53 Letters For My Lover

by Leylah Attar

  “I need a few minutes,” I say. “Hafez, why don’t you go with Marjaneh and Susan? I’ll join you in a bit.”

  “You sure?” he asks. “You want me to get you something?”

  “No. I just need to use the ladies room.”

  I walk past the dance floor, trying to look as if it doesn’t matter that Gabriella has her arms around Troy, that she’s smiling at him with her perfect lips, flipping back her perfect hair. Her perfect breasts are pressed provocatively against him.

  The restroom envelopes me in dark walls and soft lighting. I take a deep breath, thankful for the empty stalls. Everyone is counting down the minutes to midnight.

  A half-choke escapes me.

  Pull yourself together. Crying and smoky eyes don’t go together.

  I look in the mirror, feeling washed out, faded, like I’m going to disappear. I turn my purse upside down on the counter. Mints, phone, keys, pen. A chic silver lipstick. My fingers close around it. Crushed Roses. Yes, that’s what I need. War paint.

  The door opens, but I pay no attention as I swipe the rich crimson color over my lips. There. I put everything back in the purse and take a final look. That’s when our eyes meet. In the mirror.

  My heart ceases and then picks up like a runaway train.

  He followed me.

  I swing around, wanting to scratch his eyes out. For showing up. For dancing with Gabriella. For turning me inside out.

  I reach for the door, but he stops me, his eyes intent on my lips. He always liked this shade. I see the raw hunger in his gaze, the torment of separation, the yearning for relief. He hooks his arm around my waist, pulling me up against his chest, but I push him away. We stare at each other, neither one willing to back down.

  I unbuckle his belt.

  Is this what you want, Troy?

  I kneel and unzip him.

  The countdown begins. 10...9...8...7...

  I put him in my mouth—his briefs, his aching, straining flesh, all of it, in one hungry swoop

  ...6...5...4...

  I look at him, my mouth full of clothed cock.

  Do you like that? Mmmmm. Can you hear the humming in the back of my throat?

  ...3...2...1...

  Good.

  I want it to resonate all the way through to your soul.

  Outside, the world explodes with colorful streamers and confetti.

  HAPPY NEW YEAR!

  I straighten until my lips are a hair’s breadth away from his. The band starts playing ‘Auld Lang Syne’ as our mouths meet in a crushing kiss.

  Then I open the door and walk out, leaving him in the restroom. With a big red ‘O’ around his briefs. Marked, dazed and thinking of no other woman but me. Perfect breasts or not.

  43. A Double Betrayal

  January 3, 2001

  “You need a good spanking,” says Troy.

  “You deserved it.” I lean back against the headboard. “You knew you’d be paired off with Gabriella. You knew all I could do was watch. And still you came. Without giving me a heads up.”

  “All I could think about was seeing you again.” He shifts the pillow on my lap so he can look up at me. “You looked so beautiful in that dress, Shayda. Like a rose in a sea of black. My parents loved you.”

  “They loved my speech. I’m not the one they have in mind for you, and I can’t say I blame them.” My fingers play with his hair. He has two whorls on the top of his head. His hair grows in circular patterns around them—one going clockwise, the other anticlockwise. “How long are they staying?”

  “A couple of weeks.” He nuzzles my tummy. “We’ll have to meet here until they’re gone.”

  “I don’t mind.” I look around the hotel room. It hasn’t changed much. “This is where it all began.”

  “Hardly,” he replies. “It started long before this, when stars were mere particles in swirling clouds of dust. And every event since has conspired to bring us together.”

  “You should go away more. It brings out the poet in you. Give me moreth!” I smile.

  He tugs my hair, pulling my face down for a kiss.

  “I’ve missed you,” he says. “And you know what else I missed?” He gets up. “I missed the chance to dance with you. It took me a while to...uh...recover, after you left me in that restroom. By the time I got back, you were nowhere to be seen.”

  “The kids were home alone.”

  “You ran away, Beetroot. Admit it.”

  “Fine. If you admit that you wouldn’t have asked me to dance, even if I’d stayed.”

  “You’re right. It would have been too obvious. I can’t hide the way I feel when you’re in my arms. But...” He turns on the radio. “You still owe me a dance.”

  It feels so familiar, so right, the circle of his arms, his chin brushing the top of my head, our feet moving to an easy rhythm.

  “I like this,” I say, when a slow, moving ballad comes on.

  “It’s a band called Bread. ‘Baby I’m-a Want You’.”

  “We’re dancing to a band called ‘Bread’?”

  “Shhh. Just listen.”

  I let my hands slide down his back, following the hollow of his spine. My lips brush his collar bone.

  “Kiss my neck and I’m throwing you on the bed,” he growls.

  “Neanderthal.” I say. “I should have known. You knocked me down the first time we met.”

  “You make it sound like you need insurance against me.”

  “I do. You’re dangerous. And you leave bruises. And your words disrobe me, and your kisses destroy me.”

  “Works both ways.” He massages my waist. “Unbutton my shirt.”

  “What?”

  He takes my hands and puts them on his chest. “Undress me.”

  I start working my way down slowly, one button at a time.

  “What’s this?” I ask. “Did you get another tattoo?”

  “Keep going.”

  When I reach the hem, I push the shirt off his shoulders and gasp.

  Running horizontally across his entire chest is a tattoo of sharped, spiked barbed wire, much like the one around his biceps, except with his arms down, it looks like one solid line splicing through.

  “I thought you shouldn’t be the only one with interesting battle scars,” he says, shrugging off his shirt.

  I run my fingers over the tattoo. He did this for me. To honor the zig-zag gashes where my breasts used to be.

  “Your chest! Why would you do this? It’s not safe. Getting tattoos abroad.” I need words. Something, anything to hold back the dam of emotions surging through me. “You’re completely reckless, Troy! I don’t—”

  He shuts me up with a knee-buckling kiss.

  “I love you, Shayda,” he says. “I miss you everywhere I go. I want to see you turn your nose up at chapulines in Mexico. I want to walk Temple Street Market with you when I’m in Hong Kong. I want to share every sunrise and every sunset and every second in between with you. I want your laughter and your breath and your blood and your bones. You’re the one thing that centres my soul. I may circle the whole world, but you’ll always be home, Beetroot.”

  I feel his heart racing under my fingers.

  “Marry me, Shayda,” he says. “I couldn’t bear to see that look on your face again, that complete self-loathing when David showed up.”

  Unplanned, unrehearsed, his speech catches us both by surprise.

  Say yes! The barbed wire tells me.

  Don’t give up on us, says Hafez. Not when we’re so close.

  You should find yourself a boyfriend, says Maamaan.

  It’s not nice to lose your family, says Zain.

  It’s like you’re going to prom, says Natasha.

  I’ve always wanted kids, says Troy. Always.

  You know what happened to Zarrin, says Baba.

  I close my eyes.

  It’s sunny, but I’m in bed and my bones are cold.

  Grace and Henry come in, wearing hospital masks. They give me a bouquet of roses, tho
rns and all. “You should have let him go, dear.”

  “How could you keep it from me?” asks Jayne.

  I look out the window. Maamaan, Baba and Hossein are collecting fallen apples under the tree.

  Natasha and Zain hold up a handmade card. Four stick figures with giant heads, torn in half.

  Hafez cuts himself. “Make sure Ma sees this, okay?”

  They all stand around my bed, waiting.

  Gabriella waits by the door. The blue-eyed baby in her arms starts to fade.

  I take Troy’s hand.

  Everyone disappears.

  The Angel of Death walks in.

  He wrangles me away from Troy.

  No.

  No more.

  No more of living in the shadows.

  If we base our decisions on all the things we’re afraid of, we would be paralyzed with fear.

  I wrench myself away from the cold, deathly grip of despair, from all the worst-case scenarios, from guilt, from shame, from all the heavy chains that have shackled my soul. It’s time, time for me to make the journey of a thousand miles, time for me to take a leap of faith. I stand at the edge of an abyss and hesitate.

  Fly, dammit, fly, says Troy.

  I smile and spread my wings, gliding, soaring, rising over a golden valley where lemon groves lie cradled in the warmest, softest earth.

  Yes. I am home again. Because I choose love. I choose faith. And hope. And happiness. And dancing dust motes in the sunlight.

  “Yes!” I open my eyes. “Yes, Troy.”

  “Yes?” he blinks. “Yes?” He lets out a big whoop and crushes me. He totally, completely crushes me.

  We start laughing—dizzy, giddy laughing.

  “I don’t have the bloody ring,” he says.

  “I don’t care.” Like any of that matters.

  “Shayda Hijazi...no, no. Shit, I don’t know your maiden name.”

  It’s so absurd, we laugh some more.

  “Kazemi,” I reply. “It’s Shayda Kazemi.”

  “Kazemi. Hijazi. Whatever the fuck it is.” He takes off the rosary around his neck and wraps it around my wrist. “Shayda-soon-to-be-Heathgate, if I could handcuff you to me for the rest of our lives, I would. But this will have to do for now. You are mine, bound to me, tied to me, from this day on. And don’t you forget it.”

  I feel his rosary around my wrist, warmed by his skin, and I think of how far we’ve come.

  The almost-touching of our toes in this room.

  Lather on his face.

  Red nail polish.

  A hammock by the lake.

  The clip-clop of a Scottish Clydesdale.

  His nose between my chopsticks.

  All these things, all these things, break open, like a bag of marbles, rolling and rattling down the corridors of my heart, a river of shiny, bright lanterns, illuminating the way.

  “It’s true,” I say.

  “What is?”

  “What your grandmother said.”

  It’ll bring you light in the dark. It wasn’t the rosary she’d meant. It was love, pure and simple.

  “It keeps the monsters at bay.” I smile. “I wish I had something for you.”

  “Oh, but you do.”

  “What? What can I give to you when you’ve already bound and tied yourself to me for life.” I trace the beautiful tattoo around his chest.

  “Put on your red lipstick, Shayda. You make a hell of an ‘O’ with that. I’ll take that ring of eternity any day over gold and silver.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And finish the job this time, woman.”

  I step out of the revolving doors, my insides spinning. The wind feels icy as it hits my lungs, but I breathe deep. I feel like I’ve finally shed all the dark, dull layers that have weighed me down.

  I call Hafez. It’s time to have the talk we postponed.

  His phone goes straight to voice mail.

  I hang up and start walking towards the car, knowing whatever happens, we’ll work through it together.

  “Shayda.”

  I stop. “Hafez?”

  He straightens from the light post he’s leaning on.

  “What are you doing here?” I ask.

  His cheeks are wind-whipped and dry, like he’s been in the cold for way too long.

  “I had to see for myself.”

  That look. The look he’d given his father the day Pasha Moradi died.

  Do you think I didn’t know?

  “I came after you,” he says. “How many new years have we rung in together, Shayda? Did you think I wouldn’t miss you?”

  I feel my world tipping over, the porcelain family he gave me slipping over the edge and smashing, like a shattered snow globe.

  “I saw him follow you into the restroom,” he continues.

  “Hafez, I tried to tell you. I wanted to tell you—” I reach for him, but he steps back.

  His eyes are dull and tortured. A double betrayal. First his father. Now me. We were supposed to love him, but we crushed his soul.

  “Go back inside, Shayda. Consider yourself free.” He starts walking away from me, walking away from the pain, too broken and battered to stand and fight.

  “Hafez. Wait!”

  He starts walking away from me, walking away from the pain, too broken and battered to stand and fight. He turns, in the middle of the street, and gives me a bitter smile. “I didn’t forget, Shayda. I told you I would do whatever it takes to make you happ—”

  The loud blare of an air horn sweeps the rest of his words away. His body catapults into the air as a truck screeches into him. He lands, several feet away with a sickening thud, his blood spilling like black ice on the asphalt.

  It’s only when the truck comes to a screeching halt and the driver jumps out that the reality of the collision sinks in, and I race to his limp form.

  44. Lighting The Candles

  January 10th, 2001

  I’ve learned to block out the incessant beeping of Hafez’s monitor, the shrill announcements over the intercom, the chatter of food trays on a cart. I wish I could do the same with the constant screaming that’s going on inside of me, the kind no-one can hear.

  Torn.

  This is what it feels like—like every fibre of my soul is being ripped apart, limb separated from limb, all my insides being scraped out.

  My heart is breaking for Hafez, lying on the hospital bed.

  My soul is bleeding for Troy, waiting in the wings.

  It’s been a week since the accident, and every day, every hour, has put my new found bravado to a gruelling test. On the one hand is the ‘me’ who responds automatically to all the years of conditioning, of doing the things I’m supposed to do, and feeling the things I’m supposed to feel; and on the other is the ‘me’ who refuses to live a lie.

  I dial Troy’s number again.

  The first night he called, I flung my phone across the room. We had done this to Hafez. Troy and I.

  It was so easy to slip into that dark, sickening spiral of guilt, to punish myself by pushing Troy away. Because I felt I deserved that awful, searing pain it brought, to push away the one person I wanted to be the most with.

  But when Hafez opened his eyes for the first time in days, I realized we had both been touched by death, and we had both been given a second chance. It was time to release ourselves from from this constant cycle of pain, to stop holding on to ideals we both yearned for, but that always remained out of our reach.

  I hold my breath as the Troy’s phone rings.

  No answer.

  I debate about leaving a message.

  Hey. Sorry I haven’t called. Hafez was in an accident. I’ve been camped out at the hospital. The doctors say he’ll be fine, but he has a concussion and a fractured femur. I haven’t abandoned you. I’m yours—bound to you, tied to you, just like I promised. I just needed to be here for now.

  No. I hang up. No message. I need to see him, tell him face to face.

  I call his office.


  “Mr. Heathgate is out of town on a personal leave of absence. Would you like me to direct your call to his assistant?”

  “When will he be back?”

  “He didn’t say.”

  I twist the rosary around my wrist. Then I try his cell again. I could listen to the sound of his voice over and over again.

  “Call me back, Scary Cherry.”

  My phone remains silent.

  March 21st, 2001

  “When are they coming?” asks Zain, plucking his guitar strings.

  “Soon,” I say. My voice sounds distant and removed.

  In some ways, Hafez and I have spent more time together in the last two months than we have in our entire marriage. Helping him get back on his feet, driving him to physio, sitting together quietly in the evenings, we’ve come to realize what we have. And what we never will.

  “I should have told you the truth about Troy before I got involved,” I say.

  “I should have told you the truth about Pasha Moradi before I asked you to marry me,” he replies. “I should have told you about my past, given you the choice, Shayda. Neither one of us was an innocent party.”

  The accident enabled Hafez to re-evaluate life, to move past the hurt and see the real issues in our relationship. We’ve come to a mutual understanding, that it’s time to let go of all the things that have crippled us. It’s a move in the right direction, for both of us, but it means nothing to me without Troy.

  There’s no way to track him down. No one knows where he is or when he’s coming back. He’s cut himself off, and I burn in a private hell, day after day, hoping he’ll show up soon.

  Natasha turns the TV off. “I still don’t get why.” Her voice is hoarse with frustration.

  “Mum and I decided it’s for the best,” says Hafez. “When I’m settled in my new place, we’ll see each other all the time.”

  “But why today? It’s Nowruz!”

  I think she made some kind of a pact when Hafez came home—to revive a discarded tradition. She spent days setting up the Haft Seen table. How could she have known the ghosts that her beautiful arrangement dredged up? She gave up when the movers dropped off empty cardboard boxes. The candles on the table remained unlit.

  “I think the movers are here,” says Zain, peering out the window.