by Donia Bijan
In telling Noor about her forced exile to America, Zod was sick with apprehension, in agony of losing his bright, shining daughter. For the next few days there was a great deal of arguing, stammering accusations, tears, and slamming doors, but Zod stood behind the closed bedroom doors to knock softly, to remind his children of the dinner trays that remained untouched and were carried away and replaced with the next meal. He had never spoken sharply to them and he wouldn’t now, when they needed him more than ever.
It pained him to spend these last few weeks with them like a sentry, instead of holding them, memorizing their features, imprinting accurate pictures of their beautiful eyebrows and mouths and the shape of their ears to memory, recording their voices on cassette tapes and cooking their favorite meals. When they were small he nicknamed them for their preferred dishes and from time to time he still called Noor, “Nokhodchi” (chickpea cookies) and Mehrdad, “Koofteh Berenji” (rice meatballs).
He wanted to tell them everything he knew about California, even if it was piecemeal and gathered from dubbed cop shows. Back and forth he paced the narrow hallway between their rooms, aware of every minute slipping away and so many precautions left unsaid. And what about all the things they would learn that he never knew, like ice-skating and bowling, as if these were skills that could only be acquired in America. He would soon go mad if their bedroom doors remained closed.
It felt like Mehrdad’s quietness would last forever, but the day eventually came when he left his room and ventured downstairs with his unshaven shut-away face and found his father alone in the garden. He came from behind and put a hand on Zod’s shoulder. “Baba,” he said, startling Zod, who pulled his big boy to his chest, and they shook from the savage sobs that erupted between them.
Naneh Goli, too, was jolted awake early one morning when Noor pushed the door against the mattress wedged on the landing and stared reproachfully at the lump camped outside her bedroom. For a week Naneh Goli had stationed herself just outside like a sheep dog—Golabcheh (a nickname she had given Noor at birth, a hybrid of the Russian golubchik, meaning “dear one,” acquired from Yanik, and her favorite scent golab, “rosewater”), I shall remain here all night, so let’s keep each other company—buttering her up, telling stories through the keyhole about places she’d never been to, as if she were a world traveler.
Together Zod and Naneh Goli joined hands to shove Mehrdad and Noor from the nest, insisted that they fly, and stood at the threshold frantically waving good-bye, because to prolong it would have been unbearable. Go now, before I lose my courage, thought Zod. Please go.
PART THREE
Fourteen
Noor ruffled through her English-Persian dictionary. “Flimsy” was what Professor McCann had scribbled in the margin of her paper. She loved learning new words—ornaments to her rudimentary English—but wasn’t sure if flimsy was a compliment. Did he mean delicate, or feeble? What were all those little red robins darting between the ruled lines? Last week, on a beautiful fall day, he had ushered his students outside to a grassy hill where they assembled in a loose circle. He wanted them to imagine one week alone in a place they knew nothing about and to write their first impressions. Noor hardly needed to make anything up. She was so green in terms of what she knew about California that it was a relief to have an assignment she could grasp. How bizarre, seeing her English professor cross-legged on the ground, his head tilted back to the sun. Here was Prof. McCann in a polo shirt and tousled hair, looking more like an errant schoolboy than a teacher. What made him different from her classmates, who were similarly dressed, sockless and equally at ease stretching their long legs, some even discarding sneakers to wiggle their toes? This casual open-air classroom was as much a part of her initiation to a culture unencumbered by decorum as any ice cream social in the dorm.
McCann had informed his students that when he was in his twenties he had been a teacher in the Peace Corps and taught children outdoors under thatched roofs in Cameroon. Noor was amazed that this was voluntary, not mandatory service. She had imagined Americans as being insular but instead found them to be restless dreamers, earnest and intent on shaping and changing an imperfect world, while she, at seventeen, didn’t expect much, didn’t think she had it in her to ever take on anything so ambitious.
After that day, she hung around the quad pretending to read, but really studying her peers, gathering bits of knowledge the other students let fall while gossiping, arguing, and flirting. She told herself not to gawk, but the novelty of it all, their clothes, the way they moved, their talk—well, she didn’t want to miss something in the way of a useful lesson. Adorable in rumpled T-shirts and shorts, some girls chased Frisbees while others with perfect hair and wearing snug stonewashed jeans observed from the sidelines, a sexually charged playfulness between them that at times made Noor feel like a voyeur, but she remained unnoticed until the afternoon darkened and she doubled back to her dorm.
Noor shared a narrow room with Sue Sullivan. In the fall of 1984 they had arrived on campus within minutes of one another, Sue with her parents and two little brothers, each carrying a box labeled SULLIVAN/SHEETS, SULLIVAN/TOWELS, SULLIVAN/ALBUMS, and so on, while Noor heaved a lone hefty brown suitcase to the third floor. Smiling warmly, her roommate introduced herself as Sue-Sullivan-from-San-Diego and Noor thought it an exceptionally long name. At six feet and two inches, Sue dwarfed Noor. Later, cupping one of Noor’s sneakers in her hands like it was a small wounded bird, she’d cried, “Look at your tiny feet, Nora! Gosh, only five and a half,” showing genuine dismay at not being able to swap clothes.
Pointing to the bunk bed, Sue offered to sleep on the bottom and Noor watched as Mrs. Sullivan unpacked a box to unfurl a twin fitted sheet with rainbow stripes and a matching comforter. Immediately their drab room became cheerful and Noor was glad her plain white sheets would remain in the weak light of the top bunk. There was a three-drawer dresser for each girl and Sue quickly filled hers with balled-up socks and pastel underwear while Noor fit the entire contents of her suitcase into one drawer and hung her parka in their shared closet. She answered “Yes!” to every question until Sue’s parents shrugged and gave up to resume the task of furnishing their daughter’s room with bright pillows, posters, lamps, mugs, a stereo, and a small refrigerator. Delaying their departure as long as possible, the actual good-bye was swift—the brothers already outside throwing a football while Sue’s father collected empty boxes and her mother pecked her daughter’s cheek just once.
Noor missed her parents most at just that moment—how Pari would fuss with zippers and buttons on her daughter’s coat, how she kissed her eyelids and “the little raisin” (a mole on her left cheek), how they used to stand every morning at the gate and wave good-bye until she disappeared around the corner only to run back to them for another farewell. And how she had returned to them in the afternoon to be embraced again and again. Oh, how they loved her.
Zod called her frequently, at a designated time, so she waited by the pay phone in the hallway, and each time she said, “Baba, I want to come home. Please let me come home!” He wished he could tear his liver out and feed it to the stray dogs. Powerless, what could he do but repeat every word of false comfort that had been said a thousand times already? White knuckles curled around the receiver, his nails bored into his palm. Oh, what have I done? he wondered.
Noor was not enamored with her independence. It was too vast, wide like the ocean. She preferred the safety of her room and especially her bed. The area just beneath the ceiling where she lay, warm, covered in the childhood quilt that Naneh Goli had folded around a little framed picture of her family, was home. She rolled onto her stomach and hugged the pillow to her face, fondled the stash of cookies and crackers saved from the cafeteria. Sleeplessly she counted the days since she left Iran, then the hours, then the minutes, reading Zod’s letters and tracing the lines to take herself to that place of comfort between her mother and father, one holding her left hand, one her right, swinging Noor along the m
iddle of the garden path—one, two, three, up!—and the thrill of kicking her heels in the air and landing softly before being lifted again. How old had she been? Three? Four? Six?
Nighttime was the worst of the worst. How she wished for a story. Here, Noor, tonight I have one just for you. Zod had modified Naneh Goli’s fairy tales for his children and many nights they had fallen asleep to the sound of his voice narrating “The Emperor and the Mouse,” “The Cobbler and the Elves,” “Porcupine in a Pickle”—tame stories, told and retold, of underdogs in unfamiliar places that ended in friendly hospitality, reassuring Noor of a compassionate world. She grew up within these predictable stories just as she had grown up in a comfortable house where every corner was familiar. In writing her essay for Prof. McCann, she struggled with the pronouns—the he’s and she’s a tangled mess—but she tried to follow the arc of those bedtime tales.
I was seventeen years old when I arrived in United States. I did not know much about America, except for what we see sometimes on television. My English tutor was British and he told me some things. He say now I will be free but she never go there before so how does she know? First week I spend with my uncle and aunt in Los Angeles. I never saw ocean before and so many gas stations. Unfortunately they taught I would miss the Persian food so instead of taking me to the famous Mac Donald’s, my aunt cook a lot of Iranian food and one time we went to the kebab house. I was surprised because everyone look like us and speak Farsi there and dress very nice, especially the ladies wear a lot of jewelry. My cousin was angry and made sour face and said to my uncle “Why these people wear so much perfume?” My uncle was mad and also he say “These people? Who do you think you are?” Marjan was very quiet. She bring also a book and no speak to nobody. I taught everyone smelled good, looked good also, but leetle bit sad. When lunch finished my aunt order some tea and baklava but Marjan walk to front door and take some red and white candy from a dish and put in her mouth. Maybe candy make her feel better because he looked back and made half smile. Then he come back and my aunt said “Why you always make a face?” Marjan said “Because I am sick of this place.” I taught the kebab was a little dry but not so bad. I wish Marjan would teach me some English but always her room is closed. She is painful. I count five television in my uncle’s house! In the kitchen my aunt watch while he cook her favorite show Donahue. She said I will learn a lot of English if I watch television. Already my first week in America I like to smell things here. I like the bed sheet and some soap my aunt put in my bathroom and very many delicious corn flakes and chips and all advertisement on television but already I miss my father very much.
One night Sue crept in long after Noor had turned out the light, bringing with her the scent of cigarettes and pizza. She grabbed her toiletries and tiptoed out to the bathroom in her fluffy slippers, leaving the door open to the music and conversation in the hallway. Eventually she shuffled back in to crawl under the rainbow comforter, quiet at last.
Aloft, Noor whispered, “Good night, Sue.”
“Nora, you’re awake?” Noor loved Sue’s peppermint scent and the soft a she tagged onto her name.
“Yes. You smell very good, Sue.”
“Oh thanks! It’s this lotion my mom buys from Avon. You can totally use it any time.”
Such close talk at the end of each day, brief as it was, made Noor happy. She frequently surveyed the items on Sue’s dresser: her collection of scrunchies and hair ornaments, the scented creams and array of makeup, the bottle of Charlie perfume. The variety! It made her curious, sniffing tubes and bottles, wondering aloud whatever is to be done with this, trying not to disrupt Sue’s arrangement. Sue was so kind, filling their room with warmth. Just before Noor fell off to sleep, she blurted, “Thank you very much, Sue,” and at that moment she felt tied to Sue and pulled along into the next day and the day after that.
On Saturday mornings they served brunch at the cafeteria. This in-between meal was a revelation to Noor. It gave her even more opportunities to linger at the table and eavesdrop on conversations. Plus she discovered bacon—could not believe that she had lived this long without it—and piled the crisp porky strips next to her pancakes, another fresh discovery of syrupy spongy goodness.
“What is this?” she had asked Sue that first weekend as they snaked their way through a slow-moving line of drowsy students in pajama bottoms.
“Oh, Nora, blueberry pancakes!”
They slept in on weekends and woke up famished. Noor brushed her teeth and pulled on jeans (unthinkable to go outside in sleepwear) before racing into the cool morning air heavy with the scent of griddle smoke. Through the tall windows the sun cast a soft glow onto the long tables dotted with salt and pepper shakers. What promise! Coffee. Yes! With cream and sugar. Fork. Knife. Napkin. Good morning, Miss Eleanor. Five pancakes, please. Bacon? Yes! Two butter balls. Warm maple syrup. Yes! Yes to everything. Yes to brunch. Yes to class outside. Yes to being alone in a crowd. If only that breezy morning feeling, which made it seem possible that she could do this after all, would last. But in the harsh light of noon the caffeine-induced courage would fade and she lost her grip on the flimsy reins.
WHEN HER FATHER TOLD her that she would be going to Oakland, Noor had no idea where Oakland was, so he opened the atlas. Still, what did Noor know of this Mills College or the people who lived there? Did they look like Mrs. Wells, the English tutor her father had hired last year? Noor spent most of the hours on the flight to America staring out into the clouds, wondering about this faraway place and saving the roll from her dinner tray in case she didn’t like the food there.
Uncle Morad met Noor and Mehrdad at the Los Angeles airport. He held out a stiff arm to shake hands with Mehrdad and patted Noor on the head. Their relatives normally smothered them in their embrace, so they were confused by his lack of affection. Mehrdad and Noor slid across the soft leather seat of their uncle’s Mercedes-Benz as they sped down a boulevard lined with palm trees. Noor could not take her eyes off the blue band of the Pacific to their left.
Uncle Morad lived in Beverly Hills, an affluent area where many Persians resided. His home was a white villa with pink bougainvillea creeping up to a terrace that overlooked the city. He said at night it looked like a carpet of lights below. They had met his wife, Aunt Farah, years ago when she came to Iran to visit her parents. She had brought Noor a Malibu Barbie in a red swimsuit with matching sunglasses and a small terry towel. Noor would take it out of the box, play with it for a few minutes, and return it to its package. It was still displayed on a bookcase in her room. Aunt Farah smelled of lilacs when she kissed their cheeks. Her daughter Marjan came out of her room to say hello, then went back to her room and closed the door.
Aunt Farah moved about Noor and Mehrdad protectively, lightly pushing Morad aside if he started to lecture about Zod’s unwillingness to sell the café and leave Iran for good. Mehrdad stammered under his uncle’s close scrutiny and Noor cringed when he glared at them through his narrow eyes. Later, they heard their aunt and uncle arguing in their bedroom.
“You will never understand what it is to lose your mother when you are young, to know that never again will she hold you in her arms. It is not right to talk about their father, it is not right for you to question his ways.”
“Ach!” said Uncle Morad in disgust. “Did my brother send me his children to nurse?”
“Of course not!” Aunt Farah protested gently. “But please, for once put aside whatever grudges you hold. That’s all over now. They are your family for God’s sake!”
“Humph.”
After breakfast the next morning, Aunt Farah insisted on taking a photo of Noor and Mehrdad with their uncle. So they stood next to him on the patio with Los Angeles framed in bougainvillea, and Aunt Farah brought a chair for Morad and asked Noor and Mehrdad to stand a little closer.
“Yes, now I can see all of you.” She said she was going to print an extra copy for their father, “So he can carry a picture of you three together like that.”
It was her way of letting Zod know they were okay, reassuring him that his brother would take care of his children. Uncle Morad rolled his massive shoulders up and down the way wrestlers do to loosen up and cracked his knuckles before stiffening in his chair for the portrait. Weeks later, Zod wrote in a letter how surprised he was by his little brother’s gray hair. “I always imagine Morad as a boy crouching behind a bush, waiting to ambush me. Who is this distinguished old man sitting in a chair?”
Fifteen
In the days before his niece and nephew’s arrival, Dr. Morad Yadegar had a bitter taste in his mouth he could not get rid of. He always paid close attention to dental hygiene, having his teeth cleaned every three months instead of the usual six, and took pleasure in hearing the hygienist’s praise of his immaculate mouth. He gargled powerful mouthwash and inspected his tongue frequently in the bathroom mirror.
A big, fastidious man, Morad the bruiser was a surprisingly gentle doctor, performing with cool precision the delicate task of anesthesiology. He was not a particularly kind nor considerate husband (his needs and comfort came first, since he was the provider and felt that sharing a bed and bath was sufficient sacrifice). Sleeping in dove gray silk pajamas from Neiman Marcus, of which there were a dozen in the dresser, he laced his fingers across his abdomen and did not wish to be touched when falling asleep. His toothbrush and toothpaste were kept in a separate medicine chest, as were all his toiletries.
“I do not wish to smell like a woman,” he explained, insisting that Farah take a hot shower before sex on Friday nights. If she reached for him on a Monday or Tuesday, he would turn to the wall.