“Oh, don’t worry, Mrs. Darkan. It isn’t anything like that.”
“Isn’t it?”
“I’m sure he’s just enquiring about Shabnam.”
“M’hm.”
“That’s all.”
“M’hm.” Mrs. Darkan gave a knowing look. “You know, you’ve been noticeably different lately.”
“Different? I’m exactly the same.”
“Since Shabnam’s wedding, really. Something is different. You actually seem . . . happier.”
Samira smiled. “Oh, Mrs. Darkan, how your imagination runs off.”
“I’m no fool, child, and I worry for you.”
“There’s nothing to worry about. Really.”
“These sorts of games never end well and often end worse for the women than for the men. Far worse.”
When Mrs. Darkan left the room, Samira opened the envelope. It enclosed a poem, along with a letter to her. She read the poem first:
Now, to myself, I breathe.
In.
Out.
I walk full of life’s fragrance.
But you can stroke my scent with your eyes.
Breathe me into you.
Make me your breath.
Drown me, and I will brew inside you where the disconnecting instants and spaces of the alien world do not exist, I will come to being.
Yours to pull in.
Eternities since I last laid eyes upon your moon face and kissed your plum lips.
Oh to touch again. Just once more, your face, your hand.
With one blink, one quick wink, I sublime into vapor, floating my body moving within yours.
As she read his words, she felt no distance between the two of them. He was within her. She turned to his letter. She raced through the words once, then went back to the beginning and read them again at a slower pace.
Dearest Samira,
I think of you every day, and write because I’m compelled to simply stay connected to you. I dare not ask for anything in return. You exist around and within me now, and sometimes it seems like I’ve lost all my memories except for those about you. My eyes are like mystic mirrors that have permanently inked your image into themselves. You breathing in my arms. You pressing into my heart. Through the demonstrations and discontent in the streets, my soul feels at rest to feel yours within it. But I worry for your safety. Davoud has many enemies. Everything and everyone around us these days suggests a revolution is coming. Please, be careful.
Yours,
Armin
She went immediately to her studio, took the key from the back corner of her lowest desk drawer and unlocked the music box sitting on the shelf. She folded the letter and tucked it inside. She then sat at her desk and pulled out the stationery that she used to send letters back home.
Armin,
Mrs. Darkan gave me quite the look of suspicion as she delivered your envelope. If she had only opened it up to the read the contents, I’m sure she would have fainted on the spot. But she is a friend and I know she will keep our secret.
For weeks after you left, I could still feel the nearness of you. When I think of you, it makes all that I have woven into my mind and forcefully sewn into my personality unwind and leave my body. I feel real. True. But also scared. I still don’t understand what I feel, or know what, if anything, I can do about my feelings. I wish that I could be honest with Davoud. That I didn’t have to lie in bed with him. Oh, how I wish I didn’t have to touch him. That I could have the time and space and freedom to explore. I could not do any of this—even under different circumstances, but especially now as the turmoil all around us is reaching its boiling point.
Davoud is gone a lot these days, preparing for the worst, I think.
I, too, worry about our country. Democracy is a great thing but there are too many dark forces behind these demonstrations. As you know, my husband is a shrewd man. He will find a way to survive.
Samira
It took nearly two weeks for his next letter to arrive. Two weeks of endeavouring to find inconspicuous ways to ask Mrs. Darkan about the mail. Fourteen days of nervous chatter at the dinner table for fear that the entire family would read her heart unless she distracted them. She was nearly mad with anticipation when Mrs. Darkan entered her studio on a Wednesday morning.
“It’s here,” Mrs. Darkan said.
Samira smiled and took the letter, then waited for Mrs. Darkan to leave before reading her most recent gem.
My Samira,
I do understand. I do.
And yet, it is difficult for me to picture you with your husband. Forced to lie to him about your feelings. I don’t know that, Samira. The Samira I know is the one I saw for the first time in the studio on the day of Shabnam’s wedding, too caught off guard to dress herself in her usual uniform of pretension. The one who was with me in that same place, one night, all night. The one I want in my arms forever.
Before you, my life was a series of meaningless fragments. Just moments. One after another. Now you—you’ve connected them together. I have all the freedom that you don’t, and I could choose to be with anyone. But you are my every moment now. No one else. Just you. Like the greatest teacher in the world, you have shown me everything I want, and everything that matters.
I know you can’t tell Davoud. I can’t tell anyone either. So even if this means that all we do is write letters to one another, at least for now, so be it. But there will be nothing of you if you don’t take my warnings about your safety seriously. I also spoke with my sister and tried to convince her to persuade Davoud to leave the country with all of you. The thought of being even further away from you tears at my heart, but you have little choice. The riots have begun and I hear rumors that the Shah is planning a “vacation”. Everyone knows what that means—he is running. Where he will go, no one knows. I doubt the Americans would take him. Indeed, all his “friends” have turned away from him. But he is running.
The fundamentalist and communist factions are fighting for power and regardless of who prevails, Davoud will be in danger. As you know, his father . . . well, you know. You must convince him, Samira.
Please, let me know what happens. No object in my home is as beloved as my mailbox that sits alone in the cold, day in and day out, like my heart, waiting for you to fill it.
Love,
Armin
She folded the letter, placed it in the music box with the others, and wrote:
My Sweet Armin,
How incredible it feels to be the tutor for once. To feel like I, too, have something to teach.
How strange that we should have met, and as I’m finally starting to understand it, to feel love, and desire, rather than—
A knock on her door and the sound of Mrs. Darkan’s voice threw Samira out of her concentrated dream.
“Samira?”
She had forgotten that she was to have tea with Mrs. Darkan that afternoon.
“Yes, I’m here!” She hurriedly folded the letter and stuffed it in her desk drawer. Mrs. Darkan walked in to find her sitting at her desk with nothing in front of her but a pen.
“I was actually just about to write a letter to my baba,” Samira lied as she pulled a piece of paper out of her stationery box. “He’s been on my mind so much lately. I’m sorry, our get together totally slipped my mind.”
“Well, I’m sorry to interrupt then. I can wait in the music room until you’re finished if you like?”
“Oh no, you don’t have to do that. I can finish it later.”
“I don’t mind. I have to speak with Jafar about picking up some cleaning products, anyway.”
Samira waited until the door was closed and the sound of footsteps faded before taking out the crumpled letter in her drawer and continuing.
How strange that we should have met and, as I’m finally starting to understand it, to feel love and desire, rather than merely tolerate it. I remember you standing there in my studio. Bandaging a wound that years ago stained the floor beneath our feet.
/> So much time has passed since we met. So many things have changed in this world of ours. And yet, the biggest changes are within me. There are days when I feel our correspondence is nothing more than torture. Days when I want to throw away your letters and never think of you again. I can’t. I’m trying to find the truth in my heart. And in your heart.
It took hardly any time between the time the Shah fled and the time those radicals took over the American embassy. The world’s eyes are on Iran—judging all of us for the conduct of the few. Gita and Shabnam are trying to convince Davoud that we should leave. With the Shah gone and the Islamists having beaten out the communists for control of our Iran, no one is safe. Everyone is a traitor—especially those like Davoud who were always loyal to the Shah’s regime. All of the intellectuals’ criticisms of the Shah’s cruel ways, of SAVAK, where are they now? Sure, SAVAK is gone. The majority of its senior officials executed. In its stead is the Ayatollah Khomeini’s new intelligence ministry, far worse than any of us could have imagined.
Wisdom tells us all to leave. But if we go, I’ll never see you again. You’ll become nothing more than a footprint in the sand. So then I ask myself, what are you now, if not only a memory? I think I know.
You’re a promise.
And right now, more than ever, I need promise in my life.
So I advised Davoud to send his children and Ali to Paris, but told him that I want to remain in my country. I think he’ll listen to me. Please, don’t worry. Neither Davoud nor I are fools. We’re working together to help ensure the political alliances necessary for our survival.
I will not leave my Iran.
And I will not leave you.
S
Folded, placed in the envelope, addressed and stamped, Samira slipped the letter to Mrs. Darkan and it was not difficult for Mrs. Darkan to recognize the true reason for Samira’s delaying tea that afternoon. That her correspondence with Armin was, in some ways, a worse impropriety than if she had made love to him, was not lost on Samira. Making the affair public in this manner increased its harm. And even without Mrs. Darkan’s pained face of disapproval, Samira felt bad. A part of her even felt sorry for Davoud. He believed that he was Samira’s hero and would be devastated if he found out she loved another man. Beyond hypocritical. She brushed aside any feelings of guilt. She had already crossed many lines. Tasted true happiness. She refused to let Armin go.
Any doubts she may have had were resolved by the next letter. Just as he wrote that he did not agree with her decision to remain in Iran and continued to urge her to leave, he admitted that he was in awe of her and loved her even more for staying. He submitted the poems he wrote for her to literary journals, and now his love was publicly proclaimed, albeit via a pseudonym. Poetry about love during a time of political upheaval was a rare and much needed distraction, so he was even developing a reputation in Iran as one of the up-and-coming romantic poets. In one poem, he wrote:
In my dreams, I chase you in between the spaces of our separation. If I feel you move away from me, I reach out my hands and put them about those moments between my time and yours, and find you, in the dark, within me again. I touch the rugged calluses life has imprinted upon the softness of you. Grab your arms, take hold of you, firmly, then twist and turn and convert you into the air that escapes my lips.
She longed for his words, for these reminders of a love that was chosen rather than forced, even as she continued to accommodate her husband’s demands. The night she received the last poem, Davoud came to her bed and stayed until morning. She was tired of him. His smell. The sound of him breathing. So tired. She wondered, with his weight on top of her, how long he would feed and what would remain of her after he was done. When finally he slept, she dreamed of stepping off a train and into Armin’s arms. The man in her bed was reality and she dared not live in her dreams. But Armin was not fiction, either. She could not have invented him even if she had tried.
The next morning, Mrs. Darkan waited until Davoud had left Samira’s room before delivering the next letter.
“Samira, what are you doing?” Mrs. Darkan was genuinely upset. Samira understood. Davoud had, after all, been very good to Mrs. Darkan throughout the years and Samira had used their friendship to make her an accomplice in her relationship with Armin. “We’re on the brink of a war. Surrounded by violence and instability. Now’s the time when you must stand by your husband and support him. He needs you. This family needs you.”
“I’m here for Davoud, Mrs. Darkan,” Samira said. “Do you see me leaving?”
“You’re not here the way you should be.”
“I’ve done everything I can for Davoud—to ensure his survival.”
“His political survival isn’t the only thing that matters. And you know that.”
“If it wasn’t for me, he wouldn’t have formed his alliance with Fardust—”
“That isn’t the point.”
“I mean, here’s SAVAK’s former deputy director. Everyone was distancing themselves from him. But I knew he would come out on top and I convinced Davoud to align himself—”
“You know how this will end?”
“Fardust will ensure Davoud’s survival. Do you know why?”
“Not that—I mean do you know how this will end?” Mrs. Darkan pointed to the envelope in Samira’s hand.
“Can I tell you why? Can I tell you how I’ve saved my husband’s life by making sure he’s protected in the new Iran?”
“That’s not the point.”
“I knew he was the deputy director of SAVAK, you see, and then Davoud said that he had left that post to become the Imperial Inspectorate. That’s when I knew he would shift loyalties at the drop of a hat. And when I saw a new regime rising up, I knew he would kill whomever he needed to get to the top. Suddenly, he started to grow a beard and talk about the Qur’an, which I’m quite sure he’s never read.”
“Samira, the thing is that—”
“The thing is that I saw all of this. I warned Davoud to keep this alliance. I knew Fardust needed financing for a few things. I made Davoud put in the money. And who’s the head of Khomeini’s new ruthless intelligence agency? Who? Fardust! Thousands of other Shah supporters killed. Or fled. Why hasn’t Davoud been killed? Why wasn’t this house stormed when the revolutionary force first filled the streets? Why aren’t we all dead? Or exiled?”
Mrs. Darkan was silent. It was obvious from the look of horror in her eyes that the thought had not occurred to her. She welled up with tears. Samira had never seen her so emotional. She thought perhaps she had gone too far. Shared too much.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Darkan,” Samira said. “I wasn’t trying to frighten you.”
“Oh, no. Please don’t be sorry. It’s just . . . . sometimes we ignore the dangers all around us. Because we have to go on, you know?”
“I know.”
“But the truth is,” Mrs. Darkan looked Samira directly in the eyes. “Truth is that protecting him with one hand, while betraying him with the other, well, one act does not justify the other.”
Samira did not want to hear this, but knew it was true.
“And anyway, what’s your plan?”
“Plan?”
“Yes. As much of a strategist as you are, you don’t seem to have any direction with this relationship you’ve entered into. What will you do next? What will happen tomorrow?”
Samira simply did not know.
Mrs. Darkan went on, “Do you not see all that he’s done for you?”
At this moment, Samira saw nothing of the good that Davoud had done. She only felt his heavy body pressed upon hers at night; her barren womb aching for family; her dead mother and dead headscarf and dead traditions; and a man who took other women when it pleased him. He had plucked her out of her soil. He had potted her and kept her in a forbidden greenhouse, next to the magnolias and birds of paradise that Mr. Fazolali watered. She bloomed with strength and beauty, but felt only agony and isolation in her glass cage.
“Oh,
Mrs. Darkan, please don’t be angry with me.”
“How can I not be? Look at what you’re doing!”
Samira pleaded, “Please, Mrs. Darkan, you’re my only friend.” The words hung in the air. “Can’t you understand?”
Mrs. Darkan waited some time before answering, “No, I can’t.” She left the room abruptly. Samira’s gaze lingered on the closed door as her mind searched for answers. She found none. She felt unsure of herself for the first time in many years. Her tether to Mrs. Darkan, her only remaining mother, her only friend, was fractured. But she would not give up Armin. Perhaps she appeared merely childish, giving in to a whim. But Samira knew this was not it, and her feelings for Armin were no whim. In this fiercely brutal world, what she had with Armin was pure. Serene. She could not turn her back on this. She opened the envelope in her hand and feasted on the still unread letter.
My Samira,
There is nothing more in this world but you and me. And this strange feeling within me—like I have reverted to a childlike state—because I understand nothing of this unjust world that keeps me away from you.
My heart has spiraled out of control. It thinks of nothing but loving you.
And you know, it’s a modern time. People get divorced all the time. And your dreams don’t have to remain visions hosted by your mind alone. Maybe they can take part in the real world.
Can you come with Gita during her next visit to Tehran? Then we could see each other. I can watch you step off that train and bring the entire platform to life. And I can breathe again.
Butterfly Stitching Page 25
