Together Tea (10 page)

“How is school?” Mamani asked.

“Well, it's all girls now. Except for the janitors. And we have lots of new rules. You know. The hijab. And our new teacher said we shouldn't look at boys. Ever. Except our husbands once we've married.”

Agha Jan winked and pinched Mamani. “Hear that? You're supposed to be looking at me!”

Mamani swatted his hand away. “
Basseh!
I've looked at you enough—forty-five long years, I've ‘looked' at you!”

“Mrs. Amiri is always giving orders. Cover your body. Chant the death slogans. Don't be immoral. Don't be anti-revolutionary. Die for the cause if you have to. My friend Bita thinks that Mrs. Amiri is a donkey.”

“I always liked that Bita,” Mamani said.

“The nonsense they teach you these days! The nonsense these . . . what was it your friend called them?” Agha Jan raised his eyebrows at Mina.

“Donkeys,” Mina said shyly.

“You have a good friend right there, Mina Joon,” Agha Jan said.

At least they could joke about it. If Mina told Darya all this, Darya's forehead vein would throb overtime. But Mamani and Agha Jan just shrugged it all off.

Mamani got up and left the room. A minute later she came back with a book.

“This, Mina Joon,” she said, “is my antidote to all the nonsense.”

Mina knew that book well. It was small. Tattered. The blue leather cover was inscribed with faded gold lettering. The pages were worn, dog-eared, soft. Mamani's book of poetry. Inside were Mamani's favorite stanzas from the ancient Persian poets. Words she'd copied in her own calligraphy, in black ink with sweeping cursive letters.

“Come look.” Mamani motioned for Mina to come and sit next to her on the carpeted cushions on the living room floor. “Come look at these beautiful words of your ancestors.”

Mina snuggled in next to Mamani and rested her head on Mamani's shoulder. Mamani read out loud, without holding back, her voice full of expression. Agha Jan listened in silence. With the sound of Mamani's voice, Mina felt the stress of school and new rules slip away. She was content listening to Mamani read from the black cursive script of Rumi and Saadi and all the rest of the ancient Persian poets in the crinkly pages of the book. Mina wanted it to stay like that: her head on Mamani's shoulder, the smell of fried onions and mint on Mamani's dress, the gurgle from the samovar where tea was being brewed, the sun lowering gently in the crimson sky.

Chapter Sixteen

School and Saddam

D
arya marched through the living room, a roll of aluminum foil flashing in her hand like a sword. She unleashed the foil with a loud crackle that whipped through the air. Then she began pressing the foil over the living room window.

“What are you doing?” Mina asked.

Darya didn't answer.

Families had disappeared around them. One by one, they left. Most to America. And Europe. Some of Mina's aunts and uncles left without saying good-bye. They ended up in Germany, France, England, Canada, Sweden, and the Land of the Teacups. Los Angeles and New York. Mina heard these names whispered at the dinner table over minted cucumber yogurt. Every week a new family vanished from Tehran. Then suddenly the new government stopped letting them leave. And when that happened, everyone wanted to leave.

The front door opened, and Baba came in. After a hello and a quick wash of his hands, he helped Darya cover the windowpanes with silver sheets. When the living room was completely covered up, they moved on to the bedrooms. Mina trotted after her parents from room to room, observing this bizarre but apparently important action.

Olivia Newton-John's “I Honestly Love You” played on the cassette player in the living room. Mina had been with Hooman when he bought it from a street peddler's collection of pirated tapes displayed on an old rug on the side of the street. The street peddler had looked around nervously to make sure that no guards were watching, then pocketed Hooman's money.

The three of them in Hooman's bedroom now, Darya and Baba stood back from the Pink Floyd poster on Hooman's wall. Darya looked as if she would say something. But she didn't. A few months ago, it had been an ayatollah's poster. Pink Floyd. Ayatollah. Darya threw her arms wide apart as she stretched out another shining, crackling sheet of foil. Baba pressed it onto Hooman's window, attaching it with masking tape.

“Why are you doing this?” Mina asked.

“Because of Saddam,” Darya said matter-of-factly. “Because of his bombs.”

Baba cleared his throat. “Light travels into the . . .” he began in his let's-learn-science voice. “See now, there is a distance from which . . .”

“We're covering the windows so Saddam's planes can't see our lights, so they can't find the city and bomb us,” Darya interrupted him. “That's why.”

Baba paused. “Yes, well . . . that's another way of putting it,” he said. He waved the aluminum foil in the air like a baton, and tried to whistle along to Olivia Newton-John for a bit. He gave Mina a reassuring smile. “Who's hungry?” he said. “Let's have some dinner!”

SADDAM QUICKLY BECAME A PART
of life. He was everywhere. Mina saw an outline of his mustache in the clouds. In the sheen of the oily water of the city's sewer
joob
, she was sure she counted his fat fingers floating. Parts of the tufts of his hair appeared in her lentil rice. At night, the sound of his planes terrified Mina. His name was plastered on newspapers, splashed in spray paint on the streets next to the word “Death,” and incorporated into schoolyard chants and recess songs. Always, his name was said with disgust. He had attacked Iran on a September day in the year 1980. And though it didn't seem possible, a new level of change had been reached.

They were now at war with Iraq.

School became drill oriented. They practiced running for cover, crouching down, and covering their heads with their arms. Bita was the fastest runner. She'd crack her gum while crouching, even though they weren't allowed to chew gum.

The whole city covered its windows with aluminum foil. But it didn't stop Saddam's planes from roaring above. Mina imagined the pilot looking for just the right place to drop a bomb. Just the right perfect spot.

Halfway through the night, in the middle of the sweetest of dreams, slowly Mina was nudged by Darya and then, in pajamas and with doll in hand, drowsily, she followed her family down to the basement and waited there until the bombing was over.

Mina would remember stumbling down the steps to go underground. Her teeth chattering as they waited, heart in mouth, for the bombs to end, the ground shaking beneath them. The numbers of the dead announced each day, printed in newspapers, anxiously pored over by locals.

It was in the basement that Kayvon decided to teach Mina karate moves. He painstakingly trained her while they took shelter under the ground for hours on end. Kayvon's favorite kick was what he called the “side heel thrust kick.” He had learned it from watching Bruce Lee movies. He said he had perfected it.

“See, you stand with your toes parallel. In a sparring stance.”

Mina tried to copy Kayvon's stance.

“Keep your feet shoulder-width apart. Pivot on your left toe. Now lift your leg into a chamber position. And kick out, strong.”

Mina tried and tried and tried again, not quite getting it right.

“You almost have it,” said Hooman, who was watching along. “You'll get it, Mina, with practice. But you have to concentrate.”

WHITE. ORANGE. RED. COLORS THAT
Mina had often used for chalky clouds, an emerging sun, big fat hearts.

The government found new use for them. When airplanes flew overhead, the towering speakers on the streets of Tehran, on supermarket signs, inside lima bean stalls, on top of police cars would begin to wail. There were three kinds of signals, named by color and altering in siren tone, for three stages of emergency. White meant be careful but you won't die, orange meant better go to the basement, and red meant get to the basement now, lie on your stomach, put your hands over your head and pray.

Darya kept a deck of cards in the basement. They played gin rummy, nervously, knowing playing cards was outlawed now too. Anything to do with gambling was a sin. Sometimes Darya played solitaire. She silently mouthed a question before she started each game. They never heard her. Then she said, “The cards will determine the answer.” They all knew the question.
Will we survive?

Her games of solitaire ended in failure more than once. When that happened, Darya swept the cards up quickly and shuffled them into a tidy stack. The boys often took over then, making a house of cards. They placed each card onto another as though their lives depended on it. When the house of cards collapsed, as it often did, their faces fell and everyone's optimism was stifled. Still, they made it back upstairs. Each time they entered their house again it was as if they were entering it for the first time, and each time they were also acutely aware that it could be their last.

IN THE MORNINGS, MINA SLOWLY ATE
the soft-boiled eggs her mother made. If she could delay going to school, she would. Darya brewed the tea carefully, making perfect potfuls—the china teapot snug within a tea cozy Mamani had sewn. Before leaving the house, Mina did one last check in front of the hallway mirror. She tucked every strand of hair under her headscarf and buttoned up the last button of her
roopoosh
.

Their new Lessons of Religion teacher, Mrs. Amiri, had appeared out of nowhere to teach this brand-new subject. Mrs. Shoghi and the other teachers were ordered to wear headdresses. The old headmistress was asked to leave because she was too
Shahi
. A new headmistress came, holding a megaphone in one hand and a list of new rules in the other. Anyone who appeared with a bad hijab would be reported. Bita was constantly sent to the principal's office for signs of being “deviant.”

The old textbooks with the photograph of the Shah on the first page were replaced with brand-new textbooks with a photo of the new leader inside. The drawings in their old books of girls feeding roosters and going to the market were almost exactly the same, except headscarves and
roopoosh
had been added to the girls' pictures.

In the new books, the Persian kings were no longer dynamic and amazing. They were corrupt and cruel. Mina had to relearn the “facts.” She saw that the definitions of things like “history,” “good,” and “bad” shifted depending on who was in power. Mina realized that whoever had access to dispensing information drew and colored the world.

“Don't get brainwashed, Mina,” Darya said at dinner. “Don't let
them
get to you. No one can tell you what to think. No one can tell you what to do. Except me. And Baba. But don't get in trouble either. They are ruthless. So just keep quiet. Keep your head low. Try not to talk back. It's not worth it.”

On her walk to school, Mina avoided the eyes of the guards that stood watching. “Good girls don't look men in the eye,” Mrs. Amiri would say. “Good girls don't raise their voice. No need to smile unnecessarily. Good girls do not provoke. Do not let your laughter be heard.” One of the bearded guards shifted in position as Mina walked by him. Mina held her head down, able only to see the thick black leather of his boots.

At school, after morning prayers and twenty-five jumping jacks, they lined up for assembly in rows according to height. It was hard to imagine that just a short while ago, boys and girls went to the same school. The presence of opposite sexes, Mrs. Amiri said, caused mental, spiritual, and physical effects that only should be felt after marriage. Mina missed playing dodgeball in school with Farokh and his friends.

Farokh still came over to her house sometimes, and they kicked a ball in the yard, enclosed by high walls, unseen. Then they ate the apples and dried mulberries that Darya brought out for them, and teased each other quietly.

THE NEW AUTHORITIES TOLD THE CHILDREN
to hate America. But most of the kids Mina knew loved America. They liked its music, its minty chewing gum, its freedom. Mrs. Amiri said that America was vulgar and greedy—that it had supported the dictatorship of the Shah with zero conscience and propped up an evil dictator.
But who's the one making our lives hell?
Bita asked Mina.
It's this new regime, not America!

One day, during a particularly hot recess half hour, while the headmistress was busy arguing with one of the janitors and while Mrs. Amiri sat in the shade chewing on a green apple, Bita motioned for the girls to gather around. When Mina, Jaleh, and Sepideh were all comfortably seated on the cement floor, Bita beamed conspiratorially and fished out a small cassette tape from underneath her
roopoosh
. There was a photocopied black-and-white photo on the cover of a smiling man with dark hair and a dimple on his chin and a beautiful woman facing him, her hands on his shoulders.

Bita held up the cassette and looked at the other girls with an expression that invited stunned appreciation. The girls leaned in closer.

Mina instantly recognized the cassette's image and took it from Bita.

“This is Olivia Newton-John,” Mina said. “Hooman wants to marry her.”

“Yes, and you want to marry the crown prince, who's not even the crown prince anymore but some poor refugee boy in the middle of America,” Jaleh sputtered. “What is it with your family and their obsession with marrying famous people? You'll marry who your parents pick, just accept it.”

Mina wanted to pull Jaleh's hair. But it was well protected under her headscarf. “For your information, my parents don't believe in that old-fashioned nonsense!” she said.

“Can we stop this
chart-o-part
talk and look at the tape?” Sepideh grabbed the tape from Mina. “Can I borrow this? Please? Please?”

The other girls shouted in protest. Jaleh reminded Bita about the supershiny lip gloss she had lent her three weeks ago, which Bita had almost entirely used up. Sepideh told Bita that she would give her three sticks of spearmint gum that her uncle had sent all the way from America.

“I'm your best friend” was all Mina could come up with.

After several rounds of “rock, paper, scissors” (Jaleh accused Sepideh of cheating, and Sepideh insisted no, she wasn't cheating, that's how her hand formed a fist and so what if it looked like paper, it wasn't right to make fun of her double joints, and Jaleh said being double-jointed didn't mean you had to cheat at how you made a stone shape with your hand, and Sepideh looked as if she might burst into tears), Bita finally broke the conflict by saying, “Mina gets to borrow it first because she's my best friend!”

Mina ran straight home after school and slid the cassette into the player. She began dancing on the sofa. Jumping up and down and feeling free from care. This was happy music and she blasted it as loud as she could.

That night, she took out the paper insert in the plastic cassette case and found that on the inside, in Farsi letters, was the name of the singer-man who was facing Olivia Newton-John on the tape's cover. A certain Mr. John Travolta, from New Jersey.

By the end of the week her time with the tape (which she learned was the sound track to some movie named
Grease
) had run out, and she had to pass it to Jaleh (during recess, covered in a napkin, pretending it was a butter and chicken sandwich). By then, Mina had memorized most of the words to “Summer Lovin',” “Hopelessly Devoted to You,” and “You're the One That I Want.” She found the songs popping into her head at inopportune moments—during prayer time or chanting time, or worst of all, when Mrs. Amiri's heavily cloaked body roamed the classroom checking the contents of their notebooks. She knew that if Mrs. Amiri could hear half the lines dancing in Mina's head, she would send her straight to detention. “
Cause I'm losin' control, of the power you're supplying, it's electrifying.
” Mina hummed the new English words as she walked home from school under the stare of the Revolutionary Guards. “
I'm outta my head, but I'm hopelessly devoted to you
.” She didn't know the meaning of all the words, just the easier ones like “love” and “summer” and “want” that she'd already covered in the private English tutoring class that her mom signed her up for as an extracurricular activity.