All the Rivers

by Dorit Rabinyan

  It was on that glaring white morning when the big storm had passed, after we walked west towards the Hudson and then south along the boardwalk at Christopher Street and sat down on a bench opposite the foggy New Jersey skyline. It was then, after sitting quietly looking west for a while, each lost in our own thoughts, that he emerged from his contemplations and said, ‘So when you go to the sea…’ All his weariness had suddenly vanished. ‘Why are you laughing?’

  ‘Because I was just thinking about that.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About the sea.’

  ‘So you go to the Tel Aviv beach, yeah?’

  ‘Yes, usually.’

  ‘Where do you usually go? Where exactly?’

  ‘You mean which beach?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Until that moment I had been hunched in my coat, hands deep in my pockets, neck, chin, mouth and tip of my nose huddled in a scarf. Resurfacing, exposing my face to the cold, I straightened up and told him that what I liked most was to walk along the beach in the south of Tel Aviv. ‘That’s where it’s prettiest and quietest, right where—’

  ‘The southern tip?’

  ‘Right where Jaffa starts, near the clock tower.’ I waved my right arm northward: ‘Say all this is Tel Aviv?’ My hand led his eyes along the crowded buildings and warehouses and industrial structures of Union City. Then I pointed with my left towards Ellis Island. ‘And that’s where Jaffa starts?’

  He looked far south, towards the faded grey Statue of Liberty. ‘Aha.’

  ‘So it’s right here.’ I reached both hands straight out and slid them ceremoniously over the skyline, as if I were drawing the curtains open. ‘This is the most beautiful beach.’

  We watched the steel-grey sky for a while longer, with Jersey City buttressed on the other side as if behind a large wall. We gazed at the misty clouds hovering around us, at the lights, at the frozen silver vapours rising from the water.

  ‘It’s usually quiet there. There’s no lifeguard. No breakwater. The other beaches are full of people and cafés and restaurants all the way to the water, and shelters and umbrellas—’

  ‘Breakwater?’

  ‘It’s a kind of wall made of rocks, to block off the waves.’

  ‘They don’t have one at that beach?’

  ‘There’s nothing there. Just the sea.’

  That was it. We got up and continued our walk, talking about other things, or saying nothing. And perhaps, like many other conversations we had in New York, which faded in my memory, that mid-February exchange would have been forgotten if not for the fact that six months later, in August, Hilmi went to that beach himself.

  chapter 23

  On 20 March we left the city to spend the weekend with Joy at her family’s country house in Hillsdale, 120 miles north of Manhattan. Her parents had been diplomats at the US embassy in Tehran in the sixties and seventies, and Joy and her sisters were born and raised there until the Islamic Revolution broke out in ’79, when Joy was fifteen.

  ‘Nowruz?’ I’d exclaimed when she called to invite us. ‘Really? You celebrate that?’

  ‘Of course! It’s my favourite holiday!’ Just as enthusiastically, she told me about the huge house in Hillsdale and the amazing Persian catering company she’d hired for the weekend. ‘You must come, there’ll be loads of people I want to introduce you to.’

  ‘Nowruz is the Zoroastrian new year,’ I explained to Hilmi after I hung up.

  The next day at Andrew’s place, while we waited for our delivery of Italian food, I held forth: ‘Before the Arab conquest, idol worshipping was the dominant religion in Persia. The Zoroastrians worshipped the sun and moon, and they had fire rituals. Islam got a strong grip there afterwards, as you know, but the Iranians kept celebrating the Zoroastrian tradition of Nowruz even when they became Muslims. Christians and Jews did, too, with bonfires and fire rituals and festive meals.’

  ‘Festive meals?’ Hilmi purred hungrily. He put his hands on the chair’s arms as if he were about to get up. ‘OK, when do we leave?’

  Andrew looked at his watch. We’d been waiting for our food for almost an hour. ‘When is it happening?’

  ‘On the twentieth,’ I said.

  ‘Ah, the equinox!’ Andrew’s smile lit up his face and he nodded approvingly. ‘Very appropriate.’

  Hilmi looked up from a mouth-watering picture of pasta Bolognese on the menu he’d been studying. ‘Equi-what?’

  Andrew explained that 20 March was the first day of spring, when night and day are of equal length.

  Hilmi snorted: ‘Spring?’ He waved the menu at the dark window, where another wintery night was falling. ‘You’re telling me that starts on Thursday?’

  Joy had said there was a train to Hillsdale from Grand Central every three hours, but she was going to ask the other guests coming from the city if anyone could give us a ride.

  ‘You can take my car,’ Andrew suggested, and automatically turned to Hilmi to explain that his Suzuki’s engine rattled a bit, but otherwise it was fine. He was surprised to learn that Hilmi couldn’t drive. ‘Really? You’ve never driven?’

  Hilmi held the rolled-up menu against his mouth and trumpeted through it: ‘Really!’

  ‘Then you drive.’ Andrew looked at me.

  I exchanged a hesitant look with Hilmi, who eyed me through the menu cone. ‘I don’t…’

  ‘Do you have an international driver’s licence?’

  ‘Yes,’ I answered anxiously. ‘But I’ve never driven here, I don’t know the roads.’

  He got up and went to the bookshelf in the hallway, and Hilmi gave me a questioning look: Why not? It was enchanting to picture the two of us on a romantic weekend trip, coasting along in our car with windblown hair like a couple in a movie. But I was afraid of getting lost on the unfamiliar roads. I did not have a great sense of direction – I was capable of getting lost even on the direct road from Tel Aviv to Rosh Pina – so how would I navigate the American highways to an unknown destination, and with Hilmi to boot?

  ‘Here, Hillsdale.’ Andrew came back with a New York State road atlas and sat down next to me. ‘It’s two and a half hours from here at most.’

  He ran his finger along a red-and-blue thicket of snaking roads, intersections, landmarks and towns. He showed me Highway 22, a straight route to Hillsdale along the eastern border of New York and up north. He poked his finger at the northern exit from the Bronx, ran it up the map and said that from there to Hillsdale it was just one road, no turns. ‘It’s a really easy drive, and the views are wonderful.’

  The bell rang. Athne, the black poodle who’d been dozing on the rug, broke into a loud series of barks.

  Hilmi stood up. ‘Finally! I thought I was going to starve to death.’

  Andrew buzzed the building door open, and Hilmi came over and encircled me in a clumsy hug, growling ravenously, like a predatory beast about to take a bite out of my shoulder. He’s right, I thought with a new light-heartedness: Why not? I wriggled away from him. It’s only a couple of hours, just like driving from Tel Aviv to Rosh Pina. I gave him a kiss. Andrew reappeared with the food. ‘Do you know Suzukis?’

  ‘Do I know Suzukis?!’ I laughed and slipped away from Hilmi’s bared teeth and animal grunts. ‘Isn’t that a joke?’

  ‘A guy’s driving down the highway,’ I told them in the kitchen in between bites, after we’d unpacked the food, ‘when suddenly a huge motorcycle comes from behind. As it zooms past, the motorcyclist yells into the car window: “Do you know Suzukis?! D’you know Suzukis?!” A few miles later the motorcyclist passes him again, and screams: “D’you know Suzukis?! D’you know Suzukis?!” The guy in the car gets annoyed. He puts his foot on the gas and catches up with the motorcyclist. “What if I do?!” he shouts. “What if I do know Suzukis?!” The motorcyclist is hysterical now: “Then just tell me – the brake! Where’s the brake?!”’

  Highway 22 starts in the Bronx, at the northern exit from the Hutchinson River Parkway. For the first fifteen mi
les it’s a multi-lane highway, an urban thoroughfare with stop lights and traffic. But after it crosses the southern part of Westchester County and turns north-east, it narrows into a two-lane country road lined with woods and fields and little villages on either side, horse ranches and dairy farms, nature reserves and water reservoirs. The occasional sign warns of bears and deer crossing. The rest of the northern hemisphere was celebrating the beginning of spring that morning, but here in North America it was still winter. The sleepy road was hidden under a grey-white mist, and the thick forests had white treetops and icicles hanging from pine needles. There was the occasional glassy frozen lake, sparkling like a hardened sea of milk.

  We sang along with the radio the whole way: the Rolling Stones, the Mamas & the Papas, Don McLean, the Kinks and Fleetwood Mac, whom Hilmi loved. He found two local stations that played sixties and seventies hits, and flipped back and forth every time there was a commercial break. When a favourite came on, he turned up the volume and we sang at the top of our lungs, filling the car with hoarse shouts, nodding at the views around us and the cars and trucks coming towards us in the other lane, bobbing our heads from side to side. There was such simple joy between us, it seemed Andrew’s beat-up Suzuki was propelled not by its engine but by the force of our happiness and singing.

  Hilmi kept the road atlas open on his lap, and every so often, in between peeling a mandarin or handing me a can of salted peanuts, he announced what was coming up. ‘Colonial Acres in ten miles,’ he declared after we passed Bonicrest. ‘Soon we’ll merge with Highway 684,’ he noted after a little town called Rosedale, ‘in about seven miles.’

  At Pawling intersection, while we waited for the light to change, a muffled roar came from behind and a heavy motorcycle stopped on our right. The anonymous rider, embalmed in a leather suit and black helmet, nodded at us politely.

  Hilmi opened the window with a grin. ‘D’you know Suzukis?’

  The man raised his visor and revealed a pair of blue eyes. ‘Excuse me, sir?’

  ‘The lady here would like to know,’ Hilmi called out louder, putting his arm out of the window, ‘if you know Suzukis?’

  The biker seemed confused. He narrowed his eyes and squinted into the distance. After debating for a moment he said we’d better ask someone else because he was pretty new around here.

  After Dover Plains we stopped at a roadside inn we spotted from far away. Above the doorway there was a statue of an Indian chief’s head with wrinkled skin and a feather headdress. The wood-panelled room was furnished with red diner banquettes and full of noisy Australian tourists. Waitresses in black uniforms darted among the tables carrying more and more cans of Coke and huge plates of fries. We walked back to the car with coffee in paper cups, and less than half a mile down the road, uncontainably excited, we stopped again. We turned onto a narrow farm road, drove into a grove of oak trees, and there, turned on by happiness and the open countryside, we started kissing feverishly and soon crawled into the back seat.

  *

  In Hillsdale, the shopkeeper at the liquor store on Main Street tells us to keep going down the hill and make a right after the church. Surrounded by trees and sedans, shimmering with strings of party lights, the house at 12 Deer Track Lane reveals itself: an impressive two-storey colonial with window cornices and verandas. The slate-tiled roof is edged with snow. Two chimneys stick out from the slope, their curls of smoke turning the strips of light in the sky pink and purple.

  The Suzuki’s bumper hugs the last car parked on the driveway. I turn the key to still the engine and the rattling finally stops. We hear a muffled din of voices and jazz from the house. When I relax my shoulders I realize how much tension they held the whole way, but it melts away with the sigh of relief that escapes my lips as I hunch over the steering wheel. Then comes a very soft whisper of ‘God bless’, the way my father used to murmur whenever we got home in one piece after a long drive: ‘Baruch Ha’Shem.’

  Hilmi doesn’t notice. He’s tying his shoelaces. I tilt the mirror towards my face and touch the redness left by his stubble, and the imprints of his kisses. I smooth my hair down. I can feel his smile, his look lingering on me as he watches. I glance at him and smile back at the mirror. The joy of the drive, the delight of arriving, the memory of our roadside stop, the passion still evident on his face, the love – all these stay with me when I step out of the car and drink in the cold, damp air. I fill my nostrils with the perfume of snow and burning firewood, then retrieve our crushed coats from the back seat and the bags we threw on the floor.

  Hilmi comes up behind me and hugs my waist. ‘Wait a minute,’ he says, and from within the soft bend of our embrace, he turns my body towards his. ‘Come here. Stay with me,’ he murmurs into my neck, almost pleading. ‘Stay.’ It’s his regular ritual, an attempt to squeeze out a few more stolen moments before we go inside and mingle with people. ‘Just a bit longer.’ His warm, experienced hands expertly massage me through my jeans. ‘Such a beautiful driver I got today,’ his breath whispers on my face. ‘Such a beauty.’

  And suddenly, with no warning, as if it has not been just over an hour since that stop, I am burning up and weak-kneed again. I inhale the mixture of sweat and shampoo and cigarettes, and the sweet subcutaneous smell that subdues me from inside, the aroma of pencil sharpenings hidden behind his ear. As I did before, in the woods, when I breathed him and drew him into me, I remember what Joy said a while ago. She was holding Liam and I put my face up to him and took an intoxicating breath of his babyish folds of skin with their milky aroma. ‘It’s so you don’t leave them,’ she said. ‘I was just reading about it. That amazing smell that all baby mammals have, it’s to make sure the mother doesn’t abandon them.’ The echo of her voice mingles with Hilmi’s whisper: ‘Such a beautiful driver.’

  When the door swung open, the upbeat jazz we’d heard from outside grew louder. Two tall hounds came towards us, sniffing and wagging their tails. The house was well heated, humming with guests and flooded with light. Candles flickered in every corner of the large living room, and a fire blazed at one end. Men and women sat on couches, in front of low tables laden with bottles of wine, bowls of fruit and flowers in vases. Walking further inside, we saw another fireplace on the other side of the room, identical to the first. On a bed of cushions before this fireplace, a group of young people lounged while children played on the rug next to them.

  ‘Liat, Hilmi!’ Joy greeted us, carrying little Liam in her arms and kissing and hugging us. ‘That’s it, now that you’re here I can start partying!’

  Tomé joined her, grinning from ear to ear, and took the baby. ‘She says that to everyone,’ he revealed in his French accent when Joy walked away with our coats and bags, ‘but this time it’s absolutely true. She’s been waiting for you all day.’ He kissed my cheek and shook Hilmi’s hand. ‘Good to see you, welcome!’

  ‘Hey, little guy!’ I gave my pinkie finger to Liam’s tiny hand and leaned over covetously to kiss his dimples of fat and smell his babyish sweetness again.

  Joy linked her arm in Hilmi’s. ‘Come on, I’ll introduce you two to someone nice.’

  There were about twenty people in the room, and only a few were Americans. Most were old friends of Joy from her time at the American school in Tehran, who had gathered from all over the world for this reunion in Hillsdale. ‘It looks like the UN assembly in here,’ Hilmi whispered as he handed me a glass of wine. A jumble of faces and skin tones and accents populated the couches. On one end stood a group of Iranian exiles from California, as Joy explained in a hushed voice as she led me there, picking up a bowl of melting ice cubes on her way. ‘My dear Pervez!’ she called warmly to a man who smiled at us. ‘These are Hilmi and Liat. I’m depositing them with you for now.’

  A round, balding man of about fifty, with a permanent friendly smile, he gave a deferential nod: ‘Pervez Pournazarian.’ Then he introduced us to the two people standing next to him, interrupting their Persian conversation: ‘Shirin Tabatabai and Diwan Aminp
our.’

  Shirin was a photojournalist, a green-eyed, thick-browed beauty of around forty-five, wearing a black cocktail dress. Diwan, in a suit, neatly bearded yet boyish looking, was her younger brother, a doctoral student in musicology at UCLA.

  ‘Nothing?’ Pervez and Shirin were astonished to learn that my parents were from Tehran but I spoke no Persian. ‘Not even one word?’

  Diwan was more curious about Hilmi. ‘Oh, where in Brooklyn?’ he was asking.

  ‘I understand a little, but I don’t know how to speak it,’ I apologized, and explained that my parents used Persian as their secret language so that we, their Israeli children, would not understand.

  ‘The language of secrets and fights.’ Shirin smiled. She ran her green eyes over Hilmi. ‘And of love.’

  ‘I’m an artist,’ Hilmi was telling Diwan. ‘I paint.’

  For a moment I thought: if we had our own secret language, if Hilmi knew Hebrew, what would I tell him now, when no one could understand?

  ‘Un migeh keh yeh kami mifahameh,’ Pervez said with a sly wink at Shirin. ‘Amah bastegi dara chehad kam mifahama?’1

  ‘Ah, well, I did understand what he said to you before,’ I told Shirin boldly, gesturing at Diwan and taking a sip of wine, ‘when we were coming over here.’

  ‘And what was that?’ Pervez switched back to English and looked at me with mischievous curiosity: ‘Tell me.’

  When I hesitated, Shirin answered instead. She arched her brows and mimicked her brother’s coquettish speech: ‘Well, who could that gorgeous young man coming over to us be?’