Divided Loyalties

by Nilofar Shidmehr

  Navid seemed lost in his thoughts; his head bobbed and nodded. When Parvaaneh touched his shoulder from behind, he shook suddenly.

  The driver turned to him. “Are you all right, man?”

  “I’m fine,” Navid said, looking up. “Give me a cigarette.”

  Then both men blew smoke at the windshield. Parvaaneh fanned her hand back and forth, breaking through the cloud of smoke that wafted to the back. She didn’t complain.

  When they reached the road to the mountains, a fog formed around them. Parvaaneh could barely see the aspens lining the road.

  “Another half hour,” the driver said, “and we’re there.” He threw a cigarette butt out the window, where it disappeared into the fog. Parvaaneh slid to the side as the car turned right and headed into the valley, somewhere beneath the mist. A few more turns, Parvaaneh thought, and it would be time to say goodbye to Navid.

  When the car came out of the fog into the valley, she couldn’t resist holding onto her brother’s shoulder from behind. How could she go home without him? As she asked herself this, she felt nausea rise within.

  Navid’s shoulder jolted under her hand every time the car turned or dipped. He glanced back, smiling at her. “Don’t worry,” he said.

  “I’m not worried.” She forced herself to smile.

  * * *

  Sitting on the bus that drives her through the Tehran streets toward Sima’s apartment, Parvaaneh hears a voice, repeating the same words: “Don’t worry.”

  She raises her head and looks around. She’s been dozing, and the seats around her are vacant now. The voice is in her head. It is her own. All the other passengers have taken seats in the shade, on the other side of the bus. An old man sits at the front. He hits the floor with his cane as he repeats in a high voice: “Allah-o-ma sale ala Mohammad va ale Mohammad” — My greetings to Prophet Mohammad and his household. A woman in a black chador and her son in a school uniform sit behind him. The boy is about six or seven years old. His mother is feeding him rice with beans from a container sitting on her lap.

  Watching the mother and the son, Parvaaneh remembers how Navid hadn’t eaten much in the few weeks before the trip.

  “You have to eat,” Parvaaneh had said, spooning rice and ghormeh sabzi stew from the plate he wouldn’t touch. “Eat. You’re no longer a child.”

  Navid hadn’t listened. He sat still, hugged his knees, and remained silent. She brought the spoon up close to his mouth the way she used to do when he was a little boy and she just a teenager. Their mother had died giving birth to Navid, leaving Parvaaneh, at the age of ten, as the sole female in the family. Her father had enrolled her in night school so she could take care of her younger brother during the day when he, a high school math teacher, was at work. Navid grew up calling her Ana with the sweet Azeri accent of their mother, who was from Azerbaijan.

  Navid pushed the spoon back. “Don’t do this,” he said morosely. “You embarrass me by playing my mother. I am a grown man, for God’s sake.”

  “I’m sorry,” Parvaaneh said. “I am not myself these days.” She brought her trembling hand down to her lap and sighed.

  Navid looked into her eyes. “You understand why I don’t want to go to war?” he asked. His head — covered with his thick, straight, shining black hair, so like hers — bobbed as he spoke. “It is not because I’m afraid. I don’t believe the war is just. I don’t want to participate in it.”

  “Of course. I know you better than anyone — even better than myself.” Her brother’s charcoal eyes glowed as if they were on fire. The corner of his lips, which were tightly pressed against one another, twitched. She didn’t want him to die in a war, whether it was just or not.

  “Now, eat.”

  And again, automatically, she brought the spoon up to his mouth. Noticing her mistake, she was about to lower her hand when Navid stuck his tongue out at her and cracked up — a familiar gesture from his childhood. Parvaaneh laughed out loud for the first time in weeks.

  Parvaaneh herself hasn’t been able to touch food for the past three days. She is starving. Her mouth is dry and her stomach burns, but she doesn’t want to think about herself until she learns of Navid’s whereabouts. To ward off her hunger she concentrates on images from the street outside the window. The bus is moving at a snail’s pace. It passes a mural depicting a group of soldiers lying in a trench and shooting at an approaching tank. One of the soldiers appears to have been shot dead. Blood blossoms out of his chest like a red rose. Unlike Tehran’s smoky sky, the sky above the soldiers’ heads is blue. There is a banner across the sky with a slogan: God has promised heaven to martyrs.

  It is hotter than usual today, and Parvaaneh is sweating in her headscarf and her long black coat. The seats in front of her that are exposed to the sun are still empty. Watching the light bouncing off them, she winces as an image of Navid crossing the river fills her mind. He is caught up in a whirling vortex of rising, foamy water. The image makes her feel dizzy, so she turns back to watch the busy streets again. People cluster by bakeries and meat shops. There are beggars, soldiers in military uniform, and a few young girls in light gray coats entering a boutique across the street. The bus stops by a bank at the corner of Lalehzar Street, where a ­middle-aged bald man with a Samsonite waits. A woman holding one screaming child while dragging two others after her also gets on, following the bald man. She holds the hem of her chador between her teeth so that it does not slip back. Parvaaneh leans her brow on the hot iron bar in front of her and feels the burning between her legs that she had forgotten about for a while.

  If it were up to Parvaaneh, she would just call Sima to inquire about Navid. But Nasser, her older brother who lives in Germany, had warned her not to call Sima from home because her calls might be monitored. Parvaaneh thought Nasser was too timid and careful. Years ago, he had been a clandestine member of the communist Tudeh Party, back when the party was illegal. But that was before the revolution. He had left the country to study abroad and had never come back; he sent letters from time to time. These days, in 1982, the Tudeh Party supported the regime and its holy war; nobody in the government was after its members. Nevertheless, Parvaaneh promised her older brother that she’d go to Sima’s apartment downtown, and that she’d call him from a long-distance call center afterward to inform him about their younger brother.

  Parvaaneh has only vague memories of Nasser. The things she knows best about him are his handwriting and his voice. If there were no Nasser, Parvaaneh has often thought, Navid, as the only male in the family, would be exempt from military service, and she wouldn’t have had to go through the horrible things she’d experienced over the last three days. But she does have an older brother, and because of that she is now trying to fight the fatigue and the severe burning deep down inside her, where the sergeant entered her. The bleeding hasn’t stopped since the police station, and she feels as if she is filled with fire. Still, it’s not as bad as this nauseated feeling in the pit of her stomach that from time to time surges up her throat and suffocates her.

  • • •

  * * *

  Suffocated. That was how Parvaaneh felt when, packed in the smuggler’s car, they had reached the bottom of the valley and finally come out of the fog. She clutched Navid’s drooped shoulders with both hands to protect him from jolting forward as their driver pushed on the gas and the car soared on a dirt road that was suddenly visible. When Navid straightened himself and leaned back, Parvaaneh put her head out the window. Namin, the village the man had told them about, could be seen in the distance. She also saw the river for the first time, down the embankment. A guard post loo
med over it.

  “Look over there,” she said, bringing her head inside. “Are you sure it is safe here?” she asked the driver.

  “I know this area like the back of my hand,” the man growled under his breath. “The river goes for miles. I know places that are not protected.”

  No sooner had the smuggler finished his sentence than a car appeared behind them in the distance. Parvaaneh couldn’t see clearly enough in the rearview mirror to tell whether it was a military patrol or not.

  “Calm down, woman,” the driver said, seeing her worried reflection in the mirror. “One look at your face and they’ll know what we’re up to.”

  Navid looked back. His face was also pale.

  “You have the cash, yes?” the driver asked.

  “Yes,” Navid said, turning back. “Do you want it now?”

  The driver extended his hand. “Give it to me. I’ll use it only if it’s necessary.”

  “My sister has it. Give him the cash, Parvaaneh.”

  At her brother’s command, Parvaaneh bent over to hide herself from the man’s gaze in the rearview mirror, furtively opened one of the buttons of her coat, inserted her hand, and pulled out a bag she wore around her neck, inside which she’d hidden a bundle of bills.

  “Here.” She tapped on the driver’s shoulder with the bag.

  “I hope it’s not the Revolutionary Guards,” the driver said. “They are difficult to bribe.”

  He slowed the car to a stop by the side of the road, got out, and opened the hood.

  “Get out.” He came to the window and spoke to Navid. “We must pretend the car is broken.”

  “You stay there,” the driver said when Parvaaneh opened her door to get out too.

  The car was not a military patrol but a beat-up ­Paykan driven by an old man. A villager. He had animals — a sheep and a few chickens — in the back of his car. Navid and the driver waved him on and closed the hood when the old man slowed down to help.

  They got back in when the car was gone, the dust rising in the air after it, sending Navid into a coughing fit.

  • • •

  * * *

  Parvaaneh still feels the same agitation she felt on that trip a few days ago. The bus she took at Imam Hossein Square near her house crawls forward, closer to Revolution Square, but as on that day, she finds she cannot do anything about the anxiety boiling inside her. She cannot even put her head out the window and breathe. The only thing she can do is press her face against the windowpane, endure the pain, and watch the activity out in Ferdowsi Square. Today, there is no currency-exchange dealer waiting for customers on the south side by Ferdowsi Street. The intersection is blocked by a military patrol, which stops young men to check if they’ve been drafted. Parvaaneh wishes the driver could speed up and pass the patrols; they take her back to a time and place she’d just as soon forget. But the bus is stuck, and Parvaaneh surrenders to memories of the past year, when Navid had to stay in hiding at home as the Revolutionary Guards roved the streets, hunting for young men who hadn’t yet turned themselves in for military service. They would send those they arrested directly to the war zone and the front line. But how long could Navid stay at home? He got grumpier every day as he slept away the hours or sat silent in front of the television watching the news.

  Parvaaneh had snapped at him one day when she got home, tired from long hours of standing in a line to buy meat. Navid hadn’t even lifted his gaze from the TV screen when she entered. She took the bags of groceries, beef, and two fresh barbari breads to the kitchen. She cut the beef, placed everything in the fridge, and came back to the living room only to find her brother in the same fixed position, his eyes still glued to the screen. He was watching a show about young girls who married war casualties — men who had lost feet, hands, or another part of their body.

  This time, the show’s guests were a young woman clad in a black chador and a man in a wheelchair whose feet had been amputated. The woman said she was proud of her act because it was driven by a noble cause. She thought that God approved of her action; it was out of God’s love that she had married this man. The show host nodded his agreement, asserting that her action was equivalent to jihad. Even though she was living, he said, she had achieved the rank of martyr for her sacrifice of the self for a higher good.

  “What is this crap you’re watching all day?” Parvaaneh grumbled.

  “What do you want me to do? Wear a skirt and dance for you?” Navid snorted.

  “You could help me.” Parvaaneh sat down on the floor. “I am tired of doing all the work.”

  Navid leaned back against a pillow and extended his feet. “I’m a man. I can’t do housework. It’s women’s work.”

  “I don’t know,” Parvaaneh said. “Do something else besides watching TV.”

  “Like what?”

  “Anything other than watching this crap.”

  “How do you know this is crap?” Navid said jokingly. “It’s actually very entertaining. Listen to the stupid things this woman is saying. She’s nuts.”

  Now the woman on the show was saying that she had learned to be a lover from butterflies — parvaaneha — as they are described in Sufi poetry. A parvaaneh is drawn to the flame and lets it burn her. This is the metaphor for love, for sacrificing the self for a greater cause.

  “See, she is talking about you, Butterfly.” Navid nudged his sister.

  Parvaaneh pushed Navid’s elbow back. “Stop it.”

  But Navid didn’t stop. “Imagine I wasn’t your brother. And imagine I lost my feet like this man. Would you marry me then?” Navid’s eyes glowed with the same spark they’d emitted when he was a child and had done something forbidden.

  “I told you to stop it.”

  “I asked you a question. You answer. Imagine I am a casualty. Since you’re a parvaaneh, would you marry me?”

  Looking at the man on TV and imagining Navid like him, in a wheelchair, Parvaaneh suddenly burst into tears.

  “Sorry.” Navid hugged her. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. It was a joke.”

  He got up and walked across the room to their old TV and changed the channel. “Don’t cry! See, I am going to switch to your favorite program.” He winked and flicked the channel to the one showing a children’s program. A group of children, three and four years old, were leaping in butterfly costumes after an old man, fluttering their arms up and down and singing, “Par par par par parak.”

  “Oops. This one’s about you too,” Navid said apologetically. “All programs are about you.”

  Parvaaneh laughed out loud. As her brother turned off the television, she told him to let it be. “I like kids.”

  After that day, Navid always switched off the TV as soon as Parvaaneh returned home from shopping. He got up and helped her carry the bags to the kitchen. Then, if Parvaaneh was in the mood, they would watch something together. She’d bring the vegetables she wanted to prepare for dinner and spread them on a rag on the floor so she could work on them. Sometimes Navid would help. He’d separate the fava beans from their skins and throw them in a bowl by her feet or cut parsley on a board.

  “See, the damn war has turned me into a housewife,” he joked.

  During Navid’s home incarceration, as he called it, they kept the curtains shut all the time. Navid also stayed away from the windows, as neighbors were always a threat. Parvaaneh had told everyone that Navid was exempted from military service due to an old disease, and that he’d left the country and joined their Nasser in Germany. Nevertheless, she always feared that someone devoted to the revolution and the regime would spot him
at home and report that there was a young man at their house. Early one Saturday morning, when Parvaaneh was waiting in line behind the poultry shop, Mrs. Monir, who had known their family for a long time, asked Parvaaneh about her brothers. Parvaaneh had heard that when Nasser was a first-year student at the Iranian Military Academy, before he had quit and gone abroad, he’d had eyes for Mrs. Monir, who, like him, had a thick Azeri accent when she spoke Farsi. Parvaaneh had no idea how much the young Mrs. Monir had resembled this fat, middle-aged woman wearing heavy makeup and a floral chador who was so curious about her brothers. Fortunately, at that exact moment the butcher put his head out and shouted that he was out of chicken for the day. Even though Parvaaneh’s poultry coupon, for which she’d registered as a family of one, would expire the very next day, she didn’t go back; she feared running into the nosy woman again.

  Parvaaneh had searched around for possible ways to get Navid out of the country. And for that they needed money. Nasser was already helping them with their daily expenses, and Parvaaneh did not want to ask him for more. So, she put their deceased father’s house up for sale. The deposit she’d receive from the potential buyer was enough to pay a smuggler. The money that would come upon the completion of the sale was sufficient to lease a small place for herself, close to Sima. Navid insisted that they should include a cancellation clause in the contract in case something went wrong and Parvaaneh wanted to stop the sale.

  They staged the house, and Navid hid in the shower and let the water run every time someone showed up to view it.