Refuge--A Novel

by Dina Nayeri

  For the next ten or twelve days, we explored London on foot and by Tube, Baba hobbling behind, asking us if we were certain of our interpretation of the Tube map and whether we needed some Maltesers. When he was tired, which was more and more often, he recited poetry that came to him from nowhere and was directed at no one. We chatted with English cab drivers and we sampled bangers and mash. Kian wanted to visit restaurants from his list, and we tried those, though Baba couldn’t forgive the bland food—he ate a lot of Caesar salads with extra chicken breast and extra dressing. He loved Caesar dressing; it was a marvel to him. He called it “mayonnaise sauce”—Baba never deluded himself about the garbage he ate. We visited an Iranian restaurant, and it was the only night Baba was entirely comfortable, ordering the waitstaff to give us “the good meat” and “the newest vegetables.” Kian didn’t object since the Iranian staff seemed to find this behavior normal, even welcome. No harm in a little run-of-the-mill Persian puffery, especially when it promises to end in a big tip. Somehow Baba implied the promise gracefully, raising the Iranian art of suggestion to new heights. We Persians tarof and pretend and make false offers. We enter contracts based solely on backslaps and shoulder squeezes. In the restaurant Baba would say to the waiter, between every insane request, every order of extra-aged garlic pickle, “The universe will reward your kindness” or “This is a higher-order of service, sir. We must find a way to thank you.”

  Every night Baba took a train to the home of whatever relative was hosting him. Each morning he arrived more exhausted, and so I assumed the relative lived far away, maybe not just in a suburb, but in another city. As days passed, he seemed increasingly burdened by some unsaid thing, as if he had come to London with this single goal and he was failing to accomplish it. He would start speaking over a beer, lose his thread, and by his third beer he was asking about Maman again.

  One morning as our weak-chinned Covent Garden waitress, whom we now knew was called Molly, came to take our breakfast order, Baba put up his hand and said, “Miss Molly, is okay you come back in some minutes?” She said of course, poured our coffees (I think she saw the look of alarm on Kian’s face), and left. Baba didn’t touch his drink. He played with a loose button on his cuff. He said, “Children, I’ve been meaning to tell you about some changes in my life. I would like it if you carried the news to your mother in whatever way you think is best.” I reached for my coffee. A foul taste was filling my mouth; maybe I knew what was coming. He said, “For some years, I had been meaning to marry again. It kept coming up and I kept putting it off. But finally, I have. I’m sure that’s not a surprise to you and it won’t affect your life. But I need someone to take care of me. And this lady has been doing that for a while.” He stopped, scanning our faces for reactions. I don’t think my memory is distorted when I say that we were encouraging, waiting quietly for him to continue. He said, “There is another detail.” He stopped, and it seemed he was trying to choose a version of a story, to decide if his adult children were strangers or allies. His gaze searched for something that we were failing to give him as he stirred his coffee without interest. He said, “There is a child.”

  Kian exhaled and pushed his cup away. In that second Baba seemed to decide. He waved a hand at Kian, as if to stop him from lashing out or making unkind assumptions. “She’s adopted,” Baba said. “We’ve adopted a baby girl, from Fatimeh’s sister who’s ill. She was born a few months ago. Very healthy.” He exhaled deeply and rubbed his mouth and chin with his palm. For a moment, none of us spoke.

  “Fatimeh is the name of your new wife, then?” I said, leaning in, though the whole situation sickened me. Once or twice Baba had asked me about immigrating to the West. With a child, that option would mean so much more misery; at the same time, he’d crave it all the more. I remembered Maman, when we first set off from Isfahan. The tangible, often staggering differences between a settled, educated mother, even one stuck in the Islamic Republic, and a desperate refugee parent were a daily punch in the belly. And look at Baba with his cane, already too old.

  Baba smiled and nodded, relief and satisfaction coloring the slopes of his cheeks. “Fatimeh and Shirin,” he said. “Those are their names.”

  • • •

  Sometimes in the afternoon, Kian made excuses and left us alone for an hour or two. Baba and I wandered the city. We ate street nuts and tried to have conversations. “Do you want to see their picture?” he asked one day in Hyde Park. I didn’t, but he was already pulling out his worn leather wallet. Staring out from a photo with uneven edges, as if cropped with small scissors, was a village woman sitting cross-legged atop one of my grandmother’s best carpets, chipped toenails peeking out from under a long skirt, crooked teeth, a baby swaddled in three colors tucked under one arm. The sight of her shamed me—was this my stepmother?

  Before I could think, I had blurted, “She’s not from the city.” Baba didn’t respond. Embarrassed, I added, “That’s a really cute baby. When she’s older, you should enroll her in an English class. Just in case.”

  Baba’s gaze dropped. He slipped the photo back into his wallet, careful not to catch the jagged edges on the lining. “And what if I want to teach my daughter to savor and enjoy her one brief life? What would you advise for that?”

  I glared. “An easy life isn’t everything, Babajoon,” I said. “It’s tough out there. No one hands you anything and they expect so much.”

  “Who expects so much?” said Baba, as if expecting an easy answer. I released a long-suffering sigh. “Okay, okay, Niloo joon. Let’s not fight. Let’s go for a tea.”

  A few days later, as we passed the American embassy, Baba slowed. “Niloo joon,” he said, almost embarrassed by the request. “Do you think we could go in and ask a few questions? Maybe it won’t be so hard to make a family request.”

  Standing on that leafy London street, I felt trapped, as if wedged into a brick lane, the close walls squeezing my rib cage with every breath. “Babajoon, without an appointment it’ll take hours. And Guillaume and I might not stay in the States for long.” He nodded too many times. Then he dropped the subject. In any case, in twenty-four hours, the timbre of the world would change, stifling Baba’s wishes.

  The next day, the planes hit the towers. Kian, Baba, and I were having afternoon drinks in a pub near Hyde Park. We had grown accustomed to one another, and to our daily routines, and our pace had slowed—we spent a lot of time in pubs and cafés. Baba was distraught. He was on his feet as soon as the bartender turned on the news. A crowd gathered around barstools below the television but no one sat, and I mumbled translations in Baba’s ear. “Ei vai,” he whispered. “It is a madness.”

  The people around us cradled their forearms and wiped their cheeks and rubbed their necks, their mouths. They worried their bodies as if checking for wounds. “They’ll bomb us,” Baba said like it was a finished thing.

  “Don’t jump to that thought,” said Kian. “There isn’t even a—”

  “You think Hezbollah had no hand in this?” said Baba, his eyes glassy and hollow. Despite our truncated relationship, I’d seen Baba in the worst states, in drug-induced stupors, and in sadness and in loss. But I’d so rarely seen him scraped of hope. The man has hope stored up in his bones. “Well, think again. They’re all helping each other over there. It’s all the same religious insanity.”

  “Oh god, we have to call Maman,” Kian said suddenly. He slid off his barstool, his voice jumping with alarm. “What if she gets stuck in Bangkok or something?”

  Every five minutes for half an hour, Kian stepped outside and tried to dial Maman’s mobile, her hotel, and her voice mail in New York. Baba and I sat and talked, nodding to Kian each time he excused himself. We couldn’t order any more drinks because the bartender was distracted, and, for once, Baba had become conscious of himself as an Iranian, his usual fire dwindled to a few directionless sparks. He said, “Niloo joon, do you remember when you were a girl and I came to your
school to talk to your teacher?” I did remember, of course. It had been the best day. He had stormed into the school and scolded a teacher who had been cruel to me. Now I realize she was only a scared twenty-five-year-old and I had caused her to be berated by an admittedly frightening man who paid for many of the school’s amenities. He continued, “I saw you doing the morning exercises. All those girls lined up, draped in gray, their little voices shrieking, Death to America, death to Israel. It was like a knife to the gut and it was the last time I visited. And now look. They’ve done it. Whichever group it was, does it matter? This is the result of god worship. Your mother’s god as much as everyone’s.”

  “Babajoon, stop being dramatic,” I said, nibbling mindlessly on table peanuts. “The church does a lot of good in the world.” I don’t know why I felt the need to defend God or the church. I was an academic now.

  “Yes,” he said. He reached for his empty glass for the sixth or seventh time, brought it to his lips, and put it down again, gazing at it as if it had failed him. “The human heart is capable of great good.” I went to flag down the bartender.

  When I returned with three more bottles, including one Guinness Extra Stout, Baba was staring zombie-like at the television. I said something I had meant to say before. “Babajoon,” I said, “I’m glad you have someone to take care of you.”

  He focused again as if he were woken from some dream. He said, “Thank you, azizam.” He paused. “I think it’s nicer having someone that I can care for. I was young and selfish when you and your brother arrived.” He started nodding again, as if to some inner voice, his eyes a little sad. “Do you have someone to care for you?”

  “Gui loves me,” I said. “He checks on me when I’m sick and makes breakfast on weekends and talks about us to everyone. He’s the nicest man.”

  “The nicest man,” he repeated, smirking into his untouched beer. “Maybe I’m too old and Iranian to understand you, Niloo joon, but that answer alarms me.”

  “He’s right for me,” I said. “Stop reading into things.”

  “Okay,” he said in English, “we toast your nice man.” He clinked his beer to mine and said, an afterthought, “I tell you one rule of love. Don’t trap. Don’t be trapped.” After that, he switched abruptly back to Farsi. “Is your mother happy? Is that man Nader still in her life?” He gulped down half his beer.

  I didn’t answer. The situation with Nader was complicated. He had disappeared dozens of times in the last decade. It seemed the man couldn’t manage to age beyond twenty-five, forever a wandering boy. Maman stopped speaking about him years ago. But I knew she accepted his phone calls. I wondered where he was on this black day. Was he traveling somewhere in the world? Would he make it home? His passport, like all of ours, read “born in Tehran.”

  “I saw some recent photos of her,” said Baba just as Kian was coming back from the latest phone call. “How is the atmosphere of her heart?”

  What a thing to ask. I didn’t want my response to seem hollow, so I said, “I think it’s a little cloudy.”

  Kian’s eyes bulged out of his head. “The fuck, Niloo,” he said. He spoke fast English so Baba couldn’t follow. “Don’t talk about Maman to him. He abandoned us.”

  Baba’s gaze flitted from Kian to me and back again. He shrugged his massive shoulders, sucked some beer from his upper lip. “What did your mother say?” he asked Kian. “Were you able to reach her?”

  Kian said yes, but he wouldn’t say more in front of Baba. Later he told me (and I told Baba) that Maman had traveled to Thailand to care for Nader, who had fallen sick in Bangkok a few months before. His doctors there had diagnosed him with stomach cancer. Having lived as a nomad most of his life, his relationships were quick and superficial and, afraid of indignity, he had hidden his condition. Maman found out accidentally, when one of his medical bills was sent to her address, which he often used when he traveled—here was a clue that had floated to her, as if by the power of his hopes. So, she bought a ticket to Bangkok the next day, packing two changes of clothes and a burlap sack of basmati rice. Maman and Nader were always a mystery, but over the years, her love for him revealed her fuller person to me, casting the faintest light in certain corners of her heart, and I learned that no matter how you betray her, no matter how often you run away, if Pari Hamidi loves you, you don’t suffer alone.

  That night we walked aimlessly through Leicester Square and Covent Garden, buying English treats and takeout curry that we ate on the floor of the hotel room, on a makeshift sofreh, while Baba inundated us with stories of home, asking if we recalled his favorite details, trying to persuade us that we’re not from a bad place despite all that we would soon hear. At the end of the night, he reached for his cane, leaning beside him against one of the beds, stretched out his back, and said he would go to the station now. “Where do you go every night?” I asked. The answer couldn’t be too troubling, given all that we’d already learned today about the world.

  “I have a friend,” he said. He put on his rain jacket.

  That he didn’t offer more made me angry. “How far away?” I said. “What train?” I made my tone purposely accusing.

  He breathed out. “Please don’t start,” he said. “This isn’t like last time. This is just because I prefer to sleep in a home, with a family, to eat our own food.”

  “I knew it,” said Kian, gathering the takeout bags and the containers from which only Kian and I had eaten a meal’s worth. “You can’t live on Caesar salads.”

  “Please don’t take offense,” said Baba. He looked at his watch and sat down in the desk chair. “My friend Soleimani has family here. This man, he recently married into a family that I know. They like to cook for me. Hotel beds hurt. And we have some things to discuss.” He paused. “When I travel to Cyprus or Istanbul or Dubai, Soleimani helps me.” Even though he didn’t say it, Kian and I had retained enough Iranian manners to know that he was telling us that he didn’t have enough money, after that embassy-hopping trip through Eastern Europe and Asia, to pay for a second hotel room. Baba added, after a pause, “Now with this mess in New York, I think any new travel plans are finished.”

  Kian crumpled the paper bags into the garbage bin and placed it outside the door. He said, “If things are so hard, why’d you drag us here?”

  “Drag you?” said Baba, his eyes watery and unfocused. I should have told Kian to stop, but I agreed with him—I was eager to go home. Though we were American citizens now, I wallowed in the nightmare of being rejected at the border. For a moment, Baba was silent, staring mystified at his foreign son. Kian’s bluntness seemed to diminish him until finally, he said, “I blame myself for your arrogance.”

  “Let’s not fight,” I said, shooting Kian a pleading look. “I’ll walk Baba to the station.” I could see from Kian’s face he wished he hadn’t called Baba out.

  But Baba was undeterred. “Do you know what Soleimani said to me the other night? He poured our whiskeys and he said, ‘You have so much pride in being a doctor. All the esteem and opportunity you push into the light like decorations on your shoulder. It would just take a broken hand to take that away, Agha Doctor.’ And then, to cover up his outburst, he said, ‘I guess the smallest thing could ruin all of us.’” We waited for Baba to reach his point, but he already had—we had inherited his extreme pride, a canker, and we were too young to see it in ourselves. He quoted Rumi, shifting his gaze between us. “Sell your cleverness; buy some bewilderment.”

  I opened the door for Baba. I asked Kian to go to Marks & Spencer and fix us dessert. He nodded, his forehead relaxing. On the street, Baba said, “In pub, Kian say I ‘abandon’ you.” He wanted to show he had understood, but then he changed back to Farsi. “That day at your school, when I heard those little girls chanting, I thought: I will give up my children so they can leave this place. I was afraid I’d never survive elsewhere, so maybe what Kian says is true.” I didn’t respond. Was this confes
sion supposed to absolve him? I wasn’t ready for that. I think he heard me in the silence. He put my arm in the crook of his and said, “This trip was a windfall. Even if this was my last visa, I tore something precious from the clenched fist of the universe.”

  “The clenched fist of the universe,” I repeated, a delightful phrase. I saw him to his train. He shuffled to a window seat and waved to me through the glass, his smile playful, as if waving goodbye to a child. It reminded me of that other goodbye, years before. On my way out of the station, I looked at the schedule. His destination was two hours away. Four hours a day he rode on that train to be with us.

  That night over strawberry and mango with lemon cake that Kian drizzled with caramel, I told my brother the things Baba had said. He ate quietly, his head resting in his hand. The next day, Baba didn’t come to London. Kian called the number Baba had left and a Mr. Soleimani told us that Baba’s varicose stitches had burst. Kian scribbled an address on the hotel notepad, and that night, we rode the train to a remote suburb of London. Kian asked if he might have free rein of the kitchen, and he cooked a feast for us, the kind with such meticulous attention to detail that it would put any Iranian grandmother to shame. He toasted walnuts, sweated eggplants, hand-crushed garlic, and picked fresh pistachios out of their double shells. Lounging against a wall of pillows with his tea, his hand resting on the bottom of his cane, Baba was the happiest I had seen him. He told stories all night, and the Soleimani family (six men, five women, and two children) listened raptly. Kian refused help in the kitchen, but we heard him chop and sauté as Baba recited verses and tales, the music of their talents mingling, these two intense, artistic souls, strangers to each other, making everyone forget that we were Iranians in the first days of an altered world. After dinner, Kian showed Baba a line in a poetry book and Baba smiled. “Yes, this is true. This is very true,” he said, drinking in the words and his son’s attention. “I will remember the wisdom and beauty of these lines. Thank you.” And when I asked Kian what the poem was, he said, “Doesn’t matter.”