earls and dukes of Cadogan and Buckinghamshire. Were the bamboo shoots in the extension glass stairwell organic or botanic? Was the paint the highest-quality hand-mixed variety or not? And could anyone guarantee that the solar panels were not made with sweatshop slave labour in China? She was soon refusing to see homes that had not received several environmental as well as humanitarian awards for interior design. Before long, the agents who showed her, with increasing desperation, the grand terraced homes in Sloane Square, Grosvenor Gardens, and Regent’s Park, realized that she had the highest possible qualifications to undermine, if not entirely destroy, their careers. That was when one of the top companies offered her a job. If you can’t beat them, join them, as the Americans say. In this case, since it was a private British club, it was more like, ask them to join you, on certain exclusive terms. They are not stupid, these people. They recognize talent when they see it. And they know how to exploit it too. That’s how they built their empire and that’s what saved her, ironically. That’s what gave her membership in the club. Better sell real estate than her body, she said. And we agreed. The next best thing to owning upscale property, along with all the Russians, Saudis, and Greeks, was to live in it vicariously. Since she could no longer afford to do the first, she did the second. And she did it well. Of course, she had to polish her accent as well as her nails before she could accept the position; she had to brush up her understatements as well as scallop her hair. She had to abridge her 197

name, too, and invent an English equivalent: success depends on assimilation as well as class in this country. But she already possessed the greatest qualification of all. Envy. She knew that her kind of clients did not need sales pitch but expected more solid incentives. Like covetousness. They were not interested in patter but responded better to other inducements. Such as greed. And she knew exactly how to provoke these reactions. She made them believe that she was one of them, that her blood was as blue and her loyalties as true as theirs, because her investment instincts were just as good. And she did this by convincing them that she did not want to sell the house at all: she wanted it for herself. Her routine was simple. She only acquired property for her portfolio that met the criteria of her own tastes. Top of the luxury market, of course, and in the millions—lovely neoclassical terraces in Eaton Square, elegant Adelphi buildings and Georgian townhouses off the Strand, huge mansions in Mayfair—she refused anything below the double-digit mark. There was no alternative for a woman with her tastes but to be driven by her dreams. Then, when pressed, when repeatedly requested by her clients, she would finally show them round these elegant homes with unfeigned reluctance. She would point out the design benefits begrudgingly, describe the advantages of location and orientation with evident unwillingness, identify the variegated shrubs in the private back garden, the lovely old trees in the park nearby, the spectacular view of St Paul’s or Westminster with thinly disguised resentment. The formula was magic. Prospective homeowners were instantly attracted by her avidity, stimulated by her acquisitiveness. Whether the house fulfilled their needs or not, they bought it because they sensed how much she wanted it herself. People spent entire trust funds on her unarticulated desires. In less than three years, she was the top saleswoman in the company. The last we heard, she was winning awards and earning millions in commissions. That husband of hers must be eating his heart out. 198

She’s dressed in the best that Bond Street can offer and doesn’t even need to go to Paris for her Hermes now or wait to buy Guccis in Milan. But she herself has never bought a home. She needs to keep looking for it. We can understand that.

199

CARPETS

THE CARPETS H AD BEEN A BAD OM EN F ROM THE START .

The General used to say that as long as a girl had carpets, she would be all right. But we could see this one wasn’t the moment we walked in through the door. Where was she going to put them when she moved out of this place and into the small flat above the Persian supermarket? It was her only alternative and her sole asset once the Westwood house was sold. We had arrived unannounced. As soon as we heard about it, we were over there, offering our support. You can’t let a girl go through that sort of thing alone, especially when you’ve known the family for so long. Of course she wasn’t entirely alone. She had her mother with her. We’d been close to them for decades, friends with the General and his wife long before he came to California. In fact our visit was ostensibly to welcome her mother to town. She had arrived several weeks before and we were most remiss, we said, in not having come to present our compliments till now. We had been neighbours back then, contemporaries in Iran. Why, some of us had even been at their daughter’s wedding. We knew all about those carpets. 200

And the minute we stepped into the sitting room, we saw them rolled up in the bay area: the faded azure Tabriz and the once golden Kashan; the two bloodred Baluches under the ivory-coloured Kerman; the thin silk rug from Herat crushed under the weight of that enormous, full-flowered extravagance from Isphahan. There was something promiscuous about them, rolled up like that, something lewd almost, the way they lay on top of one another. They had been stacked in an unwieldy heap in the corner of the room, like gigantic, dusty crêpes, and her son was planted at one end of the sagging blue from Isphahan, playing a video game on his mobile phone. Her husband had promised to get them cleaned, she told us, gaily, hustling us through into the kitchen beyond. Another of his lies, we supposed. Unless it was one of hers. And her mother was unfortunately away visiting, in San Diego, she added with a clatter of dishes in the sink. We noticed the lunch things hadn’t been washed yet; the place was squalid. So sorry Bibijan was not here to welcome her old friends; she hoped we’d come round on her return, she said. Wouldn’t we please sit down? We deplored her mother’s absence, said we’d be sure to come again. She must have sent the old lady off to San Diego on purpose, we thought. We’d have done the same, if we were her; we’d have been ashamed to have friends come and see the house in such a state, with our mother around. Though some did say that the old woman was going ga-ga and didn’t notice such things. Perhaps that’s why she had sent her off to San Diego; she didn’t want us to see how far the poor old thing was gone. Her son was obese. We’d have thought she’d be ashamed to have any visitors see him too. Her daughter had the other problem: didn’t eat, thin as a rake. No, there certainly wouldn’t be any space for those huge carpets in that tiny apartment above the Persian store. Her husband had walked off with the house, so we’d heard, though how he could do that and how she could let him do it, in this day and age, in America, we did not know. Though of course it would have been equally 201

preposterous to fight him in the divorce courts: we don’t approve of that sort of thing, you know; we don’t like our women behaving like these greedy Americans. At least she would keep her dignity, even if she did lose the house. But she’d lose that too, of course, running the store. How can anyone be dignified selling smelly shambeh lileh? And what was she going to do about her mother in that tiny place? As it was, she was going to have squeeze the kids into one bedroom. But they certainly wouldn’t agree to share it with those carpets choking the air up, like decaying prostitutes. Well, just look at all those lovely carpets, we sighed. We sensed from her noisy tea making that she wanted to change the subject, wanted to avoid the question. But we asked it anyway. Where, we inquired, would they go when she moved? Oh, she answered brightly, there would always be room in her life for carpets. Who was she kidding? we thought, watching her bustle about with the kettle. Did she think we were Americans to try and pull the Persian wool over? The golden Kashan had barely fit into the living room of the Westwood house, and the Isphahan was too large for anywhere. It had been privately commissioned during the days of the Shah, specially woven for the grand marbled mansion in Tehran from which the General had fled after the Revolution. And when it arrived here, with its red rosettes, its blue palmettes, and its beige garlands, they had to cram it into the TV den, with its sides rolled up against the walls. Where else could it go? Later, even though they moved the sofa and the TV out during her father’s last months, the carpet could not be budged. And we can tell you, the sight of those bulbous roses and bulging garlands climbing incongruously up the walls on each side of the hospital bed oppressed us every time we visited the old man. Of course, we always visited, to the bitter end. We make a habit of doing that. We visited long enough to notice that her mother never came from Iran to care for her ailing husband. We visited 202

right through to see that her sister never attended the funeral. We Iranians have caring natures; we don’t leave people in distress alone. She was creating the usual fuss over tea, insisting on cheesecake, calling to her son to leave his game and come for his “snack,” as she called it. The last thing that boy needed was a snack, in our opinion. Perhaps she hoped that we would not talk about the divorce with him in the room. She really ought to lose weight herself, we thought, eyeing her as we declined the cake. She had let herself go in recent months. We had already noticed the gleams of white in the black roots of her blond hair. She’s aging badly, that one, we thought, nodding sweetly as she chattered on. Like her sister the decadent artist. Like her mother who was going ga-ga. Like her carpets. That oversize Isphahan had been her father’s final gift to his daughter, the last of the carpets he had sent to her from Iran. The General had his special contacts in the bazaar, for he had done better there than on any battlefield; he had thrived on lucrative monopolies under the Allied control. He had risen to the rank of Colonel under the old Shah but was offered the title of General by the new one, conditional upon his retirement from the army, they said, as a concession to the British. And it proved advantageous enough, for he became a major entrepreneur in Iran from that time on. He still wore his uniform and medals to the palace, but it was only because he was dealing in ladies’ stockings and soft drinks. Bedecked in his finery and with his left hand in his jacket, he looked the very image of the military hero he was emulating. Except that Napoleon had never dealt in pistachios, nor had a monopoly for Telefunken radios. Nor owned half as many carpets. Although he was much solicited, there was one particular carpet seller that the General patronized. The fellow had a small shop, in one of the less fashionable corners of the bazaar, but his distinguished client only had to point to a pink Kerman or the blue pool of a Tabriz, he only needed to glance in the direction of a Baluch or roll back the corner of a Bokhara, and the man would drag the 203

carpets out into the aisle, and roll them open, one by one, blocking passage in both directions for his benefit. He knew they were for the General’s daughter. She was the eldest of the children, the first to get married, the first to leave Iran. And when she gave birth to the first American citizen in the family, the merchant was the first to know it. From the way he stood back, hand pressed to his heart, breathless and sweating, waiting for the General’s decision, you’d think the carpets were for his own daughter. We heard that the two men were distantly related through a common grandmother. Their families had been divided because of religious controversy long ago, although the General denied it, of course, and the carpet seller never claimed any connection. He was just grateful for a first refusal, we supposed, but his sales to the General were no sinecure. The final purchase was conditional upon all additional cleaning and insurance expenses, which the merchant, naturally, paid. And once he rolled the carpets in heavy waxed brown paper, the shipping costs to California had to have been included in the price too. He was also expected to carry the export taxes on top of everything, unless they were exempt, through his client’s contacts at the Embassy. That was the General’s way, until the Shah’s last years. We remember the gossip at the time, the rumours. They said the carpet seller was heading for bankruptcy. We heard that the General’s wife had been opposed to her husband’s purchases and had called it a betrayal of principles, exploitation even, a form of slavery. In the end, the General bought out the carpet shop and made the owner his employee. Soon afterwards, the Revolution took place and he had to flee from Iran. But the carpet seller was doomed, poor sod. He got it both ways. He was punished, they said, for his associations with the previous regime. Now, lapped in their own dust in the TV room, the offending rolls seemed proof of another betrayal, another kind of exploitation, and we could sense it in the way the General’s daughter was 204

distracted as she asked us if we’d like some tea. Although she had not wanted to discuss the carpets, she started talking about cleaning costs when we mentioned the divorce. How much would it cost to clean her Persian carpets, did we know? she inquired. Where would we recommend that she take them? We did not remind her that her husband was supposed to see to the problem. We did not opine that these carpets should have been cleaned years ago. We avoided giving her a straight answer. We said it depended on whom, on where, on what. We told her we would let her know. And we eyed her askance as she poured the tea. How young she had been when she arrived in America, as a bride. Too young to be married, too young to become pregnant. How bright the carpets had seemed then and how full of magic. They had turned her into a Persian princess. “They’re my trust fund,” she used to giggle to her American friends. “They’re my pension for old age!” We used to laugh with her and at them at the same time; we enjoyed mocking Americans together. We imitated their oohs and aahs at the riot of medallions and knotted rosebuds underfoot; we mocked their credulous belief that her carpets were antiques. It was perfectly untrue, of course, but these farangis did not know any better. Besides, pretending to the wealth she used to have was the only way to hold her own in Westwood. We understood that. America was alright as long as you had money to spend in it. She had been invited to baby showers and girlie parties on the strength of her carpets. She had even put one in the kitchen. There it was, the ragged Bokhara. We shuddered slightly at the sight of the shred of the red beneath our feet, covered with tea stains, oil spills, yogurt. Her father used to say that a girl would never go hungry as long as she had carpets underfoot. Frankly, it wouldn’t do her or that son of hers much harm to go a bit hungry. But yes, we agreed, a girl needed her carpets. What could be more important, after the fall of a regime, before an impeding 205

divorce, than carpets? They were proof of her identity, which all that blond hair, that nose job, and her paucity of Persian vocabulary had eroded since leaving Iran. They symbolized her past; they protected her future. The carpet seller had probably agreed with the General too, wholeheartedly. It was more than the man was worth to question, let alone to bargain with such an important client. But to be honest, we still thought a kitchen carpet was a rather silly idea. This one she had not rolled up to send to the cleaners; it was too far gone. How much did the General pay for them at the time? we asked. She could not say. She looked at her watch. Her son was still eating. Her daughter was late from school. She was probably wondering how much longer we would hang around without her mother here, but how could we abandon her in such a state? We had been at her wedding, after all, so it was more than appropriate that we should be around for the divorce. How keen the old man had been to demonstrate his business acumen to the Westerneducated groom that day, how determined he had been to prove that he knew a thing or two about economics, even though he had not studied at its London School. He had bragged about what he’d paid for the carpets. It was a risible sum, a sign of his shrewd business sense, his clever bargaining ability. “But when a girl has carpets, she’ll need a house to put them in, won’t she?” he had concluded, turning the canine gleam of his smile on the new son-in-law. We remembered that moment; we recognized the bribe. We guessed the groom had been bought, had married so he wouldn’t have to work. The General provided the Westwood house too; it was part of the marriage contract. Carpets for her, house for him. Unless, her husband had been lying. We wouldn’t put it past him. The phone rang and she leapt to her feet. To her daughter. Where are you? A driving lesson? For how long? So we rose to leave. Those kids were going to be a handful. They already were 206

a handful. It was certainly not going to be easy for her in a tiny flat above the supermarket. Quite apart from having the carpets cleaned, she was going to have to pay to get rid of them now, after swearing that she would die rather than sell them all these years. Maybe she might auction them off? We knew that she was pinched for money. They did say she had been trying to smuggle money out of Iran. Well, she would not be the first to do it. They did say some sort of deal had been made to get funds in her mother’s name. The usual hanky-panky. By the time her father had arrived in California, ill-shaven, bone-thin with a face the colour of old chalk, she could hardly have questioned him about money. But when the massive carpet from Isphahan rolled up on her doorstep several months after the hostage crisis, we heard that she had lost her temper with the dying man. She was furious to have to pay such outrageous customs duty for it. How had he managed to ship something she had no desire to own out of the country at such a time? she demanded. And why the hell had he paid for the packaging and transport costs, when he could have brought money with him instead? Her father told her that he had had a special arrangement with a carpet seller in the Tehran bazaar. “It’s all his doing,” he said sourly, and then cursed the fellow. “And to think I gave him good business for all those years,” he added bitterly. Not long afterwards, we heard of the fire in the bazaar. The carpet seller and all his goods had gone up in smoke. Arson, some said. The long arm of the Great Satan, others said. But perhaps the carpets had finally taken their revenge. When we were saying good-bye, we repeated our compliments and good wishes to her mother. We said we’d come right by to see her as soon as she was back from San Diego. And we murmured that as for the carpets, she would probably get nothing but gossip value in the Iranian community if she tried to auction them. But 207

maybe we could see to getting them cleaned, if the selling price was reasonable? Say what you like but we Persians know the meaning of friendship. We stick together. It’s part of our culture to rally round when the going’s rough.

208

ECONOMY

YOU DON’T KNOW WHO OR WHAT TO BELIEVE THESE DAYS .

The most outrageous gossip gets passed around. They say the traffic is worse than in downtown LA. They say the metro system is better than in Moscow. They say there are more girls graduating from university than boys, more women doctors than men, more sex-change operations in Tehran than Botox in Beverly Hills, and more hard liquor being guzzled at private parties than gets sold on the open market in the capitals of the Western world. They also say that there are as many people condemned for their opinions inside the prisons as are walking about with impunity outside, free to be killed by the growing number of cars in the streets. So what’s true and what is not? It is just as well no one is really sure. We’re a people who don’t waste money if we can make it. There was a time when the mere mention of Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill ensured a high turnover, when conspiracy theories about Mossadegh were in great demand. We believed anything those days. We were sold on the idea that the Russians were spying on us from Sputniks, without stopping to wonder why. We promoted suspicions about the British 209

in the Suez, about the Americans in Ahvaz, without checking the linings of our own pockets. Later, we amplified the rumours about the secret services of Savak but conveniently ignored the growing power of the clerical establishment. The articulation of an idea was enough to raise its price on the market, but we did not question the value of information we may have suppressed. It boiled down to economics in the end. When there’s enough time for scepticism, why not indulge it? But if it costs too much to query everything, then trust makes more commercial sense. It’s quite simply cheaper. As long as gullibility was common currency, we bought and sold the fake along with the real and still managed to keep our overheads low. It seemed like good business practice at the time. But when we ended up believing there was a modicum of truth in what people said, we were cheated along with everyone else and duped ourselves in the bargain. So bankruptcy has made us cautious. Since the crash on the credibility index, we have been forced to become morally wary, if only for financial reasons. We see now that certitude is unsustainable, a risky investment in the international as well as the domestic markets. And since trust has proven to be the most unreliable currency of all, we believe in nothing anymore. Having sacrificed everything for trust in our previous business ventures—sons, daughters, international credibility, self-respect—we invest in suspicion now, we deal in scepticism. And we find that ambiguity pays. Persians have always favoured obfuscation. We much prefer evasion to candour, metaphor to facts; we avoid the face value of truth and prefer keeping it veiled. But we had never realized the enormous business potential of doing so before. Although we dealt in paradox and irony as well as carpets and pistachios for decades, we never knew that we could make money out of equivocation. It has proven to be a better resource than oil. Opacity is far more stable than veracity, in the last analysis; it is less expensive to produce and easier to export than the perishable truth. And since the 210

exchange rate in this sort of commerce is fairly low, and the initial outlay negligible, we can keep interest rates high and make up our losses. Contradictions, which are natural to our culture, have transformed our economy. This is why we capitalize on gossip now, take advantage of rumours. There’s always a high turnover. Everyone loves stories, especially mysteries, and Iran has a promising potential in this regard because inconsistency is inherent to our national character and our supplies of prevarication are infinite. As the past several decades have proven, we have abundant reserves of evasion just waiting to be tapped, and have found that uncertainty can feed as well as stimulate an emerging market. The trick is to make sure no one knows exactly what’s true and what is not. As long as there are no concrete statistics to prove that the traffic in Tehran is worse than in downtown LA or that the metro system is really better than in Moscow, we can keep all options circulating. As long as the actual number of nose jobs and sex-change operations is unspecified at any given moment, or the precise number of votes for a presidential campaign uncertain at any given time, or the exact percentage of shares owned by the Revolutionary Guard in whisky imports or the nuclear energy industry as yet undetermined, and the dates for the imminent collapse of the government still indefinite, or who precisely are our permanent allies or enemies, who count as the faithful or who exactly constitute the heretics, we can keep all possibilities open. We can avoid the embarrassment of inconsistency or political opportunism. In fact the health of our economy, the stability of our currency, the security of our financial system is based on the one hundred dollar question, which is accruing more interest with every passing day, namely: how many people in our country avoid believing anything at all these days for fear of being imprisoned for it? If we can keep everyone guessing for long enough, we could become one of the strongest economies in the world. If we keep 211

the turnover of uncertainty high, we could become veritable billionaires on the basis of revolving versions of reality. Having failed to export our brand of faith in the past, we could control the stock market in doubt within a very few years, and possibly bail out the Euro, if need be.

212

HAIRDRESSER

SHE IS A FRIENDLY WOMAN, THE HAIRDRESSER FROM YEREVAN . We feel

that she shares our cultural values, even though she’s a Christian. Young and pretty, with an open face and a warm smile, she makes us want to keep our appointments. She makes us come here often, even though it’s inconveniently far from home. We arrive earlier than necessary sometimes, just to chat with her. She feels familiar. There are many Armenians in Iran too, we confide in her. Then remember that this is the wrong verb tense. It’s been a while since we were in Iran. It’s been decades, in fact. Most of our family scattered over the five continents after the Revolution. Like the Jews. Like the Christians. Perhaps all the Armenians have left Iran by now too. What do we know? We keep away from Iranian circles to avoid hearing the gossip, to evade questions about our daughter. Oh! She’s met other Iranians here too, the Armenian hairdresser tells us. There’s one woman who comes to her regularly. You must meet her, she tells us, happily, ignoring our dismay. Compatriots! she trills. In Perth. Just fancy that! We don’t particularly fancy it. Since settling in Australia, we have gone out of our way to avoid our compatriots. We frankly do 213

not trust the ones who left Iran after the Revolution. Half of them are royalists, living in a fantasy of restoration. The other half are probably spies, fifth columnists, Christians, Baha’is, in the pay of the present government. We’ve had enough of Iranians. Perhaps we shouldn’t trust this Armenian hairdresser either. She could be one of their moles. We are a little disappointed. We had tried to find a hairdresser as far away from the Iranian Cultural Centre as possible, just to get away from the troublemakers, the rabble-rousers, the political agitators, and here she is, already commandeered by one. We withdraw into our loneliness, concentrate on hair, give her instructions about what she should do. We have suffered too often at the hands of hairdressers. The Armenian hairdresser has recently bought this rather dreary house in the suburbs with her husband, who is a plumber. He is overseeing the renovations so she can use the sitting room as her hairdressing salon. It is going to become smart and up-to-date, she tells us, happily; it is going to be chic and all the chairs are going to be new. She is going to have some fancy decor too. Her husband is doing the work for her with a couple of his mates. But he’s made a right mess of the pipes in the back kitchen, she adds, frowning prettily. We’re pleased that she confides in us. It’s because you’re like a member of my family, almost, she adds, with a melting smile. Almost, because she’s thinking of her mother, presumably. The first time we came for a haircut, she told us about her recently deceased mother. We are not her mother; we are not her aunt or her sister or her grandmother either. Although we are not so sure about the recently deceased part, which perhaps we may be. But we feel motherly towards her; we have maternal feelings to spare, especially after what happened to our daughter. We wonder if the other Iranian does too. That would be just typical, we think, feeling unreasonably upset all of a sudden, though it might have something to do with the 214

fact that the Armenian hairdresser is wielding one of those nasty razor things they use to shave the back of your neck. Please don’t use that, we tell her, abruptly; we don’t like those razor things. We would also like to warn her against that Iranian woman. We would like to tell her that it is a typically intrusive Persian habit, worming your way into someone’s confidence, assuming a familial tone, a maternal role. She should be careful. She’s a good mother herself, as far as we can tell. The bell jangles merrily when her youngest trots in after school. Now say hello to the ladies, she tells him, pretending fondly to be severe. But we know that he knows that she wants us to know how much she dotes on him. She adores him. But she has to be tough so that the child won’t become spoilt. He is about ten years old. It’s probably how she treats her husband too. After the little boy grins his greetings, she sends him off to the back to wash his hands and eat the chicken she has prepared before doing his homework. We can smell the spices she’s used in her back kitchen; they mingle nicely with the shampoo. It’s a homey sort of place, this hairdresser’s, in this suburban part of town. How do you cook the chicken, we ask, and she readily shares the recipe. It’s much the same as our chicken recipes, which we naturally give her on the spot. We are gratified to learn that the other Iranian woman has not done this. Yet. She has not commented, as we have done, on the delicious smell of the chicken. That makes us different, more Armenian, less Iranian. Complicity is restored between us: anthropologically speaking, we have broken bread together. A sort of communion. Most of the hairdresser’s other clients are locals. She has little foreign hair to cut, except presumably that of the other Iranian. The heaps of grey and brown and blond wisps she sweeps up from the floor belong to housewives who may have at one time been Greek and Lebanese or even Syrian and Chinese, but are now all definitely Australian. The fancy new wall decor, of black-and-white 215

life-size photos of girls staring at us through bottlebrush hair and young men glancing at us between greasy locks, is intended to attract teenagers who are undoubtedly Australian too, though if truth be told, we have not seen that many young people in this part of town. Despite the overlay of pink and orange everywhere, the hairdresser’s manner does more for her elderly clients, like us, even though we aren’t technically Australian. We warm to her. We wish our daughter had been like her, more normal, less—how shall we put it?—different. She is always smiling and fluttering round, offering us cups of coffee and magazines. It’s only with her husband that she’s cross. Oh, he’s hopeless, she scowls, snipping hard. Men are all so lazy. Are they, we wonder? We do wish she would not snip quite so close. We get nervous when she snips too close. Her husband is good-looking and doesn’t seem all that hopeless to us. We met him one day, putting in a new toilet in the back room. He was covered from head to foot in dust and sweating heavily, but did not look particularly lazy. We ask her not to do that frizzy thing she does with the scissors, please. We can feel she’s cross and begin to feel cross too. Him and his stupid friends, pouts the hairdresser, they never finish their work, there’s always something else, always another thing that still doesn’t work, always mistakes, and here I am, losing clients in the mess he makes. It doesn’t look as though she is losing anything; the place is full of clients, so many, in fact, that the next time we come, there are several people before us. She seems distracted, badly organized; she keeps us waiting longer than expected, reading stupid magazines. This is irritating. Is she taking us for granted, assuming rather too much familiarity? Is that how she treats the other Iranian? Or is it because she’s had another row with her husband? We’ve heard her shout at him at times. But perhaps this public rancour is to show the world how much her husband loves her. He is willing to put up with a lot for her: he 216

has done all this renovation; he has put the toilet in alone. All for her. But it’s his turn to scowl the next time we come in for a haircut. He does not answer when we greet him and snubs us as he stomps past with building supplies. Perhaps we expressed unnecessary warmth. Perhaps the other Iranian was overfriendly too, and he’s sick of it. He clearly sees no reason to treat us as part of the family. He’s hurt his back now and can’t do any more, our hairdresser snaps, angrily. When she frowns her pretty face darkens, grows older. She snips harder, closer. How long have these two been married, we wonder. How old is she anyway? Perhaps all this bad temper is the onset of pre-menopause. We worry for her but decide not to raise the subject. Not now. Not while she has the scissors in her hands. But we can just imagine the other Iranian saying something rather presumptuous like that to her, something too personal. No wonder her husband didn’t greet us. He probably thinks all Iranians are the same. Pushy. Intrusive. And who can blame him? One day we finally meet our compatriot. She doesn’t have an appointment but has just come over for a chat because she is fond of the Armenian. Like us. She lives in the same neighbourhood as the Armenian. Unlike us. She comes here often, but we’ve never coincided with each other until now. How fortuitous! Fancy that! She has been here ever since the Revolution. And what about us? We dodge her questions, we avoid answering her. She picks up the signals immediately and draws back, takes cover under gossip. Nice woman, she murmurs to us confidentially, with a glance and a nod and a totally false smile at the hairdresser, who flits back and forth under the black-and-white girls and boys with their pink and orange lipstick staring down from the walls of what was once a suburban sitting room. Decent family, but typically Armenian. Hard workers, these people, but too ambitious. Her husband has worked his fingers to the bone getting this place set up, but she’s never satisfied. It’s his home too, after all, which she’s taken over. The Iranian from across the road talks on and on, comparing 217

Armenians and Iranians, us and them. They are more hardworking but we are more intelligent; they are more ambitious but we are more gifted; they put in toilets and we go in for higher education. They are more dissatisfied. And she probably thinks, since we’re so cagey about answering, that we work for the government or something; she probably thinks we’re fifth columnists ourselves. We feel like traitors, listening to her gossip. Oh! I’ve been wanting you two to meet for ages, the hairdresser trills, when she finally comes over to where we are chatting under the bottlebrush girls and the blow-job boys. As if the situation were not awkward enough. As if we were not backbiting about her in her own home. Somehow everything has changed in the presence of a compatriot. We do not trust this Iranian woman’s confidences. No. The correct word is slander. We do not trust the calumnies of our countrywoman. After that meeting, we avoid going to our suburban hairdresser for some time. We don’t want to bump into the other Iranian again. Once the initial greetings and gossip were over, she had turned out to be too inquisitive. Very unpleasant. She kept asking us questions: Where do you come from, what you are doing, where do you live? Do you have family here? And you are related to whom? Where? Oh, we know So-and-So who was neighbours with the General and his wife, in Tehran all those years ago. When did you come to Australia? And you live all alone now? No children? When we briefly inquire about her, we discover that she is the aunt of someone our daughter once knew and is related by marriage to family members we are no longer in touch with, since they fled from Iran to settle in Paris and LA. Oh, but we must get together and have a real talk, she insists; you must visit me next time and tell me all about your daughter. We can’t think of anything worse. She also turns out to be the one Iranian in town who is qualified to translate and notarize all official Persian documents. That’s how she has made her living all these years since the Revolution. 218

Official Persian notary and translator. We realize that if we should ever want our birth certificates, our marriage certificates, and our divorce decrees translated, we had better go elsewhere. We might even have to leave Perth altogether. We don’t want her poking her sharp nose into our private affairs. We don’t want her asking us questions about our daughter and her beliefs. When we finally go back to the Armenian hairdresser, a couple of months later, she is the one who does the gossiping. She tells us about our compatriot. That she’s divorced. That she has worked herself to the bone and sacrificed everything to raise her one daughter. That the daughter has gone completely off the rails. How that woman has suffered over her daughter, the hairdresser tells us. Drugs and anorexia. Tried to take her own life last year, you know. You people cannot accept that sort of behaviour from your kids either, can you? You’re like us. Even if we have different religions, we share the same values, she concludes, lamely. She trails off. It is a wish, not an affirmation this time, because we have shifted from mourning about dead mothers to agonizing about daughters who are very much alive, daughters who ought to be like us but have different values. It turns out hers goes to the disco every night, hangs around with silly boys all the time, and is not working enough at school. That girl’s got no morals, she tells us, her face hardening as it does whenever she refers to her husband. Unlike her little son, who can still do no wrong, even though he is almost eleven now, the hairdresser’s teenage daughter is a source of permanent worry. She is a wastrel, a prodigal. That girl’s going to fail her exams, she prophesies, scowling into the mirror. And then, bitterly: “If she doesn’t study properly, she’ll end up cutting hair like her mother.” We stop going to the Armenian hairdresser after that. The suburb where she lives is too far away, too inconvenient for us. And she talks too much and doesn’t listen to what we want done. The last time we went she made a real mess of the haircut and it took forever 219

to grow out. And the smell of fried chicken drifting in from the back of the shop is frankly sickening, after a while. Plus, the little boy is a spoilt brat, quite frankly, the husband makes us feel like we’re intruding, and we don’t want to meet the daughter. When hairdressers get too familiar, when we start knowing too much about them and what they believe, it becomes really difficult. She might be from Yerevan, but you’d think she was an Iranian the way she carried on. And we certainly don’t want to run into our interfering compatriot in her place again. A few weeks ago, we bumped into her on the street in the middle of town. Did you know that they’re divorcing, she says to us in Persian, speaking about the hairdresser in that irritating, confidential way, as though she’d known us for years. We feel trapped. We want to get away. We do not want to talk to Iranians about Armenians. We have nothing in common with either of them. And we have no desire to hear of prophecies fulfilled. There have been enough of those. That silly woman finally lost her husband just as I said she would, our compatriot continues. She nagged him so much that he’s divorcing her. Such a shame. She’ll rue the day, you know. She’ll never find another like him, handsome, hardworking, willing to shove his head in a toilet for her. These people don’t divorce easily either. They are like us, even if they’re Christians. They don’t like being alone. And we can tell, from the way this Iranian woman clings to us and keeps inviting us to tea and begging us to visit, that she is as lonely as we are, just as lonely. And we can guess that she would rather her daughter had returned to Iran, and had been arrested for trying to run an underground university, and had been imprisoned for her opinions, like ours has done, than be free to kill herself with drugs, like hers. We are ashamed of shaking her off. We are ashamed of condemning our own daughter. But we have no desire to talk about the subject. None. 220

PHONE CALL

earlier than expected, Delli was sure that it was her fault. Her brother said it was because he refused to speak Farsi, and preferred Big Macs to khoresh. Her mother said it was because of the move and the house sale. But Delli suspected that her grandmother had seen her black undies in the wash and assumed she had lost her virginity. Bibijan was leaving in disgust. Her Mom hadn’t mentioned the black underwear when she was talking to her American friends about the early departure. Delli made sure she didn’t, by mooning around in the kitchen while they were visiting. She hated being in the kitchen. She hated the way her mother was forever emptying the dishwasher only to fill it up again, filling the plates with cakes only to have to empty them all over again. She hated her sappy friends. But a girl’s got to keep her pride; she had to hang around and make sure that her Mom did not say something stupid about her virginity to her friends. She didn’t this time. But Delli couldn’t stop her saying stupid things about Bibijan. She wished she could protect her little bundle of a grandmother from her mother’s lies. Yes, the old lady W H E N B I B I JA N S A I D S H E WO U L D G O TO PA R I S

221

would be going back to France sooner than planned because of the divorce, Goli was telling them, in that heavy sighing way she did whenever she mentioned her mother. Yes, she would miss her terribly, of course. How she would miss her. How she wished she could stay longer. Especially at this difficult time, she added before piling the dirty dishes in the washer for the umpteenth time. But it was already hard enough to have to cope with divorce lawyers and estate agents and the moving company, without worrying about an elderly person too, she told them, straightening her back with yet another sigh, as she set the machine going. The old appliance gave a cough and a hiccough and a shuddering jerk and then its hum filled the kitchen with sympathy and consternation. Her American friends all agreed with her, of course; they always agreed, they always sympathized, although they never actually did anything effectual. She was quite right, they said. No question of that. You can’t look after anyone but You, right now, they said, sagely. You have to worry about You, they said, with filtered smiles. You’re important, they nodded. Which Delli thought was a load of You Know What. Her Mom sent a text message to Lili that same evening, telling her to buy a ticket for Fatty to come to Paris immediately. Delli knew that it was bound to cause problems. Her aunt would be furious to hear that Fatty was going to show up on her doorstep before time; she would be absolutely livid to learn that Bibijan was being sent back a whole three months early. Not sent back, exactly, because Goli insisted that Bibijan was going of her own accord. But not of her own accord either, because she was probably just so shocked by the undies that she had no other choice; Delli was sure she was to blame. She felt ashamed. It was either her fault, or her Dad’s. Delli knew that her aunt didn’t think much of her Dad. If Bibi’s departure had anything to do with him, Lili would certainly have something to say about it. She usually had a lot of things to say about Bahman whom her mother insisted on calling “Baba,” 222

much to her disgust. Her friends called him “Batman” which was marginally worse. It had been a joke at first, because they were forever getting the pronunciation wrong. “Not ‘Baa-man’” she corrected them, when they came out with a long “a” as if he were a sheep. “It is Bah-man, like Batman, but with a ‘huh’ in the middle.” And that did it. They stopped bleating and turned him into a superhero after that. Delli had quite liked the idea until she had heard her aunt remark, rather laconically, that he was too fat to fly. So when the phone started ringing that day, she winced at what her Khaleh Lili might say next. She had a tongue like a razor. It was her aunt’s training in the diabolic method, Goli said, at the university in Paris, France; that’s what made Lili so critical. She had gone to some special college that Goli called the “Science Paw,” although as far as Delli knew, Lili had studied sociology rather than zoology. But she was certainly well endowed with claws, and knew exactly whom to scratch and where it hurt most. She never phoned on her mobile because it was too expensive. She sent her sister acid text messages, except when it was important. And then, she called on the landline, which no one used except salesmen, around suppertime, but—Delli glanced at the timepiece on the DVD player—this was the afternoon. She had only just woken up, after watching vampire movies till 3:00 a.m., and it was now 3:00 p.m. in California and midnight in Europe. Lili was on the rampage. Even if her niece’s virginity was no great shakes, Delli guessed that Bibijan’s arrival and Fatty coming to Paris was mega important to her aunt. She was sitting on the leather couch in the TV room, painting her toenails with black lacquer, when the hall phone rang. Delli liked black lacquer on her toes because it looked cool with her sandals, and she wanted to look cool because she was going to get her driving licence as soon as she was sixteen. Her mother would be furious if she knew, because of the white rug, but Delli was nowhere near the rug, and besides the couch was made of fake black 223

leather. Anyway, she was being ultra careful and there was a whole box of tissues right beside her, but when the phone rang, her hand jolted a bit, that’s all. A small jerk. No big deal. Just as well the couch was black. The hall phone was the only fixed line in the house. It was one of those old-fashioned seventies phones, long-ago beige with grubby keys and a curly extension wire, that was caked with grime from being dragged about from room to room. The ring tone was old-fashioned too, and sounded to Delli like a murder movie where you absolutely know it was the killer at the door and the door was unlocked and the heroine was in the shower. Or like one of those black-and-white French films from the fifties where every­one smokes into the phone, and gives long, meaningful looks towards the upper right-hand corner of the screen, before crossing the room to open the door and close it on the left. The mouthpiece was greasy and smelled of vomit; Delli could almost smell it in the ring tone. So she unscrewed the varnish bottle with a tissue, and took a deep sniff of the sweet isoamyl acetate to banish the nasty odour away. But it stayed in her mind, despite several inhalations. Funny how smells do that, she thought dimly, like dreams. Delli assumed her Mom had also guessed why her aunt was calling, because Goli took her time before answering the phone. The two sisters rarely talked. They quarrelled, they complained, they sometimes shouted at each other and most often sent monosyllabic text messages, but they avoided actual conversation. The only time Delli remembered them really talking was about their brother: the uncle she had never met. She was little when it happened and all she remembered was that Khaleh Lili was visiting, wearing Fatty-type clothes and crying a lot. She remembered her Mom crying too and the two of them hugging each other and talking late into the night. They forgot to put her to bed that night, so she just stayed up and watched scary movies on TV, and then the policemen came to the door the next day and Delli became 224

hysterical because they were just like the men in the movie. But they weren’t real policemen, her mother had told her; they were just checking that Khaleh Lili had gone. Which she had. At the crack of dawn. From that time on, Lili said nasty things about Batman to her mother on the phone, and the picture standing on the mantelpiece, showing her uncle Ali as a little boy beside her grandmother, was always associated for Delli with flashing car chases and the rip and tear of gunfights. The phone rang and rang and still Goli didn’t pick it up. Trouble, Delli thought with a yawn, glancing at the digits changing inexorably on the DVD player timepiece. 3:02:52—3:03:00. Big-time trouble, she thought, squeezing out the excess varnish on the inside of the bottle. The acetate had a sweet candy smell, a fierce pear drop odour; she loved it, but it burned her eyes. The two sisters were “time-sharing Bibijan” as Batman called it, ever since the old lady fled from Iran. It was her aunt Lili who called her the “old lady,” but Goli who used the word “fled,” because she thought it made Bibijan more interesting. “My mother had to flee the country, you know,” she kept telling her American friends, after Bibijan arrived in LA, with her maid. Delli was embarrassed to hear her talk like that, as though this little old lady, with her soft hugs that smelled of roses, and her dentures, and her bottle-bottom glasses, was some kind of international spy. But she found Fathiyyih rather frightening at first, because she wore a peaked headscarf, had hair on her upper lip, and looked like the Taliban or something. The phone rang, angrily. Lili was not giving up. Delli steeled herself. The thought of her grandmother’s adopted maid had sent a shiver down her back. It was not only the hairiness but Fatty’s garlic smell that had upset her, the onions on her breath, and that unbearable stink clinging to her clothes. Fenugreek. The Persian word for it—shambeh-lileh—sounded prettier than it smelled, and fit Fatty better than the Greek one, because she did rather shamble and was pigeon-toed. 225

The phone became hysterical. Its incessant rings tore shreds off the ugly brown wallpaper, made the leather couch feel sticky, and threatened to shatter the gold etched mirror on the wall above the TV. Delli’s nerves jangled, her hand jerked, and her eyes blurred as she scooped up a brush of glossy varnish. The acetate made her a little giddy. She swabbed the dribble down the side of the bottle as the shrill sound reverberated through the house. If only it would stop. If only her Mom would do something about it. Then the kitchen door opened at last, with a rattle of accompanying cutlery and slammed shut as the click of her mother’s heels approached down the corridor. Goli picked up the receiver. “Hi Lilijan! Long time no hear!” Delli began to apply the varnish to her left big toe with relief as her mother’s false cheeriness petered out. It was as soothing as the ensuing silence to spread the luxurious darkness across her first toenail. Khaleh Lili must have launched her first attack, Delli thought; she had no patience with Persian taarof, especially Goli’s American version of it. The two sisters spoke in a kind of broken Persian, her mother throwing in English words and Lili throwing in French ones. Delli could imagine her aunt’s words torpedoing across the Atlantic, blazing a trail of ester-smelling pear drops in their wake. The sharp odour from the varnish made her blink; it scoured her head, cleaned the sick smell of the phone out of her mind. Her mother was awfully quiet. Delli wondered if Lili had raised the subject of Fatty. Fatty’s first visit to the US was for the Naw Ruz party, which turned out to be a bit of a flop, as far as Delli was concerned. She didn’t like the food. She couldn’t bear that Bibijan expected her to eat so much. And her school friends who came for tea afterwards teased her about Fatty—“Hairy-scary-Irany-yun!” But Bibi’s maid didn’t stay long. After a month, she went back to Iran, with a special affidavit from Batman. Delli thought it was spelled Affy, like David the DJ whose rap music she thought was cool. But when 226

Bibi came back to LA a few weeks ago, it turned out to be money instead. Her Dad was rather less of a superhero then. He was spending all his time in Malibu and hadn’t even got the carpets cleaned. Since Goli and Lili shared responsibility for their mother, they shared Affy’s David money too, but that meant they also had to share Fatty. Lili said she was at the end of her rope. “I understand, I really do,” began Goli, smooth as varnish. “But just put yourself in my place. You don’t think I’m at the end of my wits too, Lili?” Her Mom’s condition was beyond rope, apparently. There was another silence, as Lili let loose a second barrage. Delli’s big toenail felt strange under the thick lacquer, as if it were not her own. She wondered whether nails could breathe. When Fatty had arrived the first time, she had engulfed her in her arms so hard that Delli could barely breathe. She had been rather frightened of the short, squat woman, who talked nonstop Farsi. Delli’s grasp of Persian was not so great, and it didn’t help that her friends kept asking if Iranians used deodorant. But Fatty turned out to be awfully kind and did all the washing up so she began to feel a curious love for the hairy-scary-Irany-yun woman. She was connected to the family in some odd way that Delli had never understood: an extended aunt, a semi-servant, half family, half not. And Delli, who felt rather unconnected to her family at times, wondered vaguely if she and Fathiyyih were not related. When Fatty left a month later, she had been inconsolable, and wept at the airport. “I told her, Lili,” her mother was saying in that voice of longsuffering reasonableness reserved for Bibijan. “But you know how she is. It’s either Paris or—” Delli started on the second toe as Lili interrupted again. She felt a lump rising in her throat, remembering Taliban Fatty disappearing at the departure gates. She didn’t know why she had been so upset to see her go. The kitchen had never been so clean as when she was there and everything fell apart after she left. Lili started phoning every night. Her Mom became upset about 227

money, and her Dad kept asking if she had anything better to propose? It led to horrid scenes between her parents, with all the dirty supper plates left in the sink till the following day. After that, the situation deteriorated rapidly. Instead of Batman flying to the rescue, he just moved out permanently, to Malibu. No I can’t do the shopping Goli, because I’m going down to Malibu. I won’t have time to come to the parent-teacher meeting because I’m taking the Volvo down to Malibu this weekend. Sorry about Delli, but I can’t deal with her right now to be honest; they expect me in Malibu. Now Bibijan was leaving too. And Delli was afraid it was all her fault and wished her Mom would not lie about it to her aunt. “My heart just bleeds for her,” Goli was moaning into the smelly mouthpiece. “I know she doesn’t want to go.” Delli could not bear the way her mother bled at the slightest provocation. But her aunt Lili, who was blood-proof, interrupted again and saved her, no doubt with smoke billowing from her nostrils. Even though they had only met once when she was seven, Delli was fascinated by her dragon aunt who sent her black undies through the post and talked French. She liked the thin, grizzled woman who smoked and photographed nude ladies and did not bother to use makeup. Lili had even shaved her hair off once, Goli told her, in solidarity with AIDS patients or prisoners in Iran. Delli thought that was awfully high-minded of her. Radical, Lili called it, with a French accent. Delli practised the word softly, under her breath: “Radical.” She tried saying it with a French accent, emphasizing the last syllable: “Radicale!” One foot done, another left to go. She looked with pride at her five toenails before plunging the brush back and stirring up the varnish. Her aunt was talking a lot this time. “It’s impossible, Lili,” her mother finally interrupted. “Bibi’s been talking about it for weeks, but it’s quite impractical. Even Bahman says so. I’ve done absolutely everything to avoid it and she still insists. So it’s your turn now; you have to do your share.” 228

Any minute now, Delli thought, Fatty was bound to come up: when was Fatty arriving, how long was Fatty staying, where was Fatty going to sleep, and above all, how much money was Fatty going to bring this time? Radical. Delli felt her head spin as she withdrew another shining blob of varnish from the bottle. She hesitated, unsure of which nail to attack next. She should probably eat breakfast, she thought, watching the blob quiver dangerously on the end of the brush. But that would mean opening the kitchen door and filling the house with the smell of frying onions and ghormeh sabzi, which her brother called Gormless Slobsy. Enough to make you puke. “You are being totally unfair,” began her mother, her voice rising sharply. Except she said “toadally” as usual, in English, with a thick Persian accent. It killed Delli. She had stopped bringing her friends to the house because it always smelled of Persian food and her Mom just couldn’t speak proper American. “Of course it wasn’t my idea!” she was saying. “She wants to come herself. I suppose it has slipped your mind,” she concluded, with all the linguistic formality she could muster in long-distance Persian, “that I just happen to be in the middle of divorce proceedings?” There was another pause, large enough for the nail polish to spill down the handle of the brush again. Delli dipped it back into the bottle just in time, and stroked it carefully up and down, sniffing deeply. “Give me a break, Lili!” moaned Goli. “Why are you stressing me like this?” Except she called it “es-stress,” like she always said “es-sex” for sex, like it was some stupid place in Britain, for heaven’s sake. “All you can talk about to me is moneymoneymoney and I’m in hell here. The house, the carpets, the lawyer. It’s hell.” But her aunt, talking at midnight in Paris about moneymoney money, wouldn’t let up. “Lilijoon!” her mother finally burst out. “Honest to God, he told me it was her pension money. If you don’t believe me, ask him 229

yourself ! I won’t. I refuse to talk to that man ever again!” And she began to cry. Goli bled and cried “at dropped hats” as she put it to her American friends. Sweat next, thought Delli; blood, tears, and Fatty’s armpits. There was something about Fatty beyond the sweat, though, some secret she was hiding, like the soft buried smell of Bibi’s attar of roses. She wished her aunt and mother would talk about that. But when Goli finally interrupted her sister’s monologue, it was about the divorce, not Fatty. It was about fraud and court cases and lawyer’s fees, not Fatty. It was about what Batman had done, and was doing and would do and Fatty had nothing to do with any of it, more’s the pity. Delli yawned. She found divorce conversations deeply boring. It was the one theme guaranteed to take priority over all others. Goli repeated herself on the subject of the house and title deeds and the divorce over and over again, reiterating the same things to each of her friends. Delli knew the script by heart. “Bibi’s impossible. She thinks we should kiss and make it up,” she was now saying. “Honest to God, Lili! I’d rather die than kiss that man after what he’s done!” Delli wished she were not in LA. She wished she lived in Paris. She wanted to get her driving licence and drive all the way to France this minute. Her Khalehjan was cool. She didn’t use words like “kiss.” She didn’t say “es-sex.” She sounded French when she spoke English, which was much better than sounding Persian. Delli imagined herself living in Lili’s apartment, high above the rooftops with cats that yowled and made love in the garbage cans. She stroked the last of her toes on her left foot meditatively. Midnight in Paris would be a good name for black nail varnish. “She says I should forgive and forget for the sake of the children,” Goli was hissing into the greasy mouthpiece. “For the children! Can you believe that?” Delli felt slightly sick. There was another pause in the conversation and only one toe left. She dipped her brush in the bottle again 230

and started on the last pig. This little piggy went to market. This little piggy stayed at home. And this little piggy—Delli didn’t want to stay at home. When her parents divorced, Delli was going to go to Paris. At midnight. With Bibijan. With Fatty who smelled of sweat and had horny toenails. She would discover all the secrets that Fatty knew, that Fatty wasn’t telling. She imagined she was Fatty, wearing a veil, as she suffocated her toenail, carefully and deliberately, under a thick coat of black varnish. It might be fun to wear a veil. “You always blame me, Lili!” her mother suddenly exploded. “I was only trying to do my best. It wasn’t easy getting the Green Card. Bahman said—” But whatever Batman said must have choked Goli up again because Delli heard nothing but her mother’s snuffling for a while. She gazed down with admiration at her handiwork. Ten black teeth gleamed back at her, nibbling the ends of her beautiful white feet, ten black pearls at the end of her pale etiolated toes. She imagined she was the veiled victim of a voracious vampire that was sucking her slowly from the toes up— Goli blew her nose loudly. “And what about your responsibility?” she shouted. “What about Ali? Remember what you said all those years ago?” A ripple of ice ran down Delli’s back at the mention of her ghostly uncle. It brought her back to reality, out of the clutches of the toe-eating vampire and into the arms of the family ­martyr. What was the secret surrounding her mother’s disappeared brother? Was he dead? Delli wondered if Fatty knew. Any minute now, she thought, and Fatty’s name would burst into the conversation like a ripe pimple. “For heaven’s sake!” cried Goli. “You know what will happen if she doesn’t come to France now, don’t you?” Any minute now. Delli drew back from the contemplation of her toes and took a deep breath, before setting the bottle down on the white rug. There was just one small smudge, she noticed, on the 231

side of her left big toe. She was reaching over for the box of tissues to wipe it clean, when a strong odour of fenugreek suddenly wafted down the corridor towards the TV room. The kitchen door had opened. “Goli dear? Golijoon?” her grandmother called, querulously. “If you won’t have her,” shouted Goli, “Fatty will take her back to Iran.” There. She had finally come up. Like bile. Like vomit. Delli’s knees jerked involuntarily from under her chin as she slid forward on the couch and stood up unsteadily, her head spinning. As she did so, the door opened behind her. Glancing up at the mirror above the TV, Delli saw two people reflected in it: one framed by the door behind and the other in front of the couch. The first was a woman in her mid-forties, with blond hair blackening at the roots, and mascara running down her cheeks. The second was a white-faced girl of fifteen, wearing a black T-shirt and standing like a shaky stork on a thin leg. Delli did not recognize either of them. “She’s not well enough, Lili!” Goli was scrambling into the TV room to get away from Bibijan, but the smell of fenugreek had arrived before her; it had penetrated; it was already installed. Delli wanted to puke. And suddenly the rug was shimmering under her. The bottle of nail varnish had been knocked over, and its contents were seeping into the white fibres, like glossy black blood. Delli froze. Her gleaming toenails were scuffed but what was worse, the rug would not, by any stretch of the imagination, fit into a dishwasher to be cleaned. Glancing back up at the mirror she felt a stab of pity for her mother, looking strained and drawn. But Goli was not looking her. She had stopped talking to Lili too. She was staring at the third shaky reflection that had emerged behind them. A ghostly little figure swayed into the room, pale and panting with a cloud of white hair surrounding magnified eyes. 232

“Goli dear,” gasped Bibijan. “I think I need the blood pills.” We’re a family of vampires, thought Delli with an awakening shiver, as she leapt over to the TV to retrieve the bottle of heart medicine, placed for emergencies in front of the mirror, for her wheezing, whey faced, breathless little grandmother.

233

A L L I N T H E FA M I L Y

WE ARE AN ENTERPRISING PEOPLE .

When something works, sells, or succeeds, we are quick to take advantage if it. And we make sure it all stays in the family. We have a couple of cousins, distantly related, who live in Florida. The sister, a widow, often comes to Switzerland, where we see her from time to time when she needs legal help, but the brother, who also owns property in London and travels back and forth to Iran, is rather alienated from our side of the family. It could have something to do with the money; it could be because of his contacts in Iran. He is so minted these days that they say he has the Revolutionary Guard in his pocket. From what we’ve heard, he has been shifting the proceeds of real estate across financial frontiers for the last twenty years, buying for less and selling for more, just for the thrill of it. He’s doing it for fun. Or for the Revolutionary Guard. Some years ago, he started rolling his sister into his schemes. After her husband died, he lent her some capital. It’s not an unusual thing for a brother to do in such circumstances, of course. He did what was expected, and it’s all in the family. So she now 234

owns property in her own right now. Courtesy of him. We envy her. When she’s not in Florida, she spends a lot of time enjoying the view from her condo, overlooking Lac Léman. Sometimes she takes us out to coffee. We like to keep up our family connections. Interest rates dropped in Helvetia during her last visit and the property market was affected. A short-term mortgage and a bite out of creamy Swiss real estate looked decidedly tempting. Replicate, emulate, duplicate: is this her idea or her brother’s? We do not know. All we know, when she invites us out to lunch, is that she needs legal advice of a financial nature. We are related distantly, after all, both to her and to the law. Of course we’ll help her sort out this legal glitch. We know she won’t pay us a penny for our services, but it’s the least we can do for family. It turns out that the cantonal bank has rejected her request for a mortgage. She has the means, she has the assets; she has a brother rich as Croesus, but her credit history is all US-based. The Swiss refuse to recognize Florida. Could we do something quickly, please? The clock is ticking on the transaction. We know all about the Swiss law, after all. Maybe we can find a way round this problem? We exert our fiscal muscles, our legal neurons. We advise, suggest, draw her a few flow charts. The options peter out: she needs cash, now. We hazard the possibility of a fraternal loan. She dismisses it. We ask her if she is quite sure there isn’t anyone else to whom she might appeal for assistance? In the family? Suddenly, she remembers. Yes indeed! Years ago, soon after the Revolution, her brother’s agent had pooled her savings in a Luxembourgish account, together those of another cousin, the wife of a General who had to leave Iran in a hurry. We applaud. That’s the ticket. All in the family. Is it possible to get access to the account without the General’s signature, who is long since dead? His widow is still alive, apparently, but she’s just gone back to Iran. Or died. The agent, meanwhile, has moved to Australia. It could be sticky, 235

but after few phone calls and some notarized copies of certificates, our cousin is on the train to Luxembourg to commandeer her cash. She phones us in a panic. It is not there. We phone the Luxembourgish bank and get nowhere. We ride to the rescue, ticket prepaid. It turns out that her brother’s agent, another distant cousin as it turns out, did indeed open an account some years ago. But rather than putting it in his own name, or even their names jointly, or in the name of the elderly General, now deceased, or that of his wife, he placed the money in the name of a holding company based in Panama. So the cash is, but isn’t there. She knew nothing about this. The agent told her nothing and she suspected nothing. Till now. It appears the General withdrew his cash before he died and she suspects him too. Or his widow. But perhaps she suspects her brother most of all. There appears to be more than one Panamanian account. When we repeat the suggestion of possible fraternal help, she refuses it outright. She would rather not involve her brother in this matter, she murmurs. It would put him in a difficult position. Very difficult. Suddenly, we wish we were not quite so related to such difficulties. We begin to wonder how many of these Panamanian accounts have links with Iran. There are ways, there are means, even now, for enterprising people to get around the law, to evade rather than avoid the sanctions, the taxes. Of course it puts both sides at risk. But if her brother cannot help, then how can we? The agent clearly cannot help either. He is not just living in Australia, he is dying there, we gather. He’s terminally radioactive. In spite of the odds, however, and without any help from us, our cousin manages to prevail over obtuse Luxembourgish bureaucracy. Using the notarized certificates and all the tears that she can muster, she finally gets the bank to recognize her rights to one of the suspect accounts. Before we leave Luxembourg, the transfer has been made to her cantonal bank in lovely, neutral Switzerland. And her brother doesn’t even know it. We applaud again. 236

But several business days later, there is another surprise in store. The Swiss bank has blocked the transaction. We should have anticipated this, of course; as professionals we should have known it could happen, we should have warned her. The Luxembourg money-laundering compliance team probably suspected the Panamanian connection. And rightly so. And the Swiss one did as well. Why shouldn’t they? Banks know how to shove the problem down the line. They only transferred the funds in order to wash their hands of the affair. So we are back to square one. Our cousin is desperate. She has paid a massive deposit for the creamy Swiss property, which she will lose in a few days. The seller is getting fidgety. She is well beyond fidgety. And the bank is obdurate. She takes us out to dinner again, and offers to pay this time, for our professional advice. She doesn’t want to take advantage of the fact that we are related, of course. Business is business. And one shouldn’t abuse family connections. She’s sure her brother would agree. We hem. We haw. We are more ambivalent, less sure, because we are after all, professional; we are only thinking of her protection. We understand the delicacy of her situation. We trust she understands ours? Indeed, she does. She must be in mortal terror of her brother. What exactly is the nature of his business in Iran? The next day, she tucks her arm in ours, takes us out for a hot chocolate, and buys us a rather fancy jacket in Geneva. Just a small token of gratitude for all that we have done. We do what we can to digest both the chocolate and the Financial Action Task Force’s guidelines for Panamanian money-laundering risk assessments. But in spite of the jacket, we hazard the possibility that more proof is needed, more facts are required. Another signature? The day after that she offers us a watch. We calculate the time difference in Perth. And then in Florida. We are happy to draft an email. We are happy to help, especially when something works. We are happy to get involved, even though we are not especially happy 237

about her brother’s business contacts with the Revolutionary Guard. We send the email over her signature, cc’d for good measure, in Persian, and then have a little chat with our own bank. The next time our cousin comes to Switzerland, we meet on a regular basis, eating at her expense, receiving gifts of scarves, cologne, and recently a pair of fine leather gloves. The creamy property is in our name now; it was the only way to resolve the issue, at least for the time being. No problem. All in the family. And it looks as though her brother is going to have to close the other Panamanian accounts after his radioactive agent dies; he may even have to foreclose his business dealings in Iran. But that is none of our business. It is not our business at all. We ask no questions, and expect no answers. There’s only so far you can impose on family.

238

I M I TAT I O N

WE ARE VERY GOOD IMITATORS ,

better even than the Chinese. And yet, our religion tells us that to imitate is blasphemy; to represent reality is tantamount to making ourselves partners with God. In the past, only religious renditions of the passion of His saints was acceptable. Everything else was a lie. So maybe that is why we became such good liars. We learned to represent reality subversively. Despite our mimetic instincts, however, we have a tendency to believe ourselves inimitable. We consider our culture, our civilization, and above all our religion to be unique. Aren’t we the original Aryans, after all, the cradle of civilization? Don’t we have the one true faith? In fact, instead of recognizing how well we can imitate others, we suspect everyone else of copying us. Of course, our copies have not always worked, especially in relation to the West. We were so eager to imitate what we saw that we jumped on board the glittering carrousel without questioning it. Our appetite for things farangi became insatiable. We copied everything. We paraded magnificent displays of flowers in the flower shops, flaunted mini-skirts and beehive hairstyles on the streets, cigarette holders and drink cabinets in our homes, copycat 239

Hollywood comedies on the screen. Even as we resented the West, we copied it indiscriminately. Undiscriminatingly. The results were disastrous. For we copied the impression rather than minting the coin. The flowers sold in a blaze of colour, drooped and died within the hour, without water under the chicken wire. The Mary Quant dresses traced out of Burda magazines faded after a single wash and grew shapeless in one wearing, without a fixer in the appetizingly bright fabrics. Our domestic comedies, full of stilted repartee and gesture, mingled Napoleonic grandeur and toothless Americana without the bite of our own satire. And our economic policies, our political relations proved to be a lot of hot air. So our disillusionment equalled our humiliation. When the carnival turned out to be a farce, the film shoddy, the dress shapeless, and the flowers dead, we felt cheated. We had not understood that the West was also the most successful system in the world at giving the impression that it was successful. We had not realized that the Western brand of illusion making was addictive. Our ego was bruised. We began to indulge in conspiracy theories. We blamed America for our imitation of it. We accused capitalism for our subjection to it. We allowed ourselves to be duped into thinking that everyone else was out to dupe us. And, finally, since imitation had been restricted to religious subjects for so long, we reverted to them, if only to lie legitimately at last, if only to blur distinctions between the copy and the original. But there’s a danger that we might stop believing in our lies one day. What then? There’s a risk that we might realize we are neither more nor less unique than anyone else, that we share a propensity for illusion mongering with everyone else, that we have committed as many follies, been guilty of as many crimes, and caused as much misery to others as they have to us. Will we then feel ashamed? Unfortunately, shamefacedness has become the biggest scam of all. It is the easiest thing to reproduce, and very tempting 240

to imitate. It is also a popular public activity for us because, as every­one knows, to be sharmandeh in private brings no accolades. Self-abasement and self-reproach can only be effective with an audience. Though many of us know how to bear oppression in silence and demonstrate courage in the darkness of the prison cell, the fact is that true humility has a far shorter shelf life than its copy. Besides, shame fulfills all the religious criteria of authentic representation. It’s the real deal. But perhaps we have achieved some degree of originality in this respect. We know all this. We cringe at the knowledge of it. We have created our own unique brand of self-perpetuating contrition because we are all too well aware of how good we are at being fake.

241

FENUGREEK

H E R H O M E A LWAYS S TA N K O F I T .

There was this pungent, acrid odour, this biting overpowering smell that seeped into everything in the place. It was a permanent fixture, like the plumbing, like the heating. It flooded the beige wall-to-wall carpeting, impregnated the pink satin curtains in the sitting room, and clung to the old plaid blanket lying on the couch and the spare sheets covered with pea green flowers in her linen cupboard. The smell even permeated our clothes when we went to visit her; in fact it adhered to every hair of our heads and penetrated our skins. Sometimes, when we came home after a weekend there, we scrubbed under our nails in the shower to stop our neighbours from wrinkling their noses as we passed. She lived on the sixth floor, in a tall block of flats, off an anonymous intersection in Toronto. There was nothing at that crossing to distinguish it from any other in the city of Toronto, but her smell. It spread for miles around. Sometimes it drifted all the way out from the driveway of her apartment block and up to the traffic lights. We swear. It was so strong, so pervasive, that we could snuff it in the air as soon as we reached her intersection on the main 242

road, and by the time we turned into the side street and cruised to a stop in the driveway and opened the car doors in the parking lot, we were practically choking. Perhaps she was cooking with her balcony windows open, spreading her odours across the entire neighbourhood. Perhaps it was simply because the accumulation of her cooking over the years had created an invisible miasma that hung like a cloud above that section of Lawrence Avenue, even when her windows were closed. In deep winter, in sub-zero temperatures, with snow falling and blocks of black ice stacked up along the streets, with snow plows slushing past and brown salt and sand scattering in all directions, there were occasions when we swore we could smell it half a block away. God knows what her neighbours thought of it. It was worse inside the building. The minute we stepped through the main doors, we were engulfed by her smell. It invaded the whole of the downstairs lobby. It seeped into every nook and cranny between the entrance and the stairs, saturating the purplecovered cubes that served as seating in the hall, marinating the dark brown fabric that lined the lift. It accompanied us and anyone who happened to enter the lift with us, all the way up to her apartment on the sixth floor, and hit us in the face as soon as the metal doors clanked open. The maroon carpets of the corridor were redolent with it; it grew stronger and stronger as we walked towards her door, second to the last on the left. And by the time we stood there and rang her reeking bell, we were already experiencing vertigo. How could her neighbours bear it? The odd thing was that no one complained. No one left a note on her door, as we would have liked to do, saying, “Stop the stink!”—or put messages in her post box in the downstairs lobby, threatening her with a court case if she did not show more consideration towards others. No one asked her to curb her culinary activities on humanitarian grounds or accused her of violating their olfactory rights. And we appeared to be the only ones 243

embarrassed about stepping out or entering into the lift on the sixth floor. Whenever we reached the lobby again, after several hours immersed in her odours, we hurried past the porter, in case he guessed where we were coming from, and ran out in a panic to the parking lot, desperate to get away from the family aroma. In fact, we behaved like the typical second-generation adolescent immigrants that we were. At the funeral, we almost expected the flowers to stink. But we had never expected so many people to come to the burial. They came from miles away. They came from all over the country. And they also came from her apartment building. All her neighbours. She had always been excessively friendly with the neighbours. She had always greeted them, talked to them. She used to embrace them too, kiss them, hug their children. It was really embarrassing to us. We wished she wouldn’t be so physical with total strangers like that, especially smelling the way she did. We wished she would restrain herself a little. You could end up stinking of fenugreek after just one hug. And besides, we tried to explain to her, people didn’t hug in this country unless they were gay. She had not heard of gays; she thought it meant being happy. She was shocked at first when we told her the new meaning of the word. We wanted to shock her so she would stop kissing people’s children and being so damned effusive. But it backfired in the end. She started talking openly to her neighbours after that about the number of sex-change operations taking place in Iran. “You may have gays,” she told them, with a certain amount of pride, “but we have a world record of transvestites.” No kidding, they said, glancing at us with raised brows. She means transgender, we muttered miserably. It’s an Islamic issue. Wow! they breathed, that’s some religion! And we could tell they were impressed, not by Islam but by our grandmother. 244

So we had scolded her a little about it. We had told her that it gave people a poor impression of our country to say such things. But it had given her neighbours a very good impression of her, apparently. They loved her. They adored her. After she died, they missed her. They never forgot her, much to our acute dismay. When we came to empty the apartment sometime after the funeral, heads lowered, hearts abashed, hoping we might not be recognized as related to the smelly old Iranian woman who lived on the sixth floor and talked about sex-change operations as though they were a subject for the Guinness Book of Records, they stopped us in the still redolent lobby, these neighbours of our grandmother; they cornered us in the still stinking lift, telling us stories, recounting their memories of the witty Persian lady with her crooked smile and love of life. She was so real, they confided to us; she was so true. She had such a sharp sense of humour; she was so clued into the world. “One hell of a liberated old dame you had there!” they said. “And so generous!” They told us about how she used to give them jars of homemade pickles, how she made them incredible sauces, delicious goulashes to eat with rice. The food she cooked, the pickles she shared, were as strong as her faith in humanity, as memorable as her tolerance of human beings, her broad-mindedness. “You could trust that old lady with your life,” they said to us. “You could depend on her for anything: she was so open, so alive.” They had tears in their eyes as they expressed their condolences. And to our acute discomfort, they embraced us, smelling of fenugreek, pungent with fenugreek. “You know,” they said, “one of the things about your grandmother we miss most is the delicious odour of her Persian cooking. We just loved those special herbs you people use; we were so glad we lived next door to her.”

245

HONESTY

G O L I WA S U P S E T A N D H E R F E E T K N E W I T .

They were in desperate need. That’s how the brochure put it: “Are your Feet in Desperate Need?” and hers were. There was a solution, of course, as there was for everything in America. “Step inside Pedicure Perfect and We’ll Change All That,” said the brochure. So Goli stepped inside, sat herself down on one of the slippery pink chairs of Pedicure Perfect, and took a deep breath. It wasn’t one of those fish tank places where garra rufa nibble on your toes, but her calluses were crying for attention. Even if she could not acquire new feet, she had to regain her composure after the argument with her daughter. Delli, who had recently obtained a learner’s licence, had driven her mother to get her feet done only to abandon her there and roar off in a cloud of exhausted Mustang and outrage. The girl who was going to Change All That was called Cymbeline; the tag on her left breast said so. Americans had this habit of repeating your name every two seconds and expecting you to do the same. Goli looked at the spelling for a long time, not sure of the word. She’d heard of American and even Persian girls called Kim but this sounded like the name of a logging company 246

in Canada or something. Or a product to keep household germs at bay, as they said. Or a multinational that made sanitary pads. She hoped the girl didn’t think she was staring at her breasts. She was only trying not to cry. Delli had upset her terribly. She had accused her of lying. “Hi, Kim,” she finally mumbled, with a brave smile, as the girl settled down with her pink tray. “Can you rub me please? That’s all I need, to be honest.” To be honest. It was a phrase her husband Bahman used all the time. To be honest, I never really studied American but I just love reading; I read books all the time, to be honest. Now that was a bald-faced lie, like everything else in that man’s mouth, including the teeth; he read nothing except his lottery tickets. Goli never learned the language properly but at least she read what they called literature in California: magazines at the hairdressers, diet brochures from the health food store, the new coffee machine manual. She had sort of picked it up naturally, as her girlfriends suggested. Just let it come natural, hon, they had advised, when she first arrived in the country. So she did, listening to the car radio, watching TV, going to the movies, trying to be an authentic American. If she were a real one, she would burst into tears right now, but an Iranian woman had to keep up appearances while getting her feet done. Even if she was going to run a Persian supermarket from now on. Goli looked at her feet critically, stretched out in front of her on the pedicure stool. They had already been humbled by blisters and a bunion, but they had better get used to it. They were going to have to hold her up for hours behind the counter. They were going to have to wear flats. This pedicure was their last fling because they had to work for their living from now. The success of the supermarket depended on her feet. According to an article she had read in the ophthalmologist’s consulting room with her mother—they didn’t call them waiting 247

rooms in this country, she had warned Bibi, because patients here preferred to be clients rather than sick—“Farsi is the only language spoken in the upmarket sector of LA since it was invaded by Iranian shops.” That was patently untrue, in Goli’s opinion. Not the invaded part, of course, and the supermarket was proof of that, but the bit about the only language. Goli did not always pronounce words correctly, but she certainly spoke English. Or at least Iranian American. Although she guessed a lot of the words, to be honest. She hated echoing Bahman. To be honest, I’m over in Malibu right now, Goli, with the Volvo. Only he had pronounced it “vulva,” because he had the accent too, in spite of the London School of Economics. He had a layer-cake accent: Californian American, over British English, over uneradicable Persian. The es-surfing, he told her happily, just bellows my mind. Like she did not, thought Goli. Like her boobs had not, she remembered, bitterly. She blinked at the unreadable nametag on the girl’s breast and imagined Bahman’s mind billowing away, like a large, dishonest balloon, as the girl with the unpronounceable name scraped her soles with a pink pumice stone. She wished Delli had come into Pedicure Perfect so they could talk honestly. She had been hoping for a rare mother-daughter moment on these pink chairs. This last pedicure could have helped them support the ignominy of their future. Have some bonding time together, her friends had advised. That’ll help. She was not sure if bonding was the exact word for it but she had wanted to talk to Delli about the supermarket, about the changes they would be facing. It was not going to be easy. Ever since the episode at the lawyer’s, Goli felt an urgent need for honesty. Her husband, she told her girlfriends, was a regular piece of crime fiction; she suspected him of all the detective ­stories. He had screwed her up big time. As though some times were small, Goli brooded, as she watched parmesan being grated 248

from her heels. Like the narrow times when she was pregnant and feeling sick and Bahman would leave her to go off and drink with his pals. Like the tight times after her father’s death, when money was short and they fell into a hole like you, as Bahman used to say. Times as thin as her daughter, she thought sadly. Or as fat as her son. Goli sighed, as the scraping finally came to an end. She had tried to be honest with her children, or at least more honest than her parents had been with her. But Delli evidently thought differently. “I want to know the truth!” she had shouted from the car, as if Goli had been lying all her life. The pumice stone returned to the pink tray and the tweezers hovered over her toes instead. Goli gritted her teeth for the sequel and blinked back the tears. The truth was that her toes were hairy. She dyed her hair blond, waxed the stubble off her legs, and bleached her moustache, but black hairs still sprouted off her toes. She hated it. They gave her away; they betrayed her. Hairy-scary-Irany-yun, Delli’s school friends chanted. When Delli still had friends. When she was still eating. Before Naw Ruz. But when had this pin-thin daughter acquired such an insatiable hunger for truth? Goli winced and concentrated on her toes as the plucking began. The scene on the way to Pedicure Perfect hadn’t been about Bahman or food; it had been about Bibi, whom they had left at home, looking very grey. Delli was worried about her grandmother and had wanted to stay with her. But Goli, who was longing for a heart-to-heart about the supermarket, was disappointed. The discussion had become acrimonious, over nothing. She told Delli she had double booked for them and it would be a waste of money; besides, she thought Delli was proud of her feet. Delli retorted that she didn’t give a fuck about her feet; she would drive her mother but go back home to Bibi. Goli was shocked by her language, guilty about Bibi and furious, because she was dependent on her daughter 249

to drive the old Mustang. She lost her temper. Don’t speak to your mother like an American, she had said. She’d speak exactly as she liked, Delli retorted. And she’d go exactly where she liked too. That was when she announced that she was going to Paris with Bibijan. Goli stared at her. They had stopped at a red light. “Paris?” “I want to see Khalehjan Lili,” Delli retorted, and pressed hard on the accelerator as it turned green. The Mustang gave a strangled groan and jerked forward. Goli lost her patience. What possessed Delli to think Lili wanted to see her? And where on earth did she think the ticket would come from? “Your Khaleh hasn’t room for you,” she cried. “And I haven’t the money.” Delli glared at her, dangerously, in the middle of the intersection. “I want to see Fatty too,” she said, “and anyway Bibijan can’t travel to France alone.” A four-wheel-drive Volvo, like Bahman’s, blared at them as Delli swung right, without indicating, and parked badly, opposite the pedicure place. The car sat wheezing and ticking, like Bibi, as Goli had struggled out of the front seat and slammed the rusty door. She could not trust herself to speak. “And I want to know the truth about Uncle Ali,” Delli had shouted after her. And then she was gone, leaving her mother marooned. Goli bit her lip. She frowned at the hairs sprouting out of her toes, at the memory of Delli’s words. It was true that Bibijan was not well; it was true that not just her eyes but her heart was getting worse. Goli had been putting off the inevitable doctor’s appointment. Another bill, another expense. She had been putting off the thought of the Persian supermarket too, and the challenge of making ends meet. But why was Delli so obsessed about Ali now, thought Goli, twitching uncomfortably under the tweezers. She must have been eavesdropping. That was the worst thing about the fixed phone; you could hear every word people said from the TV room. 250

The trouble was that Lili had phoned back late the previous night. After agreeing some weeks before that their mother could come over to Paris sooner than planned, because of the divorce proceedings, she had suddenly phoned back when Delli was still in the TV room, to say wouldn’t it be better to send Bibi to Tehran instead? Goli had been appalled. “Are you insane?” “Not permanently of course,” Lili replied. “Just mad enough to get her imprisoned on landing?” “It’s where she’d rather be, Goli.” “In prison—?” “No, in Iran.” “Same difference!” Goli scoffed. “It’s because she feels closer to Ali there,” Lili began. “It’s because—” But Goli interrupted. “Not the old Ali story again! We’ve heard this before.” “It’s not the old story.” Her sister’s voice cracked. “And it’s not like before,” she added, and then started coughing, her disgusting, raucous, smoker’s cough. The TV room had gone very quiet but Bibi was still awake, flushing a toilet upstairs. Goli waited. “It’s because she’s stopped waiting,” Lili finally said, with difficulty. “She knows.” “In that case why go back?” Goli interrupted. “Why look for Ali there if—” but she couldn’t finish the phrase. “Because there are so many others like him,” said Lili. “Thousands. Millions maybe. Many of them in prison. That’s what counts for her. Don’t you see? Solidarity.” Goli did not see. “That’s just stupid,” she said, “throwing your freedom away because other people are in prison. You can send her there if you want but I won’t. And she’s not well enough to travel that far anyway, Lili.” But she couldn’t explain how unwell Bibi was because her sister’s cough started up again. It was as if Lili did not want to know either. And by the time she finally cleared her throat and started 251

speaking, Goli was only half listening to her. She was weary to the bone. She was worried about the flat above the supermarket. She was anxious about money and not interested in solidarity. And besides, it was all too familiar. Lili was saying what she already knew: that Bahman had been lying, that he was cheating Mehdi, that Fathi had kept the secret about Ali— “But the girl’s not a total thief,” Lili added. “She has good reasons.” And that was when Delli suddenly came out of the TV room, looking like a tragic ending. Goli was jolted awake. A total thief ? What did Lili mean? And what secrets did Fathi know about Ali? And how come her sister knew about them too? But with Delli standing in the corridor, staring at her saucer-eyed, Goli did not want to talk about thieves. Or about Bahman’s lies. Not in front of her daughter. Which was why she felt so hurt by Delli’s accusations in the car park just now, by her roaring off home to Bibi, after saying she wanted to know the truth. People could say what they liked, thought Goli, squirming under the tweezers, but she did try to be conscientious, to be what her friends called a concerned parent. She had always worried about her kids, always attended the parent-teacher meetings. Her anxiety proved she was a good mother, even though she may not have been much of a daughter. But she was worried about Delli. She was afraid the girl was having a hard time over this divorce. She’s having a hard time, her friends had chimed. She was attached to her father, just as Goli had been to the General. Hardly surprising, her friends had said. Girls are always attached to their fathers, hon. But in fact what Delli herself said, after Goli stopped talking to Lili the previous evening, had nothing to do with Bahman. She wanted to know about her uncle, Ali. “Is he alive?” she had asked when Goli put down the phone. “Is he in prison?” Of all the possibilities that had been bruited about for years, 252

regarding the fate of her disappeared brother, this one had always infuriated Goli the most. In prison? With prostitutes and protesters and spies? In prison? With journalists and teachers and Baha’is? Where on earth had Delli come up with such an idea? If he had survived the war, if he had been released from the camps alive without them knowing it, why would Ali be in prison? “I thought that’s what you said,” Delli muttered, miserably. “That he was in prison with all the others.” She wanted to know what had her uncle had done wrong. Goli gritted her teeth as the last hairs were plucked off her toes. This talk of right and wrong upset her. When she had reprimanded her daughter for getting her sticks wrong, Delli had corrected her, like a schoolteacher, and told her that she always put the screw in her English. And then she had marched upstairs to flush a toilet too and check on Bibi, so Goli had to empty the dishwasher alone. It was hard when your children treated your grammar disrespectfully, when they left you to walk home after a pedicure and face the supermarket music alone. And it wasn’t easy when your sister thought your mother should be going back to Iran, just because half the country was in one sort of prison or another. Goli felt an imperceptible shudder pass through her as the tweezers gave way to the nail clippers. The pink chairs in Pedicure Perfect were slippery and it was impossible to keep still in them. That could be dangerous with clippers. But the worst of it was when your husband started pulling the wool over about your dead brother. Goli steeled herself. If Lili was right and Bahman was doing wrong, if he knew a secret about Ali which he had told Fathi and not her—she would never forgive him. Mortgaging the house, stealing the title deeds, even the divorce was nothing. But her brother—! Goli jerked involuntarily as the clippers snipped into her skin. She wished the young woman with the impossible name on her left boob were clipping Bahman’s toenails at this moment. She wished she were pouring hot wax on her husband’s head 253

and pulling every hair off his shaggy body with those tweezers. She wished she would go ahead and manicure his mockery of a manhood right off, now— Gosh, you people talk real visceral, her girlfriends had giggled when she translated idiomatic Persian expressions into English for them. They were appalled to learn that Persians ate each others’ livers and called their daughters a stomach. She tried to explain that this was not linguistic abuse of human rights. It’s just a game, she told them, not knowing the word for metaphor. But they eyed her rather coldly after that. And it had started off like a game with Delli too. “It’s our last pedicure,” she pleaded, “before the move. I’m sure Bibi will be OK for an hour.” But her daughter had refused to play. “You’re so full of crap sometimes, Mom,” she had scowled. “Tell yourself the truth, for once!” Which truth? thought Goli wanly, stretching out her toes. There were so many of them. Hers, Lili’s, Bahman’s, Bibi’s, and now Delli’s truth. But did that make a liar of her? She wished her daughter would not refer to excrement so frequently but was relieved the clipping was over. You always paid twice at Pedicure Perfect: first for the torture and second for stopping it. She supposed Fathi had her version of the facts too; Lili had admitted as much. And what about Ali’s truth? Or Mehdi’s crap? The pedicure girl was taking forever getting ready for the massage, fiddling interminably with the tweezers, shifting the clippers about in the pink tray, from this side to that. The game between Mehdi and Bahman had been a drawn-out affair too, like tennis sets, back and forth, going from this side to that. Win one, lose one. First, it had been about Bibi’s pension money. After the General died, Bahman had gone out of his way, as he never tired of saying, to ensure that the certificates were notarized and affidavits stamped so that Bibi’s rights of widowhood would come to 254

her directly, rather than passing through Mehdi’s sticky fingers. It hadn’t worked of course; Mehdi had intervened and Bahman had lost that round. Then, it had been about getting Bibi over to the States. When Ali did not come back after the war, Bahman started working on the old lady’s Green Card. He had arranged for forms to be filled and bribes to be paid and all the legal fees to be submitted and had been very upset indeed when Bibi stayed in Iran and refused to become an alien. She preferred to pay Mehdi so she could keeping hoping. So he had lost that round too. Finally, he focused on Ali. When Bahman began to quiz her about her brother, Goli thought it was sympathy at first. “Twenty years!” he had said. “That’s too long to be honest!” And she agreed. It was time to resolve the issue once and for all, time to establish what had happened to her kid brother. Was he alive? Was he dead? Was he rotting away in some camp in Iraq or worse still, some prison? It was time to resolve the matter in court. The government owed them explanations, compensation. “Twenty years,” Bahman repeated sagely, “is a long time to be honest.” Well, it was too long to listen to a liar, Goli conceded, her throat constricting as the girl who was not Kim finally unscrewed the oil. It was too long not to know who was cheating whom. Because at the end of the bottom line, she thought, as the oil pooled in her palms, Bahman and Mehdi were two of a kind; when you boiled down the day, it was just a question of economics for them. And she shut her eyes to stop the tears pricking, as the massage began on her aching calves at last. Bahman thought he had won the last round. He’d even had the nerve to come to the house the previous night, after Lili’s phone call and Delli’s question about her uncle in prison, to prove it. The dishwasher had just been reloaded, and Goli was ready to drop with exhaustion, when he showed up, with his dirty laundry in his arms. 255

“Surprise, surprise,” he said, blinking in the cracked lamplight above the kitchen door. “Plumbing’s off in Malibu and I need clean boxers.” Goli was stunned by his elephantine skin. How could he do this? How dare he do it, as if the scene at the lawyer’s had never happened? It was five minutes to midnight. Everyone was in bed, no toilets were flushing, and even the vampires were asleep, and there was Bahman grinning on the doorstep with a pile of underpants under his arm, telling her it was cheaper than going to the launderette. “It won’t take a minute,” he said. “Just a speed wash.” So Goli invited him in, as courteous as you please, as if she were still the General’s daughter, as if the scene at the lawyer’s had never happened. She also had a few quick questions to ask him, she said. Do sit down. Do you want some tea? It won’t take a minute either; just as long as the wash. But when she mentioned Ali, he became defensive. What about him? Hadn’t enough been said about Ali? And anyway he was in a bit of a hurry to be honest. When she asked him about the martyr money, he said it was just as well Bibi had refused to sign the judicial papers before, or Mehdi would have got his sticky hands on that too, and he hoped there was anti-allergen soap powder in the house. And when she challenged his honesty, he became flustered and assured her that he had found a way round it. The case was settled at last. He had managed to get her brother formally pronounced dead, through friends of his. “On the inside,” he said and dropped several of his underpants on the floor. Goli gave an involuntary gasp recollecting his words, as the massage began on her second leg. Dead on the inside? Defunct from the outside? So Lili had been right. Bahman had only been interested in compensation funds, just like Mehdi. He had had his eye on the martyr money, just like Mehdi. One in the country and 256

the other out, one through the courts and the other through old cronies, both trying to kill Ali, to erase him out of existence, dead. “Only administratively,” Bahman added, picking his clothes up, sheepishly. Goli told her husband to get out of the house and never come back. He retorted that the house belonged to the bank anyway and she would have to get out of it herself soon enough. She told him he was a murderer and a cheat. He said the martyr money was his due; it was his by rights, given all he’d spent on Bibi’s Green Card. “To be honest, Goli, I did it for the kids,” he said, as she held open the door. “For their future.” And that is what did it for Goli. Enough was enough. She was grateful to him for thinking of the future of their kids, she said. And she would hold him to it, she said, indicating the open door. But from now on, she would take over the management of the supermarket herself; she would buy off Bahman’s shares. He did not have to kill her brother to get his so-called dues, she said; she would pay him every penny, month after month, through her own hard work. “So pull up your pants, please, and get going. We have to take charge of our own lives from now on.” By the time she slammed the door on Bahman and sat down at the kitchen table in the dark, Goli had become a businesswoman. A rather sad one, a very tired one, but an independent businesswoman. And although her majestic boobs were heaving with emotion, she also knew that her tears must belong to her brother now. She would not weep for herself anymore, but for him and others like him. Goli reached down and pulled a tissue from her handbag. Foot massages always made her maudlin. But this went beyond tears, surely. This was serious. The massage was getting slower, softer. As it reached the soles of her feet, Goli knew that her brother’s death, administrative or not, deserved more than lamentation; it demanded courage and hard work. The massage was a mere stroke 257

of the ankles now. It was all over. He was gone, Bibi was going, and Bahman had blown away. Her feet had no alternative but to stand fair and square behind the counter of the supermarket after this. They would have to do their share. They would have to carry the weight of sacks of rice from the back of the store, and hold her upright as she stacked the shelves. She had some debts, yes, but she also had a moneymaker to pay them. She would show Bahman. As the last caress reached her blistered heels, Goli rubbed the sting from her eyes and blew her nose job on the inadequate tissue. It wasn’t going to be easy to get up on her two feet, but she would have to do it; she would have to stand up for others as well as herself from now on. Her kids. Her mother. Perhaps Bibijan wasn’t quite so ga-ga after all. Perhaps it wasn’t so crazy to return to Iran for the love of Ali and in the name of justice, to go back for his sake and in solidarity with others like him, to stand up for all the so-called spies and traitors killed by complicity and sent to kingdom come or to Evin for having hope in their country. And if Delli wanted to know the truth about them, who could blame her? And if Fathi could tell her, why should she not know it? And if Lili knew more than she could say on the phone, perhaps they could talk again, really talk? Perhaps the walls were coming down at last, inside the prison. There is a God Beyond Borders, thought Goli, staring at the breast tag for the last time, a God Beyond Names. It was time to go. She pulled out her purse and prepared a departing smile. “You’re a fantastic rubber,” she said to the unnameable girl, adding an overgenerous tip to the exorbitant bill to make up for possible crosscultural discourtesies. Goli swayed through Pedicure Perfect on unsteady heels and stepped through the door. She could still hear her daughter’s words through the screech of tires and the glare of the LA sun. Delli had insisted on going back home because Bibi had been so breathless. Breath. Less. The truth was, she needed a doctor urgently. Urgently. 258

Those were dangerous words; they burned in Goli’s throat as she stood breathing in car fumes and waiting to cross the road. Because the truth was that she had wanted Bibi to leave the US before seeing a doctor. The truth was that she could not afford to have her mother fall ill in California and be hospitalized and trapped on tubes and finally die. Having borne the expense of one ailing parent, Goli did not want to assume responsibility for the other, especially at this time. She was more worried about paying for Bibi to die than concerned about her mother’s health and life. That was the horrible, shameful truth. Goli set her feet on the burning macadam and began to walk on flaming heels towards the pedestrian crossing. She wished she had worn her flats; her blisters were still raw. But suddenly a car door slammed and a voice was calling. “Hey, Mom, Bibi sent me back to drive you home.” And there was her pin-thin daughter, frail as a reed, on the other side of the road. Delli stood beside the secondhand Mustang, without air-conditioning, and waved bravely at her from the middle of the blazing car park. “How’s your feet?” she called, as the little man turned green and started bleeping. “Bibi’s doing fine. She said not to worry about her. She said she doesn’t need a doctor.” Goli’s head spun in the heat. Now there’s a mother, she thought, as she began to cross the boulevard. There’s a daughter, she thought, as Delli walked round the hissing car to open the other door. Yes, here were two worth emulating: young and old. She had lost the truth somewhere but they seemed to have found it. “Thanks, joonie,” she answered, with a Californian smile. “Missed you, but you did good to go back. I’ll call the doctor as soon as I get home.” She swayed slightly as she reached the door of the Mustang and found her elbow steadied by Delli. She’s strong, thought Goli, with surprise, because she’s honest. “I’ve been thinking,” she gasped, easing herself into the scorching seat and shutting the rusty door shut behind her. “You’re right 259

about Bibijan. She needs to travel with someone. She’s too frail to go alone. And I have to get us moved into the flat and start work at the supermarket as soon as possible. So why don’t you drive down to Malibu after dropping me off, and talk to Baba about the trip. He should know that you want to find out about your uncle Ali. I’m sure he’ll pay for the ticket. He’s a generous man.” Goli felt sorry for Bahman. He wasn’t going to win this round either. Unless he realized how lucky he was to have such a daughter. And she herself could lose everything too, thought Goli, contemplating the road ahead as Delli nursed the coughing Mustang through a red light. Unless she understood how lucky she was to have such a mother. Yes, there was much to do to be honest.

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THEM

W E O F T E N C O M E H E R E TO R E M E M B E R .

It’s a place we like to visit just so we can think of them. The dead are always welcoming and there’s less stress in a cemetery than in a park, less noise. There are even several benches in this one, which are usually free. Our favourite is under that sycamore tree, where the seeds whirl down in autumn, like tiny parachutes, like prayer wheels. In the wintertime, we shiver sitting there, along with the leftover birds. In spring, we wheeze. Otherwise, it is a tranquil place, and that is a comfort to us. We are grateful to sit here quietly among the falling leaves, in peace with the placid dead. There are no bulldozers. No bulldozers. There is no wailing here either, and no loud lamentation. Back in our country, we advertise our grief, like street hawkers selling their wares, but here, cemeteries are an excuse for silence or else a quiet sort of gardening. People don’t sob in communal sorrow here; they don’t beat their breasts, or cry noisily, as we are wont to do. They sniff discreetly into handkerchiefs, they nod gently, smile politely, and then turn away to pull up weeds, throw out flowers. In fact they are as house-proud in death as in life, and busy themselves 261

with de-potting plants, with scrubbing the marble. But there is no sharing of woes, no demanding of whys and of wherefores. They don’t want their doubts and fears to echo from beyond the grave. And neither do we, neither do we. In Iran, public mourning protected us from thinking. We lamented stridently, to shield ourselves from questions and to prove we were still alive. But here, silence is used to the same end. It cushions us, it wraps us round; it creates a kind of envelope around us that allows the wound to heal, the scars to mend. We are grateful that the living do not fill it with their talk; we are thankful that they don’t look at us for conversations as they pass. Introductions are superfluous in a cemetery—where else can people go on from here, after all?—and so words are rarely exchanged, accents go unnoticed. And that suits us down to the ground. Down to the veritable ground. It isn’t just because we’re foreign either, and don’t speak the language properly that we wish to be ignored. The dead are in the majority here after all, and they set the tone, their standards prevail. They are the ones whom we have come to visit and they should be the object of attention, not us. Since they answer no questions, respond to no claims, they teach restraint. So if people glance away from us, in passing, always sitting on this bench, we know that it is not because of prejudice or suspicion. It is more due to a kind of embarrassment, an awkward recognition that this is where they might end up someday too. We are on equal terms with them here. We’re here for love and for remembrance. And so are they. So are they. And therefore they accept our presence here. No one asks where we come from; no one wants to know how long we plan to stay. No one looks at our identity cards either or requires to see our visas in this place. They respect us, and we them, because death is our common end and grief our universal human right. They stand mute at a grave, and we do too. They stroke the headstone 262

hesitantly before parting; we mourn quietly with them. They know that we have lost a dear one. And so we have. We have. Of course, a few give us the usual sidelong looks, the curious glances. Even if words are not openly exchanged, there is a certain assessment going on, a kind of appraisal. The question is not who we are, but what our dead believed. No need for talk when granite tells the tale, and even though it often lies, we rely on it, we trust the stone to speak. Most graves have crosses here and the few without are noticeable, their ogee tombstones instantly recognizable. In the old war cemeteries, Muslims who fought alongside Christians a century ago are distinguished from them in death as they were not in life, by the direction in which they face. It is as though these men had not died fighting in the same trenches, their bones buried in the same mud. Grief unites, loss invites empathy, but gravestones are less democratic. Not that the grieving are uniformly charitable. As soon as we lose sight of the dead in a cemetery and forget the reason we have come here, granite and marble can intervene. There are the tacit judgements, the unspoken assessments, the tombstone comparisons: how much did this one cost? Or that? And did you ever see such a monstrosity? Who does or does not come to tend their graves; who waters the plants and who does not; and what are the mayor’s responsibilities, of course. So he has finally put in a new water pump, has he? And about time too. He really should see to all these weeds and put some gravel on the paths. You’d think he’d plant a few more trees and set up benches in the shade, with all the taxpayers’ money! The grieving tend to be less generous than the dead. We nod in agreement, of course, since we are seated on one of the benches; we nod, we smile, and then lest more be said, we turn aside to pull up weeds, to throw out flowers. For we do feel a 263

vague guilty about the taxpayers’ money. We are not permanent residents in this place; we are just passing through. We do not belong here, as they do. But if the mayor is responsible for every single body buried in this spot, perhaps we should be too—for we share a portion of this earth. There is a plot here that belongs to us. And so we pray. That is how we pay our dues, with prayers for all their dead and ours, for those we left behind and those who died before, for those who lie around us here, or have blown, like seeds, away. Not many people here engage in such unsecular activities. The economy doesn’t encourage it. So we make up for it. We beseech on their behalf. And we bury all that can’t be said of death—its mystery, its absolute departure—into this ground, and then wait. For renewal. We are grateful that no one desecrates this soil. The grave we visit does not bear a cross. Nor does it have the ogee tombstone, with a crescent carved on it. It doesn’t have any sticks of incense either, burning at its feet to guide our dead to a possible Nirvana. But there is a shimmer of hope here, like the pale winter sunshine on the golden lettering. There is a kind of haze around it. It is neither of the East nor of the West, because it is a traveller’s grave, the grave of someone passing through. It is a human grave and could belong to anyone. For the dead, too, come from another country.

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