Refuge--A Novel

by Dina Nayeri

  “How is the atmosphere of your heart?” his father asked once, after they had smoked together, their speech thickening, their words growing strange and poetic. His father wore a loose shalwar and skullcap. He farmed and didn’t ask after hearts.

  Bahman said, “As if it devoured every other heart and it’s alone in the world.”

  His father nodded, and said, “The manghal is only for certain great moments.”

  Bahman stroked the mahogany desk his friend had built, its hidden panels and flawless curves. He recalled a 2006 visit to Madrid. Again he had wounded his children with his habit. It was enough. Fifty-five was no end. He dropped the key into his safe, pocketed a roll of bills, reached for his cane, and headed downstairs.

  That night he suffered the depths of it. He tossed and turned, his nightmares melting into silhouettes of Fatimeh and Sanaz coming in and out with cold towels and sheets and hot food he never touched. Finally, the pain reached his deep tissue, an agony like marrow leaking out. Like bones stuffed so full that they might burst, staining his flesh. But he knew the end would come and he didn’t beg for opium this time; he knew he wouldn’t. He shivered through the night, his stomach cramping so often and so hard that in the early morning hours he soiled himself. He tried to hobble out of bed, to clean it quietly, but his arms were too weak. He made noises. He fell. Soon Fatimeh arrived with tea. She didn’t comment on the mess. She simply started cleaning, humming a song she used to sing to Shirin.

  The song brought on the urge to weep. He wanted to ask, “Why did you love that drifter instead? I gave you a comfortable life. I gave you so many possibilities.” His mouth was dry, his voice raspy, but he managed to say some of it.

  She wrapped the sheets in a tight bundle, tying them by the corners. She had never offered an explanation. Now too, she said, “I think we’re all part beast.”

  The comment stung. Was she referring to his current state? Laid so low that he was soiling himself like a caged animal? He wanted to lash out, but he didn’t have the strength or will. It seemed that his pride had seeped out along with whatever toxins his body was expelling. “I’m sorry,” he said. “My body is failing.” Humiliation weighed down his voice like a dense tumor in the throat.

  Tucking the bundle under her arm, Fatimeh said, “Don’t be crazy. I know everything about you. What do you have that I don’t know?” He fell asleep on the chair as she was putting on new sheets. She woke him and rolled him onto the bed.

  Five days later, Bahman would pass an entire day reading, drinking tea, and playing with Shirin. He would sink into his bed contentedly and exhaustedly, having lived his first day in three decades with neither opium in his blood nor any vomiting or shivers. A few days after that, he would return to work. He would spend his days waiting for Niloo to respond to his letter, and then, in August, he would give up. He would pack a bag and the next morning would leave Isfahan. Searching his office, the police would find no further evidence of his guilt, only medical supplies, office papers, and stacks of photos from his childhood and his children’s in Ardestoon.

  Maybe, in that final fitful and humiliating night, his body twisting under warm lilac sheets, as it tried to shake off this demon he had carried for decades, Bahman sensed the winds changing. Maybe he sensed that his arrest would soon end, and that it was time to rend some joy from the clenched fist of the universe. Lying in a haze, trying to ignore the sensation of a thousand insects crawling across him, he planned his last days. He would give up his house, signing it over to Fatimeh and Sanaz, begging them to get along. He would take the cash in his desk and one modest bag and ride to the airport with his brother Ali in the same car that carried his children away decades before. Then, with his purchased exit visa, on to Istanbul.

  He would have to abandon many beloved things. Not just his house, but his name and place in the world, his community, his patchwork second family. It pained him especially to leave his sizeable collection of photos. But of all the musings and unwanted wisdom he had received in the past months, only two remained fresh in his ear. What do you have here that’s so important? Donya had asked. The photos? The money? Money was for living, and photos were paper, images from a life he no longer lived. They were stray sparks from a fire too far away to offer warmth.

  The second voice that tickled his ear was Fatimeh’s, the claim to know him absolutely. How sad it is when someone who has left your orbit, whose memory has receded, holds such intimate knowledge. Meeting them again feels like renewed loss, and it’s full of tremors and watery eyes and involuntary responses much like a bout of opium withdrawal, not only because every familiar detail—their blue eyes or their yellowing laugh or a charming turn of their hand—is like a coil of skin peeled from the heart, but because they took away that knowledge of you with them, that snapshot of you, out into the world. And as they changed, everything that they knew changed too. And so you are unwittingly altered.

  In this world, there were a hundred variations of him, like dolls made in the same workshop, identical except maybe a narrower head, sleepier eyes, or bushier eyebrows—details that would attract only the briefest pause in anyone but a collector, someone with their heart deep in it. These versions circled the earth, in people’s memories of him, in their stories, and each time he greeted a friend after a long absence, he would meet himself anew. Thinking of this and of his children, he tried to recall how he had seemed to them in Oklahoma, then in London and Madrid and Istanbul. Sometimes on the phone, he sensed their childish awe of him waning and had to excuse himself and hang up, their disappointment quietly flooding his lungs like an unseen current. Now he was on his way to them for a fifth time; maybe he would reach one of them this month or next. He conjured those many incarnations of himself, trying to imagine how time will have distorted them. He recalled a line that Kian had shown him in a poetry book in London years ago. Beware o wanderer, the road is walking too. And so he tried to shift his lens to match theirs, to see the moving road underfoot, and when he couldn’t, he was afraid.

  AN ADDICT IN DAM SQUARE

  SEPTEMBER–OCTOBER 2009

  Amsterdam, Netherlands

  In Farsi, there’s an expression of longing, my teeth itch for you. It covers many animal urges. Lovers say it to each other. Parents say it to especially delicious toddlers. Kian used to get it constantly as a kid, his fleshy balloon cheeks always on the verge of being chomped by some adult’s waiting maw. Siavash said it once to a leg of lamb he was barbecuing. Lately Niloo’s teeth have begun to itch: for the new community she’s found, its hearty stews and vintage songs, for work, for the apartment she is building with Gui, for Amsterdam, and for everything Iranian.

  She has begun to spend all her free time at the squat; not just the storytelling nights but other events too: folk bands, setar players, a local violinist, a Q&A with a minor politician. She even shows up on off nights just to talk to the young Iranians who live there, the ones who came recently from Tehran or Isfahan or Shiraz, usually escaping charges of moral crimes: underground music, homosexuality, involvement with anti-Ahmadinejad intellectuals. The refugees share two small rooms in the back of the squat and cook Persian food every Thursday. Siavash joins them on those days. They play soccer in the early afternoon, then cook together, eat, smoke, and drink well into the morning hours. Niloo always stays till the end, and she has never again invited Gui to come along. When he asks where she’s going, she tells the truth, but won’t entertain any offers to intervene or discussions of the dangers her new friends pose. She knows he wishes she’d found a different type of Iranian friend (maybe some Group Two women for safe chitchat over lunch on some Amstel River terrace). Now that she has chosen her friends, though, Gui is constantly trying to manage her involvement, to offer his own services so she might step back. Once she overheard him sighing into his phone to Heldring, “She’s befriended a refugee.” He waited a long time as Heldring opined. Niloo ignores these efforts. She accompanies Karim to more offi
ces, translating his stories to elegant English.

  Often afterward she invites Karim for a beer and cheese fritters; usually he declines. One day she finds him sitting alone on the stone ledge of a canal, near the spot where they have arranged to meet. He is singing a song from before the revolution, late sixties or early seventies. She sits beside him, her legs dangling over the water. He tells her about his wife, his baby daughter, and the guitar he left at home.

  She calls Mam’mad to discuss Karim’s health. Is he depressed? Mam’mad doesn’t return her call for several days and when he does, he’s vague. He sounds older, his voice hoarse. When she hangs up, Gui suggests a weekend in Paris, but Niloo says she’s too busy and goes to sit in the closet and think.

  “So you don’t think it’s hypocritical.” Gui starts up one night, even though she’s already turning the doorknob, her jacket in hand.

  “Oh Christ, why hypocritical?” she sighs.

  “Look, do what you want,” says Gui from the couch. He’s reading a novel they’ve agreed to read together but Niloo hasn’t yet begun. “I’m just saying instead of translating for this Karim, you could look into your own father’s situation.”

  “What situation?” she snaps, and they’re off. She spends the rest of the night fighting with her husband, a more frequent occurrence as the months pass.

  On story nights, she devours poetry and Old Persian tales; they all do, the stories dissolve the grimness of the passing weeks for men like Mam’mad and Karim, their lives dripping away day after day in limbo. Soon, Karim finds a temporary job and Mam’mad takes to hermitage and she spends her evenings with Siavash and his tight-lipped girlfriend, Mala. She comes to think of herself as an Iranian immigrant again, a child refugee, not an American expat—the difference having to do with options, purpose, and personal control. Like many Middle Eastern immigrants, she watches the growing influence of Wilders with awe and trepidation. She reads up on his political career, his rants against Islam (“Take a walk down the street . . . before you know it, there will be more mosques than churches”), his casual racism (“Netherarabia will just be a matter of time!”), his proposals to tax women in hijab and place moratoria on “non-Western” immigrants, and worst of all, the way he appeals to poorly educated rural farmers with his openly hostile attitude to Holland’s large Middle Eastern and North African populations. Wilders controls the PVV, a frighteningly popular party. In a message to refugees, he says outright, “You will not make the Netherlands home.” After that broadcast, she fights with Gui, who claims that Wilders is just a politician appeasing his constituents. She leaves the apartment, slamming the door behind her. She texts Siavash and asks if he has eaten.

  “That man is the Ahmadinejad of the Dutch,” says Siavash, shaking his head. “The same cartoonish villainy, but worse, because he doesn’t have to resort to fraud. He has serious followers.” They are sitting in a Turkish restaurant where the owner plays a drum-like string instrument, maybe an oud, a few feet from them, and the waiter refills their eggplant as urgently as one would refill water. Sometimes Karim works here, busing tables for cash and sending the money to the poor suburb of Tehran where his wife and children still live. Tonight Karim is nowhere to be found, but they decide to stay anyway. “I wonder where he’s hiding,” says Sy.

  “And Mam’mad,” says Niloo, “where is he?” Siavash shrugs and heaps yogurt-cucumber onto her plate. She dips her bread in it. “It’s not like him,” she mutters.

  “We should leave them alone for a while,” says Sy. “They’re in the same bad situation. They want to go to their secret corner and moan about wives and visas.”

  Weeks ago, in August, Ahmadinejad was inaugurated for a second term as president of Iran and, again, protests sprang up everywhere. “Death to the dictator,” the people chanted, and demonstrations in and out of Iran continued. Since the election in June, the newly stoked fire among the Persians of the West has grown into a full roaring flame, maybe accomplishing nothing more than the sense of closeness it creates to their native country and its history. Regardless, Niloo and her friends have attended most of the events in Amsterdam and The Hague, often stopping for drinks afterward with fellow protestors, or going off by themselves to dark, dingy brown cafés, talking for hours over fries and cheap carafes of red wine.

  All through September, Mousavi and fellow candidate Mehdi Karoubi encourage protests. A large demonstration is held in New York outside the U.N. General Assembly. In October, Karoubi is attacked by Basij militia at a press gathering, the most recent episode in a campaign of harassment against the two candidates. Furious, Siavash and two of his friends, students who have just arrived from Tehran and protested there as recently as July, barely escaping arrest, organize a demonstration at the Spinoza Monument, a statue near Waterlooplein on the Amstel River. They cut out masks of Mousavi and Karoubi and glue them onto sticks, captioned with Spinoza’s famous quote, “The purpose of the state is freedom.” Niloo dresses in green and joins the protestors, holding the sign over her face as a small array of local magazine writers photograph them and ask for quotes. A journalist from the BBC appears, takes a handful of photos, asks a single question, and leaves. Siavash does all of the talking.

  At home she tries to respond to Baba’s email. She says in Finglish, Babajoon, can you talk on the phone? I don’t know who’s reading these.

  A reply arrives two minutes later—Baba couldn’t type that fast if someone lit a match under his palms. And it’s not in Finglish, but in Farsi letters, using a Farsi keyboard. You have been the worst daughter. You write as if nothing is happening, just a casual hello. The country is going up in flames. Your Baba is suffering a hundred things. You ungrateful, selfish girl. It must be your mother’s toxic blood.

  She writes back in a way only her Baba would understand, using children’s books they once read together. Babajoon, what shrill, girlish voice you have.

  Another swift reply: You ignore his emails. He’s always waiting. What’s more urgent than your family suffering in this chaos? Maybe you don’t get news over there.

  Niloo chuckles at the clumsy attempt to chastise her. She’s heard stories of this woman from her mother and Kian. She doesn’t love Baba; she loves drama. So, Niloo replies with the insult that’s most effective on all four groups of exiled Iranians, and therefore, probably the ones in Iran as well: barefaced class shaming. I didn’t realize Baba hired a house girl. Please tell him to call his daughter.

  He won’t call. Baba has always behaved strangely on the phone. Once, years ago, he called her after months of silence. She had the afternoon free, and briefly she craved to share her stories with him, to hear his. But he only asked about her health and whether her phone number was permanent and, three minutes later, said goodbye. “It was good to hear your voice,” he said, his voice gruff and shaky but resolute—had she misstepped again? Then he was gone, leaving her many stories hanging off her tongue. Later Maman told her that calls from Iran are expensive. “That’s all it is, baby joon. He called from a good heart. Don’t make it negative.”

  Two seconds later, a final email from Baba’s account, an almost lovable approximation of English: Fock you.

  When Gui comes home, she is lying on the couch, her face buried in a decorative pillow. Lifting her head, she feels the embroidered pattern imprinted on her cheeks. Gui sits beside her, strokes her hair, and so she tells him about the protest and the emails. “Why did you engage with her?” he says. “You wrap your mouth around the exhaust pipe of humanity and then you ask, Why do I feel bad?”

  “Who’s the exhaust pipe of humanity?” she asks, defenses rising.

  “I mean the collective garbage from everyone,” he says. “The narcissism and drama and misery. You suck it in like it’s a strawberry water pipe.” She smiles—Gui learned to love fruit pipes last year in Istanbul, her fourth trip to see Baba.

  That night, she sits cross-legged in the storytelling squat with her
new community, these misfits with whom she shares noses and dark hair, restless fits and native tastes. They eat lemon-barley soup and watch themselves on BBC One. Everyone cheers when Siavash speaks, and his smile thaws his features and warms the room. If his gaze rests, even on a stranger, his eyes are generous.

  Niloo cancels two beginning anthropology lectures in a month. She lies awake at night, fantasizing about being a newly arrived immigrant again, about how different it would be if she were an adult and not a child. She imagines being stronger than she was then, poor but independent, about having a young lover who speaks her native tongue, who eats the same dishes and understands Maman’s jokes, a man to whom her parents will sound as educated as they are.

  She starts going for drinks and coffees with Siavash, thinking a friendship with him is more realistic than one with Mam’mad, who is her father’s age and has all but disappeared, or Karim, who has hit a lucky streak in his never-ending search for work. Sy feels closer to her age, not because he is (Karim is two years older, Sy five years younger), but because they both grew up in America, where aging happens at a different pace. Too tired to fight, she doesn’t tell Gui.