Together Tea

by Marjan Kamali

  They were now at war with Iraq.

  School became drill oriented. They practiced running for cover, crouching down, and covering their heads with their arms. Bita was the fastest runner. She’d crack her gum while crouching, even though they weren’t allowed to chew gum.

  The whole city covered its windows with aluminum foil. But it didn’t stop Saddam’s planes from roaring above. Mina imagined the pilot looking for just the right place to drop a bomb. Just the right perfect spot.

  Halfway through the night, in the middle of the sweetest of dreams, slowly Mina was nudged by Darya and then, in pajamas and with doll in hand, drowsily, she followed her family down to the basement and waited there until the bombing was over.

  Mina would remember stumbling down the steps to go underground. Her teeth chattering as they waited, heart in mouth, for the bombs to end, the ground shaking beneath them. The numbers of the dead announced each day, printed in newspapers, anxiously pored over by locals.

  It was in the basement that Kayvon decided to teach Mina karate moves. He painstakingly trained her while they took shelter under the ground for hours on end. Kayvon’s favorite kick was what he called the “side heel thrust kick.” He had learned it from watching Bruce Lee movies. He said he had perfected it.

  “See, you stand with your toes parallel. In a sparring stance.”

  Mina tried to copy Kayvon’s stance.

  “Keep your feet shoulder-width apart. Pivot on your left toe. Now lift your leg into a chamber position. And kick out, strong.”

  Mina tried and tried and tried again, not quite getting it right.

  “You almost have it,” said Hooman, who was watching along. “You’ll get it, Mina, with practice. But you have to concentrate.”

  WHITE. ORANGE. RED. COLORS THAT Mina had often used for chalky clouds, an emerging sun, big fat hearts.

  The government found new use for them. When airplanes flew overhead, the towering speakers on the streets of Tehran, on supermarket signs, inside lima bean stalls, on top of police cars would begin to wail. There were three kinds of signals, named by color and altering in siren tone, for three stages of emergency. White meant be careful but you won’t die, orange meant better go to the basement, and red meant get to the basement now, lie on your stomach, put your hands over your head and pray.

  Darya kept a deck of cards in the basement. They played gin rummy, nervously, knowing playing cards was outlawed now too. Anything to do with gambling was a sin. Sometimes Darya played solitaire. She silently mouthed a question before she started each game. They never heard her. Then she said, “The cards will determine the answer.” They all knew the question. Will we survive?

  Her games of solitaire ended in failure more than once. When that happened, Darya swept the cards up quickly and shuffled them into a tidy stack. The boys often took over then, making a house of cards. They placed each card onto another as though their lives depended on it. When the house of cards collapsed, as it often did, their faces fell and everyone’s optimism was stifled. Still, they made it back upstairs. Each time they entered their house again it was as if they were entering it for the first time, and each time they were also acutely aware that it could be their last.

  IN THE MORNINGS, MINA SLOWLY ATE the soft-boiled eggs her mother made. If she could delay going to school, she would. Darya brewed the tea carefully, making perfect potfuls—the china teapot snug within a tea cozy Mamani had sewn. Before leaving the house, Mina did one last check in front of the hallway mirror. She tucked every strand of hair under her headscarf and buttoned up the last button of her roopoosh.

  Their new Lessons of Religion teacher, Mrs. Amiri, had appeared out of nowhere to teach this brand-new subject. Mrs. Shoghi and the other teachers were ordered to wear headdresses. The old headmistress was asked to leave because she was too Shahi. A new headmistress came, holding a megaphone in one hand and a list of new rules in the other. Anyone who appeared with a bad hijab would be reported. Bita was constantly sent to the principal’s office for signs of being “deviant.”

  The old textbooks with the photograph of the Shah on the first page were replaced with brand-new textbooks with a photo of the new leader inside. The drawings in their old books of girls feeding roosters and going to the market were almost exactly the same, except headscarves and roopoosh had been added to the girls’ pictures.

  In the new books, the Persian kings were no longer dynamic and amazing. They were corrupt and cruel. Mina had to relearn the “facts.” She saw that the definitions of things like “history,” “good,” and “bad” shifted depending on who was in power. Mina realized that whoever had access to dispensing information drew and colored the world.

  “Don’t get brainwashed, Mina,” Darya said at dinner. “Don’t let them get to you. No one can tell you what to think. No one can tell you what to do. Except me. And Baba. But don’t get in trouble either. They are ruthless. So just keep quiet. Keep your head low. Try not to talk back. It’s not worth it.”

  On her walk to school, Mina avoided the eyes of the guards that stood watching. “Good girls don’t look men in the eye,” Mrs. Amiri would say. “Good girls don’t raise their voice. No need to smile unnecessarily. Good girls do not provoke. Do not let your laughter be heard.” One of the bearded guards shifted in position as Mina walked by him. Mina held her head down, able only to see the thick black leather of his boots.

  At school, after morning prayers and twenty-five jumping jacks, they lined up for assembly in rows according to height. It was hard to imagine that just a short while ago, boys and girls went to the same school. The presence of opposite sexes, Mrs. Amiri said, caused mental, spiritual, and physical effects that only should be felt after marriage. Mina missed playing dodgeball in school with Farokh and his friends.

  Farokh still came over to her house sometimes, and they kicked a ball in the yard, enclosed by high walls, unseen. Then they ate the apples and dried mulberries that Darya brought out for them, and teased each other quietly.

  THE NEW AUTHORITIES TOLD THE CHILDREN to hate America. But most of the kids Mina knew loved America. They liked its music, its minty chewing gum, its freedom. Mrs. Amiri said that America was vulgar and greedy—that it had supported the dictatorship of the Shah with zero conscience and propped up an evil dictator. But who’s the one making our lives hell? Bita asked Mina. It’s this new regime, not America!

  One day, during a particularly hot recess half hour, while the headmistress was busy arguing with one of the janitors and while Mrs. Amiri sat in the shade chewing on a green apple, Bita motioned for the girls to gather around. When Mina, Jaleh, and Sepideh were all comfortably seated on the cement floor, Bita beamed conspiratorially and fished out a small cassette tape from underneath her roopoosh. There was a photocopied black-and-white photo on the cover of a smiling man with dark hair and a dimple on his chin and a beautiful woman facing him, her hands on his shoulders.

  Bita held up the cassette and looked at the other girls with an expression that invited stunned appreciation. The girls leaned in closer.

  Mina instantly recognized the cassette’s image and took it from Bita.

  “This is Olivia Newton-John,” Mina said. “Hooman wants to marry her.”

  “Yes, and you want to marry the crown prince, who’s not even the crown prince anymore but some poor refugee boy in the middle of America,” Jaleh sputtered. “What is it with your family and their obsession with marrying famous people? You’ll marry who your parents pick, just accept it.”

  Mina wanted to pull Jaleh’s hair. But it was well protected under her headscarf. “For your information, my parents don’t believe in that old-fashioned nonsense!” she said.

  “Can we stop this chart-o-part talk and look at the tape?” Sepideh grabbed the tape from Mina. “Can I borrow this? Please? Please?”

  The other girls shouted in protest. Jaleh reminded Bita about the supershiny lip
gloss she had lent her three weeks ago, which Bita had almost entirely used up. Sepideh told Bita that she would give her three sticks of spearmint gum that her uncle had sent all the way from America.

  “I’m your best friend” was all Mina could come up with.

  After several rounds of “rock, paper, scissors” (Jaleh accused Sepideh of cheating, and Sepideh insisted no, she wasn’t cheating, that’s how her hand formed a fist and so what if it looked like paper, it wasn’t right to make fun of her double joints, and Jaleh said being double-jointed didn’t mean you had to cheat at how you made a stone shape with your hand, and Sepideh looked as if she might burst into tears), Bita finally broke the conflict by saying, “Mina gets to borrow it first because she’s my best friend!”

  Mina ran straight home after school and slid the cassette into the player. She began dancing on the sofa. Jumping up and down and feeling free from care. This was happy music and she blasted it as loud as she could.

  That night, she took out the paper insert in the plastic cassette case and found that on the inside, in Farsi letters, was the name of the singer-man who was facing Olivia Newton-John on the tape’s cover. A certain Mr. John Travolta, from New Jersey.

  By the end of the week her time with the tape (which she learned was the sound track to some movie named Grease) had run out, and she had to pass it to Jaleh (during recess, covered in a napkin, pretending it was a butter and chicken sandwich). By then, Mina had memorized most of the words to “Summer Lovin’,” “Hopelessly Devoted to You,” and “You’re the One That I Want.” She found the songs popping into her head at inopportune moments—during prayer time or chanting time, or worst of all, when Mrs. Amiri’s heavily cloaked body roamed the classroom checking the contents of their notebooks. She knew that if Mrs. Amiri could hear half the lines dancing in Mina’s head, she would send her straight to detention. “Cause I’m losin’ control, of the power you’re supplying, it’s electrifying.” Mina hummed the new English words as she walked home from school under the stare of the Revolutionary Guards. “I’m outta my head, but I’m hopelessly devoted to you.” She didn’t know the meaning of all the words, just the easier ones like “love” and “summer” and “want” that she’d already covered in the private English tutoring class that her mom signed her up for as an extracurricular activity.

  “Bita,” Mina whispered the next morning at assembly during chant sessions.

  “What?” Bita’s thick eyebrows shot up.

  “I don’t think I can change my marriage plans,” Mina whispered as the new headmistress chanted. “But if, for some strange reason, the crown prince and I don’t work out, then I think perhaps this John Travolta man might make a fine husband.”

  “May you enjoy many happy years together, Mina,” Bita said and winked.

  They tried not to giggle.

  When Bita came over after school with a new copy of the tape that her brother had made just for Mina, they held hands and danced all around the room.

  “Of course I won’t marry him,” Mina said later while they were doing homework.

  “Of course you won’t,” Bita said, not looking up from her notebook.

  “The crown prince,” Mina said.

  “I thought you meant John Travolta.”

  “I don’t think I’ll marry either.”

  “No, I guess you won’t,” Bita said quietly. “They’re both in America and you’re in Iran.”

  And they continued their work without saying another word.

  THAT NIGHT MINA DREAMED THAT she was sitting by the beach with John Travolta, enjoying a cup of tea. The crown prince was flailing in the waves, trying to get her attention, but Mina was too busy chatting with Mr. Travolta. She could hear the crown prince screaming for help, yelling about sharks, but she found herself unable to help him. “Let him drown,” John Travolta said. “He’s useless, just selfish. Greedy too.” Mina could only nod. “Be a doll and get me another cup of tea,” John Travolta said. And Mina got up and poured him a fresh hot cup from the samovar that was on a Persian carpet on the sand. They sat together looking at the horizon, she and John, and sipped their tea through thick chunks of sugar that they had placed between their teeth.

  Every now and then John Travolta would tilt his head back and close his eyes and wail a line from one of his songs in Grease. And Mina would look him straight in the face and quietly recite Hafez. They continued in this way until Mina heard Darya’s voice calling her to wake up and get ready for school.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Breathless from Their Disco Dancing

  For Mina’s tenth birthday party, Darya measured and rinsed basmati rice all morning. She crushed strands of saffron, then soaked the cooked rice in dissolved saffron powder, delighting in each and every orange-yellow grain. Baba climbed out from under the dining room table after hiding wine and whiskey in a picnic basket under the tablecloth. Mamani came early to fry the onions. Soghra sat in the kitchen and dabbed her forehead with a rose-water-dipped handkerchief, moaning about all the work still left. Hooman and Kayvon swept and hosed down the front steps. Mina seeded pomegranates for her mother’s walnut stew. Her stomach fell at the thought of her tenth birthday party. At any minute, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards could barge in, seize the illegal alcohol, arrest her parents for forbidden music and dancing, and detain everyone. Baba would be handcuffed, Darya would faint and fall to the floor, Hooman and Kayvon would get flogged by the guards, and Mina would end up crouched in a corner, a ball of misery. Mina prayed for the guards not to discover her party. She also prayed with her eyes squeezed shut for Saddam not to pick her birthday night to bomb the city.

  Everybody helped. Relatives and neighbors gave Darya their ration coupons for meat and eggs. Aunt Firoozeh came over in her billowy roopoosh.

  “Take my kerosene coupons, Darya Joon. Keep your house warm. Your uncle Jafar, as you know, lives like a horse and can’t stand too much heat. Besides, he’s been talking about rice pudding for three weeks now. I’m ready to hit him in the head. I keep telling him we don’t have enough milk . . .”

  “Aunt Firoozeh, don’t say another word! Please take my milk coupons.” Darya searched for her ration book.

  “No, no, I wouldn’t dream of it! I just mentioned it because . . . well, I couldn’t take just a few of your milk coupons! You with those two growing boys, Hooman and Kayvon! And that Mina of yours, turning ten! No, I don’t expect anything in return for all our kerosene!”

  “Aunt Firoozeh, please, I beg you. Take it. I won’t sleep at night until you do!”

  Mina heard them insist with exaggerated politeness in the traditional style of Persian tarof. She remembered that a few years ago she’d embarrassed Darya at a family gathering because the hostess had asked her if she wanted a piece of cake, and she had said yes.

  “Never,” Darya had whispered in Mina’s ear after pulling her aside later, “accept anything at the first request. Wait.”

  Mina had looked at her blankly, the spongy cake still filling her cheeks, a few crumbs on her lips, unable to speak or chew or swallow. She nodded instead and then observed, learning to master indirectness. With Darya’s help, Mina learned how to use just the right amount of insistence and refusal, self-restraint and flattery. The next time they were at someone’s home, she remembered the art of tarof.

  “Do you want a piece of cake?”

  “Oh no, thank you, I’m full. I wouldn’t dream of having cake.”

  Then the hostess asked again. “Please, I would rather throw dirt on my head than have you not eat my cake.”

  “Oh no, I couldn’t, you’re too kind.”

  “You must. A big piece.”

  “That’s far too big, you’re embarrassing me.”

  “Please eat it. Look at you so skinny. You’re too young to be on a diet.”

  “In God’s name, no . . .”

  “Here, may it feed y
our soul.”

  “May God prolong your life. I thank you.”

  Mina took the cake and ate it until a second piece was offered and the tarof started all over again.

  THE GUESTS WERE TOLD TO COME at seven o’clock so Darya knew they’d come by nine. That’s how it was in the City of War. Everybody was later than usual. It took time to get ready—time for the women to cloak themselves in the now mandatory Islamic uniforms and veils, for the men to organize the backseats of their cars with flashlights, battery-powered radios, and bottles of water. Time for everybody to stop in the middle of traffic, get out of their cars, and crouch in ditches by the street when Saddam decided to burst open a bomb.

  Poor Mr. Johnson showed up at 7:06. Darya opened the door pretending he was right to be on time and everybody else was embarrassingly late and uncouth. She wanted Mr. Johnson, an old friend of Baba’s who was a correspondent for the BBC, to feel at home. Despite the anti-foreigner slogans spray-painted on Tehran streets in bloodred, Mr. Johnson had not left. Mina had heard Mamani say that he was going to leave soon, though, and return to the orderly world of England. Mina wondered if he’d have fish and chips on his first night back. Mrs. Isobel, the Iranian-Armenian teacher Darya had hired to teach the kids English after school, often talked about fish and chips and tea and crumpets during lessons.

  Mr. Johnson sucked on the ends of his glasses and smiled at Darya.

  In her red, wrinkled purse Mamani kept a photograph of her sister’s oldest granddaughter, Leila. At a previous party, Mamani had made sure Mr. Johnson saw that photo. Conveniently dropped it onto his navy lap. Cousin Leila was nineteen and beautiful. And Mr. Johnson, with his blond hair parted in the middle, his tall, slim figure, and the ease with which he spoke Farsi, was not married. Mina had sat on Mamani’s lap as Mamani whispered into the phone, “Don’t worry, Sister. I’ve found someone for Leila. If all goes well, she can leave Iran before she’s twenty. She can study in England. She won’t have to suffer here anymore.”