In the weeks after he arrived from Germany, Zain, now twelve, did not leave Maman’s side and he didn’t stop eating. All day, he sat at the small sofreh and asked for more food. Maman catered to him, taking care of her son, trying to make up for all the lost time. Then he started mixing everything together – sabzi – the fresh greens, mint yogurt with cucumbers, green salad, shirazi salad with fresh tomatoes and cucumbers, rice, and stew. Each day, she cooked three of his favorite dishes, and then he asked for more. He couldn’t stop eating.
It was Zain who always heard the music of the ice cream truck before the rest of us. One day he left the sofreh so fast, he spilled his hot tea, and we heard the screech of a car before we got to the street behind him. I was afraid to look. When I did, Zain’s crooked body was lying on the ground, his forehead bleeding where the headlight of an old car had grazed him. The scarf Maman grabbed to cover her hair had blown loose as we raced to Zain, whose eyes were open even though there was blood all over his face. Around him, the driver and the neighbors were speaking in English, but we could only understand Zain who kept saying in Persian, “I don’t need a doctor. I want my ice cream.”
He was not seriously injured – all head lacerations tend to bleed profusely. After he was cleaned up and deemed well, we began to worry: he had almost killed himself getting to more food. His appetite, at first understandable, then laughable, was now a reason for concern.
While Zain was busy smothering his feelings with food, Hadi was playing daredevil on the streets of London. He demolished the Audi loaned to us by a family friend. Zain and Iman, who were in the car, were okay, and Hadi had been lucky not to be arrested for driving while three years under age and without a license.
However, he suffered serious injuries. In the hospital, I visited and found him with a bandaged head and still wearing a ripped and bloodied white shirt. Hadi’s bandage looked like an ayatollah’s turban, but this one was streaked with blood.
Baba tried to quiet Hadi. “She’s a woman, yes, but she’s your nurse. You’re rewriting Islam if you prevent her from helping you because she’s a woman. Doctors are halal, it’s permitted. Now let’s get this done.”
“She’s a woman. She won’t touch my head, and I’m going home. I’m not committing a sin.” In a strange twist, Hadi was now more Muslim outside Iran than he ever was when we were living there.
Baba didn’t know how to argue with that, especially as Hadi was becoming more devout. In fact, Hadi was transformed into an old man – no longer one of us children. He grew a beard, prayed for hours with his tabeeh, and never left open the top button of his shirt. He may have acted devilish as a boy, but now, at fifteen, he was a “man of God.” And his rules were our rules. Hadi forbade music in the house, and during commercials, he would change the channel on the radio in case there was a jingle. In London, he didn’t go out on hot summer days so he wouldn’t be exposed to women with miniskirts and halter-tops.
One day when we came in from school, Baba was pounding on the table. “I’m going to kill that bastard for what he’s done to my family. He calls himself a man of God. I trusted him. Now no one knows where he is. Or our money.” Baba stood up from the table. “But I will find him.”
As it turned out, when Baba sold the estate in Tehran, he had entrusted the proceeds to Mr. Madressi, a contact he made through a trusted ayatollah, Mr. Madressi. When, during their meeting, Madressi excused himself to pray, Baba had believed that he could trust him.
When Maman learned we had lost the money from selling the house she didn’t want to sell, she said nothing. She just turned off the stove and went to lie on the bed in the corner where she closed her eyes and dreamed of her mother and sisters in Iran whom she might never see again.
While Baba spent months tracking down the swindler, he discovered that Mr. Madressi had conned dozens of other unsuspecting Iranians. “That bastard won’t get away with this. I’m going to get it back, zan.”
A few weeks later, Baba’s eyes were wild as he came dashing into the house. He grabbed for his suitcase. “I just talked to her, his wife in America. He has a son with her. When she found out that he has a whole other life in Iran, with another wife and kid – and that he’s a thief – she was on board.”
Maman looked at Baba and forced herself to stay quiet.
Baba started to pack. “I’m going to get our money back. No matter what. I have his address. He will pay for what he’s done to us. He will know what it’s been like living hand-to-mouth for over a year, not a penny to our name, borrowing money from friends and begging from strangers. He will pay me our money.”
Maman looked down at the dirty brown carpet of our studio apartment. Her eyes went with her to the place deep in her memory.
JUSTICE
Baba
Baba arrived in Tehran in the dead of night. The sweet call to prayer, the sound of the azan from the speakers of the nearby mosque scared the crows off the roof. Baba paid fifteen rogue officers to be his private interrogators. This time, they weren’t working for the regime. They were working for him.
“Haji, you stay in the car. I want to catch Madressi by surprise. I don’t want him to have a minute to think.”
Baba clenched his fists. “I want to look into his eyes. Understand?”
Pressing his palm on the roof of the car, the commander leaned in to face Baba. “Don’t you worry, Haji, you’ll get every penny of your money back. You’ll see the surprise in his eyes before I bag his head and fear overtakes him.”
The commander rang the doorbell after he sent guards dressed in camouflage around the back of the house.
“Mr. Madressi’s house? Open up! Police.”
The man who opened up was in a white pajama shirt. He quickly closed the door behind him and walked outside. “What can I do for you, officer?” He met the commander’s gaze unfazed and at ease.
“Are you Madressi?” The commander asked, putting a hand on his side pistol.
“No. My name’s Aslani, sir.” He bluffed. “Why are you looking for Madressi?
“Do your wife and children know that you have another family in America? Or that you are a swindler, a thief? Do you want me to call your wife out here and break the news to her or do you want to go with me quietly?” The commander yelled. “Yes or no? You have one second to decide.” He made a hand motion and six soldiers jumped up from the corner and pointed their rifles at the man in pajamas.
“My personal life is not any of your business. In fact, unless you have a warrant for my arrest, you can show yourselves the way out.” Madressi began to turn when the commander pulled out his gun.
“Do you remember the owner of the Rose Hotel?”
Madressi’s head jerked up, his hand on the door handle, briefly frozen in place. He slowly turned his head toward the guards. “Who?” Madressi’s voice was louder now and cracked a bit.
“Me, you son of a bitch,” Baba emerged from the darkness without waiting for the flashlight signal from the commander. “Do you remember the day you put your hand on the Qur’an and swore you were a man to be trusted? You remember when you took my family’s life in your hands and then disappeared? You remember me now, you ruthless bastard?” Baba sprang to the door, his raised hand about to land on Madressi’s throat.
“I have no idea who you are. But clearly you’re a crazy man...” Before he finished the sentence, duct tape was on his mouth, and one of the policemen threw a brown burlap rice sack over his head.
At the police station, Baba’s stomach was grinding with pain. He hadn’t slept in over thirty-five hours since his departure from London, and he hadn’t eaten for over eleven hours. While Madressi was screaming his denials, brutality begot more brutality...Baba was sickened. The cries from the other room seemed to shake the dark gray walls of the cell where he waited. Delirious with exhaustion, he noticed that the bars of the cell were cleaner than in the prison in Mashhad. For hours, Baba listened in until Madressi finally acknowledged his name and identity, admitted knowing B
aba, and even acknowledged he had taken Baba’s money. But even at hour eleven, his screams filling the air, the man who stole from us kept repeating that the money was spent and that he didn’t have any way to pay Baba back, insisting that he had no assets and no foreign accounts.
“How much longer? What else can we do?” Baba asked the commander.
The commander shrugged. “You paid us for a job, Haji, and we won’t let you down. There are a million of these ruthless thieves running around. There are hundreds of families like yours who left Iran and relied on these criminals to help them take their money out. You’re not alone. We already have three other families in line after you: an Afghan family and two other businessmen. Trust me, more will come out. This guy’s a professional. He knew what he was doing. And he knows how this game is played. Don’t pity him, this is a part of his business.” The commander glanced at the room where Madressi hung. “I’m pleased to help gain some justice for your family.”
Another scream came from the interrogation room. Baba dropped his head, “God help me.”
With every scream, Baba thought of what it must have been like in the cold, dirty cells in Mashhad that spoke only of death and despair. He felt an ache in his chest when he imagined how the guards flung open the jail bars, dragged his son from his cell and separated him from his tasbeeh and his Qur’an.
Baba shook his head to bring himself back from the past.
This was nothing. Madressi was enduring this to protect stolen money. The real torture would be for Madressi to find his own son, cold and lifeless, with bullet holes in his head and chest.
Baba thought back to the time when Abdollah, his firstborn, was a baby. He remembered his sweet pink lips, his big brown eyes as he stared up at Baba in wonder on their first picnic as a family. Watching Maman lock eyes with Abdollah, Baba knew he would always come second after this child. And for that he was grateful. He remembered how quickly Abdollah grew to be a young boy, twirling his tasbeeh, combing his hair, and grabbing a briefcase to make believe he was going to work with Baba years before he was ready. At fifteen, it had been Abdollah who insisted on going with Baba to feed the earthquake victims in Tabas.
If Abdollah were alive, Baba wouldn’t be in this cell, paying policemen to force a man to return his family’s money. If Abdollah were alive, his family would still be living in Iran, together. But his beautiful son was dead. His mind raced from the distant past of Abdollah’s sweet childhood to the night when he held his son’s cold, dead hands. He couldn’t hold back the flood of tears streaming down his face. And when another scream filled the air, Baba began to whisper a curse as he paced the dark room and wept.
“You have no choice, Haji. There’s no room for guilt here. Think of your family. We go all the way or you don’t get a penny. He’s going to outpace, outsmart, and outrun your patience and tolerance. This is the only way. If you can’t tolerate this, step outside.”
Baba was playing with the two bills left in his pocket. He had two thousand tomans in his pocket, and a wife and four children to support in a foreign land. He took a deep breath and nodded slowly. Being involved with this felt corrupt – there was no way not to be tainted by it. But he had to take care of what was left of his family...
“Do what you have to,” Baba finally said. Sitting back on the flimsy cot where he had been waiting, Baba stared at the ceiling. “Khodaya komak kon. This is for my family. God help me.”
Twenty-eight hours later, the interrogators got the bank account information they needed to pull out the money, or at least two-thirds of it that was still unspent. For over ten years, Baba never spoke of this to anyone.
BOOK TWO
The American-Iranian Revolution
“THE KING’S” ENGLISH
Our American–Iranian revolution started in England with a protest against the King – not the King of England but the King of Rock and Roll. Even though at age nine, I still refused to learn English at my British school, whenever I heard Elvis Presley sing or speak, I was all ears. He was simply too handsome to be ignored. Our new apartment had upstairs bedrooms, a full-size stove, a toilet without slimy bugs and, most significantly, a television station that played Elvis Presley movies. I clicked it on, and the first shot of the Revolution was fired: “Jailhouse Rock!”
“The band was jumping and the joint began to swing.
You should’ve heard those knocked out jailbirds sing.
Let’s rock, everybody, let’s rock.
Everybody in the whole cell block
Was dancing to the jailhouse rock.”
At that moment, two victories occurred simultaneously on the rebel side: I gave my heart to an infidel, Elvis Presley, and I accepted the fact that I had to learn English.
We were living in London and though we knew nothing of Baba’s nightmares, of the price he was paying as he lay in a half-sleep at night reliving the wails of agony in the prison cell, we had come to understand that we were exiled from Iran: England was home now. Home would have to be where we were, not where we had been.
I realized that I was also making a break with the traditions my father had upheld – and it turned out he was not the only enforcer of strict rules at home. One afternoon, as I was watching my fourth consecutive Elvis movie, Hadi entered the living room and slammed the door closed. “This is not approved!”
“Maman said it was okay.” I jumped up and stood in front of the television set, hoping to obscure Elvis’s swiveling hips and sensuous bedroom gaze. “I’ve been watching TV for weeks, Hadi. Leave me alone.” I clutched the fancy new remote control like a weapon.
Hadi stomped into the kitchen. I could hear him upstairs as his voice overpowered the Elvis call to “Let’s rock.” “Maman, these shows have inappropriate content. They’re all about rock and roll, drugs, and sex. She’s eleven. She should be reading instead. No movies like this, Maman. These are rated for adults.”
As always, Maman was conciliatory: “I’m sure she will change the channel at any bad scenes. You know she’s a good girl.”
“She will not watch television in this house, unless it is cartoons or videos we approve of. It’s for her own good.” Hadi was now the enforcer of Islamic ideals in our house, and acted as my second father – and an even stricter one than Baba.
It was Elvis marathon week on TV, and I was not about to miss any of it. “Do you want to watch the next movie with me? It’s not bad, I promise. This one has a Cadillac Fleetwood in it. And besides, I need to learn English if we’re going to Disneyland,” I said, feigning innocence.
Baba had just announced that he was taking us on vacation to America. I didn’t really care about Mickey Mouse. I was fantasizing that I would finally be seeing Abdollah and that we would visit him at his college. Even then, this hope was gossamer thin, but I clung to it – the proposed trip to America gave Baba’s insubstantial explanation of Abdollah’s whereabouts a sudden credibility.
Hadi said nothing, but hours later, as I sat curled up and watched Elvis turn over the engine of the Fleetwood Cadillac, I felt the couch shift with new weight on the other end: Hadi had sat down to watch.
The flickering from the screen reflected on our faces; we didn’t speak, but stared straight ahead as Elvis continued to talk to me in my new language, the language of Abdollah. “Love me tender, love me true… all my dreams fulfilled…”
California 1986-1995
Dear Abdollah,
My mind is a pretty powerful thing. I had long dreamed that I was wrong somehow. But when we arrived in America and you weren’t here and no one said your name, I finally knew that Khaleh told us the truth. You’re not coming back are you?
But where are you? Are you in pain like we are? Do you see us? Are you visiting sometimes? I think of our pillow fights. I remember your Camaro. I remember the smile on your face when you would see us at your shop. I’m going to write to you in this journal every night. I hope you read it. When can I ever talk to you, I mean really talk to you again?
Your
face is starting to fade in my memory. I’m worried I’ll forget you.
I always wonder what our life would be like if you weren’t gone. Maybe we would be home in Iran. Our family would be “normal” instead of broken. I don’t know, maybe all families are kind of broken. But maybe if you were around, you and Hadi and Zain would be fighting, or maybe even killed in the war. I don’t know, but we never say your name, we never talk about you, and there are no pictures of you, and that makes me sad.
If only you were here to help me. I’m trying to keep our family happy, but I’m not sure what to do. And no one takes me that seriously. Maybe I’m wrong, I am only eleven.
We are staying at the top floor, it’s the Hilton near the airport in Los Angeles. I’ve been staring down at hundreds of speeding cars across this huge road they call the “freeway.” A trip to Disneyland tomorrow isn’t going to fix us. We haven’t been here for more than four hours and already I hate it. We all do, especially Maman. It’s good we’ll only be here for two weeks.
I love you.
Little sister,
Rahimeh
Unable to legally work in England, Baba had decided we should come to the United States for a vacation. We were to come to California for two weeks, see the sights and return to England. Or so we thought.
As he had done with the move to London, he usurped any decision making from Maman or his children, and took a drastic step. We stayed. For the second time in our lives, two weeks stretched to two years. This new move caught Maman and the rest of the family off guard, with just four small suitcases, and again, no goodbyes. Then, because Baba received a work sponsorship and could start a business, he decided to make the move permanent. Was this Baba’s secret plan from the beginning? Or did it happen by accident?
The Rose Hotel Page 14
