Chapter 5 – The Family
Laleh’s oldest brother pounded on the door of her Tehran apartment. He hadn’t heard from her in two days, nor had anyone else in the family. Her second oldest brother needed her to check on the inventory in the Damascus warehouse, and her father needed her to check on the oil rig parts which should have arrived by convoy at the Iraqi oil field, and her mother needed her to check on the new TV she had ordered over the internet. Everybody needed stuff from her, and none of them paid her anything for doing these tasks, which was a behavior pattern she had disliked for quite a few years. Every year that went by, she disliked it more and more. It seemed to her she spent half her time doing computer things for other people, for free, and she wondered what kind of deal that was, being pretty sure it didn’t extend to her brothers. When they performed work, they got paid. She kept accounts for some of them, and watched the money flow into them, day in and day out, every once in a while paying herself a little something out of these accounts, just for the fun of it. Not that she ever spent it, because she didn’t have a burgeoning social life. Some of her free time she spent saying no to guys her brothers tried to pawn her off on as a wife, but after about fifty of her ‘Nos’, they had given up and consigned her to the dustbin of old maidery. Everyone, well, the guys, thought that was too bad, given her looks. But Laleh was different than most other Iranian women, and the men smelled trouble lurking near her. So even if they asked her to marry them, most of them were relieved when she said, No.
Her brother gave up pounding on the door, and sent out a text message to his brothers saying she wasn’t home and they should try calling her later. Two days after that, with still no word, he and his father brought a key to the apartment and went inside. About the only thing her family gave her was the apartment, and for that, she did computer tasks for them, and took a lot of shit. They looked around, and everything seemed the way it always was, except she wasn’t there, so they sat down and looked at each other. No one had heard from her for four days, which was unusual, because someone always had something for her to do. Do this, do that.
Her father said, “Where is she? Did you call her friends?”
Her oldest brother said, “She only has one friend, and I texted her, and she said she hadn’t heard from her since last week.” Someday, maybe, his father would understand what texting was. “I don’t know where she is, but she better get back here soon and do some work. I’m tired of doing the stuff she should be doing for me. I got better things to spend my time on.” His father may not know how to text, but he knew about business, and he knew it was Laleh that kept her brothers’ businesses running, while they sat in cafes drinking coffee most of the day.
It took the family another week to understand they now might have to work more, because it became apparent Laleh was gone. Somewhere. No one knew where or why, but they knew she wasn’t sitting in her apartment doing the things they needed her to do. This was the first time anything like this had happened in their family, and they were more pissed than worried. Maybe it was odd behavior on her part, but they viewed it more along the lines of bad behavior, because things were starting to slip in the old business department. Where the hell was she?
The Ayatollah's Money Page 4