Karim looked at the clock on the mantle. It was already eleven. He’d slept very late. From the window he could see bits of clouds reflected in the joob.
He heard his mother saying to someone in the courtyard, “She took him and ran away without telling me.”
“She’s used to a different life,” the other woman said.
He put his clothes on quickly, and went into the courtyard. Aziz was sitting on the rug with Latifeh, who seemed to have just dropped in—she still had her chador on.
“Jennifer came to Qom and took Darius away,” Aziz said as soon as she saw him. She looked worn, dust had settled on her dark dress and on her chador which lay rumpled around her; a suitcase stood next to her on the rug.
“They aren’t here, I don’t understand …”
“They aren’t back?” A startled, naked look, came into Aziz’s face. “I wanted to pray for my grandson at the shrine and send him to the maktab. I’m an old woman, I don’t understand what goes on in the world. I sit home most of the time and read the Koran and pray. I’m doing the best I can until God takes me away”
“Where could they be?” Karim mumbled. “They have no friends here.”
“She and Darius came to my house when they couldn’t get in,” Latifeh said.
“When was that?”
“The day before yesterday, or maybe it was the day before that. I asked her to stay in my house but she didn’t accept.”
“She’s taken my grandson away,” Aziz said, lamenting, and she began to cry. She hit herself on the head with the palms of her hands.
Karim wandered outside and looked up and down the street.
It was as if he had been thrown into a dark body of water, was lost in it, not knowing what direction to move. Images rushed by his eyes, images of Jennifer in shorts and a straw hat, working on their backyard vegetable garden, of the two of them bicycling on summery green country roads, and of Darius walking around the zoo with him, looking and laughing at the animals.
He sometimes played hide-and-seek with Darius. Like a child he would hide in a closet or under the bed while Darius went about calling, “Daddy, I’m going to find you.” Sometimes if it took too long for Darius to spot him, he made himself partially visible. It was such a delightful moment when Darius said, “Daddy, I found you, you’re there, come out,” as he reached over to grab at his sleeve or the edge of his trousers.
“Daddy, will you take me on camel rides and elephant rides in Iran?” Darius had asked him as they were packing for this trip. Karim had smiled. “If we can find any of that in Iran.”
“James’s mother said they have them in India.”
“Iran isn’t exactly like India. But there are lots of nice things in Iran we could do.” He had told him he would teach him how to fly a kite, take him to a building that swayed back and forth without collapsing. Yet in Iran he had not done any of that, occupied as he was with his uncle’s needs. Of course that was urgent under the circumstances, but still …
He walked to Jamali Avenue, and for an instant he thought he saw them in the backseat of a car and he ran to the curb. But as he looked closer he realized that the woman and the child didn’t even resemble Jennifer and Darius. Where could they possibly be? Was she in trouble? Could she have left the country? He kept looking up and down the street, hoping to see them get out of a taxi or come out of a shop.
He decided to go to Turkish Airlines to find out if Jennifer had changed the tickets.
Chapter 29
The phone was ringing. Jennifer looked at her watch. It was already eight in the morning. The servant must be out somewhere. She got up, put on her bathrobe quickly, and went to answer the phone, but it had stopped ringing by the time she got to it.
Bijan was supposed to come back early today and take them to the airport. Everything made her anxious, even the anticipation of leaving made her feel as though she were on the plane just circling, unable to land.
It was hard to believe they had been in this house for such a brief time. Every day Bijan went to work and came back early; then they went out for dinner or for a ride, always after dark. Once he took her to an ancient palace, each room of which had belonged to a different wife in a shah’s harem. Another evening they went to a mill and from the old tower they looked out over the expanse of the city.
He told her that anything could be obtained in Teheran, although you might have to pay a high price for it. One night he brought home a few videos of American movies and they watched Prizzi’s Honor. Late at night she would go to his bed. He was always avid in his lovemaking, unpredictable, a little theatrical. They got very little sleep. She didn’t understand how he could function at work.
The longer she stayed in Iran, the more the country confounded her. There were all the surface rules and restrictions, women covered up, no alcohol, yet decadence flourished underneath. Prostitutes furtively roamed the streets—she had seen some of them lurking in doorways when she was passing Laleh Zar Avenue, revealing naked legs under their chadors for an instant and then covering them again. A black market made almost anything, from videos to alcohol, available. With the anti-American slogans and demonstrations went a deep admiration for American ways. Children’s lunch boxes, clothes, and sheets had American cartoon characters on them.
The phone started ringing again. She picked it up. “Hello.”
“Hello.”
Then click. The voice, from that one word, sounded like the pretty young woman who had come to the house the other day.
She got Darius out of bed and they had breakfast, and then she began to pack their belongings in a small suitcase Bijan had told her she could take. She would leave what was at Aziz’s house.
How could she let them know she was going home with Darius without all sorts of questions being raised, thorny complications? It would be best to leave and send a telegram from Istanbul, where they had an eight-hour wait between flights.
Hassan came into their room, holding a pitcher of water with ice tinkling in it. “It’s supposed to be hotter than ever tonight. You and the child are going to need this,” he said.
“We won’t be here tonight, we’re leaving. Didn’t the doctor tell you?”
Instead of answering he said, “It’s all up to God.” He put down the pitcher and left.
They still had two hours before they were to leave. Two hours. It seemed intolerably long.
She had a terrible headache. She went to her bathroom to look for aspirin but couldn’t find any in the medicine cabinet, so she tried the bathroom off Bijarfs bedroom. She found a bottle of them in the large cabinet there. She took two, and then, curious, she looked to see what the other bottles contained. Most of them, labeled in Farsi, had names she didn’t recognize. She was surprised at the sheer number of them. She suddenly suspected that many of them were amphetamines—that would explain why Bijan was so energetic and sleepless at night. The idea somehow depressed her. Maybe it was the way he lived in general, somehow dissolute in spite of his dedication to his work.
The phone was ringing again. In a moment the servant called out to her, “Khanoom, it’s for you, the doctor.”
She went to the phone, upset. Why was he calling when he should be here by now?
“Jennifer, I’m sorry but I’m going to be a little late. I was called to the hospital. I have to go.”
“Can’t you …”
“Don’t worry, I’ll be back in time for you to catch your plane.”
He sounded rushed and impatient, making her wonder if he really intended to come back on time at all. Last night hadn’t he said again, “I can’t let you go now that I’ve found you.”
Then she thought, what’s stopping me from leaving right now? Once the idea had formed in her mind it seemed the only logical thing to do. If she waited until one and Bijan still hadn’t come it would be nearly impossible to depend on taxis or buses because of the afternoon siesta. She tore a piece of paper from the pad by the phone and tried to think of something to write to Bij
an but her mind went blank. What could she say? Finally she jotted down, “Dear Bijan, I must rush to the airport. Thank you so much for the beautiful shelter and all that you did for us …” She stared at the sapphire ring on her finger, twinkling in the dimness of the corridor. She couldn’t possibly keep it.
She took it off and put it with the note in an envelope she found in the table drawer. She sealed it and left it by the phone.
She put her hands on Darius’s shoulders, “Honey, we’re going to the airport right away.”
“Are we going home?”
“Yes.”
“Is Daddy coming home?” “Yes, later.”
“Does Daddy like Bijan?”
The unexpected question threw Jennifer off balance. It took her a moment to say, “I think he would.”
“OK.”
“Remember, it’s going to be a very long trip. You have to be very patient.”
“I know,” Darius said, pushing his hair back over his ear, a gesture of pride. His hair was now longer than usual, dishevelled.
She picked up the small suitcase, glad that the servant was nowhere in sight. Outside they walked a few blocks until they reached the wider, busier avenue, where she hailed a taxi. The sun was shining brightly and the shadows were long, almost black. The taxi seat was hot, stinging her even through her chador. She put Darius on her lap to protect him from burning.
The traffic was heavier than she had ever seen it. Cars honked continuously, cut in front of each other. A yellow Paykan was pushing in front of their taxi. The taxi driver put his hand on the horn and kept it there, then opening the window, he began to shout, “Son of a whore, whoremonger.”
Darius clutched at Jennifer’s arms. Jennifer herself had gone rigid.
The driver of the Paykan suddenly jumped out of his car and came and stood in front of the taxi’s window. “Are you a donkey or a human being?” Suddenly he slapped the taxi driver’s face. “I’m an engineer, you’re a nobody, a donkey.” Then just as abruptly he dashed back into his car.
“If I didn’t have a woman and a child in my backseat I’d get out and break your skull,” the taxi driver shouted, his face, where he had been slapped, beet red. “You son of a whore.”
Jennifer held Darius to herself tightly and kept looking at her watch. It had taken half an hour to get through fifteen blocks or so. But then the taxi driver managed to push past the yellow Paykan and entered the flow of traffic again.
They finally reached the airport. The driver asked for twice as much as it read on the meter and Jennifer paid him without resistance. Her knees were shaky as she entered the terminal.
Chapter 30
The terminal was crowded with a motley group of people lined up at different counters or sitting and waiting, their luggage piled around them—two men in Arab headdress, several Kurdish women and children in baggy pants and full-skirted dresses, an English-looking couple, and some others whose nationalities Jennifer could not identify. The heterogeneity was a relief, making it easier for her to blend in, but still she could not really relax.
She looked for the Turkish Airlines counter and found it in the middle of the terminal. “Passports and tickets please,” the agent said. She gave him the tickets and passports.
“These haven’t been stamped,” the man said after looking through the passports. “Take them to that window. They’ll stamp them if there are no problems with them. You were supposed to have done that two or three hours earlier.”
“We have exit visas already.”
“This has nothing to do with visas.”
She walked away with Darius and asked him sit on a chair and wait for her. She put the luggage next to him and dashed to the passport window.
There were a few people ahead of her. A young man with a bushy beard was in charge. Smoke rose from a half-lit cigarette in an ashtray in front of him. The couple he was helping seemed to have a million questions. Jennifer shifted from foot to foot until finally it was her turn.
“What time is your flight?” the man asked.
“In an hour.”
“You should have brought your passports over earlier.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t know. My child is sick, I have to take him to his own doctor,” she rambled on.
“Aren’t there enough doctors here?”
“Yes, of course, but I thought…”
“Where’s your child?”
What business of his is this, she thought, but she managed to say politely, “I left him over there with the luggage.”
“You left your sick child alone?”
“I’m keeping an eye on him.”
The man shook his head. But then, he looked through both passports, stamped them, and gave them back.
“Thank you so much,” she said, incredulous that the passports were back in her hands.
She and Darius hurried to the customs line. It was moving very slowly because of the huge amount of luggage some of the passengers had. A few of the suitcases were so full that they had to be tied with ropes.
When it was her turn, the customs inspector asked her, “That’s all you have?”
“Yes, we’re traveling lightly”
“Open them.” She opened the suitcase and the overnight bag, avoiding his eyes. “No rugs, no gold?”
“We have nothing.”
“Go ahead, you can shut them.”
They had to go behind curtains to be searched, she by women and Darius by men. The women searched her purse, her clothes, even inside her shoes.
On the phone Darius sat next to the window with a look of intense misery on his face, then he began to cry.
“What’s wrong? what’s the matter?”
“I miss daddy, I miss grandma,” he said through tears.
“He’ll come home soon and maybe your grandma will come too,” she said. She took out a handkerchief from her purse and wiped his tears. The handkerchief, embroidered at the corner, was given to her by Azar in return for a nightgown. How could I be leaving like this, without saying goodbye, she thought, struck by guilt and remorse.
Several strands of conversation in different languages were going on around her. Two Iranian women sitting on the other side of the aisle were apparently going to Turkey to see if they could get visas to go to France. Two men in front of her were hoping to get visas for the United States. One of them said, “I have a letter of invitation from my son, he’s a doctor in California, that should make it easier.”
She began to think of their house in Athens waiting for them. Darius’s room, with his stuffed animals, books, records, toys, arranged on shelves. The room she used as her study, just above the circular stairway, a photo blow-up of the three of them on her desk. In the photograph they were wearing the matching Hawaiian clothes (Karim and Darius in shirts and she in a muumuu), all in bright orange with designs of green branches, that her parents had brought back for them from a Hawaiian vacation. The red chair in the living room Karim liked to sink into late at night with a drink to watch the news or a movie on TV. He loved old movies, especially Westerns, some of which he had seen as an adolescent in Iran. They had given him his first impressions of the United States (false ones, he had said, laughing). Their backyard, planted so that in every season there was something in bloom—holly bushes bearing red berries in the winter, dogwoods full of white blossoms in spring. The patio, where they ate most of their meals when it was warm enough, the air crystalline clear so much of the time and so quiet that they could hear the slightest quivering of the trees and the jingling of the wind chimes hanging on a branch. They watched the sun rise or set as they ate…. But then all the underlying sadness and tension mounting, until everything turned dark for Karim, even menacing …
Chapter 31
The air smelled of grass mingled with a faint aroma of flowers and wood smoke as Jennifer and Darius arrived at their house in Athens. A soft moist light shone over everything.
The house was in order, plants all watered, the lawn mowed. Nancy had pu
t their mail on the dining table. But as she walked through the house, room to room, the sight of Karim’s belongings, his clothes hanging in the closet, his bathrobe on the back of a chair in the bedroom, filled her with loneliness.
Darius went immediately into his room. She could hear him talking to his stuffed animals. “I missed you,” or “Don’t be afraid.” His temperature had vanished by the time they reached Athens, and the thin, exhausted quality had left his voice. Still, she thought she would take him to see his pediatrician.
As she unpacked the phone rang several times, but when she picked it up she couldn’t hear a voice on the other end. She was sure it was Karim, trying to reach her. Then she tried to call him herself, but the lines were always busy. She set her phone on redial. No matter how many times it rang she never got through.
That night in bed she was haunted by the extraordinary beauty and the extreme harshness, the kindness and cruelty she had encountered in Iran. She shuddered at the thought that she could have been locked up in jail, still be there.
So much had been disturbing to her. Even her brief affair with the doctor, though in some ways exciting, had a painful tinge to it, even in retrospect. It seemed more like an act of desperation than anything else.
Finally she fell asleep and then woke to Darius’s voice calling, “Mommy.” She got out of the bed and went to check on him, but he had been calling in his sleep as he had sometimes in Iran. She stood there and stared at him for a moment in this spacious room, where he lay on his own bed, holding his teddy bear.
When Darius’s school started it was easier for both of them. Every morning she took him to school before she went to the department store she had been assigned to decorate. She was using some of the patterns she had absorbed from Iranian tiles, stained glass, and carpets, striking in this otherwise conventional store. The fact that Darius was adjusting well to school and was not asking as frequently, “When’s Daddy coming back?” or saying “I miss Daddy, I miss Grandma,” and that she was very busy herself, getting positive feedback on her work, alleviated her loneliness somewhat. Darius was making friends at school, and she and Darius had Nancy and Josh too.
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