Together Tea (18 page)

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Red Lamps

L
aboo! Laboo!”

A voice came from outside the window. Mina sat up in bed, not remembering where she was. Mamani's handmade quilt was over her, a black-and-white photo of her parents' wedding rested on the bureau, burgundy silk cushions were scattered across the bed and on the floor. Slowly, reality set in. She was in Mamani and Agha Jan's house. The voice from outside continued—it was both familiar and strange. Mina went to the window and saw a hunched man in a gray shirt and dark pants pushing a cart down the street. The beet seller. With his cart filled with hot cooked beets:
Laboo! Laboo!
Could it be the same bent-shouldered beet seller from years before?

“Pasho
, wake up.” Darya walked in wearing a lemon blouse and white skirt, her hair freshly washed and blow-dried. “Come and have tea.”

Breakfast was hot fresh
barbari
bread, feta cheese, homemade sour-cherry jam. (For a minute Mina wondered if it was Mamani's jam, but of course it couldn't be. Aunt Nikki must have made it at the end of summer, and saved it in jars for Agha Jan.) Steaming black tea. Agha Jan was listening to the radio. The announcer had that booming, melodramatic voice that had been a hallmark of Persian radio for as long as Mina could remember. It was easy to believe that the announcer was the same broadcaster from her childhood. And Mina wanted it to be the same person. But most of the media figures had been replaced, sometimes imprisoned, occasionally executed, at the time of the revolution. So it probably wasn't the same guy.

The clock in Agha Jan's kitchen was the same, the red-and-white chairs were the same. The wooden box the pigeons ate from outside the window still bore the traces of the flowers and fish shapes that Mina had painted years ago, in that other life. The cushions and the tables and the plastic roses in the vase were the same. But Mamani was missing. It seemed as if someone had set up all the props on a stage, but the lead actress had forgotten to show up. Darya whizzed around the kitchen, opening and closing cabinets, bringing out saucers and bowls and spoons for breakfast. Agha Jan spooned jam on his bread and chewed, listening to the news. The pigeons pecked at the bread in their box, and Mina sipped on her tea, which in this kitchen, in this home, at this time, tasted remarkably as though Mamani had brewed it.

“Leila called,” Darya said. “She's coming tonight, to our welcoming party.”

When Mina had left, she'd been ten years old and Leila had been nineteen. And now, she was twenty-five and Leila was thirty-four, married with two children, working as an engineer.

“I can't believe she married Mr. Johnson,” Mina said.

“It's been a good match,” Agha Jan said.

Mina remembered Mamani whispering into the phone, “I've found someone for Leila. If all goes well, she can leave Iran before she's twenty. She can study in England . . .”

“But they stayed in Iran,” Mina said.

“Why wouldn't they?” Agha Jan said.

“Come on,” Darya said to Mina. “Let's go for a walk. Go put on your
roopoosh
.”

MINA WALKED BEHIND HER GRANDFATHER
and Darya, who were huddled close together and chatting quietly, catching up on family gossip and changes in the neighborhood. Darya held on to the tweed of her father's jacket elbow, at once protective and dependent, helping him climb the curb, yet also hanging on to him. Mina wondered if Darya had dreamed of this walk. Even though the sun was weak, Mina began to see shadowy black spots floating in front of her eyes again. Was this still part of the jet lag? She wanted to swat at the spots like flies.

They walked past stores Mina had forgotten about. The dry cleaner's and the
noonvayi
bread shop. Still there. At the corner of the main street, Mina saw the greengrocer's shop. The one she always passed on her way to her grandparents' house. They had good pomegranates, but not as good as the ones at the store Mamani had gone to on the day she was killed. Mina followed Agha Jan and Darya into the shop.

The store was a small square room. In Mina's memory this place had been huge. There was dust everywhere. An unshaven man with red plastic slippers on his feet stood in one corner, smoking a cigarette. Bruised oranges and withered apples were stacked in carts around him. Carrots and lettuce lay in bins. Agha Jan bent over a cartful of cucumbers.

“Agha
,
let me help you,” the grocer said.

“I can select my own cucumbers, may your hands not ache,” Agha Jan said.

“As you wish,” the grocer answered. Mina sensed that her grandfather and the grocer had had this conversation many times, had argued over cucumbers and carrots, maybe celery too. Agha Jan straightened himself, as if fighting for a sense of dignity, then handed the grocer his purchase.

“Two kilos.” The grocer weighed the cucumbers on a scale.

“Check again,” Agha Jan said.

“My mistake. One and a half. But I am not worthy of your payment.”

Mina couldn't believe they were
tarof-
ing over payment. The grocer mumbled something about being a humble servant and about
farangi
guests.
Farangi
. Foreigners. Mina looked behind her for European tourists. But there were only her grandfather, tall as the Persepolis pillars, and Darya, standing by her father as any respectful Iranian daughter would. Mina looked down at her mud-caked, thick-soled, made-for-adventure hiking boots. It was she. The
farangi
. The foreigner.

Agha Jan added oranges to the scale, and the grocer summed up the total with a stubby pencil on a tiny pad of paper, then counted the
toman
bills Agha Jan gave him.

“May your eyes be brightened at the arrival of your guests.” He dropped Agha Jan's cucumbers and oranges into crinkly plastic bags and twirled the tops. He handed the bags to Agha Jan. Then he turned to Darya and bowed. “It's nice to see you again, Darya Khanom.”

“And it's nice to see you again, Hussein Agha,” Darya said.

Hussein Agha pulled out a chocolate egg from near the scale and gave it to Mina. “For you.”

“Oh no, I can't,” Mina started.

“It's yours. You must excuse my conditions. I am embarrassed. My shop needs repair. My fruit is not worthy. But if you break that chocolate egg in half, there is a little toy inside.”

“Thank you,” Mina said.

The sun was blindingly bright when they stepped out from the dark interior of the shop.

“He was just a kid when we left,” Darya said. “He hung around and helped his dad with the store. Mamani used to give him extra change.”

Mina turned around. Hussein Agha stood in the door frame of his shop, smoking next to his boxes of onions. When he saw her, he put his hand on his chest and bowed his head.

BACK ON THE STREET, MINA NOTICED
that the cars were exactly the same. Even though it was 1996, most of the cars were still from the seventies, before the revolution.

“We're the pariah of the world now,” Agha Jan said with a nervous laugh. “Other countries can't do business with us. These leaders have taken our country, hijacked it, and held us at the throat for years.”

Three large metal stands with red lamps flanked the middle of the sidewalk. They seemed out of place. Mina looked up ahead and saw that there were at least two dozen lamps on this block alone.

“What are those?” Mina asked.

“For the soldiers that died,” Agha Jan said. “In the war. You remember, don't you? The war with Iraq.”

“Of course. I know. I was here.”

“The war lasted eight years. You were here for one year.” Agha Jan stopped walking. “Why does your government over there hate us so much?”

Mina froze in the middle of the street.

“Tell me, are we even humans to them? Do they know we also mourn every life lost?”

The sun blinded Mina, the black spots multiplied in front of her eyes. The American hiking boots suddenly felt as if they were filled with lead. Every one of Agha Jan's remarks pierced like a needle jabbing at her chest. The grandfather she had left was calm and wise. Not bitter. Mina wasn't responsible for America's actions, just as she wasn't responsible for Iran's. But always, the questions came. No matter which country she was in. People wanted an explanation.

“America sold arms to Saddam Hussein,” Agha Jan went on. “Sold him weapons. To
kill
us with.”

“Baba, enough.” Darya pulled at her father's tweed sleeve.

“All I'm saying, Darya Joon, is why sell weapons to a madman who wants to kill us? I thought your country was a good power!” His breathing was labored now, heavy. He bent over and coughed fitfully. Darya patted her father's back, worry darkening her face.

When the coughing stopped, Agha Jan stood up again. Beads of sweat covered his forehead. He wiped his face on a handkerchief embroidered with two tiny lemons. Mamani must have made that one too. Mina stood glued to the ground in her hiking shoes, her head spinning.

“I am sorry, Mina Joon,” Agha Jan finally said. “The war.” He paused. “It has broken us.” Then, as easily as if he were blowing his nose, he covered his face with the lemon-embroidered handkerchief and started to weep. Tears soaked Mamani's handiwork.

Rusty cars drove by. Cloaked women walked. Somewhere a child yelled. Darya held her father's hand as he wept. They just stood like that under the metal stands. Mina had not expected this. She had not known what she was coming back to.

Slowly, Agha Jan dried his eyes. The awkward way he dabbed his face made him seem like a small boy. He wheezed, then glanced around the dusty street helplessly, looking as if he might sway and fall. Then he said to the street, to Mina, to Darya, to no one in particular: “We are not ourselves anymore. We are damaged souls. Everyone you see in this country has been pushed to the limit. Those years of bombs. The needless deaths. This surreal life. We have become that which we were always proud not to be before.
Badbakht.
Destitute.” He folded his handkerchief, then mumbled, “Forgive me, Mina Joon.”

The red lamps on the metal stands swung above them. Mina saw all the streets of Iran in her mind's eye, hundreds and hundreds of red lamps for the boys who died, thousands and thousands for the dead in that war, so many lives cut short. She wanted to tell her grandfather that her new country wasn't what he accused it of being. But here she was again, in one country wanting to describe the truth of the other country—knowing she never really could.

“It doesn't matter,” Mina said as Darya steadied Agha Jan and they started walking back. Darya's face was hollow. “It doesn't matter,” Mina said again loudly.

Darya led the way home, and Mina staggered behind in her big hiking boots, clutching the chocolate egg. Slippered, chadored women scuffled by with bunches of radishes and scallions sticking out of their baskets. There was no red lamp hanging from a metal stand for Mamani. They all knew that.
It doesn't matter,
Mina had said. But as she stomped ahead, she knew the truth in her heart. Of course it mattered. It always would.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Homecoming Queen

T
he guests arrived at Agha Jan's house later that evening. Aunts, uncles, cousins, neighbors, friends came carrying bouquets of flowers and cardboard boxes full of sweet pastries. Some faces Mina recognized and others were like strangers. Everyone remembered her, though. And everyone was delighted to see the guest of honor: Darya. They were happy to see Mina too, but Darya was the real star. Mina had underestimated the love held for her mother by all the people back here. In Queens, when Darya had been bent over the sewing machine at the dry cleaner's, or struggling to chat with other mothers at Students' & Parents' Picnic Night, or even when she was punching a calculator at the bank, she had seemed awkward, unversed, clunkily foreign. But here she was confident, appreciated.

Mina heard her mother burst into peals of what sounded like a young girl's laughter. Darya marveled at her young nieces and nephews. She politely bowed her head to the older men who were Agha Jan's friends and former colleagues. She knelt down to better see the child who came in with flowers for her. “You gorgeous little lady!” she said, holding a dark tiny girl. She helped the server hired for the party—darting back and forth between the kitchen and living room, arranging pastries on platters, making sure there was always a constant supply of tea. She was both the guest of honor and the hostess.

Mina walked through the groups of people as she carried a tray of tea, smiling and saying thank you when the guests told her she looked like Darya, knowing that they were paying her their biggest compliment by saying that. Darya chatted with old university classmates. Mina noticed one particular ex-classmate whose face was red and excited. He couldn't take his eyes off Darya. How many of these classmates and friends were Darya's former suitors? Mina wondered. How many came and went and didn't make the cut? Why had Mamani picked Baba for Darya and vetoed the others? Were there others Darya would have preferred? Then Mina remembered that Darya had wanted math over marriage, at least at the time. She had other plans until it became clear that Mamani had marriage plans. Mina scoured the room as she passed out the tea. Was there a Mr. Dashti from Darya's past somewhere here?

A tall, blond man walked up to Mina then and held out his hand. “Pleasure. Absolute pleasure,” he said in English.

Mina realized she was looking at an older version of Mr. Johnson, Baba's friend who had worked at the BBC, whom Aunt Firoozeh had suspected was a British spy and who Mamani had hoped would whisk Leila away from Iran.

“Mina Joon! You remember William?” Leila came up behind him, a small girl clinging to her side and a boy holding on to her hand. “How's the jet lag?”

Mina put down the tea tray and shook Mr. Johnson's hand and hugged Leila. “Just fine,” Mina said. “And you. How are you . . . two?”

“Oh, we're doing all right,” Mr. Johnson said. “It's not all pansies and roses, is it? But we manage! Your engineer cousin here is working very hard on the postwar effort.”

Leila smiled shyly. “Engineering's pretty big now. We're still rebuilding. They keep me pretty busy at the firm.”

“That's so . . . wonderful,” Mina said. And then, she couldn't help but ask the question on her mind. “I thought that maybe you two would have moved to England together?”

“Oh, I have everything I need right here.” Mr. Johnson put his arm protectively around Leila. “The whole lot of you left! Best and the brightest and all that. Someone's got to contribute now, don't they?”

Mina suddenly felt guilty. “Yes, they do.”

Leila squeezed Mina tight again. “It's good to see you,” she said quietly. Then her daughter tugged at her and said she was thirsty and her son said he needed to go to the bathroom, and Mr. Johnson and Leila left Mina to attend to their children.

Mina sighed and picked up the tray again.

“Tell me, Mina Joon.” Aunt Firoozeh came trotting over and pulled Mina by the arm. “Oh, put that tray down. Let me
talk
to you! Now, tell me about your studies. What is it you're studying again? Engineering?” Aunt Firoozeh's face lit up.

“Not engineering,” Mina said. She felt as if she sounded like a ten-year-old when she spoke Farsi.

“Oh.” Aunt Firoozeh looked disappointed. Then she brightened up again. “Is it law, then? Are you studying law?”

“Nope. That's Kayvon. He's the lawyer.”

“Oh.” Aunt Firoozeh studied Mina suspiciously. “Well, we all know Hooman is Mr. Doctor and you said you hated medicine, silly goose that you are. So what
are
you studying? I know Yasaman's niece in the U.S. is wasting her time on some phony art degree. Please don't tell me you're still doing that.”

“Um, no. But I did do an art minor as an undergrad.”

Aunt Firoozeh rolled her eyes.

“But I'm doing a master's in business now,” Mina added quickly. “It's serious stuff.”

Aunt Firoozeh started to clap and gave Mina a big smile. “Oh, goodie! At least that's something. Now then, tell me, Mina Joon, what you do for that degree. Tell me all about it.”

Mina started to explain the core requirements for the MBA. Aunt Firoozeh hung on to every word as though she were a prospective student. While Mina rambled on in her fifth-grade-level Farsi, she noticed, out of the corner of her eye, a middle-aged woman with her brown hair in a big bun studying her carefully, looking her up and down. Mina knew that look. The woman was scoping her out as a prospective wife for her son/nephew/second cousin. Mina cringed. She moved Aunt Firoozeh in front of her, so her hefty body blocked Mina from the woman's view.

“So, you make all this on your computer?” Aunt Firoozeh asked. “Mina Joon, can you teach me the computer? I want to learn, but your uncle Jafar, he is so lazy, he says the computer is a ridiculous fad that will fade away, just like Polaroid cameras. He doesn't seem to understand all that I could do if only I had a computer . . .”

Mina nodded sympathetically, aware that the woman in the brown bun had shifted to get a better view of her from a different angle. She tried to ignore her and listen to Aunt Firoozeh's long list of all of Uncle Jafar's wrongdoings instead. Aunt Firoozeh checked off the professions she could've mastered if only Uncle Jafar had been supportive: a chemistry professor, a concert pianist, and/or a neuroscientist/brain surgeon.

“Wow,” Mina couldn't help but say in English.

“You see, Mina Joon, it's all his fault. That's the problem. I was like that Madame Curie. I mean I
could have been
. But he never encouraged me. He should've encouraged me!”

Uncle Jafar appeared out of nowhere, holding a glass of tea. “Ah, I see you are talking this poor girl's ear off, Firoozeh Joon. Yes, yes, we all know that I am the reason you did not get your Nobel Prize. Yes, yes, go on, tell her, tell her all the things I've done wrong, give her the god-awful list. Did she tell you yet that she could've been a race car driver were it not for me intercepting her dreams?”

“I loved driving! I had talent! But how could I cultivate all my talents when I had to get up at five every morning to make Monsieur his tea? I could've been a lady doctor, you know!”

“Who's stopping you, Firoozeh Khanom? Go on, if you really mean it. Many people start university in adulthood. Go now, instead of nagging me all day long!”

Aunt Firoozeh's face turned purple. “It's too late now, isn't it? Who would make your many meals, Jafar, and who would take care of the house? Mina Joon, he'd probably starve if I wasn't around. In fifty years of marriage, he hasn't cooked the rice once. Once!”

Listening to them go on in that old familiar way, Mina marveled at where she was. She was here. Standing in front of Aunt Firoozeh and Uncle Jafar as they argued just as they had all those years ago. Aunt Firoozeh held her doughy hand to her cheek in outrage, while Uncle Jafar pleaded his case.

As they continued bickering, Mina slowly slipped away. She walked to the old yellow armchair in Mamani and Agha Jan's living room and sank into it. The seat still had the same lumps. That woolly almond scent of the velvet upholstery. Mina closed her eyes. Her mother's laughter floated in from the kitchen. From its pitch, Mina knew Darya was with Aunt Nikki. Darya only laughed like that when she was with her sister. The smell of basmati rice and fragrant herbs filled the house. Familiar voices from long ago chatted all around her. Mina rested her head back on the golden velvet and just listened. A bunch of children (her cousins?) shouted, “Marco!” “Polo!” She heard them run. Hadn't she and Hooman and Kayvon played this game in this very living room? She'd squealed past the adults of back then, past a younger Aunt Firoozeh and a dark-haired Uncle Jafar, as her mother laughed in the kitchen, then with Mamani, cooking the rice. Mina was lost in that sweet place between past and present. The memories of childhood games in this living room, at parties just like this one, meshed with the present sounds of laughter and chatter, with the smell of rice and
khoresh
, with the feel of the soft chair. She was here. It was as though they had all suddenly come back to life after being dead. No wonder she had felt out of place with Michelle and Julian Krapper; something was always just out of reach for her over there in America. All that time she had missed these people and hadn't even known it.

“Mina Joon, hello!”

Mina opened her eyes. Above her stood a tall young woman.

“Don't joke now. I know you remember me!” The young woman's dark eyes shone.

Mina looked up at her in silence. The woman placed her hand on her heart in mock disbelief, and her fingers triggered Mina's memory. Those long thin fingers, the unmistakable scar on the right hand from the cut when they tried to open a can of tomatoes in her mother's kitchen when they were nine.

“Bita?”

“
Baleh!
Yes! Welcome.
Koja boodi?
Where were you? Your place has been empty here!”

“But how did you . . . ?”

“Your mother apparently told her old friends to contact my mother to track me down. She knows how to do her research! I couldn't believe it when I heard you were back. You think I would miss your homecoming party?
Begoo, chetori?
Tell me, how are you? How on earth have you been?”

Bita took Mina's hand and laughed. Her laughter was both something from long ago, and something Mina had never stopped hearing. She knew that laugh. This elegantly dressed, sophisticated woman had the same laugh as the girl who had jumped on her bed as they danced to John Travolta in those days of war.

“I can't believe you came. You're actually here.
Bia bebeenam
. Come and let me look at you!” Bita pulled Mina up into a semidance, semihug. She held Mina out at arm's length and regarded her.

“You're here,” Bita said again. “You're really here.”

DARYA HUMMED AS SHE PUT
the last of the dirty
estekan
and plates into the sink after the guests had left. Mina still had the black spots floating in front of her eyes, but the chat with Bita had left her high. They had talked about old classmates and teachers and boys from the old neighborhood. This one's getting his master's in Canada, that one got asylum in Sweden, the tall one who teased them was a teacher in Tehran, and then there were those who went off to war and came back with fewer limbs or never came back, and the shy one who'd committed suicide. And Mrs. Amiri? A water aerobics instructor in Los Angeles now. Mina had listened to all of Bita's update as though in a dream.

Then Bita had made a statement toward the end of their talk that made Mina feel an unfathomable return of preadolescent excitement and nervousness.

“I'm having a party on Wednesday night. I want you to be there.”

Later that night as Mina got ready for bed, she felt as though she'd just been invited to the royal ball at the queen's palace. Only, she reminded herself as she brushed her teeth, the king was dead and Queen Farah lived in a house in Connecticut and the crown prince was married to a lawyer somewhere in Virginia.