Veil of Roses (3 page)

T
he staring begins as soon as we enter my sister’s house. Even before, if you count the janitor who smiles at Maryam and me as we emerge from the airport bathroom. My
hejab
—I suddenly want the invisibility it offered. But no. We are doing nothing wrong, only trying to look nice—special, unique—in a country where this is not against the law. No one will take me to jail here for only trying to look nice, and so I need not be afraid. Nonetheless, I tuck my arm into Maryam’s and pull her close. They can look at her, my glamour sister. She clearly enjoys the attention.

After we gather my luggage and step outside to the parking lot, I take my first fresh breath of air in what feels like forever. I look up at the sky in wonder. Even the stars are different here. They are brighter and in formations I do not recognize. I should have expected this, but I am startled to realize that even the heavens here are not the same. I have to take a slow, deep breath to adjust.

“It’s very different, isn’t it?” Maryam’s voice is gentle.

I nod, for my throat is too tight from homesickness to answer. I should have sketched the stars above our home in Tehran. I must ask my mother to draw me a picture, and in return I shall draw her one of my sky here. At least we will always look at the same moon,
Maman Joon
and me. This is how I soothe myself. I breathe in the cool desert air. It is good, all good. The air in Tehran is bad to breathe. It is thick with pollution and dust. Here, it is crisp, as if we were high in the Alborz Mountains.

“Wait until morning when it’s light out,” Maryam tells me. “Remember those old John Wayne westerns
Baba Joon
always watched when we were little?”

I nod.

“Well, they were all filmed right here in this area, and it looks just like it does in the old westerns. You won’t find cactus like this anywhere else in the world. And the sky. You’ll never see a sky so blue. There are no clouds here, Tami.”

“You like it, then?” I murmur.

“I love it,” she tells me. “Iran is no place for women. America, it is for everyone.”

I look ahead of me into the darkness and try to imagine the daylight. “The land of the free,” I whisper, hearing in my words the echo of my father’s voice.

“And the home of the brave,” Maryam adds while she squeezes me to her. “You are my brave little sister, to come all this way alone.”

“You came all this way,” I remind her.

“Yes, but I had Ardishir.”

“And I have you.”

I know right away which car in the mostly empty parking lot is Maryam’s. In Iran, most people drive the same cars they had before the revolution and can only dream of driving a new shiny-gold Mercedes-Benz like Maryam’s. It is a
pooldar
car, a status symbol like none other.

While she drives, Maryam chatters away about Tucson, the weather, the neighborhood she lives in, the English conversation class I am enrolled in and which starts next Monday. I try to pay attention to her, I really do, but I am trying to recognize this woman sitting next to me, trying to understand once and for all that this is my sister. My Maryam. That I am with her once again. She was my lifeline back in Iran, the only spot of sunshine in my perpetually overcast household. And she left me. She married Ardishir at the first chance she got, and she did not have the decency to even pretend she would miss Iran.

“Hello, Tami!” she laughs. “You’re a million miles away!”

“Do you think you’ll ever go back and visit
Maman Joon
and Baba?” I pause and watch her jaw clench. “You should hear how they brag about you! You have made them so very proud. You’ll visit one day, won’t you?”

Maryam keeps her eyes on the road. “Sure I will,” she says softly. “Sure I will, one day.”

“I’m sure you’re very busy here,” I offer when I see how sad she’s become.

“Oh, totally! I am so busy! My job is really crazy and I don’t think Ardishir could manage on his own for very long. You should see that man try to get around a kitchen!”

We share a laugh. As it fades, she turns and appraises me. “You’re really grown up, aren’t you?”

“I guess so. Grown up enough to get married, anyway.”

She smiles at me sympathetically. “Don’t worry. You’ll like being married. It’s not at all like it is in Iran.” She reaches out to squeeze my hand. “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we found a husband for you on your very first night here! Then
Maman Joon
and Baba would really be proud!”

“What’s he like, this man at the party? What’s his name?”

“Mohammed Behruzi.”

“His family is from where?”

“Tabriz. But they’ve been here forever.”

“You know them how?”

“Ardishir knows his mother from having performed surgery on her knee.”

“He is how old?”

“Thirty-eight, I think.”

That’s old. Not in terms of the age difference in a typical Iranian marriage, but in terms of how much more life than me he’s gotten to live before having to think about marriage. He got to go to college, establish a career, perhaps travel to foreign lands. I smother the flame of envy that rises in my chest when I think this thought.

“Here it is,” Maryam says as we make our last turn onto a street called Calle Splendida. She slows the car.

“
This
is your house?”

Maryam nods proudly. I am in total awe, total shock. It is very beautiful, very rich. And very open. Spotlights show off the house’s design, which Maryam has told me is plantation style. There are balconies and shutters, green grass and a tall wrought-iron fence surrounding the property. But still, anyone can see in. And it is clear there is a party going on. The curtains are not drawn, and I can see men and women mingling. I can hear the sound of Googoosh’s voice all the way to the street.

“If the police drove by right now,” I ask, my heart racing, “what would they do?”

“Nothing, Tami. There’s nothing wrong with this. It’s only a party.”

Only a party. How many times I have said this back home. Twice, I attended parties that were raided. Twice, my friends and I were hauled to the police station and harassed for being with men who weren’t our husbands and for not being veiled in their presence. Leila even spent two nights in jail. Never mind that we were behind high walls, behind closed doors, and behind drawn curtains.

And this…America. Can it really be so open? Everything feels surreal, most especially the fact that I am here at all. That this house, this open life, is in front of me. That I am soon to walk inside, and it will, for a time, become my home, too.

Maryam parks on the street. I get out and stand on the sidewalk, not taking my eyes off the house, off the obvious celebration inside, for even one instant. She opens the gate, and we step onto the path leading to the house.

“Everyone will be so glad to see you,” she tells me. “I know Mohammed will like you. I just
know
it.”

The sound of the jet engines that have been roaring in my ears finally begins to fade. All I hear are the sounds of the misters watering the lawn. I hate the thought of going inside to a loud, crazy Persian party.

“Can we wait a minute, please? I just need to get my bearings first.” I bend down and unhook one sandal strap, then tentatively reach my bare foot toward the grass. I squeal as the night mist tickles my toes. I think,
So this is what bare feet on wet grass feels like.
Surely, when we lived in Berkeley I would have run about barefoot, so I must have felt this before. But I was too young to have captured the memory.

But coming back from America, Maryam would have remembered. She was very young—still a girl—at the time.
No wonder she left again at the first opportunity.
She remembered, and I did not.

I look at her spotlighted house. I look at the people dancing on the other side of the windows, those festive Persians, with their lack of fear, with their arms in the air, weaving their hands to the beat. All the
might I
’s, the
can I
’s, the
will I be able to
’s—I look at the spotlighted house and I look at the people inside and I know that the answer to all of my half-formed questions, my half-formed desires is
yes,
I might. I can. I will be able to.

“Feels good, doesn’t it,
Tami Joon
?” I look over at Maryam. She shows by her smile that she understands what life must have been like for me these past years. The repression, the shrinking world, but mostly the loneliness. I nod through the tears that have filled my eyes.

She knows what I have been through. She knows me.

“Shh, shh, shh,” she calms me, and gives me a quick, energetic hug. “Let’s go. None of this. Are you ready to meet everyone?”

I take a deep breath and nod.

“Are you scared?”

“A little.”

“Just smile a lot, that’s all you have to do. Here.” She slicks one last layer of lipstick over my lips. “Everybody’s really nice. And you look beautiful. Mohammed’s going to love you. And if he doesn’t, he’s a fool.”

“Keep your shoes on for a little while,” Maryam whispers to me after we slip inside. “Just stand here. I want Mohammed to see you in them.”

So I stand there feeling foolish for several minutes. First I am greeted by Ardishir, who comes to me and kisses me on both cheeks. He has always been so kind, has always treated me as a younger sister from the moment he began courting Maryam. “I see Maryam has worked her magic.” He grins. “You look very nice.”

“Thank you,” I reply. “I am not used to dressing like this in public. It feels very strange.”

“You’re safe here,” he assures me and extends his arm. “Come on in, I’ll introduce you around.”

He wears only socks on his feet, and I can tell from the rows of shoes neatly lined up in the foyer that everyone else is shoeless, too, as is custom.

“I can’t. Maryam says I must wait here for Mohammed so he can see me in my fancy shoes.”

Ardishir shakes his head at my sister and smiles. “I’ll go find him, then.”

Maryam and I continue to stand at the doorway, and I can see from the gold-edged mirror that the other guests are sneaking glimpses of me. I smile and try not to look scared.

At last, Ardishir and Mohammed come to the doorway. I size up Mohammed with my eyes, and I see him give me a quick up-and-down of my face, dress, and feet. He does not look too intently, and neither does he look impressed. When he sticks out his hand for me to shake, I stand still and feel my face redden. This is not considered polite. This is not how it is done in Iran, for him to offer his hand first. As the moment becomes unbearably awkward, Maryam nudges me.

“It’s okay, Tami,” she says in a light tone and nods toward his hand. I shake it tentatively and want very much to pull away from its frail delicacy. “She’s just off the plane, you know,” she tells Mohammed. “She’s still used to how things are done in Iran.”

It looks to me like Mohammed hides a sneer under his polite, apologetic expression as he replies, “She dresses so American that I suppose I thought she’d act like one, too.”

I know then that I do not like him. I know I will not marry him, and I know this night will be interminably long.

Finally, I am allowed to take off my shoes and enter the house. It reminds me of an opulent home in Iran, like those belonging to older men who were in positions of importance with the Shah’s government. All the walls are white, mostly bare except for the occasional rug displayed. Gold-plated fruit dishes adorn the tables, with grapes and apricots and dates piled high. Persian rugs of high thread counts are draped across every available spot in the ample living room. There is a huge television in the room, larger than any I’ve seen in my whole life, and Maryam points out that we are watching an Iranian television station beamed in over satellite from Los Angeles, where half a million Iranians live and they call it Tehrangeles.

I am much more interested in the music playing on the stereo. It is Siavesh,
the
biggest music star in Iran for young people, but because his music is banned there, you can only buy it on the black market. I am tempted for a moment to cry when I think back to how many nights Leila and Minu and I watched his bootleg concert video while dreaming of life in America, where girls are permitted to go to concerts and weep with joy and longing for their favorite heartthrobs, who sing to them of love.
Em-rika, good. Very good.
That’s how we said it.

And yet here I am, feeling strangely let down. I hadn’t expected that America would be so…so Iranian.

My sister takes me around to everyone at the party and introduces me. I smile until the muscles in my face hurt. They all ask what I think of America.
It’s good. All good,
I assure them. What more
can
I say? I’ve gone from an empty airport to an empty road in the middle of the night to a house full of Persians who are related to an unfriendly dentist who seems not to approve of me, when all I really want to do is sleep. I know this is not a polite way to think, but it is what I think nonetheless.

“This is Mrs. Behruzi, Mohammed’s mother,” my sister says as she leads me to a larger-size woman with sharp brown eyes. Mrs. Behruzi reaches for my hand and encircles it with both of hers. “You are a lovely girl,” she says. I thank her. “Your parents, they must be proud of you to come so far.”