The cold from the marble floor rose up fast through the thin mattress and shook me fully awake each night. In the middle of the dark night, I snuck from bed and, hand over hand along the wall, guided myself toward the bathroom. The family hosting me would be waking for morning prayers in a few hours. I had time. I counted the doorknobs, and I was finally there. Once inside, I eased the door closed without making a sound and turned on the light.
Then, in the bathroom of my host family, I took off my clothes and began the ritual of washing my underwear, pants, and shirt with soap and ringing them dry. Maman always encouraged us to use the nice towels. But here, I didn’t dare use the decorative hand towels in the bathroom.
Naked and cold, I stood there for a few minutes as I shook the wet clothes in the air. When I put them back on, my teeth chattered and I clenched my shivering shoulders. Where was my Maman?
The route back from the bathroom was always more difficult going from the light to the dark hallway. Six doors, one hallway, and I would finally be at the bedroom where I could see the shadow of the two beds. I made my way over to my mattress in the corner. It had been a lucky night. A nightmare had woken me before the entire mattress and blanket were soaked through, and I could go back to sleep on the dry half. Most nights I wasn’t so lucky and I would wet the entire mattress. Then, darkness would become my friend. I would sit curled in a ball, waiting for the air to dry it all; me, my wet clothes, the blanket, and the mattress. Sleeping on the floor on a damp mattress, far from our ballrooms, rose gardens, and imported bananas, I pulled the dry side of the blanket over my shoulders and felt for the sweater under my pillow. The sweater was my favorite gift from Maman – she had sent it to me from London – a sweet, little, soft pink cashmere sweater. I took the sweater with me everywhere in my red suitcase. But I would never wear it, no matter how wet and cold I was.
As usual, I barely slept and I rose a few minutes before the daughters so I could hide my mattress and fold the blankets in such a way that they wouldn’t see the big yellow stains.
Twelve days had dragged to three, and now five months. I had been here with this family for two months.
Across town, an hour away, the celery stew Hadi and Zain were staring at was green. Even though Hadi kept nudging Zain to eat and spooned out rice for him, Zain refused to have any stew that wasn’t red, the way Maman made it. Although he couldn’t leave the sofreh before every one was done, Zain sat toying with the rice grains, waiting to be excused. He hoped to find refuge in the room he shared with Hadi at the home of their school’s vice-principal. With a look of distaste and confusion, Zain kept swirling the stew on his plate with his fork, mixing it with the rice, but not taking a bite. How could the principal’s wife not know that tomato paste was the secret ingredient to celery lamb stew?
Hadi nibbled on the soft sangak bread, wishing it was toasted crisp, the way Baba liked.
Once in their room alone, they pulled out their schoolbooks and doodled in silence. There were no toy cars or board games. The only sounds were the growls of their stomachs.
I was found out. One morning while I was at the dining room table doing my homework, Mrs. Jahani, Mansoureh and Monir’s mother, entered, screaming, “She’s been peeing on this mattress!”
Her two daughters came running from the kitchen.
As their mother unfolded the mattress, my damp pajamas fell out. “Ey Khoda. What a stench! How could she sleep in this?” She pointed to the two dozen yellow circles on the blanket she was now holding up by pinching the edge with two fingers. I had managed to hide the stains, but not the smell.
I ran. Nearly tripping as I jumped down the stairs three at a time, I headed for Parvaneh Street, but only made it to the end of their yard.
Hours later, I was climbing up the steps of the home of yet another family friend with my red doll suitcase. At least in that house, I had my own bedroom and I could hide my urine-stained clothes under the bed, in my suitcase.
When the mother of my new temporary family sniffed out the problem, she washed my clothes, and I found them clean and folded on my bed when I returned from school. Even my suitcase had been washed. Every morning, just as I had with Maman, we had a routine. I removed the sheets and when I returned, they would be clean on my bed.
At school every morning at 7:30 a.m., when the principal asked me to stick out my hands to check that my nails were freshly cut without polish, she had to repeat herself twice. My body was in line with the other girls, but my mind was elsewhere.
I envision Maman clearly. It is a bright day and the blossoms are out just like she loves. Hidden behind my back, I carry a bouquet of parrot tulips and forsythia picked fresh from our yard. The normally busy airport is clear. There’s no noise, no pollution, no smells of body odor and sweat. The only sound is the wind cooling my face while I watch the disembarking passengers, looking for a black chador and the round shape of Maman’s head under it. I could tell her apart from fifty other women in a chador even if I couldn’t see their faces. I could tell if Maman had gained or lost a kilo. Sometimes I could even guess, mostly accurately, which jacket she was wearing just by the way the chador draped over it. Then I run toward her, she wraps me in her chador, she showers me with kisses, and we stay that way forever.
“For the third time, stick out your hands and show me your nails, Rahimeh.” The principal’s voice startled me. I stuck out a hand and then my mind returned to the airport. “The other one too,” she repeated as she raised her eyebrows and stared at me. “We’ll have to talk to your father about your lack of attention when he comes back next week,” she snapped as she walked away.
I showed her my other hand and then continued greeting Maman at the airport until school was over and it was time to go home. I was missing Hadi and Zain. But I missed Iman terribly. I was beginning to forget his face. I wanted to kiss his fat cheeks just one more time.
REFUGE IN LONDON
Maman and Baba
While I was daydreaming of my reunion with Iman and Maman, thousands of miles away in London, Iman was clenching Maman’s chador as she wailed and clawed at the oversized wall-to-wall posters of Khomeini and Khamenei which stared down at her; they covered the walls of the religious center in the Iranian community where my parents and Iman had been sharing an austere single room. Baba found himself in London with no language, no status, and because Khomeini was preventing the removal of assets from Iran, no money. The doctors advised against Maman going back to a war-stricken country, and Baba couldn’t get our money out of Iran, so this center was their best option
Originally, Baba had rushed Maman to London for a second opinion after she had been diagnosed with breast cancer. Even though the London doctors declared Maman cancer-free, a host of other physical conditions including a heart murmur, numbness in her hands, a sleeping disorder, fatigue, panic attacks, and gastrointestinal problems led her from one doctor to another, and their trip was extended, week after week, month after month. The psychological symptoms she was suffering worried the British doctors enough to insist that she not return home where her sons would be draft age and any symbol of the new government could trigger another breakdown. They also told my father that any further separation from her other children could also cause more problems. She also was going to need surgery for an overgrown ovarian cyst.
Living in an Iranian center supported by the same government that had caused her so much pain, and being separated from her other children, Maman snapped.
With Iman pleading, “No, Maman,” she shredded the cleric’s posters, her fingernails scratching through to the concrete.
In London, the ten-by-eleven room that Maman, Baba, and Iman had called home for nine months was bitter cold. The frost blocked a view from the small, oddly positioned window, and the London draft penetrated its way through the cracks in the cement walls and crept into Maman’s bones. She was curled up in pain from surgery, turning and twisting on the blanket on the floor that served as their mattress every night.
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p; Baba pulled the top blanket over her, tucking it under her cheek, but the moment he turned away, she opened her eyes, tears rolling down the side of her face and trailing into her ear. When would the tightness in her chest lift and the pain under her belly end? Maman peeked at Iman to her right, and reached over to cover his curled-up body from the biting cold. The small radiator provided inadequate heat for the London winter.
Maman looked at the door. She pulled the blanket off her chest and slowly tried to push off the floor with one hand when throbbing pain shook her back onto the makeshift bed. She couldn’t make it down the hallway to the bathroom by herself.
She looked at Baba and listened to his even breathing. He had been to every doctor’s appointment with her since they arrived in London. Between money transfers and contact with family in Iran trying to convert tomans to British pounds, taking care of Iman, and nursing Maman, Baba had been existing on three hours sleep a night. Tonight, his eyes had closed and he had passed out before his head fully sank onto the pillow.
He didn’t wake when Maman dragged herself off the blankets and pulled herself to the door, but, when she tried to reach the handle, a stab of pain ripped into her lower belly, and she cried out. Baba raised his head immediately and sat up. “What is it?”
“The nightmare again?” Baba asked. Every night, he had been awakened by the same nightmare Maman suffered since Abdollah’s disappearance. Then Baba opened his eyes fully and searched for Maman in the darkness.
“What are you doing? You have to call me when you get up.” Baba threw the blanket off to the side and crawled his way to Maman who was now curled up and collapsed on the floor. “What do you need? Your pills? Water?” Slowly, he stood, lifting her in his arms.
At his touch on her neck, she began to weep, and for the first time in four years, she laid her head on his shoulder.
“What can I do for you?” He squinted in the dark. He noticed she was wearing her scarf. When he asked, “The bathroom?” Maman nodded.
In the bathroom, Baba took off her scarf, pulled her hair back from her face and wiped the sweat from her forehead as she struggled to relieve herself. He breathed onto her neck. Her body was hot and shivering.
“Boro Baba, go.” Maman kept begging Baba. “Go check on Iman.”
Instead, Baba placed a warm hand on her shoulder as he blew more air onto her hot neck. He used her scarf to fan her and rubbed her back. After an hour, when she was ready to go back, he helped her clean up in such a gentle way that her eyes now filled with tears of gratitude.
“I’m sorry, Haji. I’m sorry you had to do that for me,” Maman whispered into Baba’s ear.
“You’re my angel. You’re my life. I would do it for you everyday, forever.”
When she saw the longing and sorrow in his eyes, the lines that had doubled around his forehead and mouth, and the guilt and anguish that threatened his spirit – she took a deep breath. A tear slid down the side of her face.
She knew her grief had made her hardened and defensive. But just then, she softened, as she remembered how much she loved Baba. And she missed his kiss.
LEGAL ALIENS
Tehran and London 1986
The small motorcycle exhaust sent a huge cloud of smoke into the street. Hadi was trying to balance his feet on the ground to stabilize the motorcycle as he waited for me to climb on. Pulling my chador over my face, I pinched my eyes closed throughout the ride to Parvaneh Street. He peddled so hard to get the bike going that his back was wet. My little red suitcase between us, I didn’t let go of his waist. My fingernails dug deeper into his flesh as cars honked and bikes piled high with whole families swerved by us. Hadi ran red lights and scooted around traffic as if we were invincible. I thought I was going to die.
Dying might have been better than going back to school on Saturday after our Friday weekends. We were all in trouble. Hadi had been expelled for sneaking onto a bus and removing all the bolts in the last eight rows of seats the morning before the school’s five-day camping trip. Even though Hadi was kicked out of his school, he continued to attend every day. Without telling anyone, after getting dropped off, he watched the other kids go in, and then sat on the sidewalk talking to the street vender who sold corn on the cob behind the school. Meanwhile, Zain had been told he would have to repeat two of his classes, even after Baba had hired a tutor for him.
Meanwhile, I normally sat alone in the lunchroom after the kids would leave having consumed their meals, and I, hungry, would escape into my memory. I had stopped participating in my favorite after-school activity – theater and drama group. Sleepless nights became a theme, and my straight A’s were suddenly C’s. When I did make it outside after lunch before the bell rang for class, I would squat on the ground in the corner of the yard and daydream about Mashhad while my classmates made sand angels in the sandbox.
The motorbike we were riding backfired and we churned around the last corner into Parvaneh Street. My teeth suddenly felt sore from biting into my chador. Without thinking, I let it fall to my shoulders. While Hadi parked the bike, lifted me off and then few up the walk, I paused and closed my eyes. As I always did, I would wait to go through the door, holding onto the fantasy that maybe this time Maman and Iman would materialize on the other side.
The chicks were peeping and flapping yellow feathers about the yard, and Khaleh’s car wasn’t there. Someone else had opened the pen. I started to run.
Inside, the house was quiet, and the curtains, which had blown around when I opened the door, settled. Suitcases had been tossed into a pile in the foyer. Hadi and I looked at each other. What was going on?
When we heard Zain’s laughter coming down the hall, I caught my breath. He couldn’t be here by himself. Then we recognized the heavy thumping of Baba’s footsteps trailing him down the hall. When Zain burst into the foyer, with Baba behind him, we threw our arms around our father. It had been a long time since his last visit and we weren’t expecting him for another week.
Within a day, we were on our way to the airport, Hadi’s motorbike still leaning against a tree in the front yard. As we neared the airport, people were yelling and screaming and running in the streets. A bomb had hit Tehran and planes were grounded, but Baba made sure we were on the next first available flight out of Tehran. I had my little red suitcase, a few clothes, and none of my toys. We said no good-byes. We didn’t know why we were going to Maman instead of her coming to us. We didn’t care; it had been more than a year since we had seen her.
Baba couldn’t take all of us with him. Not right away. Britain was getting inundated with immigrants fleeing the growing dangers in Iran. They were not issuing visas to whole families, or to remaining family members for fear they would settle in the U.K. after reunifying. After overcoming tremendous challenges to get Hadi and Zain out of Iran, Baba was forced to drop off my brothers at a friend’s home in Germany until he could secure British visas for his sons.
In the airport in Germany, Zain had both palms against the glass of the observation window as Hadi tugged on his arm. Zain wiped his nose with his hand. He was crying.
I started back down the steps of the plane. “It’s not fair to leave them,” I said crying to Baba, digging my hand into his.
Baba grabbed my other hand. “Come on, azizam. They’re with close friends. It’s only for a short time. I promise.”
“Can’t I stay here and come to London with them?” I begged. “I don’t want to leave them here alone.”
The air from the engines was lifting the hem of my short chador in the air.
“They’ll be with us soon. We can’t miss the plane. Come on, azizam. Iman’s waiting for you.”
I took a deep breath and followed Baba. When I turned for a last look, I saw only Zain’s hand print. My brothers were gone. What if they didn’t get visas? Would they have to go back to Iran and fight in the war? Would I ever see them again? And how would Maman react when she saw it was only me getting off the plane?
I tightened the grip on my red sui
tcase. An Afghan woman who had offered me walnuts on the plane ride smiled. “This is London.” Her accent was Dari. “Good luck, little one.”
The lights were blinding, and the crackling from the overhead speakers sounded like hot oil spitting in a pan.
“Dokhtaram,” Baba called every few minutes to make sure I was still behind him as he struggled to push the cart of luggage that weaved side to side. It was the first time I remember Baba calling me “my daughter.”
I had never in my life imagined there were so many people with blonde hair. As I squeezed past them, I was fixated on the blue and green eyes that stared at me – a ten-year-old girl dressed in a miniature black chador.
Only one other person in the airport wore one.
“Dokhtaram,” Baba said as he pushed me forward.
I spotted Maman. And as I approached her, I stared into Maman’s welcoming, beautiful brown eyes. Weeping, she sank to her knees, opened her chador, and pulled me inside her robe, running her hands over my arms and face and pressing her forehead against mine, showering me with kisses, whispering sweet things in my ear.
I held my breath and waited, but all I felt was cold and distant as if a stranger was holding me. This felt nothing like the hugging and kissing in my daydream. I felt Maman’s wet face against mine, and I stared at the bright lights around us. No words.
When Iman stepped forward, his eyes told me a story. “I’ve missed you. Where were you, little mommy?” Taller, with short hair, he was older, changed. He wore a gray V-neck sweater tucked into black pants, and a white shirt buttoned up all the way. But his chubby cheeks hadn’t changed at all. I quickly walked toward him, Maman holding my hand and walking me in Iman’s direction. I wanted to pick him up and kiss his cheeks. But I did nothing.
The Rose Hotel Page 12
