The Good Daughter: A Memoir of My Mother's Hidden Life (23 page)

Kobra, alone in the apartment, thought a client had come calling. She tucked in her blouse, fluffed her hair, and, smiling, opened the door. And there she was. Sara. Her hair had been clipped into a page-boy style. She was wearing a pink cotton jumper, white sandals, and one sock.

“Do you know this girl?” the officer asked Kobra.

Three years had passed since grandmother and granddaughter had last seen each other and three lifetimes could not undo what was settled between them in that instant. “Do you know this girl?” the officer had asked Kobra, but what she heard was, “Do you choose this girl’s life over your own daughter’s?”

“She belongs to her father,” said Kobra at length.

Sara turned her face to the policeman. Her chin was set and she would not budge. “No,” she told him.

They all stood there like that for a long time, Sara planted at the entry and Kobra blocking the way, until the police officer guessed that only familial bonds could engender such animosity between two people and left them to each other.

“You must take her back to her father’s house,” Kobra told Lili as soon as she returned home that evening, but Lili’s heart had lurched at the sight of Sara, and she’d been incapable of letting her go. “Just a few days,” Lili begged, and Kobra, lips pursed and cursing, at last agreed to pay a visit to Kazem’s aunt and plead Lili’s case.

Sara would spend the next week on Zahirodolleh Alley. Her flight and Kobra’s entreaties had convinced Kazem’s family of the need for Sara to visit Lili, at least occasionally, and that first stay would establish the pattern for a handful of other visits over the next year. Every month or so, one of Kazem’s aunts, cousins, or in-laws would deposit Sara at Kobra and Lili’s flat with a little brown leather suitcase. Once there, Sara devoted herself completely to the study of her mother. Sara could sit for hours on Lili’s lap, tracing her eyes, her nose, her lips, with her fingertips. “She’s after something, that child,” Kobra declared, and Lili could see it, too. It wasn’t just that Sara missed her mother—though that, certainly, was part of it. It was that Sara was so clearly struggling to square what she’d heard about Lili—that she was a bad woman, that she’d abandoned her—with the pretty young lady she’d managed to find on Zahirodolleh Alley.

The task was tremendous and it tired them all out, but nobody suffered from Sara’s arrivals as much as Kobra. In the evenings, when Lili was home, Sara was sweet, quiet, and utterly docile. After Lili left in the mornings, Sara kicked Kobra in the shins, tormented the cat, and swore at Kobra and her clients. They spent the days staring each other down, Kobra from behind her sewing machine, Sara from
behind her bangs, until Lili appeared at nighttime with her arms full of presents—rag dolls, pennywhistles, and piggy banks wrapped in brightly colored cellophane—always too much and never, ever enough.

During these months Lili did not pay much attention to the women she encountered on her way in and out of the flat each day; in their middle age and their vanity, Kobra’s clients seemed more or less indistinguishable to her. But over time Lili could not help notice that Nasrine Khanoom, the lady who’d taken her to the
baq
outside the city, was turning up more and more frequently and that Kobra always received her with particular warmth. Kobra kept a box of good cookies in her cupboard especially for Nasrine Khanoom, and she always seemed to be wearing a pretty dress or blouse when that lady called. When Lili returned from her typing class at the end of each day, Kobra and Nasrine Khanoom were often sipping tea together, oblivious to the pile of fabrics between them, and every time Nasrine Khanoom greeted Lili, her eyes seemed to linger just a little longer on her face and her figure.

The meaning of all this did not escape Lili, and when Kobra at last confessed that Nasrine Khanoom had found an excellent suitor for her she shrugged the news off just as she’d shrugged off similar news from her aunts and cousins over the last few months since returning to Iran. With that she thought the matter settled, but one afternoon she returned home from her typing class and discovered a large basket of orange gladiolus and an unwrapped box of Swiss chocolates set out on the table in place of the old Singer. The faces of her mother and Nasrine Khanoom were fixed on her with identical grins. A
khastegari
, or courtship, was under way—there was simply no missing it.

“Come sit with us,
azizam
!” Nasrine Khanoom called out to her,
using the familiar endearment “dear one” and patting the empty seat beside her on the sofa.

Kobra poured Lili a cup of tea and passed her one of the special cookies. After they’d exhausted the customary greetings and pleasantries, Nasrine Khanoom turned to Lili, cleared her throat, and announced, “The more I see you, Lili-
joon
, the better I understand why Mr. Fereydoon has been so taken with you since we took you to the party that evening.”

Lili could not remember this Mr. Fereydoon, but she smiled politely, took another biscuit, and continued drinking her tea.

“Mr. Fereydoon is a very good man,” Nasrine Khanoom went on. She leaned toward Lili and lowered her voice slightly. “Quite capable in every last respect,” she said, and then held Lili’s gaze for a moment before continuing. “Between the two of us, I cannot imagine a better husband for you than Mr. Fereydoon.”

“Excuse me,
khanoom,
” Lili asked between sips of tea. “Is this Mr. Fereydoon your relative or an acquaintance of your family’s?”

“Actually,
azizam
, Mr. Fereydoon is my husband.”

At this Lili’s mouth fell open and her teacup came down on the table with a loud clatter. Polygamy, though slightly less common than in years past, might be thought a divorcee’s best hope—this she knew very well—but that a wife would go so far as to propose on her husband’s behalf was too much for Lili to believe. A dim memory of this stout middle-aged man with the beginnings of a stoop flashed through her mind.
She’s courting me on his behalf and thinks she’s found a servant for herself in the bargain
, Lili thought, but before she could say a word Nasrine Khanoom pressed on with her proposal.

“I understand that you have been married before—Kobra Khanoom has told me some of your unfortunate… history. To be perfectly frank, others would not look favorably on your circumstances, but we are very open-minded people. And of course I must mention,
too, that since Kobra Khanoom”—here she threw Kobra a smile—“has become so dear to me in these last months I feel no hesitation whatsoever in accepting you into our family.”

“That’s very generous of you,
khanoom
, but—”

“There’s no need to answer just yet,” Nasrine Khanoom interrupted. “I’ll understand if you want a few days to talk the matter over with your dear mother, but please know that I fully expect you to make us happy by becoming our bride.”

What followed Nasrine Khanoom’s departure that afternoon was one of the longest, loudest, bitterest rows that would ever take place between Lili and Kobra. How many more weeks, Kobra begged to know, could Lili continue to drag herself around the city looking for work? “A lifetime longer than I will live as someone’s second wife!” Lili shot back, adding, “I’m nothing like you, suffering that blue-eyed jinn for two decades!”

At this Kobra buried her face in her hands and began to cry. “But how can I possibly tell Nasrine Khanoom no?” Kobra whimpered. “She and her husband have been so generous to both of us….”

Lili replied that Kobra needn’t trouble herself as she would give Nasrine Khanoom the news when that lady next called. This only made Kobra cry harder and beg Lili to hold her tongue until she herself found the most judicious words with which to refuse the proposal.

That night, after they’d finished swearing they would never again speak to each other, Lili pulled a sheet and a pillow out of the cupboard and went to sleep on the floor in the parlor. When she woke up the next morning, she saw that sometime in the night Kobra had pulled the quilt off their bed and thrown it over her. The gesture softened Lili’s anger slightly, but she still refused to speak to Kobra that day. When Kobra brought her a cup of tea and one of her special cookies the following morning, Lili stretched out her hand to take it and then muttered a terse and barely audible “thanks.” The following day, the day when she had no choice but to convey Lili’s refusal
to Nasrine Khanoom, Kobra offered Lili no tea at breakfast. They nursed their respective grudges for a week or so, and then, without ceremony or further discussion, they eased back into a mostly peaceful cohabitation that depended on the indefinite deferral of the marriage question.

As galling as Nasrine Khanoom’s proposal had been to her, and as horrible as the prospect of marriage was overall, if it were not for her brother Nader’s sake Lili might never have found the courage to take a job.

She’d sometimes glimpse women on their way to work in the city. It was true that there were not many of them, but with their pocketbooks, shift dresses, and high heels they seemed a smart and beguiling set. But no woman in her own family had ever worked outside the house, and to judge from the reaction of her aunts she might as well have been setting out to sell herself on the streets. “They only work because they have no choice,” her aunts noted darkly. They redoubled their matchmaking efforts and begged her to stay at Kobra’s side until a husband could be found for her.

But the thought of marriage was still abhorrent to her. What’s more, she’d never had much of a talent or fondness for sewing, and she also felt sure that by working in the city she could earn a better wage with which to support her brother’s studies, an expense that Kobra’s earnings alone could never support. On a cousin’s advice, therefore, Lili finally took a job as a cashier in a sundry shop near Tehran’s central police station, a sprawling concrete compound that also housed various divisions of the shah’s army. So far as she could make out, she was the only woman within miles of the site. Perched for eight-and ten-hour shifts behind the wooden slats of her booth, she sat counting out change and scribbling receipts. In the dead hours she busied herself with calculating her modest earnings, most of which she sent away to Nader in tissue paper–thin airmail envelopes.

For weeks she secretly admired the young uniformed officers who dropped by the shop. At the end of the day there was no shortage of policemen, soldiers, and lieutenants eager to escort her home. Some of them were so earnest in the appeals, made such heartfelt mention of their own unmarried sisters back at home and their duties to her as honorable men, that she was quite often tempted to accept their offers. She’d always chosen to go home by bus, however and more than once she’d found herself wishing for a veil to deflect the more aggressive offers she attracted on her way to and from work each day.

Then one day she met the General.

“This isn’t a good place for a woman to stand by herself.”

His eyes were green. Lili blinked, straightened herself, and cleared her throat.

“Excuse me?” she asked.

“A young lady, especially one so lovely as you, shouldn’t stand by herself on a busy street like this.” He nodded toward a limousine parked across the street. “I will accompany you home in my car.”

She’d never before been propositioned by an officer of this rank, and when her eyes fell to the row of beribboned medals on his breast and he took her hand and told her to get into the car she knew there was no use protesting.

“And where do you live, young lady?” he asked once they’d settled in the back of the car.

“Lower Farhang, Zahirodolleh Alley, number forty-four.”

The driver pulled out into traffic and she turned to the General and offered him a slight smile. He nodded. She caught the scent of liquor on his breath. Was he drunk? She couldn’t be sure. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him run his hands along the length of a thickly muscled thigh. She turned her face quickly back to the street and cursed herself for accepting his offer of a ride.

“Excuse me,
agha
,” she said when she realized that the driver had
turned in an opposite direction from her home. “But this is not the way. I live on lower Farhang, Zahirodolleh Alley—”

“Not to worry, not to worry,” the General assured her. “My driver knows this city better than anyone. He will take you home just as soon as I get your advice for a building project of mine.”

“But I know nothing of building projects!”

He would say nothing more, and so Lili gripped the armrest and began scanning the streets for some landmark to guide her. Were they driving north? West? Her hands were shaking now. Where was he taking her? Just when she was sure they were headed toward the countryside, the car pulled into a private street, wound its way past a long row of cypress trees, and then came to an abrupt stop. The General leaned toward his driver and whispered something she could not make out.

When they’d stepped out from the car and the driver disappeared down the hill, the General took Lili’s arm and led her into the construction site. His “building project” looked to be the beginnings of a many-pillared villa with a view onto the whole city.

It was already late in the afternoon—from where she stood in the driveway Lili saw that the sun had tinted the rooftops pink—and all the workers had left the property. Inside, wooden beams lay stacked on top of each other and heaps of refuse and bags of concrete had been piled up in every corner. The marble for the foyer, the General informed her as they picked their way through the half-finished foundations, had been brought over from Italy and would surely be to her taste.

“My taste?” she stammered.

“But of course,” he replied briskly. “It will be to your taste or I will not proceed with the project at all.” He removed his pistol from its holster and set it on a banister, but then, as if on second thought, he picked it up, passed it from one hand to the other, and began to
circle its mouth with his forefinger. “Yes. You see,
dokhtar-joon,
I’ve decided I want to marry you.”

She understood at once the sort of marriage the General had in mind—a
siqeh
, or temporary marriage, to sanctify sexual intercourse.