The Last Days of Café Leila: A Novel

by Donia Bijan

  passed;

  Pasaron una, dos, tres, cuatro,

  One, two, three, four, five, six cinco, seis semanas;

  Y aquel barquito, y aquel barquito,

  And that tiny boat, and that tiny boat,

  Y aquel barquito navegó.

  And that tiny boat sailed.

  On the telephone with her father earlier that day, she had cried so hard she couldn’t bring in enough air. “Lily,” he cooed, “mi hija, no llores (don’t cry, my daughter). I promise, if you meet Mom halfway, you will gain her trust and show that you’ve made an effort.” From the time she was little, Nelson knew how to soothe his daughter. He was good that way, never sparing comfort, addressing problems straight on. The few words he offered softened her and Lily resolved to take his advice. She would make an effort.

  Feeling a chill, she reached for her sweatshirt and pressed her face into it. Just touching it made her want to cry. It smelled sweet and good but it wasn’t hers anymore. Deeply tired but restless, she kicked off her sheets and went to listen at the door. All was silent. It was late, past midnight.

  Stepping barefoot down the creaky stairs, past the coatrack in the hallway, she followed pinpricks of light to the kitchen, where she found her grandfather with a mug of tea in one hand, gazing into the distance. His face lit up when he saw her, as if he’d been waiting, and he didn’t seem at all surprised to find her standing in the doorway. Behind him the kettle gurgled over a blue flame. The table was laid for breakfast with white plates, silver butter knives, sugar cubes and jam in glass bowls, teaspoons, and folded napkins. It wasn’t formal, but homey and effortless, in anticipation of their next meal.

  “Come,” said Zod softly, motioning to a chair.

  She sat down and joined him, tucking her bare legs beneath her nightgown. Zod poured them tea. His hands were trembling but he managed to keep the spout over her cup without spilling. He offered sugar, holding a finger up.

  “Yek? (One?)” Then two fingers, “Do?” Their first lesson in numbers.

  “Yek,” she replied shyly, dropping a sugar cube into her tea and stirring it with a doll-size spoon.

  Lily sat tilted towards her grandfather at the far end of the kitchen where they could hear the steady chorus of cicadas through the back door, and that voice inside of her intent on running, leaping into the dark streets and away, grew quiet and sleepy.

  Six

  Everything in this house was so familiar to Noor that she easily made her way through it without a light. Except for the trees, which were now overgrown with heavy branches clinging to one another in a dense web. She knew where to look for a spoon, a box of matches, or a washcloth, things she hadn’t sought out for thirty years.

  Everyone would be up before long to resume the business of the household—Zod and Naneh Goli competing to light the stove, Soli rushing to the baker to stand in a long line—but she pulled on an old cardigan against the morning chill and ventured downstairs into the tangled garden. The birds were just beginning to stir in the trees, before the faint light of dawn. Noor was glad for this half hour to rouse her nerve, since each day felt newly hatched and she was the fledgling, pausing on the moss-covered swing set that supported one end of the clothesline.

  Today she was taking her father to the doctor, although he had refused with a thousand excuses. But after dinner with Zod and Lily last week, she had heard Zod dry heaving in the bathroom, and when she knocked on the door he told her to go away. He had eaten almost nothing, and Noor noticed the stiff way he sat at the table, as if in pain, and the waxy color of his face and hands. So the next morning she made an appointment with Dr. Mehran, who seemed relieved to hear from her but was unwilling to say much on the telephone. “It’s best if you come in, miss,” he said.

  In the first bit of morning light, she tripped over her rusty old childhood tricycle trapped beneath the leafy vines that tumbled into the yard. Why did Zod keep this? He had even planted azaleas in an ancient bassinet. This garden contained their history, everything important had happened here.

  Growing up it had been her entire world, an oasis where on hot summer afternoons they drank iced mint sherbets under a canopy of trees, and when the sun went down they ate juicy kebabs on three-feet-long skewers. As the evening wore on, they lit lanterns and the yard acquired depth like a stage. The waiters wheeled out a three-tiered chariot of fruit compotes, rum babas, crème caramel, and charlotte russe, with bottles of liqueurs and digestifs glowing on the lower shelf. Soon after, the music would start. Noor sat on her grandmother’s lap, spooning pistachio ice cream into her mouth with vanilla wafers, while Pari serenaded them. Her brother Mehrdad scrambled up a mulberry tree to take his seat, legs dangling to and fro, capturing moths that fluttered under lanterns and mocking the grown men moved to tears by Pari’s song—his mother’s voice, the first music he ever knew and thought he owned.

  Noor took her first steps here, holding Zod’s hands as he walked backwards. She played hide-and-seek, ducking behind recently washed bedsheets and towels drying shoulder to shoulder on the line. The red tricycle was Mehrdad’s, then hers, and not wanting to give it up, she didn’t learn to ride a bicycle until nearly eight years old. Round and round she pedaled, knees to her chest, pulling odds and ends tied with string to the axle and making such a racket that a bare-chested Yanik would rouse from his afternoon siesta to holler from the bedroom window, “SHOOSH!”

  They were all supposed to take the obligatory nap after the noon meal, but you couldn’t get Noor to stay in her room longer than fifteen minutes. The moment Pari and Zod drifted off, she strapped on a pair of smelly jelly sandals and bolted outside. With her doll, Niloufar, secured to the back, she would make the rounds in the busy world of her imagination. Once she ran over a frog, slicing it in half with the front wheel and letting out a squeal of horror so shrill the entire household came running. The men in boxers, the women in cotton housedresses buttoned haphazardly, raced to the courtyard, thinking that Noor had smashed her skull, only to find two halves of a twitching frog. Yanik scooped it up and threw it into the bushes like he was casting a fruit pit, yelling at Zod, “Get your yardling back inside!” Then he stomped back to his bed with everyone but Pari trailing behind. Pari dropped to one knee to comfort her daughter with birdsong—mimicking their chirps and embellishing their notes so convincingly that the birds, silent for a moment, trilled, Who are you? Where’s your branch? She washed Noor’s face with cold water from a stone basin then took her inside to change into their afternoon dresses.

  Even if they weren’t doing anything but fixing afternoon tea, Pari insisted on a fresh dress after naptime. These were shapely cotton frocks, in shades of custard and pastels, sewn on a Singer from yards of fabric purchased during her travels. One often heard the hum of her sewing machine like a beehive in the bedroom, with the occasional curse when she pricked her thumb. Soon after marrying Zod, Pari learned to sew from her mother-in-law. Nina tied a small red bow around the needle on the sewing machine and patted the seat beside her. For weeks they poured over patterns and made everything from gowns to handkerchiefs in hues of violet and rose. Although Nina was still mourning her lost son, she refused to wear black after the wedding. “We have lost enough, my pearl. We will not lose our color,” she declared—consenting only to black armbands for the men. Always generous with Pari, she cried, “You light up my eyes! You deserve to be at the center of our big, noisy household,” each time her daughter-in-law paused to question a gift, another bolt of creamy silk, a gold thimble, a red velvet pincushion.

  Appreciating Pari’s quiet company, Nina stitched her journey with Yanik from Samara to Iran in measured swaths. “We left in the night with one suitcase and Niki’s coat on my back. We wore all our clothes, used our wool socks as mittens, and stuffed our boots with newspaper to keep our feet dry. I ripped the lining in his coat and filled it with his mother’s recipes but I didn’t tell him until we got here, otherwise he would’ve yelled at me for being foolish. Of course, now he thanks me
. I still make her kulich and nazuki.”

  “Where are the recipes now?” asked Pari.

  “For a long time they stayed inside the overcoat. Then he bought this café. He wanted me to help out, but I didn’t know how to cook. So I ripped open the lining and showed him the pages from his mother’s notebook—everything written in her tiny, stingy print. He wept for a long time, so much left behind. My eyes stayed dry. I was glad to be away from his family. His mother’s hand in the kitchen was delicious, but her tongue was a sword. She was a coarse woman, thick and lumpy, but she could spin gold out of a turnip, I tell you. From a dusty root in her cellar, she made soups and pickles and casseroles. Everyone was starving, but Lena could stretch a wormy apple fifty ways.”

  “Did you use her recipes?” Pari tried to follow the story.

  “Bah! Her instructions were harsh, like she was standing behind me at the stove with a stick yelling, No! No! Not like that! Too much pepper! What a mess! I was only eighteen. Your age, for goodness sake! At first I read and memorized each one. Then I locked them in a drawer and went in the kitchen to make something. But still I could hear her shrill. Whatever I touched tasted sour. Too much vinegar. Your mother raised you in a pickle barrel! Then one day I bought fabric to upholster seat cushions for the chairs Yanik bought for the café—a beautiful red brocade. I took Lena’s recipes and sewed them inside the seat cushions.”

  “You mean there are recipes inside the chairs?” Pari gasped.

  “Pearl, there’s a recipe under every ass!”

  They fell into stitches and Yanik, walking by, listened bewildered and breathed in their delight from the crack under the door. This is how, in the long stretch of those gray afternoons, Nina grieved for her firstborn by turning her attention to this good-natured girl Davoud had chosen and left for his little brother. The hollows beneath her cheekbones deepened and her brow furrowed, but inside Nina never hardened. “You are my melon,” Yanik would whisper at night when he clung to her back, “Tough on the outside, soft and sweet inside.”

  Although Pari frequently invited Noor to look at dress patterns, Noor was not interested in sewing, preferring to help her father in the café. She felt her work there was important, refilling saltshakers and folding napkins, setting a table for her dolls with a clutch of tiny silver ashtrays as plates. Still, she adored the matching dresses Pari made for her and Niloufar.

  For weeks after the frog incident, Noor wandered sheepishly through the yard, searching for the remains of the dismembered creature to give him a proper burial. Little did she know that her status with Mehrdad was elevated for having performed this mucky dissection and he took great pleasure in sharing with her his collection of matchboxes, where trapped beetles, grasshoppers, horseflies, and roaches with clipped wings resided. Her attempts to mend them with glue and set them free infuriated Mehrdad, who would then sneak them into her shoe or leave them disabled on her pillow like turndown chocolates. He teased that he had swallowed the frog bits and she imagined slimy webbed feet caught in his throat and ran screaming to Pari. Two years apart, at times a perfect big brother if a neighborhood bully tormented her, he was mostly aloof to his sister’s willfulness. When Noor called to tell him about their trip to Iran, it wasn’t to ask for his opinion and he knew to hold his tongue.

  AS MORNING BROKE, SOLI wandered outside to get his motorbike when he saw Noor on the swing looking up into the trees, lost in the latticework of the branches. He asked if she’d like him to accompany them to the doctor and Noor said no, better he stay to prepare for lunch. She rose reluctantly to go inside, where she found Zod at the kitchen table silently drinking tea by the light of a table lamp while Naneh Goli, in her flowered chador, hovered over him as if he would be late for school.

  Relieved that her presence didn’t interrupt the rhythm of their days, Noor stood behind her father’s chair and scanned the bleak but orderly kitchen: its crockery and blackened frying pans on freestanding shelves, a hulking refrigerator humming in a corner where a smaller one had once stood, the chipped porcelain sink above a curtained dark space underneath, an oval mirror with a small shelf that held Naneh Goli’s comb and a pot of cracked rouge, the square enamel stove pressing its shoulders against a wall that was splashed red and brown, like graffiti left by all the cooks who had fed this family. This kitchen was turned inside out, its contents hung from hooks and nails, ladles and sieves within easy reach—an openness in stark contrast to the discreet cabinetry of her American kitchen with its quiet drawers and hidden trash bins.

  Zod patted the hand Noor put on his shoulder and smiled up at her. His skin was yellow, but how distinguished was his white-haired head and the scent of his cologne. Dressed to go into town in dark gray pants and a black sweater vest, he pushed his chair back and said, “Let the day begin,” displaying an outward calm she knew was for her benefit. “Noore cheshmam, come have your breakfast, and then we will call a taxi.”

  It was remarkable how quickly she switched back to tea when for so long it had been a strong cup of coffee that made it possible to face the day. For sixteen years Nelson carried a thick café con leche to her bedside, and she had mistaken his affection for ardor. Naneh Goli motioned for Noor to sit down, then lifted a soft-boiled egg from the pot bubbling on the stove. What consolation this morning ritual here, the warm bread, this sunny yolk, the gurgling samovar, the souvenir saltshaker from a long-ago voyage. Everything in its place, the furnishings just as they were when she left, the front hall already filling with odors of onions browning for stew.

  How did Naneh Goli manage to keep the cold out, tend the chickens, grow vegetables? she wondered. How did they maintain this household day after day when she wasn’t even sure how to live the next hour, how to wake her daughter, how to dress to go outside of their compound, how to talk to ordinary people on the street?

  Lily was awake, winding herself up to approach the klatch downstairs. Like the person lurking in the corner of a theater just behind the very last row, near the exit, everyone was aware of her but went on about their business. They listened for movements upstairs—it didn’t help that the toilet rolled like thunder when she yanked the pull chain—while she bathed in the tub with the handheld showerhead, which had been a nuisance until she learned to kneel and adjust the spray at just the right angle to wash her hair.

  Reluctantly a new sweatshirt and jeans were pulled from the armoire, still smelling of American detergent. Watermelon lip gloss was applied, black Converse high-tops laced. Downstairs, all heads looked up when her bedroom door groaned. She carried an iPod in her pocket with earphones looped around her neck—a precaution in case Noor tried to engage her in a conversation about her feelings, launching into speeches about how it was okay to be sad or angry, or how much it meant to her that Lily was giving their “adventure” a chance.

  The sight of her at the kitchen door was too much for Naneh Goli—she simply could not hold back from gushing a string of endearments that spun around a stunned Lily. To Lily, this ancient person, all bumps and barnacles, was possessed, and she was slightly afraid of her. The others stood gazing, elated as if the curtain had finally fallen and she was joining them backstage for a celebration.

  Zod gave a gentle command to break the spell and suddenly there was a great commotion as Soli cut bread, Naneh Goli poured her tea, Karim pulled a chair forward, and Noor peeled oranges. Lily, in the center of this attention, was compelled to say the only Persian word she knew. Before their departure, in a lame attempt to teach her a few words, Noor had made a chart with words and pictures and attached it to the refrigerator door with magnets. “Merci.” That was an easy one. They were impressed.

  Karim could not keep from staring at her—so exotic was this creature before him, with honey eyes and glossy lips like a candy he could lick off her face. It was as if a door had opened and he had walked through it. Everything behind him had fallen into a deep abyss and never again could he retrace his steps to that boy, the one with unruly hair and scraped kneecaps, the kid wi
th fine fuzz above his lips who kicked everything in his path, who caught roaches and mice with bare hands, who sometimes smelled like a wet sheep. What solitude he had lived in. His world expanded with Lily in the kitchen and it was all very new looking. Then, realizing his dirty nails and ugly pants, he was deeply embarrassed and hid behind Soli, his heart beating in big thumps.

  Karim would go to school that day windswept and airborne like a dandelion in the wind. How fortunate that these were the last days before the summer break. His teacher would rap his knuckles with a ruler and he would be grateful for the sharp voice that tethered him to his desk. Friends would admire his shoes, beg for cigarettes stolen from Ala, but Karim would be lost in the task of cleaning his nails with a toothpick. A boy from Mazandaran, raised near the Caspian Sea, delivered to his uncle just days after his village had turned to rubble and swallowed a mother, a father, a baby brother; a boy who had survived the earthquake because he’d gone fishing. Until this moment he had never understood why he’d been spared that morning three years ago when the sound of his baby brother’s cooing in the early morning hours had woken him and sent him racing to the stream.

  The clock said eight fifteen. He desperately wanted to hear Lily say merci again, but Naneh Goli folded a piece of naan around a boiled egg, placed it in his knapsack, and pushed him out the door with a long list of instructions he didn’t hear. All he could think was, I fell in love at eight fifteen on the morning of June 9.

  Later that afternoon he scurried around the kitchen underfoot until Naneh Goli sent him to the storeroom for jam. The cellar, illuminated by a bulb on a string, was like a pharmacy, with shelves of rosewater, orange blossom water, quince syrup, lime syrup, vinegars, and jars of pickled vegetables, all painstakingly labeled in Agha (Mr.) Zod’s shaky script. Karim paused to read the labels but found nothing to ease the knocking in his chest, so he took the last jar of fig preserves for Lily. His Lily jan (dear), Lily rose, Lily shirin (sweet), Lily morning, Lily moon, Lily merci.