Except for two men on far stools the room is empty. The men, in black T-shirts and jeans and square-toed black boots, lean on a long wooden bar, a gathering of tiny glasses and beer bottles in front of them. One wears necklaces of beads and feathers and coins, and the other has his hair tied up behind him in a long ponytail. Behind the bar an old woman wipes down the taps and stares at Saladin but says nothing.
One of the men shouts.
You too, eh? You can’t get no satisfaction either?
The men laugh and keep talking to him.
You might want to think about taking a shower. Girls don’t much go for stinking Arabs.
Their words are loud and happy and said with a smile, and Saladin smiles in their direction and then in the direction of the bartender, who keeps narrow her old eyes.
Hello.
The bartender says nothing.
Work? I need work. I am a professional.
The bartender is a thin woman and her face falls around its bones. She takes a long, last glance at him as if to make sure of something, then asks.
Where are you from?
My name is Saladin. Of the Ayyubids. Named for the great enemy to Richard the Lionheart …
He realizes he is speaking Farsi and quickly switches.
I will wash the dish. Work?
He gestures his hand to the area behind the bar.
Clean? I can—
I don’t care what your name is. I know what you are, thought it the minute you walked in. You see that sign behind me?
None of the muscles in her face move when she speaks. She raises a bangled, freckled arm and points to a sign above the liquor bottles.
You probably can’t read. Here, honey, let me help you. The sign says NO EYE-RAINIANS. Right there, and right under it says NO DOGS.
The men at the end start to laugh and shout down the bar at Saladin.
Come on now, Mary. You could be nicer to your guest. Come down here, man, let us buy you a beer.
Saladin is not sure what is being offered, but he walks down to them and stands at the bar as a beer is poured and placed in front of him by the old woman, who chuckles under her breath and shakes her head.
You two are terrible.
The men raise their empty glasses to him and Saladin does as he has seen it done in the movies, and they make the sound but only Saladin drinks, and on the craving stomach he is drunk after half a glass, and the one with the long hair and beaded necklaces has an arm around his shoulder and is asking questions Saladin cannot keep up with.
What business do you have taking our boys hostage?
Now you know you can’t just fuck with Americans like that. You know why? Because we are patriotic, and that means that we are going to go over to your Iran and bomb the hell out of it to show you who’s hostage. Don’t you think so, Petey?
Then they are on both sides of him in an almost embrace. With every question they move a step closer.
Do your women have to wear those sheets because they are so fucking ugly no one wants to look at them?
When there are no more steps, they move a centimeter closer until Saladin feels like an animal before an attack, feeble and stuck. The aggression comes off their skin in waves, and they talk back and forth and through him as he tries to push back his stool and make for the door, but finds himself in the same position, not at all different from the position before, as if the idea to move was just that, an idea, as inconsequential as a daydream, and that all of his travel across mountains and barren deserts and cities and oceans and sky was to place him on this exact barstool to receive the bruises of knuckles that blow into his temples and gut. The force of one punch spins the lights and turns the music off, and again Saladin thinks to pick himself up off the floor and push them away and find the door to the outside, where he is innocent of whatever crime these men are punishing him for.
Nothing comes of the plan except a thick kick to his kidney and another to the small of his back, where pain and then a clear memory blooms: three older boys, brothers too, from a family that lived deep in the mountains and did not send their children to school. An afternoon at the end of fall, bare trees and clean air with a hard, cold edge. They watch him leave the cinema and cross the town square, and Saladin can sense them close behind, their steps nearer as he begins to walk the long stretch of emptiness before home. After a time they are beside him with insults so soft they are whispered in his ears: Your maman was a Tehrani, and a whore in love with the Shah … What good is she here? Your baba is a traitor to all Kurds. What does that make you? Saladin walks faster and thinks of Ali and of the chance they would have if he were here, and just as a foot trips him, just as he is on the ground kicking to try to keep the grabs and fists off, Ali is there, bigger than the oldest, strongest and more angry than any of them, and Saladin is up now, fighting alongside his brother, taking and giving and taking pain as well as they can, and for every time he falls or takes a hit, Saladin finds Ali in the mix and pushes himself up and forward until they are all hurt and the three boys from the mountains are cursing and walking away.
Tonight there is no brother, and one of the men has to pick Saladin up and drag him out to the sidewalk, while the other skips behind and tries to land another kick. His friend moves too fast and the boot misses and hits the leg of a chair, the side of the jukebox, Saladin’s shoes. On the sidewalk there are curses before and after the final toss.
If we ever see you again … Go back to your desert … fucking immigrant …
The street moves past him, men and women and cars and motorcycles, and when the desire to move comes, it is not from his head but from some momentary forgiveness of his body that lets him lift his legs and use his arms for balance against the walls of buildings, the stems of telephone poles and the backs of bus stop benches, and soon he is doing something like walking. A little blood is on his face, with a rip in the knee of his pants. Each step leads to another, and after a few hours his body cradles a deep soreness, but it moves and it is easier to keep on than it is to stand still, to remain. The streets of each neighborhood change, but the stares—curious, frightened, pitying—are all the same. He uses the sound of his heels to keep straight each tack and even to remind him he is, in fact, still in motion.
When the small sound disappears for a dozen or so strides, he looks down, and where there should be sidewalk there are rugs, four or five laid out on display, end to end, before an enormous plate-glass window that reads FARHANG MAHMOUDI. ORIENTAL RUGS, in Farsi and English. The patterns are warm and complex and old, just as he remembers them, and it is the same with the rugs as with the television news, and instantly the world of there is here. Exhausted, Saladin does not resist the overlap, does not try to ignore or erase this mess of time and space and self and walks into the rug store without a smile or a hello.
The rug seller sees him enter. There is the short look at the presence of a stranger, then the long look of recognition, and for both his face keeps the same expression. The merchant does not flinch at the sight of the blood or the bruises. He does not recoil at the scents of sweat and gasoline and mania but, always the professional, steps forward to greet his guest.
Salaam. Befaymin.
With an upturned palm that sweeps the air in toward the shop, he goes on.
Please, please, come in. Let us close the door behind you. We must be careful to keep the street out. Things are very dangerous these days. Come, my son. Come sit and I will fix you a cup of tea.
Believers
The twenty-four-year-old woman was a believer. She wore the copious black chador long before law mandated it and prayed reverently at every muezzin call. Like all true believers, she believed blindly, and when it was time, she clutched the heavy, rusted bolt cutter under her robes and followed instructions without a moment of hesitation.
Walk to the front gates of the embassy like you are a simple citizen. You will see they are bound together by a chain. Cut the chain. We will follow close behind you and storm the compound. St
ay out of the way.
And so it goes.
Because a twenty-four-year-old woman believed deeply, blindly, our first years in this country were difficult. Just as our new life in America began to open for us, this woman and her act cast our days under a thick and heavy shade.
But that is only one way to consider it.
Some say forget it. Leave the girl alone. She was not the only woman willing to do it. Under the right circumstance, I might have. The Americans have been stealing our resources for years, and what did we do? Nothing. We envied their money and fashion, but none of it came to us. On the right day, I might have gone to the embassy myself.
If not her, they would have found someone else to cut the bolt. Khomeini and his men were going to take those hostages one way or another. She is irrelevant. There are thousands just like her.
Regardless of what they say, history will forget her name and the names of the men who stormed the embassy after her with guns and determination enough to yell threats and tie hands. History will remember the names of the hostages, their number (52) and the days of their captivity (444). History will note Khomeini’s slithery negotiations, a failed rescue attempt involving a crashed helicopter and eight dead American servicemen. And history will make special mention of President Carter’s ineptitude and President Reagan’s heroism. A proud homecoming will mark all the books.
In the history of the Iranians it will be hard to forget the date, the act. November 4, 1979, a twenty-four-year-old woman, who goes nameless through time, sister of ours, performs a deed we suffer for, nine thousand miles away. Whether her deed was one of bravery or foolishness we cannot agree, but no one doubts that strong beliefs can be a dangerous thing.
As with everything else, there were good days and bad days. One minute we were filling out applications to work at a men’s clothing store, the next minute the manager saw our names and started his shouts of Get out of my store and You fucking Eyranian. I can’t stand to look at one of you bastards! And the minute after that we were walking out the door with our hearts in our throats. It was bad, yes, but at least it was noisy and honest, and the terrible stink of it only followed a soul around for so long. It was worse when our wives went to the grocer and the butcher where an angry man who watched the news on a tiny television knew enough about the crisis and the crazy Muslims in Iran to sell them only old cuts of pork.
I kept on pointing to the steak, to the roast, to the discounted ground beef, and he kept telling me, Today we only sell pork. Pig. You people can eat that, can’t you? He would not even sell me a chicken back!
Between the good days and the bad, life kept on. What other option was there? We could not leave, even if we wanted to. Where would we go? We woke and slept and woke and slept and kept a brave face to one another and for our children and tried not to collapse every time we were alone on the streets, in the stores, on the highways, under the dark gazes.
For every kindness there was a terror. For each time a person asked Where are you from? and we answered honestly and the warmness stayed at the edges of their lips, there were times when our answer resulted in a withdrawn hand, narrowed eyes and a cold turn of the head. After a while we could not predict the reaction, and some of us failed ourselves and took to lying when asked.
Italian.
French.
Greek.
Spanish, from Spain, you know Madrid? Barcelona? It is a very beautiful country, yes. You should visit.
We were never entirely certain if the lie worked, but we convinced ourselves that it did and kept to it. For this, some of us felt more American, while the rest of us felt filthy. Our dark hair, our stature, the strong features of our face and our fashions identified, isolated and accused us. Our bodies became cages from which, lie or not, we could not escape. Some women dyed their hair blond. Some men changed their names to Jon or David or Ronny. The weaker among us refused Iranian friends, music, food. The bolder answered Persian to all questions and offered no explanation beyond that. In our own ways we all treaded lightly.
We waited it out and tried not answering at all, and when that was too much, we took to laughing. What else could we do? At night we sat in front of the evening news and watched the reports from coliseums and arenas full of men, black and white, upset with us and happy with themselves, in T-shirts that announced FUCK IRAN. We laughed at their painted signs of Khomeini with his turban on fire and their burning of the ancient flag and the banners that read FREE THE HOSTAGES OR ELSE! And BOMB IRAN! We shouted at the screen, Go ahead! and watched as grown men gathered and bonded over their hatred of us. They chanted and drank and stuffed their faces with peanuts and cotton candy and popcorn like boys at a circus, and all we could do was laugh.
We laughed, yes, but during those 444 days the suspicion leaked like a stain into the fabric of our new life. We could not even keep our children clean. They came home from schools where teachers refused to pronounce their names and students ignored them or poked fun at their accents, and they would stand before us and declare they hated school. We pleaded, But maman jaan, tomorrow will be different. I promise. We lied. We knew nothing about tomorrow for them or for ourselves and could not predict when our colleagues—the other doctors, or workmen, or business associates—would throw us a greasy look, deny us a position or promotion, claim our English was insufficient, or that our educations, work ethics, presence, were somehow lacking.
The crisis dragged on. For months the hostage takers made their one demand: The Shah. Give us the Shah. On day 216 the Shah died, and though only a few of us were sad, all of us asked.
What will they ask for now? What offering will bring this to an end?
All around us trees were tied with yellow ribbons, and every day some new negotiation was in the news. Khomeini demands twenty million for the safe release of the fifty-two Americans held hostage in Tehran. Khomeini demands twelve million for the safe release of the fifty-two Americans held hostage in Tehran. In a new bid to negotiate Khomeini has asked the United States for eight million to ensure the safe release of the fifty-two Americans held, in poor conditions, in the former U.S. embassy in Tehran. There are reports they have resorted to drinking boiled water from the pool.
And still the dark gazes followed us wherever we went. At red lights we sat, stuck, behind cars with bumper stickers that said GET RID OF THE TOWEL HEADS, and we thought to ourselves, We came for this? When we took our Sunday strolls on the Santa Monica pier and the American families moved out of our way, far to the other side of the pier, we asked, We came for this? When the police answered our calls about harassment they too asked.
Well, what did you come here for? The great American dream? Paradise?
During this period we had no answers. All we knew was that we had left an ugly time behind and had somehow arrived in an ugly time, and the girl forgotten by history walked about our dreams with her bolt cutters and mysterious, determined smile. One of thousands.
On the day the movie star became president, the fifty-two hostages were released. We asked each other, Isn’t that president familiar? I think he is the actor. Yes! The actor, from that old film, the one with the monkey … We wondered at the timing, but said nothing, so great was our relief. When it was revealed that the hostages were exchanged for arms that went directly to the revolutionary guards, who sold them directly to South America to fuel yet another story of bloody revolution and sorrow in a country most of us had never heard of, we did not care. The scandal was not our business, and we breathed a collective sigh, an inhale and exhale, our first truly American breath, as we had now survived this trial on this soil and so perhaps we had, in some way, earned our stay. Around us the Americans continued to cast their dark glances for some time afterward, like a car with bad brakes coming to a stop. They said little to us in those days and finally said nothing at all, not even hello. For a time we did the same.
We took solace in one another and then in this place with its beautiful gardens and wide beaches and small pockets of paradise.
Some of us rejuvenated as we hiked the hills of Griffith Park, where we walked slowly beneath the fragrant shade of the tall eucalyptus groves.
Such elegant trees.
We have nothing like this in Iran.
A century ago there was nothing like this in America either. The Eucalyptus globulus, a nonnative species, was introduced to the coast in 1890 by an Australian scientist determined to show how their deep roots could stabilize the eroding California coastal soil. Botanists, nationalists, gardeners denied it, and the tall tree arrived to poor prospects. Scientists and park planners dismissed it, convinced the resident species—oak, madrone, pine—were better equipped against local predators and disease and it was only a matter of time before these new arrivals would be overrun. With little hope for their longevity the Australian botanist planted them anyway, loath to see the seeds and saplings go to waste after surviving the cross-Pacific journey.
The predictions fell short, turned out to be unfounded and untrue. The root systems did nothing to stabilize the soil or provide nutrients to the sandy shale, but the trees took heartily to the slopes and piedmonts up and down California and thrived far longer than any nay-saying American expert could have expected. Before long the coast was spotted with patches of eucalyptus groves. After the hostage crisis some of us walked through those high cathedrals of soft, peeling bark and took our time to breathe in the spicy smell of their fresh perfume, stretch our shoulders and necks and heads to let the sparkling shadows of their slender leaves dance over our upturned faces.
In the Company of Men
The ocean is warm, and except for a group of children swimming nearby, Saladin is alone in it. The water stings his tender cuts, but after a few strokes away from shore the weightlessness feels good and he swims farther out, where he treads water and watches a group of thin, gray fins bob up and down. He stares and does not know sharks or dolphins or the difference between the two and watches them swim near and then away and wonders what other life fills this deep into which he cannot see.
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