I thought I would die right there on the floor. Ziynab and his sister were standing over me and managed to stop Asghar for a while.
“I want to help you,” said Ziynab. “But you must tell the truth.”
“I am telling you the truth,” I begged. “She has a boyfriend. You can phone the telephone exchange if you like and get the number and find him for yourself.”
For some reason Asghar agreed to this. He stood, his ear close to mine, shovel in hand, as I crawled out of the kitchen and to the phone. I tried as best I could to explain to the operator what was going on, and after some time he said he had the phone records in front of him.
“The last number that called, was it from Isfahan?”
“Yes,” he said.
“And can you see any calls to that number from this phone?”
We waited in silence as the man checked. Asghar’s sister hid her face in her hands, but Asghar and his mother would only stare at me. The pain increased as I shifted the phone from one hand to the other.
The operator replied. “Yes, I can see many calls.”
“When did they start?”
“About a month ago.”
I looked at Asghar. Surely this proved it. He grabbed the phone from me. “You’re not a real man!” he shouted. “I’m going to come and kill you!”
I braced myself for more attacks from the shovel, hoping that death would not be far behind. But no blows came. Instead Ziynab sat by me on the floor.
“Why do you want to make a big thing out of something so small like this?”
“Your son hurt me.” It was all I could say.
She looked at me like I was no older than Daniel. “It is normal for a woman to be beaten by her husband. That is how women learn.”
She left me then. With each breath the pain got worse. I feared for the life of the baby inside me, and I feared for my own life too. I didn’t know how I could survive. After everything he had done, how could I live? Even if he didn’t come back in and attack me again with the shovel, how could I hope to still be alive in another year?
When he came back into the room, Asghar sounded strange. He knelt opposite me and made me look at his face. Though his voice was soft and quiet, his eyes were just as hard as ever. “I promise that I won’t hurt you again,” he said. “I’m angry with myself. I don’t know why I did that to you. May God forgive me.”
He stood up and left.
I knew this was not the end of Asghar’s violence. I knew he would hurt me again. Would God forgive him? I had no idea. I had long since given up trying to understand the way God worked. God was a mystery to me. With my life the way it was, I had no appetite for puzzles.
Somehow, the baby I was carrying survived the beatings. When she was born she cried as though she wanted the whole world to wake up. We named her Roksana, and after her arrival Asghar’s attacks lessened a little but never so much that I could fully relax. He was a hair trigger, a bomb waiting to explode at the slightest twitch of movement.
So when he came home one afternoon and ran into the bedroom, I expected the worst. I put Roksana down on the bed and prepared to take whatever punches he was going to throw at me.
None came. Instead, he said the words that I never imagined I would hear him say.
“I’m leaving.”
A thousand questions flooded my mind, but my instincts told me to stay quiet and let him be. He was filling a bag with clothes, but when Cherie walked in and stared at him, he stopped.
“The Sepah is going to come for me. They’ll kill me. You have to go too. Go and live with my mother. Take Cherie with you.”
In all the confusion I did at least have some clarity. I knew that living with his mother was a terrible idea, that life with the woman who believed I deserved to be beaten simply for being alive was not something I wanted my children to experience. Daniel was already terrified of her, and I knew he would only be damaged by her.
“Why are they after you? What happened?”
“A few of us refused to put up the Islamic flag this morning. They think we’re staging a coup. I’m going to Turkey and will send for you when it’s safe.”
Safe. The word had almost lost its meaning to me. I imagined what life would be like without Asghar. I imagined what it would feel like to hear the opening of the door and not sense the fear rise within me. I wondered what it would be like for my children to live in a house where they could run and shout and laugh and make all kinds of mess without fear of Asghar’s hand knocking them to the floor. I imagined what it would be like to climb into bed at night without the knowledge that I might again be used for the pleasure of a man who only wanted me dead.
It was a dream so precious that I dared not speak for fear of breaking its spell. It was a butterfly’s wing, a single thread from a spider.
In seconds, it was gone.
What would happen when the Sepah came looking for him? Would they just let me carry on and live my life in peace? No. I knew they would throw me in jail without so much as a trial. If I let Asghar leave me in Iran, I would become their target. I would never be safe. Could I be sure that these three children who depended on me for their lives could ever survive? If I tried to live on my own with them I’d be in the same position as I was before, only worse: on my own, running from the regime, totally vulnerable and with three children dependent on me, not just one.
And so, even though it made me physically sick to speak the words out loud, I made Asghar stop and look at me.
“Asghar,” I begged. “Please take me with you.”
PART TWO
TURKEY
Asghar put the phone down and stared at me. For the longest time there was silence between us. “He said he’ll make a deal.”
“So we can go? The children too? We can all go?”
“Yes. But it will cost us.”
I dared not ask how much. Asghar picked up the phone and dialed again, this time talking to his mother. He told her just a little of what had happened and why he had to leave, and he told her that he needed money. The figure he mentioned was colossal, enough to buy our house outright. There was a lot of shouting.
I had half an hour to pack. I stood and stared at the empty suitcase, my mind stalling.
“Just take what they need,” Asghar said as he filled his own bag. I realized then that I had forgotten where we were going. Had he said Turkey? Or was it Pakistan or Armenia? I didn’t want to ask, so I just put a couple of outfits for each of the children and myself into the bag.
We were due to meet Asghar’s contact in Tehran the next day, but Asghar wanted us to get out of the house as soon as possible. He also wanted to leave his car at home, so we took a taxi over to my parents’ house.
“What do we tell them?” I asked.
“Who?”
“My parents. What do we say to them?”
He looked at me dismissively. “I don’t care what they know.”
“But if we tell them where we have gone and the Sepah come looking for us there, they’ll have to lie. I don’t want them to get in trouble.”
He shrugged. “Tell them what you want then.”
And so I did. My parents started fussing over the children as soon as we arrived, and Asghar went off to make another phone call. I took my dad to one side and tried to talk as if everything I was telling him was true. “Asghar has been thinking for a while about moving away, and he says that this is a good time to go now. So we’re leaving tomorrow.”
“Is this a joke? Where are you moving to?”
“Turkey.”
“Turkey? You’ve got passports?”
“No.”
“Then why go to Turkey? If you go without passports you can never come back, you know? You leave here like that, and we’ll never see you in Iran again. Is that what you want?”
I fought the urge to cry so hard. “No, Dad,” I said. “That’s not what I want. But Asghar says this is a good time to go.”
“He’s wrong. At least wait and get a
passport. If money’s a problem you can sell your things and stay with us. We can help you.” “No, Dad, we don’t have time to wait a year to get passports. We have to go now.”
Asghar arrived in the doorway. He looked mad, his eyes burning at me. “I want to talk with you,” he said, turning and heading back outside. Dad puffed his cheeks and walked off to find Mom.
“The smuggler says we can only take one of the children.”
“No,” I said, panicking. “When you spoke to him before he said we could take them all.”
“He said he’d make a deal; he didn’t say we could take them all. Anyway, I’ve spoken with him, and he won’t change his mind. I’m leaving Cherie with my mom. You’re leaving Daniel.”
“No! Let me bring both of them. Roksana’s so small she hardly counts, and Daniel’s still only four so he won’t be any trouble.”
Asghar grabbed my arm tight. I could feel his fingernails biting through my clothes, feel my arm grow hot, heavy, and numb.
“No,” he spat. “Leave the boy, or I’ll leave you all behind.”
He left me alone in the courtyard then. I felt the same choking feeling in my throat that I remembered from the days of my grief. Only, this time, the pain was even crueler.
“What’s wrong?” Mom was walking over to me, holding in her arms my new baby sister she had given birth to a few months earlier. I looked up and saw Dad with her as well. “What is Asghar doing to you? Tell us, please. Why is this happening?”
I sucked down as much air as I could and wiped my eyes. “It’s nothing,” I said, trying to make my voice sound light and happy as I pushed past them and went back inside.
I took the case and laid it down on the bed. I found Cherie’s clothes and laid them to one side. I made another pile of Roksana’s and a third of Daniel’s. I stared at their two piles. I knew I had to leave him behind, but how could I? It was like trying to gouge one of my own eyes out.
I heard shouting outside the room and went out to check. Asghar was standing in the kitchen, his path blocked by my parents. They turned when they heard me.
“Now he says you’re not taking all the children with you? What’s going on? This is madness.”
I tried to find my calm voice again. “We have to change our plans, Dad. We’re going to leave Cherie with his mom and send for her when we’re settled.”
“And what about Daniel and Roksana?” said Mom, her voice like acid. “Have you grown tired of them too?”
“No, Mom, it’s not like that. We just—”
“Life has not been easy for us,” Asghar interrupted. “So we need to start again somewhere new. Iran is no good since Khomeini came in. You know that.”
“Yes,” shouted Dad, “life has not been easy for any of us, but we’re not running away on a whim like you are. We’re not abandoning our children or cutting off all ties with our homeland. What you are doing is foolish. You’ll regret it.”
I tried to force a smile. “I know this doesn’t make sense to you, but we really want to do this. And it would be so good if you could look after one of the children, just while we get settled. We’ll send for them in a few weeks.”
“Who?” said Mom. I looked back at her, confused. “Which one do you want to leave with us? Or haven’t you even thought that through yet?” She threw her hands up at me.
I knew I had to leave him behind, but saying it was the hardest thing of all. “Daniel,” I murmured. At least he would be safe from Asghar, if only for a few weeks. I excused myself, ran to the bathroom, and sobbed and screamed silently into a face full of towels.
I hated how light my suitcase felt as I lifted it into the car early the next morning. It spoke of all that had been cut from me. Late the night before Ziynab had come to collect Cherie and take her to a relative somewhere in the city. Saying good-bye to Cherie was the first wound. Then, early in the morning, my dad had told me that I would never see Daniel again. He said that we were wrong to do this, and that even if I ever could get back into the country, he doubted Daniel would ever trust me again. That was the second wound.
The worst was Daniel himself. “You’re going to stay here,” I said, “with Grandma and Grandpa. You’re going to have a holiday with them while Mommy goes to find our new home.”
He looked at me and shook his head. “No,” he said. “No holiday.”
It took everything I had to swallow my feelings down. But I had to, for Daniel and for my parents too. I had to let them think I didn’t care about any of this.
That third wound cut so deep it would take decades to heal.
Ziynab drove us north. Asghar and I could finally talk freely once we got on the road, but I didn’t care to speak. There was nothing to say. I was relieved that I could cry again, and for most of the six hours of the drive between Isfahan and Tehran, that’s all I did. As Roksana slept on my lap and my shoulders heaved, Asghar talked with his mother who sat next to him up front about how an escape from the country might be possible.
I listened to them talk about what had gotten Asghar into trouble. I knew it was something to do with him not raising the revolutionary flag, but I didn’t know that he had also been overheard telling others how the flag didn’t belong on the base at all or that Khomeini’s days in power were numbered. And I certainly didn’t know that a few of his friends had already been caught and hung for their part in it.
Though we were hundreds of miles away from Isfahan at that point, where the Sepah searching for Asghar were, our arrival in Tehran only brought a new fear. There were members of the regime everywhere, including the Sepah, on what seemed like every street corner. I thought it would only be a matter of time before one of them recognized Asghar, stopped the car, and pulled all of us out onto the street. I imagined both of us standing beneath a crane, staring up at a noose. I tried not to let myself think about what they would do to Roksana.
We drove to a large house on the outskirts of the city where we were welcomed inside by a man whose accent told me he was from Azerbaijan. He was as old as my dad and stared at Roksana and me before taking Asghar off into another room. I didn’t like him.
We were given a room with a thin foam mattress and little else. Later that night the man—who, though he told me his name, I always thought of as the Smuggler—came into the room, pulled out a map of Iran, and lay it on the floor. He plopped his fat finger down on Tehran and checked that we were both paying attention. First he would drive us northeast to the city of Tabriz. From there we’d take a bus to the town of Maku, right on the border with Turkey. “From there,” he said, skipping his fingers across the border, “Turkey. Easy!”
“How do we get across the mountains?” Asghar asked.
“Bus. Very easy. Only a few hours. No problem at all.”
I liked him less after this conversation. I wanted to believe him, but if it was so easy why did it cost so much?
The Smuggler asked Asghar where the money was, and he told him that his mother—who had driven back to her home in Shiraz after we arrived in Tehran—was going to bring it up in a couple of days. Again, it all sounded too easy, and when she finally did arrive (bringing Asghar’s eighteen-year-old cousin, Firouz, with her too), there was a long and noisy argument between her and Asghar about how much she was having to pay to get both Roksana and me out in addition to her son. I had long since given up trying to change her opinion on anything, so I just sat quietly with Roksana as we tried to make ourselves invisible.
Ziynab eventually returned to Shiraz, but Firouz stayed with us when we left Tehran. Apparently he was coming with us to Turkey, though nobody had told me about this change in plans.
The drive to Tabriz in the Smuggler’s cigarette-stained, beat-up car was uncomfortable. It wasn’t just the tobacco stench or the failing suspension that bothered me but the conservative Islamic clothes I was wearing. We were heading toward one of Iran’s most religious regions, one that was also well known as a route for smuggling everything from weapons to alcohol, people to drugs. The only p
rotection I would have would be a heavy, black chador, a tight-fitting hood that covered most of my face, and a pair of scratchy gloves.
At Tabriz the Smuggler parked near the bus station and gave us our final instructions. “Take the bus to Maku, and wait at the terminal when you arrive. A little boy will come and find you and bring you to my mother’s house there.” He reached into a bag behind his seat, pulling out three small books and handing them to me. “When you are on the bus, pretend you’re devout and read these.”
Ever since we had left Tehran, the scenery outside had been changing. The mountains had grown taller and the snow deeper. I stepped out of the car at the station and pulled Roksana in close. The air was colder than any I’d ever felt before, and the foot of snow on the ground was way more than any we had ever seen in Isfahan. For the first time that day, I was glad of the extra clothes.
Even before we sat down I knew that we did not belong on the bus. We looked and sounded nothing like the rest of the passengers. If anyone so much as looked down the aisle, they’d know that we were the ones who were trying to escape.
Four hours in to the trip, and the bus slowed and came to a complete stop. I looked up from the Qur’an that had been open on my lap beside Roksana-ever since we left Tabriz and saw precisely what I had feared: a line of cars waiting at a checkpoint swarming with soldiers.
Asghar grabbed Roksana and pretended to be a concerned father desperately trying to soothe his infant daughter to sleep. I stared again at the Qur’an and wished for a miracle.
I heard soldiers board the bus. As soon as I saw the military boots covered in mud and snow come to a halt beside me, I knew it was over. “Where are you from?” he asked.
“Isfahan.”
“Why are you going to Maku?” I felt sick and could think of nothing to say. Everyone knew that the only reason outsiders went to Maku was to escape into Turkey. “We are going to visit an Imam.” It was a terrible answer, and I waited for him to tell me to get off the bus. But no such order came. Instead he moved farther down.
Stranger No More Page 6
