The Mismatch

by Sara Jafari

  “You bastard!” she cried, her voice cracking.

  Soraya’s dad stood up then, discarding the duvet, seizing the opportunity to tower over his wife, as he had done for more than thirty years.

  “What did you say?” he demanded in Farsi, his lip curled. Amir hung back cautiously. Soraya was torn between running in front of her mother and running away from them all.

  “I said, you’re a fucking cheating bastard!” her mum roared.

  “I said, it wasn’t me—” he continued.

  “Oh, come on, Dad,” Amir interjected. “Just stop. Tell the truth. It’s bad enough you’ve done this, but to use my pictures? You’ve taken it too far. Have some respect—for Mum at least.”

  “She probably made the profile herself! She loves the drama!”

  Soraya’s mouth opened involuntarily, and despite forcing herself to pipe down, she still made a sound. It was enough to make her dad look at her. This was the first time he’d really looked at her since striking her weeks ago.

  The sight of his puffy red face disgusted her. She looked down at her bare toes. Noticed the chipped baby pink nail varnish on her big toe. Pondered, despite the gravity of the situation, when she would have time to repaint it, and if she had any nail varnish remover in Brighton. It was uncanny that in dire situations, situations in which she was fearful, her brain still had the capacity to think mundane thoughts.

  “What? You have something to say?” His voice was venomous. “You?”

  Soraya resisted the urge to run away. There was protection in her being with so many people, and especially with Amir. Despite often behaving unfairly to her, he would always protect her against others. It was a fine balance; he would hurt anyone who did anything he deemed detrimental to her—for example, a boyfriend. Meaning she didn’t always feel safe around him, because he could come to ruin the things she held dear, thinking he was saving her.

  But in this case, she felt safe with him.

  “Stop lying to us, we’re not stupid.” The words that came out of her mouth were spoken quietly, and yet it seemed the whole room was holding its breath, waiting for her to challenge their father.

  “What did you say?” he yelled.

  Sometimes he resembled a wild dog, she thought, desperate both to gain attention and to cause disturbance. It was innate, too ingrained in his being, to be considered a reaction. It was just him.

  But what would happen if the people around him, for once, didn’t back down?

  Soraya imagined him exploding like a defeated villain in a game. But this, sadly, was no game. He was her father, and despite everything she couldn’t ignore that. It made the pain worse.

  “You heard me,” she said, still speaking quietly. She could hear her heart beating wildly in her chest, was convinced everyone around her could hear it too. “We’re always walking on eggshells around you, but enough is enough. You’ve been a shit dad, and a shit husband, and it’s not OK. None of this is OK.”

  There was a momentary calm before the storm.

  But then he surprised her. Instead of hitting someone—or her—as she had expected, he pushed past them and stormed down the stairs, his footsteps heavy against the floorboards.

  Soraya wanted to scream, hit the wall, stomp her foot, break something, anything. He never reacted the way she wanted him to; he was incapable of normal human responses.

  The look on Amir’s face reduced her to tears. Pure disappointment. For her dad to disappoint Soraya was one thing, but it spoke something of the damage he had now caused if her brother, who idolized their dad, was disappointed in him too.

  Then she looked at her mum. She’d expected her to be similarly affected, to be crying or angry. Instead, she was laughing.

  Soraya’s arms prickled with goose bumps. An urgent feeling of dread crept into the pit of her belly.

  Her mum began cackling with loud and raucous laughter. “That bastard,” she said, struggling to breathe. Both of her children looked at her, speechless.

  She left the room then, laughing all the way down the stairs.

  “What’s going on?” Parvin asked, conveniently appearing once the action was over.

  Soraya said nothing, walking past her sister and down the stairs, Amir close behind.

  What followed was bizarre. Their mum continued laughing until she was face-to-face with her husband, the whole family gathered uneasily in the living room. Their dad had the television remote in his hand, but the TV was off.

  “Has she gone crazy?” Parvin whispered to Amir.

  He nodded his head, said, “I think so.” He put his hand on their mum’s shoulder and she shrugged him off, continuing to cackle, louder this time.

  “Are you fucking mad? What’s wrong with you? Leave me alone!” their dad said, his voice cracking.

  Their mum blocked the door to the kitchen and the twins stood by the door leading to the hallway. It was unintentional, but Soraya appreciated the irony. For once, Hossein Nazari was the caged animal. He was cornered. And he didn’t like it.

  No one ever liked it.

  There were grimaces all around. And silence. It ran around the room. Deafening. Soraya almost wanted to cover her ears, like this was a horror movie and she couldn’t take the suspense. It was no wonder she was anxious all the time, she thought. How could a person be relaxed in a house whose occupants were always at war with each other, in which the husband and wife always involved their children in their arguments?

  She had always felt jealous of school friends whose parents had divorced, because at least then their houses were finally quiet. Divorce sometimes affected children negatively, but so did a couple staying with each other when they were both unhappy.

  Soraya hoped this was the last argument her parents would have. That this would be the final straw. If it was, she could endure the way her heart hurt now. But she doubted it.

  She noticed her dad picking at his nails, how bitten they were, to the point where they looked painful.

  “I know about Laleh,” Parvin said suddenly. “I know everything.”

  She knew not to force the hijab onto her daughters. If she lived in Iran, it would be different, especially now it was compulsory for women to wear it. In England, she didn’t want them to suffer the same abuse she and Hossein experienced. She wanted them to fit in.

  She often wondered if this had been her first mistake with Laleh.

  No. Her first mistake was letting the child witness her parents’ dysfunctional relationship.

  Laleh, now seventeen years old, was a brash young woman, with a level of confidence Neda could remember once having herself. She frequently talked back to her mother, and with Hossein often drugged up and asleep—his various medications made him sleepy—Neda had to attempt to tame her wild daughter alone. She had to do that while making sure Hossein didn’t get wind of anything that was going on, and working full-time as a lecturer, and looking after her other three children.

  In 1993 she had given birth to another daughter: Soraya. And it was Soraya she truly felt sorry for. Laleh, Parvin, and Amir grew up with a father who at least tried to be sober, in a family that tried to be normal and happy. By the time Soraya was born all the fight had gone from Hossein. His methadone addiction was no longer a secret in the family, his will to work dead and gone. He was a zombie who occasionally lost his temper, the man she loved a distant memory Neda still mourned.

  Of all her children, Laleh was the one who most reminded Neda of herself as a child. Her intellect, her inquisitiveness, her nose always being stuck in a book, made Neda nostalgic for her own childhood. Despite all this, as soon as puberty hit and she entered high school, Laleh became moody, which was to be expected, then rejected reading, rejected anything of her former self.

  It all began when Neda had found a love bite on her daughter’s neck.

  She had come home from work
and Laleh was in the kitchen, still in her school uniform, eating a chocolate bar. “Baby One More Time” was playing on the radio. At first Neda noticed nothing, her brain distracted from her full day working at the university. Lesson plans and conversations with anxious students occupied her thoughts, but when she looked at Laleh she noticed how her daughter ducked her head low, and how her hair covered most of her face.

  “What’s going on?” Neda asked, slowly.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re acting strange.” Neda made her way over to Laleh until she was face-to-face with her. Then she saw it. Her daughter’s neck. She made a noise of disgust. “Laleh! What is this?”

  “I think it’s a rash—”

  “You think I’m stupid?”

  Laleh sighed. “Mum, I don’t know what you think it is?” She looked at Neda aghast. So much so that Neda began to wonder if she’d gotten it wrong. Was she projecting her own dirty thoughts onto her daughter?

  The sound of Hossein’s heavy footsteps on the stairs silenced them.

  “What’s for dinner?” he asked, coming into the kitchen while scratching his bottom. Laleh rolled her eyes and jumped up to stir a large pot simmering on the hob.

  “I’m making spaghetti,” she said.

  He made a noise of disapproval. “I want rice,” he said, walking into the living room.

  Despite what had just gone on between them, Neda still felt a pang in her heart on seeing the way Laleh’s face clouded over with disappointment at her father’s dismissive words. And maybe also, in a strange, twisted way, at his failure to notice the love bite on her neck. Laleh was invisible to Hossein.

  “I’m just saying, Laleh dear,” Neda said to her later, when Hossein was busy watching television and the younger children were asleep, “be careful, be decent, and remember you’re a Muslim. Allah is watching you.”

  Laleh rolled her eyes. “Sure, Mum.”

  Weeks passed in a similar vein, except Laleh had no more love bites. She would occasionally stay out late, but overall she was quieter and more subdued, as though she had finally absorbed Neda’s advice, recognized that her mother wasn’t stupid, that she knew what teenagers got up to.

  Neda decided she and Laleh needed some quality time together. So, they went shopping.

  In the car Laleh was anxious. She bit her nails while her mother was talking.

  “What’s the matter?” Neda asked.

  Laleh jolted upright and stared straight ahead at the car in front. Neda sighed.

  “Is it about that boy?”

  “What boy?” Laleh asked, her voice pitched too high.

  They were in traffic now, and Neda put the car in neutral. She turned the radio down. It was a difficult position to be in. She didn’t want to be too harsh and push Laleh away, but she didn’t want to be too gentle and thereby allow her daughter to do haram acts. Where was the balance?

  “The boy who gave you the mark on your neck.”

  “Can you drop it?” Laleh snapped.

  Neda let out a breath and opened the window. The heat inside the car was stifling, combined with the moody energy Laleh was transmitting; some fresh air was more than necessary.

  Despite Laleh’s words, Neda got the sense that she wanted to say something. Wanted her mother to push her one last time. How she knew this, she could never describe. Perhaps it was a mother’s intuition but she had a feeling the girl was saying one thing while meaning something else.

  “Are you sure? You know you can tell me anything.”

  “Fine, I’m…” Laleh stopped talking. She made a choking sound, similar to the first time she realized she had a nut allergy.

  “Are you OK? Tell me,” Neda said, softly. The softness would soon turn. She clicked her indicator to the left. “You’ve been acting strange for a few weeks now, what’s the matter?”

  Still Laleh said nothing.

  The radio broke the silence with the presenter cackling at a joke. Despite the gravity of this moment, the sun was shining brightly. The hottest day of the year, the presenter proclaimed.

  “Did you fall out with one of your friends?” Neda asked.

  “It’s nothing.”

  “Don’t lie to me, Laleh.” They stopped at a red light, which gave Neda the opportunity to study her daughter more closely, as though doing that would give her the answer. And perhaps it would have if only she had understood what she should be looking for.

  Then she would have noticed the way Laleh’s palm was cupping her stomach lightly. Her new necklace, the pendant in the shape of a heart with a small diamanté in the middle.

  “Laleh—”

  “Mum, I’m pregnant.”

  All eyes were on Parvin now.

  “What do you mean?” Soraya said.

  Tears ran down her sister’s face. She rubbed them away with the sleeve of her jumper.

  “I can’t hold it in anymore. I know.”

  “Know what?” Amir asked.

  “Laleh left because she was pregnant. She has a daughter. We have a niece.” She looked at her siblings.

  In the silence that followed all Soraya could hear was her heart pounding in her ears as it thumped uncontrollably. Laleh had gotten pregnant. We have a niece. So that was why her family shunned her sister. But also, that was why her family shunned one of its own members? It made so much sense, and yet made no sense at all.

  Secrets threatened to ruin the Nazari family, and this one, after fifteen years, was finally exposed.

  Finally they knew the truth about Laleh.

  A change had to come now.

  Their mum was looking pale, backing away from them until she was against a wall. She leant on it, desperately needing its support. Soraya felt sorry for her, despite knowing now what she did.

  “What did you say?” Amir asked his twin.

  Parvin looked up quickly and then back down at her feet. Her fingers nervously removed the ring from her index finger before putting it back on. She did this three times until Amir grabbed her hand to stop her.

  “I said, what did you say?” he repeated.

  “I’ve been speaking to her, to Laleh. I found her online a few months ago. She got pregnant when she was seventeen, that’s why she left. Her daughter’s name is Zara, and she’s fourteen now…she looks just like Laleh did.”

  “What? And no one thought to fucking tell us?” Amir said angrily. “You kept this from me for months? You’re meant to be my twin.” He moved away from Parvin, shaking his head. “Well, where is she?”

  Their parents were speechless, as though they had never expected this day to come. Perhaps they thought after fifteen years they had gotten lucky and would never need to explain disowning a pregnant seventeen-year-old.

  “Is no one going to answer me?” Amir looked around the room.

  Soraya had expected her dad to say something, but he sat quietly on the sofa, his head slumped.

  All she could do was watch the scene unfold; for the first time in her life she had nothing to say.

  “They live in Edinburgh,” Parvin said. “She’s lived there since she left.”

  “I don’t get it,” Amir said. “None of this makes sense. Why did she run away? Mum and Dad made out she left to be with her boyfriend, but she would have needed us if she was pregnant. Why leave?”

  Parvin and Soraya stared blankly at their brother, who clearly had no idea how hypocrisy and misogyny worked in most Muslim households. Surprising, because they imagined he would be the one to enforce such rules.

  “It’s always been different for you, Amir,” Soraya explained. “How come you’re allowed girlfriends but we aren’t?”

  “That’s different—”

  “It was my fault,” their mum choked out. “I told her to leave.”

  “Why would you do that? What she did was wrong,
yes, but family is family,” Amir said.

  Her mum was crying now. Her dad had his head in his hands.

  “She told me,” Parvin said slowly, looking at her dad, who was avoiding her gaze. “She told me Dad rang her when she had left because Mum told him what had happened, and he said he’d kill her and the baby if she tried to come back. He said she wasn’t welcome and wasn’t his child anymore.” Parvin said all this quietly. If the atmosphere hadn’t been as tense as it was, perhaps they wouldn’t have heard. But they all heard those words loud and clear.

  Soraya’s head was spinning. She too had to lean against the wall for support. Her dad’s hatred spanned two generations, touched so many people. He was the reason her sister had run as a teenager, afraid and pregnant. He was the reason they hadn’t met their niece, had been estranged from their own sister. Soraya had to shut her eyes. Her hands were clenched into fists, and she wanted so bad to beat them against his chest and make him leave. Force him out of the house.

  “Were you ever going to tell us?” Amir said. “Either of you?”

  Her mum stood straighter. “I wanted to, so many times. I wanted to bring her home. But your dad said no. He said he’d do horrible things to her, to me, and I realized it was better for Laleh to stay away. She would have a better life away from us.”

  “Blame me! You always blame me. She was seventeen years old, having a bastard child.” Despite his harsh words their dad said the last part of this quietly. “What was I supposed to do?”

  “This family is so fucked up,” Soraya let out.

  “What? You want to end up like your sister? Is that why you have a boyfriend? You want a baby? To have your life ruined?” her dad said.

  Soraya could feel Amir stiffen next to her.

  “Boyfriend? What? Why are there so many secrets? What boyfriend?” he said.

  “You don’t need to have secrets because you’re a boy!” Parvin snapped.