Home Is a Stranger

by Parnaz Foroutan

  Ahmad’s boat stopped in the middle of the water and the boys stared at us, bewildered by the erratic movements of that red boat in the sea. Ali waved us over, but the golden fisherman ignored him and kept going. The sky was overcast, but in that moment, the sun revealed herself from behind the gray clouds and illumined a path of gold in the water. He drove toward that path, to where it led to the sun, away from the shore, the witnesses, the flaming swords of no and cannot. What were the laws of man to stand in our way? What weight did those laws have in respect to the divinity of our desire? They felt flimsy, cardboard shams, when between us was an entire universe waiting to be conceived. But the punishments for our trespass were precisely designed to vanquish the flesh, to destroy the temple of our longing. Whippings, beatings, stonings. Punishments orchestrated to reduce the immensity of our desire back into the vulnerable smallness of our bodies, to leave it whimpering and contained within its bruised skin, resigned by fear to the cage of its broken ribs.

  The whole of that time I sat silently with my eyes locked on his. But that golden path escaped us, and there was nowhere else for us to go, so he turned the boat and sped it with furious intention toward the shore, and we came upon that sand with such intensity that we all lurched forward when it stopped. Ahmad’s boat was already there, and the boys waited on the sand, unhappily. Ali stood, furious. The girls scampered up. They knew there was something that was solely between that fisherman and me. He helped them out, one by one. I sat there, breathless, my scarf blown off my head, my hair tussled. Then, he extended his hand out to me.

  There was such cataclysmic power in his touch. Explosions when our atoms met. Catastrophic in the magnitude of their impact. He held my hand and broke me open. We must have shone brilliantly on that shore, against the gray of the water and the sky. But there was no way to part by lingering. There were families on that beach. The village women, watching. Menacing police. The boys waiting on the sand. He held my hand for the duration of the time it took to help me stand on my feet, and step out of his boat. And in that time, eternity. In that time, a transcendence of this brief moment of mortality. Then, he let go and I walked away, without looking back. Because I couldn’t look back. It would have been a telling. A confession. And all those other eyes already held the rage of accusation, the anger of having witnessed our shattering. So I walked away, and he must have turned to look out at the sea.

  Storm clouds gathered. I took hold of Naghmeh’s hand to ground me and a wind picked up off the water. Heavy, dark clouds rolled in. We loaded the cars quickly. Some of the girls drove with Javid and Pouya, the rest, including me, with Ali. Everyone in our car sat in silence as Ali drove, seething. A rain began. The farther we drove away, the harder it fell. Torrential. A heavenly vengeance.

  ALI SLIPPED IN a Massive Attack CD. The car pounded with the bass. He had asked Bita to sit in the front seat beside him. He drove the curves of that mountainous road in the rain with unrelenting speed. Demoted to the backseat, my forehead pressed against the window and Naghmeh beside me, I tried to figure out what had just happened between that golden fisherman and me. Something of a certain immensity. Something that had shaken up the balance of things.

  On one side of the narrow road yawned a deep gorge, at the far bottom of which a distant river meandered past jagged rocks. On the other side of the road, boulders of the mountain. Trucks drove into our lane to pass one another, barely pulling back into their own lane before near impact. Tunnels bored through the rocks, the fume of exhaust so heavy in them, a single cigarette thrown out the window would have ignited the air. Other cars blasted their horns through those tunnels, the sound blaring, as trucks drove recklessly past them and motorcycles raced between. The roads in Iran were notorious for their automobile fatalities. To drive them, even cautiously, was a brush with death. With dark humor, the truck drivers wrote, backwards, in large letters across the top of their windshields the name of the patron imam who was said to help those in moments of mortal danger, so that as they sped forward, the drivers of the cars in front could read Ya Abolfalz spelled out in their rearview mirrors.

  When we reached the peak of the final mountain before descending to the city, the rain stopped abruptly, the sun returned and humidity set in. Bita rolled down her window. She chatted with Ali softly, consoling him until he slowed down, then rolled down his own window and placed his arm on the ledge. Bita laughed at his jokes, touched his arm on the steering wheel. The breeze through the open window blew back her headscarf, passed through the auburn locks of her hair. She stretched her arm out her window, fingers open in the wind, feeling beautiful in the attention of the man beside her. Our car pulsated with the music. Beguiled by the girl next to him, Ali failed to notice the black SUV two cars back in his rearview mirror, following our car. Not until it passed us, in the opposing lane, and a basiji police officer leaned out the window and motioned us to pull over, holding a rifle in hand.

  It was as though a vacuum had sucked out the air of the car we sat in. As though the very breath had been sucked out of our lungs. A shared feeling of paralyzing terror gripped all of us, though theirs by experience and mine only in reaction to what I felt in them. Ali pulled over. Naghmeh tightened her headscarf, muttering, “Oh my G.d. Oh my G.d.” Bita, drained of color, also readjusted her headscarf. Ali held tightly to the steering wheel and parked on the side of the road, then remembered the CD in the stereo. Too late to throw it out of the window, he ejected it and slipped it, along with the other CDs in the car, under his seat.

  “Tell them you are my cousins. My mother’s sisters’ side,” he said, quietly.

  He turned off the car.

  We sat in our car waiting for the Brothers to get out of their car and approach us. I didn’t know what to do, what to expect. I had never felt so much fear. What did this mean? What would happen to us now? Most of the young people I had met in Tehran had had some run-in with the Basij, who were different from the police. The sole job of the Basij was to make sure everyone adhered to the tenets of Islam. They were mythically cruel, obtuse, irrational. The kids told stories about discovered parties, where the guests were beaten, taken to dark prisons, held for days. Or on the streets, girls were stopped, scrutinized for their hijab, assaulted, taken to dark prisons, inspected for proof of their virginity, then abused and held for days. Wine, dancing, the possession of unsanctioned books, films, music, any gathering of men and women, all this was illegal, and the job of the Basij was to find those who broke Islamic law, and arrest them, and punish them without hearing, without due process, with impunity, with righteous fury, in the name of their own god. And we had just broken a handful of those laws. Female passengers in the company of a na-mahram male driver. Unsanctioned music. One of us showing the locks of her unruly auburn hair, with her bare arm stretched out of the window to catch the breeze.

  I searched frantically through my satchel and found my father’s prayer tasbih. My father had never been a religious man, but that tasbih belonged to an elderly uncle who, on his deathbed, had given the prayer beads to my father and blessed him. My father kept that tasbih in his desk, and after his own death, I took them. When I packed for this trip to Iran, I placed that tasbih beside my passport as a talisman.

  I held those beads in my hand and prayed. The door to the black SUV opened after several minutes. The bearded driver, a tall, young man dressed in a black button-down shirt, black slacks, dark glasses, stepped out of the car, threw his spent cigarette to the dirt, stretched. The other bearded man, middle-aged and also dressed in black, got out of the car, too, still holding the rifle. They said something to each other, nonchalant, unhurried, in the theater of our windshield. The driver said something more, some final word, and the armed man laughed. Then they turned and walked toward us. They stopped before Ali’s window, bent down, looked us over quietly. The unarmed Brother said to Ali, “Your identification card.” Ali pulled out his wallet, took out his card, and handed it to the man. The man took it, put it in his breast pocket
and said, “Now, follow my car down the mountain, to the station.”

  And that was that. We were going in. It might be days before my cousins and my uncle Behrooz would be able to locate where I was being held. Nobody allowed you a single phone call to inform your family, to tell them where you were or what had become of you. You disappeared until someone came to claim you, bribe money in hand.

  “Please, G.d,” I prayed. And just that. I couldn’t find any other words, just, “Please, G.d,” over and over and over. The Brothers returned to their car. Sauntered. Leaned against the door and lit cigarettes, looked at the mountains, took a few drags, then opened the door and got in.

  Ali sat there, steering wheel still clutched in his hands. Bita was crying. Naghmeh, white, silent, held my hand in hers. Suddenly, Ali slammed the wheel with both his fists, and said, “No!” He opened his door, jumped out of the car and jogged up to the black SUV, his hands up in the air.

  We watched him. He talked to the driver. Pointed in our direction. Gestured with his hands. We watched him. He kept talking. His movements became more natural. More animated. The Brother driving the car was now leaning in Ali’s direction, resting his arm on the window. Then, that man laughed and turned to look in the direction of our car. Ali smiled, bowed his head, and the basiji extended his hand out the window, handing Ali his identification card back. Ali took the card, slipped it in his back pocket, placed his hand on his heart, bowed his head several more times, wove a jovial goodbye, and jogged back to our car.

  He opened the door, got in and sat there, without a word. He waited until the black SUV pulled out into the road and drove away. Then, Ali started his own engine, allowed for several cars to pass before he pulled onto the road. We sat in silence for that whole duration, until Bita finally asked, “How?”

  “I told them you were the daughters of my mother’s sisters,” Ali said. “That you were trusted to my care, and I had driven the three of you out for a day by the sea, and my head was pounding from listening to your nonsense for so long that I failed to notice Bita was sitting uncovered. I apologized and told them how ashamed I felt for not being able to protect your honor, but they must understand how difficult a time I had been having, the constant vigilance needed to watch three girls for the duration of the drive to the seashore and back. I said I was exhausted by the responsibility of caring for you. When I said you had less intelligence than a bunch of chickens, they laughed. That’s when he handed my ID back to me.”

  I HAD ARRIVED in Tehran’s Mehrabad International Airport a few weeks earlier, in June of 2001. It was my first time returning to Iran since my family’s escape. The last time I was in that airport, it had a different name, eighteen years back, when I was six years old. Then, my parents carried a single suitcase each. My mother had taken my hand firmly. She whispered something to my father before he separated from us. He got into the security checkpoint line for men. My mother walked with me to the checkpoint for women, where the Sisters stood behind folding tables. Women ahead of us had their luggage opened, gutted. The Sisters threw the contents onto the tables and the floor. They opened bottles, dug into the pockets of coats, tore linings. Some women were led into curtained rooms for further inspections. There were loud arguments. Crying. Whispered bribes. Women pled to be allowed to keep their rings, their necklaces. Everything of value was confiscated. The law was that you couldn’t take any gold or currency out of the country. Guards stood nearby, young men holding big guns. My mother’s turn came.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Europe. For vacation.”

  “When will you return?”

  “Two weeks.”

  “Are you taking any jewelry or cash out of the country?”

  “Nothing.”

  “What’s in your suitcase?”

  “Clothes. A pot or two for cooking, a hot plate.”

  “You need pots for cooking on vacation?”

  “I cook my family’s meals. I don’t trust foreign food to be halal.”

  “Very good.”

  The Sister, in my recollection of that day in the airport, looks like any other Sister. Faceless. Draped in black cloth. Floating through the streets, in the parks, in the corridors of my primary school. They hid razors beneath their chadors, wiped lipstick off young girls by slashing their lips. They arrested women for wearing a color too close to the shade of lecherous intent. They looked for a lock of revealed hair, listened for a laugh too loud. They called over the Brothers in fatigues. Bearded, armed, the Brothers broke down the doors of homes. Tore through rooms with cyclonic fury, searching for bottles of wine, records and tapes, films, books, musical instruments. Weddings were hushed. Classrooms were monitored. Everything hidden.

  My father stood in the line manned by the Brothers. We waited for him by the gate until we finally boarded the plane together. I don’t remember much about the rest of that journey. We lived in various rooms in different European countries for a while. I remember nights where adults I didn’t know sat around a table talking with my parents while I played quietly in a corner. They, like my parents, were waiting for their interviews at the American embassy. They shared notes, advice, stories about other refugees who had been denied visas and forced to return, and worse stories, still, about those who tried to cross borders in other ways. The interim between that last moment in Tehran’s airport and the first time I arrived at Los Angeles International Airport is the hazy dreamscape of childhood. Loneliness. Uncertainty. An endless afternoon of looking out of an unfamiliar window at an unfamiliar street. Fear. But I remember clearly the last day I had been in this airport.

  I got out of my seat and checked one more time to make sure my hijab was complete. My scarf tight and safety-pinned beneath my chin, my manteau buttoned. Then, I walked off the airplane, terrified that I had made some error in my dress. A man stood at the gate, holding a placard with my last name written in English. The rest of the passengers lined up for customs.

  I had listened to the stories back in Los Angeles from the relatives and friends of my parents who decided to return to Iran to visit family or take care of their abandoned homes, properties, shuttered businesses, to find the photographs of their children, their ancestors, their heirlooms, to dig up the jewels of their deceased grandmothers, to inquire about bank accounts, lost friends, to tend to the grave of their dead fathers.

  “The customs officials look for any reason to extract a bribe,” they said.

  “There is so much corruption,” they said.

  “It is better now than it was, they have relaxed a bit,” they said.

  “There is so much poverty, so much suffering.”

  “It is fine.”

  “It is dangerous.”

  “They’ve destroyed the country.”

  The customs officials were said to tear apart books. To hold up personal belongings to the light and criticize the traveler for indecency. Sometimes, people were identified, their names matched to family members on the Blacklist. Their passports were confiscated, and they found themselves imprisoned in Iran until the officials decided if and when they could leave. So when I found out that there existed an option to purchase a special pass that allowed travelers to skip the customs line for an expedited and more lenient search, I paid the surcharge.

  The man with the placard greeted me with a bow of his head, took my carry-on from me and asked me to follow him. We walked down a long hallway to a door. He opened it, then stepped aside, implying that I should enter first. I walked in prepared for a dark cell, a single lightbulb dangling over a table, a few metal folding chairs. But instead, that door opened to an expansive room with high ceilings, outfitted like the receiving rooms of rich Iranians, all tufted antique French chairs and sparkling chandeliers and silk Tabriz rugs and gold-gilded coffee tables bearing crystals bowls brimming with fruits and nuts and marzipan. I could have been at an old aunt’s luncheon in Beverly Hills. Save for the portraits of the dead Ayatollah on the walls. Oil paintin
gs of him in ornate golden frames. Here, the Ayatollah smiling, his hand raised, blessing a crowd. There, the Ayatollah, serious, with a woman covered completely in a black chador in the background, a faceless entity, an unidentifiable presence, just a woman, any woman, in black hijab, perhaps the Ayatollah’s wife. Portrait after portrait of the dead supreme leader’s countenance, hanging from any wall you looked at.

  The placard man told me to make myself comfortable, then asked, “Would you prefer cola, sherbet, or tea?”

  I knew I had a role to play, that the costume of my hijab requested a specific female character. My understanding of this identity was a construction of contradictions. A composite of the way the West saw Iranian women, and the actuality of Iranian women. It borrowed from the front pages of newspapers and the covers of magazines the photographs of women in black hijab, crowds of them beneath bold headlines, caught with their mouths open, their fists raised in the air. It included stock characters in movies, the extras caricatured by Hollywood as fanatical, vicious, ignorant. Newsreels of a woman screaming in a language the viewer wouldn’t understand. My idea of Iranian femininity incorporated the prejudices of my teachers and the parents of my American friends. And then, in stark contrast, there was the other part of that portrait pieced together from the actual women in my family and community, who were not fanatical, or vicious, or ignorant, who did not wave their fists or rage in tongues. It also took from their stories, about the way women in Iran were before the Islamic theocracy and the way women were forced to be after. Women who agreed to the hijab willingly, and everybody else.