Veil of Roses (12 page)

After we say
Khoda hafez
and hang up, I cry there in the blackness of the kitchen until deep exhaustion overtakes me. I stumble back to my bed, stopping only to turn on my Googooshi music once more.

At first, I cuddle under my covers in the middle of the bed in a fetal position, like a baby in her mother’s womb. This is how I usually fall asleep. But then I realize this will have to change once I am married so I better get used to it. I scoot over to one side of the bed and lie on my back and straighten my legs. I pull the covers up to my chest and cross my hands over my stomach. I imagine myself sharing a bed with Haroun. In this imagined future, I foresee many nights like this, nights in which I feel so alone I must sneak out of bed and cry to my mother over the telephone wires. I see myself lying awake in my half of the bed and staring at the contours of the ceiling while my husband slumbers beside me.

T
ami, time to wake up.”

I hear Maryam’s voice from the doorway. With my eyes still closed, I can feel light breaking through the cracks in the window shades. I decide to feign sleep and hopefully she will leave me in peace.

It is not to be. I hear her soft footsteps approach, and the bed sags slightly as she sits on its edge.

“Tami, you must wake up or you’ll be late to class.” She gently shakes my shoulder.

I moan. It is all I can do. My eyelids refuse to open. I suspect the salt from last night’s tears has made my lids stick together.

Maryam shakes my shoulder a little more insistently. I manage to open one eye and catch sight of my alarm clock. She is right. If I do not get up immediately, I shall be late to class. But I simply do not have the energy. My depression smothers me like a winter quilt. I shift my one open eye to Maryam’s face.

“I do not feel very well today,” I tell her. “I think I will stay home, if that is all right.”

“Of course it’s all right. Can I bring you anything?” Maryam places her palm on my forehead to feel for fever. Her touch feels so cool and pleasant that I whimper. This is what my mother did when we were sick as children. This is what I need today, someone to take care of me. Comfort me. Make me feel better.

“Do you remember when we were children in America and
Baba Joon
tucked us in our bed at night and told us to sleep tight and don’t let the bedbugs bite?”

Maryam smiles. “Of course I remember. I’m surprised you do. You were so little.”

“I only remembered last night as I was lying in bed. I wondered if Haroun is attacked by bedbugs each night.”

Maryam slaps her hand to her forehead. “Oh, no! I bet he is, poor man.”

We giggle.

“I called Maman last night,” I tell Maryam when the joke has lost its luster.

“You did? Why didn’t you tell me so I could talk, too?”

“It was very late. You were asleep and I didn’t want to wake you.”

“Did you talk to her about Haroun?”

“She says I should not rush into anything.”

“She’s a fine one to talk.” Her voice has an ugly edge to it.

“What are you so mad at her for? Have you been mad all these years? Is this why you never visit?”

She ignores my questions and asks one of her own. “Did you remind her you
have
to rush?”

“She knows, Maryam.”

Maryam sighs. “I know he’s not perfect, Tami. But you must listen to
me
. I am right here with you, and I will not let you make a decision that will ruin your life. We really do not know for sure there wasn’t a bug on the ceiling or that a bug did not bite his leg.”

Not this again.

“Come on, Maryam. It was all in his head.”

“How do you know?”

“For one, he was looking directly at me and talking to me, when he snapped his head full around to the corner of the ceiling. There was no way he could have
seen
a bug in that corner from how his head was positioned. There’s no way. It was an involuntary gesture and completely paranoid.”

“You should not be so judgmental, Tami.”

“I’m
not
judgmental, Maryam. I’m only trying to be honest with myself.” I push my covers off and sit up. My head suffers from dull throbbing.

“What are you doing?” She separates my sheet from my blanket and covers me with the sheet once more. “You should stay in bed if you’re sick.”

If I stay in bed, I am sure Maryam will call in sick as well and stay right next to me and talk to me all day of the benefits of marrying Haroun. That will do nothing for my mood.

“I’m only tired,” I say. “I don’t want to miss class.”

“At least let me drive you today.”

I thank her and stumble my way through my shower, dressing, and breakfast. Maryam has perhaps realized that it is she who has driven me out of the house, for she does not say another word about Haroun. We kiss as she drops me off, and I assure her I am well enough to walk home, and that perhaps the walk will do me good.

I feel my spirits lift as I approach my classroom. There is such a crazy energy in the room, most especially from Agata and Josef and their silly behaviors. It is increasingly clear to me that he is in love with her. If she realizes it, too, then she is doing an admirable job of pretending she does not.

Today, I notice immediately that along with her brown linen dress, which she has worn every day to class, she is wearing an orange-pink-white flower pin decoration in her hair. And she is wearing bright orange lipstick to match. She looks like a clown.

“Agata!” I exclaim. “Is today a special day?”

Edgard winks at me. Agata sniggers, to let me know she is in on the joke as well.

“Josef gave me a present yesterday of this hairpin and this lipstick.”

“Oh,” I say admiringly, smiling at Josef. “That was a very thoughtful thing to do, Josef.”

He smiles proudly. “She never buys anything for herself. Even her clothes, they are handed down from people in her church. She should have nice things that have belonged to no one before her.”

“She
should,
” I agree.

“You should see her apartment,” he continues. “Nothing’s new. The curtains were out-of-date by the end of the 1970s. And her bathroom towels have fringes hanging from them.”

Eva has walked in and heard Josef’s comment. “What were you doing in her apartment,
hmmmm
?”

Edgard laughs. I smile. Of course Eva’s interpretation of the situation has something to do with sex. But Nadia speaks up, as she always does when someone is in need of defense.

“Agata has lived a hard life,” she reminds Josef. “When you lose both your parents and your brother in such a horrid manner as she did, perhaps things like new curtains are not so very important.”

She is right, of course. I feel ashamed for smiling at Eva’s joke.

“My husband and I picked out those curtains together,” Agata states firmly. “God rest his soul,” she adds, as she always does.

“Life goes on,” Josef replies matter-of-factly. “My wife died. I still buy myself new curtains once in a while.”

“Well,
bully for you,
” Agata says, and turns to face the front of the classroom, using yesterday’s lesson in slang against him. Josef shrugs and faces the front, too.

Eva, Nadia, Edgard, and I look at one another behind their backs and make what-to-do faces. We take our seats in silence and wait for Danny to get the overhead projector set up. I am very much relieved when Josef leans over and whispers something into Agata’s ear. I do not hear what he says, but Agata slaps his shoulder and smiles at him. He smiles back. Eva raises her eyebrows to me. I smile. And then I slip my camera out of my backpack and take a picture of Agata’s hair clip.

A
s Danny calls the class to order, Eva leans over. “Want to do something after class?” she whispers.

I nod.

Coffee. We could go for coffee.

This thought lifts my mood even more, and soon I am doing all I can to make the class lively and fun for my classmates.

When I am paired for one-on-one conversation with Nadia, I invite her to join us.

“My husband is picking me up.” Her tone is rueful and she does not need to say anything more. She talks like some of my married Persian friends who are in unhappy marriage situations.

“Perhaps another time,” I tell her, knowing this is not likely. And then, to make the situation less awkward for her, I change the subject. “He must be very excited about the baby.”

“He wishes we were having a boy.” Her eyes contain such pain that I reach for her hand and squeeze it gently.

“Men always do, don’t they?” I shake my head like it is a lighthearted wish. Yet I know for many men, it is a very important matter, and they are very disappointed in their wives if they produce girls. “But girls are the best. Have you chosen a name for your daughter yet?”

Nadia shakes her head,
No.

“What about naming her after your mother?”

Nadia grimaces. “Her name is Cyzarine. I want something less harsh-sounding than that.”

“Your grandmother’s name?”

“Anzhelika.”

I laugh. “Well, that doesn’t help much, does it?” I am pleased to see her smile, to know that my friendliness has made her feel better.

We talk about her cravings for Mexican food, which she’s never even eaten before this pregnancy. We talk of what it feels like to have a living being inside you, and some of her fears of being fully and singularly responsible for a new life.

“You don’t think your husband will help out much?”

“Oh, I’m sure he will,” she says lightly, then immediately asks after my parents. I tell her I spoke with them just last night, and how good it was to hear their voices. Nadia prompts me to tell her about my mother, and I do. I tell her everything I love about her, including and especially knowing what she has had to sacrifice in order for her daughters to be happy.

“Your mother sounds wonderful,” Nadia tells me.

“She is,” I agree.

“I miss my mother, too,” she says quietly. “She didn’t think I was making a good decision in getting married and coming here.”

“That’s all my parents want for me, to come to America and get married.”

“They hold you close and then push you away.” She murmurs this, almost to herself.

“I’m sorry?”

She rests her eyes on me. “Sometimes the best thing a mother can do for her daughter is send her away, like yours did. She sent you out into the world so life can be better, you know? And then other times, the best thing a mother can do is keep her close, to shield her from the ugliness of the world. That is what
my
mother tried to do, but I wouldn’t listen. I should have listened.”

Nadia’s English is difficult to follow. It takes several long moments to process her words. And when I do, I am unsure how best to comfort her, how to help her not feel she is to blame. For, really, could she have known? How could anyone really know what it will be like to live with someone day after day, year after year? Perhaps there were signs that her mother saw but Nadia chose to ignore. But must Nadia be punished for such a mistake for the rest of her life? I do not want this to be the case, for I am, myself, in not such a different situation as her.

“Maybe things will get better for you,” I encourage her. “Maybe after the baby, your husband will be very happy.”

Her look tells me she has no such hope.

“He’s never been happy,” she confides. “And as long as I’m with him, I won’t be, either.”

I let out my breath and we sit for the remainder of our allotted conversational time with a heavy veil of silence between us. I do not know how to comfort her.

A
fter class, I take Eva into my confidence and tell her about Ike. About how he has brought me flowers and walked me home. About how he has asked that I stop by today.

“I promised my sister I would not befriend any American men,” I tell her. “But this—well, this is two girlfriends only going out for a cup of coffee, yes?”

“Why do you let your sister tell you what to do?” Eva demands as we start our walk to Starbucks. I push up the sleeves on my sweater. The sky is clear and upbeat, sunny as ever. I have yet to see a cloudy day in Tucson.

“She is only looking out for me.”

“Bullshit,” Eva says. “She’s trying to control you.”

“We don’t think that way in my culture,” I explain. “She is my sister and she is thinking only of me. If I have a reputation that is tarnished, it will be very difficult for me to find a husband.”

“Screw finding a husband!”

I laugh. Eva wears a short skirt and thigh-high boots and clops along with a sexual confidence I know I can never match. Nor would I want to. Nor do I want to swear like her, but I love it when she does. It sounds so bold. Eva has no need for taking this English class. She speaks English as well as she ever will.
Like a sailor.
She knows all the swear words and slang and uses them often. I think she only takes the class for something to do, until her green card arrives or until her husband gets back.

“If I don’t find a husband, I have to go back to Iran. You must know that.”

She looks sideways at me. “You’re like Nadia.” She does not say this like it is a good thing. “She was a mail-order bride, you know.”

“A what?”

“A mail-order bride. You know, some lonely American dickhead loser can’t get it on with American women and so he orders a wife on the Internet. I don’t know why Russia is where they always seem to order them from, but it is.”

“Her husband does not sound very nice.”

“Last semester, she came in with three broken fingers one day. Another time, she had choke marks on her neck. He’s an
asshole
.” She shakes her head in disgust. “I have no patience for women who put up with that shit. She needs to dump the dumbfuck before he kills her.”

“She needs to survive,” I defend Nadia. “She has come here from far away and has no one.”

“She has us,” Eva retorts.

“Maybe she doesn’t think some of her classmates are so open to helping her.”

Eva bumps into my shoulder and turns to me. “You mean me, don’t you?”

“Well…” I did not mean to speak so frankly. But just because Eva has been lucky in life, it does not excuse her from being sympathetic to women less fortunate. “We should do something for her. Have a party for her before the baby comes, perhaps. She’s having a girl, did you know?”

“Yippee,” says Eva without enthusiasm.

I laugh. “What, you don’t like girls?”

“I don’t like kids, period. They tie you down. I only want men tying me down. Literally, if you know what I mean.”

She winks at me lasciviously. I shrug my shoulders in apology. I just don’t get most of her sexual innuendos.

“Bondage,” she articulates. “Have you heard of bondage?”

She stops on the street—right in the middle of the sidewalk!—and mimics having her hands tied above her head. She squirms, thrusts her pelvis out, and moans,
“Oh, baby, do whatever you want. I’m your prisoner. Oh, baby.”

“You’re the goofiest girl I’ve ever met,” I tell her, laughing despite my horror.

She throws her arm around my shoulder. “Come on,” she says. “Let me tell you some dirty jokes as we walk to see your boyfriend.”

“He’s
not
my boyfriend.”

When a big white pickup truck approaches from behind a few moments later and slows, matching our pace, all my muscles tense. I am back in Tehran walking home from school with Minu and Leila.
The
bassidji.
The morals police.

Eva senses my panic. “What’s wrong?”

“Don’t look back,” I tell her. “Just keep walking.” With my free hand, I reach to tuck my bangs into my
hejab,
to pull it forward on my head. No
hejab
. Panic courses through my blood.

“They’re only college boys, Tami.” Eva waves at them. “Hi, boys!”

I clutch her arm.
“Don’t.”

They pull up to the curb near us. “Hey, ladies. We’re going to Bob Dob’s. Want to join us?”

“Want to?” Eva asks me.

“No!”
What is she thinking?

“You’re sure? It might be fun, having a few brewskis with the boys. They’re both pretty cute.”

“Eva.”
I glare at her.

She turns to them and smiles apologetically. “Sorry, guys. We’re off to see Tami’s boyfriend.”

I pinch her arm. The boys in the pickup say “Too bad” and drive away. Eva pulls firmly away from me. “What was
that
all about?”

Relief floods over me. I feel loose, like my body has no joints and I might flop to the ground. Like I might start giggling or crying and never stop.

“I’m sorry. It’s just that if this were Iran, we might have been arrested just now.” There is no
might
about it, with Eva in her short skirt and thigh-high boots, and neither of us with headscarves, we
would
have been taken to jail.

“For what, walking down the street?” Eva’s look is scornful, tough, like she could take on anyone. In Iran, she’d have her defiance beaten right out of her.

“Never mind.” I finally let go of her arm and stand on my own. She will never understand how things are back home. And this is perhaps a good thing. “Would you really go somewhere with men you don’t know?”

“Sure.” She smiles at me. “This is how we
meet
people.”

“Well, I already told you, I’m not supposed to spend time with American men.”

“Ike doesn’t count?”

I return her smile. “Ike doesn’t count.”

“But he’s American, right?”

“He’s American.”

“And he’s a man, right?”

“Right.” I grin. She has caught me.

“What-ever.”

I laugh and bump my shoulder into hers as we walk down the street.

“Don’t be mad, Eva. I don’t mean to ruin your fun. You can go along with those men if you really want to.”

“No,” she says in a way that tells me they’re already out of her thoughts. “I want to see what this Ike is all about. I want to see what’s so great about him that you’re willing to break your sister’s rules.”

“I’m not!” I insist. “I’m only going for coffee with my girlfriend!”

“You are so
full of shit,
” she says to me with a grin. That phrase is all her own. I know what the word
shit
means, and it was not in yesterday’s lesson.

O
h, my God,” Eva whispers to me as we arrive at Starbucks to find Ike sitting at a table on the patio. “Is that him?”

“Mmmm-hmmm,” I say back quietly. He is perhaps five meters away. If she raises her voice, he will hear what she says.

“Two words come to mind,” she tells me.
“Eminently fuckable.”

I elbow her, hard. But it is too late, he has heard her. I can tell by the surprise I see sparkling in his eyes.

“He is fucking
hot,
” she continues in a low voice. “Check out those biceps.”

“Eva,”
I scold. “Shhhhh. You are being very rude.”

Ike stands, and Eva gives me a little nudge forward. I introduce them.

“Tami needs a chaperone,” Eva says as they shake hands.

He smiles broadly at Eva. “Something tells me you’re one hell of an unusual chaperone.”

He turns from her to me and my breath quickens as we lock eyes. “I’m glad you could make it.” His smile grows wider. I can tell mine does, too. It is Julia Roberts huge, only by now, it is all mine and it is for real.

And it does not need to be surgically corrected.

He urges us to join him at the table. We make small talk for a few minutes as Ike inquires how class was and Eva tells him the Agata-and-Josef story. We laugh over how goofy Agata looked, and try to figure out if she was wearing such gaudy lipstick and the hairpiece to make fun of Josef, or if she was really pleased with the fact of the gift despite how dreadful it was. Ike tells us some funny stories from his day at work, and soon enough, we are all laughing together and chatting away as if we were longtime friends.

But it feels false to me, this lightness. I feel as if I am outside of myself, looking at these three laughing people and wishing I could be one of them. This is all I ever wanted in Iran, the freedom to laugh in public. To choose my own friends, no matter if they’re men. To sit in the open air at a café and talk without fear of the
bassidjis
. I would gladly wear that stupid
hejab
forever if I could just look at men in the eye and make a connection of friendship and share a table at a coffee shop without fear of my world coming to an end.

“Earth to Tami,” says Eva, and snaps her fingers in front of my eyes. “You’re a million miles away, and all you’ve left us is a dopey smile on your face.”

I come back to them. “I was just thinking what a great day it would be in Iran if we were suddenly allowed to go to coffee shops and mix men and women together. To openly be friends with each other, I mean. I think a whole revolution could be prevented.”

“Really?” says Ike. “You think lives will be lost before
coffee shops
are integrated?”

“Not coffee shops, but coffee tables. And absolutely. Of this I am sure. Many Iranians think things will change gradually in a bloodless revolution. But I don’t.”

“But going for
coffee
. That’s such a simple thing,” he exclaims.

I laugh. “But it’s not, of course. Men aren’t even supposed to
look
at women. To look at them is considered fornication of the eye.”

“Fornication of the eye!” Eva loves it. She slaps her hand on the table and repeats the phrase. “Fornication of the eye! Ooh, baby,
fornicate my eye
!”

I am glad she finds it funny. I, however, cannot laugh. I am reminded of sixteen-year-old Atefeh Rajabi of Neka who was very recently found guilty of the similarly absurd crime of “acts incompatible with chastity.” Poor Atefeh was hung from a crane and left dangling in public view for forty-five minutes, while the man involved received one hundred lashes and was released. The story making the rounds in Tehran is that she so incensed the judge by pulling off her headscarf and
speaking in a sharp tongue
that he, personally, slipped the noose around her neck and gave the order for the crane to rise. He, personally, ordered her lifeless body to hang there for forty-five minutes as a message to other girls:
This can happen to you.

I fix a smile on my face and stop myself from sharing the story of Atefeh. There is no need to infect my friends with the vision of such atrocities, no need to dampen the pleasure of this afternoon.
Yet, what if the world could really see? Would it matter, would it make things different for us, if they saw Atefeh dangling from the crane?

Ike notices my silence, my discomfort with Eva’s jokes.

“You think there’s going to be another revolution?” he asks.

“I don’t know,” I say with a sigh. “It is not so long since our war with Iraq. So many sons and fathers died, hundreds of thousands. It is too fresh, I think. We already have to make too many visits to the cemetery. You should see how large it is now. It has a playground and restaurant and takes up kilometers of land. None of my generation wants our parents to have to suffer through another revolution. The mullahs are old. They cannot live forever. Perhaps we can wait them out and things will get better. Or perhaps someone of prominence will convince them to stop forcing faith on people; it is a contradiction in terms and an insult to the religion. God does not want a government, he only wants people to treat one another with decency and dignity. This is what we think. Many of us, I should say.”

“I know!” says Eva. “Maybe there could be some sort of compromise. Women and men can go to coffee shops together, but women have to wear chadors, those ones with only slots for the eyes. Can you just picture it, trying to have any type of conversation in one of those awful things? Or drink coffee! How do you drink coffee when you’re wearing a chador?”

She laughs loudly. I start laughing, too. Chadors are made for isolating, not for socializing. Ike just shakes his head at us and tries not to join in.

“Or,” Eva continues, “men could start wearing chadors, too, as a sign of protest! Mix everything all up.”

“We don’t wear chadors!” I insist through my laughter. “Only
hejab
. It is only the very religious women who wear chadors.”

“Okay,” Eva says. “Then men should start wearing
hejab,
too. Make a mockery of the whole thing. Ridicule as a form of protest. Yes, that’s it! And now that I’ve single-handedly solved the problems of your country, I’m going to buy us some coffee.”

Ike and I laugh as she flounces away. But it feels too weird, to sit alone with him. I look down to my lap.

“Hey,” Ike says quietly after a long moment.