If Saladin had known the answer that afternoon, he would have said, Ali jaan, we are going to America, to California, to Los Angeles, just as Maman would have wanted us to. We can start our lives again there. That is what happens to men in America. You start from nothing and make something. You can be a hero there if you want. I know I will be. But Saladin knew nothing of that fate or where the boat was going and looked around at the other men for some clue. They stood about, listless and full of nerves, and seemed to care nothing about the where of their journey, only the when. Saladin looked into himself and tried to understand why he was so sure about the boat, its safety and direction. Perhaps Ali was right and it was safer to stay, and when the time came, they could always walk back to the mountain town, face whatever punishment or duty awaited and then sleep in their own beds. The seaman with the silver glasses ordered the gathered men to start up a thin ladder on the side of the ship. Saladin stared at the sunglasses and thought how nice it would be to have a pair for himself.
Ali, it doesn’t matter where we go. We can’t stay here. Wherever this boat takes us, we will not be as guilty as we are here. We will be strangers, but not witnesses or murderers. We will still be Khourdi brothers. Together.
In saying it Saladin heard a truth that filled him with confidence. Whether from courage or madness or the automatic motion of bodies that had not stopped for days, he pulled his brother tight and near and explained himself like a man who knew more, a man who had lived it all.
If we go back, we will be dead. What good are dead Khourdi brothers? What is the worst thing that could happen? We end up in a strange place? No. The worse thing that could happen is for you to go without me, or me without you. That is the worst thing. Maman and Baba would never forgive us. You carry Kermanshah for me and I carry it for you. When it is time, we will come back together.
Ali was quiet.
A man behind them in line shouted something in an unknown tongue, and Saladin stepped toward the ladder and waited.
His brother stepped forward and took Saladin’s shoulder. His eyes were soft and he could not, for a moment, speak.
You may be right. Maybe two Khourdi brothers are better than one. Let us see our fate, Saladin. Let us see what direction we will go and how we will get back.
In the entryway of an extravagant theater Saladin watches a tall, thin man sweep the area in front of the ticket booth. The man sees Saladin and smiles, and Saladin smiles back and the man smiles again, quick and broad, and gestures for Saladin to come, come over. The man has an easy way with his muscles, his arms and legs and face and when he speaks, his voice had so much accent in it Saladin can barely understand. The man takes his shoulder.
Now you go on in. Go on in.
Saladin put his hands in his pockets and looks down. The man squeezes his shoulder.
For free. You go on in. No charge. You look like a nice boy. I am a nice boy too. The film doesn’t start for another two hours. I’ll see you in there.
Thank you. Thank you very much. It is nice to meet you.
The man continues his sweeping, the smile solid and wide across his face.
In the dimness of his first American cinema, safe in the seat, Saladin lets himself feel the days? weeks? months? as they have accumulated and stressed his body. He kicks his feet up on the chair in front and throws his neck back to stare at the ceiling, and when this is done his body melts a little against the privacy and comfort.
Los Angeles, California, America.
Here.
As long as he could remember it had forever been America and always California, not the Texas of the cowboy movies or the glass canyons of New York, but Los Angeles, and eventually, of course, Hollywood. Others wanted the blond-haired Swedish girls or the fancy Italian Riviera, but Saladin had focused, focused resolutely on one place alone. He remembered the map his mother had ordered from a specialty store in Iran, the way she would point to California and announce, Children, how I wish I could go and live here. That is where I might be the woman I have always dreamed to be … just like Lizbeth Taylor … And then he remembered the small stamp at the end of every film, MADE IN HOLLYWOOD, and the few older high school students who left the mountain town to go to London or Chicago, and how he thought they failed themselves when they could have gone all the way, to Los Angeles. Like this, Saladin lets his thoughts unwind and follows their trail to his first deep, easy sleep. He dreams of his mother, the day the map arrived in the mail. In the dream she spreads the map on the floor and the children gather around to hold down the curling edges. She sits cross-legged and asks, Where? The sisters shout, Kermanshah!—the only place they know. Ali shouts, Kurdistan!—which does not exist. And Saladin shouts, Los Angeles! She points at all the locations with red fingernails, the same nails that earned her a black eye from their father, who shouted, Vanity! As if it were a place. The children gathered around her in delight. In the dream everyone is the same age, no child older than three or four, and they are giddy with the new game. At one point his mother puts a finger on Los Angeles and a finger on Kermanshah, and Saladin trapezes across arms and shoulders, neck and back, to get from one place to another. Her flesh is slippery beneath his bare feet, and each time he falls, a young, round-faced Ali laughs and says, Look! Saladin cannot even stand! Laughs and takes their mother’s slaps.
Saladin wakes with the jolt of someone falling in his sleep. The cinema is dark and full with the sound of slow, bare groans. On the screen two men stand, their faces in the same direction, their bodies folded into each other, hips convulsing. There is no music, and Saladin waits for the scene to change, for the story to start, but there is no story, just variations on this one theme, and a dense humidity fills the theater air. Beside him the sweeping man sits and smiles, the broom beside him and his free hand on the top of Saladin’s knee. Saladin is quick out of his seat and out of the cinema. His feet take him down busy streets where afternoon light flashes off buildings and blinds him, and he is starving and barely awake and he cannot deny that his second day in America is better than the first, but still, a mixed success.
Paths, Deposits
There was no one path, but the numbers, taken alone, seem to draw a faint line. There is evidence in the documents of the years between 1979 and 1984, and then again in records kept by international refugee and immigrant organizations. If you put them all together and take a close look, it is difficult not to see the pattern emerge.
Turkey: Van, 2,500; Ankara, 3,200; Izmir, 1,800; Istanbul, 10,000 (approx/in transit).
Pakistan: Karachi, 3,500; Quetta, 5,400.
Iraq: Al Basra, 2,200 (approx/in transit).
Greece: Athens, 2,900.
Italy: Rome, 3,200; Turin, 1,500; Milan, 2,000; Florence, 900.
Germany: Frankfurt, 5,200; Munich, 1,200; West Berlin, 2,000.
Holland: Amsterdam, 2,300.
Spain: Madrid, 1,800; Barcelona, 7,000 (approx/in transit).
France: Marseille, 1,100; Paris, 3,200.
England: Manchester, 800; London, 12,000.
Canada: Toronto, 4,800.
United States: New York, 4,500; Washington, D.C., 6,700; Dallas, Chicago, Houston, approx 5,000; San Francisco, 2,000; Los Angeles, 52,000.
They went west. Away from dawn in the direction of night as if the world were a chronometer that rotated from past to present and they walked against what they knew, had known, their childhood worlds behind, before them: the end of day, the soft, unwrit space of night. West. In lieu of a clearly marked path or common route, the storyteller can point to this thin line and say, This is how it was done, here, this is the way most went. There was a beginning here (on a map she points to a small nation labeled IRAN) and for many the end was here (her finger stretches to the west, across America, to the edge of California, to a LOS ANGELES, a city whose marking falls mostly into the sea).
Yet even the most studious observer of human movement and the most ingenious storyteller cannot say why the Iranian migrants carved a path to Los Angeles. May
be it is not for the studious or the storytellers to say. Evidence exists, in interviews, official and otherwise.
I had to come here.
My sister lives here.
There was family before here, my uncle visited once, so of course this is where I would end up.
I had a job waiting for me here.
The university gave me a scholarship.
The temperature is perfect. And there are the little red flowers, really that is what made me stay, the tiny, red geraniums that grow off the walls and out of flower boxes, we had these at home. It warms my heart to see them again.
It is most like Tehran, don’t you see? To the north the mountains, to the west the mountains, just like the Albroz. And the air! Just the same amount of smog as Tehran!
It is easiest. All kinds are here. We are not the only foreigners.
It seems like the best place.
It is the best place.
It will be the best place. It is right.
What of the answers they did not speak? Those left off the surveys and official accounts? What of the truths buried so deep the migrants forget to mention them to American friends, census takers, refugee organizations, their family, themselves?
We are here because we went to the movies every Saturday afternoon and our eyes took in these buildings, these beaches, these women and men, and we could imagine no other possible home.
We saw it as children, as teens, as young lovers and parents, and that is where we learned to want what we wanted and now what we have come to find for ourselves.
We would have stayed if this was possible at home, but it was not, so we left to seek it out.
We are here because this is the direction the dusty air blew out of the projector and filled the sails of our imaginations.
If the studious observer and the zealous storyteller stay quiet for long enough, they can hear these whispers, echoes of voices that still talk of old movies, old stars, those Saturday afternoons at the cinema. This car. That dress. Why can’t life be like that here in Tehran/Mashhad/Shiraz/Esfahan? And if they can keep quiet their noisy, curious heartbeat, they will hear the silence behind all that soft talk, the dead noise of those long lost.
Onboard
The captain of the freight ship wore a linen suit and carried a long, thin crowbar like a cane. He stood to meet the chosen men as they walked up the metal plank and onto a deck no more promising than a cement lot. When they were assembled, he paced before them, swinging the crowbar and speaking in a voice Saladin could barely hear.
This is my ship.
The captain looked at his feet like a man counting his steps.
It belongs to no corporation. No nation. No land and no law. Who you are and why you are here is not my business. I am the captain of a ship that must leave Istanbul tonight and arrive at its destination in no more than two weeks.
His English was like the English of Mr. Hosseini from school, slow and precise, and Saladin thought he understood most of it. He looked around at the twenty or so faces to see what they knew, what they understood, but every expression was the same.
If any of you choose to disturb the process of this journey, the contents of this ship, and I see fit to punish, or even kill you, no one will know, just as no one knows you are here.
The captain went on.
There is no reason for violence. You will be fed once a day. You will be allowed to smoke and walk about. There is an adequate loo but no shower. The forecast is for calm seas, and you are, after all, the fortunate ones. I am sure what has passed and what is to come will not be as easy as this boat ride.
He tapped the crowbar on the cement deck and raised his head. His face was pale and the color of the skin advertised some missing nourishment. He waited and the men rushed to speak, to ask, to demand, but the captain dismissed them with a shaking head.
The destination is not important. We are going west. With any luck you will be closer to wherever you are trying to go and further, inshallah, from here.
The seamen led them to an empty cargo container the size and shape of a boxcar. The door was unhinged, and inside, thin, green military mattresses were strewn about the floor. There were unpaired shoes, newspapers and empty plastic bags with writing in Hindu, Arabic, English and Farsi. Some of the men knew to run to corners or up against the wall to claim the beds farthest from the middle, from the smells and sounds of the other men. Saladin did not know and found a mattress in the middle. He looked to see Ali lie down on another, as far away from him as the shape of the container would allow. The seamen gave instructions in Turkish and left the men alone. The engine started and after some time the ship began to move through the water without opposition or effort. Many of the men went outside to smoke cigarettes and watch the dotted orange lights of towns on the shores of the Marmara. They floated across a surface without boundaries or borders as underneath them schools of herring and sturgeon swam north with equal ease, seeking out another season in the cold waters of the Black Sea.
Saladin watched the men and the tiny red orbs of their cigarettes bob up and down from their faces like small, bright hearts. They all stayed close beside the hull and avoided the back of the ship from where they could, if they wanted, see the last of Asia. Most looked forward or to the side, and Saladin walked to the far front railing and stared down to the water, which seemed hundreds of feet away, so far he could not see his reflection in it and was left to wonder if he was actually there, on the deck, leaving. In the moonless dark he took in the sea as she showed herself, infinite, dark and extreme, and he wished for Ali to be near, to reassure him, Saladin baba, don’t worry, of course we will find our way back from this. Time enough passed that the night went from blue to black around him, and when he felt two arms grip him around the chest and throat, there was not enough light to see whom they belonged to. The arms hoisted him up until his knees were level with the highest rail and the heaviest weight of his body was over it and nearly falling down. With the few inches available to him he pushed his elbows out with force, and he heard his brother give a small grunt. The arms threw him to the side and he landed on his shoulder and hip and yelled up at Ali.
Ackmag! What was that?
But his brother was already walking away from him, his back and shoulders set again in the proper lines of his shirt, his swagger easy and his voice light and calm.
Come now, Saladin jaan. Don’t you remember? That is how we used to play. I thought I would remind you what its like to have an older brother.
Ali smiled and then laughed.
Relax jaanam, it is no longer up to us. We are afloat to who knows where? We might as well enjoy the ride, no?
During the days the heat in the hull was unbearable. The seas were, as the captain promised, flat, and the only thing that rose up off them was the reflection of the sun. The men did the daily tasks assigned to them and otherwise looked for a cool breeze on deck and the entertainment of one blank horizon after another.
One man had four different passports. Each version had a photo of the same man—small head, flat-line mouth, trim hair and dead expression—beside the official state stamps of England, Syria, Egypt and Germany.
An Afghani man kept dice in one pocket and prayer beads in another. Saladin watched as the man forgot himself and, confused, counted the edges of the dice as he tossed the beads to the ground and took a quick look for some fateful answer.
An Iraqi began his story every time Saladin looked in his direction and stopped, midway, for no reason. The same lines came through his lips each time. I offered, but still they took my family … for many months there was not light even … at her fourth birthday we had so much money we hired a magician … such tricks …
The Turkish twins, pacifists escaped from military service, were handsome and fit like warriors. On the sunny afternoons they performed feats of flexibility and strength, juggling cans or holding one another up against the blue blue sky.
A silent group kept to their games of backgammon or cards a
nd did not take part in the fraternity or the play, and a few did nothing more than walk tirelessly through the heat in one lap after another of the ship’s oval shape. When Saladin tried to catch Ali’s arm and encourage him to sit or rest or drink, his brother shook his head.
I am used to walking now. It is relaxing. Leave me be.
In the heat, or maybe because of it, all the days were the same. The men sweated and waited and sweated more, and by night they were tired and nervous about whatever adventures issued from the dark. One night the ship lost power. The boat sat on the surface of the water and the men took to the deck to play games by the bright moon, and no one said anything about the prison of this sudden stillness. They kept busy with quiet jokes and even quieter cigarettes, anything to distract them from the temptation of the rail’s thin edge, the jump in and the swim away.
On another night Saladin woke when the Kashmiri man who slept next to him stepped on his hand. He was in a fight with an Indian man, no more than seventeen or eighteen, and the two pushed and shouted at each other in a girlish way until one of the Turkish twins woke and escorted them outside, where under the immense, empty sky they softened and walked away from one another.
One night the ship docked at a busy island port and the men were ordered off. Many refused, protested that this was not far enough. We cannot end the trip here! How could this be the last stop? But the seamen moved them off the ship and into the town, where they followed the captain like punished schoolchildren on a terrifying class trip. Ali trailed far behind and Saladin walked at the very end to make sure that in this new chaos his brother would not let himself get lost.
In a windowless building they went to a room with little ventilation and even less light. In the dim heat women began to appear, one after another after the next and spread themselves about the room without introduction. The captain took his place at a small iron table in the corner and helped himself to an orange from an overfull bowl. Beside him an old woman in a black silk shawl slowly crocheted a black silk shawl.
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