Home Is a Stranger

by Parnaz Foroutan

  I returned to my train compartment and found the watermelons I had purchased in the bazaar. I said to Amir, who hadn’t left my side, “Let’s invite everyone to the dining cart to share these melons.”

  By now, Amir seemed resigned to my dismissal of good sense, so without question he picked up the melons to follow me through the tight hallway as I invited strangers to meet us in the dining car, saying out loud, like some fruit merchant, “Come, come share the barakat, the blessing of melon.” And what do you know, people came. We found ourselves in the dining car, a whole crowd of us, and I asked the waiter to bring me a sharp knife to slice those melons.

  The gathering of a crowd of people is foremost among the many activities illegal in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Any gathering, unless it is sanctioned, like at a mosque or a funeral, is seen as a threat to the regime. Why? The Republic will have you believe that gatherings, particularly co-ed gatherings, are the hotbed of the devil and might lead good folks to sin. So they outlawed them.

  The real reason is that when people gather, they talk. They discuss, they inspire, they mobilize. And on that particular night, driven by an existential drunkenness inspired by that blood red moon, I decided to hand out pieces of dripping watermelon on the rind as I delivered an inspired sermon about love. “It is time for an evolution,” I told that crowd in the dining car. “It is time to forgo war and bloodshed, to rise above barbarism and become fully human, compassionate, forgiving . . .” They agreed out loud, listened with rapt attention, and I felt I had found my calling. I was meant to be a revolutionary. And I would bring about change, I would shift the culture of violence and bloodshed to one of friendship and amiability through watermelon. It was that easy.

  And it was, really. Just like that. I cut some melon, invited strangers to sit around and talk, and there we were, friends raised from our collective depression and helplessness to a place of solidarity. There’s something to be said about that naïveté, that wholehearted foolishness. That faith, that grandiosity, that belief in the world and in yourself, that hope that comes with youth. It’s a beautiful place. And from it comes something powerful. But you know, and I know now, that my watermelon did not bring the new world order as I envisioned that night on board that train, heading toward the commencement of a brutal and senseless war and everything that followed. But it planted some seeds. Who’s to say that someday we won’t stand in that paradise?

  I’ll tell you who. The guard who marched into the dining car, in his green soldier’s uniform, with his rifle on his shoulder. Erect. Formal. “You must disperse immediately,” he said.

  And I said, “Come, brother, come and share the barakat of friendship and love with us.”

  And he said, “Everyone, return to your compartments immediately.”

  And I said, “But we are talking about love, and the evolution of humanity toward the light of unity.”

  And he said, “Now.”

  And just like that, the people gathered grew smaller with fear, shrunk into themselves, into shadows of themselves, and hung their heads, and began walking away. “But, brother,” I began. And then I saw. That boy in that uniform had nothing in his eyes. They were empty, his focus beyond us, his soul replaced by the orders that had been drilled into him. He couldn’t see friends, or love, or dripping, sweet watermelon on the rind. He saw a crowd of rogue dissidents. A danger to the regime. A threat. And that rifle was now clutched in both his hands. And things change when a rifle speaks. A few kind strangers felt the need to hush me up and guide me back to my compartment as quickly as possible.

  “You can’t explain anything to those boys, miss,” they told me.

  And maybe it was that full moon, or the eyes of that young child in the old hotel who listened to the haji demand the blood of the enemy, but I wasn’t done talking. So I did. Out loud, through the tight hallways of that train, past the open compartments with gawking strangers, followed by my crowd of curious congregants, back to my compartment, where I continued, “That soldier was once a wide-eyed boy who listened to the wrong story. And that is why, for humanity to evolve collectively, we must first teach the children about love, and allow them to grow toward this light.”

  I carried on like that for the duration of the train ride. I sat in my compartment, full of strangers listening beside me, strangers standing in the doorway, crowded down the hallway. I carried on and on about love, about compassion and forgiveness while that train carried us back to the city and the world carried us right into that war. And I’m still waiting. Even though I’m not her anymore, that drunken, foolish child with her watermelon and her grandiosity, and her dream, I’m still waiting. And who’s to say? Who’s to say that someday, the paradise she sought won’t come into being?

  AS THE UNITED States began the siege of Afghanistan, Behrooz said he felt a tiredness he had never felt before. Amir professed his devotion to me, while Ramin the photographer wouldn’t answer my attempts to reach him. My mother called in the mornings. “Things are strange here,” she said. “America is changing.” Javid suggested we go trekking to the village of Shahsavar. Behrooz asked Javid, for the first time, to lead the trip. We left the city without Behrooz.

  On the first night, we camped beside a river, beneath a lightning storm that illuminated the skies. The next night, we swam in a cave that hid a pool fed by hot springs. To reach the village of Shahsavar the following morning, we had to walk through the cemetery first. Moss-covered tombstones nearly hidden in the tall, dew-drenched grass, some so ancient, the elements had returned them to their original form of stone. Below that mountain cemetery, through the fog, there was a glimpse of a lush, green valley full of rice paddies.

  In the stillness of that morning, in the golden rays of the rising sun that pierced the dissipating mist, we heard the sound of a young girl’s voice singing. Her song came from one of the rice paddies below and echoed through those mountains. Clear. Sweet. Holy. We stopped, our whole group, in reverence, and listened as she sang. Somewhere, in the world beyond that village, there was war. But on that morning, just her song, which rose with clarity above the blanket of fog, transcended the gravity of death and forgotten tombstones, dismissed the very mountains and reached heaven.

  After we returned to Tehran, Behrooz held up his right arm and said he felt a loss of strength in it. Sarab invited professional musicians to play with us in the afternoons. Bass guitarists. Percussionists. A boy magnificent on the trumpet. He asked them what they thought of our sound. We talked about recording and found a recording studio downtown. In the soundproof room among the microphones and the instruments, the sound engineers watched from behind the glass as the musicians improvised and I wailed my poetry.

  The next night, Amir showed up at my door unexpectedly. He held a daf in his hand, the giant orb of that percussion encircled by a thousand brass rings. Without coming in, he told me he had driven several hours to some far-flung town to the ceremony of an order of Dervish to meet with their elder to buy this particular daf, which was more than a hundred years old and known to be very powerful. He told me he had persuaded the old man to sell it to him. He stood outside the door, offering me that instrument in his outstretched hands, the wood of the frame almost golden, the surface of the goat skin dappled like the full moon. I took it from him and the thousand small brass rings around the frame sounded with a resonance so deep, I felt it in my bones. “This instrument has waited a century to find you,” Amir told me.

  No one knew Ramin’s whereabouts.

  Behrooz and his wife visited doctors.

  Each night, when I put my head on the pillow, I could hear my own heartbeat, the rush of blood in my ear. The rhythm irregular. I thought about the holes before falling asleep. Each morning, my mother called. “It’s strange,” she told me. “The American flag everywhere you look.”

  On the American newscasts, the reporters spoke of freedom and missiles, bombings and democracy. Patriotic music played to the footage of the green streak of an air
strike across the black of night, and the sudden light that appeared when that missile landed among the sleeping inhabitants of some Afghan city.

  The doctors ran several tests on Behrooz.

  At night, my heart a racket of sound, no discernable pattern, a frenzied din.

  Ramin the photographer kept silent.

  Amir wouldn’t stop calling.

  The street sweepers swept the orange and gold sycamore leaves, and those leaves kept falling. In the late afternoons, I walked in the streets. One evening, after the azaan, I came upon a funeral procession outside a mosque. Men and women in black, weeping, chanting along with the roseh khan, pounding their chests in unison. I stood outside of their crowd, dressed in orange and gold, watching. A woman in a black chador, tears on her cheek, turned around and spat at me feet. “Kaffir,” she called me.

  I called Ramin the photographer, again. “I’m coming over,” I said into his answering machine. I called a cab. I arrived in his neighborhood. I couldn’t remember which apartment, among those crowded apartments, was his. “I’m here, somewhere on your street,” I said into his answering machine. An old dervish sat on the sidewalk beside the payphone. He held out his copper begging bowl to me. I filled it with coins and said, “I’ve come seeking a friend I cannot find. Will you pray for me?”

  “That same Friend is seeking you, daughter,” he said, and just then, Ramin turned the corner, and stood before me.

  “You haven’t killed yourself, then?” I said.

  “No.”

  “Well, you had me worried.”

  “Let’s get out of here, somewhere quiet, to talk.”

  Outside of Tehran at a nearby village, we carried a blanket, a handheld cassette player, a few tapes, a kettle, and some bread and cheese into an orchard of apple trees, the ground carpeted with brown, orange, gold brittle leaves. A young man there offered to walk us to a nice spot at the top of the mountain where he spread the blanket beneath an apple tree, gathered kindling, made a fire, filled our kettle from a spring, looked at me, smiled and said, “Isn’t it miraculous?” he said. “This gallery of trees, sprung from seeds someone threw to the earth?” Then, he turned and left. And there, beneath that apple tree, Ramin the photographer asked to marry me.

  I didn’t answer. I pretended he was joking. I changed the subject. I told him about my heart instead. That I needed surgery. “I haven’t told anyone else yet,” I said. “Nobody knows there’s something wrong with me.” Ramin smoked his pipe. We listened to music on the cassette player. We drank tea, then lay on the blanket beside one another and looked at the sky through the tapestry of leaves.

  The young village man returned on the back of a white mule just before sunset. “I thought you might need help walking back down,” he addressed me. He picked an apple from a tree, rinsed it with the water of the kettle and handed it to me. Then he gathered an armload of apples and filled my backpack with them. The village man and I argued about the merits of his white mule versus a BMW as he led us down the curving, tight trail alongside the mountain. The sun set and the stars appeared and Ramin walked behind us, smoking quietly.

  At night, the urgency of my heart kept me from sleeping. In the mornings, my mother said, “We are not welcome anywhere we go, not in the markets, not in the restaurants, not on the streets.” Behrooz’s test results revealed nothing. Ramin the photographer called, but didn’t mention that afternoon beneath the apple trees. Amir called. “Come out with me tonight. Let’s go downtown, get some coffee. I want to talk to you about something.”

  The Iranian newscaster on the coffee shop television numbered the civilian deaths in Afghanistan as Amir sat gazing at me. I felt like I was suffocating. “I’ll be right back,” I said. I fled into the street. It was dark. The headlights of cars. The shadows of strangers. The air thick with exhaust. There was nowhere to go, and I couldn’t breathe. I walked back in and just as I passed the barkeeper who stood watching the TV and absently drying a glass with a rag, an old man on a barstool at the counter stopped me. He had blue eyes, white hair, wore a tweed jacket, a fedora. He reached out his hand, tapped my shoulder as I passed and said, in English heavy with an Eastern European accent, “You are a Sagittarius.”

  “How did you know?” I asked.

  “I can see.”

  He talked, at length, about the constellations and universal frequencies, vibrations that spoke between heavenly bodies. Finally, he took my palm in his hand and studied it.

  “Am I dying?” I asked him.

  He didn’t answer me for several minutes, just held my open palm, reading. “You will die on a Friday afternoon. On the nineteenth of October. At the age of ninety-three. You will be sitting among a group of young people, talking beside a fountain in an old courtyard. You will retire to your room to rest on your bed. You will look at the window, the curtains of which will blow in the breeze. You will hear the sound of the water splashing in the fountain, bird song, the laughter of those young people. You will close your eyes, then fall asleep.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Go upstairs. That young man is waiting,” the old man said. “Soon he will ask you a question, and you will say no.”

  “No to what?”

  “To who he wants you to be.”

  I walked upstairs to the table where Amir was waiting. He gazed at me with a terrifying adoration, but before he opened his mouth to speak, I said, “Let’s leave.” When we walked back down the stairs, the old man was gone. The barkeeper dried another glass, his eyes fixed on the TV.

  I could no longer sleep. My mother’s calls in the mornings felt like a strange and repeating dream. “When will you come home?” she asked me. Behrooz grew weaker, more tired. The death tolls rose. Along the avenues were mountainous piles of orange and gold sycamore leaves and the street sweepers beside them, damned to their eternal and futile sweeping.

  I BOOKED MY ticket back to Los Angeles.

  “I have to go back home,” I told everybody. “I need to have open-heart surgery. I’ll return as soon as I can. This is where I want to be, once things have settled and I heal. Tehran is where I need to be.”

  Mehrabad Airport, Heathrow, LAX.

  Outside of customs, my mother embraced me. We drove home in the deadlocked traffic of the LA dusk. The sun hung heavy in the sky, a large, orange, stagnant disc in the haze of exhaust and fumes. Its light reflected blindingly from the sea of metal surrounding us. Horns. Screeches. Newscasts, music, commercials. People sat behind steering wheels, their eyes fixed forward, weary, impatient. Broken. The cars all had flags affixed to them, taped to their windows, stuck on their bumpers. The billboards along the highway were plastered with flags, too. G.d Bless America, they read.

  I told my mother about the prognosis, the holes in my heart. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” she yelled at me, clutching the steering wheel.

  “I didn’t want to worry you.”

  “You could have died!”

  “Look, I’m fine. It’s nothing.”

  The next morning, she called my cardiologist. We met with him, he advised a more accurate procedure to identify the size and the location of the holes before we scheduled the surgery. A few days later, Justin called me.

  “You’re back,” he said.

  “For a minute, only,” I said. “I need to have open-heart surgery.”

  “Don’t you want to see me?”

  That night, we sat in my parked car on a quiet suburban street. “I’ve recorded some of my poetry with a group of musicians,” I told him. He didn’t respond. He wouldn’t look at me. “And I’ve sort of figured out what I want to do, you know, with my life. I want to work with kids. Help them, you know, make sense of the world. I still don’t know how, but I know it has to be something like that, you know? Something to do with kids . . . and making the world a better place, and hope . . .”

  “What about me?” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Have you forgot
ten all about me?”

  “No . . . No . . . I haven’t forgotten you.”

  “It seems you’ve moved on. Without me.”

  “I . . .”

  “Did you sleep with anybody?”

  “What? I’m . . . I mean there’s some guys . . . I dated . . .”

  “Did you sleep with them? Did they touch you?”

  “Well . . .”

  “You’re mine, still. You know that, right? You belong to me. I want to sit closer to you. I need to feel you next to me. Get in the backseat.”

  “I have to go back in, soon. My mother is waiting. I’m on Tehran time, still. And I have this procedure in the morning.”

  He got out of the car, opened my door.

  “Just for a minute, you owe me that. A minute,” he said. “I just want to feel you next to me.” He held the door open, waiting. “Get in the back. Just for a minute. Please.”

  I got out. He didn’t look at me. I sat in the backseat. He got in and closed the door. He kissed my neck. He kissed my face. His hands groped me. “Remember?” he said into my ear. “Remember, how you belong to me?”

  “I have to go,” I said.

  He kept his eyes averted as he pushed himself on top of me.

  “I need to go, please,” I said.

  My breath fogged the glass of the backseat window. The street outside. Suburban. Quiet. The houses dark. Their doors locked. Too late in the night for anybody to walk by. Nobody returning home. Nobody leaving. The moon was the only witness, pale and waning. The trees lining the street stood bare, their naked limbs spread wide across the dark skies. I watched the trespass of leaves across mowed lawns. Not a soul walked by that parked car. And even if they had, I don’t think I would have screamed.