The Last Days of Café Leila: A Novel

by Donia Bijan

  She marveled at her father’s enthusiasm for borscht, when for thirty years each day had been a struggle. Another man would’ve untied his apron long ago and left the country for a softer life, but not Zod. He would not walk away from his courtyard with its turquoise fountain and rose-colored tables beneath the shade of giant mulberry trees, nor the gazebo, now overgrown with jasmine, where an orchestra once played and his wife sang into the summer nights.

  One by one they’d been sent away to safety and comfort abroad while Zod stayed behind to tend to his customers who still came, week after week, to the one place that remained standing, that swept its entrance, that kept its kitchen open and made soup and offered a respite from the hopelessness on the street. You caught a whiff of sweet simmering onions—almost visible—at the door, behind which they were treated with kindness. Sometimes they couldn’t pay, often the plates were chipped and the wait was long, but the soup was always hot, and when there weren’t enough spoons, they wiped them on their shirttails, rinsed them off in the hot broth, and shared.

  Beyond the walls of Café Leila raged riots, marches, brutal arrests, crippling inflation, but Zod had stayed open through the despair, scoured the pantry for the last onion, dug up the yard and grew tomatoes, raised chickens, and if the streets became too dangerous to walk, his café became a makeshift hotel where he urged his guests to rest on cushions and blankets on the dining room floor while he circled through aisles of sleeping men like a nurse, offering tea and lozenges for the pepper spray that burned their throats and left their mouths dry. In his shadow they slept until dawn, when he lit the samovar for tea and sent them home before first light.

  Noor found herself alternating between two worlds, being excited to see her father one moment and worried about going back no longer a child, but a single mother. Yet all the reasons why she should stay in San Francisco and find a new job and keep her daughter in clean comfort had lost their luster. It seemed the separation gave Lily more leverage, using it as a tool for sympathy, revenge, a ride, a new phone, an excuse for a failed test—playing her parents like chess pieces. When Noor attempted to push back against the advancing permissiveness—“Today it’s a pierced nose. What’s next? Tattoos? Cigarettes?”—Nelson winked at their daughter conspiratorially and rushed to her defense. “Ah, don’t be a wet blanket, Noor.” “A wet what?” She had to look it up.

  When worry kept her awake, Noor wandered down the hall to Lily’s room to gaze at a soft moon face nestled between piles of teddy bears, the curtain drawn on the theatrical roll of her eyes. She longed to tickle her and plunge her nose in the soft belly she used to sprinkle with talc. Sometimes, inching into a place on the bed to smell Lily’s scalp still damp from a bath, she sniffed the part on her crown and found her daughter—There you are, baby. There you are. Then, as if hearing her mother’s thoughts, Lily would stir and growl, sending Noor shuffling mournfully back to a cold bed. How would she ever explain this journey back to Iran?

  NOOR’S FATHER HAD SENT her to America against great odds. At eighteen she had no desire or need to leave her widowed father, her friends, or familiar surroundings. But young and docile, she submitted to Zod’s plan, wishing to please, unable to just say that she didn’t want to go, too obedient to imagine that her life was her own business. A relative accompanied Noor and her brother as far as New York then helped with a connection to Los Angeles, where their uncle intercepted them and eventually delivered her to college in Oakland. And thus she was left to carve out a place for herself, to untangle English and make sense of its concealed meanings, to become a person of her own making.

  For months, robbed of a familiar context—street, home, language, family—she carried a map, a calendar, and red markers in a backpack to remind herself where she was, how long she had been there, and where she had to go next, learning to numb her nostalgia until a letter from home would stir homesickness, reminding her that even if she stood out among people who all knew one another, she was nobody here and if she didn’t go to class, no one would come looking for her. It was new being someone whom no one was waiting for.

  Her father had scattered his children like seeds—her brother Mehrdad in Los Angeles, Noor in Oakland—hoping something evergreen would spring up to be pruned and shaped on American soil. The odds had seemingly paid off: his son had graduated at the top of his engineering class and married a pretty lawyer, and now ran a successful solar panel company, proud of his autonomy. They lived in a mansion with imported Italian marble countertops where their two children ate organic cereal aloft on titanium stools.

  Noor knew a person assimilates without knowing it because one afternoon, after a difficult final exam, the scent of eucalyptus and the ocean’s breath swept her outside to sit on a bench, and while she ate her sandwich a classmate smiled and stopped to ask her name. “My name is Noor. It means light.” In that moment the prickly sensation of a first shoot felt like a pinch, the seedling starting to take root. Until then California had been a dream she stumbled into, but she woke up to find that the street where the neighborhood children had played tag and Mehrdad had beat a boy who looked up her dress, that their schoolyard, the details of her bedroom, were blurry beyond memory, and a new life opened to her.

  Nursing may not have been her calling, but with a capacity for watchfulness, she took to it readily, its purpose clear and uncomplicated. She worked long hours and holidays, taking extra shifts her colleagues unloaded, coming home to a dark apartment to eat Pepperidge Farm Chessmen and drifting off to reruns of The Golden Girls.

  Then, at the crisis age of thirty-one, when her candidacy as a bride had been discarded by Persian standards, came a serendipitous hospital romance. Her relatives stopped wringing their hands once she was engaged to Nelson. And with Lily’s arrival, motherhood allowed her to construct a world for their child out of the glistening miniatures of her own childhood—the simple bliss of a swing set beneath the shade of two pomegranate trees that would grow tall, bear red fruit, and send out roots into a new neighborhood. Yet still, after thirty years, she was at best a tender sapling with shallow creepers easily plucked.

  Now all Noor felt was free. It was a strange relief knowing that nothing would ever be the same again, that she could make decisions without consulting Nelson, though she did need his consent to take Lily abroad. When she asked Nelson, he looked past her into the long hospital corridor.

  “Ah,” he drew out a sigh. “A visit home?”

  “Yes, to see my father.” Noor tracked his gaze, half expecting to see the girlfriend.

  “You always said it’s a shame Lily hasn’t met him.”

  Then, with a small shrug, he said, “Yes, maybe it will be a good distraction for her. You’ll be careful, won’t you?”

  “Of course,” Noor replied, fixing him with an assertive look. He wouldn’t stop her from taking Lily to visit her grandfather.

  To Nassim, the trip seemed a desperate flight for Noor to mend her broken heart. “You’re going back to the city of your imagination, not the real Tehran. Do you understand? That place exists only in your mind. You’re a foreigner with a beautiful daughter who doesn’t speak a word of Persian. Face it, Noor, you’re running away!”

  Oh no, Noor thought, I’m running to.

  Still, she couldn’t find the words to break the news of their trip to Lily. When she called Lily to her bedroom, her throat tightened, paralyzing her. As a child Lily had considered every outing an adventure, dutifully scrambling into her car seat—a happy spectator of her parents’ lives, sweet as custard between them. But at fifteen it took days of pleading to persuade her to accompany Noor anywhere.

  Lily saw the open suitcase on her mother’s bed and asked, “Why are you packing?”

  “Well,” Noor answered in a small voice. “I had a letter from your grandpa and I’d like to go see him.”

  “So, I’m going to Dad’s?” Noor moved back to the closet with empty hangers, avoiding her daughter’s gaze.

  “No, sweetie . . . you’re
coming with me. He’d like to meet you.”

  Lily stared at her. “When will we be back?”

  “Two, maybe three weeks.”

  “What about camp? What about my friends?” Her eyes were already welling up.

  Noor shook her head. “Don’t worry! You can go to camp when we come back. This is your chance to learn a little Persian and see where your other half is from.”

  Lily sat down. “But I don’t want to go. I’m from here. I don’t want to learn Persian.” She was trying to blink back the tears but they just kept rolling down her face.

  “Oh, Lily,” Noor leaned her forehead against Lily’s and wiped at her daughter’s face with cool thumbs. “I need to see my father. I want to take you to the place where I grew up. I promise it will be an adventure.” It was too much—this false promise, saying it as if it would make everything okay.

  Lily stormed out of the room before Noor had a chance to tell her that they were leaving in a week. She sat wearily next to her suitcase and felt an immediate mix of relief and regret. Could she have handled it better? Probably. Noor felt incapable, though, of conveying the range of emotions, the dismay, the humiliation and sorrow that choked her. Only the vivid picture of her father waiting, his voice asking, How are you? kept her on steady footing.

  Four

  The night the girls were expected to arrive, Zod and Soli had gone to the airport early, but now the plane was late and people were restless. A monitor read DELAYED but they didn’t know for how long. At one o’clock in the morning, the Tehran airport still hummed with anticipation of landings, the coffee shop stayed open serving Nescafé and sponge cakes, and a cluster of men stood smoking and browsing the newsstand.

  In the waiting area, rows of vinyl chairs were occupied by families and excited children squirming away from their mothers’ arms to twirl and chase one another while their fathers nodded off. There lingered a pungent smell of socks and lilies from bouquets that lay waiting on the ground next to discarded shoes. Two boys kicked a sneaker back and forth, scoring easy goals between shopping bags. Not finding a seat, Zod, bird-boned and frail, switched his cane from one hand to the other and leaned against Soli’s broad frame as they paced the corridors, maneuvering around weary-eyed night porters and the lone janitor pushing a dank mop.

  Then a barely audible announcement, and the monitor flashed ARRIVED. People stopped talking and gathered their belongings, pressing towards the gate where passengers would be coming through. Zod held onto Soli’s arm as they nudged forward, his heart beating loudly in his chest. He remembered a time when Pari, his late wife, was flying home from a concert in Vienna and he went to meet her at the airport carrying six-year-old Noor on his shoulders. To pass the time, he galloped through the terminal while Noor shrieked and tugged on his mane, forbidding him to slow down. He blinked away the picture of her ribbed white tights wrinkled at her ankles and the patent leather Mary Janes knocking against his chest.

  Two weeks ago Soli had come upstairs to give him a message. “Your daughter telephoned while you were sleeping. She said, ‘Tell Baba I’m coming home.’ ” Zod thought about how if his mother were alive, she would know what to cook for a daughter turning home after thirty years with a granddaughter she had never met. Of course, Zod remembered Noor’s favorite dishes, the marble-size meatballs, the pomegranate soup, the sour cherry rice, but what about the little one? Raised in America, what does she know of his food? He must remember to tell Naneh Goli not to burn the incense. She will do it anyway to banish the evil eye, but it might scare the child and she’ll surely think Naneh is a witch.

  One by one the passengers stumbled through the gate wearing the same forlorn look of travelers after a long flight, pushing carts with oversized luggage, searching the crowd for familiar faces before being swallowed by large welcoming parties. Zod craned his neck and stood on tiptoe to catch a first glimpse of the granddaughter he’d never met. It was unbearable, the waiting. What if they weren’t on this plane? What if he had the wrong day? He was so forgetful these days.

  Then, instantly, the crowd parted as if they knew and a woman fell into his arms and cried, “Here, Baba! Baba, I’m here!” Zod’s ribs felt like kindling beneath her palms. Some people watching them wiped away their tears. Lily stood by, wisps of brown hair escaping from a loose headscarf, anxious eyes moving from her mother to her grandfather until she was pulled into their embrace. When they finally separated, Noor stood between them, each of her hands holding one of theirs—her father’s papery and trembling with the thrill of their arrival, and Lily’s twitching like a sparrow. Zod looked over at Lily, her face so familiar to him. They were Pari’s eyes that looked back at him reproachfully. Poor chicken, he thought, plucked from your coop.

  NOOR WAS TALKING ABOUT the cost of housing in San Francisco. Zod sat a few feet away from her. Lily was asleep upstairs in Noor’s childhood bedroom that Naneh Goli had prepared for her with an electric fan and a feather bed.

  Illuminated only by a lamp on the side table, this dazzling girl with almond eyes was sitting here at last, in the room that was filled with thoughts and prayers for her. She gave Zod a present wrapped in pink tissue paper.

  “Look, Baba, I found this for you in Japantown.”

  He unwrapped a navy blue kimono embroidered with white butterflies and pulled the silk sash against his cheek. Though worn from the emotional homecoming, he couldn’t tear himself away from Noor—could not believe that she was standing in front of him. He gave in to the wail that was lodged in his throat and buried his face in the new robe. Noor dropped to her knees, laying a cheek on Zod’s lap as he stroked the gray roots of her temple. Wasn’t she the girl who used to jump into his lap and thrust her hands into his thick, black hair to count the stray white wisps?

  “Tell me about yourself.” He was asking about her marriage, the ruin of it. Zod met Nelson once, when he went to America for their wedding, carrying an old-fashioned leather valise that held little more than his suit, polished shoes, and a cargo of seeds culled from the pomegranate trees Yanik had planted years ago. All he knew of the groom was that he was a heart surgeon with a nice car, and that his parents were Spanish and spoke rapid Catalan and he had not understood one word of their conversation. His daughter seemed happy, radiant, and Zod was never one to dismiss happiness. But the life he dreamed of for his child had unraveled. Noor did not know where to begin. She still felt the betrayal was her fault, that she had mistaken warmth and ease for desire. The decomposition of her life with Nelson and her tenuous hold on Lily were not topics she was expecting to discuss with her father on this first night home, but he persisted and she could at last be her true self. The rush of sentiment that her girlhood home aroused in her was reassuring and soft. He wanted to know, and she wanted so much to tell him, to shout, to sob, to let her anger out of the cage where she had kept it and let it tear this way and that until she could breathe again.

  Yet what did Behzod Yadegar know of women? Pain and death and sorrow, he understood. Now seventy-five, his stamina diminishing, Zod had been housebound more or less since his twenties. When his father had summoned him back to Iran from Paris to manage the café, he didn’t know his brother’s fiancée would become his wife and he would never leave.

  His brother, Davoud, three years senior, was expected to run the family business and build a hotel adjacent to the café. When he died in a car crash on a treacherous mountain road, he was engaged to Parvaneh Parsa, an eighteen-year-old soprano studying opera at the conservatory of music. Already promised to the family, Pari—fine-boned, with round red cheeks, hazel eyes, and a slightly lopsided walk due to a hip wound—had no other prospects, and Zod was told to step in for his brother.

  Neither of them could have known of the keen love that would grow from this inconvenient code of honor. He came to love her tenderly, gratefully. He expanded the garden, installing birdbaths and a raised gazebo to accommodate an orchestra that accompanied Pari on summer nights. When she was invited to sing in Paris and Vienna
, Zod packed her suitcase and tucked love letters in the folds of her silk half-slips. He sent her off, then waited for her. She came back to tell him stories about everything she’d seen and it was as if he had gone, too. She brought him souvenirs and chocolates, elegant ties and soft leather shoes, detective novels, architecture books, menus from Café de la Paix and La Coupole, and once even a linzer torte. His Pari had bought one from the famous Demel konditorei in Vienna and carried it home in her handbag. It came in a beautiful tin box, which Pari kept for her buttons. They tasted the hazelnut torte together with the children at teatime, and it was so delicious that he was inspired to recreate it for the café confectionary, using sour cherry preserves instead of raspberry. What a pity we don’t make pastries anymore, he thought, what with the price of butter and sugar.

  Denied courtship and hurled into marriage, Zod and Pari remained their best selves. Thirty-two years since she died, and still his brittle-boned hands burned when he thought of her skin, still they reached out across the mattress to find her in the valley where she used to lay. He knew only one woman but called her by dozens of tender names: Parvaneh, Parichehr, Parinaz, Pariroo, Parisa, Parinoor, Parastoo, Parishan, Golpari, and she answered to all. A witness to their everyday love, Noor could hardly be blamed for being bound by that measure of fidelity. Who could ever match it?

  Five

  Lily was startled awake by a rooster and the simultaneous call to prayer that echoed from a nearby minaret—a rich, mournful wail, nothing like the early-morning moan of the foghorn from the bay. This was the worst part for Lily, those first few minutes when she wasn’t sure where she was and then remembering that she was so far from home.

  She got up to open a narrow wooden window that overlooked a small terrace facing the garden. Still in her flannel nightgown, she peered out and quickly retreated upon seeing a large man in his undershirt—hairy and grunting like a bear—lifting barbells right below her window. This place is insane, she thought. There was an armoire in the room where Noor had hung their clothes, which mingled with the musty, dark green school uniforms of her mother’s youth and party dresses with puffy sleeves, vestiges of the left-behind self her mother came to retrieve. Finding them objectionable, Lily pushed them to the farthest corner of the closet and stuck her head inside to sniff her sweatshirts and jeans that still smelled of the laundry soap from home. She didn’t want them to go through the wash, so she’d been wearing the same hoodie and pair of jeans for the past three days and that’s what she pulled on again today, lifting her long hair up and letting it hang down her back uncombed. It didn’t matter because she wasn’t going anywhere.