Together Tea

by Marjan Kamali

  “You will love Shiraz!” Darya squeezed Mina’s hand. “Some of our country’s most famous poets are from there. Shiraz is known for its literature, its wine . . . its romance! And once there, we will visit Persepolis, the site of the famous ancient ruins. From there, we’ll go to Isfahan, one of Iran’s most historic and beautiful cities.”

  The plane rattled on in the sky. The flight attendant winked as she passed by. Agha Jan snored in his seat. Mina wondered if Ramin had arrived in Connecticut.

  SIGNS PAINTED WITH SEVENTIES-STYLE BUBBLE letters told them where to exit the Shiraz airport. The signs looked as if they hadn’t been updated in decades. Mina, Darya, and Agha Jan wheeled their luggage behind them and walked out onto the street. Agha Jan hailed a taxi, and they drove past large boulevards lined with trees, beautiful buildings that stood behind reflecting pools, gardens filled with colorful flowers. At their hotel, a man with a bulbous nose and white stubbly beard was introduced to them as their guide. They washed up quickly and got ready for their first sightseeing spots: the resting places of the famous poets Saadi and Hafez.

  Saadi’s marble tomb was at the end of Boustan Boulevard in a peaceful blue room. His verses were inscribed in the sea-blue tiles of the walls.

  “He died around 1290,” Darya said. “They say he was over a hundred years old then.”

  “Did you know your very own Ralph Waldo Emerson was a fan of our poet Saadi?” Agha Jan said to Mina. “Touch his tomb and say a prayer.”

  The marble was cold and smooth when Mina touched it. She closed her eyes and saw Ramin. She prayed that he had gotten back to the U.S. safely.

  Their next stop was Hafez’s resting place, a mausoleum that lay in a private pavilion in a lush garden. Mina had grown up learning lines from Hafez’s famous ghazal verses, listening to Mamani recite his wise words. Hafez’s tomb had a mystical, magical feel and Mina thought of Mamani and how she must have come here several times. Tourists walked around, holding cameras. A young woman placed her lips on the poet’s tomb. Mina wondered what Hafez would think of his country today. She also wondered what he would think of someone storing their artwork under their bed and working on spreadsheets day and night.

  Mina went to the garden outside the mausoleum and walked by its shimmering pool. A new feeling had blossomed inside her ever since her time with Ramin in the People’s Park. It was a feeling that made her think she should grab what she wanted out of life, rather than keep doing what she was told was her passion. She shouldn’t have stopped reading Persian poetry. She shouldn’t have stopped a lot of things, like drawing and painting.

  That night in the Shiraz hotel, Mina dreamed that Hafez was doing the backstroke in the rectangular pool near his tomb. Saadi was drinking tea with Darya and laughing. Mina was dressed in a flight attendant’s uniform, floating in the sky, arms outstretched. She called out, “I’m in love! Love!” Saadi and Darya continued to chat, ignoring her. Hafez just said, “But is he?” then emptied out the water in his goggles and stretched out in the garden to tan.

  “SURPRISE!”

  Mina, Darya, and Agha Jan sat in the lobby after lunch the next day and stared at Bita standing in front of them with a duffel bag.

  “Just came for one day and one night! That’s all the time off I could get. But we can see Persepolis together! You haven’t gone there yet, have you?”

  Mina was delighted and stunned to see Bita in the lobby. She had told Bita about their itinerary, but she had never expected Bita to just show up. Women were not supposed to travel without chaperones.

  “Bita Joon, did you come here alone?” Darya asked.

  “I told the guy at the airport that my brother was joining me. I took care of him,” Bita said.

  “Paid him a bribe?” Mina asked. Bribery had become such a common way to get around the stringent rules that Mina wouldn’t have been surprised if Bita had taken part in it. But still. It just felt like something that Bita shouldn’t have to do.

  “When do we go to Persepolis?” Bita asked, giving her duffel bag to a porter.

  WARNING

  Important Note

  It is informed to all respected visitors that touching

  or displacing stones in the site is forbidden and any

  kind of moving scratching, writing memories and so on

  will make the ofenders liable to prosecution.

  “You would think they could use correct English spelling!” Mina said as she read the sign near the entrance of Persepolis.

  “It’s the best they can do,” Darya said with a sniff.

  Their guide had taken the afternoon off, and a taxi driver had brought them here and said he’d wait for them in the car. No tour guide was needed for Persepolis when they had Agha Jan, who had been a professor of history at Tehran University. His passion and life’s work was the history of ancient civilizations. As soon as they entered the grounds, Agha Jan took on a professorial tone. “Welcome to Persepolis, Takhte Jamshid! You now stand at the famed ruins of palaces that Darius the Great built more than twenty-five hundred years ago!”

  Mina felt dwarfed by the decorated columns that towered majestically above her. Everything was bathed in sunlight. The air smelled of dust and time.

  Agha Jan pointed to a sculpture of men in procession carrying carpets, chairs, vases, and bowls. “These are delegations from various nations going before the Achaemenian ruler.”

  Mina ran her hand across the carvings of the men, lingering on the curls of their long hair. Was she imagining it, or did one of the men look just like Ramin?

  “Please don’t touch,” Agha Jan said.

  Huge columns reached into the sky. Some of the columns had broken over the centuries and were now small stumps. Bas-reliefs carved with intricate details ran into gaping holes of empty space. Mina took a photo of Bita by a sculpture of two huge bulls with human faces. Bita’s head barely reached the bottom of the bulls’ feet. It was liberating and humbling to be so tiny against the vastness of this past. Mina took more photos. People walked by in hushed silence, stopping to stare at a pillar or remnant walls of a palace. The requisite group of guards stood at a distance near the bottom of the plain.

  Mina walked through the fallen city, careful not to disturb any ancient stone.

  “It took over sixty years to build this part,” Agha Jan said. “This here is Achaemenian sculpture, not Assyrian. Why?”

  No one answered.

  “Because in Assyria the bulls have five legs, whereas the Achaemenians gave them only four!” Agha Jan said.

  “Of course!” Bita hit her forehead with her palm.

  “That’s where the King of Kings received his visitors. And that’s the Apadana staircase,” Agha Jan continued.

  Mina remembered learning about the Achaemenian dynasty and Darius the Great in school. The Achaemenians had ruled pre-Islam, when Iran’s main religion was Zoroastrianism, the three pillars of which were “good thoughts, good words, good deeds.” Many Iranians were proud of their Zoroastrian past, and to this day Agha Jan wore a pendant of its main symbol—a human emerging from a winged disk.

  Bita looked up with wonder on her face. “To think of the people who designed and sculpted all this. It’s amazing what artists can do! Right, Mina?”

  “Right,” Mina said. The way the columns fell into the saffron light made Mina’s fingers ache for a brush, the smallest blob of paint, anything to render this on a canvas.

  Maybe she could spend the night here. Brush her teeth underneath the Apadana staircase. Feel the sculptures against her nightgowned back. Maybe she could stay for a while. Live here and paint, drink sweet tea by the columns in the morning. Ramin should be here. Taking it all in in his calm way, climbing to the top of the staircase at night with her. Any kind of moving scratching, writing memories and so on will make the ofenders liable to prosecution. The stones wouldn’t crumble under their bodies. Before
her, people had made love here. When the walls were filled with music, when the cups overflowed with wine, when the platforms spilled with laughing guests. Women in jeweled robes had walked on these stairs. Enormous feasts had been held inside these walls.

  They took a short break for lunch: a picnic of kotelet sandwiches in lavash bread with pickles and tomato slices that they had brought from the hotel, and tea from Darya’s thermos. After lunch, they explored more. When the sun began to set, it bathed all of Persepolis in a golden haze. A gust of wind swirled around them and it was suddenly cold. The ends of Mina’s headscarf lifted in the wind.

  Darya looked at her father with concern. “Baba, you’ve walked all day. You must be tired. Come with me. We can have tea in the taxi.” She turned to Mina and Bita. “You two can look around for just a little more, but come to the taxi before it gets too late.”

  “We won’t be long,” Mina said.

  Darya led her father away, and the two of them got smaller in the distance. Mina turned to Bita. “I’m so glad you came.”

  “I figured I’d make the most of our time. Once you go back to Tehran, you’ll be so busy with your relatives those last few days, and then you’ll be off to the U.S.! Who knows when we’ll see each other again?”

  Mina didn’t want to think about that.

  Bita stopped walking. “The best way to experience this place is with the wind in your hair,” she said. Then, as calmly as when she’d removed the towel from her wet hair on the day of her party, she reached up and removed her headscarf.

  “Bita, are you crazy? Put it back on right now!” Mina pointed to the group of guards standing in the distance.

  It wasn’t long before the thumping of boots made Mina freeze. A guard appeared next to them.

  Bita’s hair flew in the wind, highlighted by the golden rays of the setting sun.

  “Khanom,” the guard began.

  Mina looked at his lanky arms and legs, took in his thick eyebrows. He looked like Hooman. He could’ve been her brother.

  “Yes?” Bita answered innocently. “Did you say something to me?”

  Mina’s stomach fell. Her arms were suddenly numb. Nothing had changed since the day Bita had identified the whiskey bottle in Mrs. Amiri’s class.

  The guard glared at Mina. He would not look directly at a woman who was exposed.

  “Do you have any business with me?” Bita repeated in a high angry voice.

  He reddened at her words. Bita had detracted from his authority by addressing him in her intimate tone, using the singular “you” in Farsi, instead of the more formal plural pronoun for “you.” Mina stared at the gun that hung from the guard’s belt. Next to his gun was a walkie-talkie with which he could alert all the other guards. Mina’s heart hammered against her chest.

  “You are under arrest,” the guard growled at the ground. Then he looked directly at Bita. “Come with me right now, you whore.”

  Anger rose in Mina like a wave that worked its way from the bottom of her sneakered feet all the way to her own covered head. His tone, his righteousness, his treating Bita as if she were subhuman made her scream, “You should be ashamed for bullying a woman! No one was here. She was just standing here alone with me. Go. Just leave us alone!”

  Bita stared dumbfounded at Mina.

  The guard looked stunned for just a moment. But then his face hardened into fierce resolution. Mina’s insults had crossed the line. He no longer looked like Hooman. “I can,” the guard said slowly, “arrest both of you right now. And then we will do what we want with you. Do you understand?”

  Mina could feel the adrenaline running through her arms and legs. Without thinking, she pivoted on her left foot. She lifted her right leg, bent her knee, flexed, and aimed. With every atom of her being, she kicked. It all happened in a matter of seconds. Side Heel Thrust Kick. The kick she’d practiced almost all her life. Her kick hit him in the “precious place,” as Kayvon had referred to it in her karate lessons. The walkie-talkie snapped out of the guard’s belt and landed a few feet away, near Bita.

  “Take it!” Mina screamed.

  A bewildered Bita paused, then grabbed the walkie-talkie.

  “Run!” Mina yelled.

  They ran as if their lives depended on it. They ran past the sculptures of ancient gift-bearers for kings, past the staircase of King Darius, past the broken pillars whose stumps ended in midair. They ran past the gray-golden remains of long ago—past the glory and the fallen grandeur. They ran in the opposite direction of the rest of the guards, who still stood in a cluster, unaware that their comrade was writhing on the ground, kicked in the balls by a girl. They ran and ran, their roopoosh flying in the air, their sneakered feet thumping on the ground, their breath loud and deafening, their hearts beating faster than they could ever remember. They did not stop till they reached the taxi parked on the side of the road and then they vaulted in and slammed the door.

  “What happened?” Darya looked scared.

  “What on earth . . .” Agha Jan mumbled.

  “Go!” Mina yelled at the driver.

  The driver jumped, startled. He turned on the engine and stepped on the gas so fast that Darya’s tea spilled all over the backseat.

  “Go, go, please!” Bita cried.

  He went fast. He broke every law. He raced past the plains and sped onto the highway.

  Darya gave up drinking any tea. Agha Jan bounced in the backseat of the car, crumpled and confused. There was no time for explanations. As they zoomed past the outskirts of the city, Mina rolled down the window and threw out the guard’s walkie-talkie.

  Once they were back in the center of Shiraz and the car slowed down in the city’s streets, Bita took Mina’s hand and linked her pinky finger with hers.

  “Thanks,” Bita whispered. “I just . . . get carried away sometimes.”

  “I know.” Mina squeezed Bita’s pinky. “I know you.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Half the World

  Bita left the next day, back to Tehran, to her job at the advertising firm where she was the head of the department for highway billboards. Mina, Darya, and Agha Jan continued on to the city of Isfahan, glad to leave behind Shiraz and Mina’s kicking of the guard.

  “He could have chased you and then where would we be?” Darya’s forehead vein throbbed.

  “He couldn’t chase her because she had rendered him helpless,” Agha Jan said. He turned to Mina. “It was truly dangerous what you did,” he said, not for the first time, but Mina couldn’t miss the note of pride in his voice.

  When they arrived in Isfahan, they checked into a grand old hotel with a red carpeted staircase and Persian rugs strewn across its large rooms.

  “Isfahan is called Nesfe-Jahan, ‘Half the World,’ ” Agha Jan said over a lunch of kabobs and rice. “Go see the synagogue. Go see the mosque. Darya, go show this girl half the world.”

  While Agha Jan took his afternoon nap, Darya took Mina to Isfahan’s main square. Horses and carriages lined up for tourists. At one end was a huge bazaar, at another was the main mosque with its glittering minarets. All around the square were handicraft shops. Darya wanted to spend time at the bazaar, but Mina was eager to explore the artisan shops.

  They agreed to split up for an hour and then meet for tea.

  Mina walked by the shops, occasionally stopping to take photos of the ancient buildings around her. He would call once they were back in the U.S., why wouldn’t he? She clicked her camera at the turquoise minarets and onion-shaped dome of the mosque at the end of the square.

  In the window of one of the handicraft shops, a khatam box painted with delicate, colorful strokes in the style of old Persian miniature paintings caught her eye. On the box was the face of a young woman being kissed on the cheek by a man in a turban. The woman’s expression was one of bliss. Mina couldn’t take her eyes off the box. She stared at it
for a few minutes, then went into the shop.

  Inside it was dark and smelled of metal and glue and paint. Mina heard a tap-tapping, the banging of a small hammer onto something. As her eyes adjusted to the dim light, she saw a man bent over a table. He seemed to be in a trance, hammering at a metal tray. On the wall behind him were dozens of silver and copper trays and plates with patterns etched into them. Mina made out scenes of birds and deer, storks and flowers. The man’s hands flew, cutting the air with a rasp.

  “Sit, rest, relax.”

  She was surprised at his familiar tone. He’d used the singular verb conjugation of “you” in Farsi, as though she was family or a friend.

  She went closer and was able to see that he was hammering out a rose. Like the one Ramin had given her in the park.

  “Go on, sit down.” His gray eyes peeked out over round spectacles. Steel-colored tufts of hair stood out on either side of his head. His shirt was open at the top, revealing more steel-wool tufts on his chest. He wore gray suit pants with white plastic slippers.

  Mina climbed onto a wooden stool near the table.

  “Visiting?”

  “Baleh. Yes.”

  He etched out a bird next to the rose. “Where from?”

  “America.”

  “Ah.” He gave the bird wings. “Lots of you come back.”

  Mina had only seen hands move so fast once before, when Uncle Jafar played the sitar for them when she was a child.

  The man strummed out the body of the bird. He didn’t ask, Why did you leave? When did you leave? How do you like it here? He seemed too busy.

  “Forty-five years,” he said after a stretch of silence, as if responding to a question Mina had asked, even though she’d said nothing. “That’s how long I’ve been doing this. Longer even, if you count my time as a child.”