“You seem to be enjoying this!” Bahman said.
She smiled and continued to chant.
“We don’t have to stay long. I just wanted you to see. To feel what it’s like out here. I don’t want you to think you have to be afraid of it. It’s just people. People like us. It’s all we have. You know?”
The sound was like the swoosh of a sword. When she replayed it over and over in the coming weeks and months and years, she knew she’d also heard a small clang, like the ring of a mangled bell. Suddenly Bahman was doubled over. He wheezed. She leaned over him as he struggled to breathe. When she looked around, three men behind them smirked. They all wore black pants and white shirts and dark bowler hats. The man in the middle held a baton embellished with a jagged chain. Bahman continued to gasp for air. A large gash at the back of his neck began to bleed. Had the three men been behind them the whole time? Or had they pushed and shoved their way through the crowd to get to Bahman? As blood dripped from the chain at the end of the man’s baton, Bahman coughed. For what felt like an eternity Roya rubbed his back and shouted his name, and then finally and with much effort, Bahman straightened up. His face was twisted in pain. A pink-red stain spread through his collar and across the top of his shirt.
“Just a little warning, Mr. Aslan,” the man with the baton-chain said. “Don’t spread so much nonsense. It’s not good for you.”
Roya wanted to lunge at him. She wanted to find the police, yell for the men to be arrested, handcuffed, dragged away.
The man in the middle shrugged. “You National Front Mossadeghis are all the same, if you ask me. Every single one of you is worthless. This country would be better off without you.” He sounded lazy, almost bored.
Bahman touched the back of his neck. He looked at his blood-soaked hand as if it belonged to someone else. Then he took Roya’s hand with his clean one. Without one word, he pushed past the three men and out of the crowd. They made their way onto the streets away from the demonstration, away from the square.
When they were safely on a quiet side street, Bahman stopped. “Are you all right, Roya Joon? Are you okay?”
“You need a doctor, Bahman.”
“I am so sorry. I should never have taken you there.” The stained shirt stuck to his skin. Blood dripped down his neck.
“I’ll come with you to the hospital.”
“No. Let me take you home.”
“They cut you! You need stitches. We have to tell the police.”
Bahman’s eyes glazed with tears. “They are the police.”
“What?”
“They work for the Shah.”
Just then a tall boy about their age ran up to them, breathless. Between gasps and pants, he spoke. “Saw what happened, Bahman Jan. Saw it all. These low-life plebeians. Uneducated vermin. Don’t know how those in power can hire these thugs. Well, actually, I do, and so do you. Hello, Khanom, excuse my manners.” He lifted his hat to Roya. “I’m Jahangir. Pleased to meet you.”
Jahangir wore an expensive-looking fashionable green vest and beige shirt. His mustache was lacquered. He was dressed for a soirée, not a rally.
“I’m Roya. Pleased to meet you,” she mumbled.
“Enchanté.” Jahangir touched his hat again. Roya had never heard that word. “Will you be okay, Roya Khanom, getting on by yourself? I need to take this boy to a doctor. He’s in bad shape. I’m sure you agree.” Jahangir touched Bahman’s arm, avoiding the blood on the top of his shirt. He crossed one ankle over the other as though posing for a photograph.
“I’ll come to the hospital too,” Roya said.
“Who said anything about a hospital? I’m taking him to my dad’s clinic.”
“Oh. But I can—”
“You don’t need to come, Roya Joon. I’ve exposed you to enough harm for today,” Bahman said.
“Yes, don’t you worry. I’ll take good care of him. I always do.” Jahangir smiled. His teeth looked like a cinema star’s.
Roya suddenly felt odd and out of place standing with what appeared to be two very good, trusted friends. “Yes, well then. I suppose—”
“We’ll walk you home first, Roya,” Bahman said.
“You need antiseptic, my friend!” Jahangir said with a tense smile. “You’re bleeding. Let’s go before you get infected.”
“We need to get Roya home,” Bahman said. “I should never have taken her to the demonstration.”
“I’ll be fine. Just please take care of yourself, Bahman,” Roya said.
Jahangir tipped his hat to Roya, Bahman nodded through the pain, and Roya walked off in the direction of her parents’ house.
As she walked, she replayed the scene at the demonstration in her head. Bahman would have been justified to strike back, to retaliate. No one would have blamed him if he grabbed the man who’d assaulted him, hit him. He had every right to. But of course he hadn’t. He knew that would only make things worse. And he was worried for her. He’d just wanted to get her out of there and have her get home safely. The boy who would change the world continued to surprise her with his decency.
She worried about his wound. She worried about the blood, a possible infection. She worried about a country where paid government thugs could strike a teenager in a crowd.
Chapter Five
1953
* * *
Café Ghanadi
For Nowruz, the Persian New Year, they’d cleaned the house from top to bottom. Maman stayed up late for weeks to sew new dresses for her daughters. On the first day of spring, the family stood around the Haft Seen table set with the traditional seven items beginning with the Farsi letter s. Roya and Zari wore new clothes down to their underwear. At the exact time of the vernal equinox when winter turned to spring, they all jumped and hugged and kissed. Baba then read a verse from the Quran and a few poetry ghazals from Hafez. It was now the new year.
It was tradition to visit relatives in the thirteen days following the first day of spring. They called upon elders first and worked their way down according to age. All shops and restaurants were closed for the holidays. The scent of Maman’s chickpea and pistachio cookies and rosewater rice-flour pastries filled the home.
Two weeks later, on the first Tuesday when the shops had reopened, Roya practically ran to the Stationery Shop. The city had bloomed into a colorful kaleidoscope of flowers. New buds burst forth as she rushed breathlessly through the streets.
When she swung the door open, the bell chimed in its familiar way. And there he was, standing in front of the counter, talking to Mr. Fakhri, who was taking notes on a pad of paper. The sound of his voice gave her a pleasant falling feeling.
“Roya Khanom, saale no mobarak. Happy New Year!” Mr. Fakhri saw her first and put down his fountain pen.
“Happy New Year to you. Both.”
Bahman looked up and his face exploded into a huge grin. “Hey! How are you? How is your family? Did you have a good new year?”
She walked closer to him and then couldn’t help but gasp. What looked like a row of large black ants crossed the back of his neck. Stitches. Those thugs.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “Jahangir’s father doused it with enough antiseptic to sterilize a swamp. I’m fine.”
Two other customers came in, and Mr. Fakhri went to them.
Bahman reached for something on the counter and handed her a package wrapped in red paper. “Here,” he said. “I got this for you. An eidy for the new year.”
“You didn’t have to get me anything!”
“I wanted to.”
She could tell it was a book. She opened the wrapping carefully, as if the paper would be forever kept and stored. When the wrapping came off, she was surprised to see it was a notebook.
“For you to write your own poems in,” he said sheepishly.
She opened the notebook. He had written on the first page: For Roya Joon, my love. May you always be happy and may all your days be filled with beautiful words. Underneath he had inscribed, in his own hand, a verse
from Rumi:
The minute I heard my first love story,
I started looking for you, not knowing how blind that was.
Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere.
They’re in each other all along.
“I hope you like it?” he asked tentatively.
She wanted to cup his face in her hands and kiss him and show him just how much she liked it, but Mr. Fakhri and his customers were on the other side of the store. “It is perfect. Thank you,” she said.
“Do you have time right now? To come with me?” Bahman asked.
“The last time we went out didn’t end up too well.”
He reddened. “I hate that you had to see that. But no one’s demonstrating today. Everyone’s still in the Nowruz spirit. I promise to take you somewhere safe. And sweet.”
Together they went outside. He walked in stride with her right away this time. With the freshness of the new year, it was easier to forget the political woes. If there was one holiday that made everybody happy, it was Nowruz. Everyone looked plumper and brighter, having benefited from time away from work and school.
They walked through Ferdowsi Square. At the fountain in the middle stood an elderly woman dressed all in red. She was wearing a red dress, even red shoes. She looked around as if waiting for something or someone. Her expression was anticipatory but dejected.
“They say she was to meet her lover here,” Bahman said as he took Roya’s hand.
“I’ve seen her here before.”
“Yes. But he never showed up. Years and years ago. This boy in my class even wrote a poem about this poor soul.”
“How sad,” Roya said.
“I can’t bear to look at her some days,” Bahman said as they walked quickly away.
After a few blocks, Bahman stopped in front of a shop window. White frothy lettering on the glass spelled out CAFÉ GHANADI. Roya had passed by this café many times but had never gone inside. It somehow seemed reserved for more sophisticated grown-up types, for people who drank coffee instead of tea, for girls who had fiancés, for chic couples who dressed like American film stars.
Bahman took her inside.
Row after row of pastries in glass cases, small round tables, chairs adorned with pink cushions, blush-colored walls, flowers in thin vases, cream oozing out of éclairs and from the tops of small cakes—it all made her dizzy.
The air smelled of sugar and coffee and cinnamon. Bahman led her to the back. He held on to her arm as if they were a couple, his body pressed against hers as they squeezed past tables. He smelled of musk and something Roya couldn’t quite place but which she had noticed that seventh Tuesday in the Stationery Shop when he’d first held her hand. She could only think of it as wind—a fast, cool, exciting gust. She held on to his upper arm, the muscle comforting and strange. Maybe it was the coffee and cinnamon in the air, or maybe it was the fact that she was in a chic café with this handsome Bahman Aslan, but by the time he pulled the chair out for her and she sat down, Roya was sure the whole pink, sugary place was spinning.
“What would you like?”
“Tea, thank you.”
“Have you ever had shir ghahveh?”
“Sorry?” She could barely hear him. The couples around them chattered. Fashionable young ladies on pink-cushioned chairs looked like foreign actresses she’d only seen on magazine covers, their hair in perfect waves (waves Zari worked so hard to emulate by setting her hair in newspaper scraps every night). These ladies chatted easily with young men across from them. The surreal world of sophisticated couples was just as intoxicating as the pastries in the glass case. Were these couples engaged? What would Maman and Baba say to see her sitting on a delicate pink-cushioned chair across from a guy?
“Be right back.” Bahman disappeared to the front of the pastry shop.
He returned many minutes later with a tray holding steaming cups of coffee with cream and a plate of two pastries. He handed Roya one of the cups, placed the tray on the table, sat down, and watched her take a sip. The coffee burned Roya’s lips. It was hot and strong and rich.
“Ear for you, tongue for me.”
Roya almost spit out her drink. “Excuse me?” she sputtered.
“The pastries. Elephant’s ear for you. Tongue pastry for me.” He paused and grinned at her. Roya looked at the plate. One pastry was indeed in the shape of an elephant’s ear and the other was an oblong shape: a tongue.
“Do you like your shir ghaveh?”
The coffee was intense, unlike anything Roya had tasted before. “It’s . . . different.”
“Best Italian espresso you can find in Iran!” He tapped the table. “Right here.” He leaned across and took her hand. “Maybe this can become our second-favorite hangout. Hmm?”
Roya giggled and nodded.
“I mean, not that I don’t love pencil sharpeners and books of Rumi’s poetry. And demonstrations. But you know . . .”
She giggled again. It felt like the beginning of everything. She was surprised that he’d led her out of the Stationery Shop again and into the brightness of the world as if it were fate that they should walk together, be seen together, sit and drink and eat together. Would they have sweet cakes and éclairs and shirini in the future? Just take bites and dive in? Perch on chairs sipping Italian espresso? Roya was dizzy but suddenly absurdly sure that being with him was her fate for the new year and beyond.
“To say you’ll marry him is absurd,” Zari snorted as they walked home from school later in the week. “You’ve seen him, what, six times?”
“We’ve seen each other for months now, thank you. And anyway, time is irrelevant.”
“Oh, Sister!” Zari stopped and looked at Roya with pity. “Time is the only thing that is relevant. You can’t pin your hopes on that boy.”
“Why not?”
“Because . . .” Zari paused. “He just can’t be trusted. Those political types are not what you think.”
“How would you know?”
“I just do. Trust me.”
They walked the rest of the way in an uncomfortable silence with Roya wanting to feel that her sister was just jealous and not prescient. Zari had to be overreacting, as always. Zari just didn’t like siasi types, that was all. Roya tried to swat away the doubt and anxiety that her sister’s words made swell inside her. She thought of the notebook Bahman had given her, the poem he’d inscribed inside. Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.
Zari had to be wrong.
Chapter Six
1953
* * *
Bruised Sky
Because it was almost summer, because the bushes and trees were already lush, because it was twilight and they were seventeen and the air was filled with jasmine, their walk on the boulevard was one that would imprint itself onto Roya’s heart for years to come.
Earlier, they’d gone to Cinema Metropole on Lalehzar Street. The chic lobby with its circular red sofa, the sparkling chandeliers, everyone dressed up in their most glamorous clothes, the framed portraits of Clark Gable and Sophia Loren, the cigarettes being smoked, the tiny coffee cups in the hands of ladies with hats, the absolute romance of the entire venue made Roya feel like she was in a movie herself. And then, the climb up the steps to the balcony to sit with Bahman on maroon velvet chairs and watch an Italian film directed by Vittorio De Sica: The Bicycle Thief.
“I love his work,” Bahman had whispered as the film began. “I’m curious to know what you think.” Roya was too distracted by the closeness of his mouth to her ear to speak. She swallowed hard and nodded. So much was new and alluring in her world with this boy.
After the film, they left the dazzle of Cinema Metropole’s lobby and stepped into a summer twilight that was so beautiful she ached. The sky was an eggplant purple, the clouds the color of bruises.
“The story relates to so much of what is going on in Iran right now,” Roya said as they walked down the boulevard. “The poor want a better life. But they’re stuck. Our
leaders need to help. All that man in the film wanted was a bicycle so that he could go to work. That’s all.”
“I agree. Our own people are stuck in that same way. Trapped in their class, their fate,” Bahman said passionately as he took her hand. “But we can change all of that. With democracy. We’re on the right track.”
“Zari says it’s unrealistic to think we’ll ever have full control of our resources. She says the British have too much at stake here,” Roya said.
“For someone who doesn’t like politics, your sister has good, strong opinions,” Bahman said.
Roya laughed.
“Now I just have to convince her that I’m not a horrible person!” Bahman said.
“Don’t mind Zari,” Roya said. “She’s a bit dramatic, that’s all.”
Toward the end of high school, Roya had started inviting Bahman to regular get-togethers she and Zari hosted after school for their friends. Nothing huge: just cut-up fruit, a few laughs, conversation. And Bahman hadn’t been the only boy there. There were others—friends and cousins who were part of their “équipe,” as Zari liked to call their circle of peers. Bahman had been introduced to Maman and to Baba, and it was amazing to think he could be in her home, chatting with her friends, just one of the group.
Bahman suddenly stopped and went quiet.
“What’s wrong?”
“I’ve been wanting to know . . .” He looked nervous. “For a while now. I’ve just been wanting to ask, Roya . . .” His voice broke off at her name, cracking like a thirteen-year-old’s. From the middle of the sidewalk, he gently pulled her to the side near a shrub so large that its greenery and flowers spilled out and made a nook. Suddenly they were blanketed by the sweeping scent of blossoming jasmine, heady and full.
He looked at her, and she was surprised at how vulnerable he seemed, standing there.
She didn’t let him get the words out, there was no need; she didn’t play games. In the fog of jasmine, she kissed him. It was like landing somewhere she should have been all along, a different plane, soft and unbelievably seductive—a place completely theirs but one she’d never dared explore.
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