Stranger No More

by Annahita Parsan

  I was twenty-one years old. In Iran it was perfectly normal to have two or more children by that age. But in Denmark the rules were different. Even though a lot of the people I studied with were older, I saw enough twenty-year-olds around the college to know that they were carefree and funny, like slightly taller versions of their adolescent selves, only with money to spend and cars to drive. I knew I could never be like them, but for just a few moments every week, I could at least pretend.

  Because I dropped Roksana off at day care while I studied, nobody knew I was a mother. I told no one about my life, so nobody knew that I was married either. Not that anyone ever asked. It suited me fine, for though I had my moments when I liked to pretend that I was one of them, I could always hear Asghar’s voice loud in my head.

  “Don’t look to the Danish people, and don’t ever make friends with them,” he’d say whenever we were out together, usually for me to act as his translator if he had to visit the doctor or run some other errand that placed too many demands on his limited Danish vocabulary. “We’re Persian, so don’t make friends with them. Look to me instead.”

  The more time he spent with his Iranian friends, the more involved he got in politics. He would deliver long lectures about the failings of Khomeini’s regime and talk endlessly about the way he and his friends were going to help get the Shah back into power. In their minds, at least, they were still fighting. But from what I heard when I cleaned up after them as they sat around our home, it seemed they were spending less time fighting the regime and more time jostling among each other for power.

  Asghar’s loyalist group kept him busy, but it did not keep him calm. He still raged and ranted, still lashed out whenever he was displeased. If I got upset about Daniel, he would shout at me. If Roksana played too loudly, he would shout at her. And if the shouting did not satisfy him, which it rarely ever did, he would use his fists.

  Ever since we had married Asghar had called me a whore. He accused me of being unfaithful with so many different people, I grew a little deaf to it. But as I put more effort into my studies, I guess it was only inevitable that he would start to focus on the people I was with at college.

  “Where were you at noon today?” he asked one evening.

  It was an unusual question, and it caught me off guard. “I had English,” I said, my voice a little weak.

  “Which room were you in?”

  I told him the number and went back to feeding Roksana.

  The next night, as soon as he came home, he was wild. “Why do you lie to me?” he shouted, slamming a dish out of my hand and sending it crashing into the wall. “What are you trying to hide?”

  “Nothing,” I said, my eyes looking down far enough to appear submissive, but remaining high enough to be able to spot the next attack.

  “I came to the room today at twelve, and you were not there. Who were you with? You are your teacher’s whore, yes?”

  I tried to explain the way that college worked, how we moved from classroom to classroom for each lesson, but it did no good. Nothing I could say would stop him.

  The next day one of my tutors called me to one side. “Annahita, is your dad going to visit today?”

  I looked at her, confused. “My dad?”

  “Yes, he was here yesterday. The office says that he comes a lot. It’s really disruptive, you know.”

  “I know, but he’s not my dad. He’s my husband.” I watched her face freeze for a moment, then snap back into life. When she spoke again, she put her hand on my shoulder. I winced a little as the bruised flesh cried out. “Okay, well, you have to stop him, Annahita. We can’t have him coming here and peering into all the classrooms like he does.”

  I wondered for a moment what would happen if I told her everything. Would she believe me? Could she help? Would it even make any difference at all? As far as I could tell, the only outcome would be a lot more violence. So I bit my tongue.

  By the time the academic year ended, we had been in Denmark for nine months. We had moved out of the shared house and into an apartment of our own on the outskirts of Copenhagen. It was a little bigger than the two rooms we had before, and I liked the fact that there was a playground outside that I could easily see from the kitchen window up there on the third floor. As summer brought with it long evenings and warm days, I liked to daydream about watching Daniel and Roksana playing on the swings together.

  I had enrolled at a new college and found it to be just as warm and friendly as the previous one. As the semester drew to a close, somehow I had let slip to Asghar that I had been invited to an end-of-year party run by the faculty. I told him I wasn’t going, but he surprised me when he asked why not.

  “You won’t like it,” I said. I must have been especially tired because my tongue then got a little loose. “You’ll just accuse me of being with other men. It’s not worth the pain.”

  Asghar drew himself up to his full height, donned a serious expression, and nodded a little. He looked like he was auditioning for the role of high court judge in a badly acted television show. “No, no, no,” he said, his hands held out wide. “You must go. I will borrow from one of my friends, and I will drive you.”

  I didn’t like this game. It was new and unpredictable. “No, Asghar. I’m not going.”

  “Yes, you are. You must go.”

  I had no choice. Even when he didn’t manage to borrow his friend’s car for the night he still insisted that I go. He had never behaved like that before, and it left me confused. Perhaps that was why I accepted the glass of red wine that was pressed into my hand. It was the first time I had ever tasted it, and soon my head was a little light and my balance a little off.

  He could still smell it on me as soon as I walked back into our apartment. He stood up and walked toward me, eyes locked, sniffing as though he were a wolf and I a wounded lamb.

  “You drank alcohol?”

  I started to explain, but his hand stung my cheek before I could get the words out. He grabbed my hair and dragged me toward the bedroom. My feet couldn’t keep up. I could feel the skin coming away from the top of my head.

  He pushed me onto the bed. I tried to hide, to make myself small and protect myself with the pillows and the covers, but he grabbed me again. He was shouting at the top of his voice, calling me every obscenity imaginable. Reaching under the bed he pulled out a stick as thick as my wrist and as long as my leg. He had always said that he had it to protect us from intruders, but that night he lifted it high to strike me.

  I was supposed to return to the college the next day to talk about the next year and hand in some paper work. I had spent most of the night in the bathroom, watching the bruises emerge across my chest, arms, side, and legs. I had a cut across my face that had barely stopped bleeding and a black eye that was already swollen. No amount of makeup would cover it up, and whenever I tried to walk, my steps were those of an old woman.

  When it was time to leave the apartment, I phoned my teacher instead. Asghar was asleep and I was desperate not to wake him, but as soon as the cheery female voice on the other end said my name, I started to cry.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I’m okay. I have just been sick in the night. Can I mail you the paperwork?”

  “Of course,” she said. A long pause followed. “We want to help you, Annahita.”

  I knew that she spoke the truth, and I didn’t doubt that she cared, but what could she do? There was no way she could help. And deep inside, a part of me doubted that I even deserved to be rescued. The words I had heard after Mohammad’s death—that God was punishing me—still continued to haunt me.

  I couldn’t understand what I had done to deserve Mohammad’s death, but if I abandoned my husband, what would God do to me then? I was terrified of God, terrified of causing further shame for my family back home. That fear kept me trapped more than any bars of any cell I had been kept behind in Turkey.

  The only thing I could do was hide. I hid my story from my fellow students and teachers, as well
as from my parents. I hid my bruises behind makeup and my sorrow behind hard work. I hid my hope of seeing Daniel from Asghar, for fear of making him mad. I hid from Roksana my fear that one day he would turn on his own daughter.

  I was hiding everything. Soon there would be nothing left.

  I had already decided not to go outside the morning that someone knocked at the door. I checked the spy hole. A man and woman stood there, both wearing smart suits and holding briefcases. I panicked. If they were from immigration it couldn’t be good news. If they were here about last night’s fight, it could be even worse. I stuck to my plan and backed quietly away from the door.

  The wounds I had received at the start of the summer had long since faded, but the previous night had brought a fresh batch of sharp pain in my muscles and deep red marks across my skin. Most of the time Asghar stuck to body shots, but from time to time he favored a black eye or a cut cheek. Last night I had gotten both.

  The move to Copenhagen had brought us into contact with new friends. They were still Iranian, naturally, and it was only ever Asghar who invited people over to visit with us. But as we sat around and I listened to Asghar talk with the couple who had recently arrived from our homeland, I was reminded of what a normal life for a married couple was like. They were relaxed and talked easily about the life they had left behind and the future they were hoping for. I remembered talking like that with Mohammad. It was a lifetime ago.

  Whatever calm was in the room did not last. As the conversation turned to politics and Asghar’s role in the fight to put the Shah back in power, the atmosphere grew tense. I wasn’t even following the discussion anymore. I had seen the twist of Asghar’s jaw and the set of his eyes. I knew what was coming.

  Soon Asghar had shed his polite skin and was standing up, shouting at me for letting the tea go cold. The couple dropped their eyes to the ground, so they didn’t see Asghar reach into his pocket and pull out the gray-handled box cutter. But I did. I knew it was only a matter of time before he held it up in front of his face, pushed up the blade, and said, “Your father never taught you anything. So now it’s my turn.”

  Asghar had been carrying the knife for a couple of weeks. He hadn’t cut me yet, but as he wrapped his fingers around it and punched me hard in the chest, I felt a new level of pain in my ribs.

  Our guests had shouted at him to stop. The husband tried to take the knife, and the wife stood in the gap between Asghar and me. That gave me the time to run to the bathroom and hide. I listened to him curse them out until they reluctantly left. When Asghar broke the lock, there was nothing I could do.

  The knock at the door was insistent. Asghar hadn’t come home since he’d left in the middle of the night, and in an instant I decided to change my mind. After all, I said to myself as I opened the door, how much worse could things get?

  I could barely understand anything they said. They spoke English, not Danish, and I could only pick out a few words. “God . . . Jesus . . . book . . .”

  “I not speak English. Speak Farsi,” I said, trying to remember the words for “Can you repeat that slower please?” They smiled a lot and carried on talking about God and Jesus, but soon it was obvious that the conversation was going nowhere.

  “Tomorrow?” the woman said, looking hopeful. “Here?”

  I said yes, though I didn’t really know what to, and closed the door.

  When they knocked the next day, it was raining hard, but their smiles were just as bright. They didn’t try to talk too much, but instead the woman handed me a book. She clasped her hands together in front of her chest, and then they both said good-bye.

  I shut the door and looked at the slab of paper and leather in my hands. I recognized the script as Farsi, my native tongue. It was a Bible. When I skimmed the pages, I struggled to understand the words, for even though I recognized the letters, the words themselves were so old and antiquated that the sentences barely made any sense at all.

  Great, I thought. What do I do with this? I couldn’t read the thing, so I could see no point in keeping it. But could I throw it away? Surely that would really anger God. For years I’d been trying to block out the fear that God might be punishing me. So I put the Bible at the top of the bookcase. It was one more thing to try and forget about.

  Asghar spent more and more time with the supporters of the Shah. Sometimes I was grateful for the amount of time it took him away from home, but as much as it helped it also harmed. From the little he told me, there were constant struggles for power within the group. When he felt as though his influence was fading, his temper at home grew even worse.

  A few months after I was given the Bible, Asghar returned home in just such a mood. He started an argument about my cooking, and it soon developed into a tirade against my character. It was the same words and the same hatred that I had heard a hundred times before, but this time, as he accused me of spreading rumors about him among the group and stormed back out of the house, I did something I had never done before. I reached up to the top of the bookcase and pulled down the Bible. For the first time ever, I prayed.

  “If you are there, please show him that it wasn’t me.”

  I don’t know why I reached for the Bible, why I prayed, or why I kissed it before putting it back. I had barely thought about God since Mohammad’s death; only when I was at my lowest point and begged him for a swift death. All the rest of the time I was too busy surviving to wonder whether God cared at all about my life.

  But in the moment that I held the Bible to my face and smelled the old leather and fresh printed pages, something within me shifted. Somewhere deep inside I was admitting that I needed him. It was a tiny move on my part, a microscopic event. It wasn’t even a step of faith so much as an act of desperation.

  And when Asghar returned a few hours later and apologized for accusing me falsely, I was stunned.

  It took a year for my parents and Daniel to get their passports and half as long again for the Danish embassy to issue visas. It had been two and a half years total since I had said good-bye to my son. So when the day finally came and my dad called with the news that they were ready to travel, I needed several minutes to let the words sink in.

  Soon I was crying with joy and relief, picking Roksana up and whirling her around the apartment, telling her that at last her big brother was going to come and live with us.

  I had a month to prepare before their arrival, and I threw myself into the tasks ahead of me. I made enquiries to enroll Daniel in a school, painted his room, and found him a bed that was being thrown out as scrap by one of our neighbors. I searched the Goodwill stores for new clothes and asked anyone I knew with a son what seven-year-old boys liked best.

  Ever since marrying Asghar I had struggled to sleep properly, but now instead of fear keeping me awake, it was nothing but pure happiness that robbed me of sleep.

  Even Asghar joined in. “I will be a good father to him,” he said, more than once. “And when Cherie comes, too, we will finally be a family again.” I was too happy to question his promises and too distracted to wonder how he really would react to Daniel’s return. All that mattered was that my boy was coming back.

  It was almost painful to stand at the arrivals gate in the Copenhagen airport, scrutinizing the bodies shuffling through the doors. So many times I thought it was them, only to be disappointed. I could feel the air grow heavy within me, feel my breathing quicken and my hands get clammy as they curled around Roksana’s. It had been too long, all but a month of Roksana’s lifetime.

  When I finally saw them—my parents pushing a trolley laden with cases—there was no sign of Daniel. I strained to get a better look, confused at what might have happened, my hands clasped tight against my chest. Then I saw his feet, fumbling along behind the trolley. My son’s feet, walking toward me.

  Dad pushed the trolley ahead as they cleared the barriers, and I finally got to see all of my boy. He had grown so tall and looked so handsome. A million fireworks exploded within me as I knelt down to greet hi
m. Tears soaking my face, I threw my arms wide and called out his name. “Daniel! Daniel! My son!”

  Mom guided him forward, and he stood, cold and still. I held him tight, but it was like embracing a ghost.

  Even though Daniel had been avoiding my calls all this time, I had thought, somewhere in the back of my mind, that we just needed to be reunited physically and everything would fall into place. But things were not that simple. All the joy and hope that had been bubbling over soured that instant. All that was left was disappointment, pain, and confusion. How could I reach my boy? He was closed to me. Everything was locked away. Had the cord between us been broken forever? I loved him still, there was no doubt about it, but could he ever love me again? Could I ever gain back his trust?

  I opened my eyes and looked up. I wanted to compose myself before saying a few words, but I stopped short when I saw Asghar staring at the two of us, his face enraged. I remembered again the jealousy which had burned within him whenever I had hugged Daniel in Isfahan. I remembered the way he hated it whenever I showed Daniel any kind of affection. The memory made me shiver.

  Back in the apartment, we settled into a strange version of family life. I was desperate to break through to Daniel but also fearful of what might happen if Asghar allowed his anger to surface. I could tell that Mom and Dad were watching Asghar carefully, wondering whether it was safe to leave Daniel with him. Roksana reacted as any two-and-a-half-year-old would to the sudden arrival of an older brother and grandparents—sometimes with joy and sometimes with frustration. Daniel showed no sign of warming to me, and I noticed him freezing whenever Asghar was near him.