The Mismatch

by Sara Jafari

  As Parvin walked she swished her hips, keeping her head low while she typed on her phone. Soraya had spent all of the night before prepping her hair and skin for graduation, and two hours on her hair and makeup in the morning, but looking at her sister now she still didn’t feel like it was enough. She resisted the urge to check whether Magnus was looking at Parvin.

  Amir towered over them, somehow having dodged the Nazari family’s small gene. He was grinning at Soraya, dimples prominent in his cheeks, which seemed impossible considering he had a beard. Perhaps she was only imagining his dimples from when he was younger. Despite his constant criticism of his sisters it was clear Amir was proud of them, which made it difficult, but not impossible, for them to resent his frequent sexist comments.

  “Congratulations,” they all said, in semi-unison.

  “Thanks,” Soraya said, before she saw her mum’s gaze. She followed it to the waiter, who was holding a tray of canapés. The Nazari family’s greatest pleasure in life was food. They didn’t all, bar Parvin, have rounded bellies for no reason. As a result the family often attempted various diets to lose their stomach fat. Soraya herself had gained and lost the same five pounds for the last six years—yo-yo dieting was nothing if not normal in their household.

  “Where’s Dad?” Soraya asked her mum.

  “He was tired so he stayed at home.” Her mum looked to Amir for help but it was Parvin who spoke next.

  “You have us here. Anyway you’d only moan if he came.” Soraya felt a twitch of irritation. Nothing was ever a big deal unless it affected Parvin.

  She wasn’t even sure why she had gotten it into her head that he would show up. As she had wanted to say to Magnus before: she knew all too well what it was like to have a disappointing parent.

  Ever since she was a child, Neda was sure of one thing: she wanted to do more. More than her school friends were doing, what her mother did, and what was expected of her. She didn’t want to stop learning, or stop working, once she married. She couldn’t fathom the idea of no longer expanding her brain academically—because, after all, weren’t human beings meant to challenge themselves?

  She soaked up information, would become obsessed with subjects at school until she mastered them. And yet, secretly, she was intrigued by romance, though she didn’t dare approach it. That was something she knew she needed real-life experience of in order to begin to truly understand it. While her dad was liberal enough to drink red wine in the evening, this liberalism did not extend to approving of his daughters talking to the opposite sex. And even if he did let her, she wasn’t sure she would want to talk to boys. Learning from books was safe, risk-free. Talking to boys, men, was not.

  Her academic success was not something her mother applauded. Maman wanted her to “act more like a girl,” beginning by encouraging her to wear makeup. This was reinforced by Reza Shah calling for women to wear shorter skirts, be liberated, be his version of free. But Neda thought the whole point of freedom was to have choice. What was the point of freedom if it meant you were uncomfortable and not allowed to be quite yourself? How was that freedom?

  It was clear to Neda that she was a disappointment to Maman; their relationship had always been strained. Neda had tried to gain her mother’s affection as every nonfavorite child does, but she had nine siblings to compete with. Maman disagreed with birth control and had babies right until her menopause hit. People in the neighborhood often made fun of her, saying she had a “large appetite.” And in being one of her eldest, Neda was forced into maturity—or at least nanny duties—at a very early age, which meant Maman often saw her more as the help than as her daughter.

  Days after Neda’s seventeenth birthday, she put her hair in rollers the night before, shakily lined her eyes with black kohl, and made her cheeks a rosy pink. She resembled a doll. It was a stark contrast to her normally plain look. But Maman was too busy to notice this change, focusing on her younger children, ordering Neda around without looking at her.

  “Don’t you think I look different?” Neda asked.

  Maman looked at her face, briefly; it was only a flash of a look, but it was enough. “What have you done to yourself? You look like a clown.” She laughed, a raucous, infuriating sound. So, not quite the doll Neda had envisaged herself as.

  Tears stung her eyes, and she wiped them away before they ran down her freshly blushed cheeks. In the process she smudged her eyeliner.

  Rather than draw any further attention to herself, Neda retreated to the bathroom. She heard Maman call her name, feebly, before giving up and forgetting about the incident entirely.

  Neda washed her face with a bar of soap and cold water, allowing the suds to get into her eyes, relishing the sting, until she had to press her fingers against her closed lids to bring herself momentary relief.

  It was then that she finally learnt she couldn’t force Maman to appreciate her, to like her, rather than love her out of obligation. Sometimes, obligatory love had to be enough. But Neda knew that when she married, she would make sure it was a love match. She needed to break the cycle she was born into, of being misunderstood and lonely. So at night she dreamt of her perfect match, and wondered if he was dreaming of her too.

  “Ten pounds for a burger without chips?” her mum muttered, taking her reading glasses off her face, no longer wishing to see the menu or the prices.

  Instead she inspected the glass of tap water that had been handed to her, and Soraya could see her gaze settle on the faint lipstick mark on the rim. She hadn’t taken a sip yet. She was often vocal about not understanding independent cafés and restaurants that were intentionally laid-back; her main qualm was that they looked, and often were, dirty. Dining out with her mum made Soraya hyperaware of her surroundings. Like how the waiter put the cutlery down in a heap, with no napkin underneath, expecting them to set their places themselves. And in such cases, she could almost hear her mother thinking, When did they last disinfect the table?

  As the family had sat down, Soraya had felt a lingering, indescribable pang about getting a table for four and not five. And then she remembered that if things were different there would actually have been six of them at her graduation lunch.

  Guilt overwhelmed her then; she had been so focused on herself she had almost forgotten about Laleh.

  They were squeezed together in a raised dining booth, with Soraya and her mum on one side, and Parvin and Amir on the other. Amir spread himself sideways, meaning Parvin was on the edge of the banquette, and opposite him, Soraya had to tuck her feet under her seat. With any other man, she might have made a point of spreading herself too, but she let it slide with her brother. She had learnt it wasn’t worth the argument.

  Parvin distributed the knives and forks while Amir tore one of the napkins into little pieces. Soraya had no appetite but wanted the food to hurry up.

  “Take a picture of me and my graduate daughter,” her mum said, passing her phone to Parvin.

  Soraya’s mouth was aching from fake smiling all day. She tilted her head to the side slightly, and her mum put an arm around her, her own chin high with pride.

  “One, two, three, smile!” Parvin said. “Oh, Mum!” Parvin came and adjusted her mum’s hijab. “OK, one more time. C’mon, Soraya, smile a bit more, it’s your graduation!”

  “Beautiful,” her mum said when she saw the picture, before sending the photos from the day to the family WhatsApp group.

  Her dad replied promptly: O I see Your all going for food without me.

  Soraya’s mouth twitched. Parvin and Amir said nothing.

  “I shouldn’t have sent them to the group,” her mum said. “It looks like I’m showing off.”

  “Well, he could have come!” Soraya blurted.

  “I know, darling,” her mum said. “He gets jealous, though.”

  The whole situation was baffling—but why was Soraya even surprised?

  “It
’s my graduation. He should have come; he has no right to be jealous. He went to Parvin and Amir’s graduation—why not mine?”

  “It’s probably better he didn’t come. He would have made us leave early because he was tired,” her mum said.

  “And he would have ordered the most expensive thing on the menu. Remember when he did that at mine,” Parvin said.

  “And then say he doesn’t like it after one bite.” Amir chuckled. “Poor man, I wish he was here.”

  Soraya did too; despite all the pain he perpetually caused, he should have been here. It was clear her siblings enjoyed his company; they brightened up around him. She wondered why she didn’t, why she held so much resentment towards him that it felt like a burning coal deep in her core. He had always been an absent parent, so she had nothing to compare his behavior to, and yet he was the person who had put so much pressure on her to do well in school. When she got into Goldsmiths with AAB in her A levels, his first response was not “Congratulations” but instead, “Why not three A’s?”

  All she wanted was for him to show he cared. And she hated herself for that.

  “He chose not to be here, he’s not a ‘poor man,’ ” Soraya said.

  “He’s not well,” Amir said.

  Soraya sighed. It was at moments like these that she was most aware she was the only person in the family who didn’t make excuses for their dad. Despite her and Parvin being close in some respects, she was reminded that Amir and Parvin were twins and would always band together. If things had been different, maybe she would have had a sister on her side in such arguments.

  “You know, we wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for him.” This was the pathetic card Amir always dealt.

  “It’s hardly impressive to have sperm…” Soraya muttered, very, very quietly.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  Parvin was now on her phone while her mum watched her fighting children, her hands linked together on the tabletop, a small frown on her face.

  “See, it is better that it’s just us,” she said.

  Soraya, in a way, agreed, but it was the principle of the thing.

  “Who was that English boy cheering for you anyway?” Amir asked.

  There was a short silence.

  “Someone from my course,” she said. She could almost feel Parvin imploring her to think of a good excuse. “He’s gay, you do know that, right?” She panicked and said it too quickly.

  Her mum visibly relaxed. “Is he? He didn’t look it.”

  “Well, he is.”

  “He’s definitely not gay,” Amir said.

  “Do you want to bet? He’s going out with Oliver,” Soraya said.

  Amir smiled, almost laughing. “Seriously?”

  “Yes, that’s why he cheered for me, Oliver asked him to.”

  Despite Soraya’s cool tone, she felt herself sweating. Under the table, she picked at the cuticle by her forefinger.

  Why had Magnus cheered for her? She had tried not to think about it, but now, with him mentioned again by her family, she couldn’t help but admit to herself that she wanted to know. Before she might have thought he was being sarcastic, a typical lad move, but now she wondered whether he was doing it out of kindness. But, with it being the end of university, she might never see him again to find out. This fact was surprisingly disappointing to her. She had spent three years around this person, but now she would no longer see him again if she wished she could.

  She wondered if he was having lunch with his family too. Had his dad sobered up? She hoped so. Thinking about his comments about marriage being wrong, now that she had heard his parents speaking, she wondered if perhaps he was talking about his parents, rather than his own entanglements. It would make sense.

  She loved love, but thinking back to what the women in her family had lost for it, she wondered if some part of her too naturally shied away from the idea of belonging to another. Maybe this was why she was hesitant to become romantically involved with anyone. Maybe she did see Magnus’s point after all.

  She felt a bit of hard skin by her nail, ready to be pulled. She circled it with her middle finger, waiting.

  The problem with keeping secrets from her family was that the thing she was trying to hide from them often ended up being masked by a web of lies that were difficult to keep up with.

  Her dad messaged again: Bring me food theres nothing in house.

  Her mum called the waitress over.

  Soraya yanked the skin off and felt the familiar sting.

  The scent of cannabis was everywhere.

  Soraya wrinkled her nose ever so slightly. In the damp room, one of many in the Victorian ten-bedroom house, there were at least a dozen people clustered together chatting. The room was sparsely furnished, containing only a double bed, a rectangular mirror, a wooden desk, and a tall wardrobe. They were all in different shades of brown veneer that clashed with the threadbare gray carpet. In one corner was an orange traffic cone.

  The people who lived in the house had mere days left on their tenancy agreement, hence the large scale of the party. It appeared people from her university planned to either renew the contracts for their London flats and houses, with the hope of finding a job in the city, if, like Soraya, they hadn’t already, or move back home. Some, with money she couldn’t fathom having, were soon to leave London to travel the world.

  Each room had been set up to play different music. In some, people smoked weed, while in others people danced to techno.

  She had never been to such a large party before, and until now had never seen some of her classmates outside of seminars either. Different groups mixed together, popular artsy people talked to the sports lads, and those she considered more reclusive and enigmatic grouped together in a corner drinking wine straight from the bottle.

  Soraya sat in one of the more chilled rooms, both atmospherically and in temperature. The bed she perched on was lumpy and she had been stranded with a girl she didn’t know well—and whose name she didn’t remember. She had hoped it would come up in conversation.

  It hadn’t.

  The girl was white with blond dreadlocks, a fact that Soraya repeatedly tried to move past.

  “I just don’t want to start the real world. I’m not ready to be an adult, you know,” the girl was saying. She spoke slowly, her lips curled into a lazy smile.

  Soraya had opened her mouth to respond when something caught her eye. In the mirror on the wall opposite her, she could see Magnus entering the room, and he was staring at her. Not straight at her but through the mirror. She quickly directed her attention back to the unknown girl and muttered noncommittally.

  “I know, right.”

  “It’s like, I studied anthropology because I just care so much,” the girl was saying. “You know? I want to learn, make a difference, go to other countries, really experience life. Help people. So I guess I do want to start the real world, but not right now.”

  “Yeah, I totally know what you mean.”

  Soraya turned her body towards Magnus, but he was no longer looking at her, now engaged in conversation with his friends.

  Magnus wore a three-button T-shirt in an ugly shade of green. His muscles strained against the fabric, his skin smooth and hard-looking. She could understand why people would find muscles like that attractive, but it was the cockiness that attached itself to athletic men that ruined everything.

  The boys looked like they all played rugby with him, and the girls were white and slender, dressed in crop tops and tight-fitting jeans. They lapped up all the jokes the boys made—Magnus’s in particular—giggling and flicking their hair, and she noticed one of the girls leaning closer to him, touching his arm while she laughed at something he’d said. It was as if the girls were houseplants in desperate need of light, and the boys were the sun.

  She shook her head,
wishing to rid herself of the tragic scene she was witnessing.

  “Urgh, they’re here,” the girl said.

  “They…?” Soraya began, before turning to find her companion’s gaze fixed on Magnus. “Oh, what do you mean?”

  “Nothing. I fucked one of their housemates a few times—he was shit anyway. You know when you have to pretend to come because you just want it all to end? Yeah, it was that bad.” Soraya nodded, as though she knew perfectly well. “Anyway, out of nowhere he ghosted me and when I finally managed to get hold of him he used the pathetic ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ excuse. I fucking know it’s not me—you never made me come, you bastard!”

  She shouted the last bit, which caused people to turn her way and laugh under their breath. Soraya’s face colored.

  “Well, he sounds like a knob,” she said, looking at her phone for an escape. She saw someone had re-posted one of the illustrations she had posted online. It made her smile, momentarily.

  While she would never call herself an artist, Soraya had always drawn, even as a young child. She mainly drew people, animals, and plants. The backgrounds to her illustrations tended to be pastel-colored, the outlines of her drawings black and thick.

  She was self-taught, so her illustrations didn’t always turn out as she planned. She hadn’t mastered the art of drawing eyes, so always drew them as shaded-in semicircles, and coined that her “style.”

  In her art she attempted to reflect the world around her. She sometimes drew women in underwear, their stretch marks on show, their belly pouches hanging proudly. And yet, despite drawing women in this way, and knowing it was normal, she still had hang-ups about her own body.

  “And then Magnus totally fucked over my friend Lucy,” the blond girl hissed under her breath. “It’s been like six months and she still isn’t over him. He’s a total fuck boy.”