Together Tea (13 page)
M
ina pulled down her chador to cover as much of her face as she could. Her brothers sat next to her, crumpled in the backseat of the taxi. In the darkness, the fleeting streetlamps occasionally lit up the people who were out at midnight. Mina glimpsed a couple, a woman in a dark chador and a young thin man, strolling as they ate ice-cream sandwiches. A few cats roamed the streets, wide-eyed. Mina closed her eyes and prayed.
They hadn't made their beds. They hadn't taken the kettle off the stove, or packed much. They hadn't said good-bye to most of their relatives, trusting the grapevine to spread the news once they were safely out. At the last minute, Mina had thrown into her suitcase her color-pencil case and the markers from last year. Now huddled next to Darya and her brothers in the speeding taxi, she started to remember all the things she hadn't brought. Underwear. Did they have enough underwear? She could see Baba press on an imaginary gas pedal as he sat next to the taxi driver in the passenger seat. The taxi driver, Ali, kept cracking his gum. The music he played was religious. A good front. If the guards leaned in and asked them questions, maybe Ali could help them.
“We are going to America,” Baba had said at breakfast, a few months after Mamani's death. Each week more boys were sent to the front to fight. When he made the announcement, Mina saw in her father's face that the decision had already been solidified between her parents, the details already worked out. When Darya had definitively said that her sons would not die killing their innocent Iraqi neighbors and Baba had said that his daughter would not be brought up silenced and stifled, together they had made their plan. At breakfast over sweetened tea and bread smeared with Mamani's sour-cherry jam from summer, the children had simply been informed of the decision. And every action since then had been one of rushed secrecy, a heightened sense of urgency informing their charade of living as though they weren't leaving.
At the airport, Ali threw their suitcases onto the pavement. It was half past midnight, and their flight left at five in the morning. They needed time to get through all the official checkpoints. Ali shook Baba's hand and bowed his head at Darya. He took a good long look at Hooman and Kayvon. “
Bereen. Bereen zood.
Go. Go quickly,” he said. “In a few months, they'll have you killing Iraqis.”
Hooman and Kayvon leaned over to pick up the suitcases. Mina looked at her brothers' long arms and legs. She couldn't imagine their bodies crouched in ditches near the border, ready to kill.
Inside the airport, Darya and Mina were separated from Baba and the boys. Darya and Mina made their way to the women's section. Mina kept pulling her chador tighter, she didn't want the authorities to find anything wrong with her hijab, she didn't want to be the reason they were refused permission to get on the plane. They were told to empty their suitcases. Every item was carefully examined and massaged by the three chadored customs officials.
“Nothing valuable can leave this country,” one of the women said, looking Darya and Mina up and down with scorn.
Another woman body-searched them from head to toe, squeezing and patting them. Questions were asked about why they were going to America (for medical reasonsâBaba had managed to create medical urgency with the help of his colleagues already in New York), how long they were staying (nine months), what, if any, jewelry, money, Persian rugs, pistachios, gold they were taking. A Barbie doll tumbled out of Mina's suitcase.
The customs official lifted up the Barbie and looked at it at arm's length. Her face contorted into a sneer. “Why do you need this?” she asked Mina.
“Remember how you had dolls when you were little?” Darya said quickly, desperately.
The female official smiled wearily at Darya. “No, Khanom, I do not. I never owned a single doll. It is you, the rich, who owned the dolls. It is you the spoiled rich class who owned everything in this country. Now look at you, scurrying away like frightened cockroaches.”
Darya stiffened. Mina readied herself for the throbbing forehead vein and a tirade from her mother. But instead, Darya only looked down at her feet as the customs official shoved their belongings back into the suitcase. A third woman was called over to look at their paperwork. The few minutes she spent leafing through their passports felt like an eternity. Then the woman jerked her head toward the terminal and handed Darya two boarding passes. Mina had expected more resistance, more struggle, expected the officials to even deny them permission to leave.
They walked quickly to reunite with Baba and Hooman and Kayvon. Mina realized she hadn't repacked Barbie. The customs official had insisted on examining Barbie, twisting her arms, cracking her knees. As Mina turned to look back at the search station, where the chadored women were throwing around the belongings of another nervous-looking mother and daughter, she caught a glimpse of her Barbie's dismantled arms and legs in a neat pile next to a picture of the Ayatollah.
ON THE PLANE, BEFORE THEY TOOK OFF,
Mina looked out the window at the Tehran tarmac one last time. Baba had promised they would come back very soon, as soon as the “craziness” was over, and their country became normal again. Suddenly Mina's heart tightened as panic washed over her. A dozen faces seemed to press against the tiny oval window of the plane. She could see Cousin Leila and Aunt Nikki and Reza and Maryam. She clearly saw Aunt Firoozeh's nose pressed against the pane, and Uncle Jafar's big mustache was squashed against the glass too. There was Soghra, dabbing her head with a hanky. And in her mind's eye, Mina saw Agha Jan. She saw him sitting alone at his kitchen table, the newspaper limp in his hand, bent over an empty bowl. At that moment, Mina even saw Mrs. Amiri, looking at her with something like envy as she sat behind her teacher's desk. Lastly, Mina saw Bita marching off to detention, turning around to look one last time at Mina. Lip-glossed, shining-black-eyed defiant Bita. The relief that Mina had expected once they were safely on the plane was not there. There was instead only a strange sensation: a suffocating feeling of guilt.
“We never said good-bye,” Mina said as they got ready to take off.
“We'll be back,” Darya promised. “This is all just temporary.”
Mina closed her eyes and saw their house, its doors wide open, the windows unshuttered with the wind blowing through. The lemon trees that Darya had planted in the garden, the roses in the yard, the jars of tea leaves and baskets of fruit on the kitchen shelves.
She turned to look at her mother. Darya's eyes were half-closed and her mouth was barely moving. But Mina recognized the words her mother whispered. She was stunned to see her mother praying. She had never heard her mother recite prayers, the Koran verses from which she had always distanced herself. When she prayed, Mina thought, Darya looked more like Mamani. Across the aisle, her father sat glassy-eyed. Hooman kept pulling nervously at his upper lip. For a minute, Kayvon's head was covered in his hands. Then he looked up and saw Mina watching him. He managed a smile. “Freedom.” He mouthed the word as the plane lifted into the air. He held his trembling fingers in a “V” for Victory.
The plane went up higher and higher. Mina leaned her head back and listened to the buzz of voices and white noise. The pilot's nasal muffled voice came through the speakers. She could smell a stranger's cologne. She held on to Darya's hand as they flew into the blackness.
S
omewhere between Iran and America the women on the plane had slid their headscarves off and unbuttoned their
roopoosh
. Just before they landed in New York City, compact cases emerged from handbags and powder puffs were pressed against tired skin, mascara was dragged across already-black lashes, and gobs of goo in small round tubs were pressed to lips.
Darya had spent most of the plane ride thinking. She marveled at how Mina slept so soundly next to her. She felt again the overwhelming sense of responsibility that she'd gotten accustomed to ever since the birth of her first child: the stunning knowledge that where her kids were going was due in large part to where she, as mother, led them. This duty felt at times as if it could drown her.
Parviz had told her early in the morning, before the kids came into the kitchen for breakfast. Darya had been pouring boiling water into the teapot, thinking how much her mother had taught her about brewing things correctly, when she saw the look on Parviz's face. She wanted to stop pouring but couldn't. Even before he said it, she knew he had big news. He'd been talking about leaving for some time.
“America . . .” he started.
“We can try,” she said finally. She felt herself sink. In order to live in a normal way, they had to leave their home. She wanted to scream at the top of her lungs.
Parviz talked about schools and education in America. All Darya could do was stare at the bottle of dishwashing liquid on the kitchen sink. The green liquid glinted in the sunshine streaming through the window. The bottle was half full. Parviz discussed Hooman's future, the possibility of his becoming a doctor. Darya noticed a few bubbles floating inside the bottle of the dishwashing liquid, at the very top. Parviz moved on to Kayvon, discussing his talent with people. When would it end? Darya thought. Parviz talked about how such a talent should not go to waste. Would the dishwashing liquid be used up before they left? How many more sinkfuls of dishes would she wash with the remaining detergent? How many weeks did they have left?
“And Mina,” Parviz continued. “Think of her spirit, her
shadi
, her joy. She lives in color. Here, she's been drained to black and white . . .”
The dishwashing liquid would outlast their stay in Iran, Darya realized. She had mentally calculated how many sinkfuls of dishes the remaining liquid would wash, and it was more than the number of sinkfuls that she estimated they'd dirty before they took off. She had solved the math problem. It was strangely fascinating to think that the leftover dishwashing liquid would stay in Iran longer than she would.
Now the plane soared in the night air. Who knew if it was right or wrong? They had uprooted their lives. The children. She knew by heart Parviz's speech about freedom and possibility and the future. But she was taking them away from the safety of the extended family. Plucking them out of the life and the world they knew and dropping them somewhere else. Even if their country had turned crazy, it was still their country. But this new place, the Land of the Teacups as Mina liked to call it, what on earth did they really know about it? Darya saw teacups spinning before her eyes and rested her head on the tiny airplane pillow and tried to sleep. She wished she could line up all her relatives, line them up one by one and stand in front of each one, just for a few minutes. Tell them that she didn't want to go, that it wasn't right that she should go and they should stay, how if she could she would jump into the sky and catch each and every bomb Saddam was dropping on them, leap into the air and catch it and stop itâTHUNKâthe bomb would land in her hand and go nowhere and they, those loved ones with whom she shared her days, would not have to die.
In her head, she mentally said good-bye to each of the relatives. To Soghra too, and the greengrocer Hassan. But when she opened her eyes, the gaping truth remained. There was no mother. Even in make-believe, she could not envision standing in front of her mother's frame and saying good-bye. Darya reached for Mina's hand as Mina slept. To a mother, there was never a good-bye. Eleven seventeen a.m. Greengrocer's. Pomegranates. A bomb. She sighed and turned her attention to her daughter and her peaceful face. Mothers did not die.
“WELCOME TO AMERICA,” DARYA WHISPERED.
Mina put her hand on her head, dazed. She looked over at her father. He was writing on the customs and immigration forms. He held on to the forms tightly, careful not to crease or bend the paper, treating with great care the tiny manifestos that held a key to their future.
“Look, Mina,” Darya said, pointing out the window as the plane began to land. “Look at all the lights.”
Outside the window, Mina saw what looked like a velvet cloth with gems of silver and gold crushed deep within its folds. The new city. She thought she saw a structure that might be the Statue of Liberty that Kayvon had showed her in books, she wasn't sure. But what she knew for sure was that she could see countless lights everywhere, endless lights, even the tiniest ones made more visible the closer they got to American soil. “They can keep their lights on at night here,” she muttered in wonder.
“They can keep their lights on whenever they want,” Darya said.
As the plane descended, Mina was filled with an inexplicable rush, a dizziness even, and as she pressed her forehead against the pane of the window and gazed down at the lights below, she felt as if she could reach down and swallow that world up. For one brief moment, she felt as if anything could be hers if she wanted it, anything at all. She wanted to jump out of the seat and run, run anywhere fast, it didn't matter where, but she wanted to move, to shout, to announce to everyone that she loved those lights. She wanted to pick them up one by one and put them in her free hair, press them over her body, lightly place them on her tongue and then slowly have them melt inside her, until all of New York was there, giving her warmth and light and actually becoming a part of her, until the lights of that city were stored so safely inside that no one could ever take them away. To have that freedom inside her and have it shine from her eyes for the rest of her life. Forever.
They moved their bags down and waited in line to exit the plane. People coughed. The murmurs, the hiccups, the sneezesâwould they all begin to sound different now? Mina pushed a strand of hair back from her face and looked ahead. Darya was right in front of her, her back concealing Mina's view. Mina tightened her grip on her carry-on bag and felt her heart pounding. They were about to enter the lights. If she could draw those lights, she would. If she could draw them for the rest of her life, she would.