The Septembers of Shiraz Page 4

  “HERE,” THE GUARD says. “An aspirin.” Isaac turns around, stretches out his arm to take the pill, and seeing the guard in his black mask standing over him, he remembers where he is.

  FIVE

  A draft blows through his window. It’s going to be a cold day, Parviz can tell, too cold for late September in Brooklyn. The reassuring warmth of his comforter makes him think of his mother, of the way he used to sneak into her bed when he was a little boy. As soon as the garage gates would rattle open and the determined sound of his father’s car would fill the morning, he would leave his own bed and go to hers, where he would find her warm body, still filled with sleep. “The world is going on without us, my Parviz,” she would say, half sorry, half relieved. “Don’t tell anyone we’re such lotus-eaters.”

  He wishes he could talk to her, but lately no one answers the phone, not even Habibeh. The last time they called him was in late August. It was a sweltering night, and when the phone rang he was chasing a cockroach around his bedroom, cursing and sweating, shoe in hand. He didn’t tell them any of this. He told them everything was fine and asked them how they were, and they said fine, everything’s fine.

  HE WALKS IN the cool morning, hands in his pocket and coat collar turned up. The university campus is strewn with students perched on steps or clustered on the lawn, but not one has a familiar face. Friendship once came naturally to him. Now he cannot recall how he managed it so effortlessly. His mutation has been insidious, creeping up on him like a disfiguring disease. His proper English—devoid of any slang—is good enough for classes but not for intimacy. And his jokes, when translated, are no longer funny. The world is going on without me, he tells himself.

  In class during an architecture slide show he writes a letter to his parents. In the half-dark of the lecture hall he writes that he is doing fine, that school is going well, that his landlord is very nice and takes good care of him. When he is done he looks up. His classmates, half-lit by the projector, are spellbound by the click-click of the transparencies, the professor’s monotonous pitch, and the bright images of Californian homes on the screen—the wooden exteriors, the atrium courtyards, the vast expanses of glass overlooking gardens. How clean these homes all seem, how simple and sunny and cheerful, carrying within their uncomplicated lines the promise of docile decades spent in the same town, on the same street, in the same house, but offering no protection against the tedium that accompanies all of that. Looking at the images he realizes that his classmates—congenial and starched and essentially unharmed—are products of such homes.

  IN HIS MAILBOX, that afternoon, he finds an assortment of bills and a letter from his sister, opened once then sealed with tape. He rips the envelope, quickly scans the note, looking for the phrase “Your uncle and the kids are doing very well,” which is the code his parents have set for letting him know that money is being sent. He flips the paper around, holds it up to the yellow-green hue of the fluorescent light, and not finding the phrase, puts the letter in his pocket and descends the stairs to his basement apartment. It occurs to him that he hasn’t really read Shirin’s note, so preoccupied had he been with the possibility of cash coming his way. Inside the apartment he unfolds the letter, reads it again—this time slowly: “September 8, 1981. Dear Parviz. Started school today. Teachers are nasty. Everything else is okay. I miss you.” Underneath she had drawn a red heart—perfect and symmetrical—and signed her name in English, though her “N” was reversed. He smiles, as though to prove to himself and to Shirin that he is glad to receive the letter, with or without news of money.

  He takes off his coat and heads to the kitchen. In the refrigerator he finds a bloated carton of milk, long expired. He knows he should dump it but doesn’t. Ketchup, mustard, and beer stare back at him from the icy hollow. He grabs a beer, the ketchup, and the bag of molding potato buns on the counter, and settles in front of the television without switching on the lights. He changes channels but finds nothing except waves of static, which he expected, something about “poor reception in the basement.” Occasionally a serpentine pattern emerges on the screen—figures distorted as in an amusement park mirror maze—or a sound erupts with no image at all—a sitcom joke followed by a ripple of robotic laughter. Listening to the sitcom he realizes that the same laugh track is used over and over, a man’s distinct yelp—not laughter at all—emerging every ten or so seconds. He fills himself with ketchup sandwiches, the sweetness overwhelming, then numbing his taste buds.

  Someone knocks on the door, but he ignores it. Then comes his landlord’s voice. “I know you are in there, son. Please open.”

  Had the voice been more rude, less fatherly, he would go on ignoring it. But he gets up and opens the door, not knowing what excuse he will offer this time. In the hallway Zalman Mendelson stands tall in his black suit and Borsalino hat, his red beard resting on his heavy chest. “Good afternoon, my son. How are you?”

  “Fine, Mr. Mendelson. And you?”

  “Thank God, everything is well. You know of course why I am here.”

  “Yes, Mr. Mendelson. And I don’t have it.”

  “Well, for two months you haven’t paid rent. So what shall we do about it?”

  Parviz looks into Mr. Mendelson’s blue eyes and wishes he had something to tell him—that money is coming, that he has a plan—but he has nothing.

  “You see,” Zalman says. “I have six children, and twins on the way. And I am not a rich man. I am renting you the basement because I need the money. So when you don’t pay me, you get me into trouble.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Mendelson. My parents haven’t sent me money lately. It’s not always easy to send money from there.”

  “All right. I’ll give you a few more weeks. Try to come up with something.” He walks away, but halfway down the corridor, turns around. “By the way, Parviz, I never asked you. Do you have any place to celebrate the Sabbath?”

  “The Sabbath? I don’t really celebrate it, Mr. Mendelson.”

  “You’re always welcome at our table, should you change your mind,” Zalman says. He stands for a moment, his hands folded before him. When he doesn’t receive a response, he walks away.

  Parviz takes a sip of beer. It tastes bitter, like aspirin dissolving on one’s tongue before being swallowed. He turns off the failing television, walks to his bedroom, and falls back on his bed, onto a mound of wrinkled clothes he is always too hurried or too tired to clean up. It amazes him to think how these things once took care of themselves: clothes thrown on a chair magically hung themselves in the closet the next day; sheets were changed weekly, towels biweekly; carpets were swept, floors sponged, and mirrors wiped—he has no idea how often but often enough that he hadn’t once witnessed a dust ball roaming the floor, as he now does—two tiny globes of lint, hair, and dust gliding in the crevice between his bed and the night table, dancing a playful waltz in the mild wind from the open window.

  Above him the ceiling creaks, and he imagines the Mendelson children running from room to room, the older ones carrying stews from the kitchen to the dining room, the little ones chasing one another, all in anticipation of the comfort and suffocation of the family dinner. Having spent a rather miserable year in the university dormitory, sharing a room with a pimply boy from Wisconsin who was fond of hockey and who went to the bathroom with the door open, Parviz had thought that getting his own apartment might be less disheartening. But of the many neighborhoods in New York, all of which had seemed equally daunting and unfamiliar to him, he had ended up in this one, thanks to a little notice at his school cafeteria that read “Kind, loving family renting basement room with private entrance to a considerate student.” When he arrived at the Mendelsons’, he was surprised to find that they were Hassidic Jews, those black-robed orthodox Eastern Europeans that his parents joked about, calling them “those beardies from Poland.” One look at Mr. Mendelson’s freckled face in the afternoon sun, leaning against the iron railing of his front porch, three children trailing him, and Parviz had thought,
No, I cannot live here. But then came the handshake, the laughing blue eyes, the lemonade served by a portly Mrs. Mendelson who said to him, “Call me Rivka, call me Rivka!” and soon he was discussing laundry facilities and garbage disposal.

  Yes, the Mendelsons are a kind and loving family, as their ad had said, but they are not his. And besides, there is a moldiness about them, a certain mustiness in their black suits and stockings and wigs. To enter their apartment would be like relegating himself to a ghetto, where the memories of all the wrongs committed against Jews simmer year after year in bulky, indigestible stews.

  He tells himself that no matter how lonely he gets, he will not go so far as to persecute himself by sitting at their table, celebrating a day that to him is no different from any other day.

  WHEN HE DIALS his parents’ number, before going to bed, he is relieved to hear Habibeh’s matronly voice. “Habibeh, it’s me, Parviz.”

  “Parviz-agha! Bah bah, how nice to hear your voice!”

  “How are you?”

  “Well.” She clears her throat. “Fine.”

  “Is my mother there?”

  “No, Parviz-jan. She’s out.”

  “She’s out? It’s early morning there, isn’t it? What about my father?”

  For a while there is no answer and he wonders if the line somehow got disconnected. “Your father,” she finally says, “has gone on an unexpected trip and it’s not clear when he’ll return. Do you understand?”

  “Unexpected trip”—the code phrase for trouble. One could not be sure when wires were being tapped, so families, talking across oceans, or just across town, devised their own secret languages. “Yes, I understand.”

  “But don’t worry. It’s just a trip and he’s bound to return. You’ll see…And how are you? Are you well?”

  “Yes. I’m well.”

  “Parviz?”

  “What?”

  “Ksht” she says, stomping her foot loudly enough for him to hear. He laughs. That’s the sound she used to make when she pretended to engage in karate with him. “Keep up your training,” she says. “I’m becoming a black belt and you’ll have to compete with me!”

  “Yes, yes, I will.” He laughs.

  When he hangs up he turns on all the lights in his room—the naked bulb on the ceiling, the office lamp on his desk, even the small blue bedside light. He sits on his bed for a while, but unable to tolerate the midnight silence of his room, he leaves.

  Outside the air is clean, cleaner than in his basement apartment where humidity swells like steam in a ship’s engine room. He walks down the dark street, past sleepy homes with deserted porches, each indistinguishable from the next. His neighbors’ chimes tinkle in the wind, creating a fairy tale sound that comforts him.

  Beyond his neighborhood he finds a pizza shop still open and enters. He asks himself if it is wise to waste a dollar on a slice and he decides that it is. He sits down and takes slow bites, extending the moment as long as he can. Leaning back in his chair, he examines the murals—uninspired scenes of a Venetian gondola, a Sicilian village, a Mediterranean seascape. On the radio Sinatra sings a mellow song, which he recognizes because his father would play the record in his study on weekends. He remembers entering that study as one would enter a shrine, tiptoeing on the arabesques of the carpet then standing behind his father, waiting for him to feel his presence and turn around. Sometimes he would stand there for as long as five minutes, examining with his six-year-old eyes the paraphernalia on the walls—newspaper clippings with yellow edges, family photographs, greeting cards, and antique swords and daggers hanging like half-moons one beneath the other, from as far back as the time of Cyrus and as recently as the 1920s. The swords intrigued Parviz. The handles—some gilded, others jeweled—made him wonder if they had actually been used by soldiers of the Persian Empire or knights of medieval Europe. That the blades may have once been tainted by the blood of a man, a man now long buried, both thrilled and terrified him. At last his father would turn around and see him there, put an arm around his bony shoulders, open the top drawer of his desk, and pull out a red tin filled with pastel mint candies. To Parviz the mints were magical, and he never asked for them during the week.

  THE LAST TIME he saw his father, at the airport on that October morning, was also the first time he saw him cry. “May you be happy, my Parviz,” his father had said, his right eye infected, the veins like rivulets spilling red inside it. “Baba-jan, please make sure you see a doctor for that eye,” Parviz said. “It’s getting worse.” His father forced a smile. “Yes, yes. You don’t worry about me. Just take care of yourself.”

  Hugging his father by the gate Parviz felt for the first time a slight curvature in his father’s shoulders. “You go on ahead and map out America for us,” his father said, tapping him on the back. “Just don’t chew too much gum and don’t start wearing cowboy hats.” He then laughed.

  On the plane he leaned his head against the oval window and tried not to cry. “They’ve sent you off because of the war, yes?” an old woman sitting next to him said. He nodded. The war, the draft, the revolution—all of it. “They did good,” she said. “You’re the wrong age for this country now. These mullahs will use the last one of you.”

  Yes, he was the wrong age for his country. But wasn’t his father, also, getting to be the wrong age for this country? He thought of his bloodshot eye, of the bend in his back. As the plane finally took off, he watched the city move farther and farther from him—the houses enclosed inside brick courtyards, the miniature cars trapped under smog, and the Elburz Mountains, shrouded in ghostly white, towering over it all. He saw his father driving home, straining with his bad eye. He saw his mother by the kitchen window, looking up at the sky as though expecting to see his plane fly above, as she often did when someone she loved went on a trip. And he saw his little sister, her tongue blue from eating too many candies, color-coordinating her crayons, ready to charge a fee to anyone who wanted to borrow one.

  May you be happy, my Parviz.

  Baba-jan, I am not happy. Where are you?

  SIX

  For days her mother’s sapphire ring has been missing.

  “This was the first present your father gave me,” her mother said the morning she noticed its absence. She stood by her dresser, looked around at her perfume bottles and her Russian dolls—the smallest one at the edge, nearly falling. She kneeled on the floor, ran her hands over the carpet. By the fourth day, when she was convinced that she would not find the ring, she stood again by the dresser and cried. Afterward, she turned around, to the doorway where Shirin stood. “This was the first present your father gave me,” she said, as though she had never said it before.

  When the silver teapot disappeared from the dining room console, just two days after the ring, Shirin did not point it out to her mother. The missing ring was causing enough grief, she thought, and besides she feared that she might be the one who was somehow responsible for making these items disappear. She knew she had not taken them, but was there any way to be certain? She could have destroyed them in her sleep, or maybe she just didn’t remember taking them; her mind was acting strange lately.

  “I hate to think this,” her mother told her one morning as she drank her tea, “but I’m starting to think Habibeh took the ring. Who else could it be?” Hearing this accusation further convinced Shirin that she was the culprit herself. “No, it can’t be Habibeh,” she told her mother. And then, unable to provide an alternative explanation, she said, “It must have fallen somewhere. It will turn up.” She hoped, all the while, that the question of the missing teapot would not arise.

  SHE THINKS ABOUT the ring as she watches the rope ripple in the air, up then down, each end held by one of her classmates. She jumps, once, twice, three times, bending her knees just in time for the rope to glide under her. The fourth time her feet refuse to leave the ground and she stands there, solid, lifting her body only when it’s too late. The other girls yell, “Out! Out! You lose.”

  Sh
e steps aside, the scarf around her head choking her, the fabric rustling against her ears with the slightest movement. She imagines there are tiny elves inside her scarf, crumpling paper against her ears all day long just to irritate her. Just as well that she’s out of the game; she’s too tired to jump up and down. She walks to the other side of the playground, by the school entrance, where Jamshid the janitor is half asleep in the lunch-hour glare of the sun. She watches him, a leathery old man, tall and thin, with an uneven beard. She pulls out her uneaten chicken sandwich and hands it to him, then does the same with the banana ripened in her schoolbag since morning. Jamshid snaps out of his afternoon daze and reaches for the goods.

  “You’re not going to eat these?”

  “No. Take them.” The departed ring has taken her appetite with it. And then there is the missing teapot. And finally her missing father, gone now for almost two weeks.

  Jamshid-agha accepts the food without qualms. “Thank you,” he says. “But a girl your age should eat her food. How old are you? Nine, ten?”

  “Nine.”

  “Actually, you’re not so young. Nine is old enough to marry. My own wife was only thirteen when I married her.”

  Walking around the playground, she remembers her mother’s comment as the three of them passed by a nearby school one afternoon. “Isn’t this a mini Monte Carlo?” she had said. “All these clusters of children devising their own games, each group with its croupier and gamblers. And in the end, you may leave with a few pretty pink chips, but everyone knows there are no real winners….” Her father had laughed at this. Then he said, “No real winners, maybe, but learning a few tricks sure helps.”