by Fariba Vafi
Shahla’s maman is an old woman who thinks about the other world, but my maman has only recently found time to think about this world.
Shahla’s maman is a woman who tolerated all kinds of misery and remained faithful to her husband to the end, but my maman remained loyal to herself more than anybody else.
When Shahla talks about Maman I listen quietly. The woman Shahla talks about is only her maman.
She waves her hand in front of my eyes and snaps her fingers. “Where are you?”
I say, “With Mahin. I miss her.”
And I don’t tell Shahla that I had gone to Mahin to talk about the maman I knew.
45
I write:
Dear Mahin
Maman is sick. Shahla is supposed to get the results of Maman’s tests tomorrow. She thinks it’s better for Maman to lose some weight. Maman quietly says, “She wants to kill me with hunger.”
I bring Maman home with me for a few days. The neighbors come to visit her. Amir advises, “Don’t let those people come in the house.”
Maman says, “The son of a government minister is not as stuck-up as your husband.”
Maman is weeping and puts her hand on her chest. “It hurts here. It hurts a lot.”
I remember Aunt Mahboub. She also used to put her hand on her heart saying it hurt. I remember well that her hand wouldn’t go down. Instead she would move her hand toward her necklace, fixing it on her cleavage. Rubbing her throat, she would ask, “Do you know how to get rid of these tiny freckles?”
She had traits that Maman doesn’t. Maman is not made of the same clay.
She says, “I am afraid to have a heart attack like Mahboub.”
Maman is submerged in her thoughts.
You can’t tell if she is thinking about Aunt Mahboub’s death or her own.
“What’s the use of being alive like Qadir?”
The neighbors would hear Uncle Qadir’s sobbing through the night calling for Aunt Mahboub.
“Or like that blessed soul.” Then she says, “Peace upon him.”
Which one of the dead is she blessing, I ask?
“Mahboub. My poor sister. It wasn’t her time yet.”
Perhaps she will give a second blessing too. But no. Nobody is here to pretend for. It’s only me and her. Like the night that Maman and I were awake. You were not home. Shahla was asleep.
In the moonlight I could see that she was awake and I could hear Father’s voice. His voice was coming from the basement. It wasn’t a cry for help, but it was the voice of someone who was begging for something and could be heard very well in the silence of the night. How long I stayed like that, I don’t know. I was wishing for the moaning to stop. I covered my head with the blanket but could still hear him moan. I waited for Maman to get up, but she kept lying there listening.
It was the sound of crying. It was the sound of pleading and weeping. The sound of pain. I half rose and got closer to Maman. Her eyes were closed. But I knew she was awake. I had seen her eyes gleam. I called her. She didn’t answer. I wanted to go downstairs, but I didn’t dare. I thought it was a dream that would end, like a nightmare that would be forgotten. Everything would come to an end. It would end right then. But it didn’t.
I shook Maman’s shoulders. She turned her back to me and sobbed. I was afraid of waking up Shahla. She’d be cranky for a few days if she didn’t get her sleep. I sat in my bed.
You know Mahin, to make up for that night I throw the pillow off of my face every night in my dream and go to the basement by myself. I turn the lights on and sit by Father.
I still haven’t been able to forgive myself for lying down in bed hiding my head under the pillow. This is one of tens of images in which I don’t like myself, and one can’t get over something like that without love. I am stuck behind these images, on the side of the shadows, and I own all of them. How can a person get anywhere bearing all this weight?
Father died that same night, lonely, like a defenseless child.
I can’t write any more. I fold the letter, and put it under my mattress.
46
I have found my favorite place in the house. I am sitting there and flipping through a book. I go back to the beginning of the line and read the same sentence over and again. My eyes, like magnets that have lost their power, only move on the paper without absorbing the words. I rest my head on the book, and when I look up Amir is there. Unexpectedly. It’s difficult to recognize him at first. He looks a little darker, slimmer, and a bit unfamiliar.
After kissing the kids, he tells them to go and play in the yard. I say, “No, stay here.” They will make noise in the yard.
Being alone together is nothing like what happens in the movies. There is no sound, no music. Like a man and a woman who run into each other in the street, we are supposed to remember that we somehow know each other. But remembering alone is not enough. There is a need for something more, perhaps something that has to do with love. Amir comes close and touches my arm.
I say, “I’ll get you some tea.”
He follows me to the kitchen but doesn’t let go of my hand. “I won’t go back to Baku any more. I’ll stay right here.”
47
Maman says, “Promise you won’t tell anybody.”
Shahla is opening canned fruit for Maman.
“I want everybody to look at my face when I am talking.”
I laugh, “At your nose?”
Moaning, she says, “Yes, but not at my breasts.”
I stare at her face to avoid looking at her chest. Her face looks old.
“It’s my bad luck that the surgeon did such an awful job. The chest should feel smooth, even with no breast. These scars upset me. The skin should be soft, like normal skin.”
My heels are itching. So are my fingertips.
Shahla goes out to shop.
“But it’s not smooth. Sometimes I go crazy and want to put a hot iron on my chest and smooth it out.” Maman moans.
“Are you in pain?”
I am waiting for her to show me where it hurts. I point to her chest.
She says, “No.”
Her hand is searching for pain in the air. She doesn’t know the exact place it hurts. Perhaps she is in no pain at all. She moans louder as if reading my mind. I know this weeping. I am used to it like an old nanny. It’s old. Her chest is not smooth because of age. Her weeping is gloomy and hoarse.
But it’s a lie. I have not gotten used to this noise. I don’t like Maman’s weeping. I am not happy. I know I am frowning and don’t look anything like a cheerful and smiling nurse. Maman is unhappy too. Sickness hasn’t given her the yielding and accepting face that makes one look calm.
“If Mahin were here, she would have thought of something.”
I don’t know what Mahin would have done that Shahla and I can’t. The look of an impending crying fit covers her face. I bring her milk and straighten up her sheets. I arrange her medicine on a plate and repeat the order in which they should be taken. This is all because there is nothing else I can do. All patients need sympathy. And I am no good at expressing that.
48
I can’t sympathize with Amir either.
“Although she didn’t continue her education, her life was turned around. If she had stayed here, she would have been an ordinary and uneducated woman, like hundreds of others. But now . . .”
Amir is thinking about his friends, and with every sentence he looks at me. He is waiting for me to say something so he could talk more passionately about that other world. It’s enough to say, “But her husband got sick; he was depressed.”
Then he starts quietly and convincingly, “I know, they have their own problems too, but their issues are different.”
Then his voice becomes louder little by little. “You don’t understand what it means to find a finger behind the workshop. You don’t understand what seeing a thirteen-year-old girl who is a drug addict and is willing to do anything for money, does to you.”
Amir needs
a nudge to pour out his heart. Silently, I go to the backyard. The sound of the tambourine has started, albeit late.
He says, “Shut that door. For one night don’t listen to the orchestra. Come here and sit down.”
I sit by him and ask, “Has something happened?”
I know that a breeze has stirred in his direction from another world, like the smell of barbecue that comes from far away and tickles your nose.
“What did you want to happen?” Gently, he puts his arm that is stiff like a wooden stick on his eyes. “You stay at home and have no idea what is happening out there. If you knew, you wouldn’t say these things.”
I don’t know what I have said.
“You are willing to live in this awful and hideous place even if you were to relive it a hundred times over. Isn’t that so?”
I want to scream “No,” but I feel like a convict whose confession or silence wouldn’t change her death sentence.
“Think about it. The kids will have good educational opportunities. They can use their talents. Nobody will put them down.”
At least if he takes his arms off his eyes, he wouldn’t look so much like somebody who is stuck under the rubble.
I get up and wash the dishes that are left from dinner. I shoo the mosquitoes out of the room and close the windows. Amir has fallen asleep with the story he has told himself. I pull a blanket over him and with my new obsession make sure the door and windows are locked. The air is cool, and here and there the windows of the houses across the street are lit. I put away Amir’s toothbrush, straighten out the kids’ covers, and take a second look at the kitchen. Everything is in its place; tidy and neat. I lie down only to realize that there is no use. There is no use shutting the doors and the windows. Insecurity has crept into the house like a filthy cat, and I know that even if I close my eyes, I’ll hear its evil snore in my dream.
49
I scream.
“Don’t I have the right to have anything private for myself in this house?”
Amir is quiet. The back of his neck has turned red and that’s a bad sign.
I holler again. Amir has read the letter that I wrote to Mahin, and is now waiting like a witness that the judge hasn’t summoned in yet.
To get him to talk, I scream at him like a sharp needle against a pimple.
He says, “Now I understand why I never liked your mother.”
I don’t know if I should fight him for reading the letter or for what he is thinking about my mother. I say, “You had no right to read my letter.”
“I had every right. Anything that concerns you in this house concerns me too.”
There is no arguing about this point. It’s an old argument that is repeated every now and then. I sometimes prefer privacy but he believes in sharing everything. I try hard to remember what I had written in my letter.
“She is being punished for it.”
I look at him, surprised. “Punished for what?”
“Punished for her cruelty, for being coldhearted. Now, watch how she’s going to die, a hundred times worse than that poor man.”
He goes to the fridge and says, “The poor thing.”
Again Amir has thrown a word into the air, and I have to find out who it belongs to. I repeat to myself, “Poor Maman, poor Amir, poor Father.” Like a dress, I hurriedly try the word on every person. I wonder who looks best in this dress.
Suddenly I wonder, “What if it belongs to me?”
50
Shahla is talking about Maman’s bad temper, and it’ll take some time before she begins to talk about her sickness. I listen quietly and I am preoccupied. Wherever I go, I don’t stop thinking, even when I am changing Maman’s sheets, or when I take Shadi to school and bring her back, or when I witness Hosseini’s bloodshot eyes. Amir throws one leg over the other, and then again switches his legs. He has no problem with his legs. He has a problem with silence. He starts talking. No ears catch his words. They simply swell up and fill the room.
I go to the room where Manijeh is sitting. She looks like a passenger who has lost her ticket. I bring her back with me to the room where Amir and Hosseini are sitting.
Amir is signaling me with his eyes to say something, but I have become too dumb to get his signal. He is forced to send a more obvious sign. “I’ll show you.”
When you lose it, pulling yourself back together is very difficult.
We have left Manijeh’s house. The kids are walking ahead of us. I am walking a little behind Amir. Manijeh is watching from her window. I wave to her. Amir pretends that he doesn’t see her. We have to walk to the main street to find a taxi. We start walking in the dark, and I get started on my task. Like a spider, I hastily weave a web around myself and move inside it. This web is stronger than anything. Amir starts talking, and I swiftly continue my work like a woman who weaves a vest even with her eyes closed, and tell myself silently, “Now, see if you can get me.”
51
Shahla comes with her hands full. “Why are you sitting in the dark?”
We don’t say anything. She turns on the light and Maman blinks rapidly. I believe Maman has only one light, and when it’s off it gets dark everywhere. Shahla has one extra light. That’s why even when she is weeping and in the middle of crying and sobbing, she can tell the young girl who is standing nearby, “Mrs. So-and-So doesn’t have tea,” or ask her to bring tissue paper, or fill up the sugar bowl. Amir also has many lights. When the ones inside the house are off, he can turn on his own lights. That’s why he can go to the swimming pool when we fight, or go for a big breakfast of tripe, or treat himself to a cool fruit juice and take off with his friends for the mountains.
Like Maman, I have only one light. When it goes off, it feels pitch black inside me. When I am mad, I am feuding with the whole world, and I am yet angrier at myself.
But Mahin has many lights. Her lights are constantly being turned on and off. It doesn’t matter if a few of them are off. Some others are still on.
We gather around the packages that Mahin has sent. I open her letter, and Shahla opens one of the packages with a knife.
Mahin writes that she is now living with a wonderful young American. A picture of them is in the middle of a package of clothes. They have no problems. Only that sometimes they don’t understand each other’s language. Mahin hasn’t written anything about her Iranian husband. Apparently, they lived together only for a few months. She writes about the lotions and the powders she has sent. I read a few lines while keeping an eye on Maman and Shahla, who have looked through the package and are now playing with a box that looks different.
Mahin says that this is the best quality imitation breasts she has found. She writes that they are a little small and are not as big as Maman’s, which you could put a glass of tea on without worrying if it would fall.
Maman is lovingly cursing Mahin.
Shahla says, “Where did she find this long-legged guy?”
I take the picture and look at it. The long-legged guy is smiling. He looks biracial and is holding a happy Mahin under his wing like a tiny chick. The picture moves from hand to hand. The special box moves from hand to hand. The letter moves from hand to hand.
I have the picture again. I cover the body of the long-legged guy with my two fingers. I look at Mahin anew; frizzy black hair, naked arms, and tight shorts. I move the picture back and forth.
Maman looks at me with surprise, “Don’t you recognize your own sister?”
52
I like the basement. Sometimes I like to go back there. Sometimes it’s the only place that you can go from the ground level. It’s been a long time since I realized that I have been carrying a basement within me. Since I have discovered the basement is my starting point, I stop there often. This time I have found the courage to walk there and carefully look at its walls. I have even considered putting up a light on the low ceiling. The basement no longer scares me. I want to go there. This time with my eyes open, feeling no fear.
I have been a tenant f
or thirty-five years in this basement, and now I have a sense of ownership. I want to find out about all its corners and passages. I want to see the stairs clearly, to get to know the hallways and look closely at the people. I have always looked at it through darkness and have seen only shadows and ghosts. How could I see anything else when fear blinded me and disgust stopped my breath?
Now I want to search all its gaps and openings in the light. The kids are calling me. The phone is ringing. Shadi puts a pencil sharpener in my hand, and I climb reluctantly out of the basement. I shake myself. I’m in no rush. I’m carrying out the kids’ orders. I know that I can return to the basement anytime I want, like a traveler who returns to her homeland.
53
The woman enters the bedroom and the man, after apologizing, looks inside the room over the woman’s shoulder. They apologize again for checking the bathroom. The real estate man winks at Amir. The sound of the tambourine is heard. The woman and man look at each other. The real estate man says, “What’s that?”
He leaves, following the woman and the man. Amir follows them and returns after a few minutes.
The kids look at Amir as they watch me getting ready to leave. Amir is standing in front of the kitchen and looks like a warrior who can’t believe his opponent is walking away quietly, leaving the battlefield.
I step outside. I am in the yard when Shadi taps on the window. From the movement of her lips, I realize she is asking for cheese puffs.
I start walking. I pass the intersection and go into a quiet alley. This alley has no resemblance to the other alleyways on this street. It has trees and smells nice, the scent of jasmine, the fragrance of roses, the aroma of freshly cooked rice. The houses have large windows and the chandeliers are visible through lace curtains.