by Donia Bijan
Twenty-Four
They learned that the girl’s name was Fereshteh. Dr. Mehran had taken the girl to the hospital where she was treated for her burns. She needed reconstructive surgery that her family could not afford, she had lost vision in her right eye and the left eye was blurry. Despite Dr. Mehran’s urging, her family refused to press charges against the spurned young man, who had sought Fereshteh’s hand in marriage. He was the son of a contractor and nephew to a prominent judge. An impoverished family with small children, they feared retaliation.
Fereshteh’s father was a day laborer who did occasional construction work for the contractor and when Noor went to plead with the girl’s mother to seek justice, she found them huddled in a ramshackle one-room apartment that stood empty except for a tattered rug. Exasperated after hearing the woman’s repeated, “I trust in God,” Noor went to see Dr. Mehran.
“She wants me to pray,” said Noor, “as if prayer will put an end to brutality! They’re so afraid, they can’t imagine standing up for their rights. They’re willing to sacrifice their own daughter! Can you imagine?”
Dr. Mehran listened patiently.
“Your expectations are too high, khanoom,” he said. “Your assumptions about legality are a Western notion that have no grounds here. These are ordinary people, fragile people, frightened by the ever-present threat of violence. They have surrendered to corruption and indifference because the alternative may be worse.”
“Yes, but tell me, Doktor, how am I to explain this to my own daughter?”
Lily asked her every day if they had found “the jerk who did this to Ferry.”
He gave her a pitying smile.
“Go home,” Dr. Mehran paused, “and pack your bags. This is a bad place for tourists.”
NANEH GOLI CONTINUED TO fret about the sordid intrusion into their private lives and worried her beads—a string of evil eyes. Yet there was also a sudden elation, for Noor and Lily had latched onto each other in a light-headed, post-trauma truce.
Every morning Soli dropped off Noor, Lily, and Karim at the hospital and they spent the day with Fereshteh while her mother went home to mind the younger children. They brought cold watermelon and currant cake, they fed her grapes and filled the room with fresh flowers from Mr. Azizi’s shop. Twice they even snuck in Sheer in a large canvas bag.
Noor wondered why Mrs. Taslimi came alone to see her daughter. She arrived breathless in the afternoon, a pervading scent of fenugreek clinging to her headscarf when leaning in to kiss them, and leaving at sundown to return again to the hospital in the early morning before her husband went to work. Her unabashed affection for Karim and Lily embarrassed them and they stood in awkward silence when she praised Lily and called her fereshteh, which translates to “angel.” “May God watch over you and bless you. Such good children you are,” she said, grasping their hands.
“Even my husband and the children are afraid to see Ferry,” she whispered to Noor, “but your daughter, she flew in like an angel. She wasn’t afraid.”
Just days after Ferry’s discharge, Mrs. Taslimi, utterly bereft and distraught, came to see Noor and asked if her daughter could stay with them because the twins were terrified and her husband could not bear looking at his daughter without flying into a rage. Ferry was afraid to sleep alone and mewed all night. Meddling neighbors stopped by under the guise of paying a visit to gape at her.
“What sort of future awaits Ferry?” she wailed. “The neighborhood kids are calling her a monster.”
“But you cannot banish your own child! It’s unconscionable! It’s bad enough that you won’t report the man, but this . . . this is unforgivable. Do you realize that Ferry already blames herself for this?” Noor was incensed. “Flesh wounds are superficial, but have you thought about her psychic wounds? You know this is wrong—how can you abandon her?”
Mrs. Taslimi bristled at Noor’s judgment and regarded her levelly.
“It is easy for you to talk this way because you have not lived in this country. We don’t know each morning if there will be work, if we’ll have food. What good will come from going to the police, going into the streets to protest? It means going to jail. Tell me, who will look after my babies when I’m in jail? My daughter was given a chance. She did not take it, fine. But did she have to insult the man?”
“So you not only forsake your daughter, you accuse her of bringing misfortune onto your family?” Noor’s face had darkened at the wretchedness of it.
She asked about school and whether Mrs. Taslimi had spoken to the principal to see if there was a possibility for Ferry to attend later in the fall.
“School? What school?” replied Mrs. Taslimi. “Fereshteh cannot go back to school.”
“What do you mean she can’t? The doctors say her left eye will gradually heal.” Noor half expected this but had hoped for better.
“Look, I know you mean well but going back to school is out of the question,” she said, sinking back in her chair. “Maybe someday . . . if she has the surgery.”
Noor stared at her with raised eyebrows.
“Please, khanoom. Don’t look at me like that. This is for her own good; she’s already been through enough pain, I can’t subject her to the public eye.” Mrs. Taslimi said, looking away from Noor.
“I think you mean you can’t subject the public to her.”
God! What is wrong with these people? thought Noor. These people. Her people. Powerless people. Where did this matter-of-fact acceptance of injustice, this catastrophic surrender, come from and when would it end? But her opinions didn’t matter here and in countering Mrs. Taslimi, she risked Ferry’s slim chances of ever resuming a normal life.
Noor understood then what she would have to do.
“I’m sorry if I’ve offended you, Mrs. Taslimi. I have a daughter, too, and it’s thoughtless of me to suggest that you can send Ferry back into the world. Lily is so fond of her, please bring Ferry to us tonight. We’d be very happy to have her and I promise to take good care of her. I’ll prepare a bedroom for her where she’ll be comfortable.”
Fidgeting with her veil, Mrs. Taslimi thanked her and left quickly.
IN SOCIAL STUDIES, LILY had learned about the untouchables, but like every chapter in the textbook, it was mostly forgotten by the time their teacher moved on to the next continent. That Ferry was cast out was medieval, yet despite being baffled by Noor’s explanation, Lily was thrilled to have a roommate. Even with all the bedrooms in the house and the Vieux Hotel virtually empty, Soli and Hedi hauled an extra twin bed into Lily’s room and she covered the mattress with tissue-thin sheets softened from years of wash. Beside the bed she positioned a small electric fan and cleared the night table of her scattered pens and notebooks to make room for a vase of pink freesias from the garden.
Karim, too, was pleased to hear the news and didn’t seem nearly as surprised that Ferry would convalesce away from home. “No one can hurt her here,” he told Noor, “Besides, the doctor comes every day and you’re a nurse.”
Noor had asked Zod’s permission to house Ferry, mostly as a courtesy, knowing that he wouldn’t deny hospitality, but the part of Naneh Goli that believed in ghosts and incense tried to talk her out of it—she warned them not to let a stranger in.
“We let strangers in every day,” said Noor.
“But they go home afterwards. I tell you, this girl is a bad omen,” cried Naneh.
And although Zod was too weary to argue, he reminded her of the story she once told him of the king who threw his owl boy into the dungeons so he wouldn’t be seen and of the brothers who set him free to live in the forest where he would not be condemned. It was not the first time he had offered refuge to the dispossessed.
Lily’s new ritual was to help Ferry dress in the mornings, laying out jeans and one of several long-sleeved cotton blouses with childish animal and flower prints that Mrs. Taslimi had packed to avoid anything that needed to be slipped over her head.
Noor brought a change of dressings on a tray
with ointments and sterile gauze to clean the burns and soothe the flare while Lily watched the careful swaddling that Ferry endured in silence. The risk of infection was high and throughout the day, Noor changed the bandages with infinite care and cleaned the yellow discharge that oozed from Ferry’s eyes.
Lily had never seen her mother work—Noor only nursed her through the occasional cold and rarely spoke of her patients unless it was a case that involved Nelson. Watching her mother tend to Ferry with such a sure hand, all the while talking softly about how nicely she was healing, was like seeing her for the first time and she felt a peculiar pride, uncertain of what it was because it was so new. How could her mother be so capable, and yet so helpless? It was odd seeing Noor so self-possessed, standing in her childhood bedroom with the small bed and the yellow birdhouse and her dolls on the shelf, clasping surgical scissors and leaning over a mangled girl.
Ferry didn’t talk much at first and Lily would ask in English, “What are you thinking about?” and stroke her hair until she spoke. Ferry’s composure, the gravity in her slow movements to the bathroom, the way she groped her way like a creature in the woods, sometimes frightened Lily, but she never winced at the garish wound plastered to the girl’s face.
Before long a peculiar bond had developed between the three children, who spent hours together in the air-conditioned hotel lobby with the drapes drawn against the afternoon sun, which bothered Ferry’s tender skin. Karim reluctantly detached himself to get his chores done and once away, his thoughts would return to them, and he hurried back to their den as if they were in a play he had interrupted. Their familiarity allowed them to tell one another things they may have kept to themselves, secrets too tedious to keep, all in a new language they cobbled together.
“What would you say to the man who hurt you?”
“I would say ‘I hope you die in a fire.’ ”
“Why didn’t you tell the police?”
“Because they would hurt my family.”
“Are you sorry you didn’t marry that thug?”
“God, no!”
“What did he look like?”
“A monster.”
Often they devised a scheme for revenge, interrupting one another and making Ferry laugh with the outrageousness of it, much of it involving arson. Little did they know that the law in Iran permitted an eye for an eye. But blinding the perpetrator wouldn’t strike them as punishment—no, that would be too generous a respite from the ugliness they wished to inflict upon him. Karim’s eyes cast about, always on the lookout for his uncle, who was ever more vigilant since their mad escapade. Whenever a door opened, whenever he heard footsteps, he turned uneasily towards the sound because he knew one error, one forgotten task, and Soli would berate him and separate him from his friends. Yet Karim did not bear grudges against his uncle—he did what he had to do and that was all.
Lily told them stories of her life in America. She talked about her father, how much she missed him, of how he had chased women and hurt her mother. But she also felt a need to defend him, to make clear that he was not a bad person. She told them that she did not want to go to the all-girls’ school, nor to her old school, where every hour and every move was spelled out for her—all those bells telling her where to go next.
“I feel different now, I like not having homework, not caring about grades.” It wasn’t that Lily found school exceptionally difficult. “Before, I was really good at every subject. I was so sure of what I wanted, but lately, I don’t know—” And now she wasn’t as eager to go home.
With school back in session, Karim could only join them in the late afternoons, bringing home candy or a pack of gum to share. He multitasked, scooting across the empty room with a mop, stopping to recapture a story mid-sentence. His voice was changing and he couldn’t understand why one moment his words screeched like a girl, so it was best to keep mum and take his place in their circle as a listener.
He knew next to nothing about what sort of life Lily had led before coming to Iran, but the more she talked, the more her words confused him—teasing his poor lovelorn heart. How can both be true? he thought. Did she want to go back to her father or would she stay here? A small flame of hope flickered and he would fan it with all his might, until his arm fell off. These moments of promise were so bright, they warmed his chest and left him reeling with happiness even when he was in the classroom, even when Soli grabbed his arm and pulled him away. Without that kind of hope, his heart would freeze into a hard, solid lump.
NELSON HAD ASSUMED THAT Lily would return for the beginning of the school year and that Noor would stay until her father died. He wrote encouraging emails to Lily, but knew she would see through them. Her acquiescent sighs to the broken words he repeated through the static of telephone lines were never reproachful, yet it worried him because what he knew and loved about his daughter was that she could not be depended upon to comply with form. Her bold, brutal honesty was what he admired.
Conversations with Noor were circuitous and she was evasive, making Nelson wonder if it was because the phones were tapped or just more of her Persian punishment strategy where grudge was perennial. What Noor lacked in wiles, she made up for with virtue, mystifying him with alternating pride, fury, and vulnerability, like a wounded soldier.
The problem was that he had never stopped loving her and would have begged forgiveness, foresworn women forever had he been willing to live an unatonable life with a woman he loved more tenderly than ever. When she had asked him plainly, “Have I not been a good wife to you?” he’d gasped as if seeing her naked, luminous skin for the first time. In all his outings with other women, he never met anyone like Noor. She had comforted him with the simple rewards of everyday life, a life he loved so much—their first cup of coffee in bed, the perfect square fold of his underwear in the top dresser drawer, and yet he’d shown a deliberate indifference to the future like an unmanned engine, never once asking himself, What am I doing here? Suppose Noor found out? Worse, Suppose Lily found out? Nelson enjoyed women the way a gardener delights in roses: their unique scent, the few small prickles in the hollow of their shaved armpits, their fleshy strawberry hips and sickle-shaped nails that dug into his back, and he had to sniff each one—it would be negligent otherwise.
Still, it wasn’t remorse so much as misery that troubled him now, because Nelson did not want to be apart from his wife and daughter who were supposed to be the evergreens he could not imagine losing. Yet he had. And with every thought of Lily on the far side of the globe, Nelson loosened his tie to make room for the lump that would rise to his throat.
ABOUT A WEEK AFTER Ferry moved in, Lily’s dad phoned her. She was glad to hear his voice. Had he ever gone this long without knowing what was going on in her life? Where could she begin? He sounded tired, like he’d been up half the night in surgery and could use a hot shower. Lily remembered how she used to hear the front door and the clomping upstairs in his clogs when he’d come home late and peek into her room to chat if she was awake, to kiss her good night, still wearing his scrubs, in a cloud of hospital smells—alcohol, blood, and sweat intermingling, as if he’d come from a battlefield. It was so different from his morning scent of pinecones and peppermint breath.
He laughed into the phone when she told him about going to the pool dressed up as a boy. Then she told him about Ferry. She knew if she told him about her other plan, to go to the airport and fly home, he would worry and tell her mother, and Lily didn’t want them to suspect anything in case she decided to try again, or accuse Karim of being her accomplice. Although, now she was afraid to go outside, or to leave Ferry alone. She felt responsible for her new friend. And if Ferry’s family didn’t want her, Lily supposed that made Ferry part of her family now.
When she finished talking to her dad, Lily handed the phone over to Noor. Then she lingered, just outside the doorway, listening to their conversation. Her mother was trying to explain what had happened and at first she was talking in that icy voice that Lily hated—that we
’re-fine-thank-you-very-much tone she used frequently with Nelson.
But eventually she softened, exhaled deeply, and said “I’m just exhausted, Nelson. I don’t know what to tell Lily and I ask myself how this could be possible, that I’ve exposed her to such cruelty, that a girl can be disfigured, then shunned by her own family. And to top it off, my father is slipping away fast and he doesn’t even want me here.”
Then Lily heard nothing again, until her mother said, “No, Nelson. I don’t want you to come. What would you come for?”
Twenty-Five
In mid-September, Lily convinced Noor to have a birthday party for Ferry and to invite her entire family. They decorated Café Leila with spools of red and green crepe paper, stringing the ribbons across the beams and pushing a few tables together to make one long rectangle. Lily and Karim’s complete lack of discretion was one of the true signs of childhood; they had no need for it, so filled with eagerness were they to please their friend.
Compared to Lily’s own birthdays that had stretched into extravagant weeklong events from pony rides to beauty parlor visits, this party was sedate. Ferry took a bath and borrowed a dress from Noor’s closet and Lily painted her nails blue. These three friends, an orphan boy, an American sojourner, and a wounded girl, knew little of one another’s past but already they had a history of their own. And this little celebration was as much for Ferry as for all three of them, for having found one another.
Lily ignored Soli and Naneh Goli’s cool looks when she brought Ferry into the kitchen to help her bake a cake. Their youth and proportionate hunger would’ve made Naneh Goli laugh in happier days, but worry dampened the pleasures of watching two girls bake. Soli marched formally between the kitchen and pantry providing them with stingy portions of flour and sugar—he could not bring himself to part with more than six eggs.