I stood among the fallen books, among the words of artists who’d spent happy, circuitous hours writing, honing their words for years. Mr. Fakhri bent over my mother like an animal wounded and lacerated himself.
I wanted to leave and not come back to that shop, to escape from the whole city, to run away and hide somewhere.
I rushed out. On the pavement I heaved forward and vomited and hid my tears as best I could from passersby.
When he saw my mother’s laceration, my father sped us to Jahangir’s. We couldn’t go to a hospital in Tehran. There was so much shame back then in all of it, Roya Joon. In her sickness. In her attempt to take her own life. In even the idea of suicide.
Jahangir was home when we took my mother in to see his father. He hugged me and assured us that our secret was safe with him. Jahangir’s father promised not to say a word about what she’d tried to do.
Thank goodness, she hadn’t had a chance to puncture her skin deep enough. I had grabbed the knife in time. In the end, a gauze bandage and ichthyol ointment was all that was needed. “But one more second here and there, one little slip . . .” Jahangir’s father shook his head.
She could have worn a scarf around her neck and gone about town. She could have stayed home until the wound had healed. But we were all—my mother, father, and I—completely stunned. Not just from what she had almost done, not just from knowing it took only “one second here and there” for a very different outcome. But I was still trying to process what had transpired between my mother and Mr. Fakhri. And I wondered if my father, in his own quiet way, knew.
It was Jahangir’s idea that we go and stay in the villa up north. Just for a few days. Just until we got our bearings, until my mother healed, until we all regained some semblance of normalcy. He promised me he’d keep you up-to-date. I guess he wavered on that promise. Of course I knew Jahangir was in love with me—please, Roya, there is no more time for pretense. I won’t pretend I didn’t know. Though at that time, we never would have acknowledged it. We would not have put it into words. Necessarily.
But I loved you. All I wanted was you. I would have given anything for you. And Jahangir promised he’d make sure that you and I communicated. It was he who helped with the delivery of our correspondence. He was my conduit, my confidant, my go-between. He was good at heart, Roya Joon. He was trying to protect us. He wanted above all for me to be happy—I really do believe that. And who was it who ultimately changed the letters so we ended up at different squares? I want to say it was my mother. Lord knows she didn’t want us married. Except, Roya Joon, my mother was in the villa with me up north all along. And even though she was suffering, I do not think it was she who did it. It was someone whom we both trusted but who felt he had a debt to pay.
She convinced Mr. Fakhri to do it. Of course, I only realize this now, decades later, trying to put the pieces together. Because he owed her. He owed her for completely abandoning her and leaving her with her unborn baby. Which she, well . . . there was no legal abortion in Iran then. She took matters into her own hands.
I wanted to tell you the very next day where I was. I thought I could find a telephone up there, call you, let you know. I wanted to have Jahangir tell you.
That next morning, in the villa, I walked into my mother’s room. I didn’t even have to say a word. I didn’t have to tell her that I wanted to contact you. She took one look at me and said, “You call that girl, you tell that girl where we are, you let on to any of this, and guess what, Bahman?” A smile spread across her pale face. “I’ll do it again. And this time, I’ll do it all the way. I promise you.”
She sucked in her breath and held her hand to her neck. “Just let her go, Bahman. For me. You communicate with her and I will do it again.”
I remember the wooden boards of the villa’s main room had a gap, and through this crack the wind blew, and at night it got very cold. Even in summer: you know how those nights up north can be. My father stuffed a shamad cloth in the crack to seal it. It didn’t help much. I sat night after night and let the wind sting my back. I made sure I sat there right at the gap so the wind cut through my spine.
I cooked. My mother eventually joined us for meals. Delusion took over. She spoke constantly of my marriage to Shahla. My father, to change the subject, talked about the problems Prime Minister Mossadegh was having. I missed you; I wanted so badly to see you. But I was too ashamed to tell you that we had escaped the city because my mother had tried to kill herself.
Misery seeped into that place and was impossible to keep out, just like the wind that came in through the crack between the wood panels, no matter how hard my father tried to fill the gap. Your letters kept me going. I didn’t want to tell you all that had happened. It made me ashamed and it made me confused. I wanted my mother to be normal, to be like other mothers. I wanted her to care for and support me, and I wanted her to be at our wedding and to let us live our lives. I wanted that more than anything else. But she was not like other mothers. She was herself. She had the rage, she had the depression, she was violent, she was cruel, she refused to let me live in peace. She wanted to control my life, she told me she loved me so much that she wanted the best for me. That she had been too poor and had given up too much to have me squander it away.
Was my father nothing more than a way for her to attain status? Did she ever even really love him?
I poured out my heart in those letters to you. Do you still have them, Roya Joon? Did you keep the letters? I suppose you wouldn’t.
My father and I shouldn’t have tried to handle all of it alone. I know that now. But I was too young to know better. I kept worrying about you. I still refused Shahla. The more my mother pushed her on me, the more I resisted. And I did not do so, despite what my mother may have believed, out of spite. I did not reject Shahla to rebel. All I could see was you standing in the shop, your hair in braids, your schoolbag on your shoulder. I only heard your voice. In your presence, I found a calm.
I was determined to marry you, despite the threats, the illness, the hell. That’s why I wrote that last letter. She could not stop us. She could not end our happiness with the threat of suicide! I had had enough, and I had decided to escape. She was holding us hostage with her threats, and I didn’t want her to have that power over me.
She knew I waited for you at the square. She knew I was heartsick with worry over you. And when I read your last letter and told her in anger and confusion that you had said you wanted to see no more of me (how could I tell her that the letter said you couldn’t take her?), she laughed. She told me, “Good, I told you so, I told you that girl is no good,” and she promised to starve herself to death if I tried to reconcile with you, if I tried to get you back.
I was supposed to be the “boy who would change the world.” But life has a way of squashing dreams, plans, ideals. In the end, I barely served my country. I was an activist working to spread political material of the National Front, sure. In 1953 I was active. But how disillusioned I became with politics and all the rest of it after the coup in ’53. And I could barely rejoice as others did in 1979 to see the Shah gone. I was too worried that worse would follow. In the end, Jahangir did more than I did. He went to the front! He followed in his father’s footsteps and became a doctor. And he treated soldiers and the wounded in Ahvaz during the war. He died in a bombing. So no, during those weeks apart I was not in prison. I was not in hiding for political reasons. I was simply trying to keep my mother alive and figure out how to solve this problem of her threats, of her closeness to doing it all again, of our irreconcilable plans.
Remember how much you used to worry that we would be jinxed by the evil eye? I scoffed at it all being just superstition back then. But I look at the life I have lived without you, and who knows? Maybe there is something to our culture’s obsession with the evil eye. Look at what ended up happening with my mother.
Even after I received your last letter requesting that I never see you again, never contact you—I never stopped loving you. And
I hate to think about the possibility there—was that really what you wrote? Because now I just don’t know.
And, my dearest Roya, when we met here at the center last week, I could see in your eyes a certain worry that maybe I had lost my mind or my memory. But please know this. I may not remember certain things—what I ate for lunch two days ago or which darn pill to take when. For that, I need Claire’s guidance. But my mind is sharp as a knife when it comes to remembering everything that happened that summer. When it comes to knowing my heart.
The truth is, Roya Joon, I was never as happy as when I was with you. So many wonderful moments with my children and, yes, with Shahla, but I was never as happy as I was with you. There have been years when you were the first thing I thought about when I woke up. Just about everything reminded me of you. Of course I knew you belonged to another, as did I. But, Roya, you have always been a part of me. Some things can’t be helped.
And now I find I must stop.
It is when I think of the purple sky on the evening of our engagement, and the moments we shared, that I remember beauty in this world. But after what has happened to our country, and really, when I look around at this modern world, I can’t help but think there is an ugliness, a streak of cruelty in all of it. I have tried to remain positive, as the Americans so encourage, I have attempted to not be one of those grumpy old men! Claire here at the Duxton Center has been good to me. She calls me “Mr. Batman.” She doesn’t tire of my stories. I have confided in her. Even told her about our young love. The moments of beauty and connection keep me going. I see my children and my grandchildren and I am happy. The rest of it—the politics, the mental illness that drowned my mother, the cruel twists and turns—well, there is a fetid underside to life sometimes. When I think that way is when I get the most hopeless.
I loved you. I loved you then, I love you now, I will always love you.
You are my love.
Bahman
Chapter Twenty-Nine
2013
* * *
Toothpaste Sheets
Roya found her phone and searched for the number of the center. Mrs. Aslan and Mr. Fakhri. A first baby who was never born. And then Mrs. Aslan’s body turned on her and killed all the others. Except for one.
She could see Mrs. Aslan, the rouge on her cheeks that night at the engagement party. She knew how the loss of one child could render everything broken. To have lost four? Oh, it was different times then, Sister, don’t you remember? People lost children all the time.
She had waited long enough, for goodness’ sake. No matter the snow, forget it. She had to go there again and see him face-to-face.
“You don’t have a lot of time, I’m afraid,” Claire said on the phone.
“I’m sorry?”
“He’s taken a turn for the worse, Mrs. Archer. His son and daughter have been here for the past two days.”
“But I saw him less than two weeks ago. I got his letter. . . .”
“He wrote that as if his life depended on it. He asked me to mail it. Look, sometimes these are just scares. Sometimes there are dips, the Parkinson’s flares up, and then he’s fine again. We’re hoping.”
“Oh.”
“But if you’d like to see him . . . well, I would come as soon as you can.”
When she got to the center, the ice had barely melted. Snow still covered every corner of the parking lot, only it was gray now and dull, its crevices filled with dirt.
Once inside, Roya expected Claire to take her to the dining hall. The same stink of beef stew filled the lobby. (Did they ever eat anything else for lunch over here?) She wanted Claire to lead her down the corridor to the dining hall to see Bahman in his wheelchair by the window. They had probably placed a plastic chair for her in the same spot. They could look out at the parking lot again, at the snow, even though it was gray and dingy now. She’d pull out the letter from her purse, and Bahman’s eyes would fill with that same damn hope, and she would talk to him about all the history she had not known until now.
But Claire led her down another hall entirely. It was the color of every hospital corridor she’d ever seen, the color of the place where she’d held Marigold one last time. She used all her effort to put one foot in front of the other. By the time they got to the room where Claire entered, Roya was sweating. She should have taken off the down coat she wore.
It was dark inside the room, the drapes drawn. As her eyes adjusted, she made out a bed, a chair next to it, a nightstand with a vase, a table in the corner by a sink. And in the bed lay Bahman, his breath like a broken machine.
“Let me help you with your coat.” Claire pulled off one sleeve and then the other, and together they removed Roya’s puffy coat. Roya made her way to the chair by the bed and sat down. She was so close to Bahman that she could now see the lines around his mouth. His eyes were closed. There were no plastic tubes coming out of his nose. He wasn’t hooked up to volumes of liquid; he was fully there, her Bahman. He had to be fine.
“I’ll be right in the lobby if you need anything. Just press the buzzer by the bed and I’ll be here instantly. But, Mrs. Archer?”
“Yes?”
“Take your time.”
“Oh,” was what she said. But what she really wanted to say was: Why is he in this bed and not in his chair, and please don’t leave.
When the click of Claire’s heels receded, Roya was once again alone with him. His chest rose and fell under a white sheet and a blanket the color of turnips. She wanted to open the drapes, let light into the room.
“I’ve been waiting,” he said. He opened his eyes. “How was your drive? How are you?” His voice was small, hoarse.
“It was all good. What happened, Bahman? What happened to you?”
“I’m just fine. Hanging in there, as the Americans say. My daughter was here this morning. She’s coming back tonight.”
Roya should have come sooner. She thought of him writing his letter to her. All those confessions. Suddenly none of it mattered. Someone had changed their letters when they were young. Whether it was Mr. Fakhri because of Mrs. Aslan, as Bahman seemed to suspect, or even Shahla or Jahangir, she might never know. She wanted him only to know that she, too, had days where he was the very first person she thought of, days where she had wanted nothing more than to be with him. Something had happened when they were young, something inexplicable and irreversible. They were bound, attached to each other in a way that was impossible to fight. She had loved him and her love for him had never quite stopped. She had tried to push it down, hide it, make it disappear. But it was always there. It floated in the branches of the trees outside her California college boardinghouse, it was in the layers of the clouds in New England, it had been in the red puffed-up chest of a bird that sang in winter. It was everywhere. Still.
“Bahman?”
His breathing had slowed. She took in the stubble on his face, the lines on his forehead.
“I missed you. Every single day,” he said.
“I missed you too.” As she said it, tears ran down her cheeks. She pulled her chair as close as possible to the bed and took his hand. It was dry and felt smaller than when she’d held it two weeks ago. A scent of pungent soil, a puddle of rain, came from the vase of flowers on the nightstand, like something forgotten.
She stood up. She balanced herself on her left foot and then with everything she had, she hoisted herself up onto the bed. His eyes widened when she lay next to him. She put her arm across his body. They fit perfectly next to each other. How natural this felt, to lie beside him. She nuzzled her head into his shoulder.
“Roya Joon.”
The sheets smelled like toothpaste. He smelled like the wind, like water and salt, like all their time together when they were young.
In a parallel universe, the boy who had first shown her what it meant to fall in love, who promised he would wait for her, would have always been hers. She was in the bed in the center and she was pressed against the bookshelves for stolen kisses. She was
in both places all the time. He would always be right there.
She held him under the toothpaste sheets and, too, in the pastry shops of a city long changed as they went through the lobby of Cinema Metropole with its red circular sofas to kiss under the sky. Before she knew it they were in Jahangir’s living room, familiar patterns of navy-blue and white geometric shapes on the Persian rug as they practiced their dance steps. “Look at me.” Bahman raised her chin gently. He interlaced his fingers with hers. The gramophone had a huge brass funnel through which tango music filled the room. Bahman could not have known what to do, how did he know what to do, but he took charge. Their movements were clumsy at first; they couldn’t get their feet in sync. Couples around them danced as perspiration trickled down her spine. He held the small of her back; they caught the rhythm and then were one. It felt as though he carried her as they moved together in that hot living room. The music settled into the folds of Roya’s green dress, landed in her hair. She was drunk on his scent. Together they swayed, their bodies against each other. He guided her face to his and kissed her. She thought it would have felt like flying, but no, it was like landing. In a place soft and sweet.
In the bed, beneath the toothpaste sheets, Roya stroked his chest, searched for his arms, the muscles she had known so well. She kissed his eyes, his cheekbones, his lips. She pressed her cheek against his heart and lay there, grateful for the time she’d had with him, however short or long it had been, grateful she had known him, grateful that once, when she was young, she had experienced a love so strong that it did not go away, that decades and distance and miles and children and lies and letters could never make it disappear. She held him in her arms and said to him all she needed to say.
The Stationery Shop Page 24
