Because I Said So (33 page)

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Farhad knew where I was. It turned out that I’d tried to go in through the men’s entrance. The guard pointed to the women’s entrance, draped with black curtains to hide the goings-on from the eyes of men. Inside, berobed women checked the contents of my pockets and waved a metal-detecting wand over us before allowing us to pass.

Accompanying Guity were Afsaneh and Mastoneh, her sister Parvoneh’s daughters, whom I’d looked forward to meeting for some time. These smart, independent, lively women had embraced me from afar despite never having met me, sending friendly e-mails and reaching out to their only American cousin. It was after midnight local time when we arrived at Parvoneh’s apartment. She had converted her bedroom into a barracks for us, with mattresses extending from wall to wall. Exhausted and giddy, we stumbled into bed. “This is what I love about Iranians,”

Farhad said to me as we lay in the dark, trying to calm our over-tired children. “They come meet us at the airport in the middle of the night, and then give up their bedroom.” I took note of what he said, thinking it would be only the first of many things he would reveal to me.

The next day, Afsaneh brought me a light silk scarf to replace my woolen shawl. Smaller and nearly sheer, it was much better in the heat, and I was grateful to finally get some sartorial assistance. I remembered a newspaper article I’d read about a woman who owns an Iranian delicatessen near San Francisco. Around
Noruz
, she told the reporter, she reaches out to the American wives of Iranian men who wander into her shop unsure how to prepare for this important holiday, looking for guidance they don’t get at home. My Iranian husband had brought me here, but like the shopkeeper, the women would help me fit in.

Warm, generous, and patient, the cousins took a day off work to drive us around the city and show us the sights. After dinner we piled into their mother’s ancient Toyota and drove to the cooler hills of northern Tehran. Although Farhad had tried to prepare us for the chaos of Iranian traffic, the reality was terrifying.

Cars zigzagged across the road, ignoring the painted lines divid-224

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ing traffic into lanes, refusing to stop at the lights. Leyla was at once nervous and intrigued by the lack of seat belts. “Why don’t you have seat belts?” she asked Afsaneh, who was driving down the middle of two lanes of traffic. “We have too many seat belts already in this society,” Afsaneh obliquely replied.

We parked the car and walked up a trail lined with cafés, kebab shops, and drink stalls, where crowds of people were out walking and socializing in the cooler evening air. Traditionally dressed women clad head to toe in black robes mixed with younger women pushing the limits of the dress code in cropped pants and remarkably tight trench coats. Their scarves sat far back on their heads, merely a nod to the law, though Afsaneh took pains to adjust mine over the nape of my neck.

We left the next day
for Shiraz, where we were greeted at the airport by an entourage: Dr. Farzaneh, the paterfamilias; his sister; her husband; as well as the family driver and his son. I began my campaign of relentless cheerfulness, good manners, and grace and embraced everyone.

We arrived hot and sweaty at the Farzanehs’ home. At the end of a quiet, narrow, dead-end alley off the busy main road, a tall wooden door opened onto a beautiful garden courtyard. Invisible from the street, it was an oasis of tall green trees, running water, and flowering plants. We women removed our scarves and all of us sat outside to drink
secanjebeen
—a refreshing drink of mint and shaved cucumber. The sun had set, and the evening was cool-ing down. The plants had just been watered, giving off the scent of fresh dirt. In the calm stillness, Kian ran around merrily and Leyla, despite being totally excluded from the conversation going on around her in Farsi, tried really hard to be polite. Later, when the suitcases had been unpacked and the gifts doled out, she glided from room to room with a shawl tied around her head, deep into make believe.

Our days in Shiraz were leisurely and languid, slowed by the heat and the baby. I tried to let go of my itch to get out and see
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more of the country and instead to just enjoy being in Iran, hanging around the house, making modest excursions, watching the kids connect with their grandparents.

As a toddler just learning to talk, Kian’s experience was sensory and social, just as it would have been at home. He loved his low sleigh bed that had once been Farhad’s, so shiny with fresh paint that it looked new. For Kian, it was like being in a little boat. He could get himself in but not out, lifting himself up on his arms as high as he could and then, using his belly as a fulcrum, tipping forward, planting his face on the sheets, feet flailing in the air. Each morning he woke and cried, “Mamani! Mamani, come!” Guity played peek-a-boo through the curtains and then took him downstairs, leaving the rest of us to sleep a little longer. Outside in the garden Kian would cheerfully greet Dr. Farzaneh, kissing him on the cheek. One morning he climbed into his stroller and stretched out his hand, beckoning his grandfather. “Bia, Baba, bia,” he said. Baba rose stiffly from his chair and pushed the stroller slowly around the garden, with Kian looking very smug. “You make me young,” Dr.

Farzaneh told him, beaming.

Leyla was utterly entranced by the nuances of Iranian life, which fueled her already rich, passionate imagination. One afternoon I sat alone in a seldom-used sitting room. Though the sun was still high in the sky, it was a little dark inside, and a breeze played with the sheer white curtain at the open window. Leyla flitted into the room talking to herself, sprawling on the over-stuffed velvet chairs. She lifted up the cover of a glass dish filled with sweets, slipped a treat into her pocket, and flitted out, barely aware that I was there.

Another day we visited the tomb of the poet Saadi, which Farhad had loved visiting when he was young. Leyla stood before a reflecting pool, staring at the coins on the bottom glinting in the sun. “If I had a coin I know what wish I would make,” she said,

“that Iranian culture would be free.” Taking three coins from Farhad she made three wishes, keeping the other two secret.

We descended into the underground teahouse to see the fish pond beneath the domed tile ceiling. Leyla leaned over the tiled bar-226

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rier to look at the fish and Farhad smiled, watching his daughter do the same thing he’d done as a child. But in the close quarters of the teahouse, Leyla got self conscious. “Everybody’s staring at me because of my stupid red hair,” she whispered. I told her that their curiosity was kind, not hostile. “It makes my face turn red,” she replied, longing to blend in with the other Iranian children.

After lunch one afternoon, Guity, Farhad, and I sat together in the kitchen drinking tea. Guity was taking a rare break from her routine of managing the house; she spoke English for my benefit even though it was tiring for her. As she and Farhad told stories of their accomplished and eccentric family, I saw a different side to my husband. He was calm, happy, and reflective—more relaxed than I’d ever seen him. Was the shift in his behavior because of the warmth and comfort of unconditional maternal love? Or was Iran, and his childhood home, the one place in the world where Farhad was truly comfortable? I realized this was the first time I’d seen him in his native country, at home.

Thanks to the barriers of language
and cultural understanding, most of the time I was unaware of what was going on around me: where we were trying to go, what time we were supposed to be there, and who was waiting for us. Yes, I was insecure in my role as an Iranian wife and mother; I wasn’t juggling clients against soccer practices or maneuvering my work around the babysitter’s availability. I’d forsaken both control and responsibility, but instead of feeling excluded, I felt oddly liberated.

Farhad glided seamlessly between English and Farsi, forgetting what language he was speaking and unaware that I didn’t understand half of what he was saying. If I was in the room, he assumed I heard him say to his mom (in Farsi) that we would be ready to go to the bazaar or the museum or the restaurant in ten minutes. Then he would become confused and irritated when I didn’t jump up and get ready. “We’ve been trying to get out of here all morning,” Farhad would complain. Until that point I would be unaware that we were trying to do anything besides
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hang out in the garden playing with trucks. I would round up shoes, diapers, water, and snacks, put on my frock and scarf, gather the kids, and get in the car. There I would sit in the heat, conserving energy by not talking, my lack of Farsi all the more convenient. I was so hot in my overcoat and scarf that, despite the glaring sun, I finally abandoned my sunglasses because they just slipped down my sweaty nose.

Official government slogans proclaim that “the
chador
is a woman’s freedom.” Though clearly propaganda, there was an ironic truth to it, at least for a while. Aside from the discomfort of wearing so many layers in the heat, I found my prescriptive Iranian wardrobe unexpectedly freeing as well. I wore the same linen overcoat every time we went out. My floppy linen pants were basically cool and comfortable and did a remarkable job of hiding the dirt.

Confined by the law, I was not responsible for, nor was I judged by, my appearance. But then again I was only a visitor—I hadn’t been forced to cover myself for the past two decades.

One afternoon Guity dressed in formal black for the funeral of a twenty-year-old boy who had been struck down while cross-ing the street. She cursed the regime that demanded that she wear a long black trench coat, black stockings, and a black scarf in the oppressive heat. As Guity got dressed, Leyla sat on her bed mesmerized by a basket of scarves, pulling out one after another, holding them up to the light, tying them under her chin, listening to our every word. “When it ends, I will take these scarves out into the garden and set them on fire,” Guity declared. “Oh, no,”

Leyla cried. “Send them to me!”

Eager to spend some time
alone with her grandchildren, Guity urged us to do some traveling on our own. So Farhad and I left the kids and went for an overnight to Esphahan, one of the finest cities in the Islamic world. With Farhad the happiest and most relaxed I’d ever seen him, I looked forward to being a couple again, even if only for twenty-four hours. And I was eager to see more of Iran through his eyes, without the children’s needs
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distracting my attention. Yet, as we walked down the aisle of the packed plane, I felt acutely self conscious, and instinctively I reached for my kids—who of course were not there. Until that moment my universal identity as a mother had mitigated my foreignness. I felt suddenly naked without the protective cloak of motherhood.

Arriving in jewel-like Esphahan, we had dinner under the stars, surrounded by fountains in the magnificent, romantic courtyard garden of our elegant hotel. After dinner we walked to the beautiful
Pol-e Si-o-Seh
, or Bridge of Thirty-three Arches.

Descending the stairs to the riverbank, we went under the bridge onto a patio extending over the water. A cool wind blew, and we sat with our backs to the bridge, looking over the water and the city beyond. The dank, swampy smells of the river mixed with sweet smoke of water pipes. The tea was warm and I drank too much of it, not wanting to censor my experience in any way.

For a snapshot in time we were ourselves again, a couple in easy sync, traveling and having an adventure in a foreign land. As we strolled in and out of the shops in the city’s expansive bazaar the next day, Farhad began haggling, teasing, and bonding with the shopkeepers. He was in his element: connecting with people, hearing their stories, joking around—the charming, curious guy I’d married. And yet I was seeing another side of him as well, just as I had in his mother’s kitchen: that of an Iranian man in Iran, reveling in a lifetime of cultural understanding. While Farhad talked and talked, I wandered around each tiny shop, looking at every last item. I longed to move on together; as fascinated as I was to see my husband in this new light, I was also eager to linger in our intimate experience of the city, to understand more of what I was finding so indefinably Iranian before we had to head back to Shiraz. The afternoon was closing in on us and we were running out of time, but I wasn’t in control.

On the plane back to Shiraz, Farhad basked in the memory of the bazaar. Stories of his childhood bubbled up: how his mother, charming and warm, once sat with a tailor through hours of conversation and innumerable cups of tea before walking out with a
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pair of pants at the price she’d wanted. Or about an old restaurant in the Shiraz bazaar where the waiters wore traditional baggy pants, felt hats, and colorful sashes, and how magical it was to see the dust floating in the beams of sunlight streaming through holes in the walls. I was grateful for the stories. But they heightened my sense of missing out on the richest facets of our trip.

Near the end of our visit we accompanied Farhad’s aunt Mahine to the mosque where his paternal grandparents are buried. In keeping with the rigid dress code required in religious places, I was ordered to put on socks, shoes (no sandals today), a scarf, overcoat and, on top of all that, a
chador
. Mahine sent Farhad back into the house to get a more formal long-sleeved shirt. This was the first time he’d had to wear anything other than a T-shirt the whole time we’d been in Iran. Although men are not allowed to wear shorts, their wardrobe is otherwise not strictly controlled.

“Aaaaaah,” he grumbled as he struggled to pull the shirt on over his T-shirt. We were out of the car and in front of the mosque.