by Sara Jafari
I have just heard from the client at Purple B and unfortunately you have been unsuccessful. They did offer some feedback which you may find useful:
She is a very smart girl and presented herself well. We were just concerned that she may be a bit timid for our role, which involves meeting with very tough clients. I would also advise her to elaborate on her answers more when in interviews as she came across quite quiet and nervous.
I’m sorry I couldn’t bring better news but I’m sure if you work on your confidence for next time you will do well! Interviews are always great practice. Even if you are unsuccessful, just make sure you use the feedback.
I’m sure we will be able to find something else for you soon.
Thanks,
Hannah
Soraya glanced at the email, skimming over sentences until certain words jumped out at her, words such as “unsuccessful” and “timid.” She barely gave herself pause to take in the news, but instead rang Parvin.
“Would you say I’m timid?”
“Um…” Parvin paused, clearly taken aback by the question. “A bit, yeah, why?”
Why had she chosen to phone her sister? Soraya hated her honesty. She wished Parvin would bother to lie, to make her feel better. She could hardly end the call so abruptly though. Instead she forced herself to continue with it.
“In what way am I timid?”
“I don’t know…you aren’t very assertive, are you?”
Soraya bit her lip, held her phone tight, and looked out of her bedroom window. She could see the railway tracks from New Cross Gate station, a train slowly moving past. It was all rather gray. She studied the scene closely, her nose almost to the glass. The people on the train were smaller than ants, going about their lives.
“I just got rejected from a job,” she said finally.
“Oh—they said you were timid?”
“Well, yeah.” Her breath steamed up the window, so Soraya sat back and drew a love heart with her index finger in the condensation.
“Well, you can always work on that.”
Soraya didn’t want to work on it; she didn’t want to have to change herself, and quite frankly she didn’t even want the job that bad. She wanted a job in which she could be timid and that would be fine—but what job was that?
There was a pause.
Soraya lay down on her bed, put her feet up against her slanted wall, not sure how to word what she would say next. “Do you ever get Muslim guilt?”
Despite it being a made-up phrase, Parvin knew what she meant. “Sometimes, but then I remember we aren’t hurting anyone, so why does it matter?”
While Parvin’s words were not quite what the Quran decreed, they gave reassurance all the same.
“Why? Are you seeing a boy or something?” she pressed.
“Not really,” Soraya muttered.
“Care to elaborate?”
“Nope.”
“Oh, quit worrying and start living, Soraya,” Parvin continued. “Maybe that’s why you’re so timid, you’re always stuck in your own head.”
That comment made Soraya want to say some not very timid things in reply. She settled for “Well, that was rude.”
“But remember to be careful,” Parvin added, a strange edge to her voice.
“Careful?”
“Like…you know.” And then she whispered, “Remember to always use protection.”
Soraya’s cheeks colored, the urge to hang up becoming even greater. “OK, stop. I’m not stupid.”
“No need to get snappy. Aren’t you going to ask what’s new here?”
“Fine. What’s new?”
“Well, for starters, Amir has a new girlfriend. She’s very quiet. Almost too quiet.”
“Huh?”
“She came round for dinner, again! She’s only twenty, which I thought was a bit weird. They talk about getting engaged a lot, but I’m not sure she’s that into it.”
Soraya could feel her irritation turning to outrage. It was one thing for her brother to have “secret” girlfriends, of whom he had many, but another to flaunt them while simultaneously preaching about Islam to his sisters. And her mum and dad’s lack of care about the whole situation brought her anger all the way home. Soraya breathed in deeply, telling herself, It’s nothing new.
“That’s quite a big age gap…interesting. Wait, why do you think she isn’t into it?”
“She just giggled whenever it was brought up. She was quite timid, actually.”
“Like me, you mean?”
“Well, no, you’re a bit more timid than her.”
Soraya’s jaw tightened. She got up from her bed. Perhaps she could work on her timidness, starting with her sister.
“OK, I’ve gotta go, bye!”
She hung up before Parvin could say anything else. Instead of dwelling on the email from the agency, as she inevitably would if it stayed in her in-box, Soraya decided to delete it.
She spent the rest of the day drawing a new illustration. She drew what she imagined her sister Laleh to look like now, and she was smiling. But despite her attempts to draw a woman in her thirties, she couldn’t help but give her teenage qualities, from that one photograph she had of her. Her cheeks were chubby, her eyes youthful and carefree. That was all she knew of her sister.
She wondered why Laleh had ruined her life, leaving her entire family, for a man. How it seemed, judging from the women in her family, that men always seemed to ruin women’s lives.
She texted Parvin then: Do you ever think about Laleh?
Parvin replied: Always.
Soraya let out a long breath. Contemplated replying, but didn’t quite know what to say. What was there to say, when she didn’t know Laleh at all, knew nothing about her?
Her mind began to wander to Magnus. And not for the first time she asked herself what she was doing. A bubble of panic rose in her stomach. She pushed the thought down, vowing to interrogate it at a later date if necessary, hopefully never.
She refreshed her mailbox again and had no new emails. Looming over her was the fact that without any income, and with her quickly dwindling student loan savings, she’d soon have to move back home.
Neda was acutely aware of the middle-aged men who walked past her in the streets, the way their gazes lingered on certain parts of her body: her breasts, thighs, bottom, even her wrists. Everywhere but her face. It seemed women weren’t allowed to walk down the street without being looked at, whistled at. As though walking down the street was akin to being a painting in a gallery or—depending on how you looked at it—a freshly drained lamb in the markets.
She wore a knee-length skirt and a fitted blouse, attire she thought suitably conservative while she worked part-time in the admin department at the hospital. She wore similar outfits to university.
Skipping breakfast, she ran to the bus stop, her feet slamming against the hot ground. She swore she could feel the heat through her sandals. Beads of sweat ran down her forehead; her underarms were already damp with perspiration.
The houses down her street blurred before her eyes, their mismatched grand gates and cream brickwork merging into one. Children played with footballs in the road, their laughter ringing in her ears.
It was only when she slowed down, due to a stitch in her side, that she noticed her neighbors standing outside their houses chatting together. They turned to look at her with amused, inquisitive expressions. She gave them a wave, conscious that it was considered rude not to give them a proper greeting. This was made more embarrassing when she rounded the corner and saw her bus driving away.
She stopped again and rested her hands on her hips while she caught her breath. Grudgingly, she raised her arm limply and hailed a taxi. A red car stopped in the middle of the road and the man inside gestured for her to hurry. Dashing over, she jumped into the bac
k seat.
“The general hospital. Quickly, please, I’m late,” she said, before leaning away from the driver. Her now damp back was sticky against the leather seat.
“Sure,” he said, looking at her through his mirror.
She exhaled, still catching her breath, making a mental note to get fitter. Looking out of the window, she saw great green trees, colorful cars with large rounded tires, and women wearing miniskirts, which seemed to be getting shorter by the day. Murals of the Shah were painted on the buildings they passed, his angular face and dark eyebrows commanding, but despite their grandeur such murals were so commonplace seeing one was like seeing her own face in the mirror.
The taxi driver took a right when he should have taken a left, and began to make his way down an underpass, in the opposite direction from the hospital.
“Where are you going? The hospital is the other way,” she said sharply, before letting out a tut. “How do you not know where it is?”
He said nothing, and the silence dragged on. Her hands were suddenly slick with sweat, her whole body damp in the heat.
“Excuse me, sir? Where are we going?”
“To my house,” he replied gently, his gaze on the traffic ahead.
Her whole body felt cold then.
“What?” she yelled, looking at the meter. He was driving at 120 kilometers per hour, like all the other cars on the motorway. She looked at the door. It was not locked. “Why?”
His grip tightened around the steering wheel. “I need to get something from my house first.”
“What?” Her thoughts were jumbled—what did he need to get and why had he let her get in the car when he had errands to do?—and each new question jostled its way to the front of her mind. And then one jumped out, stuck in her throat, and lodged itself there.
Was she even in a taxi?
It wasn’t always clear-cut, regular cars and taxis weren’t easily distinguishable. Arguably, anyone could be a taxi driver. She’d heard before of girls being abducted by men pretending to be taxi drivers, but it never happened to people she knew, not people like her.
“Let me out now!” she yelled.
“Darling, that’s not possible, we’re on a motorway,” he drawled.
She peered at him. He was old enough to be her father, even had the same thick black mustache and receding hairline Baba had.
For once Neda was speechless.
“You have beautiful legs,” he said, again quietly.
“What?” she spat. She wanted to smack him, beat him, and that’s exactly what she planned to do when the car stopped.
“I saw you running. Lovely, lovely legs.”
“Take me back, now!”
“Why did you get in the car, then? Dressed in a skirt like that.” He let out a low whistle.
The car slowed as he drove down an exit ramp, and then there were shops again, people walking the street, billboards of glamorous American movie stars, cinemas, and French restaurants. It was bizarre that those around her shopping, hand in hand, were unaware that she was being abducted.
He continued driving more slowly now, needing to seem inconspicuous among the pedestrians nearby. Neda’s hand was firmly on the door handle. It slipped against her clammy palm.
She pulled on the handle while the car was moving.
He noticed and attempted to speed up. She closed her eyes and pushed the door open, jumping and rolling into the open gutter. She landed roughly on her side in a stream of dirty water, one of the many that ran along the streets in Tehran. Immediately she felt a surge of pain and wondered if she’d broken her shoulder or arm. She could almost feel the dirty brown water seeping into her grazed legs and arms.
The car sped off with its passenger door still open. She wanted to make a note of the registration plate, but all she could do was lie dazed in the water, her heart beating painfully loud and fast in her chest, her whole body numb. Passersby ran over.
“What happened?”
“Are you OK?”
“What’s going on?”
Concern was etched on their faces. But all Neda could think was that she’d had enough. Had enough of men leering at her, of her friends being groped in the street. Abductions such as these were commonplace and yet nothing was being done about it.
She wanted control.
* * *
—
A week later she joined the Islamic Society at university. It was something she had always meant to do, but had put off as a not quite pressing task. To begin with, she tentatively sounded out the idea of wearing a hijab to her friends.
“It’s much better—you have more freedom, in fact!” she said to her best friend.
“Oh, come on, it’s so old-fashioned,” the friend replied. “I bet you won’t last a week.”
“No, it’s Islamic. As Muslim women we should wear it—”
“Neda, just because you were stupid enough to get in a car with a donkey doesn’t mean you should preach to us, understand?”
And when Maman saw Neda attempting to leave the house one day wearing a hijab, she stopped her in her tracks.
“What are you doing?”
“I have my reasons, Maman,” Neda began. “If you don’t like it, talk to Allah, not me.”
Maman’s mouth was wide open. But because there was nothing she could say, all she did was scowl. It was at that point Maman and Neda finally stopped even trying to understand each other.
Maman couldn’t ask her daughter to take her hijab off. Her family classed themselves as Muslim despite Neda being the only one to wear a hijab and pray five times a day. They prayed even if they were not stringent about when and how many times a day, whereas prayer time had always kept Neda sane and calm. It gave her something to work towards. And in times of hardship, it gave her something to hold on to.
Her family liked Western ideas, the ones the Shah had introduced to Iran, though admittedly not the way these had escalated. It was the cause of many heated discussions during family parties. There were those who appreciated how the Shah had transformed Iran into a modern country, and those who focused on the spreading slums, the widening gap between the rich and poor. What they all wanted was democracy and modernity, while upholding Persian culture—an impossible combination, it seemed.
Neda was unsure where she fitted into all this. Her reason for wearing a hijab was twofold: she would become closer to Allah, and she would protect herself from those around her. She tried to explain this to her friends: that it wasn’t going against the Shah’s regime; it wasn’t a political statement as such, but a personal one. But conversations with others were much the same as those with her maman and best friend; they didn’t understand her way of liberating herself. Instead they turned defensive because they saw Neda’s hijab as a reminder that as Muslim women they too should be covering themselves, and they didn’t want to.
And so, Neda became one of only four girls at her university to wear a hijab.
Soraya was guilt-tripped into going back to Brighton every other weekend. All her mum had to say was either “We miss you” or “Family is important” and she would make arrangements to travel down. Soraya’s already nervous disposition meant her mum’s hidden messages dug deep inside of her. They translated to: appreciate your time with us because one day we’ll be gone. Rich when her mum herself had left Iran over thirty years ago and rarely went back to visit her own mother.
The four-story Nazari house was embarrassingly cluttered and everything inside was mismatched. It might have been a nice place to be had they known how to decorate it. The basement, which would be a separate flat in London, was where Parvin stayed, when she wasn’t living and working in Bahrain. Amir occupied the farthest room on the ground floor, with his own back entrance, all the better for sneaking girls in. On the second floor were their mum’s and dad’s separate rooms. They were well beyond
the two-beds-in-one-room stage, and in the past year had chosen to keep to separate spaces. However, this was not a welcome transition. Her dad had moved into the room none of the family had gone into for over a decade, and claimed it as his own.
Soraya resided in the attic, which had an abundance of natural light, something she missed in her London flat. Being in this bedroom in the daytime, with the sun shining on her face, was enough to lift her mood. It was curious how similar to houseplants humans were. How sunlight could lift you up when you were perilously close to drooping.
Soraya sat on her bed, the sheets cold against her legs. Her laptop was open and she was working on an illustration.
When her anxiety was heightened, drawing helped calm her; it gave her hands and mind something to focus on. Friends sometimes asked her to draw for their zines, or she posted photos on her Instagram, developing a portfolio for herself, though she’d never tell anyone that was what she was doing. If she said it aloud and enough people knew about it, that meant if she failed everyone would know. Then her shortcomings would become abundantly clear to all.
She heard the staircase creak under the soft footsteps that were making their way up to her room.
“Soraya!” Parvin called, in a voice an octave too high.
“Yeah?” Soraya was always aware of how low and moany her own voice sounded in comparison to her sister’s.
“What you doing?” Parvin plopped her small body down onto Soraya’s bed. She was wearing leggings and a baggy jumper, yet somehow still looked chic. Soraya looked at her own outfit: black jeans and a tucked-in white T-shirt. She could see a small roll of belly fat. When she straightened up it flattened.
Quickly, she closed her laptop. “Nothing—”
Soraya wasn’t given the opportunity to finish as Parvin spoke over her. “Oh, God, I have to tell you something!”
“OK…”
“Amir snuck a girl in last night.”
Soraya was irritated but not surprised. One rule for men and another for women was the running theme in their family.