by Deno Trakas
Nadia came in with coffee and a pastry like baklava. “I sorry I don’t have more, I hope you like.”
“This is great. Thank you,” I said and meant it—I’d skipped breakfast and my stomach was rumbling. Nadia was doughy in her features, a little heavy, with ashy skin—she looked a lot more like Sadegh than Azi did—but she dressed well, designer jeans and an expensive looking cream sweater. Her hair fizzed with soft curls that complemented the oval of her face, and her smile was white and winsome. She never stopped moving. Even when she sat back and took a sip from her cup, she did it with one fluid motion, then set the cup on the coffee table, excused herself, and got up again. In a minute she returned with a dish of mints and a bowl of fruit.
She also talked a lot, and yet she paid close attention when I spoke, as if she were trying to record every word for future use. Her English was better than Azi’s—she’d lived in the states a year longer—but she spoke too fast, as if she were trying to match the pace of Americans. The result was good vocabulary with idioms that were often a shade off the mark.
“So, are you missing Azi?” she asked straightforwardly.
“Yes, very much.”
“She is missing you too, I am sure. She had mixed up feelings about going home.”
“There seems to be fighting in the streets, riots—I’m worried about her.”
“Oh yes, and also she might be prosecuted because she study in United States.”
“Persecuted?”
“Yes. And she’s afraid of many changes, like the women must to wear chador again. And no makeup.” Nadia made a face as if the thought were revolting, but of course the image of Azi in chador was quite different for me. “Iran is fuck up, no?”
I smiled. “Yes, it is. Of course, we have our problems too, like the guy who attacked Azi. He hasn’t come back, has he?”
“No, thank God. I am very afraid. I do not go out in the night except with someone. And I have new lock.” She pointed to the door, where a new deadbolt had been installed.
“Are you going to stay here by yourself?”
“I hope I will find another roommate when the school start.”
“You’re still in the ESL program, right?”
“Yes, I have the last semester, then I enter university.”
“What are you going to study?”
“My father want me to study the chemistry, and I can do it easy, but I don’t like it. I want to study the theater or something like that.”
“Sounds like fun. Do you have any friends who can look out for you in the meantime?”
“Usually yes, but now the boys—you know them? Abbas, Wahab—”
“Oh yes.”
“Oh yes, they do that to your car. Saad, he is crazy boy, very religious, he go to madrassa in Saudi Arabia and learn jihad. Well, some of the boys they go on trip to Florida. They want to look for American girls on beach. I ask can I go to look for American boys, but they don’t let me. So I am all to myself. Azi was my only girlfriend. We talk all time.”
“What did you talk about?”
“Many things, like the boys.”
Because she was twenty-four and had always seemed to be a serious student, I’d never thought of Azi as being preoccupied with “boys.” “Did you talk about American or Iranian boys?”
She smiled, coy with the information I was trying to coax out of her. “Both.”
“Are they different?”
“Oh yes. The customs for the men and women are different in Mideast, more separate, strict, especially in strict Islamic country like Iran now. And many men there, my father too, they think they are princes, but they are male shovingest pigs.”
I laughed. “Male chauvinist pigs?”
“Yes. The American men are also sometime, but not as many. And the American men are tall and handsome and smell good.” She paused as if to sniff me over.
“Did Azi say I was a male shovingest pig?”
“Oh no. She say you are very gentleman. You know, I do not want Azi to be with you always in the last week, I am jealous, but we talk at night and she is so happy.”
I smiled and took a bite of pastry to cover my embarrassment, then changed the subject. “How long does it take a letter to get to Kuwait or Iran?” I asked.
“Sometime one week, sometime more. Now in Iran, maybe the letters stop. You write to Azi?”
“Yes.”
“Good. I write too, but your letter more important. I think she will be unhappy. Happy to see mother, but unhappy with bullshit. Is right word?”
“Yes, that’s probably the perfect word. I still don’t understand why she left.”
“Well, her father marry again is real reason.”
“Yes, she told me. I don’t understand that at all. I guess her mother wanted her to come home and take care of her,” I said flatly. “When my father died my mother fell apart. She wanted me to take his place, to take care of her, to take over the restaurant, insurance, investments, finances, everything. I had to drop out of school—that was in January—and live at home until school started again in the fall.”
“I sorry, Jay,” Nadia said, reaching across the table and patting my hand.
“Thanks. That’s part of the reason I didn’t go home for Christmas.” I remembered one scene in which my mother sat on the living room floor surrounded by family photos, crying, begging me to stay, and when I tried to leave the room she crawled after me, grabbing at my ankles. I shook my head to clear it. “Things are a little better now.”
“Good. But really Azi’s mother not want her come home; she want Azi stay in United States to be safe, to get education and good job. But her father don’t pay now, and Sadegh, you know Sadegh?” I nodded. “Sadegh say all people in Iran think United States is in conspiracy with Shah to attack Iran.”
“That’s crazy. The Shah has already left the States, he’s sick, what kind of conspiracy could we be planning?”
“I think they are crazy also. I love U.S.” She got up, went to a cabinet, and brought out some Time-Life books on American culture. “See, I buy these. But I am Kuwaiti, not Iranian, and not prisoner of SAVAK. You know SAVAK?”
“They’re like the Iranian CIA, right?”
“Yes. They torture many people—the Ayatollah’s son is tortured.”
I remembered my argument with my students. I wondered how they were handling their contacts with Americans and relationships with their families. I wondered how the boys were doing down in Florida. An image flashed through my mind of Steve Martin and Dan Ayckroyd on Saturday Night Live, two wild and crazy guys looking for American foxes. I could see Abbas and Wahab walking along Daytona Beach, dressed in their customary polyester slacks and white dress shirts and black shoes, stopping to ask every pair of sunbathing girls if they wanted to have sex. I laughed, half out loud. Nadia looked at me curiously, probably wondering what I found funny about SAVAK. “I was just thinking about the boys in Florida,” I said. “Do you think they’ll find some American girls?”
“Oh no. Maybe some fifteen-year-old girl, like they find here in mall, who want to go out because her mother don’t let her, and the boys her age don’t have car.”
“Do they know there are laws against having sex with girls under eighteen?”
“No sex. They only drive and drink some beer and kiss maybe. And maybe they try to touch some boob.”
This time I laughed full out. “Where did you learn to talk that way, Nadia?”
“What? I say it wrong?”
“No, you said it right. Do you date American men?”
“No, no,” she answered, her tone changing, becoming almost sad. “Last year I had American boyfriend, but he dump me. Is right word?”
“Yes. I’m sorry.” And now, here she was cooped up by herself in Columbia over the holidays, afraid to go out and certainly lonely. “Why don’t I go home and change,” I said, “and I’ll come back in an hour and we can go get some food. I only have a few dollars, but I’ll take you to Hardees. How about it?�
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She hesitated.
“I’m talking fifty-nine cent cheeseburgers—it won’t be like a date,” I added, trying to make the invitation more casual.
“What it will be?” she asked seriously.
“I don’t know. A cheap lunch. A cheap lunch together.”
She smiled and said, “In Kuwait, lunch together, cheap or no cheap, is date.”
“Okay then, let’s call it a cheap lunch date.”
“O-kay,” she said, sounding a lot like Azi. “But we talk all time about Azi.”
“It’s a deal.”
Nadia refused to let me be lonely and spirited me through that long blank week after Christmas that most people filled with their families. We spent part of every day together, watching TV, sneaking into Riverbanks Zoo, riding bikes, and walking on campus. Having grown up in a city in a desert, she loved the seasons and trees, especially what she called the “grandfathers,” the hundred-year-old oaks and tulip poplars. She even wanted to go jogging with me and bought herself some new running shoes, and a pair for me. When I protested she said, “I buy one, get one half price, after Christmas sale, so don’t blow your whistle.”
Nadia was a generous, affectionate companion, but she couldn’t replace Azi. Sometimes she’d call to suggest we do something, and I’d make up an excuse. I tried to read, watched TV, but sleep was what I did best—one night I slept fourteen hours, and all the next day I wanted to go back to bed.
When the boys returned from Daytona Beach, she didn’t need me as much, and I began to withdraw again. But one evening she invited me to join her and the boys at her place for the invention of a Kuwaiti pizza. I thought we’d make for awkward company and said so, but Nadia assured me they’d behave.
I went early to help Nadia get ready, but she didn’t need me—the apartment was clean and spicy-fragrant from a pot of sauce bubbling on the stove. I took her a bottle of cheap wine that I’d had sitting around, and she thanked me but said she probably wouldn’t serve it to the boys because some of them, like many Muslims, thought the Koran forbade it. She’d looked up the verses that were usually quoted in the argument, and she was sure they did not forbid alcohol, and she was sure most of the boys drank, but she didn’t want to take a chance.
Abbas, Wahab, and Saad arrived late but bearing gifts, flowers for Nadia and a poster from Florida for me. They insisted I open it on the spot, so I unrolled it to reveal a naked woman, painted silver, rising from a pile of silver coins. Abbas said, “We see this and we think, ‘Mr. Nickel!” Surprised and flattered, I laughed, thanked them, and shook their hands. All was forgiven, I thought, but Saad still wouldn’t look me in the eye. However, Nadia’s garrulous cordiality took over, wove its spell around us, and by the time we sat down to eat, we were telling stories and laughing even though the humor didn’t always translate across cultures. The pizza didn’t turn out very well—the crust was hard and the sauce had a mysterious ingredient that argued with the goat cheese—but Nadia also served salad, yogurt, fruit, and pastries, so we had plenty of food and a lively time hearing about the boys’ wild and crazy misadventures in Florida.
Then the conversation turned naturally to the differences in sexual morality here and in their countries. Nadia took it upon herself to defend the rights of Mideast women to be equal partners in dating and marriage. Soon we had a debate bouncing back and forth across the kitchen table—I felt as if I’d heard it before, right here with Azi two weeks earlier. This time I had a greater stake in the dispute, but I deferred to Nadia who spoke only in English for my benefit, although the boys spoke more Arabic and Farsi as they got more angry. Nadia said, “Women should not be the slaves for men. My father treat my mother like the dirt—he slap her and lock her in her room when he is mad. Is this right?”
Saad jumped up and said, “Yes, man must to have control over woman. Give me Koran, I show you.”
“I don’t have it.”
Saad looked as if he couldn’t have heard her correctly. He asked again, “Where is Koran?”
“I don’t have Koran here. I am Christian like my mother, she is Lebanese. My father is Kuwaiti, Muslim, but I am Christian. I have Bible. You want to see Bible?” Without waiting for an answer, she stood up as if she were going to look for it, but she stayed put and kept talking: “That is your problem—you want for world to respect Islam but you don’t respect other religion. You think Koran is word of God, but Koran is written by men, Bible too, and both say one thing in one place and opposite thing in other place.” Saad jumped up and shouted at her. I thought he might physically attack her, so I stood up too and moved between them with my hands raised. He stepped forward so that his chest bumped mine. Surprising both of us, I pushed him, not hard, but firmly enough so that he had to take a couple of steps back. In his black eyes I could see his righteous rage battle with vestiges of civility, and he might’ve charged me, but his buddies had stood too and were at his sides, holding his arms, urging him to sit and calm down. Instead he shrugged them off, fell forward to his knees, prostrated himself on the carpet, and mumbled Allah something. Later Nadia explained that it was part of the Shahada, the Islamic profession of faith. The other boys repeated in Arabic, “Allah-u Akbar”—God is most Great. Nadia sat still, respectful but unmoved. Then Saad got up, pointed at her, then me, shouted, and stomped out.
The drama broke up the party. We told the boys to follow Saad and try to cool him down, and I stayed to help clean up.
“You feel o-kay, Jay? I think you are in the dump.”
“I’m all right. I don’t like to argue with the boys. How about you?”
“I am glad the boys are back, and I like to argue with Saad—he is such jerk, and he don’t know nothing. How you like poster?”
“I like it. I’m going to put it up in my bedroom when I get home.”
She smiled. “O-kay, but don’t think too sexy. Azi will be jealous.”
“Do you think I’ll ever get a letter from her?”
“Yes, I am sure.”
“Insha’ Allah,” I said.
“Hey, you say that good.”
“Thanks. And thanks for the party. It was fun, even without alcohol. But next time I’m bringing wine, beer, maybe even bourbon—maybe Saad’ll loosen up a little.”
“Good idea, but he won’t come.”
“Even better.”
On the way home I thought about that phrase, Insha’ Allah. I’d said it to Nadia just to show off, but I remembered it because I liked it, and I liked it not because I believed that God has a plan and everything happens for a reason, but because of the opposite, because I believed that Chance rules our lives, and “the will of God” and Chance are just about the same.
CHAPTER 4
January 1980, the new year, the new decade, arrived grimly, the whole country held hostage, not just the fifty-three locked in the American embassy in Iran for the eighth week, but all of us locked by our inability to do anything. January, the hungry month, when December’s salary runs out two weeks before the next check comes. The gray month, when the colored lights of Christmas are all put away and the dry, stripped trees are dragged to the curbs.
One night after the news, which reported that the Soviet Union had invaded Afghanistan—what was that about, and how would it affect the situation in Iran?—and also that the Secretary General of the U.N. had visited the Revolutionary Council in Tehran, hoping to resolve the crisis, but had failed—I tried to call Azi. I got as far as a foreign operator, but she didn’t speak English, and all I could do was say the name of Azi’s father and give the address I’d written to. The operator said something, I repeated the name and address, she repeated her statement, I repeated the name and address, and she hung up.
Richard returned and invited me over on a Sunday afternoon while Emily and the baby were out. I was happy to see him, shook his hand and pulled him into a brother hug. Then we did the guy thing: we popped a couple of beers, he put a bag of chips and a jar of salsa on the coffee table, we sat on the couch
with our feet up and turned on a football playoff game even though neither of us was all that interested. “So, Nicky, how’s the poppy princess?”
Richard was third generation Mexican-American, had thick dark hair, a wide, sympathetic face, and happy eyes; he spoke English with humor and a hybrid Mex-Tex-South Carolina accent. He called me Nicky for Nichols, or Mano for hermano. I called him Ricky Ricardo, or Wetback, or Rich, especially when he asked me for change for the vending machine at school. “Didn’t I tell you?” I said. “She had to go back to Iran before Christmas, and I’ve been moping around ever since.”
“When’s she coming back?”
“I don’t think she is. She has family problems, in addition to the political bullshit.” I remembered Nadia using that apt word.
“Damn, Mano, I wish I’d known—I would’ve invited you to go to Texas with us—you could’ve been our babysitter. You could’ve met el Padre himself.” Richard’s father was a Catholic priest in San Antonio, a champion of migrant workers, and a collector of fables. Rich liked to make fun of him, his Don Quixote nature, but clearly he had tremendous respect for the man. “And you could’ve met Aunt Tequila—she lives with us now, and she’s a hoot.”
“Really, you have an Aunt Tequila?”
“That’s what we call her, Tia Tequila, even to her face, because she likes to”—he raised his beer to his mouth and drank.
“I’m sorry I missed it.”
“So what’s the latest over there in I-ran?”
I gave him a brief summary of the gambits and dodges of diplomacy as I understood them, and added, “They’re just playing with us. They know Carter’s a pacifist at heart and isn’t about to go to war over this. I also think they’re making it up as they go and don’t know what to do. But they’re having a presidential election later in the month, so maybe things’ll change.”
“Ah, the stupidity of optimism—good for you.”
“It’s all I’ve got.”
“So what have you been doing besides moping? Don’t say studying.”
