A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea (10 page)

ou might say the girls were raised here, by a great many of us. Before the revolution, they came only in summers, danced around in pink dresses without sleeves sent from big London stores, and the other children followed them, mesmerized. They picked oranges and lounged under trees-reading their English stories. They went to mixed-gender beaches with their parents. They let their hair fly on the backs of motorcycles and watched workers in fields. They loved the moist air of the North, the endless green of Shomal. But the Shomal that Tehranis knew was a different world from ours. It still is.

You see, half an hour’s drive in one direction leads to the Caspian Sea and to well-dressed English-and French-speaking tourists with foreign degrees doing who-knows-what in Western villas. Half an hour’s drive in another direction leads into the dirt roads of the mountain. If you ever come to Shomal,
this
is the sight to see: donkeys and horses carrying men in skullcaps and women in bejangled, colorful clothes into the forest, to their unpainted baked-mud or clay houses all grainy with hay. And the straw jutting from walls and covering their low, low roofs. I like these peaceful parts of the mountain, the wildflowers and jackal songs, the water wells and feather-paved coops.

Before the revolution, Tehranis came to escape a world of loud music, Western television, fashionable parties, and clothes measured by a hundred tailors. And what did they find here? Just us villagers in our Gilaki coverings, farming rice. Now they come to escape
pasdar
s everywhere and riots and secret living. And what do they find here? Just us villagers in our Gilaki coverings, farming rice. In Cheshmeh, where we believed in modesty before 1979, and where we refused to go to extremes after, there are days when you might forget the world has changed—unless you are a Hafezi.

In the old days, the Hafezi girls ran in and out of our houses and we fed them from our kitchens, warmed by how little they knew of the differences between us. Of course, there were rules. The Hafezis made it so we could never treat the girls as our own.
Proper Farsi only,
Agha Hafezi said.
No Gilaki with the girls.
He demanded this, though he spoke our dialect to the workers in his rice paddies. Saba eventually learned to switch between Farsi and Gilaki (
Khuda daneh,
she would drone constantly like an old woman)
.
Mahtab never spoke anything but Farsi and English. This was one easy way to tell them apart.

I saw back then that Saba was the twin who had inherited her father’s Gilaki spirit instead of her mother’s crazy foreign one. There was an incident when she was seven, when she proposed marriage to my son. Sweet, yes, yes. She wanted to be one of us. But it salted my stomach with worry. The twins spent all day putting together a
khastegari
present, full of pastries and coins they had saved, and—my favorite because it was a token good only for your distant aunt— a picture of their mother as a young woman to prove how beautiful Saba would be. They stole some makeup and painted her seven shades of blues and reds. It was a spectacle. They even bought a piece of lace for the veil.

Outside my house there is a winding dirt road that leads around the hills. And if you stand at the window you can see the Hafezi house in the distance. It rests higher on a hill by itself, on a bigger road. So I saw them coming from far off, one sister watching from behind a tree nearby as the other sister knocked on my door. I answered. “And which are you?” I said, even though I knew. I wanted to spare Saba the embarrassment, with that ridiculous veil. And then out comes Reza, showing up at the door in his underwear, not putting the clues together, poor boy. How is he to know what goes on in the minds of girls who read too much?

When I tried to send Saba away, Mahtab ran out from her hiding place, put her little hands on her hips, and said to me, “You’re a mean old lady. We saved all our money for this
khastegari
. We even went through Khanom Omidi’s treasure chador!”

Hah! You see, when you leave girls to their own minds, they grow a tongue—not to mention a long, sneaking hand that’ll surely land them in hell.

Being smart girls, they knew I would call their parents. So apparently they spent the afternoon hiding out, messing around with that donkey-brained cousin of theirs. They used to spend a lot of time making up stories for him, because Kasem was ready to believe anything. One of the biggest mysteries of this world is how a boy like him can be worshipped and waited on like a pasha, when he’s so clearly a fool. But that’s how it is with boys. Don’t think I don’t see it just because I have sons. I know what girls suffer. I may not be one of those big-city feminists, but I’m not blind. My heart broke when I saw their father praise Kasem or pull him onto his lap while Saba and Mahtab watched like hungry orphans in overpriced dresses.

Every day I watched from my window as their father left for work and the girls followed him down the road, trying to see who could hold his attention longer. And when we were all at their
sofreh
for dinner and the house was buzzing and no one was listening to the girls, I heard them competing over who would get to walk on his aching back or bring him his tea later. And they argued over which was better: the time Agha Hafezi went to their school to demand that some filthy boy Mahtab “loved” be forced to play with her, or the time he came home full of celebration—a new piece of land—and picked up Saba only and danced and danced around the room until she pretended to faint.

Still, it isn’t Agha Hafezi’s fault that the girls were starving for his love. He didn’t know any other way. He was a happy, hard man. He had Bahareh to take care of the girls’ daily needs. His job was to provide, to protect them. What man without troubles spends time thinking of how to bond with his young daughters? They are not simple like boys.

But he did worry and work hard for them—that I will swear is true—rolling up his pant legs and walking through the sodden fields with the workers. I have never seen another landowner do this. He grew up here, you know. His father built the big house and the son has grown attached to it despite his city wife. He is Gilaki at heart, like Saba. Sometimes you see him with a fancy raincoat and a long umbrella, inspecting this or that. Sometimes he is in breezy cotton work pants and a knit cap in the local coffee shop, smoking with the old men. Once I heard him say a few words of Gilaki to Ponneh when she came to play with his daughters. He said to her, “How’s school? I’ll give you a new dress for every year you finish.” But Ponneh was too proud even then—and now she can sew her own clothes from old patterns or new ones she copies from tourist women.

Lately Agha Hafezi has taken to bad habits. He failed to protect his family, and Saba is the only one he has left. He is softer, full of mourning, obsessed with questions of the spirit. He feels her value and he keeps trying to mend things, but how can he know the way? He never learned her heart when she was young and willing.

Maybe it’s too late for the two of them. Maybe Saba should abandon these games with my son and get a husband who can also replace her father . . . someone older, stronger. But she will never admit this. She is the kind of girl who wants both the dates and the donkey, never compromising. But she will
have
to compromise. My son is already in love. As for Saba, I am thinking Abbas Hossein Abbas is the perfect choice for her.

aving Khanom Mansoori and her husband over to the house is like having no guests at all. Saba calls Khanom Mansoori the Ancient One not only because she is twenty years older than the other caregivers in her life but because she is always either dozing or talking to herself. She requires no company, no hostessing, no effort. When her husband accompanies her on a visit, Saba and her father feel no obligation to remain in the room. The old couple will talk to each other for a while, eat something, drink tea, and eventually one of them will notice something off—a pillow in a color she doesn’t like or the telephone or a picture of Saba’s mother in the corner—and they will realize that this is someone else’s house and leave. Agha Mansoori likes to make a show of caring for his wife, and Saba knows that in order to avoid insulting the old man, she must bring out a tray of apples and cucumbers and place them in front of him, never his wife. He will then take twenty minutes to scrape out the insides of the fruits into a bowl and serve them to her himself. Saba wonders if he has always done this, or if it’s his way of feeling useful in his later years—because when the women gather alone, his wife seems perfectly capable of eating solid apple slices with her healthy back teeth.

Today the couple has stayed longer than usual and Saba has decided to watch a video instead of listening to their discussion about whether the big rainstorm that destroyed their first house happened in the fourth or sixth year of their marriage. She sits on the floor of the living room and switches on the television and VCR. She chooses a tape containing random episodes of a number of popular American television shows she has asked the Tehrani to record for her. The sound is a little scratchy, the dialogue hard to understand but, aside from a few lines of impossible American slang, it’s decipherable for someone with Saba’s excellent English. A few seconds into the first sitcom, the music catches the couple’s attention. First Khanom Mansoori nudges her husband and then he too is captivated. “What in God’s name are they doing there?” he shouts.

It’s the opening credits of an American show called
Family Ties
. “Why are they all hugging there?” Agha Mansoori asks. Then when he sees TV-husband Agha Keaton kissing Khanom Keaton, his eyes grow wide. “
Vai
, did you see that, Khanom?”

“It’s an American show,” Saba says, amused. “Do you want me to explain it?”
The old man waves for her to be quiet as the first scene opens. He moves closer to the television as if he can understand the fast-paced, crackling English words.
In the show, Khanom Keaton hangs up the telephone and Agha Keaton scolds her.
“Ei vai,”
says Agha Mansoori, mesmerized. “Look at that. They’re fighting now.”
Khanom Mansoori chuckles, probably at the urgency in his tone.
“They’re not fighting,” says Saba. “He’s only saying—”
“Hush, Saba jan,” says Agha Mansoori. And then he throws his hands up in the air. “
Vai
, look what they are showing there! No shame . . .” Khanom Keaton sits on her husband’s lap. Kisses his lips, his neck, and murmurs soothing words. Agha Mansoori slaps the top of one hand with the other. “God help us . . .”
Saba has seen this episode twice already. It’s yet another one in which Alex P. Keaton tells his laid-back American parents that he must, must, must go to Princeton.
What is this Princeton?
Saba mused the last time, because as far as she knew, only one college was worth mentioning in America, and that college was called Harvard. Sort of like Tehran University—a core academic hub surrounded by village institutions. But now Saba is well informed. She has researched this Princeton—a place that also educated Sondra Huxtable of
The Cosby Show
even though she is no pale princeling—and all the colleges like it with names unfamiliar even to the highly educated in Iran.
Saba relates to Alex’s struggle with his parents. Like ambitious Alex, she is a capitalist. But this is Gilan, the birthplace of the Communist Party of Iran, the land of Mirza Kuchik Khan and his socialist Jangali movement that fought for the downtrodden and the peasant class in Gilan’s forests back when the Mansooris were very young. If the old couple understood English, they would agree with Alex’s hippie parents.
But Agha and Khanom Mansoori ignore all of Saba’s attempts to explain the plot. When she tells them that Alex P. Keaton is visiting the Princeton dorms, Khanom Mansoori says, “No, no, that boy there must be his cousin. They look exactly alike.” When Saba explains a line of dialogue, Agha Mansoori ignores her and touches the screen just over the orange-and-blue bedspread. “We had a blanket like that one. Do you remember, Khanom? The day Hasan brought it and we spilled the tea?” To which his wife responds, “It was soup. Where is that old thing now? Was it really an
American
blanket?”
When it seems that the two are distracted by memories—she talking about old days and he nodding and shelling pistachios into a bowl—Saba moves to turn off the television, but Agha Mansoori objects loudly. “
Aieee
. Wait. We are watching the story there. It’s shameful, Khanom . . . shameful.” Then he leans over and drops a handful of naked pistachios into Saba’s hand. He waits for her to eat them, as if they were medicine.
In seventy years maybe Saba’s own husband will call her “Mrs.” instead of her first name. Maybe he will have a sweet, gummy smile, shell nuts for her, and worry about how many she eats. If she married Reza, she is sure he would do all these things.
They watch for three hours, never skipping the commercials, until the tape cycles through six episodes, including an episode of
Growing Pains
and half an episode of
The Wonder Years.
Saba likes American high schools. She wonders what it would be like to go to one every day—to have a locker for her banned books, to have a boy occupy the locker next to hers. She takes in the details of the shows— the slightly uncomfortable look of suburbia, the layout of kitchens, women’s haircuts, the ubiquitous pancake diner. She misses her sister. At the same time, she wants to be alone. Funny thing about television shows, she thinks. They cover so many worries and crises and hurts. Yet somehow they wrap them all up in thirty minutes or less. What a beautiful world where all of life’s aches are wiped away with one group hug after exactly 22.5 minutes of visual storytelling. Saba wants to live in that world. She imagines that her sister already does.
The sky outside grows dark and Khanom Mansoori has fallen asleep. Her husband continues to sit ten centimeters from the television and comment to no one. Then something jolts the old lady and she sits up and calls out, “Saba, come here.”
Saba moves to the other side of the room, sits on the carpet beside Khanom Mansoori. She adjusts the pillows behind the old woman so she can be more comfortable.
“Saba jan, what happened to all that business about Mahtab and America?”
Usually a mention of her sister makes Saba’s throat constrict. But something in the old woman’s tone makes Saba lean closer. Is Khanom Mansoori dreaming? Has she confused the year? But then her withered lips whisper something that Saba knows is not a dream. “Are you still too grown-up for stories? You remember . . . the kid and the coping?”
Saba smiles, recalling the day they read
Zanerooz
magazine with Ponneh. It is impressive that Khanom Mansoori remembers a conversation from so long ago. Saba smooths back the strands of henna hair that have escaped the old woman’s scarf. “I’m not too old anymore,” she whispers, and rests her head on Khanom Mansoori’s shoulder.
“Tell me a story then. Something Mahtab wrote in a letter.”
“There was no letter,” she says, hoping that someone will challenge the lies she has learned to tell about Mahtab.
Across the sea,
she whispers over and over in her dreams to
pasdar
s holding knives to throats and forcing truths out of reluctant lips.
Khanom Mansoori shakes her head. “Don’t tease an old woman,” she says, her voice birdlike. “At my age, you learn that true things are different from things your eyes can see. I want to know what’s in the letter before I judge that it’s not true.”
Saba lets out a laugh because she doesn’t know what to say to such a request. She appeals to the old woman’s husband. “Agha Mansoori, can you help me, please?”
There is a moment of silence, and she thinks Agha Mansoori didn’t hear her. But he says without looking away from the television, “What help? Just tell her the stories or the letters or what have you so she can tell you if they’re true. What’s the difficulty?”
Saba sighs, “But there
are
no—” She stops because it is useless to argue with them. Besides, why is she fighting? She saw Mahtab get on a plane to
somewhere.
There is no denying that. And she hasn’t told a story about Mahtab—except to herself alone in bed, or a few details to Baba—since that day in the alley behind the Rashti post office.
The Mansooris won’t judge her. They are creative with the truth, not only because they are Iranian and realize that good stories must be embellished, and words of praise must be exaggerated, and half of all invitations must be lies, but also because they are old, and it seems to Saba that this is what happens at the end of life, as in the beginning. People enter and leave this world trying to understand what everything means, how easily the costliest possessions can break, and what is theirs to keep. When they discover the bitter truth that everything is fragile and eventually gone, they make up a new reality in which the best of what is lost waits for them somewhere they are too busy to go.
Where is Uncle Koorosh? you ask. He moved to France
(died)
. The beautiful neighbor boy? He is in college
(jail)
.
“All right,” Saba says, and takes a breath. Why not honor Mahtab in this way? Besides, unlike all the rest, Mahtab’s story
could
be true by some magic available only to twins. Didn’t Khanom Mansoori herself say that the bond between twins is unbreakable? That each will always know the truth about the other’s days? She is the one person who will understand all the possibilities following that day at the airport, and all the promise of the elegant mother in the terminal holding the hand of a girl with Saba’s own face.
“Good girl,” Khanom Mansoori sighs.