Persian Girls: A Memoir (23 page)

“Do you have a single room for tonight?” I asked the woman behind the counter. She consulted a large notebook, then said, “Yes,” and handed me a rate sheet. Rooms started at $100 a night.

I left and started walking again. When I reached streets in the twenties I noticed a hotel with a plaque next to the door saying that it was a residence for women. The lobby was small and dingy, with stained walls and bouquets of artificial flowers set in different spots.

“What are your rates for a single room?” I asked the woman at the front desk.

“We have a minimum stay of one week,” she said. “Rates start at $350 per week.”

“Do you have any rooms available at the $350 rate starting tonight?”

She nodded and asked for proof that I was over eighteen. I showed her my passport. I gave her $350 in cash and she handed me a receipt and a key.

After resting for a while in the small, dark room, I went outside for a walk.

As I ate a sandwich at a nearby diner, I looked at the want ads in a newspaper. There were pages and pages of jobs, but most required higher education, experience, and, at the very least, good typing skills. I circled a few, went to a public phone, and started making calls.

I
n New York, I managed to get a job babysitting in exchange for room and board. Natasha was the eight-year-old daughter of Greenwich Village artists. After putting the little girl to bed each night, I’d steal a few minutes to write.

I wrote a story about the time Ardavani visited my father. I gave it a different, darker ending.

 

 

One day, I watched as Natasha’s mother picked her daughter up and cooed to her, “You’re the prettiest, the most perfect little girl. You’re the love of my life,” and I knew I had to leave. I had been only a year older than Natasha that day in the school courtyard. A wound inside me opened up. I couldn’t even bear to look at Natasha anymore.

After brief stints as a waitress and a hospital aide and living in rooming houses, I wandered into Judson House, a student residence in Greenwich Village, subsidized by an adjacent church. I had just registered for three courses at the New School, two in psychology and one in English literature, for the fall semester.

“Though we’re affiliated with a church, we don’t discriminate on the basis of religion or have any kind of quota,” the manager said as we sat in his small office overlooking a tree-lined street. “We have Jews, Christians, one Buddhist.”

“I come from a Muslim background.”

“And now a Muslim,” he said.

I immediately felt at ease in the place. Though not luxurious, it was pleasant, with coffee always brewing in the kitchen and music in the background as someone played the old piano in the dining room. At breakfast, which was included in the rate, I talked to some of the residents, students from nearby universities. The women were very different from those at Lindengrove. One was studying to become a film director, another an anthropologist, another a physician, another a business manager. Most of them weren’t New York natives. Many had come to the big city to escape the confinement of small towns or a history of family difficulties.

After a few weeks there, I began to feel that not letting Father know where I was (which also meant I had no access to Pari) was more unbearable than letting him know, so I tore out a sheet from a notebook and wrote him a brief letter, giving him my address and assuring him that I was in a good, safe place and would be pursuing my education. In the morning, as I stood by a mailbox on the street with Father’s letter in my hand, I hesitated. I tried to tell myself that even if he came after me, he would have no power to force me back to Iran, that I was living in a different country with different rules now. Finally I dropped the letter in.

That evening in my room, as I was writing a letter to Pari, the sky darkened and the air grew chill. From the adjacent room, I could hear Judy Garland singing “Over the Rainbow” on a record player.

 

 

I burst out crying, a long deep sob that shook my whole body.

 

 

 

 

 

With a second part-time job, in the admissions office at the New School, my subsidized housing at Judson House, a student loan, and frugal living, I was getting by. I was at ease, not just in Judson House but in the whole city, with all its ethnic variety and different languages. I didn’t stand out as “foreign” in New York the way I had in Lindengrove.

I didn’t hear from Father. He had never written to me before, but I had expected him to respond this time.

O
ne day, I pulled a letter from Pari out of my mailbox and read it as I stood in the small mailroom.

She had finally managed, with Father’s reluctant help, to get a divorce. But her freedom from Taheri came at the expense of her
mehrieh
and her son. She had visitation rights to Bijan, but so far hadn’t succeeded in seeing him. As Mohtaram had warned, the long distances and the difficulties of arranging things with Taheri made it impossible. Father had gone to Tehran several times and tried to use his influence with a judge he knew from law school, to see if he could get his grandson to live with them but the judge said it wasn’t in his power to change the laws. Father mentioned Taheri’s crime but, as he originally suspected, too much time had passed, and they didn’t have evidence of what had really caused the woman’s death. Father came back, despairing and then angry at Pari for wanting the divorce to begin with. Both Father and Mohtaram were shamed that Pari had gone through with the divorce.

 

 

Through the mailroom window I could see a hard wind blowing and traffic going by in a continuous stream. Residents of Judson House were rushing in and out. I stood still, clutching the letter.

I
n my second semester at the New School, I noticed a man with a lot of dark hair and blue eyes in my psychology class. Every class he’d pause in the doorway and look around the room before taking the empty seat beside me.

After one class, he followed me outside and asked me to have dinner with him if I hadn’t eaten yet. When I hesitated, he said, “I’ll treat you.” It was more than not being able to afford eating out. I was wary of a date, several of them having ended badly.

It was raining and we went to a Chinese restaurant around the corner. Howie was four years older than me and had a degree in mechanical engineering from Cooper Union. He had worked as an engineer for a year, but gave it up because he found the field dull. He was put off by having to wear suits and work nine to six in an office. He had begun graduate studies in philosophy at Columbia University, but after a year dropped out of that, too. Now he was getting a degree in psychology. I told him I was studying psychology to be practical and that my real dream was to become a writer.

His last relationship with a girl had ended several months ago, he said. “She was a good Jewish girl. My mother would have been happy if it had worked.”

“My family would like me to marry someone from Iran and a Muslim.”

“They wouldn’t like you going out with me then, an American Jew.”

I nodded. “If you were Christian it’d be the same.”

“Are you religious?” Howie asked.

I shook my head.

It was after midnight when he walked me back to Judson House. The rain had stopped and the moon was visible in the sky. He kissed me quickly and I went inside.

After that we met whenever our schedules could be squeezed to match—five minutes in the lobby of the graduate school building, twenty minutes in the cafeteria, an hour in the evening in a restaurant near the school for something quick to eat. Or just sitting in the library doing work. With Howie I felt freer than with other boys; perhaps it was because I felt sparks of attraction immediately and trusted them, or just that I felt compatible with him. Although from different backgrounds, we could talk for hours, exchange views, or be quiet and just read and do our work together. I took him to a Persian restaurant. He bought a bunch of roses for me from a vendor who wandered in, taking my mind to Pari and Majid.

After dinner near the New School one night, I spent the night with him in his apartment. Although the apartment was small, it had the luxury of abundant light pouring in. Shelves around the rooms were filled with books and records.

In the morning, when we had to go to our different appointments, parting was difficult for both of us.

Then everything between us moved quickly.

“I want to introduce you to my parents,” he said after he proposed marriage in a candlelit restaurant and I said yes without pause. “Don’t worry, there’s nothing they can say or do that would have any effect on us.”

Howie and I drove to his parents’ apartment in Yonkers.

“How can a Jew and a Muslim mingle?” Howie’s mother, Gussie, asked.

I looked at the plates of roast beef, potato pancakes, and coleslaw and tried to think of an answer to the question.

“I’m not sentimental about religion, you know that,” Howie said to his mother.

“Aren’t you going to miss home and want to take our son there, too?” Irving, Howie’s father, asked me. “He has no place in your country.”

“I don’t plan to live there,” I said shyly.

“I know the Shah is friendly with Israel but Jews are just a small minority there.”

“In Iran Jews are respected. They have prestigious jobs; some of them are close to the Shah,” Howie said.

We left quickly after dessert.

“Are you upset?” I asked Howie as we drove home.

“What?”

“About us?”

“Of course not. I love my parents but I don’t share their values.” He put his arm around me to reassure me.

I watched the scenery move past me as we drove toward Manhattan, thinking how strange it was that this man from a different culture and religion had met and fallen in love with me, an Iranian Muslim.