by Sara Jafari
“What?”
“I know you were using me too,” Magnus said quietly. “I read your diary.”
In that moment she wanted to die.
“And?” she said in a pathetic attempt to call his bluff. “What’s that got to do with anything?”
“The night you told me about your dad, you left your diary under your pillow. When you were showering, I read what you wrote in there. About me being gross, how you only asked me out to get ‘kissing practice.’ That you’re a virgin.”
“What do you want me to say?” she challenged. “Apologize for using you, when you were using me too? And you know what? I was right about one thing: you are gross.” She wasn’t sure how she managed to keep her voice so level.
Magnus ran his fingers through his hair, pulled at a strand.
“I wasn’t using you! I wasn’t even involved in the bet. I told them I didn’t want to be a part of it. I admit, I did tell the guys we had sex just to get them off my back when I realized how much I liked you, that this could be something real. I wanted them to stop talking about the fucking bet, that’s all. I know it all sounds worse than it was, it was just lads talking—”
“And yet that girl knew I was a virgin, so you had been telling people. Was she another one you were with whilst you were with me? One of the fifty. Fifty. Jesus Christ.”
She saw his jaw tighten. “No, of course not. Rosie’s one of my best friends. I just told her about what I read. I wasn’t sure what to do. I didn’t know if you really liked me or if all this was a game to you.”
His excuses sounded as hollow as she now felt.
What was the point of defending herself when he too had lied to her—used her in a much worse way? Wasn’t all this proof of how dysfunctional their relationship was? She always knew it would have to end, and perhaps on some level she had also known his affection for her was never real. Her family, it seemed, had been right all along. He had been after nothing but sex. All to win fifty pounds and bragging rights.
“Stop! I don’t care. We don’t need to hash any of this out.”
He nodded in acknowledgment. “So this really was all about practice for you?” he said.
She tried to think of what she’d written in her diary. She hadn’t mentioned her changing feelings for him, she didn’t think. At least she would be saved that embarrassment.
His attitude towards sex was worlds away from hers. Fifty. The number was colossal. Unimaginable to her. How many other such bets had he made about other girls? Was Soraya merely one of many?
“Yes,” she said. “It was.”
“Fair enough,” he said slowly. “I guess this is it then.”
The words winded her. It didn’t matter then that it was inevitable; those simple words of acceptance still had the power to wound her.
“I guess so.” She began to walk away.
“This is what I mean,” she heard him say.
Soraya whipped her head around. “What?”
“You can’t face up to things. I don’t believe you. I know you like me. I know this was more than just ‘practice.’ But you bottle up everything. I mean, you didn’t tell me about your dad, that you were a virgin—plus there’s all this stuff about someone called Laleh! Who even is she? We would never have been able to work because I don’t know who the fuck you are.”
“Oh, fuck you. You had a really good read of my diary then? Who even does that anyway? And maybe I didn’t tell you everything because I knew you’d never understand!”
“What, because I’m white?”
She sighed with frustration. “Yes, because you’re white! Because you’re the kind of guy who sees an Asian girl you think looks exotic, and then decides, You know what? I’m going to try and sleep with her. For sport. For a laugh. How could you ever understand why I needed practice with guys, why I’m a virgin, why my sister was disowned, what it could possibly be like to grow up in my family!” She paused for breath and added, “You could never understand.”
Magnus grabbed her arm.
“Soraya,” he said.
She shook him off, shoved his chest so that he stumbled away from her. “No. Whatever this was, it’s over. It’s done.”
The girls at the bus stop started making excited noises.
“Oh, shut the fuck up!” Soraya shouted at them, before leaving.
This time he didn’t follow her.
“Baba kojas?”
Four-year-old Laleh pulled at her mum’s thin cotton trousers while she asked where her dad was.
Neda looked down at her small daughter. Her own back was aching, the weight of the two babies growing inside her taking its toll. And yet when she looked into her child’s large brown eyes, needy and loving, she couldn’t help but lift her up and place her on her knee.
She combed Laleh’s silky hair. “I don’t know.” Neda couldn’t keep the worry out of her voice. She had no one to talk to. She could hardly trust her peers with her troubles, and didn’t want to say anything to Mena lest her friend dislike Hossein even more. Despite her never voicing it, Mena’s opinion of him was clear. Besides, Maman had always taught Neda to keep family matters private.
Mena had finished her PhD quicker than Neda, as she didn’t have multiple pregnancies to contend with, and had moved to London the year before. It was only with her departure that Neda realized how lonely England could be.
Life with Hossein had its peaks and troughs, and right now they were in a trough.
She already had enough to worry about with the news from her family back home. Every day Neda feared a family member would be lost to the Iraq bombings. Sometimes she would ring and ring and receive no answer for days, and then would find out they were hiding in a basement, waiting out Saddam’s attacks. Accounts of bombings over three thousand miles away shook her to the core. She wanted desperately to return but her family had encouraged her to wait it out, to take the opportunities given to her, not waste them. Wait until things had calmed down. But by now it had been eight years.
“You wouldn’t like it here at the moment,” her baba had said.
“Yes, she would! We’re all wearing hijabs now, she’d love it!” she’d heard Rabeh say. Baba had shushed her.
“We’re proud of you in England, azizam, just stick at it. So many people would kill to be in your position, remember that,” he’d said.
One of her younger brothers, Ali, the most liberal of them all, had come to Liverpool to study two years ago. He told her everyone who could was leaving Iran. It was a comfort to have him in the same city, even though they weren’t particularly close.
So, Neda held in her troubles and doubts. She often suspected her marriage had been a mistake but reminded herself frequently that Iranian marriages were different from English ones—and how quickly she was forgetting her roots! They weren’t about true love or passion, but about companionship, having a partner in life. And didn’t all relationships have issues to overcome?
What if your partner was cheating, though, as she now suspected Hossein was? That was recognized as grounds for divorce; if she had evidence, the courts in Iran would allow them to separate. But what would people say? That it was her fault for making them go to England, for not listening when he said he wasn’t happy, for not being enough for him?
“Boys are stupid, Laleh azizam, remember that,” she told her daughter.
“Why?” Laleh’s inquisitive eyes grew larger.
“They cheat and lie,” Neda muttered. Laleh looked at her strangely as if she understood this information. It brought Neda a wave of shame, that her four-year-old daughter understood the reality of marriage. But shouldn’t she know early? And Neda was lonely, who else could she tell?
“You’ll grow up to be strong, won’t you?”
“I want to be like Popeye!”
Neda stroked her daughter’s hair once
more.
“Can we go to the park?” Laleh exclaimed, jumping off her mum’s lap. Her little legs looked strong as a frog’s as she hopped up and down, determined to get her way. Neda couldn’t blame her for being bored in their shabby flat.
Once Neda got a teaching job at the university, which she did alongside her own studies, they’d moved to a larger place, but they still had an assortment of mismatched furniture. Hossein had saved for a year to buy a bigger television, which he was proud to own. The Persian rug they’d brought with them eight years ago was in the living room. It was important to Neda, something to remind her of her roots.
The walls were bare, with mold growing high up in one of the rooms. Neda frequently scrubbed it off, but it always came back. Often she heard the neighbors on one side, either arguing or having loud intercourse.
“Mummy’s feeling tired,” she said, with a deep sigh.
“Pleaaaaase?” Laleh gave her sad eyes. She was so expressive, so honest with her emotions; it was admirable.
Neda heaved herself off the sofa. “OK, but we can’t stay out too late, my back hurts.” She put a cardigan on and folded her silk scarf down the middle before wrapping it loosely around her head. Towards the end of her pregnancy she didn’t mind letting some of her hair show; she lacked the energy required to keep fixing it.
She held Laleh’s hand as they left the house. “Maybe your uncle will be in—” Neda barely had a chance to finish her sentence before Laleh struggled out of her mother’s grasp and ran down the path, five doors away, to Ali’s house.
Laleh banged on the door. Getting no response, she peered through the letter box. “Uncle Ali! I know you’re in there!”
Neda struggled to catch up with her. “Laleh! Stop shouting!” she shouted, ironically. “If he isn’t answering, he isn’t in. Maybe he’s at class. Come on, come on, let’s go.”
As they walked away, Neda looked back at her brother’s flat and saw a curtain twitch. Perhaps her daughter wasn’t speaking out of turn. But she knew how much her brother loved Laleh, and if he wasn’t answering the door to her it was probably because he couldn’t answer. Meaning he had a girl over. Neda shook her head. It seemed everyone came to England to transgress. All she had come for was a new learning opportunity.
The park they frequented was a short walk from their flat. As soon as they passed through the gate Laleh ran off and amused herself. Neda made sure to watch over her from a nearby bench. She knew it was safe here but had heard stories of strangers in parks. Despite this, she shut her eyes for a few seconds, to let the pain behind her lids settle.
“Neda?” a voice said. She opened her eyes and instantly focused them on Laleh. She was sitting cross-legged in a sandpit, determinedly creating a mound. Then Neda looked at the woman in front of her. Suddenly she felt too hot, and wished she was at home and could run herself a cool bath. The sun seemed to have settled directly above her head and was beating down on her navy blue hijab.
“Look at you! How many months along are you now?” Simran asked, perching on the bench next to her.
Neda knew the other woman from their local mosque, though she wasn’t a friend Neda would have chosen for herself. Simran was a busybody who made Neda miss Mena even more.
“Eight, alhamdulillah. How are you? Your husband and children are well?”
Simran bent forward, staring into Neda’s eyes. She often did this, as though rooting deep into Neda’s soul and extracting incriminating evidence that she would eventually share. Her long black hair was tied up in a thick plait down her back. Even looking at it made Neda feel hot; she could imagine the clinging weight of it and scratched her own neck in response.
When Neda had reached seven months pregnant with the twins, in a fit of despair at the discomfort, she’d had her hair cut into a bob. Hossein had barely noticed.
“They’re well, sister, thank you.” Simran gave her another pointed look. “There is something I need to talk to you about.”
Neda focused her gaze on Simran’s hands and the henna pattern there. She remembered she’d once queued to have henna put on her hand by Simran at a henna party. She had shown Hossein afterwards and all he’d said, while laughing at her, was “Why do you have shit on your hand?”
She had ignored him for the rest of the evening while he insisted he was “only joking.”
“Sister, are you listening to me?”
“What?”
Simran took a deep breath, grasped Neda’s hands between her own. “Sister, people have seen Hossein hanging around with an Englishwoman. They saw him going into her house last night. Did he come home?”
It was like a sharp punch to Neda’s stomach. She needed to leave.
Simran wore a look of grim satisfaction, as though now the heavy burden had been lifted off her shoulders and placed onto Neda’s, she could rest easy.
“Sorry, sister, I feel a bit light-headed. I think it’s the sun. I’m going home,” Neda said.
Simran’s expression dropped. What did she expect, Neda thought, that they would discuss her husband’s indiscretions together? That wasn’t how it was done. Not to Neda’s way of thinking. Secrets should be kept within the family, always.
She got up with slight difficulty, gripping the back of the bench for support. Simran held her hand out to help, her face now pinched in something almost like sympathy. Neda was too embarrassed to take it. Embarrassed about everything. About her entire existence. Every imperfection became heightened; her mind had a way of pushing her even lower into the pits of despair. She was conscious of the way her stomach ballooned outwards, how swollen and fat her feet were, of the hairs she was too tired to shave from her fingers. Was it any wonder he strayed?
And now everyone knew about her husband’s transgressions. He was supposed to be a Muslim man, her good man, and now everyone was talking about them, no doubt laughing at her stupidity for marrying a man with no morals. Every time she thought of them—the people in the mosque, his fellow takeaway workers, even her university peers—gossiping about her, she felt a pain in her chest. She tried not to think about it. She couldn’t in front of Simran. She would not break down in front of anyone, fuel further gossip.
After many years, Neda finally understood why gossiping was haram.
“Neda?” Simran called after her.
“I’m fine, Simran,” she called back. “Laleh!” Her child looked up, no doubt about to protest. “Now.” The little girl trudged slowly towards her mother.
Neda grabbed her wrist and turned to wave goodbye to Simran. “Talk soon, sister.”
“Neda, are you sure you’re OK?” Perhaps she truly was trying to help. But better Simran had kept quiet than make Neda so painfully aware how badly she was failing in her marriage and in life.
“I’m fine, honestly. Say hello to your husband from me.” Neda gave a forced smile and turned her head away before a tear ran down her face. She walked away as fast as she could. Laleh had to run to keep up, little legs struggling to match her mother’s long strides.
“Mummyyyy, stoooop!” Laleh moaned.
Neda looked down at her daughter’s pink, perspiring face, and slowed.
“Why are you crying?” Laleh said. This wasn’t the first time she had seen her mum cry, and it wouldn’t be the last.
“Your dad is a bastard.” Although Neda said it quietly she knew she shouldn’t have said it at all. Knew she was being a bad mother. That thought dipped her deeper into sadness. “Do you want some ice cream?”
Laleh looked up at her mum, pleased, but didn’t reply.
“Is that a yes?” Neda pressed.
“Why is Daddy a bastard? What’s a bastard?”
Neda’s cheeks colored. “I didn’t say that, azizam, come on.” She tugged Laleh’s hand to make her walk a bit faster. They stopped off at the corner shop on the way home and Neda allowed Laleh to buy any ice crea
m she wanted. When they were home she gave the child her coloring books and pens, which busied her nicely.
Then Neda went into the kitchen, opened the cutlery drawer, and emptied its contents into the sink. She filled this with bleach and hot, soapy water. After that she started on the plates. While they were soaking, she rested her back against the doorframe, breathing deeply. She wanted desperately to sweep the whole place and mop the floors. Instead Neda went to their bedroom, stripped the bedding, and put the sheets and pillowcases in the bathtub. She filled it with hot water and laundry detergent. Everything was left to soak, but a voice was still nagging at the back of her mind. There were other people in her household. The women Hossein had been with, was with currently, taunted her. They were in the sheets, in the cutlery her lips touched. She wanted to scream. If Laleh hadn’t been there she would have screamed, without restraint.
She settled for walking to her bedroom, opening the chest of drawers, and removing a pastel pink cashmere jumper. It was her mother’s; Neda had taken it as a souvenir of home. She inhaled the warm scent, bringing back memories of her busy, loving home. She buried her face in the soft fabric and let out a muffled scream.
She struggled to stop.
Then, in a moment of potential insanity, she and Laleh were in the car. It happened in a blink and Neda knew she was driving herself further into madness, but she couldn’t stop.
Getting behind the steering wheel was difficult for her. The car was ridiculously cramped but she pushed the driver’s seat back and proceeded in her pursuit. Her back was in pain; everything hurt. As she struggled she knew passersby were judging her. They openly stared, and when she met their eyes they didn’t look away. She was a foreigner, and so she would be looked at. It wasn’t anything new.
“Where are we going?” Laleh asked.
“To collect Baba.”
“Where is he?”
“I don’t know.”
“So how will you find him?”