The Last Days of Café Leila: A Novel

by Donia Bijan

  Naneh Goli inched her way to the front, digging bony elbows into paunches. She almost didn’t recognize the two other passengers who came to stand next to Nelson: Mehrdad, tanned and slim, in jeans and a navy blue blazer, bent to say something to the small woman in a gray silk headscarf standing between him and Nelson. They looked up to smile warmly at their entourage waving wildly on the opposite side of the glass, waiting eagerly to flock around them.

  “Farah joon . . . oh, Farah joon, I can’t believe it!” cried Noor, turning to look at Lily to see if she had seen her aunt, too, and the utter shock in Lily’s face confirmed that these three were real. The floodgates opened then and they wailed openly and without restraint. It’s not something they had planned, but that’s how it is when you come to a clearing. How else to let go of all that was inside them?

  Twenty-Eight

  Lily would hardly let her father out of her sight. She waited for Nelson to wake up in the morning and brought him freshly squeezed pomegranate juice in bed to watch him gulp the cold, purple juice with loud exaggerated lip smacking. Inseparable those first few days, Nelson could hardly brush his teeth without an audience. He lifted Lily a few inches off the ground with feigned effort to express his wonder at how much she’d grown, grimacing under her weight before tossing her about, and their delight in this game rippled such that they all felt a little airborne.

  Ha ha ha! Their laughter echoed through the house. His presence didn’t fade Mehrdad’s glory, not at all. In one day, they peeled back the sullen faces and reminded them how to laugh. Ha ha ha! The house itself seemed to flourish and flex its muscles, shutters sprung hinges to dappled sunlight, pipes rumbled, and lights shone in every window. Only Sheer, unaccustomed to the rich timbre of male voices, crawled under Zod’s bed where she stayed until dinner smells lured her to the kitchen.

  Aunt Farah had arrived in time to keep a tender vigil on the family and there was nothing in the world she wouldn’t do to lift their heavy hearts. So petite, yet she filled the room when she appeared, always attentive and hugging them with her small arms. Her suitcases bulging with presents, she quickly endeared herself to everyone with intuition and small, thoughtful gestures, giving Naneh Goli a glittery cosmetics bag filled with shiny hairpins and satin bows, while Noor had lugged a fancy new iron across the ocean for her, which she didn’t know how to use and had stored away.

  In one afternoon Farah saw what had taken Noor three months to notice and she quietly took Karim under her wing, soothing the lovesick boy with affection.

  “A thirteen-year-old boy needs a room of his own,” she argued. “It’s not as if there aren’t enough bedrooms.” Mehrdad and Noor, all too familiar with the twinkle in their aunt’s eyes, agreed.

  The next day, they moved Karim into Mehrdad’s old bedroom, ignoring Soli’s vehement objections. Karim carried his few possessions in a plastic grocery bag and sat on the bottom step with the bag at his feet until Farah took him upstairs and helped him settle in, rearranging the furniture, putting a poster of a soccer star above the bed, changing the faded duvet and threadbare towels, and taking him shopping for new clothes. He’d grown two inches and his pants were riding well above his ankles, but he blushed crimson when Lily complimented him on the new jeans.

  In one week Farah became the person closest to the children, giving gifts of no occasion, and they took comfort in her dazzling presence like warmth from the sun. Noor wondered how Uncle Morad had never melted.

  Mehrdad pulled the mattress off the bed Naneh Goli had prepared for him into the salon and slept on the floor beside Zod. Brother and sister camped out at his bedside, only leaving the room to use the toilet.

  At night, he mumbled and gasped their mother’s name, “Parvaneh, Pariroo, Parinaz.” If they didn’t know that he had always called for her this way, they may have wondered who all these women were, but this had been their parents’ language—each name tied to the one before like precious stones on a string.

  Mehrdad and Noor sat quietly on the sofa looking at photos of Cameron and Chloe on his iPad from their holiday in Costa Rica. Cameron, her fearless nephew, had surfed the enormous waves. Both were such a mix of their parents, but at ten, Cam reminded Noor so much of Mehrdad as a little boy—the same dimpled chin and that fantastic smile. Chloe, too, had Mehrdad’s playful grin, but her mother’s clear blue eyes looked up from under her long lashes, recalling Chrissy’s candor.

  Noor had never met anyone like her sister-in-law and she was admittedly a little afraid of her because Chrissy was incapable of tarof (a custom of self-deference exclusive to Iranians). She spoke frankly and without decorum. If she didn’t like your chicken, she’d go in the kitchen and make herself a salad. If the flowers you brought made her sneeze, she’d tell you to put them on the porch. Once, she’d even taken half a German chocolate cake to a dinner party, admitting to the hostess that it was her favorite and she’d kept the other half. For months Mehrdad was too mortified to accept another invitation. Yet this very guilelessness is what Noor loved about her—you never had to wonder with Chrissy if yes meant no. This was her brother’s life now: well-grounded, with a lovely family and a job he loved, and he was proud of that.

  Nelson insisted that Noor stay in the room when he came to apologize to Zod. Mr. Yadegar, I’m so sorry I hurt your daughter. I’ve come to take my family home. I promise to take very good care of them, etcetera. Zod’s eyes shone with gratitude as if this man alone understood him.

  Later that night they found themselves alone in a rare moment of privacy when Noor walked into his room carrying fresh towels. Nelson closed the door, took her in his arms very slowly, and begged Noor to forgive him. It was like stepping inside a movie they had seen together, and she couldn’t help but giggle at the cliché: jilted wife facing repentant husband. He kissed her tenderly and muttered a thousand apologies, pulling her to the floor, big hands caressing all her soft surfaces, almost reaching beneath her skirt, all the while begging “please, please, come home” in whispered remorse. Yes, his fingertips still burned a hole through her sleeves. Yes, her heart hammered in her chest and her legs parted ever so slightly. Noor sighed, took a deep breath and waited for it to settle. His scent of pine mingled with aftershave in the soft gully of his clavicle made her dizzy. Being virtuous was so very difficult. Didn’t she deserve a wild and free moment? She trembled with the thought that maybe this would not be the last time they would make love together, glad, glad to have recovered what was lost. Yes, he’d come to take her home. What was she made of? Ice would melt in the glint of those eyes.

  She placed a hand on his chest, feeling his heart pounding. He laid Noor down and kissed her neck, her ears, her mouth, cupped her bosom, and she kept her eyes open so she could see this magnificent man. He removed her skirt and rested his head on her stomach and she looked at him through eyes blurred with tears. Oh, Nelson, and she clung to him, wrapping him in her limbs. My my my my my. Nothing between them now but a wound, not forgotten, not even forgiven, but accepted.

  Afterwards they lay close without speaking.

  “I don’t need anyone but you and Lily,” he said at length. “I need nothing else.”

  “But what are we doing here, really?” she asked.

  “Well . . . I think we are coming back to each other.”

  “Yes, but now I have to go.” Dr. Mehran would be arriving any minute.

  She stood up and fastened her skirt and smoothed back her hair. At that moment they heard Lily downstairs. “Dad? Dad!”

  Lily reached the landing at the moment Noor closed the door behind her. Cheeks ablaze, Noor averted her eyes but her daughter had already noticed her untucked blouse and smiled knowingly.

  “Is Daddy in his room, Mommy?” Mommy. When had Lily last called her “Mommy”?

  “Sorry. Yes.” Sorry for what, she didn’t quite know, but she hurried past her daughter into the dim hallway of the house she knew, sailing past the bedrooms to the bathroom where she closed the door and leaned against the sink. Oh,
what had she done? She had only herself to blame.

  Downstairs, Noor noticed the kitchen clock had stopped at six twenty-five. She drank a glass of water from the tap and went to find her brother. Mehrdad, still a little jet-lagged, had woken from a nap upon hearing Zod call his name—or had he dreamed it? He rose to lean his cheek against the small pulse on the side of his father’s neck. He and Zod resembled each other more now that Mehrdad’s hair was graying, both with the same long, thin nose, the same shoulders, though Zod’s had contracted considerably.

  The pleats in Zod’s eyelids fluttered and he opened them once to drink in the sight of his son, “Pesaram (my son),” and closed again.

  “Baba?” said Mehrdad. “Baba joon?”

  “Pesaram, pesaram,” muttered Zod, reassuring Mehrdad that he hadn’t left yet, that he was his father always and he lived inside him always.

  Over and over they whispered back and forth, Baba, pesaram, Baba, pesaram, like a hymn. Even with his last breaths, Zod vowed his attachment to his son, so there would never be any doubt that he loved his children.

  Dr. Mehran had told them that it would be soon. When? At most a day. Sheer, curled up on Zod’s bed, yawned and went back to sleep, one crooked finger scratching behind her ear.

  As Zod fell into sleep, he dreamed that he was flying a paper airplane. He was actually sitting in it and his brother was in the pilot’s seat. Zod couldn’t see his brother’s face, of course, just the square back of his head and a voice, shouting like pilots do in old movies in the open-air cockpit, but he couldn’t make out what Morad was saying. His brother was an idiot. He had always known it was best to keep away from him, so what was he doing here? Is this how he was going to die, with his brother throwing him out of a paper plane? Then the pilot looked back and Zod saw that it wasn’t Morad at all, but his big brother, Davoud, yelling, “Are you hungry, Zod?”

  “Starving.”

  And they flew like prayers through the clouds.

  Twenty-Nine

  Zod was gone by the time Noor returned to his bedside with Lily and Nelson, and soon they were joined by Naneh Goli, Ferry and Aunt Farah, Soli and Karim, with Hedi and Ala close behind. Mehrdad choked back tears and held Lily, but Noor sobbed noisily into Nelson’s chest, and before long they all wept together, resting their heads on one another’s shoulders. When it subsided there was a moment of peace, a quiet interrupted only by the light scrape of the chair Soli brought for Naneh. Each one of them had already sat alone with Zod and said everything they wanted to say to him, and he had given each his last word like a keepsake. When Noor walked into the yard to call Dr. Mehran, she saw him asleep in the car with his mouth open. He’d never gone home from his last house call.

  Poor Naneh Goli. She wondered if her sole purpose on this earth had been to keep a deathwatch. Will they all die before me? Haunted by the blurry vision of herself in the seasons ahead with too many ghosts, her eyes continued to fill with tears but she wasn’t one to wail. Naneh had done enough of that, her scalp shone underneath what hair was left. She only longed to be alone with Zod before his soul left his body, and because they counted on her to get things done, Noor asked Naneh to prepare Zod. It’s customary in Iran for a family member to wash the body of the deceased; there are no undertakers and no viewings, burial is swift, and in the Yadegars’ case, there would be no clerics present at the funeral.

  And so it was that Naneh Goli took soap and washcloths and a basin of warm water to bathe Zod in the salon, a ritual as familiar to her as the bare shoulders, limbs, and pale chest of this shrunken man who had once been her boy. Raising the rigid stalk of his right arm to lather it, then the left, she whispered to him to tell the others that she wouldn’t be long now, that her days were numbered, too.

  In the lamplight, moving with precision and utmost tenderness, she rinsed every inch of him, kissed and swabbed his eyes, ears, and nose with cotton balls dabbed in rosewater. She tweezed the wayward hairs of his earlobes, clipped his fingernails and toenails, buffing each nail to a fine gloss. Then she dried her hands to unfurl the shroud she had prepared days ago. It was the simple white cotton sheet Nina had once embroidered for Zod and Pari, ironed smooth and scented with rosewater. She wrapped Zod within it and stood beside him for what seemed to her a short time, when in fact the light from the rising sun lit the room and he glowed in his cocoon.

  The aroma of toasted flour grew stronger as Noor came downstairs, and she opened the windows to let the smell of halvah drift into the streets and over the rooftops, heralding a funeral. This rich pudding of flour, butter, sugar, and rosewater was a salve to their grief. She found Soli alone in the kitchen bent over an enormous pot of syrup, his narrow shoulders slumped in sorrow. It would not be appropriate to touch him but she stood near the stove in solidarity.

  “Is Naneh still asleep?” she inquired. Naneh Goli, parched from a night of ablutions, had gulped down some water and gone to bed at dawn.

  “Yes,” replied Soli, reticence under lock and key.

  “Would you like some help with the halvah?”

  “No, khanoom.”

  “May I prepare the dates, at least?” She wasn’t giving up on consoling this lonely man.

  He gestured to the platters of dates they would serve at the cemetery, already stuffed with walnuts and covered with plastic wrap. The man had only slept a few hours and was up long before dawn. Then he put the ladle down and faced her, his eyes shiny and round as coins, questioning her.

  “What will become of us, khanoom?”

  “Today. Let’s just get through today and tomorrow, Soli,” Noor replied, for the funeral was scheduled the following day and they still had much to do.

  “But how? How will we manage without him?” It was like a wave breaking and Soli convulsed and crashed, heaving between sobs that shook his entire body. There was more going on inside that man than he let them believe.

  “One foot in front of the other, that is the way we do it, Soli. One foot in front of the other,” said Noor.

  MEHRDAD, NELSON, HEDI, AND Soli carried Zod to Dr. Mehran’s car. Some families choose to have the body transported to the cemetery in a limousine, but Dr. Mehran would not let a stranger drive his old friend to his grave and Karim had washed and polished the vehicle until it sparkled in the bright afternoon sun.

  Noor and Aunt Farah followed with Naneh Goli and the children, all in black and their hair combed underneath their headscarves, in a minivan chauffeured by Aladdin. Wreaths filled every square inch of Mr. Azizi’s pickup truck as he led the slow motorcade through town.

  News of Zod’s death had sent volts through the tight grid of neighborhoods, and one by one doors opened as people in their dark clothes locked their homes, pulled down the metal grates on their shops, and hurried to fall into a line behind cars and minibuses, motorcycles and bicycles. They poured into the street, their heads lowered, pressed to the backs of those before them, a procession that built and built like a line of dominoes. It was unlike anything Mehrdad or Noor had ever seen—car after car after car, shuttered shop windows, men and women weeping openly, mopping their faces with white handkerchiefs.

  Noor peered around at the row of taxi hoods and the forlorn faces in the bus windows and all behind them, the rhythmic march of mourners bent under their grief, drawn forth by the single wish to say good-bye to a yaar, a constant and devoted companion. Along the sidewalks, policemen squinted to see, taking a second or two to realize what was going on, then pausing to touch the brim of their caps. For now, they tolerated the crowd and the wailing voices, held back by what was in their eyes, or rather, what was not—an unheeded indifference to their presence.

  “Move along, now,” they commanded in a half-hearted attempt to establish authority. But really, they knew that one ungenerous impulse and any one of these men, wracked by grief, would catch them by the throat, so they stood beneath the sparse trees clicking cigarette lighters in their palms, blithely observing a cortege the likes of which they had never seen but for mart
yrs and mullahs.

  Noor turned in her seat to look back once more at the line that was growing longer still, ten, maybe twenty blocks, pressed together and tighter, moving forward in a slow pulse.

  ARRIVING AT THE CEMETERY, fathers, brothers, and sons carried Zod on their shoulders to a freshly dug plot. And then the line broke and the volume of their cry rose like from a choir, wavering when they lowered him into the ground and crowded around his grave, utterly dependent on one another to bear this loss of the best in themselves. Gone was the slightly rigid mien of everyday, here their cheeks were wet, and everyone nodded and had a kind word for one another, whispered like involuntary prayers, some replacing the gravity with anecdotes about Zod, a connectedness between them he had fostered.

  One by one they knelt to say good-bye, their eyes cast down upon their friend, only once more, then, no more, for before long the site was covered with flowers as if bulbs had bloomed all at once, and they rose with grass stains on their trousers and the scent of damp earth on their hands.

  Naneh Goli, who held Ferry’s hand until then, went to kneel as near to the pit as possible, her spine arched beneath a black veil, unaware of the crowd politely skirting her. Lily clung to Noor, for the wailing that erupted from the women frightened her, and Noor, overwhelmed by the sound herself, tried her best to reassure Lily that this was their way and she needn’t be afraid. It was as moving as it was alarming, and the family huddled together to receive the mourners who came before them with fresh tears to utter “may it be your last sorrow, may his soul be joyous” while Karim and Soli passed around trays of dates and squares of halvah beneath a pink afternoon sky, the sun still warm on their backs.