Refuge--A Novel

by Dina Nayeri

  “Well,” said Maman, “he wants to deflect from the uranium efforts. Maybe he hopes to be underestimated.” She looked into her cup and smacked her lips. “Enough of this for us both. It’s so much stronger than coffee. Where did you find it?”

  Baba shrugged. “Istanbul.” He seemed bored by the question and left unsaid the Where else? He said something about a bazaar in Sultanahmet and scratched the back of his neck just above his undershirt. The spot was fire red, as if he had been scratching it all night. “Did you read the news from Isfahan?” he said, his tone shifting suddenly. “They cloned a healthy sheep called Royana. I visited him with Ali. It was very nice.” Then he added, his tone mischievous, “He looks very tasty.”

  Maman laughed. I poured myself a cup and plopped down beside Maman, who was holding her arm out to me. She stroked my hair and we talked about the cloned animal, about science in Iran and the universities there. After a while, we returned to Royana the sheep. Baba said, “I bet Kian could make a feast out of him.”

  “Do you remember,” said Maman, “that time we ate Niloo’s chicken?”

  “Ah yes, the esteemed Chicken Mansoori,” said Baba, letting out a big sigh. Then he looked at me, his eyes flashing with unreleased laughter, and he put his hands together in feigned contrition. “My darling, I’m so sorry we ate your chicken friend.” Maman snorted and wrapped her arms around my waist, burying her vanilla-scented head in my chest. Baba added, “But it was your own fault for choosing such a delectable name. I mean, half the time I thought he was called Chicken Tandoori. What did you want? We’re only poor carnivores, driven by our basest instincts.”

  “It’s a good thing Gay didn’t come,” Maman said. “We are so embarrassing.”

  Our ruckus woke Kian a few minutes later and he joined us with his own cup of sludge. He had tried adding the evaporated milk to it. It wasn’t bad. By then, Baba was glassy-eyed and flushed pink, sweat pooling under his arms, above his stomach, and on his lower back as he ranted about a local mullah who was stealing from his savings account using a cousin at the bank. During his explanation of the bank’s slapdash system of identity verification, the mood of the evening changed. Suddenly, Baba was alone on that side of things, and we three were exchanging worried glances. He went to the bathroom twice in the middle of that story.

  When he was gone the second time, Kian asked, without ceremony, as ever, “Is he on something? He’s definitely high, right?”

  Maman shook her head as if to shake the thought off into the ether. “It’s just the coffee. I know what opium looks like; he would be half asleep and babbling about the stars. Plus, I went through his suitcase; I got promises. This is coffee.”

  Baba opened the bathroom door and ambled toward us, his steps irregular but energetic. He wiped his forehead with a hand towel and said, “Ahhh, Madrid,” as if completing some earlier reflection. Then he continued his story like he had never paused and we let him, though we were all a little afraid. Images from that night at the Red Carpet Motel crept back into my thoughts, and I returned to bed cradling my fears, but I was too fainthearted to question him.

  I promised myself this: I would never introduce this man to Guillaume. And if I had kept any friend or acquaintance from Yale, I wouldn’t introduce them either.

  That night Baba’s heart stopped. Luckily, he wasn’t alone. He was still in the sitting room telling stories to Maman, who, with her eastbound jet lag, didn’t expect sleep to come till sunrise. His breath grew short during one of his stories and he staggered into his favorite fuzzy chair. As soon as he sat down, he was overcome by nausea and itching, and a few minutes later, his heart began pounding so ferociously that he stood again, walked a few steps, then dropped onto the couch, clutching throw pillows, manic in his eyes, manic in the clumps of ever-young, sweaty hair fanned across the cushions, manic even in his teeth, grinding, wincing, terrified. Maman ran to the neighbors’ and banged on their door, begging in English and Farsi and in simple sobs to call an ambulance. Since it was our first night in Madrid, she hadn’t seen the emergency numbers tacked to the kitchen corkboard.

  When Maman stormed back in with our sleepy neighbors—two Spanish sisters with a dozen earrings and half a shaved head between them—Baba was near fainting, his color drained, his eyes closed, his breathing erratic like the pained sputters of a dying engine. Kian helped him to the floor, wondering aloud if he should be laid on his stomach or back. He gave Baba water, most of which ended up on the pillow and on Baba’s undershirt, and propped up his head until we could hear a breath. By the time the ambulance arrived, Baba’s lips were blue.

  In the morning, the doctor, a broad-shouldered Indian man with a severe Roman nose and night-shift shadows, told us that Baba had admitted to taking Adderall to mask the effect of opium, of which there was plenty in his blood. Being medically competent, Baba hadn’t overdosed on either drug, but he had come close. He was old enough to make mistakes, and his drugs were from black markets. Plus, he was a habitual opium user and had almost no experience with uppers. The doctor assured us in his soothing accent, a gently rolling English-Spanish-Hindi hybrid, that Baba was stable. He seemed persuaded that Baba hadn’t combined the drugs recreationally, but only to mask the presence of opium; maybe he wanted to shield us from it. The doctor seemed sorry for us, the corners of his eyes drooping every time he said Baba’s name. He said, in that universal doctorly tone full of sterile compassion, that since Adderall wasn’t illegal and since Baba’s travel itinerary made it plausible that the opiates in his blood were consumed outside Spain, he wouldn’t notify the police. This was a kindness. We all knew what had happened. Then he offered Baba medicine to hold off withdrawal until we left Madrid.

  Baba stayed in the hospital for two days. He slept a lot. He ate a lot of unsalted soup and crackers. He didn’t complain about the food.

  On New Year’s Eve, Kian and I ran out to the nearest square to buy churros (Maman had become addicted), party hats, and silly 2007 eyewear. We wanted a photo of the four of us celebrating, even if it was in a hospital room. Who knew when we would all be together again? The last time had been in 1993.

  After his release, Maman wouldn’t look at Baba and his regret and misery were palpable. He haunted the apartment with shoulders hunched, his once exuberant hands tentative. He stared at me pleadingly as if he wished he could crawl into the skin of another man. Mostly he slept and read his books as the rest of us visited the royal castle, parks, monuments, the Prado, and every baker and butcher we could find. Maman floated from place to place in her big shawl, sampling curious meats, looking up historical details, and asking vendors for recipes. It struck me that she and Baba were no longer in the same cultural category—Maman wasn’t displaced each time she left her home. She seemed so much younger than Baba. She didn’t struggle and suffer and hunt for lavash bread. She didn’t look for an Iranian host or a welcoming sofreh. She ate Spanish food. She learned Spanish greetings.

  At my insistence, we visited the National Archaeological Museum. At Kian’s insistence, we went to Botín, the oldest restaurant in the world, a stony, cavernous space with stews and suckling pigs and soft candlelight. Each time Baba was mentioned, Maman changed the topic. Kian said, “Fuck that man.” I didn’t object.

  When we came home from Botín, Maman went straight to bed. Kian said he was going for a long walk, and I stayed up with Baba, watching television from the opposite side of the room, not speaking. I wanted to leave, but we had agreed that someone should watch him every night. He sat in a corner of the red couch, a little bent, a quilt over his legs. With half his body covered, he looked frail and weak. “Come and sit beside me,” he said, patting the couch. “Turn off the television.”

  “Are you hungry?” I asked, coldly. He smelled like sweat and cigarettes and a long sleep. “We brought you some stew from that place.”

  He shook his head. “I wanted to speak to you,” he said as I sat beside him on the couch
. He pulled me closer, draping the quilt over my legs too. I didn’t resist his fatherly gestures. What would be the point? Finally he said, his sodden eyes fixed on me, “I understand why you didn’t want a wedding.”

  His sorrow moved me. He deserved to feel every bit of this guilt, but I wanted to spare him a deeper wound. “It’s not you guys,” I said. “Weddings take planning. It’s not like Ardestoon, where a dozen grandmas pull it together in a week.”

  “We are barbarians.” His voice trembled. Before I could react he waved his hand around as if to say, I didn’t mean that; let it go. He moved on. “I want to tell you a story,” he said, a brightness cutting through his dim watery gaze, like a flicker from the other side of a long fog. “This is about the four lavish weddings in your mother’s family that are said to have attracted four big curses. As you know, in Iran, curses are more potent than in the West.” Already I liked this story. I knew why he was offering it: absolution for not inviting the family into my romance. He straightened the quilt as if we needed it to protect us from djinns. The gesture seemed instinctive, and I wondered if he had a habit of telling stories to children, maybe to Shirin.

  According to Baba, the idea has been tossed around that maybe the women in my mother’s line, starting four generations ago in some saffron field in western Iran, live under a curse that is released by their extravagant weddings (the jealous eye, they say), each marrying for love and watching it fall to ruin in dramatic ways. So that’s four ruinous endings of which I would have been number five—that is, if I hadn’t been clever enough to avoid a wedding. “Niloo joon,” said Baba, “you have always been ahead of the curses. Later, I will tell you about the seven times your life came into grave danger and you escaped by a hair.” But now the wedding curse:

  The first was in a saffron field. My great-great-grandmother, raven-haired and cunning-eyed, married a saffron heir who, soon after, vanished.

  The second was in a white orchard house. The saffron heiress’s daughter, who wasn’t as beautiful but had money and charm, married a man who, ten years later, was murdered by his own villainous doctor.

  The third, well, the third is not worth telling. Maman’s mother ruined her own life with her silliness and bad choices. “She was religious and you can’t blame everything on curses,” he said. “Sometimes it’s God’s fault. We’ll skip that one.”

  And finally, Maman, who fell in love with a horrible addict in medical school and whose hopes were the purest, the highest, the most splendid of them all. She tempted the fates at her wedding by announcing that she was the happiest wife in Isfahan and Tehran and Shiraz and Rasht.

  Baba went on to say that I was lucky; I wasn’t superstitious like the first two, who lived in an Iran that’s gone to legend, or religious like the second two, who flung themselves at Christ with all the heartiness that they thought had long ago leaked out of their skin. “You’re a logical woman,” he said. “But you have to be careful still. The progression of these stories from merely unlucky to truly wretched is so linear that even I have to believe there is a stronger force at work.” Well, I thought, maybe the notion of a curse was easier to unpack and sit with than the dozen drug binges, the hundred ugly lies, the thousand or so humiliating scuffles; all that our family had done to one another.

  There is a curse; we are its worthy victims—this is a better story.

  “Maybe you should leave Iran,” I said, my tone icing over, even as his was softening into a croon. Not that I didn’t love being given the fatherly treatment I had missed all these years. But I had looked forward to this trip, and Baba had sullied it. The least I could do on behalf of Maman and Kian was to keep any kind syllable from escaping my lips. At the same time, I wasn’t about to offer to help him—not after this. So I added, “You always talk about settling in Cyprus or Istanbul. Just move.”

  He shook his head as if summoned back from a dream. “The house,” he muttered, frowning like I was a confused little girl. “And my practice. That’s my life.”

  I got up from the couch and pulled my cardigan tight across my chest. “I guess if I had built a home I wouldn’t want to leave it either.” I started to go. “Goodnight, Baba,” I said. But then I remembered our talk in London, how he had questioned my instincts. I turned back. “Do you understand now why I chose Gui?”

  “He’s the nicest man,” he said flatly. I waited, so he added, “I assume, Niloo joon, that you mean to imply that he has no vices. What can I say? That’s enviable.” I scoffed, which angered him. “I’ll arrange for you two to come to Istanbul soon. I have to meet him. Whatever harm I’ve done, I regret. But your family is your family.”

  That night I finally saw Maman cry, though I’m not sure for whom or what. I hope she released a lot of things. On my way to bed, I passed her room. Her door was ajar, and she was weeping on her pillow. Some instinct told me to leave her. Her tears weren’t urgent or bitter. She didn’t need the crook of an arm to sob into. These were old, weary tears. She didn’t heave or shudder. She just tipped over and spilled out, quietly, as if washing her eyes, or cleansing a wound before binding it for good.

  • • •

  In those days I gave all of my sympathy and loyalty and care to Maman, and I judged Baba harshly. I wonder if, after Madrid, Baba lived the healthy, youthful life he had hoped to find in his third marriage. Thinking back on that trip, on the last days of 2006 and of a dictator’s life, and the first days of my life in Amsterdam, I shudder that Baba and I were peering over the edge of similar peaks, each beginning a marriage, storing our hopes in bonds that would grow so slack in just three years. In many ways, I think, we were each sinking into a heavy sleep then. And three years later, the rattle of a scattered nation finally waking would rouse us too. It wasn’t such a coincidence, I think, that Baba and I fell into step in this way. Every Iranian was in the same coma back then, and we all stirred in the same moment.

  FAMILY FORMATIONS AMONG EARLY PRIMATES

  OCTOBER 2009

  Amsterdam, Netherlands

  In the weeks after her friend’s death, Niloo runs from grief toward her old habits. Research. Her 2010 syllabus. Furniture lists for the new apartment. She cooks using measuring cups and tests her bank card daily, buying gummy worms at corner shops, just to see. Gui tries to make her laugh, brings home her favorite takeout dishes, checks in from his office every afternoon. One day he catches her arranging a mountain of papers into sixteen neat piles. He takes her hand, as if delivering bad news, exhales loudly, and says, “Niloo Face, I have a very important question.” She lets him pull her away from her paper forest, thinking he wants to talk about Mam’mad again, to reassure her that the world will heal. “The last time you copied something . . .” He pauses, touches her cheek. “Did you remember to paste?”

  She yanks her hand away and tosses a throw pillow at his head. He laughs, catches the pillow. “Okay, okay . . . I’m sorry . . . but . . . just one thing.” He lays an earnest hand on his chest. “I’m pretty sure I saw a page from the first stack float over to that other stack there. It was a while ago, so you’ll have to check them all now.”

  “Yeah, laugh it up,” says Niloo, and returns to her work. “You won’t be laughing when I get tenure.” He leans over the couch and kisses her nose and, for a moment, everything feels as it did when they were twenty-three and living in a buttonhole room with a rented couch, where he tossed his sweaty shirt in the wrong corner, unearthed her frantic safe haven, and decided to love her anyway.

  She craves a night of solitary cooking. It’s been a while since she’s used the spice jar and she misses its smell, the rough grains scratching the pads of her fingers. Her mind drifts to her grandmother in Ardestoon, the smell and taste of her hands, sensations she can conjure here in her Amsterdam kitchen. Besides, she wants to do something kind for Gui. She decides to make lamb shank, one of his favorites, but when she opens the pantry to fetch the mason jar, it is gone. She checks the pots and pans
drawer, thinking maybe she left it there while retrieving a roasting pan last time. She looks in the fridge and oven too. But the jar has vanished. The blue cloth and the cheap plastic bag around it have disappeared. Even the white shelf has been wiped clean of its orange dusting of spice, as if the jar never existed.

  She bats away the pestering thought that Gui has thrown it away, as he’s tossed away so many of her old T-shirts and stripped paperbacks and torn tote bags. Impossible, she thinks, but who else would have touched it? Their domestic world contains only two. No one else’s hands reach into their cabinets. Aside from Niloo’s new friends, they lead a private, nomadic life. Even on holidays, they set colorful, artful tables for two. They exchange presents one at a time, slowly.

  For hours she searches, craving that lamb shank like she hasn’t eaten in days. She becomes desperate to cook it, to eat it with her hands, to gnaw at the gristle. The evening is lost to the search and soon it’s too late to cook. She gives up. She takes a plate of fruit into the bedroom and eats while flipping through science magazines, stories of digs and inexplicable artifacts. When she emerges for a cup of tea, she finds that Gui hasn’t eaten yet. He’s reading case briefs, highlighter in hand.