Stranger No More

by Annahita Parsan

  The nuns prayed long and flowing prayers, but mine were stuttering, simple things. I asked God to help me. That was about it. And when I was done asking, I let my thoughts drift wherever they wanted. But still, I continued these faltering prayers, feeling a sense of peace warm me despite their simplicity.

  Eventually, we moved from the convent to the town Social had suggested on the outskirts of Stockholm. For what felt like the hundredth time, the children enrolled in a new school and I signed up for a bunch of courses at a new college. The police had warned us not to contact any other Iranians, never to show any of our family photos to other people, and not to tell anyone anything about our life before. I reminded Daniel and Roksana of all this daily, but at twelve and eight, they were still just children. Roksana couldn’t understand why I was so worried, and we fought all the usual battles that children and parents fight at that age. Only, for us, things weren’t normal.

  I knew I couldn’t control what Daniel and Roksana said away from me any more than I could protect them as they walked home from school. Asghar had found us twice already, and I carried with me a constant, gnawing fear that he would do so again.

  I missed Cherie too. Stealing away, moving to a new city, and keeping it all from her felt like a betrayal. I knew that if life had taught me anything, it was that it is full of hard decisions that often get harder the more we put them off. Even so, I was tired of shouldering so many burdens all the time.

  Most of all, I felt more cut off than ever from my family back in Iran, and although I still spoke to my parents on the phone, I knew that my divorce from Asghar had been every bit as toxic for them as I had feared. The more I had suffered, the less I had been able to tell them. Added to that, it had been months since I had talked with Khanoum. The distance between me and my family felt greater with every passing year.

  The news that Khanoum had suffered two heart attacks and was dying caught me off guard. It winded me just as severely as one of Asghar’s punches to the stomach, and I struggled to concentrate or think clearly for hours after I finished the phone call with my aunt.

  All I could think about was the last time I had seen my grandmother. It was the night I had found out that I had to choose which of my two children to leave behind in Isfahan. I was standing by the bed, staring at the piles of their little clothes, feeling sick at the thought of choosing just one to take with me.

  Khanoum walked in. I hadn’t known she was in the house. She hugged me, saying nothing. I wanted to hold onto her forever. I wanted to tell her everything about Asghar and the trouble he was in and the terrible choice I had to make. But I knew I couldn’t. So I just kept on hugging her, holding her close so that she wouldn’t look at me and see me break down and weep.

  “I promise I won’t die before you come back,” she whispered. “I’ll be waiting for you.”

  Hearing that she was dying set off a fire within me. I had to go back and see her. There was no option, no discussion, no possibility of any other solution. I had to go back. I had to see her while she was still alive.

  I started making plans to visit Iran. The more I investigated what it would involve, the more complicated I understood the situation to be. Since I had not been living in Sweden for three years, there was a chance that my leaving the country might threaten my status as a temporary resident.

  I needed a visa too. That meant going in person to the Iranian embassy in Stockholm. I would have to do all I could to hide the truth from them about why I had left Iran a decade earlier. If they saw through my story they could try to have me arrested, or worse.

  And what about Daniel and Roksana? The thought of leaving them behind for the week that I planned to be away was painful in the extreme, but could I keep them safe there as well? At fourteen years old, Daniel was close to the age at which the regime drafted all boys into the army. If he came with me, I might lose him all over again.

  Siavash presented the solution to the first problem. “We could get married,” he said one evening as I agonized over it all.

  “What?”

  “We could get married. That way you could get a Swedish passport, and you’d be able to get back in the country.”

  What he said made sense. We had been together for over two years, and I knew Siavash to be a kind and gentle man who took care of the children and who would not hurt me. And might it even go some way to restoring my family’s honor? I doubted it. It might even make things worse—a third husband at a little more than thirty years old.

  But there was little time to think things through. Khanoum was dying, and I wanted to see her in Iran and still be able to return to my new life in Sweden afterward. So I said yes, hoping that he wouldn’t hear the fear in my voice.

  The Iranian embassy was a thirty-minute bus ride away from downtown Stockholm. It looked more like an army barracks crossed with a refugee camp than a home for diplomacy and politics.

  I joined the line of people outside the metal gates and rearranged my chador for the twentieth time since leaving the house that morning. I had rarely worn one since leaving Turkey, and I hated it just as much as I had when I was a girl and the teachers at school forced me to pull it tight over my forehead to make sure that no hair was showing at all.

  I wasn’t sure quite what I was expecting once I got through the gates. I had pictured so many different scenarios in the previous days. Would I be treated like any other woman, given the minimum attention necessary and sent home? Or would I find myself invited into a back room for further questioning by a soldier wearing the green beret of the dreaded Sepah?

  I spent hours waiting on the long wooden bench, just like every other person who sat in strained silence alongside me. And when it was finally my turn to approach the booth and explain that I wanted a visa so that I could return home and visit my dying grandmother, the warm smiles and nods from the official opposite me threw me off guard.

  “But, sister,” he said when I had finished talking. “A visa will take too long. Better by far to travel home on an Iranian passport. That I can get for you very quickly.”

  How much longer does Khanoum have? Enough time to wait for me to get a visa? If I travel under another name, as we’d already planned, perhaps it doesn’t matter what passport I use. And since I’m married now to Siavash, who is a Swedish citizen, he’ll likely be able to get me back into the country if I run into any problems coming back.

  I filled out the paperwork, using fake family details I had memorized.

  “Thank you,” he said, smiling as I slid the papers back beneath the perspex window. “All you must do now is return your Swedish passport. You have no need of that anymore.”

  Giving up my passport worried me, but I simply nodded my thanks, said that I would do as he suggested, and left.

  In less than a month I would be back at Khanoum’s side. I hoped I would not be too late.

  PART FOUR

  IRAN AND SWEDEN

  With every second that passed, the customs officer’s silence grew more and more menacing. I shushed Roksana as she fidgeted beside me. I tried to compose myself. Breathe. Stay calm. Relax.

  He was turning the pages of my Iranian passport. Every one of them was blank, but he studied them like a detective. When he finally looked up at me, his expression was blank. “Are you a refugee?”

  “No.”

  As he held another silence, his eyes remained locked on mine. “Yes, you are. It says so right here.”

  He pointed to a blank box on the photo page. “If you weren’t a refugee this part would be filled in. Stand aside.”

  I tried to protest, but two soldiers appeared and told me to follow them. I’d left Daniel in Sweden for his safety, but Roksana held on tight to me as we walked over to a door at the side of the hall.

  “Not her,” one of the guards said as Roksana followed me through. “She stays here.”

  “No! She’s my daughter. She’s got to stay with me. She’s only a child.”

  “She’s not coming through. She can wa
it here.”

  I searched the hall. There were some porters standing around, and I picked the nearest one and asked him to wait with her while I was inside. I pulled out $100 from my bag and bundled it into his hand. “Get her any food she wants, okay?”

  His eyes bulged at the sight of the money.

  Roksana’s eyes were wide with fear.

  “Just wait here,” I told her as I tried to gently peel her away. “It’ll be fine. I promise.”

  I was shown into a windowless room with benches along the walls and a guard at the door. Another woman my age was already in there, and she looked up, startled, when I arrived. Soon she went back to crying loudly.

  I thought back to the embassy in Stockholm and the man who had smiled so nicely as he advised me to get a passport. I wanted to feel angry at him, but instead I just felt scared.

  The only thing that helped was remembering the Bible. The last time I had been to the apartment near Copenhagen I had taken it with me, and I had kept it by my bed ever since. I pictured it, recalling the smell of the leather, the feathery touch of the pages. I must have held it and kissed it a hundred times already, and as I waited in the room while the woman beside me wept, I prayed for help. I didn’t know if it was going to work, but I had nothing else to rely on.

  I waited an hour before the door opened again. I asked the guard to take me to Roksana, but he refused. He shouted at the woman to stop crying and told me to get up and follow him.

  The room I followed him into was so small, just big enough for a desk and a few chairs. In it was a man who looked as though he had lived his whole life in a cloud of cigarette smoke. He didn’t try to hide the disgust in his voice as he spoke to me.

  “Why did you leave Iran?”

  I had rehearsed some of this already and decided to base as much as I could of my story on the truth. “It wasn’t my choice. My husband told me to go with him.”

  He blew out a fresh cloud of smoke, made some notes, and looked back at the ID papers I had handed over along with my passport.

  “And your husband, Siavash Parsan. Why did he want to leave?”

  “I don’t know. He didn’t tell me. He just said we had to go.”

  The questions carried on for another while. Pretty soon they had gone full circle and I was back to explaining why I had originally left. After an hour, the man had me taken back to the waiting room. The woman was still crying.

  I begged the guard at the door to let me see Roksana. He refused. “What about my family? They’re waiting for me outside, and they’re going to be worried. At least let me go and tell them I’m here.”

  I was escorted out to the arrivals hall, an armed soldier on either side of me. My two brothers, Hussein and Ali, couldn’t hide their shock. The soldiers let us embrace and say a few words before taking me back.

  When I finally saw the chain-smoking man from before again, he strolled into the waiting room, twirling my passport in his hands.

  “We’re going to need some more information.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m not happy with your explanation of why you left in the first place.”

  “Why? I already told you everything. Why can’t you let me go?”

  “Oh, you can go,” he said, a hint of anger snaking its way into his voice. “You just can’t ever leave.”

  I didn’t understand. He smirked and pointed to a stamp that had appeared in my passport. “If you try and leave you’ll be arrested on the spot.”

  His smile dropped as he stared at me. He shot his hand out. I wasn’t expecting it and was too slow to avoid the slap as his palm connected with my cheek.

  “Go, then. You’re not worthy of calling yourself an Iranian.”

  I couldn’t tell my family anything. When Hussein asked why it had taken me six hours to get out of the airport, I just shrugged and said something about there being a problem with my new passport but that it was all resolved now. Mostly, I held Roksana and tried to comfort her. She had slept a little while I was being questioned, and the old man had brought her food and drink. But she had been terrified the whole time.

  It was late by the time we got to the hotel in Tehran that night and early when we left the next morning to make the hourlong flight south to Isfahan. I didn’t have much time to think about what was going to happen to me, although in the few quiet moments I told myself that if I needed to, I could always get out across the mountains. Roksana and I have done it before. We can do it again.

  There must have been over one hundred people there to greet us as we walked out at Isfahan airport. Bright red flowers were thrust into my arms; smiles, kisses, and shouts of delight rang out. In spite of all the worry that I was carrying inside, the joy of the moment was undeniable.

  Eleven years had passed since I left, and in that time some people had changed beyond all recognition. Children had become parents, parents grandparents, and my little sister, Mina—born at just the same time as Roksana—had grown to be a beautiful young girl.

  “Are you happy you’re back in Iran?” one of my cousins asked me.

  The honest answer was that I was desperate to get back to Sweden as soon as I could. “Yes,” I said, knowing that the truth would only hurt their feelings and lead to questions I did not want to answer. “I am very happy.”

  After greeting everyone, we made our way to my parents’ home. Khanoum was barely recognizable when I saw her in the courtyard. She was thin, her skin like old cloth stretched over her bones. In addition to the heart attacks, she had suffered at least one stroke. Her left side hung limp, her mouth frozen in a twisted grimace.

  I held her hand and lay my head on her lap. When she tried to speak, I could not understand her words, and my sister, Mariam, came to translate.

  “She said she’s happy you’re here,” she explained. “She wants you to take her home.”

  The few days I spent with Khanoum back in her house on Farshadi Street were among the most precious I can remember. I sat with her in the courtyard like we once had so many years ago. The fish had long gone from the pool, and the pomegranate trees were not half as big as I remembered, but her home was an oasis. The clocks turned back to a time in my life that I had almost forgotten.

  I quickly learned to understand Khanoum better, to know when she was cold, tired, or hungry. I cooked for her, gave her baths, and changed her clothes. Again and again she told me that she was happy.

  Life in Iran was different. It was not the same country that I had left behind. New wealth was on display, as multistory hotels rose up from the streets and factories and corporate headquarters spread out along the freeways.

  There was new poverty too. When we ate out at a restaurant, children would beg outside. I had seen the same thing in Istanbul, but never before in Iran. Behind closed doors people spoke of the regime with disgust and the Sepah with fear.

  A week after I arrived, I told my dad that I had to go downtown to get my passport stamped. Once the clerk had taken mine away, Dad and I sat in the crowded room together and waited. We talked a little about Khanoum’s health and Daniel’s progress at school. We talked about how Roksana and Mina were both growing up so fast and so well. I had already told him about divorcing Asghar and meeting Siavash but not about the fact that Siavash and I were now married. I thought about it but chose not to. I wanted to carry on sitting, father and daughter, just talking about the everyday things in life. Most of all, I wanted to remember what it felt like to have him fight for me, to take my side and defend me even when I was fully to blame. Until then, I hadn’t realized quite how deeply I missed being the one he fought for.

  It didn’t take me long to remember the Iranian concept of time, especially when sitting in a building staffed by officials. But as those waiting for their passports were called up, given their papers, and dismissed, and the crowd disappeared, I worried.

  We were the last two in the room when a woman came over to us and told us that since it was noon and they were about to close we had to le
ave.

  “But what about my passport? I need to get it stamped.”

  “Oh,” she said. “You’re Parsan?”

  I nodded.

  “We had to send that one to the other office. You’re going to have to get it from them.”

  As soon as we were back on the street Dad pointed at the scrap of paper the lady had given me with the address I needed to visit. “That’s not a good place,” he said. “I’ve heard of it. The Sepah works out of there.”

  That was my nightmare, right there. Me being questioned by the regime’s brutal military police. Me walking into a Sepah jail and never walking out. Me hanging by the neck from a crane in a public market.

  “I’m worried about you,” Dad said. “I’m really worried.”

  The camera overlooking the street was clearly visible. “Don’t come with me, Dad,” I said as we stood on the corner and watched the entrance. Two armed guards stood out front, their green berets and uniforms confirming what Dad had said. “I don’t want to get you into trouble.”

  “No,” he said, squeezing my hand. “I’m coming with you.”

  I tried to remember what it meant to act like a good Muslim woman as I crossed the street. I dropped my eyes and fell in behind Dad, grateful for his escort. Muslim women were always safe when they were with their fathers, weren’t they?

  “Not him,” the guard said after I explained why I was there. “Only you.”

  I turned around and embraced Dad. “Go home,” I whispered. “Tell Hussein and Ali where I am, and see if they know anyone who can help.”

  Dad looked at me, nodded, and left.

  I tried to be brave and turned back to the building. After taking a deep breath, I walked inside.

  The corridor was just like the one in the Hotel back in Turkey. Long, straight, dark, with closed, windowless doors on either side every few paces. I was not handcuffed, but I was in no doubt that I was their prisoner.