Refuge--A Novel

by Dina Nayeri

  Now in the doorway, Niloo’s face was pale and she kept repeating, “How did you get here?” as she led him inside. “Who were you talking to outside?” she asked.

  What he wanted to tell his daughter first was that he was clean, that he hadn’t smoked for four months—though that’s too short a time to be making declarations. He wanted to tell her that he knew he looked withered and bent, and that he felt it too, but maybe she could pardon his ill-fitting shirt and silly hat, his old man gut, because he was tired, his skin thinning, his jowls and eyelids leadening. He wanted to tell her that he had seen his country fall apart again, that looters had burned cars, and a girl had bled out on the street, and that his home had been invaded by ill-wishers of so many varieties, but that turning back was useless, because the road is walking too. He wanted to say that the detox had hurt, really hurt, that he was no longer married, and had spent the last two months standing in lines outside embassies with a new lawyer, filling out impossible English and Dutch papers, sputtering through interviews, eating smelly fish and bloody meat, and that he missed her—why had she been so distant in Istanbul? Why did she vanish into her body even before they finished their goodbyes, even before the cars came?

  But now was not the time to say these things, because he needed a pillow tucked behind his back, a hot cup of tea with honey, and maybe a little lunch made by someone’s delicious hand. Because this wet city was disorienting and tangled, and because his mind was full to the brim with the rogue on the sidewalk, and Niloo’s pigtails, and Pari’s sudden appearance behind her, he didn’t notice right away the state of his daughter’s home. Pari said, “Come in, Bahman joon. Let me get you tea.” She hugged him warmly and said welcome and disappeared somewhere beyond an undulating wall of fabric. He dropped his bag by the door and slipped off his shoes, discarding them beside Pari’s and Niloo’s—he chuckled at the shiny rose pumps (a single grass blade stuck to one garishly thin heel) and the black loafers, because it was easy to tell which belonged to whom: Niloo’s were the sensible ones.

  “Why is the hallway made of sheets?” said Bahman.

  “It’s still under construction,” said Niloo. “Come in, Babajoon, we have floor pillows in the sitting room. It’s still a little dirty.”

  From somewhere behind the cotton hallway, Pari’s English voice, higher pitched, buttery and slack-cheeked like a child’s, carried over to them. “We fix! Is no worry!” He could see that, like him, Pari had an easier time lying in English. She shouted, “Here is all over tulips!” Bahman wasn’t sure what she meant by here; probably Holland, since he saw no tulips in the room.

  Bahman preferred sitting by the open window of the dusty living area, this interrupted space that secreted dirt from its unpatched pores at a speed much higher than Niloo and Pari’s feverish scrubbing. Sitting in the bedroom struck him as obscene; he had spent weeks—weeks that ambled on like decades—trapped in a detox bed, and then in Istanbul he had slept in a small windowless room. And anyway, he had been alone in those places and never took the time for a restful pot of tea. They set up a sofreh on the floor between two fabric walls opening onto the biggest window. The mouth of the cotton tunnel seemed to suck in the breeze and the whole length of it shuddered so that the fabric never stopped caressing their arms and backs. Bahman adjusted his body on a pillow and placed a sugar cube on his tongue. Sometimes out of instinct, he still aimed to place the sugar cubes near his back teeth, but those were gone now.

  “So it seems we’re refugees together,” he said, reaching for a joke.

  Pari and Niloo didn’t laugh, but he could see Niloo preparing to explain things he had already begun to know, things that felt unimportant now. He knew she had been unhappy for years, decades. Maybe Pari knew too, though it would take her some time to look at it head-on and to articulate it. Their daughter had made some stunning errors—she had stared dumbly at her own open wound and let it seep, never calling for help as her every joy bled out. This had happened to him many times, and each time he had tried to explain that he wasn’t wallowing; that sorrow isn’t a devil’s contract that you forge in the dark. Sometimes you trip and fall in.

  “Niloo joon,” he began, wanting to ask, where is Guillaume? Instead he said, “I was just remembering the day I met the love of your life.”

  Niloo shifted on her pillow, tucking her bare feet beneath her haunches, as if to hide them. “It was a nice trip,” she said blandly. She picked at a toenail and turned to Pari. “There’s a kabobi on the Bosporus that crushes pistachios into the meat.”

  Her sadness wounded him, but he sipped his tea and spoke cheerfully. “No, not that. I came to the school to pick you up and you didn’t want to go because Ali Mansoori was still on the playground,” said Bahman. “Remember that?”

  Pari chuckled into her fist. A smile surfaced on Niloo’s lips. “No,” she said.

  “It was a big day,” said Bahman. The sugar crunched between his canines and tickled his back gums. “You had made it clear that he was our future son-in-law. I confess, I never thought he was very suitable. He seemed like the negligent sort.”

  “He was,” said Niloo. “I always had to follow him around.”

  “Good thing we ate him in effigy,” Pari tittered playfully into her tea.

  “You two talk way too much about that damn chicken,” said Niloo. “It was a chicken. We ate it over two decades ago. Stop savoring it.”

  Bahman considered the accusation. Maybe they revisited that incident because it was a rare moment when all their basest instincts aligned, overwhelming all their nobler sensibilities: a child’s affection, a kinship with animals, the civilized necessity of a butcher as middleman. They reverted to the primitive and each of them condoned it in the end, without argument or outrage. Eating the chicken Niloo had raised bonded them as more than a family. They had nurtured something in their home, killed it, cooked it, felt guilt over it. Someone deceived; someone forgave. They made a story and repeated it for entertainment and nostalgia. Among the three of them, they filled every role.

  They each drank another cup. Niloo refilled the kettle and opened a box of Dutch waffle cookies. They talked about Bahman’s travels, about his office, his house, the steps he and Kamali had taken to protect some of his assets. When he had tired of sharing his stories, he paused and eyed the half-finished kitchen that came into view when the curtain beside him fluttered. “Tell me about this apartment.”

  Niloo jumped up, gathered some crumpled paper napkins, and announced that she was going to the bathroom. When she returned, even before she sat down, she was talking about work. “I’m writing about primate families,” she said. When had she learned the Farsi word for primate? Her Farsi hadn’t been advanced enough in Istanbul or Madrid. In fact, he recalled feeling embarrassed by her weak translations. At times Bahman had understood a remark from Gui, and had anticipated Niloo’s translation, hoping to confirm that his experience of the reunion and first meeting had been full, no words lost. But her version was clumsy and sparse and he felt annoyed with his daughter, who, given her education, might have rendered the words more elegantly in her native tongue. She did a better job from Farsi to English, and had delivered a sweet version of his last sentiments to Gui—though he had meant to convey a hidden second meaning, as is customary among Iranians. But Niloo failed to hear it. He had wanted to tell Gui that he was a good man—exceptional, in fact—and that meeting him had given Bahman a deeper understanding of the world. But given that all things end, especially unnatural things, he considered it likely the two men’s paths would never cross again. This saddened him and he hoped he was wrong.

  Presently Niloo continued on about her paper. “I can have it translated if you want to take a look. Translation is cheap here. I know a lot of Iranian students.” Out of nowhere she added, “It’s so strange to have you both here.”

  “Niloo joon, tell me about this apartment,” Bahman said again.

  Niloo bu
sied her hands in her hair, taking out the rubber bands and putting them back in again. “I’m just trying to fix it up by myself. I mean, I may not stay here, but I’ve never put any work into a place, so . . . I don’t know. My friends here live the way we did after we left Iran, everything temporary like you’re always one day from being booted out . . . Anyway, Maman already knows.” She said the last thing not as a courtesy, but a challenge. She didn’t think he deserved to be involved.

  “You should leave here,” said Bahman, not bothering with politeness or boundaries or what kind of rights he might have earned as a father.

  “Yes, no question,” said Pari. “You should pack and leave today. We can book a hotel if you need a holiday from your regular life.”

  Niloo scoffed. “Leave something half done? Shocking advice from you two.”

  “This gesture seems unnecessarily hurtful,” said Pari. “You should be kinder to those you’ve loved. It’s better for your health.”

  Bahman nodded; he had thought the same but found no elegant words. Niloo always misjudged what she needed. He wanted to tell her, you don’t need all the things the world has pushed you to want. He recalled London, her tired, desperate voice: No one hands you anything and they expect so much. But no one needs a PhD or publications or titles. You don’t need a big city. You don’t need hundreds of friends, or adventures, or any substance to fill your bones with life. You need some good lamb stew with kidney beans and fenugreek, basmati rice, romance sometimes, community always. You need a deep well of kindness for old lovers. The atmosphere of the heart matters; you draw your border around that and keep it clean. If you dispose of a love too brutally, you scorch the surrounding heart flesh where they lived, and then that atmosphere is ashen. Having walked away from his home, his photos, souvenirs of his children, Bahman knew that you don’t need much—most everything we claim to want is the empty shell of something more essential; we’re afraid to face the hard road to obtaining the thing itself. So we build a fortress of objects we crave to keep near. What did the photos of his children matter when they were gone from his life? And marriages, houses, what were these but waiting containers for love? He wanted to say, everything ends. Everything. All love and truth. Family is all. It regenerates, like reptile skin. It endures. But he said instead, “You don’t have to work this hard, Niloo joon. Go home. You’ll be more comfortable.”

  They sat for several hours, talking, resting. On his way to the bathroom, Bahman passed a rough wooden dining table sectioned off by the curtains and holding stacks of mail. He picked up a letter from the top of the pile. It was from Guillaume. He replaced it, went to the bathroom, and returned to the sofreh, where Niloo and Pari were now reading.

  “Should we warm up dinner?” said Pari.

  “Are you going to open that letter?” said Bahman to his daughter.

  Niloo stared at him, blinking a few times, folding a corner of her page. Pari shifted closer to her, took the shawl from her own shoulders, and draped it around her daughter’s. Under the wrap, Niloo released her shoulders and sank a little, like a fading child loosening her sticky fist from around a pulverized sweet. Bahman retrieved the letter from the table and watched Niloo open it. It was handwritten on office letterhead, four or five lines at the center of the page. Pari read aloud and translated for Bahman, her accented voice making the casual American phrases absurd. From English to Farsi, Pari’s translations were near flawless, preserving tone and mood, every word a marvel in its precision.

  Hi, Niloo Face, it began. This is what he called his wife? Rumi would quake. Pari glanced up at him, one eyebrow slightly raised, then continued:

  Today I dropped a shirt on the closet floor thinking there’s no more Perimeter. Then I thought, if Niloo came back, I’d be a better husband. I’d let you put all my stuff into piles and talk all day about monkey jaws and the five types of cavemen in inland Spain (or whatever you’re interested in lately). I’d never throw anything out again. Last night I made that Shirazi salad you like and I drank all the juice. Please call.

  Niloo flinched, burying her head in a pillow on her mother’s lap, pulling her legs into her body as if to protect her organs.

  “Oh, Niloo joon,” moaned Pari, wiping her face. Bahman kept his eyes on Pari’s hands as she tucked the letter back in the envelope like it was made of rice paper.

  They sat in silence. Twice Pari started to speak, but appeared to think better of it. Then she whispered to Bahman, “Why did he drink the salad juice?” A laugh escaped his lips—he had wondered the same thing—but Niloo shot them such a betrayed scowl that Pari swallowed the stub of the thing like she’d been caught smoking.

  They drank tea. Finally Bahman said, “I didn’t tell you about my arrest. Being trapped in my house. Leaving. It was an education.”

  Niloo opened her eyes. “That’s nothing like this.”

  Bahman continued on his own track. “This isn’t about building a home on your own or being strong. Something frightened you and now you’re afraid to leave your pile of stone, just as we’re all afraid of leaving our piles of stone. But sometimes the wind forces you a different way. You strap on your pack and you move, because if you hunker down you’ll eat too much dirt.” His disappointment in her surprised him; he had done so much worse. If her self-sabotage was a dark spot in her vision, his surely blocked out the sun. Though perhaps that was all the more reason to be furious with her. She was supposed to be better, a scientist, American-educated, and she was supposed to be Niloo: an incomparable person, he had always believed.

  But perhaps Bahman wasn’t disappointed so much as confused by the science of it—how could someone related to him be so out of touch with her nature? Bahman had never been blind to his own wilderness, all that was basic and beastly in his soul. And yet he spent his life covering worn fangs with porcelain, making the primitive artificial. But Niloo’s job didn’t involve such lies; she watched people at their truest. She studied coarse truths dug from the earth. Where did her instincts go? When did she develop an itch to struggle? And where were her stores of joy?

  As a toddler, Niloo had been wild and unrefined. He recalled Kian and his revolution songs; maybe every adult choice is a rebellion against the juvenile self. The child revolutionary finding God. The pleasure-seeking girl retreating into scholarship. The dutiful son of a stoic farmer finding opium. Or maybe it was simpler than that: Niloo Hamidi had woken from a coma much like his own, much like every modern Iranian who has lived in compromised ways—the lies, the addictions. Now her every nerve was alert and screaming. How would she greet the work that comes after waking? The hurt was spreading inward. His daughter was in detox.

  That night they brought out all of Pari’s food, the eggplant fried with garlic, the yogurts, the saffron rice. Pari paraded out salad olivieh and ghormeh sabzi (that magic old lamb stew) and placed them on the floor atop the sofreh. They sat hemmed in between the two draped sheets and feasted in the semi-dark, the windows open to let in the breeze and the lamplight. As they were arranging the food, in a private moment when Niloo went to make a call, Bahman and Pari agreed that they would wait here, sitting with their daughter through whatever spell had struck her. They would wait until she was ready to leave the apartment on her own.

  “Was it difficult getting out?” Pari made small talk, one ear on her daughter.

  “What can you say? It’s hard for everyone.” He sighed and smashed eggplant into bread for her. “I worried they were watching the office, so I left an entire wall of the children’s photos. Eight years of memories and no doubles or negatives.”

  “Shame,” she said. “I would have liked to see those again.”

  “And their sketches and poems,” he lamented. “I was so ungenerous with those I wouldn’t even let Sanaz go near the drawers. We had such fights.”

  Niloo seemed in no hurry. She returned with a bottle of red wine. At first Pari refused, her tight chin and lips disapprovin
g. But she drank half a glass, and soon they were talking about Niloo’s work again, then about Isfahan, love, refugees, and then all these things at once. Pari said a word about Nader. “God rest his soul.”

  Niloo said, “What if I have a Nader out there?” She was on her second drink.

  Bahman scoffed and topped up his daughter’s glass. “Eat some rice. It’ll soak up all that lazy nostalgia.” They piled one another’s plates with saffron rice smothered in pungent fenugreek sauce, dipping their bread into the yogurt and the eggplant.

  “I think there’s something evolutionary about finding your person among your own kind,” said Niloo, the wine trilling her voice like a dusty old violin string. “Not just an Iranian in my case, but maybe another immigrant kid.”

  Bahman chuckled into his fist—his daughter was prone to some serious Iranian drama. “What cheap sentiment,” said Pari, waving a hand before her nose.

  “And a common one,” said Bahman, stirring the stew for buried beans.

  “It’s narcissistic to think you can’t be loved by anyone except a clone of yourself,” said Pari. She seemed more shocked by Niloo’s inexperience than her fickle ways. Briefly Bahman delighted in a realization: they were ordinary parents sitting with their child, eating native foods, discussing her mangled heart.