The Shipwrecked

by Fereshteh Nouraie-Simone

  Our neighbor’s servant, we noticed, was standing on the roof. “Look at that son of a bitch,” Mother noticed, “ogling at my girl.”

  “Hey mister,” she whooped, “what are you standing there for, feasting your eyes? Don’t you know you can’t invade folks’ privacy? Get down or I am calling the Committee right now.” The man snickered and shrugged his shoulders. “It is your own fault—your gallivanting in the yard unveiled. If you had any modesty you’d cover yourselves,” he said.

  “Can’t we breathe free in our own house?” Mother wanted to know. She picked up her tea glass and turned to Zeynab. “Come on in, missy,” she said. “From now on, don’t get out there without a head cover.”

  I felt drained and listless. Without a word I picked up my books and newspaper and went inside. Zeynab squatted next to me, mumbling. Suddenly she said, “I just want to talk.”

  I ignored what she said and continued reading. She said again, “I know I am not supposed to talk, but I really want to talk.”

  “All right, go ahead and talk,” Mother said impatiently. “What do you want to talk about?”

  “I’m scared Mohammad Agha will cut my head off.”

  “You get up and get ready for your prayers. Don’t think bad thoughts,” commanded Mother. “Mohammad Agha is harmless,” she said.

  Zeynab got quiet and thoughtful. It was obvious she was dealing with some kind of an internal conflict. Absentmindedly, Mother was thumbing through the pages of a magazine when the telephone rang again but stopped before we picked it up. Standing motionless, Zeynab raised her hand to her face to hide an amused sneer. I looked at her, an ominous feeling going through me. Her behavior was certainly bizarre. She noticed I was staring at her. “What are you reading?” she asked, taking her hand off her face.

  I held the book in front of her and asked, “How many grades have you finished?” Mother, not waiting for an answer, interjected, “My girl, I can put you in adult literacy classes, if you want. Mohammad Agha said you have finished elementary school.”

  “I have a question,” said Zeynab, changing the subject. “You are all so educated and understand everything so well. Just tell me how it is possible for two grown people to die in a car crash but an infant gets thrown out through the windshield without a scratch.”

  Mother and I exchanged glances. Deep in my heart I had a sense that trouble was ahead. Mother frowned with a certain look in her eyes. She pursed her lips, and deep lines appeared in the corners of her mouth.

  “You are so naive,” Zeynab persisted. “I’ll be skinned alive if Mohammad Agha finds out I have opened my mouth. But you are so nice; I can’t lie to you.”

  The doorbell rang. It was the sanitation man calling for a spot of lunch and his monthly allowance. We were left alone again after his departure. I pulled Zeynab aside and told her that talk like that disturbs Mother. “But I swear on the Koran I am not lying,” she protested. “This woman who claims to be Mohammad Agha’s aunt is lying. I don’t know who my parents are. For all I know I may be a foundling.”

  As she turned toward us, Mother heard the last sentence. Color drained from her face. “Do you realize,” she said sternly, “that if you lie, all your prayers will be nullified?” Zeynab laughed pejoratively. “Oh, come on, who says I pray? Mohammad Agha’s aunt has never said a prayer in her life, and he himself is a drunk with no religion!”

  Mother was almost in shock. “Look here,” she warned, “I’m going to call her and tell her what you’re saying behind her back.”

  “I don’t care,” said Zeynab, pouting. “She’ll come and get me and throw me in the arms of strangers again.”

  We were speechless. The illusion of good fortune had turned into a receding cloud of dust. Transfixed, Mother and I stared at each other, lost for words. Zeynab, on the other hand, was excited by her boldness, knowing she was treading on forbidden ground. “I shouldn’t have said that,” she moaned, tears welling up in her eyes. “You are such decent people. I bet you’ll kick me out now. Right?” she asked, whimpering.

  The phone rang and I lunged for it. A woman’s voice I couldn’t recognize asked for Zeynab. “Who are you?” I queried.

  “I am her mother and have just arrived from Ghazvin.”

  “But madam,” I said curtly, “she says her mother has died in a car crash.”

  “Oh, she’s not all there, you know, and says things,” the voice explained. “I’ll be there to pick her up.”

  Mother, with her ear pressed against the receiver, wondered, apprehensively, “Who are these people? Where did they get our phone number and address?”

  “They are after me,” Zeynab said “all those thieves and smugglers.” If Auntie Malak had heard this, she would have fainted on the spot, I thought. Mother, too, looked pale, making me think that we were now in a real crisis.

  “Do you know what you are talking about?” I snapped at Zeynab. “We have known Mohammad Agha for twenty years.”

  All this time, Zeynab kept glancing at me pleadingly, seemingly apprehensive of Mother and the misery that lay in her future. Words, as if churned by a force stronger than her will, poured out uncontrollably. Mother, vacillating and nervous, muttered, “Didn’t I say we shouldn’t hire anyone? Didn’t I say we shouldn’t trust anyone? How do we know what Mohammad Agha does in his spare time? He does only carpentry work here. We are not with him all the time. Who could have imagined Hassan Agha and that wife of his leaving us in a lurch after fifty years? Do you remember how she put her hands on her hips and stood in my face yelling, ‘Then what’s the revolution for?’”

  This was a delicate subject and had to be changed. I turned to Zeynab and asked if she could honestly tell us who she is and how she got to know Mohammad Agha. We all drifted into the kitchen, which looked meticulously clean after Zeynab had finished with it. Impressed, once more Mother changed her tone. “Listen to me, girl,” she addressed Zeynab, “don’t be afraid and tell me the truth.”

  “I swear on the Holy Koran, I’m telling the truth.” Zeynab asserted. “Until a few years ago,” she went on, “I was in an orphanage. Then I was adopted by a rich engineer, Mr. Sham-Akhtar, and his wife. Three years ago she died. Mr. Sham-Akhtar married me off and moved lock, stock, and barrel to America. Turns out my husband was a heroin-smuggling gang leader, him and his mother and brothers. They tried to get me hooked too, but I ran away and went to the Committee and gave them their names. The guards came and took them all away. A little later, I saw their pictures in the paper, and the report said that they’d hanged my husband and two of his brothers. That made me happy. Then this woman who says she’s raised me took me to her house and that’s where I saw Mohammad Agha. His job was to bring in girls. One night they sent a customer to my room, and I got into a fight with him. I cracked his skull with a flowerpot and ran into the street yelling and screaming. He was so afraid the Committee would find out. That’s how I ended up here. And now you are going to kick me out, I know.”

  I was in a real quandary. Was she sincere? I could not tell. I wanted so desperately to see through her. I pulled Mother aside. “We absolutely must protect her,” I whispered, “if she is honest. We must change her life.”

  “Are you crazy?” Mother retorted. “It’s dangerous. Didn’t you hear? Heroin smugglers! She’s sent her husband to the gallows. His comrades are not going to let go. They’ll be after us. What if she’d tell the Committee all sorts of lies about us? I shouldn’t have trusted Mohammad Agha. I never liked him much. Come to think of it, he does look like a cutthroat. That stupid and bad-tempered Hassan Agha! He was worth his weight in gold, compared to these folks. Fifty years he lived with us under one roof and not a pin got lost or misplaced, though he had control of everything in this house. What do we do now?” Mother said with a note of desperation in her voice. “I’m gonna call Mohammad Agha to come and get this girl out of here.”

  I felt it contingent upon me to show some backbone. “No way!” I protested. “First we must get to the bottom of wh
at she says. If she is telling the truth, we can’t hand her over to those wolves.”

  Mother was reluctant. “What if she is in cahoots with those thieves?” she said, now in the throes of doubt. Trying to defuse the tension, I told her jokingly she was worse than Auntie Malak. It suddenly occurred to Mother that Zeynab had taken a shower in the downstairs bathroom and had possibly seen the crates of wine bottles left with us by a friend for safekeeping. “Those crates are behind the bathroom window in the backyard,” she said fearfully. “I am sure she has them! Now she has an advantage over us. One word and she’ll report us to the Committee. Imagine that! Here we are, our maid’s captive!”

  “We’d better not talk about the crates,” I said dismissively. “I’ll dispose of them tonight somehow.”

  “Throw them in an empty lot or something,” she suggested. “To hell with that wine. I told you not to store them in the house.”

  Zeynab, oblivious to us, was mumbling to herself absentmindedly and incoherently. “I had a good time in the engineer’s house,” she said to no one in particular. “Until his wife died and he went crazy. He’d cry every night and beat his head against door and walls and then turn on me and give me a good thrashing.” She then reached for an apple and started gnawing at it, quiet and pensive.

  That night we had an invitation to dinner at Mr. K’s home, and this added to our ordeal. We were torn between suspicion and sympathy. For a moment, allowing sentiment to take over, Mother said, “Poor girl, snatched up by these wolves! We can rescue her. I’ll keep her here . . . find her husband . . .” she muttered, her voice trailing off.

  Before anything else, we had to do something about the wine crates, regardless of what we did with Zeynab. By now, we had thrown away all unsanctioned objects, such as playing cards, backgammon boards, videos, music tapes, incriminating photos, etc., all in fear of a raid. Mother covered her head even when she answered the phone. We kept the windows shuttered, went to bed early, and turned off all lights. We had cut down on socializing—which had taken a toll on Mother’s temper. She was already demoralized by Hassan Agha’s departure and Morteza’s grievance lodged with the authorities. After a couple of short visits to Europe, Mother had toyed with the idea of liquidating everything and moving to the other corner of the world to get away from all this. But she had decided against it. How would it be possible to go into exile at her age to a land where streets evoked no memories and language was a barrier? How could one sit next to a small window all day and watch the never-ending European rain? Despite everything—the murderous Afghani wetbacks, religious-police raids, runaway inflation, Hassan Agha’s desertion, war, bombardment, and insecurity—Tehran was home, and every part of it interlaced with her life. Even its problems and heartbreaks were meaningful and could be shared widely. Its rare moments of relief, too, were of a public nature. Death itself had familiar rituals, and life in this town, with all its chaos and agony, had familiar and comforting patterns for Mother and was latent with the expectation of better things to come. Living abroad, however, would have meant nostalgia for the past and recycling old memories.

  Time was now of the essence and we had to take some action. Mother had the urge to do something drastic, something untoward, to protect Zeynab, this helpless creature, but was scared of the consequences. She was more inherently cautious than to act on impulse. That made her so much more desperate for a reasonable escape route.

  “Did you notice how casually she spoke of her husband’s execution?” noted Mother. “She almost sounded jolly. It made my blood curdle. I don’t even know these people. But when I see their pictures in the paper and read the caption they have been executed, I get sick. But this girl sounds as if she is used to such things. She could do the same thing with us.” At this point it looked like we had to get rid of her. But how? And how to deal with Mohammad Agha?

  “I know you don’t want me,” said Zeynab, as if reading our thoughts instinctively. “I should have kept my trap shut. I know it was stupid of me to talk. I’m not going back to Mohammad Agha and that bitchy aunt of his. I just got myself out of their clutches. I know where I’ll go.”

  “Where?” asked Mother expectantly.

  “Back to the engineer, Mr. Sham-Akhtar,” replied Zeynab with authority.

  “But you said his wife is dead and he is in Europe,” exclaimed Mother, thinking she had caught her in a lie. But Zeynab was right on the ball and came back with an answer. “But his mother is here and she liked me. Besides, I heard that he is now back,” she came back without missing a beat.

  The dry and hollow timbre of Zeynab’s voice told me that she was lying. But to Mother this was a ray of hope. “That’s my girl,” she whooped. “You just do that. If they kept you all those years, they must be better than anyone else. You just go to their house, and I’ll put Mohammad Agha and his aunt in their place for good.”

  “But you don’t know that woman,” warned Zeynab. “A few months ago she had some problem with a neighbor, and she told a bunch of lies to the Committee. They came and took that woman away.”

  Once more the color drained out of Mother’s face. She immediately regretted pitching herself against the aunt. “Very well,” she said, in retraction of her threat, “I won’t get tangled up with that woman. That is none of my business. As for you, dear girl, just go to Mr. Akhtar’s and stay there.”

  It was hard for her to utter these words but they had to be said. We had to extricate ourselves from Zeynab and her predicament. After all that had happened, we had to act conservatively, with self-preservation in mind.

  As for the dinner party, it was decided that Zeynab should go with us. Mother helped her put on one of her old-fashioned winter garments with a high collar. When Zeynab saw herself in the mirror, she burst out laughing, almost like a child.

  “I look just like the aunt, one of those madams,” she said as she guffawed.

  Mother winced. “Now you look respectable,” she said defensively. “What was it you were wearing before? It was shameful.”

  While Zeynab was busy adjusting her outfit, I called a friend about moving the crates of wine. I knew Mr. K would take exception to having a stranger in his house, but we had no choice. We even thought of declining the invitation. But then we felt we needed the company. Besides, the affair was a farewell party for me in anticipation of my upcoming trip out of the country.

  Mr. K did not easily let anybody in his house. He had made elaborate arrangements with trusted friends and relatives for coded ringing of the doorbell. He would alert his dogs to stand guard before he opened the door. The dogs had been especially trained to be suspicious of the chador and to attack women wearing it.

  When we arrived, we touched the door and a light came on at the top of the doorway. When we rang the doorbell, we could hear a siren sounding inside the house, setting off the dogs. A metallic voice in the intercom asked, “Who are you?” Then another voice from behind the door asked the same question for confirmation. Following a long pause, the door opened and we entered. We hastily took off the chadors and other headgear before the dogs reached us. Mr. K immediately stared at Zeynab, who was putting away her chador. He then looked quizzically at Mother. I intervened and explained that she was not a stranger but a new maid we could not leave at home because we didn’t trust her that much. I hastened to point out that we were letting her go the next day anyway. This not only failed to calm Mr. K, but exacerbated his agitation to such an extent that I began to regret coming to the party at all. Earlier that morning, sixteen people had been executed for an assortment of charges, including corrupt practices and infractions of religious moral standards. This had put everyone on edge.

  Mr. K asked us to wait out in the garden until he had warned his family and guests of the presence of a stranger in the house. Zeynab was certainly proving a disruptive factor among us. We were all related, close-knit and like-minded. That night a foreign element had infiltrated our gathering, causing concern and discomfiture. Mr. K’s wife, adjusting her head
gear, sidled up to Mother, wanting to know why she had trusted a stranger. Bringing Zeynab had definitely been a mistake, but it was too late.

  Zeynab, oblivious to the disturbance her presence had caused, was delighted to be at an affair of that kind. With wide-eyed curiosity, she was looking everyone over. At some distance from where the guests had congregated, a chair was placed for her with a bowl of fruit and confectionaries at her feet. Soon it was time to tune in to the Persian broadcast from Radio Israel. My Uncle Doc was addicted to foreign broadcasts and knew the wavelengths and schedules of all of them. But Mr. K cast a wary glance at Zeynab and signaled to him not to turn on the radio.

  Auntie Malak wanted to know what Zeynab’s wages were. I noticed that Mother was not averse to the idea of palming Zeynab off on Auntie. Accordingly, she began giving a praising account of Zeynab’s housekeeping virtues. She hinted that the girl needed a home and did not expect any pay. The only reason why we were trying to place her was that we were leaving town for an extended period. The thought of an unpaid domestic excited Auntie, but she was too nervous about strangers to fall for it.