The Street of Butterflies

by Mehri Yalfani

  Azar was glued to her seat at the table. She didn’t have the energy to move.

  Nahid didn’t feel sleepy either. Since she had seen the baby in Azar’s arms she had been disturbed. She didn’t want to accept it. She was ashamed of talking about the baby, and all she wanted was to forget that he existed, but he was as real as the sunlight that streamed through the apartment and she couldn’t deny that he was there, with them.

  “I don’t understand why you left Mahmood,” Nahid said. “You seemed so much in love with him.”

  Azar lifted her eyes to look at her sister. She was pinching and shaping a piece of bread into a gummy ball. “You thought I was in love with him? Uncle wanted us to get married. He wanted his son to have a wife in exile and not be lonely. Baba and Maman liked it, too; they were happy to get rid of me. They were too old when they had me and couldn’t take care of me.”

  “And you liked going to Canada.”

  “Yes, but I was a stupid young girl then. What can you expect from a seventeen-year-old? Why did Maman and Baba have another child when they already had three grown up children? What would have happened if they hadn’t had me?”

  “Complaining about the past won’t solve anything. Do you think life here will be easy for you with a fatherless child?” Nahid snapped.

  “Nahid, if you had lived there too, you would understand what I went through,” Azar replied with a lump in her throat. Brushing away the tears that had started to spill down her cheeks, she added, “I had nobody over there, nobody, you understand? I spent ten of my best years with Mahmood. He wouldn’t allow me to continue my education and finish high school. He didn’t want me have a child. And he wouldn’t let me get a job. And when I left, he denied me everything. I was lucky I didn’t end up in a hospital. Alen helped me when I was desperate and had nowhere to go.”

  Nahid stood behind her, and impulsively threw her arms around her shoulders, holding her close without saying a word.

  The sun now flooded the room. Nahid was wondering if the telephone would ring and if Nastaran or Niloofar would want to come to see their aunt. She said, finally, “I understand. It was hard for you. But you should have written to me sooner.”

  Azar answered coldly, “I didn’t write to anyone, about anything. No, I didn’t want to moan and beg for your help. Don’t you remember, once I complained that Mahmood had insulted me, and you wrote to me saying that I had to accept his ways. Correct? So, I didn’t write anymore.”

  Nahid softened her tone and tried to be more compassionate: “But you should have written to me about this much sooner.”

  Hurt and surprised, Azar asked, “Written to you about what?”

  “About being pregnant before you were married.”

  And after a while she continued, “And when the boy had his accident.”

  “The boy! You mean Alen?”

  “Yes,” Nahid answered.

  “Well, I did write to you, and I talked to you about it on phone.”

  “But you didn’t tell me you were pregnant.”

  “No, I didn’t tell you I was pregnant. I knew if I told you about it, you would encourage me to have an abortion and I didn’t want that.”

  “What do you want to do now?”

  “You tell me what should I do. This child is my son. I gave birth to him. I’m still breastfeeding him. I have an Iranian birth certificate and an Iranian passport for him. I wanted to bring him Iran to introduce him to his relatives. And now you’re suggesting…”

  Azar got up from the table, went to the living room and sat on a big sofa. Outside the window, two tall buildings blocked her view. The sun dipped behind a cloud and the room suddenly seemed dark.

  Nahid sat on the edge of a sofa as if she had something urgent to do and was poised to get up and leave. She was restless and anxious. She looked at the clock on the wall and the narrow ray of sunlight that was making its way back into the apartment. She couldn’t see the sky beyond the buildings outside her living room window, but she could smell the air pollution that would get denser as the day progressed. With sadness and disappointment in her voice, she said, “Azar jaan, don’t be upset with me.”

  But Azar raised her voice involuntarily and said, “Tell me what to do. I can’t hide him. I can’t kill him.” She covered her face with her hands and burst into tears. Sobbing and shaking, she jumped when she heard the baby cry and rushed to the bedroom. Nahid followed her and stood by the door as Azar took the baby in her arms, opened her shirt, and tenderly held the baby to her breast. Standing by the door, Nahid thought she should hug and kiss Azar, and the baby, but she couldn’t make herself step forward. The baby was like a scar in her sister’s arms, and again Nahid wished he simply didn’t exist.

  Wiping the tears from her face, Azar watched her baby suck slowly and rhythmically.

  Nahid was consumed by shame, anger, and frustration. She had to find a solution. Anxiety was like a fire burning her insides.

  Azar lifted her head and looked at Nahid with tears still glistening on her cheek. “I am sorry, Nahid jaan. I didn’t want to make problems for you.”

  Nahid tried to control her anger “I have chores to do, my dear,” she replied tersely. And then she continued, “I’m sure that Nastaran, Niloofar, and their children will come to visit today. Then Mehdi and Farhad, and then others. I will have to tell them.”

  “Tell them? Tell them what? You mean about Alen? Or about the baby? You shouldn’t tell them anything. I will tell them and answer all their questions. You don’t need to worry.”

  “You will tell them? What do you want to tell them? For example, what will you say to Mostafa? If you only knew how hypocritical he is! If he learns that you are not married, he will make sure that I am disgraced in front of everyone like a worthless penny.”

  The baby let go of his mother’s breast and looked around. He gurgled and smiled at his mother. Azar lifted him to her face and gently kissed him. She let his head rest on her shoulder and tapped lightly on his back. The baby’s dark skin contrasted sharply against his mother’s pale skin. Azar didn’t say a word. As if she hadn’t heard a word Nahid said.

  “Do you remember how I took care of Nastaran and Niloofar when you and Mostafa went to Shokoofe New or Cabaret Miami or to the Caspian shore?” Azar said.

  Nahid wanted to say we also took you to the Caspian shore with us, but she didn’t. She wasn’t in the mood to chat about the past. The past was lost somewhere, where even remembering it seemed unreal. She didn’t want to get close to the baby or to hold him or hug him. The baby was a stranger to her. Azar couldn’t be his mother and it wasn’t clear who his father was either. It wasn’t Alen. The Alen whose photo Nahid had seen bore no similarity to this six-month-old baby. He didn’t look like Azar, either. Where had Azar found him? A thought lit her mind like a lightening bolt but she didn’t dare voice it. Suddenly, a hint of joy lit her face. She moved closer to Azar and took the baby from her arms. The baby gazed up at her, his eyes black, wide, and innocent, and smiled crookedly at her before he began to wail. If Azar hadn’t been right there, she might have imagined that Nahid had pinched him. Nahid promptly handed him back to his mother and said, “He doesn’t know me yet.”

  Azar said, “He knows you and he is aware that he’s not welcomed by you.” She caressed the baby to soothe him and he quickly calmed down.

  Nahid left the bedroom and turned her head to add, “I have to make something for lunch and dinner. Niloofar and Nastaran may come at any moment. You’d better rest.”

  Azar wondered what had happened to Nahid. Her attitude toward Azar had changed; her cheerful nature had become somber. Azar was hurt by Nahid, who had always been like a mother to her. Now she regretted returning to Iran. Since the first moment Nahid had seen the baby in her arms and realized that he had been conceived outside of marriage, her attitude had changed and there was a new coldness in her words and expre
ssions.

  Azar placed the baby on the bed and lay down beside him. She burst into tears, but tired and frustrated, she soon fell asleep next to her infant son. When she woke, the baby was awake, too, his fingers curled into her hair.

  Nahid opened the door quietly and entered the room. “You slept for two hours. Are you still tired?”

  Still angry, Azar was aloof. “Yes, I slept.” She sat up, looked at the baby whose arms and legs danced in the air. Azar felt her heart sink when she looked into his big, black eyes. The baby’s innocent stare always made her cry and Alen’s memory was like an arrow piercing her chest.

  Nahid sat down beside Azar and said, “I have an idea. I mean, I have a solution.” She placed her arm around Azar’s shoulders with the gentleness and kindness of earlier days. “I thought we might tell Nastaran, Niloofar, and the others that this baby is your adopted child, not your real child….”

  Nahid stopped abruptly and looked curiously at Azar’s blank expression. It seemed Azar hadn’t understood what Nahid had meant.

  Azar was quiet and waited for Nahid to finish.

  Nahid said, “It’s not a bad idea. You won’t need to explain. You know, getting pregnant before marriage…”

  Azar shook her haed and said, “I don’t understand at all. I explained everything to you and wrote to you. My doctor said, go to your country and be with your family and you said, come. And now…”

  Nahid interrupted her and added, “It’s all right with me. My problem is with Mostafa, with Nastaran and Niloofar, Mehdi, Farhad, and their relatives. I don’t want my daughters to be humiliated in the eyes of their husbands and their relatives…”

  “I know,” Azar said, her lips tightly pursed.

  Nahid hugged her and kissed her. “Try to understand my situation. Now you’re in Iran, not in Canada. Here things are different. People judge you. Do you remember how strict Maman was with you? You should understand this.”

  “I do,” Azar replied, her tone frosty.

  “So, you won’t mind if I tell my children that you adopted this child?” Nahid said, her voice firm.

  Stunned and incredulous, Azar looked at Nahid and said nothing. Then she picked up her son and gently placed him at her breast.

  A Suitable Choice

  IS IT MY FAULT? No, it’s not. It happened without my intention. I don’t know why everyone puts the guilt on men in these situations. Why is it my fault? What did he expect from me? I wanted to collect my belongings and leave—he wouldn’t let me. Well, then it happened. I didn’t mean it to happen. So it’s not my fault.

  Is it my fault? No, it’s not. Yes, I betrayed Gholam, but I didn’t want to. The fact is, I didn’t choose him. How could I make a choice from such a long distance? Yes, I saw his photo, and a five-minute videotape, and I talked to him on the phone, once. That’s it. I just wanted to escape from that damn place. Gholam made it possible for me to do so.

  Is it my fault? I don’t think so. But everybody put the blame on me. Yes, I shouldn’t have married a woman I didn’t know well, had only seen in a photo, and talked to once in a phone call. “A big mistake,” Kamyar had said. Not only Kamyar, but some of my other friends had also told me the same thing, directly or indirectly: “It might not have a happy ending.”

  It was my mother’s fault. She came to visit me after seven years. She was shocked by my life, thought my apartment was a mess. “A pig sty,” is how she described it. “Oh, my God, so many girls in Iran looking for a man like you, and you are still a bachelor? When I go back to Iran I’ll do something about it –a suitable wife, that’s what you need.” Yes, it was my mother who sent me a wife. And now everyone thinks I am the guilty party.

  What should I have done then? Gholam didn’t want me to leave. We had been roommates for a while and we lived in peace and harmony. It was Sima who caused the problems. Yes, it’s true that I was attracted to Sima from the moment we first met. She wasn’t a very beautiful or even a good-looking young woman, but she was sweet and cordial and there was something about her that was enchanting. We became friends quickly. I couldn’t believe she was raised in Iran. When I lived there, girls, women, were different. Most were shy and never got familiar with a man they didn’t know. But Sima was easygoing, as if she had known me for years. How can I put it? She wasn’t shy at all.

  Kamyar and I became friends first. Well, I don’t like building a wall between people and myself. Both came to greet me at the airport when I arrived. At first glance, I liked Kamyar, but when Gholam handed me the bouquet of flowers, I realized he was the person I would be marrying. Everybody called it “a suitable choice.” What a choice! Kamyar was filming us. Gholam introduced him to me as his friend and roommate. We became friends that first night. We all lived in the same house.

  She became more intimate with Kamyar than me. I was dazed and tongue-tied. I couldn’t believe this educated, charming, chatty, and friendly woman was my wife. Yes, I’m not as socially comfortable with women as Kamyar is. He says, “You’ve imprisoned yourself in your small world: work, work, and work, nothing else. You don’t read any books, you don’t watch any films, and you even don’t read the newspapers or watch TV.” He’s right, but why is that wrong? I don’t have time for those things.

  I believe it was Gholam’s fault. I told him, don’t do it, it’s risky. “What’s risky?” he said. “So many people get married this way. I am not the first to do this.”

  I told him, “There is a risk that you will not understand each other, or even like each other. How can you get to know her when she lives few thousand kilometres away, and all you have seen is a photo and a video?”

  “When she arrives here, I will get to know her,” he said.

  “I don’t think that is the right thing to do,” I insisted.

  Gholam said I should have learned everything there was to know about him from the five-minute videotape I was sent, and from our short telephone call. How could I? When I saw him at the airport, even at first glance, I realized he wasn’t for me. If Kamyar weren’t there, I might have liked Gholam, but next to Kamyar, he wasn’t attractive at all. They were completely different. Kamyar was young, tall, and handsome, and Gholam was chubby, older, and almost bald. His name! Gholam! In Canada, they call him Gol. I find that terribly funny. In Farsi, “Gol” means flower! “You’re my wife,” he said. “You married me. You knew me.”

  I replied, “How could I know you? How could I know anything about you at all?”

  “You chose me,” he implored.

  I wished I could tell him that if Kamyar had sent me his videotape I would have chosen Kamyar, but I didn’t have a choice—the only videotape I was shown was Gholam’s.

  Yes, it was my fault, but many men marry this way and their wives turn out to be nice women and they have happy lives. It was my fault that I didn’t ask Kamyar to leave my house before she arrived. To tell you the truth, I couldn’t do it. We lived together for more than seven years, and we’d never had any problems. He wasn’t only my tenant; he was like a brother to me, a younger brother. He cared about me. He worked nights and slept during the day and was no trouble at all. Indeed, we were good friends.

  When I heard his wife was going to arrive soon, I’d said to Gholam, “I’d better move out. Not be in your way.”

  “No need to move out. Please stay,” he’d said, sounding hurt. “You’re like a brother to me. You know that.”

  Well, we were like brothers, I can’t deny that. We never had a problem. He’s a patient, generous man.

  Gholam is a nice man. It’s just that he’s not chatty. He normally has nothing to talk about, but he’s a good listener. When Kamyar is with us, I like to talk. But with Gholam I have nothing to say. It’s as if the words are stuck to in my mouth and won’t come out. There’s a distance between us, and it is getting wider and wider. Yes, he’s much older than Kamyar and me—fifteen years older. Kamyar and I are the same
age. When I realized Kamyar was six months younger than me, I laughed and teased, “You’re still a child!”

  “What do you mean?” he said. “Then, you’re a child, too!”

  “No,” I giggle, “I will be twenty-five before you are.”

  Sima and Kamyar always teased me about their age, reminding me that I’m getting old. In four months, I will turn forty. “I would never have guessed you are forty,” Sima said. “You don’t look like you’re forty.”

  I said, “I am thirty-nine, I am not forty yet!”

  Gholam looks like a person who has swallowed a stick: always upright, unable to laugh at any joke. Whenever we, I mean Kamyar and I, tell a joke, he shows no interest. If Gholam and I lived in Iran, with this attitude he has, I would have turned into dust by now; I couldn’t bear it. Life is not only formality and morality. To be free to talk, to live and to laugh as I like were my main reasons for wanting to leave Iran; otherwise, I would have been crazy to leave my family, my friends, and my home. We are in Canada, not in the Islamic Republic of Iran where laughter is an offence.

  She’s friendly, sincere, helpful, and lively. When she arrived, my friends came to visit. She entertained them with her numerous jokes. Her loud, joyful laughter was contagious and everybody enjoyed her presence. I could see my friends were envious, thinking I was lucky to have such a good wife. I wished they were right. Yes, I have a good wife, but I was not sure I could keep her—and not because I didn’t want to keep her. I love her, but it seems she doesn’t feel the same way about me. She is more interested in Kamyar than me.

  He should have realized that Sima wasn’t interested in him. They are made from different dough, completely different from each other. Even though she didn’t tell me at first, later, when we were more intimate, she admitted it was a big mistake. “What do you mean—a big mistake?”

  Although I knew what she actually meant, I asked, “Coming to Canada was a mistake?”

  “No,” she said. “Choosing Gholam as a husband was a mistake.”