“To say you’ll marry him is absurd,” Zari snorted as they walked home from school later in the week. “You’ve seen him, what, six times?”
“We’ve seen each other for months now, thank you. And anyway, time is irrelevant.”
“Oh, Sister!” Zari stopped and looked at Roya with pity. “Time is the only thing that is relevant. You can’t pin your hopes on that boy.”
“Why not?”
“Because . . .” Zari paused. “He just can’t be trusted. Those political types are not what you think.”
“How would you know?”
“I just do. Trust me.”
They walked the rest of the way in an uncomfortable silence with Roya wanting to feel that her sister was just jealous and not prescient. Zari had to be overreacting, as always. Zari just didn’t like siasi types, that was all. Roya tried to swat away the doubt and anxiety that her sister’s words made swell inside her. She thought of the notebook Bahman had given her, the poem he’d inscribed inside. Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.
Zari had to be wrong.
Chapter Six
1953
* * *
Bruised Sky
Because it was almost summer, because the bushes and trees were already lush, because it was twilight and they were seventeen and the air was filled with jasmine, their walk on the boulevard was one that would imprint itself onto Roya’s heart for years to come.
Earlier, they’d gone to Cinema Metropole on Lalehzar Street. The chic lobby with its circular red sofa, the sparkling chandeliers, everyone dressed up in their most glamorous clothes, the framed portraits of Clark Gable and Sophia Loren, the cigarettes being smoked, the tiny coffee cups in the hands of ladies with hats, the absolute romance of the entire venue made Roya feel like she was in a movie herself. And then, the climb up the steps to the balcony to sit with Bahman on maroon velvet chairs and watch an Italian film directed by Vittorio De Sica: The Bicycle Thief.
“I love his work,” Bahman had whispered as the film began. “I’m curious to know what you think.” Roya was too distracted by the closeness of his mouth to her ear to speak. She swallowed hard and nodded. So much was new and alluring in her world with this boy.
After the film, they left the dazzle of Cinema Metropole’s lobby and stepped into a summer twilight that was so beautiful she ached. The sky was an eggplant purple, the clouds the color of bruises.
“The story relates to so much of what is going on in Iran right now,” Roya said as they walked down the boulevard. “The poor want a better life. But they’re stuck. Our leaders need to help. All that man in the film wanted was a bicycle so that he could go to work. That’s all.”
“I agree. Our own people are stuck in that same way. Trapped in their class, their fate,” Bahman said passionately as he took her hand. “But we can change all of that. With democracy. We’re on the right track.”
“Zari says it’s unrealistic to think we’ll ever have full control of our resources. She says the British have too much at stake here,” Roya said.
“For someone who doesn’t like politics, your sister has good, strong opinions,” Bahman said.
Roya laughed.
“Now I just have to convince her that I’m not a horrible person!” Bahman said.
“Don’t mind Zari,” Roya said. “She’s a bit dramatic, that’s all.”
Toward the end of high school, Roya had started inviting Bahman to regular get-togethers she and Zari hosted after school for their friends. Nothing huge: just cut-up fruit, a few laughs, conversation. And Bahman hadn’t been the only boy there. There were others—friends and cousins who were part of their “équipe,” as Zari liked to call their circle of peers. Bahman had been introduced to Maman and to Baba, and it was amazing to think he could be in her home, chatting with her friends, just one of the group.
Bahman suddenly stopped and went quiet.
“What’s wrong?”
“I’ve been wanting to know . . .” He looked nervous. “For a while now. I’ve just been wanting to ask, Roya . . .” His voice broke off at her name, cracking like a thirteen-year-old’s. From the middle of the sidewalk, he gently pulled her to the side near a shrub so large that its greenery and flowers spilled out and made a nook. Suddenly they were blanketed by the sweeping scent of blossoming jasmine, heady and full.
He looked at her, and she was surprised at how vulnerable he seemed, standing there.
She didn’t let him get the words out, there was no need; she didn’t play games. In the fog of jasmine, she kissed him. It was like landing somewhere she should have been all along, a different plane, soft and unbelievably seductive—a place completely theirs but one she’d never dared explore.
The taste of him, his arms around her, his body against hers as she continued to kiss felt boundless. When she finally drew back, he looked flushed, overwhelmed.
“I think that’s a yes.” He looked like he could fall.
“Yes. It is.” Her new feeling of authority was liberating and surprising. She’d had no idea until that moment about the power she held over him.
“I’ll go to your parents, of course.”
She’d assumed he’d been kissed before. But then again, maybe he never had. She certainly hadn’t kissed anyone before this, and she was astonished at how natural it felt, as if she had been doing this all along.
“If your parents give me their permission, we can be married by the end of summer. I just want to get closer to you. I want nothing more than that. For our worlds to be one.”
This had to be the fate written on their foreheads in invisible ink all along. She’d said yes . . . to what? To the kiss, to marriage? Her heart raced, and then he leaned in and kissed her. What had been strong and startling the first time morphed into something so tender even the flowers on the shrub could have carried it in their exquisite stamens, borne it in their tiny translucent petals. She melted into him. This was not supposed to happen before marriage. But here they were. My God, good girls did not do this. But Roya didn’t care. She could eat him up right there. If they did this for the rest of their lives, it would never be enough.
“You like his VOICE? You said you would marry this person because his voice cracked?”
“I like his everything,” Roya said. “We are in love.”
Zari and Roya lay in their room later that night whispering after the lights had been turned off. Roya kept replaying every moment of the evening in her head. How Bahman’s voice had cracked when he asked her, the kiss near the bushes—all of it. She had shared some of the details with Zari but was regretting it now.
“So his voice cracked and it was so adorable that you’re considering marrying someone who could be imprisoned for his activist work any day now? Whose parents you’ve barely met?”
“Stop catastrophizing everything, Zari. He is passionate about the future of this country and is helping a very worthwhile cause. That’s to be admired.”
“And his mother? You said she was rude to you when you first met her.”