Veil of Roses (4 page)

“Yes,” I agree. “They want for me a better life than I could have in Iran.”

She questions me about my education, about the friends I have left behind, and about the northern Tehran neighborhood where I was raised. I can see she likes me just fine.

“My son would do well to marry a nice girl like you,” she tells me. Then she calls to him across the room, “Mohammed!” His smile is fixed as he makes his way over to us.

In a country where women can show none of their curves and must always cover their hair, there is only one way to show sex appeal, and it is all in the eyes. When Mohammed approaches, I lower my head and present myself as shy, almost too shy to make eye contact. But then I raise my eyes to meet his with a slightly teasing tilt of my head and a tiny smile I seem unable to hide. There is, contained within the glance, an undertone of both submission and sexuality. It is a look Iranian mothers have helped their daughters perfect over the last two decades.

Mohammed’s eye twitches when he notices what I am doing. His facial muscles are tight.

“Tamila is the nicest girl,” his mother tells him. “Talk with her. Get to know her. You two have a seat on the couch. Go ahead.” She waves us away.

Sweat explodes under my arms as I walk ahead of Mohammed to the couch. He seats himself two cushions away. From the corner of my eye, I see that we are the focus of everyone’s attention, although they pretend to ignore us.

“So, did you have a nice trip?”

I nod and smile. “Very nice, thank you.”

“Good food on the plane?”

“Yes, very good.”

“What did my mother tell you about me?” he asks bluntly.

I swallow. “That you are a good son.” She has not even said this. I realize she has said absolutely nothing about him.

“Has she told you I live with my girlfriend, who she refuses to meet because she’s not Persian?”

Mohammed’s eyes are sharp. Not unkind, I notice. Just resolved.

“No.” I want to cry, I am so humiliated. “I did not know this. I am sorry for any problems this meeting has caused you.”

“It hasn’t caused any problems,” he assures me. “I know a good Iranian son is supposed to marry a good Persian woman, and bonus points to him if he helps her move to America. But it’s not going to happen with me. If I get married, it’ll be to Shelly.”

My heart sinks. Not for me, but for him to be placed in such a horrible position. “I understand. I am very happy for you to have found someone you care for.”

“Thank you.” He is more relaxed now that he has made his intentions, or lack of them, clear to me. “Can I get you anything to eat?”

“No, thank you.” All I want to do is slink away and cry. What a bad idea this party was.

“Come on,” he urges me. “It will make my mother happy to see us talking together like friends. I will tell her later that I am engaged to Shelly and not to bother with these silly meetings anymore. I’ll be right back.”

Mrs. Behruzi gives me a broad smile from across the room. She is a nice woman. I would like a mother-in-law like her. I feel disappointed for her, and for letting down Maryam. I mentally calculate: eighty-eight days left to find a husband. I can only hope I will not have eighty-eight more meetings such as this.

Mohammed brings me a plate of fruit and nuts. He hands it to me, sits back down, and begins eating his own. I murmur my thanks and nibble on a dried apricot. At least my nerves have calmed now that the pressure to impress him is off.

“Can I offer you some advice?” he asks.

“Of course.” I am eager for any advice that will help me find a husband and stay in America.

“The Iranians most likely to marry you are going to be the traditional, religious ones. So you shouldn’t dress like that.” He gestures with his eyes to my low-cut crimson dress.

I feel my face redden. “But I am not so religious.”

“Obviously,” he says. Again, I detect that sneer just beneath his smile.

“I didn’t come all this way to wear a chador.” Of that I am certain.

He sees he has offended me and he raises his palms in defense. “I’m just saying, it’s something to think about. If a Persian guy with citizenship wants an arranged marriage, it’s because he can’t find someone here who’ll go along with his traditional ways. Think about it. If he wants someone modern, he can find that here with an American girl who has none of the hang-ups Persian women do.”

“I see.” I let the edge come through in my voice. I place my plate on the coffee table in front of me and stand. “Thank you for your advice. Please excuse me. I must splash some water on my face. I am so very tired from my flight.”

I pass Maryam on the way to the bathroom. She tugs at my arm. “Well? How’s it going?”

“He’s engaged to an American girl, that’s how it’s going. His mother is acting on her wishes, not his. Maryam, didn’t you know this? I feel so foolish!”

She pulls me in and hugs me. “I’m sorry, Tami. I didn’t know.”

“And he told me I have hang-ups.”

“What?” She is incredulous. “No, you don’t!”

“Maybe I do,” I tell her wearily.

She purses her lips at me. I know how important it is to my sister that I believe myself worthy of finding a husband in the next eighty-eight days. And I do. Rather, I will. And maybe I will even convince myself that I want one. But not tonight.

“I’m having a hard time keeping my eyes open,” I tell her. “Would it be all right for me to rest for a minute in my room?” It is past one o’clock here and I am too tired to calculate what time it is in my native time zone. But knowing Persians, the night is still young and this party has hours to go.

“This party is in your honor.” Her voice is firm and her smile fixed. “Why don’t you freshen up? Then we’ll find some more people to talk to. Maybe someone knows of another man who is interested in marriage.”

Yet when I look in the bathroom mirror at my rubbery, made-up face, with my curls drooping, I don’t want to go back out there.
You shouldn’t dress like that.
The dentist’s words burn in my ears.
Persian women have hang-ups.
I cannot, will not, face anyone else judging me on my first night in America. This is supposed to be a happy night, a night of hope. I cross my arms and turn away from the mirror. I take in the opulent bathroom around me. I look longingly at the deep claw-foot bathtub against the far wall. I want to lay myself down into it, curl myself into its deep curves. I
have
to, for just one minute or maybe two. Just until I am ready to face them all again. I gather the plush towels from the towel racks and spread them on the bottom of the bathtub.

I hold up my dress to climb in, and then sink to rest my head on a rolled-up towel. I cannot suppress a sigh of relief.
This
is good, very good. I close my eyes; I cannot fight it.

As I fade off, my slumber is invaded by strange, swirly dreams unlike any I have had before. I dream of low-cut dresses and boob jobs and sneering dentists.

Those are the bad parts of my dream. I also dream of tongues, of men and their tongues. And those parts of my dream are not so bad. But they are very confusing to me.

T
he dentist is the one who finds me in the bathtub. After I am gone awhile, my sister tries the bathroom door, only to find it locked from the inside. Sound asleep, I do not hear her pleas to open the door. Mohammed comes up behind her in the hallway, realizes what has happened, and uses a paper clip to pick the lock. He opens it to find me unconscious in the bathtub.

I am drooling. And snoring.

And my panties are showing.

They are Persian panties, mind you—big, white, all-cotton briefs with a little blue bow in front. Matronly, is how Maryam describes them. When they are unable to rouse me, the dentist and Ardishir haul me to a futon in a nearby guest room. The party continues without me until shortly before dawn.

“You need new underwear,” Maryam informs me the next day as I sink my head in horror as she tells me what happened. It is after noon, and we are only now beginning our day.

“I just
got
new underwear.”

We are at the kitchen table having tea and fruit and
Sholeh-zard,
exquisite rice pudding made with saffron, which was left over from last night’s party. Ardishir raises his newspaper to hide his smile.

“You can’t wear underwear like that and expect to find a husband,” Maryam insists.

“It’s not like anyone’s going to see my underwear until after I’m married.”

“Mohammed did last night,” Ardishir points out.

“Mohammed probably thought they were too sexy for me to attract a good husband,” I grumble.

“Hardly,” scoffs Maryam. “Those are the least sexy panties I’ve seen.”

I tell them what Mohammed said about me, about my chances of finding a man to marry dressed like I was last night.

“He’s crazy!” Maryam waves her bright red nail-polished fingers in the air in indignation. “You looked great. Ardishir, don’t you think he’s crazy?”

“Yes, dear,” he says to her over his newspaper and winks at me.

“Mohammed doesn’t respect his parents, that was clear,” Maryam declares. “He should marry a Persian girl. That’s really the best way. The right way.”

This I do not agree with. I think he should marry anyone he wants to. But I sip my tea and say nothing. It is no use to argue with Maryam.

“I think we should go shopping today,” Maryam announces. “Ardishir, you don’t mind, do you? I’ll show Tami what an American shopping mall is like and help her pick out some new, um, some new clothes.”

Underwear is what she means.

On the way to the mall, I cannot get over how relaxed the drive is. No one honks at us or makes us swerve to the side. No men jump out of their cars and argue with their fists raised. America is so very civilized when it comes to driving. I fear for my life in the traffic of Tehran, and this is true even when my mild-mannered father drives. Behind the wheel, he becomes as crazy as the rest. Every perceived infraction is an affront to his manhood.

Once at the mall, Maryam and I link arms and walk slowly so I can gawk at everything. There is so much glitter, so much shine. So much skin! Some women even display their belly buttons for all to see! When it comes to sex, Iran and America seem to be complete opposites. Here, everything seems designed to make men think of sex. There, everything is meant to suppress it. Here, young girls don’t have to be accompanied by a
mahram,
no brother or uncle or father to protect them from being fooled by a smooth-talking boy. Here, boys and girls hold hands and openly kiss each other. In Iran, even married people do not do this in public.

“Maryam,” I ask in wonder, “how do these girls expect to find husbands if they act in this way?”

She laughs at my naïveté. “You know how every good Muslim man dreams of being greeted at the gates of heaven by a never-ending supply of virgins?”

I nod.

“Well,” she continues, “virginity isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

“Maryam.”
This is
blasphemy
where we are from.

She shrugs. “American men like their women a little more experienced, that’s all I mean. Their version of heaven probably includes a bunch of prostitutes who can show them a thing or two in the bedroom, not some dead-fish virgin who makes them do all the work.”

Before I can even respond, Maryam catches sight of an upcoming store. She grabs my arm and pulls me ahead. “It’s coming up! Here it is!”

The store we stop at has nearly naked female mannequins displayed in the windows wearing skimpy lingerie and sporting sexually suggestive poses. I realize that Maryam must be right that heaven is different for American men.

“Tami, this is Victoria’s Secret.” She says it like she is introducing me to an old friend of hers.

I raise my eyebrows in wonder. “It doesn’t seem to me like Victoria has
any
secrets.”

“Amazing, isn’t it?”

She leads me into the store. I am hugely embarrassed to be standing where anyone can see us. She at least has a wedding ring. I cover my mouth with my hand as I look around. I am
shocked.

“Do you wear these things?” I ask her in a whisper.

“Oh, yeah,” she says in what I can only describe as a lascivious manner. “Come on, let’s try some on.”

When the saleslady approaches, I feel a panic attack coming on, the same sort of terror I felt in Iran when the
bassidjis
approached me on the street to demand that I tuck the wisps of my hair into my
hejab
.

“My sister needs some new bras and panties,” Maryam says, as matter-of-factly as if she were asking for bread at the bakery. “She needs some basic everyday things, and then I’d like to try on some of your sexier items.”

“I don’t feel so good,” I say to her in a low voice. “Can we do this another day?”

The saleslady eyes me up and down, mostly up. “You’re what, a 34-C?”

I bite my lip and feel the tears welling. I shrug like a child.

“Can you believe it?” Maryam exclaims to the saleslady. “A natural 34-C!”

“A nice chest must run in the family,” she compliments. Her name tag says
Bonnie
. I wonder if this is her real name. I wonder what her family thinks of her working in a store like this.

My sister laughs. “Mine were dinky before. Barely a B-cup. I had a boob job last year.”

“Maryam!” I glare at her.
What is she doing telling this to a stranger?
I am
sure
my parents did not send us to America to talk to strangers about our boobs.

“She just arrived in the United States yesterday,” Maryam explains.

Bonnie points to the rear of the store. “Come on back to the dressing room. I’ll measure you and bring you some things to try on.”

I look pleadingly at Maryam.

“Go on.” She nods toward the dressing room. “I’ll find some things I think you might like. She’s very shy,” she tells Bonnie.

My mother wore a pink bikini. My mother wore a pink bikini.
I chant this to myself to boost my courage as Bonnie takes my measurements.

“What’s your favorite color?” she asks.

“Blue.”

Bonnie frowns.

“Nope. You need hot colors. I’ll be back in a sec.”

Sec. Sec. I puzzle over that word while I stare at my hair in the mirror. Maryam has used a hot iron to make waves that hang over my shoulders. I tuck it behind my ears and smooth it down against me. Then I shake it loose. I love how free it feels as it falls halfway down my back.

Bonnie returns with twelve bras on a tray, like she is serving tea to me. “Orange is the bestseller this season. It’ll look great on you, with your dark skin.”

She leaves me in privacy, and once I get accustomed to the strangeness of the situation, I feel like a child who has been left alone in a candy store. They are delicious, all of them. I run my fingers through the silky yellows, the lacy limes, the daisies, and the polka dots. I try them all on, and Bonnie is right. I am made to wear hot colors.

I preen in front of the mirror like a model in the forbidden magazines my girlfriends and I used to pore over, and I wish Minu and Leila were here with me so we could giggle together and so they could try some on, too. I am not shy, like my sister tells people. I am just not used to things and I am without my girlfriends. I was always the bravest of my friends, always the one who wore the brightest-colored headscarves and let the most hair show on the street.

“Make sure to try on the add-a-cup,” Maryam calls from the other side of the door. “Maybe then you won’t need a boob job.”

I cringe at her lack of modesty.

“You don’t really want her running around in a D-cup, do you?” I hear Bonnie say quietly to my sister. “With those eyes and that creamy skin, the men are going to be all over her as it is. With an even larger chest you’re just looking for trouble.”

“True,” Maryam replies and calls out to me, “Never mind about the add-a-cup, Tami!”

“We only want attention from
certain
men,” I hear her tell Bonnie. “Not the
typical American man
.”

At the checkout counter, Bonnie rings up our purchase: seven bras all of different colors and coordinating thongs and hip-huggers and Brazilian something-or-others. While Maryam is busy spraying some perfume on her wrist, I slip a lacy black add-a-cup bra onto the pile.

Bonnie smiles at me and winks.

I wink back.