Together Tea (19 page)

Chapter Thirty

This Is Not Timbuktu

M
ina and Darya shot up the silver skyscraper in northern Tehran in a shiny elevator equipped with a digital voice that called out the floors in Farsi. Darya had come to drop Mina off and to say hello to Bita's mother, her old friend.

“And remember to help,” Darya said. “Make yourself useful. Don't just stand and watch. Help Bita prepare for the party.”

The door of Apartment 3G was opened by Bita's mom, Suri. She looked almost the same—a poufy hairdo and red lipstick—except that her face was speckled with age spots.

“Well, look at you!” Suri said. “
Vay khoda
, my God!”

Darya and Suri kissed and hugged, then kissed and hugged again. Suri engulfed Mina in a big hug and kissed her too, then both Darya and Suri wiped lipstick off Mina's cheeks.

White leather couches flanked the spacious living room. Bright paintings hung on the walls. Everything was hip and modern and fresh. Mina remembered a different set of furniture from before. Mina looked at the TV. Oprah was interviewing John Travolta.
Vay khoda
indeed.

“But . . .” Mina started. “What?”

“Come on, Mina, you must know that we watch everything you do in America. Satellite dishes are our friends! This isn't Timbuktu. It's
Tehran
!”

“I know . . . I never thought it would be . . . I mean, of course.” Mina fumbled for the right words. “Oprah. Makes sense.”

“Four times they've come and removed our satellite dishes,” Suri said as she motioned for them to sit. “Four times we've been fined.”

Darya shook her head in exaggerated empathy.

“Don't worry. We keep putting them back up. They want to forbid all contact with the rest of the world. But we're hooked up.” Suri nodded proudly.

“You're hooked up all right,” Darya said.

“We have CNN. We have BBC. We have—” Suri put her hands on her hips. “The Voice of America!”

Darya let out a whistle.

“Don't think we're all backward here, Mina Joon,” Suri said.

Darya glared at Mina. Flicked her head just slightly to cue Mina to say something.

“Oh no, I didn't,” Mina stammered.

“Let me help you with the food.” Darya started for the kitchen.

“I won't let you touch a thing. You sit. I'll bring tea,” Suri said.

“Come on, let me help.”

After seventeen
tarof
back-and-forth statements with Darya insisting that they should help with the food for the “young people's party” and Suri insisting that as guests they should just sit and have tea and eat fruit and nuts and biscuits and some cake that she'd made just for them, a door slammed.

“
Salaam,
hello, hello!” Bita trotted in with a white towel wrapped around her head, and another towel wrapped around her body. Her face was red from her shower.

“Oh, Bita, get dressed before coming to greet guests!” Suri said.

“Well, hello, Khanom Beautiful, hope you had a good bathing time,” Darya said.

“Thank you, thank you.” Bita greeted Darya and Mina with shower-fresh kisses.

Bita pulled the white towel off her head. Dark hair dropped over her shoulders.

“Going to change!” she sang out. “Back in a sec!”

Because Darya was absolutely relentless in her
tarof
and would not take no for an answer, and because Mina pretended that she too really wanted to cook right then and there, Suri had no choice but to let them into the kitchen. Ceramic roosters stared at them from the kitchen shelves. On the glistening granite counter, they helped Suri put together a lentil, mint, and beet salad. Suri plucked leaves from the stems of washed mint, Darya chopped the mint into perfect pieces and added olive oil, vinegar, salt, pepper, and turmeric to Suri's cooked lentils. Mina chopped cooked beets into uneven clumps, the swirls on the pads of her fingers staining red.

A little bell sounded.

“That's my oven!” Suri pulled out a baking sheet filled with little sausages wrapped in dough.

“Oh!” Mina said. “Pigs in a blanket!”

Suri looked confused.

“Oh, that's just what they call it in the U.S.,” Darya explained and gave Mina a look that said: There are no pigs in Iran.

“Oh, it's not actually pork, of course,” Suri said. “It's beef. But it's quite good.”

Mina only knew pork from going out with friends. Darya never served it. She made the kids order sweet-and-sour chicken in Chinese restaurants, never pork. Bologna sandwiches, if they ever had them at all, were beef bologna. The Jewish brands were Darya's favorites because “they are the closest to who we are.”
The Persians and the Jews go way back,
Baba would always say.
Don't fall for this current political rhetoric. Heck, most of us WERE Jews and Zoroastrians before the Arabs invaded!

“Don't work too hard, Mina Joon.” Bita waltzed back into the kitchen wearing blue jeans and a sports bra.

“Oh, it's fine, it's no problem,” Mina said. Mina had grown up in America while Bita had spent her adolescence in Iran shivering in basement shelters during the war, covering her hair with a headdress every day, and yet, in her presence, Mina felt like a dutiful, matronly lady servant. She felt suddenly very old-fashioned in her long, flowing, flowery dress that seemed
Little House on the Prairie
–ish next to Bita's casual wear.

Bita caught Mina looking at her outfit. “Don't worry, I'm going to change right before the party. I won't open the door with my bra on!” She bit into a non–pig in a blanket. “I wish it were real pork,” she said. “I never had real pork till after the revolution, and then they said we couldn't have it. Now I eat it whenever I can. I like my pork roasted and spiced with chili flakes. I like it diced and salted. I like it on Thursday nights and on Friday mornings for breakfast.” She grinned. “I loooove sausages!”

Suri stopped plucking. Darya stopped chopping. Mina looked at her beet-stained hands.

“Thank you, Bita, for sharing. Now grab a board and chop some onions,” Suri said. “I've heard enough about your love of . . .
sausages.
”

Bita grabbed an onion and brought a knife down on it, hard. Mina mixed the beets into the salad.

“May this regime rot in hell!” Bita sang out and grabbed another non-pig, then swayed her booty in time with the onion chopping.

Suri, Darya, and Mina looked at one another and could do nothing but laugh. You couldn't stop Bita from being Bita.

JUST BEFORE 11:00 P.M., DARYA
left with Suri so “you kids can have your space.” Suri had arranged the food carefully on the tables and conveniently left the key to the liquor cabinet on the dining room table. Mina wondered if Darya would have gone to so much trouble for a party of Mina's in the States. But then, Mina didn't have too many parties. Baba and Darya were always worried about the possibility of drugs or alcohol being brought to their house. It was enough that their children lived in such a permissive culture. Baba and Darya erected boundaries wherever possible in order to maintain “decency.” But in Bita's case, the opposite was happening. Her parents were going out of their way to help with her party and to ensure a good time for all. It was precisely because they lived in such a repressive country, with so much emphasis on the laws of “decency” that Suri compensated by giving her daughter free rein within the confines of their home.

Then the guests arrived. They came in couples, groups, some with their arms interlaced. They were all attractive and much hipper than Mina had expected. They had come for a good time, and at Bita's house, they knew they would have one. One girl pulled off her headscarf to reveal dozens of long thin braids glittering with beads. She came with a tall, green-eyed twentysomething man with a goatee. When the girl unbuttoned her
roopoosh,
Mina suppressed a gasp. She was wearing tight leather pants with a silver, shimmery, barely-there tube top. Her bare midriff showed off six-pack abs and a silver belly ring.

“You must be Mina. Bita has told me so much about you! You live in
New York
! I love New York!” the girl in braids said.

“If I can make it there, I can make it anywhere!” The green-eyed man in the goatee tipped an imaginary hat.

At that moment, Bita walked in—wearing a strapless black minidress with perfume and teased hair. She kicked up her legs, open-toed silver high heels piercing the air. “Da da da da dum, da da da da dum! It's up to you, New York, Neeewwww Yawk!” She grabbed the girl with braids and the man with the goatee and they joined her in an impromptu cancan. Soon the three of them fell over into a messy pile on the floor, arms and legs and spiky heels everywhere. They untangled from one another in a fit of giggles. When the man straightened up, he looked at Mina. Even though he was still laughing a bit, his eyes seemed sad. He pulled at his goatee. “Well, welcome,” he said to Mina. “Welcome to Iran.”

Bita untangled her arms from her friend's. “Mina, this is Lilly.” She pointed to the girl with the braids and the belly ring. “And this,” she said as she poked the man with the goatee in the stomach, “is her boyfriend, Massoud.”

“I'm very happy,” Mina said. “I'm very happy . . .” She faltered, not sure how to go on in formal Farsi. “I'm lucky to meet you,” she said, trying to use the correct, polite formalities.

Massoud and Lilly looked puzzled and exchanged a glance with Bita.

“Oh, don't be so official and old-fashioned!” Bita said. “Come on, it's the
nineties
!”

They all laughed. Mina laughed too, but nervously.

“Do you think the guards are patrolling around here tonight?” Massoud pulled at his goatee, surveying the windows.

“Don't worry, I'll take care of them,” Bita said.

Lilly high-fived her. “Hey, do you have Tupac's latest CD?”

“You bet. I'm not just going to play Madonna! You guys want some wine? Gin and tonics?”

Once they got their drinks, Massoud, Lilly, and Bita talked about music. Mina stood close and tried to join in, but she had nothing to say. She kept thinking about how Bita had introduced Massoud. Lilly's “boyfriend.” Just like that. She thought boyfriends weren't allowed. Baba and Darya always said Persian girls didn't do the boyfriend thing.
Thou shalt study and work hard and get straight As, and then, once thou hast achieved thy college degree, thou shalt marry a Persian man who has a secure, respectable position in life, and thou shalt have babies and take care of thy husband, home, children, and career.
Baba and Darya's code of conduct seemed startlingly old-fashioned here. Mina felt ridiculous in her long floral dress. She felt like a nerd crashing the cool people's party.

Lilly and Massoud were kissing now. Mina awkwardly backed away from them toward the food.

“Oh, those two!” Bita shrugged. “Lovebirds! In their own nest of bliss. You know what I mean?”

“Yuppo,” Mina said. She had a flashback of Mr. Dashti sipping tea at her parents' house in Queens.

THE GUESTS DANCED. THEY SWAYED
to the rock and roll and sang the lyrics of the American Top 40. They were shocked that Mina didn't know all the lyrics. “But don't you live there?” they asked with baffled looks. “Wouldn't you listen to the Top 40 every day if you actually lived in America?” Mina shook her head. No, you wouldn't. Not necessarily. It's not like that. It's not like that over there.

Most of the guests were couples. Dating. Going steady. A few were single, like Bita, who had recently broken up with a man she only referred to as Silly Sassan.

Bita introduced Mina to a tall thin girl who looked like a model and used to be Massoud's old neighbor. She was now engaged to Lilly's second cousin. Mina nodded and smiled and tried to say the right things in Farsi. A pattern soon emerged. Upon hearing that she was Bita's old friend from the States, the guests' initial reaction was one of excitement and curiosity. But then, after a few moments of small talk, it became clear to the guests that Mina was a bit square. After a period of polite exchange, the guests inevitably tuned out and walked off, uninterested. The men's eyes would begin to roam, and the girls would look bored and move on. And soon, Mina stood alone by the food table, watching everyone dance.

“I know you know this song!” Bita yelled at Mina from the dance floor. “Come on!”

Mina walked over to her awkwardly. Bita grabbed her hand.

“I guess I just don't keep up with the top hits,” Mina said, doing something in between a bounce and a prayer movement, trying to mirror Bita, but feeling utterly out of step.

Bita swayed her hips seductively. “You don't get out much, do you?”

“I'm usually . . . busy,” Mina mumbled. “It's not like everyone in the States just parties.”