by Sara Jafari
His chest hair scratched against Neda’s neck and she moved away. “Maybe he just needs more time,” she mused.
“It’s a hard thing giving your daughter away…I could try again, I suppose?”
Hossein had rung Baba numerous times and shown up at her family home, but he was always met with the same icy silence, or if Baba had to talk it was monosyllabic, causing Maman to overcompensate.
The arrival of a letter in the post soon shook up their routine. Shook up their entire lives.
“What do you think?” Neda tentatively asked Hossein. They sat cross-legged on the sofreh. He had a piece of bread lathered in honey almost to his mouth, and he held it there contemplating her words. A drip of honey fell from the bread and left a trail on the sofreh.
“What do you think?” he asked, surprising her.
“I don’t know…it’s a great opportunity, but I only applied on a whim, I didn’t think anything of it. I was hoping I’d get a place at a university in Tehran. And also we have this.” She gestured to their tiny one-bedroom apartment. Her family had provided them with key pieces of furniture, and she knew they’d struggled to do that despite the place being so small. But tradition dictated that the man’s family pay for the wedding and the woman’s the furniture. “And, of course, you have your job, and you might not want to move,” she added quickly. While Hossein gave her free rein to speak her thoughts, she sometimes wondered if he was almost too good to be true. She didn’t want to overstep any unseen boundaries.
“I can find another job.” He broke into a grin. “It could be an adventure.”
“And so many of our friends are moving abroad.”
“If we can get away before things become even worse here…”
Was it treacherous, she wondered, to abandon one’s own country when times had gotten difficult? Neda and Hossein went together to small demonstrations in the streets, with hundreds of others, shouting for democracy, for a new leader, but it was dangerous, and despite always displaying outer strength, she didn’t want to have to fight anymore. There was talk of friends of friends being taken to prison, tortured for speaking against the Shah.
Neda wanted out. But would she be able to leave her family behind?
Perhaps it would be easier if she left. Her baba’s profound dislike of Hossein sometimes got to her, though she tried to remain impartial. Every time she saw her family she was reminded of what Hossein did, and their opinions of him rubbed off on her. Try as she might, she would come home feeling colder towards her husband. She was easily thawed, but she hated the feeling, hated that it had to be like this.
And it wasn’t just that. Her own country’s universities didn’t give her a scholarship, but the one application she’d sent abroad, on a whim, to England did. Perhaps it was a sign? Allah telling her it was time to move on.
“Let’s go,” Hossein said. “Let’s see what freedom and democracy can really be like.”
“Do you think?” Excitement and fear stirred in the pit of her stomach.
“Neda, this is an amazing opportunity for you. A university in England—England!—wants to pay you to study in their program. I’m so proud of you, and you need to take this—you’ll regret it if you don’t. It’s only a year after all, and it could be the best year of our lives. Not many people get this opportunity; we need to take it.”
Neda’s heart fluttered. He saw something could make her happy and he wanted her to do it.
“Are we mad?” she asked, laughing.
“Aren’t we all a bit mad?” He leant across the sofreh and held her face between his hands. “We’re going to England.”
Soraya moved from behind the counter, a position she’d been in for fifteen minutes.
She had begun working full-time at a high-end clothes shop. It had all happened quickly; she was invited to interview at twenty-four hours’ notice, and then told she got the job on the spot. She began work the following day. While it wasn’t her first choice of occupation, she knew anything was better than unemployment.
She struggled with her thin heels as she plucked them from the lush carpet and picked her way over towards the customer. Heels were compulsory for all staff. The French-inspired décor attempted to be glamorous; the furniture was light pink and the spiral staircase leading upstairs to the personal shopping area rose-gold. On each clothes rail were no more than five items, all equally spaced and arranged in size order.
The customer, a sour-faced woman dressed all in white, ignored her greeting. Only to be expected.
Despite this, Soraya drew in closer, her manager Guy’s eyes on her from the other end of the shop, keen to find something to criticize her for. To blame her for a missed sale if she didn’t say the exact words she’d rehearsed from the company manual.
The woman was looking at the rail of clothes, grabbing items and fingering them before discarding them.
“Good afternoon. How are you today?” Soraya said, a smile plastered on her face; she could feel her cheeks twitching ever so slightly and dug her nails into her palms.
“Fine, I don’t need help,” the woman said, bypassing a conversation she didn’t want to have. What she didn’t seem to notice was that it wasn’t a conversation Soraya wanted to have either. It was in these moments that Soraya felt despair. She thought about Oliver, who had managed to get a paid yearlong publishing internship while she was still stuck working in retail, still being rejected by graduate employers—and customers—daily. She tried not to feel jealous.
“OK, well, give me a shout if you do!” Soraya turned on her heel and moved back to the counter.
Guy edged towards her, his brow furrowed. His turtleneck jumper and plaid suit combo gave him an annoying air before he even opened his mouth. The high neck looked like it was choking him, but his pink nose gave him a misleading appearance of childlike innocence.
“Well, she didn’t want to talk,” he said in his Essex accent, holding back a smile. His hands were thrust deep into his trouser pockets and he rocked on his heels.
“I know,” Soraya said, holding back a laugh.
“She’s looking at that coat. Why don’t you ask her if she wants to try it on?”
Guy often put Soraya in uncomfortable situations where she had to bear the brunt of a customer’s aggression. She was about to make another wobbly descent when a colleague came down the stairs to take over.
“Oh! It’s three already…” Soraya said.
“Ah, right, I suppose you can go home now.”
At this she bolted to the staff room, promptly removed her heels, and rubbed the soles of her feet, which were pink and sore. She slipped on trainer socks and pulled on her cut-off Doc Martens.
When she left she noticed Magnus waiting outside to meet her. For a minute he didn’t see her. She used this opportunity to look at him freely for once. He was leaning against the concrete wall by the shop, one leg propped casually against the wall, the other stretched out in front of him. He had a book in his hand, his head bent in concentration.
As she stood staring at him, passersby muttered when they had to walk around her, obscuring him from her view. It was only when she was pushed, accidentally or otherwise—this was London—that she went over to him.
“Whatcha reading?” she said, close to his ear.
He started, ever so slightly, and then grinned, lifting up the cover so she could see. 1984.
“Interesting,” Soraya said, pursing her lips.
“I’m sorry it’s not one of the excellent works of literature you read,” he joked, before she swatted him. He shoved the paperback in his coat pocket. “How was work?”
“Same old, same old…”
“It’s not forever.” He began stroking her palm, caressing the sensitive area. All of London, the hustle and bustle of it, faded away when she was with him. Or rather, she became part of the crowd, excited to be t
here, for a change. Until recently she had felt tired of the city.
Something fluttered deep within her and she forced it back down. She was making things harder for herself. There was an expiry date on whatever their relationship was, and it was fast approaching. She could feel it.
“I know.” She yanked his hand slightly so they could begin walking.
“I have some news…”
“Really, what?” They were heading towards Oxford Circus, Magnus leading the way, when he turned right onto a side street.
“An agent got back to me today.”
Soraya stopped but Magnus continued walking, pulling her hand.
“Hold up! I didn’t even know you’d sent your book out yet. This is huge!” Soraya said. “Why are you not jumping up and down?”
He suppressed a grin. “I don’t want to jinx things.”
“You’re not jinxing anything.” She planted a kiss on his lips, swatted his arm. Soraya still didn’t feel comfortable kissing in public from an irrational fear that someone who knew her family would catch her. She played this off as not liking PDA. “You deserve this,” she insisted.
Despite being happy for him, she felt a tinge of jealousy too. They’d made a promise to each other, and while he was soaring, she was here, being bossed around in heels for minimum wage.
She had added some illustrations to her Instagram account and finished off the drawing of Nunhead Cemetery, but she wasn’t exactly pursuing her dream. She wasn’t sure that was her dream. Or even if she had a dream. How could she pursue a dream if she didn’t know what it was?
In many ways she felt ashamed to be this directionless, like she was the only person from her university to have no idea what she wanted to do now that she had graduated. In her dark moments, she wondered if there was something wrong with her. “Anyway, the agent asked to meet up next week to discuss representing me.”
“This is amazing! I hope I feature in your acknowledgments.”
“Of course.” He nudged her playfully with his elbow. “It does clash with rugby practice but I didn’t want to seem difficult from the get-go…”
Soraya resisted the urge to say, “It’s only rugby practice,” because she knew that wouldn’t go down well. He took rugby seriously in a way she couldn’t understand. She’d assumed he’d stop playing once they graduated.
“This is such good news,” she said instead, beaming at him, feeling the strain of the smile pulling against her cheeks. “This calls for a toast.”
They made their way to a nearby pub, and Magnus ordered a bottle of red wine. She wished she’d told him sooner that she didn’t have a particular fondness for wine. But by this point, it had been too long and she wasn’t sure how to broach the subject.
“To your book,” Soraya said, raising her glass to clink his.
Magnus’s cheeks were flushed. She realized he didn’t like too much attention when it came to his writing; he became bashful and embarrassed. It was a side of him she rarely saw.
“It’s not a sure thing,” he said.
“Even getting this far is very impressive. You do know that, don’t you? And why would she want to meet about representing you, if she wasn’t serious about it? Have faith in yourself.”
He took a long sip from his glass. She attempted to mimic this but was struck by the earthy tanginess of the wine, and inwardly shuddered.
“I just don’t want to get too excited. I don’t feel like I’m the type of person who could be an author. Even calling myself that makes me cringe. It feels way beyond my reach.”
She put her hands over his.
“Don’t ever think that. You can be anything you want to be. You’re talented at writing, Magnus. I’m not just saying that because you’re my…whatever, I’m saying it because it’s true.”
He was about to counter her point when she added, “Anyway, there are lots of mediocre white male authors, so I wouldn’t worry. What’s one more?”
He pushed her arm, laughing.
“You’re such a dick,” he said.
“A dick you like very much,” she said quickly. They looked at each other and burst out laughing again. “Sorry, that was really bad.”
They spent the rest of the night talking about their plans for the future, what Magnus would say to the agent, what his next steps would be if he were signed. When the conversation turned to her future she felt paralyzed. How could she still not know what she wanted to do? She clung to this idea of working in marketing, having an office job, because that was what everyone else was doing, that was what her idea of success was. Work in an office for a big company and you will have made it. But was that even true?
Magnus was always encouraging, no matter what she said. Some days she would say she wanted to be a professional illustrator, others work for a marketing company, sometimes even that she’d like to do a master’s in graphic design. Every time he would nod along, showing no judgment whatsoever about her chaotic, confused mind.
“I wanted to ask you something,” he said. She noticed the tops of his ears were pink and his face was flushed, from his alcohol consumption, she assumed.
“Yeah?”
“Well,” he said, tripping over his next words. “More that I want to tell you something, actually. Just that…I’m not seeing anyone else.”
His words hung in the air. His initial nervousness made sense now. She resisted the urge to smile. She felt powerful in that moment, knowing that what she said next was important to him. It was a strange, but wonderful, feeling.
“Neither am I,” she said, resisting the urge to say “obviously.” Because to Magnus this fact wasn’t obvious, she realized.
He smiled then, a big, goofy smile that was contagious. “Let’s keep it that way, yeah?” He winked and she let out a laugh.
“I’ll try.” She paused for a moment. “I have to ask you something, though. Once in one of our seminars you said you didn’t believe in relationships, that you think they’re wrong. Has that changed?”
Initially, he looked surprised, but then he leant back, a pensive expression on his face.
“I know the time you’re talking about,” he said. “The book we were studying reminded me of my parents. How they’re stuck together—or at least feel like they are. I never want someone to feel stuck with me, or vice versa. It’s probably one of my worst fears, in fact. But…” He trailed off, tracing the top of his glass with his forefinger as he thought through what he would say next. “I guess with you I’m trying to just let go of that fear. We aren’t our parents. And I like you a lot. I kind of actually want to be yours.”
“I want to be yours too.”
Before Magnus, she would have thought this to be excessive, but she meant it. She liked the idea of them belonging to each other. She knew then that she was falling in love with him.
When they got back to his house, she avoided his housemates by going straight to his bedroom while he shouted hello to them before following her up the stairs. As soon as his door was closed, he leant forward, his lips finding hers.
He stopped for a moment, moved an inch, and they looked each other in the eye. His deep brown gaze was warm and mysterious. That said, she knew exactly what he was thinking. She was thinking it too.
They may try and do things with you. Don’t let them do that.
Ten minutes later came the moment she had to stop him from taking it too far, as she always did.
“I don’t know…” she said, not sure how to finish her sentence.
Frustration was clear on Magnus’s face. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but when do you think we can stop waiting?”
She wished she knew the answer to that question.
“I don’t know,” she sighed. “What’s the rush?”
“There isn’t one…I’m just dying a little over here.” He laughed humorlessly. “I want y
ou so bad.”
“I want you too, it’s just…like I said, I want to take it slow. I don’t know what else to say.”
She couldn’t even be sure at this point whether she was lying or telling the truth.
He looked as though he wanted to say something else, but instead he bit it back, kissed her on top of her head, and pulled her towards him. “It’s OK.” He encircled her in his arms and legs, and it was this act that felt the most intimate. Their naked bodies pressed against each other. And soon she heard his breathing slow as he fell asleep.
This position both panicked and softened her. His hands around her middle, almost trapping her. But that this person wanted to sleep next to her, felt comfortable enough to do so, and that he was hers to snuggle against, was almost too much for her. She wondered how people handled this level of intimacy as teenagers.
The guilt remained, heavy and hard within her. She could almost see herself from a bird’s-eye view and shut her eyes as though to erase the image. But she couldn’t. She saw her own naked body and this large white man pressed up against her. Imagined her dad and brother walking in and seeing them like this. Began wondering, again, how she could call herself a Muslim when she was in bed with a man who didn’t even believe in God and whom she would never marry. And yet she liked him, more than she wanted to admit.
She wondered, as usual, why everything in her life had to be so complicated.
She pulled his arms up, so they were around her waist rather than her lower stomach, so she could move around more freely. Then she got out her phone, and opened Instagram, seeing that he had posted a picture he had taken of her in the pub. She was holding a glass of wine and smiling, and from an outsider’s perspective they seemed like a perfectly normal couple. The picture had only three likes, whereas the photos of him alone tended to have significantly more.
She’d asked him in the past not to post pictures of her online because of the risk of her parents seeing them, but he must have forgotten. She wasn’t sure what was worse, that she was clearly alone with Magnus in the picture, or that she had alcohol in her hand. If Magnus wasn’t asleep she would have asked him to delete it, but a small part of her liked that he had posted it. It showed that he was proud to be with her, that he wanted people to know they were together. This fact made her heart swell in both a pleasant and an anxiety-inducing way.