Daughters of Smoke and Fire

by Ava Homa

  “You’re a mind reader?” I looked down in embarrassment.

  “It’s all over your face.”

  I didn’t want to burden her with another litany of fears, but I could no longer bear the weight pressing on my chest. I told her about distrusting Karo, leaving out the fact that after spending some time with him, it had physically hurt to say goodbye. She did not interrupt me once and listened with interest even though she’d likely already heard most of it from Shiler.

  Then I confessed that I had lied to my parents after Chia’s funeral and told them that I was leaving to study in Canada. “I asked Mama to let me talk to Baba, and I stood there at a pay phone. People were waiting in line behind me. I thought now that Baba and I had a loss in common, you know, perhaps we could talk about our grief. He wouldn’t talk to me. Can you believe that? How can he be so stubborn?”

  Joanna gave me a caring look but didn’t answer, assuming I was still only venting.

  “Seriously, Joanna, I need to understand. Please talk to me.” I picked up a dish towel to dry the plates while she washed.

  “Your father has been depressed for twenty-five years. You experienced depression at one point yourself. His is ongoing.” Joanna talked about how torture broke people in irreparable ways. He had never found the chance or the tools to heal.

  When the kitchen was spotless and filled with the smell of baklava and freshly brewed black tea with cinnamon, we sat at the scrubbed table, sipping from our mugs. Joanna told me that after the funeral had slowed down and people started to forget, as people do, Intelligence called my father in every day for a week and questioned him all day, telling him how his failures in life had gotten his son killed. “Who did you gamble your life and you son’s life for? Your people? Do you not know that they report on your every move?”

  Joanna said I had done the right thing by telling my parents I was in Canada. Because that’s what Baba in turn had told the agents; he had said they couldn’t touch any of his children any longer.

  Joanna gave me a slip of paper with my father’s handwriting on it. “They moved.” It was their phone number and address in Halabja.

  “He wrote this for me or for you?”

  “He asked me to give it to Shiler so she could send the information to you.”

  “Do you think I should contact them?”

  “I don’t know, bawanem. But you will know. When the time comes. Enough for tonight?”

  “Joanna, it’s so hard to love parents who don’t know how to love. It’s even harder to love yourself when your parents didn’t love you.” She nodded, but I wasn’t sure she understood how, after a life of motherlessness and loneliness, I opened my heart easily—and how many malicious forces competed to fill that vacancy.

  That night I dreamed that I was slowly lifting my head out of a swamp buzzing with lots of noisy flies and other insects.

  The inexorable ticking of clocks continued.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Joanna and I gardened, cooked, and talked all day, every day. Every time grief lunged at me like a shark, she offered me her shoulder. The house shone spotless, and more poems reappeared from my dusty memory: “A heart filled with love is a phoenix that no cage can imprison.” But every time a gust of wind howled or a door slammed within earshot, every time someone spoke too loudly outside of the house, I jumped uncontrollably and my hands shook.

  Then the day came. A postman left a package in the mailbox. A sudden breeze ruffled the leaves of the trees, sending them into a frenzied dance. I twitched as I tore into the envelope.

  The papers felt heavy in my hand. I was invited to go to the Canadian embassy for a visa interview. I felt like I grew inches in height. Tears rolled down my face, but these were different from those I’d shed over the years. They were at once hopeful and fearful. I felt tall as I walked back across the porch and into the living room, where Joanna was reading. She looked up at me from her Sufi book, and she knew. “Sixteen months of waiting is over,” she said as she hugged me.

  I sensed a panic surging in my chest. “It hasn’t happened yet.”

  “You’d have to mess up the interview really badly to not get that stamp in your passport.”

  “Tehran-Ottawa relations are sour these days.” Individuals’ destinies didn’t matter.

  “Oh, stop with the worrying!” She played music, waving a handkerchief in the air, moving her hips. I held her hand and danced the halparke: right foot in front, left one in back, shoulder pushed forward and back, celebrating my first step toward freedom. Miserably clumsy and uncoordinated, I danced along and was soon too enthralled to be touched by fear. The irony wasn’t lost on me that a people with one of the most tragic histories had created such a happy music and were always ready to dance and celebrate good fortune.

  I booked the first available slot for an interview with the Canadian embassy. On a frosty morning before sunrise, we got into Joanna’s car and drove to Tehran. As we navigated the winding mountain roads, I didn’t have anything to say, but I couldn’t bear the silence either. I gripped the seat. Even if by some miracle I got the visa, I could be on the blacklist. I fiddled with the radio dial for a distraction.

  I clenched my jaw as Joanna parked, and we made our way to a small office with its doors closed. A crowd of nervous Iranians in hats and shawls shivered before it, sharing stories of wild visa rejections and of Canada debating whether to close its embassy. Joanna left to find us some food, and I had a sense she couldn’t bear the tension. I clutched at my coat and stayed rooted to the spot, hoping that I wouldn’t break down, reciting poems to deafen myself to the frightful chitchat.

  Just as Joanna finally made it back to the queue with two sandwiches, they called my name and let me inside the embassy.

  The frowning middle-aged woman at the counter did not have to cover her hair. She didn’t bother with niceties and asked question after question about how I met Karo and where we held the wedding, checking my answers against the document we had provided last year, then told me to wait outside again.

  I hugged myself tight, leaning against the wall across from the small window of the embassy, waiting for it to reopen and another name to be called. The staff was on their lunch break. I paced the small street.

  “Do you miss him?” Joanna wanted to know if that was why I couldn’t eat.

  It didn’t even occur to me that she was talking about Karo. “I feel there’s a limit to how much and how long we can yearn for someone.” My heart had shrunk so much that it was not capable of missing Chia anymore.

  “Do you feel somewhat numb?” Joanna wrapped her shawl over her nose, which was turning red in the cold.

  “I feel grateful.” It was true. After all, I felt a faint sense of appreciation for having had Chia in my life even for a short while.

  “I’m not too sure how you feel about the move.”

  “You’re not alone!” I wanted to get out of Iran so badly, and yet I was terrified of what could happen in Canada with the mounting anti-immigrant sentiments. The Iranian and Canadian flags, erected over the door, danced in the cold breeze. Neither of the countries was mine. One had crucified my brother and threatened to kill me. One had killed its own natives at one point and I wasn’t sure it had a place for the likes of me.

  The steel-barred window opened at two. Names were called. I wasn’t too sure if the Leila they finally called was me. Joanna shoved me forward. A man slid my passport along the counter. I clasped it and stumbled back. Joanna placed her hand on my shoulder, and we walked through a curious crowd.

  My hands were shaking too much to open the document. Joanna found the visa page for me. I ran my fingers over the glossy page. It was real.

  We headed back immediately to make it home before dark.

  “It won’t be easy to have to accommodate someone else’s needs and schedule when you get to Canada,” she said.

  It was true—I had been able to read whatever and whenever I wanted, completely ignore what the clock dictated, and sleep
anytime, anywhere in the house, in whatever piece of clothing I wished.

  “That’s the least of my fears, Joanna.”

  That night, she taught me how to bake an apple cake and had me blow out candles. We celebrated a rebirth that had not happened yet.

  In bed I held my stamped passport to my chest and could not fall asleep.

  Dawn broke as I sat up, soaked in sweat, and shook my head to dispel the recurrent nightmares of getting lost in Toronto, forgetting all the English I had practiced, being abducted by human traffickers. I wrapped myself in a robe and went out to the yard.

  The chirping birds were invisible, and their nests, high up in the branches of the weeping willow tree, looked vacant. A cool breeze whispered under my robe and raised goosebumps on my moist skin.

  Surrendering to the biting weather, I unlocked my folded arms and, stepping onto the dewy grass in my slippers, bent toward the small garden that had grown out of some mysterious and neglected seeds in a plastic bag. I kneeled to feel the support of the earth beneath my palms. I was closer to freedom than I had ever been. All I needed was to make it on to the plane and feel it take off.

  Then I held my hands up to the sky and gazed at the rising sun.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  I dragged my life behind me, condensed into two suitcases. I didn’t want to leave Joanna’s embrace. It was the safest place I’d ever known. I soaked her shoulders with my tears, wishing she were my mother and that I could crawl into her womb and be cared for and safe. “I have never been this happy and sad at the same time,” she said as she wiped my tears.

  My destiny was to be decided today, a year and a half after Chia’s execution. I crossed the departure area between the embraces and murmurs of the passengers and their companions.

  “Traveling alone?” The customs officer did not make eye contact.

  “Joining my husband.” My breath was noisy.

  “His permission?” He extended his hand.

  “Whose permission? Oh. Right. My husband is waiting for me. He’s sent me an invitation.” I provided every document I had, none of which was Karo’s official letter allowing his wife to travel abroad on her own. Of all the possible scenarios, I had missed the most plausible one. A nervous sweat broke out on my face.

  The man had me follow another officer to the waiting area where suspicious travelers were kept. I still had three hours until boarding, but panic roiled inside me. If they had not looked into my records yet, they would now. Time mercilessly slowed down and stretched. An oversized picture of a pretty woman in hijab gazing down read in Persian and English: “Respected ladies, complying with Islamic dress code is mandatory.”

  By the time I was called in for further questioning, my cuticles were bleeding.

  The dark old room smelled putrid, like escaping sewer gas. The metallic blinds were closed. A large uniformed man with a long untrimmed beard was looking for a folder wedged somewhere among many others. Behind his chair hung a refrigerator-sized photograph of Khomeini and Khamenei, the Supreme Leaders who had slaughtered countless thousands of “God’s enemies.”

  The armpits of the secretary’s shirt were wet. On his chest, white traces of salt had formed isolated atolls. He looked annoyed as he thumbed through the file drawer of his battered metal desk. “Leila Saman?” he asked in an angry voice. On his lips my name was another crime. I’d be dragged into a prison cell right now. The rotten-egg smell made me want to throw up.

  “You deaf? Are you Leila Saman or not?”

  His beady eyes drilled into me as I nodded slightly.

  “Is it easier to move that big head rather than a small tongue?” The crude man laughed at his own joke, looked through some papers he’d fished out of a battered folder, and signed in a few places. How would they put it? We’ll send you to the place we sent your brother? I wondered if this final relief would be a favor. It was better to die once than a hundred times a day. And who knew what would happen to me in Canada if I made it there?

  The officer made me stand there. The room had no window, no air conditioner, no plants; a ceiling fan hung still above shelves overflowing with dusty files and yellowing papers. The odor of sweat and mildew was suffocating. His terrible breath filled up the airless room.

  I stared above him at where the ceiling met the wall. “My husband is a resident of Canada. I’m going there on a dependence visa. That proves he wants me to join him. You can contact him.”

  “Why didn’t your parents choose a name for you from the Qur’an?”

  A bucket of ice cubes poured down my spine.

  He had a prayer bump on his forehead from frequent friction with the mohr, the Shia clay tablet. My ID revealed that I was born in Kurdistan, among people Khomeini called corruptors on earth.

  The guillotine, I’d heard, was a lot less painful than the firing squad. Death was a friend now, had faithfully walked shoulder to shoulder with me these past two years.

  “Why don’t you and your husband serve your own country?” he went on.

  My eyes traveled down from the ceiling and wall to the folder, to the large man’s indifferent face as he absently scratched his beard. “We will, once we graduate. That’s the goal—to mix Western technology with Islamic ethics.”

  He nodded in approval, started searching my luggage, meticulously unfolding each pair of underwear I’d packed, including the silk lingerie I’d bought on a whim, and sneered when he found a zipped-up plastic bag at the bottom of the second suitcase.

  The officer recoiled when he realized he’d been touching my sanitary pads. Without another word, he showed me the door.

  I dissolved into laughter after I closed his door behind me. God bless infidel-saving pads.

  My passport was stamped. The boarding pass did not evaporate or melt or shatter into pieces like I had dreamed. I went through the frosted doors that did not admit the silhouette chasing me. The past was another continent.

  I was the last person to board the Aeroflot flight.

  I walked down the narrow aisle, blind to the other passengers. This was real, this breaking up with life as I knew it, this one-way journey to the unknown. When I settled in my seat, I relaxed my shoulders despite the tug of grief in my chest.

  The engines rumbled beneath me as the plane began taxiing to the queue for takeoff. I took a steadying breath to calm my nerves. Raindrops formed into lines of water that slid sideways across the tiny oblong window as the plane took off. The clouds skated under the plane.

  The layover in Moscow was eleven hours long, and because of my Iranian passport, I was not allowed to step outside into the city I was so eager to see. I browsed the terminal, taking in details of life outside the 636,400-square-mile prison named Iran.

  Tall and slender women flaunting shapely legs in short skirts sold cigarettes and liquor to endlessly waiting passengers. People passed in front of me, talking, chewing, laughing, frowning, and directing their looks away from me. After an hour, I sat on some stairs, my palms touching the cold blunt stone. A smiling, pretty blonde reclined on the stairs in front of me. Five male admirers surrounded her, cutting each other off to make jokes for her. She laughed at what would frighten me.

  I continued to stroll around and came across a mysterious door that I hadn’t noticed before. This nearly imperceptible door was made of opaque black glass and was emblazoned with Russian words. I walked by but found myself across from it again, and I waited there awhile before pushing the door open. The dark stairs looked menacing. I stepped back. An older man in a black suit and tie bowed to two sharply dressed businessmen and led them down the stairs. I followed.

  Downstairs was cool, a significant contrast to the heat upstairs. The old man said something to the receptionist and led the two to a modern, chic room with lots of chairs, desserts, and drinks. Internet—there were three connected computers. Two were busy, one free. I could send an email to Karo, let him know I had dodged incarceration.

  “Excuse me,” called the receptionist in English while I
stared excitedly at the monitors.

  “Oh . . . hi! Could I use the computer for five minutes?”

  “Did you fly business class?” He looked at me from head to toe.

  My throat went dry. I bet you can figure out the answer.

  “Sorry, if you had flied business class, we could have helped you.”

  Shouldn’t that be ‘flown’? My left hand was still pointing toward the free computer.

  “Do you have an invitation letter?”

  I shook my head and climbed back up the stairs. In the economy area, I slid down a wall and sat on the floor, bracing myself for more exclusions and for what would inevitably be more embarrassing situations in which I’d fail to understand unwritten rules.

  After a tormenting ten-hour wait, I made my way to the security screening area and emptied my purse for a gruff border officer’s inspection, removed my shoes and belt, passed through the intimidating metal columns, and let them conduct their “random” search.

  While we were boarding, a man in uniform sized me up and smiled in approval, as if rating me. He then scrutinized my passport, and his smile suddenly froze. He looked me up and down again, but his expression was so different this time, I couldn’t help but chuckle slightly. “The pilot has asked that you let us hold onto your passport for now.”

  “Randomly again? But he can’t do that. You don’t have the right.”

  My glare did not shake him.

  “We will return it to you once we land at Pearson.”

  I looked at myself and wondered what made me look like a terrorist.

  “To hell with you and the rest of you,” I said under my breath as I walked away and found my seat on the massive Air Canada plane.

  I felt numb. The sting of distrust burned, but that was yet another penalty I had to pay for having been born in Iran, in that wicked land where, just like in James Joyce’s homeland, “the old sow eats her farrow.” My birthplace would follow me everywhere, making me a criminal in the eyes of a stupidly cruel and prejudiced world.

  I found my seat and wrote in my diary: