The Last Days of Café Leila: A Novel

by Donia Bijan

  Lily held out her notebook to show Karim her plan, which she had illustrated in a series of cartoons. A comic book, plotting out the scheme—and the part Karim would play in it. It took him some time to make sense of her drawings, to understand what she was asking him to do. Each panel had a clock face in the bottom right hand corner that indicated the time of day action was taking place. The first page was filled with pictures of supplies, a gas can with a spout, money, passport, scissors, backpack, watch, food, hat, and sunglasses. An arrow pointing away from Café Leila (with bars drawn on the facade, to imply a jail) arched over the ocean and a continent, to a house on the west coast of America, where a man waited on the front lawn.

  On the second page, she had drawn herself with short hair, wearing mannish clothing, riding behind Karim on the motorbike. The clock read two thirty. The drawing took them through the streets of Tehran to the single geographic center Lily knew, the swimming pool. At a quarter past three, Karim and Lily enter the building during the afternoon men’s session. The figure drawings were rough but clear enough for Karim to gasp at the images of him bare-chested in swimming trunks and Lily in an oversized T-shirt and shorts jumping into the pool. No, no, no. Pointing at her, then at himself, miming breaststroke, he shook his head emphatically, no.

  It was, to Karim, as if Lily had presented him with pornography and color flooded his cheeks. She chatted in mixed sentences, plucking Persian words from her limited vocabulary, bubbling over, like an excited child. Karim tried to protest—Lily must understand how outrageous this was—that no one would buy her disguise, that they would be found out, mobbed, arrested, beaten, jailed. So many people were arbitrarily detained. But Lily wasn’t interested in consequences. Laughing at the terror in his eyes she cried, “C’mon, Cream, don’t be such a scaredy-gorbeh (cat)! We’re going swimming together.” She rotated her long slender arms in a mad windmill and he caught a whiff of her sweat, tangy and pleasant.

  “But why?” he managed to ask in English, pointing to the picture of the pool. Lily eyed him.

  “Because I want us to do something special together before I go.” She smiled. He shook his head, trying to fathom the meaning of her words.

  “Cream, didn’t you tell me you grew up by the sea? Don’t you remember feeling free in the open water? I want us to do that together, to swim in this little blue sea.” What she didn’t say was that, for her, going to the pool as a boy, however rash, was her own small act of civil disobedience, a rebuke to the regime’s absurd restrictions.

  Karim swallowed and didn’t say anything more.

  The next page of the notebook took them to the airport, with crudely drawn jets and a control tower. This is where he would leave her—there he was pulling away from the curb while Lily waved good-bye. On the runway, her face peers out from one of the tiny windows of an airplane.

  Lily reached into her pocket and pulled out a fistful of dollars and the passport she had already stolen from her mother’s dresser, to show him she was serious.

  “I have enough money for a one-way ticket right here. I need you to drop me off and I’ll get on the first flight out of here.” She had close to two thousand dollars and a rough itinerary that could take her to Frankfurt or Amsterdam, and from there she would call her father. “I can’t let my dad know until I’m almost there,” she said.

  “Am-ester-dam?” Karim repeated slowly and shot her a dubious look. Was she really going to go all the way there? It was so simple, she explained, but it could not be done without Karim driving the motorbike.

  Karim thought no one but a fool would attempt this, then again, why not? What did he have to lose? It gave him a very special feeling to be chosen and pulled into her world, a world where thoughts became actions. He figured he wouldn’t have many chances to get this close to Holland. In the heat and hum of bees in the late afternoon, he felt his chest dilate, diffusing the anguish within into something delightful and sweet, like honey, like courage.

  Ironically, the task that filled him most with dread wasn’t the escape or theft or even being caught—it was chopping off Lily’s silky hair. He wondered if she would let him keep it. Then he could run his fingers through it when she was gone, because gone she would be—of that he was certain. How can I help her run away? he thought. But how can I not? Grief over losing her was already gripping him, twisting him apart. Karim shifted to his feet but nearly sank to the ground again.

  “Until tomorrow then,” he said without looking at her, and strode off with the shopping bags before he lost his nerve.

  THAT NIGHT, KARIM LAY wide awake beneath a sheet, parallel to his uncle Soli who snored noisily in the bed beside him. He had always drifted off to the reassuring sounds of his uncle’s rhythmic inhaling and exhaling, but this night, each breath was immense, drawing air and crumpling his lungs until he gasped. To quiet his thoughts, he played a game in his mind, invented long ago, in which he skipped stones on the shore, and each stone leaped farther away, troubling the flat surface of the water, on and on into the infinite sea, until at last he fell asleep.

  Just before daybreak, he woke up to the smoke from Soli’s morning cigarette and opened one eye. Yesterday’s buoyancy plunged, but he had made a promise and knew that today he must be his most obedient and effusive. Before Soli had a chance to shout any orders, he rose and scuttled about, dressing swiftly and offering to fetch the bread.

  Once outside, Karim drew deep breaths into his lungs. I mustn’t appear too eager, he thought, taking long strides along the dry dusty road, counting coins from a zippered pouch, the sun already piercing his neck. Even in the freshness of dawn, the city breathed in the heat.

  He returned with bread, first stopping in the yard to hide the can of gas and bottles of water he had procured behind the shed. Coming into the kitchen, the fragrance of tea welcomed him and he thanked Naneh Goli for the honey and cheese she put before him, cramming it all into his mouth at once and she smiled approvingly at his appetite.

  Being sly was not his nature—the trust he had earned here would be tested today. Looking at Naneh Goli, hunched over, frail and forgiving, made him feel shame for his forthcoming deception and he looked away, avoiding her eyes. He was older now than when he’d come with the open wounds of an orphan boy.

  He remembered arriving one chilly winter night without even a bag. The yellow lights all along the café windows were lit and the clink of utensils and scent of grilled meat had aroused a savage hunger. Zod had greeted him warmly and Naneh Goli had bathed him because he had forgotten how and he must have smelled primitive. They fed him and gave him clean clothes, then they sent him to school. Zod treated him like a son. I have been absolutely loyal until now, he thought. Then, before this sense of mixed allegiances overpowered him, he bolted out of the kitchen to finish his chores.

  “Don’t you run off, now,” Naneh Goli called after him, but his life led only to this moment and to the afternoon hours when he would deliver his promise to Lily.

  IN THE LAST HOUR of lunch Karim, seized with apprehension, nearly tripped while carrying a tray of clean glasses to the dining room and Soli yelled, “There’s no need to hurry!” But a little later, rushing back, it happened again, and this time Soli blocked his path. Tall and muscular, he held Karim’s shoulder in a tight grip.

  “Sorry, uncle,” he gulped. His heart wouldn’t settle down for fear of his uncle’s intuition. He breathed in deeply, and finally Soli let him go with a small shove.

  Usually a confrontation with Uncle Soli shook him up, but just then, his guilt gave way to longing and Karim didn’t care what his uncle would make of his haste. He wanted only to see Lily happy.

  By the time he’d washed all the dishes and put everything away, it was after two o’clock. The plan was to meet at two thirty by the garden shed where Karim had hidden their supplies. At last, when the household turned in and everyone retired to their afternoon slumber, Karim crept outside with a bag of fruit.

  He found Lily hastily pulling on his favorite shirt. S
eeing her in his clothes made him gape, overcome with the special intimacy of the moment. There was no way he could let her go. Never.

  “Na,” he murmured, but knew there was absolutely no chance that he could change her mind.

  Then, as if she read his thoughts, Lily narrowed her eyes and held out the scissors. “What’s in the bag?” she asked.

  “Gojeh,” he offered. He knew Lily loved the sour green plums and she took them in exchange for the scissors. Then, kneeling with her back to Karim, she let her hair out of the ponytail and bent forward with her hands on her knees.

  “Are you afraid, Cream?”

  But he didn’t answer. He stood behind her and ran his hand just once over her hair, about to enter a zone, as he often did in her presence, where everything outside it faded.

  “Hurry up, then,” she said, irritation creeping into her voice.

  Karim lifted a handful of hair, made the first cut, and then gathered another, even and steady, until the pale skin of her beloved neck shone.

  Karim looked down at his hands, as if he couldn’t believe what they had done. He shut his eyes to the exposed back of her head lolling on her shoulders. It seemed to matter more than ever to protect her. Lily touched her bare neck and sat up.

  “Good enough,” she said. “Now, let’s go.”

  She slipped the backpack over her shoulders and ran to open the gate. His face glistening with sweat, Karim idled the bike through the gate, closing the latch softly behind him. He planned to follow a route he knew that would take them through a quiet stretch, not running the risk of being seen by too many people. The swimming pool. The airport. Two places that had been separate were suddenly connected, the distance between them more than eighty kilometers, but it appeared much shorter in his youthful estimation.

  Dressed like a boy, a ball cap pulled down over her cropped hair, Lily heeded Karim’s warning to keep her eyes downcast all the while. They rehearsed once again their entry to the pool, but what worried Karim most was keeping her quiet because she blurted out English and laughed when he shushed her. To minimize speech, he insisted on a few hand signals and crossed his forearms now to stop her clowning around with a small sigh of irritation.

  With one hand on her heart, Lily promised, “I’ll be quiet, Cream.”

  Shyly, he patted her arm and hung the bag of plums from the handlebars. Lily straddled the bike and wrapped her arms around his waist. Then Karim started the engine and they went into the road.

  GONE WERE THE DARK curtains that had been hung for ladies’ hour and the men lingering outside didn’t look twice at the two young boys making their way through the archway. Karim was glad for the relatively dark interior of the front office where a bald attendant with a pockmarked complexion was welcoming an elderly man ahead of them. Karim handed over the entrance fee using the monthly pocket money Soli gave him, instead of the dollar bills Lily had forced into his palm yesterday.

  Pretending to look for something in her backpack, Lily pulled out a bath towel to drape over her shoulders in an attempt to look casual. The attendant carried on an animated conversation with the old man, taking the money from Karim absentmindedly and the two slinked away exchanging a quick victory sign.

  “Hey!” he called after them.

  They froze. Karim turned slowly, his legs wobbly, “What?”

  “Put up your playthings,” he hollered.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Hand me your phones, please.”

  “Oh, sorry, we don’t have phones,” said Karim, his heart pumping. Turning around and walking out the door was the obvious option. Go. Now.

  “Listen kid, you take me for an idiot? Come here and empty your pockets or leave.” The loud rap of his knuckles on the counter rattling Karim’s nerves.

  Lily didn’t understand one word of this exchange, but she knew it wasn’t going well. Karim took one short step then stopped and turned to Lily and made the telephone sign—thumb to ear, pinky to mouth.

  “What’s the matter with your brother, is he deaf or something?”

  “My brother?” Something inside Karim opened. “Uh, yes, sir.”

  “Okay, okay, never mind. Go on in.” He dismissed them and turned back to his friend.

  Karim hurried them into the locker room, fear trickling through his pores. Panic liquefied his insides and even though he didn’t want to leave Lily by herself for a minute, diarrhea raged through him and he rushed to the bathroom where he sat with his head in his hands and almost gagged at his own stench. This was a mistake. A grave mistake he’d made agreeing to this scheme, believing that the real divide between them was just a matter of coverings.

  When he returned to the locker room Lily was sitting on a bench next to a locker, absorbed in a brochure she had found on the floor, easily ignored if you didn’t know her. Disguised in an old soccer jersey and long baggy shorts, the blue cap pulled low, she wore a pair of Mehrdad’s rubber sandals found in his closet and had wiped the polish from her toenails. Raucous shouts came from the pool, from the men horsing around. She looked up and smiled, gave him a thumbs-up even though he had explained a thousand times that it meant something entirely different in Iran—was in fact an insulting gesture. But he returned the signal. He loved her and it didn’t matter that the signal meant “up yours,” because everything in his head was upside-down and anything seemed possible.

  That was how he had to think, that they could really do this, but the instant they were by the pool, doubt sneaked its way through brainwaves of courage. Again, arms crossed against his chest, he pointed to the diving board, No jumping, he warned, and walked towards the stack of kickboards and inner tubes. It was 102 degrees and the pool was swarming with men and boys, but they would be all right as long they just floated and she kept the hat on.

  Lily, however, had other plans. She turned on her heel and marched straight to the diving board. Karim ran after her, urgently whispering in Persian, “Don’t you dare, don’t you dare.” She may or may not have understood, but his tone was clear. She tried to protest and lapsed hurriedly into English.

  “It’s so crowded, no one will notice me. Cream, please.”

  A deep frown, so unfamiliar to his face, and for the first time a spark of real anger flashed in his eyes.

  She shrugged, “Fine, fine.” and he pulled the invisible zipper across his lips to silence her.

  They slid gingerly into the water, feet scarping the abrasive shallow end, and waded forth in their tubes, cooling their nape with wet hands. They couldn’t stay mad at each other for long. Karim cupped his hands and splashed Lily to make peace, she quickly followed suit, and they played like this for a few minutes, sending off ripples on either side. How she longed to dunk him.

  “Hey, Cream,” she said softly, her voice drowned out by the noise, “How do you say brother?”

  “Baradar,” he said, repeating more slowly, “Ba-ra-dar.”

  “Oh, that’s so easy,” she said, pointing to him, “My bra-dar.”

  Karim swallowed, it wasn’t exactly right, but he nodded soberly and gazed at the droplets of water on her pale forearms.

  Lily looked on bitterly as the other swimmers plunged and surfaced, romping about poolside as though they were at the beach, while she and Karim were stuck puttering around in their inflatables. She inadvertently locked eyes with a hairy chested young man on the deck, who returned her gaze steadily, forcing her to look away quickly. But he continued to contemplate her.

  His approach was gravely serene, the way one would approach a bird, the slight tilt of his head, the measured stride across the deck. Even with eyes cast downward, Lily, like a creature in the wild, sensed movement. What freedom she imagined when immersed in water drained in that moment. Karim, preoccupied with smacking horseflies foolish enough to land on his arm, thought Lily was trying to engage him in another water fight, kicking him underwater. Then he saw her frightened expression, eyes wide and shifting side to side. A dark figure stood above them.

  “Hey, yo
u,” he called to Lily who kept her head down and vanished into her shirt.

  Play deaf, play deaf, play deaf.

  “Hey, I’m talking to you!”

  Karim looked up.

  “Not you, him,” pointing to Lily.

  Karim shielded his eyes from the sun, “Oh, him? He can’t hear you. He’s deaf.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “Where’d he get that Bagheri shirt?”

  It was a knockoff number six jersey worn by Iran’s retired star midfielder from the nineties, Karim Bagheri. It had been Soli’s and handed down to Karim, who adored his namesake. He’d felt a ripple of pleasure seeing it on Lily that morning, not thinking that it would bring trouble. But sports fans are the same everywhere—soccer, football, basketball—they covet jerseys.

  “Tell him I’ll give him thirty thousand tomans for it.”

  Karim glanced at the spasm in the thin slope of Lily’s shoulders beneath the nylon shirt, glad that she couldn’t understand what was being said.

  “Okay, I’ll ask,” he said, trying to sound friendly and signing to Lily who stared panic-stricken at his improvised gesticulation. Wisely, she shook her head, no.

  “It’s not for sale. Sorry, bud.”

  “Okay, make it thirty-five,” the man persisted.

  “No way, he sleeps in it, man. Hey, so you like Bagheri, huh? No one has that right leg.” Karim kept his voice steady. As much as he needed to get rid of this man and get out of the pool, he had to keep his alarm in check.

  “Bagheri’s a legend, man. You follow Persepolis (the Iranian soccer club)?”

  “Oh yeah! Damn shame they lost last week.”

  Someone shouted to the young man from the café.

  “Later,” he nodded to Karim and left.

  Karim looked at Lily, the color drained from her face. It was time to go. He took her trembling hand underwater and paddled quickly to the shallow end. They waded out, warily stepping from the pool onto the hot stones, water dripping down their legs. Calmly they picked up their towels, clutching them for cover, slipped into their rubber shoes, and crossed the space between the pool and the changing room in slow, deliberate movement.