Sheida continues to stare at the tears rushing down her mother’s face, at her face twisted with pain, with the jagged scars of memories. They terrify Sheida. Those tears. Those words. They crush something inside her like an empty soda can. She wanted to avenge herself. She didn’t think of the tsunami breaking her mother’s body open. She didn’t think she would see her mother in shards and shreds, torn apart.

  She wants to say something, but she can’t. She wants to dig her nails into her thighs and tear the flesh out.

  Outside, the clangor of running and jostling and shouting can be heard. Police sirens dovetail a woman’s single scream. A helicopter roars back and forth across the silent sky.

  Tehran, 1983

  He said she was letting them plant fear in her. “If we let them scare us, then we will have nothing left.”

  She listened to him, standing by the window. She was watching the landlady on the veranda, picking stones from rice, with her floral chador sliding down her hair. She lifted a hand and swept it forward.

  “They’re arresting everyone,” she said without turning around. “Why should you be an exception?”

  “They cannot arrest everyone. There are so many of us.”

  He was sitting cross-legged on the ground. Next to him, a pile of anti-government leaflets he dropped into people’s houses at nights. From where she was standing, she couldn’t read what was written on them, but she knew this was not the revolution he had fought for. He held a cigarette stub between his fingers. The porcelain ashtray they had bought in Isfahan was next to his knee. The ash on the cigarette was so long it curved inward. She was afraid it would scatter on the rug.

  He saw the worry in her eyes. He put the cigarette down on the ashtray. About her fear, he said nothing.

  She placed a hand on her protruding stomach. She wanted to speak of her fear when she felt a tiny movement inside. She smiled and turned to him. “She’s moving.”

  He scrambled to his feet and sprinted toward her. His hand on her stomach was warm. She felt the tears rushing to her eyes.

  “I can’t be alone when she comes. You have to be there. You have to be everywhere.”

  She knew he didn’t like it when she spoke this way. But she couldn’t help herself. She had fear growing thorns in her throat.

  “I’m not going anywhere.” He kissed her stomach and her hands and her neck. “I’ll be right here.”

  The bell rang when they were putting the leaflets into piles. Maryam looked out. The sky that day was a different sort of blue, with the sun recoiling to the back, as if it were no longer watching them.

  He said, once the fear prevails, we will have nothing left.

  He was wrong.

  She was left with nothing but fear.

  Tehran, 2009

  A mild breeze slithers through the mulberry leaves behind the window. White clouds float across the blue sky like a smiling dream. Maryam wakes up. Sheida is sleeping on the bed next to her. Her mouth slightly open; her eyes deeply shut. Maryam feels a rush of emotion, of pure joy, looking at her daughter, here with her. At last. She also feels strangely rested; not once did she wake up during the night. She cannot remember the last time she slept so deeply. There are two lines on the skin below Sheida’s neck, like a necklace. Maryam would like to trace them with the tip of her finger. Is this going to be a new start? Is this the first day of a new life?

  She gets up and casts a glance at her reflection in the mirror. Her swollen eyes sting. She peers into the mirror but can’t see her eyes because of the fall of the folds. She runs her middle finger over one saggy eyelid and pulls it up. Scenes from last night pour back into her mind. She thought the anger had died down, and the pain. But nothing seemed to have changed. It was only waiting for the right moment to explode. She had not been able to restrain herself, to hold back memories, to continue bleeding inside. Amir’s death is the greatest load Maryam has ever had to carry, his death and her secret, those lies she told Sheida, of tumors and hospitals. How ashamed she felt at times, how disgusted with herself and the way those lies disgorged from her mouth. So many times she wondered whether what she was doing was right. She had no answer, and as the years passed, she felt she had no other option. The secret had coiled hard and unrelenting around her and would no longer let a peep out of her throat. All Maryam could think of from week one, and all the weeks and months and years that followed, was surviving and forging through.

  She remembers the day she moved back to her parents’ house. She had lost five kilos in one week. She looked like a shadow of herself. If you don’t think about yourself, at least think about your daughter, her mother had said as she packed Maryam’s bags while Maryam sat in a corner watching her. Everything in the apartment reeked, not of Amir but of his absence, and Maryam did not have the force either to live with it or to let it go. Her mother packed all of Amir’s things into a carton, sealed it with layers over layers of tape, and sent it to his mother in Hamedan. She then put Sheida in the stroller and took Maryam’s hand.

  It was strange to move back to that old house with its jacaranda tree whose sweet, dusty perfume woke Maryam up every night, gasping for air. The perfume of the flowers had never bothered her as a child. Now it clogged her lungs, pressing her throat as if it meant to smother her. But you used to like it so much, her mother would say in a plaintive voice. She did, she knew she did. Not anymore. What is happening to me? Maryam thought.

  Instead, Sheida loved the tree. She would spend hours and hours under its shade, playing with her dolls or helping her grandmother clean the rice. As weeks and months passed, Sheida seemed more and more reluctant to stay with her mother in the room and instead preferred to stay with her grandmother in the garden. She had stopped coiling like a snail on Maryam’s bed, with her elbows sinking into the mattress as she paged through a picture book, saying the names of each character out loud, almost shouting, trying to wake her mother from one of the long dozes that grew longer and longer every day. Maryam was, in fact, awake. She could hear Sheida shouting, she just couldn’t bring herself to get up. She didn’t have the strength. She felt like she had the world on her shoulders, pressing her down. She just wanted to sleep and sleep and never wake up. She appeared behind the white wooden latticework in the corridor only when she had to take Sheida to the dentist or to get her vaccinations. Or when it was her turn to cook: Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. It is to get your mind off things, her mother had said. Or at mealtimes, when her parents and her brother and his wife, visiting, all sat around the table, a spoon in one hand, waiting for her. It seemed to Maryam, at the time, that there was a deliberate rise in the volume of their voices whenever she was about to enter the dining room. It was their way of telling her that life had to go on. She found all the noise irritating, as if she merely needed loud voices to forget her pain, to forget that he was no longer there, that she was going to get old alone, that she was going to get old with her life on pause. So she preferred to stay in the room to sleep or look out the window or knit one more scarf for her daughter, who hardly ever wore them.

  But the day arrived when Maryam realized she had to put an end to the long doze that was sucking her and her daughter in alive. It was an insignificant incident, but it shook Maryam to the core.

  A year had passed. Sheida was going to start elementary school. It was a cool and windy morning. Maryam neatly combed Sheida’s hair and put her bangs up with a small white flower-shaped pin, getting her ready for school. But once they reached the school, the principal wouldn’t let Sheida into class. Not without a maghnaeh! she said in a shrill voice. Maryam looked around. Sheida was indeed the only girl without a headscarf. She looked naked in the midst of covered little heads peering at her from a hole in white. Maryam felt a pang of shame, of inadequacy. She argued angrily, desperately, with the principal that her daughter was not nine years old, and according to Islam, you had to cover your hair only once you reached nine years of age, the age of taklif. The principal would not back down. Regulations were regulations, she averred, and nine years old or not, her daughter, like all the other girls, had to put on a maghnaeh when entering the school.

  Maryam clammed up. She remembered that her mother had warned her about the maghnaeh, but she hadn’t taken it seriously. She realized then that while she was wrapped in the shroud of her grief, the world had moved on, and now every little girl on the street had a headscarf on, and everyone seemed to know about it except her. She surely must have seen them. How could she not have paid attention?

  She turned around to look for Sheida and saw her hiding behind the heavy iron door, holding on to the doorknob. She was standing rigidly, as if making an extra effort to keep her body whole. As though if she eased up for just a moment, her body and everything around it would crumble into pieces. There were no tears in Sheida’s eyes, but it seemed to Maryam that her daughter was about to cry, that at any moment, hot humiliated tears would stream down her face. Maryam couldn’t forgive herself for what she had done to Sheida, for the humiliation she had made her daughter go through. She couldn’t go on like this. It was time to wake up from her sleep.

  That was when she decided to find a way to leave the country. While waiting for the visa, which at the time she did not know was going to take ten years, she found a small apartment with brick walls and large windows and moved out of her parents’ house. It is time, she said as she swooped Sheida up in her arms, her father carrying their bags behind her. Her mother waved at them, wiping her tears, pouring a bowl of water on the ground in their wake. As Maryam passed by the jacaranda tree, she inhaled deeply, filling her lungs with its fragrance; she no longer felt like suffocating.

  • • •

  Maryam steps out of the apartment, closing the door quietly behind her. Outside, the air is cool and fresh. It is still early. The air has not yet grown hazy with smog. The city is silent. It is this silence that, more than anything, gnaws at Maryam’s nerves. She knows it, heard it thirty years ago. It is not natural, not an early-morning quiet. It is that of a city that has been beaten into silence, quickly, abruptly, without a moment of hesitation. And yet the city is still standing. A city that, although wounded and ravaged, has not backed down, a dormant volcano that could erupt at any moment. It is this standing, this resistance, that worries Maryam. Everywhere she looks, there are traces of last night’s clashes: an overturned, burned trash can; broken asphalt, its pieces strewn along the sidewalk and on the street, with marks of dry blood visible on them; the writing in green on a wall, Where’s my vote? Maryam knows there are more protests coming up, that the people will once again take to the streets. And with the protests, there will be more clampdowns and rampaging and arresting and killing. How many more victims? How many more dead? When will the bloodshed ever end? Maryam watches those few who, like her, are out on the street scooting past, a flux of ruffled blurry faces, cringing backs. Will they once again succeed in draining us?

  • • •

  There is a line outside the bakery. Maryam stands behind a woman wearing a white headscarf with pink flowers on it. She has a basket in her hand. Inside it are basil leaves wrapped in newspaper. The woman puts down her basket and turns to look at the sycamore tree behind them, then her glance falls on Maryam. “Another day,” she says.

  “And we’re still here,” Maryam responds.

  The woman nods, gazes at the sycamore tree, and turns back to the baker, who, coated in dough powder, slides the sangak with a long spade out of the oven, tosses it on the counter, and flicks the stones out of its tiny holes. The bread is hot. The woman takes a sack out of her bag and puts the bread inside it.

  Is Sheida happy? Maryam thinks as she watches the woman leave the line, her body slightly swaying side to side. Has Maryam been a good mother despite her frailty, her failings? She’s not sure. With hindsight, she sees that she never had a clear plan about anything. She groped her way through Sheida’s childhood, never knowing for certain what the right choices were. Amir had to be there. Maryam was alone and her heart was too ravaged for her to be able to focus. And all around her, it always seemed that the other mothers knew exactly what they wanted, what their children wanted. All the other mothers were able to sleep with their child in another room; Maryam did not. They knew when to cover the child’s hair when going out; Maryam did not. They knew how to tell the child that everything would be okay; Maryam did not. It seemed to her that there were two types of mothers on earth: those who knew and those who did not. Maryam did not. She knew only how to protect her daughter from the secret. How to survey everything, sifting through it all, from Sheida’s school courses to her father’s death, before letting anything reach Sheida’s mind. Maryam kept the unwanted residue to herself. The residue was everything that had gone wrong in her life. Sheida was best kept away from it, from the blood-soaked hands of history. Maryam had dug the foundation. She was the mother. She thought she knew best. But Maryam foundered, and there was no tree branch she could cling to.

  • • •

  Sheida is still curled up, asleep on the bed, when Maryam arrives at home. Maryam sits on the edge of the bed and strokes her daughter’s hair. Sheida opens her eyes. Her sleep is as light as ever. That unchanged lightness brings the child home to Maryam. She bends and places a kiss on her cheek that smells of sleep. “Did you sleep well?”

  Sheida nods and smiles. Her sleep-filled eyes are shiny. She brings her hands together and places them under her chin. “I remembered something a few days ago,” she says, lifting her sleepy eyes to Maryam. “I remembered Baba all of a sudden. One of the only memories I have of him.”

  “What did you remember?”

  “I saw him holding me up in his hands. I was really scared. That’s all. I remember the fear perfectly. And there was some kind of a window.”

  “I took you to visit him twice. The second time, you were around three years old. I was able to pass you to him behind the glass screen, and he hid something in your clothes. I’ll show it to you later.” Maryam adjusts the blanket on Sheida’s shoulders. As she speaks, she feels unexpectedly light and natural, as if she’s been waiting all her life for this moment when she can let go. And surrender is as light as a raindrop.

  “The first time, I wasn’t there,” she continues. “They wouldn’t give me an appointment to see him. So I just took you there and insisted that he needed to see you. They finally agreed to take you in to him for a few minutes, but I had to wait outside. Your poor father didn’t even know you were born. It must’ve been a shock when they just passed this little girl to him, saying that it was his kid.”

  Sheida smiles, though there is a sad look in her eyes. “What was he like?”

  “Baba? Well, he was quite shy, kind of like you. But he was very determined, a bit stubborn, maybe—” She tries to laugh. Something catches in her throat. Nothing has become easier. Time does not heal wounds. It does not even overcome tears. When it comes to grief, time is nothing but a failed attempt at forgetting. “He was very kind, and he had a beautiful voice when he sang.”

  Sheida seems tense as she lies there looking at her mother. “I cannot imagine how difficult it must have been for you.”

  Is this a pardon? Maryam thinks. Reconciliation? She does not know how to respond. “I just wanted you to have a good life,” she almost murmurs, as if no longer sure of its meaning. She has repeated these words so many times in her mind that they sound like nothing except a weak attempt to keep walls from crumbling.

  “I’ve had a good life, Maman. I’ve had a beautiful life.”

  Maryam listens to her and thinks, What about Italy? She does not ask. She does not wish to open another wound. She knows she failed Sheida in Italy. She was the mother. She had to be strong. She had to protect Sheida, not the other way around. Maryam was not a reliable mother.

  “I wanted your life to be full. That is, I tried to give you that life.”

  Sheida smiles. “Well, with all those courses you enrolled me in, chess and tennis and painting and English and calligraphy and gymnastics! Even gymnastics! I was stiff as an iron pole, and you still enrolled me in that terrifying course! So I can tell you, my life was full, all right.” She laughs. Her face glows.

  Maryam caresses Sheida’s hair. Perhaps Sheida has indeed forgiven her. Perhaps what happened in Italy is no longer important, no longer hurts. Or perhaps Sheida does not mention it because she wishes to spare her mother. Maryam feels a lump in her throat, a lump of simmering gratitude.

  “You were good at all those things,” she says. “Now let’s go have breakfast.”

  • • •

  The sunrays trickling from the kitchen window into the cups give the tea a golden-red glow. Sheida places the cups on a tray and takes them to the table.

  Maryam walks over to Sheida. She has a wooden box in her hand. “This is what I wanted to show you,” she says, and opens the box. Inside is a bracelet made of date stones, enshrouded in pieces of white cloth, which she unravels carefully, holding it out to Sheida. “Your father made this.”

  Sheida places the tray on the table, looks at the bracelet. Her eyes are wide, her cheeks flushed. “This is what he hid in my clothes?”

  “Yes.”

  They sit down. Maryam takes the bracelet out of its white shroud, out of its wooden tomb. She handles it carefully, like crystal.

  “You’ve never worn it?”

  “It’s yours. I was only its keeper.”

  “It’s beautiful,” Sheida whispers.

  Maryam looks at her daughter. She would like to sleep and wake up and find herself surrounded by green sparkling fields, the sunlight on her skin, the air scented with the perfume of wildflowers, the tip of the grass tickling her hands as she walks, arms outstretched, through the fields. She takes Sheida into her arms. She no longer feels like crumbling, like coming undone. For a long moment, she feels nothing. No anger. No sorrow. No shame. She turns to Sheida and clutches her daughter’s face in her hands. In Sheida’s eyes, he is alive, laughing, crying, hurling their unspoken words to the skies, like colored papers at a carnival.

 

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