“Do you remember that?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said, “I remember that.”
________
As it turns out, Tehran is beautiful in the spring. The temperature is just right, and there’s a gentle breeze blowing, and the snowcapped mountains loom so large and look so close. My dad lives about a mile from the hotel if you walk straight down the main thoroughfare, and then turn right, and left, and right again, which I do, thanks to the friendly staff at the hotel who circled points A, B, and C on my map, showing patience with the American. I’m blinking in the sunlight, which seems extra-bright because of day two of jet lag—it’s noon when it should be night—and once again I’m dressed in jacket and slacks for the occasion, because I want to look presentable when seeing my dad for the first time in fifteen years, but also because I thought I’d read somewhere that it’s not acceptable for men in Iran to wear short sleeves in public. Apparently I’d been wrong about that, as I’d been wrong about many things, including the grimness, the hopelessness, the ruthlessness that I was so sure I’d been able to perceive blurring past the window of my taxi. Whereas yesterday there’d only been gray, beige, and black, today there’s color everywhere, pastels and primaries, even the women’s headscarves are in color. In that alternate reality of mine, Danush Jamshid would be taking an afternoon break from selling his knockoff SIM cards so that he could meet his dad for lunch, just catching up, he’d be driving his motorcycle at top speed down the main thoroughfare, no helmet needed. Instead, I’m Danny McDade, walking among the people of Level 4, pretending as if I’m one of them, the diaspora having come full circle. I don’t need to speak the language to know that something like happiness can still exist in a nation that has an oil embargo, banking restrictions, and frozen assets. Every few blocks I pass a mural in vivid detail and vibrant color, meticulously painted, five, six, seven stories high, of rainbows, angels, doves, optimism. Later, I will ask my dad to explain the symbolism to me and he will say that these are not symbols but commemoration of the Iran-Iraq War in which a million died.
Unlike the hotel, my dad’s apartment building has not been designed with the Western conception of the Orient. It’s a plain, no-nonsense structure, closer to Queens than the Orient. There might as well be a nail salon across the street. The stairwell is constructed out of pale concrete, making it seem as if the entire building will crumble at the first tremor, and it’s while walking up this stairwell, my loafers making hollow sounds, that I suddenly think that I should have brought something for lunch, just a little box of something to show American hospitality and that I’ve been raised right. “Here’s a little box of something that I picked up,” I’d say. But it’s too late now, and I’m standing in front of my dad’s door, staring at a nameplate handwritten in Persian, which I’m assuming says Jamshid. It’s as beautiful as any of the signs I’ve seen, this one simple word, and I realize that it’s the first time I’ve witnessed my dad’s handwriting, with its calligraphic expertise, its dashes and dots, reading right to left. Then again, it might be the landlord’s handwriting.
My dad opens the door, as if he’s heard my footsteps in the stairwell, and he hugs me, right there in the doorway, fifteen years gone by like that. He’s not worrying about my height or about icebreakers. I can feel his full weight leaning into me. “How have you been?” he says. He’s saying it into my shoulder. I don’t know if he’s asking me how I’ve been since arriving in Iran, or how I’ve been for the last fifteen years.
He’s been aging, that’s how he’s been. He has gray in his bushy eyebrows and he’s stooping a bit. I can still see my resemblance in him, at least I think I can, the inescapable biology, the nose, skin, etc. I wonder if I’ll start to stoop when I’m sixty-five, if that’s what I have to look forward to. Meanwhile, he’s ushering me into his apartment. If he’s anxious about anything, he doesn’t seem it. His apartment is decorated like the hotel lobby, paisley on the walls, Persian rugs on the floor, but the place is sparse and has the quality of a bachelor pad. It feels as if it’s been recently cleaned and before that had not been cleaned in a year. If I were to open a dresser drawer I’d find a bag of potato chips. The living room table has been laid out with bowls of pomegranates, apricots, and pistachios: the source material for what becomes Hollywood cliché. “This is just to get us started,” my dad says. He sounds excited. He’s been waiting for this moment, and now the moment has arrived, and he’s going to make sure the moment is perfect.
I don’t drink tea, but I say I do, and he pours me a cup from a giant bronze samovar that looks ancient and inoperable. If the samovar makes the tea taste better than a teapot, I can’t tell. Then we sit cross-legged on the paisley cushions on the Persian rug, drinking tea and eating pomegranates, apricots, and pistachios, trying to catch up. “Have you ever had pomegranates before?” my dad asks. “Yes, I have,” I say. “These are the best pomegranates,” he says. I’m trying not to get red juice all over my mouth. I’m trying not to get pistachios in my teeth. I’m trying to listen and not make mistakes. I’m in polite mode. I’m thirty-five years old and I’m not accustomed to sitting cross-legged on the floor.
He’s retired now from engineering. He’s all finished with what his LIU education gave him. He points to his college diploma hanging on the wall. He’s proud of that college diploma in its ready-made frame. It looks like a prop that he’s hung for the occasion, and when I leave, he’ll take it down. He’s done moving from city to city. He’s stable. He’s here to stay in Tehran, fourteen hours away by plane.
Halfway through catching up I spill some of the tea on the Persian rug and panic. It looks like raindrops before the hard rain comes. “Sorry about that!” I say, but my dad shrugs. In a bachelor pad you don’t care about spilled tea. The drops sit between us, slowly drying, while my dad asks me if I remember how we had to walk through Buffalo trying to find lunch at a Persian restaurant. “Of course I do,” I say. He asks me if I remember the doogh I drank. “The so-so doogh,” he says. I ask him if he remembers that he’d worn sandals and socks. Yes, he remembers that. He’s laughing, and so am I. Here’s the memory that we’ve managed to create, the funny story about a cold afternoon in Buffalo. Now I’ve got five days left on a thirty-day visa and my dad is telling me that he has big, big plans for us. First we’re going to go to a museum to see the national treasures. Then we’re going to eat at a real Persian restaurant. Then we’re going to take an excursion to the mountains. He pulls the paisley drape back so I can see the top of the snowcapped mountains from his window. “Just an afternoon trip,” he says, because the mountains are deceptively close. I’m sure that when the Americans have grown tired of waiting around for the sanctions to bring about regime change, forty years and counting, they won’t invade from the sea, but will instead choose to come over those mountains.
“You’ll see,” my dad tells me, “we’re going to experience it all.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
As always, this book could not have been written without my wife, Karen Mainenti, and my therapist, Steven Kuchuck.
I am indebted to my agent, Zoë Pagnamenta, and to Alison Lewis and Jess Hoare at the Zoë Pagnamenta Agency, and to my editor Matt Weiland, who years ago plucked me from obscurity while I was working for Martha Stewart. My gratitude also to Cressida Leyshon, Deborah Treisman, David Remnick, Hilton Als, Ian Parker, Peter Carey, Tom Sleigh, Jennifer Raab, Andy Polsky, Joanna Yas, Jerome Murphy, Deborah Landau, Anya Backlund, Alison Granucci, Victor LaValle, Dani Shapiro, Michael Maren, Hannah Tinti, Bryan Charles, Scott Smith, Andrew Fishman, Jeff Golick, Jeff Adler, and Thomas Beller, who years ago plucked me from obscurity on the basketball court. As well as to the New York Foundation for the Arts, Blue Flower Arts, Hunter College, Columbia University, and New York University, where several of these stories were written sitting in a cubicle in the basement of Bobst Library.
ALSO BY SAÏD SAYRAFIEZADEH
When Skateboards Will Be Free
Brief Encounters with the Enemy
Copyright © 2021 by Saïd Sayrafiezadeh
All rights reserved
First Edition
“Audition” and “Last Meal at Whole Foods” originally appeared in The New Yorker. “Audition” also appeared in Best American Stories 2019. “Metaphor of the Falling Cat” originally appeared in The Paris Review.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Sayrafiezadeh, Saïd, author.
Title: American estrangement : stories / Saïd Sayrafiezadeh.
Description: First edition. | New York : W. W. Norton & Company, 2021.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020053360 | ISBN 9780393541236 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780393541243 (epub)
Subjects: LCGFT: Short stories.
Classification: LCC PS3619.A998 A84 2021 | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020053360
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American Estrangement Page 13