by Sara Jafari
“Opium,” Neda whispered. “Oh, Hossein.”
Soraya left John’s house at 7:00 p.m.
Her insides felt like they had been grated, her skin dry and fragile. She’d had a few hours’ sleep on the sofa while Friends played in the background.
It was a brisk fifteen-minute walk back to her place. Her stomach growled angrily despite her not feeling hungry. On the way home she stopped off at the supermarket.
She was given odd looks by those around her. Perhaps it was because her hair was balled into a knot on top of her head, her fishnet tights now laddered, her eyeliner smudged. She knew she looked bad, but for the first time she didn’t care. What did caring about her appearance ever achieve? It never made her happy.
She grabbed a Diet Coke and packet of crisps, and then ventured to the frozen food aisle for a pizza.
Her nerves were sensitive: the fluorescent lights too bright, her shoes too hard on her heels, her bag too heavy on her shoulder.
As she rounded the corner, the cold air of the freezers making her shiver, she saw a familiar back. She stood still like he was a snake and any sudden movement could be fatal. He hadn’t seen her so she turned away slowly, deciding she didn’t need the pizza after all.
Of course, at that exact moment, he turned and looked straight at her. His lips parted and then curled into a smile.
So, naturally, Soraya ran away.
She power walked out of the aisle and moved two aisles away to the cleaning products section. She paused there and began looking at the washing detergents, not quite sure what she was doing. Part of her was irritated that he was in the way of the pizza, and part with herself for cowering away from him. Allowing herself to be inconvenienced by him.
She felt a presence and could smell him. She let herself inhale the familiar aftershave before looking up. Magnus stood next to her.
“Why’d you run away?”
“I didn’t run away.”
“You did, you literally ran away from me.”
He looked happier than usual, his cheeks flushed, his eyes animated. The breakup, it seemed, had done him good.
“Well, I guess I didn’t want to see you.”
He sighed, his expression altering.
“I don’t like the way we left things, Soraya,” he said, softly.
“Listen, it’s all fine, whatever.” She shrugged.
He put his hand on the shelf, leaning against it, a position that suggested he wanted a proper chat.
“If we’re going to see each other around, can’t we at least be friendly? Not that you will see much of me come January.”
“What does that mean?” she asked.
He scratched his head, his face bent sheepishly low. “I’m moving.” The words came out in a whisper.
“Where? Back home?”
“Not quite…Paris.”
“Paris?” Her own voice sounded strangled, which embarrassed her.
“I’ve been doing a TEFL course and I found out yesterday I got a job teaching English at a school there. And…it hasn’t been announced yet but I got a book deal! It’s a cliché, I know, but there’s something about being a writer in Paris…” The rest of his words were lost as the same word echoed in her brain.
Paris.
Paris.
Paris.
She knew she needed to curb her emotions before she began crying in front of him.
“Hello?” he said, with a nervous laugh.
“Sorry, yes, congrats! That’s amazing!”
“How are things with you anyway?” She hated that question. She had nothing to offer forward.
“Fine, just fine!”
He narrowed his eyes.
Soraya stood up straighter and swayed slightly. She was really hungry now, her accidental twenty-nine-hour fast no longer novel but concerning. He put a hand to her shoulder to steady her. She flinched.
The hurt in his eyes was palpable.
“I just…are you OK? You don’t look good.”
She laughed shakily. “Gee, thanks.”
“No, I mean…have you been out or something?” He looked at his phone. “It’s half-seven?”
“I’m just on a comedown and really hungry.” She laughed, not meaning to.
“You took drugs?” He looked worried, lines creasing his forehead.
She sighed. “I’ve always taken drugs, Magnus, it’s not a big deal.”
His hand was still on her arm. She wanted to shake him off but couldn’t bring herself to do it. It would be the last time he touched her, and she hated herself for being so sentimental as to think that.
“You need to take care of yourself. Look at your dad…”
Her mouth opened involuntarily as rage bubbled inside her.
“What the fuck? You can’t just throw that in my face.” She pushed his hand away. “You’re lecturing me for taking MD on a night out, like you don’t drink alcohol? Imagine if I said something about your dad, chastised you for drinking because of his problems.”
He shut his eyes and clenched his jaws.
“I didn’t mean to…”
“Forget it. It doesn’t matter.”
She didn’t even care about their argument, not really. She just didn’t like that he was pretending to care for her and judging her as though she was struggling without him.
“There you are!” a voice said from behind her. Soraya turned to find a blond girl making her way towards them. She stood close to Magnus and they looked nice together, like they were a natural couple.
“I couldn’t find you,” the girl said, in a singsong voice.
Soraya stepped back, her breath hitching.
She was such an idiot.
Magnus looked totally at ease, which made the whole situation worse.
“Red or white wine?” the blonde said, showing both bottles to him. He was now facing her, but his eyes were still on Soraya.
“Erm, red,” he said. “This is Soraya, by the way.”
The girl turned, as though she hadn’t realized Soraya and Magnus had been talking. She smiled brightly and Soraya might have thought she was nice if it wasn’t for the painful reality that Magnus had already moved on with her.
“Hiya,” the girl said.
“I’m late for a thing anyway, nice meeting you. Have fun in Paris, Magnus.”
Soraya left, taking impossibly large steps, holding herself together until she was at the self-checkout.
They needed to leave Liverpool, that much Neda knew.
She held on to the idea that starting afresh elsewhere was all they needed. She worked hard to finish her PhD, her only moments of harmony and stillness in the very early hours of the morning, when it was still dark out and all her family were asleep. When she grew so tired that she couldn’t justify continuing to work, she sat at the end of a bed and allowed herself to breathe. She gave herself only five minutes a day of peace and silence, and she savored them. She had pushed herself to her limits before, but this was different. She was tired. Mentally more than anything else.
She thought back to the day Hossein had told her about his addiction.
She was surprised but at the same time not. It explained his mood swings. Opium was common in Iran; many of Baba’s friends were opium addicts. When she thought of them, she imagined them smoking it from a pipe in dark rooms and then lying on the floor, spaced-out for hours. Their wives would be expected to bring them chai on request, even light them up another puff if need be. Opium use was both common and life-destroying, creating zombies out of previously able men.
She hadn’t imagined her healthy, fit husband would be among them.
And how had she not noticed? How had he successfully hidden something so large from her? It made sense, now, that his clothes always smelt so strongly of aftershave. He had been covering t
he scent of his sins.
“Why?” Neda had asked him.
He shrugged. “I have nothing here.” She imagined he had rehearsed this story. His voice seemed cold, devoid of any true emotion.
She moved her head towards the living room, to the two newborn babies, to their little Laleh. “Nothing?”
“I mean job-wise,” he said impatiently. “You’re thriving here…I’m not. I’m a loser in this country.”
“We can go back! I’ve always said we could go back. I want to go back. We agreed we would stay until things settle down back home, if things settle down back home, but we can go back anytime. What are these excuses?”
“Here is better for the kids, for you, for me, maybe…I don’t know.”
“So that’s the real reason—you don’t know? Who do you take those drugs with? Huh?”
“Ziryan—”
“I knew it!” Neda interrupted.
And through her forcing it out of him, she realized why he began smoking opium. To be accepted by people he deemed similar to himself; to experience momentary highs in which he felt happy and weightless. She understood the attraction of that, but opium? Didn’t he think of his family?
“English people don’t want to be my friends,” he said. “And I don’t want to be theirs! Fucking bastards.”
But that wasn’t all. It was clear to Neda that she had grown thicker skin than her husband over time. Years of being called a “Paki bastard,” being told to “go back home,” being told he looked “dirty” had gotten to Hossein. Isolated him. Pushed him towards anyone who would be his friend. Peer pressure. Was Hossein a thirteen-year-old? Neda thought bitterly. She wanted to have sympathy for him, because she knew that was what she was meant to feel, but instead resentment bubbled inside her.
The weight of responsibility, of having three children while working on her PhD and worrying about her family at home, threatened to break her sometimes. And here he was, getting high with his friends. With no support from him, she was being crushed.
“It was only meant to be a bit of fun, but you don’t understand the feeling…the way I feel when I smoke it.” He smiled then; it was the most genuine joy she’d seen in him in years. She felt sickened by the sight.
She gripped the countertop, her fingertips pale, and turned away from him, forcing herself to feel the correct emotions. To behave as was expected of her, to be the devoted wife.
But she couldn’t.
“I can’t look at you.”
“Neda,” he implored. “Please help me. You’re my wife and I’m begging you: help me.”
“How can I help you? Just stop taking it!”
“I’ve tried, Neda,” he said. “I’ve tried to go without, but that’s when I get angry and do things to you that make me hate myself. I’m not well—I’m ill.” His expression was pleading with her to take this weight onto her shoulders; it was clear he expected her to fix his problems, relied on her to do so.
And she was unable to say no to him—she wanted her Hossein back. The man who made her laugh, gave her that weightless feeling.
“We’ll take you to a doctor,” she said after a moment. “They’ll be able to fix this. But first, pray with me.”
He looked uncertain.
“In times of hardship we turn to Allah,” she said. “Your faith has been weak, we need to strengthen it.”
Perhaps seeing that this was a way to appease his wife, no longer to be the object of her disdain, he nodded.
Night prayer, tahajjud prayer, was one of the most important prayers, so it was fitting that it was the one Neda and Hossein chose to perform together, to ask Allah to help him. Neda was confident that a connection to Allah would ground her husband when clearly his marriage to her had not done so.
After they settled the babies in their cots, they performed wudu. It was important to center and quiet yourself, focusing solely on the act.
“Bismillah,” they both said under their breaths before washing their hands, using their left to wash their right. This motion was performed three times before repeating the act, but this time the right hand washed the left three times. It was important to wash between each pair of fingers, and all the way up to your wrists.
As Neda performed the ritual, she looked at Hossein, noting the way he didn’t quite clean carefully enough between his fingers. She repressed the urge to scold him and breathed deeply through her nose instead. He was learning.
Then, in turn, each cupped their right hand and drank from it, swishing the alkaline-tasting water in their mouths before spitting it out. Next they put more water into their cupped hands and inhaled it into their noses. Neda didn’t like this part as much, but understood the need to clean every crevice of her body before talking to Allah. Following this came the washing of their faces, arms, elbows, heads, ears, and feet. Always in this order.
Ordinarily, people took it in turns to perform wudu, but Neda urged Hossein to do it with her. She didn’t trust him to do it fully, and it was now imperative to her that he should.
They laid their prayer mats on the living room floor and Neda put on her chador. Hossein stood a little in front of her while they began their prayer.
From the corner of her eye she noticed Laleh sitting on the sofa watching them, doll in hand. It was good, she thought, that her daughter was seeing her parents praying together, witnessing the importance of a good relationship with Allah.
Neda didn’t know where she would be without Allah; she imagined she would be lost, aimlessly wandering the earth. Islam gave her a reason for being, something to look forward to in the afterlife, the feeling that everything happened for a reason. Yes, everything. Even Hossein’s opium addiction. Perhaps Allah was testing her. It was understandable, she thought, that her initial reaction was one of alarm, but now the shock had worn off she needed to remember what her religion had taught her. She could handle the bad; this was a test, after all, to see what she would do next.
The next day she booked a doctor’s appointment, asked Ali to look after the children, and took Hossein to the surgery.
His doctor was a large woman who was sympathetic to his addiction. She breathed heavily, as though lifting her arm to sign his prescription was almost too much of an effort, would tip her over the edge.
“We’ll put you on methadone,” she said. “It’s a safer alternative to opium. And we’ll give you a dose every day. Gradually this dose will reduce until you no longer need to take anything. We’ll do this slowly, how does that sound?”
Neda couldn’t help but wonder how someone who seemed to have respiratory problems herself could help him. Help his entire family. She didn’t want to take a slow approach; didn’t want her husband to take another drug to survive. She wanted all of this nasty business behind them, and for things to be better again.
But of course she knew this way would be better. She shuddered to think of Hossein’s temperament if he suddenly stopped taking his drugs. She knew from enough research on lab rats that it was medically kinder to wean a person off an intoxicating substance slowly. That didn’t mean she liked it though.
If life with Hossein and their children was enough for her, why wasn’t it enough for him? It was easy to blame his moral deterioration on his crumbling relationship with Allah, but she couldn’t banish the thought that she was not enough for him.
She was reminded of a study of cocaine use she had read for her undergraduate degree in which some rats were given all the pleasures they wanted and some were given nothing. Those given nothing were more likely to become addicted to cocaine, while those already living in paradise refrained from taking it.
The evidence that perhaps she and her children were not enough for Hossein stung, because she knew she couldn’t argue with science. She had built her career around it, taught postgraduates while writing her thesis. What would they think if she discredited scienc
e because it upset her?
Of course, she had further thoughts of divorce. But was it fair to leave her husband when he was so low, when he needed her the most?
Such thoughts are destructive, she told herself. Support your husband.
And that she did.
It seemed Hossein couldn’t—or perhaps wouldn’t—stop taking methadone. He took the lowest possible dose of the bright green liquid for weeks, sometimes months, but when finally it was time for him to abstain from the drug altogether, he could manage without it for only a few days. In those brief interludes Neda saw something of the man she’d first married: her Hossein. The Hossein who valued her, who rarely raised his voice to her or the children, the man who was grateful for his family. And then he would come home red-faced once more, having gotten his fix from a dealer of some kind—or maybe even the friends who got him into taking opium in the first place—and it would all be ruined again.
He would ruin them again.
It was after his third failed attempt that Neda made the decision finally to move, to uproot her family and start afresh somewhere new. The summer after she handed in her thesis, the family moved to Brighton. It was easier to blame Liverpool, and the people Hossein spent time with there, for the destruction of their family. Brighton was their beacon of hope. By the sea—and hadn’t Maman always told her water was calming? Could aid almost any ailment? Could the sea, then, save Hossein?
They left suddenly and without much thought for the logistics, but it turned out OK. It had to.
Neda became both housewife and breadwinner. They had lived in England for ten years at this point and had been made British citizens.
Occasionally she indulged in fantasies of leaving Hossein, telling herself she had the power in their relationship, but she knew she would never do it. She couldn’t leave him when he was so vulnerable, so dependent. What would he do without her? Where would he go? She knew he would end up homeless. Or, worse, dead. She had resigned herself to looking after him—perhaps this was Allah testing her.