A Door between Us

by Ehsaneh Sadr

  It was Ali who decided that they should go for it.

  “I don’t see what else we can do. We keep trying to wait for the perfect time, but maybe this is the best we can get.”

  Sarah was still nervous. “I just wish my aunt wasn’t going to be here. She’s sure to make a scene.”

  “Would you rather tell your mother right now, on your own?”

  Sarah thought about it. No. She was going to need Ali’s help to get through this. His arrival right after her announcement would help cut short any unnecessary drama. She also hoped the sight of them together as a couple would help convince everyone that there was no use protesting against it. Besides, it would be kind of fun to tweak her irritating aunt a bit.

  She sighed, “I suppose you’re right. Let’s do it.”

  * * *

  Sarah moved swiftly down the hallway. She could hear laughter from the salon, where it sounded like her father was still entertaining everyone with the latest jokes he’d added to his collection about Isfahanis, Rashtis, Turks, and other Iranian regional and ethnic groups living up to stereotyped behavior as cheapskates, cuckolds, and more. She passed her brother’s bedroom, where all the youngsters had gathered to watch TV.

  In her own room, Sarah locked the door behind her before she opened her closet and dug past hanging clothes to pull a heavy box from the back of the roomy wardrobe. Sarah removed the top of the box and dug through the papers it contained to find the big white envelope she was looking for. She set the envelope on her bed while she replaced the contents of the box and pushed it back to its place in her closet. Then she picked it up and opened it to pull out a manila folder. She left the empty envelope on the bed and hid the folder under her chador. Then she left her bedroom and walked back down the hall toward the den.

  Sadegh’s briefcase was still where she’d seen him lean it up against the couch when he’d sat down to visit with the men before lunch. The soft leather bag was already overflowing with papers and books. Sarah turned the folder sideways and wedged it into the middle opening so that one end was sticking up a bit. She was sure he couldn’t miss it. She wished there was a way to pass this on to someone she hated a little less than Sadegh. But the important thing was to get it out of her own house and make sure it got back to the authorities so she and Ali would be safe.

  “Sarah, are you okay?”

  Sarah whirled around and found Sumayeh at the entry to the den. Sarah’s heart started pounding at the unexpected intrusion. Had Sumayeh seen her fiddling with Sadegh’s bag?

  “I was worried,” Sumayeh smiled. “Your mom said you haven’t been feeling well.”

  Sumayeh had always been kind to Sarah, so Sarah wasn’t sure why she’d never been able to warm to her. Maybe it was because of that weird scar. Or maybe because Sarah had still had a bit of a crush on Sadegh when he’d married Sumayeh. Or maybe it was just that Sumayeh was always so serious, had no sense of humor, and never laughed at Sarah’s attempts to be funny.

  “I’m fine,” Sarah said, more coldly than she’d intended. “I was just looking for something.”

  “Can I help you find it?” Sumayeh offered in a voice so sincerely helpful that Sarah decided she must not have seen her shoving the file into Sadegh’s bag.

  “No, it’s not important,” Sarah said with relief. “I was just about to go and rejoin everyone.”

  Sarah brushed past Sumayeh and headed toward the salon. God, she’d given her a fright. Not that it was really that big of a deal. Sumayeh was probably quite well-informed about all of Sadegh’s activities, so she would understand about the papers. But it had startled Sarah nonetheless.

  Sarah headed across the salon toward the chair where she’d earlier been sitting between her mother and father, who were bridging the male and female sides of the room. Halfway there, however, she decided it would be better to simply address everyone from the middle of the room. She stopped in the center of the massive carpet her father had purchased from Qom last month, right where the bud of a lotus flower grew between two men on horses in pursuit of a beautiful stag. Sarah cleared her throat and announced, “I have something to say.”

  A few of the men looked briefly in her direction but the ladies ignored her entirely as they continued their conversation.

  Zainab was speaking. With one hand, she held a ribbed glass of tea while the other held a cream puff with a bite taken out of it.

  “I was there to pick up Nafiseh’s school uniform when I saw her.” Zainab used the cream puff to point in a general eastward direction to, Sarah presumed, indicate where she was when the event in question occurred. “She tried to talk to me, can you imagine? Of course, I ignored her entirely. Mr. Akbari’s shop is certainly serving a much lower type of clientele these days. We’ll have to find a new tailor now!”

  A few of the ladies tittered and the men turned back to their own conversations. Zainab took another bite out of her cream puff. Out of the corner of her eye, Sarah saw that Sumayeh had rejoined their gathering.

  Sarah had no idea what they were talking about and took a deep breath to try again. But before she could speak, Fatimeh said softly. “That’s not nice.”

  Zainab answered sharply, her hawk eyes zooming onto Fatimeh as if she were prey. “What do you mean? After all that woman has done to our family? I have nothing to say to her . . . None of us should have anything to say to her.” Zainab leaned forward and set the remaining half of the cream puff on a small plate before her and then raised her glass of tea to her lips.

  “Vallah! ” Aunt Mehri harrumphed her agreement to Zainab’s sentiments.

  Sarah gathered herself to try interrupting again but was distracted by the strained look on Fatimeh’s face as she opened and then closed her mouth several times in succession. It looked like she was struggling to decide whether to speak or keep quiet in the face of the usual alliance between her strong-willed sister and mother. Fatimeh started chewing on her bottom lip, and it looked as if she’d lost her nerve. But just as Sarah decided to speak up and started saying, “I have to . . .” Fatimeh rallied her courage and spoke. “Well . . . she’s been hurt too, hasn’t she? Isn’t it punishment enough that she lost her son?”

  Sarah realized that the conversation must be about Sadegh’s real mother. She’d heard the whole story after the mix-up about Sadegh taking flowers for his half sister. What an unlikely coincidence that had turned out to be! Sarah still couldn’t quite believe that the beautiful girl she and Ali had given shelter to had turned out to be her cousin’s half sister.

  Ali, of course, had strongly disputed this interpretation of events. “It’s too much of a coincidence to have happened by chance,” he’d argued. So far as he was concerned, it was much more likely that the girl had been working with Sadegh all along to entrap him and get to Azar and Ibrahim through him.

  Sarah disagreed but chose not to push the point. It wasn’t just that Sadegh hadn’t even met his biological mother until after Ali had already been arrested. It was also that Sarah still remembered so vividly the moment when Leila realized she was trapped in the alleyway. Sarah didn’t think it was possible for anyone to fake the combined fear, resignation, and determination evident on the girl’s face. And how could anyone have known, when Sarah herself had no idea, that this exact mix of feelings would elicit Sarah’s impulsive decision to invite Leila into their car and create the false premise of Ali’s arrest?

  Sarah tuned back into the ongoing conversation, or monologue rather, in which Aunt Mehri was chastising her cringing daughter while peeling an orange. “My God, Fati, sometimes you surprise me.” It was strange to hear Aunt Mehri use God’s name in a way she usually avoided out of respect for Sumayeh’s feelings. “Don’t you realize what type of lying filth that woman is? And how she nearly destroyed our family?” The knife in Aunt Mehri’s wizened hand made several quick slices through the orange peel. “It was only through God’s great mercy—” Aunt
Mehri pointed the knife heavenward, and resumed shouting. “—that I was able to make it through at all. Kheili sakht bood! It was nearly unbearable . . . You have no idea what it did to me!” Aunt Mehri set the knife down with a clang.

  Sarah’s telephone vibrated. She retrieved it carefully from her pocket and saw a text from Ali: Should I come now?

  She texted back: Five minutes.

  Sarah put the phone back in her pocket and readjusted her coverings. She was still standing awkwardly, like a bullseye in the middle of the salon with the whole family sitting on couches and chairs lining a ring around her. She was getting tired of standing on this stiff rug, whose woolen and silk fibers still hadn’t gotten enough foot traffic to fully soften. She needed to make her announcement quickly and get to the door for Ali.

  Aunt Mehri had continued her tirade as she ripped pieces of the orange peel from its flesh “How that woman managed to fool your father and get her hooks into him, I will never understand.” Rip. “I knew what she was from the moment I laid eyes on her.” Rip. “My heartbreak wasn’t for me . . . it was for your father! I couldn’t bear it that such a good, kind, and pious man was being fooled by a snake like her.” Rip. “And I thank merciful God every day for protecting us from her. It could have been so much worse.” Rip. “But He heard all my prayers for my children and my husband and my family. And then one day, just like a gift from heaven, he delivered the proof I needed to convince my husband. You wouldn’t believe the letters I found from this woman to . . . I can’t even say the word!”

  Aunt Mehri paused for effect and then ripped the final piece of peel from the orange.

  Sarah used the pause to jump in. She spoke loudly as she turned in a slow semicircle on the rug’s woven lotus flower to include all the male and female relatives in the room. “I have something to say. I hope it won’t be too much of a—”

  “No! I . . . oh! . . . I can’t . . .”

  Sarah lost her audience at once as all eyes turned toward Fatimeh who looked as if she were having some sort of a mental fit. She was shaking her head and making sharp monosyllabic attempts at communicating. With her sunset-colored chador over her round body, Sarah thought she looked a bit like the orange Aunt Mehri had just peeled. Although about a thousand times bigger.

  Sarah tried to take back the floor. “Please, it’s important. I have a guest joining us today and—”

  “She didn’t write those letters!” Fatimeh managed a shrill but coherent sentence before she burst into tears. She pulled her chador over her face as if to hide in shame.

  “What?” Aunt Mehri looked sharply at Fatimeh who, wracked by sobs, didn’t seem capable of further communication. “What is wrong with you Fatimeh? Take a deep breath and calm yourself !” Aunt Mehri dug her thumbs into one end of the peeled orange she still held to split it in two.

  Fatimeh readjusted her chador and obediently took two deep breaths, during which time Sarah wondered whether she ought to jump in again or, instead, text Ali to wait for the present drama to pass.

  Fatimeh’s voice was shaky but clear when she spoke again. “She didn’t write those letters. I know because—” Fatimeh blinked her long bovine eyelashes twice before continuing. “—I did.”

  Aunt Mehri looked irritated as she set the two halves of her peeled orange onto a plate and reached for a tissue to wipe her hands. “That’s impossible! What are you talking about? Most of the letters I saw were from that . . . man.”

  Fatimeh’s face looked drained of color but resigned. “Yes. Babak Islami. He was the grocer in the neighborhood.”

  “Right! See!” Maman-Mehri made her point. “That’s the man she had a . . . relationship with. Disgusting!” Maman-Mehri returned to her orange. She pulled one section off, bit the end, and started chewing.

  “No, Maman, listen to me,” Fatimeh protested. “I was the one writing to him.”

  Sarah was confused. Fatimeh wrote love letters to a grocer? Such a brazen and shameful activity was entirely out of character with the sweet, proper, and timid woman she knew. Sarah glanced at Fatimeh’s husband to see what he thought of this sudden admission and was intrigued to note that he looked a little embarrassed, but not surprised.

  Aunt Mehri, meanwhile, looked indignant and angry. “You’re making no sense, Fatimeh. The letters were all addressed to her.”

  Fatimeh shook her head. “I signed her name on the letters I sent to him. I was a silly teenage girl pretending to be her.”

  Aunt Mehri shook her head. “Don’t be stupid, Fatimeh. You were just a child!” She still held the second half of the orange section she’d bitten into.

  Fatimeh had resumed her tears but managed to get words out, nonetheless. “I know. I was a stupid, stupid child playing at something I didn’t understand. Roksana, Ms. Tabibian I mean, was so beautiful. But she was lonely. I don’t think she was hardly ever allowed to leave her apartment. It was fun to imagine a . . . friendship for her.”

  Sarah was trying to connect the dots. Aunt Mehri was saying that Sadegh’s biological mother, her husband’s second wife, had had some sort of illicit relationship. And that she’d learned of the relationship because she’d seen love letters belonging to the woman and the grocer she was in love with. But Fatimeh was saying that she was actually the one who’d sent those letters?

  “That’s enough!” Maman-Mehri snapped. She dropped the rest of her orange section onto the plate before her and pulled her chador tighter as if to use it as protection against Fatimeh’s story.

  “I could tell the grocer was in love with her,” Fatimeh continued desperately. “So I sent him a note. It was easy enough to deliver. He’d seen me shopping with her, so when I gave it to him, he assumed it was from her. And then he gave me notes to give back to her.”

  Aunt Mehri made as if to interrupt Fatimeh, but Fatimeh kept talking louder, holding the floor.

  “It only went on for a week or so. I got scared when it got serious and he started pushing to meet. I hid all the notes and tried to forget about them. Didn’t you wonder why love letters like that would have ended up in my room? I had no idea . . .” Fatimeh turned now to Sadegh. “I had no idea that Maman-Mehri found them or that the letters led to the rupture with our father. I’m so sorry and embarrassed. I don’t expect Ms. Tabibian’s forgiveness, but only hope God can forgive me.”

  Sarah thought Sadegh looked pretty calm given the implications of Fatimeh’s revelation that his real mother had been ejected from the family based on a horrible misunderstanding. He opened his mouth to speak but was cut off by Aunt Mehri.

  “Harm? My dear child . . .” Sarah noticed that Aunt Mehri’s tone toward Fatimeh had changed quite dramatically from harsh and dismissive to sweet and cajoling. “It is obvious to me that you are confused. Clearly, she must have manipulated and involved you somehow in this disgusting romance of hers in a way that made you think you were the one instigating it. That woman is more clever than you can imagine.”

  Fatimeh shook her head to indicate her disagreement, but Maman-

  Mehri went on.

  “It wasn’t just the letters, you see. When I found them, I did some additional investigating. I . . . watched her. You wouldn’t believe how often this woman went out for groceries!”

  “It was one of the only places she was allowed to go!” Fatimeh interrupted.

  “You wouldn’t believe how much makeup she would pile on to see this man,” Maman-Mehri went on.

  “She always wore a lot of makeup,” Fatimeh said.

  “Stop defending her, Fatimeh! You were a thirteen-year-old child. You didn’t see things. You don’t know how these two would look at each other! You don’t know how easily he took a key to her home. As if he was expecting it! He would never do such a thing, let alone actually go to her house, unless she had made him aware that she was completely available for him.” Aunt Mehri stamped her foot for emphasis and bumped the edge of the servin
g table, lightly jiggling her forgotten orange.

  The room went silent. Fatimeh blew her nose.

  Bzzzzzz.

  Sarah had been so engrossed in the conversation between Aunt Mehri and Fatimeh that she’d entirely forgotten about Ali. The sound of the doorbell was an urgent reminder that Sarah needed to do some explaining of her own before Ali walked in the door.

  “Like I said, I—” Sarah started but was once again interrupted, this time by Sadegh, who had a question for his mother.

  “Wait. What did you say about a key?” he asked as he stroked his beard with his long, thin fingers. Sarah was distracted from her own news once again as she watched Sadegh’s eyes narrow and his face darken, as if he suspected something. Sarah tried to remember what Aunt Mehri had said about the key. What was Sadegh implying?

  “Khodaya! My God, it doesn’t end!” Aunt Mehri threw up her hands. “I’m too tired to talk about this anymore. Really, I don’t feel good. I need something to drink. Somebody get me some water.”

  Sumayeh jumped up, and Sarah saw her shoot Sadegh a meaningful look as she left the room. Sumayeh had always been close with Aunt Mehri.

  But Sadegh didn’t back down. “Maman-Mehri, how do you know how those two would look at each other? How do you know that the grocer took the key to Ms. Tabibian’s house so easily?” Sadegh wasn’t shouting. But to Sarah’s ears, his voice was so intense he might as well have been. And the implication was now clear. Sadegh thought Aunt Mehri was involved somehow in giving the grocer a key to his mother’s house.

  Aunt Mehri hitched up her chador and pulled it close. When she spoke, her voice was high-pitched and whiney. “Sadegh, to ro khoda vellemoon kon! Please, don’t make me talk about this anymore!”

  Sumayeh returned with a glass of water. Again, she shook her head at her husband to, Sarah assumed, indicate he should drop the subject for now.

  But Sadegh ignored her and spoke to his mother. “Did you give him the key?” he asked the question directly now.