The Last Days of Café Leila: A Novel

by Donia Bijan

  Karim felt that everyone was watching them, that everyone knew what they were up to. Terrified, they somehow retained the presence of mind to change into dry pants in adjacent stalls, where Lily knelt at the brink of the toilet to vomit and it was a horrible sound that wrenched his guts. They wrung out their trunks in the sink and kept their shirts on to dry in the heat. Walking past the dim office, the bald man drank tea and barely looked up to acknowledge Karim as they left.

  They found the motorbike where they had tied it to a post, Karim silently sending up a prayer of gratitude that it was still there. Bikes were regularly stolen and he saw it as a good omen, or maybe his mother was watching over them, maybe Lily herself was a lucky charm.

  Lily was still shaken, her mouth twisted with worry. This was only the first phase of her plan and it had curdled. After the absurd sequence of events, which Karim had yet to explain to her, especially about the magic jersey, relief washed over him—a thought popped in his mind that Bagheri, too, was smiling at them, keeping an eye out for them. And, with that realization, he burst with a gust of giddy laughter and took Lily by the shoulders, “Lily jan, we did it, you see? We go swimming! Boy with girl. Bra-der and seester!” he exclaimed in his broken English.

  For an instant tears pooled in her eyes, but seeing his happy face, she just laughed. For there it was, they had done it—they had really done it!

  The sun was still burning down through a cloudless sky when they mounted the old bike, which sputtered, then roared with the sweet sound of the engine. Lily’s arms coiled around Karim’s waist, her hair damp through the cloth cap pressed to his back, her breath still sour from throwing up blew warm on his neck—it all made him delirious. He swung past the parked cars and surged forward up the road, flying over hills that came afterwards where he was certain of another miracle.

  Twenty-Two

  Summers were hard in Tehran. The boil of asphalt roiling at midday left drivers evermore impatient and most people stayed inside with the shutters closed. Noor had stopped her afternoon forays to the flower shop, having given herself over to the custom of midday napping. She came downstairs in the rumpled T-shirt dress she’d slept in and cleared her throat, “Let me make the tea, Naneh.”

  But Naneh Goli just clucked at Noor’s cough, or maybe it was her dress. Naneh Goli could not understand why Noor slept in her clothes when there were crisply ironed, clean nightgowns in her dresser. She had a tray already prepared with milk biscuits and stewed red plums for Zod.

  Noor was about to object to the cookies when Naneh Goli cut her off, “Nothing is bad for him anymore, Golabcheh.”

  Noor nodded and accepted the tray, carrying it to the sitting room where a rotating fan blew warm air, every other turn lifting the white sheet over her father, who lay shriveled beneath like a pile of crooked twigs. He accepted a single spoonful of compote, shaking his head to a second serving.

  Lily didn’t show up for tea and Karim was not sitting on his footstool by the kitchen door, where he usually kept vigil waiting for Lily. However, she was accustomed to the disappearance of the children in the afternoons and hoped they were playing in the air-conditioned hotel lobby and not in the yard, where Lily would surely suffer a heatstroke. After the last episode on the street, Noor had given up suggesting the pool, but soon she would find them, bring them some cold drinks. She offered to read the newspaper to Zod, but he looked away. Weary, was he, of the news, or annoyed that she was still here? She didn’t press him and he closed his eyes. Nobody knew what he was thinking about these days.

  Noor went to the kitchen to fill a pitcher with ice water and cherry syrup. She found Sheer snoozing on the cool marble ledge. “Aren’t you lonesome here all by yourself?”

  Sheer just flicked the tip of her tail and closed her eyes. The cat was never far from the kids—or Zod. It seemed odd. The house was quiet, but then again, they were inclined to whisper so as not to disturb Zod when he dozed.

  “Where is everybody?” she asked Naneh Goli, but Naneh Goli had the water running and didn’t hear her. She set off to the hotel to find the kids, the pitcher of cherry juice forgotten.

  After nearly an hour of searching the compound for the children, Noor began to panic. When she stepped into the café, having hastily wrapped a scarf over her head, Soli shook his head vehemently when asked about their whereabouts. How should he know where they were? He had never approved of this arrangement between his nephew and Zod’s granddaughter. Their romping about, chasing that cat, and the infernal crack of the Ping-Pong ball, interfered with Karim’s duties. This will all end badly, he thought each time he heard their shrieks of laughter, shaking a finger and pointing to the heavens as he did now.

  “Alley cats,” he spat, his throat cording, beads of sweat on his forehead from manning the grill.

  “Excuse me?” Noor asked coolly, then seeing his worried look, she let it go.

  “They’re probably in the garden, khanoom, or the hotel” he said, embarrassed now.

  “I looked. They’re gone.”

  He gaped at her, mystified. Karim came and went as he pleased, but the girl wasn’t allowed to leave the premises without her mother.

  Noor never did know quite how, but together they ran rhythmically, without another word, back to the house for keys to the Peugeot. In America Noor would have called the police. She wanted to call the police now, but Soli and Naneh Goli convinced her to wait, to drive around before dark to see if they could find Lily and Karim themselves, though neither of them could possibly guess where the two may have gone. They thought it best to search separately, so Noor, despite being wary of facing Tehran’s traffic, took the car and Soli went for his motorbike—only to discover it was missing.

  ONCE AGAIN, DESPERATE AND desperately out of place, Noor found herself navigating the city streets, shocked at how inept she was—what did the signs even mean? She choked back a sob. Suddenly darting into a thoroughfare, she drove haltingly, a white-knuckled seize of the wheel pressed to her bosom, her foot on the brake, raising the ire of other drivers who converged upon her from left and right, screaming obscenities, blinking their lights and leaning on their horns, drawing so near they could reach through the driver’s window and slap her, a deafening shriek of a siren, and people, so many pedestrians everywhere, weaving through the cars. Every assumption about lights, lanes, right of way, crosswalks, was obsolete. A camel in the Wild West, she was frothing now, her harness bell clamoring but drowned in the torrent of sound, of wheels and wheels and wheels spinning. Noor steered the car towards the curb and cut off the engine.

  The rap on the window came so suddenly she jumped. A woman peering through the glass was asking Noor if she was all right. Hemmed in between the curb and a pickup truck, she was sitting with her forehead against the wheel, resigned after just a few kilometers. The traffic had not subsided, the children had not been found, and with no idea what street she was on or how far she had driven, Noor rolled down the window to see a policewoman. Young, no more than thirty, she eyed Noor quizzically.

  “Do you need a doctor, khanoom?” she asked.

  “No, officer.” What she really wanted to do was to burrow her head in this woman’s neck and cry. “I’m lost. I came looking for my—”

  Mentioning Lily meant mentioning Karim. Unaccompanied, unrelated boy and girl meant trouble. Yet strangely, she felt a lack of fear in the presence of this woman who had cut through the throng to reach Noor.

  “I came to buy medicine for my father. He’s very sick, he’s dying. But I can’t find the pharmacy and it’s getting late and I’m afraid to drive in this traffic. I don’t know how to get back home.” She was panting the words.

  “All right, all right, calm down. Which pharmacy? We’ll escort you.”

  The thing was that she didn’t know because Dr. Mehran made daily house calls, administering medication to Zod himself, and she had only been to the pharmacy for cough syrup and maxi pads.

  “First, let’s see your license.”

  No
or turned and reached for her purse just as one would, but the California driver’s license she retrieved from her wallet was not what the officer expected.

  “What’s this,” she snapped. “This is no good here. You can’t drive with this.” Narrowing her eyes at Noor, “I have to take you to the station. Please get out of the car.”

  “What? You can’t be serious! You said you’d help me find the pharmacy!”

  “I can’t let you drive with this,” she said, inspecting the plastic card with bemused curiosity.

  “But why not?” Noor demanded, raising her voice.

  “Because, khanoom, we are not in America.” A sharpness surfaced in her voice and she drummed her fingers on the hood.

  “Oh, really?” Noor mocked, “I see, I need a special license to drive in your circus,” her voice was rising dangerously. “Shouldn’t you be taking these lunatics—” she cried, gesturing to the traffic, “these maniacs to the station, instead of harassing me?”

  Then she mumbled bitch in English under her breath.

  “I’m losing my patience, khanoom. Get out of the car. Now!”

  “Oh, oh! Wait! I get it. Hold on a minute.” Noor reached again for her purse and pulled out her wallet. “Sorry officer, it’s been awhile. What’s the going rate?”

  The only sensible thing that Noor did was not mentioning that her daughter was missing. When the phone rang in the kitchen Naneh Goli snatched the receiver. Noor was detained for driving with an invalid license, insulting and attempting to bribe an officer of the Islamic Republic.

  THEY WERE IN THE maze of the city for about an hour. Karim had little experience driving a scooter, but he managed to maneuver the narrow spaces between the cars and avoid the ditches on the side of the road. He would not have minded getting lost, going west instead of east, prolonging the journey and their freedom. Splendid was the clamor of angry car horns and shrill police whistles, the gnarled trunks of lifeless trees, the gritty sadness of the city.

  “Look, how pretty,” said Lily, pointing to a flock of geese flying above them in V formation. “I wonder where they’re going.”

  The brightness of her voice, even when he didn’t understand what she said, released him from the confines of his small life. They could not have predicted the sweetness of their escape, how it amplified all the sounds and sharpened their perception. How time stretched before them, the way it does in childhood when an hour feels like an eternity.

  The airport was still far away and Karim had avoided the short cut, continuing straight instead of turning left onto the freeway ramp. There were more cars along this flat stretch. Buses thundered by, taxis blared their horns cutting him off, and he turned into a side street to avoid the congestion.

  At a red light he adjusted the mirror and his eyes were drawn towards some young men lurking on the sidewalk near a newsstand. Two wore dark sunglasses and cupped lit cigarettes in their palms. The other two in loose Adidas pants and black warm-up jackets hovered with their hands in their pockets in front of a corner grocery, peering into the glass window.

  The heat made Karim weary, the insides of his pants’ legs were hot and sweaty, and with the change left in his pocket he thought of dashing into the store for a cold soda.

  “Lily, Coca-Cola?” She nodded yes but he continued to stare dubiously at the men and then at the clear sky, hesitating then pulling forward a few yards from the curb, ignoring the wave of uneasiness. Weren’t there always men on street corners? Out of the hot sun, he parked in the shade of an awning.

  “Stay here. I’ll be right back,” he said in Persian and walked quickly to the market.

  The four men glanced at him, their faces masklike, then quickly looked away when the door was pushed open and a man walked out with two large plastic jugs, letting the screen slam behind him.

  Reaching the front door, Karim stood aside, catching his own thin reflection in the glass, to let two women carrying shopping bags come out. As soon as he was away from Lily, he wanted to return to her as quickly as possible, but the men nudged ahead and stood in his way blocking the women’s path, not bothering to look at him. Karim noticed the younger of the two was only a girl, with a grave, watchful expression on her face as she studied the four guys, then brushed past them, pulling her companion along.

  One of the men, squat and beefy, catcalled but she quickened her steps and he straightened up, gesturing to his friends to follow in the direction where Karim had parked the scooter. Sensing that these were a band of street thugs, he turned back towards Lily to see the women drop the bags and break into a run, the flying hem of their veils billowing like sails and sliding down from their heads to their shoulders to resemble capes of superheroes. Yet they failed to outrun the hooligans.

  There was some sort of brawl at the far end of the street where the men ambushed them, jeering and taunting in crude language, and now the stocky one held the girl in a chokehold while she screeched and struggled and another prodded and poked her. The older woman clawed at their backs until one of them broke away to have the space to kick her in the gut before returning to combat, leaving her to collapse on the sidewalk.

  Suddenly, a sound pierced the brawl. Foreign. English. Female. “STOP! Leave her alone!” Lily screamed.

  Shit, thought Karim. Shit. Shit. SHIT.

  Until then they were totally unaware of the slight figure behind the motorbike. Now she stood squarely in the middle of the street, squinting into the sun, one arm held up against the light and Karim looked past her at the men. Men big enough to tackle a truck stared back, astonished. They understood stop, but that it came from a kid in a ball cap with a feminine voice was unbelievable and in the few seconds it took them to register the witness to their brutality, one got to his feet.

  Whatever happened next hinged on Karim’s instincts—he watched Lily, she watched them, and his mind was full of words but not a single one came to him, nothing but a howl like from a mute, a stammering mute “LEEE-EEEEL-EEEEL,” and he lunged, grabbing her arm and running in a breathless gallop away from the hulking brute who came after them.

  It was all he could do to shove Lily inside the small grocery ignoring her protests. “No you! You here!” he warned desperately in the language he had learned playing games, but this was no longer a game.

  When he stepped back out onto the sidewalk the man pounced on him, forcing him down to the pavement, pressing an immense chest against Karim’s back, hollering obscenities into his ear, and holding him down spread-eagled with hands that were so much larger than Karim’s that he was trapped inside them. A shriek made the man turn sideways. Then came a strange, animal cry, so wild and intense, that it drowned him out, and the minute he loosened his grip to swivel towards the sound, Karim wrestled free and stood very still. The mob at the end of the street was calling to his assailant who rose furious, aiming a fist once more, shouting right into Karim’s face. He was the spitting image, literally, of a bulldog with a big, open, square jaw and dreadful breath, and Karim squeezed his eyebrows to avoid the spray of spit into his eyes.

  “Who are you, you ignorant son of a bitch, huh? A spy? We’re just doing our job, you know. I should knock your baby teeth out of your skull, or better to kill you, you little shit—”

  “We weren’t here, I swear. We weren’t here. We didn’t see anything!” Karim begged.

  “SHUT UP! SHUT YOUR MOUTH, FOOL! You think you can hide your foreign girlfriend in there? Huh?” he yelled, tilting his fat head towards the store. “We’ll wait right here as long as it takes and I’ll service her, too. Then I’ll drag both of you to the police for a good lashing and you can spend your honeymoon in jail, sleeping in your own piss with your pants down . . . ” all the while jabbing Karim’s chest with his index finger as he spewed vulgar threats.

  “COME ON! LET’S GO!” shouted his cohorts. “He’s just a stupid kid, let’s get out of here!”

  “I’m not finished with you, boy,” he vowed, punching Karim hard in the stomach. “I’m coming back to break
your neck.”

  “HEY! Let’s go!” came another urgent call.

  Then he turned and ran to his friends, leaving Karim doubled over and drenched with sweat, his mind reeling feverishly. How? How did they embark on this misadventure? They were so young. He was so young. With the back of his hand he wiped the blood and spit off his face. His knee hurt and he pulled up his trouser leg to see the flap of raw skin and blood seeping through the fabric, swollen and stiff. He knew what he had to do. Anything that could be explained to Lily about what just happened would be incomprehensible. I have to get her to the airport, away from here—his scattered thoughts flattening into a clear picture like one of Lily’s drawings.

  Trudging to the entrance, he pushed the door and hobbled inside the store to fetch her, but she wasn’t there. All the blood drained from his face. He could not fathom where she could be. Searching the aisles deliriously, a sneaker came untied and he nearly tripped and fell onto the tiles before giving up and going back into the heat. How? How did he ever think he could do this when he couldn’t even keep his shoelaces tied? The street was deserted and the bike leaned idly in the shade as if all hell had not just broken loose.

  THERE CAME A CRY from a stack of bricks on the curb, so jagged and hoarse that Karim thought at first it was a crow. Then it came again, sharp and unmistakably human. Nosing the scooter warily towards the sound, Karim slowed down and came upon three women nestled behind piles of rubble next to an unfinished construction site. Intent on shielding the women, Lily released her hold on a warped metal pipe and twisted around to wave frantically, urging Karim to stop, her color ashen against the masonry. How was she over here? Relief washed over him and then spoiled quickly, giving in to unspeakable rage. What the hell is she doing here? he thought.