The Heart's Desire

by Nahid Rachlin

  Jennifer picked up a glass and took a few sips. It had a fragrant, mellow taste. “I didn’t think homemade wines could be this good.” Darius yawned and rubbed his eyes. “I’d better get him ready for bed,” she said. “Is there any harm giving him a bath?”

  “Not as long as he doesn’t have high fever”

  It was a good thing to have a doctor near at hand, she thought.

  As she ran the water into the tub, she caught her own reflection in the mirror, sunken cheeks, tired eyes. Her clothes were all creased. She suddenly was embarrassed to have been seen like this by the doctor, although he had acted as if everything about her was acceptable, even exciting.

  Darius was very quiet as she gave him a bath. Was he frightened, puzzled, sinking into further confusion, or just too sick to care? After the bath she put her spare shirt on him again and tucked him into bed. She began to tell him a story from one of his favorite books. “Once upon a time there were three goats…. They wanted to get to the other side of the stream, where the grass was greener.” She was halfway through when Darius fell asleep. She took a quick shower herself.

  When she returned to the living room the table in the corner was set. Bijan said, “We can eat now.”

  They sat down on opposite sides of the table. “More wine?” he asked.

  “Yes, please.” Her stomach still felt tight.

  He filled both her glass and his own.

  She took a few quick sips of her wine, hoping it would calm her. Through the windows she could see the afterglow of the sunset fading. A few stars and the moon were faintly visible. The white muslin curtains were billowing gently in the breeze.

  He put rice and koresh on her plate and on his own. “Please take whatever else you like.”

  He pointed to a photograph on the wall. “That’s my family. My mother, father, sister, and me when I was twenty or so, in college. The rest are cousins and nieces. They come here a lot, they fill up all the beds.”

  In the picture he looked a lot like he did now, only he was thinner, his hair cut shorter, combed back more neatly.

  “I never got along with my father while he was alive but after he died everything changed. When I looked at him in the casket he opened his eyes—that’s really what I thought happened—and there was forgiveness there.”

  The strangeness of what he said made her smile.

  “You think that’s funny? It felt that way; the feeling is what matters.”

  “I see what you mean,” she said, thinking she might have offended him.

  “I had a very strong bond with my mother. It was because of her that I came back here from America. I had a phone call from my cousin that my mother was ill and if I didn’t return I might never see her again. It made me go almost crazy. After we hung up I just sat by the phone, paralyzed. I was in my last year of medical school and couldn’t even miss a day without serious consequences but as I sat there I realized my mother was more important to me than passing my exams. My mother died a year after my coming home. I got my degree from Washington University anyway though I finished up my last semester’s course work in Iran.”

  “Then you just stayed on?”

  “It’s home after all.”

  “Have you ever been married?”

  He shook his head. “There’s a lot in this culture I can’t accept, an arranged marriage is one of them.” He seemed a bit shy and inhibited with her now, different from the way he had been in the office, as if he were not sure how to act with her. “I hoped to meet someone on my own when I was studying in America. I had a girlfriend for a while but it didn’t work out.”

  “What went wrong?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, looking puzzled as if he hadn’t solved the mystery himself.

  “Lately things have been strained between my husband and me. … It started with the hostage crisis, the way Iranians were treated in America. He just wasn’t happy there any more and that began to take its toll on our relationship.” Rebelling against confiding in this stranger, she said, “Of course I still love him.” She noticed a little color coming into his face. She felt caught in a web of tangled urges, tangled emotions.

  “Would you like some dessert?”

  “Nothing else.”

  “Why don’t we leave the table? Hassan will clean up later.”

  She went over to the sofa while he went to the phonograph to put on a record. “I’ll play it on low so it won’t wake Darius,” he said. “Would you like to hear American or Persian music?”

  “Persian,” she said, partly to please him but also because that music with its soft, melancholy cadences, suited her mood right now.

  He adjusted the volume a few times until it was low and yet audible enough and then he came and sat next to her. Gradually, he moved, inch by inch, closer to her, so that their arms were touching. She could smell his cologne, or was it soap? He grasped her hand and held it. She did not resist, though it made her miserable to be here with this man she hardly knew. After a moment she said, “I’d better get to bed. I’m really exhausted.”

  He let go of her hand. They both got up and he walked her to her room. They stood outside the door and looked at each other in the dim light. He was very attractive, she thought, with his maroon shirt casting a healthy color on his face and his curls of dark hair over his forehead. He leaned toward her and murmured like an adolescent boy, “Can I kiss you?” Not waiting for her answer, he pulled her to him and kissed her lips.

  She could again smell the scent on his skin, was aware of how attractive he was, was grateful for his help, yet it all felt rather abstract. She put her hand on his arm. “I carit…” she said.

  “I know you must be tired,” he said, pulling back.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Good night.”

  “Good night.”

  In the room she looked at Darius. He was breathing deeply, rhythmically. She got undressed and lay on the bed in her underwear again. Moths were beating against the window. Cicadas carried on in the trees. She clutched the pillow and shut her eyes.

  She woke to the crowing of a rooster somewhere and the hum of traffic. Sunlight was pouring into the room. She remembered immediately where she was. She rose on her elbow and checked on Darius. He was still asleep. She got dressed and went into the living room. Bijan wasn’t there. Her eyes caught a folded sheet of paper on the dining table, with Jennifer written on it. She picked it up and opened it. “Jennifer, I thought I would let you sleep. I had to go to work but I’ll be back early this afternoon. By then I should have the result of Darius’s test.” The servant came in, carrying breakfast on a tray, and began to arrange it on the table. Bread, cheese, butter, jam, fruit, tea. He was very small and had a brooding, sly manner. He did not show the slightest surprise at her presence. She sat down and had bread and butter and tea. Forced herself to.

  Chapter 24

  Karim’s briefcase had not turned up at the police station, when he checked with them. It seemed he had no choice but to apply for a new passport in Teheran. What was going to happen if he could not get one quickly? Darius’s school would be starting in September, so would his teaching, and there was Jennifer’s work.

  He began to walk through the town, studying its structure. He came across an old karvansary with a sign saying, “Under reconstruction.” He found a back door open and went in. The building was tilting slightly as if it were about to collapse. The rooms, off a columned porch, were ornamented with engravings and friezes of animals and flowers. One wall was covered by a faded tapestry of a man and woman sitting under a willow tree, each holding a glass of wine, another depicted men on horses moving through clouds. He could imagine travelers, usually alone, usually male, having stopped here overnight on the way to a distant destination. Sometimes they would get a sigheh for the night as he and his uncle had. He looked closely at the half-demolished, repainted entrance door, and he scratched off some of the paint with a key. An intricate arabesque design of flowers and animals were revealed underne
ath.

  Then he sat on a bench on the porch, contemplating how he would restore the place. As he sat there he had a vivid image of himself as a voyager through life—first in Iran, then America, now back in Iran.

  He left the karvansary to get some food before everything closed for the afternoon siesta. He sat on the terrace of a restaurant, overlooking the sea. The roof of the terrace consisted of a thickly woven layer of grape leaves, interspersed with jasmine flowers. He ate while watching the boats gliding on the water and children playing on the sand. The sight of the children made him miss Darius terribly. He wondered again about the consequences for all of them if they were late getting back home to the States. But the idea of going back to the same job, the same town, depressed him. The conversations he had had with the neighbors about a broken lawn mower or how to mend a patch of grass, and in the winter, when the landscape turned cold and barren, about the best way to melt ice in the driveway, seemed unconnected to him and unreal. That wasn’t really him. It was just a posture he had put on, for too long, it seemed.

  The same neighbors with whom he thought he had good relationships had begun to say incredible, unfair things. “We have nothing against you personally, but are those fanatics from Iran going to murder any more people all over the world?” They spoke the word Iran with such disdain, as if it were the worst hellhole, populated by murderers.

  He took out a photograph of Darius, Jennifer, and himself from his wallet. It was taken a year ago in the backyard of their house in Athens. How deceptive it was; it reflected none of the turmoil that had been simmering under the surface of their lives then. Hadn’t Nancy, who took the picture, said several times, “Smile,” or, “Relax, you’re looking stiff.” Nancy herself was always cheerful, even when things weren’t going well for her. Come to think of it, it seemed he really didn’t know Nancy or Don, their true feelings and thoughts about things. They had a facade that stood like a wall between them and others.

  He could not stop the flow of negative memories. That day when he had gone to see Ed in his office to talk about his promotion. He had thought he could make a good case for himself; his recent publications were being cited more frequently than anyone else’s in the department. Ed handed a batch of papers to him; they were student evaluations of him as a teacher that Ed must have kept in a file. Karim had been given copies of them at the time and already knew what the students thought of him. Most of the comments were favorable; only a few thought he needed to give more structure to the class.

  “I’ve already read these,” Karim said.

  Ed said through pursed lips, without looking at him, “I want you to look at them again—in light of promotion. Did you notice the specifics, lack of structure, lack of clarity?”

  “Well, do you have trouble understanding me?”

  “Sometimes,” Ed said. “Look, I’ll put you up next year. Meanwhile work on your teaching and get a few more articles out.”

  There was clearly no reasoning with this man, Karim had thought. Of course Ed himself was trapped in a situation he hated, but was that enough to excuse him? It was common knowledge that his grant applications had been repeatedly rejected; his research was terrible; his wife had left him for someone in the arts department. His attempts to establish relationships with new women had not worked out. He viewed his two sons as failures—it was rumored that one was heavily involved in drugs, the other had been put in a mental hospital twice for “aggressive behavior.” A sense of failure, of being trapped, in fact permeated the whole department. He tried to recall the good aspects of his life in Athens—the serenity of their house, for instance, the pleasure of riding his bicycle on quiet streets back and forth to school, the cool fresh air in the morning as he and Jennifer hiked near their house; but no comfort came to him. Instead, looking back, those scenes seemed like picture postcards, beautiful, but flat and distant.

  He left the restaurant and went into a small park. For an instant he was transfixed by the sight of a woman sitting on a bench. She was following the dress code only loosely—wearing her chador so that much of her hair was revealed, and she had light makeup on. He couldn’t take his eyes off her. She looked a little like Soroor, the prostitute he had spent that night with—and of Jhaleh, the girl from long ago. The woman turned around and their eyes locked in a mutual, curious stare. A flame leapt up inside him under her gaze. Then she got up and walked away. He was tempted to follow her, ask her questions, but managed to restrain himself.

  When he and Fereidoon got to the hospital the nurse told Karim his uncle was doing very well and could be taken home. Then she gave him a prescription. “I hope you’ll be able to fill this. There’s a shortage of heart medicine … He’ll have to rest as much as possible and avoid eating too much fat or eggs. And absolutely no cigarettes.”

  “Would he be able to take a car ride back to Teheran?”

  “As long as he isn’t driving.” She guided them to Jamshid’s room.

  Jamshid was dressed and waiting for them. He looked well, his color was good. He had already taken care of the small bill, he said. “Most of the costs are paid for by the government. In spite of the war, we still have good health care in Iran.”

  At the house, they took Jamshid into a room they had prepared for him—Fereidoon had put a radio next to the bed and a pot full of geraniums in a corner.

  They sat with Jamshid for a few moments and then left him to rest.

  Chapter 25

  After breakfast Jennifer left with Darius for Aziz’s house to see if anyone was home, but again the door was locked and no one was there.

  Darius was suddenly full of questions. Why can’t we get into the house? Where is grandma now? When is daddy coming back? Why are we staying at the doctor’s house? Jennifer tried to answer everything in a way that would not upset him.

  How serious was the accident? She was worned about Karim; yet she couldn’t shake off her anger at him. She decided to go to Turkish Airlines to see if she could change the tickets to an earlier date—she had their passports and tickets in her purse. At the airline office an agent checked his computer and found a flight to Istanbul on Thursday, four days later.

  “Nothing earlier?”

  The man shook his head. She gave him the tickets and he reissued new ones for them.

  She paused on the street wondering what to do—check into a hotel and keep checking at the house to see if anyone was back?

  It seemed best just to go back to Bijan’s house at least tonight. On the way back she bought a few necessities for Darius and herself—underwear, a T-shirt, and pants.

  When they got back, the servant was standing by the gate, looking up and down the street in a vigilant way.

  “Khanoom, Pm glad you’re back. The doctor called. He said he wouldn’t have advised you to go out,” he said in his heavy, ponderous way, not looking at her. “He gave me instructions to do all your errands for you.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” she said, trying to seem nonchalant. “This was something I had to take care of myself.”

  Above the roar of the traffic outside she heard a demonstration starting somewhere, faraway voices of a mob shouting. It began to recede and finally it faded.

  “I know America will yield, and become an Islamic Republic,” the servant said.

  She was startled by the concept but also by the fact that he was acknowledging he knew she was an American.

  In a few moments he served them lunch. She and Darius ate and then she took him into their room and put him down for a nap. His temperature was a little above normal; his fever came and went mysteriously. Hassan had put two glasses, a carafe with ice in it, and a bottle of mosquito repellent on the table. He had also brought a portable fan to supplement the slow-moving one on the ceiling. Through the window she could see two herons in a nest, only their heads visible. Tiny yellow butterflies fluttered around the flowers. The air here was cleaner, freer from smog, than where Aziz lived, making the sunlight, the sky, purer in color. The place was enc
hanting, magical, now in bright daylight—too bad that Darius was sick, that the circumstances of her being here were so strange.

  Bijan returned at four, holding a package and a sleek red toy sports car. “The car is for Darius,” he said.

  “Oh, he’s going to really like it.”

  “I got the result of the blood tests, he doesn’t have malaria or hepatitis.”

  “What could it be then?” Anxiety shot up in her.

  “Some kind of bacteria or virus, but it can’t be too serious.”

  “We went to see if anyone was home but the door was still locked.”

  “I was hoping you’d stay on here.”

  “We’ll be leaving for the United States on Thursday.”

  “Too bad, just as we’re getting to know each other. Are you sure you want to leave so soon?” He looked visibly disappointed.

  He gave her the package. “I bought some clothes for you and Darius. I guessed at the sizes. I hope they fit.” “You’re doing so much for us.”

  He suddenly leaned over and kissed her on her lips, first gently and then more forcefully.

  “I’m a married woman,” she whispered.

  “You left your husband when you came with me to my house, it amounts to that.”

  It does feel like I have left Karim, she thought. This is something he would never forgive me for if he knew about it. They embraced, kissing for a few moments. The ceiling fan was whirring slowly. She pulled back as Darius wandered into the room.

  Bijan gave him the red car. Darius took it reluctantly.

  “Do you want to play a card game with me? No? Then I can do some tricks for you,” Bijan said to him.

  Darius was unresponsive, but Bijan got a pack of cards. He sat down and said to Darius, “Take a card, now put it back in the deck.” Then Bijan shuffled the deck and pulled out the card. “This is the one?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Darius said, a faint smile coming into his face.

  Bijan did another trick and another one, talking to Darius in English and Farsi, back and forth. He finally stopped when Darius began to look tired and leaned his head on Jennifer’s shoulder.