The Last Days of Café Leila: A Novel

by Donia Bijan

  The girls were oblivious to all this austerity. The wholesome feeding of large numbers of people had been this café’s business for decades, so why this sudden begrudging of a birthday party? Because there was a cultural divide that mandated sobriety in a house where a man lay dying and a damaged girl brought tragedy upon tragedy. Every day, anguish welled up and held, but children can’t be expected to hold their breath so long.

  Ever since Zod had fallen ill, the tension in Soli’s stomach would not let go. If Soli had experienced joy in his youth, he hardly dared to remember it. He was not the cherished child of doting parents, but one of six, and mostly left on his own until he was the extra pair of hands in his father’s orchards and he would’ve spent a quiet, uneventful life outdoors by the sea, if at seventeen he had not been sent to fight Saddam, where good fortune meant coming back with your limbs intact. War hardened Soli—he could not understand why they were sent to the minefields, why he was spared, and the unspeakable horrors he witnessed haunted his dreams. Even the camaraderie he once felt with fellow soldiers waned and he was alone.

  Zod was the only person who had ever paid attention to him in a meaningful way and taught him to turn out such things as a good lamb stew and the satisfaction that comes from serving food that people would share over confidences and conversation. Yet those same people who came every day to eat a bowl of warm stew would taste the sorrow in Soli’s food and miss the fragrance and bright flavors that had nourished them for so long, but they didn’t complain and they didn’t reach for the saltshaker, as though performing a simple penance for Zod’s demise.

  Naneh Goli, too, came from a rural life to live with the Yadegars under a roof where every day her heart grew bigger and she fell in love with each of them. She was the ox that had pulled this family through despair so often, yet she now felt desperate watching Zod’s fire diminish no matter how hard she blew on the ashes. She couldn’t find the strength anymore to protect her little family and vulnerability stiffened her towards Ferry for bringing the world’s woes to the confines of their home. That habitual ease of hospitality, so fixed in their day-to-day lives, turned to a dull necessity. The love feasts, the anniversaries and birthdays, the excitement and the whetting, belonged to yesterday and what she really wanted was to take a sword to the balloons and streamers and shut off the lights.

  Cake baking is a bittersweet thing. There are so many reasons to be in the kitchen with a sieve and a cup of flour, and what one baker does, another cannot because it reminds him of something or someone. Baking is always with good intentions and good cake can never be anything but that, a special treat, whether the eggs came from a backyard coop or a supermarket shelf, or perhaps there wasn’t quite a cup of sugar but just enough. There’s no best way to make a birthday cake, but tenacity helps, as does optimism. How else to lift the gloom in this house? Nina would have liked to see her great-granddaughter cream together butter and sugar with her old wooden spoon and turn out a vanilla cake into a fluted copper mold once used for charlotte russe.

  Even Noor, caught off guard by this youthful enthusiasm, bounded down the stairs and into the living room to find Zod lying so still that her immediate thought was Oh, Baba, don’t go dying on me now. She bent over him just as she had done when Lily was a baby sound asleep in her crib, holding a finger beneath his nose to feel the warm breath and just then Zod flared his nostrils, blinked, and opened his eyes. The sparks shooting from those eyes belied age or disease, and if you looked into them and nothing else, not the yellowish complexion or shrunken frame, you may just believe that everything you were told was a lie, that this scrawny man, alert and bright, would live a hundred years or more.

  Before he could protest, Noor lifted him, pulled his arms through the wide sleeves of the butterfly kimono, slipped his socked feet into bedroom slippers and, gripping his elbows at shoulder height, legs apart, stood him up to waltz backwards away from his sickbed.

  “Haven’t we done this before?” he asked.

  “Done what?”

  “This dance. Only I was the lead and you were a toddler learning to walk. If I let go, you tumbled forward.”

  “I’m not letting go, Baba jan.”

  “I know.”

  She settled Zod into the big chair propped with cushions against the kitchen wall, poured him a glass of tea with two sugar cubes, and demanded step-by-step instructions for making the yeast dough for piroshkies.

  While the dough rose beneath a large linen towel on top of the refrigerator, he told her to take a black frying pan from the hook above the stove and heat some oil to brown the meat in small batches. He instructed her to scrape the bottom of the skillet to gather all the dark bits and pieces, to dice onions and fry them slowly in butter with turmeric and cinnamon until golden sweet, to sliver apricots and orange peel and simmer them with a tablespoon or two of vinegar and honey, cooling them and then seasoning with the salt that was always kept on the hood of the stove in a small silver bowl with a little spoon. Then she must fold them with the meat and onions, but he wouldn’t tell her how much or how long. Instead he raised his tea to his lips, sipping slowly, allowing for her memory of these familiar scents and colors to reawaken.

  Noor wanted two fillings, so Zod told her to wash spinach, and to wash it again, and once more still to remove all the soil before steaming. She filled a large saucepan with water and placed it on the rear burner, then strained fresh cheese through cheesecloth and crumbled it between her fingers before pounding allspice in the mortar and chopping scallions unevenly and squeezing out the excess water from the cooked spinach.

  “Didn’t you used to put cream in the spinach filling?”

  “Mm. And sometimes hard-boiled eggs,” he replied. “My mother used to say ‘Make each bun like it’s your first.’ ”

  “Maybe that’s why you never got tired of making them all these years.”

  Noor looked at him, there at the table watching her with his lively eyes. She went over and bent down to him. Why couldn’t they stay like this?

  Naneh Goli shuffled in, arched an eyebrow, and Zod answered her with a wink. He sat quite still watching Noor’s movements, jittery and uncertain, her hands smooth and unscarred unlike his own battered claws with gnarled blue veins that ran across the back—he often examined his hands as though they weren’t his, but objects from a toolbox. Every urge to push Noor aside, to do it himself more quickly, was let go. He was enjoying himself, but why now? Why not forty years ago when his shoulders filled his shirts and he lifted her on the counter to watch him bone a bird?

  She had been a stubborn, single-minded girl, that’s why. She had complained about the pervasive smell of fried onions in the house and cringed at the sight of raw meat, pink and fatty. She would gag at a whiff of hard-boiled eggs, held her nose and breathed through her mouth when he brought home trout, slicing open the stomach and pulling out the slimy intestines with his fingers. His little Noor had vowed never to cook, yet ate everything he prepared and asked for second helpings. How heartening to see defiance creeping in through the half open back door.

  “It would be good to die after this,” he said softly, but she heard.

  “You don’t get to choose when you die, Baba.”

  “Sometimes you do.”

  Lily helped Noor with the delicate folding of the piroshkies, which are traditionally made in large batches in order to justify the effort it takes to knead the dough, make the fillings, and wrap by hand a bun that stays fresh for only a few hours. Together they scooped and folded and sealed the half moons late into the night. Never had they worked side by side in such good spirits and never once, not even after they had filled six dozen, did Lily complain.

  FERRY’S PARTY WAS A small but cheerful gathering: Mrs. Taslimi with her six-year-old twins who clung to her legs, Lily and Karim, Noor and Zod, and Dr. Mehran. Naneh Goli’s attempt to stay busy elsewhere in the house was thwarted by Zod. “You’re not going to become a bitter old nanny now, are you?” Offended, she joined the party.<
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  Lily entertained the twins, making paper hats and blowing balloons, while Karim grilled kebabs of tomatoes and chicken and passed around tumblers of orange soda. Dr. Mehran sat with Zod, resuming where they left off the day before—the doctor’s house calls long ago became an excuse to keep Zod company, spooning broth into his mouth and wiping his chin while picking at the dinner Soli served him at Zod’s bedside. It pleased them to reminisce about a time when they were young and untroubled and nothing hurt for long.

  “Do you remember being fifteen, Doktor?”

  “Ah yes! My father was very harsh with my sisters, but I was the golden boy and spoiled rotten,” Dr. Mehran said, slightly embarrassed. “My mother always served me the marrow bone from the soup, the rooster crown, the chicken hearts, and the biggest slab of tadig.”

  “Ha ha! A prince! That explains your vitality. They fed you the nuts and bolts!” said Zod.

  It’s good to laugh like this, thought Zod, to defy expectations about how a dying man should behave. Ever since the blessed girl’s arrival, Noor was too preoccupied to hover awkwardly at the edge of the room and Lily came to him regularly and unreserved, even sharing her earbuds and propping up her iPod on the nightstand.

  “Listen to this, Grandpa,” she’d say, and play him the soundtrack to The Sound of Music, a movie she had watched obsessively through kindergarten and first grade. Zod jiggled his foot to the familiar tunes. Pari, too, had loved that film and bought the record to sing along with it. It was still there, buried within the stack of records in the dumbwaiter. If only they could play it now, he thought, and let these kids dance in the gazebo, to take turns twirling in the middle as they themselves had done years ago, before music was taboo and dancing became vulgar. Persians are festive, it has long been their custom to look to the sky and break into song without reason, and no amount of curbing or curfew will crush that primal desire for revelry. They cannot, need not, will not live without song. Nowadays, people did everything they used to do: drink, dance, rap, and frolic—only underground.

  Ferry, nestled between her mother and Noor, was virtually hidden from the early evening customers. When Lily came to fetch her to cut the cake, leaving the mothers alone, Noor didn’t ask why Ferry’s father hadn’t come. The two women sat side by side in somber silence watching the twins chase Sheer around a table.

  “Do you know they call their sister ‘Fig Face’?” blurted Mrs. Taslimi.

  Noor looked at her quizzically. “Excuse me?”

  “They overheard some children at school say Ferry’s face was like the inside of a ripe fig.”

  “And what do you say to them?” Noor tried to control her fury from surfacing.

  “What can I say?” she shrugged.

  Ferry blew out the candles on her cake and they sang “Happy Birthday” in Persian, Lily spiraling into giggles at the unfamiliar lyrics. Even Soli untangled his brow, nailed a smile to his face, and uncrossed his arms to serve tea. Lily cupped her hand over Ferry’s, like a groom, to guide the knife and served the twins first before bringing plates to Noor and Mrs. Taslimi.

  Where did Lily learn this baking and serving? thought Noor. And here their thoughts converged because Ferry’s mother was equally baffled by the easy comfort and absence of anguish in the girls. It seemed they had jumped the glass walls of the fish bowl to roam the room, while their mothers circled inside.

  Afterwards, in the hazy summer dusk, when the crickets began their courting calls and the guests grew tired, Noor wheeled Zod away, slipped off his worn leather moccasins, and tucked him in. Ferry walked her family to the gate to prolong the good-bye and held her mother, forbidding herself to cry when the twins hid behind the trees, too afraid to come near. When it became clear that there was no longer the least hope of returning home, Lily and Karim escorted Ferry back on the gravel path to the kitchen, where she was given a dishcloth to dry the dishes while they swept and mopped.

  Noor pulled off the blue cleaning gloves to stack the plates in the cupboard, and Naneh Goli snoozed in the big chair. Later, weary and famished, Karim plated leftover chicken and they ate in the kitchen with the back door open to a full moon, and Noor remembered suddenly the afterglow of soirees in the garden when her parents would sit in this kitchen, with Pari’s feet propped on Zod’s lap, sharing a late-night snack and trading stories about who came, who danced, who was gay and who was dreary, and oh, what a night.

  All Noor ever wanted was to give her daughter a childhood like her own, happy and festive. There was a time in her life, when she was eleven or so, that she’d sit in the back of the classroom with her best friend, Roya, and suddenly dissolve into a fit of giggles over some tiny slip, reignited at the slightest arch of the teacher’s eyebrows, helpless to stifle their laughter. If there’s one thing she remembered, it was that sidesplitting laughter, especially when Mehrdad would pin her down and tickle her fiercely until she screamed, begging him to stop but all the time laughing wildly, uncontrollably, until their father turned the hose on them.

  Lily and her father had that—the teasing smiles and wink-wink jokes, an effervescence between them that flattened when Noor stepped in. Noor remembered this well, the expression that clouded their faces when she voiced caution, a complaint, another reminder. The fact that they could be close and their conversations long, that Nelson was good at knowing their daughter and she was not, was something that bothered Noor, but then again, all she ever wanted was for Lily to feel the irrepressible ripple of laughter.

  Twenty-Six

  Zod began to die in October. Time was short and now every hour seemed an hour from his death. A hush fell on the house, on the garden, on Noor and Lily and Naneh Goli, on Karim and Soli, on Hedi, Ala, and their customers. More than anything, Noor wanted to put her father’s mind at ease that she and Lily would be all right, but Zod saw through any performance meant to please or assure him of this. It had taken her so long to understand that though Zod appreciated her attentions, he wasn’t used to accepting care and it was best to anticipate his needs and not ask whether he was thirsty or needed an extra blanket. This, of course, was his gift: to know your desires before you said a word.

  Noor did insist on the night shift (she practically arm wrestled Naneh Goli for the sofa) and would lay sleepless, conscious of every rise and fall of Zod’s labored breath. He mostly dozed but stirred when the light first came in and she rushed to wash his face with a cool washcloth. Always tidy, he did not object to her shaving him. She would fill a bowl with warm water, tilt his head back, and put a hot towel over his face. Zod closed his eyes then and sighed with pleasure. Not once had he sat in Nezam’s barber chair in the Hotel Leila lobby, yet in this seventh decade of his life, time stood still long enough for a proper shave. His daughter lathered shaving cream up to his temples and scraped the blade over his chin, gently pulling taut the loose skin and breathing in the clean scent that filled the air.

  Such intimate work to sweep her fingers slowly over every line, every furrow engraved into the droopy folds of his jowls, stopping only to rinse the blade in the basin and resuming her delicate task. How long had it been since anyone had caressed this face? Traces of a handsome man still lurked in the sunken hollows of his eyes. He watched her without saying a word and it was impossible to know what he was thinking. All of a sudden he uttered, “A lot of the time I don’t know if I’ve said something out loud or if I’ve just thought it.”

  “Well, you’ve been very quiet, so what were you thinking about?”

  “Isn’t it strange how our hair and nails keep growing even after we die? What practical purpose could it serve?”

  If they all crowded into the room, Zod pretended to fall asleep. Oh, how they wore him out until Dr. Mehran suggested taking shifts, giving himself the longest hour. What comfort it was to have him in the house even if he sat birdlike and alert at Zod’s bedside, twitching his beak nose to dismiss them and hardly looking up if they wandered in a minute early. “Hanooz na, hanooz na! (Not yet, not yet!)”

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nbsp; Sometimes Noor walked in to find Naneh Goli with her head on Zod’s pillow and an arm draped over the skeleton beneath the sheets, twisted around him like a flame. If Zod spoke, a flicker of light would rise in her face, then quickly fade when he closed his eyes.

  One afternoon, Naneh Goli was going through a pile of photos on Zod’s nightstand and holding them up to his face one by one. Looking over her shoulders Noor saw a picture of her grandmother, a young mother of three boys: one lean, one burly, one angular. She recognized Uncle Morad, but her oldest uncle was rarely mentioned and when she glanced over at Zod, he drew in a deep raspy breath.

  When she turned to go he said, “Aren’t you staying?” He wanted her there!

  “Yes,” she said. “I’ll stay right here,” and pulled out a chair to sit on the other side of the bed.

  Naneh Goli lifted another black-and-white image from the pile in her lap. Noor, maybe three years old, in a frilly bathing suit, holding Mehrdad’s hand on the Caspian shore. Mehrdad looked away from the camera to the sky, with one arm raised and a finger pointing up and his little sister followed his gaze. What was he showing her? A seagull? It was his trick sometimes when she pestered and pestered him, just before frustration turned to fury, to distract her by pointing to something obscure in the sky—Look, a bird! Look, a kite! And if she resumed annoying him, testing his limits, he would make sure no one was looking and pinch her bottom, hard and mercilessly. She would shriek then, from the sudden, unexpected punishment, more surprised than in pain, and there was no end to her tears. It served her right. Being the older brother, he was forced to watch out for her and for the most part tolerated her wrecking a toy, running after his heels, but he didn’t need her; she needed him.

  Oh, Mehrdad. Suddenly, desperately, she wanted her brother. What time was it in California? It didn’t matter. She got up.

  “I have to make a phone call.”