American Estrangement

by Said Sayrafiezadeh

  “Yes, it’s me,” I say, name unstated and nonchalance maintained. We’re just catching up here, loosey-goosey, enacting the inverse of acute anxiety.

  “Danny, where are you?” he says.

  I tell him where I am. He is relieved to hear where I am. He makes it sound as if there was a chance I wouldn’t have arrived, or that I wouldn’t have been allowed in, or that I wouldn’t be allowed to make a phone call; this is, after all, Level 4. He wants to know how the flight was. The flight was terrible, I want to say. “The flight was great,” I say, because I’m easygoing from Upstate. What I’m really hoping is that he’s on his way to pick me up, to surprise me with some hospitality at the airport, but there’s no way of asking about this without seeming entitled. If I was speaking to Chip, I’d say, Hey, Chip, are you coming to pick me up at the airport? But this isn’t Chip, and my dad is telling me to take a taxi to the hotel. “Don’t get ripped off by the driver,” he tells me. He sounds paternal again. Or maybe he’s just paranoid. I’m impressed that he’s used the colloquialism ripped off. “We’ll have lunch tomorrow,” he says. “Does that sound like a plan?”

  “That sounds like a plan,” I say. He wants to know if I have any of my authority papers with me. What authority papers is he talking about? “Any authority papers,” he repeats. Apparently this is how you talk about passports and visas when you’re on the phone and the mullahs might be listening.

  “Yes, I’ve brought them,” I say.

  “Where are they?” he says.

  “They are here,” I say. “They are in my pocket.”

  “What are they?” he says.

  “What are they?” I ask. They are my visa and passport and driver’s license. What else would they be? Have I forgotten to bring something essential?

  Finally, I realize that what he’s asking me is if I have any food allergies.

  I don’t know about the rest of the country, but Tehran is slate-gray in the spring. The gray goes with the beige of the buildings. The beige goes with the black of the headscarves. The only color is the yellow of the taxi I’m sitting inside, speeding through the city, the cabbie flouting the rules of the road, along with the truck drivers, the bus drivers, and the motorcyclists who aren’t wearing helmets. Everyone’s honking, everyone’s in a hurry, everything looks hardscrabble, but every city can appear hardscrabble when it’s overcast and you’re coming in from the airport on little sleep. If it weren’t for the women with the headscarves and those snowcapped mountains off in the distance, the ones my dad referenced when he’d referenced beauty, I could be driving down the Grand Central Parkway right now. When I’m not staring through the window, I’m staring at the back of the cabbie’s head, beige cap on black hair. He knows enough English to know that I need to get to the hotel. He’s about my age, give or take, probably having to drive a taxi for a living because it’s the only way he can make ends meet under the economic sanctions—the economic sanctions being one more reason why our children and grandchildren aren’t going to have the future they deserve. He’d tried to help me with my luggage curbside, but I didn’t want to come across as entitled, and so I did it myself, a big jet-lagged smile on my face. I’m sure he can tell I’m American without me even opening my mouth, unless he’s guessing Italian or Greek. Or maybe he can see straight through the facade to what’s really going on behind Danny McDade. It’s not my fault, I want to tell him, meaning the economic sanctions and whatever else might be my fault. In addition to the exhaustion and befuddlement, I’m operating with guilt and shame, my own and my country’s, the latter about a century in the making. In that alternate reality of mine, the one where WASP mom moved to Iran, circa 1983, tail end of the Cultural Revolution, I can picture in my jet-lagged state how I’d be the thirty-five-year-old cabdriver in this present-day scenario, Danush Jamshid from Hormozgan Province, doing what I can to make ends meet in a country that has an oil embargo, banking restrictions, and frozen assets. I’d be driving from the airport at top speed, flouting the rules of the road because I have nothing to lose, swerving to avoid the pedestrians who are crossing in the middle of the street since they have nothing to lose, either. In my spare time, I’d be selling knockoff SIM cards, trying to make extra money on the side so I can save enough to get to America, never mind that there’s a Muslim ban, never mind that I’m filled with envy and disdain for the American sitting in the backseat of my taxi who was too petrified to even let me help him with his luggage. I’d be dreaming of Amazon and Walmart and women without headscarves, hoping I’d have the chance one day to study engineering at Long Island University, because I’ve heard it’s a good school, and it’s also my sole chance at circumventing global bureaucracy. And lo and behold, in this alternate reality of mine, Danush Jamshid would somehow have his visa application approved—I don’t know how, this is all flight of fancy anyway—but when he arrives in America that’s where the fancy ends for good and the truth takes over, where he finds he still needs to drive a taxi to make ends meet, nights and weekends, going up and down the Grand Central Parkway in big bad New York City, because that’s what an immigrant from a Level 4 country does when he can’t put his engineering degree to use and he’s overstayed his visa. He’ll be picking up people at the airport who’ll stare at the back of his head, wondering how much English he speaks.

  By the time the cabdriver pulls up to my hotel, I would have been more than happy if he’d rip me off. I give him seventy-five thousand tomans, which sounds like more than it is. I want to say something meaningful, something about how he should never give up on the dream, brother. He tries to help me with my luggage, but of course that’s not going to happen. A moment later, he’s disappeared back into traffic, eight lanes where there should be six, leaving me standing on the sidewalk staring up at my hotel that says HOTEL in English, which I find comforting. It’s a building that’s obviously been designed with the Western conception of the Orient, borderline kitsch to put people like me at ease, with its purple paisley exterior to set it apart from the municipal gray. On top of the portico is a statue of an elderly man in repose, sitting cross-legged and wearing a turban. He looks like a character from Disney, the flip side of fundamentalism, olde worlde and defanged, just returned from having bartered spices on the Silk Road, when times were simpler, before there were centrifuges and enriched uranium. Come inside the hotel, he seems to be saying in mildly accented English, we will neither loathe nor envy you, we are only delighted that you are here to spend some money. He’s either a stereotype or the source material for what becomes a stereotype, and I’m not well versed enough to know the difference. Framing the hotel entrance are two life-sized sculptures of white stallions, rearing with excitement, so that when I wheel my luggage past I can feel like a conquering hero, which I also find comforting. Inside the lobby, there are Persian ornamental vases, six feet tall, and there are Persian rugs on the Persian floors, and there’s an aquarium with Persian fish swimming in a loop. The hotel staff is friendly, bilingual, and all male, and they appear, each and every one of them, to exhibit no signs of monetary distress or international disdain. My dad is picking up the tab for this gaudy hotel, six days and five nights. He’d offered. I’d said no. He’d said it was the least he could do. I was adamant. He was adamant. We went back and forth like this for a while, until I realized he was right, it was the least he could do.

  The last time I saw my dad was in Buffalo, New York, of all places, speaking of hardscrabble. I was almost twenty years old then, and I’d taken the train one winter morning to meet him, seven hours door-to-door from the suburbs of Upstate, with my mom and Chip seeing me off on the platform. They were smiling and waving, putting on happy faces. “Have fun,” Chip called, but I could see the forlorn glimmer in his eyes. Then I spent the next seven hours watching the state of New York pass by my train window, mountains, lakes, rivers, thinking about trying to have fun. When I arrived it was early afternoon, and whatever the temperature had been in Upstate, it was half that in Buffalo, the midday wi
nd blowing hard across the platform, and there was my dad waiting for me under the exit sign, smiling and waving, showing Persian hospitality, and dressed in sandals and socks. I was confused by this, the sandals and socks, and the confusion embarrassed me, and the embarrassment overwhelmed any other emotion I might have had the chance to feel. Amid the crowd of departing train travelers, my dad had stood out as conspicuously foreign, and this, as I already knew, was something one sublimated as best one could. I’d worn a jacket and slacks for the occasion, the all-American wardrobe bought at Walmart, because my mom and Chip had insisted I look presentable when seeing my dad after fifteen years. The first thing he did, in lieu of a hug, was make a big production out of comparing the height of our shoulders to see if I’d outgrown him yet at the age of twenty. As far as icebreakers went, it was a good one, and we’d stood there on the train platform, negative windchill, sandals and socks, acting as if we were buddies from way back, pressing our shoulders together. When my dad saw that I was indeed an inch taller, he was ecstatic. “You’ve surpassed me!” he said. His accent was thick and his syntax perfect and his phrase was infused with double meaning. He was acting casual and upbeat. He was also asserting that, regardless of fifteen years of separation, biology could not be expunged.

  Then we walked. I was cold and he was not. I somehow knew that to tell my dad I was cold would be to acknowledge that I was an American, fragile, privileged, cloistered, all true and, in this context, unbecoming. There was an Iranian restaurant he was keen on taking me to for lunch, a very special restaurant that would have doogh, the best yogurt drink I’d ever had. “Doogh,” he said, as if I would of course understand what doogh was and why we needed to walk so far to have a glass. I had never heard of this yogurt drink before. I had never heard that yogurt was something one could drink. “Doogh,” my dad kept saying. I wasn’t sure if he was saying “do,” “dug,” or “dough.” I wasn’t sure if I should call him Dad and he wasn’t sure if he should call me Danush, so we wisely avoided the conundrum by calling each other nothing. I asked him if we might pass Niagara Falls on the way to the restaurant, but he said no, Niagara Falls was on the other side. “We’ll do it next time,” he said. Sure, he’d been bouncing from city to city for the last fifteen years, engineering job to engineering job, West Coast, Florida, Texas, not to mention Queens, but that was the past, and now, at the age of fifty, he was stable, he was putting down roots, he was here to stay in Buffalo, seven hours away by train.

  Once my embarrassment had dissipated, curiosity began to take over. I was strolling with a stranger who resembled me slightly, eyes, nose, skin—although mine ten shades lighter, thanks to the woman in this equation. And yet my dad was the one who had remained single after all these years. For what reason, I did not know. There was a lot I did not know.

  “Aren’t your feet cold?” I asked him.

  “American winters,” he said, “are nothing like Iranian winters.” He showed me his fingers. His fingers were permanently swollen. “From the Iranian winters,” he said. “When I owned no gloves.”

  Because of the cold, there was hardly anyone else on the street. The emptiness made the city look more desolate than it probably already was. Every so often we would pass an American flag in front of a store or house, flapping innocuously, and it occurred to me that out of all the thousands of American flags I’d seen in my life, including my family’s on the Fourth, I had never once been in the presence of someone for whom the flag might one day be flown against. But my dad did not seem to notice the flags. What he did notice were the big changes happening in the city, “revitalization,” he said, mispronouncing it revitatalization, including something new and exciting with the Buffalo Skyway, on the other side that he’d show me next time, that he might have a chance to help design if things shook out the way he hoped. I was impressed that he’d use the colloquialism shook out.

  When we finally got to the restaurant, the restaurant was closed until dinnertime. We gazed through the window at chairs on tables, as if the chef might come out of the kitchen and make an exception for us. Then we walked on. My dad knew of another restaurant that had this very special yogurt drink, doogh, that would also be the best I’d ever had. My toes were cold in my loafers and my legs were cold in my slacks and a few times I said something to the effect of, “I’m up for anything,” meaning that I was freezing and willing to eat anywhere.

  Soon we were in the business district. The business district looked as if it were going out of business. This time the restaurant was open but my dad stared with displeasure at the menu posted in the window.

  “Looks good,” I said, upbeat and casual.

  No, it was not good. The restaurant was not at all what he remembered the restaurant to be. He wanted to take me to yet another restaurant, just a few blocks away, one that would have decent doogh, but not the best. He apologized for this in advance. In a city with a population of minimal Iranians, there seemed to me to be a disproportionate amount of Iranian restaurants from which to choose, and I had the sense that my dad had been planning this lunch for a very long time, and the moment was now here, and the moment was all wrong.

  The restaurant we settled on was some sort of Persian fusion, nonspecific, all-inclusive, arabesques on the walls, world music playing, college-student waitstaff. I could tell my dad was disappointed and resigned. The doogh here was so-so, he said again, and he ordered it anyway. He said that the ghormeh sabzi was average, the khoresh gheymeh was okay, the bademjan was probably good, because how can you screw up badmejan? I made a show of looking over the menu and murmuring interest and assent. When the doogh arrived, my dad let his sit on the table untouched, as if in protest, a tall glass of pure white liquid with a straw sticking out of it. I sipped mine cautiously, my American palate unaccustomed to exploration and uncertainty, and then something must have clicked inside of me, deep down on that latent genetic level that’s apparently always lying in wait, because I instantly recognized it as one of the most delicious things I’d ever tasted, half yogurt, half salt, hint of mint. I sipped and then I gulped, and then it was gone, and I was sucking through the straw, trying to vacuum up the bottom of the glass. Had I been having lunch with Chip, I would have suggested we order another one right away. Instead, I said nothing, because I didn’t want to seem entitled.

  Now that the central dilemma of finding a restaurant had been resolved, and my dad and I were finally sitting face-to-face, his face somewhat similar to my face, it was clear that the only thing for us to do was engage in small talk, prolonged and small, beginning with the arabesques hanging on the walls. This arabesque represents this, my dad said, that arabesque represents that. He was in docent mode, guiding me through the gallery of antiquities in his sandals and socks. I murmured interest and assent. I asked follow-up questions. I waited for the waiter. By the way, my dad said, had he mentioned that the badmejan in this restaurant was good? Yes, he had mentioned that. But thank you for mentioning that again. I will order that because you have now mentioned that. I spoke the way I was dressed, jacket and slacks for maximum courtesy and inoffensiveness. I leaned in close so I could hear his every word, my hands folded, my elbows off the table, the small talk made more self-conscious by my dad’s accent and the world music being piped in and the laughter emanating from the other tables, especially the one right next to us, where a group of college students, about my age, ate from a dozen different plates of Persian fusion food. They were full-on Americans, no question, just dropping in for some culture on a cold winter’s day, but I was sure they knew more about what they were eating than I ever would.

  I kept expecting that the small talk with my dad would soon be supplanted with the substantial talk, the talk about what life had been like for me these last fifteen years, about what life had been like after he’d left us, Mom and me in our apartment in outer Queens, across from the nail salon, Nails Something Something. But the small talk continued unabated. There had been buildup and now there was anticlimax. I was the adopted child
who, upon finally meeting his birth parent, marvels at the shared biology, but aside from that, so what?

  “Do you remember,” my dad suddenly asked me, “the time we drove to Long Island for the weekend?” He was telling me about a time when we’d taken a drive one Sunday afternoon, impromptu, the three of us, early summer in the Buick LeSabre, windows rolled down, final destination Mineola, but then we’d changed our minds at the last minute, and we’d continued on to Shelter Island, an additional two hours away. He gazed at me through the recollection.

  I racked my brain for the memory. “No,” I said, “I don’t remember that.”

  “Do you remember,” he went on, “the time we drove to New Jersey for the weekend?” According to him, the same sequence of events had transpired: the three of us, Sunday afternoon, early summer in the long-ago-discontinued Buick LeSabre, final destination the Palisades, but altered at the last minute.

  “That sounds like fun,” I said.

  I could see him searching through the database in his head, searching, searching, and coming up empty because, after all, there were only a handful of memories to choose from, and now the small talk was replaced by silence, prolonged and telling, my dad and I avoiding eye contact, while the table of my American peers stuffed their faces with plates of ghormeh sabzi. I thought perhaps I should try to offer my own reminiscences from the past, but all I had were bits and pieces of non-narrative. Do you remember the time you were sitting on the blue couch? Do you remember the time you put the hard-boiled egg on my plate?

  After a while, my dad asked me if I happened to remember the time we went to Coney Island. There had been no Buick LeSabre for this outing, only the subway, the three of us on the F train coming in from Queens, forty stops end-to-end. He was looking at me from across the table with an almost pleading look, a please-tell-me-you-remember-this look, how is it possible that you don’t remember this? In his mind it must have felt like this had taken place just last week, the three of us oceanside, me, Mom, and Dad, walking on the boardwalk to buy frozen ice from a vendor, and then my dad taking me on the merry-go-round. How can you not remember the merry-go-round? When I was done with the merry-go-round we went into the water, and the waves were gentle, and I had water wings and an inflatable dolphin that he’d bought for me right after he’d bought me the frozen ice from the vendor. He said he’d shown me how to float on my back, and how to kick my legs, and we played some game with the inflatable dolphin, and when we were done with the water he took me back on the merry-go-round again.