Veil of Roses (11 page)

“You are correct, I am sorry.” Haroun turns to Maryam and his eyes become polite. Less insistent. Less crazy. “How did you prepare this meat? It is delicious.”

Maryam describes her cooking process, and we slip back into pleasant, normal getting-to-know-each-other conversation. I tell of the beauty of Sabino Canyon and some of the houses I admire on my route to school. Ardishir tells of a funny woman patient he had this afternoon. Maryam teases about some of the
pooldar
American women who shop at Macy’s. Haroun tells a funny story about his neighbor. By the end of the meal, I am back to feeling hopeful about Haroun. A long conversation over tea and sweets does nothing to dispel my hope.

When it comes time for Haroun to leave, Maryam and Ardishir say good-bye and discreetly disappear into the kitchen. I walk him to the door and wait as he slips his shoes back on.

He straightens and smiles at me.

“Thank you for a lovely time, Tami.”

“Thank
you
.”

“May I call on you again?”

“I would be honored.” I give him my Julia Roberts smile, the one that worked so well on Ike, and suddenly his forehead wrinkles. He leans in.

“Open your mouth, please.”

I draw back. “Pardon?”

“Let me see your mouth.”

This request startles me so much that I do what he asks without thinking. I open wide. He leans in again and studies each tooth individually. When he backs off, he taps me on the nose in what I am sure he thinks is a playful manner. “Not to worry. There are some good corrective smile surgeons in town. Have you thought about seeing one?”

But Ike said my smile is dazzling.

I snap my mouth closed and firmly shake my head. He laughs like I am joking and makes a move to take my hand.

I hesitate.

“You’re a shy one, aren’t you?” he asks, as if this pleases him.

I’m not shy. You’re just strange.

He reaches for my hand again. With dread in my heart, I let him take it.

“I think we’d get on quite companionably, don’t you?” he asks. It is all I can do not to pull my hand back. We look at each other for a moment. “I’ll call you in the next week or so to make arrangements. Okay?”

“Mmmm.” It is all I can say. I am afraid I will scream if I open my mouth. Thankfully, he takes my response as agreement and moves to step outside.

I close the door quietly behind him and lean my head against it. I begin to bang my head on the door, over and over, harder each time. I am thinking one thing only, chanting one thing only.

He wants to marry me.

He wants to marry me.

May God strike me dead; he wants to marry me.

T
ami?” my sister says quietly, coming up behind me.

I stop banging my head. I take a deep breath and turn to face her. She looks at me with great compassion.

Ardishir is at her side. He is incredulous. “Did he just inspect your mouth?”

I nod and sniff to keep my nose from running. “Like I am a horse he is considering to buy.”

“Did I hear him right? Did he say he’s open to a marriage?” Maryam asks.

I nod with a heavy heart.

“Don’t worry,” she says kindly.

I avert my gaze.

It is easy for her to say,
Don’t worry.
She is lucky to have found such a decent man as Ardishir. She is not the one who will have to hunt down imaginary bugs and nurse imaginary scorpion bites.

“At least he can provide for you a decent home,” she consoles.

“She’s not going to marry him!” Ardishir explodes. “He’s a nut job!”

I sink my eyes into Ardishir. My savior. My lifeline. Yet again, he is rescuing me from Maryam. Or trying to, anyway.

“What makes him crazy?” Maryam demands. “What? Because he got bit from a bug?”

“He didn’t get bit,” I declare. “It was all in his head.”

“And that bug on the ceiling!” Ardishir mimics Haroun, how he snapped his head and bulged his eyes. He laughs as he remembers. I take Ardishir’s cue and join in with his laughter. I hope it causes Maryam to see that two reasonable people in the room, Ardishir and me, think Haroun is crazy. And if she is reasonable, she will think so, too.

And of course, I cannot be expected to marry someone who is crazy.
Can I? Or is this, perhaps, the price I must pay?

“And the way he washed his hands!” Ardishir slaps his hand to his forehead. “I thought he’d be at the sink all night!”

Maryam’s eyes are dark and determined. “There is nothing wrong with cleanliness. And perhaps he really did see a bug on the ceiling. Only last week, one climbed out of the bathroom drain. I saw it myself.”

“He’s cuckoo, Maryam,” Ardishir insists. “You don’t want your sister marrying someone like him.”

Tears come to Maryam’s eyes. “I want her to stay in America,
that’s
what I want.”

“I know,” soothes Ardishir. “And she will. We’ll find a way.”

“She doesn’t have all that much time,” she snaps at him. Then she turns to me. “Tami, he was not so bad. You must admit, ninety-five percent of the evening was very pleasant.”

Ardishir bursts out laughing at her logic. “The remaining five percent was
pretty freaky,
though, wasn’t it?”

Maryam shrugs, turns her palms upward. “So what if he does not like bugs? It is not the worst thing in the world, for him to dislike bugs. I do not—”

“No, Maryam,” Ardishir interrupts. “You have it wrong. Haroun does not like
imaginary
bugs.”

“She would do much worse marrying in Iran. You know what her options are there.” Maryam gives him a meaningful look. “So Haroun has issues with bugs. He is mostly okay. He makes a good living, he can provide for her.”

I let out a shaky breath. “I am very tired. Let us save our decisions until the morning.”

“This is not something even to consider,” Ardishir insists.

“Yes it is!” Maryam looks as if she will scratch his eyes out with her long red fingernails.

I am ashamed that I have caused them to fight. “Thank you both for tonight,” I tell them. “I am so very grateful to you for your hospitality.”

Maryam waves off my thanks. “It’s not hospitality. This is your home as much as it is ours. Right, Ardishir?”

“Of course.”

This is where I know for sure they
both
are wrong. This is not my home. I will have to leave it, one way or another. Either my visa will expire and I will go back to Iran, or I will get married and move to my husband’s home.

I bite my bottom lip to keep my tears from flowing as I go upstairs to my bedroom. Once in the privacy of my room, I stare at myself in the mirror. My face has turned greasy from all the makeup Maryam slathered on me.

I snarl at my reflection. Perhaps Haroun is the best I can do in such a short time. Perhaps he is all that I deserve.

I let out a big sigh and rearrange the
hejab
that hangs over the corner of my mirror so it covers the whole thing, so I am hidden from seeing myself. I light my Perpetual Light candle, turn on my Googoosh music, and smear cream all over my face. I rub it off viciously, cursing my fate, hating that all my choices are bad ones.

I turn off my light and climb into bed. I burrow myself in the fluffy red comforter on my bed and turn so I can watch the flame of the candle dance in the darkness.

My bedroom has always been my refuge. Since Maryam married Ardishir and left Iran, I have had my very own bedroom. It is the only place I did not have to wear some sort of veil, some sort of mask. On the streets, I literally veiled myself—kept a grim, eyes-down countenance. At my job, I put a barrier between myself and my girls every time I pretended to them that the future was something to which they could look forward. And with my dear parents, I was the polite, obedient, understanding daughter, the one who pretended not to see Maman’s glassy, tear-puffed eyes. With her so sluggishly sad, I countered with a dutiful cheer. Always a veil. It has only been alone at night that I get any sense of who I am, of who I might become. It is alone at night that I have found my greatest peace.

I realize that I will lose this, too. I will lose my nighttime peace. If I marry Haroun, I will come to imagine all sorts of rodents running through the house at night. I will begin to hear the crackle of imaginary cockroaches and the buzz of imaginary wasps as I try to fall asleep. I am sure Haroun will twist restlessly in our bed, fending off imaginary insects.

Good night. Sleep tight. Don’t let the bedbugs bite.

I suddenly remember this rhyme from our days in America, from the nights our father tucked Maryam and me into the double bed we shared at our apartment in Berkeley. We used to pinch each other after he’d left the room.
Gotcha.

The memory makes me smile. I will have to remind Maryam of this in the morning. We, too, used to conjure up imaginary bugs.

But we did it only for fun, not because we were crazy.

Maryam.

I know she is trying to help. And I know there are to be sacrifices involved in rushing into marriage. I did not expect to find my one true love in such a short period of time. I knew I would have to settle. And I know that my life is not destined to be easy. Being a woman from Iran, I would never dare to hope for such a thing. I just never realized how tiring it is, to have to constantly drum up the energy to live only a half life.

Everyone in my life that I love has had to make sacrifices. My mother and father settle every day, living in the wake of a revolution that has betrayed them.

Maman Joon.
With her soft skin that smells of rosewater. Who goes to the beauty salon every week to have her hair done, her eyebrows waxed, her skin deep-cleansed, and her toes manicured.
Why, Maman,
I used to ask when I was still a child,
why do you bother when you only have to cover yourself up afterward?

And she would look at me in kindness and explain herself to a daughter too young to possibly understand.

Because they can make me cocoon myself from the world, but they cannot stop me from feeling beautiful.

At this she would take my chin in her hand and bend close to me.
I will live in the cocoon, Tami. And you will emerge as my beautiful butterfly.

I begin to cry as I think of my mother. Poor
Maman Joon
. She should not have to live the way she does. They should return her passport. They should let her go.

Sleep does not come to me this night. I cry all the tears that I have stored up for so long, tears of homesickness and parent-sickness and friend-sickness. Tears for the sacrifices inherent in being a woman of Iran.

When it is very late and I am sure Maryam is asleep, I walk stealthily to the kitchen and dial my parents’ home in Iran. It must be close to noon there, and I expect my mother to be home. Sure enough, after only three rings I hear the lullaby that is her voice.

“Allo? Allo?”

“Salaam,
Maman,
Hale shoma chetor-e?” How are you?

“What’s wrong, Tami? Is everyone okay? Are you and Maryam all right?”

Tears gather in my eyes. How many years I heard her ask these same worried questions each time she received a phone call from Maryam. Her tone always roused my father and me from whatever we were doing, to hear Maryam’s news from America.

“We’re fine, Maman. I just wanted to hear your voice. It is very late here, and Maryam is asleep.”

“Tell me how you are,
Tami Joon.
”

My tears stream down my face. I wipe them and sniffle and wipe the whole mess onto my pajama top. I no longer try to hide my sorrow from my mother. Instead, I explain to her my dinner with Haroun and the predicament in which I now find myself.

“So you and Ardishir both think he is unwell in the head. And yet Maryam does not.”

I confirm this is true.

“Ardishir thinks you should not marry him?”

“That’s right.”

“And Maryam thinks you should.”

“That’s right.”

“And what do you think, Tami?”

I inhale deeply. “My head tells me this is the correct and logical decision to make. Marrying Haroun would allow me to stay here, and I do love it here. He would be a good provider and does not seem too religious.”

“And your heart? What does your heart say?”

“Does that matter?” There is bitterness in my voice.

“Of course it does.”

“I don’t know, Maman. It isn’t my heart so much as my stomach, my gut. I have been unable to talk myself out of this heavy feeling I have had since dinner.”

“He really asked to inspect your mouth?”

“He did.”

In the moment of silence that follows, I am able to picture my mother perfectly and imagine what she is doing at this moment. She is dressed in house pants and slippers and has her hair pulled back with a barrette. She is standing at the window facing the courtyard. The curtains are open, since the window is not visible from the street. And she is watching leaves twirl through the cobblestones. And she is thinking what to say to her youngest daughter, knowing how much I depend on her wisdom. This silence brings me calm, for I know her judgment will be sound. She more than anyone knows how much is at stake for me.

“You are perhaps not ready to get married, even if it was to someone perfect in every way,” Maman finally says.

This thought occurs to me frequently as I fall asleep at night, listening to my sad Googooshi music. I have so enjoyed my freedom here, and so chafed under Maryam’s manageable admonitions. A husband’s admonitions might not be so mild, and cannot be so easily dismissed.

“Would you marry Haroun in Iran? If not, then you should not marry him at all.
Go as far as you can see, and when you get there you’ll see farther.
You must trust this will happen. You must trust that Allah has other plans for you than to become Haroun’s wife. If He wanted you to marry Haroun, He would have made Haroun more stable.”

“I’m sure you’re right, Maman. It is just hard to walk away when I don’t know what the future holds.”

“I know, my love. Believe me, I know.”

“If I do decide to marry him, will you support my decision?”

There is hesitation.

“You will do what must be done, Tami. I know this about you. Your father and I will support you and trust you, no matter what your decision.”

“Even if that means I may have to come back home?”

There is more hesitation.

“Your friend Minu is engaged, did you know? She is marrying Seyed, the grocer’s son.”

This may sound like a change of subject, but it is not. Unemployment is very high in Iran. Seyed is okay, and he is employed, but poor Minu will have to live in the house of her mother-in-law. And her mother-in-law is known for her dourness and meanness to others. When you marry in Iran, you marry the whole family. All the brothers, parents, cousins, and uncles. And it seems there is always one who finds ways to be cruel.

“Poor Minu,” I say. “I am sad for her, but she must have felt it was her best choice.”

“I’m sure she did.”

This is my mother’s way of telling me that my choices would be even more limited in Iran.

“Let me talk to her,” I hear my father’s voice insist in the background.

“
Tami Joon,
how is America?”

“Baba!”

“How is my little black fish?”

A moan of homesickness escapes from my throat. “
Baba Joon,
I miss you. I wish you and Maman could be here with me. Our family should not be separated like this.”

“Shhhh,” he quiets me. “You must not say such a thing. You are our little black fish, and you will keep going and keep going and don’t let the pelicans swallow you up. We are fine here. You must not think sad thoughts of missing us.”

“I know, Baba,” I whisper. I hide from him my sniffles. He wants to see only the brave side of me.