“How are you, Mrs. Aslan?” that Roya girl dared to ask her now as she sat on her sofa. “Bahman said you had a difficult evening sleeping. Are you feeling any better?”
Limp and snotty and rude, that’s what this girl was.
“How do you expect me to be?” Mrs. Aslan said. “You just wait, my girl. Life will slap you down too. It’ll push you down when you least expect it. You’ll see. This world lacks justice. Did you know babies die?”
The girl looked stunned, absolutely flummoxed and shocked. She couldn’t even say anything.
“That’s right. Did anyone tell you that when you seduced my son? When you lured him into that stuffy bookshop?” Her heart tightened as she spoke, her stomach lurched. Suddenly her body raged with heat; she wanted to tear her clothes off, to stand naked near the window, to feel wind on her skin, to feel anything but this suffocating descent into loss.
“Mother, please. Please.” Bahman’s voice sounded like it was coming from a mountaintop away. She had sunk into a sweaty panic attack.
“Love,” Mr. Aslan began in a sonorous voice. “As our poet Omar Khayyam says, love is—”
“Enough!” Mrs. Aslan said. “Shut up.” She couldn’t bear it. Her husband was always pretending nothing was wrong. He was a wimp, a coward, a fool. He wouldn’t even talk about the losses. She got up and walked out of the room to get away from his platitudes of poetry and that snot-girl Roya.
The door slammed.
Roya only looked at her hands as she sat on the sofa. Her whole body shook. Bahman had warned her, he had told her about his mother’s illness—how she descended into rages, how she could not control her moods. She would have to please this mother-in-law for decades to come, but even now it seemed she could do nothing right in Mrs. Aslan’s eyes. Mr. Aslan looked like he had been kicked by a horse. They had pretended for a while to be normal and to have tea and to visit in the traditional way. But Mrs. Aslan had made zero pretense of liking Roya, and now she had rushed out in panic and anger. What was this illness, this “mood monster that takes her over,” as Bahman had once described it? Mr. Aslan was constantly trying to make up for his wife’s rudeness. Now he offered Roya another glass of tea, another piece of baklava. When Roya said no thank you, Mr. Aslan closed his eyes and leaned back, assuming the pose many Iranians took when they were about to recite the ancient Persian poets.
For a minute, Mr. Aslan remained in this position, breathing deeply. Then he got up too. “Excuse me,” he said with a slight bow. His eyes were teary. “I’ll be right back.”
Roya watched him shuffle out of the room. She stayed seated on the couch next to Bahman, next to the son of these parents who were so different from any other couple she had met, who seemed so very far-gone and alone.
When his mother acted this way, when her rage took over and she abandoned the niceties of social etiquette, Bahman changed. He became quiet, deflated.
The sound of Mrs. Aslan’s sobs landed like bullets against the closed bedroom door.
Roya squeezed his hand. “It doesn’t bother me,” she lied. “It cannot be helped.”
The muffled sound of Mr. Aslan comforting and cajoling his wife came through.
Bahman didn’t say anything. He just looked straight ahead. After a few minutes that felt endless, he quietly rested his head on Roya’s shoulder. She felt his cheek even through the tiny stitches on the seam of the blouse that Maman had sewn. He burrowed his face into her. It was as though he wanted to disappear.
Roya kissed his head, stroked his hair. She would save him from this.
When Mr. Aslan finally came back, he looked depleted. “Now!” he said in a tone of forced cheer. “Who would like another tea?”
Babies die rang in Roya’s ears.
Bahman stood up and went to the kitchen to bring more tea. It was all for her sake, this charade of holding the edges together. Of keeping the door shut to Mrs. Aslan’s room, of pretending that her sobs did not continue. Bahman came back with fresh tea from the samovar, the glasses balanced on a silver tray. He was used to this, to getting tea, navigating the kitchen, serving, possibly even cooking. Women’s work. He and his father did more of it than any men Roya had ever seen. The woman in their house was ill. Father and son picked up the pieces, picked up the slack. They made sure the house functioned. Bahman had told her that any servant who was hired to help was eventually fired by his mother—she could not take their gall, their presence. She did not get along with the help. It was better this way, he said. They were a private family; better for others not to be exposed to her moods anyway. As he stood with the tray of tea now, it was clear he would have preferred to protect Roya from this embarrassment of emotion, this lack of control.
Bahman carefully placed the tray on the table.
It would be worth it. She would accept his mother, do her best to get along with her. For this boy, she would do anything.
Chapter Eight
1953
* * *
Engagement Party
Their engagement party was on a summer evening in July, several weeks after Roya and Bahman had both graduated from high school. Maman and Baba had invited family and close friends to their home for the celebration. Maman and the girls worked for hours in the kitchen, cooking and preparing. On the day of the party, Kazeb, a woman they sometimes hired to help with the housework, came over to go shopping with Zari for last-minute items while Roya and Maman focused on the star main dish: jeweled rice.
By the kitchen sink, her brown hair up in a bun, her kind, round face damp from exertion, sleeves rolled up so her chubby arms were visible, Maman cleaned the zereshk. These small dried barberries would be nestled into the basmati rice when the dish was done. Roya stood next to her mother and inhaled her familiar lemony scent. She helped her pick out any pieces of dirt or tiny stones from the barberries and then watched her put the dried berries in a small sieve and rinse them.
“Do you think it will be different, Maman?” Roya asked.
Maman put the sieve in a bowl of cold water to soak.
“What will?”
“Us. You and me.” Much as Roya yearned for a new life with Bahman, it was strange to think of the changes ahead. Would this house with its white lace curtains and kitchen so meticulously organized still feel like her home? Would everything change? Would she still be able to joke with Zari and be one of the family like before?
Maman sighed. “This is what was intended, Roya Joon. Girls grow up. They marry and move out.” She pulled the sieve of barberries out of the bowl of water and shook it several times over the sink. “Would I want you to be living in this house with me till the day I die? I cannot lie. There are selfish moments when the idea of my children never leaving my side seems fine by me! But of course you need to start your own life. You have your own future. May you and Bahman have a long and happy life together, inshallah, God willing.”
A long and happy life together. The ground would shift in so many exciting and scary ways when she and Bahman got married at the end of the summer. Maman handed the sieve to Roya and Roya laid the barberries on a kitchen towel, patted them dry, and scattered them onto a big plate—all movements she’d mastered with Maman’s guidance over the years. But this time she was keenly aware that though she was cooking with Maman like always, it was for an event that would take her further away from her mother.