Veil of Roses (17 page)

I
had hoped that when I arrived home from dinner with Haroun, I would be able to slink off to my bedroom and collapse into my bed. To think this situation through in silence, in darkness.

But Maryam is still awake, and so my hope is dashed. She and Ardishir are together on the couch in the living room watching the Persian news on the satellite from Los Angeles. Ardishir barely turns his attention from the program. But Maryam, who has been lying with her head in Ardishir’s lap, jumps up and rushes to kiss me hello. Her eyes beg with curiosity as she waits for me to offer information.

“How was dinner with the macadamia nut?” Ardishir calls over before I have a chance to say anything. Then he gives me a wink and a smile.

“Don’t you listen to him.” Maryam takes my hand and pulls me toward the love seat by the fireplace. We sit down together and she keeps my hand in hers. “Well, little sister, how did things go? Was dinner everything you hoped it would be?”

“Please,” I ask, “what is this illness called mad cow disease and how does one contract it?”

From the couch, Ardishir hoots a loud laugh. Maryam shushes him.

“Haroun doesn’t think he has it, does he?” She asks this as if she is afraid to hear my response, for it would confirm his craziness if my answer is yes.

“No, but he thinks I may get it from eating my steak medium rare.”

There is another loud laugh from Ardishir. “Mad cow!”

“Hello, no one is listening to you, Ardishir.” Maryam’s anger is palpable, but Ardishir doesn’t even see her glare, he is so bent over with laughter. She turns back to me. “Ignore him.”

“Well, what is this disease?” I persist.

“It is something strange and rare, that is all I know. And cows go crazy from it. But I don’t think people in the United States have gotten it. I have only heard of some cases in England many years ago. You surely would not get it from eating a steak tonight.”

I should have known. I missed out on a perfectly delicious steak because of his craziness. The sacrifices have begun already. I withhold a sigh.

“Haroun asked me to marry him and I agreed. He will come to speak with Ardishir soon.”

Maryam cups my face in her hands and kisses me on both cheeks and my forehead before responding. “Oh, little sister! This is such good news! Ardishir, did you hear the good news? Tami will be able to stay in America, right here in Tucson!”

Ardishir has stopped his laughter. He looks over at me with a severe look upon his face. “He is crazy, yes? You have not changed your mind on that, and yet still you agreed to marry him?”

I know Ardishir told me he would play the role of the doubter and forbidder up until the last moment, but his tone is so serious that my voice falters.

“I, um, no, I do not think he is crazy. Only a little overly cautious about his health. His sister died from an infection when he was young. This is why he behaves this way.”

“Oh, poor Haroun, to have lost a sister.” Maryam’s eyes well with tears, and she looks to Ardishir, I think, to see if she is convincing him to pity Haroun.

This is, I think, a good strategy. “He says I remind him of his sister.”

“Now, that’s disgusting. Why would he want to marry his sister?”

“Ardishir, enough from you!” Maryam boils over with rage. Her voice softens when she asks me, “Shall we call our parents and share the good news?”

“There is no need to bother them, because I forbid the union. I will not give my permission.” Ardishir is so stern that again I am taken aback.

“It’s not up to you,” Maryam spews at him. “Asking you is only a formality, and we can skip it if you’re going to act this way. Why aren’t you happy for my sister?”

“It will be important for Haroun to receive permission from Ardishir,” I say. “It is practically all he talked about from the moment I agreed to marry him.”

That, and my need to be examined by his doctor.

“Ardishir will give his permission. It is what my parents want, and his role is to represent their wishes here.”

“It’s my job to act in the best interest of
Tami
. Marrying someone who should be locked away in a mental institution is not in her best interest, and I won’t be convinced otherwise.” He shakes his finger at Maryam as he says this.

I am dumbfounded. He talks so seriously.

I stand up from the love seat. “I’m going to bed. You two can work this out between yourselves. I only know that Haroun intends to visit soon to speak with Ardishir.”

“Good night, Tami.” Maryam pulls me close for a hug. “Don’t worry about my husband. He will be reasonable when the time comes.”

With Maryam hugging me, she cannot see Ardishir’s face. I am hopeful to receive another wink and smile behind her back. But it is not to be. He narrows his eyes and says good night sternly, like a disapproving father. Perhaps if he grows tired of his job as an orthopedic surgeon, he can become an actor, because he plays the part of new-sheriff-in-town so very well.

L
ater that night, hours after Maryam and Ardishir have gone to bed, I tiptoe to the kitchen and dial Iran. I am desperate to hear Minu’s voice, to have her reassure me that I am making the correct choice in marrying Haroun.

“Oy!” she squeals when I greet her. “Is it really you, my American friend? You must tell me how you are! Your girls ask after their favorite teacher all the time, they want to know all about your adventures in America, but I must tell them to use their imaginations, for she is far too busy to call me with the details.”

Minu is a teacher also. Her classroom was next to mine. She is short and slight and wears her hair in a pixie cut. She talks with grand gestures of her hands and great theatrical expressions. I can see her now, exactly, as if I were standing in the room with her. She is performing for me.

“Please forgive me,” I beg. It is not a joke, to abandon my best friend. My voice drops to a choked whisper. “I miss you so much, Minu…it’s so hard to think of you there and not with me. You’re on my mind all the time, I think of you constantly, but in my thoughts you are here with me, and we are finding our way in America together.”

I have these photographs in my head, these daydreams, of Minu and me seeing R-rated movies that are uncensored. We play Frisbee at Himmel Park. Laugh at the world.
Check out the fine dudes.
We are laughing, laughing, always laughing. We are riding our bicycles through the university campus. Buying our own red scooters and zipping around town, letting our hair blow free in the wind.

“I’m getting married, Tami, did you hear?” Her voice sounds bright.

“My parents told me. I suppose I should congratulate you.”

We sigh at the same time.

“Oh, Tami, I don’t know what I’m going to do.” She sounds desperate in a way I have not heard from her before. My heart breaks for her.

“What’s wrong,
Minu Joon
?”

“Oh, Tami,” she weeps. “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

She repeats herself and it alarms me. Her mother committed suicide when Minu was a baby, and each time we hear of a girl who has ended her life, Minu presses for details. She finds the idea of suicide admirable, for it is a way for a woman to seize control of her life, if only for the briefest of moments.

“What do you mean, Minu?”

“His parents are so awful. His father is very rough, very demanding.”

“Of you?”

“Of his wife. Of Seyed. He treats them so badly, I wonder sometimes if he is on drugs. And his mother, oy! No woman would be good enough for her son, least of all silly old me.”

Here is a joke Minu and I have laughed at over the years: A young Persian man excitedly tells his mother he’s fallen in love and is going to get married. He says,
“Just for fun, Maman, I’m going to bring over three women and you try to guess which one I’m going to marry.”
The mother agrees. The next day, he brings three beautiful women into the house and sits them down on the couch and they chat for a while. He then says,
“Okay, Maman, guess which one I’m going to marry.”
She immediately replies,
“The one on the right.”
The son claps.
“That’s amazing,”
he says.
“You’re right. How did you know?”
The Persian mother replies,
“Because I don’t like her.”

This joke is really not very funny. I don’t know why we ever thought it was.

“Oh, Minu,” I commiserate. “Does Seyed know of your concerns? Perhaps he might agree to live apart from them.”

“They’ve got an apartment for us above theirs,” she informs me glumly. “And now I fear that Seyed will be like his father in marriage. It is what he learned. It is all he knows.”

Oh, my poor Minu. My sweet, dear Minu. She is as deserving of happiness as anyone. And yet it will be denied her. She knows it; I know it.

“You just tell them the bride has gone to pick flowers,” I tell her. “And then run out of there, down the street in your wedding dress, as fast as you can!”

She laughs. During Iranian weddings, the man performing the ceremony asks the bride if she agrees to marry the groom. When the bride does not reply, the guests cry out,
“The bride has gone to pick flowers.”
The woman is asked again,
“Do you agree to marry this man?”
Again, she stays silent. Again, the guests cry out,
“The bride has gone to pick flowers.”
It is only after the third time she is asked that the bride says yes.

“That would be a sight, wouldn’t it?” Minu asks, her voice breaking.

“I’m sorry, Minu,” I whisper.

“Me, too,” she whispers back.

We both know it will not happen. Our bride will not get to pick flowers. And I no longer have the heart to share my concerns about marrying Haroun. Next to what she faces, I should consider myself lucky.

W
hen I arrive at class the next day, everyone else is already there. Conversation stops. All eyes turn toward me. Even Danny, who usually keeps himself out of the conversations until class begins, looks at me with a worried look.

“Well?” Eva demands.

“Well what?” I do not like being put on the spot in front of everyone like this.

“How was dinner?” Eva asks. “Any interesting news for us?”

She has told them all. This bothers me, for I would have preferred for my situation to be private. I would have preferred to arrive at class one day already married, and simply share my news then. But now they all know of my dilemma, my quest. I look at each of my classmates in turn. Edgard raises his eyebrows at me. Nadia looks scared. Agata looks mildly curious, and Josef looks ready to pounce.

I sigh. I may as well get this over with now. “I expect that I shall get engaged very soon, perhaps as early as this weekend. And this is good, I am happy, because I will get to stay in America. My fiancé is a very nice man.”

“Hooray!” yells Agata, raising both fists in the air in a victory cheer. “Hooray for Tami!”

Josef comes up to me and pats my hand. “Good girl, good girl. I am sure you have made your parents very happy.”

“I hope so.” I smile at him.

“When’s the date?” Edgard asks.

“I don’t know exactly, but sometime in the next few weeks.”

Nadia smiles bravely at me, but I can tell my news makes her want to cry.

“We need to have Nadia’s baby shower soon, then, so we can have your wedding shower the weekend after that,” Eva pronounces.

“You don’t need to have a party for me,” I protest.

“
Girlfriend,
if you’re getting married, you need some serious lingerie and, a-hem, bedroom toys.”

Bedroom toys!

Even after all these weeks, Eva still shocks me speechless on a regular basis. I give her the wide-eyed look of disapproval that she has come to know so well.

“Eva! These are not matters to discuss in front of everyone!”

Edgard and Josef snigger like teenage boys. “Please, discuss away. Pretend we are not even here,” Edgard says with a wave of his hands. “Right, Josef?”

“Absolutely. We are not even flies on the wall.”

“We could combine parties,” Nadia suggests.

“Oh, no,” I disagree. “Having a baby is such a special thing. You must have your own party.”

She makes a face. “I do not think I will be able to go to your party if it is not held at the same time as mine.”

“That man is such a—” Eva starts in on her like she always does.

Agata quickly interrupts. “He vill let you a-go to your own a-party, though, von’t he?”

Nadia nods. “He knows we need things for the baby. Especially with his hours cut, every little bit will help. So if we could combine my party and Tami’s, it would be for the best.”

Her eyes have dark circles under them, and her hair looks stringy, as if she has not shampooed it in several days. I am so worried for her. I reach out and squeeze her hand. “It’ll be fun to have it together.”

Danny has let us converse well into the start of the class, but he finally calls us to order. We work for over an hour on practicing proper use of participles and how to avoid dangling them. I pay careful attention and participate fully, as always, and soon enough, class is dismissed.

“Come on,” says Eva, pulling me up from my chair. “Let’s go tell your boyfriend that you’re going to marry the fruitcake.”

My eyes sink shut. I am tired of her lack of sensitivity.

“Haroun is not a fruitcake,” I say. “He is going to be my husband.”

“Not if Ike has anything to say about it.”

I grab Eva’s arm and dig in with my nails. “He must never know.”

She shrugs. “You know he’s going to find out.”

She tries to pull back, but I keep my grip on her. “He’s not. You need to promise me—
promise me
—you will never breathe a word of it.”

“Is that what you
really
want, Tami?”

She yanks her arm away.

“Yes.”

“Then fine. I won’t say a word about it.”

“I don’t want to go to Starbucks anymore,” I tell her. “I don’t think it’s right, now that I’m almost engaged.”

“Good. I’m sick of coffee.”

We decide to go to Park Place Mall and shop for baby gifts for Nadia. While waiting for the bus, we sit on a bench and close our eyes and lift our faces upward to bask in the beautiful March sun. I have peeled off my sweater and sit there in my Levi’s and turquoise camisole and I feel like my soul is healing somehow with each ray of sun that pierces my skin. Feeling the sun on one’s body should be a basic human right afforded to all. Chadors.
Death out for a walk
is how Guy de Maupassant way back in the nineteenth century described women in chadors.
Never again,
I resolve. Never again will I veil myself from the sun.

“You know what?” I tell Eva. “Marrying Haroun is good.”

“If you say so.”

“I say so.”

“Did he do anything goofy last night?”

I chuckle. I tell Eva how he took out an antiseptic wipe after touching my hand across the table and methodically wiped all evidence of me from his body.

We share a laugh.

I tell her how he slammed on his brakes on the way home, claiming a dog had run out in front of the car, which was completely his craziness talking.

We share another laugh.

I tell her how he asked me to open all the doors—to the restaurant, to my house, to the passenger side of the car where I sat, so he would not have to absorb their germs.

I sigh. “But other than that, we had a really nice time.”

She kicks my shin with the side of her leg.

“I bet you’ll die a virgin,” she says.

I laugh and I feel the sunshine even on my teeth. “Somehow, I doubt that.”

“Sex isn’t exactly a sterile endeavor, you know.”

“Well, it wouldn’t be the worst thing to have a marriage without sex.”

Eva reaches over and slaps her hand over my mouth. “Blasphemy!”

I bite her hand, and she pulls it back. “Seriously, Eva, if it means I get to stay in America, that’s just fine with me.”

“You’ve never had sex, right?” She asks this scornfully.

“Of course not!”

“Ever had an orgasm?”

“I don’t even know what that is.”

“Oh, girlfriend! We are going right to Borders when we get to the mall. I’m going to buy you a book about sex. A very graphic book about sex.”

I feel my cheeks redden. I am so very grateful we are alone at the bus stop.

“And then you can hide it in the grass next to your shoes!” she jokes.

I laugh. “I won’t have to hide it! I am getting married now. Maryam won’t mind if I have a book about sex. She might even buy me one herself.”

She rolls her eyes. “Jesus, you people are nuts. Porno books are okay, but walking shoes are not.”

Then she gets an idea. Her mouth opens very big and she clutches my arm. “I know! I think before you’re willing to give it up forever, you should at least
have
sex, so you know what you’ll be missing! So you can make an informed decision!”

She nods at me like this is a brilliant idea.

“
Right.
And how am I supposed to do that?”

She raises her eyebrows at me a few times and grins. “I’m sure Ike would be willing to help out in that regard.”

“Are you
crazy
?” At the very mention of Ike’s name and the word
sex,
my body feels all squishy and warm.

“You’re the crazy one,” she insists. “Ike’s totally hot.”

“Haroun won’t marry me if I’m not a virgin.”

“He’ll never know.”

“He wants me to see his doctor for a full physical to make sure I’m completely healthy before we get married. So trust me, he’d know.”

Eva looks disgusted. “What
is
this?” she demands. “Why are you letting yourself be treated this way? Aren’t you humiliated that he’d even
suggest
such a thing?”

Aaargh.
Eva only sees the world from her happy, sex-filled, gender-equal, German perspective. Telling her things about my life is really pointless. I don’t know why I bother.

“This sun feels wonderful, doesn’t it?” I say, turning my face back up to it and closing my eyes once again. “In Tehran, there is so much smog it feels as if the sun never gets through like it does here.”

“Living under the clouds of smog,” Eva drawls sarcastically. “That’s so symbolic.”

I elbow her and open my eyes because I hear a bus roaring down Broadway Boulevard toward us. I stand and grab her hand to pull her up. She swishes her hair from side to side, then grabs hold of her breasts and repositions them so they are as perky as can be, and tugs the waist of her skirt so it rides as low on her hips as possible. Her flat, tanned stomach is on display for all to see.

My friend Eva,
I think with sudden affection.
She wouldn’t last an hour on the streets of Tehran.

T
his is my first bus ride in America, so I let Eva lead the way. We board at the front of the bus. She pays the driver by slipping change into the dispenser, then grabs the first available row she can find, which is just a few rows from the front. I sit next to her and look around, at the advertisements, the male passengers in front and behind us, and marvel at the modernity of the bus. Back home, the buses are pre-revolution.

I turn to Eva with indignant glee. “I can’t even tell you how much I enjoy doing these sorts of things. Back home, women have to board the bus in the back and stay in the back so the men do not even see us. This is so crazy—I am not being corrupted just from riding a bus!”

Here’s an example of how topsy-turvy things are in Iran—we have these restrictions on buses, yet men and women cram into taxis together. As a joke, we call dating “going for a taxi ride.”

Eva leans her head against the window and looks at me. “What would happen in Iran if you moved to the front of the bus and sat down?”

I snort with incredulity. “I never would.”

“Why not?”

“I’d be dragged off the bus and arrested.”

“What if every woman moved to the front of the bus?”

“They wouldn’t!”

“But if they did?”

I raise my hands and speculate. “We’d all be taken to jail. Beaten, maybe.”

“And if you kept on doing it?”

“What, do you think we’re insane?”

“I’m just saying, there’s power in numbers.”

“There’s power in guns,” I tell my naïve friend.

I can tell Eva is frustrated with me. “Do you know who Rosa Parks was?”

I shake my head.

“Danny told us all about her last semester. It used to kind of be the same way here, only not with men and women but with blacks and whites. Blacks had to ride in the back of the bus and had to give up their seats to white people if all the seats were taken. And after doing this for years and years, one day Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat.”

Terror strikes my heart. “What happened?”

“She got arrested. Then she got bailed out and the whole city of Montgomery, Alabama, exploded. Blacks started striking and refused to ride the bus until they could sit where they wanted and didn’t have to give up their seats to anyone. And the whole town more or less ground to a standstill. Economically, the town couldn’t survive without the black workers.”

“Did they ever get the law changed?”

“You bet.” Eva nods proudly, as if she took part herself. As if we could all just do the same thing in Iran and things would get better for us.

“Well, America is all about the money. That’s why it worked. In Iran, the government runs most businesses. It wouldn’t matter if we stopped riding the buses. They wouldn’t care. They wouldn’t care if we stayed in our homes forever and never came outside. In fact, they would probably prefer it. They’d give all the jobs to the men.”

“You’re such a defeatist. You think like a total victim.”

I am a total victim.
I feel a sudden rage toward her.

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” I tell her in a voice that is not very friendly.

“It really bothers me how you let people walk all over you! You’re marrying this
weirdo
who’s going to hold you back. Once you’re married, he’s not going to let you out of the house, just you wait. Too many germs. He’s going to keep you a prisoner, in some germ-free little bubble. And if you ever do have kids, it’ll be through artificial insemination so he doesn’t have to touch you and dirty himself. But he won’t have kids, you mark my words, because they’re so germy with their snotty noses and they’d have to go to school and breathe in germs from all those other kids.”