After Tehran

by Marina Nemat

  Chocolate-Chip

  Cookies

  When I was fifteen years old, Alik, who had immigrated to Canada in 1979, wrote to me about Yonge Street. He told me that it began at the foot of Lake Ontario in downtown Toronto and ran northward some nineteen hundred kilometres, making it at the time the longest street in the world. This was unimaginable for me, and as I tried to picture it, I saw the Yellow Brick Road leading to the Emerald City in The Wizard of Oz. Yonge Street had to be full of mystery and adventure.

  On August 28, 1991, as our plane flew west over the Atlantic Ocean toward Canada, I wondered what our new country was truly like. Alik had sent me photos of his house in the suburbs of Toronto. The house was big—very big compared with the small apartments I had lived in most of my life—and it looked so beautiful that it seemed fictional, but Alik told me that according to Canadian standards, it was an average-size house. He had also sent me photos of Niagara Falls, the CN Tower, and the University of Toronto, but he might as well have sent me pictures of Narnia or some other imaginary land. Alik’s photos all seemed alien. Even Canadian colours looked different from the colours in my life: the blues were deeper, the browns stronger, the reds more vibrant, the yellows sharper, the greens more alive, and the pinks and purples dreamier. In my mind, Canada was a cold land where it snowed and snowed in winter. The short summer unfolded on the shores of a blue lake surrounded by the emerald green of pine-covered hills. Except, how friendly was this magical land? Could we find our way in its strange vastness?

  Michael was two and a half at the time of our trip from Hungary to Canada, and fortunately, he slept for most of the flight. When he awoke, we were close to Toronto. I told him to look out the window at the beautiful clouds.

  “Is that Canada?” he asked, pointing at an enormous cumulonimbus cloud. I had told him so much about our new country that he was quite excited about it. I had promised him that we would make big snowmen in winter and swim in crystal-clear lakes in summer.

  “No, honey, that’s a cloud. Canada is down there … below the clouds … we can’t see it yet.”

  “Snowman!” he cried, pointing at another cloud.

  Even God makes snowmen here, I thought.

  That day, the day we arrived in Canada, I wore my nicest dress, which my mother had made. It was burgundy and very stylish. I had even bought new shoes to go with it. They were black and had three-inch heels. I wanted to blend with the crowd. I wanted to look Canadian. I believed that the people who lived in a wealthy country like Canada had to be fashionable. As we made our way through Pearson Airport, I was surprised to see that most women were wearing blue jeans or khaki pants. But it didn’t matter. One should be well dressed when beginning a new life. I wanted to mark the occasion properly.

  I can’t remember much about Pearson Airport. My memory is a jumble of images: rushing along hallways with Michael in my arms, standing in lines, and answering a customs officer’s questions. Once we made it to the public concourse, I wanted to scream Alik’s name, but I contained myself. Although I had not seen him in twelve years, I spotted him immediately. His hair had greyed and thinned, but he looked the same. At six-foot-seven he was easy to notice. His head bobbed enthusiastically above the waiting crowd. We hugged and couldn’t let go.

  I sat in the back seat of Alik’s car and stared at the scenery as we drove to his house. We were to stay at his place until we could find an apartment. The sky was an indigo blue, as unrealistic as the sky in a child’s painting. And the horizon seemed so far away, farther than I had ever seen it. It was August and the fields were a luminescent green; the cornfields seemed to stretch all the way to the North Pole. Buildings were scarce, and the scents of grass, water, and soil saturated the air.

  “Where’s Toronto?” I asked Alik.

  “Toronto!” Michael exclaimed, pointing at horses in a farmer’s field.

  “My house is in the suburbs,” Alik said, as if this explained everything. We had suburbs in Tehran, but we had almost no open spaces between them. What I now saw were farmland and wilderness.

  The car moved along the highway, and after a few minutes, a town with rows of almost identical brick houses came into view. They all had front yards that, unlike the ones in Tehran, were not fenced in behind tall walls. Flower beds overflowed with reds, oranges, and pinks. We had arrived. I was worried but hopeful. How could I not find my way to a good life in a land of so many intense colours? As we walked into Alik’s house, I felt like an astronaut on her first Martian expedition.

  I had expected Alik and his wife to ask me about Evin, but they didn’t. The silence I had faced in Iran, the one I had helped sustain after my release from prison, had stretched all the way across the ocean. I could almost see it now. It looked like a giant poisonous jellyfish that had swallowed the world. I did not want pity, but I needed acknowledgment—not only of my own experience, but also of all I had witnessed. My cellmates and I had suffered, and deep in my heart, I was desperate to know that our suffering had not been meaningless.

  The day after we arrived, Andre began looking for a job and Michael and I set out to explore our new country. The first time I took Michael to a park in Canada, it was drizzling, but we went anyway.

  Before coming to Canada, we had spent ten months in Hungary. In Budapest, people sometimes called me “Gypsy” and swore at me on the bus or at the park. I didn’t take it personally. I had nothing against Roma people, but I was not a Gypsy. I had dark eyes and long dark hair, and I guessed that Hungarians had never seen an Iranian, so I couldn’t blame them for their ignorance. After all, they had lived in a closed society for many years (we arrived there in 1990 shortly after the fall of Communism). I hoped that things were different in Canada and that I wouldn’t be judged because of the colour of my hair or skin.

  I put Michael in a swing and pushed him as hard as I could, and he laughed in delight, crying, “Higher! Higher!” No one else was at the park, but after a few minutes, a man with a girl about Michael’s age joined us. I decided the man was the girl’s grandfather. Michael got off the swing and went to the slide, and the man put the little girl in a swing. I watched them. The man smiled at me. I smiled an uncertain smile in return. He wore black casual pants and a beige jacket. Unlike me, he seemed very much at ease. He and the child blended with Planet Canada, not at all aware of its strangeness. Their every step told me that they knew what they were doing, when my every move was full of doubt and insecurity. I wondered how many times they had already come to this park. They had probably both been born in this country. This place belonged to them, and the truth was that I was an outsider—but at least I was sure that Michael would soon feel as though he had always lived here.

  The rain had become heavier. The sky was an impatient shade of grey, the colour of a storm.

  “Do you need a ride?” the man asked me.

  I shook my head no and mumbled, “Thank you.”

  “Cookies! I want cookies!” Michael now cried. He had had his very first chocolate-chip cookie two days earlier, and we had no more left. I knew there was a convenience store around the corner, but I had not bought anything in Canada yet, since we were still staying at Alik’s house.

  “Cookies! Please, please!” Michael begged, and I scooped him up in my arms and ran toward the store as the rain drew puddles on the sidewalk. “‘Rain, rain, go away, come again another day!’” I sang. I was teaching Michael to speak English, and he loved nursery rhymes.

  They had so many different kinds of cookies at the store that it took me a few minutes to find the right kind. I felt dizzy. The abundance astonished me. I prayed that Michael wouldn’t want to try them all. Wide-eyed, he stared at the overflowing shelves. My eyes filled with tears as I put the package in front of the cashier, a young blond woman, and gave her a twenty-dollar bill. I couldn’t believe that I had become emotional buying cookies. She had no idea how treacherous my life had been and how long I had waited to come to this country.

  “What a cute little boy,” she sa
id, handing me my change. “Nice shoes! Where did you get them?”

  Michael was in my arms, wearing the pair of multicoloured suede shoes I had bought in Hungary.

  “In Europe,” I said.

  “I guessed so. They don’t make them so nice here. Where in Europe?”

  “Hungary. We’ve just immigrated here.”

  “Do you like it so far?”

  “Yes. Very much. People are nice.”

  I had gone to the park and now I was at the store, and no one had sworn at me. I had not been beaten up, arrested, or both for not wearing the hejab or for any other reason. And we had bought cookies. What more could one ask for? Michael and I skipped all the way home, singing nursery rhymes. I knew that our life in Canada would not be a fairy tale. Those require a kind of innocence that I had lost at sixteen, and since then I had not believed in “happily ever after.” But here we could hope and work hard for a better life.

  Andre found a job as an electrical engineer a few days after our arrival; this was close to a miracle because Canada was in a recession at the time. We rented an apartment, paid our first-and last-month’s rent, and had two hundred dollars left in our bank account. Alik bought us a blue loveseat and a chair, and we purchased a cheap dining table, six chairs, a bed for Michael, and a queen-size mattress, which we put on the floor in our bedroom. Andre’s boss gave us an old TV that he didn’t need, and we bent a metal clothes hanger and used it as an antenna. That gave us six channels, which was much better than the two channels available in Tehran. We were grateful.

  As it turned out, our apartment was on Yonge Street. I will never forget the first time I stood at the pedestrian crossing at the intersection of Yonge Street and Baif Boulevard. It was early October, and the sun still had a bit of warmth. Michael was clinging to my hand, waiting, as impatiently as I was, for the helpful little white man in the signal light to appear and indicate that it was safe to cross the street to go to the grocery store. Even though my house had not fallen on a wicked witch and a good witch had not given me ruby slippers, I was like Dorothy at the beginning of her journey. The difference was, I knew that the wizard, no matter how powerful he happened to be, could not take me back home. Even though I missed my home terribly, it didn’t want me any longer.

  One of the first things Andre and I did after moving into our apartment at Yonge and Baif was go to our local Catholic church. We had to give thanks to God. At the church, we met people who eventually became our good friends. One day after the Mass, Andre went upstairs to meet the organist, Flavia, and told her that he had been an organist in Tehran. Flavia invited us to her house for dinner and asked me if I would like to join her book club. Soon, the monthly book-club meetings were one of the highlights of my life. This wasn’t only because of the books we read, which I greatly enjoyed, but because the book club gave me a sense of belonging. I think it was during the first meeting I attended that I briefly told the members I had been a political prisoner in Iran. They didn’t ask me any questions. Ten years later, I would present them with a first draft of my memoir, Prisoner of Tehran.

  At the church, I met a couple named Lynn and Joe, who had two young daughters. The youngest was Michael’s age. They invited us to their home for our first Thanksgiving dinner in Canada. Lynn was a dental hygienist and worked part-time. We saw each other regularly and grew to be good friends. She had a car and sometimes picked up Michael and me at the apartment, and we took the kids to the library, the park, or the mall. Lynn also took us to Canada’s Wonderland, which soon became Michael’s favourite place to visit. With Lynn’s help, I slowly began to feel I could belong in Canada.

  The Sunday Star

  I started to improve my writing by asking my book-club friends to read my manuscript. By then, we had been meeting once a month for more than ten years. They were all very curious to read it—and once they had, their feedback and encouragement gave me the confidence I needed to take the next step and enrol in creative-writing classes.

  At various events these days, Lee Gowan—my very first writing instructor at the School of Continuing Studies at the University of Toronto—sometimes tells people about the first time we met in February 2003. That day, after my shift at Swiss Chalet ended, I rushed to the store, bought two large pizzas for the kids and Andre for dinner, got changed, and then drove to Finch subway station to catch the train to the St. George Campus of the U of T. The entire trip took about an hour and a half. When I got off at St. George station and walked out onto Bedford Street, it was windy, frigid, and grey. I had checked the map and memorized my route, but I was extremely nervous, so I stopped at every corner en route and carefully looked around to make sure I had not taken a wrong turn. I was wearing my parka, hat, gloves, and my warmest boots, but my face was numb from the cold. The wind had managed to penetrate all my layers of clothing.

  “What am I doing?” I asked myself somewhere along the way. Panic had crept under my skin. I was a woman from Iran with just a high-school diploma. I was only a waitress, and English was my second language; I was certain that all the students walking past me were smarter than I and much better educated. I didn’t belong there at all. Then I reminded myself that I was on a mission.

  As I turned onto Hoskins Avenue, I spotted the old stone building that is University College. It resembles a castle. I remembered a photo of it that Alik had sent me shortly after his arrival in Canada in 1979. On the back of it, he had written that University College was built in the mid-nineteenth century and then restored after a disastrous fire in 1890. He also mentioned that, allegedly, it was haunted. What I found most interesting about it was its asymmetry: the left half of the building is quite different architecturally from the right. I had examined the photo and thought about the people attending the University of Toronto. I had been fourteen then, living in post-revolutionary Iran: a time of slogans against the West, rhetoric against Western culture, the removal of women’s rights, and the beginning of the ban on music, dance, and literature. To me, students at the University of Toronto were among the luckiest on earth. Now I was in Toronto, as unworthy as I had ever been. I chastised myself: I had to stop thinking this way. The truth was that I had to write my book and get it published. This was my second chance. This was why I had survived prison.

  Standing in front of University College, I gazed up. The right tower had a window near the top, and I suddenly had an image of Rapunzel leaning out of it, throwing her thick long golden braid to the ground for Prince Charming. I pulled open the heavy wooden front door and stepped into the poorly lit foyer. A map of the building stood posted near the entrance, but I found it too confusing. I knew the room number for my class, and I knew it was on the second floor, so I followed the wide staircase, my right hand on the smooth old wooden handrail. My boots echoed against the walls and ceiling in the musty air that felt a thousand years old. Had I come here as a little girl, I would have expected a wicked witch to jump out from behind every closed door. I followed one hallway after another, until I finally found my classroom.

  Lee Gowan walked into the room right on time. I had seen his photo, but he was taller than I had anticipated. He was wearing a black sweater and black pants. The desks stood in a square around the room, and I was one of fourteen students. Lee sat on the chair left empty for him. One by one, he asked us to introduce ourselves and briefly explain why we were taking a creative-writing course. Most of the students were either lawyers or office workers, and said they had always wanted to become writers. When my turn arrived, I looked down and told the truth.

  “My name is Marina Nemat. I was arrested in Iran at the age of sixteen for political crimes and was tortured and came close to execution. That was almost twenty years ago, and now I want to write about it.”

  My heart was racing, and I felt as though every blood vessel in my body was ready to explode. Everyone was staring at me. I put my hands under my thighs and sat on them, hoping my classmates wouldn’t see how badly I was shaking. I was afraid I might become too emotional. B
ut I did not. In Evin, we had to hide our emotions from our interrogators, or they would use them against us—and we sometimes had to hide our feelings from our cellmates because we didn’t want to upset them. I rarely cried in front of my friends in Evin. Instead, I saved my tears for prayer time when I covered my face with a chador. Most of the girls behaved the same way.

  I can’t remember what Lee said, but he seemed at a loss for words. He later told me that he had never heard such an unusual introduction and had been shocked.

  Our first exercise was writing about an onion. The smell of onions reminded me of Bahboo and her cooking, so my piece ended up being about her. Exercise after exercise I became more confident with my writing and began to share bits of my memoir with the class. Lee and my fellow classmates appeared genuinely interested in my work, and their critiques helped me view my story from the perspective of a reader who didn’t know much about Iran. I became aware that I needed much more detail in my story. Things that were basic knowledge to me were foreign concepts to most of my classmates. I had to explain an alien culture to the average Western reader. My story was not only about coming of age under difficult circumstances; it was about a child political prisoner who, like thousands of others, wasn’t particularly political. How politically aware can you be at sixteen? Evin was a dark world of horrors, a real nightmare, and I had to make this strange concept comprehensible. The task overwhelmed me, but what I learned from Lee and later my other instructors was that I had to write the book one scene at a time, then fit the scenes together like a puzzle—which is exactly what I did.

  As I wrote each scene, I felt as though I were travelling back in time. When I wrote about the lashing, I was back in Evin, feeling each lash on the soles of my feet. I remembered the strange numbness that came over me the moment I was arrested, which some people mistook for bravery, but I knew I wasn’t brave at all. I had just detached myself from my body. As I recalled being tied up to a pole with armed guards pointing their guns at me, I didn’t feel afraid; instead, I felt sad and tired. I just wanted them to let me go to sleep.