Divided Loyalties Read online

  Her words were effective, but their baba had not consented before she said, “I made them swear to my milk to come back after they’ve obtained their degrees. And I promised that, at that point, we’d all move to Kerman together. Don’t fight me on this. You’re going to have to leave that garden behind.”

  Not only did her sisters not come back after finishing school, but they also found jobs in Arizona and moved there, where the weather was similar to Bam’s. Worse, they brought Maryam’s mother to live with them. “I want to be with my children and grandchildren,” she had said. “I spent all my life raising them and now I have nothing to do in this house. I am no one without them.” She’d pursed her lips. “My home is wherever they are.”

  Maryam’s baba had let her mother remain with them so that her wish could come true. She had died, surrounded by her two older daughters, while Mary’s father stayed back to die in his own home — in his orange grove, among the scent of tangerines — and to be buried in Bam’s cemetery beside his ancestors. Only Mary, who had sensed their father was going to pass, had taken time off from work and come from Toronto to Bam to be present at his deathbed.

  And now it was Mary who had come back to her ancestors’ town only to help an old man who bore a shocking resemblance to her own baba. Even though, in reality, he was the father of this dead girl laid at his feet, naked and defenseless. Mary sat the old man down and turned him away from his daughter’s body. The man’s arm, torn at the elbow, that had turned up in the same scoop with the dead girl was stuck between two mud bricks, and the girl’s body, turned on its right side, was leaning on it. Like a lever, the dismembered arm supported the body’s weight, keeping it up and preventing the dead girl from falling face-down. Her small breasts hung, touching the ground.

  “I think your daughter was taking a shower at five o’clock before the call to prayer when the earthquake happened,” Mary said. She sat beside the man and gave him the second shot.

  “We didn’t have running water at home.” The old man lowered his voice to a rasp. “We went to the public bathhouse once a week.”

  “These men who are working here are all doctors. They don’t look at your daughter as ordinary men look at women, but I’ll go and wrap her in white cloth.” She tucked a wisp of hair on her brow under her scarf. “I’m a Muslim woman. My father was from here. We used to live on Ansari Street, close to Seyyid Mosque. He used to attend Friday prayers.”

  The man didn’t seem to be listening. Crouched, he was rocking back and forth, mumbling something under his breath. Mary waved to the Canadian aid workers to take the body out of the man’s sight. The aid officer walked over to Mary.

  “Are you sure your daughter was alone at home?” Mary translated the officer’s question.

  “I don’t know. She never came with us to Jiroft,” the man stammered, biting his lips.

  The bulldozer ran full throttle again, and the body of a young, naked man rolled out. He was missing an arm. The old man jerked up onto his feet and stared at the unearthed figure. He buried his face in his hands. “I am destroyed,” he said. “Dust on my corpse. My dignity is ruined.” He shuddered like the earth itself. His teeth hit against each other as he spoke.

  Mary thought he would be better off dead. If only he hadn’t seen what his eyes had dared to see. On an impulse she turned and embraced him, as tightly as she’d held her own father — nothing but a bag of rattling bones in the last days of his life. She didn’t want to let go. The old man pushed her back. She was not a family member: a Muslim woman should never touch a man, except for her husband, her father, her brother, or her uncle.

  “I am sorry,” Mary said. The old man didn’t seem to hear her. He had his gaze fixed on his own daughter.

  The aid workers brought two plastic covers from the tent. As they lifted the girl’s body to place her in the bag, the old man suddenly jerked forward and ran toward them. He ripped the plastic from the body and kicked his daughter’s corpse back into the ruins. “Leave the girl who mortified me here to rot.”

  The girl’s body fell on its back, her big brown eyes wide open.

  “She has no shame.” The old man gave a strangled yelp. “Look how she is looking into my eyes.” He pushed the girl’s face onto the ground with his right foot. Then he yanked at the young man’s dismembered arm, pulled it out from between the mud bricks, and tossed the stump into the rubble. The arm landed on its severed end; the hand, stiff with rigor mortis, was turned up toward the low desert sky, its fingers wide open. The old man grabbed the arm and pushed it back into the earth the other way, so that the cut end, instead of the fingers, stood out.

  Next, the old man attacked the man’s body, grabbing his testicles in one hand and squeezing, while, with the nails of his other hand, he tried to pop out the boy’s open eyes. The aid officer grabbed the man’s arms and pulled him back, and Mary gave him a third shot. The other two aid workers lifted the girl’s body again and placed her into the same plastic bag as her lover.

  The plastic the old man had ripped from his daughter’s body drifted on the ground among the rubble until a sudden breeze lifted it up into the air. It caught on the boy’s torn arm where the meat and veins twisted into a knot, and flapped in the dusty air. With its brown skin peeling, the stump looked like the trunk of Mary’s palm tree, half-uprooted by the earthquake. She shook her head at the bizarre idea.

  • • •

  * * *

  Maryam had put the roots of her half-fallen palm back in a hole she’d dug in the soil. Then, using her weight, she’d pushed the trunk up. It was a mature and heavy tree now. The Jesus-like young man who had surprised her when he’d walked into the yard of her childhood house had come to help her with the replanting of the tree. Once they had finished, he climbed the tree and hung his turquoise beads from a lower branch.

  * * *

  At first Mary stood still, staring at the stump of an arm, aghast at the old man’s rage. He knocked the aid officer aside and clawed his way back to the body. Then she ran after him. She grabbed his arms from behind and yanked him back. When he fell on his back, she pressed him down and dug her fingernails into his arms as he struggled to get away. “You should let me tear her up!” he cried. “She sinned, and, as her father, I have every right to punish her. You know that, don’t you?”

  When Mary couldn’t come up with an answer, the old man verbally attacked her. “Your father would have done the same with you, if he’d caught you sinning.”

  The mention of her father opened Mary’s mouth, and the words poured out. “First of all, none of us is without sin. Secondly, leave it to Khoda to judge the dead. You’re not allowed to sit in his place and determine their punishments before the Judgment Day. You know this, Baba. Don’t you?”

  Mary released his arms, not expecting that he would roll over in rage to quickly grab a kitchen knife gleaming amid the rubble. Mary’s heart lurched as the man pushed himself up from the ground and ran. She quickly jumped forward and positioned herself between the old man and his daughter. In the split second before the knife’s reflection caught her eye, she saw the Canadians running toward them. “No!” Mary shouted and threw herself on top of the girl. As she felt the man’s hand grip her throat, she quickly turned and grasped at the boy’s torn arm, using it like a stick to push the old man away. Finally, he fell on his side. Mary let go of the arm and tried to pull the knife out of the man’s grasp. Again he pushed her back, but she grabbed the old man’s wrist and twisted. They struggled until her Canadian co-workers separated them. Only then did she see that the man was bleeding from his side. There was a cut on his side where his shirt was torn and soaked in blood. She tasted salt and earth, and blood in her mouth.

  “You have become like these blond outsiders who don’t have a God,” he said. “I bet you have done every wrong you desired abroad. Good your father did not see you disgracing him like this.” The man got up and spat on his dead girl. “She
is not my daughter.”

  Mary sat in silence. Seeing her unmoved, he turned and left.

  • • •

  * * *

  Now in the early morning, she stirs. Gazes into the dawn. The suffering figure is gone from outside the tent and all is peaceful. She lies on her back and thinks about her father. If it weren’t for him, Maryam would have run after the wretched old man, but this time only to throttle him. She wished to God he hadn’t looked so much like her father, with his same tone of voice, soft, liquid eyes, and long, thin face marked by furrows. She rolls onto her side and thinks about the robed man who had helped her by holding up the trunk of her palm tree as she scraped fistfuls of soil into the hole and then evened out the earth at the base of the tree. They hadn’t even spoken to each other. Not a word.

  Divided Loyalties

  I arrive in Tehran two days after my brother calls to inform me about my father’s death. “A car hit Papa,” Milaad says, his voice cracking like phone static. “It happened close to his home. He died on the spot. The driver fled the scene — we couldn’t find him. There is also something else, which I’ll tell you when I see you.”

  Thankfully, Milaad accompanies Maman to meet me at the airport. Maman and I had a fight on the phone six months ago and we haven’t talked since. That was the night I came back from Paris, the last place I saw my father alive. Our squabble doesn’t matter now. I am here to be with my mother during the forty-day mourning period. I might even stay longer — for six months, a year, or, who knows, the rest of my life — if Maman and I can get along now that the source of our separation is gone.

  Nor does it matter that my mother wrongly accused me of siding with my father. In truth, Papa and I had a row at the end of our trip and he accused me of exactly the same thing: of supporting her. This is what our parents did to me and Milaad all our lives. Each wanted us in their camp when they fought with each other. And once they made peace, they would divide their children between them. Milaad was hers and I was his.

  My situation was much worse than my brother’s during the times when our parents quarreled. As a girl, I was supposed to side with my mother. This wouldn’t have been difficult, if her true reason for being angry was that my father was a miser. We lived very close to poverty because the only money that came into the home was from our mother’s meager salary. Papa used all of his money to buy property. However, the real reason behind my mother’s anger was her desire to control my father and keep him, like Milaad, under her thumb. I believed my father should have his independence as much as I wanted to have mine. I wanted to have freedom of association — to like, love, and assemble with whomever I chose, including my aunt Raazi, Papa’s younger sister.

  Entering the arrivals area and dragging my suitcase behind me, I look around for my mother and see her, along with Milaad, walking toward me. In her black winter coat, slacks, and wimple hijab, she looks slim and miserable. I speed up and we meet halfway. She throws herself into my embrace and wails. “You see, Maana, your mother is a widow now.”

  People standing nearby look at us with comp­assion. “Sorry for your loss,” they whisper as they pass. The other passengers laugh with joy as they reunite with their loved ones. Their families, dressed mostly in bright colors, shower them with flowers and kisses. I pass Maman a clean napkin I’ve saved for my own crying and hold her until her sobbing subsides.

  “Let’s go,” Milaad says, grabbing the handle of my luggage. I am startled by how much, with his sideburns and goatee, he looks like our father when he was young. Milaad has come without his wife, Shabnam. Perhaps he didn’t want to put her through the ordeal of witnessing an unpleasant exchange between our mother and me.

  Hugging Maman around her shoulder, I walk with her out of arrivals and up the road to the parking lot. She continues shivering all the way to Milaad’s white Renault, which belonged to her before she gave it to Milaad as a wedding gift.

  As Milaad drives us out of the airport, I wonder where we are going: To Papa’s house or Maman’s? They are separated but not divorced. Maman and I are sitting at the back, and Milaad checks us in the rearview mirror from time to time, as if he can’t believe he is seeing us so close together again. Holding onto my hand, my mother is no longer crying.

  She had made up with Papa shortly before he died. She’d even taken him to visit her home. Six months earlier, she had refused to even give me the address. This was what began our fight over the phone; she’d said she was afraid I’d give it to my father.

  Maman stares out the car window, her face swollen and her eyes foggy. Milaad turns on to the Chamran Expressway. So we are heading to Papa’s place. He lived in the Atisaz Residential Complex, in one of the old towers that were part of phase one of the development project. When Papa first saw me in Paris, where we both went to vacation this past summer, he told me that he had made a down payment on the pre-sale of a unit in phase two. He also said he intended to put the property in my name.

  My father’s compulsion to buy real estate started during the construction era after the end of the Iran–Iraq War and never slackened. He became greedier with every new possession, which he immediately rented out, using the money toward his next purchase. Recently, he’d even thought of investing in real estate in Vancouver through me. I’d been an architect in Iran, but, unable to find a job in my field in Canada, I became a realtor. I didn’t say no when Papa brought up the idea, but I didn’t want to have anything to do with his real estate ventures, not in Canada or in Iran.

  As I think about my father and our difficult relationship, I set my sights on the marvelous Atisaz buildings, a mixture of cubical and triangular structures that have become landmarks in Tehran’s northwest. I wish I could live in Iran, work in my field, designing constructions like these, and build a future for myself in my country. I haven’t been here for four years — not since 2002, when Milaad married Shabnam and I attended their wedding. Unlike with my last visits, this time there’s no rush to go back to Canada. I closed my latest real estate deal the day before Milaad called. “Can you come right away?” he said. “If you’ll leave tomorrow, you can make it to Papa’s third-day memorial. Maman needs you here. You’re her only daughter.”

  “I’ll be there in two days.”

  “Thank you. You know Shabnam gets along with Maman very well, but she cannot replace you.”

  After I hung up, I immediately called the RE/MAX Lougheed Mall office and told them I would be off for a while; they could give my office to another realtor.

  Milaad pulls into the parking spot assigned to my father. He had no car. I squeeze my mother’s hand and then let it go to open the passenger door. Milaad opens the door for her on the other side and it squeaks. As I take my suitcase from the front seat, I know I must decide if I’ll stay with my mother for good. I can call my landlord and terminate my rental agreement in Vancouver. I can ask a friend who’s got my keys to send me the items I want to keep and sell the rest. In Iran, I will have both a family and a job of my choice. I can buy Maman and Milaad out and have Papa’s apartment to myself. I’ll renovate it, buy new furniture, and turn it into the home I always wanted. I’ll throw parties, inviting Maman and my favorite aunt, Raazi . . . of course on separate nights!

  The security guard at Papa’s building recognizes Milaad and rises from his seat, putting his hand on his heart, and greets Maman and Milaad. “Salam, Malak Khanoom. Salam, Milaad Khan.” He is a middle-aged, bearded man with large, rough hands, unlike Papa’s, with their long, shapely fingers. “This is my sister who lives abroad,” Milaad says, and slips a few banknotes into his hand as we pass.

  “Thank you, and my condolences, again,” he says. His loud greetings set Maman crying again. I hold her in the elevator during our ride up to the tenth floor, where she and my father lived together until one year ago. It is as if I’ve become her mother.

  She separates herself from me when the elevator doors open, pulls a set of keys fr
om her coat pocket, and strides forward to Papa’s apartment at the end of the hall on the left. We troop after her. I enter first and Milaad, carrying my suitcase, follows me.

  I put my boots beside my mother’s shoes on the upper shelf of the shoe rack in the foyer. My father’s brown shoes are on the bottom shelf. He was wearing that particular pair in Paris when he and I visited some old, flirtatious Persian woman he introduced as one of his clients.

  Papa’s scent still hangs in the living room. It is the same smell that filled the room we shared in my cousins’ house in Paris — a mixture of the aromas of Aunt Raazi’s cooking and the scent of the Old Spice aftershave I’d mailed him from Vancouver. Even though he was a rich man, he lived on his loved ones’ charity so that he could purchase more properties.

  The room looks the same as when I saw it four years ago. The walls desperately need painting — Maman had demanded this continuously ever since they’d moved to the apartment — and the heavy, mismatched furniture needs to be changed. This apartment doesn’t look like a rich lawyer’s residence. I recall Maman shouting at Papa, her voice bouncing from the walls, “I’m embarrassed to invite our daughter-in-law’s family to this place.”

  I look around for my father. Is he in the bedroom, his ears stuffed with cotton balls, and a heavy blanket pulled up over his head so he can’t hear the echo of my mother’s bitter tirade over issues mostly related to household expenses and money? No, he is dead,