the sea beckons me whenever I am there. I hear her and I want to go to her. It is as if I am under her spell.
Every summer when we go to the Caspian Sea, I feel I am going home, or better yet, going to meet my lover, even though at seven years old I am too young to understand what it means to have a lover. The grownups try to watch me like hawks but I am small, slick, and can disappear into the water easily. I have come close to drowning a few times and yet I am never afraid. I always seem to come up when I really need to, or is it that the sea releases me when she feels I have been under the water for too long?
"No, drive us to Shah-Savaar as planned,” Dad says. “We are tired. Come for us tomorrow afternoon and then we will go to the sea." He turns toward me with a smile.
Dad is strict when it comes to schedules and plans.
"We won't be able to swim today anyway, even if we stopped now. Your swimming suit is packed in the big suitcase,” Mom explains with a smile as she holds my hand.
Mom understands me. She has the same blood. She knows all about the desire for spontaneity that is second nature to me and is responsible for the surge of excitement that runs through my veins at times like this. She understands that at these moments, when I want to go to the sea, nothing matters except the urge to do what I want to do. We are like that, all my family; we are too free-spirited I am told.
At our citrus orchard in Shah-Savaar the first thing Mom does is to take my swimsuit out of the suitcase. I snatch it from her hands, giggling, wear it, and go outside to visit with our gardener’s family. They have a couple kids younger than me and live in a cottage on the other side of the orchard. In their living room, on the shelf, I see the dolls that I have sent with dad over the years. There are five or six of them standing in a row. For a second I am sad, I don’t have a doll at this point. Then I remind myself that I chose to send them to Mehri, our gardener’s daughter. I volunteered gladly, as I usually do, as soon as Dad had asked if I wanted to send anything to the family. Besides, I already know how those dolls are built, which explains the broken arms on a couple of them and the miss-matched eyes, one open and one closed, on some other ones.
What I do with most of my toys is break them apart. Every new toy, except the ones with no moving parts, lasts only a day or two in my hands before it is dismantled. I don’t set out to break them; I just want to know how they work. With the dolls, I pulled on the arms until I discovered the thick rubber that holds the arms together and yet allows them to move independently. With the toy cars, the wheels had to come off for me to learn about the axle and how it holds the wheels together.
After leaving the gardener’s house, I play with the dog, that I have named Felix after my favorite cartoon character, a black mischievous cat. I am called inside when it gets dark. Despite the thick layer of smelly ointment Mom has spread all over me in the hopes of repelling bugs I am covered in mosquito bites.
“It itches all over,” I complain as I scratch myself like a mad dog.
"You should have worn something over that swimming suite,” Mom says. “You know how much they love your blood. You have sweet blood."
No one else ever gets bitten as much as I do. They all come for me, as if one of them rated my blood with five stars and advertised it to all the other bugs.
“She had done so much for me. I should have not listened to my sister and her children.” Dad's voice brings me back to the kitchen. “Your mom was an amazing woman,” he continues.
“Learn from your dad,” Mom used to tell me. “He is very disciplined, takes good care of himself, and has the strongest will power.” Ironic how they both had so much love and respect for one another.
Mom was right. Dad quit smoking after forty years cold turkey, by throwing the pack in the trash as he left his doctor’s office, after the doctor suggested that smoking might be bad for him. He never smoked again. Dad also exercised every morning, ate properly and followed his doctor’s advice religiously. I just wish he would have taken as good of a care, or close to it, as of the woman who gave him everything.
My heart aches. Regardless of what Dad did or didn’t do, I feel responsible for what Mom went through. I left her too. I should not have abandoned her.
“She had done so much for me. I should have stayed with her,” I whisper.
Dad sits next to me, close enough for me to smell his aftershave, the smell that lingered in the house every day after he left. After the divorce, I missed that smell.
I pick up my head and look at Dad sitting next to me, holding his boney head in his hands.
“I would have stayed. I wanted to,” I whisper.
“But you fell in love and left Iran, remember?”
I am reminded that Mom was the only one who supported me when I fell in love. She believed in me, my choice, and thought I was mature enough to make my own decisions. Everyone else, including Dad, thought I had lost my mind and tried hard to stop me.
“I did leave but I was going to go back. We were all planning to go back – all the students,” I say, sobbing, as I get up and leave the kitchen. I thought I had forgiven Dad but realize now that I am still upset with him for siding with my birthparents instead of with Mom.
I take refuge on the gray sofa in the living room. The movie is still running. The main character is talking to his mother’s caregiver.
“Bahman came back to Iran. So did your cousin. They kept their word.” I think I hear Dad talking but when I pick my head up he is sitting silently across from me on the gray love seat with his head held in his hands.
I remember leaving Iran. At Mehrabad airport, I hugged Mom and promised to come back with my doctorate degree, something I knew would make her proud and happy. That was what we all were going to do - come to the States, study, then go back to Iran where great jobs and happy lives were awaiting us. At least that is what many of us believed at the time. Most of us didn’t know or chose to be ignorant about the issues that later brought The Shah’s power to an end. For most of us studying in the United States the future looked bright. Back then Iran was a great place for making money if you were educated.
“Bahman made great movies after finishing his education and coming home,” Dad says as he watches the screen. Now showing the main character sitting next to his mom.
I wonder if Dad realizes the movie he is watching is about Bahman’s own family and ours.
“At least he got a taste of working in his own country” I tell myself.
“Life is full of surprises,” Mom’s voice echoes in my head and I am reminded that Bahman’s movies were banned by the new government after the revolution, even though they weren’t pro Shah or against the revolution.
“It happens every generation or two. It happened to us too, in the form of the 1953 coup d'état,” Dad says, reminding me that they, Mom, Dad, and others who appear to me at times, seem to all have the ability to read minds.
Dad is right. In fact the 1979 revolution is the direct result of that coup d'état. Every time I hear that we, the United States, created the first democracy in the region, meaning Iraq, I want to shriek and scream – in fact the United States snuffed out the first democracy in the region some fifty years ago when they ended the populist and secular government of Dr. Mossadegh with a coup d'état engineered and executed by the CIA, and then brought The Shah back to Iran. People have a short memory when it comes to history.
Democracy, as we have witnessed lately with the events that followed Egypt’s uprising and the Arab Spring, is contagious. I can’t help wondering what would have happened if Iran’s democracy had flourished instead of being destroyed by the CIA? Would there even be a reason for being concerned about the Middle East, Afghanistan, Pakistan, etc.? Or would other nations have followed in Iran’s footsteps and defused the tension in the region, which would mean not having to hear about the Middle East every time we turned on the news?
“Honey, what’s done is done. You can’t change the past. Stop torturing yourself.”
She is back. My beautiful mothe
r is here. She is wearing her green lace suit. Her hair is cut in a fashion that highlights its natural tamed waves. Her smile lights up the living room.
“I wanted to come back. I wanted to spend all those years with you instead. You know that, right?” Tears are running down my cheek.
“Of course, sweetie” she says.
“She is nothing but heart, so sensitive. You should know that,” Mom continues, turning to dad who seems astonished by Mom’s present.
Dad looks at Mom with sad eyes. The soft-natured woman turns into an angry lioness when it comes to defending or protecting me, even from Dad.
My heart aches. My tears are flowing endlessly. This, leaving Mom alone for decades, was not how I wanted our lives to be. I wanted to take care of her when she needed me the most.
“Life is full of surprises,” Mom whispers. “Things go as planned and then...” she trails off...
“A revolution happens and you don’t see your daughter for years,” Dad adds. At that moment I realize how much he must have missed me too.
“I am not against the revolution” I am about to say since being against the revolution seems to be a crime but then I correct myself. In fact I don’t like revolutions in general. Revolutions to me are like surgeries, quick but painful. They may help the patient but they are also intrusive and create other issues. I prefer non-intrusive methods and
What The Doves Said: The Director (Book Four) Page 4