The Rose Hotel

by Rahimeh Andalibian

  Later that day, I applied yet another cool cloth to Maman’s forehead and watched her face for signs of waking. As I had so many times before in my life, I hoped that the glass of sugar crystals and hot rose water would help to settle her.

  For every hour of the next two months, we relived the helplessness and horror of Abdollah’s arrest and imprisonment at the same age. Hadi refused food and wouldn’t shave until Iman was freed. Zain disappeared and drank, and Zahra’s first birthday passed without a party – only a small cake with a candle.

  Every night, my parents stayed awake, conducting midnight prayers, and Baba spent the days struggling to learn the system and find legal help. Constantly weeping and praying, without eating or sleeping, Maman suffered exhausting emotional attacks. Missing school for the first time, I stayed by her side, and refused all my friends’ phone calls. I couldn’t believe God would let this happen again. I was ashamed, though I wasn’t exactly sure why.

  Even though Iman had little memory of Abdollah, or what had happened, he knew now, more than ever, that the impact of Abdollah’s death had not left him unscathed.

  When Iman placed tissue paper on the floor of his cell to prostrate himself in morning prayers, his gangbanger roommate kicked him in the kidneys and slammed him against the wall calling him “camel jockey.” After a guard removed the bully and Iman returned to his prayers, his words were soft, the pain in his bruised side and shoulders ignored. Iman found himself talking to Abdollah, whom he had last seen in a cold cell like the one in which he was now imprisoned.

  “When I put my forehead down on the ground, I can feel you here with me, Brother. It’s been so long, I hardly remember your face anymore. I was two-and-half when you died, but I know of you. I know some of your stories, and I know you must have felt so much more terror than I feel right now. Brother Abdollah, I’m sorry you went through this. I’m grateful you’re here with me now. I wish I could have been there for you then.”

  Although we all drove to the juvenile detention center, only two visitors were allowed at a time. My parents always told Iman we were all there, sitting in the visitors’ area, giving up our turn so our parents had more time.

  The next time I saw Iman, it was in a courtroom when the judge dismissed the charges as wrongful incarceration. The only reason why Iman was arrested was because the cops had shown the boys only Iman’s picture, asking them if he had been their attacker. When it came to a line up, the victims couldn’t identify Iman. They had been drunk: it had been dark: they never did get a good look. Iman wasn’t Hispanic, and the car didn’t match. Iman was free. But he wasn’t really. In public he no longer made easy eye contact and, despite the fact that he was the victim of profiling since the police had shown only his picture to the victims after their attack, he relived the shame and trauma in his nightmares for years.

  I sued Orange County on Iman’s behalf six months later. We had a great case. However, a year later, the country filed for bankruptcy and all cases were discharged.

  Only a few weeks after Iman had returned home, I awakened him from a nap and convinced him to go out to dinner with me, Hadi, Shanna, and the baby. My parents preferred to remain at home since Zain was unaccounted for. On the car ride home after a casual dinner at a café, Hadi drove the car with increasing acceleration with large swerves on the sharp turns. The wipers couldn’t keep up as raindrops pounded the windshield like bullets, making it hard to see as we sped across lanes of traffic. “Will you please slow down, Hadi? We have the baby in the car,” I said.

  Shanna and I locked eyes over Zahra as she dozed between us in the back seat; we each held one of her tiny hands. I was viscerally thrown back to another dangerous car ride, years ago, in Mashhad.

  “Hadi?” Shanna suddenly leaned over closer to the front seat. “Is that Zain’s car?”

  Hadi was gripping the steering wheel, his mouth clenched tight, and his eyes fixed on the white convertible ahead. I was thrown to the side, landing on Shanna’s shoulder, as he changed lanes again. Then I saw it, too. We were chasing Zain’s Mustang. This was déjà vu. I flashed back to Mashhad, to Baba pursuing Abdollah, racing ahead in his Camaro…

  When Hadi caught up to the bumper, the license plate clearly in view, he slid alongside, maintaining his speed above eighty, and motioned to Zain to pull over.

  I leaned forward. This couldn’t be happening. There was a blonde woman, scarfless, beside Zain in the passenger seat.

  When Zain saw Shanna and me, he sped up.

  Rain slammed into my face. Hadi lowered the passenger window and yelled, “Get back here.”

  But the Mustang was gone.

  “Let him go, Hadi,” Shanna said as she squeezed Zahra’s hand. Zahra was now wide-awake. “The baby’s in the car. Just let him go.”

  By the next week, after Zain didn’t come home for two nights in a row and Shanna banished him to the couch, Zain announced that he and Shanna were taking Zahra to Fiji. They were off to dive, snorkel, and take pictures in the pristine waters of the Pacific. There was no budget or planning, it was an impulsive decision made to save their marriage. We didn’t ask too many questions because Zain and Shanna were holding hands and flirting with each other again. Usually the fighting between them was intolerable, then reverted, for a few moments, to bliss. The fact that Baba was going to find a way to pay for Zain’s latest car accident repairs was irrelevant. As usual, we hoped that these blissful episodes might string together to improve their marriage.

  For the two weeks they were in Fiji, the honeymoon did occur. Zain fed Shanna fresh strawberries and papayas and pineapples. Each morning he told Zahra a new joke and jumped with her into the clear blue water from their glass-bottom bungalow. He told his daughter how much he loved her and how she completed his world. And he meant it. But then, back home after a week of good behavior, Zain was again sneaking into the house at dawn, sending his marriage down another twisting alley.

  THROUGH THE GREEN DOOR

  California – Mashhad – Mecca 1993-1996

  Maman was kissing Baba’s cheeks and forehead and smoothing his hair; on her face was a smile – something I hadn’t seen in ten years. With his voice cracking, Baba had told me, “Gerefteem! We got the green cards. You can finally go home.”

  Wrapping my arms around his neck, I kissed him again and again. To secure green cards for a family of six in America was no small task. It had cost tens of thousands of dollars, lots of sweat and tears, and eight long years. Of course, it was a bittersweet victory. My brothers couldn’t go home. Because they had not served during the Iran-Iraq War, if they returned, they would be immediately conscripted into the Iranian army. Although I was sad we had to leave all three of my brothers, I was overjoyed at the prospect of seeing Iran after nearly a decade absence. Maman had already called her sisters, her mother, and all her friends.

  The next day, I heard Baba’s voice coming from the kitchen. “Why don’t you understand, azizam, we just don’t have the money.”

  For the last ten years, Maman had been trapped in London, and then, in America. For her, the American dream meant the freedom to return home.

  I heard a pot clatter in the kitchen and knew immediately Maman was protesting. “How come we have the money to rent a ceremony hall and cater it for religious ceremonies? How come we have money to help the community, your friends, but now that it’s my chance to go home, I can’t?”

  Waving her arms in the air, she paced the room and finally began to speak.

  “After watching you sell everything we owned, lose everything we worked for, this is what you say to me? You know I walked away from my life, my family, my home with a bag for a twelve-day trip to London.” Maman took a breath and patted her chest, the first sign that a panic attack was starting. “You know I didn’t get to go back and pack anything or say a single good-bye? You know that, right? You know how my heart stopped beating every time you went back and I couldn’t? You realize that?”

  Maman’s voice cracked and she opened a window
.

  I had never seen Maman confront Baba about his spending, certainly not about spending money on religious ceremonies.

  Baba was calm and the tone of his voice suggested his confidence in appeasing her. “I’m just starting our Mecca business. Wait a few months, zan. We’ll take the tour together and then we’ll go to Mashhad from Saudi Arabia. You can stay there and be with your mother, sisters, and Imam Reza as long as you like.”

  Baba’s latest financial venture was to put the last of his resources toward a new business organizing and leading religious pilgrimage tours to the holiest place on earth for Muslims: the city of Mecca and Madinah in Saudi Arabia. Combining his unwavering commitment to serve God with his talent for business, my father had started charging for what he used to do for free – taking other Muslims on pilgrimages. In this case, he would take Muslims from California who were answering the call to express their religious devotion with the challenge of their lives: a once-in-a-lifetime guided trip to make the Hajj, a journey to the Holy City that is one of the Seven Pillars of Islam.

  “You can’t ask me to wait – not anymore. I can’t wait a day, Haji. The way you do things, it could be another year before we are ready to go.” Maman bumped a large pot with her elbow and it slammed against the drain board and crashed into the sink. “ I can’t count on a promise. I’ve waited ten long, torturous years for this moment. Ten years! And now you want me to wait longer still?” She closed her eyes.

  Baba lowered his head. “We just don’t have it now. We don’t have the money.”

  I stood in the doorway watching the two of them. All my life, it seemed I had watched them fight n the kitchen when Maman was making food or cleaning up. Maman started tossing pans into the sink; Baba sat at the dining room table looking out toward the yard. I could hear Zahra’s rabbit, Dodi, chewing on a carrot. He was awake and waiting for Baba to let him loose from his cage as he did every day. Then, at the end of the day, Baba would spend over an hour running after him, catch him, and place him back in the cage, hating that he had to confine the rabbit, even for its own safety.

  At that moment, looking at Maman, I understood why she had supported my decision to start working as a teenager. She never wanted me to be financially desperate or dependent. She didn’t like the feeling of being trapped; she hated feeling helpless.

  Maman was determined. “My mother is ill, and I’m going to see her, and I must see my son’s grave. I’ll find a way. I’ll conduct ceremonies myself and I’ll borrow the money if I have to.” The steely tone that replaced the usual soft modulations of Maman’s voice was new.

  Baba kept his eyes on the rabbit cage. He had disappointed Maman once again. When we left Mashhad, he had taken some of the proceeds from the sale of the Rose Hotel and donated the majority of it to a rebel ayatollah who would use the hotel revenue to run a prestigious school. In addition to multiple unsound business ventures and having put his resources into the Iranian Muslim community in America, Baba had also lost his investments and the house in Turtle Rock. Now, after placing others ahead of his family for years, he was investing in a new business, one that would serve the community, revive him emotionally, and increase his significance, but he had nothing left to help the one person he cared about the most – his wife.

  A few weeks later, I found Maman in the yard watering her potted plants. I handed her a white envelope and asked, “Are you ready to go to Iran Maman?” She didn’t look at me for a few minutes, having put down the water hose. She opened the envelope with her wet hands. Although she couldn’t read English, she recognized what was in the envelope: two plane tickets. Our forty-five day trip would give us the chance to visit Maman’s family, see Abdollah’s grave, reconnect with our home and still return for my fall classes.

  In my mind, it was a simple plan. I dropped out of my summer college classes, used my school loan money for the trip, and committed to taking twenty-six units in the fall that I would pay for by working full-time. I began to coil the water hose around my arm. “Let’s go see Grandma. But first, we have a lot of shopping to do.”

  Ten days later we packed our oversized suitcases with the Iranian “wish list” – Neosporin, Tylenol, Advil, antibiotics, Valium, Xanax, Band-Aids, Kit Kat bars, Saran Wrap, sugar-free gum, Ziploc bags, paper toilet seat covers, used cellphones, perfumes and colognes, designer clothes, and brand-name make-up, and headed to the airport. When we landed in Tehran, one by one, the female passengers reached for their folded scarves and lined up for the bathroom to remove their make-up. Hearing so much Persian on the airplane made me feel at home.

  Tehran’s Mehrabad airport, which once seemed so enormous when I left Iran at nine years old, now it seemed incredibly small compared to the Los Angeles airport I had left twenty-eight hours earlier. As we taxied to the terminal, we passed by broken-down cars, plane parts, and containers of trash along the runway. Planes were haphazardly parked on the grounds, some far away from the single entrance to the building. As a tinge of orange lit up the morning sky, I took a deep breath, and finally set foot on the earth that was once my sacred home.

  Tehran now made London and America seem like mere, distant dreams. But everything seemed odd and out-of-kilter, diminished in every way. The cars were old, covered with dents and scratches; they had broken taillights, and fenders were held on with duct tape. The city was much smaller than I remembered, and posters of Khomeini and Khamenei were plastered on every wall next to pictures of dead men “martyred” in the Iran-Iraq War. On the streets, the people looked tired and worn by decades of despair, heartbreak, and economic paralysis. I had returned, but to a dirtied, wilted Iran. It was as if a heavy layer of dust had buried everything I remembered.

  Maman had time to take care of some business, including an unresolved dispute between Baba and the buyer of our mansion on Parvaneh Street, during the layover in Tehran en route to Mashhad to see our grandmother, Maman’s fourteen siblings, and my forty-three cousins. She was determined to collect the rest of the money owed to our family, money that Madressi hadn’t had a chance to steal. Maman was going to make the owner pay for the five Persian rugs and all the furniture we had left behind on our abrupt departure from Iran.

  When the oversized, twenty-foot, green metal door opened and we were greeted by the dark-haired, unshaven man who now owned our mansion, I was already predisposed to disliking him. He lived in my home and I did not. I was grateful for the chador that hid my eyes, helping me conceal my disdain.

  I was flooded by a flashback almost immediately: the little chicks Hadi brought home that one day. Where was Goldie? Where were her nineteen kids? Where were the willow trees where we played hide-and-seek, the path where I learned to ride a bike, the orchard of walnut and cherry trees? The yard had been rendered lifeless. The garden and playground that surrounded our home and that had given our family refuge against that stormy time was unrecognizable. In the garden, we had harvested walnuts and peaches, radishes, squash, and watermelons. Now there were no roses in bloom, no shiny cherries dangling in the summer sun. All was dust.

  As we entered the house, the clamor of children screaming filled the rooms. One child entered where we were sitting and began smacking a broomstick against the carved wooden headrests of the once-elegant upholstered European couch. Maman and I looked aghast as we noticed much of the furniture and antiques were in disrepair; paintings in their frames were dusty and some scratched. Maman’s blue antique Venetian vase was chipped, her hand-carved wooden frames that graced her pictures of Mecca were damaged, and the large Persian rug with its fringe ripped out were all evidence of the ravages that had taken place in our absence.

  I wanted to scream at the man, but when I looked at Maman, I knew we had more important business to take care of – she came to settle an old score, and she knew how to play this game artfully. After two hours of discussing the weather, politics, family, and the life expectancy of chickens, everything but the disputed debt, Maman finally pushed the topic.

  “You’re a man of
respect. You are also a man of God. I’m coming to you as a woman with a family. I come offering a compromise to end this long-standing dispute between our respected families.” Maman slowly placed her teacup on the table. In the background a door slammed, followed by the rattle of furniture and floorboards as eight little children pounded down a distant hallway.

  After a minute, she continued. “I have no problem with the sale price of the home. I come here asking that you settle the debt for the price of the furnishings and belongings that were left here. I’m confident that we can part ways in agreement and close this chapter for both of us.” She was making her first business deal ever, and she sounded firm and self-assured.

  The new owner nodded, but averted his eyes from Maman’s direct gaze. “You are a respectable woman and a mother of five children. I bought this home, including the furniture and rugs, but if you dispute the deal I made with your husband, I’ll have to settle this with you.” He wasn’t just complying out of kindness. He knew that since Maman was in the country, she could pursue a financial settlement in the courts.

  Four little girls with colorful scarves that barely covered their heads approached me and tugged on my chador. They wanted me to play with them. Even though I let them pull me into the hallway, and I loved children, I didn’t want to play with these kids. The sound of a basketball thumping against the floor echoed throughout the entire house and that unmistakable sound jarred my memory. It was the ball Baba had bought for Iman in Kuwait, a brand new shiny orange ball with black and white stitching. Now, it was blackened by filth.

  I let go of my chador for a split second and, as it rolled off my head showing my headscarf, I grabbed the ball with one hand. Backing away from me, the boy’s eyes never left the grimy ball. At the time we left Iran, I had been hiding it on the top shelf of my closet, checking on it during weekend visits to Parvaneh Street, waiting for the day when Iman would be bigger and would return from London to play with it.