by Kimia Eslah
“Can you not go away again for a long time?” Nassrin pleaded between sobs.
“Yes, sweetie …” Mojegan began before she was cut off.
“Hi, Maman,” said Taraneh.
“Salam, Taraneh-jaan. Is Nassrin okay?” Mojegan felt torn between all the conversations.
“Yup. Just went to brush her teeth.” Taraneh spoke clearly without elaboration.
“How are you, sweetie?” Mojegan tried to assess the family’s mood from Taraneh’s tone.
“Okay,” said Taraneh flatly.
“How’s school?” Mojegan tried.
“Okay,” repeated Taraneh.
“Omid said you’re moving,” Mojegan tried with a comical tone. “Do I get to come along?”
“Uh … do you want to talk to Baba?” Taraneh asked.
Taraneh’s redirection to Reza stirred anxiety in Mojegan.
“Yes, Taraneh,” said Mojegan, abandoning all attempts at lightening the mood. “Please let me speak to your father.”
“Okay, I’ll go get him,” Taraneh replied in a monotone.
Mojegan heard her place the receiver on the table and the distant sound of the television. She assumed Omid was taking advantage of not having a parent supervise him to watch television while he ate his breakfast on a school day. She remained anchored to the telephone in the sitting room, absentmindedly brushing the carpet with her free hand. Another two minutes she waited. Zeena brought a small tray with tea, sugar, and cookies, and Mojegan thanked her kindly. The rest of the family was being considerate of Mojegan’s privacy by staying out of the sitting room.
“Salam, khanome!” Reza spoke in a larger-than-life voice.
“Salam, Reza.” Mojegan tried to sound cheery.
“Chetori? How are you?” Reza asked enthusiastically and then tried a joke, “How is your tent?”
“Things are going well here.” Mojegan ignored the question. She could feel her agitation overwhelming her. “How are things there?”
“Khoub ast-en. It’s good. The kids are getting ready for school.” Reza’s voice trailed off as if he was looking around for something more to say.
Mojegan took the opportunity to jump in, “Reza, what does Omid mean about moving?”
“Moving? Oh, yes!” Reza’s tone was exuberant again. “Mojegan, darling, we’re moving to a house! You’ll have a beautiful kitchen, a yard, and your own bathroom.”
“Reza, what house?” Mojegan grew frustrated by this back and forth. She wanted to climb into the phone, sit across from her husband, and understand what was happening.
“I bought us a house. It has four bedrooms, so the girls don’t have to share anymore, and three bathrooms, so we can have our own. You’re going to love it,” exclaimed Reza.
“Reza? What are you talking about? How did you buy a house? When?” Mojegan could hear herself yelling into the phone.
“I sold my truck and put a down payment on the house,” Reza explained. “You’re going to love it. We move in a month.”
“Your truck? We just paid that off. How are you going to work?” Mojegan was shaking her head in disbelief.
“Oh, don’t worry about that. I’ll get a lease on another truck, today.” Reza brushed her off.
“Reza, why didn’t you wait for me?” Mojegan tried another approach.
“I thought you wanted a house,” Reza objected mildly. “Besides, this was going to be your surprise.”
“I do. Thank you,” Mojegan said to her own dismay.
“You’re welcome, darling,” Reza replied very sweetly. “You deserve the best.”
Still stunned, Mojegan tried to collect more information about the price of the house, the lender, and the mortgage payments. She sensed a monstrous wave of destruction looming overhead, and she prepared to be thrust underwater yet again by Reza’s impulsivity. Anxiously, she had been treading water for some time, carrying him and the children, and managing to keep their faces above the surface. When Reza brushed off her questions and described the property and neighbourhood, the wave crashed upon her head.
“Hillcrest Village? I don’t know that neighbourhood. Where is it?” Mojegan tried to assuage her worst fears.
“On Don Mills Road,” Reza started. “Just north of Finch Ave.”
“Reza, that’s an hour-long commute for me to bus to work,” Mojegan protested.
Reza dismissed the complaint, “Don’t worry, Mojeeh. You’re smart. You’ll get another job.”
PART THREE
CHAPTER 11
STOPPED HALFWAY ALONG the five-lane bridge, astride her green and rusted CCM bicycle and leaning against the stone guardrail of the Bloor Street viaduct, Taraneh pressed forward for a better view. From her spot on the bridge that connected the East End to downtown Toronto, the eighteen-year-old could see the lush valley of deciduous and evergreen trees and the winding river rushing with spring runoff. She could also see the six lanes of speeding traffic on the parkway and the paved trail spotted with cyclists and pedestrians enjoying a surprisingly hot day on the last Friday in June 1987.
The toothy texture of the stone guardrail bit into the flesh of her right arm. To feel anew the intensity of the pain, she put more weight on her arm and ground her exposed skin into the jagged surface. The summer breeze blew tangle threads of warm and cool air over her face. She closed her eyes and focused on the acute sting in her arm. Taraneh smiled, swallowed, and sensed a peaceful fog descend on her mind and heart. As the sensation of pain diminished, she resisted opening her eyes. She wasn’t ready yet. That momentary relief didn’t balance the injustices of the previous twenty-four hours. In a short jerking motion, she scraped her forearm against the gritty stone. Her body stiffened, she gasped, and her aggrieved arm shot pain through her being and demanded her awareness in its entirety. The fog returned, it absorbed her thoughts and feelings, and left her at peace, ready to continue to work.
Most days, she cycled the half-hour trip downtown along the main strip with the arrogant drivers, always wary of foolhardy jaywalkers and bracing herself to be doored. She preferred cycling to taking transit. On the train, she felt trapped and exposed to the young men who didn’t like the look of her. Some sneered at her in contempt, others pointed and laughed with friends, and a few hurled slurs from the platform as the door closed. Freak! Whore! Dyke! Queer!
Every incident frightened her more. Following her experience the previous day, she decided to stop taking the train altogether. She remembered the moment the four young men had entered the train car in a boisterous roar of malicious humour. Instantly, she had thought, Time to get off! Now!
The subway car hadn’t been empty but Taraneh didn’t trust anyone to help her. The doors had closed and she had missed her chance to escape. In her seat, she had crouched down to make herself small, keeping her eyes on her novel. Across the aisle, a middle-aged white man in a suit had been asleep with his head against the Plexiglas barrier and tenuously gripping his briefcase in his lap. A few seats away to her left, there had sat a young white couple, whispering giddily and unaware of everyone else. At the next stop, I’ll get off, she told herself. By that point, her heartbeat had been racing, her skin crawling, and her stomach turning.
Taraneh had heard them before she had seen their feet approach her seat and surround her. She had recognized their laughter — strident, erupting forcefully and landing heavily — as a precursor to cruelty. Taraneh’s shoulders had tightened and her jaw clenched. Looking down at the floor, strewn with discarded newspaper and a puddle of coffee that had widened as the train travelled, she had seen four pairs of men’s running shoes and her own army boots.
“What’re you reading?” one man had asked in an amused tone.
Taraneh never felt prepared for these confrontations. She didn’t want to mollify or denigrate her attackers. She resented the social pressure to outsmart and overpower her assailants. She w
anted to travel from one place to another, day or night, without being harassed and without being accused of making the wrong choices. She was tired of altering her appearance and modifying her movements in an effort to become invisible.
Within a minute, she had found herself standing face to face with a young man her own age. Her novel had landed on the floor, under a seat and out of her reach. She had gripped the rail with her right hand to steady herself. The assailant had clenched her left thumb in his fist and curled it backwards unnaturally. A sharp pain had shot through the length of her arm but Taraneh had not screamed. Instead, she had grimaced and stared hatefully at him. When she heard him speak Farsi to his abettors, she had briefly forgotten the pain in her hand. This dirty cunt reeks up close, she had heard.
When the train stopped at Sherbourne Station, Taraneh had pulled her thumb out of his grip and made to disembark. They had not attempted to detain her. When she had reached out to push two of them aside, they had recoiled in disgust at the thought of being touched by her. On the platform, Taraneh hadn’t turned around to see their lewd gestures or hear their misogynist slurs. She had sprinted up the stairs, weaving through the slower moving riders and thrusting herself through the turnstile and out the double doors.
On the narrow sidewalk, pressed against the brick wall of a bank, shaking and agitated, Taraneh had lit a cigarette and wept. She tucked her aching thumb into the sleeve of her black hooded sweater. In the shadow of the office towers that lined Sherbourne Street, she had felt reduced to a speck on the sidewalk; becoming part of the urban scenery had comforted her. In a downtown crowd of suits, panhandlers, and blue-collar types, Taraneh blended into the mosaic. No one noticed or bothered her. To them, she was another young street punk dressed in tattered plaid and denim, covered in patches of anarchist slogans, and sporting a shaved head and dyed fringe.
In the suburbs, she stood apart like a solitary skyscraper. The slurs shouted from across the road, the eggs hurled from passing cars, and the lengthy sneers were experiences she associated with suburbanite teens. Preppy guys with windswept hair and turned up collars, drinking pop and sharing cigarettes by the 7-Eleven. Just a few years earlier, Taraneh would have yearned for the attention of these boys, similarly to coveting their idols when she plastered her bedroom wall with posters of Rob Lowe, Johnny Depp, and River Phoenix. Mimicking Brooke Shields and Alyssa Milano, she had worn in tight jeans, short sweaters, big hair, and shiny lips. Each side dressed up for the other and Taraneh enjoyed the performance. Her parents had insisted that she dress modestly, with longer sweaters and lighter makeup, but they appreciated her pursuit of femininity.
As a child, Taraneh had struggled to be demure and submissive, like Nassrin and Pegah. After each failed attempt, when she had been chastised for lacking humility and good manners, she had promised herself that she would never fail again. In her childhood diaries, she wrote lists of all her shortcomings and created plans, complete with self-inflicted punishments, to ensure that she performed as expected. The moments when Taraneh heard her father refer to her as a good girl, or her mother describe her as dutiful or obedient, were a source of intense joy that filled an immense cavity in her sense of self. In disproportion, the feelings of having failed, of hearing herself described as boorish and bossy, and of fearing that she would never change for the better, caused her to perceive herself as a dirty wild animal. She had punished herself with pain and hunger for days at a time. In her school bag, she had kept a hollowed plastic pen with a jagged edge. In the bathroom stall, she had administered her punishment by pressing the jagged edge into her inner thigh until it hurt too much to bear. She had sentenced herself to three days of punishment for minor letdowns and five days for major breaches.
As a young adolescent, Taraneh had realized that she could gain a minimum level of acceptance from her parents by dressing prettily. Her mother had been thrilled to help Taraneh choose fashionable clothes, style her hair, and apply a modest amount of makeup. To be the focus of her mother’s positive attention had satisfied Taraneh in a fundamental way that nearly made her cry. Instead of objecting to her mother’s choices of pale pinks and blues, Taraneh had smiled and agreed. This reaction had caused her mother to be overjoyed and fueled Taraneh’s desire to please her even more. Lots of girls wear these clothes, she explained to herself. I’m just doing what other girls do.
Following her relocation downtown at the age sixteen, Taraneh had lost interest in mimicking suburban girls. She understood that dressing like other teenage girls would cut her some slack and allow her to pass more easily in the world. However, she knew from experience as a pretty girl that she would still be the target of unwanted attention. Instead of hurtful and hostile remarks about appearance, she would be grabbed at in crowds, told to smile back, stalked for blocks, and hooted at from passing cars. There seemed to be no escape from the tyranny of spectators, commentators, and assailants, and her parents’ incredulity had only added insult to the injuries she suffered from routine harassment.
***
Pedaling determinedly and regularly checking traffic on her left, Taraneh crossed Sherbourne Street and headed to work, one block west to an old office building on Bloor Street East. She tightened her grip on the handlebars, and her knuckles turned white as she recalled her earlier phone conversation with her mother.
“My thumb still hurts,” Taraneh had said as she touched her left thumb lightly.
Her mother had called at noon to ask whether Taraneh would visit them that weekend. This was the regular Friday morning phone call that Taraneh had grown to expect and dread. She had postponed visiting her parents’ North York home for nearly a month. Exams for her last year of high school were finished and she had no other excuses for staying away. She knew the question would percolate shortly and she was preoccupied with formulating an answer.
“Did you put ice on it?” her mother had asked in a concerned tone.
“Yeah, I did, but it still hurts when I bend it.” Taraneh had felt herself choke up on emotions.
“Taraneh, if you don’t want their attention,” her mother had begun matter-of-factly, “then you need to stop dressing like … like you do.”
“Maman! What does it matter how I dress?” Taraneh had protested.
“You’re such a beautiful girl,” her mother had tried to placate her, “but people don’t know that from your hair and your clothes.”
“They come after me even when I look beautiful,” Taraneh had said with an emphasis that made beautiful sound gaudy.
“That’s different,” her mother had perked up. “They want to let you know that you’re pretty.”
“What?! No, they want to …” Taraneh hadn’t wanted to finish her sentence, to say rape me.
Superstitiously, she had worried that saying the words aloud might invite malice. Also, it had felt strangely arrogant to claim that someone wanted to have sex with her. Like everyone else, she had been socialized to expect rape and violence as a normal part of life as a woman; she had prepared herself psychologically for such an inevitability. Yet, to speak these truths to her mother had seemed crass and hyperbolic, rather than unjust and inhumane. She wouldn’t understand, Taraneh had told herself. She doesn’t know what these guys are like.
“There is no winning with you, Taraneh,” her mother had bemoaned. “What do you want me to say?”
Mojegan and Taraneh were as familiar with the form and feel of this conversation as they were with the childhood storybooks they had read together. Each struggled to show empathy and compassion without resorting to moral judgements, but both women mistrusted the merits of sympathy. Both believed that any act of sympathy without reproach was also a statement of approval of the other’s choices, and neither woman wanted any misunderstanding about her disapproval of the other.
Taraneh desperately wanted her mother’s acceptance and esteem irrespective of how she dressed, who she loved, and where she worked. In times of abje
ct grief, Taraneh had begged her mother to embrace her without moralizing, without speaking. Reluctantly and silently, her mother had rubbed her back and Taraneh had momentarily felt accepted and protected. It had never been an act that Taraneh herself could reciprocate. When her mother appeared distressed, Taraneh had only ever mustered reticence and civility. She does it to herself, giving in to his every whim, Taraneh reasoned. Feeling pain might help her understand. If she’d stopped coddling him, then we’d all be better off.
Taraneh perceived her mother as a hidden peril. Though her mother was conscientious, she was a hazard because of her close link to Taraneh’s father, who was dangerously reckless. Taraneh observed how the rippling effects of her father’s narcissism and negligence agitated the entire family, including her mother, who had grown increasingly disgruntled with his unpredictability. and how, like a raging storm at sea, it plunged her family into turbulent waters and forced everyone to struggle merely to keep afloat. Although her mother had never mentioned it, Taraneh sensed her frustration when he decided plans at the eleventh-hour or arrived home with “a present for our family” that was well beyond their means.
In public, her mother bit her tongue and smiled in response to these frequent transgressions. When her mother thought they couldn’t be overheard, Taraneh heard her berate him for placing their family in yet another difficult situation. In response, her father would plead boyishly that he simply wanted everyone to be happy. If her mother continued her complaints, his response was variable. At times, Taraneh heard him promise impishly. When he felt put upon and caged, he rejected and belittled her mother’s concerns.
Taraneh, Nassrin, and Omid were familiar with this exchange; throughout childhood, they had heard it week after week from behind closed doors. Taraneh was attuned to her mother’s body language, and she knew when her father had upset her mother. By her sixteenth year, Taraneh was aware that her mother was perpetually unhappy.
One Sunday morning in Taraneh’s fifteenth year, following another surprise dinner party, Taraneh had been alone in the kitchen with her mother. She had been preparing breakfast for herself while her mother scrubbed pots and pans from the previous night’s feast. Her father and siblings had been asleep. Offhandedly, her mother had expressed her weariness about hosting future parties. Without forethought, Taraneh had suggested that her mother divorce her father to avoid being steamrolled.