Veil of Roses

by Laura Fitzgerald

  The sun. The waves. The sound of the ocean. The sexy confidence of a bikini top and cutoff shorts highlighting the strong-muscled legs of an able woman. Bare feet. The wind dancing through her hair. She remembers it all. And she wants it for me. I am her dream deferred.

  “I promise, Maman Joon,” I whisper back. “I promise I will go and wake up my luck.”

  And then I grasp her to me and I cling to her because I miss her so much already, my sad mother who smells of rosewater. I try to memorize this moment, this embrace. I will need to carry it in my heart forever. I will need to be brave, for her.

  For I am not coming back.

  Three weeks later, that little perfume bottle filled with sand from the shores of San Francisco Bay is packed safely in my luggage. I am on an airplane, leaving my homeland behind. When the pilot announces we have left Iranian airspace, a cheer breaks out. Women on the flight unbuckle their seat belts and stand. They look around. They yank off their headscarves and run their fingers through their hair. They have left Iran, and the future is theirs, to make of it what they will. I remain quietly in my seat and watch them. I think of my mother. My chest is so tight I cannot breathe.

  I watch the flight attendants serve peanuts and offer drinks, now that we’ve left the boundary of our country, where alcohol is illegal. One approaches me. He smiles and asks if I would like a glass of wine. This startles me, the fact that he is looking at me as if there is nothing wrong with an unrelated man and woman looking each other in the eye and chatting casually. In public, no less. And, of course, there is nothing wrong with it. It just doesn’t happen where I am from.

  And so I take a deep breath. I reach up and fiddle with the knot under my chin, and then I pull off my hejab. I press it into my lap, as far away from me as possible.

  He nods at me in approval. In affirmation of what I have done. I look right in his friendly tea-brown eyes. Strange as it feels, I do not look away.

  “Yes, please.” I nod back.

  I want the peanuts. I want the wine. I want to look into the eyes of a man and feel no shame.

  My name is Tamila Soroush.

  And I want it all.

  It is twenty-four hours since I left Iran, since I clutched my parents to me at Mehrabad Airport and we wept our good-byes. After three plane changes on three different continents, I am now ten minutes from Tucson, Arizona, where I am to depart the plane and meet Maryam.

  And it is clear to me that the plane is going to crash.

  It drops suddenly. Little bells ding politely but insistently, and the airplane attendants scurry to buckle themselves in. Their faces look nonchalant, but I know they are trained to put their faces this way in times of crisis. A man’s voice comes on over the loudspeaker. His English is fast and garbled, and although I have studied English all my years in school and my father spoke practically nothing but fast and garbled English to me for the past three weeks in preparation for my journey, the pilot’s words are too run together for me to make out what he’s saying. Perhaps he’s telling everyone to say their final prayers. I grip my hands on the armrests and begin a soft chant to myself: “Baad chanse ma, Baad chanse ma.”

  “Excuse me,” the woman next to me says, slowly and with careful enunciation. She has joined this flight from Phoenix. “Is that Arabic you’re speaking?” She wears a black T-shirt that says Power Corrupts in bold silver letters. She would receive forty lashes on her back for wearing this shirt in Iran. Forty lashes at the very least.

  I shake my head. “It’s Farsi.”

  “I thought so. I lived with a Persian guy for a while. Was that a prayer you were saying?”

  I give her a rueful smile. The plane is clearly not going to crash. We’d just hit an air pocket. “I was a little frightened from the…mmm…how do you say, turbulence. I was saying how my bad luck follows me all the way around the world.” I watch her to see if she is able to understand me or if I’ll need to repeat myself. I really don’t know how good my English is, and I feel myself blush. It could be just awful.

  But perhaps not, because she gets an excited look in her eyes and turns more fully to me. “You’re just coming from Iran?”

  I nod.

  “That’s awesome! Do you have family here?”

  I nod again. “My sister lives here with her husband.”

  Maryam has lived in the United States for almost fifteen years, ever since she married an orthopedic surgeon named Ardishir. On his yearly visits to Tehran to see his mother, he began courting my sister. My parents were proud he was a surgeon. That means a lot in my culture. But he was only a resident of the United States, not a citizen. That was not good enough. My parents would not permit the marriage until he obtained his U.S. citizenship, for then he could take my sister back with him to America and sponsor her for citizenship.

  “How long are you staying?” Her smile is so friendly, I do not mind all the questions. Everyone in America smiles big and talks a lot. I have seen this in the movies.

  “I am moving here.”

  “Really? How did you manage that?”

  My heart pounds. I feel myself blush. I tuck my hair behind my ears. I feel like I am lying. But it is true. I am moving here.

  “I am getting married,” I say, as confidently as I can. I smile, knowing happiness is expected with such a statement.

  “Congratulations! Did you meet him back in Iran, then?”

  I shake my head, swallow hard. “I have not met him yet.”

  “Oh,” my seatmate says. Her broad smile falters and her eyes darken. “An arranged marriage?”

  “Yes,” I say. “In my culture, it is not so unusual.”

  “How do you feel about that?”

  How do I feel about that? What, I want to ask, does that have to do with anything? I am here on a three-month visa. The sole purpose of my trip is to find a way to stay, and that means I must find a husband who will sponsor my application for residency. The choice is marriage here or marriage there, and for me this is an easy choice. Being married is a small price to pay if it means I can stay in the Land of Opportunity and raise my children, my daughters, in the freedom that would be denied them in Iran.

  “Americans only get married if they are in love,” I tell my seatmate. “But in my culture, we try to choose someone we can grow to love over time.”

  “Wow, I can’t imagine that.” She shakes her head, but suddenly laughs. “But then again, I’ve been divorced twice already and I’m not even forty. Who’s to say yours isn’t the better way?”

  My eyes get big. I cannot help it. Divorced, twice! She must be the black sheep of her family, to have behaved so badly that not one but two men divorced her. This is why she is so chatty. This is why she talks to strangers on airplanes. Everyone else probably shuns her.

  She grins at my shock. “But I’ll tell you what. That Persian boyfriend I lived with for a while? He was better in bed than both my husbands put together. He was fan-tastic. Maybe that’s a cultural thing, too.” She shakes her head at the memory. “Mmmm-hmmm, the things he could do with his tongue.”

  The plane jerks to the ground. The rough landing prevents me from having to respond. I am stunned and horribly embarrassed by what she has said. I make myself busy gathering my things as the airplane taxis to the gate.

  “Can you find your way out okay?” she asks.

  “Yes, yes,” I assure her, not wanting my sister to see me with such a badjen, a disreputable woman. “Thank you very much for your kindness.”

  “Take care, then,” she says, unbuckling her seat belt and pulling herself up before the plane has even come to a full stop. She grabs her backpack and heads to the front of the plane. I watch her walk away. She is the first American woman that I’ve spoken to at any length. I know I will remember her forever. She was friendly, and she was crazy.

  And I can’t even begin to imagine what her Persian boyfriend did with his tongue that made her so happy.

  Although it has been fifteen years since I have last seen Maryam,
my terror at seeing her again causes me to linger, so that I am the last one off the airplane. And when I do depart the plane, I hear her high, happy voice before I see her.

  “Tami! Tami!” she shrieks. “Oh, oh! Over here, Tami Joon!”

  I turn my head toward the voice, and my heart melts as a blur I understand to be Maryam grabs me and kisses me on both cheeks before enfolding me in her arms. Pressed against me, Maryam curls my hair around her fingers. I’d forgotten how she used to do that when we were children in the bedroom we shared for many years. That’s how she used to wake me up in the mornings, by weaving her fingers through my hair and singing to me. I laugh with relief and start to cry and hug her back very tightly.

  “Shhh,” she says softly, smoothing my hair. “Don’t cry. We don’t want your eyes all puffy and red.”

  When she steps back and takes my face within her hands, when she gives me another kiss upon both cheeks, I gasp. “You are so beautiful! How did this happen?!”

  Her black eyes sparkle, delighted. “Everyone is beautiful in America, Tami Joon.”

  It is all I can do not to gape at her. Maryam has always had appealing features, but she has a beauty I have not seen before. She has lost her baby fat and toned her muscles and grown her hair long. It falls halfway down her back in perfect, shiny waves. She wears gold, gold, and more gold—earrings, a necklace, two bracelets. In Iran, gold jewelry is how women show off, revealed at parties after coming inside and shedding the headscarf—hejab—and manteau we must wear when outdoors to keep the low-class bassidji goons from harassing us.

  Here, Maryam openly wears her gold. Her face has laugh lines where before was only smoothness. She wears bright pink lipstick, gold eye shadow. Copied from a magazine model, most likely. That’s how she practiced back home. Most different is her chest—this is not the same chest she had when she left Iran.

  “Oy, Maryam! What is this? Did you take some special vitamins to make yourself grow in all the right places?” She is my sister; I can ask her.

  She laughs, delighted by my naïveté. “They’re not real, Tami. I enhanced them last year. They call it a boob job.” She giggles at the words. A boob job, this is unheard of where I am from. It would serve no purpose. Nose jobs, sure. They are all the rage, for noses are the one operable, changeable, fixable feature of ours that men actually see. The rest of us remains cloaked anytime we are in public.

  I question whether Ardishir approved of Maryam’s boob job.

  “Approved?” She laughs harder. “Who do you think paid for it?”

  I realize now, while looking at her new boobs, that while I may have come halfway around the world, what I have truly done is enter a whole new universe.

  “Did it hurt?”

  “Not so much.” She shrugs. “It’s what women do here, especially if their husbands have some money. If they are married to doctors or rich men who own businesses, for instance.”

  She puts her arm around my shoulder and turns me away from the gate. Toward the exit, toward my future. “Don’t worry, if we have a hard time finding you a husband, we’ll get you one, too. I’m sure Ardishir will pay for it.”

  This idea horrifies me.

  “I do not want Ardishir buying me new boobs!” This is not something my parents told me about, the need for new boobs.

  “You’ll do whatever it takes, Tami,” she laughs. But when she sees that I am near tears, Maryam pulls me toward her and reassures me with a hug. Then she stands back and strokes my cheek. She adds, quietly, “I don’t ever want my sister to be so far away again. So we’ll do what it takes, right?”

  I swallow and nod. “Right. You’re right, of course.”

  Maryam holds up a bag from Macy’s. She is a manager there; my father tells this to everyone he knows. “I brought you some things to change into. There’s about thirty people waiting for us back at the house.”

  “Here? You want me to change my clothes here, in a public toilet?” I think back to all the times I was forbidden from using the filthy ones back home.

  She nods. “Just try not to touch anything.”

  I have been traveling for one whole day and two whole nights, and I haven’t slept for more than three hours in a row. I do not want to enter a public toilet, on this, my first night in America. And I do not want a party. “Ay, Maryam,” I groan. “I am so tired. I don’t know if I’ll be able to keep my eyes open at this party.”

  “I’m sorry,” she says. “But we expected you much earlier. I couldn’t call everyone and cancel. It would have been rude. Besides, there’s a dentist who will be there whose family we know. He lives in California and has to go back tomorrow. His mother says he is ready to be married.”

  A pushy Persian, that’s my sister. She has always been this way, and I do not have the energy on this night to argue. She promised to my parents that she would find me a good Iranian husband with American citizenship, and she will keep this promise. Starting this very night.

  I remind myself to be grateful. She is my sister, and her intentions are good. So I let her slip a form-fitting red dress with a deep V-neck over me. I let her put so much makeup on me that I barely recognize myself in the mirror. I let her spray something in my hair that she says will make it curlier and bouncier. I let her put my feet into open-toed sandals with three-inch heels. I let her polish my toenails. This alone makes me smile, to see my toes so colorful and happy. Everything else terrifies me. Excites me? Yes, I admit that. After a lifetime of living under a cloak, I am ready to dress up all fancy. Just on my own terms, not those of my sister.

  And after a lifetime spent trying not to be noticed in the streets, it feels very dangerous to have strangers stare at me. And yet stare they do.

  The staring begins as soon as we enter my sister’s house. Even before, if you count the janitor who smiles at Maryam and me as we emerge from the airport bathroom. My hejab—I suddenly want the invisibility it offered. But no. We are doing nothing wrong, only trying to look nice—special, unique—in a country where this is not against the law. No one will take me to jail here for only trying to look nice, and so I need not be afraid. Nonetheless, I tuck my arm into Maryam’s and pull her close. They can look at her, my glamour sister. She clearly enjoys the attention.

  After we gather my luggage and step outside to the parking lot, I take my first fresh breath of air in what feels like forever. I look up at the sky in wonder. Even the stars are different here. They are brighter and in formations I do not recognize. I should have expected this, but I am startled to realize that even the heavens here are not the same. I have to take a slow, deep breath to adjust.

  “It’s very different, isn’t it?” Maryam’s voice is gentle.

  I nod, for my throat is too tight from homesickness to answer. I should have sketched the stars above our home in Tehran. I must ask my mother to draw me a picture, and in return I shall draw her one of my sky here. At least we will always look at the same moon, Maman Joon and me. This is how I soothe myself. I breathe in the cool desert air. It is good, all good. The air in Tehran is bad to breathe. It is thick with pollution and dust. Here, it is crisp, as if we were high in the Alborz Mountains.

  “Wait until morning when it’s light out,” Maryam tells me. “Remember those old John Wayne westerns Baba Joon always watched when we were little?”

  I nod.

  “Well, they were all filmed right here in this area, and it looks just like it does in the old westerns. You won’t find cactus like this anywhere else in the world. And the sky. You’ll never see a sky so blue. There are no clouds here, Tami.”

  “You like it, then?” I murmur.

  “I love it,” she tells me. “Iran is no place for women. America, it is for everyone.”

  I look ahead of me into the darkness and try to imagine the daylight. “The land of the free,” I whisper, hearing in my words the echo of my father’s voice.

  “And the home of the brave,” Maryam adds while she squeezes me to her. “You are my brave little sister, to co
me all this way alone.”

  “You came all this way,” I remind her.

  “Yes, but I had Ardishir.”

  “And I have you.”

  I know right away which car in the mostly empty parking lot is Maryam’s. In Iran, most people drive the same cars they had before the revolution and can only dream of driving a new shiny-gold Mercedes-Benz like Maryam’s. It is a pooldar car, a status symbol like none other.

  While she drives, Maryam chatters away about Tucson, the weather, the neighborhood she lives in, the English conversation class I am enrolled in and which starts next Monday. I try to pay attention to her, I really do, but I am trying to recognize this woman sitting next to me, trying to understand once and for all that this is my sister. My Maryam. That I am with her once again. She was my lifeline back in Iran, the only spot of sunshine in my perpetually overcast household. And she left me. She married Ardishir at the first chance she got, and she did not have the decency to even pretend she would miss Iran.

  “Hello, Tami!” she laughs. “You’re a million miles away!”

  “Do you think you’ll ever go back and visit Maman Joon and Baba?” I pause and watch her jaw clench. “You should hear how they brag about you! You have made them so very proud. You’ll visit one day, won’t you?”

  Maryam keeps her eyes on the road. “Sure I will,” she says softly. “Sure I will, one day.”

  “I’m sure you’re very busy here,” I offer when I see how sad she’s become.

  “Oh, totally! I am so busy! My job is really crazy and I don’t think Ardishir could manage on his own for very long. You should see that man try to get around a kitchen!”

  We share a laugh. As it fades, she turns and appraises me. “You’re really grown up, aren’t you?”

  “I guess so. Grown up enough to get married, anyway.”

  She smiles at me sympathetically. “Don’t worry. You’ll like being married. It’s not at all like it is in Iran.” She reaches out to squeeze my hand. “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we found a husband for you on your very first night here! Then Maman Joon and Baba would really be proud!”