by Donia Bijan
“History broke us apart,” Noor replied, “You don’t know what it’s like to be young and insecure and sent away from home to fend for yourself.” At that, she rose to her feet.
“Don’t I?” There was a long silence, intimate, with no trace of sarcasm.
“You have to feed your cat,” said Noor and she went downstairs, feeling transparent. For once Lily saw through her. She couldn’t plot or hide her motives, like from a child. The truth was, Noor wished it wasn’t so rapid, this change in her daughter becoming a young woman. She had hoped to keep the imperfect world at bay, to gloss over her own flaws and foibles, but there was no turning back, no quiet shushing, no rocking, no crooning to her chickadee. Their walks together would be in the open now, into the wide world.
THE RULES WERE CLEAR. Karim was allowed to complete his chores in the morning so that he could spend the afternoons with Lily. They were not to leave the premises. Sometimes he was given money to buy ice cream and he raced to the shop alone, so as not to be away any longer than necessary. They were allowed to watch television in the old hotel. Soon Karim would be going back to school and there would be no time for such activities. Zod dismissed Soli’s objections. “For a few weeks in the summer they can be children, no?”
Noor discovered a box of videos that turned out to be old home movies that Zod had transferred from film to videotape. Lily and Karim sat cross-legged in front of the screen and watched women and children at a long-ago birthday party, seated around a large table in a corner of the garden, their glasses of tea in silver holders. Crystal candlesticks with pink pendants glowed over pyramids of fruit and there was a burst of applause at the sudden appearance of a huge domed cake lit with dozens of candles. The film had no sound, but you could almost hear the noise and bustle of the singing and clapping and gesturing to the camera with exaggerated waves. A cranky-looking man in a three-piece suit smoked on the veranda while half a dozen boys and girls in party clothes played a chaotic game of hide-and-seek.
Where were they now, these rosy-cheeked children and their elegant parents? Lily was particularly drawn to one frizzy-haired little girl riding a tricycle and the slender woman reaching for her, but try as she might, Lily still felt little connection to these people on the screen, even though they were her family.
Karim would look back on the sweetness of those August afternoons as the happiest in his life. Since leaving his village, he never had free time, loss having forced him into a man’s life at an early age. But Lily taught him to play. They found a deck of cards and an old Monopoly set, gradually teaching one another the words for colors and numbers in each other’s languages. When a match was broadcast, they watched the World Cup. Karim delighted in Lily’s squeals of enthusiasm whenever players knocked in goals from inconceivable angles.
She was astonished when he told her that women were not allowed in the stadium, that girls had been arrested for going to the matches disguised as boys. Lily thought he was making it up. She loved going to soccer games with her father. It was wonderful to sit on the bleachers under a blue sky, to smell the freshly cut grass, to cheer wildly. How could girls be denied the immense pleasure of rooting for their team, of watching the players run around in the heat and plow their hands through their sweat-soaked hair when they missed a shot? Oh, and what about the pure joy of a win in the slipping seconds before they charged the field to get their hands on one another? What was the harm in being a spectator?
To hasten his chores Lily would often help Karim. Donning one of her great-grandmother’s aprons, she joined him washing dishes, scraping tidbits off plates into a bowl Naneh reserved for Sheer. Lily stacked the crockery and silverware in a soapy bath and together she and Karim fished out forks and spoons, rinsed and wiped each, one by one, gathering them into bouquets and placing them in metal pitchers. For Karim, it was glorious standing so close to Lily, smelling her fruity shampoo, and he nearly swooned when their fingertips brushed against each other under the foam.
Once, when a knife slipped from Lily’s towel, cracking a glass bowl in the sink, Karim cut his thumb on its jagged edge. Lily gently washed and bandaged his wound, smiling bashfully at him from under her dark brows, murmuring soothingly “Pobrecito niño. (You poor thing.)” When everything was clean and dry and put away, they sat at the kitchen table and listened to music on Lily’s iPod, sharing the earbuds, Karim trying to follow the movements of Lily’s head since he’d never heard these songs.
Sometimes, if Karim’s chores took him outside, Lily would spread a blanket in the shade of the mulberry tree and wait with Sheer in the crook of her arm while he swept the ashes from the grill or cleaned the chicken coop. Playfully, he’d scramble up the tree to shake a branch, pelting Lily with ripe berries, loving the ripple of her laugh as she let Sheer slip away. The cat was always with them, exploring every corner of the house, wandering into the salon to roll on her back and stare at Zod as if challenging him to do the same. It surprised Zod how old he was yet still, when faced with a kitten twitching its whiskers, he felt like a child, patted his knee and reached for the curious creature. The children would come calling and find her asleep on the old man’s lap.
MEANWHILE, NOOR HATCHED a plan. There had to be a way to draw Lily to the lives of teenagers like herself before she could broach the subject of school. The idea of going swimming excited her. She thought that if she could get Lily to the pool, then she would see all the girls her age, relatively free, having fun, giggling and splashing one another like girls everywhere. Noor summoned her courage by playing this scenario over and over in her head: if Noor could catch the mood of this environment, then in the days to come she could tell her daughter about going to high school in Tehran for the fall semester.
Anyone seeing them might have thought they were friends, strolling past the kindergarten and the little grocery, carrying their towels in Lily’s backpack, the sun already fierce on their backs. Under baggy coats they wore swimsuits beneath T-shirts and jeans and covered their hair in matching headscarves. Lily had grown taller and took longer strides past the men hosing the sidewalks in front of their shops, forcing Noor to trot behind her.
At the entry to the pool, through the confusing panels of cloth hung during ladies hour for “safety,” they paid the attendant, who demanded they turn in their phones and handed them a locker key. The fifteen-minute walk in the intense heat had made them irritable so Noor suggested they take a quick cold shower.
“Okay, Mom.”
Normally, Lily would have ignored Noor’s ideas, a pattern so consistent that Noor thought this sudden willingness was a sign that it was going to be all right, that her daughter would take the news well.
They undressed and hung their towels on the line of hooks above a row of wooden benches. Whooping in the cold shower drew curious looks from the handful of women who had arrived at nine o’clock sharp to take advantage of the allocated three hours. When had they last done anything fun together? thought Noor, as she watched her daughter clearly enjoy herself, laughing while dousing herself with the cold water.
They came out of the changing room still laughing and stepped out into the bright sunshine. Out by the deck, Noor watched Lily hold her nose for a cannonball, and she remembered a holiday long ago in Mallorca, where they stayed with Nelson’s grandparents in a pink-and-white villa. They went for long swims in the Mediterranean and sat for late night meals in fish shacks along the beach, eating fried sardines, with Lily between them smacking her little palms together—a memory so vivid, it made her stomach hurt to think Lily would never be nestled between her parents again.
Lily surfaced and swam the length of the pool to where Noor and a few other women sat watching her. She performed frisky and playful handstands, somersaults, and held her breath underwater, enjoying the attention. Who is this new girl? they all wondered.
“She’s my daughter. She’s fifteen,” Noor offered. Bold now, she asked if their daughters were joining them. A woman with dyed reddish hair in a loose bun and wearing
big designer sunglasses shook her head no.
“My girls are in America. They have swimming pools in their backyards!”
Her friend stretched her legs and nodded in agreement, “My son and his wife are also in Los Angeles.”
“You must miss them so much,” said Noor.
“Yes, they have two enchanting little girls I haven’t seen in three years,” she replied.
“Do you have more children?” the redhead wanted to know.
“No, just one.”
They searched Noor’s face to guess her age.
“You should have more,” they chanted in unison.
“Oh, I’m afraid it’s not up to me,” and Noor excused herself to swim some laps, not wanting to continue a dead-end topic. People felt obliged to offer their opinions. She’d had a few miscarriages after Lily, then given up. One day she had asked Nelson to put Lily’s crib and high chair on the sidewalk and watched from the kitchen window as a young father wheeled the crib to his pickup truck. Later an elderly couple, too polite to haul away the high chair without asking, rang the doorbell and gave her an earful about the grandchild who would be visiting soon. She walked to the curb to show them how to snap the tray on and off and helped them load it into their trunk.
Noor pushed off a wall and swam energetically from end to end—the water icy at first and then just right. Lily, balancing on a noodle, paddled towards her, gleefully shaking her thick hair and lifting it like a curtain to twist in a knot. Her vessel tipped and she dropped back smoothly below the surface, exposing darling pink toenails like periscopes. Horizontal now, they floated on their backs for a little while longer with the sun in their eyes and nothing but water between them. As they climbed out, Noor could see the girls she had followed a few days ago coming out from behind the screen that separated the changing cabins. Two were already lounging on their deck chairs and waving to the newcomers. Noor grabbed their towels and unrolled them near enough to greet them and Lily sat beside her hugging her knees.
“Excuse me, ma’am, are you a swim instructor?” asked the oldest in the group.
Noor laughed, “Me? Oh, no, sweetie.”
“It’s just that you swim so well and my little sister, Bahar, could use some lessons,” she explained.
“Oh, well, I’d be happy to teach her but my daughter here is really the better swimmer.”
She turned to Lily, “Don’t you think you could teach swimming?”
Bahar looked Lily right in the eye, probably contemplating the benefits of a lesson from a peer rather than an instructor. Lily worried about how they would communicate, but there was hardly a need for words in swimming. She nodded and gave Bahar a pleasant smile, “Okay, I will,” she said, sensing that Bahar liked her.
Noor felt that her hunch had turned out to be right—the company of these cheerful, curious girls, provided just the setting she had hoped for.
They nearly had the pool to themselves, as most women were sunbathing. Bahar, only a year younger than Lily, was reluctant at first. But urged along by Noor and the other girls, they walked together to the edge of the pool and Lily gently torqued her student’s back, tucking her chin for a dive.
But Bahar solemnly shook her head, “No dive.”
So Lily jumped in and held her arms out to her as Nelson had done when she was a toddler.
“One. Two. Three. Jump!” she cried and Bahar flew into her arms submerging them both and they rose to the surface laughing hysterically.
How easily they transcend barriers, thought Noor as she watched their pantomime—how do you say kick, how do you say elbow, how do you say high, how do you say low, breathe out, forgetting most and remembering some of these maiden words. Noor wondered if this was real, if her daughter could be happy here, or would this playfulness dry up once they toweled off.
Just before the café closed for the morning session, Noor ducked in to treat the older girls to cold sodas, which they accepted graciously. They asked Noor if she and her daughter would be back and Bahar kissed them shyly before they gathered their belongings and left.
Walking home, their hair still damp beneath their scarves, Noor reached for Lily’s hand and Lily didn’t pull away, slowing down her youthful gait to walk beside her mother.
“You had a nice time?” Noor asked.
“Yeah! Bahar is so funny.”
“In a half hour you taught her to swim!”
“Can we go again, Mom? Do you think she’ll be there?”
“Sure.”
“Can Karim come, too?”
“Sweetie, didn’t you see there were only women there? They don’t let boys and girls swim together.”
“That’s insane. I don’t get this country, mom. Like, why is everyone so afraid of women?”
“I agree, it’s crazy, but just pretend you’re in an all-girls school.”
“That’s your solution?” The edge in Lily’s voice was back. Why was her mother so passive? How could she dismiss this blatant discrimination that was all around them?
“Lily, speaking of school,” she began, but the words caught in her throat.
“I’d never go to an all-girls school, mom. It’s not natural. Besides, girls can be so mean.”
“Oh honey, you saw how nice Bahar and her friends were.” She hurried along, emboldened by the turn in their conversation. “You’d like school here, they will love having a friend from America. Come September, you’ll be quite the celebrity.”
“Wait, what are you talking about?” said Lily. She stopped walking, all the color drained from her sun-kissed cheeks. She pulled her hand away and held it over her mouth, a storm gathering behind her pale face.
“You better be joking, Mom, or I swear I will tear this rag from my head right here and scream for help.”
“Shhh, now calm down, Lily.”
“Does this backwards country even have child services? Oh no, of course not, otherwise poor Karim wouldn’t be slaving it in that dump.”
“Watch your mouth! If it wasn’t for your grandfather, Karim would be in an orphanage!”
“I’d rather be in an orphanage and so would he!”
“Please listen, Lily,” Noor pleaded as Lily tried to talk over her.
“So this is your plan, for us to stay here? Does Dad know? Have you even spoken to him?”
“Just come with me to see the school. All right? And if you really don’t like it, we’ll find another one. It’s probably only for a few months until Baba—”
“Answer me! DOES HE KNOW?” People stopped to look back at them.
“Let’s go home and I’ll explain everything.” Noor tried to keep her voice even but she was shaking—petrified that Lily would do something that would alert the police patrolling the streets. “Please don’t draw attention, Lily.”
“I’m not going anywhere until you answer me because if Dad doesn’t know, your little experiment is over.” Suddenly she pulled the scarf loose and threw it at Noor who just stood there paralyzed by the fury in her daughter’s twisted face.
“How many times has your precious father called you, huh? If I didn’t leave him a message to call you—” Noor caught herself. She didn’t know if they were the morality police, but two men in uniform were weaving through the cars towards them. They absolutely needed to get off this street and she grabbed Lily’s arm, pulling her home.
KARIM WAS PRETENDING TO sweep the courtyard and water the plants so his uncle wouldn’t find him idle while he waited for Lily to return. He felt ashamed each time he imagined her swimming. Two hours went by like two years and then, when they finally came through the front gate, Lily jan was crying and her mother was calling to Karim to close the gate behind them and fetch a glass of water.
But Lily ran past him and up the stairs to her room. Khanoom (ma’am) looked so angry, he didn’t dare ask what happened. Noor was kind to Karim and he felt bad that she and Lily were always arguing. Karim thought his mother would have hit him with a stick if he ever talked back, but khanoom, she was always
apologizing to her daughter.
Twenty-One
One afternoon, waiting for Karim to return from the shops, Lily was writing in her journal in the courtyard when she noticed the motorbike leaning against the gardening shed. She had ridden on just such a bike one summer in Mallorca, clasping her father’s thick torso, her eyes closed to the rise and fall of the road. Queasy when they stopped at last for ice cream, she rested her head against his chest, warm from the sun, and listened to the steady pulse of his heart until the feeling passed.
The memory struck her deeply, and as if retracing that moment, she went to the bike, dropped her notebook on the lawn, and grabbed the handlebars to clamber on top. It was heavier than she had anticipated. She turned and twisted the front wheel, toyed with the key in the little drum, half expecting the engine to roar. She looked back at the house. Not a sound. Everyone was taking their afternoon naps. She stared through the gap in the trees at the gate and a quiver ran through her.
Lily climbed off the bike, wiped her palms on her jeans, and stood for awhile wondering what to do next. She picked up the diary, filled until today with angry one-line entries. The motorbike would be her escape vehicle. It was so perfect she could not believe it had not occurred to her sooner. The rage that consumed her since the last battle with Noor turned to frantic euphoria, popping and crackling inside her as she tried to articulate the thought on paper as the idea began to form. She knew Karim would help.
THAT AFTERNOON, COMING HOME from the market, Karim paused under the mulberry tree and squinted through the branches to see Lily absorbed in her notebook. Lily, hearing his footfalls, turned and smiled. Feeling the familiar flare that rose from his chest when she called, pronouncing Karim as “Cream,” he resisted the urge to run to her, and put the shopping bags down to wipe his brow.
He walked over to sit beside her on the dried-up patch of August grass. The household rarely stirred between two and four. Everything was still except for the wheezing chorus of the air conditioner grilles clinging to the windowsills. Everyone retreated to a cool corner of the house to sleep. Even Noor, who once resisted the obligatory afternoon siesta, was fast asleep in the middle of the day, waking up startled each time as if napping was something extraordinary.