Dreaming in English (2 page)

GO AND WAKE UP YOUR LUCK

M
y mother wouldn’t let me cling to her; she made me stand tall. My world—the only one I knew, the only one I remembered—stood still for that last moment at Mehrabad Airport while she brushed away my tears and told me,
Go, my daughter. Go and wake up your luck.

At her urging, I did.

All by myself, I flew halfway around the world, more than twelve thousand kilometers, from Tehran, Iran, to Tucson, U.S.A., worrying the entire time. You name it, I worried about it—first, that the dangerously outdated IranAir aircraft would simply break apart midflight. That when I spoke in America, my English would not be good enough and people would laugh at me. I was scared to see Maryam again after fifteen years of only across-the-ocean phone calls, concerned that our sister relationship would be too different, or else that it would be too much the same. I was terrified by the possibility that I might never see my parents again, and equally anxious that I would fail in my quest—my mandate—to find a husband in America before my tourist visa expired, and that I’d have to go back. I was afraid I
would
find a husband, only he’d turn out to be maybe not so nice. I feared that Americans might not see me for
me
, that they wouldn’t understand I was separate from my government, that even if some crazies in Iran thought America was Sheytan-e Bozorg, the Great Satan, I did not. I was afraid I would not be given a chance.

Oh, how much has changed in three short months!

This time when I fly into Tucson, I’m not alone. I’m with Ike—my beautiful Ike, with his easy smile and ocean blue eyes. He’s my husband now! We got married yesterday in Las Vegas. Everything has happened so fast there has hardly been time to think. I’ve been too excited to eat and far too excited to sleep, and this time, when things get bumpy during the plane’s descent, Ike is here to take my hand.

“Scared, Persian Girl?” He asks this with a tease in his voice. While I’m Tamila Soroush to everyone else, to Ike I am and always will be his Persian Girl. “You’re not scared of a little turbulence, are you?”

I rest my hand on his warm, sure skin. He’s been quiet on the flight back, studying me closely when he thinks I’m unaware, probably wondering just who this is, this woman he’s married, and I’m glad now for his light tone and gentle joking. “I’m not afraid of anything anymore,” I say.

But Ike knows me better. “Oh, yeah?” He grins at me, a sweet, naughty-boy smile. “Kiss me, then,” he says. “Kiss me right here, right now.”

At this, I blush. All around us on the airplane are other people—people going home; people leaving home; people traveling for work, for fun, for family, for love. The airplane is a bullet shooting through the sky. Life is happening all around me. We are all moving all the time, and I realize—
finally
, I realize—that I am no longer in a holding pattern, waiting for my life to begin. Like everyone around me, like Ike beside me—I, too, am hurtling toward my future, one which, if all goes well,
inshallah
, will take place in the land of the free and the home of the brave. And yet, when it comes to kissing Ike in public, I don’t feel very courageous. For in my homeland of Iran, the country that has woven itself into my psyche, for both better and worse, love happens mostly behind closed doors.

“Okay,” I admit, “I maybe still have some fears.”

“You know the best way to get over them, don’t you?” he says. “Through repetition. You’re going to have to kiss me over and over again. Public displays of affection, it’s called.”

I feel myself blush as I give my new husband a friendly kiss on his cheek.

“Well,” he says matter-of-factly, “I suppose that’s a start.” When he runs his fingers up my forearm, my skin tingles with possibility. Although the air on the plane is stale, I have never felt so alive. Alive, and suddenly worried.

“What about you?” I ask. “What are your fears?”

“Me?” He scoffs. “I’m not afraid of anything. I have no fear. None. Zilch. Nada.”

I give him a look that asks,
Really?

“I swear, Persian Girl,” he says. “Perfect love drives out all fear.”

“Wow,” I say. “That’s very profound.” Not to mention incredibly sweet. But I know Ike a little bit by now. “Did you come up with this yourself?”

He grins. “It’s U2. Do you know who U2 is?”

“U2 is a band from Ireland, and they are very socially conscious, yes?” I ask. “They have a campaign called Red that raises money to help poor people.”

“Very good!” Ike says. “Although actually they raise money to help fight AIDS—in poor countries. So you were close—very close! But I’m surprised U2 isn’t banned in Iran. They’re kind of revolutionary, I’d think.”

“Everything’s available on the black market, no problem,” I say. “But I know about them from here, from my English class. Danny taught us the song ‘Pride,’ which is about Martin Luther King, Jr., yes?”

Danny’s my English teacher. He’s a hippie-style person who plays the guitar for us and teaches us American folk songs and other songs, too. The way he played the song “Pride” was using only an acoustic guitar, and he sang it with sorrow in his voice. I liked his humble version better than U2’s loud one.

“Partly it is, indeed,” Ike says. “It’s a very cool song.” He sings, “
Free at last they took your life. They could not take your pride. . . .
”

My new husband does not have a very good voice, I’m sorry to say. I try not to wince at how off-key he is.

“Ike?” Thankfully, he stops singing. “Aren’t you afraid for what your parents will say about our marriage?”

As of yet, they know nothing about it. Ike left a voice mail for his parents before he boarded the airplane to Las Vegas, saying only that he was going to meet some friends. And then he married me. He’s a planner by nature, and I’m very much aware that marrying me was not in his plans. Surely his parents will be aware of this, too.

If that’s a flicker of doubt I see in his eyes, he quickly pushes it away. “They’re going to love you, Tami.”

“And if they don’t?”

“They will,” he insists. “How could they not?”

“Um—because I married their son in order to get my green card?”

“No, no, no.” Ike corrects me. “You married their son because you love him.”

“Yes,” I agree, for this is true, too. “But I worry they’ll overlook that point.”

Ike assures me they won’t. Then he looks away, out the window. He’s watching our descent as if he’s landing in a new city to which he’s never before been—which isn’t the situation. We’re going back to the same Tucson we left. It’s the two of us—married now—who are different.

The final buckle-up bell sounds, and Ike unconsciously tightens his seat belt.

“Are you ready?” I ask him.

He takes my hand. “Ready for what?”

I can’t help but smile. “For what comes next.”

“No.” He grins. “But what the hell, let’s do it anyway.”

What comes next is telling his parents we’re married, and even if Ike isn’t nervous, I certainly am.

I’ve never met them, and from what Ike has said, he’s told them very little about me. Here is what I know about these people who are now my family: His father, Alan, owns a small construction company and a number of rental properties. Ike is close to his father and often helps him on construction jobs. His mother, Elizabeth, used to be a full-time nurse but has worked just one or two shifts per week since Ike was young. Besides Ike, who’s the eldest, there are four girls in the family—Izzy, who’s eighteen; Kat, who’s sixteen; Paige, who’s fourteen; and Camille, who is six and was adopted from Guatemala when she was a baby. Ike lives in a backyard studio guesthouse that he built with his father, and the girls share bedrooms.

Ike and I hold hands as we walk through Tucson International Airport. Holding hands in public is new for me, and it feels both utterly innocent and profoundly naughty at the same time. I pause for a moment under the sign that greets arriving visitors and take in its message with new eyes: WELCOME TO TUCSON.

My family lived in the United States before, back in the 1970s, when my father was a graduate student at the University of California-Berkeley. We went back to Iran soon after the Shah was deposed and the Ayatollah Khomeini returned from exile. My family’s happiness ended at that point. My Western-leaning parents, who’d seen a successful democracy in action, who understood the wisdom of a separation between church and state, got caught up in the clampdown that followed. More than that—my mother was arrested and jailed for five months. Permission to leave has been denied them again and again, and so now they’re destined to live out their lives in Iran’s repressive religious regime. For so long, their only hope has been to see their daughters settle once more in America.

Maryam made it out first, fifteen years ago, when she married Ardishir. Now it’s my turn. I’m so glad to have my chance; I almost didn’t make it.

Although my family is modern, they encouraged me to agree to an arranged marriage upon arriving in America. It was the only way I would be able to stay beyond the three months my tourist visa granted. And so I agreed, but on what was to be the morning of our wedding day, my hastily-agreed-upon fiancé, Masoud, a developer from Chicago, handed me a contract which demanded that I bear his child immediately—before filing my green-card paperwork—and that I give up all rights to the child in the event of a divorce.

I couldn’t do it. I’d come to America for my parents, yes, and I’d come for myself, too—but most of all I’d come for the children I hoped to have one day. That they would never know repression. That they would be raised in freedom. I couldn’t let them have a father like Masoud Fakhri, who would so coldly cut their mother from their lives. If I signed his contract, my children and I would be hostage to his decisions, his whims, his vices, his control. He could divorce me at will and take from me my children.

And so for them—for the daughters and sons I hope to have one day—I said no.

When I walked away from this marriage, with my visa just days away from expiring, I resigned myself to going back to Iran, defeated, to a homeland where I never really felt at home. And then Ike, my handsome American Boy, Ike—the only one I’d wanted, the one I was sure I could not have, the one I’d secretly met for coffee day after day on my way home from English class—knocked on the door of my hotel room in Las Vegas, where my friends and I were celebrating the wedding of our classmates Agata and Josef.

This was yesterday, when Ike came for me, and I got that flutter of excitement I always get when I watch the end of romantic American movies—after it has all fallen apart and when it seems that love is not meant to be and that life has turned out to be nothing more than a cruel dictator of fate, but then . . .
but then
. . . something happens to change all that.

For me, it was a knock at the door.

Ike came for me, and the storm clouds parted. The angry gods softened toward me, and Ike declared his love. I’ve been pinching myself ever since, to remind myself it’s not just a dream. It’s true.
I’m married to the man I love.
Thanks to him, I got my freedom. The question that remains: Can I keep it?

So many things can and might go wrong, especially with our immigration interview. Will the authorities believe our love is for real? Maybe, or maybe not. But on this, my first full day as Ike’s wife, standing beneath the WELCOME TO TUCSON sign, holding his hand, I allow myself to be hopeful.

“What are you thinking, Persian Girl?” he asks.

What I’m thinking is how nice it will be to put the past behind me.

What I’m thinking is how far I’ve come, and not just in miles.

What I’m thinking is
wow.
Just . . .
wow
. Did this really happen? Am I really here?

I look into my new husband’s true-blue American eyes and squeeze his hand. But I don’t answer him, for what I’m thinking is too big for words.