by Zoya Pirzad
Alice let go of my arm and waved at someone. ‘It was the right thing to do. Keep that monkey-lady from going around and showing off in people’s faces about the Grade of her gorilla man. If the Professor would knock off this “comrade” nonsense of his and get a house in Braim like any normal person would, we wouldn’t have to put up with the pretentious airs of every nouveau riche in town. By the way, did you hear what I said before we walked in? You will invite them, won’t you?’ All of a sudden she gave a broad smile and a loud ‘Well, hellllo!’ and went up to a couple whom I could not recall. I had heard what she said before we walked in. And no need to ask who she wanted me to invite.
Artoush was talking to the head waiter by the door to the dining hall. I walked up to him and on the way peeked into the assembly hall, the double doors of which were wide open. There were thirty or forty women sitting in seven or eight rows of chairs, facing a table covered by a green baize cloth. On the tablecloth stood a vase full of asters, behind which a woman stood giving a speech. From her chignon and the bow in her hair I recognized her immediately. It was Mrs. Nurollahi. I always marveled at how she could arrange her hair in such a tall chignon. Armen called Mrs. Nurollahi’s bowtie hair ribbons, which always matched the pattern of her dress, ‘the trademark of Father’s secretary.’ When I reprimanded him – ‘Be nice!’ – Artoush would laugh. ‘She is a capable woman. I suppose she does talk a bit much and maybe once in a while gets worked-up over nothing.’
Armen was pulling Arsineh’s hair. ‘Stop it,’ I said, and grabbed Armineh’s hand – she was lurching toward Armen to defend her sister.
Artoush said, ‘There are no free tables. We have to wait half an hour.’ Then he turned to Armen. ‘I hear that you are itching to lose a few games of ping-pong to me.’
Armen laughed. ‘No way! I’m itching to win.’
The twins jumped up and down. ‘The winner gets to buy ice cream for everyone after lunch!’ Artoush took the twins by the hand, and they went over to the ping-pong tables with Armen.
I called out after them, ‘I’ll wait here, then,’ but they did not hear.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Mother and Alice talking to a couple who were distantly related to us. I did not have the energy either for the woman or for her husband. They were members of a religious movement, Mary’s Disciples, and were always proselytizing, insisting that we come to their meetings. In order not to catch their eye, I started reading the noticeboard for the events scheduled in the assembly hall:
WOMEN AND FREEDOM –
A TALK BY MRS. PARVIN NUROLLAHI
BEGINS AT 11:30 A.M.
I looked at my watch. It was nearly 12:30, so the talk must be winding down. I stepped in to the room, reflecting that I had not known until now that the first name of Artoush’s secretary was Parvin.
I sat in the first empty seat. Two women, one elderly, the other young, looked at me from the adjoining seats, nodding their heads and smiling. The elderly lady was eating peanuts from a bag held between her knees, and the younger one was chewing gum. Mrs. Nurollahi was saying, ‘Let me repeat once again that the first demand and primary goal of the women of Iran is the right to vote.’
The last time we had Nina and Garnik over to our place, Garnik and Artoush got into a long argument. In the end, Garnik asked, ‘Why do we have to get ourselves mixed up in it?’
Artoush asked, ‘We are Iranians, are we not?’
Garnik answered, ‘We are Armenians, are we not?’
Nina said, ‘What is all this voting stuff about?’
Mrs. Nurollahi’s voice was high-pitched, and she drawled the end of her sentences. ‘In conclusion, I remind you that we have been struggling for this cause for a long time now. The women of Iran have raised a great cry. The problem is that their cry has not been united, and has never been coordinated and directed toward a single goal...’
The elder woman smiled and leaned toward me to offer some peanuts. I smiled back and declined with a wave of my hand. The young woman next to me was listening to the talk, nodding her head in rhythm to her gum-chewing. Mrs. Nurollahi said, ‘And now, to close with a flourish, allow me to read a poem for you.’ I remembered that I needed to put the freshly ironed sheets away in the bedroom drawers. Mrs. Nurollahi read:
Awake, sister!
In a world where Djamila Boupachas write decrees of national Freedom.
In their own blood across the page of history
Fetching eyes and ruby lips
Are no longer the measure of
Womanhood
The elder woman whispered in the ear of the young woman, loud enough for me to hear, ‘They’re not talking about our Miss Djamila, are they?’
The young woman said, ‘No, Mother.’ She shifted her stance and grumbled, ‘You don’t understand anything!’
The elder woman’s hand hung motionless in the peanut bag. ‘What do you mean I don’t understand? I understand perfectly!’ The sound of clapping mingled with the crinkling of the bag.
The women got up from their seats. A small group headed off toward the exit. Others mingled, talking and congratulating Mrs. Nurollahi, whose chignon was visible above all the other heads. I bid farewell to the elder lady and her daughter and came out of the room.
Artoush and the children were standing by the door of the dining hall, while Mother and Alice were still talking with the couple from Mary’s Disciples. I motioned to Alice that we were going in to the restaurant. Artoush and I and the children followed after the head waiter, who showed us to our table. Artoush was right. Mrs. Nurollahi was a capable woman. I knew she was married, with three children. Like me. Despite that, she was working, and was involved in social activism, too. What did I do beside housework? I returned the greeting of the head waiter and thought, ‘Mrs. Nurollahi is a capable woman.’
The dining hall of the Golestan Club was crowded, like every Friday, and, as usual, swimming with acquaintances of ours. Luckily, we were seated at a table far away from Marguerita and her parents. Soon Mother and Alice found us. Mother was saying, ‘Nonsense, they are a very fine couple.’
‘I didn’t say they were bad people. I said they talk a lot.’
‘They make up for it with a house so clean it sparkles.’
Alice looked at the kids and crossed her eyes. ‘What’s that got to do with the price of eggs?!’ The twins burst out laughing.
We ordered Chelow Kebab and Mother told Artoush three times to tell the waiter to make sure her kebab was very well done. ‘And have him take away these awful eggs, too.’
Armineh and Arsineh said, ‘No! We want to play with the flour.’
I gave the dish of flour and cracked eggs to the waiter. ‘Thanks. We won’t be having eggs.’ Some people liked their Chelow Kebab in the old-fashioned style, with a raw egg yolk, so on Fridays the Club decorated the dining hall tables with deep dishes full of flour in which several egg shell halves were nestled, serving as little egg yolk bowls. The twins loved playing with the flour and once or twice had spilled the egg yolks onto the table, so that the waiter was obliged to change the white cotton tablecloth and the green felt mat underneath. Mother detested egg yolks with Chelow Kebab.
Alice took a piece of bread, scanned the entire circuit of the room, and then started in. ‘Do you see Dr. Salehi-Fard’s wife?’ Dr. Salehi-Fard was the Chief of Surgery at the hospital. He was recently married, and now I remembered that it was him, the man Alice had waved to earlier and exchanged kisses with his wife. ‘She looks and acts like a hick, but see what a husband she caught? Do you see Dolatarian’s wife? I don’t know why people say she’s so chic. Is that thing on her head supposed to be a hat? It looks like a baby bath. Does she imagine a woman can turn herself into Jackie Kennedy just by slapping on a hat?’ The woman described by Alice was the mother of one of Armen’s classmates, a boy who once received a good beating from Armen for calling Armineh and Arsineh ‘twin fillies hitched together like draft horses to a buggy.’
Alice asked Armen, ‘Aren
’t you going to have any salad? Pass it over here.’ She tipped Armen’s salad onto her plate and looked over at the door. ‘Whoa! What are Manya and Vazgen doing here? Onions in a bowl of fruit!’
Manya was the twins’ art teacher and Vazgen Hairapetian the school principal. They were a young childless couple whose only concern in life was the Armenian school and its pupils. They were coming over to our table. I told the children to stand up in the presence of their teacher and principal. Artoush also stood up, and after exchanging greetings, invited them to sit with us. Vazgen said, ‘Just for a few minutes.’ He sat down and explained, ‘We are guests of Mr. Khalatian. Otherwise we’re complete outsiders at the Golestan Club.’
Alice tried not to look at me, and said, ‘What a thing to say!’
Manya got into a conversation with Mother and Alice and kidded with the twins, as usual. ‘Are you two sisters, or Xerox copies?’
Vazgen turned to me. ‘The translation of the book I was telling you about is finished. Do you have time to read it? I’d be grateful.’
Vazgen and Manya produced a monthly children’s magazine in Armenian called Lusaber. On a few occasions I had translated some poetry or stories for it, and Vazgen would sometimes give me material from the magazine to comment on before publication. When they had gone to their table, Arsineh asked, ‘What book, Mommy?’ Armineh echoed, ‘What book?’
The day I was summoned to the school about Armen beating up the Dolatarian boy, Mrs. Dolatarian (elegant and petite, jade-green business suit, hair in a French twist) conceded that Armen was in the right, while I took the side of her boy. We made both boys apologize to one another. Afterwards, Vazgen talked about the book Little Lord Fauntleroy and mentioned he was translating it into Armenian.
‘Little Lord what was it now?’ asked Alice as she burst out laughing.
Mother said, ‘Manya has no equal. Despite all her work, you should see her house. Always clean and tidy. Fresh and spick and span. That’s what you call a real woman!’
Armen took the grilled tomato from his plate and put it on Arsineh’s plate. Arsineh sneered, and Armineh muttered, ‘Why do you always use our plate like a garbage can?’
Artoush lifted the tomato off Arsineh’s plate and moved it to his own. ‘Does Vazgen really find the time to do translations after all the work he does? Why don’t you do some translations?’ I looked at him for a moment. He was smiling at me.
Mother said, ‘When would she find the time? It’s been six months since she washed the bedroom curtains.’ And she stared at me. ‘If I’m lying, go right ahead and say so.’
I cut up the twins’ kebabs. Was it Artoush’s smile, or his tone of voice, that reminded me of the days when we were newly engaged?
12
The children were at school, and Artoush was at work. I had straightened up the bedrooms, the dusting was done, and dinner was on the stove. The phone rang.
‘If I don’t call you, you’ll never think to ask how I’m doing, will you?’ It was Nina.
When I launched into an explanation of how I had been thinking of her for several days and wanted to telephone her and just didn’t have the time, she laughed and cut me off. ‘Don’t explain. I know you are busy. What with the way you constantly needle yourself about the minute details of everything, and then there’s your mother’s pickiness, and Artoush’s grumpiness.’
One of Nina’s virtues was that she never got offended. She always said, ‘When I put myself in so-and-so’s position, I see they are right.’ The way Nina saw it, everyone always had a good reason for what they did, no one was ever to blame, and people never did things in a mean spirit or with an ulterior motive. And yet...and yet...here she was talking about ‘Artoush’s grumpiness’? Why did everyone around me think my husband was grumpy?
To change the subject, I asked about Sophie and Garnik, and about her son, Tigran, who had been accepted to the University of Tehran. Nina asked after the kids and Artoush and Mother and Alice, and then talked about how happy she was with her new place, and that the neighbors were not bad people.
‘In the house next door is this bachelor Dutchman. He’s practically two meters tall, and he’s a little loony, worse than me.’ In the midst of raucous laughter, she explained that the Dutchman sunbathes on the lawn at three in the afternoon, smack in the middle of the yard, with the sun blazing away overhead. And that the lady across from them is Jewish, and asks Nina every Saturday to go and turn on the outside lights for her. She had not yet met her other neighbors.
One of Nina’s faults was her talkativeness, especially on the phone. I was worried about the food on the stove. I butted in, ‘Nina, I’ve got food on the stove...’
‘My gosh!’ she hurriedly exclaimed. ‘I’m sorry! I completely forgot why I called. Come over for dinner this Thursday. Tell your mother and Alice, too. Actually, I’ll call her myself – I don’t want your sister to get her knickers in a twist.’ And she laughed again. ‘Garnik’s niece is here with us for a few weeks from Tehran. The poor thing’s just gotten divorced. I want you to meet her. Some of the things she does remind me of you. Thursday, don’t forget! Come early so the kids can play together. Sophie really misses the twins. You’d think they didn’t see each other every day at school.’ Finally she said goodbye.
I hung up the phone and went to the kitchen to stir the food. As I turned off the stove, the phone rang again. I went back into the hall.
‘I had not pegged you for one of those women who are constantly on the phone.’
One of my faults was never being able to think of good comebacks. When people talked rubbish I would just keep quiet. I kept quiet and Mrs. Simonian kept on talking. ‘The other night you told me you would send some woman to our house. There’s no sign of her. I don’t appreciate empty promises.’
There was a limit to my never being able to think of good comebacks and to keeping cool and quiet. I drew a deep breath, twisted the phone cord tightly around my wrist and said with a voice rather louder than normal, ‘In the first place, Ashkhen’s name is not “some woman.” She is a respectable lady who happens to work to make a living. In the second place, she has no telephone and I have to wait until Saturday when it’s our house’s turn in the schedule, and third—’
She cut me off. ‘Today is Saturday.’
I was caught off balance. ‘Yesterday she called to say she can’t make it, because—’
She cut me off again. ‘You said she didn’t have a telephone.’
I was about to blow up. ‘Her son telephoned.’
She was quiet for a few seconds. Then her tone changed. ‘So, please don’t forget and...I’ve set aside a jar of chutney for you.’
I was dumbstruck. I couldn’t make sense of her hot and cold behavior. I said I would speak with Ashkhen, thanked her for the chutney, and put the phone down. I had better warn Ashkhen what she would be getting herself into.
13
The children’s piano teacher was an English woman, fair-skinned and blond. She had married an Iranian man, and despite living for many years in Iran, her Persian was much worse than us Armenians. Before the children’s lesson began, she told me, ‘My telephone number...you, to Mizzus, Mizzus, what is her name? Your neighbor.’
‘Simonian,’ I said.
She clapped her hand on her freckled forehead. ‘Ahh! Simonian. She called today. She very strange woman. She say come tune our piano. I say I am no piano tuner. She spoke with bad manners.’ She arched her thin blond eyebrows and shrugged her delicate shoulders. She waved her upturned fingers in the air a couple times, with their red polished nails, beckoning the children to follow her to the piano room.
I took a seat in the parlor, feeling embarrassed, as if I was the one who had done something awful. While waiting for the children to finish their lesson, I glanced over the plaid easy chairs, the chintz drapes, the little statues, the large paintings, the silver and china dishes, and waged an internal struggle: ‘What does it have to do with you? You are not responsible for the wrong-doi
ngs of anyone else. Artoush is right. You should not socialize much with this family.’ Taking in the room’s decor, it occurred to me that dusting all these tiny statuettes, heavy busts, paintings, and dishes must take quite a long time.
On the bus on the way home I tried to explain to the twins why they should not ask after Emily so much. ‘Emily has more homework, and her classes are harder than yours. And I suppose her grandmother does not like Emily to go out of the house too much. Everyone has their own ways, and we have to respect that.’
Arsineh blew away a curl that had fallen over her forehead into her eyes. ‘But Emily is our friend. We like her a lot.’
Armineh put the piano book down on the seat next to her and took her sister’s hand. ‘Every day she says “I wish I could come to your house.” ’
Poor Emily, I thought. If it were me, I would also long to get away from that jail and its jailer.
‘Can we go to the Store?’ asked Armineh.
‘Can we buy Smarties?’ asked Arsineh.
We got off at the stop near the Store.
The supermarket was cool and fragrant, as always. The twins ran straight for the candy counter. ‘Basket or cart?’ the clerk asked me. ‘Basket, please.’ I hooked the shopping basket over my arm and headed directly to the health and hygiene section. A woman was leaning over her grocery cart looking at the shelf of soaps and lotions. Her cart was full of different kinds of Cadbury chocolates. We smiled at one another and, as though obliged to explain, she said, ‘I’m taking souvenirs for some Tehranis who rarely get their hands on imported chocolates.’ She laughed and I laughed back. ‘They also asked for soap and lotion. I’m not sure which soap to pick.’
I picked up a bar of Vinolia soap and put it in my basket. ‘I always take Vinolia for souvenirs.’ She picked four bars of the soap and dropped them in her cart, along with three jars of Yardley hand cream. She said goodbye and, with some difficulty, got her cart to roll forward. I took a jar of Yardley and placed it in my basket.
