Teaspoon of Earth and Sea (9781101601990)

by Nayeri, Dina

  Mahtab wipes her tears with a checkered scarf that no longer holds so much meaning in comparison. When she thinks of Cameron now, she no longer hates him. Not after witnessing the tragedy on the grainy tape. She understands now about the intangible things that must be done by people just like him. He is a good man, a man with all the virility in the world despite what his father might think, because he is willing to go back to this place that wants to kill him for his tastes; to risk this fate in order to live a life that is important. She thinks back to a time when she was the top half of a starfish and decides that it is better to cherish it, the beautiful memory, than to hate him for not desiring her.

  Oh, but he did want you, Mahtab. There is more than one way to long for someone. And look at Cameron now, making use of his life. He is off repaying the universe for his good fortune. Mahtab will do the same.

  She will live a courageous life, like Daniel LaRusso of The Karate Kid or Professor Keating of Dead Poets Society—both so brave in the face of a formidable evil. As she prepares her report based on all the evidence Ponneh has sent to her—Dr. Zohreh’s testimonial, the pictures, and the video—she considers the Aryanpur credit card. It will not give her freedom from her desires, she realizes now. Secret unearned wealth never does. Deep down she knows that she will have such freedom only by living the kind of life Maman wanted, a significant life, a life noticed by the world.

  And there you have it. Mahtab spends one summer in New York and conquers an Immigrant Worry that some people live with forever, because it takes an exceptional person to overcome it—the one about making a mark in a strange land. In two weeks’ time, the front page of The New York Times will shout a bitter-tasting truth to the world:

  THE REVOLUTION IS NOT OVER!

  by Mahtab Hafezi, Harvard Class of 1992

  Oh, Mahtab joon. You have done so well. So very well indeed. You have made me and our parents proud. Can you imagine what Maman would say if she were to see your name stamped thickly in finger-staining black ink and distributed across oceans?

  To celebrate, Mahtab and her friends go dancing in a real New York City nightclub with flashing lights and flowing cocktails. They dance alone, no escorts. They jump up and down in short skirts and bejeweled tops, as in the best music videos, and Mahtab is the cause of their joy, the very center of it. She is finished with the poor Aryan for now. She doesn’t need a partner. The room is full of men and women together, but it is unlike the clubs she used to walk past at Harvard, with boys appraising scantily clad women at the door—a white scarf transforming into a turban and frightening her away. Here she is in charge, and there are no pasdars lurking in dark alleys.

  When I imagine her there, I think of the scene in Dead Poets Society where the boys dance secretly at night in a way very different from their polite suit-and-tie functions. Their dancing is tribal, much like the men from Cheshmeh. They dance to release, to impress, to express ecstasy, madness, and a too-wild-for-daylight kind of glee. Mahtab is a wild thing now, a free creature. She can do as she wants, mullahs and pasdars be damned.

  She sends safe wishes to Cameron, her homeward-bound friend. Maybe one day she will love an American man instead. American men may not dance, but they are experts at understanding women like Mahtab. And it seems they pride themselves in not having their own needs. Do you think this is true of all of them, or just the movie men? Iranian men are brimming with their own raw, seething hopes. They call out to us to care for them, to save them—without so much as a name in the byline. I wish sometimes to have one of them say to me, “You, Saba Hafezi, impress me.” They never would, not the least of them. We women have become too strong in that unshakable, garlic-fisted way, and we frighten them. But if one of them were to write a love song for me, it wouldn’t be full of old-world dramas. It wouldn’t be about dying or forever things. It would simply say this: “Saba joon, you’ve done so well.”

  Soon I will find enough courage to break free from this place, and maybe I will be brave enough to hide that videotape in my luggage. I asked the Tehrani to smuggle it out of Iran, to send it to someone important, a journalist or a professor, maybe one at Harvard. But he said it was too risky and refused. It is a frightening thing, to abandon a home.

  One heart tells me to go.

  Another tells me to stay.

  But I will try. That much I promise . . . because you, dear sister, impress me.

  Chapter Fourteen

  SUMMER 1991

  Saba sits in a chair by the window in the guest room where she now keeps all her belongings, listening to her tapes and watching the small television she has moved here. On her lap rests a glass with Abbas’s medicine, which she mixes absentmindedly, stirring in sour-cherry syrup. He has trouble swallowing pills, so this is how he takes his heart medication, though Saba finds it unwise. Each time after he drinks it, she fills the glass with water and gives him that too, to get every last molecule. Today she mixes the drink on a tray in her room instead of in the kitchen to avoid having to talk to him when he comes home. He has deteriorated in recent months, is almost blind now, and though she refuses to forgive him, she has softened toward him because of his obvious weakness. In a few minutes he will knock on his way to bed and ask her for the medicine. This is their routine.

  Saba stares out into the yard, where the roses Ponneh and Reza planted for her in the spring are bathing the garden in fragrant yellow dust, and she becomes unaware of the work of her hands. She watches. Stirs. Watches. Stirs. In the background her favorite American drama replays a story she has nearly memorized—a couple begins their romance in an Italian restaurant. Soon she will need new videotapes, new dialogue, new words, new glimpses of American life. These days she relies on distractions for comfort.

  She thrusts a few cherries into the cherry pitter, extracts the pits with a snap of her wrist, and drops them into her own medicine-free glass, remembering the days when she and Mahtab used to steal the cherry pitter, a rock, and a bowl of fruit, and hide in their bedroom pitting cherries, eating unripe almonds with salt, and smashing apricot pits for the nut. Sometimes their father would have procured a banana, a luxury after the revolution.

  The sharbat is cold and sweet, and splashes red against her teeth and tongue. The ice clinks in the glass as she empties it with three gulps, so she doesn’t hear the knock on her door. Abbas enters tentatively, as he has done every night for months. He clutches something wrapped in a newspaper. It smells like meat and is soaking through the pages. Saba doesn’t ask about it, because even the casual conversations of their first year are gone now. He reaches for the glass, thanks her, and takes a few distracted sips. He mumbles as he leaves, “Tomorrow, maybe ab-goosht.” Lamb stew. Saba decides she would prefer chicken, and so that is what she will make.

  “Let me see you drink it all,” she says. He obeys. She takes back the glass and fills it again from a jug of water. He drains that too before he slips out.

  Half an hour later she heads to the bathroom. In the hall she runs into Abbas, still gripping his glass. Is he aware of how much time he wastes shuffling around? She makes a disgusted face at his old age, at his feeble mind, at everything that is her husband.

  She holds his gaze, watery, gray, flanked by intricate webs of worn skin, the hopeful look of a small child who wonders if his bad behavior has been forgotten. She frowns at this pathetic old man who she has married, small, bent, with folds of skin gathered up around his neck, as though the flesh were fleeing from his face. His paunchy stomach rises and falls in his white undershirt and enormous gray pajama pants. “Where are you going?” he asks, his breath raspy, his eyes pleading. “Are you going to read tonight?” She knows what he wants, that this wretched man wants her to forget, wants to hold her again, to feel the warmth of human company. He has tiptoed around the house since the Dallak Day, always hoping, silently begging. Somewhere inside she feels sympathy, like a lump of coal glowing with the first hint of ora
nge and red, but her anger is torrential and it douses the tiny flame.

  Abbas drops his gaze and clears his throat. She can see that what she does to him daily is so much worse than any court’s judgment. Maybe he craves punishment so that this misery can end. But she can’t give him release, this man who has cost her a real life. Saba responds coldly, “Go to bed, Abbas. I like to read alone.”

  He gives her the empty glass. “Yes . . . I should get some rest.” He peeks at her face again. “Do you want me to buy more fruit tomorrow? I noticed you’re eating a lot of fruit this summer . . . very healthy.”

  “I can buy my own fruit.”

  “Would you like some money? Maybe to buy some books.”

  “I have a bank account,” she says, “remember?” Agha Hafezi has made certain of this provision for his daughter in her marriage contract.

  Abbas nods. “Well, I thought maybe you would like to have some of your young friends for dinner. If you want that . . . um . . . I will be a good host. I know a good joke.”

  She stares into his cloudy eyes and thinks she is in danger of accepting his kindness. The sad way he can’t decide if he is her husband or her father. She senses her resolve about to weaken and walks away. He is just an old man, like Agha Mansoori. . . . But no, Agha Mansoori loved his wife more than himself. How can she dishonor his memory by comparing that sweet, gentle man to the monster who lives in her house?

  She takes the dirty glass to the kitchen. She washes it and replaces the medicines in Abbas’s private cabinet. One of the bottles, which was half full with Abbas’s blood thinners when she began her nightly routine, now falls with frightening lightness in her hand. A few remaining pills rattle around. She counts them, her heart fluttering with memories of Agha Mansoori and his last attempts at tricking fate and death. But she can’t recall the right number of pills. Did Abbas realize that the medicine was in the drink? What if he forgot the routine and thought she was offering something to wash it down?

  He couldn’t have. This has been their routine from the start. Medicine in the drink. Besides, Abbas knows the dangers of taking more than the precise dose of the pills. He takes them to prevent clots and to aid blood flow to his heart. Too much can cause fatal bleeding and a stroke. No, she thinks. He’s the one who explained this to me.

  Later in the night Saba hears Abbas call for her. She crouches outside his door. He seems confused. He is saying nonsensical things, slurring the simple syllables of her name. There is a knock, like he has run into something. She waits behind the door, but does not go in. Instead she leans against the wall and pulls her knees to her chest, listening to her husband struggle. Then he is silent again for a few minutes before he begins snoring. Once or twice she falls asleep but is jolted awake by Abbas’s pained voice and the pounding of her own heart. How many pills were left in the bottle before tonight?

  She thinks about calling the doctor. In a moment of quiet, she opens the door and goes to Abbas. She leans over him and listens to his breathing, which seems normal.

  “Should I call the doctor?” she whispers, uncertain that he can hear. Then he lets out a small moan and an unexplained panic rises inside her, exactly like the one she felt during the ten days of caring for Agha Mansoori. Each morning that he hobbled to his door a minute late, she felt this same urgent dread.

  She runs to the phone and dials the doctor’s number, jamming her fingers in the rotary holes and switching to a pencil because her hands are shaking. No one answers. She wonders if she should go out to find him. But he lives in the neighboring village and is only a general practitioner. The clinic in the town center will be closed—and it employs only family doctors, nurses, and midwives. She would have to drive an hour to Rasht to find Abbas’s heart specialist or a hospital. Should she call an ambulance? It would probably take as long. Finally she dials the number of Ponneh’s neighbor, the one around the corner who has a phone and can fetch her friend.

  Since the hanging, Ponneh hasn’t been as readily available to Saba as she used to be. Saba suspects her friend has become more involved with Dr. Zohreh. But Ponneh makes the time to visit a few times a week, plants herbs in Saba’s garden and cooks with her.

  The phone rings ten minutes later and a breathless Ponneh demands to know what has happened, why her neighbor dragged her from sleep to come to the phone. On hearing the explanation, she only says, “I’m on my way,” and hangs up.

  Saba returns to check on Abbas. His moaning calms for a while, and she assures herself that all is well until she sees the vomit in the corner of the bed. She hurries to the kitchen to get him some water and a towel, and considers this unexpected terror at the possibility of his death. How could it be, when she has been dreaming of this day for so long? She tries to get Abbas to drink the water, cleans him off, then lies outside his door again. Through fits of sleep, she dreams of a somber tune about an American fisherman on a boat called Alexa. The song makes her think of Mahtab and the rough hands of the fisherman who pulled her out of the Caspian. In her stupor, she hears Abbas’s voice and the unbearable sound makes her gulp for breath.

  She wakes up to Ponneh shaking her shoulder. “How is the old devil?”

  “Shhh,” Saba warns. “Don’t say these things. What if he dies?”

  “What if?” Ponneh looks shocked and amused. “Saba, this is a long time coming. He’s so old. He’s had much more time than he deserves. We’ll just sit and wait.”

  Ponneh’s icy expression jars her. Abbas calls out and Saba rushes to his side. A pleading look colors his uneven gaze, reminding her of all the little cruelties she heaped on him for what might be the last year of his life. Just a few hours ago he begged to buy her fruit, to watch her read or entertain her friends, and she brushed him aside like a market peddler. She touches the cold, slack skin of his hand. “I’m sorry,” she whispers.

  Ponneh is pacing behind them, her scarf already discarded. As soon as the apology leaves Saba’s lips, Ponneh lets out a breathless snort. “Saba, you will regret this, I promise you. You’ll hate yourself forever if you let your emotions get the better of you. Tell him what he did was unforgivable. You’ll never get another chance.”

  “Stop it! I’m doing my best,” Saba says. “The doctor wasn’t answering his phone before. Please just try calling him again. Actually, call the ambulance too.”

  Ponneh exhales loudly in protest as she stomps into the living room to make the call. She returns a minute later and says, “He’s coming soon.”

  “When?”

  “I said soon!” Ponneh sounds angry, as if it were her life that’s spiraling out of control. She taps her feet as Saba hunts for clues on Abbas’s tongue, in his eyelids. How pale are they supposed to be? She remembers something the doctor said about his arms.

  “Abbas jan, lift your arm,” she shouts. “Lift your arm for me.” No response.

  Ponneh mumbles, “You’ll regret it.”

  When she can find nothing else to occupy her, Saba sits on a chair next to Abbas’s bed and watches him. Ponneh leans over the old man and listens to his heart, her hair falling over his chest. She looks like a young girl observing a sleeping grandfather. Maybe she expects that Abbas will die tonight. His eyes are cold, chilling to watch.

  Did Saba do something wrong? She always puts the medicine in the drink. That was their agreement. But it’s true that she has been preoccupied lately. Did she carry out one of her latent fantasies? Is it possible? No. She did nothing. Except this: for a moment, as she watched television and dreamed of her sister, she let someone else take over, some wild creature that lives inside and survives on crumbs. A monster that never has its own way. Sometimes during her cruelest daydreams, when Abbas is thrown into the Caspian or disemboweled, she fears she is no different from the Basiji women. That she too has a beast with a Cheshire grin waiting inside, and the only reason hers is safely caged is that she has wealth and family. An
empty stomach is a powerful motivator, and maybe, swallowed up in her own desires and facing another lonely, hungry sundown, Saba let go and the banshee found a way to get free. Did she mix a bit more sour cherry into the drink than usual? Was she trying to cover up some foul taste?

  “No,” Saba says aloud. She did nothing. She counted a perfect dose.

  She returns to the kitchen to inspect the glasses because she will never be able to live with such a mistake. But they are already washed. She comes back to the room and leans beside Abbas, takes his hand in both of hers. “Abbas, the doctor is coming. But you have to tell me, did you take medicine with the juice?” She searches his eyes. “Tell me.”

  He makes an incomprehensible noise. Then he seems to nod.

  Relief and panic wash over her, followed immediately by disbelief. “Don’t you remember the routine? I put your pills in the glass!” He nods again and she wonders if he knows what he is saying.

  Before she has a chance to think, Ponneh is beside her. “Tell him,” she whispers. “Saba jan, tell him now.”

  There is too much pressure from all sides and she turns and screams at Ponneh, “What do you want me to say? What? You were supposed to come over and help me! What are you doing? And where the hell is the doctor?”

  Ponneh doesn’t raise her voice. She says, “I never called.”

  Saba is frozen. She feels around for her chair and drops into it.

  “Have you forgotten that day?” Ponneh yells. “Remember the women and their tools and the way they threw you around like a rag?” Saba rests her face in her hands and pants into the air between her legs. She can’t decide if she should get up to call the doctor or if it’s too late. Has Abbas heard any of their conversation? Ponneh doesn’t seem to register Abbas’s presence. “I know you’re emotional, and it’s easy to forget when you look at how old he is . . . and how sad it is to be near death. And you know what else, Saba jan, I know you don’t want to be alone. But you won’t be. You have me, and a real family. And you have Reza.” Ponneh sits on the ground beside her chair. She glances at Abbas, interlaces her fingers with Saba’s, and says in a childish voice, “The three of us forever.”