What We Owe

by Golnaz Hashemzadeh Bonde

  “To the hospital.”

  Then she looks at me one more time. With doubt.

  “Are you up for it, Mama?”

  I don’t know. I don’t know if I’m up for it.

  “Not if something goes wrong.”

  She laughs. It’s a harsh laugh.

  “Then it’s best you don’t come.”

  She’s dressed now, and the front door is open.

  “I have to go.” She doesn’t look at me. Walks out. Closes the door.

  I’m sitting there, staring at my trembling hands. Thinking how it’s all going to hell again. I wish we’d been allowed to be happy a little longer. I wish there’d been more joy. I wonder if my memories of that Midsummer day will still feel beautiful the next time we cross that bridge. Or if beautiful moments only count if nothing changes. If the beauty is allowed to remain, undisturbed.

  I hear a car drive up, and I think of her standing down there on the street. I think how all this ugliness hasn’t made her stop trying. I jump up and rush toward the taxi. It’s about to pull away when I jerk open the door and climb in. She looks up from her phone, surprised.

  “I’m here,” I say.

  She nods, turns away. After a moment, she reaches for my hand. We hold hands the rest of the way. It’s quiet in the car and I think, Here we are again. She and I, in a car, trying to create something beautiful.

  when we arrive, they see us immediately. i’d been prepared to shout and argue, but it’s not needed. They take babies seriously, I think. New life is more important than a life that is almost over.

  She asks me to wait in the waiting room. I don’t understand and protest, but her face silences me. She doesn’t trust me, and that’s that. She walks into a room with a nurse, and everything is still. For a long time everything is still. I’m sitting with my purse in my lap, hugging it. Wondering where Johan is, but I’m glad we’re alone. That it’s me who’s here, it’s me who’s helping. Or at least, I should be helping! I shouldn’t be sitting here powerless.

  “Excuse me,” I say to a passerby. “Is there a cafeteria here?”

  “Follow me,” the person says, and takes me to a shop.

  I’m relieved, in some indescribable way. As if the store allows me to be who I want to be. Someone who does something. A helper. I find a basket and start gathering stuff. Carrot juice, to give her strength. I take two. A small bag of chips. I pause by the magazines, but I don’t know what she reads. I try to remember. Wish I knew, because she would know. She would know what I want. I decide in the end to not buy any at all. That’s better than seeing her disappointed.

  Now I don’t know what to do. I look toward the flower buckets and remember that day in the hospital, when I asked her to take the ugly bouquet with her. I turn away. And then I see it, the stand with small teddy bears and giraffes and baby blankets and other things meant for good outcomes. I stretch out my hand and touch a mouse, a blue mouse of soft, smooth fabric that is wrapped in a small blanket. I lift it up and my eyes fill with tears, and I want to give up. I want to go up to the cancer ward and ask for a room and say, I’m here to die. But I put the mouse in the basket and take it to the checkout. I ride the elevator up to the maternity ward. I act the way I should, for once.

  When I arrive, a nurse approaches me. I swallow hard. I think, Now’s the time. Now I have to prove I’m a mother, I’m a nurse. I have to prove who I am. But I just stand there.

  “Your daughter would like to see you.”

  I nod.

  “How . . . what? Do you know anything?”

  I don’t think she hears me. Or maybe she doesn’t want to answer. I squeeze the mouse in my pocket. I couldn’t put it in the bag, couldn’t hand it over, just in case. In case.

  The nurse goes in front of me, knocks gently on the door before opening it. I struggle to hold down the lump in my throat, not to let it burst. Inside Aram is sitting, reclining back in a hospital bed. Her stomach is bare and there are small electrodes attached to it. She’s turned away, so I turn too. Trying to suppress my panic.

  “Mama,” she says softly. Her tone surprises me. I don’t know if I’ve heard it before. It’s her mother voice, I think. She sounds like that because she’s a mother.

  “Mama, look.” She reaches for me, and I go to her. I don’t want to look at the wires and machines, so I look at her face and see she’s happy. I want to start breathing again, but I don’t dare.

  “Do you hear it, Mama?” I don’t understand what she means, but when I listen I hear a quick, rhythmic sound: thump, thump, thump.

  “It’s a pulse. A heart. Look there.”

  I look at the monitor and see. Heartbeats. Tiny rapid heartbeats. I don’t think I understand at first. I just look.

  “There she is,” said Aram. “She’s doing well.”

  Something bursts in my stomach and rushes up through my throat. I take hold of the bed. Trying to see through the tears.

  “There she is. She’s doing well,” I repeat. “She’s doing well.”

  I crawl up on the bed, and we lie next to each other, watching. The waves flow by on the screen. We lie there a long time, waiting for the test results, waiting to go home again. I don’t think about waiting. I don’t think about anything. I just watch and listen.

  It’s only when we pull our coats on that I remember why I rang her door. The cancer. It’s back. Metastases everywhere. In my stomach and lungs and liver.

  I glance at her. She looks so relieved. So fulfilled. She’s not thinking about how weak my steps seem, so I decide to give her this day. This day belongs to life.

  I have made a nest on the sofa with pillows and blankets. I even managed to make tea. All by myself. No one knows I’ve started treatment again. I never thought I’d be able to keep such a thing to myself. But it scared me, what happened that day we went to the hospital. That tiny life waiting in her belly. I have to protect her. If I’ve ever protected anything in my life, it will be that baby.

  When Aram was born, I thought she would be the one who replaced Noora. That she came instead of Noora. I thought she would be safe, that no one would hurt her. But it was too early. We were still in the middle of the nightmare. The pain and grief couldn’t be prevented. She became part of what was going on. Persecution, war, our escape. But now. Here’s a life that can be free from evil. A life that will replace mine, replace Noora’s, will even replace Aram’s. This is our chance, and I’m not going to spoil it for anything. I go to my treatments, and I vomit quietly. It won’t be possible to keep it secret forever, but as long as it works, as long as I can, I’ll protect her.

  I pull the blanket over my legs and grab the landline. My mother’s number is on speed dial. I’m going to call and tell her a little girl is coming to earth. A girl who belongs to us. We’ll be four generations of women on earth at the same time. I think, This is my way of paying her back for what I took from her.

  It takes a while for someone to answer. I wait. I suppose she needs time to move in that small apartment. I won’t hang up and make her disappointed she didn’t get there in time. Finally, after perhaps twenty rings, I hear a strange voice. It’s the neighbor. We exchange a few pleasantries before I finally ask if Mama is home.

  “Ey vay, has no one told you? Khanom was taken by ambulance to the hospital!”

  “Why?”

  I hear my voice harden, and even though it’s not this woman’s fault, it feels that way. We’re going to be four generations on this earth! She’s getting a new Noora. I’ll give her a new Noora!

  “It’s best that you call there,” the neighbor says, and gives me a number. I write it down in silence. Hang up without saying thank you.

  I start calling my sisters, but no answer. I start over, calling every single one again. Finally, Maryam picks up.

  “Maryam, what’s going on?”

  “Aziz, nothing,” she says. Then she’s quiet.

  “I know Mama is in the hospital. I know nobody is answering my calls. So something’s going on. Tell
me!”

  “You don’t need to worry about it,” she says. “Focus on getting well! We’ll take care of all this.”

  No, no. Not now, please, not now. I lift a pillow and scream into it.

  “Maryam, I want to talk to my mother. I need to talk to my mother. Where is she?”

  I hear her whispering, talking to someone else. I hear that they are trying to work out how to deal with me, what to say.

  “Maryam,” I cry. “Where is my mother?”

  “Please settle down. There, there.” She pauses. “Mama had a stroke. She’s . . . unconscious. We don’t know if she’s going to wake up again.”

  “Yes, yes, she will wake up! You have to wake her, Maryam. I have news. Aram’s baby is a girl. I have to tell her.”

  She’s silent, my strong sister. I hear her trying to regulate her breathing, trying to stay calm. She is still trying to protect me, even though she’s never succeeded. None of them ever managed that, and now Mama is dying, and no one is helping me. They have to help me wake her up!

  “Maryam, you have to make her wake up. Do you hear me? I need to talk to her. I need it, Maryam. You don’t understand.”

  “I’ll call you later, aziz,” she says, and hangs up. And that’s all.

  I sink into the couch, among my pillows, curl into a fetal position and whimper.

  “Mama, Mama . . .”

  I try to rock myself into some kind of peace. My gaze settles on the puke bucket next to the sofa. The half-drunk meal replacements lying on the rug. I’m alone. I’m so piercingly alone. Loneliness lies heavy over my body. My entire body feels its weight. I try to lift my arm to wipe the wetness from my cheeks, but it hangs limp at my side. I can’t move it. Suddenly, the room spins and flickers before my eyes. It’s like a carousel spinning faster, faster. I want to get off! I want to get off, but I get nowhere.

  The evening masood came home and told me Saber was dead was the night hope died. The hope of starting over. When Masood lifted up my daughter, my very being, in his arms and started to beat me. The hope of making anything other than pain from the pain died. We couldn’t stay. We couldn’t protect ourselves, and we couldn’t protect our child.

  When he was done he backed away with Aram still in his arms. She screamed so loud that I thought, Now they’ll come, any moment they’ll come. There could only be criminals in a home where the baby screams like that. The kind who must be executed. He backed off until he hit the wall, and then he sank down. I thought he was going to drop her, because everything was happening with such force, but he didn’t. He held tight. It calmed me. In some strange way, I became calm in the chaos. I thought, He has her. He won’t hit her or kick her. Even if I never manage to crawl up from this rug, he has her. He won’t let her go. At that moment that was all I cared about.

  He kicked me just like Maryam was kicked that first time. I thought about that as I lay there. Now it’s happening again, the same thing happening again. And when the same thing repeats itself, you think it’s meant to be. This is the way it was always meant to be.

  We froze in that position. Him against the wall. Aram in his arms with her head turned into his armpit and her little rump in my direction. And me, there on the rug. My cheek against the roughness. My eyelashes against my cheekbones. I think it was the shock that overtook us. I want to believe that. That shock turned us into people who beat each other. Into different people who never found a way back to who we really were. Or to who we could have been. We froze like that, and it was a long time until we moved. Aram fell silent finally. Fell asleep. I know I thought, We’ve chosen the wrong path. I know I thought that already then. We couldn’t afford to stay here, motionless. We had to go. We had to warn the others. We had to find a new hiding place.

  we woke near dawn. aram whimpered, and it made our bodies react. We didn’t look at each other. I think we were ashamed, that we both felt ashamed. Back then I still thought I had some reason for shame. Because I was the kind of woman who got beat on by her husband. I felt shame for who I was and shame for whom I’d chosen. We got up off the floor without a word, and started to gather our belongings. There wasn’t much. Some clothes. A couple of blankets. A few pieces from our wedding china. We’d left most of it with Masood’s father. Just for a while, we thought. Just until this blows over. Until everything calms down again. But we understood that morning, as we gathered the pieces of our life and threw them into our small suitcases, that it wasn’t going to happen. It wouldn’t be over, it would never calm down. Our things, possessions that together could have built a home, a life, they’d be left behind in someone else’s storage. Soon enough someone would go in there, think, Maybe I’ll borrow this bureau or this dress for my newborn daughter. The dresses I knitted or sewed on my mother’s sewing machine, every one made by me.

  When we finished, I tied a wrap around my upper body, and Masood placed Aram inside it. She was silent, dead silent. As if she knew it, knew everything. And so we went down the stairs. A boy with a rug over his shoulder and two small suitcases in his hands. A girl with a baby against her body. We opened the door carefully and Masood stuck his head out, waved at me when he saw that the street was empty. And so we walked off into the dim morning light. We didn’t know where we were going; we were just trying to get as far away as possible. Masood cried silently. I knew he wept for Saber. I hoped he was also crying for me. For what he’d done to me. But I don’t think so. I don’t think he even remembered. I think he forgot about it every time, as soon as it was over. He repressed it immediately.

  we stood in the middle of the city, at imam Hussein Square. That’s not what it used to be called. It used to be called something else. Something without the word imam in it, but I don’t remember what. Masood stood inside a telephone booth and tried to find a new place for us. I looked at the crowd moving around us frantically, almost in panic, even though the sun had barely had time to rise. Looked at the smoldering wake of the latest air raid. At the soldiers marching in my direction and beyond. I pressed Aram against my pounding heart and felt my own pulse in her body. This is no place for a child, I thought. We have to get out of here.

  “I’ve arranged something new,” Masood said, and lifted our suitcases again.

  I didn’t move, and he looked questioningly at me.

  “Masood, we have to get out of here.”

  “We are on the way, come!”

  But I stood there.

  “No, I don’t mean that. I mean, we have to go. Flee. We have to leave Iran, Masood.”

  Just then Aram gurgled, laughed with a toothless smile.

  We both turned our eyes toward her. Stared at the pure joy of living streaming out of her. Then we laughed too, first him and then me. We stood there in the middle of our fear and laughed, and he put his arm around me and pressed me to him. Now I realize I should have been uneasy, fearful. Faced with this man who had beaten me bloody and blue while holding my child in his arms. But I wasn’t. I leaned against him, seeking shelter. He was the safest place in my life. It took a long time for anything to feel safer than him.

  a few weeks later, masood came home with a brown envelope under his arm. His sweater was drenched with sweat, his hands trembling. I sat on the floor with Aram in a new windowless room. She crawled around me in circles on the rug that composed our home, and I didn’t understand how she managed it. I didn’t understand how she could thrive there. With no light or air. That she was able to find any energy to move in that vacuum surprised me.

  He opened the envelope and emptied its contents for me. Three small things. Paper and ink. On the surface, not much. But I gasped.

  “Masood,” I said hesitantly. “Masood!”

  He sank down, lay down on his side with his head in my lap. His body was still shaking, and now I understood that it was from adrenaline. Fear and adrenaline. He buried his head in my skirt and I stroked his hair while I stared at the three small booklets. What if they weren’t good enough? What if something went wrong? What if we used them, and it a
ll still went to hell.

  I lifted one up, the top. It felt authentic, the weight felt right in my hand. I opened it and flipped through. There was a photo of me, and the name Noora Pooreh. A false name. I closed my eyes tightly. It was happening now; it was really happening. We were going to flee, and this was who I was, who I would be. A false person, and my Noora constantly with me, like a shadow.

  I opened the other passports and looked at the pictures. Masood, with wide eyes and terror in his gaze. And then her. My little baby. One year old and a babbling smile. I wondered how a small child flees. Why would any baby need to flee. I wondered what would come to mind when she thought of this country. Her country that she would never know. I wondered what would become of her. I wondered that most, what would become of her. Setareh, it said. He had chosen the names, and I thought it was a good choice. The star that would lead us through the night.

  “This is for her sake, right?”

  Masood looked up at me.

  “I hope so,” he replied, and at that moment I felt like we were children too. Twenty-four-year-old, wasted children. We had no idea what we were doing. We kept telling ourselves we had a responsibility, we needed to escape for her. She shouldn’t lose her parents, her life. She deserved a future. That’s why we were leaving the fight. That’s why we were leaving our families, our country. That’s why we had to abandon and betray them. But I don’t know. I don’t think it was true. I think we did it for our own sake. For our own selfish reasons. Because we didn’t want to end up like Noora and Rozbeh and Saber.

  Because we didn’t want to die.

  fake passports were expensive, and so were airport smugglers. We didn’t pay. Masood didn’t want to tell me at first where the money came from. He didn’t want to involve any more people than necessary. Get anyone in deeper than they already were. Later I understood that his uncle paid. That we owed him our freedom.

  Masood didn’t want me to tell my mother.

  “For her own sake,” he said, but then he changed his mind. “For our sake. You know how she can be. If she starts to scream and cry . . . it will attract attention, and she could end up in interrogation and who knows.”