Divided Loyalties Page 14

  Mojgan was very sick when my father brought her home. He told me to forget about Hamid from that moment on. He would help me divorce the bastard. My parents went to my home and got my things. I stayed with them. I turned completely paranoid. I was afraid that Hamid was going to sneak over to my parents’ house and kidnap Mojgan again. I even took my cheshm siyah to the bathroom with me. My maternity leave was over. My father wanted me to go back to work. He said they would take care of Mojgan during the day, but I quit and never left the house. At night, I woke up several times, checking to see if Mojgan was beside me. I saw Hamid’s shadow behind every window. The only time I wasn’t agitated was when I was breastfeeding Mojgan and my mother would brush my disheveled hair, as if I were a small child. My breast milk dried up more every day as the shadow of Hamid grew bigger and bigger in my mind. Finally, my father decided that I had to leave the country.

  My parents had to sacrifice their house to get us out of the country. I needed Hamid’s permission to get a passport for me and Mojgan. He had disappeared again, and if he came back, I knew he would probably ask for a bigger sum than the person who forged a passport for us. With the passport, I could travel to Turkey, but from there I couldn’t go anywhere, because every other country needed a visa. Through one of our distant acquaintances, my father found Abbas, who smuggled people out to Turkey. There were eight other people with me accompanying Abbas that day on the bus to Turkey. We pretended not to know him. I sat with two women. Neither of them had a baby. I was afraid that Hamid was going to appear before the bus got to the border and take my cheshm siyah away from me. During the three-day journey, the bus stopped at least ten times so that the passengers could eat, stretch, or go to the bathroom. I stayed inside the bus most of the time, and other times got one of the women to hold Mojgan and stand behind the bathroom door while I was inside. I didn’t care if they thought I was crazy.

  Mojgan got a urinary infection twice during that year we lived in Turkey in the shitty accommodation Abbas provided. I didn’t say a word to my parents about our condition when I called them. They had enough to deal with on their own. In their old age, they had become renters again. They couldn’t afford a place in the same neighborhood they had lived in for thirty years. Then, after the Dutch police caught me at the border and sent us back to Turkey, they had to move to an even smaller house in a worse neighborhood to provide money for Abbas to forge a new passport for us.

  I never told my parents that I paid Abbas too. He charged his female customers extra. We had no other way but to give ourselves to him; otherwise, he would send us back to Iran. When he came back drunk from the bars in the middle of the night, he made me kneel, stood in front of me, took out his dick, wrapped my long hair around his hand, and pushed my head close enough so I could suck it for him. There were a few times when Mojgan woke up and cried. I told my captor, “Vel kon zolfo, Abbas agha. The baby needs me.” But he didn’t let me attend to her. He said if I pulled his cock from my mouth, he would put it in Mojgan’s.

  My parents don’t know about any of this. They are happy that their granddaughter and I live in the best city on earth — in Vancouver. Every time I call, I assure them that they haven’t sold their house for nothing. If, one day, they were to find out about my real life — for example, that I was once caught shoplifting, or that I was in a complicated relationship with an Italian man — they would drop dead. Fortunately, my social worker got me out of the first mess. She convinced the police that I was on medication and wasn’t aware of what I was doing. Fortunately, Mojgan is still with me. My mother still has her hopes that one of these days I’ll become an immigrant, establish myself here, and bring her over to see my cheshm siyah. She told me that her only wish is to comb Mojgan’s hair like she used to comb mine. She asked me to let it grow until she can be with us. I have not taken Mojgan for a haircut for years. I am determined to bring my parents to Canada to live with us in their last years. My parents didn’t make themselves ghorbaani so that I could be one.

  I cannot, under any circumstances, write and sign that I am a victim, as the people at Victim Services want me to. I am not a ghorbaani. And this is my last word.

  Sign Language as Second Language

  There is no private language.

  — Ludwig Wittgenstein

  I am in line at the bank. The Brazilian and the Italian tellers are busy with customers who are craning their necks to grasp what the men are telling them in their thick accents. The quickest of the tellers at this branch — a short, stout young man who doesn’t have an accent (a real Canadian) with short, dyed-blond spikes — is not in today. There is a sign on his counter: CLOSED. I look at my watch. The Italian and the Brazilian take their time. Keep talking. I’ll have to grab something to eat on my rush to class. They don’t care. They just shoot bland smiles at the impatient customers like me.

  I see a hand waving at me from behind a desk at the other end of the counter. It belongs to a teller I’ve never seen before — a young Asian man. He must be new.

  My turn. I take out my bank card and the student loan check. The words pour out of my mouth even before I sit down. “I want to deposit this and I need forty dollars in cash.” I look up at the teller for a response. He smiles. I am confused. He waves his hand gently in front of my eyes and then points to a sign on his desk: I’M DEAF. PLEASE BE PREPARED TO COMMUNICATE IN WRITING.

  “Oh, cool,” I say out loud. “I am always prepared for writing.” He winks a few times, but his eyes stay focused on my lips. Oh, who am I talking to? He’s deaf, I tell myself. But that’s a good thing, because he won’t hear my accent.

  I’ve never had my lips read. What’s more, I love writing. Actually, I am a writer. Or want to be. A romance writer. Sure, I’m pursuing higher education — CAD drafting, which has nothing to do with love but is good for making money and a secure future — but my secret passion is the writing course at the local community center.

  It might be too late for me. I may be a university student, but I am already thirty-six — “mature,” they call me — and there isn’t much English vocabulary in my word bank and my savings account is low on grammar. Nevertheless, I am more comfortable expressing myself in writing than I am speaking aloud. The same is true in my mother tongue, Farsi, a language that is said to be, as the old expression goes, as sweet as sugar. I have always felt this way. I didn’t always hate talking, but now I get cramps in my gut when I hear myself speak with an accent. This is new. Post-immigration syndrome. Words lose their shape in my mouth.

  While the teller’s gaze is still pinned to my lips, I read the name-tag on his white button-up shirt and say, “Hello, John. I’d like to deposit a check, withdraw forty dollars, and pay my hydro bill.”

  He shakes his head, points at the paper, and jots down, “Please write the things you want to do, one at a time.” He draws a smile beside his words and passes the pen to me. I frown. I know the rule of “one thing at a time” from ESL class. “Don’t cram too many ideas into your sentences. It is best if each sentence contains only one idea.” Wherever you go in this country the same rule holds: one idea at a time — even at a bank with a deaf teller with a fake English name!

  The paper in front of me is filled with scribbles and silly smiles. I find a blank space between two happy faces and write my first request: “DEPOSIT.” Then I raise my head and try to pull my lips into a smile. He gives me back a grin so generous that it makes me let out a passionate “John” that has nothing to do with him, really. I remember how I once confused my former lover by moaning “John” the first time he went down on me. It took him a few months to ask who this “John” was whose name I’d screamed. I laughed so hard that I thought he would leave me on the spot, but I stopped in time to explain: “There is no John. ‘John’ is an utterance that springs from the heart to the tongue when we Iranians experience pleasure, feel joy, or when we become enthralled. Literally, it means ‘life, soul, essence of existence,’ somet
hing like this. We also use it to address our loved ones. For example, if I call you ‘Richard John,’ it means, ‘Richard, my dear, my love, my whole life.’”

  John the teller smiles patiently as I laugh at my funny memory. He holds up a finger to say, “one moment.”

  He takes my check and looks at the monitor. He seems the same age as me, maybe a few years younger. I like the way this man has dressed in a vest and a tie, and put on glasses with rectangular, shiny, black frames that fit well on his round face, and even add an extra charm to his look. His complexion is much darker than that of the Asian people I know. His black hair is spiked. He has the wide nose of a Filipino and the big eyes of a Vietnamese. Tiny freckles crowd around his nose. Under my gaze, he stands and turns. He has the build of a Japanese man — broad shoulders and short legs — but he does not walk in the short quick steps of the samurai I’ve seen in movies. He showcases all I find attractive about Asian men.

  Finally, I manage a glance down at his handwriting on the page. Formal sentences that slant toward the edge of the paper. I like the way his g’s curl up and his i’s curve in the middle. His handwriting makes me think he is easygoing and warm. I’m so lucky it’s Y2K, the year 2000, the year of the ILOVEYOU bug, when everyone had, so no one has to see my childish handwriting in English. Especially publishers.

  He prints a receipt and with a gentle nod indicates he wants me to sign.

  “All right.” I catch myself speaking, and nod my head, yes. He grins. I can’t take my eyes off the happy row of teeth he displays — or from the cute freckles on his wide nose. I shoot back a big smile, satisfied with my ability to interpret this visual language of his and express myself in the same language. Where and when have I learned this language? I have no idea. Speaking it feels soothing, easy, comfortable. I have never felt as confident in my English skills during these bloody challenging years in Canada as I do right now.

  “John John” drops his head and I remind myself of the first rule of thumb: don’t try writing until ideas have gelled in your mind. Do all Canadians do it this way? One thought at a time? And what is it that I want to express? He is still waiting for me to sign the papers in front of me. But all I want is to drop the pen in my hand and, instead, grab hold of his meaty fingers, nested together on the desk. However, as a writer I know that I should always hold onto a pen. My fingers should always remain faithful to the pen. Or nowadays, the keyboard.

  “Is there anything else I can do for you?” He writes on the only empty space left in the corner of the page; his words, like the freckles on his nose, jam together. I think of writing him an invitation for coffee. In this way, I would use my pen to plot a romance story for myself rather than for a made-up character. Yes, that’s what he can do — go out on a date with me . My hands, though, do not dare to express my wish. They stick not only to the pen but to the original plan.

  “I NEED $40 IN CASH,” I write.

  I wait for him to bring me the cash, the idea of initiating a romance still fresh in my mind. Having found the right male character, I am already developing a plot for the story of our love affair. Love stories have always been my favorite. My aunt, the cute, tiny old lady who once was a teacher and never married, the woman who took care of me during the day when my mother was at work, got me started on them. I was only three when she sat me on her lap and told me the story of Layla and Majnun as she fed me. I’ll never forget the spark in her old virgin eyes when she narrated how much Layla suffered, being apart from her lover. Persian literature is full of love stories: Vis and Rāmin; Khosro and Shirin, Bijan and Manije. The most admired, read, and memorized form of poetry in Persia and today’s Iran has been ghazel, love poetry. Love is forbidden, but it has nevertheless managed to survive a history of violence, invasion, and atrocities — all those cruel kings, pools of blood, and eyes and tongues gouged out.

  The first scene is starting to form in my head. We are sitting in the Starbucks coffee shop just around the corner. We are both deaf and, as such, live in voluntary exile in our imaginary world. Writing is a lifestyle we chose for ourselves when we realized we didn’t belong to the real world but to the world of myths that no longer exists. We are, however, two productive members of a common past, constantly engaged in a serious discourse with a sweet future that never drops from the tree of possibility since it is not going to ripen, ever. We have no paper or pen with us at the café, where we sit in an intimate corner on the same side of a small table, so we pretend we are not only deaf but also blind. I take his glasses off and run my hand against his face where I know the freckles are — the same size and color as poppy seeds. Then I place my hand over his closed eyelids and listen to the words said by the movement of his pupils. My hands later slide down and rest on his latte-sweetened lips. They are sticky and give my fingertips a sudden tingle of excitement. He touches the bits of cupcake on the corner of my mouth as I nibble his finger. It tastes like berries. I imagine my mouth as a paintbrush. I paint his little freckles purple with my kisses. I scream in excitement, “John John!” Wrong move, for it brings the waiter over to our table. John pulls his face away. Although we’re blind we still can feel the looming shadow of the waiter. He slams cash down on the table.

  John the teller gently touches my arm through my jacket and points to two twenty-dollar bills laid down beside my hand. I take my time getting out my wallet and tucking the money inside. He looks over my shoulder and hesitates before handing me back my bank card. I turn around. A young girl, thin and blond, wearing tight jeans and a short tank top that frames her full breasts and displays her pierced belly button, is watching me. She shuffles every now and then. She wears a belt with large holes from which a set of chains hangs. I quickly turn back to the desk and thrust my bank card back into John’s hand. Then I take the pen.

  Yes, I am simply going to write to my teller that I am attracted to him before this girl takes my seat. I will use all the seductions of writing I’ve been taught. I will confess that I have always wished for a deaf lover, without being fully conscious of it. In this case, my accent won’t bother my lover; on the contrary, he’ll love it!

  Besides, in bed I can talk as much as I want without fearing that it might jeopardize things. In the past, I started talking to my white lovers in my mother tongue when we were in bed, and the next morning they were gone. That’s why I am blaming Canada for all my romantic failures, and for all the sweet men with bitter tongues whom I’ve let into my bed.

  I wish all Canadians were deaf! Then I would feel like I belonged to this place. Then I could have remained silent as I took the oath of allegiance to the Queen at my citizenship ceremony. But what if they had asked us to make that oath in writing? I’d have been really screwed because I would not have been able to cheat, which I actually did. As the others were making their oath, I mumbled my favorite song in Farsi under my breath. I didn’t flee my homeland and avoid making an oath to the Supreme Leader only to come to a country where they would force me to make such an oath to a monarch.

  But I will not blame the Supreme Leader or the Queen for my landing in a foreign place nine years ago. The members of the writing group I used to attend in Iran were no less bossy or oppressive than the leaders of the revolution. They forced me to write dry literary stories that were not to my taste. They thought my romance writing was lowbrow, degrading, and superficial. Even worse, they called my stories “unimaginative,” not “revolutionary” enough.

  “Read Hemingway and Faulkner, not Danielle Steel,” they said. To me, however, the simple act of loving in a place where young men and women who stroll side by side in parks are arrested and lashed for it is revolutionary. I was once arrested in Saei Park, sitting between two male friends and reading one of my stories to them. They put me in a solitary cell for one day because of my crime. I would have gotten lashes if my parents had not fabricated a story that I was the official fiancée of the man sitting on my left. His mother gave the same version to the moral
ity police over the phone.

  I did not consider sitting on a park bench with two male writer friends a revolutionary act, but I did consider it heroic to write romance in a land of no love. I view my writing as my most subversive act, even more revolutionary than the act of one of the female writers in our group, the tall, classy woman with short hair. What she did was acknowledged as a brave and subversive course of action by all male writers. She worked for the Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults before and after the revo­lution. One day she was called before the authorities in the morality office and was given a repentant letter to sign. She didn’t wear hijab before the revolution and even for a short time after; she always talked with her male colleagues, and was seen laughing, indicating that she had counter-revolutionary, non-Islamic ideas. She should have been ashamed of her past and should have acknowledged her repentance by signing the letter provided. The classy virgin writer (by virgin, here, I mean unmarried) did sign the paper, but not the one the authorities wrote. She rewrote the entire letter, saying that she was proud of her past, yet she would comply with the new rules set out by the morality office.

  At least in my romantic tales I didn’t comply with any new rules in place at the writers’ group. I left the group when I was asked to quit reading Danielle Steel and write sublime, worthy, literary stories. Although I’d never actually read any of Danielle Steel’s books, I had read her Persian counterpart, R. Etemadi, which I kept a secret. I wouldn’t have gotten admitted to the group in the first place if I’d ever mentioned R. Etemadi. What I liked the most about his books were their imaginative and “subversively futuristic” titles, written in Farsi on the front of the book and in French on the back — for example, Ce soir une fille mourra (Tonight, a Girl is Going to Die).