Together Tea

by Marjan Kamali

  Mina looked to her right and to her left, took a deep breath, and entered the park.

  HE WAS STANDING BY THE TREE, as promised, with a single flower in his hand. When she was near him, he gave it to her. A crimson rose. The exchange was quick, but she was painfully aware that neither of them was as adept as the regular citizens at navigating the threat of watchful guards. As instructed, they walked in parallel, about six feet apart, as though they were walking on invisible railroad tracks. Never too close. And never, ever touching.

  Two children walked side by side, sucking on orange Popsicles. A boy and a girl. Mina remembered those Popsicles. She could almost taste the tangy sweetness as melted orange drops slid down the girl’s chin. The girl and the boy skipped past them, arms now linked. They had not yet entered the danger age where their changing bodies rendered their connection unholy.

  “It’s good to see you again,” Ramin said, just loud enough for Mina to hear him across the divide.

  “Same here.” She glanced quickly at him. He was wearing jeans and a light brown coat. His face was flushed. It was getting colder now. It had been a mild winter, but today she felt the chill.

  “Are you cold?” he asked.

  “No. Thank you for the flower. It’s beautiful.”

  “My pleasure,” he said quietly. “I figured I’d be like the poets. Oh, let us drink some wine for there is no tomorrow and give thy friend from the U.S. a rose? Is that what Khayyam says?”

  She burst out laughing.

  “You have a great laugh.”

  “Thanks.”

  Was he blushing? She wished she could look at him long enough to tell. Instead, she looked down. All she could see from her peripheral vision were his legs from the knees down. His shins under the denim cloth. His feet moving in rhythm with hers.

  “You know, Mina, I had such a great time at Bita’s breakfast. And at the party the other night.”

  The sound of his deep voice soothed her. It made her feel as if she were all alone in the world with him, sitting close to him, even though they walked in a public park, trying to be unseen.

  “Bita’s a great hostess,” Mina said. She crossed her arms to shield against the wind, the rose against her chest.

  “She is, but that’s not why. I mean, the reason is because, well, it felt serendipitous, but it was because we . . .”

  They heard a car motor and a loud screeching of brakes. Ramin stopped in midsentence. They looked to their right. A green jeep had driven up to the edge of the park. Five or six bearded men in fatigues holding guns sat in the back. Mina halted.

  “Keep moving,” Ramin whispered.

  Mina stared at her feet.

  “Don’t stop, Mina. Look straight ahead and keep going.”

  The jeep veered onto a lane and parked abruptly. Run, Ramin, Mina wanted to shout. Run before they come to us.

  The guards tumbled out just a few feet away. Mina felt their eyes on every inch of her. She wished suddenly that she could turn back time, rewind the tape and be small again, have Ramin and herself shrink to childhood, where their stroll together would not be criminal. What was the offending age? Ten? Twelve?

  One of the guards called out. “Beeyan cigar een posht!”

  His voice was rough and startled Mina. He’d asked the other guards to join him for a smoke at the back of the jeep. Mina couldn’t tell if he really wanted a smoke, or if he’d noticed Mina and Ramin and was saving them by distracting the other guards. Maybe he was empathetic to their parallel-line walk. Maybe he had his own girlfriend somewhere. Maybe he was just lazy and didn’t feel like dealing with them right now. Mina wanted to think that the guard was helping them out. She wanted to believe that somehow she had an ally in that group, a young guard who knew that two people should just be able to walk together in peace.

  Whatever the reason, the guards now stood in a cluster by the jeep. Out of the corner of her eye, Mina saw the flicker of a lighter, the burning of a cigarette.

  Ramin motioned toward a tree nearby, a huge sycamore tree with branches reaching out to the sky and a trunk two feet wide.

  “Behind it, stand behind it,” Ramin whispered.

  She scurried around the tree and stood behind its huge trunk. Her heart was beating so fast that she was sweating now despite the cold. Still gripping the rose, she suddenly realized how foolish it was to hold it. It gave them away. She let the flower drop to the ground and covered it with her foot but not before a few of its petals flew off, scattering around her like drops of blood.

  Ramin leaned against the opposite side of the tree. She could hear his breathing. Mina remained hidden from the guards’ view. All they would be able to see from where they stood was Ramin’s lanky figure, just a young man relaxing under a tree.

  “You okay?” Ramin’s whisper was bold, concerned.

  “Yes, fine.” The dry December air filled her lungs as she took in a deep breath. “Are they watching?”

  “Yes, they’re looking right at me.”

  “Oh, God.”

  “It’s okay, Mina.” His voice had a slight quiver. He was, she knew, just as frightened as she was, but he was attempting to be calm for her sake. She wished she could just see his face. She wanted to comfort and be comforted by him at the same time.

  “Don’t speak, Ramin. They’ll know you’re talking to someone.”

  “They can’t see you. And even if they see my lips moving, let them think I’m just another crazy guy talking to himself. God knows I’d have enough reason to be nuts here with all these rules they have.”

  She couldn’t help but laugh, though she stifled it immediately.

  “Did I already tell you that you have the best laugh?” he asked. His voice was more relaxed now.

  “You did.” They stood for a moment in silence.

  “Do you like it here?” he asked softly.

  “Well, I did until the guards showed up.” Her heart still pounded. She rubbed her clammy hands against her roopoosh. She hated that the guards had this effect on her. But they always had and probably always would. Their presence had made the very air around the tree electric with danger.

  “No, I mean, here.”

  She realized then that he was asking not about the park, but about the country.

  “I do and I don’t. From the minute I arrived, I haven’t stopped thinking about leaving. Sometimes it’s all too . . .”

  “Different?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said. “But I don’t mean different from home, from the U.S. I mean . . .”

  “Of course,” he interrupted. “You mean different from before.”

  His deep voice carried understanding. With him, she didn’t have to explain. With American men, 1979 was just another year. But Ramin knew. As with Leila and Bita, for him the year of the revolution was when the world was cleaved into Before and After. And even though the men who came over to tea knew that too, it never felt easy to talk to them. Like Baba, those suitors had worked so hard at “owning” their new lives in America that Mina sometimes felt they were afraid to even admit what they had lost, the price they had paid. But Ramin was different. From that very first time in the kitchen at Bita’s party, he had had no problem cutting to the truth. With Ramin, she felt free to acknowledge the melancholy of loss. His wise, calm voice relaxed her even now as she hid under a tree in a Tehran park with the Revolutionary Guards’ morality police nearby.

  Mina leaned into the tree and let the bark dig into her back. Knowing that Ramin was on the other side made the trunk feel solid and reassuring.

  “But I also love it at the same time,” she said. “The food . . .”

  “I know. I’ve eaten more in the past few days than I do in weeks back home! And the trouble everyone goes to for you . . .”

  She smiled. Even as the cold air chilled her hands and face, Mina was beginning to feel better
. Talking to him lifted her fear and filled her with warmth. “They go to so much trouble that sometimes it’s overwhelming. Every meal is like a feast. But . . .”

  “It’s all so good,” he finished the sentence for her. “It does feel good to be spoiled.”

  Mina looked up at the leaves in the branches of the tree. They were pale yellow, deep red, some still green, a few orange. “The other thing I’ve been struck by,” she said, “is all the color here.” At her feet lay a coppery carpet dotted by her crimson rose petals and a few other flame-colored leaves. She thought of the sparkling mosaics on the buildings in south Tehran, the turquoise-blue koi ponds all over the city, the intricately woven colorful rugs in homes and shops. The mounds of saffron, turmeric, and sumac in the bazaar and the kaleidoscopic designs of flower beds in the parks. “Nobody tells you about the colors.”

  “I know. Since I left it’s as if I always remembered my life here in black and white. But there is so much color here. I’d forgotten just how much I missed it.”

  Exactly, Mina thought. She imagined him leaning against the tree, looking up at the same flame-colored leaves. She leaned more heavily against the tree trunk, as though it could bring her closer to him. The timbre of his voice, the sound of his words made her feel safe. Her heart had stopped pounding now, the adrenaline that had fueled her when she first saw the guards was ebbing. Even though she knew the guards were watching, even though they held guns, she found that as long as he was on the other side of that tree, talking to her, she did not want to be anywhere else. She ran her hands against the peeling bark. The air was dry and cold, but the trunk of the tree seemed to emanate warmth. That morning, she had bathed with rosewater soap. She had carefully washed and dried her hair. He could not see her hair, could not smell its fragrance. He could not know how much she wanted to be next to him.

  “Sometimes, I wish I never had to leave,” he said.

  “I know,” she whispered. “But I suppose we have to get back to our lives.”

  Our lives. Even as she said the words, she imagined racing through the hallways of the business school. She thought of taking her exams and graduating and hanging on to a strap in a New York City subway car on her way to work. She had things to do. Goals to accomplish. He had meetings to attend, projects to finish, deadlines to meet. Our lives.

  “What I wanted to say was that when I saw you in the kitchen at Bita’s, I . . . well, what I’m saying is that I think it would be good for us to . . . I just thought that . . . what if we could keep in touch?” he finally asked.

  A few crimson and yellow leaves floated past Mina’s face in the breeze. “Of course,” she said with relief. “We’ll keep in touch.” She stared at the rose on the ground. “I wish we had more time. I wish this hadn’t all been so rushed.”

  “We’ll have an even better time back home.”

  She could hear his feet on the dry leaves, adjusting his position. The air smelled of damp leaves and roasted nuts. Suddenly, she felt suspended, just the two of them, under that tree, and the rest fell away. She was free of both the past and the future. They were here now, together. As each moment ticked by, as each delicious lazy forever moment stretched out under that tree—it could not be undone. It was theirs.

  “When do you go back?” he asked, bringing her back to reality.

  “In a week. I can’t believe I’m already halfway through my trip. We’re going to visit a few other cities.”

  “Let me guess, Shiraz and Isfahan?”

  “Yes.”

  “I have great memories of Shiraz. The land of the poets. What is it they call it? The ‘Land of Love’! You have to visit Persepolis while you’re there.”

  “That’s the plan. And you? When do you go back?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  The wind made the branches shake, and a few more leaves fell to the ground. She wanted to stop time and make this moment last. Despite the danger, she longed to reach around the tree and touch him. The guards were watching. She had spent most of her life balancing between cultures, never really quite at home. But with him, right here, under this vast, beautiful tree, she was home. With him, she felt she finally belonged.

  “I leave early in the morning.”

  “Oh.”

  “But we’ll call. Yes?”

  A group of mothers and children walked by, and their voices interrupted Ramin and Mina’s conversation. She leaned her head against the rough bark and closed her eyes. It was reassuring to think that this tree had stood in this park for a hundred years. It predated the guards. It predated the current rulers and the Shah before them. How many other couples had stood under this tree? How many other conversations had it known?

  She opened her eyes and looked up at a slate-colored sky between the branches. A few more people walked by. If anyone thought they looked like lovers, they did not care. The guards only cared because they were paid to care.

  The sounds of passersby stopped after a while, and it was just the two of them again, alone.

  “It’s cold,” she said.

  “I wish I could give you my coat.”

  She smiled. “Do you think it’ll snow?”

  “Give me your hand,” he whispered.

  She heard the rasp of fabric against the rough surface of the trunk. “No, Ramin, please. They’ll see,” she hissed.

  But with her heart pounding, Mina slid her left arm around the tree. Her fingers walked along the bark, searching for his. She felt for his hand, a hand that she’d only touched once when they first introduced themselves with a handshake at the party, and found it reaching for hers. His fingers were warm, his skin was so soft. Slowly, gently, his hand entwined with hers. Both of them knew that they should not be doing this. But once they touched, nothing felt more natural. Is this what Darya had been talking about? Is this the happiness that she wanted to find for Mina?

  “It is so beautiful here,” she said.

  They talked then for a while more, about the snow he saw on the peak of the Alborz Mountains every morning from his grandmother’s window, and the difference between kabobs here and in the U.S. He asked for her phone number and she told him, and he repeated it several times so he wouldn’t forget it. All the time, their hands were intertwined.

  And then it started.

  First one flake and then another as thin as a dream. They landed on her eyelashes, her tongue, they dusted her hand in his. The snow filled in the crevices between their fingers, binding them as a unit, no longer two separate things.

  Leaning against that tree, swathed in cloth from head to toe with the guards only a few feet away—she felt surprisingly free. His deep voice carried and caressed her, making her feel as if she were floating. Years and years from now, she would remember this moment. She had fallen in love, right then and there. This much she knew. But was this all they would have? Would they really keep in touch? Her life would go on, her schedule was full. His life was busy with work. But no one could undo this moment. No one could make what had happened not happen. When their hands touched, the risk they’d taken to be here was all worth it.

  “It’s getting late,” she said. As she spoke, a feeling of loss enveloped her. She was with the only man she’d ever truly wanted, and she had to leave. But lunch obligations waited. Their respective families were expecting them. “We have to go.”

  He squeezed her hand one last time. “I’ll call you in New York,” he said.

  Slowly, reluctantly, she let go of his hand. She heard his footsteps receding, his feet rustling in the snow-wet leaves. She shivered. He would now walk past the guards and back to his grandmother’s house so he could go to the airport so he could get on a plane and so he could return to his normal life. God willing. There was still the exit from the country to worry about; sometimes exiles were detained at the very last minute before departure. Mina’s knees felt weak. Whether she was shaking from the cold or his touc
h or his footsteps in the snow—she did not know. “Good-bye,” she whispered to the emptiness.

  As she stepped away from the tree, her headdress snagged in its bark. She tugged at it, dislodging the cloth at last, but then turned to see a tiny coil of green thread still clinging to the trunk.

  The guards were still smoking by the jeep, on their third or fourth or twentieth cigarette now. A few of them passed a walkie-talkie back and forth. One of them glanced up as she walked by, and his gaze took in all of her, his eyes finally locking on her face. Did he know? Had he seen Ramin against the tree, had he guessed? Mina walked faster, still scared but feeling more alive than she’d ever felt. The people she walked past could not have known that she was dissolving into someone else, that she had just felt her life reshaped by love.

  Mina thought of the tiny coil of thread from her headscarf, hanging on the tree. Would it still be there after the snow stopped falling? Would it be there after storms and rainfall, after the seasons changed, after the guards grew up, grew old and died? How long would the coil of green hang there, wedged into that timeless tree? Mina wanted it to stay there forever. She wanted that coil of thread to mark for all time the moment when her world was cleaved into a whole new Before and After.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Poets, Prayers, and Persepolis

  Mina, pay attention!” Darya waved a map as they sat in the plane. “See, the cat’s left ear borders Turkey and the right ear touches Azerbaijan. Its belly sits on the Persian Gulf. The right side rubs against Afghanistan and Pakistan.”

  “I know.” Mina had seen cat-shaped Iran on a map a hundred times.

  “Right here is the shared bloody border with Iraq,” Agha Jan said.

  Mina looked out the plane window and thought about Ramin. Whenever there was a big life question to be answered, Mamani would fish out her Divan book by the fourteenth-century Persian poet Hafez, open the book to a random page, and read the top right corner. There lay the answer to her question. Mina wished she could ask Hafez whether she and Ramin would actually keep in touch. Who was to say if once they got back to the U.S. they could keep up a connection or even a conversation? Their moments in Iran had seemed suspended from reality. Could the love that Mina had felt under the tree in People’s Park really be sustained?