Roya’s head throbbed. “You never once mentioned her. You didn’t tell me there was someone planned for you.”
“Look, my mother, like most mamans, has—correction, had—a girl in mind for me. She picked Shahla out a while ago. Trust me, it’s not what I want in the slightest. It’s not what’s going to happen.”
“Why didn’t you tell me? You should have told me. I would have liked to know!”
“Well, because. Look, Roya, my mother has some . . . issues. Sometimes she is not well. Emotionally. In her mind. You may have noticed.”
Roya had first met Bahman’s parents back in the spring when they were courting and they had gone to his house with a group of friends after school. Bahman’s father was kind and quiet, but his mother intimidated her. The first time she’d met Mrs. Aslan (and each time since), it was as if she was being evaluated from head to toe. When she spoke in Mrs. Aslan’s presence, Roya felt awkward and childish. It was obvious that Bahman’s mother did not like her. She had been against their engagement. But in the end, Bahman’s father, quiet and unassuming, had the last word because he was a man.
“You should have told me.” Roya pushed away her coffee cup and got up. “No wonder your mother can’t stand me. She had someone else in mind for you. How could you not tell me something so important? Did you think I wouldn’t find out? In this city? Where students like us know the same people, when boys from your school date girls from mine, did you really think that I wouldn’t find out?”
“Please, Roya. I feel nothing for her. Less than nothing. My mother has her own ideas about everything. She’s . . . she’s struggling.”
Roya sat again because she didn’t want to give the girl in the hat the satisfaction of seeing her quarrel with Bahman. She wanted to leave, but she couldn’t. Even though she was furious with Bahman, she was already trying to save face on his account. This was the societal web of niceties and formalities and expected good female behavior that often suffocated her. But she had no choice but to bear it, to try to navigate within it. That much she knew.
“Don’t worry, my mother will come around. Give her a little time to get to know you better. How could she not see in you all the goodness that the rest of the world sees?”
“Please. She thinks you can do better.”
“That’s actually impossible, so she’s wrong. Look, it’s her nerves. My mother’s not entirely in control of her emotions. She has her dark days. But she will come around, you’ll see.”
Of course there would be other contenders; Mrs. Aslan would have had other girls in mind for Bahman. In Mr. Fakhri’s shop, among the bookshelves and in the dark, musty corners, it seemed that Bahman was hers alone. The boy in the white shirt and khaki pants was hardly ever there with other friends. Their conversations, private jokes, jaunts to Café Ghanadi seemed encased in a separate sphere. Because he was politically active, she’d at first assumed his circle of friends consisted of wonkish nationalists obsessed with Prime Minister Mossadegh. When she’d thought of Bahman socializing, she’d imagined political debates held over espresso with intellectual young men in cafés. But Jahangir was his close friend, and she had already seen that Jahangir ran in very elite circles. He was known for giving the best parties. Bahman was a part of all of that—she was learning. Of course there would have been other women planned for him, wanting him.
He leaned in and kissed her on the cheek. His mouth smelled of burnt coffee. The Shahla girl could not have missed it. In public, at the café, Bahman drew her in as if they were alone in the world, as if they had nothing to hide.
Roya should have pushed his face away, but instead she allowed the kiss to land. They were engaged, for God’s sake. Their fate was bound. No mother’s prearranged plans could thwart them.
From the corner of her eye, Roya saw the girl called Shahla get up and bump her way through the tables as she scurried out.
Chapter Seven
1953
* * *
Mrs. Aslan
Against her will, Mrs. Aslan had to approve of the engagement because, as she often said if only people would listen, in this hellish world all it took was for the man to give his go-ahead, what did the woman’s opinion matter? Apparently her feckless husband had to just approve of the match, and lo! It was done, stamped with a seal of legitimacy. As if she, the mother, hadn’t been the one to push that boy out of her flailing, frail body, as if she hadn’t held him to her breast month after month as he sucked her dry, as if she wasn’t the one who held his hand and walked him all over the city to show him the world, as if she hadn’t sat with him night after night encouraging him to tackle the poems and math problems in his notebooks. As if she hadn’t done everything in her power so her son could do better, rise in this life! From the very beginning she had seen in this baby the potential for greatness. He would shuck the yoke of class and stagnancy; in this new, modern Iran, he could get to better social circles. Wasn’t the country changing? Wasn’t that what everyone said? Hadn’t she managed through sheer determination and God’s will to escape a destiny of poverty? She had been a little girl in torn slippers with a shabby headscarf tied at her neck, a girl who should have been nothing more than a destitute man’s daughter, a peasant, a servant perhaps. A girl who had suffered unutterable losses. But she had Bahman now.
She had married Mr. Aslan (it did no good to wallow in the grievances of a broken heart; whatever it was, it had happened this way) and through this marriage, she had defied the trappings of class. She’d married an engineer! She had raised their boy; did anyone in the entire city doubt the energy and intelligence and absolute talents of her son? Was he not the sun and the stars? She wanted that Roya girl gone from her son’s life. Instead she had to stomach the girl giggling on her living room sofa. (Yes, they had a sofa. That was it; they had a sofa, Western-style furniture. In the tiny room of her childhood, there had been no chairs, no table, no fancy sofas. They had sat on the floor. They ate their meals cross-legged, from dishes arranged on the sofreh cloth on the floor.) Now this girl sat on her sofa. It made her livid. It made her sickness, a monster that was unpredictable and unforgiving enough, bear down even stronger. A tsunami of this horrible nervous illness sometimes drowned her with little warning. She’d go down beyond reach, and when that happened not even her boy could haul her out of those moods. Though he did try.
It was during a particularly bad down-cycle of her sickness that Bahman boldly announced his desire to propose to Roya, and her husband, weak and ineffectual as he was, had succumbed! Encouraged him, even. In her low moods, Mrs. Aslan had little power; she could barely get through the day, even the hour, didn’t they know that? How could they pounce this news on her then? Maybe that’s exactly why they did pounce it on her then, the sons of dogs. She would attend the god-awful engagement party only because, as ever, a woman ultimately had to give in to her husband. Even a weak, pathetic husband like hers. She wanted to prevent this catastrophe of a match. Her gorgeous son, who had so much to offer, who could do fabulous things with his life! Marrying some bookish, average girl who thought reading novels translated from Russian or English was something worthwhile, who was pretty but not astoundingly so, whose father struggled to maintain his stagnant clerkship. Whose father, worst of all, exhibited the same obsession with nationalism and the prime minister that had lately infected her own son. She didn’t need her boy embroiled further in useless political activism. She wanted Bahman to succeed. Join the oil company, make money—there was so much to be made—so much potential for these young people!