The Luminous Heart of Jonah S.

by Gina B. Nahai

  Zeeba Raiis, therefore, took a chance on appealing to HIAS for help. She was sponsored by Chabad and flown to Maryland. She was grateful for the assistance and hospitality, but she couldn’t hack it as a Jew, or at least as a Chabad kind of Jew. Her granduncle, son of the convert and the mullah’s daughter, was in New York with his children. She had begged them for help a dozen times since she escaped Iran and was ignored every time, but she took a chance and showed up at their door with her two daughters and three suitcases. They let her stay for ten days, then suggested a trip to LA. The climate was much more agreeable, and apartments were larger, more suitable for accommodating uninvited, unwelcome houseguests.

  “Go to Westwood,” they had said, “and just shout a word in Persian. Every head on the street is going to turn.”

  This was Zeeba’s only plan when she got into Iranian man’s taxi in Queens. She told him she was going to Los Angeles where she knew some Iranians from the glory days in Tehran, but that she had no idea how to find anyone or whether she could rely on them for help. The cabbie wrote down John Vain’s name and address.

  She folded the note and put it in her bag as Option B, and she didn’t think about it much on the flight to LA. They landed at night and slept in an airport hotel; the next morning, their cab driver was, again, Iranian. On a lark, she asked him if he’d heard of a restaurant owner in Hollywood named John Vain.

  “Of course,” the driver announced. “I must have dropped two hundred people at his door over the years.”

  __________________

  Zeeba Raiis was one of those I-didn’t-sign-up-for-this women who believed herself the subject of a great cosmic hoax: she had married one man and woken up next to another. The person she married was the smart, highly educated son of privilege whose father hosted a lavish wedding for Dr. Raiis and Zeeba, and gave them a house to live in. Dr. Raiis was young and handsome and idealistic—one of those boutique intellectuals (in LA, he would have been called a Neiman Marxist) whose idea of a good time was to drink a glass of Bordeaux as he read Jean-Paul Sartre in the shade of a maple tree on one of Tehran’s famously narrow alleys. When he married Zeeba, he already had lofty ideas of serving God and country by giving freely of his medical expertise. Soon after, he founded a medical corps of young doctors and nurses willing to forge through vastly underserved provinces and out-of-reach villages to prevent such common calamities as blindness from trachoma and paralysis from polio. For a while in the late ’60s, this was both laudable and practical: with only a young wife and no children to pay for, he could play Florence Nightingale and still earn enough to keep Zeeba happy.

  But then the children came, and Zeeba’s friends and siblings moved from their first houses into larger, more lavish dwellings, and what had been a nice pastime for Dr. Raiis started to become a hindrance for the family. Zeeba began to press him to stop being saadeh—a polite term for stupid—and put matters of personal honor and professional duty where they belonged: in words, not deeds, and by looking after his own family’s needs instead of those of perfect strangers.

  Dr. Raiis would always deny this, but his wife was convinced that he was motivated more by vanity than principle: he treated the poor even though they couldn’t pay because he liked their expressions of gratitude, saw himself as a scholar rather than a businessman because he thrived on the veneration accorded to men of letters and science. That the same people who admired his public service would not be caught dead choosing it over making money in their own lives remained ungrasped by Dr. Raiis. The more Zeeba complained that he wasn’t making a good enough living because he was too busy giving away his “assets,” the more Dr. Raiis tried to prove that he was secure in his decision.

  Zeeba, in the meantime, kept a running tally of every social and financial advantage her husband’s obstinacy cost her and the children. She kept the books on the income and assets of every other family so she could report to her children just how much money their father was giving up every day on their behalf. She said that Dr. Raiis had a natural aversion to being rich the way some people feared rats or snakes, that he was selfish because he continued to treat poor children for free and, as a result, had to deny his own kids “basic luxuries” such as monthlong shopping trips to Europe. Because of him, their daughters were going to have to settle for a bad marriage or none at all.

  There was no telling how many of Zeeba’s dire predictions would come to pass, but no one ever lost money by betting on calamity in Iran. Dr. Raiis and his wife fought about his work for the first ten years of their marriage, then broke new ground when, in 1978, chaos and violence erupted on the streets of Tehran. Zeeba wanted him to follow the advice of “those who know better,” open a bank account in London, Switzerland, or New York, and wire their savings out of the country. She thought they should convert their valuables to jewelry, which could be transported easily, pack it up along with the children, and go abroad for the summer. She would have done all this on her own if she could, but even under the shah, when things were as good as they’d ever get, women could not travel or take their children out of the country or open foreign bank accounts without written permission from a male “guardian.”

  For his part, Dr. Raiis did not believe that the army would fold, the United States would withdraw its support, and the shah would fall. Even if the unthinkable came to pass, he told Zeeba, he had nothing to fear from a new regime because he had done nothing wrong. His conscience was clear; his sleep, except for when Zeeba woke him up to vent, peaceful. Just look at that medal of honor he had received in 1976 from Her Majesty, Empress Farah Pahlavi, for selfless service to the country.

  The medal was made of eighteen-karat gold and hung from a velvet band in the red, white, and green colors of the Pahlavi flag—a testament to his personal integrity and professional service to humanity. While the shah was in power, it was framed and hanging most prominently above the mantelpiece in the Raiises’ living room. Afterward, Dr. Raiis had to relent to Zeeba’s entreaties to take it down and hide it because “any minute now, one of the servants or neighbors will report us to the mullahs for being friends of the royal family—and you know what that means—it’ll be the end of you, at least, if not both of us.” She left with the girls three weeks before he was identified by the regime as a taaghooti—corrupt on earth—and ordered to report to Evin Prison.

  That night, Dr. Raiis gathered all his honorary degrees and commendations, as well as the medal, and buried them in a fireproof safe in the backyard. He held a flashlight against his chest, and a soup spoon in his right hand. It was two in the morning and the temperature was at least ten below freezing. Dr. Raiis’s hands and body shivered from the cold and from fear, but his insides felt hot, and his hair was wet with perspiration. The flashlight kept slipping from its tenuous cradle and the neck of the spoon bent a little more every time he tried to break the ice with it. He realized he should be using a shovel, but that would have raised too much suspicion on the part of the servants. They were always watching him, sifting through the trash, eavesdropping on his conversations, and reporting even the most banal details to the local komiteh. He had snuck the spoon into his pocket the day before when the cook was taking his afternoon nap, and so was digging in the dark.

  “It doesn’t matter what’s true,” Zeeba had told him a thousand times before he woke up, bloody and beaten and strapped naked to a chair in the basement of the Evin Prison, “only what’s believed.”

  Dr. Raiis had bet his whole life on a single truth, and lost.

  __________________

  Zeeba Raiis needed a place in which to live and Elizabeth couldn’t afford the rent on her own apartment without help from John Vain, so she invited Zeeba to share the one-bedroom in Beverly Hills. She and her daughters took the sofa bed in the living room; Elizabeth and Angela slept on a twin-size mattress in the bedroom. The close quarters—barely eight hundred square feet—would have been unimaginable in Tehran, but in Los Angeles the apartment became a source of comfort for everyone living
in it.

  The two older girls, Angela and Nilou, became fast friends. Nilou—blue petal—was a beautiful creature with exuberant charm and a solid mind. Angela was bold and outspoken and already able to debate any issue to her opponent’s death. Next to them, Zeeba’s younger daughter, Neda, had as much personality as a dying slug on a burning sidewalk in August.

  She was such an oddity at school, so unable to make friends or even get a pity invitation to any of the dozens of gatherings and parties that took place every weekend, she might go entire days without exchanging more than a handful of words with anyone but Nilou or Angela. If anyone did notice Neda, they would see that she studied through every moment of every day: during recess and lunch at school, at home in the afternoon, even Friday nights. Her social life consisted of hanging back in a corner of the room when Nilou and Angela had friends over. The only phone calls she received were from kids who wanted to know what the homework was or what test they had to prepare for.

  During the school year, she took the bus home every afternoon and stayed in till the morning. On weekends and holidays she studied or walked to Roxbury Park to hit tennis balls against the wall by herself. She chewed her nails and bit her lips till they bled, never spoke in class unless she was called upon by a teacher, and then, though she knew her lessons inside out, often mumbled the wrong answer.

  She was so insipid and slow, so quavering even before her own shadow, that Angela declared her an “endangered species, like the ones that can’t survive on their own. You have to keep her in a protected place and watch so she doesn’t get torn up or shot by humans.” Even at that age, Angela had a way with words.

  * * *

  Angela’s old classmates from elementary school in Iran would later attribute her hard edges to the French education she had received at the Lycée Razi in Tehran. Her teachers were all French and so were many of the students, which meant no one had time for subtlety or tripe or the nonsense known as “sparing another’s feelings.” They were permanently out of sorts because they had once “owned” Persia but lost it to the Russians and the English and finally the Americans; they thought their language was the most beautiful in the world and their culture the most refined, but they fell in that battle to the English and the Americans as well. As a result, they were forever eager to tell the world just what was wrong with it. Every other sentence they uttered began with, “Je vais vous parler franchement”—I’m going to be frank with you—which meant that what followed was going to be hurtful or offensive or worse, and that there was no room for disagreement or negotiation.

  In time, Angela herself would attribute her combative attitude to “a genetic inability to roll over and play dead.” That didn’t mean, as some people believed, that she actively relished fighting. It was just that life had presented her with a choice between bowing her head and taking the blows, or charging out of the gate every day, ready for a fight. In middle school in LA, when the other girls excluded her from games at recess, she would confront them—one against a dozen—and demand a place. When the boys pointed at her overly developed breasts and called her “dairy cow,” she would shove them and stand her ground until she was bloodied and bruised and sent off to the principal’s office. In high school, when the American kids laughed at her matronly clothes and geeky glasses, called her “rag-head” and asked if people in Tehran still rode to school and work on camels and donkeys, when strangers stopped her on the street to tell her to go home, called her “sand-nigger” and “hostage-taker,” she yelled back and told them just how ignorant and misguided she thought they were, how empty their lives must be.

  Her resilience helped Angela endure the unpredictability and dislocation of the first few years of exile. Her single-mindedness helped her overcome language and financial barriers, resist the hungry pull of inertia and hopelessness that could otherwise have consumed her when she lost her father, sister, and home, all within a three-year span.

  But there was also this: it wasn’t all up to her. Where she fit in wasn’t entirely a matter of choice.

  __________________

  Once, two years after they had arrived in Los Angeles, an elderly American woman she had met only minutes earlier gave Elizabeth a compliment on her watch. They were at Lucky 99; the woman was a patron; the watch was a wedding gift from Aaron.

  “I like your watch,” the woman said. “It’s so art deco.”

  Elizabeth had no idea what art deco was, but she knew the proper response to an older woman’s expression of flattery. She took the watch off and held it out to the American. “It’s not worthy of your excellence,” she said, presenting it to her as an offering.

  That was a taarof—the only civil way to respond. It was done every minute of every day in every corner of Iran and among Iranians in America. Upon getting passengers to their destination, a cab driver with any class would refuse to accept payment. Store owners declined to charge for merchandise. Diners invited strangers to share their food.

  But taarof worked both ways. The person receiving the offer was certain to reject it. The only people who were exempt from this were members of the royal families dating back many hundreds of years. They were the true owners of everything—people as well as things—in the country; everyone else was just a caretaker. The royals didn’t have to ask, and certainly didn’t have to pay for what was theirs in the first place; they just had to “admire” something—a house, a farm, a beautiful woman—and it would be offered to them on the spot, under the implied penalty of death. Mere mortals, on the other hand, wouldn’t dream of accepting a taarof.

  Sadly for Elizabeth, the American woman at Lucky 99 didn’t have a clue what taarof was. She took the watch. “My goodness!” she cooed. “How very generous of you.”

  She slipped off her own watch, put it into her purse, and wore Elizabeth’s instead.

  “Thank you.” She sounded suspicious, as if the thing may explode any minute. Then she started to walk away.

  When she saw this, Angela, who was old enough to understand what had just happened but not too old to not express herself freely, pulled at Elizabeth’s arm and said, loudly, “Why did you do that?”

  Elizabeth was mortified that the woman might hear Angela’s objection. She tried to shush her, but that only incited Angela more.

  “Get it back!” she yelled.

  Elizabeth pulled Angela out of the woman’s earshot. “Stop that,” she said. “It’s unseemly.”

  Angela hated that phrase. “It’s unseemly”—bah-deh—was an ax that fell in a Persian household dozens of times a day.

  To renege on an offer that had been made and accepted would mean you weren’t as good as your word, and that you cared more about material possessions than your aabehroo.

  “But it’s not the same with Americans!” Angela pleaded. “They don’t know you were taarof-ing. It’s not unseemly to ask for it back.”

  As they walked past the woman’s table to leave the restaurant, Elizabeth and Angela heard her say to her companions, “These rich A-rabs don’t know what to do with all that oil money.”

  __________________

  The oil money, of course, was flowing anywhere but into the pockets of Iranian Jews in exile. It belonged strictly to the mullahs and the army of thugs and cutthroats they called Sepah-e Pasdaran. If it wasn’t used to round up and torture and kill their political opponents, it was stowed away in bank accounts in Switzerland, the Caymans, and the United States. The vast majority of Iranians who took refuge in the West after the revolution escaped with barely more than their lives. It is true that most were more educated than the average immigrant, that centuries of French, English, and American influence in Iran had made them conversant not only in the language but also in the culture of the West. In this regard they had more in common with immigrants from Western nations than with others, but just like all immigrants, they worked hard and paid dearly for their success. The storybook life, of palatial homes and red Ferraris and shopping trips to Neiman Marcus, belonged to on
ly a sliver of the Iranian immigrant population.

  __________________

  Zeeba told Elizabeth what she knew of the fate of the Soleyman holdings in Iran: it was based mostly on rumors, Zeeba said, and a few notices in the newspaper or on the radio while she was still in the country. Bagh-e Yaas, she said, had become the private residence of Seyyed Mojtaba, his two wives, young children, and many relatives. Soleyman Enterprises and its assets had been “nationalized” immediately upon Elizabeth’s escape, which meant a handful of mullahs had become very rich.

  Elizabeth had heard the same reports from a number of other recent refugees, and she gleaned as much from the few phone conversations she’d had with Manzel’s husband recently. She had not called or written to them for over a year after she left Iran because all the mail was monitored—opened and reviewed before being delivered—and the phone calls were listened to. In the case of Manzel’s family, things were even more difficult because they shared a phone line with eight other households. Her neighbors knew she had worked for Elizabeth who was now a fugitive. Like most believers in those early days of the revolution, they trusted the mullahs’ good intentions and pure motives. Every day on the radio and television, the mullahs said that America, Israel, and the taaghooti—the corrupt on earth—had conspired to crush the movement and return the monarchy to Iran. The shah may be dead, but his two sons and many siblings were alive and scheming. To prevent their takeover of the country, every citizen had a duty to spy on all others. Mother against child, student against teacher, brother against sister—no matter how close the ties, the sanctity of a person’s faith superseded the relationship.

  Manzel’s neighbors eavesdropped on each other and listened in on the phone. They would not have hesitated to report her to the Pasdaran—the mullahs’ private army—or to complain to Mojtaba about her sedition.