Rooftops of Tehran

by Mahbod Seraji

  “Life’s short, way too short. Enjoy every breath you take because no one knows what comes next. Through the eyes of creation, the time each of us spends on this planet is no longer than a blink! We have to live our lives trusting in God’s judgment. There’s a reason for everything. My poor mother, bless her soul, used to say don’t waste your time asking God why because God doesn’t talk back. Somewhere down the road, though, he shows you signs that help you understand why things are the way they are.”

  I know what Ahmed’s mother is doing, and I wish she would stop. I want to tell her that I don’t believe in her arrogant God who’s too good to talk to us, but that would be considered extremely rude. No matter how upset you are, you must never contradict your host. Even more important, you should never say anything religiously offensive.

  Grandma walks in the room. She looks at me for a few seconds, and asks again if my wife knows I’m back yet.

  Ahmed smiles and says, “He has no wife, Grandma.”

  “Oh!” says Grandma, her eyes hazy and befuddled. “I thought he was married to the girl next door,” she says, “the one Grandpa used to give chocolate to.”

  “No, Grandma—” Ahmed tries to interject, but Grandma cuts him off.

  “She is a nice girl. I like her a lot.”

  “I’m sorry,” he whispers to me. “She doesn’t know what’s happened.”

  “That’s okay, she’s probably confusing me with Doctor.”

  “You should let your wife know you’re back,” Grandma says to me. “She has been waiting for you for quite some time. Just like I waited for Grandpa.”

  “Yes, Grandma. He will let her know,” Ahmed soothes.

  “She cries for him every night,” Grandma says. “Poor girl, she cries every night. She is so sad.”

  “Okay, Grandma. We’ll take care of it. We’ll let her know,” Ahmed says patiently.

  “Yes, best to let her know,” Grandma says, shuffling out of the room. “The poor girl should know. It breaks your heart to hear her cry like that.”

  The doorbell rings. When Ahmed answers it, Faheemeh pushes him aside and runs toward me. She jumps into my arms and kisses my face, over and over, as tears roll down her cheeks. I can feel her body shaking in my arms. She has cut her long black hair short, and it makes her look more grown up than she really is.

  “What happened to your hair?” I say, laughing while trying to hold back my own tears.

  “Needed a change, that’s all,” she whimpers, as she studies me through moist eyes. “You look like you’ve lost a lot of weight.”

  “I needed a change, too,” I say.

  She laughs, and hugs me hard.

  “Thank God you’re back, thank God for that,” she says.

  Ahmed’s mother exchanges greetings with Faheemeh and asks if her parents are well. Soon she goes to the kitchen to start lunch.

  Faheemeh puts her arm around my shoulders. She bites her lower lip as she quietly sheds tears and wipes her face with a white handkerchief. “Ahmed and I talked about you every day you were away,” she says. “We missed you dearly, and couldn’t wait for you to come home. Everyone in the neighborhood knew what happened to us, including my parents and brothers. My mother and father were genuinely worried for you, and prayed for your health and your safe return.” She asks me how I feel, and before I have a chance to answer, she hugs me again and breaks into bitter sobs.

  “We’ll make it through this together,” she says. “I don’t know how, but we’ll make it. I promise. Our recovery may be slow, but it will happen, I’m sure of it.”

  It feels wonderful to be with Ahmed and Faheemeh again. They look more mature than I remember. They appear to be totally aware of each other in the way that only married couples are. Gone are Ahmed’s boyish antics and youthful mannerisms. Sitting next to her, he’s like a man, confident, determined, with an air about him that makes it obvious that Faheemeh is his woman. The girlish disposition that made Faheemeh look like a teenager fallen in love for the first time is gone, too. She is a woman now, mature, serene, and aware that she is the subject of someone’s unconditional affection and devotion. I wonder if Zari and I ever would have gotten to this point if she were still with us.

  Faheemeh starts to talk about that day. She remembers fainting on the sidewalk after the soldiers attacked Ahmed and me, but she doesn’t remember anything after that. A couple of the families who were standing close to us, and witnessed everything, shielded her from the agents who were roaming the crowds to learn about “the three crazy kids responsible for this nonsense.” The people who took her home told her parents everything. Her older brother yelled and cursed when he learned that she was with Zari, Ahmed, and me. But when he heard about what had happened to the three of us, he hugged her, showered her with kisses, and thanked God that she was safe.

  Faheemeh was sick for a long time. She couldn’t eat or sleep. The images of that day still haunt her, and she often finds herself crying without a cause. Her parents tried to send her to England to stay with a distant cousin for a while, but she refused to go.

  “You know what kills you?” she asks. “Not knowing, that’s what kills you. I went to Evin Prison every day. I was sure I would have to come up with the cost of the bullets before I could get your bodies back.” She bites the skin between her thumb and her index finger. She says she couldn’t start mourning for Zari because of her uncertainty about our situations. “I couldn’t go on until I had a sense of the total loss in my life,” she says, as she breaks down into another bitter fit of weeping. “I miss her so much! I just wish I knew why she did it. She seemed so in love with you. I wouldn’t have guessed it in a million years.”

  I tell them that I should have known and that a few days before it all happened, Zari and I talked about Socrates and Golesorkhi. I tell them how she talked about death and suicide when we were out having an ice cream, and how I changed the topic because I thought it was depressing.

  “Perhaps if I had listened, I would’ve suspected something,” I say, nervously reaching for my sleeves. Ahmed grabs my hand.

  “Don’t do that,” he whispers.

  “Don’t blame yourself,” Faheemeh begs. “No one could’ve guessed what she was up to from a conversation like that.”

  “I wouldn’t have interpreted anything Zari said as a sign of what she was about to do,” Ahmed says. “This came out of nowhere. You can’t, you can’t, you can’t blame yourself,” he warns emphatically.

  “Why did she do it?” I ask. “She said she loved me. How can you do this to someone you love? I don’t understand.”

  I say I don’t understand, but I do. As inconceivable as her action was, it must have seemed the only way for her to shout her defiance of the Shah, making the ultimate sacrifice for a greater good, a red rose action, a Socrates decision, a heroic gesture, signifying the triviality of life without freedom.

  After lunch I ask how Ahmed and Faheemeh met after Ahmed was released. He shakes his head and starts to laugh. Faheemeh follows suit.

  “He came to our house,” she starts. “My brother opened the door.” She stops and looks at Ahmed to continue.

  Ahmed shrugs his shoulders. “I’m so glad I didn’t have to violate our pledge to the sacred brotherhood of the boxing fraternity.”

  Faheemeh smiles and hits Ahmed in the shoulder with the back of her hand. “My dear brother,” she says. “You weren’t going to manhandle the poor kid, were you?”

  “He wasn’t a kid when he was beating me up a few months earlier,” Ahmed says sarcastically.

  “He’s just a kid,” Faheemeh laughingly protests.

  “Anyway,” Ahmed says, “lucky for the ‘kid,’ he got out of my way. By then she was already halfway to the door, screaming and yelling my name. Boy, you should’ve been there! She made quite a scene. Everyone came out of their homes to see what was going on.”

  “A couple of days later our parents got together and announced to the neighbors that we were engaged,” Faheemeh says as s
he jubilantly shows me her engagement ring.

  “I can’t believe I didn’t notice that before,” I say, putting my arms around her and Ahmed at the same time.

  “We didn’t want to have an engagement party without you,” Ahmed says. “Besides, we want to wait until Zari’s one-year anniversary.”

  I’m extremely happy for them. Theirs is the first good news I’ve heard in many months.

  On the way to Zari’s house, we stop at the spot where I planted Doctor’s rosebush. “Everyone took care of it,” Ahmed whispers. “For Doctor, for Zari, and for you.”

  I shake my head in appreciation. “We’ll never let this bush die,” I say.

  “We won’t,” Ahmed confirms.

  We arrive at Zari’s house. A series of images flashes in my head, including the first day Faheemeh rang the bell to begin our remarkable summer together. I’ll never forget the joyful smile on Zari’s face when she first opened the door. She and Faheemeh hugged. Then she looked toward us and winked before walking back into the house and closing the door behind her. It’s so heart-wrenching to know that Zari will never be answering a doorbell in that house again.

  I ring the bell with shaking hands, and Zari’s father opens the door. He stands in the doorway and stares at me with sad eyes. I say a tentative hello. He takes a step toward me and hugs me so tightly that I fear he may crush my ribs. He holds me for a long time, and I can feel his body shaking. When he lets go of me, I see tears in his eyes. He steps aside and we walk into the yard.

  As Mr. Naderi shuts the door, I see Zari’s mother walking gingerly toward us. The brush of age has touched her, too, creasing her face and turning her hair gray, just as Ahmed had warned. She looks like an unhealthy old woman nursing not just a fatigued, exhausted body but also a haunted spirit and a tormented soul. I go to her, and she hugs me, and we begin to cry in each other’s arms.

  There is no pain like the pain of losing your child, my mother’s voice echoes in my head.

  After a few seconds, Zari’s mother grabs my shoulders and gently pushes me away from her to gaze into my teary eyes. I recognize traces of Zari’s features in her kind, sorrow-worn face. Underneath the veil of grief I can see the blue eyes, the well-shaped chin, the lovely cheekbones.

  Zari’s mother wipes the tears from my face with her fingers and tells me to be courageous. “You’re too young to harbor a pain like this in your heart for too long,” she says. “My dear, dear boy, I wish you knew how I feel about you and about what you were doing for my dear Zari.” I nod while remembering the night she saw her daughter in my arms up on the roof.

  “You need to let go of the past, and focus on the future,” Mrs. Naderi says. She hugs me again, and whispers, “I know you’re strong enough to move on. Leave this country as you promised Zari you would. You need to go to the States and get a college education, because only educated people can save this country. While there, tell every American what their government’s senseless support of a dictator has done to the Iranian mothers. Tell them that there will be no end to these atrocities until they stop paying for our oil with the blood of our children. Promise me that you will do your part toward emancipating our people, because you owe it to Doctor and Zari.”

  I nod yes, but I’m not sure in my heart that I can ever leave this alley. After Zari, what does it matter if I have an education? How can I go to the United States, the country that has supported the man responsible for the death of my angel?

  We walk past the cherry tree and enter the house. On the way to the living room I notice that there are a number of boxes in the hallway. “Are you moving?” I ask Mrs. Naderi.

  “Not for a while, but not a day too soon,” she says. “You can imagine how difficult it’s been for us to continue living in this house.”

  The thought of another family occupying the house in which my Zari lived fills me with pain.

  The living room is exactly the way I remember it from the night of Keivan’s party. The picture of Zari and Doctor is still on the shelf. We almost kissed looking at that picture. I try to peel my eyes away from the shelf before I burst into tears.

  The floor is covered with an inexpensive Kashan rug. There are large cylindrical pillows around the room on small Turkmen sitting mats. A steaming samovar is in one corner of the room, a teakettle on top of it. Six small old Persian teacups with worn-out gold rings around their bases are set on a brass tray next to a neat pile of matching saucers. The smell of the freshly brewed tea makes the room feel cozy and warm.

  Zari’s mother pours us tea from the samovar as Mr. Naderi smokes his cigarette quietly. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the Masked Angel in the hallway whispering something in Keivan’s ear. Zari’s mother waves at Keivan and says, “Come here, honey. Come say hello to our guests.”

  Keivan walks up to me. Zari’s mother prompts, “Say hello, dear.”

  Keivan says hello and hugs me, clasping his little arms firmly around my neck. I hug him back and whisper in his ear that I missed him. He says he missed me, too, and then he turns around and looks at the Masked Angel in the hallway, who’s preparing a tray of sweets. Keivan sits next to me and places his elbow on his thigh and his hand under his chin. I put my arm around him and squeeze his shoulders a couple of times. Zari’s mother smiles and says that Keivan has been a great help to Cousin Soraya while his poor, heartbroken mother was dealing with pain no mother should ever have to deal with. Keivan shrugs his shoulders and smiles, understanding that his mother is paying him a compliment.

  “Children are the most precious things in the world, if you ask me,” Zari’s mother says. Then she turns her head toward the ceiling and begs God not to ever deprive any parent of the joy of raising their kids.

  I want to ask why she’s praying to a God who robbed her of her child, why she hasn’t boycotted him, written him off. I remember the night on the roof when I told my father that God wasn’t fair because he never reacted to those who committed atrocities against humanity, especially the young. That night Zari was sitting beneath the short wall, listening to us. I look at her picture on the shelf and feel the muscles around my heart tighten up. I want to scream and pull on my skin to free up some room for the pain that is bloating me.

  Mrs. Naderi starts to talk about Doctor’s family. “His mother is now in an institution with no prospect of recovering from her mental illness,” she says. “His father died a couple of months ago; God bless his soul. He was the lucky one, if you ask me. It’s not a good thing to outlive your own child. Nothing is more painful, nothing. The last few months he wasn’t really living, he was just breathing. Death is a blessing at a time like that.” Mrs. Naderi shakes her head and wipes the tears from her face.

  The Masked Angel enters the room carrying a tray full of sweets. She whispers hello, and Ahmed, Faheemeh, and I get up to greet her. She points to us, and with a gesture of her hand pleads with us to sit down as she and Faheemeh hug and exchange pleasantries. She whispers so quietly that I have a hard time hearing her.

  Mr. Naderi smiles as the Masked Angel sits down on a pillow only a few centimeters away from him. He whispers something to her, and she shakes her head no. Then he looks at me. I wish I knew what just passed between them.

  Mr. Naderi’s silence is certainly odd, and uncharacteristic of the talkative, somewhat philosophical man I once knew. He has always been a kind man, gifted with a gentle soul and cursed with a rugged face that looks anything but friendly. The hardship he has endured has not marred his Olympian body, and he still looks like a formidable wrestling champion, with broken ears and a face that has been rubbed into the mat a few too many times. He and my father used to talk about their matches and opponents in great detail. I always enjoyed Mr. Naderi’s exciting stories told in his deep, scratchy voice. What a stark contrast his present demeanor is to the happy-go-lucky ex-champion of a few months ago!

  Zari’s mother says that the Masked Angel has been struggling with a bad cold that won’t go away. “The poor thing has lost her voice,
and coughs all night long. She has to see a doctor,” she says. “But the young are too stubborn, and think they can overcome everything. God bless her, there isn’t a day that I don’t burn espand for her to keep the evil spirits away! I don’t know what we would have done without her.”

  I can tell from the movement of the Masked Angel’s eyes behind the little holes in her burqa that she is looking at me. This is the first time she has seen me up close. She must be curious about the boy her best friend and cousin fell in love with. I sense a distinct nervousness in her demeanor. I would almost swear that she is shaking under her veil. Mr. Naderi whispers something to her again, and she whispers back.

  They must be very close. She must be filling the void that Zari’s death has left in his life. The poor man adored his daughter, always referring to her as his reason for living. She was the center of his universe, the sun that brightened his days and the moon that lit his dark nights. In the evenings, when he came home from work, Zari ran up to the door and clasped her arms around his muscular neck to embrace him, and that was enough to make him feel rested and at peace. And on Friday afternoons, Zari brought him tea in the yard as he sat by the hose in the shadow of the cherry tree and read the newspaper. He always talked about his dreams of having grandchildren. “Two grandsons,” he would say. “I’ll teach them how to wrestle and carry on the family tradition. Wrestling is the best sport in the world!”

  And now the two people who could have fulfilled his dreams are gone. Maybe the Masked Angel can someday give him an experience close to what he would have had with Zari.

  Mrs. Naderi repeats that Soraya has been the pillar that has kept the family from collapsing. “Dear God, never deprive anyone of the joy of raising their child,” she prays again, “and damn the Devil of the Middle East, the servant of the West, and the destroyer of young lives.”