Daughters of Smoke and Fire

by Ava Homa

  “Do you care to explain why?”

  “If Canada rejects my application and you don’t come back to divorce me for whatever reason, I’ll remain ‘married’ for the rest of my life.”

  “And what’s wrong with that?” He winked. “I believe we need all the legal documents to make our case valid, but we could ‘lose’ your ID and apply again. So yes, I can arrange for that too.”

  “Without the need for my father’s documents and neighbor’s testimony and what have you?”

  “Without a hassle for you. We should oil quite a few mustaches though,” he said. “Keep both IDs. So I can get you out of trouble, if need be.”

  If I got detained while he was away, he could help me only if we were related.

  “Is that all?” he asked.

  “No.”

  He turned off the engine.

  “What did you want to say,” I asked, “on Chia’s last day? When you were on the stairs and I was begging him to stay.”

  “I . . .” He looked sideways at me like a rabbit looking at his hunter.

  “The truth,” I demanded.

  “I swear I was going to ask him to stay. The clips had frightened me too.”

  Long pause. “Well, why didn’t you?”

  Karo clasped his hands behind his head and leaned his forehead on the wheel. “I didn’t want you to think I was a coward.”

  “If you’d let me think you were a coward, Chia would be alive,” I whimpered.

  He reached out and took my hand. “I will make it up to you, I promise.” The dam broke and we sobbed in each other’s arms.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Karo hugged me, and it lasted longer than it should have. I looked around for the Police of Enjoining Good and Forbidding Vice, scanned the faces of the people who noticed our touch.

  “This is the preboarding announcement for flight 759 to Austria . . .” said the loudspeaker.

  “I will see you soon, invincible lady.” Karo patted my shoulder, his straight black hair falling across his forehead.

  I avoided his gaze to hide the hurricane churning within me. “Are you making fun of me?”

  “You stare into chaos and see past it. Nothing gets in the way of your composure.”

  This wasn’t his usual vocabulary. “Are you reciting poetry now?”

  A mischievous smile. “Please be extra cautious and patient until your visa arrives, Mrs. Wife.” He kissed the corner of my jaw, but his lips met only my headscarf.

  I stared into his indigo eyes and then took one last look at his full lips. A kiss on my forehead. The roar of a plane landing. The lingering smell of his woodsy cologne seconds after he walked away. I searched for the exit sign.

  “Leila!” he called in the sweet way only he could pronounce my name, more like Lee-la. I looked back. “Take it easy, please,” he said, and turned on his heel.

  “Call me from Vienna.” I cupped my hands around my mouth as I called after him. Iran Air planes were flying coffins, thanks to the US sanctions. His Air Canada flight to Toronto after the six-hour layover would be less scary.

  The only way to find out whether or not I was on the blacklist of those forbidden from leaving the country was to make an attempt, and that required a visa. A tremendous amount of luck would be needed for so many details to fall into place and let me be free. If luck was hereditary, I wouldn’t ever be getting on a plane.

  I watched Karo pass through frosted glass doors that only admitted passengers. My head spun, making me feel seasick. There walked a man who had held me close yesterday in a portrait studio and—momentarily uniting our breath and body—gently placed his lips on mine at the photographer’s command. But he had never pressed them.

  The large windows of the bungalow in the town of Lavasan, north of Tehran, presented a world of wonder, a mess of weeds and fallen branches in the front yard. The interior was tastefully decorated with wooden statues of birds and framed paintings of landscapes, yet from the noxious smell of decay from dead vermin in all the rooms, I could tell that rats had taken up residence before me.

  In my suitcase, Karo had left a framed photo of him and me at our staged wedding, touching cheeks and smiling, staring directly into the camera lens as if daring whoever saw the picture to challenge the validity of the union. But it was the only picture there. I searched frantically for the photos of my brother between the folds of my packed clothes. I wanted to climb to the top of a mountain and scream my lungs out.

  “Vienna has one neat airport. It’s 2:00 a.m. here,” Karo reported on the phone.

  “Why did you steal all my photos of Chia? How dare you?”

  He hung up. I hurled the wedding photo, which hit the wall, and the glass shattered into dozens of pieces. I was not sure where, but I ached. I was internally bruised, all blue and purple.

  The first week, I scrubbed and vacuumed and dusted the old cottage that Karo said had not been rented out for a few years. When the place was finally livable, my weary soul began to revive. I hit the garden, trimmed the dead stalks and watered the live ones. In time Chia’s shadow no longer haunted me—it was more like a companion, piecing me together.

  Two weeks had passed since I’d last heard from Karo, aside from one curt text informing me he’d arrived in Toronto. He was punishing me for my outburst.

  The empty fridge had been disappointing, but the stress of risking arrest to go grocery shopping was more than I could handle. I found stale chips and canned beans, wrapped a blanket around me, and sat on the patio with a cup of fresh tea.

  Under the dawn’s rose light, a stray cat, gray with white stripes, climbed up the short cement wall surrounding the gate. “Wrong place,” I said. “No food for you, kitty. Lots of cash, though, if you can digest that, left by my pretend husband, who thinks he has the power to simply blow grief away like he’s Aladdin’s genie.”

  My words did not stop her beautiful saunter. “You’re pretty fat. Where I come from, cats are the size of Tehranian mice. Mice there are the size of the cockroaches here.” She meowed. I made a meek high-pitched noise to communicate—if not commiserate—with her, the first living being I’d seen after two weeks of solitude. The cat shamed me into sharing my chips and fetching water for her. “So what do you fear in life?” I asked as she lapped her water. She turned her back on me and jumped lightly on top of the wall.

  I sighed. I couldn’t avoid leaving the gates of my sanctuary forever, not if it would take over a year for my visa to come through. So I put on sunglasses, covered myself head to toe in black, and cautiously peeked out the door. No one was out on the street at midday, not when the heat was this oppressive and the air thick. That gave me courage to stand in the doorway and inhale the sweet fragrance of vining shrubs of jasmine on the brick walls of the next-door neighbor’s house, another humble bungalow. The mountains were a sea of green. The rest of the cottages on this street were luxurious. Perhaps my best tactic was to disguise myself as a wealthy vacationer, dressing in the clothes in the owner’s closet. But I couldn’t bear the attention it would arouse. I was more comfortable looking like a maid.

  A cab braked before me at the intersection. The local supermarket was only a five-minute drive away. Quickly I purchased enough food to last me for weeks, wearing my sunglasses inside the building too. The same taxi driver was waiting when I was done, and I jumped in, preferring to see as few people as possible. He asked me on the way if I was raised abroad. My outfit must have stuck out in this ritzy resort town, where the Iranian upper crust came to ski.

  In Toronto, I said. “The capital of Canada?” he asked, and I confirmed, though I was not actually sure. I made a mental note to check later. He helped put all my bags inside the yard, and I tipped him handsomely to appear like someone used to spending dollars, not toman. When he left, I sighed in relief and realized I knew nothing about Canada and that my English needed a lot of work too. Before closing the gate, I picked one of the neighbor’s jasmine flowers that had grown onto my wall.

  I settled i
nto an uneasy pattern, trying to preoccupy myself by preparing for my new life in Canada, should my visa actually come through, all the while looking over my shoulder. I’d discovered a small library in town, open to women three days a week. I perused the shelves, looking for encyclopedias, travel guides, English language dictionaries—anything that would help me acclimate to my new life abroad. I tried to force myself to study English for four hours a day, but too often I slipped into old habits, watching film after film borrowed from the library and planning storyboards in my head.

  My plants pushed through the fertilized soil, transforming into tiger lilies and impatiens. I spent long hours in the garden, spritzing each leaf carefully, hoping to cultivate something within myself as well. Karo and I had weekly video chats, where he babbled on about his life in Toronto and quizzed me on English vocabulary until I wanted to chuck the computer across the room. And occasionally Shiler called, updating me on her missions with her political party. I never called my parents, save for one call to inform them that I was leaving the country. But aside from these video calls and the few people I encountered at the library and the supermarket, I avoided contact with everyone, worried my neighbors would learn my identity and call Intelligence on me.

  One day, long after the sweltering stretch of summer gave way to crisp autumn mornings, I woke to my phone ringing, a call from an unknown caller. I stared at it until the ringing ceased. A formidable pain enveloped my limbs like my bones were being crushed in a giant, invisible fist. It could be Karo, using a calling card. Or it could be Shiler, who also had not called me for weeks, since she was undergoing some intensive combat training. Syria was torn by civil war, and she was going to the Kurdish north of the country to rebuild the neglected area.

  I ignored the phone and went out to the patio. The caller didn’t leave a voicemail. The sun radiated through purple clouds. Near the rusty gardening gear in the shed, I found unmarked seeds in a plastic bag and planted them, trying to recall Rumi poems. “In this imaginary plain of nonexistence/I am your spring of eternal life.”

  Someone rang the bell and knocked on the gate using a coin or keys. I froze.

  The knocking continued. I held my breath and walked backward, expecting soldiers to scale the cement walls.

  I slipped inside as quietly as possible and tried to get one of the messaging applications to work—Skype, Google Talk, or Yahoo Messenger—but none did, thanks to the government’s almighty web filters.

  I paced the house frantically, grasping my hair, which weighed unusually heavily on my scalp. I couldn’t even call the police if someone broke in. A gun was what I needed, and some training in how to shoot it.

  Rummaging through cabinets, I collected and sharpened all the big knives in the house and hid them under the pillows and doormats, atop the fridge, and inside a dresser by the main entrance. I’d die with dignity; I would not let a filthy Islamic Republic agent or a burglar touch me.

  When I went to shower that evening, I stood before the wide mirror of the bathroom, held the largest knife, and mimed stabbing myself.

  My survival instinct might stop me from cutting myself deep enough to save me from a state agent or random rapist. A plan B was required.

  I placed razors in every part of the house and inside my coat pockets. Wrist-cutting was more doable and efficient if it came to that. I bathed and scrubbed away dead skin.

  I wrapped a towel around my hair, threw my stiff body on the bed, and stared at the ceiling. My thyroid was swollen, and I imagined my entire body gradually inflating, turning me into a gigantic balloon, stretched so that my skin paled until it disappeared into the ether. I flew up and up, so high that I could leave this country, this earth, get where no one could reach me, not even Chia.

  I once again stood naked before the mirror and turned on the light, surveying my tiny breasts and protruding hip bones, changes I had not noticed until then. I was practically gaunt, with prominent collarbones; my ribs even protruded when I lifted my arms. If I kept on losing weight like that, I’d disappear entirely before the Canadian embassy made a decision about my case. Somewhere between my bones and my skin, blisters had invaded my flesh. Only I could see them.

  I held up a pair of scissors. I’d lost my brother; I’d lost our tie; I’d lost the me I’d understood myself to be; I’d lost my safety. For me, grieving was like crackling in a hot furnace. Yet I was alive, perhaps capable of rising from my ashes one day.

  Each lock of hair that fell eased a portion of my burden. With a trimmer, I shaved the rest.

  When the hair was swept up and flushed away in the toilet, I was no longer sizzling.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  The next morning I closed the door behind me and walked down the road only to see a woman turn onto my street. I shifted my focus to the houses, pretending that I was looking for an address.

  “Leila!” She startled me. “Is that you?”

  I gaped. I knew that breathy voice.

  “Finally! I was about to go home! Why didn’t you open the door?”

  Tears pooled in my eyes, but I was also grinning.

  She went on, “I knocked on your door a few times yesterday. Is there something wrong with your doorbell? I thought Shiler gave me the wrong address or . . . Are you okay?”

  I looked over my shoulders, took Joanna’s hand, and led her back down the road and inside the house.

  “Would you like some water? That’s the only thing I have to offer.” I fetched a pitcher from the fridge and two glasses before she answered. Then I double-checked that all the doors were locked.

  “Come here, my daughter!” she said, patting the sofa.

  I broke down before her, crying uncontrollably. She held my shaved head without a word.

  It took a while before I was able to speak. “It’s been brutal. I think I’m losing it.”

  “I understand, avina min,” Joanna said. Shiler had been worried about me, holed up and mistrustful of everyone, so she’d sent Joanna to check on me. She’d jumped in her shabby car and driven for some ten hours to stay with me for as long as I wanted. Because I hadn’t answered her knocks yesterday, she’d had to sleep in her car.

  I told her what had happened yesterday. “I think I’ve developed paranoia. Every sound freaks me out—the wind, the raccoons. I had sleep paralysis this morning. It’s too awful. I’m losing it.”

  “You’re not, my sweet. Remember that you’re very strong and this is only a phase. You can rest easy now. I’m here.” She led me to the bedroom, and after I lay down, she pulled the sheets up to my chin.

  “Will you sing me a lullaby?” She made an eye mask for me out of her headscarf and sang in a soothing voice.

  I now understood why she and perhaps other mothers sang lullabies: to prepare children for all the sorrow awaiting us along the way while putting us to sleep.

  I woke to the smell of chicken and ghabooli, rice made with pomegranate paste and walnuts. Joanna was singing by the stove. “Joanna, thank you! But you should have rested first.” I was salivating.

  “I had my power nap.” Joanna placed plates and utensils on the dining table and served dinner. I was reminded of the afternoons I’d visit Shiler and Joanna after school, before Mama got off work. Often Joanna was seated behind her brown-and-black sewing machine, tailoring dresses for the community. She’d remove her glasses, hug me, and feed me, no matter how many times I lied about not being hungry. The simplest food she made tasted heavenly, especially her dokhawa, the steaming soup of yogurt, rice, and barley with parsley and dill drifting on top of it.

  As we ate, I told her about my audiovisuals and books that taught English to foreign speakers. Through the role-playing scenarios, I had practiced explaining symptoms of the flu to a doctor in English, shopping for clothes, complaining to a neighbor whose dog barked at night.

  Joanna rose and cleared the dinner plates, then began dicing pistachios for a batch of baklava.

  “I cannot thank you enough for the meal. I’ll cook for you tomor
row. I haven’t cooked a proper meal like this in years! Since before Chia . . .”

  “Practice giving your recipes to your Canadian neighbors,” she interrupted.

  I smiled at the thought of sharing food with neighbors in peace. If I didn’t get arrested in the airport. If I survived the challenges of the first few years.

  Within a few minutes, the smell of hot honey and toasted pistachios wafted across the kitchen and had me drooling all over again. As Joanna retrieved the piping-hot tray from the oven, I rummaged in the kitchen drawers for a serrated knife, already imagining the crispy phyllo melting on my tongue. I turned to a drawer in the buffet near the dining table, instead coming across a stack of papers I’d not yet discovered. There was a piece of mail with the address of the bungalow, but it was made out to a Reza Azimi, not Awin Shokri. I forgot the dessert in an instant. With a pang of realization and annoyance, I stormed off to demand some answers from Karo.

  A collection of pixels on my computer screen formed a blurry image of Karo. While the stars had appeared in my sky, his was still blue and bright.

  “Leila!” he answered when the video finished buffering, his crystal-clear smile at full wattage. “How are y—”

  “So you said this place was your sister’s? Awin’s?”

  I expected Karo to demur, perhaps blame an invented weak connection, but he admitted he’d been renting the bungalow and made the story up so I wouldn’t feel I owed him an even greater debt.

  “What else have you made up, Karo? Does Awin even exist?”

  “You’re going too far, Leila.”

  “How do you expect me to trust anything you say?”

  “You don’t need to. Just let the papers come through, and then you can do whatever you want, and with whomever you trust, if you trust anyone at this point. For God’s sake, Leila, you pick a fight with me every. Single. Time.”

  I hung up.

  I padded on bare feet back to the kitchen, where Joanna stood at the sink, rinsing the dishes.

  “Sad thoughts again?” She tilted her head.