by Ehsaneh Sadr
* * *
All week, Sarah agonized over whether she ought to return to meet him. She had so many questions about what had happened and would love the chance to tell him off. On the other hand, perhaps the best way to hurt him the way he’d hurt her would be to let him sit alone at the café waiting for her. The thought was satisfying in a vengeful sort of way. Plus, she wanted to move on. After all the pain and heartbreak of the summer, things had finally started to feel a little normal, and she didn’t want to disturb her fragile stability.
Her parents, she knew, wouldn’t approve. Her family viewed Sarah’s aborted nuptials as a divine blessing that had protected her and the rest of them from a politically and religiously suspect alliance. But even if they liked Ali, they wouldn’t think it appropriate for Sarah to be meeting a man at a café. Although, Sarah reflected, she was pretty sure she and Ali were still technically married. Her parents would have told her if they’d managed to finalize the divorce.
It wasn’t until she was stuck in traffic, on her way to the café but already forty-five minutes late, that Sarah knew for sure that she had to see him. It was as if an internal magnetic bar had finally identified true north after having circled the face of a compass erratically due to interference. But was it too late? Would Ali still be waiting for her? She had no way of contacting him. But if he left, it might really and truly be over. It was this realization more than anything that had sparked her change of heart. Because, mixed in with the anger and fear of what he would say was the certainty that a part of her still loved him. She wanted to understand and explain. She wanted to give him the notebook, just as she’d planned. The only thing worse than having the conversation she’d been dreading all week would be not having it at all.
Traffic was at a standstill, and the car was moving forward only inches at a time. As many people as vehicles seemed to be in the streets as pedestrians weaved between the slow-moving cars. Sarah noticed flashes of green and wondered whether all these people were headed to some sort of event or demonstration. Sarah shook her head. What would compel people to take to the streets yet again? The early protests might have been fun, with millions of Tehranis turning out like they did when the national soccer team won an important victory. But since the supreme leader had endorsed the election results, protests had been small, sporadic, and heavily policed. Where was the fun in that? And what was the point even, since the numbers of people turning out was too small to make any difference.
“Is there no way to get around this?” she asked the driver. “Couldn’t we try the alleyways?”
“Na, khanoom,” the driver said. “This is the only way to get to the park from here. It looks like something is going on at the university.”
“Then I’m going to get out here,” Sarah announced.
“Wait!” he protested. “I’m sure traffic will open up soon.”
“No, I’ll get there faster if I walk. Don’t bother trying to get to the sidewalk. The cars aren’t moving so I’ll get out right here.”
“Be careful, madame.”
Sarah paid and then grabbed her purse and the notebook and hopped out of the taxi. She wended her way through the cars in the street and then the pedestrians on the sidewalk. She held her chador carefully to avoid trampling on it in her haste. Her shoes—chosen for fashion, not comfort—rubbed against her heels, and her purse bumped awkwardly against her hip with each step. Why, oh why, hadn’t she left the house earlier? She would never forgive herself—or God, who should have been more helpful—if Ali wasn’t still at the café when she got there. Assuming, that is, that he’d come to begin with. What if he’d had his own change of heart?
Sarah turned onto the side street on which the café was located and began jogging down the slightly sloped hill. Two blocks away she saw a man exiting the café. Was it him? He raised his arm to signal for a cab.
Sarah hollered as she redoubled her speed. “Ali!”
The man turned. As did the other dozen or so pedestrians on the sidewalk.
Sarah was running hard now. “Ali!”
It was Ali. He dropped his arm and stared.
Sarah knew she must look a sight. Running and yelling in the streets was entirely unexpected behavior from a well-bred religious girl like herself. But she was too happy and relieved to care about what passersby might think. She tried to slow down and catch her breath, but the momentum of her downhill run tripped her up, and she fell, rolling knee over arm, shoulder, and back until she came to a sitting stop on her other side. More dazed than hurt Sarah tried to regather her chador, purse, notebook, and dignity as Ali came running up to her.
“Are you okay?”
She looked up at him and gingerly rubbed her knee where it had hit the pavement. “Yeah, I’m fine.”
Ali shook his head and made a strange expression.
Sarah asked, “What?”
“Nothing. It’s just . . .”
Sarah realized he was trying to suppress laughter as he continued.
“You should have seen yourself !” Ali was laughing openly now. “You were streaming down the hill with your chador trailing like a superhero cape and screaming like a banshee and then, boom, down you go.”
“Yeah? Maybe I should have just let you leave?” Sarah tried to look offended but was sure her twitching lips were giving her away. She’d forgotten how much fun it was to make Ali laugh.
“No!” He smiled warmly and offered her a hand up. “I’m so glad you’re here. It just . . . surprised me, that’s all.”
Sarah paused a moment before taking his hand and standing. She let go as soon as she was upright and asked, “You don’t like having a superhero wife?”
Ali took a deep breath before answering.
“Actually, I’m quite delighted.”
* * *
“So why didn’t you get in touch when you were released?”
They were inside the café where they had already been talking for almost an hour, catching up on the current events in one another’s lives. Conversation was so easy and intimate that Sarah felt ready to address the main topic on her mind. After considering several subtle ways of bringing it up, she had decided to be direct.
Ali sighed deeply. “Sarah . . .”
“Do you know how I heard you were free?” Sarah cut him off. “I ran into Mr. Shirazi’s daughter, and she asked how you were doing. Do you have any idea what it feels like to learn, from someone I barely know, that my husband had already been out of jail for two weeks and hadn’t bothered to come see me?”
Rather than looking apologetic, however, Ali looked irritated. “Well,” he said, “I honestly wasn’t sure you wanted to hear from me, since you completely forgot about me while I was in prison. Prison! I thought maybe you finally agreed with your aunt that marrying me was a bad idea. My parents said you never once called to ask about me. Why?”
This wasn’t right, Sarah thought. How was it that she was the one being put on the defensive?
“Why didn’t your family call me?” Sarah turned the question on Ali. “Why didn’t they call, even once, to see how I was doing after those men ripped my husband away from me the night of my wedding.”
“They did!” Ali insisted. “They even came to your house to see you.”
“No!” Sarah knew her voice was too loud but couldn’t help herself. “I never saw them. I never heard from them. Never!”
Ali didn’t say anything but looked at her expectantly, as if waiting for her to figure something out.
“No,” Sarah said again but this time in a whisper. She shook her head as if the movement would stave off a truth that Sarah did not want to accept. “My parents wouldn’t have . . . I don’t believe it, I . . . How could they have managed it?”
Even as she asked the question, unbidden memories arose of the small pink sleeping pills her mother had insisted she take that first night and for severa
l days after.
“My God!” Sarah breathed. “I just can’t believe they would do such a thing. I . . . I need to talk to them. Maybe it was a misunderstanding. Or they were worried about upsetting me. Or . . .” Sarah’s mind searched for an explanation that would absolve her parents.
“Anyway, I don’t know exactly what happened,” Sarah said, unwilling to speak ill of her parents. “But, you have to believe me. I never knew that your family visited or called. My mother told me your family blamed us for the arrest. I didn’t think they would want to hear from me.”
“All you had to do”—Ali’s eyes were unyielding—“was pick up the phone one time and call my mother, and this would have all been cleared up. Why didn’t you?”
He was angry with her! Sarah couldn’t understand it. Didn’t he see that it wasn’t her fault?
“I don’t know,” she stammered, lips trembling. “I was afraid, I guess. I didn’t know they had called me, and I thought they were angry at me and my family. And my parents, well, they told me it would be better not to call.”
Ali leaned forward, elbows on the table, his eyes locked on hers. “Sarah. This is important. I can’t be married to someone who will put her parents above me. Look, I love my parents too, and I want them to be happy, just like you want your parents to be happy. But there are times when the best decision for us isn’t going to please anyone else, and I need to know that my wife will stand by me. Otherwise, there really is no point in this.”
Sarah was weeping with anger. She wiped at her cheeks with scratchy café napkins as she responded. “That’s not fair! We didn’t make a decision together that I could defend to my parents. You were in jail and I was all alone, trying to figure out what to do. Maybe I didn’t make the best choice. Maybe I should have called. But when you aren’t around, you shouldn’t be surprised if I listen to my parents. They’ve cared for me my whole life. You and I hadn’t even known each other for three months when you were arrested.”
Sarah blew her nose and tried to calm her breathing.
“It doesn’t matter how long we’ve known each other,” Ali insisted. “I need to know I am my wife’s first priority, and she needs to know she is mine. I need to know that when I’m dragged into jail, her heart is with me and she’s thinking of me and trying to help me and my family.”
“I was thinking of you! You have no idea what it was like for me. Every day, from the moment I opened my eyes to when I finally fell asleep at night, I was praying and begging and crying for God’s intercession. I couldn’t eat. I didn’t talk to anyone. I sat in my room all day except for the few times we went to the shrines to pray for your release. And then, after a month and a half of this, I find out from some stranger that you’ve been out for two weeks . . . How do you think that made me feel?”
Ali rocked his head slightly from side to side as if to consider her words.
Sarah knew what she had to do to make him see her side of it. She slid the yellow notebook across the table. It wasn’t pretty. Just a standard A4 notebook left over from the previous school year. But it would make him understand.
“What’s this?” Ali asked.
Sarah kept her eyes on the notebook. “When you were gone, I felt so alone. I was so used to talking to you and emailing you. And I was afraid everything would be monitored, so I, well, I wrote to you in that notebook. If you read it, you’ll see I didn’t forget you.”
Ali thumbed through the notebook. “You filled almost the whole thing,” he commented. Then he flipped to the front and started reading Sarah’s first entry which was written four days after Ali’s arrest, when she’d finally stopped taking her mother’s sleeping pills and had a clear head but no idea what to do.
Sarah waited, trying to remember what she’d written in that first entry and wondering what Ali would think. As he read, his tongue returned to the jagged edge of his lateral incisor.
Ali looked up from the notebook. He smiled at her. “You still sleep with my jacket?” he teased.
Ali had left his wedding suit jacket in the car when he’d been arrested. In the days and weeks that followed, Sarah used it as a covering at night to feel closer to him. She remembered having sworn in her first notebook entry that she would sleep with that jacket until it was replaced by her beloved.
Sarah narrowed her eyes at Ali. “I burned it when I realized you hadn’t contacted me after your release.”
Ali looked startled for a moment and then, realizing she was teasing him back, broke into a loud guffaw. Sarah let her mask of feigned anger drop and joined in with laughter of her own.
“Oh Sarah-khanoom,” Ali said shaking his head. “You’re too much!”
He glanced at the grimy clock on the café wall. “I actually have to go. I’m already late for a meeting.”
“Really? But I came early so we could have plenty of time together.” Sarah couldn’t help teasing again.
Ali chuckled. “Yes, it’s terribly inconsiderate of me,” he said with sarcasm. “But I do have to go. Can I take this with me to read?” He gestured to the yellow notebook.
“Yes, of course,” Sarah said. “It’s yours now. You can do whatever you want with it.”
Ali slipped it into his briefcase and gathered his things but remained seated at the table.
“I want to see you again,” he said in a low voice. “Let’s meet at the house next time so we can have some privacy.”
“What house?” Sarah felt her cheeks grow warm, but she pretended she didn’t know what he was talking about.
“Our house,” Ali said. “The one we were going to live in . . . the one we were driving to on our wedding night.”
Sarah tried to answer coolly. “Sure. Why not?”
They decided on a date and time, and he gave her his new cell phone number so she could call or text if needed. They stepped outside the café, where Ali chuckled again in the midst of their final goodbyes.
“I’m going to have that image of you running down the hill”—Ali gestured to the hill in question—“in my head all day long.”
Sarah made a face at him, pretending to be offended as internally she relished the accomplishment of having made him laugh once again.
“You’re constantly surprising me, Sarah. I . . .”
Ali’s voice trailed off, and the smile on his face stiffened. Sarah followed his gaze across the street to the front gate of a shabby apartment building from which a small, neat man with a trim white beard was exiting. The man looked up and down the street before motioning to a car that quickly pulled up before him. The man licked his unusually dark purple lips and then pulled out his telephone and punched at it with his thumb as he got into the car. Sarah and Ali watched as the car drove off down the hill, the man inside with his ear pressed against his phone.
Sarah asked. “Who was that?”
Ali’s entire affect had changed from the relaxed, teasing posture of a few seconds ago. He was breathing hard and put his hand up to rub his forehead.
“Ali,” Sarah called his name with alarm. “Are you okay?”
“I’m sorry,” Ali answered, still rubbing his forehead as if to erase something from it. “It’s just . . . He was one of the people . . . in jail. He . . .”
“He was one of the protestors?” Sarah asked.
“No . . . he was . . . God! These people won’t let me alone!” Ali shook his head. He looked angry.
“I don’t understand,” Sarah said.
“Nothing. Never mind. I’m okay. I just . . . Let’s forget it.” Ali took a deep breath and turned away from her and then back in a slow circle. When he faced her again, he looked calm.
“Okay, Sarah dear, I really need to go,” he said. “You can get yourself home from here, right?”
“Yes, yes, of course,” she answered.
Ali turned to go, and Sarah watched him walk down the hill, one hand holding his b
riefcase, the other in his pocket. A light wind blew into his suit jacket so that it ballooned around behind him. At the bottom of the hill, Ali turned and smiled at her before heading east on Keshavarz.
Sarah couldn’t wait to see him again. She was sure he’d suggested they meet at their apartment so they could . . . Well, she wasn’t sure how she felt about that. It might be best to stick with public places for now. At least until they were 100 percent sure that their parents would let them stay married. Although now that she and Ali had reconnected, she supposed it wasn’t up to their parents anymore.
Lost in these happy thoughts, Sarah turned to start walking up the hill, feeling the blister on her heel protest as she did so. She glanced across the street and was surprised by the sight of a familiar face in an unfamiliar setting.
At the building from which Ali’s jail acquaintance had exited.
Sadegh.
What was her cousin doing here? Sarah watched him buzz and speak into the intercom system. She noticed that Sadegh was holding a bouquet of yellow and purple flowers. He must be going to someone’s house. Sarah watched as Sadegh waited for what seemed like a long time until the gate was opened, manually it seemed, by a girl who greeted him warmly. Sarah gasped as she recognized yet another familiar face. It was the beautiful girl she and Ali had saved on their wedding night.
* * *
“You’re sure it was the same girl?”
Ali questioned Sarah as they sat at their small kitchen table eating delicious kabobs he had picked up from Nayeb restaurant. Sarah had overcome her qualms about meeting him at their condo. He was still her husband after all, so there were, technically, no religious grounds for concern. But, although she removed the long black chador when they came inside, she kept her headscarf and manteau on.
Sarah had looked forward to seeing their condo again. It looked almost exactly like it did the last time she had seen it, shortly before the wedding, when she and her mother and a few cousins had worked on the final decorative touches. Sarah did notice, however, that the beautiful embroidered kitchen hand towels her mother had picked out had been replaced with a plainer variety she did not recognize. And the few dishes in the drainer to the left of the sink were not from the collection of Italian dishware her family had stocked the cabinets with. Probably, she noted with approval, Ali had been spending time here but didn’t feel right about using all the beautiful things her family had purchased for them to use as a couple.