Butterfly Stitching

by Shermin Kruse

  “You never leave me alone during Red Alert!” Reza said.

  “Look, sweetie, look to where I’m pointing. I just have to go through those gates right there and buzz his apartment number. Sahar jan, the umbrella?”

  “I don’t see one . . .”

  “No! Don’t leave me!”

  “Three minutes. I promise.”

  “You swear only three minutes?”

  “Look at me.” Maman turned around to face Reza. “Look into my eyes. I promise to be back in three minutes.”

  “There’s no umbrella back here, Maman.”

  “Basheh, aziz. I’ll just get wet. Now, can you take care of your brother until I get back?”

  “Umm . . . I guess so . . .”

  “Good girl. Now, take my watch, Reza. Here. Here’s my watch. Do you see the minute hand’s on five? Do you see that?”

  “Yeah,” Reza responded.

  “Well, when it’s on eight, I’ll be back.”

  “Eight.”

  “And that’s at the latest. I might even be back before then.”

  “Maman, please don’t leave us alone!”

  “Listen to me, son. We can’t leave your brother. Do you understand?”

  “Yes . . .”

  “Your sister will take care of you. And she’ll help you read the watch if you get confused.”

  Sahar looked over at the small tear gliding down her young brother’s puffy cheek and wiped it with her thumb. “Hurry back, Maman jan.”

  Maman nodded.

  “Keep your eyes on the watch. I’ll see you in three minutes.” And with that, Maman ran out of the car toward the old building, thrust open the manual gate, and disappeared.

  “Can I look at the watch too?” Sahar peeked over her brother’s shoulder onto the device that he had only a few months ago begun to understand.

  Reza was somber. “Basheh. But don’t breathe on me too much.”

  “Basheh.”

  “Don’t squeeze in like that.”

  “I’m not squeezing.”

  “Here, you can see it from there.”

  “No, I can’t see it like that, I have to lean in.”

  “Fine. Lean in. But don’t breathe on me.”

  “I’m not.”

  Silence.

  Stare.

  Watch the watch.

  “What’s it say?”

  “Let me see . . .”

  “Is it on the number eight now?”

  “No. I think it’s six and a half.”

  “So she’s almost back.”

  “Yeah.”

  Silence.

  “You’re coming in too close, Sahar. You’re squishing me.”

  “No, I’m not!”

  The minute hand moved to seven.

  Seven and a half.

  “Do you see her?”

  “It’s not time yet.”

  “But she could be early. Is that her?”

  “Reza, that’s a tree.”

  “Are you sure? It’s raining really hard . . . maybe you can’t see it but I think it’s her.”

  Sahar rolled her eyes. They both returned their gazes to the watch. Silence.

  The minute hand moved to eight.

  “It’s on eight! It’s on eight! They’ll be out right now.”

  They looked back to the rotting black gates. Sahar’s breaths felt shallow and fast. She tried to slow them down. Breathe in, count to three. Breathe out, count to three. It seemed like hours before she looked back at the watch. There were vibrations from a rocket hitting someone’s home, or maybe a store, or maybe a mosque. Distant enough. Close enough.

  Reza began to cry.

  Sahar moved her hand around under the quilt until she found Reza’s bony fingers and held them tight. He must have forgotten his gloves too. A brief bit of comfort.

  “She’ll be back in a second,” Sahar assured him, though she was beginning to doubt it.

  “Basheh,” Reza whispered.

  Silence.

  “It’s eight and a half. Why isn’t she here yet?”

  The alert siren screamed. The children said nothing.

  When the minute hand moved to nine, Reza looked away from the watch and up at Sahar. Looking in his tearful eyes, so much darker than hers, broke her heart a little. He asked her, “Should we go in after them?”

  “They’ll be back, Reza jan.” Sahar gave him the confidence she did not feel. “It’s okay.”

  Sahar closed her eyes and pretended to direct the scene. The rain thrashed against the windows like she had never heard before, so she commanded it to play the windshield like a drum. The same drum she had played in her mind while waiting for Maman to pick her up. The rain obliged.

  Boom bara-boom-bara-boom-boom-bang.

  Bara-boom-boom-boom;

  Bara-boom-boom-bang.

  Boom bara-boom-bara-boom-boom-bang.

  Sahar smiled, opened her eyes, and then cued the street lights to sparkle like the stars. They, like the rain, followed direction well and twinkled and flickered just for her.

  “Reza, do you see that it’s brighter out now than it was before?”

  “What?”

  “It’s brighter.”

  “It is?”

  “Yes! It is! And I’m telling you Maman’ll be out very soon. I’ve already cued her.”

  Reza made a face at his sister. “Sahar, the world doesn’t listen to you the way you always think it does.”

  “Yes, it does! Just wait. Maman’ll be out very soon.”

  At ten minutes and fifteen seconds, Reza jumped up with excitement. “Look, Sahar, look!” he pointed out the window. “There! Do you see them?”

  Maman’s body flew out of the rusted gate and ran toward the car.

  “Yeah, I see Maman! I see her! But . . . wait a minute . . . where’s Raumbod? I don’t see Raumbod!”

  Sahar’s heart collapsed through her guts and sank down her legs. She noticed her breathing was fast again and the air tasted heavy, like chunky pudding. She felt her throat tighten up. She wished she could open up her mouth wider like a well and swallow all the air she needed at the same time. How do you make air thinner, so it doesn’t get caught in your throat?

  What would happen if she lost her brother? Madness, like Maryam jan. She would never look up at the sky or ask light to twinkle for her. Lightning would break the wings of all butterflies so they could never flutter again or help fallen birds. She would sob every dawn and every afternoon and never hum another tune unless it was a sad one. She would use her head like the handle of a cane for Maman to lean on, and stand still for as long as Maman needed to lean on her.

  “There! He’s right there,” Reza said, “hanging over her shoulder!”

  Sahar felt her throat open up and the chunky air dissolved into softness. Maman opened the car door and a soggy Raumbod bounced into the back seat. Sahar grabbed his face and planted six kisses on his cheeks, forehead and eyes. Raumbod squealed and Reza giggled. Yellow Alert sounded. Even so, her heart still thudded. She wanted to crawl into Maman’s arms and find comfort. But Maman depended on her to protect the twins. She tried to be calm, but felt as though Maman’s brushes thickly painted the air with screaming colors.

  “You’re okay now,” Maman said. “We’ll be home in a just a couple of minutes. You’re okay now.”

  She shifted gears and put her heavy foot on the gas.

  Home.

  Soon.

  Maman began singing one of Hyedeh’s now illegal and always melancholy love songs.

  “Ah, the flowers are withered. There’s a madman in the garden. My heart is a goblet of fire. My body burns like a stove. There’s no light in the whole world. Not even a light. Not even a light.”

  The radio clock struck twelve noon. Sahar gestured as though painting with a big brush. She pictured Hayedeh, no longer allowed to sing at all because she was a woman, twirling to the colors on her brush. Dance through purple. Windmill through orange. Whirl and circle inside the car. She looked over at h
er brothers and saw the singer dance around them. Joy. There could be joy. Schools would reopen. Rockets would stop long enough for grass to grow in the park. She would feel hundreds of tingly green blades between her toes. Iranian songs would unwind themselves out of their sadness. If only she thought hard enough, was good enough, she could bring color and music and dancing into the fear of this moment.

  She felt a chill and pulled up the quilt to her chin.

  “When’s Baba going to fix the heat?”

  “Very soon, azizam. Very soon.”

  2

  “Prostitutes,” Maman murmured. She seemed angry. Their car turned the corner in a battle with rush-hour traffic as Sahar watched the road and ordered it to bend. Bend like the mysterious curves that she wished her body had, each twisted turn revealing one dark working woman after another. They wore the same draped rupush and headscarf as any other woman on the streets of Tehran; sleeves to their wrists and hems to their ankles. The cloth long, to hide the womanly shape so as not to entrap men’s minds and entice them to sin. The figures blended perfectly with the shadows of their backdrop but somehow managed to tell the world who they were and what they did. They moved like ghosts, able to appear and disappear within seconds.

  Sahar paused, and then confessed, “Narges told me they wear black nail polish.”

  “What?” Maman sounded surprised.

  “Black nail polish. That’s how you know they’re prostitutes.”

  “Well I know that but how did . . . do you even know what a prostitute is?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me what you think a prostitute is.”

  “They do sexy things with men for money, things you’re not supposed to do with anyone except your husband.”

  “Well, you’re right, darling. That’s their symbol. Black. Like everything else these days.”

  “What if they run out of black nail polish? How else can you tell what they do?”

  There was silence for a while and then her maman answered, “Maybe sometimes the game’s played more subtly. Even suggestive and direct eye contact, for example, can hint about the woman’s occupation. But you shouldn’t worry about that. Just remember to avoid the women with black nail polish, okay?”

  “Why?”

  “They can be trouble. What they do is very dangerous.”

  “They could get killed, right?”

  “They do their best to avoid that. If the Morality Police are close, they can put on gloves or hide their hands in their pockets, then reveal the blackness again when the coast has cleared.”

  “Oh.”

  “They also have . . . other ways of convincing the Morality Police not to arrest them.”

  Sahar thought about it for moment, then asked, “Why do they do it, Maman jan, when it’s so dangerous?”

  “That’s harder to understand, sweetheart. It has to do with money.”

  Sahar wondered what hours these phantoms kept. It was the middle of the afternoon. Did they come home at six p.m. like her baba did every day? Or did they journey through the streets all day and night, through blazing heat and bitter cold? They must need to sleep, and eat, and nurse their babies. They must go to shelters when there are air raids. They must feel things in their hearts: panic and sorrow. Maybe they had pain behind their eyelids, like Baba’s amoo who was blind in both eyes. So they must smoke hookahs full of opium like he did to ease the eye ache. Bad things happened to them, so it must cut their heart to remember. Like if they had gashes or bruises, they would not know how they got them, or who punched and kicked them, or why. Sahar imagined them walking, but two meters in the air so their feet never touched the ground, not remembering anything because it hurt to have any memories at all.

  “We’re all vulnerable to things that we wouldn’t do if we didn’t have to,” Maman said. “So we epitomize.”

  “What’s iptomez?”

  “Epitomize. It’s when you become an example of the thing that you’re doing. Like if someone does bad things, they might think they are an example of that bad thing. So these women, they’re the oppressed, but because they’re rejecting the rules, maybe they also feel rebellious. Maybe they convince themselves that they are a rebellion. Do you understand?”

  No, Sahar thought without saying anything.

  “Your baba wrote a poem about them.”

  “What did it say?”

  “Let me see if I can remember it.

  “Plants climb out of the battered soil

  “of our beheaded Iran.

  “Misfortune fertilizing their nails.

  “Grief watering their feet

  “and oiling the air they breathe.

  “More and more grow by day.

  “Chameleons with shadowed fingertips;

  “numbers explode like shattered windows

  “and dead ‘martyred’ bodies . . .

  “I don’t remember the rest of it, aziz.”

  “Can I see Baba’s poem when we get home?”

  “I think he’s got it hidden with his other writings, but maybe someday, if things change, he can dig it out. Even publish it.”

  They came to a stop sign next to a younger woman. Sahar watched her through the Peykan’s dusty window. The phantom waved her lit cigarette, displaying her black-tipped hands to potential customers. Sahar saw her soul; its dark hue matching her profession’s symbol. Their eyes locked and Sahar noticed her own palm involuntarily pressing itself against the car window, as if to touch the woman’s reflection. She felt only the frost on the glass then ordered her palm to release itself. In less than a minute, the Peykan pulled up to the heavy rust-colored gates that closed off the courtyard of their apartment building and connected it to the street. The young girl and her shadow were lost behind them.

  The metal gates were automatic in theory. In practice, Maman had to move the stick shift with the torn leather bottom to ‘P’ and step out of the car to manually push open the ridiculously heavy gates.

  They lived in the western area of Tehran, a neighborhood not as badly hit by the missiles, and their building stood near the only park whose small patches of grass had survived the city’s severe water shortage. Sahar’s baba, Armin, had served as the consulting engineer for the building and so received a discount on the price of unit 3A. For some reason that apartment was not selling like the rest. That was how her parents could afford to say goodbye to their renting years after Sahar’s brothers had been born, and purchase their first real home.

  But Sahar, who did not care that they were owners instead of renters, still daydreamed about their old house, it was big: two-stories. They had only rented the bottom floor, but could use the private garden as much as they wanted. There had been trees to swing from, a small pool to swim in, and frogs to play with. The six-story building they lived in now had the dullest of all front courtyards, surrounded by a typical brick wall (to block out the gazes of outside men). No plants to kiss or grass to whistle through or tadpoles to chase. Just the cold, stone ground and its brick blockade.

  They pulled into their parking spot and Maman dug through the trunk to take out the grocery bags.

  “Pick me up, Maman!” Reza demanded, bouncing out of the back seat and jumping up and down at Maman’s side.

  “Me too!” Raumbod mimicked.

  The spoiled twins took no notice of Maman’s delicate grocery bag balance and climbed up her rupush like worms.

  “Sahar jan, carry the melons please.”

  They got Maman’s arms. Sahar got two heavy melons. Not fair. She held the melons in her hands like babies and followed Maman, imitating her steps. One step, two steps, three steps; a circus act of bags and melons, marching as Sahar’s imaginary cameras followed them through the stone and toward the stairs. Threw a smile at the pretend lens and almost dropped the melons wobbling side-to-side. Suddenly Sahar could hear frantic steps making pound-pound-clank-clank noises. It was Mr. Zarami rushing toward them. She clicked “pause” on her imaginary VCR remote control and stopped the scene.<
br />
  “Samira Khanum!”

  “Mr. Zarami, salam.”

  “How many times have I told you the importance of closing the gates? Don’t you understand we are at war?” He was talking into Maman’s left ear, which did not always work so well, but was loud enough that she could hear him anyway. Spittle hung from his lips. His glossy eyes were more yellow than usual. Like a drooling dog. His hair was messy and he smelled like rotten eggs. Sahar wondered how long it had been since the widower from the fourth floor had bathed. Maybe he spent too much time worrying about the gates to wash. Bits and pieces of the brick wall were caved in from rocket-attack shock waves. Sahar thought that anything bad enough to need a barrier could work its way in through the cracks, even if the gates were always closed.

  “Oh, so lovely to see you today, Mr. Zarami,” Maman said, smiling. Sahar knew that smile. She tried to imitate Maman’s cool air and give a fake smile to Mr. Zarami too. She tried not to notice his fanatic arm-waving, spit-spewing fit.

  Just then, one of the heaviest grocery bags in Maman’s arms ripped open. Peaches, so hard to find because of the shortages, rolled and bopped and plopped down to the ground and spilled all over the gray parking spaces. Reza scrambled free of Maman’s rupush and ran giggling toward the spinning sunset-colored balls. Raumbod, bemused, remained in Maman’s arms.

  “Boys! Be nice now!” Maman released Reza to the peaches and adjusted her headscarf. “Sahar, child, put those melons down and help your brothers gather the peaches and take them upstairs.” She turned to Mr. Zarami. “Sorry about that. As you can see, I have my hands full today!”

  The peach-spilling chaos disturbed Mr. Zarami even more. Though his arms had stopped waving, perhaps due to mere exhaustion, his eyes bulged like marbles. Sahar looked through his eyes, transporting herself into the world from behind their sad yellowness. Then she pulled back out to gawk at him. His eyebrows joined together in the center of his forehead like best friends shaking hands. A frown made his skin wrinkle like Maman’s leather purse. He scared her a little, so she decided to call him Mr. Glossies because who could be afraid of someone with such a silly name? She smiled.

  “What are you smiling at, child?” Mr. Glossies asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “Are you mocking me?”