And I did. From the scribbled writing and the repetitions and crossed out words, it was obviously only a first draft:
My dear and most beautiful Emily:
I will never forget you as long as I live. I am prepared to folow you to the ends of the earth and save you from your tyrannical grandmother and mersiless father. I too, seek escape from my stupid sisters and my mother who only knows how to criticise and cook and plant flowers and complane, and from my father who only likes to play chess and read the newspaper. Down with all fathers, mothers and grandmothers!
With the letter in my hand, I sat down on the bed and stared out the window at the jujube tree. And there I was, feeling ambushed, as though suddenly thrust in front of a mirror that reflected back an utterly unrecognizable image of myself. I folded the letter and put it back under the mattress, changed the sheets and pillowcase, straightened the bed, and left the room. I could barely read the clock through my tears. It was after nine. I really did not want to go out. I really did not want to see Mrs. Nurollahi, or anyone else. I really wished I was still a child and could put my arms around Father’s neck and cry my little heart out.
30
I was the only passenger on the bus. The driver hummed an Arabic song under his breath. I could tell from the soulful way he sang ‘Ya habibi’ and ‘Ya azizi’ that it must be a love song. We passed Cinema Taj. It seemed like only yesterday I would take Armen to Cinema Taj. When the twins were small, I would leave them with Mother every Friday and make mortadella sandwiches at home, with diced onions and chopped parsley – he really liked those. He also loved Canada Dry Orange soda, and insisted on going up to the Cinema Taj snack bar to buy it for himself. We would watch the film, eat our sandwiches, and have great fun together. On the way back home, his hand in mine, he would recount the plot two or three times from beginning to end.
The bus stopped in front of the Blue Star store. How long had it been since I held Armen’s hand? How long had it been since we went to the movies, just the two of us? Before getting off the bus, I told the driver, ‘What a pretty song you were singing.’ He laughed – a young man, with three gold teeth.
I stood in front of the Blue Star display window, wondering. What did Mrs. Nurollahi want? Did my boy really hate me? Why hadn’t Artoush taken any steps to make up with me? Taped in the window was a square piece of cardboard: ‘See our Easy model washing machines inside the store. Made in America!’
Several times Artoush had asked me, ‘Why don’t you buy a washing machine?’
Mother had said, ‘Clothes must be washed by hand.’
Alice had said, ‘They’re quite expensive.’
Artoush said, ‘You should definitely buy one.’
I got to the Milk Bar and climbed the twisting stairs. Several of the tables against the glass wall were occupied. Young girls and boys, not-so-young women and men. I was uncomfortable. Whenever mention of the Milk Bar was made in our house, Alice would arch her eyebrows. ‘It’s the spot for a morning rendezvous, if you know what I mean.’
I told the waiter I was waiting for a lady friend, emphasizing the word ‘lady.’ I sat at one of the tables for two and kept a lookout toward the stairs, hoping Mrs. Nurollahi would show up as soon as possible, say what she had to say, and leave. I thought of Armen’s letter. Of Artoush and the overturned sugar shaker. Why didn’t anyone understand me? I had never before experienced such an unbroken string of unhappy events. I thought about how calm my life had been before Emily and her grandmother turned up in G-4. My critical streak tripped me up: ‘So, it was only Emily and her grandmother who overturned the calm life you were leading?’ A tall chignon with a polka dot hair ribbon climbing the stairs provided me with a handy pretext for evading that question.
As soon as she was seated, Mrs. Nurollahi asked, ‘Are you not feeling well?’ I was taken aback. Did it seem so obvious?
Flustered, I explained that things were hectic these days, with constant guests, taking care of the children, the heat and humidity, which all wore me out. And well, children grow up, and their problems grow bigger. And it tires a person out, trying to understand and solve such problems. And sometimes I feel I’m not a good mother, and instead of helping me, the people around me make my burden heavier. And I’m just tired...and I was crying.
Mortified, I wished I could sink under the table. Why was I crying in a strange place? Why was I telling a woman whom I had only met a few times, and was not on intimate terms with, things that I had not told anyone? Mrs. Nurollahi took a tissue out of her purse and put it in my hand. I dabbed my eyes. ‘I’m sorry. I just don’t know what happened.’
She put her hand on mine. She did not say anything until I raised my head and looked at her. Then she said, ‘Your hair is so beautiful. I wish my hair were straight, like yours.’ She patted my hand several times and then withdrew her hand. ‘They say the café glacé is very good here.’
While she was placing the order for café glacé with the waiter, I turned to the glass wall and looked outside. One of the palm trees on the other side of the atrium was dried out and dying. When I was little, Mother used to say, ‘I wish your hair had a little curl in it, like Alice’s.’
When the waiter left, we began to talk. ‘You Armenian ladies,’ Mrs. Nurollahi began, ‘are far ahead of us. Muslim women have only now started to fight for some of the things you have had for some time. We are just setting out on the path.’
I should have replied, ‘It’s not quite the way you think,’ but I just nodded my head.
She wanted me to tell her all about the management of the Adab Armenian school, about the Board of Trustees for the Armenian community. I told her that the Armenians had built the school themselves. I do not remember where I had heard this, but the first group of Armenians hired to work for the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company would go after hours to the site of the school, and in essence, built the place brick by brick with their own hands.
Mrs. Nurollahi asked, ‘Why did you decide to call the school “Adab”, with a Persian, instead of an Armenian name?’
I did not know the answer to that. I talked about the tuition structure. Tuition fees for the pupils were tied to the income of their parents. A sliding scale: the higher the family income, the more the tuition of the children. On the other hand, the lower-income families sometimes paid no tuition, or might even receive financial assistance. I did not tell her that once in a while one of the better-off families would bargain like the dickens in an attempt to lower their tuition. I told her about the annual membership dues that the Board of Trustees had established, also tied to each individual’s yearly income. I did not tell her that there were people who would not mind getting out of paying the annual membership dues altogether. I told her about the charity benefits that were held two or three times a year, for which the women baked pastries, and sold the things they had knitted or crafts they had made. The proceeds were given to Armenian families of little means. I did not explain that these bake sales could also become a focus of backbiting, keeping up appearances, and keeping up with the Joneses, with ladies vying with each other about things like their cars, their trips to Europe, and the Grade of their husbands in the Oil Company.
She was listening intently. She thanked the waiter when he brought our café glacé and then asked me, ‘Do you know Mrs. Emma Khatchatourian?’
‘No,’ I said, but when she added, ‘The cakes she baked were marvelous,’ I remembered. Mother, who was not impressed by anyone’s baking, used to say, ‘You want cake, it has to be baked by Emma!’
Mrs. Nurollahi said, ‘When I lived in Tehran, she taught baking classes in the Farah Charitable Society. What wonderful...I forgot the name of the pastry, Nazok?’
‘Nazouk,’ I said.
‘Yes, yes, that’s it. What wonderful Nazouks she made.’
Then she talked about their own society and its activities, about the efforts of women to win suffrage, about literacy classes, about how Iranian women were not yet aware of their rights. Now that she
was speaking in a relaxed manner, not using those four-dollar words, I was inspired. I told her so, and she laughed. ‘I have to talk in a more formal style when giving a public speech, otherwise people will suppose I am not educated enough to be a speaker, or that what I have to say is unimportant.’ We drank our café glacés, which were quite tasty.
A young couple, a girl and a boy, went over to the record machine. Word was that the Milk Bar had recently shipped it in from Europe; I knew it was called a Juke Box, but had never seen one before. The youthful girl and boy bickered good-naturedly over the song to choose. The boy was tall and thin. The girl wore an orange shift dress, straight and shapeless, with green trim on the hem and sleeves.
Mrs. Nurollahi was looking at her too. ‘When I see youngsters laughing and having fun, I really enjoy it. It’s the whole reason we’ve been pulling our hair out. When I think about my own youth...’
The young pair finally picked a record. It was one of the songs Armen often played on his portable Teppaz turntable, dancing the Twist to it. I had never been able to make out the words the singer repeated over and over. Sipping my café glacé, I finally figured it out: Hit the road, Jack. I had never liked the song until now. Why? It was a nice song.
Mrs. Nurollahi stirred her drink. ‘For Armenians, it’s no revelation, but for us it’s something completely new. My own mother and father, who would be considered educated and progressive, tried to move mountains to get me to marry my cousin. I know that’s not a custom among Armenians, but for us Muslims, family marriages are not only not frowned on, they are a kind of good deed, as the old folks say. You must have heard the saying, “The marriage of paternal cousins is made in heaven”?’
I had heard it. I was once again on the verge of telling her that things were not quite as she imagined, that Armenian women have their own problems, but Mrs. Nurollahi did not give me the chance.
She touched the bowtie ribbon in her chignon. Maybe to make sure it was tight in place. ‘I dug in my heels against marrying my cousin.’ She laughed heartily and two dimples appeared in her fleshy cheeks. ‘If you want the truth, I had fallen in love with my cousin’s friend, who had come to our house a couple times. Well, we all joined forces – he, my cousin, and I – and kept talking it up to all the mothers and fathers concerned until they finally gave in and consented.’
I was looking at her, my chin propped on my fist. ‘You married your cousin’s friend?’
She made a ring around her glass with her thumbs and forefingers, looked outside and slowly nodded. There was a faint smile on her lips and in her eyes. ‘Almost twenty years ago.’
I wanted to ask, but it was hard to work up the courage. Finally, I said, ‘Do you still...?’
She sucked the bottom of the café glacé with her straw. When it made a slurping sound, she pushed the glass back. She blotted her lips with a napkin and laughed. ‘I tell the kids not to slurp like that, and here I do it myself. Do I still what? Am I happily married or not?’
I nodded and Mrs. Nurollahi drew a deep breath. ‘Do you see this dress? She pinched the collar in her fingers. ‘I saw the pattern in a magazine.’ The dress had a peter pan collar and six buttons down to the waist. ‘I searched all over Tehran to find the cloth for it.’ The material was white cotton with large yellow polka dots. ‘I went a dozen times to have it fitted and spent a small fortune at the tailor.’ She leaned back in the chair and looked at me. I looked back at her, waiting.
She paused as the waiter came to clear the glasses. When he was gone, she leaned forward, elbows on the table. ‘After I wore it a few times, it got to be just another dress. Of course, I still love it. I’m careful not to stain it, and each time I wear it, I shake it out and hang it back up in the closet so it won’t get wrinkled, but...’ She opened her purse and took out a cigarette case. ‘Do you smoke?’
I took a cigarette. ‘Sometimes.’
She lit a match for me. ‘Me too, sometimes.’
I looked at the silver cigarette case, engraved with a tall-stemmed flower. ‘What a pretty case.’
She signaled the waiter to bring an ashtray by pantomiming knocking the ashes off a cigarette. Then she looked at the case and smiled. ‘It’s a present.’
‘You were talking about the dress,’ I prodded.
She ran her hand over the cigarette box, as if caressing it. She took a puff of the cigarette. ‘When I was in Tehran over Norouz, just by accident I found this belt in General Mode.’ She pushed the chair back a bit for me to see it. ‘It’s the same color as the polka dots, no?’ The belt was indeed precisely the same color as the polka dots, and it had a very large golden buckle.
She pulled her chair forward, looked at her watch and said, ‘In short, people have to take care of what they have. It’s eleven o’clock. At 11:30 I have a doctor’s appointment. There was a whole slew of questions I wanted to ask you.’
She dug into her big yellow purse and pulled out a piece of paper. ‘I’ve noted them all down.’ She began reading them off: Laws of marriage and divorce among the Armenians, custody rights after a divorce, history of women’s rights in Armenia, literacy percentages among the women. I cut her off and said that I could not provide her with precise answers about all that; she had better speak to the Church and School Society. She nodded and noted down the names of a few people. She wanted to invite Armenian women to attend the meetings of their society. ‘The problems of women apply to all women, it’s not a Muslim or Armenian issue. Women must join together, arm in arm, and solve their problems. They must teach one another and learn from each other.’ Now she sounded like one of her public speeches.
I insisted she let me pay the check, but she would not relent. ‘You are the guest of our society.’ In the street, as we were saying goodbye, I remembered to ask her if she had come to the 24th of April commemoration. She had come, and when I asked with some surprise what for, she replied, with equal surprise, ‘Why wouldn’t I? A tragedy is a tragedy, it’s not a Muslim or Armenian thing.’ That did not sound at all like a public speech.
31
After the cool dim interior of the Milk Bar, the bright heat of the street felt good. I was feeling better, lighter. There was a long line at the ticket window as I passed by Cinema Rex. All men, mostly Arab – why weren’t they at work at this time of the day? The upcoming feature was Tom Thumb. I checked out the film poster and the stills on the wall: Tom Thumb sat on a spool that served as his chair, before an overturned cup that served as a table, and he was drinking water from a thimble. An Arab man was selling dried shrimp from a cart in front of the cinema. I held my nose and passed quickly by. I should bring the twins to see the film, I thought, before they get too old and independent, like Armen.
I bought pants for Armen, the ones he had pointed out a good while before, on the condition that I could exchange them if they did not fit. When I came out of the store, I did not feel like returning home. I felt like walking around and thinking, or maybe walking around and not thinking. I walked and I thought how staying at home all the time, socializing with a fixed circle of people, and grappling with the usual repetitious problems was wearing me out. I had to do something I felt passionate about, like Mrs. Nurollahi. I walked past the Mahtab Bakery and remembered Thursday’s upcoming dinner. I turned back, went inside the store and bought pastries and some trail mix.
As I walked out of the store, a box of trail mix, a box of pastries and a wrapped parcel in my hand, I ran straight into Emile Simonian, coming at me head on. Was it my imagination, or did he seem agitated? Before it occurred to me to ask why he wasn’t at work at this time of day, he offered, ‘I wasn’t actually feeling that great, I mean, I didn’t have the patience for work, so I took a sick day. I came to the bazaar to buy some gardening gloves and a trowel.’
Before it occurred to me to say that the bazaar was in the other direction, he added, ‘If you are not in a hurry, will you come with me? I don’t know where to get them.’ Why was he so flustered? A voice said, ‘Maybe because he ran into
you.’ I could not tell which side of me was speaking.
‘For that kind of thing, we have to drop over to the Gardeners’ Club store.’ He took the packages out of my hands and asked, ‘Where is that?’
We hailed a taxi and I told the driver, ‘Alfi Plaza.’
On the sidewalk in front of the Gardeners’ Club store there was a peddler selling olives, fresh pickles, and grape leaves. I thought olives and fresh pickles would be good for Thursday night, and bought some. Emile came out of the store with a gardener’s trowel and gloves, and a few packets of seeds. ‘I bought seeds for sweet peas.’ He saw the peddler’s cart and said, ‘I love grape-leaf dolma. God knows how long it’s been since I had some.’ I bought grape leaves.
We caught the bus for Bawarda. We talked all the way home and I don’t know how many times we repeated, ‘How interesting, me too!’
In front of our house he handed me back the packages and said, ‘Believe me, I’m not just saying this. I have no one I can talk to like this, on and on.’
It was night time before I finished preparing the dolma stuffing. I asked Artoush, ‘Will you take the kids for fish and chips?’ The kids jumped up and down and Artoush probably thought I was making a peace offering. I put the dolma stuffing in the refrigerator, explaining that I had a lot of work to do for Thursday night. I lingered before closing the refrigerator door so as to avoid looking any of them in the eye.