Things We Left Unsaid (20 page)

‘What hat?’

I motioned to the kids to get off, and said to Nina, who was still sitting, ‘Get up. Here we are. Didn’t you say you wanted to buy a beret for Sophie?’

She got up from her seat. ‘For the moment I’ve got more important things to do than buying hats. Let’s see, you are not invited anywhere on Thursday night, are you?’ The
instant I said no, she said, ‘Then you’ll have guests.’

I said goodbye to the driver, and was the last one to get out. I reprimanded myself. ‘A beret in this heat? As Mother would say, “You really are an ass!” ’

After the kids’ piano lessons, we all took the bus home. When we got off at our stop, I looked over at Emily, who was walking with the kids toward our house. Before I
could venture a word, she said, ‘Grandmother said for me to stay at your home for a couple hours.’

I remarked to myself, ‘Grandmother assigns everyone his appointed task.’

I went in the kitchen, only to find that Mother and Alice had turned up before we got back. Time and time again I had explained to Mother that I gave them the spare house key so they could open
the door in case of an emergency when we were out of town. It had no effect. Mother and Alice were in the habit of popping over unannounced, and if it happened we were not at home, they would just
dig out the key and let themselves right in.

Alice was sitting at the table, filing her nails. Mother was standing on a chair dusting the clay jugs atop the cabinets. As I walked in, instead of returning my hello, she blurted out,
‘What am I going to do with you and the junk you display all over the house? Just like your father, God have mercy on him.’

‘Who asked you to go climbing up there? Ashkhen dusted all the cabinets last week,’ I said.

Mother stepped down off the chair. ‘Ashkhen’s dusting is good for nothing.’ As Nina walked in, Mother greeted her enthusiastically. So, her pique with Nina had come to an end.
I heard Artoush drive up in the Chevrolet.

Nina and Alice greeted each other with kisses, and Nina told her about Thursday night’s dinner party. Sophie and the twins jumped up and down, clapping.

‘Oh boy! A party!’

They hopped over to Emily. Armineh said, ‘You must come too!’

Arsineh added, ‘Do come!’

Armen looked at Emily. Emily looked downward. ‘If Grandmother allows...’

Nina said, ‘Don’t worry, your grandmother and your father are invited too.’

Alice put on her lipstick without a mirror. ‘Joop just loves Persian food.’

Mother said, ‘Clarice will make Fesenjan for him.’ So her pique with the Dutchman had come to an end, too.

Arsineh told Armineh, ‘Now do your impression of Miss Judy. Come on, do it!’

Armineh stood on her tiptoes and pointed her index finger at Armen. ‘This time you serious learn piano, or you play hokey again?’

Arsineh answered in the role of Armen, ‘I am serious about it.’

Armineh arched her eyebrows and pursed her lips. ‘Then you, Emily, here in
living room
, until I call!’

Sophie held her hand to her stomach and said, amidst her laughter, ‘That’s exactly how she talks!’

Nina lovingly pinched Armineh’s cheek. ‘You little rascal.’

Mother grinned, saying, ‘That’s my lovely, witty girl!’

Alice, her lipstick canister and nail file in hand, doubled over laughing.

Emily cast a sideways glance at Armen, who said, ‘Hardy har har.’

When Artoush came in, the twins jumped into his arms. ‘Daddy, we’re having guests Thursday night! Sophie, and Emily, and everyone, and all...’

All the way home from the piano class I had wanted to say something, wanted to tell Nina no, but she never gave me the chance. Now, as I tried to open my mouth again, she put her hand on my
shoulder. ‘I’ll help you out. You won’t have to lift a finger.’ She slipped her arm behind my back and practically pushed me out the kitchen door. ‘You just go invite
the neighbors. I’ll take care of the rest.’

Artoush kissed the twins. ‘Not a bad idea. Emile and I will play some chess.’ I left the kitchen, thinking, ‘If only I had thrown that black pawn into the garbage
pail.’

I do not know if I closed the front door behind me or not. I headed down the path, opened the gate, but instead of crossing the street, I followed the drainage channel toward the neighborhood
square.

I was mad. At Nina for twisting my arm to hold a dinner party because she wanted, as she put it, to fix Violette up with Emile. At Alice, who only thought of herself, and at Mother, who only
thought of Alice. At the kids for being happy, and at Artoush, who only thought of chess. Why wasn’t anyone thinking of me? Why didn’t anyone ask me what I wanted?

My compassionate streak complied. ‘So, what do you want?’ I answered, ‘I want to be alone for a few hours a day. I want to talk to somebody about the things I like.’ My
critical streak leapt in. ‘Which is it? To be alone, or to talk with somebody?’

I passed by a eucalyptus tree, reached out and picked a leaf, crumpled it up in my hand and smelled it. I walked on a few paces and tossed the mashed-up leaf in the gutter. ‘I want to know
what decision the hero of Sardo’s story takes in the end.’ The words came out, and I took a sudden step backward, having almost stepped on a dead frog, flattened on the sidewalk. It
looked as though a fat tire had run smack over it. I muttered under my breath, ‘Curse this city and all its frogs, lizards, and water snakes, dead or alive.’

I reached the square, angry, grumbling, on edge. The sun had set, but it was still hot. A stench rose off the drainage channel. I sat on one of the benches lining the square, a row of Msasa
trees and oleander bushes, with their pink and white blossoms, behind me. In the square, under the water tower, a skinny cat was chasing something. A frog, maybe, or a lizard.

A hot gust blew over me and dropped what looked like a pea pod into my lap. For a second, though, I mistook it for a worm or a locust, and instinctively flicked it to the ground, shivering with
disgust. I thought how, ever since arriving in Abadan, life seemed like a constant struggle against a multiplicity of winged bugs and creepy crawlies. Ever since I was a little girl, insects were
revolting to me, and still were. That, and all the smells that washed over me in Abadan, gave me a constant feeling of nausea: the smell of gas from the refinery, the rancid smell from the drainage
channel, the smell of fish and salted shrimp mixed with the Arab perfumes in the Kuwaiti Bazaar – it all combined to make me feel sick whenever I went shopping. Of course, along with all
that, perhaps the main culprit was the heat and humidity. Why had I come to this city? Why didn’t I just stay in Tehran?

I thought of our house in Tehran. What a pretty little yard it had. I remembered the little lane and its tall plane trees. Summers when we or one of the neighbors watered the trees, you could
smell the wet soil. Winter mornings, before even getting out of bed, I could tell if it had snowed. The light that came streaming in through the bedroom window after a snowfall was different from
the light on other days. I remembered snowy days, going to school with gloves, a hat, and a woolen scarf that Mother had knitted for me. What a wonderful sound the crunch-crunch of the snow made
under our boots! How many years had it been since I’d seen the snow, or worn my overcoat and gloves, or warmed my hands in front of the heater, or watched the frosty breath come out of my
mouth?

I shooed away a mosquito that was trying to fly up my nose. Why had I come to Abadan in the first place? Why hadn’t I stayed in Tehran? Because Artoush got hired by the Oil Company,
because Alice got a job in the Oil Company hospital, and because Mother came with Alice to Abadan. Had Mother come to be with Alice, or to be near me? Has anyone ever done anything just for my
sake? What had I, at the age of thirty-eight, ever done solely for my own sake?

It was getting dark. The square was empty, with no one about. Through the boxwood hedges ringing the houses, I could see the lights coming on one by one. I turned my head toward our street. I
had to go back. The thought of all the things I had to do depressed me: making dinner, planning Thursday’s party, a brewing argument with Armen about the pants he had been nagging me to buy
for ages and which he would certainly want to wear on Thursday night, and above all, inviting Mrs. Simonian. Demanding, selfish harpy, I thought. She imagines everyone’s her personal maid and
servant. Instead of all these tasks I did not like but had to do, I just wanted to lean back in the easy chair and find out what the hero of Sardo’s story would choose in the end: love or
responsibility?

A dark shadow turned the corner and I leapt up. In the fading twilight I could not see well. It must be one of the children. They must have gotten worried. I started heading toward it, then
almost ran, then stopped in my tracks. Mrs. Simonian also stopped in her tracks. She was wearing a white crew-neck blouse with black pants, just like her granddaughter’s outfit from that
afternoon. Wearing flats, she seemed even shorter than usual.

She stood motionless for a moment, then continued on her way, and without looking at me, said, ‘So, you like to take walks, too.’ It was not a question. I did not know what to do,
whether to walk with her, or not. She stopped and turned around. ‘You were on your way back home.’ Again, not a question. ‘Shall we walk together a little ways?’ This time
it was a question. It even had the hint of a request about it.

I walked beside her, feeling ashamed for having called her in my head a ‘demanding, selfish harpy.’ Something in her voice made me feel sorry for her. We walked back to the square in
silence and, heading toward the bench where I had been sitting just a few minutes before, my neighbor asked, ‘Shall we sit here a while? I’m tired.’

The bench was tall for her, but she sat with ease, neither hopping nor jumping, but rather gently pulling herself up onto the seat. She’s had a whole lifetime to practice, I thought. A
whole lifetime of practice, just to sit down.

It was dark and muggy, and the air was still. I heard the monotonous ribbeting of the frogs in the drainage channel and the sound of splashing every time one of them jumped. I smelled my hand.
It still smelled of eucalyptus.

A bicycle circled around the square, with a large box fastened to the back. It was Hajji, or as the kids called him, ‘Bread Man,’ an old man who sold Lavash in the mornings and
evenings at the Oil Company locales. He must have been on his way back home to Ahmadabad and the tiny, dusty, dirty lane where his house was. He’d have more than an hour left to pedal. A few
years earlier, his son had drowned in the Shatt al-Arab river, and I paid a consolation visit to Hajji’s wife, who, as he said, was just dying of grief. When Mother and Alice found out that I
had gone to see Hajji’s wife, they said, ‘You’re crazy.’

Artoush said, ‘It was a good thing you did.’

Before the forty days of mourning for the boy were over, Hajji’s wife set herself on fire and died.

Hajji remarried two months later. ‘Won’t you take a wedding gift for Hajji?’ laughed Mother and Alice. Artoush just shook his head, and I stopped buying Lavash from Hajji.

‘What a lifeless city,’ Mrs. Simonian said.

I thought I would broach the matter of Thursday’s dinner party and kill two birds with one stone. ‘The family who used to live in G-4 – you saw them yesterday at our house
– have arranged...’

She did not let me finish. She turned her head to face me and spoke very deliberately. ‘I saw them. Let me guess. They want to invite my son and because they want to invite my son, they
have invited me and Emily, as well. And you must be invited too, right? Or maybe they’ve even stuck you with hosting the party?’ And she sneered.

I held my breath. A warm breeze knocked a few petals on the ground from the oleander bush behind us. I peered at the Msasa trees surrounding the square in the faint light of the metal lamp
posts. How did she know?

She put her hand on my knee. ‘Clarice, I like you.’ It was the first time she used the informal ‘you’ with me. ‘You are different from other women. You pay
attention to things that others don’t. Things which are not important to other women are important to you. You are just like me, or rather, like me in my younger days.’

The idea that I might be like Mrs. Simonian was the last thing that would ever occur to me and the last thing I might wish for. Why was everyone saying that I reminded them of someone? Nina said
I reminded her of Violette, and now...

She lifted her hand from my knee. ‘I don’t like this city. It’s been years since I liked any city I’ve been in. I put up with it for the sake of Emile and Emily.’
She fell silent. I noticed once again that she was talking more informally than usual.

Her eyes were fixed on the water tank. ‘Ever since I was old enough to know myself, I have always chosen to put up with things. First for the sake of my father, then for my husband, now
for my son and granddaughter. I have never done anything for my own sake.’ She seemed to be talking to herself. I stared at the water tank, standing atop its metal legs like a giant bogeyman
peering down from on high at us two women.

She sneered again. ‘Are you surprised? Like everyone else, you suppose that I have done and had whatever I wanted in life?’ She slid off the bench and stood there. ‘Come on. I
want to show you the rest of the photographs.’ And off she went.

I did not think of the children’s dinner, nor of Nina, nor of Mother and Alice. I did not want to deal with any of them. I wanted to do something that I wanted to do. I wanted to see the
photographs.

The gate of G-4 was open. We crossed the yard. The flowerbed on the right was overgrown with weeds, but the soil in the flowerbed on the left was newly overturned. Did he pull the weeds himself,
I wondered? Did he hoe the ground himself?

The house was dark and quiet. Mrs. Simonian headed for the bedrooms. She stopped next to the statue of the elephant with the broken trunk to stroke its head. ‘Ganesh is the god of fortune
and wealth for the Hindus.’ She stroked the broken trunk. ‘You see? Even this poor fellow’s patience has been broken by me.’ She opened her bedroom door. ‘Emily is at
your house. Emile has gone to fetch her and must have stayed. Is the blond at your house, too? Sit here on the bed.’