A Good Country

by Laleh Khadivi

  The stood in front of the counter and read the fares.

  Do you have your new ATM card?

  Right here.

  Ok. Let’s see if it works.

  They got to the woman in the Amtrak uniform and Rez felt bad that she had to wear something so silly and so he smiled broadly at her and she, with her fifty or so years of life, smiled back.

  One-way to Berkeley please.

  No. No. Get a round-trip. Just schedule the other half for Thanksgiving. You’ll probably save money.

  The idea of spending extra money, $120 that could be used in Istanbul, in an emergency, crossing the border, aggravated Rez but saying something was not worth the argument. Act normal.

  Round-trip please. I just have to make sure I don’t lose it.

  Well, your name is in the computer, just in case.

  Rez looked at his card. Plastic. Where did plastic come from? Petroleum. The chemical makeup of petroleum he remembered from AP chemistry. But why did everything have to be made of plastic? Because it was cheap to manufacture, durable … he almost turned to ask his dad but then stopped himself, not wanting to engage in conversation, just wanting to fall away from the reality around him into the spirals of his mind until this last bit of theater was over and he and Fatima were riding north, holding hands, staring at the sea.

  Her parents had dressed up. They wore nicer versions of things he saw them in at their home. Her mother’s head scarf, a thin lavender sheath, only covered half her hair and draped elegantly down her back. Rez had only met Fatima’s father once. Ahmed. His pressed shirt and slacks and shoes looked fresh from a business meeting and Rez shook his fleshy hand and spoke to him for a few minutes. Rez did his best to smile at Fatima’s mother when she mentioned she was sure Rez would take good care of her daughter.

  Of course.

  His own mother was crying now.

  I know they will do great.

  She’d kept herself from it for as long as she could, until the last possible moment.

  We have good children.

  That is true. They are good children.

  The mothers agreed and used tissue to dab at their eyes. Rez watched Fatima hug her mother and listened to the enormous sobs that shook out of their embrace, tired and long and without shame. Near them on the platform the family of four stared and then tried not to stare, and the fathers cleared their throats and tried to end the show but the women kept on as Rez’s own mother stood alone with her face pressed in and down and no one put an arm on her shoulder.

  The lights on the platform lit up and bells began to chime and Rez shook his father’s hand and then felt the long arms wrap around him and pull him in toward the heart.

  We will see you in October. At parents’ weekend.

  I will be there.

  Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.

  Rez’s father’s stern face had gone slack and he handed Rez his duffel bag full of Islamic texts and cash and clothes for the desert.

  Best of luck.

  Thanks, Dad.

  Then the train stopped in front of them and Rez and Fatima walked up to the entrance and turned around for a last good-bye to the four faces that had made their faces, to the bodies full with emotion and hope and history and love, before they walked to the opposite side of the train so Fatima could lay her head against the glass of the window and cry.

  By the time they were in Newport she had adjusted her head scarf and reapplied her makeup and he had done his best to convince her their decision was right and they sat quietly beside each other with nothing to say. Rez stared out at the dry riverbeds and fenced-in yards with sleeping Rottweilers and sun-bleached swing sets and let the chaos of emotions drain out of them. The conductor came by to check tickets and Rez watched him walk down the aisle, punching a hole in the small cards that signified paid, all the way to Berkeley. He stopped at their seats and looked at their tickets and asked them to please stand up and pull their luggage down from the overhead racks. He slipped on blue plastic gloves and asked again when neither of them moved.

  Without your permission I will have to call the U.S. marshal that rides with us. He is legally allowed to search bags. It is easier if I do it.

  Fine.

  Act normal, Rez remembered.

  Under her breath Fatima whispered, This is bullshit, and looked away from the conductor. The man, in his late fifties, white hair, pocked and rosy nose, a Californian of many generations probably. Rez watched him unzip Fatima’s roller bag and look through the few belongings, jeans, sweatshirts, a hair removal device, bras, lots of bras, scarves, shoes, a few books, a stack of photographs, and a large Koran. He picked up the Koran and leafed through the thin pages.

  This your book?

  Yes.

  The book of your religion?

  Yes.

  The man stared at Fatima and she stared back, arms across her chest, her breath nearly audible. Rez thought of the books in his bag, not the Koran, but about the Koran, about Islam, and he knew that he would throw them away at the train station in L.A., if they made it that far. The conductor put the objects back and zipped the bag. The train began to slow to the next stop, Orange, and the conductor looked at Rez’s duffel, picked it up and moved it up and down to gauge its contents. Then he put it at Rez’s feet and hole-punched their tickets.

  See that you change trains in L.A for the northbound Coast Starline.

  Rez felt Fatima reach for and hold his hand and her hand was cool and soft and ready.

  40

  They had sex on the plane. The bathroom was small, but big enough for two if he stood behind her, her hair in his mouth and their two faces in the mirror changing and changing. There was nowhere to go so he went in, deeper and deeper, in small movements and watched her watch herself and then watch him and then close her eyes. For a while he stared at her face in pleasure, all the tension of the day, the good-byes, the train ride, LAX, the passport lines, the terminal, the takeoff, sucked down and away and the space between her brows, her lips, opened and her face was a full moon of beauty. He didn’t want to come so he looked at himself and when his eyes locked with his reflection—the liar, the escaped son, the convert, the reclaimed—in the mirror his head started to spin with violence. Not the side-to-side spinning of being drunk or getting barreled for too long, but a fast up-and-down dizziness like swallowing his feet or doing a back dive and he blinked and saw himself again in the mirror, a kind of monster covering his face, green and grimacing. His hard-on left him and Fatima opened her eyes.

  What’s up?

  Flying made her nervous; the sex was her idea. They’d held hands during takeoff and the clasped hands became a gentle arm up and down her thigh and then in between her thighs and after the meal and the passengers around them either passed out or were catatonic in front of their televisions, she mentioned it and he agreed and they took turns walking to the bathroom in the middle of the plane, far from the stewardess station. They did not discuss it and Rez wanted to say that it was probably ok, because they were not actually on the ground, on earth, and he wasn’t officially Muslim yet, hadn’t taken the oath, and this was an exception, a distraction, not an offense. He had this all ready but when he opened the bathroom door, she stood in the small aluminum box completely naked, her pale flesh perked with goose bumps, and he thought, Fuck it.

  Reza, you ok?

  Rez looked at her face, turned back to him in worry.

  Yeah, just got a little light-headed. Give me a second. He took a few deep breaths and ran his hands over his face and then ran them over her back and ass and up and down her legs. Nothing. Reza. Reza. The new name. He tried to forget about it or pretend it was no big deal but he kept thinking, Reza had never had sex. Only Rez had. Rez had lived all this life so far, and Reza had done nothing more than buy this plane ticket and lie to his parents. She turned around and sat on the closed toilet and looked at him and he put it in her mouth and the sensation of limpness and arousal and fear, the combination new to him, mad
e him panic and he pulled out and pulled up his pants.

  Don’t worry about it. We should go back to our seats.

  She stood up and hugged him with her naked body.

  You’re right. That’s the right thing to do.

  They flew through the night, two or three hundred people in rows, each a universe of histories and desires and fears and futures. Fatima slept, her head resting on a pillow propped up on his shoulder. He looked around at the passengers and their sleep or electronic distraction and tried not to think about what was coming or what had been and let himself be up and aloft in these last hours, unbound.

  41

  The ice cream here tastes different.

  It really does. Sweeter. Or something.

  Or. Or. Or.

  She teased him and he kept licking trying to find the source of the richness. Eggs? More cream? All he knew about ice cream he’d learned in fourth grade when the class made it as a science experiment about freezing points. He remembered that day in Ms. Motsen’s class, the explanation of molecules and how, under cold conditions, they slowed and that slowing was freezing. That night he went home and stared at the contents of his freezer, the mist flowing out toward his face, and tried to understand. Because of the cold the molecules moved slower; time too must then move slower; the freezer is a time machine. Rez explained all of this to his father, who smiled at his son and took the conversation further: If so, is the oven also a time machine? They talked science like that until he was in eighth grade, the what-if and how come and this is how, and it was the only time Rez saw his father as a person, a thinker, a curious boy like himself, and not just father of the dinner table, father of the car, hard father of the house.

  Hot and cold. Fast and slow. Old and young. The two days in Istanbul split themselves apart like this. When they landed, the two of them still in the center of sleep, they stood in silence in the passport line and they stood alone before the Turkish official who looked once at Rez and once at his passport and then stamped it and called to the next person in line. Rez used printed instructions to get them from the airport to the bus and from the bus to the hostel and everything they passed along the way blurred and creased and failed to catch his eye because it was not real, but some reality buried under the deep confusion of time and space, old and new, Rez and Reza.

  The hostel was nicer than they expected. Cool in a hot city, tucked into an old stone fortress of some kind, modern rugs and Turkish art. The receptionist was Australian, twenty-five or twenty-six years old and hot with shiny blonde hair and sharp blue eyes and just as with every girl that caught his eyes these last weeks, Rez thought his way into feeling sorry for her and the way she prostituted herself in the short jean skirt and off-shoulder T-shirt and didn’t even know her sin.

  She took them up to a private room with a double bed and they put down their bags and stared at each other and lay down fully dressed and slept, chaste bodies, chaste minds. Between them the heat had gone and Rez relaxed and gave himself to exhaustion and blank dreams.

  They had thirty-six hours before they met the smuggler. They spent their time wandering the tourist neighborhoods of Istanbul, running into people their age, in the same sneakers and T-shirts and trucker caps. Everyone attractive and western and mobile. They e-mailed their parents from a café. Rez typed, Berkeley is awesome. Foggy in the morning and afternoon, but nice. My room is small but has a good desk and my roommate is from Korea. He seems nice.

  They walked down the Bosporus and bought a deck of cards from a newspaper kiosk and played gin rummy on a park bench. Everywhere they walked, the Hagia Sofia mosque was visible and yet neither of them mentioned it. They joked and laughed and held hands and were happy and then, for no reason, he pulled away, or she did, and they walked apart and kept their thoughts to themselves and complained about the city and the travel and the unknown. On and off. As the day went. She wanted to pray and he reminded her what Daoud had said: Act regular. Act Western. And they walked past mosque after mosque and she stared in but said nothing.

  At dusk they ate a meal of fried fish and potatoes and green salad ordered from a menu in four languages. They played a game of guessing where people came from by their shoes. They walked down the tourist-filled streets, past clubs blasting electronic dance music and cafés that spilled out into the streets and bars that played soccer matches on huge flatscreens and Rez wished for a faster way back to their hostel. The city disappointed him, it was neither this nor that, not Muslim and not Western, some nowhere in between.

  They lay down in the bed, but did not sleep. Fatima sat up beside him in the dark and together they stared at the little line of light at the edge of the curtain, the night outside loud and bright. He said nothing to her but put his hand on her lower back.

  What do you think it will be like?

  Rez waited until he felt the answer come to him.

  I don’t know. Weird, at first, then good. Daoud said they will give us an apartment and then give me a job. They said there are labs, and chemists are needed. And we will be married right after I convert.

  What do you think it will be like, to be married?

  No answer came to Rez for a long time. He waited and his desire grew, harnessed him, and he sat up and wrapped his body around hers until their breath was the same, in and out, in and out, in and out.

  Like this.

  They fell asleep in this tangle, and when they woke, the day was already well on its way.

  Their meeting was at eleven in a part of the city far from Taksim and Rez showed his Google Maps printout to one cabdriver after another and they all shook their heads and said, No no no, and pointed to the water and the water taxis and then drove away. Rez looked at his maps and saw that the meeting spot, a restaurant named Torkoy, was across the Bosporus, on the Asian side, and he asked the Australian receptionist the best way to get there.

  Water taxi and then walking, I suppose. Careful your pockets.

  The air and wind and sun on the water taxi ride buoyed Rez and for a moment his worries—about being late, meeting the smuggler, getting over the border, the new life—left him and he simply sat in the yellow light and soft late-summer wind. The water soothed him most and Fatima put on her sunglasses and tied her hair up and they looked together, in the back of the forty-seat water taxi, like a happy couple on their way.

  They arrived on a street busy with stores and stalls and traffic and Rez took Fatima’s hand and carried their bags as they started to wind up through the curvy residential streets where nearly all the women wore head scarves and every one stared at the couple as they passed. Fatima took her hand out from his and walked at a distance from him.

  The restaurant was a hole in the wall, as was everything else in this neighborhood. Locksmiths and cobblers and butchers and fabric stores all as small as they could be lined the streets, broken up by doorways that looked as if they had not been opened in many years. Above the narrow streets people threaded their laundry lines from building to building, sheets and men’s shirts and children’s clothes, and at Rez’s and Fatima’s feet dogs sniffed little bags of trash left on the curb. They stood outside for a moment and stared at the entryway.

  You ready?

  I am.

  Ok. Let’s go check it out.

  Fatima, I don’t think this is for checking out. I think as soon as we walk in and meet this guy, it’s done. We go.

  Rez stopped himself. In her eyes and voice he saw Fatima pull up the courage to do it. To take these steps into the restaurant. At the back of his mind Rez thought about return, about in case it doesn’t work out and the ways they would leave. He’d kept a little money in his savings account, in case they needed to get out, get back, but he did not mention it.

  Without a smile or a change of voice, Fatima responded, Yes. Ok. Yes.

  The smuggler was thin, not much older than Rez, but already bald. He wore a European-league football jersey, sweatpants, and Nikes. He sat at a table with a cup of tea, punching into a cell phone. Whe
n he saw them walk in, he did not stand up and Rez introduced himself and Fatima nodded but said nothing.

  Yes. Yes. Sit. You are the Americans?

  Yes. For a little bit longer.

  There were no laughs and Rez and Fatima pulled out chairs at the table and the smuggler raised his eyebrows at the waiter and soon there were two more glass cups of tea.

  Good. I am the man you are looking for. Who is your contact?

  Daoud.

  Ok. He typed the name into his phone. Rez wondered how far his English went. From the accent and the attitude Rez couldn’t tell if he cared about Islam, was concerned with the caliphate.

  You have paid him already?

  Yes.

  But what I see is you have only paid for one.

  He kept typing into his phone and Rez waited for him to see that he had paid for two, one price for Fatima to cross and another price for Rez. The man typed more and then looked up.

  It says one. One fee.

  No. I am sure … Can I? Rez gestured to borrow the phone.

  You cannot.

  I paid for two. I can pay you for two now if you want. Does that help?

  If you want to cross.

  Rez opened the pocket of his backpack that held his passport, his cash, the pictures his mom had given him to hang in his dorm room. He pulled out four hundred dollars and handed it to the smuggler.

  Very good. I am Erdrich. Now my instructions are to take you to the border at Ras al-Ayn. Is that what you are expecting?

  Yes.

  When we are there, I will not drive you into Syria, but to a safe house where you will find the people who will help you cross.

  Yes.

  She will have to cover at the safe house.

  Yes. We know.

  But not until then.

  Ok.

  The excitement grew through Rez and he found himself trusting the guy more for his abrasiveness.