Searching for Hassan

by Terence Ward

  “Baba even won the award for best cook in Iran,” Maryam said proudly.

  “Of course, you are the best,” Mom said.

  “Well, now I’ve retired after twenty years. They ask me to come back, but I say no. I’m finished with the hotel.”

  “Coffee? Tea?” Rich asked. “Should we go to the café to have something to eat?”

  “No, no!” Hassan waved his hands. “I’ve worked in hotels all my life. I will never eat their food!”

  On the other side of the table, Kev chattered away with animated Maryam, who also spoke English well, as did Mahdi. Joking with Chris, Mahdi introduced his cherubic little son Ali. Chris pulled out a photo of his own two small boys. Kev was amazed to hear from Maryam about Hassan’s pilgrimages to Mecca, normally a once-in-a-lifetime event.

  “Hassan went on haj six times?” Kev asked in disbelief.

  “Yes, now he is a true haji.” Maryam looked at her father with deference.

  “I tell people, don’t call me Haj Hassan, I don’t want that. Just Hassan.”

  “OK, Haj Hassan, tell us how you went,” I said.

  He laughed. “There was a big group of Isfahanis going to Mecca,” he said. “And my boss told me I had to go and cook for them.”

  “I’ll bet it was the first time they ate baked Alaska,” Kev quipped.

  “In baking Arabia?” Hassan raised his eyebrows. “Kevin, you’re still a crazy boy! Everyone was happy, so my boss sent me again and again. Six times! I asked to God, Please, not again. And God agreed.”

  “Where did you go when you left Tehran?” Fatimeh asked Mom.

  “We moved like Bakhtiaris for seven years, from one place to another, always in California,” Mom replied. “Then we settled in Berkeley, the boys went off to college, got married, had children.”

  “How many children?”

  “Two boys for me,” Rich said, “two for Chris, Kev has two girls, and Terry no.”

  “A bit like us,” Fatimeh said. “Seven years passed before we built our house in Isfahan. Then Mahdi went to university. Now he’s an engineer. And look at all the grandchildren.”

  “Hassan,” Mom asked, “did you have problems because you’d worked with an American family?”

  “No. No problem.”

  “And when the Shah left?”

  “That was the happiest day of my life! Well, not the happiest. First was when Ali was born, my first son. Then, when the Shah went, no one could believe it. We were cheering. They told us, Iran will become like heaven. But then the war comes. We have to fight crazy Saddam. And so many must die.” He shook his head.

  “Fatimeh, it must have been terrible, all your boys fighting.” Mom touched her arm.

  “Hassan was the first to go to the war,” she said. “Then Ali, then Mahdi. I stayed at home, crying and worrying all night. Saddam sent his rockets to Isfahan. Many people died and many went back to their villages. But I stayed here. If I was to be killed, it didn’t matter. I never want to leave my home.”

  She revealed her personal torments quietly, with a wounded smile. Her eyes wavered as she revisited the nightly bombings on the city while her men were on the frontlines.

  “You didn’t want to go back to Tudeshk?” my mother asked.

  “No! Not even for one night. I suffered so much there.”

  While for Hassan his ancestral village still had a special allure, even a romantic pull, for Fatimeh it was the contrary: Tudeshk was like a curse.

  “For five years after we left your house, Donna, I stayed trapped in Tudeshk. We had only a mud house, no water, no electricity. It was so hard.”

  “Where was Hassan?”

  “At first he tried to have a small shop selling fruit and vegetables, going back and forth to Isfahan to buy them. But people would take our goods and ask to pay later. Some never paid us, and what could we do? We lost everything except my loom. So Hassan agreed to leave for Isfahan and found work in a hotel. I stayed behind in Tudeshk with the children, because in the city we didn’t have a home. All we had was a piece of land that we had bought with your money. So every day and night I made carpets, so I could sell them and build my house. Mahdi helped me, and Ali helped all my children. It was so hard, so hard.” She rubbed her cracked hands that bore years of labor, and sighed. “That’s why I look old.”

  “No, you don’t. Fatimeh, look at me.” My mother drew her finger across her forehead.

  “Thank you. Now I have a house, a car, everything. In the summer Ali comes to visit, Mahdi has his own house, and Maryam has a nice house too.”

  “And where’s baby Ali?” I asked about our favorite child, their firstborn.

  “In Bandar Abbas.”

  “He’s well?”

  “Yes, yes. He’s captain in the navy.”

  “With children?”

  “Yes, one boy and one girl. Al-hamdulillah.”

  “My heart really missed you.” Hassan looked at us all. “Now you’re here.”

  Fatimeh looked tenderly at my mother and caressed her arm. “You must be tired now, Donna. Such a long trip from Yazd across the desert. Please, you sleep. Tomorrow we see you. Insha’allah.”

  “Yes, Patrick, Donna, you come for lunch tomorrow!” Hassan announced again, beaming with a newfound smile that washed away the war years.

  That was the sign. Hassan stood up, and his whole clan began to rise. Once the women got up, we all began saying goodbye. Another long bout of men kissing men and, in respectful Islamic fashion, avoiding any shaking of women’s hands.

  As the entire family called out good night and piled into their canary-yellow Paykan to drive off, a warmth surged over us as we watched their waving hands out of the open windows.

  “We found them!” my mother said, holding her bouquets of flowers.

  “Incredible. And everyone’s alive,” echoed my father.

  Intoxicated and giddy, we turned away from the balmy palm-lined street and meandered back into the marble lobby. Inlaid woodwork bespoke painstaking restoration. The lights dazzled off the magnificent centerpiece, an intricately carved silver goblet four feet high. I looked at this, then fixed my gaze on the distant teahouse in the garden courtyard. At that moment, an arm reached out and grabbed Rich. A familiar bear hug swooped him up, catching him unawares. “Ha-a-ssa-an!” the doorman crooned.

  We had to calm down. It all seemed unbelievable. We sat out under the stars in the hotel’s open-air café. Enveloped by sprinkling fountains, trees and budding flowers, bronze tea trays, bulbous domes of Isfahani fantasy, we silently tried to gather our emotions, which had been flung in ecstatic disarray.

  “And they all survived the war,” Dad suddenly said.

  “There must be a God,” Chris asserted.

  “His mustache is identical,” Rich said, still perplexed by the eager doorman.

  Kev agreed. “Actually, I think he looks more like Hassan than Hassan himself.”

  Basking in the moment, we sipped our tea. Leaning back on his carpeted divan, Dad sighed, looking over the beauty of the falling water, the garden’s flowers that filled our eyes. My mother’s hand rested on his.

  “Well, boys,” he told us, “just remember what Oscar Wilde said: ‘The book of life begins with a man and a woman in a garden, and it ends with revelations.’ ”

  My mother held her bouquets on her lap and stared out at the blue-tiled onion-shaped dome that rose above the hotel wall. Two turquoise-tipped minarets stood at attention.

  That night, I watched my mother’s face lose thirty years.

  * * *

  Taarof, the Persian ritual of hospitality, is overwhelming: complicated, subtle, self-effacing and richly layered. Taarof elevates the guest to semidivine status. The host, by contrast, dons a humble cloak. One common taarofi expression is ghorban-e shoma, which means “may I be sacrificed for you,” or “at your service.” In short, the host is willing to give his life for you. Generosity in the West pales in comparison. Against this refined graciousness, we are but paupers n
ext to princes.

  At the heart of this hospitality is food. Each guest begins a culinary odyssey that seems to have no end. The journey is governed by timelessness. Lavish banquet portions are prepared, enough to feed a passing nomadic tribe. The host’s hands are everywhere, serving food and drink, refilling plates and glasses. “You haven’t eaten enough, baba … just a little more.” Second helpings are offered, then thirds …

  Needless to say, the feasting carries on for hours. The doubled-edge sword is this: as one can never eat enough to please the host, one also cannot refuse. Operating with the three times rule, one can decline food, but it will be offered again and again. Not to be rude, the stomach must comply, even if critically overfed and on the verge of explosion.

  Certain rules of decorum and courtesy obtain: the host never sits when the guest is standing, never turns his or her back to the guest, never eats before the guest and, of course, continually apologizes for not having enough food while the table, or sofreh—a dining cloth laid out over the carpets—simply groans with a bountiful cornucopia.

  * * *

  At noon, we arrived at Hassan’s home, on Bi-sim Street in the Bozorg Mehr neighborhood. Drops of water on the freshly washed yellow Paykan car dripped onto the gray tiles that covered the bulk of the patio. A strip of soil adjacent to the house’s walls grew two fledgling cypresses, a climbing grapevine, carefully planted pink geraniums, violet pansies and blossoming fuchsia snapdragons. Like my father, Hassan was obsessive about his flowers.

  He welcomed us in a white shirt after a morning surely spent in the kitchen. His flat-roofed, cream-colored brick house had a 1950s Southern California feel, with its central wooden door and two sliding glass doors to either side.

  “What a beautiful house,” Mom said. She had a lifelong devotion to family renovation projects.

  “And your flowers?” my father asked. “Tell me.” Comparing notes, the two elderly gardeners studied the small patch of land that held a scraggly apple, a quince and a young pomegranate tree. Neat, narrow rows of greens sprouted from the soil.

  We slipped off our shoes on the white-tiled raised porch. The warm sun cast fresh light. In her long pistachio-green dress and modest ivory-colored scarf, Fatimeh greeted us. Once a woman is indoors, her chador is put away.

  Helping my mother at the front door, she led us through a narrow hall that opened into a large, cool living room. Richly colored carpets in classic reds and indigos covered the entire floor. My mother admired the inside doors, which were decorated with diamonds, hexagons and octagons of stained glass in emerald and blue. We sat down in the living room. A sliding glass door overlooked the apple tree and the two fathers, who were still outside on Hassan’s patch of land.

  This day marked the beginning of our gatherings, where we reminisced about the long years apart. We wept, laughed and ate while listening to their stories of joys and sorrows, the tragic tales of war, and also the great news that all the children were alive and well. Equally unforgettable, Hassan created the Iranian version of Babette’s feast.

  The fragrant odor of saffron filled the kitchen and drifted through the house. A blue plastic sofreh was spread on the carpeted living room floor and we knelt around it. Zam Zam orange sodas stood in front of us. Plates of sabze, the mouth-freshening mixture of greens—mint, tarragon, basil, cilantro and scallions—colored the tablecloth along with crisp red radishes and moist white sheep’s milk cheese. These were the colors of the Iranian flag.

  While Kev chatted with Maryam about her profession—counseling women—Chris and Rich played games of tic-tac-toe with her sons, Masoud and Saeed. Curious about what was brewing in the kitchen, I got up to watch Hassan’s steam and fire, and to catch old scents.

  Poking my head in, I saw his back, a towel slung over his shoulder. In a deft move, juggling two pots, he set down a tray of freshly sizzled chicken kebab. He turned down the flame under the steaming rice and pierced a piece of chicken with a fork, testing its tenderness.

  “Taste it, Red.”

  He used my old nickname. My mouth watered as I bit into a morsel that hurtled me back to earlier days.

  “Saffron is the secret. The yellow one is good for laughing,” he said with a mischievous giggle. “You see, I mix lemon with garlic, onion, sumac and saffron. Then I grill out there.”

  Outside the kitchen, in the back, a metal charcoal grill sizzled away.

  “Fatimeh doesn’t want the smoke in the house, so I made that.”

  “I want to write down your recipe.”

  “Yes, but later.” He scooped the steaming rice into a bowl. “Now you must go.”

  “Mmmm.” I snatched another piece while he wasn’t looking. “C’mon, let me help.”

  “No, no, you must go sit down.” He shooed me out.

  This was another rule of taarof. As a guest, you must remain idle and offer no help. Don’t even try. Your role is circumscribed: you must be served, and your only duty is to consume your host’s embarrassment of riches.

  The aromas from the kitchen triggered a reaction. Anticipation filled the air. Finally, heaping trays of white fluffed basmati-style rice arrived with Hassan’s memorable saffron chicken. Oooohhh! Fried aubergine and lamb, mosamma bademjan—a dish that always pays a high compliment to the guest—was passed to my father. Bah, bah, bah! Fresh barbari bread, oval-shaped with a crispy crust, and bowls of thick creamy yogurt descended onto the tablecloth. The Ward brothers dug in.

  One of Hassan's scrumptious dinners.

  Hassan’s clan had grown. Three generations filled the house, but we missed one. The eldest son I remembered so vividly, little Ali with the smiling face, was not with us. So, with little prompting, Fatimeh showed us color photos of him. Now a dashing captain, dressed in spanking navy whites against the blue Gulf skies, his brass buttons shone, and his cap brim shaded his aquiline nose and confident eyes.

  “So handsome,” Mom said. “Like Hassan when he was young.”

  “I hope the damn American fleet in Bahrain leaves him alone,” Kev muttered.

  The second son, Mahdi, we had known only as a baby. His fate had always been in question. Numerous times, my mother had rushed him to the hospital with Fatimeh. Hassan told us that after we left, an English family offered to adopt him and take him away to Britain. But Hassan refused. Mahdi’s compressed forehead, which once gave him the look of an ancient Mayan, had leveled out. A graduate of prestigious University of Tehran, he was now an accomplished telecom engineer, running PBX and digital relay systems for the Esfahan Steel Company.

  Maryam, on the other hand, had graduated with high honors from theology school and was a committed teacher. Her eyes had Hassan’s spark, full of life and illumination. She told me proudly that women outnumbered men at the University of Tehran. She made a point of speaking about the deplorable life of women in Saudi Arabia.

  “Can you believe, in Arabistan women cannot vote, work or even drive,” Maryam said. “That is not Islam.”

  She spoke about the Saudi Wahhabi fanatics who were known to finance Osama bin Laden and the Taliban of Afghanistan, who imprisoned women, put them in purdah, even cut their throats. She was disgusted, calling them terrorists. Because of this, she told us, all Muslims are now accused when it is the Wahhabis who are doing these crimes.

  Abruptly she turned to Chris. “Tell me about your family.”

  “I’m like Hassan. I am the cook of the house. I do the cooking even for my parents-in-law, who live with us.”

  “Mash’allah, may God praise it. This is good.” She nodded. “We know that blessed Ali helped the Prophet’s daughter in the house. So husbands must help their wives.”

  “I do not agree,” squealed her husband, Rasool Iskander, in mocking defiance.

  Out of earshot of Maryam, Hassan laughed. “Of my five children, imagine, it is she who has become a mullah.”

  Rasool chatted quietly with me, and I could tell he was not very aggrieved by his wife’s feminist talk. With his best friend, Maryam’s brother
Mahdi, Rasool had joined the army. In the war, he told me, the Iraqis captured and imprisoned him for five years. During a perilous night raid on the Iraqi front, Rasool had been one of the many wounded, and he had been left behind, unconscious, on the battlefield. He still carried a steel plate, from brain surgery performed gratis by the Iraqis.

  Rasool turned to me rolling his puppy-dog eyes. “My good friend Saddam!”

  “Don’t be silly!” Maryam pushed his drooping shoulder. She played Hardy to his Stan Laurel.

  “Yes, my friend Saddam!”

  Maryam and Rasool had been engaged before he went off to fight, and she had waited patiently for five years before her love returned.

  “The Red Cross saved him,” she said.

  “How?”

  “They mispronounced his name. They called him Russell Alexander.”

  “That’s right, I am Rus-sell,” Rasool Iskander said with his ironic smile.

  His Euro-friendly name, given to him by a Swiss relief worker, helped him stand out in a crowd of two hundred thousand emaciated prisoners of war. Saddam Hussein’s mistreatment of captives was brutal. Fed seven teaspoons of rice a day and five teaspoons of soup, Rasool weighed about 110 pounds when he finally hobbled down onto the airfield tarmac and kissed his home soil. The Iraqis still held thousands of prisoners from a war that ended in 1986.

  Mahdi also fell in battle but managed to crawl back through mud and barbed wire to his trench. Thankfully he was not captured. Shrapnel ripped into his skull, leg and hand, where it remains. He lost his hearing in one ear and has only partial hearing in the other.

  “Every family lost someone,” Mahdi said sadly. “I was lucky.”

  A photo of Hassan’s nephew Daoud was brought out. He was only sixteen when he died. He had been a sprinter, very fast, and had a baby face.

  Unexpectedly, Fatimeh emerged with some old photos of us, four little brothers in our long-lost Arcadia in north Tehran. In one picture, four grubby rascals are holding dachshund puppies up for the camera, with tiny Ali wrapped in a burgundy sweater by their side. In another, young Fatimeh rests her arm on Kevin’s shoulder under pine trees, next to a trickling turquoise fountain.