The Septembers of Shiraz (10 page)

N
ew York loves expanse. It grows upward and spreads its tentacles outward, the island spilling into adjoining lands through its many bridges and tunnels. A person given to idleness, as Parviz has come to think of himself, must move about for the sake of moving, if only to fit into the general scheme of things—an electron obeying the current. Tantamount to movement, he has come to realize, is self-reliance, a fact reflected even in the language: “Take care,” a friend may say to another as the two part. In his old life the same two friends would have said to one another,
khodahafez
—“may God protect you.”

He finds refuge from the city in Zalman Mendelson's hat shop, spending three afternoons a week steaming identical hats. The task numbs him, half-formed thoughts emerging from his mind like the vapor rising from his steam machine and vanishing just as quickly. Time moves slowly here, like those agonizing hours spent in mind-numbing high school
classes, when his young, excitable mind had to castrate all of its instinctual thoughts in order to grasp the rice output in Isfahan, for example, or the pistachio export from Rafsan-jan. And yet something has changed in him so gravely that he now actually enjoys these slow, indistinguishable hours, which pass him by, demanding so little of him, no more than fish swimming in an aquarium. He looks at Zalman Mendelson standing at the counter, his accounting books spread open before him, adding and subtracting the profits and losses of his life. He seems a happy man, his round face giving him a generous and benign appearance. And if it weren't for his pale, soapy complexion—no doubt a result of so many years spent in a dim, steamy shop—he would have been the ideal advertisement for the fulfilled life.

“Do you like Brooklyn, Mr. Mendelson?”

Zalman looks up from his book, his glasses sliding down his nose. “Sure. Why wouldn't I like Brooklyn?”

“It's fine, of course. But don't you ever wonder what it would be like to live somewhere else?”

“Why would I wonder about living somewhere else? I live here.” Zalman puts down his pen and removes his glasses. “What is this about, my dear boy? What are you trying to say?”

“I don't know. I guess I'm wondering if you ever regret anything.”

“Regret anything? Like what?”

“I mean in life. Do you ever wish things could have turned out differently?”

“No, I don't regret,” Zalman says. “What should I re
gret? God has given me a wonderful, healthy family and I thank him every day.”

“Yes, sure. But beyond that. Are you sorry, for example, that your father was imprisoned and had to leave Russia? Don't you wonder what your life would have been like if you had lived in Leningrad instead of Brooklyn?”

“Parviz!” He laughs. “You cannot ask questions like these because you will never know the answer. It is all God's will. I cannot question it. Besides, if circumstances were such that my father could have stayed in Leningrad, then he would have never met my mother in Vladivostok and I would have never been born. He would have married someone else and they would have had different children. Things happen for a reason, and only God knows what these reasons are.”

A cool breeze announces Rachel, who walks in, looking flushed, the shape of her long, slim arms visible through the sleeves of her sweater. Such lovely, delicate arms should not be wasted on the pious, Parviz thinks. What is the point after all, of having such arms and not being able to embrace those who are taken with them? She places the bag of food on the counter for her father, as she does every afternoon.

“Where is your coat, Rachel?” Zalman asks. “Aren't you cold, walking around like that?”

“I forgot it at the shop.”

“You forgot it at the shop? My Rachel, her head always in the clouds…Go pick it up, or else you'll have to go to school without a coat tomorrow.”

“It's too late now. Mameh needs me to help her with dinner. Dovid and Chana are coming over.”

Parviz watches her through the steam. “I can go get it after I'm done here,” he offers. “I'll bring it to the house.”

She looks at him, for the first time since her arrival. “Thank you,” she says. “That would be very kind.”

When she leaves a sudden happiness swells in him, along with an anticipation for the evening ahead, which, he knows, will consist of no more than an errand.

“Thank you, Parviz,” Zalman says. “Actually, you may enjoy meeting Rachel's boss, Mr. Broukhim. He's Iranian, like you. His wife divorced him after they came to this country, and the poor fellow, old enough to be a grandfather, found himself on the street. She took him for all he was worth, that woman! After thirty years of marriage, she decided she is done with him. Naturally she got custody of their daughter too. He lived in his car for a few months, eating canned beans and tuna. His daughter, about Rachel's age, would sometimes sneak out of the house and bring him food. He came to our community, finally, and we helped him out. Now he is settled here. He has an apartment, a shop, and, God bless him, a dog. He says he is done with women. And who can blame him, after all that?”

 

T
HE DOOR CHIMES
as he enters the flower shop. A small, mustached man, wearing a tweed jacket, is behind a counter, trimming stems. Parviz introduces himself and they shake hands.

“So you like it here?” Mr. Broukhim says. “What are you studying?”

“Architecture.”

“Really? My brother was an architect. Guess what he is doing now? He paints houses.” Mr. Broukhim has an easy smile, but weepy eyes. “I tell you. Study something else along with your architecture. One cannot easily transport one country's architectural sensibility to another. People won't take to it.”

“Where would I transport it, Mr. Broukhim? I live here now.”

“Yes, now you live here. But who knows where you'll end up in a few years? Do you really love this country so much that you can't imagine living anywhere else? Once you leave your own country and start moving around, there is no telling where you'll go next.” He disappears into the back, emerges with Rachel's coat, and hands it to Parviz. “Me, I was a doctor. Now, as you can see, I'm in the flower business.” He smiles, his palms like an open book circling around him. “But I like to think it's temporary. Between you and me,” he whispers, “I don't like these religious beardies. I can't wait to save enough money so I can get out of this neighborhood. But what can I do? They helped me out and now I'm settled here. Well, I don't want to bore you with my problems, Parviz-jan. Give my regards to Rachel and her parents.”

“I thought you didn't like the ‘beardies.'” Parviz laughs.

“They're the only ones I like! Now go, go!”

 

W
ALKING HOME HE
holds the coat against his chest. The sweet, flowery smell that wafts up to his nose surprises him; it is not a scent he would have associated with Rachel. He brings the coat to his face and holds it there for an instant, but seeing Yanki the grocer on the other side of the street he brings it down again.

“Erev tov!”
Yanki waves hello. “How are things?”

“Fine, thank you. I haven't forgotten about my debt, Yanki. I'll pay you back as soon as I can.”

“Sure, sure, you'll pay me back,” Yanki says. “
Moshiach
will come before you pay me back!” He turns the corner and disappears.

To the long list of his losses, Parviz adds dignity. In his old life, who would have talked to him as Yanki just did? He thinks of Mr. Broukhim, of his wrinkled face and his tweed jacket, of the gratitude he must once have received from his patients, of the life he must have left behind. Now he has a little flower shop on a little-known street in Brooklyn, and he is learning the difference between violets and African violets.

He walks up the steps to the Mendelsons' and rings the doorbell. He knows that Rachel may send one of her siblings to answer the door. But when the door finally opens she is standing before him.

“Thank you.” She smiles as she takes the coat.

“You're welcome. How is that dinner party going?”

“Party?” She laughs. “It's not a party. It's a dinner for a young couple going to London as emissaries tomorrow.”

“As ‘emissaries'?”

“Yes, you know about our emissaries, don't you? We have thousands of them. They go to foreign countries and help the Jewish communities. They provide kosher food, build schools and synagogues, that sort of thing.”

“Sounds like quite an operation. Exporting Judaism.”

“No, it's not like that.” The smile disappears from her face just as easily as it had appeared. “Well, goodnight. Thanks again for the coat,” she says as she shuts the door.

Standing on the stoop, he tucks his gloveless hands in his pockets and looks out onto the dark street. How unyielding is that space between connection and interruption—one false move, one misspoken word, and you find yourself on the wrong side of things.

M
usical chairs in Leila's house means musical cushions. Shirin and the other girls, gathered here for Leila's birthday, lay out pillows and cushions on the floor, while Farideh-khanoum stands by the stereo, in charge of the music. Shirin has always disliked this game, whose purpose, she believes, is to show that in any gathering, there is always one person too many.

On the fourth round she loses her spot. She stands on the periphery with the three other condemned girls and watches the race. Chaos intensifies as seats become scarce, the girls screaming and laughing as they scramble to sit. She looks out the window. A snowstorm was predicted this morning. Large flakes are already coming down, accumulating quickly on trees and rooftops. She remembers how on weekends, in the wintertime, when her father and Parviz were still around, they would go out for lunch to her father's favorite kebab house, or to that Russian restaurant whose chicken
Kiev delivered a flow of melting butter when pricked with a knife. Afterward they would return home, well fed and half asleep, to the lullaby of radiators. Her mother would prepare tea and sing in that feathery voice of hers that made people tell her she should have been a singer. To which she would always reply, “I should have, I should have, I should have been many things….” Her father would sit with a stack of newspapers and catch up on the week's events—the earthquakes, the assassinations, the stabbings, and robberies. Shirin would curl up on the sofa next to him, comforted by the masculine scent of tobacco, aftershave, and newsprint.

 

W
ITH SEVEN GIRLS
still in the game, it occurs to her that she has enough time to go to the basement and take more files. Farideh-khanoum is very focused on the game, her finger alternating between the “play” and “pause” buttons. And Leila's father is most likely not at home; if he were, there would not have been any music. But where would she hide the files, since she doesn't have her schoolbag? What if one of the girls sees her? She thinks of that afternoon when the two men had come to search their house, how she had buried that one file, of Ali Reza Rasti, in the garden, next to the cherry tree. She had almost gotten caught, with the mud on her pants. How many times can she get lucky, like that? But she is here, already made irrelevant by the game. Should she not try, at least?

She tiptoes out of the room until she is out of view, then
takes her coat from Leila's room and walks down the creaking stairs to the basement. The stomping of feet above sends her heart racing. She opens the armoire and moves the old clothes. More files have been added to the pile. She takes the top three, wraps her coat around them, and sneaks back up. She shoves the coat—and files—in Leila's closet.

Back in the living room, the competition has intensified between the remaining two players vying for the last seat. The rivals spin, and when the music finally stops the one sitting down is Elaheh, the daughter of the head of a prison. Did Farideh-khanoum ensure Elaheh's victory with her timing? After all, it would not hurt to be on the girl's good side.

Once the birthday song has been sung and the candles blown out, she eats her slice of cake but thinks about the files. How will she retrieve her coat without anyone noticing? What if the whole class finds out? What would Elaheh do if she knew? No doubt she would report back to her father. And the father, what would he do? Drops of vomit form in her throat, with the sour taste of undigested heavy cream. She stops eating. The other girls, already devouring their second and third slices, are planning the next activity. There is talk of hopscotch, Monopoly, the telephone game.

“Shirin-jan, you don't like the cake?” Farideh-khanoum says.

“It's very good. I just…I'm not feeling well.” Under her sweater, beads of sweat trickle from her chest down to her stomach. She excuses herself and calls her mother to pick her up.

“I'm going to think you are allergic to our house!” Farideh-khanoum laughs. “You get sick every time you come here.”

“She's not that much better in school,” Elaheh says. “She spends half her life in the infirmary.” Because of her new social standing, Elaheh is the most vocal of all the girls, as comfortable with adults as she is with her classmates.

“Yes, Shirin-jan?” Farideh-khanoum says. “Are you that sickly? Well, some children are just like that.”

She had been to the infirmary five times in the past two weeks, a fact that had categorized her by her peers, her teachers, and now, Leila's mother, as “sickly.” But she doesn't think of herself as a sickly child. What had been troubling her were bouts of nausea, accompanied by sharp stomach pains, and it was only once she was in the infirmary, sipping the tea prepared for her by Soheila-khanoum, the school nurse, that her stomach muscles relaxed and she felt the nausea float away. There, in the hush of the white-walled, sunny room, away from the other children, she would let herself be coddled by the nurse, a kind woman who people said had lost a daughter in one of the revolution's bloodiest riots. “Black Friday” people called the day of that riot. But for Soheila-khanoum, Shirin thought, the blackness must have spilled onto the other days, giving her nothing but black weeks and months. She wondered if Soheila-khanoum got bored or lonely all by herself in that infirmary, the silence a constant reminder of her daughter. She seemed pleased to have a visitor who interrupted that solitude as frequently as Shirin did.

When the girls begin their game of telephone, Shirin retrieves her coat and holds it on her lap, making sure the files are not visible. Waiting for her mother, she watches as each of her classmates whispers a phrase in her neighbor's ear and giggles. The phrase emerges from the lineup, botched.

Her mother honks. She holds the coat in one arm and waves good-bye to her classmates with the other. “Feel better!” some call out and Shirin thanks them, though she wonders if they really mean it.

They drive slowly in the snow, the car skidding every now and then. “I don't have the snow chains on,” her mother says. Shirin imagines the car spinning out of control and crashing into a tree. But soon they arrive home, without tragedy.

In her room, she spreads out the files on her desk, and when she sees the name “Javad Amin” scribbled on one, she runs to the bathroom and throws up, finally. As her mother washes her face Shirin looks at her own reflection in the mirror and sees the cherry pins in her hair—Uncle Javad's final gift. She wants to tell her mother about the files, about
his
file, but decides not to. Increasing her mother's grief, she knows, would also increase her chances of dying. Grief terrifies her, because it's invisible.

After a nap and a cup of mint tea she takes the files and buries them in the garden, on top of Ali Reza Rasti's file. “Good luck, Uncle Javad,” she says as she covers up his name with soil and snow.