by Donia Bijan
The days were growing longer now, but in the short days of winter the customers arrived sooner to leave the somber streets for the light in the café. Like children being called to dinner by the plume of smoke, a hand beckoning over the rooftops, they arrived one by one, two by two, their faces stung from the cold air. In the courtyard the heady odor of onions and grilled meat converged, and through the half open door they stumbled in like drunken sailors, bumping into one another to reach a table. If a regular didn’t show up, Karim was sent to look for him.
For Zod, Café Leila was an ongoing opera where from his vantage point he felt privy to the secret lives of these men who loosened their shirt buttons and rolled up their sleeves to play a part in his theater. He lamented the absence of women, who came less frequently, finding the hejab oppressive and the watchful eyes of the gendarmes loitering the streets looking for an excuse to antagonize them prohibitive. Sometimes families came with wives and grandmothers and daughters and sisters, and when they did his eyes lit up like lanterns and he clapped his hands in the air like a wedding party had arrived.
The world changed around Café Leila, but the life that had gone on there since the 1930s continued. Where there were once merchants to their left and right, there now stood mostly uninhabited buildings gazing vacantly at one another. Dusty storefronts with remnants of their merchandise—a tennis shoe, cans of old film, a bicycle tire—told of lives that had moved on. The only ones who remained were the old doctor in the two-story house (his family long gone abroad), the grocer who sold Ala his tea and cigarettes, the kindergartners who went home at noon, and Zod in his tidy café with its marble floor and ladder-back chairs, opened nearly eighty years ago by his father, Yanik Yadegar, a Russian émigré who had once trained in the kitchens of the Hotel Astoria in St. Petersburg.
In the 1930s Yanik brought blinis and apple charlottes, beef stroganoff and kulich to Tehran, opening the first confectionary with a garden café. He came with his wife, Nina, who spooned cinnamon-scented ground beef and onions into delicate piroshkies and learned to cook Persian food by trial and error, nourishing her family and customers with a generous spirit, mingling delicately with neighbors, and learning to speak Farsi. To steady their leap across borders, Yanik changed his surname from Yedemsky to Yadegar, and planted a small orchard of pomegranate, almond, and mulberry trees that would shade the terrace tables. Year after year they blossomed, filling the air with their sweet smell, regardless of political turmoil or the events on the street.
Before a second story was built, before the children were born and the dream of an adjacent hotel was realized, Yanik and Nina slept like two stowaways in the storeroom, snuggling between pickling jars and burlap bags of rice and pinto beans, with their few possessions neatly folded in a cardboard box fashioned into a cupboard. There was no bath, so twice a week they set off by doroshke (a horse-drawn carriage) to the nearest hamam, where Yanik smoked qalyan (water pipes) in the men’s section and Nina drank tea with the women after emerging pink-skinned from the steam room and the rough scrub-down by a dour-faced attendant. It was on the wooden benches of the communal baths that the couple endeared themselves to the locals; a gregarious Yanik grew an impressive handlebar mustache and sang Russian ballads to fathers and sons who welcomed him with a warm rumble of applause, and Nina brought tea cakes to grandmothers, aunts, and young girls already enchanted with this fair-skinned beauty. From them she learned how to haggle, how to make yogurt, when to pickle the eggplant and cucumbers and garlic the villagers brought to town on donkeys. When December brought snows and their street lost power, they learned about Yalda, the Persian winter solstice celebration, and they lit the café with candles, filled ceramic bowls with pomegranates, dried fruits, and nuts, and cooked enormous pots of hearty ash reshteh, a thick noodle soup stirred with whey. It was a night so cheerful and memorable, full of storytelling and feasting, that for years it remained a neighborhood tradition to gather at Café Leila for the solstice.
Eventually, brick by brick, living quarters were added, a porcelain pedestal sink and footed tub were installed, but Yanik and Nina continued to frequent the hamam and sneak into the café’s storage room to grope and make quick love, finding comfort in their original nest, always cool and dim against the heat between them. It would not have surprised Zod to find out he was conceived on a bed of lentils. His parents once dreamed of a better life and Iran folded itself around them, offering sanctuary where they could raise their three sons and work and live with dignity.
In the old days when cities like Tehran and Kabul boasted cinemas and tennis clubs, Café Leila was home to intellectuals. The fifties and sixties seemed filled with possibility, and Yanik welcomed students from the university, writers, musicians, poets, and journalists, parties of guests who gathered here every afternoon and stayed long into the night. He envisioned the ambiance of the elegant cafés he’d seen in Budapest and Vienna and loved to sit in the glass-fronted cubbyhole that served as an office, watching his customers dig into his wife’s baklava with a fork and knife. He bought copies of their books to display on the shelves and asked for their autographs, and if they liked a dish, he named it after them so it was no longer borscht, but Nima’s soup or Forough’s stuffed cabbage and Sohrab’s cream puffs. Their regular visits sustained him—wanting more than just a restaurant, he created a cultural hub where his sons learned to play chess and backgammon with the patrons, to serve and sweep, to roll filo dough and fry blinis with rose petal jam under Nina’s gaze.
Of the three, it was Zod, her middle child, who took to the alchemy his mother practiced in the kitchen. She was self-taught, relying on intuition to bring ingredients together and finding ways to honor them. Where Yanik insisted on his formal training, an acrobat expecting to be applauded for his skill, Nina improvised and laughed at her mistakes, which were often her triumphs. If she forgot to add mashed potatoes to the cutlet dish, the vegetables were folded into crepe batter for a thin potato cake she sprinkled with chives and fresh cream. Mostly, it was the way things were always new that kept Yanik and Nina open and purposeful—there was no end to their learning. They made a good life for their children in a country where they weren’t raised and would never leave, but such a peaceful existence would not be a given for their grandchildren.
AT LAST IN HIS bedroom with the door closed, Zod sat by the window with Noor’s letter in his lap, the sun sinking away behind the trees, an ice-cold hand seizing his heart. Somewhere, beyond the borders of the city, beyond the continent and an ocean, in a place his hands could not reach, his daughter sat in darkness with a broken heart. It used to worry him to think of his children as strangers in a strange land, but each time they asked to come home, he patiently explained his desire to give them a better future until they stopped asking.
Zod had always felt that when you first become a parent something happens that makes you see and hear as if you’re a newborn, too. In the first year of his daughter’s life, he found himself looking at the world through her eyes and living in it as if he didn’t already know it, like they were both creatures with wide-open eyes and shaky limbs. Her every move was as new to him as it was to her, from the slow grasp of her rattle to her small sneeze. When she screamed, he screamed. When she hiccupped, he hiccupped, so that she would never be alone with her new sounds. How did he ever let her out of his sight?
Three
Noor was glad to see Lily bring a friend home from school. They had been living in the rented apartment in Pacific Heights for six weeks. Lily’s bedroom was much smaller than her one at the house and Noor had worried that she wouldn’t be comfortable having anyone over. From Lily’s room came the ripple of girls’ laughter and Noor smiled to herself as she prepared a snack of fruit and pound cake and carried it to them on a tray.
Laura’s bright, open face, and the way she eyed the tray so eagerly, encouraged Noor to linger a moment and she bent to kiss the crown on Lily’s head. Lily looked quickly over her shoulder, her dark eyelashes fluttering in dist
ress. Undeterred, Noor lingered behind her questioning Laura about school.
“Mom! Enough already!” Lily said, exasperated. Noor felt flattened. She smiled a tight smile, mumbled to Laura how nice it was to see her again, and retreated.
What seemed odd to Noor was how she thought in these few weeks they would become closer, not slip apart. Just the day before, Noor’s best friend Nassim—practically Lily’s godmother—was visiting from out of town and Lily barely acknowledged her. All of Noor’s offers of mother-daughter outings and special treats were thrown back at her, and all week she watched Lily willfully dump the contents of her lunch sack into the trash.
“Don’t make me lunch,” she cried, “You try to make it too fancy . . . I hate those stupid little fruit cups, all brown and mushy. I’m not three years old!”
Sparks of anger were understandable in a teenager, especially with her home turned inside out, and Noor was making every effort to maintain a sense of calm and security, to keep the channels open, but Lily’s hostility was making it difficult.
When at last Laura went home, Noor asked Lily to come to the kitchen.
“What was all that about? What’s wrong with me asking Laura a few questions? I’ve missed her,” she said, leaning into the counter to study Lily.
“Because you’re embarrassing me with all your questions!” Lily’s hand flew up so abruptly that she knocked over a glass of cranberry juice and made no attempt to clean up the red pool gathering on the counter.
Noor straightened up and moved closer with a dish towel.
“Lily, I think it’s okay for me to talk to your friends.”
“Fine. But you don’t have to ask them ten million questions. Can I please go now?”
“Not yet. Can you tell me why you were so rude to Aunt Nassi yesterday? You didn’t even say hello. How could you ignore her? She brought you a lovely gift,” Noor said softly.
“I don’t want that cheesy bag and I can’t stand her either.”
“Why? Where is this coming from?”
“She’s a phony, that’s why, with her big hair and fake boobs.”
What put her out? thought Noor. Lily had always adored her glamorous auntie.
“She’s my friend, Lily. And yours. Listen, I know you’re shy. I used to be shy, too—”
But Lily cut her off. “I AM NOT SHY! STOP! I just don’t like her, okay? What do you want from me?”
“I want you to greet people politely! And please stop shouting.”
Every day was hard. Today, harder still. Noor felt so hollowed out and tired she wished she could put her head down on the counter and leave it all for another time.
“Sometimes I don’t like some of your friends but don’t I still chauffeur them around and buy them birthday gifts and treat them to lunch? Huh? I’m still polite to them.”
Lily turned her back to leave then changed her mind. “Then you’re a phony just like Auntie Nassim . . . pretending to like people you can’t stand.” She seemed suddenly relaxed as if she’d finally succeeded in ridding herself of something lodged in her throat.
“That’s enough, Lily. I think you’ve said enough.” Noor clutched a damp, pink-stained dishcloth in both hands to stop herself from throwing something and Lily slouched away.
TWO MONTHS INTO THEIR stay at the apartment, the furnishings were still spare. Noor had planned to look for a condo once the divorce was settled, even though Nelson had offered to move out so they could stay in the house. Nassim suggested she at least take some of the good furniture, but Noor didn’t want to clutter the small space with remnants of her old life.
One day, when she knew Nelson was at work, she did go back with a few empty boxes to collect some dishes and pots and pans. Standing in the kitchen, the bright light of a May afternoon streaming through the skylight over her old stove, breathing in the scent of a thousand meals she had prepared here for her family, the atmosphere was so rich with memories that she pulled open a drawer and reached for her knife to carve out her heart and leave it on the kitchen counter for Nelson, the heart doctor.
Instead she left empty boxes like coffins on the scrubbed tiles of the graveyard that used to be her kitchen. Wanting nothing to do with that place, she took inventory of all their possessions, remembered how much everything meant to her, and decided to leave it all behind, except for a moth-eaten navy blue sweater that had belonged to Nelson.
That night Lily said, “Are you wearing Dad’s sweater?” Noor actually preferred her daughter’s sarcasm to silence and sulking. She hadn’t wanted anything else from that life, but the sweater reminded her of Nelson’s warmth. She wasn’t proud of it, but so what? It was just a sweater and she was always cold. “It’s way too big, but it suits you,” Lily said and Noor took one step forward with an urge to hug her, but Lily turned away.
How steep was the penalty for being a jilted wife? Noor was a good nurse, calm and meticulous, but since the separation there was a tight-lipped tension in the air at the hospital, apparent in the demeanors of the staff, the patients, and even their visitors. She could sense it. It was there—the humiliation, the pause to blink and look away, and now she counted her profession among her losses. To work at the same hospital as Nelson was untenable.
After lunch one afternoon, she went to the locker room and collected her extra pair of shoes, clean uniform, mismatched earrings and hairpins, tea bags and a coffee mug, photos of patients with their cats and dogs, and went into the break room to say good-bye. Seeing her standing in the doorway, her arms filled with her lamentable belongings, they gathered around her, and for one brief moment the indignity of it all washed over them. In the end she could not look into their eyes. What little she had to show after twenty years of nursing fit into one box.
Back in the apartment, she called Nassim. “What should I do now?” Noor and her best friend, both motherless, had long ago become each other’s surrogate mom. They met in nursing school at Mills College when Nassim, a year younger, had arrived with a wild-eyed look Noor recognized. Dark and petite, she steered clear of the cafeteria and darted along the hallways pretending she was late for something, all the while checking her watch. One day Noor asked her to lunch, instantly becoming guardian and interpreter to this newcomer who sat safely squeezed in a booth with her new friend. They made it through those precarious post-hostage-crisis years by faking French citizenship and rolling their R’s, celebrating many firsts together — tacos and Thanksgiving and driver’s ed. But while Noor groped her way through, Nassim would metamorphose, leaving nursing and losing her rich accent to become a television broadcaster in Phoenix, where she lived with her husband, Charlie, and their twins. Her very Iranianness, aside from her alluring eyes, uprooted and dried like dead thistle.
“I looked at all those people and it was awful how they pitied me,” said Noor. “They all said how well I was looking, as if I’d been sick.”
Nassim seemed relieved to hear that Noor had left her job. “Oh, thank goodness! Why should you work? Get a good lawyer and make that son of a bitch pay.” She offered the names of some “hotshot” attorneys. “Don’t let it go too long, Noor.” She sounded disappointed that Noor did not want to go after Nelson.
Noor’s voice broke when she tried to defend herself. “I don’t know . . . I haven’t thought that far.” What lay at the bottom of her abyss was something else, something that could not be mended—not with money, not with vengeance.
One Saturday afternoon, upon returning home from the grocery store, the sight of her father’s letter in the mailbox quickened her heartbeat. The staircase under the portico was empty, so she sat on the bottom step and ripped it open right there. She wasn’t prepared for the wonder of it.
Noore cheshmam (light of my eyes),
You won’t believe it now, but please trust me and the light that is inside of you.
Pack a bag for you and Lily and come visit your old father.
Until I hold you . . . one thousand kisses,
Your Baba, Zod
AT THE APARTMENT THERE was nothing for Noor to do except boil water for tea and drink it on the fire escape, where she perched on the ledge overlooking the marina, a view that had once lured her to San Francisco overshadowed by an eagerness at the thought of how soon she would see her father. Noor loved the city; she had experienced her first sense of a future here, but all happiness had seeped out, and from the moment she read her father’s letter, Noor began planning their visit to coincide with Lily’s summer break.
Now that she was leaving, the fog, the stale air that had made it hard to breathe these past few months, lifted, and she knew that when they returned to San Francisco, it would be as if they had never lived here, with the possibility of a fresh start. Once an amateur tour guide to its hilly neighborhoods, these past few weeks she felt like a tourist, taking snapshots of the Golden Gate Bridge and buying gifts and souvenirs for her father and all the people who kept Café Leila running.
Noor had kept her father’s letters dating as far back as 1984, re-reading them to stem the gulf between them. Awful penmanship belied funny anecdotes about neighbors, customers, cooks, and grocers, failed stews and recipes. Light of my eyes, they began, I have just taught Soli to make borscht! Yesterday I bought beets with big, glossy leaves still caked with wet soil. Naneh washed them in the tub until her arthritis flared, but she’s promised to make dolmas with the leaves. After we closed Soli tucked the beets under coals and roasted them all night. When I woke up I smelled caramel and winter and smoke. It made me so hungry, I peeled a hot, slippery one for breakfast and licked the ashes and charred juices off my burnt fingertips. Noor, bruised from betrayal, remembered borscht, remembered stirring sour cream into the broth and making pink paisley shapes with the tip of her spoon, always surprised by the first tangy taste, each time anticipating sweetness. Her mother had called it a soup for the brokenhearted.
