The Luminous Heart of Jonah S.

by Gina B. Nahai

  To the many inquiries directed at him—why, why, why would you do this?—Aaron responded with a smile and a quiet, “Why not?”

  To Elizabeth, who appeared not a bit surprised when he accepted her proposal, he promised “affection, loyalty, and the willingness to forgive.”

  To himself, in the predawn hours when he awoke with a start from a restless sleep, he said he was doing his part in upholding the Soleyman family’s good name.

  It was all true. Then again, truth has many layers, some visible to the untrained eye and others not.

  __________________

  The year he left for Paris—1958—had been the best and the worst of Aaron’s life. In April, he lost his virginity to the woman he had secretly loved since he was twelve and in middle school. In August, he made the mistake of confiding in his mother the identity of his lover. In September, only days before he was to start university in Tehran, he was picked up from Bagh-e Yaas in a company car and driven to the airport where he was handed an airline ticket and a visa to exile.

  His parents told their friends that Aaron was in France to study medicine. That was true, and not unusual for the times. Many a child of well-to-do families was sent away to a Swiss finishing school or an English military academy. Some were as young as eight or ten years old, others had finished high school and failed to pass the college entrance exam in Iran, or simply sought a European education. Most obtained their degrees and returned, triumphant, to marry a girl of their parents’ choosing, take over the family business, or establish themselves in their chosen professions. A few fell in love with the West, or with a Western girl, married against their parents’ wishes, and faded into a quiet life in Europe or America.

  So Aaron’s departure, though unexpected, raised no questions. Nor did the fact that, unlike other students abroad, he never came home in the four years he was away: Izikiel was not the type to indulge frivolous activities such as taking a vacation. And Aaron was too serious a young man, too dedicated to his studies, to indulge homesickness or a longing for family. That other matter—the love affair that had so alarmed his parents that they had banished him to another continent and would have kept him there till he agreed to give up the woman—remained secret.

  * * *

  The woman—Fereshteh Ghareeb—was a doe-eyed, husky-voiced temptress fifteen years Aaron’s senior and married, alas, to his maternal uncle. The first time Aaron set eyes on her she was ensconced in a hundred yards of white lace and sitting under a choopa in her soon-to-be-husband’s home. Twenty-seven years old and a divorcée, she had pulled off the nearly impossible feat of finding a second husband who was neither a widower in search of an unpaid caretaker for his young children, nor too poor or sick to walk away with a “desirable” bride.

  Fereshteh’s first husband had divorced her because he felt he could not trust her to remain faithful. Depending on whom you believed, he was either a paranoiac who accused even stray cats of being flirtatious with other men, or simply astute enough to detect intention before it had translated into action.

  The second husband, Jay Gatsby (formerly known as Jaaveed Ghareeb), was an Iranian Jew with a degree in English literature from Harvard and an affinity for silk scarves and tiepins and white suits with wide, padded shoulders. In high school, his flair and elegance had prompted some speculation as to his masculinity, and caused him a great deal of quiet suffering. To establish his bona fides as a man, he had taken the unusual step of voluntarily signing up for military service: although technically compulsory for all young men under the shah, the service was really for those who were too poor to bribe officials, too unmotivated to go to college instead, or too unconnected to call in a favor. Two years later, when he was honorably discharged, Jaaveed brought his weapon home and put it on display in his parents’ living room. It wasn’t an easy feat; the army did not like having civilians with guns in their homes, but it was important, Jaaveed felt, because it would dispel the ungainly rumors, make his mother a little less frantic to marry him off, and, if he was lucky, give Jaaveed some time and space to pursue his passion: to read novels and write poetry.

  His favorite book of all time was an obscure little story about a North Dakota farm boy named James Gatz who had made fast money and moved to New York, then changed his name to Jay Gatsby. The book had been published in the United States in 1925 and was almost immediately forgotten. Jaaveed happened upon a copy of it in the school library. Almost from the first page, he felt he was reading his own and his people’s story: there was the rags-to-riches trajectory, the tension between new and old money, the yearning for beauty (in time, though Jaaveed did not know it yet, there would also be forbidden love and marital infidelity). Before he graduated from Harvard and returned to Iran, he changed his name to Jay Gatsby.

  * * *

  Aaron’s mother, when he confessed to her his love for her brother’s wife, blamed Fereshteh Gatsby for being a brazen whore and a pedophile. His father blamed Jay for being a cuckolded milksop who couldn’t control his wife. But to hear Aaron tell it, it was he who had fixated on Fereshteh the night of her wedding and thereafter, dreamt of her every night, and found every possible excuse to see her daily for six years until one night, when he was eighteen and she thirty-three, he had found her alone at home, then cried bitter tears and begged her to leave her husband, abandon her children, and run away with him.

  He would dispute this vehemently, but the general consensus about Fereshteh Gatsby was that she wasn’t that much to look at even in her youth, and certainly no great beauty by the time Aaron fell for her. What she did have was that amorphous quality Jews described as “being like a Muslim woman.” That was a highly flattering characterization for any female, especially from a male point of view: it meant that she carried herself with just enough confidence to pose a challenge, but not so much as to be forbidding; that she knew how to dress and what color to paint her lips and what angle to cross her legs at to be welcoming but not easy; that she could dance before a roomful of men without losing her nerve, toss her hair around without looking like a shrew, conduct many an affair quietly and let her husband do the same without upsetting their social or domestic standing.

  Fereshteh Gatsby must have been all that and more—reckless is a word that comes to mind—because instead of eloping with Aaron she arranged to meet him on odd nights, in her own home with her husband safely tucked away in his bedroom. They lived in a two-story house on Molavi Avenue, a short distance from the Razi Hospital. To believe Fereshteh, her husband had no interest in her except for the purpose of unsuccessfully attempting procreation; he was happier looking at pictures of the Marlboro Man, David Bowie, and Prince Charles of Britain than seeing her naked. Early in their marriage, he had declared he couldn’t sleep well with another person in the room, and moved his own bed to a different part of the house.

  * * *

  Fereshteh and Aaron carried on this way for five months and could have done so for many more, maybe for the rest of their lives, had he not allowed his conscience to ruin his life. As much as he spent every minute of every week anticipating the brief hour of encounter with Fereshteh, he was also tortured by guilt and by the fear of scandal. He knew he would never have the strength to stop the affair as long as he remained under the same sky, so he spent the summer before college tearing out his heart in little bloody pieces and building up the courage to confess his sin to his parents. Before he left, he wrote Fereshteh the longest letter he would ever write and signed it, Yours Truly, in life and thereafter.

  * * *

  Aaron married Elizabeth because he had to take a wife sooner or later in order to produce heirs for the Soleyman bloodline; because she was too young, he thought, to sense his emotional absence and sexual indifference; because she herself was more of an onlooker than a participant in much of what went on around her. He knew her family’s demise had something to do with his own feud with Raphael’s Wife, and he was happy to give her a new home and family. He was fond enough of her to find her
quirks amusing and her earnest affection for him endearing. And though he couldn’t give her his love, he had every intention of giving her his complete fidelity.

  __________________

  It was a common enough practice to give children Western names, so no one was alarmed, or even made the connection, when Aaron named their first child Angela. In fact, he chose the name because Angela was the English translation of Fereshteh—angel. That was the only concession Aaron granted his own still-grieving heart—to be able to say Fereshteh’s name as often as he wanted without raising suspicion—and the one conscious signal he gave her that she was still and forever his one great love. Not that you could tell, by the way he handled his personal and professional life, that anything was seriously wrong. Two years later, when Elizabeth bore a second daughter, he named her Noor—light. By then he had expanded Soleyman Enterprises into the largest concern of its kind in the country, established a reputation for dealing fairly with his employees and honestly with his partners. His wife adored him in her own dispassionate way, and the rest of Tehran’s upper crust—Jewish, Muslim, and Baha’i—all appeared to like him, so Aaron thought this was it, he had achieved what he was expected to, fulfilled his responsibility as Izikiel’s heir, and now just had to wake up every day and live and breathe and go through the motions of a man who has a pulse but no soul.

  That’s what happens, in the East, to people who suffer an irreversible loss: to survive, they trade their soul for the shell of a body.

  It’s only in America that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

  * * *

  They never had a chance to tell him this, but Aaron’s children sensed his absence throughout their time together. Angela, who always did have a way with words, would later compare her own longing for an emotional connection with her father to “trying to ride a straw horse. You can mount it and whip and kick and command all you want, or you can feed it sugar and a bucketful of apples, but the hard thing is, you know even before you start that it’s never going to move.”

  It didn’t make it any easier for Angela that her mother, Elizabeth the “Ice Queen,” was able to accept Aaron’s emotional remoteness. Not even sixteen years old and without the benefit of an ordinary childhood to draw upon when they married, Elizabeth never fell into line with what constituted a normal life. She certainly had no idea how to live like the aadam hessabis—people of substance—whose ranks she had joined. The wife of an aadam hessabi would bear children but not raise them, leave them in the care of nursemaids and servants at first, and boarding schools in Europe later. She didn’t breast-feed, bathe, or cook for the children. She was aware of what went on in the house without getting too bogged down in the details. Her job was to know the rules of high society and to insert herself into those ranks. She had to be well dressed and beautiful all the time, seen in the right places—an exclusive hair salon or tailor’s shop, lunch at the new Russian restaurant, dinner at Darband—by the right people. She had to go to parties and host them as often as everyone else, look fresh and cheerful in front of the men. She had to dance beautifully, plan extravagant trips, buy the most exquisite jewelry. In this way she would ensure her family’s standing, a good name for herself, and good marriages for her sons and daughters.

  If held to those standards, Elizabeth would have failed. The ageless maturity she had displayed in childhood neither grew nor diminished with time. She had appeared no different at twelve than she would at eighteen, and she didn’t seem to want much more either. The plain sheet dresses and flat shoes she went around in, whether at home or on the street running errands or even at the few parties she and Aaron attended, were barely distinguishable from her beloved school uniform. She didn’t splurge for luxuries because she didn’t see the point, continued to take her meals in the kitchen with Manzel the Mute, didn’t have the slightest idea what use to make of the dolls and toy strollers and miniature tea sets that visitors brought as gifts for Angela and Noor.

  Even the fact that she had only girls, that she hadn’t produced a son, didn’t seem to be of the least concern to her. When asked by well-meaning citizens why she wasn’t in more of a hurry to give Aaron an heir, she appeared genuinely puzzled. When told that girls did not constitute an heir, she was even more stumped.

  Maybe all those numbers and data and facts she had filled her head with as a child had left no room for good old-fashioned common sense.

  Maybe she was trying to a have son, but wasn’t able to. Maybe Aaron had lost interest in her. Maybe she didn’t want to take a chance at having yet another girl. One is bad enough; two is awful; but, really, three would be a calamity.

  The truth was, neither Aaron nor Elizabeth longed for an heir or felt the need to expand their family. They had each lost too much—he, the love of his life; she, her family of origin; he, the ability to love again; she, her life’s dream of going to university—to want more than the small piece of contentment they had managed to wring from fate and circumstance.

  Only they didn’t know, yet, that the less you ask of God, the more He’ll begrudge what little He’s let you have. He’s good at that—poisoning the well just as it starts to run dry.

  __________________

  The poison in Bagh-e Yaas, whether Aaron chose to believe in it or not, was the widow’s sigh.

  Raphael’s Wife came to the house every few weeks, and she dragged her so-called son along with her. At the gates, she held down the doorbell until someone answered, and the longer that took, the more she screamed curses and obscenities.

  “Let me in, you whores and dog shits,” she screamed at the gates. “Open up, you common thieves, you’ve stolen my son’s inheritance and thrown us into the gutter, let me in or I’ll curse your children so they’ll be eaten alive by plague.”

  The neighbors and regular street vendors all knew her and her story; they either ignored the outbursts or yelled at her to shut up and take it elsewhere. Strangers passing through stopped and stared at her and the boy, asked questions, then shook their heads in disbelief and eyed her contemptuously, as if to say they knew she was lying. Anyone could see that Raphael’s Wife was too thin and dark, much too unattractive for any man to copulate with, and much too old to have a son as young as the boy she claimed was Raphael’s.

  In her fist she clutched the neck of a filthy white plastic bag that smelled like the inside of a dead sheep and that she guarded vigilantly, as if fearing it would be stolen from her. As soon as she arrived, one of the maids would run to the door and let her in so as to cut short the scene she was making on the street. She marched ahead of the maid into the Big House and stationed herself in the main salon to wait for Aaron. If Elizabeth tried to speak with her, Raphael’s Wife would spit in her direction and call her a “motherless tramp” and a “crazy man’s daughter.” If Manzel brought her a tray of food, Raphael’s Wife would kick it to the floor and slap her son’s hand if he so much as reached for it. She wanted to speak only with Aaron and she would wait, she threatened, wait all day and night if she had to—he wasn’t going to avoid her, not for as long as she drew a breath or until he consented to give her son his father’s name.

  Aaron had no doubt—none whatsoever—that he owed nothing to this woman and the boy. But he was not so coldhearted, or so unconcerned about others’ judgment, as to remain oblivious to the holes in the widow’s stockings, the mud caked on the boy’s shoes, the smell of the outhouse that emanated from them because they lived without indoor plumbing or a septic tank. He gave her money for rent and food every time she came, and agreed to pay for the kid’s schooling, which might have been generous if, as Raphael’s Wife believed, it wasn’t their own money he was giving back.

  * * *

  As he grew older, Raphael’s Son began to understand that nothing came from those visits but disgrace and mortification. He resented his mother for this, for taking him around like a mark of shame, lugging the old plastic bag in which she kept her money and her keys and what little else she owned that was worth
protecting. In her pocket, she carried his birth certificate which she took out a dozen times a day to show to any stranger willing to listen to her story.

  There it was—she pointed to the place where his surname should be:

  First name: Raphael’s Son

  Last name: None

  Provenance: Bastard

  She came to the house one afternoon in the summer of 1975, looking worn out and desperate and about to burst with rage. Next to her the boy, who would have been twelve if Raphael’s Wife weren’t lying about his blood and birth, seemed bereft of emotion. In the Big House, Raphael’s Wife sat down on the edge of a sofa in front of Aaron, placed the bag on her lap without loosening her grip on it, then grabbed her son’s arm and tried to make him sit as well. He remained standing, hands in his pockets and eyes sewn to the ground, a pillar of resentfulness.

  “Are you sending him to school?” Aaron asked without introduction, referring to the boy as if he weren’t present.

  Raphael’s Wife scoffed, “We barely have a roof over our heads. The food we eat isn’t fit for a dog, we need new clothes, new eyeglasses, and you ask about school?”

  In a tailored suit and monogrammed shirt, Aaron sat in an ice-blue armchair with silk upholstery and wooden legs painted with gold dust—a replica of a chair that was on display at the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul. Slowly, he reached for a cigarette, lit it and took a drag, exhaled the smoke.

  “I’ve told you his school is paid for,” he said without looking in her direction.

  At this, Raphael’s Wife dropped her plastic bag and dug her nails into her son’s arm.

  “You TOLD me?” she erupted at Aaron, shaking the boy who remained stunned and unable to react. “You TOLD me?” She let go of the arm and grabbed her son behind the neck, pushing his face forward as if it were separate from the rest of him. “Look here! He’s nearly blind. I can’t get him new glasses because I have no money.”