Divided Loyalties

by Nilofar Shidmehr

  I was so angry that I would have smacked him in the face if Mojgan had not been there with me. She ran to the car and shouted at me to open the door for her to climb in. Ebi said he could give us a ride to Lonsdale Quay. Mojgan and I could have our picnic there without him. I accepted, but only to make my cheshm siyah happy. She screamed with joy when we got into the car. Even though the quay was only two streets up from my place, I still wished that the police would appear and charge Ebi for driving with a child in the front seat. Neither Ebi nor I talked on the way. And then, just before we got out, after I undid the seat belt, Mojgan leaned forward toward Ebi, put her arms around him, planted a small kiss on his cheek, and said, “Thank you, Daddy.” My cheshm sefid finally did her thing: she marked the end of my relationship with Ebi. What could I have done? Should I have brought a knife and chopped her head off to please Ebi, the same way Ibrahim wanted to make God happy?

  Unlike Ebi, Ali wanted Mojgan to call him Dad. When we started to date, he asked me to force my ­cheshm siyah to do so. He didn’t know that this cheshm siyah was also a cheshm sefid. Ali lived in the same building as I did. He moved in after Ebi was gone. He saw me in the hallway a few times and then one day when I went to take the garbage downstairs, he approached me and asked me to have tea with him at his place. I said I had my daughter upstairs. He said it was no problem; I could come over with my cheshm siyah.

  Ali was everything Ebi wasn’t. He was short and bald, had a mustache, a pot belly, and fair skin. He was neither a liar nor a joker. He didn’t like nightclubs or sports cars, and was very homey. He told me that he had recently divorced his wife and was looking for a good, faithful Persian woman. He wanted a family life and he wanted commitment — as soon as possible — and he didn’t have a problem with me having a child. But my child, my cheshm sefid, had a problem with him.

  Mojgan simply didn’t like Ali, and she showed it in all possible ways. She didn’t greet him when he came up to our place or when we went downstairs to his apartment. Ali was big on educating children. He didn’t stop picking on my cheshm siyah, no matter how much I told him, “Vel kon zolfo, agha.” He grabbed Mojgan’s shoulders, looked into her eyes, which by that time had turned charcoal black with defiance, and told her that she should greet him. Mojgan screamed and pushed him back, ran to her closet and started taking out her toys and clothes and flinging them across the floor. She was smart enough to know this would make Ali extremely mad. Ali was tidier than any woman — all his spice and herb bottles were labeled.

  Ali was also a good cook. He cooked for us every time he invited us over. His food was delicious but Mojgan refused to eat it. She wanted to sit on my lap, and Ali thought she should sit on a separate chair. I was too afraid of Ali to lift Mojgan up onto my knees. He had already warned me not to give in to my ­cheshm siyah’s demands. I looked away, but she didn’t stop trying to climb onto my lap. Ali got up from his seat, pulled out a chair for Mojgan, lifted her, and sat her up on it. He held my cheshm sefid’s hands back so she could not claw his face, which had suddenly turned red. One time she bit his ear, and, as a result, he confined her in a small storage room where he kept empty boxes. “This will teach her to sit on her seat,” Ali told me. “You brought her up badly; she wants to hang from you all the time.” I explained to him that my cheshm siyah was not really a cheshm sefid. She was just emotionally insecure because she had not had a stable home when she was very little. I’d kidnapped her from my husband and taken her out of Iran when she was one, and we’d lived in limbo for six months in Turkey. But Ali didn’t listen to me when I told him, “Vel kon zolfo.” It was as if I were speaking in a language he didn’t know, not in Farsi. He asked me not to let her out of the closet. I had to continue with my dinner and converse with Ali while Mojgan was banging on the door, crying, and asking me to let her out. It was torture, which I had to get used to as Ali’s education project continued. Mojgan learned to sit on the chair by herself, learned not to interrupt us every second while we talked, learned to say “thank you” to Ali after dinner or when he bought her something. But she never learned to let him carry her in his arms when we went out together, and she never learned to call him Dad. Ali still complained that I should teach her to accept him as a father. “I can’t cut her head off for not loving you,” I told him. “You should accept her as she is.”

  Ali asked me to marry him but I was not sure. I knew Mojgan hated him, and I wasn’t attracted to him enough to put up with what he did to Mojgan, let alone to deal with the fact that he was traditional and boring. He didn’t talk dirty in the bed, he wanted sex only twice a week, and he didn’t go down on me. Our relationship was eventless. We spent most evenings at home, we ate Persian food every day, we went to the same parks and beaches every weekend. It was a stable relationship, though. He was committed to being my husband and to being my cheshm siyah’s dad. Didn’t I long to have a family? Didn’t I want to have security?

  One Saturday when we were on our way to Lonsdale Quay to shop and go for a stroll, I told myself that once we returned home I’d tell Ali that I would marry him. I’d dressed Mojgan in a white dress with pink polka dots that Ali had bought, and tied her pigtails in pink ribbons. She looked adorable. It was sunny outside and we strolled down Lonsdale toward the quay. Mojgan didn’t ask me to carry her in my arms, which was a good thing. Ali bought her an ice cream from the McDonald’s by the Sea Bus station. “Thank you, Dad,” I said, looking at Mojgan. When we came out of the shop and walked toward the water, she saw some children with their parents climbing up a tower in the middle of a cobblestone square. She said she wanted to go up too. I lifted her up and was about to climb the stairs after her when Ali stopped me. “This is too dangerous for you,” he said. “I’ll take her.” And then, before I could say a word, he grabbed Mojgan from my arms and was on the first stair. “Daddy takes Mojgan,” he said. But Mojgan started screaming and hitting him in his face. “Mommy,” she cried, “Mommy,” and I saw her yanking at one of her pigtails so hard that the pink ribbon fell off. I wanted to pull her out of Ali’s arms, but it was too late. Ali was already out of my reach and there were two Chinese families following him. Each of Mojgan’s shrills clawed at my heart. “Bring my daughter back,” I shouted. My voice was so loud that people on the stairs turned around and looked at me. “That man has my girl! He is not her father,” I yelled. The Chinese people who were in the middle of the stairs had to climb down first before Ali came down. A few seconds later, a furious Ali pushed a crying Mojgan with swollen face and flaring black eyes onto my chest. He brushed past me toward the quay. That was the end of our relationship. My cheshm sefid had done her thing: she’d brought to an end my relationship with Ali.

  Mojgan didn’t call Kevin Daddy, but Uncle. I met Kevin through Lavalife. After I broke up with Ali, I moved to Coquitlam and told myself that I was no longer going to date Iranian guys. “A new home, a new life” became my motto. I had heard about this phone-dating system on TV and decided to give it a try. Kevin was Caucasian, born back east. He was in his early forties and an engineer. He had a broken marriage and one son and he had put his ad in the category of “long-term romantic relationships.” He said in his ad that he was looking for a relationship that could possibly lead to marriage. He also wanted to start anew. We were a great match, I thought.

  At first, he was hesitant to meet me when I told him that I had a three-and-half-year-old daughter, but he changed his mind when he learned that I was Iranian and could make him Persian food. His colleague at work was Iranian, and Kevin had already tried our food and loved it. I spent the whole day cleaning and cooking. I got my cheshm siyah to help me organize her toys. She got so tired that by the time Kevin arrived she was sleeping like an angel, her long black lashes casting shadows on the area below her eyelids.

  The quiet of my clean apartment made a good impression on Kevin. He said this was the home he was missing: warm food, peaceful environment, and good company. He had green eyes and curly light b
rown hair and was dressed like a real gentleman, wearing an elegant navy-blue suit and shiny black dress shoes. He brought me a bottle of expensive red wine.

  He didn’t stay over that first night. I knew it would be a great mistake to go that far on the first date. But then he never stayed with me for the night. He said he had to sleep in his own bed. I understood later that it was just an excuse. His real problem was my cheshm siyah; he was afraid she was going to wake him up in the middle of the night with her cries. “I had my days with a small baby,” he once told me, “when his screams woke me up a hundred times at night.”

  I didn’t want him to leave, though. “Kevin, please, vel kon zolfo.” I am sure, because of the imploring tone I applied to my voice, that he understood my words didn’t mean anything bad. They just meant “Come on. Stay!” But he didn’t listen. It was all right the first few times. But then I suddenly felt so lonely that I started to cry. As my psychiatrist said, this was my depressive mood emerging at night. It was as if it was me, not my cheshm siyah, who was three. And then I’d wake up in the middle of night feeling as if my mother had abandoned me and left me alone in an empty house. Even my cheshm siyah didn’t exist anymore. She was lying there, but I couldn’t see her. Only the walls existed — the walls that I clawed at while crying.

  Nothing except booze could help me calm down. The wine Kevin brought with him from time to time was not enough. The welfare checks just sufficed to pay rent and buy ingredients for Kevin’s favorite dinners. I had to shoplift dresses from the thrift store. The peaceful home with warm food and beautiful, well-dressed company that Kevin desired required money. And since I didn’t have enough, I began to take Kevin’s money to provide all this for him. The first time, I took twenty dollars. He didn’t seem to notice. The second time I took fifty, and the third time it was a hundred-dollar bill. The next time he came over, he said he thought his son had stolen from him. I was safe. He didn’t suspect me, so I continued taking money from his wallet when he was in the washroom to buy alcohol for my lonely nights. I saved face and never told him how much I cried every time he left me after he made love to me. He didn’t even let me hold him for five minutes. He quickly got up, dressed himself, and said he was going to bed at his home.

  Kevin and my cheshm siyah got along well. He took us out on the weekends. It seemed like a miracle; Mojgan was well-behaved during the six months that we dated. She listened to Kevin and said “Okay, Uncle Kevin” when he asked her to do something. She didn’t cry or nag during the time he was with us. He played with her and kept her so busy that she always fell asleep in the car when we headed home. I wondered what so got under Kevin’s skin at night that he needed to escape my cheshm siyah, whom he was so fond of during the day.

  “She is not a newborn, Kevin,” I kept telling him. “Please, vel kon zolfo. She is almost four — she doesn’t cry at night anymore.”

  “I don’t want to risk it,” he answered. “I suffered from insomnia for a long time.”

  Even when he took Mojgan and me to his home, he drove us back and dropped us at home at night. The last time he invited us over was on my birthday. After dinner, I tucked Mojgan into the bed that belonged to Kevin’s son. We had already finished two bottles of wine before and during the dinner. I knew Kevin had three more in reserve. I’d brought a CD of my favorite Persian tunes and told Kevin that I’d dance for him if he provided me with more wine. By the time we went to bed, I was so drunk that I could hardly keep my eyes open. I don’t know what happened next, because when I got up it was the next morning around ten. Mojgan was pulling at my hair and crying. Her face was puffy and red and her hair was a mess. When I hugged her I noticed that her dress and stockings were wet. Kevin was not at home. He came back at eleven. It was obvious he hadn’t slept all night. His face was as white as a ghost, and the green of his eyes, which had glowed last night when I’d danced for him, looked mossy. “Hi, Uncle Kevin.” Mojgan ran to him at the door. He pushed her back with a cruel hand. Kevin took out my keys and the hundred-dollar bill I’d nicked from his pocket the previous night. He put the bill back in his wallet, threw the keys in my face, and opened the door for us to leave. My cheshm siyah had done her thing; she had marked the end of my relationship with Kevin with her crying that night.

  Who says I haven’t made sacrifices for my cheshm siyah? I have sacrificed my hope of having a stable relationship. Now I am stuck with casual dating. It doesn’t matter, though, in which category guys put their profiles. I would never sacrifice my cheshm siyah to avoid being alone. I would never make her a ghorbaani to get what I want, even if it was to marry God himself. I am so unlike that crazy Ibrahim, who called himself a prophet.

  “You don’t make Mojgan a victim to get a man,” I told myself. “You are not a ghorbaani. Understand? Don’t you ever say it to yourself, Gisou. Not ever.”

  Third Argument

  I am not a ghorbaani. Ghorbaani reminds me of Mohammad Hossein Fahmideh, the teenager who became a hero in the beginning of the Iran–Iraq War by throwing himself at an Iraqi tank and blowing both himself and the tank up. The government said that other men should take him as an example and sacrifice themselves for a greater cause. They should sacrifice their lives to push the invader from our land. By making themselves ghorbaani, they could save other lives, the lives of women and innocent children. I think my family took Mohammad Hossein’s example and sacrificed themselves for me and my cheshm siyah to have a better life — a better future. Thinking about this, that my parents are ghorbany, makes me sick. I have no intention of taking after that teenager and being a ghorbaani. I don’t know why it should be always the case that for one person to live another must become a victim.

  My parents did everything, blew their savings and sold the house they had lived in for thirty years, to get me out of my bad marriage and out of the country. It didn’t take me long to realize that I had married the wrong person. Hamid was not the businessman selling fabrics that he claimed to be. He was a drug addict who sat at home the whole day. He went out only to get his weed or hang out with other worthless, jobless addicts like himself whose families paid for their shit. My salary as a typist was barely covering the rent. If it were not for my father, we would have starved to death. My parents lived on my father’s retirement money from the hydro company. It was a small pension, but he secretly gave me some part of it every month. My parents lived very poorly. As the proverb goes, they reddened their faces by slapping them. Their only advantage was that they already had a house to live in. Since they could not afford to buy things on the black market, my mother had to line up for hours to get the cheap meat and rice the government subsidized. Her knees became more swollen each day, but she still didn’t complain. One day when I refused to take the money my father had saved for me from their household budget, my mother put it in my bag when I was in the bathroom. When I found the envelope with the money the next day and went to return it, my mother told me that they were hopeful Hamid would soon get over the depression caused by bankruptcy and go after a job.

  He never did, though. Nor did he ever quit the shit he was smoking. He only worsened, stealing money from my purse — the money that could have bought medicine for my mother to help her with her osteoporosis, and that could have bought my father the new glasses he desperately needed, and that could have allowed my mother to throw parties and invite family and friends over so that she wouldn’t be lonely. My mother also thought a child could save Hamid from the swamp of depression. When he knows he is a father, my mother told me, he will be motivated to go after a job or start a new business.

  My cheshm siyah’s birth didn’t motivate Hamid a bit; instead, it motivated my parents to make more sacrifices to get Mojgan fed. They lived on so little money — close to nothing. I didn’t have enough milk, and the milk powder was so expensive. In addition to waiting in the other lines to get cheap food for themselves, my mother had to stand for hours in a line at the pharmacy to buy my cheshm siyah governm
ent-subsidized milk. One day I decided I was no longer going to let Hamid turn the money my parents saved into smoke. I started hiding my money in different place around the house. But he always found it. Coming back from my parents’ one day, I noticed that one of the bricks on the wall by our front door had become loose. I pulled the brick out, placed my money inside the crevice, and put the brick back.

  After that, my wallet was always empty and there was no money hidden in the house to be found. This sent Hamid into a complete fury. One night when I was sleeping, he came to me, woke me up, and told me that he was going to kill me if I didn’t tell him where I’d hidden my money. He had turned everything upside down to find the bills. He had even emptied the insides of all our cushions and spread out the stuffing on the floor. His continuous yelling finally woke my cheshm siyah. At that time, she was only six months old. She started screaming like crazy. I shouted, “Vel kon zolfo, Hamid.” But he didn’t stop his yelling, so I had to lie and say that I would give him the money only if he shut up and let me calm my baby down. He sat silently while I fed Mojgan. After I put her back in bed, I told Hamid that I was not going to give him the money that was for feeding our child. Not ever. This time he didn’t shout. Instead, before I knew what was happening, he took my cheshm siyah from my arms and walked out the front door.

  The next three days were the hardest of my life. Hamid disappeared. My father called Hamid’s parents in Mashhad, a city six hundred miles away from Tehran, to inquire if they knew their son’s whereabouts. They did not. He wasn’t at their place, they swore. However, two days later, they called to tell us that Hamid had a message for us. They said he was somewhere in Tehran and that Mojgan was safe. He wanted a big sum of money to return her. We couldn’t go to the police and say he had stolen my child. According to Islamic law, he was Mojgan’s father and had full rights over her — he could sell her or even kill her if he decided to do so. My mother had to sell her own gold and jewelry from her marriage to provide money for Hamid. I had already sold the gold Hamid’s parents and family had given me on my wedding.