A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea (20 page)

On Friday afternoon Saba tells Abbas that she will be at her father’s for the rest of the day. She will be back before dinner, so he won’t have to eat alone. But when will she have time to cook dinner? he worries. She reassures him that she made tonight’s dinner this morning. But it won’t be fresh then, he predicts gravely—doesn’t Saba know that fish has to be eaten right away? Oh, but not to worry, Saba promises, because the meal is made with lamb. Evidently Saba has forgotten that Abbas requested fish for dinner. After much haggling, Abbas is satisfied with a promise of fish for tomorrow and leaves the house. Saba, who plans to leave half an hour later, returns to the guest room, uncovers her hidden stash of makeup, and applies the faintest layer. She plays Paul Simon songs, disguised in piles of English language instructional tapes, and reads
The Captive
, a book of poetry by the renowned Persian poet Forough Farrokhzad, a woman whose works are banned and who, like Saba, cut her education short and married young.
O stars,
she writes about a lost love,
what happened that he did not want me?

Saba lingers on that line, a momentary indulgence.
What happened?
When she is sure Abbas is gone, she leaves through the back and goes to her father’s home. From the far side of the house, Agha Hafezi’s music drifts toward the kitchen as she enters. Soft notes seep into the thin walls and lightly touch her ears. He is playing a tape of French songs. Saba immediately recognizes her father’s favorite, “Le Temps des Cerises
.
” He plays it when he’s in another world, leaning against his cushions, wishing for another time, his eyes tired black slits that penetrate the smoke-filled room with their unfulfilled hopes. He doesn’t understand the words of the song, but he understands
something
about it. The melancholy. The memory.
She finds Ponneh and Reza already waiting inside the pantry. She hasn’t looked at Reza up close for six months. He seems somewhat changed. His chin is a little rounder and covered with a thicker layer of stubble. His skin is paler. It suits him.
“Long time since I saw you,” Reza says awkwardly, and leans forward to kiss her on both cheeks. Stray thoughts of that other kiss warm her skin, and she hopes Reza doesn’t notice. She tries to expel the memories, tells herself they are worthless, that he failed her, and there is no point in dredging up new hope from old disappointments.
“What are you listening to these days?” she asks, realizing that her efforts at feeling nothing are doomed. Reza’s face brightens and he lists some songs—nothing new.
“I learned how to play ‘Fast Car’ on the
setar
,” says Reza with a grin. Saba’s chest constricts at this reminder of the day they were caught together. She wants badly to hear him play the song. He has a talent for making every tune sound a thousand years old.
It takes only a moment to unpack the contents of their coats and purses—a bottle of homemade wine, three hashish joints (a luxury compared with opium, signaling that her friends consider this a special occasion), and a small box of sweet
ghotab
bread.
“So,” says Reza, and waits. Neither of the girls speaks. Ponneh takes a drag and blows the smoke into a drain in the floor strategically positioned between their crossed legs. “How’s . . . being married?”
“Don’t be an idiot,” says Ponneh, taking another hit. “You know the situation.”
Reza looks at her with eyes narrowed. “Do you plan to finish that by yourself?” Ponneh passes him the joint. None of them mentions Saba’s marriage again.
“I’m going to call Dr. Zohreh about my mother,” Saba says.
Ponneh perks up. “I’ve been thinking maybe that’s a bad idea,” she says. “I really shouldn’t have said anything before.”
“Who’s Dr. Zohreh?” Reza says.
“Look, Saba jan,” says Ponneh, “she couldn’t have any new information. If she did, if your mother had contacted her, she would have called your father, right? I told you everything already, and it’s not good to dwell on things your mother said years ago.”
“You
didn’t
tell me everything, though,” says Saba. “Like what exactly is the group doing, anyway?” She tries to place Dr. Zohreh in her memories and vaguely remembers her mother rushing off for days at a time to meet with people Saba didn’t know. She thinks Dr. Zohreh might have visited her once in the hospital and tries to remember the days surrounding that night at the beach. But what’s the point? This talk is like fixating on a broken music tape or a misplaced list. She knows every word of the lost information, but she has an obsessive need to look and look for something she might have missed.
“Who’s Dr. Zohreh?” Reza asks again, louder this time. Ponneh takes a deep breath. She glares at him and scratches a well-tweezed black eyebrow with the tip of her barely peach fingernail—a subtle challenge to the moral police and the strength of their eyesight.
“I didn’t join anything yet,” Ponneh says. “It’s called Sheerzan
. . .
Saba’s mother and Dr.Zohreh started it after the revolution.”
“What’s the group for?” Reza asks.
“For women, what else?” Ponneh laughs, as if this was obvious.
“I don’t like this,” says Reza, shaking his head. “You’ll get into more trouble.”
Saba plays with the lighter. “Reza’s right. You should leave it alone.”
Ponneh scoffs. “What do you know? You weren’t the ones—” She stops and picks something off her tongue. Then, after a moment, she shrugs and says, “They have a shack in the mountains, right above the sea. It’s beautiful.” Her bloodshot eyes soften and she leans back against the shelves.
“You’ve
been
there?” Reza asks. “I can’t believe this!”
Ponneh ignores him. “They’re
amazing
. They told me that Persian women are made of fire inside.” She taps her chest with her free hand. “These mullahs and
pasdar
s know that. And what do you do when you want to douse a fire? You throw a big, heavy cloth over it, deprive it of oxygen. And that’s what they’ve done to us. Isn’t that poetic?”
Saba’s mother used to say similar things when she first had to put headscarves on her daughters a year or two after the revolution of 1979 and when she saw the rows of amorphous, shrouded, black figures in the streets for the first time. Rows and rows of crows in a line. Rows and rows of fires doused. Did this group have something to do with her disappearance? Did she go to prison because of them? What crime did she commit that her husband wasn’t equally guilty of as a fellow Christian convert? The memories are too jumbled and she resents her mother for leaving her with so little help.
“What do they do?” Reza asks. “Is it illegal?”
Ponneh takes half a piece of
ghotab
bread. “Like I said, they have a shack in the mountains by the sea. And they find tragedies against women all over the country. They document them—write about them, secretly photograph them for American newspapers.”
Saba considers the timing of Dr. Zohreh’s message about her mother, her motives for reaching out to her now. Dr. Zohreh wouldn’t think much of Saba if she knew what she had done, how she had given up college to marry a rich old man, a Muslim who might cover up the religion her mother flaunted. Deep down, Saba knows that she is no longer a rebel despite her music, that she traded her mother’s teachings for her safe plans.
Trust me
, Saba used to say to her mother when she was only five years old.
I know a lot of things.
Her mother would laugh at this, and Saba imagines that she would take these words no more seriously now. If she had her mother’s address in America, she would scream the words into a tape recorder and mail it to her.
Just trust me. I know a lot of things!
Except Saba doesn’t even know if America is where her mother has gone. Maybe she’s in a cell. All she has is the nimbus of a woman and a girl in an airport terminal—a hazy Mahtab looking at her with the guilt and embarrassment of leaving her behind. Is it a false memory? Lately her nightmares of the knife-wielding
pasdar
have eased. She doesn’t have to stake her life on any truth yet. She has begun looking for her mother and has written two letters to Evin Prison in Abbas’s name, keeping it hidden for her father’s sake.
Reza’s eyes are wide now and he has forgotten about the hashish and alcohol. “That’s so much worse than I thought,” he says, scratching through his longish hair.
Saba sighs. This is going nowhere. “What kind of tragedies?” she mumbles, trying to picture the seaside shack among the villas or in the tree-covered mountains.
“They have boxes hidden all over the shack,” Ponneh continues. “Pamphlets, pictures, typed and handwritten letters. All going to America, England, Australia, France—but also to Rasht, Tabriz, Tehran, Isfahan. They send the material to newspapers and television. People who should know these things but don’t. And they send pamphlets inside Iran too, to women who might join. It’s really something.”
Ponneh pulls a photo from her pocket. A picture of a woman with a shaved head and scars from a recent lashing marring her beautiful back. Below the picture is a caption: “Crime: Unruly scarf slipped off in the wind.” Saba notices the beauty of the woman’s half-turned face and glances at Ponneh, who is chewing her nails. She can see Ponneh’s hesitation in sharing this secret, these friends, with her, because after all, Ponneh has experienced something that Saba hasn’t. The woman in the picture, like Ponneh, probably could never have been pious enough. Never obedient enough. Because her crime was all over her lovely face. “Isn’t it grotesque?” Ponneh says, her tone hard and dry.
“Don’t be so vain, Ponneh jan,” Reza says, as if reacting to something entirely different, some private exchange from another day.
“Well, this is just the reaction Dr. Zohreh wants,” Ponneh says. “Outrage. I think it’s grotesque that the poor girl . . . no . . . that
I
have to carry these marks on me forever. What if I get married?” Her voice breaks and she squirms in her clothes, as if she can feel the bruises. According to Khanom Omidi, they aren’t healing and parts of Ponneh’s skin are permanently numb and discolored. Nerve damage. But she is lucky her spine is okay.
Reza nods. “Ponneh, you’re beautiful,” he says, as if he can feel the bruises too.
Saba blows a lungful of smoke into the drain. “The
most
beautiful,” she says, and squeezes Ponneh’s shoulder. “Don’t be sad. Not in the Pantry of Earthly Delights.”
Ponneh smiles weakly. For a few more minutes she describes the ugly things that have happened not so far away, while Saba considers her own life, her luck, the fortune she has engineered for herself. Something about Dr. Zohreh’s group feels off to Saba—not so much like fighting as adapting. Not leaving this doomed country but squirming until the present situation is comfortable enough. She prefers her own way, her immensely more logical way of lying low until she can break free. She has a marriage that allows her to come and go and plan her future unnoticed, while Dr. Zohreh is sending pictures to faceless allies abroad—politicians and reporters who may never respond. Screaming into the Western void to friends who may not even exist.
When Ponneh is finished, they sit in silence. They should feel awkward, but they are used to this bizarre threesome they have created—each of them craving it in some way. “Please don’t join,” Reza says. “It isn’t right. It’s not how things are done. Be patient and one day you’ll find you’re happy. Like our mothers. If you think they don’t matter in the world, you’re a fool. You both need to stop trying to be so grand.” Ponneh huffs and looks away. He begs again, “Please don’t.”
“Don’t worry, I haven’t,” says Ponneh, and passes the bottle to Saba.
They spend another hour with the alcohol and pastries, talking over Reza’s faint humming. If they were alone, Saba would ask him to sing something. They would listen to her music, her Walkman’s metal headpiece stretched to fit over both their ears, as was their habit when they were children. When Ponneh goes to the bathroom, Reza reaches over and touches Saba’s hand and whispers, “Do you forgive me for that day? I’m sorry I didn’t try harder.” She nods and looks away. He moves to whisper in her ear. “When the old man dies, you will have just reached the prime of beauty.”
She pushes him away, distracts herself by making a mental list of all the ways to approach Dr. Zohreh. She wants to do it alone, without Ponneh. “Don’t play these games with me again,” she says. “We’re not kids. It’s insulting.”
Only die for someone who at least has a fever for you,
Khanom Basir said once.
He looks bewildered. “I’m not playing,” he says. “You’re my friend, Saba jan. Do you think I can just replace my friends like they never existed? Your place is empty here.” He takes her hand and puts it on his chest, but she pulls away. “I brought you an apology gift, the best I could afford. I went all the way to Rasht for it.” He takes an old book with a broken spine out of his jacket. “American stories,” he says proudly, and she holds it to her chest and decides never to reveal that the book is in either German or Dutch. He says, “I even tried to befriend the old man, your Abbas Agha, so I could visit you. He was in the square and I asked him his favorite poet, offered to run errands. I did everything. The pompous old thing thought I wanted money and shooed me away.”
This makes Saba laugh, and she pushes him away again just as Ponneh returns. “What’s so funny? I need a good joke.” She relights a cigarette and sits cross-legged in her corner.
Then the pantry door bursts open and Ponneh scrambles to toss the half-smoked butts down the drain. The bottle is empty, but Reza drops it and it rolls through the dark, clanking against food cans as it goes. Saba’s mind rushes through all the possible excuses and settles on
I’m married and free to do what I want
. But before she can speak, she glimpses her father, white-faced, almost hunched in the doorway, his eyes red, his gaze so out of focus that he can’t have noticed the contraband.
“Kids, we have to go,” he says in a quiet tone. “Saba jan, come, my dear.”
Already Saba senses the hole in the world. Something precious is gone, and in a few seconds her father will tell her what is lost. She reaches for her throat and begins to cough. Reza rushes to hold her, a habit from a far-off past, but he steps back when her father reaches her first. She swallows hard, but the water is so deep and she can’t climb out.
“What happened?” whispers Ponneh.
“It’s Khanom Mansoori,” says her father, and trails off. Saba can see him changing his mind, altering the words he had planned to say probably from the time he closed the door on whoever delivered the news. He looks with worry at her hand around her throat and Saba removes it. “Agha Mansoori is all alone now. He’ll need your help.”
The journey from the pantry to Agha Mansoori’s house is a blur. Her father tells them the story. Khanom Mansoori died in her sleep, cradled in the arms of her husband of nearly seventy years. Saba tries to picture it and it’s easy to do. “Agha jan,” she whispers to him softly as she falls asleep, “my mouth feels dry,” and he hobbles off their floor mattress to get her some water. When he comes back, she is breathing gently, and he places the water next to the bedding on the floor. Maybe he lights an oil lamp. He holds her in his arms. When he wakes, her skin is cold and ashen. The water is untouched. And he cries out and calls for Agha Hafezi to come and take him away.
Saba can’t decide what all this will mean. Khanom Mansoori never took center stage, but she was somehow a necessary part of life in Cheshmeh. She was a listener, a patter of hands, a giver of assurances, a sleeper. How will life continue without her? Who will beg for stories of Mahtab? On whose eager ears will Mahtab’s legacy fall?