The idea had crossed my mind, even, of having a child one day together. I’d seen a boy once when we were wandering in the old section of Yazd who could easily have been our son. We’d been searching for a herbalist Vahid knew about. Maybe I’d already been in a fanciful mood. A man we’d passed on the way and asked for directions had smiled and warned us to be careful, saying the shop sold things possessing magical powers. When we found it, it felt more like a cave, deep and dark and cold enough to make me shiver. The walls were lined with sheets of aluminum foil and the shelves creaked under countless jars of herbs and powders. Only two people could enter at a time for there was little space to stand among the great sacks of dried flowers and leaves piled on the floor.
As we squeezed inside, Haji Akbar—the herbalist—came to me and stared me down. His expression was so severe it made me jump. His burly white eyebrows shot up at such sharp angles I’d been at a total loss for what to say. In retrospect I imagine he’d meant to show concern, assuming we’d come a long way to seek him out. I wish I had thought of going with a list of ailments needing curing, or some mysterious ache or illness only he could relieve. Instead I’d pointed around his shop, trying to recover my nerve, directing him to this or that and reaching for my money. We’d emerged with a jar of murky honey for me to take home and a small plastic bag of white golpar seeds to eat with boiled green beans.
When my eyes readjusted to the daylight outside I saw the boy. His skin was smooth and he had fierce green eyes. I stopped and stared at his sandy hair and olive skin. He kicked up the dust by scuffing his shoes along as he walked, seeming to enjoy the little clouds that puffed up in his wake. With his coloring and the odd, independent way he had about him he could easily have been ours, mine and Vahid’s. Instead of giggling or shouting “Hello” he simply gazed back at me. There was no menace or fear in his expression, just the impression of unflinching boyishness and being secure on his own turf.
When he’d passed I suggested the idea to Vahid, that if we were ever to have a child together it would resemble that boy. Vahid had laughed and insisted that our child would be even more handsome, as if there was nothing more that needed to be said.
When the police are finished with us we go home. I feel certain there can’t be anything else. When we step out of the car the security guard calls Vahid over. I am left to stand alone in the street. I watch them speaking, looking for some clue in their expressions.
“Jenny, the police were here yesterday,” Vahid tells me, motioning me over. “They followed us here the day we came home from the train station. They saw you and thought you might be a spy so they came yesterday to make trouble for us.”
The guard tells us they had demanded to know where I was staying. When he’d refused they had pushed him and shouted, insisting he write down a list of everyone in the building, their apartment numbers and all of their names. I watch his face as he retells the events and recounts his refusal; I see his pride in having protected us. My presence seems to have given him a sense of purpose, a catalyst to rise up against the basiji.
Though I am aware it is a serious matter, it is also absurd. I try to imagine men in uniforms pounding on the door of Vahid’s apartment and rifling through my notes and photographs—revealing only recipes and pictures of food. Vahid looks strained as he leads me away. The message is clear to us both. It appears everyone is waiting for me to leave.
So we depart first thing the next morning, taking a taxi to the train station instead of anyone driving us. We leave in total darkness like criminals; everything has been packed in haste. We half haul, half drag our bags along, our belongings shoved haphazardly into pockets and unzipped pouches. We shiver as we stand together on the platform, waiting for the train bound for Tehran. Sadly it feels like the perfect way to depart. In fact, it is the only way.
Chapter Sixteen
This isn’t where I had expected us to spend our last night together, in a place so far outside of Tehran. In the distance there is only a motorway and endless, scarred earth where identical apartment complexes are being planned and built.
Everything here has a half-finished look to it. Some of the mounds of soil have been there long enough to sprout yellow wildflowers. Others have developed a crust firm enough to sit on. Some enterprising person has taken advantage of all the fresh dirt and started growing a small patch of vegetables. Neat rows of tomato and aubergine plants have begun to fruit. A carefully engineered canopy of sticks and torn strips of plastic sheets has scared the birds away long enough to give it a chance to thrive. In this landscape of torn-up ground, barren buildings and windblown garbage, it gives the impression of being the sole thing that has received any care.
The apartment where we will sleep is in between tenants. The previous inhabitants moved out a week ago, leaving traces of their residency in the form of an abandoned sponge on the edge of the sink and a lining of soiled aluminum foil under the burners of the stove. Decorated in mustard and green, the apartment looks intended for middle-class families. A low sectional couch is arranged in front of a picture window covered with thick blue curtains. The bathroom has a European-style toilet instead of a squat hole in the floor. Shared taxis stop just at the top of the hill, ferrying people onwards to central Tehran neighborhoods like Shemroon and Tajrish, or beyond to the industrial city of Karaj. It is a commuter suburb much like those in other cities. The shop downstairs sells bread and tiny, finger-length cucumbers, which together with some cheese, mint and olives will form our last meal together.
The apartment belongs to Vahid’s old commander in the army—it had taken Vahid over twenty text messages and a network of phone calls to obtain the keys. As we’d sat on the train, Vahid had begun calling everyone he knew in Tehran with any kind of power, working his way through the phone numbers of those he’d served with in the army. Everyone he talked to seemed to take an interest. Word spread like wildfire that he had entered some kind of marriage. There seemed to be an unspoken understanding that he needed somewhere safe to pass a night with his new wife.
We’d had hours to kill until we could get the keys. In Tehran we had passed the time moving from place to place. The rain had prevented us from staying anywhere long. We’d sat in the steamed-up windows of a cheap café, spending the last of our money, ordering lamb’s brain sandwiches, fried on a griddle and stuffed into split rolls with ketchup. Football commentary had played on the radio. The young guys who manned the kitchen took turns slipping outside for a cigarette. I’d felt a powerful sense of guilt toward Vahid for what I was about to do, for effectively abandoning him.
When we arrived in Tehran I could see Vahid was a bit clueless. Aside from his military posting he’d had little opportunity to learn the city. He knew as much as I did, that wealth was north and poverty was south, and aside from that we were lost.
As we walked around, it was like any other Iranian city we’d known, compartmentalized into neighborhoods devoted to various trades. Kalhor Street was an endless row of shops selling automotive parts. Manoochehri Street sold Caspian Sea sturgeon and river trout from large tanks. The vegetable shops clustered around Engelhab Square sold things like avocados and rosemary, items I hadn’t seen for weeks. Probably the biggest difference was how little anyone bothered us—no one looked at us at all. In the rush of people who could have been in London or New York if it weren’t for the Farsi signs and the boxy shape of the cars, we had all but disappeared.
The anonymity had lessened our anxiety. Though we were tired and our eyes were heavy we were happy to be away together again. We walked through an Azeri neighborhood of southern Tehran, slipping into the courtyards of old 1920s mansions overgrown with vines and rosebushes. We sucked on small squares of jelly and candied walnuts, and kissed when no one was around. We shared a kind of desperation, making a last attempt to forge our relationship into something solid. We wandered the streets, waiting until we could go to the place where we would spend the night.
We passed a small mosque that made me sto
p. I heard the desperate sounds of crying from within. A plaque above the door read “God curse the killer of Fatemeh.” “Noor Mosque” was spray-painted in green letters below.
Two men approached, extending their arms and seeming eager for us to go inside. Over my shoulder I heard one of them whisper to Vahid, asking if I wouldn’t be afraid. The building appeared modest, even shabby, nothing like the grand mosques I’d grown accustomed to entering, decorated in seven soaring shades of turquoise and emerald. It lacked their immense pillars and vast, domed arches, their intricate façades that had taken fifteen years to build. Instead it was plain, covered in chalky, white stucco. The entrance was strung with wires and lit by a single, round light.
In stark contrast to the miserable wailing and sobbing inside, the heavy, wooden doors were painted a vibrant green. Tentatively I reached to open one, pushing it carefully but firmly with my palm.
The noise was shrill and powerful, the moaning and crying out rang in my ears. I turned to leave, unable to bear it, but Vahid grabbed my arm, steadying me. My eyes began to adjust to the darkness. Faintly I could make out a sloped aisle and a wooden bench. Guided by my hands, I stumbled quickly to take a seat, terrified we’d trespassed on a funeral of some kind. I strained my eyes to anticipate any movement, half expecting someone to come and ask us to leave. The room was pitch black, the darkness absolute. I couldn’t even see the shoes on my feet.
I heard shrieks of people’s names. Moans for help and forgiveness. Pitched voices of sickening wretchedness. I lowered my head even though no one could see me, my cheeks burning with confusion and guilt.
I felt Vahid slide across next to me. He leaned over and pulled my scarf away from my ear. Careful to make himself heard, he explained we had entered a mourning mosque, a special gathering place for those racked by sorrow and grief. The windows had been blacked out to conceal identities. The lights were switched off to protect the proud or the shy. We squinted in the darkness, inhaling the smell of old carpets, the bones in our chests vibrating.
It seemed to me incredible that Iranians, in spite of their carefully nurtured privacy, in spite of not even calling each other by their names in public, should be so forthcoming with the most personal expressions of mourning, preferring to gasp and howl them in the darkness of this room. My fear slowly changed to a feeling of calm, even liberation, the freedom of being able to weep openly without shame. Vahid placed his hand lightly over mine and it felt right to be there together, in that pitch-black, morose, intimate place.
I wish the thought hadn’t come, but it rose up and took hold before I could push it away. I knew it was time now to give him up, for Vahid to become a stranger again. His life would continue to be shaped by people and events that were nothing to do with me.
I thought of him alone in the coming months, returning to everything he knew. Sheltering again among his family, looking for a job, perhaps finding himself forced to grow a beard. He had no passport, had never left the country. And anyway, since he was Iranian, where was there for him to go?
Now as I look at Vahid in the shabby apartment he seems apologetic. It isn’t where I had expected us to spend our last night together. I don’t know what I expected at all. A feast prepared in his mother’s kitchen? Dozens of exulting relatives seated all together on the floor?
I can see the shame in his eyes for having brought me here. But I know it is the best he can do for me and I try to assure him that it is fine. My bag is on the mat by the door; there had been no point in unpacking it. There is no bed so we’ll sleep on top of blankets piled on the carpet. A small heater is plugged into the wall beside us. A plastic sheet with our simple dinner is laid out on the floor.
Lying together on our nest of sheets and covers, Vahid tells me I need to come back to him. His eyes fill with tears and his voice becomes hoarse. I can hardly bear to look at him. I know that as much as he might make me happy he would also make me miserable. I don’t know whether we would even survive together or what we would be up against. Maybe in Tehran we could make some kind of existence for ourselves. Or maybe he could try to come to the UK, causing the tables to turn. I would be forced to become his mentor and parent, to guide and sustain him in finding a new life. Everyone there would believe he was lucky to come, seeing it as an escape from some kind of nightmarish, wasted land. Only I would understand how he would suffer and long for all he would be leaving behind.
There is little left for us now. Final, tender, excruciating sex and a few hours of restless sleep before the taxi comes for us at 4 a.m. Forty-five minutes in the taxi, five minutes to push my luggage through the chaotic security barricades, another ten to find the sign bearing “London” in rearranged letters. Maybe we’ll be left with twenty minutes to sit in some quiet place under the gaze of the men at the exit control who will check my passport and visa and scratch at it with their fingernails. Then I’ll pass through, unaccompanied by Vahid for the first time in weeks, and disappear.
Eleven Memories I am Taking with Me
nimeh ye zohr—the position of the sun in the sky when it produces no shadow on the ground, our least favorite time of day.
taarof—the number of times a gift must be refused before it can be accepted, to allow a person without means to show generosity without hardship.
jigar—the liver, the organ said to feel emotion, like the heart, but because the liver is composed only of soft tissue, it is said to be the most vulnerable.
noon khoshk—the scraps of bread Vahid’s mother collected in a bag on the back of the kitchen door, to be handed to a man who came to their neighborhood twice a week and sold the bread on for feeding animals.
livaan—the metal cup Vahid carried with him everywhere, filling it with water at fountains so we could drink from it.
tokhmeh khordan—the way Vahid taught me to eat sunflower seeds, breaking the shell between my teeth and sucking out the seed in a single motion, getting only a faint taste of salt from the shells.
yaaftan—to find something beautiful in a place where it is least expected or where you had to struggle.
payvand zadan—the act of locking two things to each other to keep them both safe, an old-fashioned word for marriage.
joob—the canals running down the sides of the streets in Yazd, carrying water from wells to the pomegranate and cypress trees.
gholob gholob—the sound Vahid made when drinking the warm milk and orchid root his mother made for him as a child.
roon e morgh—the leg of a chicken, Vahid’s favorite part, which he stripped of meat with his teeth before sucking on the bone. Also a name he gave to me.
Chapter Seventeen
Opposite us a woman is reading a book and taking bites from a sandwich wrapped in foil. Two girls are staring into their compacts and relining their eyes with pencils. A man repeatedly stands up and reaches into his pockets, then sits again, counting the passports of himself, his wife and three children. Five minutes pass. Then ten. I watch the letters on the departure board spin and arrange themselves into new destinations, then people slowly get up and walk away.
The barrier they must pass through has a finality about it—two counters where a last inspection takes place. I’ve heard that people have been stopped here just before leaving the country, had passports confiscated, been taken to prison. Today everyone passes through without incident. Soon it is just the two of us left.
We are too numb even to drink from the paper cups of tea in our hands, yet too alert to be able to relax. Here we must be more careful than anywhere, to ensure the guards don’t see anything amiss. Every few minutes their eyes pass over us with little interest, like some tiny nothing. Only this is the opposite of nothing.
It is something that began with a simple hello in a garden, an address scribbled into a notebook, an invitation to learn to cook rice with a crust. In four and a half weeks it has both betrayed and refused to abandon me, clearing all other men away. It is something that causes me now to sit, twisting a still-strange-feeling ring on
my finger, staring at the floor in shock.
I shut my eyes hard to trap the tears behind my eyelids, to force them to be reabsorbed before they have the chance to spill down my face. I feel the corners of my lips begin to give way and tremble. I am the one leaving, the one with a paper ticket in my hand, but it feels as if it’s the other way around—that Vahid is being torn away from me.
I am familiar with the course our relationship should now take. The e-mails, the expensive phone calls, the slow, inevitable eroding that will follow; the strange logic that submerges us into the lives of others and then, just as forcefully, rips us away. I’m fearful of the things that will no longer make sense when I am home, or that the whole time I will just be thinking of him.
I glance again at the departure board, where the green light next to “London” has begun to flash, then at the destinations below waiting to be lit up. I don’t know what I am hoping for. Aside from a handful of European capitals, it reveals only a list of large, soulless cities across the Middle East: Doha, Abu Dhabi and Dubai. I feel desperate and disappointed. But then I look again. And I see it.
I turn to Vahid and he looks at me. I study his face and try to think how to ask. My cheeks are hot and I press on them with my hands.
“Meet me in Istanbul,” I say. “In two and a half months’ time. I have a friend who has an apartment. We can borrow the keys. You have time to get a passport and you won’t need a visa for Turkey. I’ll have a break between classes for the summer. We can be…” I pause and my voice catches in my throat. “We can be together again.”
The Temporary Bride Page 20