by Sara Farizan
“Stay out of trouble,” Ali says. “I’m the rebel in the family, okay?” The glint in his eye reminds me of Maman.
Ali goes to speak with Mother through the open window of her car, and I turn and whisper to Nasrin. “Let me do the talking in the car,” I say, and after all the shocks she’s had today, I think she might actually listen to me. I open the car door and let Nasrin in, and then I follow her into the leather backseat. Daughter turns to me, and I notice a bruise under one eye. I try to hide my shudder and do my best not to think about what customer left her a souvenir. She still manages to smile wider than anyone I have ever met.
“Salam! It’s good to see you again,” Daughter says. I beam and hope it’s enough to keep her spirits up.
“It’s wonderful to see you, too! I have something for you.” I reach into my book bag. I can feel Nasrin’s eyes on me. I am sure she is jealous and wondering how I know Daughter. I pull the book of poetry from my bag. Before I hand it to Daughter, my eyes meet Mother’s sunglasses in the rearview, asking her permission. Mother nods and I give the small book to Daughter.
“It’s your favorite subject,” I say, and she laughs in delight.
“Oh, thank you! Thank you so much! I’m going to read everything!” she babbles. “When should I return it to you? If you leave me your address—” I cut her off.
“It’s yours. All yours.” Something should be. Daughter looks at the book, caressing the laminated cover with her hand. Tears surface in her eyes. Nasrin looks at me with an Is-she-serious? face. I don’t think Nasrin understands how anyone could get so excited about a book.
Daughter laughs again and shows the book to Mother. “Did you see what she brought me? A book of poems! Isn’t it wonderful?”
Mother, looking out onto the road, can’t deny Daughter’s enthusiasm. The edges of her lips curl up slightly, and it’s the most emotion I have yet seen from her. Daughter turns back to Nasrin and me. She regards Nasrin as though she were a new toy.
“Your friend is really beautiful,” Daughter says, and I blush. Nasrin straightens her shoulders in self-satisfaction. “Thank you,” she says. “You’re very pretty yourself. I love your lipstick.”
“Do you work, too?” At first I don’t understand Daughter’s question to Nasrin.
“Work?” Nasrin asks.
Mother turns the wheel and finally speaks: “No. She’s not one of us.” I am doing my best not to laugh. Maybe Nasrin really could be a sex goddess.
“You’d do really well, I think. Men would put you in high demand,” Daughter says before turning back around to face the front. Comprehension washes over Nasrin’s face, and her jaw may reach Australia if she isn’t careful.
8
“DON’T BE NERVOUS,” PARVEEN says as we wait outside an apartment door. I told Baba that morning that I was going to be at Nasrin’s, and Parveen picked me up from school. I am getting to be a professional liar. The apartment door opens, and there stands a tall, smiling woman, probably in her fifties, wearing huge glasses and a long chador. She is very much a black tent with a beaming face.
“You’ve made it! Is this the young man you were telling me about?” the tent asks, and I look around a moment before I realize she means me.
“Yes, Goli khanum. This is my friend Sahar,” Parveen says as she makes her way inside, tugging me by my coat. The apartment is small but well decorated. Three boys sit on a couch. They look like teenagers. Sitting in a chair is a young woman who looks to be in her mid-twenties and wears garish makeup. On the opposite side of the room is another woman sitting alone. She is demure and folded in on herself like a pile of rumpled clothes.
Goli khanum puts one meaty arm around me. “Bacheha, children, this is Sahar,” she says. “She’s Parveen’s friend. Don’t be afraid to speak in front of her. She has the same illness we do.” Illness? I know I haven’t read about all the diseases a person can have, but I never came across gender change as one of them. Parveen and I sit next to each other on a small sofa, our hips touching. I sit very straight so as not to take up too much space. Parveen takes my hand in hers, and I relax a little. The boys on the couch nod in my direction. One of them is very handsome and looks confident. He speaks first.
“I’m Jamshid. It’s nice to meet you, Sahar.” He smiles just like Parveen does. They both seem at ease with themselves, unlike the young woman in the corner, who continues to fiddle with her hair. “These are my two rude friends, Shahab and Behrooz,” Jamshid jokes, and the shy boys nod mutely. Shahab looks very young. Behrooz looks like a girl trying to dress like a boy. Will I look that way?
“Jamshid is the perfect gentleman,” Goli khanoum brags.
The young woman with the ton of makeup caked on her face speaks next. “I’m Katayoun. Welcome to our little club.” I don’t know if I’m ready to be a card-carrying member yet.
“Why are you here?” says the shy, fidgety woman in the corner without introducing herself.
“Don’t be rude, Maryam,” Parveen admonishes.
“She needs to know this isn’t a game! It isn’t something you just try on.” Maryam’s voice shakes. She looks like she hasn’t slept in weeks.
“Maryam is having a hard time with her transition,” Goli gently explains. It’s obvious from the tension in the room that these meetings are not entirely social in nature. We sit in awkward silence as Goli khanum goes to the kitchen to make tea.
“Are you okay?” Parveen whispers to me.
I don’t know how to answer her. Jamshid looks so confident and free. He sits relaxed, with his legs spread out as he likes. He’s definitely a man. If I am to go through with this, I want to be like him. Goli returns with a tray of tea, and everyone but Maryam graciously accepts a glass.
“Does anyone have anything they want to discuss this week?” Parveen asks the group. She is obviously the team captain, while Goli is the surrogate mother.
“I was turned down from another job. I am running out of ideas about where I can work,” Katayoun says.
“I am sure we can find something for you. Don’t give up,” Parveen says. Maryam grunts loudly in the corner.
“What is it now, Maryam?” Parveen asks.
Maryam straightens up in her chair and looks directly at Parveen. “What job is Katayoun going to get? You think they don’t discriminate against her? She can’t pass like you can. She doesn’t have a supportive family like you do. Don’t feed her any lies, Parveen.”
“And what do you do?” Parveen cuts back. “Feed her despair?” It’s the first time I have seen Parveen lose her composure. She’s made her life sound so wonderful. Katayoun looks sadly into her teacup. I wonder what her life was like before she became a woman.
The meeting continues, and the group members talk about problems they have had facing discrimination from certain family members or places they used to frequent. Behrooz’s parents have disowned him, and he is now living with Jamshid in a small apartment. Shahab went to ask a woman’s family for her hand in marriage, and the family shoved him out of the house before he could even speak. Maryam does not say anything throughout the rest of the meeting. She does not look anyone in the eye, that is except for me. Her gaze makes me uneasy, and I have to keep reminding myself why I came here. As the members of the group speak, Goli khanum tries to ease their worries, tells them everything will get better and that Allah loves them. It’s a small comfort, but it seems to keep the dissatisfied in the group hanging on. She also has her success stories, Jamshid and Parveen, as cheerleaders.
The two of them talk about how they both knew who they were from a young age. Parveen talks about dressing up and wishing she were a mermaid, so no one could see her ugly and unnatural genitalia. It’s clear that Parveen’s parents support her, and she continues to live with them. That seems like a rare gift in this group. Jamshid also keeps in touch with his family and manages to do well in university, though he admits that he does not tell many people that he is transsexual, especially at school.
Parveen and Ja
mshid also talk about how wonderful Goli khanum was to them when they first went to a religious meeting about transitioning that included a lecture by a mullah from Qom. The mullah said that their illness was nothing to be ashamed of and explained that turning flour into bread was not a sin—and neither was changing from a man to a woman. “According to the Islamic Republic of Iran, there is nothing in the Koran that says it is immoral to change one’s gender,” Jamshid says proudly. I get the feeling that no one at that meeting asked anything about homosexuality.
“Are you sure you feel that you are in the wrong body?” Jamshid asks me. I’ve never wanted to be a boy; it never even occurred to me before I met Parveen. From the way everyone has described the experience, I know it isn’t just something you try on. There’s a painful surgery, the psychological struggle to get used to your new body, and the prospect of having no family left to support you. All that seems to be only the beginning.
“After my transition, my family felt that their son had died,” Goli says. “They even wore mourning clothes for forty days.”
Do I feel like I was born in the wrong body? I know how I feel when Nasrin walks in a room. I feel strong and weak. I feel proud and ashamed. I feel love for her and hate for myself. I want to be clean of my feelings for her because they are wrong. Everyone knows that.
“Yes,” I say. “I feel like I’m in the wrong body.”
“You’re lying,” Maryam says from her corner. Everyone yells at her for being insensitive. They trust me completely. Goli tells Maryam to serve everyone more tea, and Maryam reluctantly complies, shuffling in her slippers across the floor to the kitchen.
“It’s a big thing you’re doing,” Jamshid says. “Admitting your illness. It takes courage, and we’re so proud of you.”
I feel their acceptance, and it feels good. It’s nice to belong somewhere. It feels good to have this kind of support from a group that understands what it means to be different. It’s unusual in our culture, but it exists. Nasrin and I might have a chance.
9
THIS IS THE LAST thing I want to do. The last place I want to be. I have to be here because it would look suspicious otherwise, but I wish I could have taken some of those drugs that Ali has around beforehand.
I hate shopping for myself. It’s tiring, I can never afford anything I would actually want, and the clothes I prefer are not entirely fashionable or ladylike. Shopping with Nasrin is both agony and pleasure. I love seeing her in glamorous clothes. I love the high she gets from a new pair of shoes or a dress. I love that we can be in a store full of only women and she can twirl in front of a mirror freely while other women stare at her in envy of their younger years. I love that she always asks for my opinion.
At the moment Nasrin is trying on wedding dresses. “What do we think of this one?” the genial shopgirl asks. She’s skinny, in tight black jeans, black high heels, and a white silk blouse. Mrs. Mehdi and Nasrin look at the latest wedding dress on display and begin arguing. This dress is traditional, white with lace sleeves and a lace bodice with a long train in the back. I sit in the corner, watching the two of them bicker while other clerks and customers mill about with their own wedding dress dilemmas and triumphs. The hell I will go to because of my girl-loving heart will look a great deal like this store.
When we arrived at the dress shop, we had to use an intercom to be buzzed in. The store has no windows, so all the women are allowed to remove their head scarves if they so choose, which is all of us in the store. For once, though, I wish I’d continued wearing my manteau and head scarf, because I feel underdressed.
All the other women wear so much makeup. Some have shaved their eyebrows and tattooed on thicker, more luxurious ones, while others have dunked their lashes in so much mascara, I can’t imagine how they will ever be able to wash it off.
Mrs. Mehdi is again telling Nasrin why this dress is “perfect,” and Nasrin of course has her eye on another one. They have been arguing over every dress, and I am not brave enough to try to play referee. Mrs. Mehdi looks like she is ready to strangle her daughter, and Nasrin is practically frothing at the mouth.
I haven’t told Nasrin about my plans yet. It’s not that I want to catch her off guard, I just don’t need to put more pressure on her yet, and I don’t want her to talk me out of the only thing I can think of to keep us together. It doesn’t sound so bad. Parveen and Jamshid have full lives, and Jamshid has more rights as a man than I do as a woman. He can wear short sleeves; he can have two wives or more if he can provide for them. I can’t even get one. It seems ideal, if I don’t think about Maryam and her distorted and furious face.
Nasrin rolls her eyes at her mother and turns to give me a pout. She knows how much I hate this. She texted me late last night about how sorry she was to make me go through dress fittings. I didn’t text back. I don’t think she’s having much fun, either.
“Try it on, Nasrin. What can it hurt?” Mrs. Mehdi says with irritation. The attendant picks up the dress, leading Nasrin to the changing rooms in back. This leaves Mrs. Mehdi and me alone. Most of the time we get along fine. She tells me stories about my mother and the baby chicks they used to play with when they were little kids. Lately, though, she’s been quieter, and I find it unnerving. Everything is very polite between us. No frosty overtones or snide remarks, but she’s steely eyed now. I am not sure when that changed. Sometimes I wonder if she knows . . . No. Nasrin and I are always careful.
As if to chase away these thoughts, Mrs. Mehdi sits next to me and pats my leg in good spirits. “I’m exhausted,” she says. “Nasrin is just as stubborn as her father.”
“She will decide on a dress eventually,” I say. “She’s pretty good about making decisions.” Good at making the right decisions about the right kind of person who can give her the right kind of life. This marriage is her playing it safe. The only time she’s decided to do that. Mrs. Mehdi drinks from the tea a clerk freshened up for her a few moments ago. The staff fawn over Nasrin and her mother, and I know both of the Mehdi women love it. I wonder if my mother, growing up with all her wealth, relished the attention while it came to her. I try not to think about that.
“My own wedding seems like ages ago,” Mrs. Mehdi says. Nasrin and I used to love to look at all the photographs of her parents’ special day, with my parents in the background as special guests. My mother was gorgeous. Nasrin even admitted that she was making the bride look bad in comparison. That always made me very proud. “Your mother was such a good friend,” Mrs. Mehdi recalls. “I was so nervous.”
A few feet away a girl emerges from the dressing room, squealing in delight over the dress she has put on. Seeing her daughter, the mother starts crying. My mother and I wouldn’t make such a scene. She would probably realize that I wouldn’t feel comfortable in an elaborate, frilly wedding dress and suggest a plain white dress instead. We would get ice cream afterward and talk about my classes. We might have.
“I needed my best friend there that day,” Mrs. Mehdi says sadly. “It’s important, deciding to spend your life with someone even if you think he isn’t the perfect choice.” This surprises me a little. True, I don’t see Mr. and Mrs. Mehdi look at each other the way Maman and Baba did, but my parents were rare. Nasrin would sometimes sleep over at my house when she was younger, usually because her parents had gotten into some big fight. These fights were occasional but lasted a few days. Mrs. Mehdi would criticize something small about her husband, like the way he chewed at dinner or that he smelled of body odor, and Mr. Mehdi would yell and scream. Neither would talk to the other for a few days, but they got over it. Nasrin was now unfazed by their quarrels, but when we were eight years old, she would cry in my arms and I’d smooth her hair. Sometimes my maman would come in the room and cheer us up.
“I am glad you are going to be at the wedding for Nasrin. She will need you,” Mrs. Mehdi says.
“She will be fine,” I say. “It should be a lot of fun.” Really, I want to knock over all of the stupid mannequins with ridiculous n
eon-colored wigs on their heads.
Mrs. Mehdi takes another sip of tea and eyes me coolly. “It won’t be long before it’s your special day, I’m sure.”
I bring out one of my many rehearsed lines. “Oh, I’m not ready for anything like that yet. I still have so much work ahead of me.”
“Well, someday you may want to start a family of your own, just like Nasrin does. I can’t wait to be a grandmother! Though I don’t look old enough to be a grandmother, do I?” Nasrin does not get her vanity from her father.
“You look very young. I’m sure Nasrin will wait until you grow older to give you grandchildren.” I don’t know if she really possesses maternal instincts. I never imagined her as a mother, and we’ve never talked about having children. Is that why she is doing this?
“Nasrin loves kids,” Mrs. Mehdi says. “You’ve seen the way she looks after the younger children at parties.” She’s right, but that’s because Nasrin is a kid herself. I never thought her fondness for children came from a deep desire to have her own, but maybe I didn’t want to see it.
“Yes. Yes she’s good with children.”
“If they have Reza’s eyes and Nasrin’s smile, I think we will have some little heartbreakers on our hands, won’t we?” Another happy family. Not like mine. The store clerk comes back into the room, leading Nasrin, who looks gorgeous in the white dress her mother insisted she try on. I sit on my hands.
“Oh, Nasrin, you look beautiful!” Mrs. Mehdi exclaims. “This is the one! This is the one for you!” She’s already picked out Nasrin’s life, why not the dress? Nasrin admires herself in the mirror and inspects the same problem areas she has had through all of high school. First she looks at her chest and wishes it were a little bigger. Then she looks at her backside and wishes it were a little smaller.