The Heart's Desire

by Nahid Rachlin

  He felt Soroor’s hands on his body. She was undressing him.

  Then he felt her beside him on the bed, her naked skin. He smelled the musky perfume again.

  Everything around him was blurry. He moved his hand along her body tentatively. A memory flashed across his hazy mind. He was walking at the edge of a ravine somewhere in the countryside—he must have been about thirteen or fourteen—and heard a shrill cry down below. He was shocked to see a woman running in the ravine, her blouse torn, one of her breasts exposed, and a man chasing her. Blood was flowing from the scratches on her bare breast, chest, arm. A few days later he heard a prostitute had been stoned to death, not far from that spot. He had wondered if it had been that woman. One day I will have some influence in changing such horrors, he had thought in his adolescent idealism.

  He had to fight a wave of nausea rising in him. He felt Soroor’s hand moving on his chest, stomach. Am I going to manage …

  He saw a naked woman walking toward a room. The word “Toilet” on a plaque nailed to the door caught his eye. Tree branches were thrashing against each other in the wind outside. As she walked out of the bathroom a ray of light coming through the curtains outlined her body. A narrow waist, pear shaped breasts, slender long legs. A sharp pang of desire shot up in him. “Soroor,” he called.

  She came and lay next to him. They turned to each other and he kissed her, feeling himself getting hard. Her dark hair spread on the white pillow, her breasts flattened against her rib cage. He kissed one breast and then the other. He kissed her navel, thighs. He moved into her easily …

  At dawn she got out of the bed and began to put her clothes on. He sat up and reached for his pants on the chair. He took his wallet from the pocket and gave 10,000 toomans to her, twice as much as they had agreed to. She tossed the money into her purse without comment, put her chador on, and kissed him on the cheek.

  “Do you want to stay?” Karim asked.

  Soroor shook her head. “My friend has to go somewhere.” She smiled sweetly. “I’ll find you at the beach by your hotel.” She said goodbye casually and left as if this were not the end between them.

  He lay back on the bed. Was another man waiting for her in another room? Would she act the same with the other man? There was a sincere quality in her, had that been a mere act? What about diseases? The hotel clerk had said, “We give them tests.” The chances are it was true. He felt a stab of guilt, thinking how much Jennifer would detest this if she knew about it. But in a way, he thought, sleeping with this prostitute, for one night, in a drunken state, was nothing. It was merely embracing a memory, bringing back through touch someone else from another stage of his life.

  A soft knock sounded on the door and Jamshid came in. “Are you ready?”

  “I will be in a minute,” Karim said, not looking at him, suddenly shy.

  Jamshid won’t give it much thought or try to analyze the meaning or consequences of what we did, now that it happened, he thought. In a way he wished he could be light-hearted about it himself. But then as he glanced at Jamshid, he detected a little sadness, a vague hint of something—regret maybe, shame.

  “Who knows if we’ll be alive tomorrow,” Jamshid mumbled.

  Chapter 10

  A ray of sunlight glared down on Jennifer. She was sweaty and her head ached. There was a bitter taste in her mouth. She must have fallen asleep. Then she remembered that Darius was still not himself and that Karim had left her with the responsibility and was still off somewhere with his uncle. She saw, through the open door, that Aziz now was sitting with Darius in the courtyard, reading to him:

  All save the face of

  God doth perish.

  To him shall we return.

  God is all-pervading, All-knowing.

  Praise be to Allah, Lord of the Worlds,

  Show us the straight path …

  She wondered what Karim felt about his mother indoctrinating Darius. Over the years they had had many discussions about what kind of religious training, if any, they should provide for Darius. Maybe a Unitarian church would be good, maybe something of each religion, Moslem and Christian. They had ended up giving him no training. And then they had decided to send him to Juniper Tree School because the majority of the children attending it came from mixed religious and cultural backgrounds. They had met some of the mothers. When they heard someone addressing Mrs. Furumoto, a blond American responded, and Mrs. O’Conner was Chinese …

  She lay there, distraught, wondering how she was going to bear the rest of this visit. They had been there for three weeks now, but it seemed like an eternity.

  The ceiling fan had stopped turning because of an electrical failure, which seemed to happen two, three times a day, and it was stiflingly hot in the room. She felt nostalgic for the mist in the air over the fields where she went on walks near their house in Athens, the cool breeze that always blew when they sat on the patio. She was even nostalgic for her daily routine at home—exercise, dropping off Darius at his nursery school, and then going to work—she worked three days in the Columbus office and two days at home. On the days that she worked in the city Karim picked up Darius, since he had no afternoon courses to teach, and stayed with him until she returned from work. She liked to make lists for herself with headings, “Call Nancy at nine,” “Take Darius to his swimming lesson at six,” and then check off each item as she got it done.

  Now she had to try to fit in with Karim’s family’s rituals—tea, snacks, long lunches, afternoon naps, prayers. Every morning Aziz watered and weeded the plants, swept the ground, made sure the kerosene lamps had enough oil—they had to have the lamps ready for when the electricity went out. Monir got the day started with her own and some of her two daughters’ personal chores, washing, ironing, sewing. She and her daughters always dressed in fresh, nice clothes. Monir wore linen skirts and blouses and sandals, and large gold jewelry. Azar liked full, printed skirts and frilly blouses, and delicate filigree gold jewelry. Zohreh almost always wore jeans and T-shirts and a thin chain necklace. (Of course they all wore chadors over their clothes when they went out and Aziz wore a chador even when they had male visitors at home.)

  Aziz rarely left the house. Occasionally Monir went out shopping with her daughters or visited a relative or friend. But she too stayed home most of the time. Zohreh was the only one who used every opportunity to go out. She even took on all the grocery shopping so that she could get away from the house.

  Azar had once wanted to be a stewardess so that she could fly all over the world and still always come back home, but after the revolution it had become more difficult for a woman to hold a job like that. Now she spent her time embroidering, or playing cards with whomever would play with her, or she hung around with her friend, Latifeh, a young girl her own age who lived in the house next door. If Zohreh was away, Latifeh and Azar went into their bedroom and sang together, songs about loneliness and unrequited love, or they listened to records with the same themes. Or they danced, snapping their fingers as they gyrated their hips. Sometimes Latifeh would suddenly stop whatever she was doing as if she had heard an emergency bell and say, “I have to go, my mother is alone,” her voice expressing urgency. Her mother was paralyzed from the waist down, due to a inept operation, Latifeh explained, so she had all the responsibility of caring for her since she was the only child and her father had died long ago.

  Zohreh told Jennifer that before her father had lost his job, he had promised to send her abroad for an education. Now she hoped to get into Teheran University which was almost free and she could also save money living at home. Her parents expected to look for a place of their own as soon as Jamshid found work, she said. In the fall Azar planned to go to the local high school to finish her last year, which had been interrupted, but her goals beyond high school were not clear yet. Zohreh wanted to study comparative literature and in the fall she would be taking English and Italian at the university until she could apply to become fully matriculated.

  Most days Karim an
d Jamshid went to the stone basement to lift weights, but the women in the household did nothing for exercise. Accustomed to taking vigorous long walks and bicycling, Jennifer felt her muscles becoming slack, and a restlessness in her body for more movement. She had begun to do some running in place and some sit-ups but that did not entirely satisfy her. It was hard for Darius, too. Karim had found a tricycle for him, which he had gotten cheap at a used bicycle shop in Teheran. At first Darius rode around and around the courtyard on it, then he gave it up—partly because it became monotonous and partly because he just wasn’t feeling well.

  Every day there were many visitors, friends, and relatives—a tall young woman who complained of backaches due to lifting up the children too much, a round-faced pretty woman who smiled a lot, revealing her dimples, a woman who had twin girls. They came with their children and stayed for several hours, talking, eating fruit, and drinking sharbat. It seemed they were consoled by listening endlessly to one another’s complaints—about rising prices, the scarcity of jobs, the many young men who were killed in the war. Several of them had lost a relative or a friend. They hugged and kissed their children with an abundance of affection. They pampered Darius, who amused them with his broken Farsi and his American manner.

  Sometimes men dropped in too. Hossein came once again, clearly, it seemed, to exchange glances with Zohreh. He told Jennifer that he had wanted to go to college but then he had had to serve in the army. Luckily he worked in a supply depot instead of actually fighting—having obtained that position through connections. After the war he had lost all motivation to go to school; now he owned a lamp shop.

  Neither the men nor the women had gone beyond high school, and they all lived in this old-fashioned neighborhood, by and large untouched by the modernity the shah had introduced during his reign.

  They reminded her somewhat of the people she had grown up with in Margaretville. Few of her high school classmates had gone on to college. They had stayed there, the girls getting jobs as waitresses, hairdressers, or secretaries until they got married, usually to local boys, and as soon as they had a child they quit their work. The boys became plumbers, electricians, mowed lawns, plowed the driveways of weekend houses, or they worked at the ski center or in lumberyards. Her own brother had gone into the lawn mowing business after high school and had built it up; now he was doing landscaping.

  The visitors were cordial to her, but they did not understand, as Aziz and Monir did not, her need for work, for being alone sometimes.

  If she withdrew into her room to try to do some work or just read, a novel she had brought with her or one that Zohreh had lent her, they seemed to feel hurt. Aziz would say to Monir, loud enough for Jennifer to hear, “What’s she doing all alone in her room?” Monir would reply, “She must be sad.” Then one of them would knock on the door. “Jennifer, Jennifer, is anything wrong, people want to see you, be with you.” Once Jennifer had locked the door from the inside, an automatic, instinctive act, and Aziz had kept turning the knob, rattling it as if something were wrong. She had called, “Jennifer dear, are you there, are you all right?” as if she had been locked away for days, perhaps even dead. Another time she had heard Aziz say to Monir, “She comes from a different country. She has different ways of doing things. She can’t help it any more than the cat can help having that color fur.” Jennifer could see the merit of intense human interaction. Maybe it was better than the detached, cold attitude of the workaholics she knew in the United States, but still she yearned for periods of solitude.

  Then there were dowrehs each woman in the family attended. Monir went to one with other women whose husbands had lost their jobs in the war. Zohreh had a book club, where they read mainly foreign novels in translation. Azar had joined a card-playing group. Aziz had a group of women friends who held prayer sessions monthly, each time in a different house.

  Monir had told Jennifer that if she were there long enough she could go to a dowreh she knew of that consisted of foreign women married to Iranians.

  “There are that many?” Jennifer had asked.

  “Enough, I guess. Some of them must be Iranian by birth, but educated in Europe or America.”

  Then she had met one of those foreign women, an Austrian, married to an Iranian man. Britta had come over one afternoon with another woman who apparently was married to one of Aziz’s second cousins. Britta stayed briefly and then invited Jennifer to visit her at her house. She said she had a little boy, only a year older than Darius; it would be good for them to meet.

  Jennifer got out of the bed, thinking she would take Darius to visit Britta. She wanted to talk to her, and it would be good for Darius to meet another little boy.

  Chapter 11

  “How nice you came,“ Britta said, leading Jennifer and Darius inside. She introduced them to her other guests, two other women. Then she called to her son who was playing outside with other children.

  Javad, dressed up in short pants and a starched, short-sleeved white shirt, looked prematurely grown-up for his age. He asked Darius to go out with him to play on the swing. Jennifer was happy to see that Darius’s face brightened as he followed him.

  The house, like the neighborhood, was relatively modern with an American-style kitchen and bathroom, but the furniture, except for a few pieces, was Iranian—Kashan rugs, brass-top tables. And Persian music was playing on a phonograph. “I’m swimming in the darkness of your eyes,” a male voice sang. “I’m drowning in the memory of our love.”

  Other visitors were arriving by the minute, women with their children. The women took their chadors or scarves off, went into the bathroom, then came out with makeup on and their hair fluffed out. The children wandered into the courtyard while the women sat in the living room serving themselves tea, sharbat, fruit, and pistachios.

  “You know, I’d never live in Austria again,” Britta told her.

  “Really, you like it here so much?”

  “I was lonely there, people are so cold. It used to be great here with so many clubs—an American club, a French club, and an Austrian club. If I wanted to I could go visit people any time, play games—card games, tennis, Ping-Pong. Of course none of that exists now, so I try to provide a gathering place in my own house.”

  “How did you meet your husband?”

  “I met him here. I was here with a group of other professionals from Europe to help set up a health clinic, one of the shah’s projects then—by training I’m a social worker.” She picked up a pomegranate from the platter of fruit on the table, cut it open with a knife, and began to eat the red seeds inside. She did it expertly, not allowing the juice to dribble down. “I quit working after I got married. Akbar wouldn’t want me to work. It’d make him ashamed in front of his friends and family, it’d look like a commentary on his capacity to support his family. I used to think I had to have a career but to tell you the truth I feel good without it.”

  Jennifer noticed one of the guests looking at her. “Women are forced out of their jobs anyway,” the woman said. “I used to teach computer science at a private school. Then there were complaints from the students’ parents that a woman shouldn’t be working side by side with men. Finally I was pushed out.”

  “The parents complained, even the mothers?” Jennifer asked.

  “Many women here fully support what the new regime is imposing.”

  “I can see that,” Jennifer said, thinking of Aziz, who unequivocally favored control by religious mullahs, and of Monir, who was not quite opposed to it.

  “Of course there are some who’re against it but they don’t dare to express it.”

  Another young woman joined in. “It wasn’t easy for women under the shah either. All the laws were still on the men’s side. Boys inherited twice as much as girls from their parents, for instance. Men could divorce their wives with any excuse, but a woman had to prove a lot to get a divorce. Don’t forget the shah himself divorced Soraya because she couldn’t bear him a son.”

  They were interrupted by a shri
ek. A little boy had bumped into a chair and spilled a glass of sharbat. His mother jumped up and said, “Oh, no. Go on outside, will you.” The boy dashed out. She went into the kitchen and came back with a sponge and tried to wipe off the sticky drink from the expensive-looking rug. After going back and forth a few times, she plopped into a chair, her eyes flaming, and said, “Where’s their father? He doesn’t even remember their ages. I’ve been pregnant as long as we’ve been married.”

  A young, teenage girl who had been sitting on the other side of the room came and sat next to Jennifer. She had very light coloring, fair skin, hazel-green eyes, and red hair. She would have been pretty if she had not been so thin and her face not so full of disturbance.

  She asked Jennifer, “Are you American?”

  “Yes.”

  “So is my mother.” There was a sudden excitement in her voice.

  “Really, does she live here now?”

  “Oh, no, she lives in L.A. I’Ve lived with my father most of my life, since I was ten years old. After my parents got divorced my mother went back home.”

  “Why didn’t your mother take you?”

  “She tried, I’m sure she did.” Sadness spread over her thin, pale face. “In case of a divorce men get automatic custody of the children, that was true under the shah too.”

  Jennifer knew that but now here in Iran, the ominous implications hit her harder. “It’s absurd, here women are the ones who sit home and take care of the children full-time,” she said.

  “But the men earn the living,” Britta said mindlessly.

  “They could give child support,” Jennifer said.

  “You just have to be careful not to get divorced in the first place,” Britta said.

  “Even if you’re miserable?” Jennifer asked, with a flicker of annoyance at Britta’s off-hand manner.