Refuge--A Novel

by Dina Nayeri

  Bahman remembered those early days, when the revolution was a movement of the people and not corrupted by religion and greed. All uprisings begin with hope. Many lose their way. Despite that, 1979 was a good year. It was the year Niloo arrived. This recent turmoil seemed very different to him, though he wasn’t involved in either. Back then he was in the throes of love and first-time fatherhood; this time he was stuck in a bizarre purgatory of his own making.

  The protests had been going on for some days now, and last week, before he closed his office for the night, three men had broken in. In Tehran, protestors had attacked shops and offices, banks and private vehicles. They had set things on fire. They seemed to have no purpose other than to express their rage. “Down with the dictator,” they yelled in the afternoons, so that the din of their voices overpowered his own dental drill and he had to pull down the shades as he performed routine extractions for fear of a shaking hand. This revolution, it seemed, was a roaring fire with little kindling, much like a love affair that you know won’t last and so you burn through it all the more feverishly. These young people weren’t prepared to die for freedom and a new government as his generation had been. They had their satellite dishes and nose jobs and fancy labels. They had access to ski resorts and Western music. They had education and some semblance of the Internet. What was there to die for? A principle? Maybe the poor were suffering, but it’s not the poor who make things happen. And the conscientious rich were only about their online-bazi.

  The day the men had broken in, Bahman tried the usual pleasantries. But they were too hot and stimulated and wanted nothing to do with reason. So he offered money. This gave great offense; one of them turned over his receptionist’s desk. He said firmly, “Friend, I’m with you about Mousavi, but this is a medical office, do you understand? You have nothing to gain by spoiling tooth-fixing stations.” Then he pulled out a wad of cash, making them realize that he was offering much more than they had imagined—maybe this amount wasn’t so insulting. In the end, expelling the three boys from his office cost less than a thousand American dollars.

  Now the news seemed to say that things had gotten worse. People had died in protests all over the country. Journalists had been arrested and expelled. The Western media had been blamed. European exiles were gathering in front of embassies, universities, and in squares across the world, the possibility of change, of homecoming, drawing them together and igniting their sleeping passions for Iran.

  He rolled over to spit into a trashcan beside his bed and changed the channel to an Iranian news station. Here was something new he had missed: a few days ago, a young woman, only four years younger than Niloo, had died in the streets in front of her pleading, weeping father and a crowd of others. Someone had shot amateur video of her death, and so the Iranian media had no choice but to address it; Neda Agha-Soltan’s passing was already being watched the world over. According to the Iranian news, she was a protester. And her death was the responsibility of a novelist, Dr. Arash Hejazi, a literary man who Bahman knew had won awards and translated great books to Farsi. Were they saying he pulled the trigger?

  He turned to the BBC, then CNN and Al Jazeera, trying to cobble together the real story. As he waited for new reports to begin, he called up Neda’s video on his computer, leaving the still image on the screen while he searched for articles. Many of the websites were blocked. Some people had taken text from various reports and posted it on social media. The world was mourning Neda. For this moment in history, she was young Iran. Would anyone ever think of 2009 without remembering this poor child? Though he had no stomach for the violent and the gruesome (his poetic disposition taking over the minute he removed his scrubs), Bahman decided to watch the footage.

  She wore jeans and a scarf. Blood was rushing over her face. He thought he saw her choke once or twice. Someone’s hand was pressed over her chest wound, and her father was wailing, begging her to open her eyes. Bahman had to pause halfway because a strange panic was rising up in his own chest. Where was Niloo now? Where was Kian? He hadn’t spoken to either of them for over a year.

  Soon a new program began on the BBC. Once again, Iran’s stolen election was the main topic. And now Neda too. The reporter said that, a few days earlier, during the massive Saturday protests, a Basiji had shot her in the chest, though she was only a bystander, not protesting. She was declared dead at Shariatie Hospital, but the state refused to allow mourning or a funeral for her. Any gathering would result in the arrest of her family. And yet, she had become an icon—the video of her death now a sick relic of this second revolution. The novelist Arash Hejazi was mentioned: he had tried to revive her; maybe that was his hand in the video, holding her chest.

  Something hard rolled in Bahman’s stomach. It was as though the oncoming withdrawal had been a toxic vapor, and now it was solidifying inside his body, strengthening and morphing into a hand poised to torture him. As it tickled his throat and scraped its long nails across his stomach lining, he watched the video again and again. He watched it four times, turning his computer this way and that, trying for a smoother picture. He vomited twice, ate some rock candy, then the nausea dug in again and an unsettling fog dulled his senses. He drank tea but didn’t call on Fatimeh or Sanaz. For hours he thought of Neda. Her jeans. The blood rushing over her face. He thought of his own daughter who had escaped this madness and recalled a young woman who hadn’t. Sometimes fate summons you to act—when would this poor trapped girl ever cross paths with another person who might help? He emailed his lawyer. “What was the name of that girl in the court?”

  Two hours later, Agha Kamali replied. “Hello, my friend. How is your health? The name of the girl is Donya Norouzi. What a name, yes?”

  Naming is an act of poetry—that names can be prophetic was one of the few mystical beliefs Bahman held. Neda, for instance, means voice, the voice of an uprising, perhaps. How grand and fanciful he had been in naming Niloo and Kian. Shirin simply meant sweet. Donya Norouzi, though, was the best Bahman had heard in years, its bearer worthy of rescue. He uttered it to himself over and over as he copied her phone number into his notebook and drifted back to sleep.

  Donya Norouzi. A new-year world.

  • • •

  The fog grew thicker, but somehow pleasant. In this soupy, feverish delirium, he could pretend to be stoned, or in a dream state, and his body felt light, free-floating. Once he rolled off the bed and it felt fine to hit the ground, like his body was covered in soft padding. Twice Fatimeh came in with food, the healing aromas of eggplant and sour pickles and saffron rice preceding her. Later Sanaz slipped in while he was drifting in and out of sleep, and she played on his computer for a while.

  In the early evening he switched on BBC news. This time, he watched footage of protests across Europe, usually in front of Iranian embassies. Exiles had staged demonstrations in Paris, London, Vienna, Berlin, The Hague, Rome, Dubai, and even in American cities like New York and Los Angeles. Over the images of black-haired masses spilling into streets, drenched in green, mouths gaping in anger, a voice talked of an awakening among the comfortable Iranian diaspora; here was a new fervor that roused their native longings. Was Niloo or Kian among them? He watched extra carefully when the camera spanned the protests in The Hague and New York, unsure how far they were from his children’s homes.

  Fatimeh’s eggplant was unchanged. The onion sautéed in hot olive oil to the point of maximum sweetness, the garlic fried last so it was never bitter, never burned, each slice of eggplant skinned, salted, and sweated individually, so that every morsel contained only the best of the vegetable. Fatimeh’s eggplant was an exercise in excellence and care, much like her barley soup, her lamb shanks, and her ab-goosht, which contained hardly any filler, any gristle or shards, only the tenderest chunks of meat and a single bone stuffed with marrow. He suspected that she took from smaller bones to make the one on his plate overflow with the decadent matter. Fatimeh was a nurturer devoted to service, not
a scholar activist like Pari, or a fainter and seducer like Sanaz. Years ago, on the first night of their marriage, he noticed that Fatimeh made separate salads for them. For him she used only the heart of the lettuce, and she served the outer leaves to herself. Her roughness and simplicity pleased him. Though it was a shame that their physical relationship had always been lukewarm and uncomfortable. Hence her affair with the poet, he supposed. He didn’t blame her. How could he?

  “Why are you here?” he asked when she popped in with tea. “I didn’t ask for help. Why did you come to court?” He was groggy and must have sounded accusing.

  “Agha Kamali asked me,” she said. “What should I have done? Said no when your lawyer says you’re in big trouble? . . . Go to sleep.”

  He flitted in and out of sleep for another long while. As the hours passed, they slowed. The morning had gone by as normal, but the early evening felt like a day, the shivering growing in intensity, the skin of his arms and legs itching, the vomiting hitting violent new peaks. How quickly the disease set in. After three vomits, Fatimeh’s eggplant was long gone and he was sure four or five hours had passed. But the clock showed fifteen minutes. He decided to distract himself with photos.

  Bahman’s albums were his treasure. He had never allowed Sanaz to touch them, as they were locked in three drawers below his desk. He had brought them into this child-sized room with his other things after arriving home from jail. Now, looking at Kian playing with his toy truck, staring at the camera indignantly, and Niloo eating sour green plums with salt, her hair in pigtails, devastated him. He wished he had photos of Niloo’s wedding. He tried to blame his emotions on the weakness of his body. He began to shake, his shoulders shivering at first until his entire torso was heaving and tumbling and heaving again.

  No, he couldn’t do this. Why should he do this? He was a man with a name, connections, and money. Dirt on their heads; let them all die with their religions and their laws and their masochistic philosophies. He had his own gods, his own prayers and sacraments. He had Rumi; Rumi understood need. Man is only flesh, he mused, and he ambled out of the room renewed, determined to save his own from pain.

  He found Fatimeh in the kitchen, chopping celery into spears. “Fatimeh joon,” he said, trying to regulate the volume and quaver of his voice. Still, it trembled and he had to take a quick breath after every three words. He sounded like a man who had spent a week in a meat locker. “Fatimeh joon, you put nothing in the eggplant?”

  She blinked a few times, trying to work it out. “Did I put something where?” Then she got it, and her thick eyebrows shot up. “Ei vai,” she said, laughing silently.

  “I’m going to call Ali,” said Bahman, scanning the kitchen, suddenly aware that his head was moving far too much. He tried to hold still and lost his thread for a moment. “I’m going to call Ali. He can come over for dinner. He’s family.”

  Fatimeh didn’t chastise him. She said, “The guards will smell a manghal. And they come into the kitchen sometimes. He has to cook you something at his house.”

  “Yes, yes,” he said. He noticed Fatimeh’s bare feet, her long red toenails. When was the last time she clipped them? Why would a person bother to polish her nails and not clip them to an appropriate length?

  Standing by the living room phone, he dialed his brother’s number. He waited, gently panting. But before Ali could pick up, Sanaz sauntered in and started in on him. “Who are you speaking to?” she said, crinkling her nose. He realized that he hadn’t showered in over a day and had sweated through his clothes many times over. To hell with it. “You have to put your calls in the log.” Sanaz nodded toward a yellow page taped to the paisley olive tablecloth that draped the tea table. Years ago, Pari had found the coin-shaped table in a bazaar near the Thirty-Three Arches.

  He ignored her. Ali would cook him a fatty beryooni, and he would fill it with opium. He would do this every day, and he would deliver it in a medical kit, and the guards would have no idea of the scheme. They were children. What did they know?

  Sanaz approached. He hadn’t hung up or made a gesture to write in the log. She said, “Bahman, you’re going to get us into trouble.” What nerve she had, speaking of trouble as if she wasn’t the source of every bitter morsel he swallowed. She reached across him and clicked on the cradle, disconnecting his call.

  Now all the unspent anger of the previous days, all the blame-taking and rationalizing and the demurring, swallowing every response, quickened and boiled over so that all Bahman felt over his nausea and stomach pain and desperately itchy limbs was raw animal rage. The receiver still in hand, he roared at her, “You vile thing, I want you gone,” and he smacked her hard across the face. And though he hadn’t wanted to do it, and would never have chosen such barbaric ways in a rational state of mind, he felt no guilt, only a sweet, gushing release.

  After a silent beat, Sanaz began to shout. She cradled her stomach and flung curses at him, and though her voice rose with each word, she was never shrill. She sounded ardent, like a martyr. She rushed to grab the phone from him. In a frenzy of dialing (who was she calling? her sister?), she knocked a pen and Niloo’s nativity statuette off the table. Fatimeh and Shirin appeared from the kitchen. The front guards too had heard. Two men entered without bothering to remove their shoes.

  A single day had passed under house arrest—one single day. He took a breath, trying to slow the chattering of his teeth. He would die here, he was sure of it, in this slow-burning netherworld that was shaped like the home he’d once built.

  “What’s the trouble?” said the young guard who had come to breakfast that morning—was it only this morning? What hellish protraction. The guard held a fresh cup of tea, which Sanaz must have brought to his car. Bahman looked at his wife, now whispering and sniffling, her hand covering the receiver.

  “It’s nothing,” said Fatimeh. “I got into a fight with her. I’m sorry.”

  The guard stared bewildered at Fatimeh, because what is one to do about the domestic squabbles of women? His wives were in their own home; and they weren’t the ones under arrest. The guards muttered to each other until Sanaz hung up her call. Bahman assumed that she would now end this miserable charade, maybe have him thrown back into jail, though, as a husband in an Islamic state, he did have the loathsome right to hit his wife. Still, the world was populated by jealous, scheming humans and these particular humans liked Sanaz better than they liked him.

  And yet, Sanaz said nothing. She crossed her arms and shook her head and sniffled again. Fatimeh offered the guards some dinner, if they would be good enough to come to the kitchen table, since the sofreh was in the laundry. She led them away, with Shirin trailing happily behind, distracted by the unexpected meal.

  “All your talk of education and feminism and America,” whispered Sanaz, clutching the nativity statuette to her chest. “All your talk. You’re an animal.”

  He wanted to ask her why she had spared him with the guards when she could have used the incident to turn the divorce far in her favor. He said, instead, “Why do you hate me? What did I do that you have to cause all this commotion?”

  She glared at him, her eyes desperately sad. “Why do you think you can throw people away? If a person didn’t study exactly what Niloo or Pari studied, they can’t be smart? Or chic or interesting or . . . enough? You’re pompous and cruel.”

  Sanaz liked to exact her own creative punishments, and that night her reason for keeping silent in front of the guards revealed itself. As he lay shivering under three blankets, the minutes creeping onward through a riot of clattering pots and high-pitched spats and crashing plates from downstairs, someone knocked on his bedroom door and entered without waiting for a reply. It was the wooly-bearded man, the witness from the courtroom, along with Soleimani, Sanaz’s brother-in-law. Neither had taken off their shoes. They stood by the door, watching him, and in his fever Bahman thought that he had been right earlier—Sanaz was calling her siste
r. Bahman’s first instinct was to greet them, but as soon as he opened his mouth, he was overcome by nausea. His body hinged forward and he vomited again in the bucket Fatimeh had placed beside his bed for that purpose.

  THE HOSPITALITY OF THE DUTCH

  AUGUST 2009

  Amsterdam, Netherlands

  Gui asks every few days about Zakhmeh, hinting that he’d like to come along. But Niloo’s responses are always ungenerous. Instead, she calls her mother in New York but doesn’t say much. After four years of marriage, Niloo still refuses to throw a wedding—it feels like tempting fate to let Gui get involved with so many Iranians. God forbid they should demand a garish Persian spectacle. Sometimes on the phone, her mother whines in English, “I need photo for when I get old.”

  “It’s a hassle, Maman joon,” Niloo says. “And Gui doesn’t care.”

  “Okay, so Gay is not care. What about your people? We need photo.”

  Niloo long ago stopped battling her mother on the “Gay” issue. Maman has her familiar syllables and no idea of the difference and that’s that. Gui thinks it’s funny.

  Now, when Maman raises the topic, using as her excuse Baba’s constant desperation for keepsakes, Niloo says, “Baba has his own wedding photos. Plenty.”

  “Niloofar, stop that snarking,” Maman says. She has recently taken to peppering her English speech, already salted with Farsi words, with garbled adolescent slang from the Internet. “You stop that nasty-bazi. I am so over it.”

  Niloo changes the subject. She decides against telling Maman about lunch with Mam’mad or the refugees at the squat. Instead she talks of her research on the jaws and teeth of early big game hunters. She’s talking to Pari Hamidi, after all, once-esteemed Iranian doctor and academic, social renegade, a woman who respects all scholarship. But her mother just spews a bunch of emotional nonsense. “Primate . . . why is important?” she says. “Study what happens in Iran! They steal election over there! Crazy bastards. Iran is all over in the shits. I never understand why you study anthropology. These garbages they dig up from earth, they’re too long dead. No longer useful to thinking; to modern thinking.”