The Last Days of Café Leila: A Novel

by Donia Bijan

  “Who are you going to call?” Zod asked.

  “My brother.”

  “Is he here?”

  “No, not yet,” and she ran from the room to dial his number.

  “Please come,” she said. “Could you?”

  THROUGH THE OPEN WINDOW Noor saw Lily and Ferry on the swing set in the garden, Karim pushing one, then the other, a hypnotic to-and-fro synchronized to the intervals of creaky metal chains. Their high voices carried upstairs to the bedroom. What did they chatter on about all day? How did they reach one another so easily? It seemed the bridge between them even diminished the distance between Noor and Lily.

  That constant feeling that she was being endured was gone. For too long Noor had auditioned for motherhood, fun mom one day to authoritarian the next, careening from affectionate to cool, indulgent to critical, hands-off to hovering, and if Nelson was the arbiter, the easygoing dad, there to keep the peace and make their meals festive, it only heightened the pitch of her pendulum. It was exhausting being Noor, but she meant well. She always had meant well.

  It was with the best of intentions that Noor had decided to pay a visit to the judge earlier that week. Yes, the one with the deranged nephew who burned Ferry. Maybe her father’s rage had fueled her outrage. She’d been afraid for too long.

  She borrowed Naneh Goli’s black chador and sat on a hard chair outside the man’s office for three days before he agreed to see her. Noor had refused to divulge the reason for her visit to anyone but him and eventually the clerks pretended she wasn’t there. Noor rehearsed her story and prayed that her voice wouldn’t waver in his presence.

  When at last she was granted five minutes, a portly man in his sixties leaned over a cluttered desk and motioned to a chair across from him. Noor introduced herself and once again eighty years of the Yadegars’ goodwill revealed that the judge had filled his ample belly more than once at her father’s table. But she had not come for his “best wishes” and told him so. He assumed Noor needed a favor, offering “if there’s anything I can do for you” and that’s when she looked straight into his eyes, sweat dripping like a faucet from her armpits beneath the veil, said indeed there was, and came out with it, not leaving a shadow of a doubt in case he tried to dodge accountability.

  “I had no idea,” he said defensively, but of course you know when someone in your family is demented.

  Noor couldn’t make any viable threats and didn’t want to put Ferry’s family in peril, so she pleaded to his conscience. Leaving the adoption papers and the child’s gruesome photos on his desk, she left quickly before her knees buckled. Ferry’s mother had agreed, so all Noor needed was for it to become official: Fereshteh would become a member of the Yadegar family.

  Now, through her bedroom window Noor watched the children through the tree branches. She saw Lily drop something. A Popsicle. Without missing a beat, Karim came from behind to offer his own. Even through the canopy of green leaves, even with his face half averted, Noor registered something in his stance. Karim stood before Lily, planted in the earth like the hundred-year-old mulberry tree, all shelter and shade, as if standing still to make a vow. Noor turned her head to the sky—the air was cooler now, and she could smell rain. All the small mannerisms, all the furtive glimpses, the color and light in his face when Lily came into the room. How stupid can you be? she thought. Karim is in love with your daughter!

  She went downstairs to the kitchen and filled a pot with water, then carried it to the stove to cook the rice for dinner. She stood with folded arms, waiting for it to boil, then imagined her father’s voice urging her to keep moving. So she took out plates and cutlery to set the table, dumped the tea leaves and rinsed the teapot, filled a pitcher of water and put it on the table with five glasses, washed lettuce for a salad, found a bowl, peeled cucumbers and chopped tomatoes until the lid shuddered on the pot, and she started the rice. She knew there was nothing she could do, nothing that would help Zod, and nothing that would help Karim. She couldn’t change the conditions, she couldn’t deny her awareness, and she couldn’t stand in the way of death or love. The only thing to do was to keep moving, to do something, to show courage, to give everything she was capable of giving.

  She turned the flame down, wrapped a dishcloth around the lid to trap the steam, and joined the children in the yard. Then all went quiet except for the crackle of tadig crust cooking beneath the rice.

  “Dinner will be ready soon,” she said.

  “Good, I’m starving,” said Lily.

  “Anything I can help with?” asked Ferry.

  “You three can clean up.” And she squatted down to pick up a discarded Popsicle stick in the dirt.

  Twenty-Seven

  They chose an overcast day, grayish and mild, to take Ferry to the pool. Bright sunlight was still irritating and the doctors advised her to stay mostly indoors. It was to be their first outing since she was attacked and Noor suppressed her apprehension, agreeing to accompany the girls. If only Karim could come, too, they lamented, and Lily teased that this time, “Cream can borrow my suit!”

  They had just finished breakfast and Lily was biting off pieces of bread and mopping the remains of a fried egg. Karim was hanging around, his bright eyes glimmering and watching Noor expectantly. She took a swig of tea and looked at Lily’s face, at Nelson’s grin on her mouth and the laughing edges of Pari’s eyes—his and her blood running through her veins. Lily gazed at Noor as if her mother could make things happen, as if she held the keys that opened doors Noor didn’t know were shut. Not a trace of fear in these children, she thought. They haven’t seen anything, yet have seen so much, but oh, if they knew more, they wouldn’t take on the world like this.

  At half past nine they left the house, walking through the quiet residential neighborhood with Ferry close between them and the wind swishing their scarves about. The curtains on the facade surrounding the entrance to the pool were drawn but the sound of women in water carried to the street and they linked arms to go inside.

  The attendants were just sitting down to breakfast and the one with abundant loose black hair got up to sell them their passes while the other carried a teapot to the small round table wedged in the corner of the office, already laid with a floral tablecloth, a nice chunk of feta cheese, and a loaf of bread. It was only when the young woman looked up at Ferry’s disfigured face that she gasped involuntarily. Ferry had not been around many people, she didn’t know yet how to handle their gaze, their revulsion, their pity, or even their compassion.

  Noor apologized for interrupting their meal, feeling sorry for the girl behind the counter who fumbled nervously with the tickets and change. Noor realized they were good people caught off guard and it was up to her to put this woman at ease, just as it was up to her to shepherd Ferry through these initial awkward encounters. Here is where her nursing skills came in handy and she quickly diffused the unpleasant air with a lucid explanation of Ferry’s accident.

  “You know this is not her fault,” Noor added at length. “Come here, Ferry joon.” She took Ferry’s hand to bring her closer to the desk.

  “This is Fereshteh. We call her Ferry for short. My name is Noor, and this is my daughter, Lily. And what’s your name?”

  “Soudabeh, but please call me Soodi,” she lifted her eyes to peek once more, smoothing a creased bill before passing it to Noor. “Would you like three lockers or just one?”

  They collected keys to adjacent lockers and Noor left her cell phone with Soodi, who smiled shyly and waited for them to turn the corner before sitting down at the table and dropping her head into her hands. Upstairs in the locker room they undressed quietly.

  Lily was thinking back on the last time she was here, picturing Karim’s anxious eyes darting back and forth. A pang of regret went through her for putting him in such danger. Ferry went inside herself the way she sometimes did. Noor draped their towels over one arm and gently put a hand on the girl’s shoulder.

  “Ferry, are you up for this?”

 
“Mhm.” She shrugged.

  “It isn’t going to be easy, but it will get better,” said Noor.

  “Never. It will never get better,” she cried. “The only three people I know who can stand to look at me are you, Lily, and Karim.” Behind her dark glasses, tears welled up and trickled down her cheeks, soaking the gauze patch on her right eye.

  They took a collective deep breath and opened the door to the pool, looking straight ahead. Five or six women sitting at a table in the café sipping tea stared with mouths agape until a sudden impulse made Noor look over to nod hello and they returned the greeting, lowering their eyes. She unloaded the towels to apply sunscreen to the girls’ backs. Heads turned to look and one by one they averted their gaze, embarrassed when Noor acknowledged each with a friendly smile. It’s the only way, she thought. Exile is not a solution.

  “There you are, Mrs. Yadegar!” A voice cried from behind them. “Where have you been?” Bahar and her sister Sahar came towards them, suntanned arms outstretched.

  “We were wondering when you’d be back,” said Sahar.

  “Hello! It’s been too long!” said Noor, waiting for them to come closer. Lily took Ferry’s hand.

  “This is Ferry, khahar koochooloo man (she’s my little sister),” Lily said in broken Persian.

  There was a flicker of distress in their eyes. Then, “It’s so good you’re here. Bahar could really use another lesson!”

  TWO DAYS EARLIER, AT around nine thirty in the evening, Mehrdad had called. Noor’s first thought was that he couldn’t get his passport renewed or he was too busy at work. Up until now, she had withheld information about Zod’s demise, offering false hope in her flowery emails. Yet her most recent call came as no surprise. Mehrdad wasn’t naive and was all too familiar with the Persian custom of keeping a true diagnosis from a dying patient or his kin to spare everyone unnecessary worry. Why ruin a life with bad news? But even in writing, Noor was a terrible actress and Mehrdad was prepared.

  “Hey, Noor,” he said. “It’s me.”

  “Hi. Is something wrong?” She sat gripping the receiver.

  “No, I just wanted to give you my flight number.”

  “Oh!” she cried, tears pooling in her eyes and falling like fat raindrops into her lap.

  “Are you all right?” asked Mehrdad.

  “Yes . . . yes, of course. I always cry. Let me write it down.”

  After hanging up, she searched for Naneh Goli and found her bent over the ironing board behind the yellow curtain that separated the linen closet from her bedroom. After sixty years of ironing, the smell of starch and rosewater saturated the walls, seeped into the carpet, and Naneh Goli carried that scent everywhere she went so it was never difficult to find her. How often had Noor snuck up behind her plump nanny and spooked her, Naneh Goli threatening to smack her bottom with a shoe. Even now she stood dauntless, though mostly shoulder blades and ribs beneath a thin housecoat.

  Noor leaned in to hug the tiny, crooked woman who would iron paper towels if you let her.

  “Naneh joon, you’ll never guess who’s coming.”

  “Doktor?”

  “No. My brother.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “No, Saturday. Saturday night.”

  “We have to prepare a room.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Have you told your father?”

  “No, I will right now.” She breathed in Naneh Goli’s perfume a moment longer before letting go.

  All of a sudden, the house came alive as if light had only come through a keyhole before. She saw and heard everything, from particles of dust, to the mild fall weather, to the noise from the café, through Mehrdad’s eyes and ears. She drifted from room to room, straightening objects, polishing furniture, peeping into bathrooms to check the soap, opening and closing the refrigerator door. What would Mehrdad like to eat? How much Scotch was left in the dumbwaiter? Naneh Goli circled the same rooms with a broom and a dustpan. Even Soli quit brooding—the prospect of another man in the house seemed to have softened the detachment that had taken him in its grip. He rubbed his hands together and set about peeling and chopping with new zeal.

  The cuisine of Northern Iran, overlooked and underrated, is unlike most Persian food in that it’s as unfussy and lighthearted as the people from that region. The fertile seaside villages of Mazandaran and Rasht, where Soli grew up before moving to the congested capital, were lush with orchards and rice fields. His father had cultivated citrus trees and the family was raised on the fruits and grains they harvested.

  Alone in the kitchen, without Zod’s supervision, he found himself turning to the wholesome food of his childhood, not only for the comfort the simple compositions offered, but because it was what he knew so well as he set about preparing a homecoming feast for Zod’s only son. He pulled two kilos of fava beans from the freezer. Gathered last May, shucked and peeled on a quiet afternoon, they defrosted in a colander for a layered frittata his mother used to make with fistfuls of dill and sprinkled with sea salt. One flat of pale green figs and a bushel of new harvest walnuts were tied to the back of his scooter, along with two crates of pomegranates—half to squeeze for fresh morning juice and the other to split and seed for rice-and-meatball soup. Three fat chickens pecked in the yard, unaware of their destiny as he sharpened his cleaver. Tomorrow they would braise in a rich, tangy stew with sour red plums, their hearts and livers skewered and grilled, then wrapped in sheets of lavash with bouquets of tarragon and mint. Basmati rice soaked in salted water to be steamed with green garlic and mounds of finely chopped parsley and cilantro, then served with a whole roasted, eight kilo white fish stuffed with barberries, pistachios, and lime. On the farthest burner, whole bitter oranges bobbed in blossom syrup, to accompany rice pudding, next to a simmering pot of figs studded with cardamom pods for preserves. All night long Soli hummed in the kitchen.

  SATURDAY BROUGHT RAIN, FINISHING what remained of their housekeeping so that even the cars and the streets shimmered. Anticipation took possession, bringing them back from the brink of despair and shifting attention away from sorrow to better attitudes and warmer feelings hitherto forgotten. Persians appreciate a proper welcoming party and didn’t a native son’s return call for one? Noor thought it would be a treat to eat a late dinner in the international terminal, remembering how often Zod had taken them there for a club sandwich to watch the planes land while waiting for Pari’s arrival.

  A trip to the airport was something Naneh Goli didn’t want to miss—she never forgave Zod for leaving her behind the last time when Noor and Lily had arrived. Wedding gold was unearthed for the occasion and rouge applied carefully to her shriveled cheeks. Soli wore a cypress green hand-me-down sweater vest from Zod over a pressed white shirt to chauffer them to the airport.

  With Ferry’s help, Lily made a welcome banner, writing Mehrdad’s name in Persian with colored markers and learning to write her own name, too—the sweeping rise and fall of the letters themselves more visual poetry than alphabet. She was quite fond of her uncle. Twice he had taken her to Disneyland, and on his visits to San Francisco he rushed first to lift her off the ground in a whirling embrace, ignoring the adults and offering her tiny presents from his pocket.

  Karim’s eager pleas to Soli to accompany them were ignored. Stung by his uncle’s cold refusal to take him, he hung back in their shared room, peering through the window across the narrow divide that separated the café from the old hotel. He jerked his head back when Noor stepped outside, pulling the hood of her parka against the drizzle. Watching them approach the car with their heads bent to avoid the rain, did he see Lily hesitating, craning around to look for him? No, she was only running back to grab the nearly forgotten bouquet Mr. Azizi had arranged earlier that day.

  Does she even know I’m here? he thought. Here I am, look up! But then she was gone and he banged his forehead against the cold windowpane. How long would this last? He didn’t think about the end of Lily’s stay, but once he was reminded of it he co
uldn’t help but hear the latch closing on the best days of his life. Fall was here, and with it a longer night. How many such empty hours had he before him?

  A STEADY LAYER OF drizzle fell against the windows in the nearly empty restaurant where they had a perfect view of the runway. Lily pushed her forehead against the glass, watching the planes nose their way to the gates, wishing Karim and Ferry had come, too. Not so long ago, she had desperately wanted to be in a window seat on one of those planes taking off. That focused, inconsolable, anywhere-but-here hysteria driving her wild. How she had longed for her father, how she missed him still and wished she could tell him everything that happened. Looking back now, she could scarcely believe what the last days of August had brought her, how in one afternoon a world of unknown cruelty and unforeseen friendship opened to her, how suddenly she became a part of this everyday life. And it seemed like an immense span of time when in fact it had been only a few months.

  After they had eaten and paid the bill, they walked to the waiting area where they watched through a glass panel as a stream of passengers entered the long hallway, pushing luggage carts and scanning faces for a familiar person. Lily unfurled her banner, filled with the simple hope of seeing her uncle.

  “Looks as if his plane has landed,” said Noor, rummaging in her purse for a mint. “Nice.” Lily nodded and let her gaze wander to a little gathering of people a few feet away who were gesturing to get a passenger’s attention. When she looked back her eyes grew wide and she let out a shout.

  Nelson was surveying the crowd and spotted her just then.

  “Lily!” he mouthed.

  “Daddy!”

  His eyes were shining. All the movement around him continued forward, but like an apparition he floated towards her, dropped his shoulder bag to the floor, and pressed his large palms against the glass. Forehead to forehead. Fingertip to fingertip. Voices and laughter growing distant around them. Nelson’s face split into a huge grin. He crossed his eyes and stuck out his tongue. Lily, on tiptoes, glued to the glass, was afraid to move a muscle should he disappear. Noor stiffened, but then it was nearly impossible to be unmoved by the wonder of it. The others stood mystified. Someone, maybe Soli, picked up the banner Lily had let fall and held it up. Noor knew, didn’t she, that Mehrdad would sense the direction of her thoughts and call Nelson. Until then, Mehrdad had not once meddled. Whether it was intuition or mutual understanding, she knew that her husband had come to take them home.