A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea (14 page)

Reza begins to hum a slow, familiar tune. Is he trying to soothe her with this droning American melody? Does he even know the words? Reza believes the only important part of a song is the music; but this isn’t true. For Saba, the words are everything and the music only secondary. She sings in a whisper.
“You got a fast car. But is it fast enough so we can fly away.”

“It’s the song you were humming,” she offers, hoping he will continue along with her.
But Reza’s face turns cold, and he says, “Not now, Saba.” Then he adds, “I just like the tune,” and she remembers his innocent belief in music, a crime now like so many beautiful things.
He looks at her and she tries to seem happy but fails. She wishes she hadn’t said anything. Again she has insulted him, reminded him that he is a villager. She lets her expression fall where it wants. “You’re missing Mahtab,” he says. She chuckles at their old routine. “Have a drink.” He holds out the paper bag and she takes a long, throatburning swig.
“Do
you
miss Mahtab?” she asks.
“I liked Mahtab very much,” he teases. “She had a beautiful face . . . and pretty fingers.” He touches the tip of Saba’s finger. She pulls away only a little, and he smiles.
When they were small, before the revolution and puberty, they were allowed to play together in the street. It is likely that Reza knew Mahtab just as well as anyone outside their twinly universe. Saba looks up at the sky and takes another drink. The heat of the liquid opens up her throat and makes her braver, happier. “Mahtab liked you very much.”
“I’m lucky,” he says, and they pass the bottle between them again, in memory of Mahtab. Reza adjusts his angle against the wall, so that his legs go farther out and his body shifts down to Saba’s height. “I used to think you two were princesses,” he says. “I thought you would marry the American prince from the magazine and leave us all to pine for you.”
“Both of us?” she says. The air is freezing, but Saba’s cheeks grow warm. She knows what Reza is doing. His days of playing football and guitar for worshipful audiences have given him the cruel male instinct to lay a trap for any woman who seems a willing target. To amass possibilities so that in his old age he can brag in the town square,
I could have had her . . . and her . . . and, yes, that one too
.
She wonders if Reza dreams of America; he has no notions of it outside the TV set. Would Mahtab love him too? Reza has a Gilaki soul, like her father. Though he’s interested in agriculture and asks Agha Hafezi about it sometimes, he doesn’t mind the odd jobs and the boxy stand near the seaside where he sells his mother’s rush baskets, loofahs, brooms, pickles, and preserves. He hates big cities and the new Iran. He longs for a good, slow hookah afternoon in the Iran of his childhood the way Saba longs for America. He despises change, showy tourists, religion, and his reluctant spot in the back of the mosque beside the discarded sandals. He loves his father’s
setar
and the Beatles.
“No man should have to choose,” he says. “And twins . . . imagine the sight you would have been.” He touches the lock of hair coming out of her scarf. “Maybe God took her away to save you from people like Mustafa.” Saba nods, trying to keep the lump from growing in her throat. He says, “You know, once I saw a man get flogged for kissing a woman on the cheek in his own house. There was a
pasdar
passing by the window.”
“That can’t be,” she says. “Not in Shomal. I saw a couple kiss on the lips once in the market.”
“And because you saw someone get away with kissing on the lips, then I can’t have seen someone get flogged for kissing on the cheek?” Saba shrugs. She is a little bleary now. “That couple you saw in the market, were they over eighty or under six?”
“Funny.” Saba mocks him. She hates it when he pretends he’s older. So transparent.
“You don’t know much, do you?” he says. “You think there’s a ladder of kisses. Cheeks, then lips, and so on. That’s what small children think.”
“So?” She folds her arms and tries not to scoff at his arrogance. Talking with Reza about kissing is like standing in a baker’s kitchen, holding a warm cake and only smelling.
“So, Khanom, a kiss on the cheek can be a lot more serious than a kiss on the lips.”
“Ah, so much expert
bazi
. What do
you
know?” Saba pulls herself up and starts to walk away, but Reza takes her arm, pulls her to him.
He squeezes her face tightly in both hands and says in the shrill, accented dialect of the old men in the square, “Come here, child, stop struggling and give us a kiss.” Saba tries to pull away but is overcome by a fit of laughter.
“Oh, wait,” Reza says. “Forgot to remove my teeth.” Then he smacks his lips and lands hard on the right half of her mouth.
“Bah, bah,”
he sighs. “Who’d want to flog an innocent old
hajji
for that?”
Saba makes a show of wiping her mouth. “Okay, you made your point.” She smiles despite a pang of regret. Her first kiss wasted. Has Mahtab had her first kiss by now? Saba wonders. Was it worthy of television? Maybe she is having it now, somewhere in the American Northeast—or Holland or England or France.
“Khanom,” he says, “I’m not nearly done making my point.”
He puts the paper bag aside. She glances past him. Whenever Reza watches her like this, in the bazaar or pantry or even in dreams, she always looks away, never brave enough. Her hands are tucked behind each thigh, but he finds them, interlaces her fingers with his. He hums a little, and she smells the alcohol on his breath as he rests his cheek on hers. He is clean-shaven, his skin warm and sandpapery. She wonders if he can hear her blood speed up, gurgling like a treacherous stomach, or if he feels her cheek catch fire against his skin. She struggles not to move or even swallow too hard, afraid of embarrassing herself. Despite the effort, she can hear her own breath as she takes in the sandalwood smell of his soap and wonders why the simple act of being alive has to be so loud. But Reza isn’t listening. His lips brush against her cheek and linger there. “See?” he murmurs in her ear, as he reaches for the bottle, one finger carelessly stroking the skin around her wrist. “Try getting away with that in the market.” Then his lips brush past hers as she inches toward him.
In the next second Reza jumps clear of her, his face ashen.
Kasem is there, staring openly. A curious grin and an angry flash pass across his face at once. Reza takes a few steps toward him, but then Kasem turns and dashes into the house, Reza taking off at full speed behind him. “Kasem, stop! Stop!”
The back door slams as Reza rushes to catch up with Kasem. Saba’s hands shake. She scrambles to hide Reza’s alcohol. Her skin is like ice—except for a tiny spot in the middle of her right cheek, still warm and flushed, where the last vestiges of fire have not yet died down.
A few moments later Reza returns. “I didn’t follow him in,” he says. Her scarf has fallen onto her shoulders and he pulls it up with both hands. He glances back at the house. “It would look worse, me trying to shut him up. Go find Ponneh. Say you’ve been in your room all night. She’ll vouch for you.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course. Ponneh would never get us into trouble. Now go.”
Saba hurries back to her room through the side door. She finds Ponneh resting on her bed. She is sitting up, holding two of Saba’s English novels in her lap. Uncomprehendingly, she runs a finger over the title of the thicker book,
The Joy Luck Club.
Ponneh doesn’t read English. She stares at the cover of Golding’s
Lord of the Flies
and mumbles in Gilaki. Saba, who buys or trades half a dozen novels every month, eyes her newest acquisitions, recently printed paperbacks that she bought from the Tehrani at ten times the right price. Ponneh is bending the spines, but Saba doesn’t care. She drops onto the edge of the bed, trembling, clutching her scarf tightly around her neck.
“What’s wrong?” Ponneh struggles to sit up. She touches Saba’s back, rubbing a little as Saba sits shivering at the edge of the bed.
“I . . . am . . . in so much . . . trouble,” Saba whispers. She grabs her throat, the heavy sensation of the water rushing back. She doesn’t care that Ponneh is watching.
Ponneh stashes the books under a pillow, manages to shift all the way to Saba’s side, wincing with every movement, and says, “What? What did you do?”
“Nothing. But Kasem thinks he saw us . . . Oh God, I’m in so much trouble.”
“Calm down,” Ponneh says, almost unsympathetically, as if to imply that this is nothing compared with her own ordeal. The indifference in Ponneh’s voice unnerves Saba. “Tell me. What were you doing?”
Saba stares into her friend’s curious face. “He only kissed me on the cheek. It was just a kiss on the cheek. That’s not bad, right? We do that all the time.”
Ponneh sighs. “I can’t believe you, taking risks on a day like this.”
“It was nothing!”
Ponneh’s eyebrows pull together and her face looks even whiter. She takes Saba’s hand—only two fingers really. “You can’t just sit still for
one
day? Hasn’t today been bad enough?” Saba can tell Ponneh is still punishing herself for her weakness.
“If Kasem tries to say something—”
“Do you want me to say you were here the whole night?” Ponneh interrupts.
Saba nods. She strains to hear what is going on in the living room now. She hears voices. Kasem, Mullah Ali, the synchronized cawing of the ladies. She doesn’t hear her father. A few moments pass, and Khanom Omidi pokes her head in the bedroom door. “My poor Saba, what has happened?” She waddles to Saba and sits on her bed, puts Saba’s head on her ample lap.
“Is Baba coming? What did Kasem say?”
“You are lucky for now, my girl. Your baba went to the caretaker’s to get more firewood just after you left. He’ll only be ten minutes. He doesn’t know anything yet. But why were you out playing around with Reza? You are a smart girl! Always careful!”
“I didn’t do anything, I swear. We just ran into each other. He kissed me on the cheek, and then Kasem saw and took it the wrong way.”
“Kasem told Mullah Ali that you were doing more than that,” says Khanom Omidi. “Anyway, I
hope
you did more than that, Saba jan, or it will be a very expensive nothing.” She gives a sad chuckle and lets it fade. Unlike other mothers, this indulgent old woman has never advised the girls to forgo any pleasures—only to keep them hidden. She seems disappointed that Saba doesn’t have lurid tidbits to offer.
“What a waste,” Saba whispers. She imagines all the punishments Mullah Ali might concoct—that she be flogged or married off to Kasem. Worse, she conjures the flash in Khanom Basir’s eyes as she bans Reza from Saba’s house forever.
Khanom Omidi frees Saba from her scarf and strokes her hair. She kisses her temple and rubs her cheeks with creased, briny fingers. Saba wishes she hadn’t woken up today. Everything is different now, and she despises the world that has sprung up around her. It’s like a tentacled plant that has been growing quietly, taking care to go unseen until it’s too late to keep its fingers from choking her. She wants to escape. Maybe she will wake up one night and flee to Reza’s house . . . convince him to run away to America—exit visas be damned. They can swim.
How many scoops of a teaspoon,
she wonders,
from this side of the world to that?
After some minutes with no one bursting in, Saba goes to the door and peeks out into the hallway. In a far corner, she sees Khanom Basir leaning against a wall.
“Promise me,” his mother begs Reza, “promise that you aren’t getting involved.”
Slouching in the corner, her usually stern face bewildered, Khanom Basir looks weak, even helpless. Saba can’t decide if she feels bad for her, or if she is just sad that the thought of her involvement with Reza is so revolting to his mother. Saba tries to read Reza’s lips as he whispers,
It was nothing
. Is he appeasing his mother? She can’t help but think that this is very cowardly of him. But then again, maybe it
was
nothing. Maybe he just doesn’t know what to do. He holds his mother’s head against his chest and kisses her henna-stained hair. Then he helps her fix her headscarf as he did with Saba minutes ago. Saba tries to catch his gaze, but he looks up only once. His eyes are filled with bafflement, as if he had been bitten by a caged snake. He shakes his head at Saba and mouths,
I’m sorry,
and Saba is reminded of the day he whispered those same words across the
sofreh
when she was dancing and couldn’t be sure why he was saying them. She ducks back into the room.
“He’s denying it,” she mutters.
“He’s just a boy,” says Khanom Omidi, “young and confused. Look at what he’s dealing with. Such a big, big need to rescue everyone. That’s how young men are.”
More
maastmali
where there is no innocence.
Ponneh snorts, almost bitterly—but maybe it’s the pain or Khanom Omidi’s opium taking effect. “He’s not so confused. Men are men.” Seeing the scowl on Saba’s face, she adds, “You’re too good for someone that weak. And all men are weak.”
More
tarof
where there is no generosity.

When Saba’s father returns home, he is given the full story. Mullah Ali explains. Saba was seen playing around with Reza Basir. Outside. Without her
hijab
. She was seen in a very compromising position. If Kasem had not stopped them, it would have been much worse. Khanom Basir interjects, reminding Agha Hafezi over and over again that his daughter is out of control and needs a husband, and that her son Reza is not a candidate. But do not worry, Agha Hafezi, a proper course of action has been discussed by your benevolent guests. This need not damage your daughter. Why should you worry about her with such careful guardians to think of her interests? Do not worry, dear sir. For you do not parent alone. Just remember that your daughter’s reputation is at stake, and think of all the evils to which this small infraction could lead.

Saba, who is listening to all of this with her ear pressed against the bedroom door, considers once or twice escaping through the window—because the worst scenario, the most dreaded possibility, is the very thing they are now discussing: a marriage.
Please, God, take Kasem on some clerical errand to Mashhad or Qom
.