Together Tea (11 page)

“Bita,” Mina whispered the next morning at assembly during chant sessions.

“What?” Bita's thick eyebrows shot up.

“I don't think I can change my marriage plans,” Mina whispered as the new headmistress chanted. “But if, for some strange reason, the crown prince and I don't work out, then I think perhaps this John Travolta man might make a fine husband.”

“May you enjoy many happy years together, Mina,” Bita said and winked.

They tried not to giggle.

When Bita came over after school with a new copy of the tape that her brother had made just for Mina, they held hands and danced all around the room.

“Of course I won't marry him,” Mina said later while they were doing homework.

“Of course you won't,” Bita said, not looking up from her notebook.

“The crown prince,” Mina said.

“I thought you meant John Travolta.”

“I don't think I'll marry either.”

“No, I guess you won't,” Bita said quietly. “They're both in America and you're in Iran.”

And they continued their work without saying another word.

THAT NIGHT MINA DREAMED THAT
she was sitting by the beach with John Travolta, enjoying a cup of tea. The crown prince was flailing in the waves, trying to get her attention, but Mina was too busy chatting with Mr. Travolta. She could hear the crown prince screaming for help, yelling about sharks, but she found herself unable to help him. “Let him drown,” John Travolta said. “He's useless, just selfish. Greedy too.” Mina could only nod. “Be a doll and get me another cup of tea,” John Travolta said. And Mina got up and poured him a fresh hot cup from the samovar that was on a Persian carpet on the sand. They sat together looking at the horizon, she and John, and sipped their tea through thick chunks of sugar that they had placed between their teeth.

Every now and then John Travolta would tilt his head back and close his eyes and wail a line from one of his songs in
Grease
. And Mina would look him straight in the face and quietly recite Hafez. They continued in this way until Mina heard Darya's voice calling her to wake up and get ready for school.

Chapter Seventeen

Breathless from Their Disco Dancing

F
or Mina's tenth birthday party, Darya measured and rinsed basmati rice all morning. She crushed strands of saffron, then soaked the cooked rice in dissolved saffron powder, delighting in each and every orange-yellow grain. Baba climbed out from under the dining room table after hiding wine and whiskey in a picnic basket under the tablecloth. Mamani came early to fry the onions. Soghra sat in the kitchen and dabbed her forehead with a rose-water-dipped handkerchief, moaning about all the work still left. Hooman and Kayvon swept and hosed down the front steps. Mina seeded pomegranates for her mother's walnut stew. Her stomach fell at the thought of her tenth birthday party. At any minute, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards could barge in, seize the illegal alcohol, arrest her parents for forbidden music and dancing, and detain everyone. Baba would be handcuffed, Darya would faint and fall to the floor, Hooman and Kayvon would get flogged by the guards, and Mina would end up crouched in a corner, a ball of misery. Mina prayed for the guards not to discover her party. She also prayed with her eyes squeezed shut for Saddam not to pick her birthday night to bomb the city.

Everybody helped. Relatives and neighbors gave Darya their ration coupons for meat and eggs. Aunt Firoozeh came over in her billowy
roopoosh
.

“Take my kerosene coupons, Darya Joon. Keep your house warm. Your uncle Jafar, as you know, lives like a horse and can't stand too much heat. Besides, he's been talking about rice pudding for three weeks now. I'm ready to hit him in the head. I keep telling him we don't have enough milk . . .”

“Aunt Firoozeh, don't say another word! Please take my milk coupons.” Darya searched for her ration book.

“No, no, I wouldn't dream of it! I just mentioned it because . . . well, I couldn't take just a few of your milk coupons! You with those two growing boys, Hooman and Kayvon! And that Mina of yours, turning ten! No, I don't expect anything in return for
all
our kerosene!”

“Aunt Firoozeh, please, I beg you. Take it. I won't sleep at night until you do!”

Mina heard them insist with exaggerated politeness in the traditional style of Persian
tarof
. She remembered that a few years ago she'd embarrassed Darya at a family gathering because the hostess had asked her if she wanted a piece of cake, and she had said yes.

“Never,” Darya had whispered in Mina's ear after pulling her aside later, “accept anything at the first request. Wait.”

Mina had looked at her blankly, the spongy cake still filling her cheeks, a few crumbs on her lips, unable to speak or chew or swallow. She nodded instead and then observed, learning to master indirectness
.
With Darya's help, Mina learned how to use just the right amount of insistence and refusal, self-restraint and flattery. The next time they were at someone's home, she remembered the art of
tarof
.

“Do you want a piece of cake?”

“Oh no, thank you, I'm full. I wouldn't dream of having cake.”

Then the hostess asked again. “Please, I would rather throw dirt on my head than have you not eat my cake.”

“Oh no, I couldn't, you're too kind.”

“You must. A big piece.”

“That's far too big, you're embarrassing me.”

“Please eat it. Look at you so skinny. You're too young to be on a diet.”

“In God's name, no . . .”

“Here, may it feed your soul.”

“May God prolong your life. I thank you.”

Mina took the cake and ate it until a second piece was offered and the
tarof
started all over again.

THE GUESTS WERE TOLD TO COME
at seven o'clock so Darya knew they'd come by nine. That's how it was in the City of War. Everybody was later than usual. It took time to get ready—time for the women to cloak themselves in the now mandatory Islamic uniforms and veils, for the men to organize the backseats of their cars with flashlights, battery-powered radios, and bottles of water. Time for everybody to stop in the middle of traffic, get out of their cars, and crouch in ditches by the street when Saddam decided to burst open a bomb.

Poor Mr. Johnson showed up at 7:06. Darya opened the door pretending he was right to be on time and everybody else was embarrassingly late and uncouth. She wanted Mr. Johnson, an old friend of Baba's who was a correspondent for the BBC, to feel at home. Despite the anti-foreigner slogans spray-painted on Tehran streets in bloodred, Mr. Johnson had not left. Mina had heard Mamani say that he was going to leave soon, though, and return to the orderly world of England. Mina wondered if he'd have fish and chips on his first night back. Mrs. Isobel, the Iranian-Armenian teacher Darya had hired to teach the kids English after school, often talked about fish and chips and tea and crumpets during lessons.

Mr. Johnson sucked on the ends of his glasses and smiled at Darya.

In her red, wrinkled purse Mamani kept a photograph of her sister's oldest granddaughter, Leila. At a previous party, Mamani had made sure Mr. Johnson saw that photo. Conveniently dropped it onto his navy lap. Cousin Leila was nineteen and beautiful. And Mr. Johnson, with his blond hair parted in the middle, his tall, slim figure, and the ease with which he spoke Farsi, was not married. Mina had sat on Mamani's lap as Mamani whispered into the phone, “Don't worry, Sister. I've found someone for Leila. If all goes well, she can leave Iran before she's twenty. She can study in England. She won't have to suffer here anymore.”

KISSES AND HUGS AND HAIRSPRAY
surrounded the guests as they arrived. Their house had one of the most coveted designs in post-revolutionary Iran: a big private foyer. Here, when the women arrived, they could stop and remove their heavy
roopoosh
, release their hair from their headscarves, and slowly transform themselves into the women they were—the women they had been before the revolution's new laws. The state's obligatory flat shoes were thrown off and feet slipped into stiletto heels pulled out of plastic bags. Flattened hair was fluffed and teased back into shape. Tight red dresses, shimmery tank tops, miniskirts, and mutually admired spaghetti-strap gowns emerged from under the
roopoosh
. The women joked and grumbled about the Islamic hijab as they pressed tubes of lipstick to their mouths and smeared eye shadow above their lids. They shared one another's black-market Chanel No. 5, spritzing between their breasts and inside their wrists.

In the foyer, on special hooks Darya had hammered in after the revolution, hung the discarded
roopoosh
in a row. They were lifeless and colorless, even more so without their owners in them.

After greetings and cocktails, after
dolmeh
and pistachios, Baba announced it was time for a little music. He drew the blinds shut and made sure all the doors were locked. Darya pulled curtains over the blinds as an extra precaution, and Mina's uncles piled chairs against the front door. If the Revolutionary Guards decided to break in, the extra buffer would buy them all some time.

“Don't worry, they're not around this neighborhood tonight,” Baba reassured the guests. “Big wedding in Yousef Abad. They're all downtown, most of them anyway.”

“Well, last weekend they stormed the Honaris' wedding.” Aunt Firoozeh sucked an olive off a toothpick. “They heard pop music and broke in, ten Comiteh Revolutionary Guards. Fined the host. Kept the guests in custody. Poor Niloofar said she should've never had a reception.”

“Firoozeh Joon, you're being negative again,” her husband, Uncle Jafar, said. He sat stuffed in an armchair drinking homemade beer he'd brought with him in yogurt containers. “Don't scare these good people. One shouldn't be paranoid. Maybe think a little before you say things that scare children?”

Aunt Firoozeh glared at him as she sipped her wine. Mina had watched them argue all her life. “May God
release
me from this man and his criticism!” Aunt Firoozeh muttered, then stomped into the kitchen. Uncle Jafar continued talking to no one in particular. “Have you heard of Viktor Frankl? Have you read his books? He knows about the power of positive thinking.” He coughed, his eyes burning from the brew. “Also, there's an American woman, by the name of Glooria Gay-Lord who has sung a song with which I'm very pleased. It is called ‘I Veel Survive.' Have you heard it?”

A few men nodded politely and feigned interest because he was an elder. Other guests smiled and looked down. Darya then handed Mina a silver tray filled with bowls of different nuts and Mina trotted around the room, balancing the tray in her hands.

“Would you like some nuts?” she asked the old powdered aunts who sat with Mamani on the couch.

“Oh no, thank you, may your hands not ache.”

“Please take a nut,” Mina insisted.

“No, no,” the ladies politely refused.

“In God's name, take a nut, please,” Mina said.

“Well, okay then, maybe just one.” Mamani extracted a few nuts from the bowl.

“May it nourish your soul,” Mina said, bowing her head. Darya always said that before people ate.

“Thank you, my soul is yours,” Mamani said.

Mina continued around the room.

AT NINE O'CLOCK, COUSIN LEILA
arrived with her father, Professor Agassi, and her mother, Dr. Agassi. Tall and thin, Leila wore dark blue jeans and a white blouse. She was the only Iranian woman Mina knew who didn't dress as if she were attending an opera every time there was a party at someone's house. She didn't wear any makeup, but she still looked better than the others. She had big dark eyes and long black hair that was always moving, fluid around her fair skin. Leila hugged Mina amidst the loud greetings and laughter at her family's arrival.

“
Tavalodet mobarak,
happy birthday.” Leila was the only person who remembered what this party was actually for. Presents were piled high in the living room, but few others had uttered “Happy birthday.” “How's it going?”

“It's going. Aunt Firoozeh and Uncle Jafar argued already. Baba insists on playing music. My mom cooked my favorites. Mamani wants you to marry Mr. Johnson.”

Leila didn't seem surprised at any of it. “Come on.” She took her second cousin's hand. “I brought you a book. In English.” Leila spoke fluent English and tutored children in their homes. Darya always encouraged Mina to bolster Mrs. Isobel's lessons with English conversation with Leila. “For your future, Mina Joon,” she would say. “It will be the language of the world one day.” Every Wednesday after school, Mina, Hooman, and Kayvon were dragged to Mrs. Isobel's classes. Darya added an extra Monday session after the war began. She had heard from Baba's brother, now seeking asylum in Chicago, that not knowing English made him feel blind.

Mina and Leila went to the bedroom and thumbed through the paperback: it was a book from the Michelle series. Michelle lived in a place called Portland, Oregon. She had a best friend, Sandy, and was learning how to babysit. Sandy and Michelle both liked a boy called Brett. But Brett only liked the cheerleader Marcia. Marcia smiled on the book's cover, holding pink fluffy balls, her bare legs raised in the air.

“And the English-language bookstore can sell this?” Mina's eyes widened at Marcia's bare legs.

“The booksellers have colored over Marcia's legs with permanent black marker now,” Leila said. “But I got this before.”

There was no need to say before when. Their world was cleaved into Before and After. Before the revolution. Before the new laws. Before the upside-down.

“You went to trouble, thank you,” Mina said.

Leila read out loud about Michelle and Sandy's plan to stop Brett from taking Marcia to prom. Mina sat on her bed and tried to follow their problems, but she couldn't help worrying about the Revolutionary Guards. If they burst in and arrested her parents for the party, it would all be her fault.

“Dinner's ready!” Darya's head popped into the room.

THE GUESTS HEAPED THEIR PLATES
with rice and
ghormeh sabzi
, rice and barberries, and poured Darya's walnut and pomegranate sauce on top of their saffron rice. They drank Baba's illegal wine and insisted everything was the best they'd ever had. This time, Mina knew it wasn't just
tarof.
Her mother's cooking truly was superb. Mina broke some fresh
naan
and dipped it into her cucumber and mint yogurt.

“To the chef, the lovely lady at the head of the table.” Baba raised his glass.

Darya blushed. “May it nourish your souls,” she said.

“To Mrs. Rezayi!”

“Thank you, Khanom Rezayi!”

“May your hands not ache!”

“May you live long!”

Darya beamed, her eyes bright.