Divided Loyalties

by Nilofar Shidmehr

  I realize, as Milaad enters the room. And Maman is not on her way to the bedroom to pull the blanket from him, addressing him in an old-fashioned and respectful way by using his last name, but insulting him by yelling in his face. “I’m talking to you, Ashrafi, and you’re hiding like Milaad did when he was a teenager. Shame on you!”

  Maman is in the kitchen; I can tell from the sound of cups banging on the counter. She must be making us tea.

  “Why are you standing?” Milaad taps my shoulder. “Sit down.” He lounges on the sofa. “I know you must still be in shock.”

  I sit beside him only to find that the coffee table is covered with the land title documents from my father’s properties. “Oh, these?” The words jump out of my mouth.

  “Yes, these,” Milaad exclaims. “Maman seems in a hurry to sort things out. She is afraid you’ll leave suddenly, like last time.”

  As soon as he mentions her, like the genie out of the bottle, our mother appears. She stands over us, holding a tray. “Please put those papers to the side. I brought tea.”

  She places the tray on the table and takes a seat in an armchair on the other side. “Have some halva, Maana, dear. I cooked it for you today. Or, if you are hungry, I can make you something.”

  “No, thanks. I ate on the plane.”

  Before taking the halva, I first offer it to Maman. She waves the back of her hand at the plate and says with a hoarse voice, “Can’t eat.” Her lips are white and dry. She wets them with the tip of her tongue and pleads, “Let’s send your father’s soul a salutation.”

  I nod and chant after Maman. “Allah-o-ma sale ala Mohammad va ale Mohammad.”

  Milaad’s voice joins ours for the second and third salutation. He turns to me after the ritual and announces that he has to go. “Don’t stay up. We have a big day tomorrow. I’ll be here at 8:30 to take you to the cemetery.”

  “Finish your tea before you leave,” Maman says.

  “Shabnam is waiting for me.”

  “One cup of tea doesn’t take that much time.”

  Reluctantly, Milaad sits back down. I give him his cup and then take mine and start sipping slowly.

  “I wanted to discuss this.” My mother points at the land titles beside the tray. “You need to be present.”

  “Some other time, Maman,” Milaad objects. “Let’s leave this for after the seventh-day memorial.”

  I nod in approval and smile as my mother turns toward me. She smiles back for the first time tonight. I am glad we don’t have time to discuss Papa’s inheritance. If it turns out he did put Atisaz II in my name, it might create another rift among the three of us. My father had already put his first house in my name when I was born, and gave my brother nothing on his birth. Maman used this as an example of his unfair treatment of his children, and turned Milaad against Papa and me. When I sold the house to transfer the money to Canada as a requirement for my immigration visa, she claimed that half of the house belonged to her. It was the same claim she had made a hundred times before — that she had loaned her entire savings to Papa to purchase the house when they got engaged. This time, however, she asked me to pay her share so that she could pass it to Milaad to undo my father’s injustice. I refused to give her anything.

  As my mother’s sweet halva melts in my mouth, I feel embarrassed about my selfish behavior. But I had to be selfish. If I had given Maman half of my money, how would I have escaped from my parents and their troubles? I’m sure if I told people that the reason for my immigration to Canada was to escape my family, no one would believe me.

  To calm my uneasy feeling about my past actions, I make a promise to myself: if we find out that the Atisaz II apartment is in my name and my mother wants me to give a share to her and to Milaad to be just, I will do this. Hopefully, nobody will do anything that could tear us apart. It is so good to be a family again, sitting around in one home, sipping tea.

  Maman offers to refill Milaad’s cup, but he stands up and says he really has to go now. I accompany him outside. “How is Aunt Raazi?”

  “Good,” he whispers. In an even more hushed voice, he asks me to come downstairs with him. “I need to quickly talk to you.”

  As the elevator closes, Milaad starts. “I’d like to ask you not to mention Raazi in front of Maman. Pretend our aunt doesn’t exist.”

  “Isn’t she going to be at the cemetery tomorrow?”

  “She will.”

  “Then I shouldn’t talk to her? Shouldn’t even greet her? Why? What’s the matter?” I feel stupid, as if I need to ask permission to talk to my own relatives.

  “Of course you can greet her. But stay by our mother instead of socializing with Raazi and others from our father’s side.”

  I raise my eyebrows in disbelief.

  “You know that our father spent a lot of time at Aunt Raazi’s after he came back from Paris. Maman thinks that she was trying to set him up with some woman, the same way she did twenty years ago. I am sure you remember.”

  Not wanting to hear one more word about the past, I raise my objections. “It was her husband who arranged those meetings between Papa and the woman who worked at his bank. Aunt Raazi was actually against it. You were only a child, so maybe you don’t know, but I went over to her house and asked her flat out. She put her hand on the Koran and swore that it wasn’t her.”

  “Anyways, Maman thinks that this time Raazi discouraged Papa from making up with her. Even after Maman brought him over to her new place, he refused to move back in together. Maman thinks that’s because our aunt found him a woman in Paris. Somebody from the time when Raazi and her husband lived there with our cousins. Did you notice anything suspicious when you were there together?”

  “No,” I lie, and to cover it up I put on a surprised face and add, “Notice anything suspicious like what?”

  Before Milaad can continue, the elevator door opens and we step out into the lobby. The concierge jumps to his feet. Milaad waves at him to sit down. He obeys, but his eyes are glued to us. I am about to continue our conversation when Milaad stops me, shaking his head and nodding toward the main entrance.

  I walk with him outside. He pulls at my sleeve to continue walking to his car, and then motions for me to get in. Once I’m settled in the passenger seat, he turns to face me. “You remember I told you on the phone that there was something about Papa’s accident that I’d tell you later?”

  I nod, already feeling troubled.

  “I’ll say it quickly and then you should go back. Maman will think we are talking behind her back.”

  I nod again and sit back silently, letting him talk.

  “You know how super-sensitive Maman is about Aunt Raazi. If you hang around with her during Papa’s memorials, Maman might cause a scene. I want to prevent this, because if she does, other things might be revealed — things we don’t want our extended family and friends to know. Things that would cause our mother to lose face.”

  “What things?” I hear my heart thumping loudly while Milaad takes a breath and continues talking.

  As he speaks, he looks at the rearview mirror instead of at me. “Papa had the accident and died twelve days ago, but we learned about it only on the day that I called you. When Maman didn’t hear from him for days, she sent me to his building. The concierge — who, if you didn’t notice, I paid earlier — told me Papa was dead. It was awful to find out from a stranger like that. But anyway, Raazi did the same thing earlier on the same day. She had also come to check up on Papa, and the concierge informed her about what had happened to him. When we arrived at the coroner’s to identify the body, she was already there.”

  “Oh my!” I gasp.

  Milaad turns to me. “I am sorry, sister. You don’t know how guilty I feel. Papa called me two weeks before his death. It was my birthday, and he wanted to come visit us. I turned him down. Then, a week later, when I saw Aunt Raazi’s number on my pho
ne, I thought she wanted to ask me to be nicer to Papa, so I didn’t answer. Only when Maman told me that Raazi was also trying to get hold of her did I think it must be something important.” He shakes his head in despair. “I was a bad son to Papa.”

  I reach out my hand to grasp his shoulder, which is trembling as he silently cries. I notice his hair has gone gray in the front.

  I wait for him to wipe his face before asking the question that’s on my mind. “I wonder why Raazi didn’t call me?”

  “Perhaps she didn’t want to distress you. You know how much she loves you.”

  My brother’s tears pour down his face again. I don’t tell him how distressed I feel, how upsetting it is to be so baffled by the actions of my family members. No, I still don’t have the understanding required for living with and among them.

  Milaad drops his head. “Our father’s corpse lay at the coroner’s for ten days before we learned about his death from a complete stranger. If this leaks out to others in our family, not only Maman but also you and me will lose face. Nobody can know. People don’t even know our parents were separated and living apart.”

  “I understand,” I say faintly, even though I don’t. “Raazi won’t tell anyone,” I add. “Unlike our mother, she usually keeps her lips sealed.”

  Milaad nods. “You should go back,” he says. “Please be extra kind to our mother until her nerves settle. She’s gone through a lot. We don’t want her to remain depressed for the rest of her life.”

  “I will,” I say as I get out of the car. I wave at Milaad as he drives away. Before going back into the building, I take a few deep breaths, letting the crisp air calm my head, which is still buzzing from the stifling heat in the car.

  The security guard gets up when I enter the building. I look away and walk straight for the elevators.

  During the ride up to our floor, I try to calm myself. I decide that the story Milaad just told me, like other bad stories, belongs to the past. I am going to look to the future, to a different future for our family. Hopefully, Maman will also let the past be history, once all of the memorials are finished. Hopefully, in a near future, like all normal people in the world, we too will have a normal relationship with our relatives, including our father’s side of the family. With that thought in my head, I barge into our apartment and throw myself on the sofa.

  “You look exhausted.” My mother’s raspy voice pulls me out of my wishful thinking. “Go to sleep to be ready for tomorrow.” I cower as I realize she is sitting beside me, gazing at the wall, lost in her own thoughts. She has taken off her hijab, and hasn’t touched her cup of tea.

  “Yes, let’s go to sleep.” I caress her thin gray hair before standing and offering a hand to lift her up to her feet.

  “Yes, let’s go.” Her voice is as hoarse as it used to be in those times after a bad fight with my father. We trudge together through the foyer to the bedrooms. “You can sleep with me in the master bedroom or in the guest room. I changed the sheets this morning.”

  I am tempted to go with her, but decide on the guest room instead.

  Milaad has placed my suitcase at the foot of the bed, where my favorite red velvet blanket is still spread out. I put on my nightgown, turn off the lights, and slip under the covers, hoping that I can finally rest. I cannot.

  The tension between my mother and Raazi goes back a long way. As the story goes, Maman once kidnapped me from Raazi’s arms. It was the first time she left Papa. Milaad wasn’t born yet, and I, at two and a half, had been left in the care of Papa’s younger sister, who was married but hadn’t yet given birth to her sons. After ten days of separation, my mother was a mess — crying all the time and going crazy. One night, she disguised herself in a chador, rang the doorbell, and, when Raazi opened the door, snatched me and dashed to a waiting taxi. Apparently, I cried nonstop and was so frightened that I bit her. She occasionally reminds me of that — as if I am a villain in that story. I roll over. The room is warm, but still I shiver.

  When I open my eyes again, the room is brightened by sunlight and Maman is shaking me. “Wake up! Milaad will be here soon.”

  “Good morning.” I sit up, noticing that the window is open.

  “I opened it. It was like a sauna in here. I’m still having a hard time breathing. I wonder how your father lived with you for a month in the same room!”

  “I’m not used to the weather here anymore.”

  “You will be if you stay long enough.”

  “For sure.”

  “Now come to the table for breakfast. I hope you still enjoy our food.”

  * * *

  An hour later, I am once again sitting at the back of Milaad’s Renault, this time beside my sister-in-law, Shabnam, a slender young woman wrapped in an expensive fur coat. It is the first time I have seen her since her wedding. Elegant leather boots cover her delicate legs up to the knee. She has large hazel eyes and long eyelashes like rays of sun. A large tray of halva, on which Papa’s name is written, sits on her lap. There is a bouquet of gladioli between us.

  Maman sits in front and holds a Koran. She starts reading it aloud halfway through the long ride to Behesht-e Zahra Cemetery, forty-five minutes outside of Tehran. I feel like a kidnapped child being taken to a place she doesn’t want to go. But unlike in my childhood, I don’t cry. I cannot cry, because in a way, I don’t believe Papa is dead. Unlike my brother, I haven’t seen his corpse. My last image of him is from Charles de Gaulle Airport, just before I headed for customs. He was staying one more week in Paris at my cousins’ house. He was looking so skinny, even though he’d gained several pounds during our time together. I’d taught him how to cook rice to add to the canned fish or beans he bought for daily consumption. “Don’t forget to practice cooking once you’re back home. I’ll test you when you come to visit me in Canada,” I said, hugging the bag of bones he’d become during his short separation from my mother. “I’ll wait until you’re back and then send you an invitation letter.”

  Maman’s melancholic voice reciting the Koran makes Shabnam sob quietly. Not wanting her soft crying to seep into me, I concentrate on looking down at the gladioli on the seat. Once I can no longer bear the thoughts of my hands pulling apart their petals, I look up, past Shabnam, and watch the road. The closer we get to the graveyard, the more poor local children selling flowers and rose water gather by the road.

  Shabnam’s sobs get louder. A small puddle of her tears starts to form on the plastic that covers the halva. I touch my mother’s shoulder and shake her slightly.

  “What?”

  “Can you finish your reading, please?”

  She turns around. “Oh,” she addresses Shabnam. “Don’t cry, my poor girl.”

  “I won’t, Malak Khanoom,” Shabnam utters with a broken voice.

  I also look at my sister-in-law with pity. With two tough women in the family, it makes sense that Milaad has chosen this fragile wife with the sensitivity of a high-school girl.

  “Sorry,” Shabnam murmurs, “but the sight of your father’s face at the coroner haunts me night and day.” I tremble as an image of my father’s face, dead and gray, replaces the image of torn flowers in my mind. Feeling guilty for judging my sister-in-law in my thoughts, I think about how lucky I am to live in Canada, and not to have experienced the horrible ordeal that she has. I move the bouquet to my right side and slide toward her. “Do you want me to massage your shoulders?”

  “Yes,” she says softly and presses her eyelids together, a few more tears falling on her high cheekbones before she turns her back toward me. I rub her shoulders until her sobbing subsides. Milaad looks at me in the rearview mirror with appreciation. I nod at him, a replica of the Papa of my childhood, sit back, and look out the window.

  We are at the cemetery entrance. There is a long walk from the parking lot to Papa’s grave. Behesht-e Zahra has grown into a small town. Maman leads the way, carrying the bouquet. S
habnam, Milaad, and I each carry dishes of halva, dates, and fruit. We try to keep pace with my mother but it is not easy; Shabnam cannot walk fast in her high heels and she avoids walking on the flat slabs of stone that mark the graves through the old part of the cemetery. We can still see Maman at a distance. It is a weekday in a cold January, and the cemetery is almost empty.

  In ten minutes we pass the central morgue and reach the area where new graves are dug. A procession of a few Allah-o-Akbar–chanting men, followed by a group of women and children, take their shrouded dead on a stretcher to his grave. I lose sight of Maman as she mingles with the women but then find her again as the throng moves off in the direction of an open grave.

  Farther down the field, my steps slacken when my mother arrives at Papa’s grave and a few people clad in black rush forward to hug her. They must be Milaad’s in-laws. They step back when we arrive and greet them. Shabnam throws herself into the embrace of her father and cries like a baby.

  Maman pushes aside the bouquets from Shabnam’s family and places the bouquet we brought at the center of the pile of fresh dirt that stands a bit higher than the surrounding ground. She crouches down, sprays rose water on the parched soil, and sobs loudly. Shivering in my bones, I am about to join her when I see Raazi and her husband arrive. I put the dish of dates I am holding down on the grave beside the flowers and go over to greet my aunt. My mother seems too absorbed in her mourning to notice what I am doing.

  Raazi opens her black chador and shelters me in her embrace. Wrapped in the same cover, we are now one. She holds me for a long time, crying on my shoulder. “It’s so good to have you back. You smell like your father. My poor brother.”

  Her bosom is as consoling as it was on the day when, crying, I went to her house after Maman and Milaad barged into my room and beat me for siding with my father. I was a teenager then, and Milaad only a child. I knew it was Maman who had manipulated him like a puppet; nevertheless, I couldn’t forget the way he stomped on the architectural model of a house I had made as a school project and destroyed it while Maman knocked me down to the floor, sat on me, held my hands with one hand, and repeatedly slapped me across the face with the other. My mother’s blows hurt, but Milaad’s actions broke my heart. I cried all the way to Raazi’s on the bus, and decided to take revenge on my brother by hurting the person he loved the most — who else but Maman?