“That they were stark raving mad,” Maman mumbled.
“Yes! I mean, no. We would have been astounded. Proud, I think.”
Zari sighed. Kazeb came and took away some dishes. Roya sat still.
“Say what you want about the Shah, but he is making this kind of thing actually possible. He is helping women so much, I have to give him that. Do you know what you would be if you went to America?” Baba asked.
“Mad,” Maman said.
“No, not mad! I said it: pioneers! Your generation is the first that even allows Iranian women to have this kind of opportunity. It’s mind-boggling.” Baba rubbed his face. “Relatives are saying things about me. That it is dishonorable to send one’s daughters abroad. ‘How can you even consider sending your unmarried daughters to a foreign land?’ they say. . . .”
Unmarried. Roya winced at the term. An unwanted image of Bahman marrying Shahla in a garden in northern Tehran played in her head. Bahman had been married for two months now. According to Jahangir, the wedding had been quite glamorous. Shahla looked like a movie star. Mrs. Aslan had outdone herself.
“All I’m saying is that we have to do something! Sitting here and sulking will only pave the path to becoming a pickled old spinster. You would waste away. Or you could go and study in an American university. Just think of that. Getting on an airplane to fly in the sky?”
“We are not rich,” Maman said.
“We are richer than many. It can be done.”
Roya had told her parents that she would never marry nor go near another boy. In the four months since she’d stood in that square, waiting for Bahman, seeing Mr. Fakhri die, she had mostly stayed home. Cried in her room with the door shut, barely ate, felt empty. High school was done anyway, and her plan had been to start a new life with Bahman, so without that, she actually had nothing.
Eventually she’d ventured out with Zari and sometimes walked with her to the grocer’s. She always dreaded the possibility of seeing Bahman or any of his friends in the city. Shame filled her, shame and regret at her own lack of judgment, her stupidity and naïveté. Dances at Jahangir’s felt as distant and alien now as the foreign films she’d seen at Cinema Metropole. Had she even gone to those dances? Had she once done the tango in Bahman’s arms? Had any of it really happened? Now it was all she could do to study English and to help Zari practice the new words. Roya found some relief in studying together. As always, work of the mind came to the rescue.
She thought of the days spent in Mr. Fakhri’s stationery shop. She avoided that street entirely now. She couldn’t bear to go near it, not with all the memories it held, not after she’d seen it scorched. She still had the dream where she went to the shop and saw Mr. Fakhri again. Who was the girl who had run into his shop so full of hope, wanting to give or receive a letter? What a fool that girl had been.
“. . . which is why I want to preserve them,” Baba was saying. Roya had lost track of his words and didn’t know if he was talking about his daughters or pickles. “Even if that means my daughters have to leave me to get a university education on the other side of the world. Don’t look at me like that, Manijeh Joon. For the children, we make the sacrifice.”
For the children. Roya knew that academics had always been tough for Zari. Did she still have a thing for Yousof? He was studying medicine at the university now. It seemed that Zari had had more than a passing flirtation with Yousof. Would she really want to leave Iran?
“Do you know how hard it was to learn how to apply to university in America? I had to put my own doubts aside. My heart is still filled with salt! It’s nerve-racking enough, let me tell you.”
Maman shifted in her seat.
“If my boss hadn’t offered to help with the applications and information about the scholarship, I don’t know how I could have done it.”
“Let Zari stay,” Maman said. “Why does she have to go? Let Zari stay.”
“Manijeh Joon, it’s safer if they’re together.”
“Safer? How on earth is it any safer? You are sending our daughters to America, where they know no one. Modernity has limits. Is it the new bourgeois fashion to send our children abroad?”
“The Shah’s sister went to—”
“We are not the Shah’s sister!”
Though the four of them sat at the table and Kazeb floated in and out with more butter and more tea, the discussion was a private battle between Maman and Baba, and Roya and Zari knew it.
“Manijeh Joon, I had to jump through hoops! Just getting the girls to consider it was hard enough. And figuring out the whole process hasn’t been easy. Don’t you know I had to use every connection I had, practically beg to learn how to do all this?”
“Who does this?” Maman was close to tears. “They are so young.”
“We need to join the modern way of thought. If my boss is willing to help, if they have this opportunity, why not try? They will come back. They will get an education that is beyond anything we ever dreamed. And then they’ll come back to us.” Baba motioned to Roya. “For months she’s done nothing but cry. She is becoming depressed and bitter here.”
Roya felt herself grow small. Her role had become that of the jilted lover, the object of pity and shrugs. It was beyond humiliating.
“And you saw what happened with the coup,” Baba went on. “The stationer is gone! So many died. For what? Iran just isn’t stable right now. I want it to be, you want it to be, it almost happened. Maybe it’s just not the fate of this country to be a democracy. God knows we’ve tried. My father was fighting for the Constitutional Revolution back in 1906. He was the same age these girls are now. His generation gave us the Persian parliament. But where are we now? It’s always two steps forward, three steps back with this country. Just when we have a prime minister who is decent, he is knocked aside. Now the Shah has solidified his grip. He is nothing but a lackey for the West. He is their puppet.”
“So the girls should go to the West? You make no sense!”
“We can’t count on democracy here. That dream is dead now. At least in the West, they won’t have to worry about coups or dictatorships! It’s an insurance policy, Manijeh Joon. We just need to be prudent right now. They cracked down on so many pro-Mossadegh people. Maybe we’re next. Roya was out there in the streets. She could have been shot!”
Maman dropped her face into her hands when he said this and was quiet.
“I’ll go,” Zari suddenly said. She sat up very straight. “Yes, Baba Jan. Let’s apply, let’s try. I’ll go. With Roya. And then we’ll come back. We’ll come back and be near you and Maman for the rest of our lives but with an American education that no one can take away from us.”
Baba looked like he could faint. “Zari!” he simply said. “Yes, yes. That’s what I’m saying. No one can take that education away from you once you have it. Do you know? You can take your degree from the university and put it in your pocket and it will be there for the rest of your life. That is all that I am saying.”
Dust motes floated in a band of sunshine from the window. The tea smelled of bergamot. Kazeb’s sounds in the kitchen were comforting, familiar. Outside a peddler moaned about his beets. Roya wanted to leave the humiliation, but she did not want to leave all of this: Maman’s soft presence, her city, her home. She did not want to say good-bye to her father.
“They can study here. They can apply here. Get that degree here,” Maman said.
Baba just shook his head. He didn’t have to say anything else. They all knew that here meant the city of the coup. The city where people were shot for no reason. And also the city of Roya’s betrayal by her fiancé. She still had a hard time going around town, in case she ran into Bahman. Or Shahla. Or worse, the two of them together.
Zari sipped her tea, and Roya wanted to tell her: You don’t have to come with me. You have a life here. I think you’re in love with Yousof. Of course you are. You stay. Just because one of us had her life derailed doesn’t mean both of us have to change course. You stay here wit
h Maman and Baba. Live the life you were meant to live. My life is up in the air; yours doesn’t have to be.
She knew she should say all this to her younger sister. It was what a good older sister would do. But no matter how modern their family was, Roya did not have the power to override Baba. Or maybe she could not bear to go without Zari and was secretly relieved at the package deal that Baba had dreamed up.
In another neighborhood in that very city, Bahman was sitting with his new wife. According to Jahangir, Bahman had put off getting a job as a journalist for the progressive newspaper to work for a while in the oil industry. Just as his mother wanted. The boy who would change the world had simply listened to his mother. Roya imagined him waking up next to Shahla, getting dressed in front of her, going to work to learn how to maximize the profits of oil. This was the life he had chosen. The life his mother had chosen for him. And he had said yes to it all. Prime Minister Mossadegh was gone now anyway. Bahman and Shahla had a life together.
She hadn’t heard one word from him since that last letter. He hadn’t called, hadn’t written. She had to hear his news from Jahangir. And she was far too proud to contact him. Why would she, after how he’d treated her? After he’d specifically stated in his last letter that he didn’t want her to contact him? She wasn’t desperate. She wasn’t going to grovel. Who did he think he was anyway? How wrong she’d been about him. How stupid. How young. To think he had actually married Shahla! Roya hated the look of sympathy that followed her wherever she went about town: The poor thing! They had been such the perfect couple! Now look at her. What a destiny! Did you know she pushed the stationer away from her at the last minute? He died! That poor stationer. . . .
It was impossible in this city to continue as before. Maybe Baba was right. She should leave Tehran.
“Of course we will go. We’ll go together, Baba Jan,” Roya said. Her body had lost its form; she floated above the breakfast table like a ghost.
Though it felt like going to the moon, this was a guarantee that she could avoid Bahman, at least for a few more years. She’d get her sense back. She’d be away from the spot where Mr. Fakhri had fallen and from the charred remains of the shop, which someone had said would be rebuilt as the branch of a bank. She’d study and then return as one of the few women in the country with a university degree, from America, no less. She would truly join the rank of the newly educated modernized class. She would be the pioneer. Why not her? What else did she have to do here? As for Zari, Roya would make sure to take care of her little sister. They would do this. Others before them had done what had at first seemed absurd. The country was changing. Why not be on the front lines of education? They would come back when they had finished their studies, and to hell then with everyone who had given her those looks of pity and judgment.
Baba nodded and said he would ask his boss for the paperwork for the applications. He said it in a small voice, as though he was both amazed and slightly ashamed. Maman stared first at Roya, then at Zari, and burst into tears.
“Look, you don’t have to do this,” Roya said to her sister that night as they got ready for bed.
“Baba won’t let you go alone.”
“There is something with you and Yousof, yes? You’ve been awfully quiet about him lately. What’s going on with you two? It’s not like you to not divulge every detail. Why so quiet? Look, I know you’re not saying anything because you’re worried about how I might react. Well, don’t worry! If you’re happy, I’m happy for you. You don’t have to protect me. If you’re in love, then you should stay in Tehran.”
Zari removed pins from her hair. Ever since Mrs. Aslan had called to tell Roya about Bahman’s wedding plans, Zari had stopped wrapping her hair in newspaper strips to create waves. She pinned her hair to the sides during the day. It made her look older, more mature. It befitted a girl in her last year of high school studying English on the side. Roya marveled at how much older her little sister looked in these past six months. It was as if the breakup of Roya and Bahman and the death of Mr. Fakhri had forced Zari to grow up faster too.
“Never you mind, Sister.” Zari’s hands stayed at the nape of her neck. She looked like a sculpture described in an ancient poem.
“You’re willing to leave everything behind?”
“If you go, I go. We’ll start together. And anyway. It’s only for a few years, right? Maybe I should try to make something of myself too. It’s a new world. We are the pioneers of the new generation of liberated young Iranian women!” She imitated Baba perfectly.
Stunned and secretly relieved by her sister’s willingness to accompany her on this journey, Roya went to bed feeling as though she were about to dive off a cliff into freezing, choppy waters.
The letters arrived by post at the beginning of summer. Baba took them to his boss, who translated them for him. Yes, his boss reassured him, the letters said yes. Both Roya and Zari had been accepted to the small women’s college in California that Baba’s boss had recommended because it had a special scholarship program for international students. Yes, each had gotten a spot. They would start in the same class because Roya had waited a year after her own high school graduation, and yes, yes, yes, indeed, they had been accepted. No, they wouldn’t be the only Iranian women there, a few others had gotten accepted this year! Probably the Shah’s relatives, Maman said with worry. But she stayed up late sewing the girls new clothes, making each of them a trunkful of blouses and skirts and blazers. Her daughters would not go to Amrika without the finest clothes that she could sew. She made each of them a dress (light green for Roya and pastel blue for Zari) from the finest, softest cotton she could get at the bazaar, darting her needle around the collars to add her unique embroidery of tiny flowers. She cut batiste fabric and worked late into the evening stitching together blouses in four different colors for each of them: cream, white, light pink, and a baby yellow. She bought blazers and pleated skirts from the shops in the north of town and ironed them painstakingly. At the bottom of each trunk, she carefully placed underwear and stockings bought at the bazaar. Roya and Zari helped Maman pack their trunks with disbelief. All the rest of the savings that Baba had went into the purchase of plane tickets and the portion of the tuition not covered by the scholarships. He sold the collection of gold sekeh coins that his own father had given him when he married. He worked late hours for extra income. He even asked Maman to take the small inheritance she had from her parents’ deaths and send it to America with the girls.
On the day of their departure, Maman held a Quran above their heads. Roya and Zari paced under it three times, then kissed the book for good luck on their voyage. It was a small ritual to ensure safety for all trips. Roya and Zari had performed this superstitious rite growing up whenever their family was going on vacation to the city of Yazd or Isfahan or Shiraz. They had held the book above the heads of relatives who were returning to villages up north after visiting them in Tehran. But Roya had never expected to go under the Quran for a voyage that would take her to America.
The pain over Bahman and the death of Mr. Fakhri had been so raw at first; Roya felt like her skin had been torn off. But over time, in place of the exposed skin, a veneer had formed. By the time she boarded the plane, Roya was aware of her skin and bones and eyes and limbs, but her heart was locked away. An enormous amount of what she used to believe had been erased. Her heart would be closed off, this she promised herself. Her hair was carefully set, the handle of a suitcase dug into her palm—and somehow, her feet were moving, one in front of the other. She could see that Zari looked concerned but also slightly thrilled. She heard Maman cry, watched Baba count money—a fistful of unfamiliar green bills that he had gotten from the bank—and hand it to them. She registered all this as though in a dream.
On the ride to the airport, the sky was the color of gunmetal and it looked like rain would come; the clouds were so full. But the gray puffs remained just low and heavy. They drove by familiar buildings and streets, the shops they’d walked past countless ti
mes. Café Ghanadi, their old school, and Maman’s childhood home on Soraya Street. Baba took a long route and gave them one last look at this city that would be invisible soon for them—at least for a while. He deliberately avoided Sepah Square and the location of the Stationery Shop. Roya felt a surge of love for her home and for her parents and all she was leaving behind.
“We’ll love the campus, won’t we, Roya?” Zari squeezed her hand.
Roya nodded.
“It’s not worth staying in this country anymore anyway.” Baba tried to sound like he believed it. “They toppled our true democratic leader. Now the foreign powers and their lackeys can do whatever the hell they want with us. Not worth it for now. Go. Go and be free. Learn everything you can. Better than being here with your throat choked by a dictator and with a government that can shoot at will.”
Roya waited for Maman to stop him and say, “Mehdi, stop the nonsense. Enough with your anti-Shah rhetoric.” But she just fought back sobs in the car and said not a word.
The girls boarded the plane. And as they swerved above the city, they held each other’s hands, not quite sure that they wouldn’t just die. How did this thing stay in the air? When the plane picked up speed and magically rose in the sky, Roya felt like she could almost, but not quite, touch the clouds that carried in them torrents of rain. As they rose higher and higher, she wanted the bloated clouds hanging low over Tehran to finally release their deluge, to break down and give out and soak the entire city and everyone in it with a tsunami of tears. But maybe the gray puffs above Tehran just kept it all inside and didn’t release one drop of rain. It stunned her to think as she soared farther and farther away that there would be so much about her hometown that she would now just never know . . .
Part Three
Chapter Seventeen
1956
California Coffee Shop
The Stationery Shop of Tehran Page 14