A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea (36 page)

“Can we go to Baba’s house?” Saba asks one day when Reza is almost asleep and she is examining the lines of his back with red polished fingertips. “Let’s invite Ponneh.”

Last week when a distraught Saba called Reza from her doctor’s office in Rasht, he told her not to drive. He took a bus and arrived two hours later to bring her home. The girlish ob-gyn sat with her in a teahouse near her office and they shared stories and talked about their favorite books. When the doctor offered Saba her home number, Saba shook her head, and only later realized she had been rude. The girl wasn’t offering her services, but her friendship. In the car Saba told herself that it’s just as well. She may not be here next month, or next year. Reza kissed her cheek, said he didn’t care about babies. He promised that happier days were ahead.

Now in her father’s pantry with Ponneh, they push back the scattered boxes of useless items—flyswatters, batteries, items that were required shopping during the war years, along with milk and eggs— and make room around the drain. They shed their outer clothes and sit cross-legged in a triangle, knees touching, heads close, whispering like teenage fugitives from a party of adults who don’t realize that their children have grown.

It is a miracle how this small cupboard alters the very air between them. Now they are back in another time, before marriages and hangings, babies and widowhood, before any of them had witnessed death—when they were just three children playing.

Eighteen years old, smoking in the pantry, hidden from the world. Seven years old, tumbling in a pile of arms and legs in the open air. Now, at twenty-two, they gulp from a bottle of
aragh
quickly but carelessly, with their backs toward the door. Within an hour the bottle is empty and they have forgotten their strange history. They have forgotten about many things and nothing is unmentionable.

They talk about the day Ponneh was beaten. They discuss Saba’s first marriage without reserve or embarrassment. It is just a fact now, and none of them cares. Once they even talk about Reza’s schooling and his good fortune in having a rich wife. In their drunken state, none of them finds it awkward and they laugh at the idea of Saba the benefactress. And then they arrive at the day Reza visited Saba in her home. That is the moment in the conversation that Saba remembers most clearly, the instant when she catches something pass between her friends—a signal that, despite their touching knees, bypasses her and goes directly to Ponneh. A glimpse like an apology.

Though it is only a moment, Saba will always recall that this was the time when she felt most like the other woman. It isn’t a vague feeling, but something clear and tangible and devastating.
She,
not Ponneh, is the third, the far corner of the triangle, the one who doesn’t belong, a character in
their
movie. And in the gloom of trying to find her place, she feels decades older, because she realizes that she does have a role, that Reza and Ponneh are tied and she is the matron. The provider. The mother.

What is her purpose here, now that she can’t even have children with Reza?
She thinks back to her father’s warning that she should use her independence well. Has she done that? She might have already made it to America, or even found her mother. She could have searched among their exiled relatives or dug for prison records to make sure her mother was never there. There is so much she didn’t try.
They hear a noise coming from a far corner of the house, and Ponneh gets up to leave. She sighs and pulls on her scarf. Before slipping out, she says, “This was nice.”
But Saba is already in another place. Already on a flight to America. So much becomes clear when you are drunk and really able to see. She remembers that day in the alley near the post office in Rasht, when she was eleven and she offered Reza a music tape. Ponneh told him that he couldn’t accept such a gift from her. It was part of their pride, their shared village ways. The two of them were rooted in a place to which Saba would never belong, whether or not she shared the bond of parenthood with Reza. How could she have believed that money or class wouldn’t come between them? How could she believe that she could build a life with someone based only on a love of foreign music? As she follows her husband’s gaze to her best friend, Saba licks her dry lips, certain that she has made a lifetime of mistakes.
Yes, she has managed to become part of a pair again, but is it the right pair or just a substitute for them both? Though Reza has proven that he loves her, is devoted to her and determined to be happy, he still pines for Ponneh the way Saba pines for Mahtab.
She lies in bed all of the next day, thinking about what she has done. She thinks of her damaged body, of the Basiji women, of her father’s advice, and curses herself for being so foolish, so cowardly, to mistake what she experienced with Reza as the kind of love she saw over and over in her books and movies. How can she compare it with
Casablanca
, or
Romeo and Juliet
, or even the couples in thirty-minute comedies who fall in love over pasta in Italian restaurants? Reza can’t even share these tales with her. Worse yet, if she ever writes her own stories in English, he will never be able to read them.
But maybe this is the end of her bad luck. Doesn’t it have to be true that bad fortune is finite, and that one unlucky streak can use up an entire lifetime’s allowance?
Reza enters, tentatively, to ask again what has happened, what is wrong.
“Go away,” she says, hoping that he will become angry, that he will pull her out of this. But Reza simply nods and closes the door.
Overwhelmed by dark thoughts, she finds herself drifting in and out of sleep until she gives up and reaches for her headphones. She puts on an old favorite by Melanie, letting the lyrics soothe the spot of guilt deep in her chest. She hums the words to herself and revels in the fact that no one has confiscated this song. With Melanie’s littlegirl voice and the
pasdar
s’ cursory grasp of English, it has slipped past them wearing the mask of a harmless children’s song about skating. She sings along and mocks the audience of ill wishers she keeps in her head for occasions like this.

For somebody who don’t drive,
I’ve been all around the world,
Some people say I’ve done alright for a girl.

She dreams of her father and mother, standing next to a child Mahtab. They are together, though her mother’s face is from ten years ago and her father’s is an older version. He is offering Mahtab dried sour berries from his pockets. That was the gift he always bought for them, for the less tangible milestones of their childhood— heartbreaks, disappointments, mistakes, successes. Even now he brings dried berries every time he visits Saba. He sends them along with the mail carrier, puts them on reserve with the fruit seller, prepaid and waiting for her. He always remembers to send this small, almost daily gift, though sometimes he forgets her birthday.

The next scene is a real moment that occurred a few days before her wedding—the only time Khanom Basir tried to confront her father. She knocked on his door on an evening when Saba had made dinner for him. From the main room Saba saw her father straighten up, tuck in his paunch of a belly, and roar through the alcohol and opium that ran thick and sluggish in his blood, “No more of this!” Khanom Basir drew a breath and stepped back. “You are speaking about my
only
daughter!”

My only daughter
. In that instant Saba didn’t think of Mahtab. She didn’t conjure memories of her mother holding her sister’s hand at the airport. There is something crucial about fathers at weddings and in that regard she had much to be thankful for.

She wakes and reaches for a stack of papers. English words and half-written stories. If her mother heard Saba’s stories now, she would be proud of all the words that she knows. But which of her real-life friends can be trusted with Saba’s last story—the one about Mahtab and her husband and her Big Lie? Maybe one day she will tell Khanom Omidi. But for now she lies back in her bed and weaves the story for her mother, the mother who lives in her memory and with whom she converses from time to time. No one else can be trusted to listen and understand. This one is too raw a sore, too close a connection, Saba’s own secret storeroom.

These are the people Mahtab has put behind her:
Khanom Judith Miller—because Mahtab is now a journalist in
her own right.
Cameron the poor Aryan—because he lied, and because the card
in her purse is nothing more to her than a trinket, a keepsake. Babies—because I may not be able to have them, but she doesn’t
even want them.
Baba Harvard—because he has no arms, no smile, no fatherly
knobs in his shoulders. He is cruel despite his deep pockets and erudition. He stares into and beyond your tear-soaked eyes with academic nonchalance, perfect poise, total control, and then he moves
on to the next eager scholarly face in the line. He has too many children who vie for him, and no dried sour berries in his deep pockets,
no blood in his heart. He never smokes too much, or drinks too often.
He never forgets birthdays; he has secretaries who send packages on
his behalf. He has no need for you. Good fathers have need. Yes, there are
some
things in my life that Mahtab envies. I have
witnessed things she wishes to see with her journalistic eyes, and I
have a father made of flesh and blood.
Nothing else, though, because I have been a coward. I know that
later in life, long after Mahtab is beyond the reach of my imagination, I will pick up the phone, wanting to discuss the remarkable
coincidences in our lives, all those tricks of blood and fate that forced
us to live the same life across so much earth and sea. I will wish that
I had been strong enough, secure enough, to live life the way she did,
not so pragmatically, not so afraid of risks. I will lament my choices, having married Reza because I was afraid to run, to follow my twin and our shared dreams away from this new Iran. I will think about my lost sister, put the receiver to my ear, and have a pretend conver
sation with her instead.
On that day, as I hold the phone to my ear, ignoring the frantic
beep-beep-beep
of the disconnected line, I will realize too late that I
shouldn’t have wasted the time I had with Mahtab, my other self.
I should have been braver. Mahtab is brave. She doesn’t care what
the world tells her to want. Are young brides supposed to want babies?
Pfff!
Mahtab doesn’t care. She has her own plans. This is the story of
how she rids herself of the last and most important Immigrant Worry
so that she is no longer a foreigner. This one is about children and
lovers.
No, that is untrue. . . . This story is about fathers and daughters. I think Mahtab is probably married now because, after all, I am
married and she is my twin. Who has she chosen? Cameron? James?
Someone else? She can’t have retuned to Cameron. He has a secret
and has moved to Iran—committed a sort of suicide and left her with
Yogurt Money. As for James, isn’t he the one she always wanted? A
pale American princeling? I think that she can forgive him his one
failing, as I forgave. She can forget that he was once a coward, too
weak to stand by her after a series of events involving a broken high
heel. Her road back to James happens like this:
It is May 1992 and she is about to graduate from Harvard. She
visits an Italian restaurant in Harvard Square—run by a cousin of
the Tehrani; but she doesn’t know this detail that connects her to me.
She reads the menu and tries to choose a pizza to take back to her
room, where she plans to spend the evening packing.
James Scarret passes by the door just as she looks up from her
menu, and for the first time since the incident at the bar, they both
smile and he doesn’t rush past. He enters reluctantly and she remembers all the parts of him that she found so foreign and enticing. His wide jaw covered with sandy stubble, his matching hair, longish, with a touch of russet. That almost-white baby fuzz on his arms. The very opposite of Cameron with his black hair and his soft comedian’s fea
tures and too much confidence in every expression.
“Are you eating alone?” he asks. She says that she is. He pauses,
then says, “Why not stay?” He looks for signs of refusal in her face.
“We should eat here one last time.”
Before she can think of a reason not to, they are seated. It is May and Cambridge is reborn. Maman jan, have you ever
seen Harvard Square in springtime? Have you visited it on your
adventures abroad? There are details I know I can’t imagine just by
looking through the famous bird’s-eye movie shots or at the photos of
an emerald dome overlooking the river. I can tell you that afternoons
are longer now, and that restaurateurs have set up tables and chairs
outside, tentatively at first, looking up at the sky, then shedding all
caution and gliding from table to table with white wine and red wine
and sangria, until droves of warm-weather customers spill out of their
establishments and onto the street like popcorn kernels exploding
out of bags on the stovetop. I imagine that it looks very much like
certain parts of Tehran or Istanbul.
James asks what she is doing next year, and over two plates of
pasta, she tells him about
The New York Times
. She is very proud of
it. James watches her eat, reaches over and dips a piece of bread into
the last of her sauce. “We’ll need to stop for something in an hour,”
he says. “Right? Since it didn’t have rice? What was the word? . . .
Domsiah!
”
Mahtab looks up, surprised that he remembers the name of the
rice and that he is willing to mention things she told him about Persians and their bizarre eating habits. She examines his captivated
expression and thinks maybe she doesn’t need another wandering Iranian man like Cameron if she has someone like James. Someone who
doesn’t know about Farsi letters or the rules for Persian authenticity, but who
wants
to know. Someone without Immigrant Worries or a longing for a home that may no longer exist. Someone who isn’t an exile, isn’t lost in the search for a country, but worships her for her exotic troubles—her beautiful melancholy; almond-eyed turmoil that knocks men in the heart. Maybe the Persian-cat, Persian-carpet brand of curiosity isn’t so bad. At least she’s not in a village where she is
mundane.
You see, Maman, I have learned some things. When I go to
America, I may fall in love again, and if I do, it will be with an American man. Do you know why? Because Mahtab has taught me that I
don’t need someone who is tied to me by blood, a childhood friend,
or someone from my own part of the world. Yes, there is comfort in
such pairings, but I have lived without it before. Maybe I can manage
without a baby and Reza and every other standin for Mahtab. Why
should my life be an echo of someone else’s? I am done with invisible
strings and tethers to a dying homeland. I don’t want to be a lost
immigrant with worries and longings that keep me from fitting in.
I need someone who thinks I am unique on this earth, though he
knows that I am half of a broken pair.
American men understand uniqueness much more than blood
ties. They find no romance in the familiar, in village bonds. They are
raised to be adventurous and brave. My nameless American may not
fit into a grainy old Iranian movie, he may never play me “Sultan of
Hearts,” with its mesmerizing anguish, on a badly tuned guitar. In
that way he is like Reza, who can’t read my books. But at least he
won’t be in love with someone else. It seems to me that Persian men
are
always
in love with someone else. They eye every dish except the
one in front of them. They have too much hunger for their own
good—poetic lunacy not worth passing on to the next generation. For all his past faults, James has a wide-eyed fascination for no one
but Mahtab. He speaks of her background as if he believes all Iranian men have curly black beards, smear kohl around their eyes, and spend their afternoons fighting Greeks in iron loincloths; as if all Iranian women have heavy-lidded gazes and pomegranate picnics like in the old paintings, wrapping their huge soft thighs around
setar
s and leaning back into the embrace of mustachioed lovers. She likes
these clichés. They’re not the ones about
hijab
and turban bombs. Suddenly he seems impossibly young and Mahtab wonders why
she was so harsh with him. They order drinks and settle into conversation, quickly discovering that formerly bitter memories are now
funny. Soon they stumble onto the realization that this dinner is a
milestone—that Mahtab is giving him another chance. He moves to
her side of the table and they share dessert. He plays with his spoon
for a few minutes, but Mahtab isn’t uncomfortable. He is very good
at being quiet. Why didn’t she notice that about him before? “I’m
sorry,” he says, “about what happened.”
She touches the soft blond hairs on James’s forearm and says, in
the nonchalant start-over way Americans do, “I don’t care about that
anymore.”
Two weeks after graduation, they elope and move to New York
City, a rash decision fueled by the unfortunate combination of a
Dutch beer, a whiskey sour, an oldfashioned, a sidecar, and a martini.
Yes, she is reckless. She can be, because American divorces are easy.
And American divorcées are considered seductive and brave. These are the things she remembers about her elopement: throwing away the guilty Hermès scarf. Trying to throw away the credit
card and failing because Yogurt Money is sticky stuff. The ache of
missing a father she hasn’t seen in more than a decade, because, for
all his books and philosophies, Baba Harvard can’t walk her down
the aisle.
Months pass. Soon after her wedding, Mahtab too has to face
motherhood, because a baby with James is inevitable. Her father-inlaw mentions it every day. At first he suggested it in passing, joking
and laughing about his future grandchildren. But recently he has been grumbling about it, taking James aside and waving his hands in
his face.
She realizes now that motherhood is the fate that will take her . . .
eventually.
A baby will end your childhood says her old friend, the
pari
that
used to perch on her mailbox in California. It will tie you to this
man, this city.
Yes, it
could
mean the end says Mahtab’s logical other self. Certainly it
will
mean the end says a new voice, a bitter old lady
with bad breath and spindly fingers who Mahtab fears might be
her
. . . someday. The banshee in old age.
No, a baby is not worth her journalistic dreams. So much could
happen if a child enters her world. There will be no more freedom of
movement. Her own mother had to sacrifice an entire life, her whole
history, for her daughters. She had to leave one of her babies behind.
What if Mahtab has to abandon a child? What if
she
has to sacrifice
everything? What if Cameron comes back with news of Iran, with
adventures she can write about for
The New York Times
, and the
landscape of her world changes?
Never,
she thinks. She will not have a baby. Not ever. Not for anyone. She has a career to tend to, worlds to discover and unveil for the
world’s best newspaper.
See? Mahtab doesn’t need a child, or anyone at all. That is her
greatest strength.
In the days after the wedding, Mahtab and James have frequent
dinners with the Scarrets in Connecticut. There is something uncomfortable about the Scarret home. Have you ever seen American
houses like this on television? I can tell you exactly what it looks like,
with its untouchable furniture and decanter of scotch waiting between
the cream couch and the deep-cherry grand piano. One night at dinner, over the rim of his whiskey glass, James’s father asks if they’re
having problems conceiving.
“We’ll have kids when the time is right.” James squeezes Mahtab’s
hand.
“The time’s right
now
,” Mr. Scarret slurs. Mahtab wishes she had
the authority to take the glass away from him and send him off to
bed. “I’m almost sixty.”
Mahtab feels the calm rushing out of her, abandoning her body
and running down the street. She is beginning to hate James’s father.
But despite her fury, she doesn’t lose control. She knows that, in a free
world, the decision to have a baby is hers only.
A few hours later she and Mrs. Scarret get up to do the dishes.
Mahtab returns to the dining room for the last plate and overhears
her father-in-law mumbling to James in the living room. “Not ready?”
he says in his whiskey-coarse voice. “What’s the holdup? Back in Iran,
she’d have four babies strapped to her back.”
Maybe James expresses all the shock and fury that is owed to the
world just then. Maybe he only drops his head and sighs, mumbles
something conciliatory. Or maybe in that moment he musters up all
the bravery and movie heroism he didn’t have when he was a scared
college boy in a bar. Maybe all of those things happen in another universe, and in this one Mahtab just storms into the dining room, grabs
her handbag and James’s keys, and blows out of the house, leaving
ajar the thick wooden door of the Scarrets’ home.
All night long she tosses and turns. She can’t shake the image
her father-in-law has created—the image of herself as a village girl.
Did Baba Harvard lie? Maybe it’s true that orphaned children can
never be adopted into better worlds, an immigrant will always look
like she belongs back in the village, and fatherless girls will remain
fatherless.
She holds on to these thoughts and rolls them around protectively, maternally, in the warm space between her chest and her pillow. And so something with its own life does develop and grow inside
her that night. Not a baby, but the first whispers of an epic misstep, an idea that she will later remember simply as the Lie—almost inevitable in both its ease and its potential to solve so much in one go—exactly the kind of thing that has caused so many people to mis
understand Mahtab over the long years out of Iran.
When the night is almost over and sleep doesn’t come, her
thoughts turn to her parents. Outside a few scattered memories and
the many conversations she has invented over the years, she has no
evidence of Baba’s temperament or beliefs. She tells herself that Baba
would defend her against Mr. Scarret and his baby-obsessing, ignorant-about-Iran ways. Despite all the fathers she has coveted throughout her immigrant life, the fatherly shoulders she has admired and