Veil of Roses (20 page)

I
should not have watched
Bend It Like Beckham
last night, for I am not allowed a happy ending. I approach Starbucks with one thought in mind: I must say good-bye forever to my good friend Ike.

I am fifty yards away when he catches sight of me, and I see such relief in his eyes. He keeps his eyes locked on mine as I approach, and he stands beside his table and waits for me. My resolve falters before I even reach him.

It is like in a movie. Life may go on all around us, but there is no one in the world but the two of us.

You’re here to tell him good-bye.

I feel heaviness in the pit of my stomach. I hope it doesn’t show in my face. I want Ike to remember this moment and see only my smile.

“My God, you’re like a vision,” he says when I reach him. He pulls me close for a hug and reaches to cradle my head in his hands.

When Ike steps back and takes both my hands, he looks at me earnestly. “We’ve got to make the most of the time we have left, Tami. We can’t waste a single minute.”

I let out all my breath slowly and feel my smile leave my face. How can I hurt him like this? He has been nothing but kind.

“Let’s sit,” I urge him while squeezing his hands. He does not release mine as he takes his chair. We seem to have crossed some threshold at The Rustler in sharing our feelings for each other.

“I want you to meet my family.” He looks at me earnestly. “I want you to come to dinner and get to know them. I want them to know you, too.”

“I can’t,” I say softly with regret.

“You can,” he insists. “I’ve researched this, and there are tons of Internet cafés now in Tehran. So we’ll be chatting online all the time until you can come back again, and I want you to meet my family so that when I tell you stories about them, you’ll have their faces in your mind.”

“Ike, there’s no way.”

“I’m inviting your sister and her husband, too,” he says with conviction. “They’ve got to get to know me, too.”

“Ike—”

“I’m not taking no for an answer.”

“This isn’t a movie.” I smile sadly. “I’m not Jesminder and you’re not Joe. This is real life, and I’ve come here today to tell you good-bye.”

Ike furrows his eyebrows. “That’s ridiculous. I don’t accept it.”

“You can’t reject my good-bye!” I say indignantly.

“Yes I can. You don’t leave for, what, ten days or so?”

I’m getting married, Ike! Married!

But I do not say this, of course. I can barely stand to even think it.

I shake my head. “It’s too hard, being with you.”

“I told you, I’m going to make sure your sister loves me.”

My lips are suddenly very dry. I lick them and bite the bottom one, and when I get my courage up, I reach out and stroke his cheek. “It’s not that.”

“Then what is it?” His impatience is playful. Endearing. He is my dear. He is my heart. I lower my eyes and take his hand. I try to memorize the path of his veins. “I won’t be coming back. I will probably get married when I get back to Iran. It’s time.”

“Don’t.” His breathing becomes very heavy.

I look up. “Don’t what?”

“Don’t get married.” He shakes his head and his voice takes on an increasingly desperate tone. “Don’t just do it because that’s what’s expected of you. Be the one who’s different.”

“That’s exactly what you don’t want to be in Iran.”

“Fuck Iran, Tami.”

“What does that even mean,
Fuck Iran
?” I feel my blood boil. I am sure my face is red with anger.

“Don’t go back.”

“You think I want to go back?” I say bitterly. “You think I’d rather be there, wearing a veil and being afraid whenever I go out in the street, when I could be here, sipping coffee in the sunshine and taking pictures and laughing the day away with you? You think I’d rather have every last thing I do determined by corrupt old men?
Do you think, Ike? Do you think I wouldn’t do anything I could in order to stay?
”

“I’m sorry,” he apologizes.

But I do not accept his apology. Instead, I slap my palm to my forehead. “God, you Americans, you make me crazy! You think everything’s so
easy
. And maybe it is for
you,
but for the rest of the world, you know, well, lots of us struggle just to get through the day alive, and then we wake up to go through it all over again another day. Our lives are like a nightmare that never ends.”

“Groundhog Day.”

“What?”

“
Groundhog Day.
With Bill Murray. It’s a movie.”

“What-
ever,
Ike.” I stand, exasperated. “It must be nice, to be able to base your view of the world on nothing more than the movies you’ve seen, but they’re
not real
. All the American movies end happily, haven’t you noticed? And that’s not how it really is, in case you didn’t know.”

Ike looks at me like I’ve lost my mind. Like I am hurting him just for spite, and maybe he’s right. I’ve said too much, and of course, it’s not what I really want to say. I have not spoken the words closest to my heart. Nor will I.

I sigh. “Listen, I’ve got to go. Things are really crazy from here on out. My sister’s got a bunch of things planned and we might go out of town for a while….”

He stands, too. “We’re not ending things like this, Tami.”

“Ike, what do you expect from me? I’ve got to spend time with my family, with my sister. I have no idea when or if I’ll be seeing her again.”

“Fine,” he concedes. “But this isn’t the end. Today, I mean. Today is not the end for us. Our last day is not going to be spent fighting.”

I grab my backpack and head toward the sidewalk. “We weren’t fighting.”

He follows, calling out, “You’re so argumentative today, Tami. What’s gotten into you?”

I close my eyes to stop the tears, but they pour out too strong, so I stand there like a fool and cover my face with my hands and try to steady myself.

“Hey,” he whispers in a husky voice, and pulls me to him from behind. “I’m sorry.”

I turn into his hug and bury my head into his shoulder. My tears immediately stain his shirt and wet his neck. His arms tighten around me.

“
You’ve
gotten into me,” I whisper. “My heart is just breaking, and I don’t know what to do about it. I never meant for this to happen. I promise, Ike. I never meant to hurt you.” My words are reduced to a jumbled sob by this point.

He steps back and lifts my chin. He lowers his lips to mine. And then he kisses me, and it is the softest, most soothing kiss the world has ever known. I never knew a kiss could be so gentle. It is like I am a child in my mother’s arms, and for this moment, there is no such thing as fear. I had forgotten I could ever feel so safe.

“Ohhhh,” I murmur, and close my eyes so I can imprint this feeling in my brain. I reach for his face and press my fingers against his cheekbones. I trace an outline of his ears and press my fingers onto his lips. So soft. His warm breath envelops my fingers, and then he catches one of my fingers in his teeth. He bites it playfully and caresses it with his tongue.
He is so alive.

I love this man.

I open my eyes to smile at him and find that his eyes have been closed this whole time as well. He, too, is trying to memorize this moment.

“Ike,” I say softly, and when he opens his eyes, the love in them is more than I can walk away from. He kisses me again, and such a surge of tingling warmth rushes through me that my knees threaten to give out. Ike feels this and presses me back, against the ledge of the Starbucks patio. He kisses me deeper and uses his tongue this time, and in my mind is a big white swirl with a little round black hole anchored in the middle. Amidst all the swirling white, my only goal is to get closer and closer to the hole in the center. I lean into Ike and whimper at how he feels against me. I try to drink him in, his taste, his tongue, his touch. I don’t even know where I am anymore.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

All of a sudden, I hear the screech of Maryam’s voice and the smack of her presence behind Ike. I flinch and push him away. I am drunk from kissing Ike and paralyzed by the anger in Maryam’s eyes.

“Did you forget you have a hair appointment? I’ve been waiting for you at home for over an hour.”

“I’m sorry,” I beg her. “I’m so sorry.”

“You,” she hisses at Ike and shakes her finger at him, “don’t you
dare
ruin things for my sister. You stay
away
from her.”

“You must be Maryam.” Ike fakes composure, but I can tell how shaken he is. My sister glares at him with narrowed eyes.

“I’ve got to go,” I tell him, making big, telling eyes at him to beg him not to argue with my sister. My heart races so much that I am sure if I looked down, I would see it beating through my chest. But I don’t look down. I look only at him, telling him good-bye and I love you with my eyes.

“I think we should—” he begins.

“We need to go,” Maryam says firmly, reaching past Ike to take my arm.

“Tami,” Ike says in a stern voice.

“Please don’t,” I say back, my voice breaking. “I have to go. I’m so sorry.” I squeeze his arm once as I rush past him to Maryam’s car. I hurriedly buckle my seat belt as Maryam gets in after me and starts the car.

“Don’t look at him,” she tells me after glancing in the rearview mirror.

But of course I do. And she is right; I should not have looked. Poor Ike stands there with his arms crossed in front of him, bending over a little as if he’d been kicked in the stomach. I feel my heart collapse in upon itself as my eyes meet his. His blue eyes reach out to me, plead to me to come back to him.

My poor Ike, with eyes as blue as the Caspian Sea. He has finally realized that this truly was our good-bye.

I sink my head back against the headrest. I know that the vision of him standing there will haunt me forever.

“Are you okay?” Maryam asks after we have pulled away.

“No,” I tell her in a dull, dead voice. “But then again, that’s not really the point of all this, is it? So don’t bother with such silly questions.”

L
ater that night, Maryam taps on my bedroom door. Knowing she will enter anyway, I do not answer. She finds me on my back on the bed, my eyes reddened from crying. The picture of me and
Maman Joon
from that day at the ocean lies facedown on my chest. I have studied it for hours and still do not have the answers for which I search. Maryam sits beside me on the bed and picks up the picture to study it.

For a long time there is silence.

“Do you remember if it was foggy that day?” I ask her eventually.

She looks at me quizzically. “Probably. It was always foggy in the mornings.” After a pause, she asks, “Why?”

I let out my breath. “I just wonder, that’s all. She looks
so happy.
And I just have to wonder, didn’t she know? Couldn’t she tell? That was her moment, her moment in the sun. She would never have such a perfect day again, a day of pure happiness. She looked like a song that day, don’t you think?”

Maryam nods and swallows hard.

“I just can’t imagine what it must have felt like, to be her,” I continue. “To have all this freedom, all this happiness, and then to have it taken away so suddenly. It was like there was a tsunami forming, and it would drown her so soon, and she had no idea.”

Maryam watches me like she is listening to a stranger speaking in a foreign tongue. I take the photograph back from her and study it some more. I study
Maman Joon
’s eyes. She looks like the world is hers for the taking, she really does.

Maryam reaches to wipe my hair from my face. “I keep forgetting how young you were,” she says quietly. “You don’t really remember any of it, do you?”

She leans to kiss my forehead. “I like your version of what happened.” She smiles gently at me. “Hold fast to it. Keep it close to your heart.”

“What, isn’t it the truth?”

“Sure it is,
Tami Joon.
It’s
your
truth, and that’s what matters.”

L
ook, promise you won’t kill me,” Eva says to me the next day after class. She pulls me aside and pushes me down onto the bench outside our classroom. “But I did something I need to tell you about.”

I sigh. After yesterday’s horrible situation with Ike, Eva’s antics are so insignificant. I simply cannot summon the energy to care all that much about what she has said or done this time.

“I won’t kill you.” I try not to sound as lethargic as I feel.

Eva clutches my hand and squeezes it in excitement. “Okay, I know you don’t want me meddling, but the stories you told me about Haroun just freaked me out, plain and simple. He’s clearly a fruitcake, even his doctor basically said so.”

I just sigh and look at her, waiting for her to continue so we can conclude our conversation and I can go home and crawl into bed.

“Have you heard of Internet dating?” she asks.

“Internet what?”

“You know, where you meet someone online through an ad on the Internet, and then if everything goes well, you meet them in person and go on a date.”

“Don’t tell me,” I say to her, giving a small laugh of exasperation. “Please, please, don’t tell me any more.”

“But listen!” she says. “They have all sort of groups and subgroups as to how you meet people. You know, if you love chess, there’s like a chess-lover’s dating forum. All kinds of shit like this. So, I just found a couple websites for Persian singles who are looking to meet other Persian singles.”

I smile despite my mood. “Persians running personal ads on the Internet? I don’t believe it! We’re way too hung up on the traditional way of doing things.”

“Apparently, not all of you. So,” she says, looking at me with undisguised glee, “do you want to know what I did, or not?”

I cannot help but grin at her enthusiasm.

“Tell me, what did you do?”

She looks so smug. “Well, after you told me all that stuff about Haroun, I just decided that if I had anything to do with it, I wasn’t about to let you marry some weirdo, Persian or not. There had to be someone better.
Had to be.
So, I placed a little ad of my own, on your behalf.”

“You didn’t use my name, did you?”

“No, no, no,” she assures me, and holds up a folded piece of paper. “You do these things anonymously. So, do you want to know what your ad said?”

I cover my mouth and giggle and giggle. My crazy friend, Eva. I nod and keep giggling.

She ceremoniously unfolds the piece of paper and flattens it against her leg. She clears her throat and begins.
“Single Persian woman searching for a good man to marry.”

She pauses and looks up at me to get my reaction.

“Oh, my God!”

I am awarded another Eva grin.

“Single Persian woman searching for a good man to marry. Save me from current prospect, an obsessive-compulsive neat freak! Visa expires April, but desperately want to stay in America! Marriage of convenience strictly okay. I’m young, sexy, will look great by your side. Save me, marry me!”

“Oh. My. God!” I sink my face into my hands and laugh until the tears burst forth uncontrollably. The thought of Haroun reading this ad strikes me as hilarious. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God!

Eva waits for me to regain my composure.

“We got a perfect response,” she tells me. “Out of all the responses, we got the one we needed.”

I am already laughing.

“No, Tami, I’m serious. I talked to this guy on the phone, and I think he’s the answer to your prayers.”

“Eva, there is no time for this! Haroun gets back tomorrow!”

“There is. Listen, his name is Masoud Something-or-other and he’s a real estate developer in Chicago and he’s in Phoenix
right now
visiting his parents for whatever-the-hell Persian holiday y’all are celebrating.”

“
Noruz.
It’s the Persian New Year.”

She waves me silent. “Whatever. Not the point. The point is, I talked to him at length several times about himself and what he’s all about. I talked to a bunch of his friends and they all seem normal. He sent me his picture and he’s pretty decent-looking. A big nose, but no bigger than any other Middle Eastern guy I’ve met. He cleans up pretty good. I pulled a credit report on him, I checked to see if he’s ever been arrested. This guy has never even had a driving violation. I’m telling you, Tami, he’s perfect.”

“There’s got to be something wrong with him or he wouldn’t be so interested in this.”

She opens her mouth to respond and then stops herself. “Just meet him, see what you think.”

“It’s too late,” I tell her. “Haroun is bringing his uncle for dinner tomorrow. We’re doing the official engagement tomorrow night.”

“It’s not too late,” she insists. “Listen, just meet the guy. If he’s not a million times better than Haroun, you’ve lost nothing but half an hour of your life. He’s waiting for us right now at Chuy’s.”

“What?! I thought you said he was in Phoenix!”

“We’re meeting him at Chuy’s at four o’clock. He drove down just to meet you.”

“Eva! Aaaahhhh!”

“Nothing to lose, everything to gain. It’s right on your way home.”

“What’s wrong with him?”

“He’s perfect for you,” she insists.

W
e walk into Chuy’s and I spot him right away, as Persians can always recognize a fellow Persian. He dresses in a white polo shirt and wears a
pooldar
gold wristwatch. On the table before him is a bottle of Corona with a lime squeezed into it, a basket of tortilla chips and salsa, his car keys, and his cell phone. He looks at the walls, which consist of company-sponsored graffiti. He appears very comfortable, very casual. A fine-looking man. Actually, quite handsome.

He stands as we approach and looks first and foremost at Eva. “You must be Eva,” he says happily, and reaches to hug her. Friendly guy, must have been in America a long time.
Or he’s a letch.

When they step apart, he smiles at me.
“Salaam,”
he says in Farsi.

“Salaam,”
I say back, and extend my hand, which he shakes congenially. Eva nudges me with her elbow and tells me she is going to buy us margaritas. I tell her to get me a Diet Coke. For a moment after she leaves, I avoid looking at him by focusing on the graffiti behind his head.
Marriage is the only war where the enemies sleep together.
Startled, I shake the inauspicious words from my mind and lower my eyes to Masoud’s face. His skin looks soft, pampered.

“So you’re Tami.” He smiles after we take our seats across from each other in the booth. “I feel like I know you already, from all that Eva has told me.”

I feel my cheeks redden. “I had no idea she put that ad on the Internet,” I assure him. “I would never have permitted such a thing.”

He shrugs and smiles. “Why not? There’s no shame in it.”

“It’s just
very
different from what I’m used to.”

Masoud studies me, but it is not with eyes like any of the others. It is not so much with a judgmental eye as a curious one.

“So you like America,” he says.

“Very much so.” I cannot help but to smile broadly.

Masoud smiles back. He looks to be in his late thirties, possibly his early forties. About the same age as Haroun.

“When I came here for college, I met and married an American woman. She sponsored me for my citizenship. It was so kind of her. I always thought that someday I’d do the same for someone else, if the chance arose.”

Eva slides into the booth next to me and hands me a margarita. I shake my head and smile at Masoud. “She’s incorrigible.”

“Did you tell her yet?” Eva asks Masoud.

“No, I was warming her up first.”

I slug my margarita. “I’m warmed up. Spill it. Tell me your secret.”

He takes a deep breath. He doesn’t lose his confidence, but just seems to choose his words carefully. “My parents would very much like for me to be married.”

“That’s not so unusual,” I reply slowly, knowing there is probably more to it than this. All Persian parents want that for their almost-middle-aged sons. They all want the grandson.

“Me being married would be good all around,” he says. “It would stop the constant questions, the not-so-subtle invitations of young women to dinner whenever I visit.”

I laugh. “How many have you met this week?”

He laughs back. “Three.”

“Any takers?”

“Nah. They’re all daughters of my parents’ friends.”

Eva can’t stand the small talk, our indirect approach to things. It’s too Persian for her.

“Oh, for God’s sake! He’s gay!”

My mouth drops open and I can feel my eyes grow big.

“You’re
gay
?”

Masoud nods.

“But your parents don’t know it, right?”

He nods again and grins at me.

“I see your dilemma,” I tell him.

“And I see your opportunity,” he replies.

We study each other for a long moment. Without taking his eyes off me, he takes a drink of his beer. Without taking my eyes off him, I sip my margarita. It looks like it’s killing Eva to keep quiet, but she does so, admirably.

“We have quite the interesting situation here, don’t we?” I finally say.

“We do indeed.”

We both smile.

“Aghar moush va gorbe hamkari khonand vaubelahe doekhandar,”
I say in Farsi.
When the cat and mouse agree, the grocer is ruined.
If he and I agree, we can trick everybody.

“My thoughts exactly.”

We laugh together.

“Oh, my God,” I say, shaking my head in disbelief. “This could be perfect.”

“I was hoping you’d think that. Your friend Eva wasn’t so sure.”

“She’s quite the proper girl,” Eva says sarcastically.

“There’s nothing wrong with proper!” I say defensively. “It’s just everything is
this close
to being a completed transaction with Haroun.”

“Let me tell you what would work for me,” Masoud offers. “This all will either work or it won’t. Hopefully, it will, but if not, that’s okay, too. I need to be married to get my parents off my back, and they need to think it’s a real marriage. I’m already settled in Chicago with my business, so you’d have to move there. We’d have separate bedrooms and each have our privacy, that’s very important to me. I think in public we should behave as a married couple. In private, we’re just friends.”

“Would you—act on your, um, your homosexual impulses?” I blush as I ask it but am proud of myself for being so direct.

“Act on his homosexual impulses!”
Eva hoots with laughter and slaps the table.

I narrow my eyes at her, a look she always ignores. “
What, Eva?
Now what did I say that’s so wrong?”

“Is he going to fuck other men, that’s what you want to know. Right?”

“Eva!”

I make apologetic eyes at Masoud.

“Don’t worry,” he tells me.
“Marda be adab, adab amoukhout az beadabon.” Courteous men learn courtesy from the discourteous.

“That’s for sure,” I agree.

“Hello!” Eva declares. “There’s three of us at this table, and one of us doesn’t speak Iranian! How rude!”

Masoud adopts a serious tone. “In answer to your question, there is someone I’ve been seeing for a long time. We have been discreet and will continue to be so. He’s a very good person. I’m sure you’d like him.”

“Does Tami get a stud muffin on the side, too?” Eva asks.

Stud muffin?

“I—I don’t know,” he stumbles. “I hadn’t thought about it.”

“I wouldn’t see anybody else,” I assure him. The idea is just too strange.

“You don’t want to promise that,” Eva insists. “You might meet some hottie and want to jump his bones. And why shouldn’t you? Your husband just told you he’s going to fuck his way through the phone book.”

“Eva.”

“Tami.”

“Eva.”

“I’m just saying, don’t agree to give up your sex life when you don’t even know what it is you’re giving up,” she advises, and turns to Masoud. “She’s a virgin,” she explains. He raises his eyebrows in amusement.

That’s it. I’ve had it with her. I shove my elbow into her upper arm so hard I know it will leave a bruise.

“Enough rudeness!” I say firmly.

“Hey! I’m just looking out for your best interest.”

“You can take my best interest and
shove it up your ass
!” This is Eva-speak; I swear I learned it from her. She brings out the worst in me.

“Nice one!” She is proud of me and with her laughter brings the argument to a close.

“Oh, boy!” Masoud laughs. “And will you be visiting often, Eva?”

“She’s a very corrupting influence,” I say. “I suggest she be banned from the house.”

“But I’m the one who brought you two together!”

Masoud winks at me, and I know from that wink that he’s the one. He’s got a good sense of humor and doesn’t lose his cool. Haroun would
literally
be washing out Eva’s mouth and my mouth right now with soap if he had just heard our conversation.

“Do you have a housekeeper?” I ask.

He laughs. “Is that your biggest concern?”

“That’s my first concern,” I tell him. “I have several more.”