Teaspoon of Earth and Sea (9781101601990)

by Nayeri, Dina

  The diner is nearly empty. She hears Otis Redding—do you know Otis Redding? He makes beautiful music—wafting into the dining room from the kitchen. Sittin’ on the dock of the bay. José’s distinctive voice hums along with the melody. She follows it into the kitchen, thinking maybe he is lonely in there.

  “Mija,” he says, which is what his people call beloved girls. “I thought you quit.”

  She walks up to him and mumbles something about being bored. She wanders closer to the sink until she is standing next to him, watching his hands and forearms disappear into a pillowy mound of dish foam. Then, without meaning to, she rests her head on José’s shoulder. She knows it’s strange. She can tell because he has suddenly stopped scrubbing, his body rigid. But she doesn’t care. It has been a long time since she felt the twists and knobs of a fatherly shoulder against her cheek.

  “Good-bye, José,” she mumbles into his scratchy flannel shirt. “I’ll miss you.”

  He smooths Mahtab’s hair with his wet foamy hand. Maybe he too misses the softness of a daughterly cheek on his shoulder. He says, “You take care, mija.”

  There. She has said her good-byes . . . to someone. Not to me. The thread that holds sisters together across the world is broken and there is no more symmetry between us. But I see now that it has been just about twenty-two minutes and, according to the rules of American television, a problem must now be solved. It is time for Mahtab to purge the first of her Immigrant Worries. Do you want to hear what it is? The first worry is the same for everyone. From now on, Mahtab of the auburn hair and pointy nose and fine education, adopted daughter of Baba Harvard, stops fearing her Persian roots. But don’t be sad. That face, it still exists somewhere—except now it isn’t part of a pair.

  Khanom Mansoori is fully awake now and she takes Saba’s hand, touches her face, and says, “You know you’re like my own granddaughter.”

  Saba nods, as does Agha Mansoori. “Yes, yes,” he’s saying, “our own granddaughter.”

  His wife continues. “Mahtab or no Mahtab. Letter or no letter, that story is truth.”

  Though she wants to linger in her surrogate grandmother’s arms, to cry a little and ask her why she thinks this is so, she only kisses Khanom Mansoori’s papery cheek and gets up to make dinner. The Mansooris have stayed too late, and so they will spend the night with the Hafezis. Saba tries to push the old woman’s words out of her mind, because there is no time to linger on sad things. She doesn’t want to be the kind of girl who is lost in her own thoughts and daydreams. She has to find some bedding for her guests now. But Khanom Mansoori calls after her to wait a moment. “It doesn’t matter where something happens, as long as it happens. If I told you the story of the first time I kissed Agha here . . . on our wedding day or in the yard when we were twelve. Who really cares about all that? The details you can change. The where and the when. It’s the what and the how that make it truth or lies.”

  Agha Mansoori turns red at the memory and mumbles to himself.

  “Khanom Basir said that it’s unhealthy for a grown woman to dwell,” says Saba, “or to tell stories about people who aren’t with us.”

  “Please,” says Khanom Mansoori, as she reaches for her glass. She makes an exaggerated gesture of swatting away Khanom Basir’s comment. “What’s healthy for a little girl is healthy for a grown woman. Grown women just need bigger portions.”

  “That’s a very nice thought,” says Saba. The nicest she’s heard in a long time.

  “Go on, then,” says Khanom Mansoori. “Finish your story, so we know it’s true.”

  Saba gives an obliging nod and finishes. “Up we went and there was doogh. . . .”

  The Truth of It

  (Khanom Mansoori—The Ancient One)

  Agha, did you hear the things she said? Were you listening carefully? You didn’t say much so I think you weren’t listening. She’s not like our granddaughter, Niloo. Saba is a book type and she knows how to hide her meaning. You need sharp ears, Agha jan. By the time she finished, you could see that her color had flown away. You could hear her missing Mahtab. You couldn’t? Oh, listen to you, Agha. You see camel, you don’t see camel. You are a little boy yourself. That’s why I like you so much.

  I don’t like sleeping at that house. I’m still tired. But it was good that we stayed. I don’t know how she doesn’t get scared in that big house at night.

  Ai, my poor girl.

  Do you want to hear the real meaning of that story? Yes, I have it figured out—help me sit down, will you?—all that business about Baba Harvard and saying good-bye to the kind dishwasher man from South Mexico . . . sad, sad thing . . . it’s not about missing parents and broken families. It’s about that crazy, crazy man sitting in the big house and watching his daughter run around, trying to get his attention. What’s wrong with him? If you knew how many hours she spends alone, you’d grow horns from shock.

  No, don’t tell me he has tried. I never see them together outside the house.

  Agha, next time you go over there, maybe take her a little present, or ask about this or that. Compliment something small, like her wrist bangles, or if she is not wearing any, the whiteness of her skin. Fatherly things, so she’s not so thirsty for it . . . And don’t look so scared. She’s a young girl, not a garden snake. I saw you gawking at the television, so you have plenty to talk about. Maybe let her explain the stories without interrupting so much—yes, you did interrupt. I managed to understand some of it, though . . . some Keaton-Meaton crazy-bazi . . . A useless story. No head or tail to it at all.

  Aah, that’s nice. Scratch just there. Thank you, Agha jan.

  Do you think all the gossip is right? Some say that Abbas would be a good choice for our Saba because he is old and rich like her father. Others say that her cousin Kasem is a good choice because he is already family. It makes me sad because I always wished she would find what you and I had. Young love . . . love that is not all about enduring. Maybe some fun. Remember when we were her age . . . the mornings behind the house?

  Yes, yes, I know it’s improper. I won’t talk about it.

  I’m not talking about it . . . Why have you stopped scratching?

  What was I saying before? I’m tired, Agha. I haven’t slept well. All this death everywhere gives me bad dreams. Help me lie down . . . Days are so strange now, when all our real friends are dead and we’re living in the world of their children. I’m afraid of dying. It’s a depressing business.

  What do you think, Agha jan? Maybe Saba has figured out something through her twin-sense. I think there are many sorts of truths to this story and the biggest one is that Mahtab is still alive somewhere.

  Chapter Five

  AUTUMN–WINTER 1989

  On a wintry white Friday afternoon, Saba walks the open market, the jomeh-bazaar, and thinks she should become a better liar. It must be easy in America, where people say what they mean. In Iran, you have to be backhanded, to convey your wants by seeming to seek the opposite. She wishes she had lied less convincingly to Reza.

  Lately he visits her house more often, asking to play the guitar hidden in the sitting-room closet. He places his fingers on the strings, comparing the sound with his father’s setar or the bigger, rounder oud. “Baba can play any string instrument,” he brags. They have been in her pantry only once without Ponneh. It was awkward, the two of them, alone in the dark—nothing like the natural, uninhibited feeling of their threesome, always joking and flirting, making fun of Kasem. Instead Saba and Reza sat nervously and listened to a cassette player. He lit her cigarette and watched her take a drag. When there was a lull, he fiddled with the matchbox. “Saba Khanom,” he said, “are you—” and he stopped. She thought he was about to ask if she was missing Mahtab, as he always did.

  “Vai,” she sighed. “Don’t start with the Saba Khanom stuff.”

  Then he plucked her cigarette from he
r mouth. “Can I kiss you then? Just one time?”

  She was caught unprepared and said no, though she wanted to say yes. He didn’t ask again. Now she worries that she has insulted him. Maybe he thinks she doesn’t want to kiss a villager. The problem, Saba decides, is that she hasn’t learned to lie and still convey the truth—like when her father tells the mullah there is no opium in the pipe.

  She can smell opium now, as she passes an elderly man in a skullcap. The bazaar, which is the main livelihood of many of its merchants, is situated in the town square, along with a handful of stores, a kebabi and fish restaurant with tables outside, and a coffeehouse that serves only tea and water pipes on deep red reclining rugs. There is a bench and chairs where old men sit under trees. The marketplace is where the bus stops and where friends and strangers congregate. On busy days, a pasdar or two loiter in a jeep, keeping their eyes on the sinful young. The market is open all year, even on winter days when a wet chill descends from the mountains, making the air thin and painful. Saba wraps herself tighter in her layers of scarves and thick coat. A heavy breeze blusters through the tunnels formed by tarps and roofs of plastic sheets. There are few vegetables today, only basics like onions and potatoes. Usually baskets with every kind of green herb are arranged in rows, piles of mint, parsley, and coriander, but today the merchants are selling from preserved supplies. Huge wreaths of dried herbs hang above their stalls. At the baker’s stand, Saba spots Ponneh holding a paper bag with the telltale syrup stains of baghlava at the bottom. Ponneh reaches for some coins to pay.

  The baker says, “Please, Khanom, I am your servant.” Saba takes the time to watch this game of tarof, pretend generosity, and marvels at the ridiculousness of it.

  Ponneh says, “Really, I insist.”

  The baker looks down and cocks his head humbly. “Please, they are yours.”

  Ponneh repeats one more time, “I insist.”

  And then the game is over. The baker accepts, and the tarof dance comes to an elegant end. Saba smiles at the thought of what would have happened if Ponneh had accepted the “free” pastries. The baker might have chased her down the street or started a tab. This is the way of things. Social laws aren’t reserved for social settings. Butchers must offer free meat. Barbers must pretend to cut hair for their own pleasure.

  Lying well is crucial in Iran. Everyone practices at least the two most basic arts: tarof (“Come, sir! Eat, drink. Take my daughter!”) and maast-mali (“covering with yogurt”), the art of pretend innocence. (“Oh, it was nothing! A dent? It was barely a scratch. In fact, I wasn’t even in the country that day!”)

  Ponneh reaches a pretty hand into the bag and pulls out a hot, dripping pastry.

  “Saba jan!” She runs over and gives Saba a hug with her forearms and elbows since both hands are occupied. “Reza was here earlier buying tea,” she says. “I ran into him and he said he can come to the pantry at six.” She holds out a pastry to Saba. “Here, try this.” She glances at the baker, who gives her a gummy smile. “If that man weren’t toothless and a hundred years old, I’d marry him and spend my life getting fat.”

  Saba takes a layer of the pastry, relieved that Reza has invited himself to her house. He must not be too insulted, after all. Maybe one day he’ll ask to kiss her again.

  “Just a bite?” says Ponneh. “Don’t tarof. Maman gave me the money.”

  They walk together toward the colorful pyramids of spices and nuts—cumin, turmeric, walnuts, and almonds—arranged on tables like the hills of a distant planet. A crowd has formed next to the fishermen’s coolers of fresh catch and beside a butcher selling lamb shanks. The shoppers don’t form a line, except for the first two, and then they explode into a cluster of shoving, peering, and shouting.

  Hours later, their baskets full of vegetables, tea leaves, rice, fish, and a jumble of staples, their purses depleted of ration coupons and money, they head home as the hum of the afternoon call to prayer, the azan, wafts from the local mosque and the sun begins its descent, washing the mountains beyond in new colors. They pick up their pace. Soon nightfall will make it difficult for young women to be out without risking questioning.

  Just outside the bazaar, Saba hesitates. “Look who’s there,” she whispers.

  Mustafa, a young officer of the moral police, is watching them. He has claimed to love Ponneh for years, and she has always refused. Now that he wears the pasdar uniform, he takes pleasure in torturing them, forcing them to abstain from the few discreet freedoms most villagers still enjoy. Saba tucks some loose hair into her scarf.

  Mustafa strides toward them, straightening his olive-colored uniform, his eyes fixed ahead. Saba quickens her step, recalling the day an airport pasdar barked at her mother. Then, just as they are about to turn a corner, she hears a snap. Ponneh stumbles.

  “Damn, I broke my heel.” She curses as she reaches under her manteau and floor-length skirt to pull off the shoe, a shiny red thing with a heel the length of a finger.

  “Why are you wearing those to the market?” Saba stares at the shoes.

  “I like them! And no one can see.”

  Saba doesn’t find this strange. Ponneh has always done what she wanted, and after the revolution, a pair of red shoes is a brave thing, not superficial or vain. Saba too has experimented with this form of rebellion. Many of her friends have.

  Mustafa catches up with them. His voice is like a whip, and he pretends he doesn’t know them, a game he expects them to play. “You there,” he says, probably thinking his unkempt beard hides his age and identity. “What are you doing? It’s getting dark.”

  Saba feigns a respectful tone. “We’re just going home. Good day, Agha.”

  “Let me see your papers,” he says. Ponneh rolls her eyes, balancing on one shoe.

  Saba tries not to scoff. She slips into a rural accent. “We were just buying food.”

  Mustafa shakes his head. “Where is your home?”

  Saba stifles a shocked laugh. “Are you serious? Mustafa, you know us—”

  Mustafa’s eyes dart to Ponneh. Saba holds her breath, watching him recall Ponneh’s beauty as he looks her up and down with that same grotesque, leering look that she associates with Kasem. And then she sees something that looks like hatred.

  Ponneh fixes her gaze to the ground, trying to hide her annoyance. No need to worry, Saba thinks. Ponneh’s scarf is perfect. She is wearing loose layers and no makeup. Only the red tip of a shoe peeks out from underneath her clothes. Mustafa has nothing on them. His eyes flit from her face to the shoe. “What’s this?” he says as he kicks aside the hem of her skirt. “Those shoes are indecent,” he spits.

  “They’re under my clothes,” says Ponneh, teeth gritted, eyes disdainful. “Go away.”

  “Such high heels are shameful and improper,” he says.

  Ponneh raises her voice. “What business is it of yours? Is this some kind of fun for you?”

  Saba gasps, but Mustafa ignores the remark. “Decent Muslim women know to be modest,” he says flatly. Now Saba too is annoyed, as with a child who won’t stop playing an obnoxious game. There is nothing Ponneh could have done to avoid this, short of wearing a burkah. Even then, Mustafa would target her. “Come with me.”

  Saba mumbles in disbelief as they follow Mustafa toward the thatched-roof house that serves as the local headquarters of the moral police, the komiteh. Ponneh carries her shoes in one hand. A few paces from the bazaar, on a quiet road with a high wall made of mud and hay, she stops. “Mustafa, that’s enough. You’ve made your point.”

  Mustafa turns, his face red. He clearly expected her to obey, to submit and give him some satisfaction after countless rejections and humiliations, all his wasted pining. He puts a hand on his baton and steps closer to Ponneh. “Walk,” he commands.

  Saba puts an arm around her friend, but Ponneh shakes it off. Her willful expression is frightenin
g. She lets out a small, scathing laugh. Hazelnut eyes widen, as they did during so many childhood fights when something inside Ponneh snapped, causing her to give up everything just to prove her point—always belligerence over tact. Please, Ponneh, don’t be stubborn now.

  “No,” Ponneh says, her voice cracking a little. “I’m going home.”

  “You’ll get a hundred lashes,” Mustafa warns, hovering close. “Just wait.”

  Saba freezes. Can a pair of red shoes get Ponneh lashed? Certainly not here. What lies does Mustafa plan to tell when they reach the komiteh office? He could say anything. The law is a fluid thing in Iran. Saba remembers that early after the revolution, pasdars would go around smelling houses to see if anyone had been eating sturgeon, forbidden because of its lack of scales. That was a crime that could earn a few lashes—based on the proof of a pasdar’s nose—until later Khomeini declared the valuable caviar fish halal.

  Mustafa grabs Ponneh’s arm. A sour taste fills Saba’s mouth.

  Ponneh pulls her arm away hard, and he stumbles back.

  He takes her face in one hand, a gesture that for a second seems tender, his thumb moving in a tiny circle against her cheek. Then he squeezes her mouth open and whispers, “Whore.”

  It is the familiar reckless flash in Ponneh’s eyes that makes Saba move. She drops one of the bags. Oranges and tea spread across the gravel street. “Don’t!” she shouts.

  But Ponneh has already done it. It is far too late now. By the time Saba can restrain her friend, she has slapped a pasdar hard across the face.

  Then Mustafa’s baton is out and Saba can barely distinguish her friend’s body from his. He strikes her on the back, and she crumbles. She screams. He tucks the baton under his arm and pushes her to the ground. In another second Ponneh’s mouth is pressed against the dirt. Mustafa falls to his knees beside her, breathing into her ear while pressing the baton into her back. He mutters something as he lifts her chin toward a tiny alley hidden by the dark. He waits, but she gives him a repulsed look and twists her head out of his grasp.