Rooftops of Tehran

by Mahbod Seraji

  I concentrate hard on seeing her face. Her head is tilted to the right, as if she’s looking over her shoulder toward my room, anticipating my arrival. I can tell from the position of her body and the way she wiggles around that she’s anxious and distracted by the sound she thought she heard. After a few uneventful seconds, she leans back against the wall again.

  I wrestle with the idea of coming out of the dark and into the moonlight. We would look into each other’s eyes, but wouldn’t say anything. What could either of us possibly say? It would be too beautiful a moment to ruin with words. I would walk up to her, extend my hand, and help her up. We would embrace forever. But what if she tried to run away? I’d grab her and tell her that the nightmare is over, that I don’t care what she looks like, and that she will be mine for the rest of our lives!

  “Yes,” I accidentally whisper.

  Her head snaps up and fixes on where I’m sitting. Her eyes glow radiantly with borrowed moonlight—undoubtedly the same eyes that have watched me every night. Her gaze is fierce and penetrating, predatory and skittish, like a startled cat’s. Instead of running away, she calmly reaches over her head and pulls the lace down in front of her face, transforming herself back into the Masked Angel. The steady finality of her movements reminds me of her characteristic confidence.

  I stand up and step out into the moonlight. She sits motionless, and her pull on me is magnetic. I walk slowly up to her and, after a momentary pause, I fold my body neatly to sit next to her. Her blinking eyes stare at me from behind the lace of her burqa, and my heart adjusts its rhythm to match their cadence. My eyes fill.

  “Don’t cry,” she whispers.

  I search for a familiar ring in that whisper.

  “Please, don’t cry,” she repeats.

  “Is it you?” I ask.

  She turns her head, hiding her eyes from mine.

  “Tell me,” I beg, “is it you?”

  She remains shielded and silent. I reach over and take her chin in my hand to turn her face toward me.

  “Let me see your face.”

  She shakes her head no, but I can see her tears cascading like jewels under her veil.

  “How long did you think you could hide from me?” I scold gently.

  She tries to turn her head away again, but I hold on tight. “Did you really think I wouldn’t see you?”

  She shakes her head, mute in response to my probing.

  “Do you have any idea how much I’ve suffered without you?” I choke, anger slipping into my voice. “Do you know how often I thought life wasn’t worth living without you? What if I had killed myself?”

  Her hand slides out from underneath the burqa and she tries to put her fingers to my lips to quiet me, but I pull my head away and continue to talk.

  “Did you think I was going to go away and forget about you? How could you think that? Didn’t you know that burning in hell for eternity would be a better punishment than life without you?”

  “Hush,” she pleads.

  “The fire that took you is still burning my heart.”

  “Please, stop,” she whispers.

  “No! Why should I? How can I?”

  “I beg you, please, stop.”

  “Did they threaten your family? Was it Keivan? Did they threaten to take him away? Tell me the truth.”

  “Please, stop, please . . .” She weeps, her words interrupted by ragged breaths. I stop and listen to her cries, and it feels as if someone is pulling my heart out of my chest. I’m filled with remorse, and I beg her to forgive me. I try to explain that a volcano has erupted inside me, and although I wish I could temper it, I am not in control.

  She leans closer and wipes the tears from my cheeks with the palms of her hands, then quickly pulls back. I explain that I could never really picture my future without her, that it would have been like a vast, barren wasteland, waking each morning and not caring if it was sunny or rainy, hot or cold, early or late, winter or summer. I prayed to God to take me away, to put an end to a life that didn’t matter anymore.

  She quickly bites the skin between her thumb and index finger and says, “Don’t say that!” then breaks into bitter weeping.

  “Oh, God! What am I doing?” I say. “What you’ve gone through, my darling, is a hundred times worse than what I’ve endured. Forgive me for being so selfish.”

  “No, no, no! Please, stop saying these things!”

  “Your walk, the way you move, your eyes, the way you scratched your head a minute ago, everything tells me that you are my Zari.”

  “You must stop.”

  “Let me hold you, let me feel the weight of your body against mine. Tell me that nothing will ever separate us again.”

  “Oh, God, forgive me,” she whimpers. “I should never have let things go this far.”

  “All I want is for you to promise that you will never do anything like that again!”

  “Oh, God, help me. Please, help me!”

  “What are you afraid of?”

  “Please, God, I’m sorry.”

  “Why are you sorry?” I say, starting to listen.

  “This is going to break his heart—”

  “I don’t care what you look like,” I interrupt. “Your appearance doesn’t matter to me. I love you.”

  “God help me, I should never have let it go this far.”

  She gently pushes me back when I reach out to embrace her, and in the unbearable silence that follows I stare into her eyes, desperately searching for the answer to a question I don’t have the courage to ask. She tries to say something a couple of times but her sobs get in the way.

  “What are you trying to say?” I ask.

  A long pause follows. My heart pounds, her heart pounds. I can hear both.

  “I’m not her!” she cries.

  I don’t say anything because I’m afraid I’m hearing her right. “I’m not her,” she whispers, shaking her head and whimpering.

  “Don’t you understand? I’m not her. I wish I were, I really do.”

  “Don’t,” I beseech, my voice falling away with my hope.

  “I knew it would come to this,” she weeps. “I foresaw all of this the morning you came home from the hospital. I knew that eventually you’d look for your angel under my veil, but I am not her. She loved you so much, I don’t think she would’ve had the strength to hide behind this mask, no matter what she looked like after that cursed day.” She sobs, and her body shakes violently.

  I feel as if someone has injected me with ice water. A bitterness blooms in my mouth, rushes through my veins, and burns my skin.

  If I had a horse, I would ride it.

  If I had a heart, I would hide it.

  “I should never have let it go this far, I know that now,” she says.

  “Yes, I watched you every night from this spot—because I was curious about you. I knew you were watching me, and I knew that somewhere in the back of your mind, you were associating me with her. I knew that you saw me through the window while my back was to you, but I let you do it because I liked the way your gaze felt on me. I should’ve stopped you. I hope you can forgive me for that.”

  If I knew a rhyme, I would chant it.

  If I knew a song, I would sing it.

  I feel myself drifting away. Her voice buzzes in my ears, but I don’t hear the words. I see her head moving, her body shifting from left to right, her large blue eyes bright in the moonlight, the tears sliding down her cheeks just barely visible beneath her mask. I close my eyes, pull my neck down between my shoulders, lick my lips, and pray to God for this moment to end.

  I don’t know how long I stay in that state, but when I open my eyes the Masked Angel is still sitting next to me—motionless, quiet, those eyes begging for forgiveness. I stare at the ground for a long time before asking, “Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I don’t say anything because I have nothing to say.

  “Maybe I wished I were her,” she says. “They call me the Masked Angel, but eve
n an angel can’t resist the temptation of desiring love.”

  I don’t respond.

  “I wish I had made it clear to you from the start that I wasn’t her. Please forgive me for not doing that. Can you forgive me?”

  I’m as silent and weary as the stone on Doctor’s grave.

  “I don’t blame you if you can’t. Hate me, but please leave as you had planned. It’s best for all of us. If she were with us, she would want you to go.”

  “No, she wouldn’t,” I say, bitterly.

  “Okay,” she admits, “you’re right, she wouldn’t want you to go away.”

  “No, she wouldn’t,” I repeat like a difficult child.

  “Okay,” she says again submissively, “you’re right, she wouldn’t want you to go away. I remember how sad she was about it. She worried that you’d go away and forget her; that you’d come back with a beautiful, educated wife who would be a million times more desirable than her.”

  “That would have never happened,” I say forcefully.

  “I know that now, but I didn’t then,” she says, “so I couldn’t say anything to the contrary. You know, she loved the poetry you used to read to her. She always talked about how you read every verse as if you were the poet.”

  As she talks, I turn my head away. Her whispering voice makes me angry, and I wish she would stop, but she continues.

  “She wouldn’t want you to have bitter memories of her,” the Masked Angel says quietly. “If she could be here for one minute—just one minute—she would use every second of that time to ask you to move on. She would ask you to do it for her because it would be the only way she could have peace.”

  She stops for a few seconds.

  “She never told anyone about you, except me. I’m the only one who knows how much she loved you. Please trust me when I say that I know she would want you to move on. How could she rest in peace if you ruin your life because of her?”

  She stops again and wipes the tears from her face. Then, as if she suddenly remembers something that needs to be said, she asks, “Do you remember her pointing to the biggest star in the sky and saying it was you?”

  “Yes.”

  She leans over and tries to look me in the eye. “You have to go away and never look back. You need to leave the pain here, where it belongs. I know this is what she would want me to ask you. I knew her better than anyone else in the world. She was my cousin, and my best friend. You must trust me.”

  I scrub at my face with my fists and nod to let her know that I trust her. She cries for a little while, then apologizes again for leading me on and says that she needs to go back inside the house because her aunt and uncle might worry about her. But she doesn’t leave; she keeps on talking. She says that she understands now why Zari thought that I had the largest star in the sky, that I have That. Zari was a good judge of character, and her assessment of me was right on. She will make sure to learn of my progress in life through our neighbors and my family, and she will pray for me every night for the rest of her life. She assures me that she is going to take care of Zari’s parents because they are now her number-one priority. She will be a devoted servant and a lifelong companion to the family.

  She stands up and extends her hand to shake, which I do, reluctantly. Her hand is cold, but her grip is warm. I squeeze her hand gently, and she squeezes back. I look down at her long fingers, and her fingernails that look and feel just like Zari’s. I look back up and stare into those shining turquoise eyes.

  I remember my last night with Zari, when I told her about the conversation I had overheard between her and the Masked Angel. Zari had said that was the last time she had talked to Soraya. The Masked Angel could not know about the night Zari and I spent together in her room, when she pointed to the skies and told me that mine was the biggest star. The next day, she set herself on fire.

  “It’s you, isn’t it?” I whisper.

  She starts to quake under her burqa.

  “Those are my Zari’s eyes,” I say.

  Her eyes close tight against my gaze.

  “Is it you?” I ask again, desperate.

  “Yes,” she whimpers, “it’s me.”

  Her knees buckle, and she collapses in my arms. I hold her up, pressing her to me as we slowly descend to the floor in each other’s arms. I kiss the crown of her head, her forehead, and each closed eye through the fabric of the burqa. Her hands stroke my face, fingers gliding through my hair and meeting to clasp around my neck.

  “I love you,” I murmur.

  “I love you, too,” she murmurs back.

  “I missed you,” I complain.

  “I missed you more.”

  I cradle the back of her head in my palms and pull her forward until our foreheads touch.

  “I couldn’t have made it without you.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “Could you hear me talking to you in my dreams?” I ask, rocking her gently.

  “Every word,” she says, “but I couldn’t answer. I hoped you would go away and pursue your dreams, move on and let me fade away.”

  “What dream is worth pursuing without you?”

  “Don’t say that!” she cries, stiffening. “You can’t stay. You have to promise me that you will go away, just as you’ve planned.”

  “No, never,” I say, squeezing her tighter.

  “But you must, for your sake and for mine, for everyone’s safety,” she pleads. “Oh, God, I remember you running after me. Your desperate cries of Ya Ali, Ya Ali will stay with me forever. I was so sorry for you. I don’t know why I took you along to see that horrible scene. Maybe unconsciously I was hoping that your being there would change my mind. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry, darling.”

  Zari reaches under her burqa to wipe away her tears. I press her against me to calm her down.

  “The pain I felt for you was by far more hurtful than my burn marks. I remember the siren, the paramedics working on me, and the hospital. I could tolerate my own pain if I knew you were okay. No one talked to me about anything except the care I was to receive. My shoulders, neck, and parts of my face were burned, not too badly though. It looked a lot worse than it really was. I knew that my hair had been shorn, and that I had bandages on my head. I wanted to ask about Ahmed, Faheemeh, and you, but I couldn’t because I didn’t want to associate any of you with myself. Late at night, however, I secretly prayed for you all. Sometimes I repeated the same prayer hundreds of times, reasoning with myself that the more I recited the prayer, the greater the probability that God would take my requests seriously.

  “A man visited me in the hospital every day: the same man who had punched Doctor in the face, the man with the radio. He watched me for hours from behind a large window, talked to the doctors and nurses, and took notes. He looked at me with a strange, sad gaze. He seemed to feel sorry for me. Once, I woke up in the middle of the night and found him standing by my bed, staring at me with that look on his face. I wanted to say something, but he left right away.

  “I was brutally tormented by my separation from you, and that’s how I knew that I truly loved you. I cursed myself for asking you to go along. What could you possibly gain from the experience of watching me set myself on fire, except a lifetime of torment and agony? I’m so sorry, darling, so sorry. And then, to make matters worse, I was alive and no one knew it. I wanted to die. I wished I had died. The pain I had caused you, Faheemeh, and Ahmed, and, of course, my parents. That was all unbearable to me. And now, my parents have to live the rest of their lives in exile for what I did. I wish I had died. I’m so sorry.”

  “I understand.” I nod, while thanking God for keeping her alive.

  “For my own sake, I never regretted my action,” Zari says, “but I deeply apologize for involving the rest of you. I had to do what I did. Someone had to. Someone had to make a statement, in public, loudly and defiantly. Doctor used to say that the regime doesn’t understand that killing people doesn’t scare the activists and that death is a small price to pay for freed
om.”

  Zari stops and collects her breath; she is trembling under her burqa.

  “For every one they kill in private, ten people should do what I did in public, so the regime can see that killing only makes their crimes more visible.”

  Zari takes another short break.

  “When my skin began to heal, they moved me to a different floor and a different room, where I had a window view into a yard that seemed to be always filled with people. The ambiguity around my fate had begun to wear me down. I used to sit by the window and wonder if you were okay, if you had gone to the United States, if Ahmed and Faheemeh were free and still together.”

  “I did the same in my room,” I say. “Except I wondered if you could see me, if you could hear me. I cried and I kept asking why.”

  “And I would talk to you every night,” she says. “I would hold you in my arms, caress your face, your hair. I would kiss your lips. I would have died if something had happened to you. The pain would have killed me.”

  Her breathing becomes irregular as if she is hyperventilating. “Are you okay?” I ask, extremely concerned.

  She nods before continuing. “I had no communication with anyone; no television, no radio, and no newspaper. I didn’t know what time it was, what day it was, or even what month. I had no idea what was going on in the world, except that the Shah was still in power because the man with the radio still visited me every day. Many nights I dreamed of our summer days by the hose under the cherry tree, and when I woke up I felt as if someone had placed a ton of bricks on my chest. I would try to remember what your face looked like, but I couldn’t. For some reason, the more desperately I missed you, the harder it was for me to picture your face in my mind.

  “One night I woke up in the middle of the night and realized that a pencil and some papers had been placed next to my bed. I immediately began to draw a picture of you. It was astounding how the eyes of my mind couldn’t see your face, but my hands had no trouble tracing your every feature on the paper.” Zari reaches over and touches my face lovingly. I can see through the holes in the burqa that her eyes are closed.