ROYA SHAMS
TEHRAN, AUGUST 1987
I never really loved being alive. It’s hard to get there without some sort of distance. Hard to describe the shape of a cloud from inside the cloud. Like how I would appreciate gravity more if I’d had trouble floating off in my teens. And what I could sneak away for myself felt notable only in contrast to that baseline of self-lessness. A half hour stolen in the morning to quietly sip tea alone or mindlessly doodle only felt like a reprieve because it was what everything else—cooking, cleaning, shopping—wasn’t.
That’s why I was so annoyed when I met Leila. Our husbands had been friends since their military service. Once a year, they’d drive north to the woods of Rasht, near the Caspian, to smoke cigars and drink and fish and retell the same stories they told each other every year. Gilgamesh, Leila’s husband, was a squat man, muscular, balding. Leila was taller than him, not by too much but still noticeably so. She told me once he asked her not to wear heels, which she said she was happy to oblige. Gilgamesh had worked for the Tehran police since leaving the military. Ali told me that during their trips, he sometimes shot squirrels and doves with his service revolver. I didn’t much like that, but my eagerness at having our house to myself for a few days each year dwarfed the distaste I had for whatever Ali was doing or who he was doing it with.
I knew wives then who couldn’t use the bathroom without first asking their husband’s permission. My marriage with Ali was never one of those, but just being perceived, all the time being perceived, was itself exhausting. Ali’s vacations were vacations for me too.
This was around the time I realized I was pregnant with Cyrus. I still hadn’t taken a test, not wanting to confirm what I already knew was true. But I was spotting, and my spit tasted like copper wire. My breasts were heavy and sore; it hurt to inhale too deeply. I knew what was happening. Making some blue lines appear on a pregnancy stick would mean I would have to tell Ali, and once I told Ali, I knew nothing would be the same. I just wanted to be vacant a little longer. Free from his devout attention, his pity.
When Gilgamesh showed up at our house to pick up Ali, he’d packed a car full of camping supplies: a tent, little pans, gin, wine. He’d married Leila that summer, a small ceremony I remembered mostly because the bride had so few relatives present—a stern doughy father chain-smoking Russian cigarettes, a few ambivalent cousins. And then there they were in our driveway, Gilgamesh and his new bride. She was maybe twenty-four, twenty-five, stout, eyes constantly moving around with an air of boyish mischief. Gilgamesh asked Ali if she could stay with me during their trip, something about it not being safe to leave Leila alone in their house—I wasn’t sure if he meant not safe for her or for him to leave her alone. I begged Ali with my face to say no, wanted desperately to protect my precious few days of total autonomy. But Ali agreed without hesitation and there was nothing to discuss. Gilgamesh barely even looked at me, waddling around inside our house inside his muscles, inside a body grown two sizes too large for his brain. It was like he was at a bank: he deposited his wife, this stranger, and picked up Ali. And then the men were gone, and Leila and I were alone.
It didn’t take long for Leila to emerge from behind her veil of meek decorum. It was like the men took her shyness with them. I had made zereshk polo that first night, but I was, am, not a good cook. I get impatient, distracted, could never get the timing right. My rice turned sticky, my kabobs burned. Serving the meal, Leila didn’t even wait for me to plate myself before diving into her food. She was compact, had cut her hair very short, so her head had these coin-sized curls that moved around as she chewed. We talked about little things for two seconds—yes, the mulberries came from the vendor at the market with the shaggy dog; no, Gilgamesh didn’t like zereshk polo.
“He doesn’t like sweet things,” Leila said. “Sometimes he just grabs a pinch of sumac, a pinch of salt, and he’ll suck on that. Is that normal?” she asked.
“I have never heard of that,” I admitted.
“He’s like an alien who pretends to be human. ‘Ah, this is food? I shall eat this. Ah, dancing? Let me try that,’ ” she said, pantomiming her husband in a sort of dance seizure.
I smiled a little, despite myself, which seemed to encourage her.
“Really! He pours cough syrup in his tea! Every morning and every night!”
I didn’t know what to do with my face, so I tried to keep it still. I didn’t know this woman at all, couldn’t figure out why she was telling me these things. Suddenly, she said, “Ah, I don’t want to talk about husbands anymore. They’re gone after all, alhamdulillah!”
I said nothing but was a little insulted. She was the one who’d brought up Gilgamesh. I’d said nothing about Ali.
“Okay,” I tried. “What would you prefer to talk about?”
“Oh god! If you have to ask that, we are already lost, aren’t we?” She laughed, but I was feeling frustrated.
“How about we go for a walk,” Leila said. “I want to show you something.”
It was late already, maybe seven p.m. But I did not want to be rude to this guest, however unwelcome, however rude she was being to me. She got up from the table, leaving her plate where it was, and walked to the coat rack by the door. I made a point of collecting her plate, silverware, and glass slowly, methodically, to the point where she said, “Oh come on, Roya jaan, just leave it! Who are you even cleaning up for?”
Myself? I thought reflexively but did not say.
“I just want to rinse everything quickly so the grime doesn’t set,” I said, no longer trying to mask my annoyance.
Leila rolled her eyes, stood impatiently by the door like a petulant teenager while I took my time rinsing the forks, the knives. Finally I met her by the entrance with my coat. She was looking at herself in the little gold mirror we had hanging near the entrance. It was something I’d come to love about her, in time. It wasn’t narcissism, the way she was always looking at herself. I recognized later there was a kind of wonder in it, running her fingers over her smile lines, the skin of her forehead, as if to say, “Where did you come from? This skin, what a strange envelope!” But there, in the moment, I just saw a silly vain girl.
“Where are we going?” I asked, opening the door.
“To the lake,” Leila said. “I want to show you something.”
I was trying to be a good host, but my hospitality was wearing thin. The lake would be a twenty-minute drive, and it was already starting to get dark. I resented having to agree to this stranger’s whims. I grieved for my lost aloneness.
“Isn’t that a bit far,” I asked, obvious in my unhappiness.
“Do you have a pressing appointment?” Leila asked impishly.
I frowned but pulled my scarf over my head. Even though it was beginning to get dark outside, Leila pulled out a pair of sunglasses, big ones with thick black frames that covered up half her face, and we headed out.