After Goodarz’s disappearance, Ehsan’s disability became her punishment, one that she would bear forever, and Mahan slowly faded from her memory. Sometimes when she was tired of her life and her ordeals, it crossed her mind to institutionalize her child and leave for another part of the world, as Goodarz had. But the boy’s huge, brown eyes, which looked so much like her own, suggested that he knew what was going on in her mind. He would look at his mother with such a sad and curious expression on her face that she couldn’t stand it and she would start to cry. Hugging him and crying loudly, she would say, “No, I will never leave you, my baby.” And so it goes—day after day, year after year.
When she reaches her bench, a man is sitting on it. His profile seems familiar, but it doesn’t occur to her that he might be an acquaintance. He doesn’t seem to notice her approach; he sits as still as a statue, absorbed in watching the horizon. Nadereh parks the stroller and wipes a corner of the bench with a piece of cloth. When she sits down, the man turns and looks at her. For a few moments, she feels like she’s in a dream, an old dream that she’d struggled to forget. She’s speechless, and it seems like the man is as well. They stare at each other, spellbound, neither believing who or what they are seeing. Ehsan starts to make his incomprehensible sounds, breaking the spell. Nadereh recovers herself, but Mahan still sits transfixed, watching her; it is clear that she cares about her child. When Nadereh finishes soothing the boy, she turns to Mahan and gazes into his face, which seems to have aged more than twenty years. Neither utters a word. Finally, Nadereh collects herself and asks, “What brings you here?” Her question is ironic and teasing, as if no time has passed. Then she adds, “Maybe you’re here for a vacation!”
When she notices the profound sadness in Mahan’s eyes, she instantly regrets having spoken to him so flippantly. She remembers Parvaneh and Mahasti and asks him seriously, “How are your wife and daughter? Mahasti must be a beautiful young woman by now.” She won’t allow herself to say Parvaneh’s name. Before Mahan can answer, her son needs her attention again. She quiets Ehsan, then turns back to Mahan and stares at him. The man has changed. It isn’t only the years and early old age that have changed him; there is a shadow in his face, a thoughtfulness that wasn’t there before. She can’t bear to look at him any longer, and she turns away, but not before seeing the tears welling up in his eyes and beginning to flow down his cheeks. Her sarcasm dies within her.
Perplexed, she asks, “Why are you crying?” Mahan tries to wipe away his tears with the tips of his fingers, but it’s no use. For a moment, there is silence between them. Has Parvaneh died? Nadereh wonders. Mahan has taken his eyes from her and is watching the ocean again. Nadereh thinks about Parvaneh, wondering what could have happened. Not sure whether she has asked or not, she inquires again, “How’s your wife?” Had she mentioned Mahasti? She’s not sure, so she continues, “And Mahasti?”
Mahan takes his eyes from the ocean and looks at Nadereh. This time there’s pride in his eyes. With a trembling voice he says, “Mahasti left us.”
Nadereh feels the ground fall away beneath her feet. It’s as if she is suspended in some awful place. A question dances in her mind: Is she dead? She tries to recover her composure and asks, “What do you mean?”
Despite his deep sorrow, Mahan smiles, and he says, “She left us to devote her life to the poor, but I believe she also wanted to punish us. It’s been three years, and we haven’t had any news from her….”
Nadereh fights to regain her composure and then she gently places her hand on Mahan’s arm. His light brown eyes, which age has surrounded with wrinkles, are red and full of tears. Nadereh is speechless. She wants to say, “Young people sometimes…” but the words don’t come. She stares into Mahan’s eyes, and searches for the Mahan she remembers from years ago.
She asks herself what good could possibly come from rehashing her reasons for leaving. We could have been together.… No, it’s better this way….
Mahan says, “Do you remember that night when you and Goodarz came to our house with Ferdous? After you left, Parvaneh and I had a big fight. She blamed you for everything, and I couldn’t stand it.”
Nadereh says, “Yes, I remember…. I left Toronto the next day. Actually, it was because I had heard something about Ferdous. I felt that it would be better for all of us if I stepped out of your life.”
She wants to add that she had also been thinking about what was best for Mahasti, but bites her tongue.
Mahan asks, “Why did you run?”
She sits back. Her voice becomes serious. “To tell you the truth, I was tired of the way things were going. I thought I should get away for a while and think about my life, but I couldn’t bring myself to come back and arrange for the things I’d left behind. I asked one of my friends to do it for me. I knew that I didn’t belong in your life. I was becoming a burden, a…” She trails off.
Mahan stares at her. “When you suddenly disappeared, my life started to fall apart. It felt like I wasn’t myself anymore. Parvaneh saw it too. It was beyond my control. Everything became shallow and meaningless: my family, my wife, my child, my work, the community, everything. Then my life completely fell apart. I didn’t care about my family and my home anymore. I kept going to work, but at home…. How can I explain it? It felt like I was just acting out a part. Sometimes I really hated my role. Once, I left home and didn’t come back for a couple of days. Parvaneh was so mad at me. In spite of all of this, she tried her best to keep our family from falling apart, but it was impossible.”
He stops talking. Nadereh puts her hand on his arm and says, “Forgive me. I didn’t want to wreck your life. I thought it would be better if I left. I ran because I wanted you and Mahasti—”
Mahan interrupts her. “No, no. I could never blame you. Whatever happened, it was all my own fault. My marriage with Parvaneh…. I always blame myself for the day you came to the hospital with your dead baby in your arms and left without him. I should—”
Ehsan starts to fuss again, saying his only word: “Baba.” Nadereh gets up and turns his stroller around so that he is facing them. Holding on to her son’s hand, she says, “That’s better; he can see us this way. Whenever I talk to someone else, it bothers him. I think he feels jealous, or he’s afraid of losing me. How can I reassure him? The little guy still can’t talk. He calls me Baba.”
Mahan asks, “Is he your son?”
“Yes, he is my son, and Goodarz’s son.”
A look of understanding comes into Mahan’s eyes. He says, “I’m sorry. All I’ve been doing is talking about myself. What about you? I heard that you moved to Vancouver and married Goodarz. To tell you the truth, I followed you, a few months after you left. I had tried to make myself forget you but I couldn’t. I had feelings for you; whether it was love or not, I don’t know. Since the first time I met you in the hospital, I had a feeling about you. I really didn’t know if it was regret or love. Living with Parvaneh was like a departure from my real life.
“When you reappeared, I didn’t want to force myself to accept the fact that I loved you. And then we all went camping together. You remember the trip, don’t you? I was wrestling with myself then to make a decision. I couldn’t understand what was wrong with me. Maybe Mahasti was a factor, too. It was impossible to decide, and it was getting harder and harder to keep on pretending.
“Then, when I found out you had married Goodarz, I went back to Toronto and continued with Parvaneh. But it was a disaster! Parvaneh saw right through me; she knew that I wasn’t the same person. It was out of my control. I isolated myself for months; I didn’t talk to anyone. I would leave home for three or four days at a time. It was after one of my absences that I came home to find that Mahasti had disappeared. She hadn’t finished high school yet, and it took a few months before we found out that she had volunteered to work with children in Ghana. She wrote and asked us to leave her alone. In her brief letter, she said that while most
of world’s population was struggling to find a piece of bread to survive, we were haunted by our personal and trivial problems. At the beginning, Parvaneh believed that she would come home, that it was a teenage thing that would pass. But it’s been three years already. She not only hasn’t come back, but she has never written us again. Every once in a while, we search her name on Google to find out where she is. But we don’t have an address or email for her. So, that’s it. She’s disappeared from our lives.”
As abruptly as he began, Mahan stops talking. Tears run down his cheeks.
Nadereh looks into Mahan’s eyes with compassion and says, “You should be proud of your daughter. Nowadays, you can’t find many young people like her. Most of them care just about themselves. The best ones are those who travel and explore the world. The rest just get a degree if they can and find a job—they don’t care what’s going on in the world. Mahasti is a special young woman.”
Having regained his composure, Mahan says quietly, “Yes, you’re right. But as a father, I still can’t believe what happened. After Mahasti’s disappearance, Parvaneh and I were constantly fighting; she blamed herself and I insisted that she was wrong, that it was all my fault.”
Ehsan starts crying again, and Nadereh gets up to look after him. “Sorry, I have to take care of my baby.” Lovingly, she hugs Ehsan and pats his back, then bends over to calm him down, kissing him and murmuring to him. She takes a banana from her bag on the back of the stroller; she peels it and breaks it into little pieces and puts them on a paper plate in front of Ehsan, who bats it away with the back of his hand. Nadereh kisses him again and consoles him lovingly, then she turns to Mahan. “I don’t know why he’s so upset. It’s better if we walk. He might fall asleep; he seems tired.”
They walk side by side for a while. Nadereh turns and looks at Mahan, who is gazing out over the ocean. He has the same taciturn expression she knew from years ago. She remembers Mahasti with her long, straight hair falling down to her shoulders, and her big brown eyes that were so much like her father’s, always dressed in colourful shirts and jeans. She had called her Auntie Nadereh. When she was younger, whenever Nadereh would go to visit, Mahasti would run to her and say, “Auntie Nadereh, will you read me the Paria poem?” Nadereh would sit her on her lap and read her the poem from her book.
Now, Mahasti is like a question mark in her mind. She wonders how that spoiled little girl could have become so rebellious as to leave her parents. Mahasti was almost ten when Nadereh left Toronto, but she had seemed much younger because of her tiny body and her doting parents. She remembers how Mahan would wrap her in his arms like a five-year-old and tenderly kiss her forehead.
She wants to continue talking about what has happened. “It was my fault. That night, I shouldn’t…” Suddenly she remembers Ferdous and says, “The next day, a woman called me and said she knew something about Ferdous. So we arranged to meet and she told me things about Ferdous that made me hate myself for trusting her. Actually, that was partly why I decided I couldn’t stay in Toronto any longer. I couldn’t bring myself to believe that I had been helping a person whose hands were so stained with other people’s blood. I didn’t have any problems with her being a tavab. I knew it wasn’t easy to be tortured and still remain strong and faithful to the cause. Anybody could break down and betray someone, but to bring about someone’s death…”
Mahan is off in his own world and doesn’t seem to follow what Nadereh is saying. She continues, “If Ferdous had been executed…” She stops talking, then after a few moments adds, “I’m talking nonsense. If Ferdous had been the one who left, there wouldn’t have been any problem. To tell you the truth, I wasn’t sure why I ran away. Goodarz left the same day. He had left me, and suddenly I felt lonely and I panicked. Goodarz could have helped me face the situation. Actually, I wasn’t planning to leave forever, but when I came to Vancouver and found Goodarz, I decided to stay here and remove myself from your life. Honestly, everything came apart that night.”
She looks at Mahan and continues, “And I didn’t want to…” She couldn’t continue.
Mahan says, “I know. You don’t need to explain. You were honest with yourself. But me, I don’t know.”
Without waiting for Mahan’s to continue, she says, “The most important thing was that I lost my trust in people. I wasn’t myself anymore.”
They share a few moments of silence, neither one daring to ask the other any more questions. The things she had learned about Ferdous came back to her. After she had left Toronto, she had made an effort to forget everything about Ferdous. Thinking about all she had done to help her left her feeling sad and angry with herself for allowing herself to be fooled. Whenever Goodarz mentioned how badly Ferdous had misled her, she refused to think about it or allow herself to be angry with him. Had he maybe heard something, too? Not likely. If he had, he definitely would have said something. He was uncanny when it came to reading people. Wasn’t he the one who had realized her love for Mahan? Also, he had told her many times, don’t get mixed up with these people. There’s a huge gulf between you and them. Leave them alone. But she didn’t understand him until it was too late.
Collecting herself, she blurts out, “What happened to Ferdous? I really want to know what she did after Frida’s death. She thought that if she donated her kidney, everyone would forget about what she had done in her past.”
Mahan looks at Nadereh, surprised. “Didn’t you know? It was in all of the Iranian papers. Ferdous killed herself the same day Frida died. She jumped off her balcony. Her body lay in the street for hours until someone found her.”
Nadereh stops walking and stares at Mahan, totally astounded. The shocked look in Nadereh’s eyes unsettles Mahan. “I thought you knew. All the newspapers wrote about it.”
“Newspapers?”
“Yes, all the Iranian newspapers.”
“Back then, I wasn’t sure where I was or where I was going. I wasn’t even aware of my surroundings. The only thing I knew for sure was that I left for Vancouver on the same day that Frida died.”
Mahan puts his hand on Nadereh’s shoulder and hesitantly said, “I wanted to know: have you been happy?”
Somehow, Ehsan manages to turn himself around in his stroller. He reaches out for his mother, crying again. She keeps on pushing the stroller, ignoring his restlessness. She still hasn’t answered Mahan. What good would it do to answer anyway?
When she looks back on everything, she can see that these pitiful melodramas, including her own sad life, are all hopelessly intertwined. Would there never be any happiness for any of them? Blocking out the black thoughts, she returns to her old tough self and asks with a trace of irony in her voice, “How’s Parvaneh? Is she happy with her work?”
Mahan turns back to her. In his clinical voice, he replies, “Parvaneh? She lives and breathes her work; she’s totally consumed by it. She’s managed to ease the pain of Mahasti’s disappearance. In a way she’s proud of her, boasting about her in public, but I can say for sure that she misses her terribly. She is burying herself in her work. She took some university courses, and now she works in a centre for children with disabilities. I admire her independence. She’s very strong. Just putting up with me proves how strong she is.”
Nadereh pauses for a few moments, considering her response. Finally, she looks at Mahan and says, “Fortunately or unfortunately, the world has been built by these kinds of people, people who can get along in any situation. I never really got to know Parvaneh. Sometimes she was more than nice and sometimes she was narrow-minded and selfish. But I can’t say that she ever wronged me. She helped me go to school, find a job, and stand on my feet. I didn’t do any harm to her, either. I was truthful and honest with her. I was honest with everybody.”
She just keeps on walking and pushing the stroller. Without looking at Mahan she says, “Goodarz loved me deeply. I mean, he really was in love with me, without expecting anything in return.
But I didn’t appreciate him until after he left.”
Reaching down to pat Ehsan’s shoulder, she continues, “This is the fruit of our love, a disabled boy. Now Goodarz is gone and all I’ve got is Ehsan. Maybe this is the punishment I’ll always have to endure because of my ingratitude. You know, I’ve never really believed in this type of thing, and I still don’t, but sometimes I think life has its own cruel way of making things right.”
She stops talking for a few moments, thinking, then continues. “Sometimes I think I shouldn’t blame myself. After Ehsan was born, and after Goodarz found out that there wasn’t any hope for him to get well, he sometimes sugggested that it would be better to place him in an institution and for us go away, to explore the world. But I couldn’t do it.”
“So he left you?”
“Yes, he left me. The note he left said that he wasn’t willing to take care of a child with disabilities for the rest of his life.”
“When? When did it happen?”
“Three years ago.
“And you’ve lived alone for the past three years?”
“Not exactly alone—with my son. I named him Ehsan, in memory of the first man in my life; the man who lost his life to his dreams.”
A Palace in Paradise Page 12