by Donia Bijan
He returned to the table with a deep hunger and ate enormously after such a long vigil, loosening his belt to dance with Pari, anesthetized with a dose of joy that would tide him over the next hours. It wasn’t until the last guests staggered home just before dawn and the house creaked and settled into sleep, that he crept to the kitchen and fashioned a splint from a wooden spoon. Thereafter, a crooked finger reminding him that it hadn’t been a dream.
Ten
Morad flew off with Pan Am. They watched him go. Zod did not intend on living a life of reparations. Morad’s intention had been to shame him, to punish him for life, but he turned away too quickly to know that a savage handshake had only released Zod from a compulsory allegiance to a boorish brother who did not love him.
Every morning by seven, Zod was at Nina’s elbow, no longer cross-legged on gunnysacks stirring an empty pot on the floor. Over the years he had memorized his mother’s every move like a chess game, so when she reached for a sieve, swept a pastry brush, folded a piroshki, he didn’t follow because he was already there, her muscle memory traveling through him so that if you stood watching them at the kitchen window, their arms moving in billowy sleeves, it would have looked like a well rehearsed ballet, choreographed until the moment when Nina lifted a cutlet from hot oil with bare hands and Zod yelped from the burn that singed the first two layers of his skin. Nina’s calloused hands, numbed long ago from pushing pots from fire to fire with bare hands, made a dismissive wave towards the icebox where he plunged his purple flesh into its frozen depths.
Back at her side, they rolled yeast dough into transparent sheets to fill with cabbage, ground beef, and onions. She was mostly silent, thinner than ever, her broad behind shrunken now beneath one of the dozens of print smocks sewn with two deep pockets in the front where she kept pencils and tissues and lists. Ancient scars speckled her rough hands but her upper arms remained a creamy white and jiggled with the to and fro of the rolling pin.
Zod, watching from the corner of his eye, afraid of falling behind, grew delirious with hunger but he knew better than to pinch a bite into his mouth, lest his mother smack his hand away. Every time she left a pan of poached birds on the counter, he wanted desperately to steal a wing, to pick at the warm carcass after they’d carved away the meat. The truth is, cooks starve to feed others. Nina never nibbled as she went along, “We set the table. Then we eat. Not now. Now, we work.”
In the thirty years since Yanik had tied an apron around her belly and shown Nina how to separate eggs, she had explored countless recipes, decoded the subtleties of Persian food, its ancient alchemy of sweet and sour, hot and cold, its deference to plants and herbs, soliciting Naneh Goli’s palate to measure and fine-tune. What triumph to turn out a pot of rice with a golden potato tadig—that magical crust beneath the steamed rice. Trial and error taught her which rules to observe and which to rebuff.
“Me, I like lemon, but the recipe always calls for too much or too little,” she explained. “Think of the people you’re cooking for. Learn their passions and adjust without straying too far from the basic rules. Your father eats with one hand on the saltshaker. Goli eats whole preserved lemons like gumdrops. Squeeze a lemon on the salad, add a little salt, but don’t be so keen to kill the lettuce.”
Zod didn’t realize he was training to trust his eyes, ears, and nose to tell him when to lift the lid off a simmering pigeon-and-pomegranate stew and add more molasses, to imagine flavors like layers of colors and know how they interact before squeezing them onto his palette.
Everything in the kitchen of Café Leila had purpose and meaning. It was a room filled with knowledge that Nina, in her grueling devotion, acquired and carved into its walls. From the hooks above the stove to the stone for sharpening knives to the spice cupboard arranged according to heat and subtlety, emerged an efficient pattern, never whimsical or decorative.
Over the years, she allowed herself a small Zenith radio that sat on the windowsill and aired soap operas, and a framed mirror mounted on the wall along with her comb and lipstick in case she had to go into the café. To walk among its pots and casseroles was no different than a stroll through a laboratory. Clean and narrow, with a door leading to the courtyard on one end and another entry on the other providing natural light and a pleasant cross draft.
“You might mean well, son,” Nina would say, shuffling behind Zod like a crab. “Now do it over, please.” She confided in him her share of disasters that outweighed the happy accidents, all the while prodding him to keep his workspace tidy. “No one wants to eat something that came from a mess.”
It was no longer unharried little Sunday lunches prepared in Madame Chabloz’s kitchen for three or four bachelors who forgave his errors, his overcooked lamb gigot, the curdled custard and convivial chaos. There, he had been an earnest boy toiling in a workshop, turning out a delightful hodgepodge of flavors to unconditional enthusiasm. Here, they fed far too many people to indulge in exotic experiments, yet Zod’s eagerness didn’t wither. He became stove-bound, rooted to the tile, good mannered but a little crazy. Like all young cooks, he had a pathological urge to change and revise—ego and curiosity compelled him to alter recipes with mixed results.
Only on Thursday mornings would Zod leave Nina’s side to accompany Naneh Goli to the market. Zod liked dressing for the occasion, shedding his standard uniform of gray flannel trousers with shirtsleeves rolled up for a double-breasted suit, necktie, polished shoes, and fedora, regardless of the weather. Coming downstairs, clean-shaven and dapper, Nina teased that he was on his way to a ball. Yanik had already taken him to the bazaar and introduced him to all the vendors, and Zod felt his attire showed respect.
Nevertheless, the instant the gate closed behind them, a boyish enthusiasm surfaced in Naneh Goli’s presence, and they would stop to sample street food from the little stands that dotted their path. Steam rose from giant roasted sugar beets, wrapped in newspaper and piping hot. A young boy sat on a wooden crate behind his makeshift juice stand, slicing pomegranates with a meat cleaver and squeezing their juice into small plastic cups, his flushed cheeks matching the color of his fruit. Men sat behind charcoal braziers turning ears of corn and fanning skewered liver kebabs they slipped sizzling into pockets of lavash bread with a tangle of cilantro and mint. Ribbons of fruit leather, apricot, plum, tamarind, and cherry, draped like laundry from wires strung between awnings. The two shoppers zigzagged from one stall to the next, with Naneh Goli trotting to keep up with Zod who whirled between the stands, eating as he went, in a frenzy she described as the mad dervish.
At the market it was Naneh Goli who led the way, picking up a quick banter with Mostafa the fruit vendor, who followed her longingly with his sunken eyes, ignoring the clamor of other women. Here, you pointed at what you wanted and Mostafa presumably selected the best for you. Only Goli was allowed to fondle the fruit and he hollered at anyone else who dared touch his peaches. He filled their bags with fat yellow pears and clusters of ruby grapes, all the while maneuvering to brush against Goli’s hand, to catch one glimpse of a small earlobe when her veil slid back.
But Naneh Goli sensed his hunger and was hard with him, taunted him, surveyed the pyramids of oranges with mock disgust and discouraged shoppers behind her from buying them. Her cruelty surprised Mostafa and his mustache drooped, but all he could do was nod gravely to Zod, as if he would understand, before Goli turned away demurely and walked to the butcher.
Zod could not imagine his Naneh in a romance, for she seemed old and obstinate, though she was still in her thirties and quite pretty. Mostafa had been to see Yanik more than once to beg for her hand, and there had been a string of suitors before him: Hamid, the tailor, Kaveh, the barber, Najib, an electrician, all dispatching their mothers to Café Leila where they settled themselves in the salon, making small talk until tea was served and then coming straight to the point, breathlessly embellishing their son’s intelligence and entrepreneurship, the family’s wealth and stature. Naneh Goli overheard these exchanges
and whispered to Nina in disbelieving huffs, “Why? Why would I ever marry that old codger?”
Once, a few years after her young husband’s sudden death, she consented to marry a shopkeeper eighteen years her senior with a good income and two housekeepers. It was arranged with formality and without affection. Nina sewed her a gown, a reception was held at the café, and a driver took Goli, a dresser, and two carpets to her new home. Zod shivered when he peeped inside her former room that first night and saw it empty, stripped of everything but the drapes and her rosewater scent. They did not furnish the room for weeks even though Yanik offered more than once to move Nina’s sewing machine back in there.
At first Naneh Goli came to visit one or two afternoons a week, staying longer each time, until the visits became more frequent and her husband sent word that he required some attention from her. But Goli felt lonely in his big house, lonely for Nina and the boys, jealous that another girl would take her place. She was unaccustomed to a cook and a servant who didn’t need her interference, and a husband who expected her to share his bed. Upon her defiant refusal, they quarreled bitterly and she escaped to Nina, who held out hope that he would eventually earn Goli’s affection, that they would start a family.
Nina spent long afternoons stirring nougat and sugared almonds to cajole her young protégé to go back to her home with newlywed treats to sweeten the match. But the breach between the couple widened when he took to beating Goli with a cane, and he eventually threw her out. Naneh Goli happily moved back, forgoing her mehrieh (a dowry pledged by the husband at the time of marriage) but returning with the dresser and two rugs. She concluded that marriage was without benefits.
THE WEEKLY TRIPS TO the market energized Zod and he pulled the loaded trolleys into the courtyard, handing out parcels like trophies to the waiters who came to help him unload. “The first figs!” he hollered, as if the arrival of every fruit, every leafy green, every root, was something to celebrate. There were seasons for produce then and you couldn’t find tomatoes in December.
His mother was tired, and he took advantage of her fatigue and occasional absentmindedness to rework a recipe when she retreated upstairs to her sewing. In the afternoons, after sweeping the floor, in the hour before Pari came home from the conservatory, he would make an elaborate minaret of cold sandwiches, or rhubarb preserves spooned over yogurt, or a persimmon pudding layered with coarsely ground almond brittle.
With his eyes trained on the front gate, waiting for Pari to walk through with music books clutched to her chest, he set a garden table with a white cloth, silver, and china. She became his lab mouse, sniffing happily at the poached pears with peppercorns and cardamom before running through a labyrinth of delicately assembled snacks, while Zod ran like a colt from kitchen to table, fetching more and more accoutrements for his dishes. This favorite time of day, between lunch and dinner, when time stood still for them, could have been a period of courtship, the wooing of the belly below the heart, except they were already married.
Pari always volunteered to wash up but Zod wouldn’t hear of it, shooing her to Nina’s room, listening to their soft voices rising and falling through the open bedroom window. Alone, he circled the table to see what she had scraped clean and what was discarded, trusting her palate above all others. Just crumbs, stems from the halved pears, a radish, or half a spinach pie remained.
But how to translate this love over and over again, to make each dish appear fresh, like a first crush? True, he looked forward to serving this food to customers who had been raised at Yanik and Nina’s table, introducing them to these flavors slowly, like the rock ’n’ roll records he played for Pari. But he had to temper his desire to show off. He remained mindful of Nina’s resourcefulness, her no-nonsense soups and batters that were the spine of his repertoire. Without them he would have remained a clumsy amateur powered by ego. Zod’s mother said there was hope for him because he knew his limitations. He knew to follow her rules before breaking them, to remember what she had already discovered because, unlike her, he wasn’t born with inherent knowledge.
But Zod could still delight in foraging for the herbs and flowers and roots to flavor his soups and vinegars, to tuck bouquets of seasonings inside the cavities of whole whitefish and pigeons, and to save tree trimmings and apple blossoms for roasting lamb, even making piroshki dough from a sourdough starter that he would combine with well water. All these began as experiments, but he did not stray from the basic rules.
By five o’clock most afternoons Yanik, waking from his nap and looking for a cup of tea, would find Zod alone at the kitchen sink washing dishes. He stood at the entryway watching him, wondering how this had happened. How did Zod close the gap between what he wanted and what he had? He had not simply acquiesced to a plan his parents had proposed, but seemed to slip into it like a good shoe, comfortably. Yanik allowed himself to conjure grandchildren—four or five tiny versions of Zod and Pari running through the yard, climbing trees, scraping knees, and Nina doting on them—then waved a hand to dispel the image. After his loss, he succumbed to superstition the way his parents and grandparents had in response to tragedy. It was best not to forecast; prophecy was a clergyman’s business. The ingredients were there for a good life if Zod and Pari wanted to live it, as long as Yanik didn’t tempt fate, as if his thoughts alone could bring down the house.
Zod carried a tray outside and they drank tea through a sugar cube held delicately between their two front teeth. Yanik often repeated what had already been said in so many ways: “It takes courage, son, to make this your life.”
“Yes, I know, Baba jan,” Zod would reply. “There is nowhere else I would rather be.” And after that the only sound was the clatter of dice against the backgammon board, until the sun dropped lower down the sky, urging them back to work.
Eleven
Guests who said the finest feature of Hotel Leila was the Juliet balconies often booked a room for one or two weeks during the summer, when the orchestra played in the garden every night. After dinner they would retire to their rooms with a drink and unlatch the shutters, spreading them out noisily. Looking up, Zod would see men in shirtsleeves rolled above the elbows leaning over the wrought iron railings behind a fog of cigarette smoke. The women, too, with cardigans draped over bare shoulders against the chill, leaned into the night to hear Pari, their lips moving to the lyrics they knew. No one slept much, but no one complained.
It had taken Yanik and Zod six years to build the hotel, Yanik having agreed at last to stop at twelve rooms, four on each floor. He wanted a grand hotel, a Ritz, with a marble lobby and an elevator boy. They had quarreled and shouted, each having envisioned an establishment of different proportions—Zod in favor of the quaint and his father persisting on a stately mansion where international stars and heads of state would stay.
“They will need just twelve rooms for their entourage,” he’d argued, and Nina had come to her son’s defense. “Truly important people will value a place where they will be taken care of and left in peace.”
She was right, of course. Room eight became the pied-à-terre of a certain diplomat and room eleven was frequented by a celebrated actor when working in Tehran. Nina even kept their slippers and bathrobes in storage until their next visit, always filling the rooms with flowers and fruit baskets before their arrival.
But what really kept guests coming back was the scent. By 1968 Café Leila ranked among the city’s best restaurants and Zod was beloved for his imaginative cooking. A genuine bonhomie filled the air with the chime of cutlery and chatter as the waiters swayed through the high-ceilinged dining room like arabesque dancers. The café was so popular that by midday people would begin lining up outside the bakery, where cream-and-yellow-striped boxes were filled with Zod’s specialty piroshkies. This simple pirog, a yeast bun really, brought men, women, and children to the south side of Tehran, “threatening to tip over the ship” as Yanik liked to joke.
It wasn’t that Nina didn’t make equally tasty buns, but Zod, he
r rogue apprentice, had refined the dough to a featherlight brioche with a subtle tang. He filled the pockets not just with beef and onions, but peach jam, saffron rice pudding, smoked sturgeon, potatoes and dill, cabbage and caraway apples, duck confit and chopped orange peel, and, once, even a pearl that fell into the lemon custard when Nina’s necklace snapped, beads hitting the counter like hailstones. By chance the boy who bit into it didn’t swallow it, but dislodged a baby tooth hanging by a thread and his parents found the incident quite fortuitous. It wasn’t every day one found a precious stone in a roll and a rumor circulated around town that Café Leila’s piroshkies carried good omens, and thereafter their orders multiplied for holidays and happy occasions.
Nina was happy to have her pearls restrung, and Zod spent sleepless nights shaping and proofing and brushing row after row of fat little pillows with his paintbrush dipped in egg wash until Pari pitter-pattered down in her nightgown to take him to bed. But he’d be up before dawn to slide them into the ovens and within minutes a marvelous aroma would creep through the seams of the kitchen door, up the stairs and into the garden, rising above the tall birches that lined the alley to hover over rooftop sleepers escaping the summer heat, and wafting into the rooms where guests unfurled and woke one by one to that baked goodness. Only then did Zod feel entitled to some respite, sitting down for a quiet tea in the kitchen, with the back door open to a shaft of first light, before waking Pari and the children for school.
Downstairs, in the lobby at dawn, Aladdin’s quick footsteps returned from the newsstands with the daily papers. Upon his return he lit a potbellied samovar and lined slim tea glasses, saucers, and teaspoons on the credenza. He was bellhop, concierge, and butler, aproned at seven to sweep outside the revolving hotel door (a feature Yanik had insisted upon), waiting to receive the first tray of hot piroshkies from the bakery. Breakfast was served on the veranda, and Aladdin changed into his tuxedo to carry the tea caddy and platters of warm buns to the guests seated around Persian brass tray tables. It was all-you-can-eat and guests took advantage, tucking a few rolls into their pockets for later.
