Dreaming in English (38 page)

“Yes,” I say. All Iranians know this.

“It takes a special kind of person to possess power but not abuse it,” he says. “That’s why I admire the founding fathers. That’s why I study them. They were wise enough to know that in order for their children and their grand-children and
my child
to enjoy the freedoms they’d fought for, they had to create a government that acknowledged that the best power is limited power. And they did something that was unheard of at the time—they created a country in which the citizens owe allegiance to no leader, but rather to a set of principles.
The power resides in the principles.
Principles are what people will fight for, and principles are what they’ll die for. They’ll die for no man—at least no man of power. They’ll die for each other, and they’ll die for their children, and they’ll die for their ideals. They’ll die so freedom remains the birthright of every American.”

My skin tingles at his words, at his passionate conviction.
God, I love it here.
America is a beautiful, beautiful place, for this very reason that Ardishir describes.

He continues quietly. “I read these books because I like the stories of all the decisions, all the choices, these people made, and how they little by little made one good decision here and another smart decision there—and when you add them up, they make a country.”

“A great country,” I say.

“I’m telling you this for a reason,” he says. “I’m telling you because there’s always a moment, isn’t there? When something great and magical happens involving freedom, there’s always a moment that precedes it—a moment of decision. Sometimes made collectively; other times, individually. Sometimes it’s spontaneous and other times, it’s well planned. When something great and magical happens involving freedom, it’s because there’s a moment when a person or a group of people decides to step up and be what the moment requires of them.” The look he gives me is compassionate, and also matter-of-fact. “This is your moment, Tami.”

I shake my head. “I had my moment. The immigration interview—that was my moment.”

“Separation of powers, Tami. Checks and balances.” Ardishir smiles. “That’s the brilliance of it all. That guy had no business telling you what the outcome of a court hearing would be. That’s not his branch of government. He doesn’t control it. It’ll come down to you and the judge, and the judge’s interpretation of the law. That’s it. No one else counts, just you and the judge.
This
is your moment, Tami. You’re about to have your moment.”

The question in his eyes:
Will you step up?

“W
ill you step over here, miss?” This is what I hear immediately after I go through the metal detector. The person who asks is a black-skinned woman close in age to my mother, and she asks politely, but my terror ignites like it always does when I have to deal with people who have power over me.

“I, well ...” I glance back and see Ardishir watching. He shrugs and smiles, telling me it’ll be fine, that this is no big deal. “Okay, sure.”

She leads me to a special section—thank God it’s right in public and not in a locked, windowless room!—and asks me to stretch out my arms and spread my feet. As she waves her wand, my body locks into a rigid position. I have no knives, no guns, no shoe bombs, no nothing. But still, I’m guilty. That’s what moments like this always remind me of—that I’m guilty of the crime of being born. Of being born a woman in the Middle East. While the guard waves her wand, a male officer looks through my shoulder bag and carry-on luggage, the sum total of my worldly possessions.

“I’m sorry for the inconvenience,” says the lady. “We’re required to do these random checks.”

With my foreign name, I can’t help but think there was nothing random about it. I think this even though to my right is an elderly white man and to my left is a mother with a little boy and a baby. They’ve pulled the bottom rubber balls from the old man’s walker to peer inside and they made the mom lift her baby from its stroller to examine it more closely. From the cradle to the grave, it seems we’re all potential threats to the status quo.

“No problem.” I give the woman a false, polite smile, then collect my bags, wave to Ardishir, and continue up the ramp to the terminal. The entire unpleasantness lasted less than a minute, but I know too well from past experience that its effects will linger.

I detour into the women’s bathroom, thinking I’ll catch my breath there, out of sight of the authorities, out of the public eye. But this is a bad idea, for once inside, my heart is flooded with a memory of my very first night in America, when I had such hope for my future, and I burst into tears. It’s been too much—all of it. The highs have been too high and the lows have been too low and the daily indignities of life will never, ever go away.

There’s a woman washing her hands, and she looks at me in sympathy. “Are you all right?”

But I nod and wheel my carry-on bag into a toilet stall, locking the door behind me. I’ve always been good at crying silently; I’ve had lots of practice.

On my first night, Maryam met me at the airport and dragged me into a bathroom just like this one, only on the other side of security. Thirty Persians waited back at her house to welcome me to America—one was potential husband material—and the clothes I’d worn on the plane weren’t right for the party, so she dragged me into an airport bathroom and slipped a form-fitting red dress with a deep V-neck over me, slathered makeup on my face until I hardly recognized myself, slipped my feet into open-toed, high-heeled sandals, and painted my toenails a stark red. I protested that I was exhausted and in no mood for a party, but she played the part of pushy Persian perfectly and insisted that I smile my way through the night.
That’s all you have to do
, she said.
Smile through everything.

That first night in America, everything seemed possible.

Maryam.
My heart cries out for her. I already miss her terribly, and I so wanted to see her as a mother—not just once a year on her summer trip to Canada, but every day. She’ll be one of those crazy, overprotective moms who thinks the world revolves around her daughter. She’ll be convinced her daughter is the smartest, funniest, prettiest girl ever. And she’ll be right, because it’s every mother’s prerogative to think that about her child, and it will
certainly
be true about my niece.

I like how Ardishir said that freedom is every American’s birthright, and I’ll add that it’s every child’s birthright, no matter where they’re born, to have someone believe in them—to believe they’re deserving and capable of anything, that the world is theirs for the taking.

I would have thought that about my child, if I’d been so fortunate to have one.

But now I never will.

I don’t think I’ll ever love again. It’s too painful, too hard. I’ll be like Rose, the old lady who lives alone. But I don’t
want
to be the old lady who lives alone—I want to be the old lady who lives with Ike, and he’s letting me go without a fight. This hurts more than anything. How can he just let me go? I can’t even breathe without him.

This is ridiculous
, I tell myself.
Of course you can breathe. Get it together and get out of this stupid bathroom and out of this town. It was only a way station, that’s all it was ever intended to be. It was never supposed to be your home—you’re a big-city girl, and you’ll be happier in Vancouver.

I tell myself this only to propel myself out of the bathroom and onto the airplane. I don’t believe a word of it. What I believe is that I’ll miss these people every day for the rest of my life. I believe the sun will never shine as brightly as when I lived here. I believe the best is behind me.

I’m like my mother that way.

N
ow, San Francisco is what I call a city!

I’ve been here before, when I was small and my parents were graduate students at Berkeley, but I was so young I have no memories of it, only the few pictures I’ve been given. I wonder if my parents took us to Chinatown and Castro Street. I wonder if we rode the cable cars. I wonder if we drove across the Golden Gate Bridge. We must have—who would go to San Francisco and not drive across the Golden Gate Bridge?

With Nadia and Baby Maryam, I do all these things. The only tourist destination I skip is the prison on Alcatraz Island. No, thank you—why would I want to see that?

Nadia is doing so well. I have only known her when she was in a bad relationship with a mean husband, and so this visit is special to me because she’s a whole new person—the best of her old self, with the wisdom of someone who’s lived through a hard time. She’s been staying with Maryam’s fashion-conscious Persian friend, who has taken her clothes shopping (she used to wear her husband’s old beer-brand T-shirts) and for a new highlighted hairstyle (it used to be stringy and an unflattering dirty blond). Best of all, Nadia laughs. Really and truly laughs, and she’s so pretty when she does! If she keeps this up, she’ll have laugh lines one day. And her baby gurgles and squeals with delight at the world around her. I’ve never seen such a happy baby.

On my second day, Nadia borrows a friend’s car and drives me to the beach. When we’re in the parking lot, my cell phone rings. It’s a call from Iran. My heart lurches. They must know. They must know I have to leave. Their poor hearts must be broken.

“Tami? Is that you?”

“Maman,
salaam
!” She never calls me; it’s always my father who calls. “How are you? Is everything okay? Baba’s okay?”

“We’re fine, Tami Joon. It’s you we’re worried about.” Her voice smoothes and soothes. “We spoke with Ardishir. I’m so sorry about your interview. I’m so sad for you.”

I hate for her to be sad for me. She’s already been swallowed up by sadness for herself.

“It’s okay,” I say. “I’m actually doing okay. I’m visiting my friend Nadia in San Francisco. Do you remember being here, Maman?”

“Like it was yesterday,” she says. “Memories of places are often so vivid, yes?”

Nadia has the baby loaded into the stroller and gestures that she’s going for a walk. I wander over to the low wall separating the parking lot from the footpath. I should look at the ocean, it’s so pretty, but I stare at my feet instead.

“It was more than twenty years ago,” I say. “Too much time has gone by.”

“I love all the old Victorian houses,” she says. “I always thought I’d like to live in one.”

This is Maman’s preferred way of talking—indirectly, around an issue, so as not to cause offense, so as not to make anyone feel bad. But I do feel bad. My mother
could
have lived in one of the pretty houses here, if she hadn’t left America on what amounted to a thoughtless, jealous whim!

“I’m at the beach with Nadia, Maman. Was there anything else you called for, or can I call you back later?”

Later, like from Canada.

“Ardishir thinks you should take your situation before a judge. He’s worried you won’t go back home after this trip.”

“Home?” I swallow hard. “I’m not sure where that is anymore, Maman.”

“I would have loved to go to court,” she says quietly. “After I was arrested. I would have loved the chance to go before my accusers and defend myself, with a fair and honest process. I always pictured it, in my head. I had a great speech all planned.”

My heart aches for her. My throat, too, so no words can get out.

“No one ever asked me what happened,” she says. “No one. Not even your father. I suppose no one wanted to cause me any grief. I don’t blame them, and I didn’t want to talk about it any more than they wanted to hear it. You don’t want to put that burden on someone.” There’s a pause, and then she says softly, “Anything they could have imagined, it was a hundred times worse. You like to think you’d be strong, but ...”

“Why didn’t we leave afterward?” I ask. “We could have all lived in a Victorian house. We could have all been happy.”

Such a long silence follows that I worry she’s set the phone down and walked away from her disrespectful daughter. Finally she replies.

“I made so many bargains with God,” she says. “So many bargains. And He let me out. He let me live. I guess I thought I didn’t have the right to hope for anything more. And at first I couldn’t leave. Did you know this? They held my passport for several years. And then my mother became ill. And then ...” Her voice fades.

“I don’t want to be afraid any longer.” My mother’s voice quavers. “You don’t know what it’s like, to be so afraid.”

“You’d be happy here. I know it,” I say. “And don’t feel bad that I have to leave. You should come anyway.” I swallow my bitterness at the irony that just as my mother might finally summon the courage to come, I have to leave. “Maryam needs you, Maman. She really, really needs you right now.”

“Tami, don’t give up,” Maman says. “Don’t be like me and just stop trying.”

“Maman, I’m not. I promise. I’m just being realistic.”

“I used to say the same thing,” she says.

I already long for a cool, dark bedroom where I can hide myself away for the next twenty years. I’m already so much like Maman.

“Please don’t make me feel any worse than I already do,” I say.

“You should go before a judge,” she says insistently. “Think of all the people who’ll never get the chance to, Tami. You have a chance here.
You have a chance
.”

I look out to the ocean. The water looks cold and dark and like it could swallow me whole.

“I’m too afraid,” I say.

“You’re stronger than you think,” Maman says as I watch a sailboat with a brilliant blue sail, the same color as Ike’s eyes. “We’re all of us stronger than we think.”