“Should I leave my country without saying goodbye to my mother, Masood? Is that what you want me to do?”
We sat on the rug in our tiny room, whispering. So afraid were we of persecution. We didn’t know where they were, how they listened. We didn’t know if they knew about us, or how much they knew.
But Saber, he knew everything. He was the only one in our group who had information about all of us. We put on blindfolds before we went into a meeting, so we didn’t know what the others looked like. So we wouldn’t be able to identify each other. We’d heard stories about what happened when you were arrested. They sat you in a car and drove you around the city and told you to point out familiar faces. Whoever was participating in meetings. Whoever you knew from underground. Whoever was handing out flyers at night. People like us. And that was just the beginning. Then came the torture, rape, threats of execution, all for more information. More names. We had to be strangers to each other.
But Saber, he knew everything. Our grief when the news came was mixed with fear for our own lives. What had they done to him before they killed him? How faithful had he been to us in those agonizing final hours? Some part of me wanted to believe he’d betrayed us. Then I wouldn’t be the only traitor.
It took a few months for everything to be ready. We kept our suitcases packed and moved like nomads around the city. The rumors reached us, how they’d arrested more and more of our comrades. We all moved around, but we left traces behind us. It was impossible not to.
Masood repeated again and again that it wasn’t Saber’s fault so many were being arrested. It couldn’t be Saber who had named names. He would never do that.
“They killed him because he was silent!”
He said this as if trying to convince himself, and I didn’t say otherwise. I didn’t know. I just rocked Aram in my arms, sang old songs, and whispered: “It’s okay, everything’s okay.” I tried to convince myself. The truth is that I was scared to death, and not only was I afraid of dying, but I was full of shame. Shame that we were leaving the chaos we helped create. Shame for Rozbeh and his parents. Shame for my lack of principles, shame I hadn’t dared to stand up for anything at all during that interrogation. A profound shame that I would leave my mother with the loss of two daughters, a war, and a revolution that had taken her country from her. I was ashamed, and in my shame, I told myself this was for Aram. This is for Aram. Many of us said that later, much later, when things got difficult in a different way, when we couldn’t understand the language, and people called us towelheads, and we wondered how anyone could survive that cold. This is for the children. But our heroism was not that great.
only masood’s father knew that we were leaving. His father and his uncle who’d paid. I couldn’t let it go, of course.
“Why can’t my mother know if your father does?”
He looked at me with tired eyes.
“Please,” he replied. “Don’t make this any harder than it needs to be. It’s already hard. It’s already so hard.”
I thought I’d tell her anyway. I would sneak off. Go to her, hold her for a long time, tell her everything. Tell her it would all be okay. That this wasn’t a loss, but a win. A win for Aram, a win for us.
“We’re leaving so you won’t lose us,” I was going to say. And she would understand. She would hug me back, tight. She would forgive me for Noora, and she would thank me for taking care of everything, so she didn’t have to worry anymore.
But I knew it wouldn’t be like that. I knew she would throw herself on the ground and hit herself in the face and scream at God and his fundamentalists, screaming: Stop taking my children away from me. She would scream and hit and the neighbors would come out and ask questions, and she’d yell out the answer and someone in the crowd would look at me in a different way than the others and that person would sneak off and pick up the phone and make a call and before I’d managed to lift my mother from the ground again, a van would have stopped in front of the house and guards would have jumped out and then I’d be gone.
I knew Masood was right. But all my anger, all my sorrow, was directed at him. We had taken Noora from my mother, and now he took my mother away from me. I could never forgive him for that.
We were in the refugee camp by the time I finally got ahold of a phone and a way to use it. It had been several weeks since we left, several weeks since she’d heard from me.
The camp was composed of small summer cottages in a forest, outside a small town that we never went back to. It was beautiful. Even amid my worry I could see that. The forest was beautiful. This place was beautiful. I used to sit on a bench with Aram in my lap and tell her to look. Look at the tall pine trees, at the moss and the inviting boulders. I pointed to the birds chirping and the dogs that passed by on a leash. I put her in the swing and gave her a push and she almost reached the green branches hanging down from the sky. She gurgled and laughed and started to walk and run in those woods. There was air and light, and I thought it was obvious. It’s obvious this is better. I said it out loud to myself, but I couldn’t quite believe it.
In the reception area there was a phone with a timer on it, and you had to pay for the call afterward. It cost so much to call Iran at the time, and we had so little money. Masood sat next to me and said I should keep it short and I looked at him and wondered how you were supposed to do that. How were you supposed to tell your mother you’ve fled to another continent, that you might never see her again. I wondered how you kept something like that short.
It took a couple of tries before the call went through. I think about it today, how hard we struggled to get in touch. It really felt like we had lost them forever, our families. But finally it worked, and I pulled so hard on the telephone cord while I was waiting to hear my mother’s voice that the receptionist put her hand on mine and squeezed it.
“Hello!”
She sounded upset, and I looked anxiously at Masood. Thought it might be easier to hang up, might be easier to never have this conversation. To never have had it.
“Maman.” My voice was trembling, and I decided to let it. Let it gush out of me.
“Mamaaan.”
I heard her crying, heard her sob, and minutes passed while we cried together over the phone. I know Masood had his eye on the timer, and I thought perhaps this is the way to do it, just like this. You weep together over the phone. Maybe that’s what you do, every time you hear the other one’s voice on the phone. That was all we did for years.
When I looked at the timer, it was up to three minutes and twenty-six seconds, and we hadn’t said a word. My eyes met Masood’s, and his face was apologetic, but he put his finger down on the hook. The sound of my mother disappeared.
“It’s okay. She already knows everything, you know that.”
I wanted to tell him it wasn’t enough that his father had told her, that she had all the information. I wanted to explain. I wanted to talk about it. But I couldn’t get anything out. I took the phone in my arms and hugged it tightly. Wept and hugged.
Masood stood next to me, bewildered. There are things you can’t understand in advance. How utterly difficult it is to be a part of someone else’s grief when you yourself ache so much. He walked away eventually and the receptionist took over. She wasn’t a receptionist really, but somebody who was hired to manage us. Manage our wounded souls. She stood beside me for a while, but even she didn’t know what to do. What you are supposed to do. So she embraced me. I disappeared into her big, motherly arms and she pressed me to her, and she cried too. Her body, her upper arms quivered as she rocked me back and forth. It made me sob even harder. The feeling of being enveloped in someone else, in an unfamiliar body, when you’ve lost the bodies that used to envelop you.
Sonja was her name. There were many tears at our refugee center, and Sonja cried with us all. She gave us a lot of comfort. I wish I could find her. I wish there was a Sonja for me now.
Mama never forgave me for leaving her. i hoped one day she would. Would understand more
good came from our escape than bad. She never accepted it. She thought we could have stopped doing whatever we were up to and just hidden. Hidden ourselves away from politics and revolution. Found a village far out in the countryside and stayed there until everything blew over. And the war, the war ended a few years after we left. We could have hidden from the war. We could have hidden Masood so he didn’t have to fight. Or at least we could have come back when the war was over.
“Even if that’d worked, Mama, even if everything you say worked, we don’t want to live under an Islamic dictatorship,” I said to her once, over the phone. Then the line was cut. I heard a distinct drone, like the sound the TV used make when programming ended for the evening. And then silence. When I tried to call back, I reached an automated voice telling me the number was no longer in service. It was only temporary, but at that moment I thought they’d taken her away from me again.
We could hear that they were listening. The click when someone picked up the phone. The noise. Sometimes voices. Sometimes they came and went. Click click click click. I had to resist the impulse to shout at them, scream at them to leave us alone. We had fled. We weren’t there. We had nothing to do with them. But I didn’t dare. My mother still lived there, and I couldn’t cause her any more trouble. I’d done enough, more than anyone should ever have to endure.
and when i finally call with the news, the good news, they say I can’t talk to her. Say she can’t talk. She’s lying unconscious in a hospital bed, and I may never talk to her again. I have to tell you, I think as I lie there unconscious in my darkness. The words echo inside me. I have to tell you. I have to tell you.
i know where i am even though i can’t open my eyes. I recognize the smell. Antiseptic and revolting at the same time. Open wounds and infected lungs and decaying bodies. I try to move my lips, try to protest. Say I want to go home. But they are dry, dried shut. And I can’t control them.
Aram takes my hand. She must have stood over me, waiting for the slightest movement.
“Mama. Mama, I’m here.”
I stop trying. Let my eyelids rest. I disappear again.
Next time i wake up, my eyelids open by themselves. The room is dark. Empty. I’m plugged into a machine, and it sounds like it should. Regular beeps. I let out a huge breath.
“I’m alive. I’m alive.”
I mutter it as I look for the red button. I push hard, for a long time. Even though I know that doesn’t make any difference. They hear the same signal no matter how hard I push. But I’m pushing it for dear life.
“I’m alive!” I burst out when the nurse comes into the room. She’s round and old and nice, and she laughs.
“What luck!”
She comes over and takes my hand.
“I’m glad you’re awake, Nahid. Your daughter’s been here every day waiting for you.”
I press her hand hard, so hard it must hurt.
“What happened? What happened to me?”
“You had a stroke, Nahid.”
A stroke. Like my mother.
“That can happen, you know. From the tumors.”
I know. I know that. But I don’t want to. I don’t want to have a stroke. I don’t want to have tumors.
“I need to talk to my mother.”
The nurse nods and fiddles with the tubes on my arm.
“Yes, there, there. Soon, the night will pass.”
I understand that she doesn’t take me seriously. That she thinks I’m delirious. I know that’s what people do when they’re about to die. The elderly people I cared for always called out for their mother. Sometimes I’d sit on a chair in the hallway and listen. A symphony of agony. The last moment of life. Everyone cries for their mother.
“I’m awake. I know what I’m saying. Please. Give me my phone. I have to call my mother.”
She pats my head.
“It’s the middle of the night, dearie.”
“You don’t understand, I need my mother. This is an emergency!”
“There, there,” she says as she picks up her things. And then she goes.
I raise the red button and press hard again. But I already know that she’s not coming back, that she sees me as I saw my old-timers. Tears wet my pillow and I shake my head with what little movements I’m able to produce. I’m not old! All the weak bodies I’ve helped in their last hour. They were ninety, even a hundred years old. Why didn’t I get more. Why did I get so little.
I’m going to die, I think. I’m really going to die.
“Why didn’t you tell me, mama? why didn’t you say anything?”
Aram is sitting next to me, stroking my hair.
“I wanted to take care of it,” I said to her. “I wanted to take care of it myself.”
“You don’t need to do that, Mama. I’m here.”
I want to tell her I was trying to protect her, but I don’t know if that’s true. I was trying to protect the baby. My grandchild. I wanted to protect my own immortality. Myself.
“It will go away again,” I say. “It disappeared the last time. It will disappear again.”
She is leaning back, with her hand on her belly. It’s huge. I tell her that, and she laughs. So soft again. I see in her eyes that she is happy. She has a kind of bubble around her, and in it I have no place. She has a bubble of gentleness and serenity and happiness that is for her child. I’m something she handles. Handles in order to get back to her own world. I think: She won’t miss me when I die. She’ll have something new, something much better than me. That child is going to take my place in her life, and she will think it’s a good exchange. She’ll come to feel that if the price for my child was my mother dying, then it was worth it. That’s what she’ll think. Maybe say it to someone, someday. I think: Maybe it wasn’t good after all. The child coming. I think: The child will make me die alone. I’ll die even lonelier.
I call my sisters every day. they tell me about our mother, but I don’t know if they’re telling the truth. They say she’s still in the hospital. She is conscious now. But she receives visitors only a few minutes a day. And she doesn’t have access to a telephone.
“But can you tell her, Maryam? Can you say that Aram is going to have a little daughter?”
“We don’t want to make her too emotional. The doctors say that’s bad for her. You know that, right, Nahid? It’s not good for her?”
I want to scream at them, but I keep it inside. I’m proud of that, that I manage to hold back. They’re keeping my mother away from me, but I think that’s what I deserve. I was the one who left her and them. My rights have long since been exhausted. So I keep calling several times a day. Trying to make out from their tone of voice if something has happened. But I also know that she might as well be dead. My mother may already be gone. They wouldn’t tell me, not now. What difference would it make? If they wait long enough, they’ll never have to tell me.
Christina wants to stop the chemo again. The stroke scared her. They think I’m weak. That treatment will kill me. They’re hoping they can radiate away whatever is big enough, whatever they can get to. But we all know that won’t save me.
Aram has hope for radiation. She believes in it.
“You have to do it, Mama. You have to do everything you can,” Aram said after our conversation with the doctor.
“If radiation could have killed it, they’d have used it from the start. It doesn’t matter.”
“You can’t give up, Mama. Do you hear me? You can’t give up. You have to let them try radiation. You can’t stop now. Not now.”
I wonder if she really wants me here. Or if she’s just saying that. Just saying what you are supposed to say.
I often think about fleeing. wonder if what we did was right. Right and wrong, it’s so hard to know which is which as the years go and everything gets complicated, knotted. Sometimes I wonder if right and wrong are even the opposite of each other, or just two ways of expressing the same thing.
If you think in terms of life and death, then fleeing was the r
ight choice. It should be that simple. We fled political persecution and a war. The best chance for our survival was escape. And we survived. We did. For thirty years we survived.
But every sibling and cousin we have, Masood and I, who stayed is still alive. Everyone, that is, who was alive when we fled. Those who hadn’t yet died in 1984, they are still alive. While Masood is dead. And I’m dying.
Why did Masood’s heart stop? Why did cancer attack my body? One wonders. But at the same time, how could our hearts beat so long? How could our bodies take everything that’s happened since the day we got on the plane with those false passports?
I watch the news. So many refugees streaming across the sea. The world has changed. When we fled, our biggest problem was how to get out of our own country. Once we figured that out, we bought a plane ticket. Flew to freedom. These people. They fight their way here, kilometer by kilometer. And when they do get here, they think they’ve arrived. I want to tell them it’s only just begun. Fleeing sits in your blood, it’s passed on to your unborn child, and like a tumor it grows inside you over time. Everything you’ve lost, what you think you’ll be able to get over, you can’t. It’s still there. Even the fate you feared, even what you fled. Even your painful, bloody death is still with you. Still there. It moves through your nightmares. It moves through your memories. All those memories of the ones you lost. What you’ve fled from lives with you as vividly as the strange new life you’re trying to adapt to. It won’t go away! You are condemned, and your children are too. Everything remains, and everything is passed down.
I decide to go ahead with the radiation after all. There’s a large mass in my liver that they want to remove.
I start laughing when Christina tells me.
What We Owe Page 11
