2

Those two sentences had ensnared Salim, not Hasti’s high forehead, nor the dimples on her cheeks when she smiled.

When Hasti returned home from the office, Grandmother said, “Salim called and asked permission to take you out for coffee, and . . . I didn’t let him finish. I said, ‘We have coffee; come have coffee here. Then I can meet you, too.’ I hope that wasn’t the wrong thing to do.”

Hasti took a shower. All these years she had been enamored of Morad, and Morad hadn’t said anything, and now the persons closest to her were driving her toward marriage with someone else. Grandmother favored an ordinary life devoid of excitement. Her mother’s reasoning was this: the number of suitors will become fewer day by day, and in the end, you will become a stale, old maid. If she became Salim’s wife, she could, with the windfall of the Farrokhi family money, at least fulfill her brother Shahin’s lifelong wish and send him to America.

But Morad’s voice was in her ear, and Morad’s close-set eyes remained etched in her mind. In real life, Morad’s eyes were never focused on one point. They were always darting about in search of something unseen. But his voice always circulated around a single subject. Morad would say, “Consumption patterns must be changed,” and Hasti would tease him and say, “Yes, and we should all have bedsheets full of holes, like a sieve.”

Hasti knew why, of all things, bedsheets had come to mind: just recently Mother Eshi had bought Russian sheets from a shop at the end of Lalezar Street. “However much you wash and iron them,” she had said, “they won’t wear out. Even American women buy Russian bedsheets.” And Hasti had said, “And Russian people eat American wheat.”

Hasti was debating whether to wear her New Year’s outfit or her mother’s gift of the alternating matte and glossy violet sweater. Salim had not seen either one. She put on the dark red jacket and skirt and reserved the sweater for the day Morad would visit. She fixed her hair and makeup. Now that everyone wanted to sell her, let the price be high.

Salim arrived. He had a bouquet of Persian violets in his hand. He gave the flowers to Hasti and said, “Prelude to New Year’s.” He did not say where he had picked or bought them. And he did not listen to Hasti’s insistence that it was not necessary to remove his shoes. Hasti knew that she should put a pair of slippers in front of her guest’s feet, but the only men’s slippers in the house were Shahin’s plastic ones that, aside from being too big for Salim’s feet, were badly worn.

Hasti put a side table in front of the armchair in which Salim had sat, and she put a tray with coffee-making supplies on the table. Salim asked, “Shall I make some for you, too?”

“Yes, please.”

Salim didn’t look at Hasti. He had given her the one modest glance allowed by his religion that day at the Bowling Center restaurant. But Hasti searched for the magnetism of his gaze and thought, The eyes of this guy cannot be forgotten. They contain a supernatural secret. If, as Grandmother says, “God is manifest in humans, His glow reflected especially in the eyes and the gaze, more than in other senses,” Salim’s eyes are proof of this.

Salim poured a teaspoon of Nescafé from the container into a cup, added a spoonful of sugar, poured in a little boiling water, and mixed it well until it foamed. Then he poured boiling water and stirred again. He stood and gave the cup of coffee to Hasti. Grandmother had put the bouquet of Persian violets in a small crystal vase on the tray. “What refinement you’ve shown,” Salim said, “to have put my gift flowers on the tray.”

“The refinement is not mine,” Hasti replied. “It is Grandmother’s.”

Grandmother entered. She had changed her clothes and wore her New Year’s prayer chador. Her face had been freshly washed, and her appearance, with that white hair, was spiritual, like one who has just finished praying.

Hasti sighed in relief and left the stage and the conversation to Grandmother and Salim. Sometimes she heard what they were saying; sometimes she didn’t. She didn’t hear them when her mind was caught up in thoughts of Morad.

Grandmother was clearly pleased with Salim. She asked what he had studied and what his father’s work was. Salim said that in England he had studied the history of religions and that he had written his master’s thesis on comparative mysticism. He said that his father was a button merchant in the grand bazaar (his friends called him “button man”) and that he himself was obliged to work in his father’s business. Since he had joined, the business had expanded, and now they also import braid, edgings, lace, and women’s decorative items. Touran Jan asked, “Why ‘obliged’?”

“I wanted to become a university professor,” Salim said, “but they didn’t accept me. I don’t have a doctorate.” And Hasti had no idea that worthless buttons could get a person’s wife into an elite sauna and a person’s son to England.

Then Salim talked about his father’s activism during the Mosaddeq era. Another reason they had not employed him at Tehran University, he said, is that his father was a supporter of Mosaddeq and that he and Shamshiri had attracted a large number of bazaar merchants to the cause.

Now it was Touran Khanom’s turn to say that her son was martyred as a follower of the old man, Mosaddeq—that he was shot near the Parliament building—and to show Salim the photo of Hasti’s father that hung on the living room wall.

Salim rose and stood in front of the photo. Father’s photo looked out at Hasti every day from its black frame. A young man with a thin, curled mustache. His face seemed freshly shaved and his hair just out from the barber’s shop, neat and brilliantined. New jacket and slacks on his body, a bow tie at his neck. Grandmother would say to Hasti, “Your eyes are just like his.” Mother Eshi would say, “The old woman is talking nonsense. Your eyes are just like mine.”

Salim didn’t move from in front of the photo. It was as though he were asking Hasti’s hand from her father’s image. Then Salim’s attention was drawn to the photo of Mosaddeq to the right of Hasti’s father’s image. Mosaddeq, in a black cloak, squatting in the corner next to a wall in his place of banishment, Ahmadabad. A cane was positioned diagonally between his legs. He had signed the photo years ago and had sent it to Touran Khanom, the mother of a martyr . . . Touran Khanom had always told Hasti, “Name your son Mosaddeq.”

Touran Khanom recited:

O heart, did you see that the beloved did not come?

The dust came, yet the rider did not.

She added, “This is the saddest poem that Omid composed for the old man, Mohammad of Ahmadabad.”

Salim looked at the picture of Khalil Maleki, whose jacket had been thrown over his shoulder and whose shining eyes were fixed on the camera. Even in the photo his large bald head shone from cleanliness. This picture was inscribed “Dedicated to the light of my eyes, Hasti Nourian.”

Salim turned to Hasti and said, “So you knew Khalil Maleki well?”

“I knew Mr. Maleki during the last two years of his life,” Hasti responded. “He used to say to me, ‘Hasti, you be my eyes, and I’ll be your knowledge.’ He would speak about Marxism in simple words, and I would write them down. But every day that I went there, he would say, ‘First, go say hello to Sabiheh.’”

“Was he afraid of his wife?” Salim asked.

“Not at all! He respected her.”

“Maleki was a great man,” Salim said. “He was the first person to propose communism without Moscow—before Tito, even before Nehru. He shook the foundation of that ideology on this side of the world. But few people heard his voice. Perhaps he had spoken in an arid desert or into a well. He had come too early . . .”

Hasti remembered the last night when she, along with Jalal and Simin, had accompanied Maleki home. Sabiheh Khanom was crying, and Jalal suggested that if in the house . . . Hasti prepared coffee in the kitchen. Simin asked Maleki, “Why? Why?” And Maleki said, “Simin Khanom, your heroes will not always remain heroes. We turned to Tito, who had no faith in freedom. We gave our hearts to Nehru, and we were disappointed.” And Simin said, “Trust only in yourself.” And Maleki had cried. In July of that year Maleki died, and in September, Jalal.

An image of Jalal Al-e Ahmad was on the adjacent wall. Salim gave it a perfunctory look and said, “I have seen this photo of Jalal.”

“It’s the last photo of Jalal,” Hasti said. “Monajjemi, the engineer, took it at Jalal’s cottage in Asalem.”

Salim sat, and Hasti welcomed his look into her eyes. What secrets did those eyes hold? What to call them? What best described them? Magnetism? Attraction? A door to the unknown heart? Those eyes pulled Hasti into a sea—no, a calm ocean—and then carried her to a secure shore and protected her. And those know-it-all eyebrows? Why know-it-all? Those eyebrows held a thousand questions in reserve.

“More than anything,” Salim continued, “Maleki’s strong antenna detected weakness in the whole Soviet system and the dictatorship of the proletariat.” He swallowed and added, “A system that had the name of socialism but whose customs were a type of state socialism, or, in Maleki’s words, state capitalism.”

“But Maleki himself was a socialist,” Hasti responded, “a freedom-seeking, Iranian socialist, stressing the rights and interests of the small and unfortunate nation of Iran . . .”

Salim finished Hasti’s sentence: “While the Stalin regime established the Tudeh Party to sacrifice Iran’s interests to the immediate interests of the Soviets—in the case of the northern oil, in the disturbances in Azerbaijan, in opposition to the National Movement and other Iranian anti-despotic movements . . .”

All three were silent. Grandmother left and returned with her son’s photo album. She faced Salim and said, “Mr. Farrokhi, come here and sit on the sofa so I can show you photos of my son and of Hasti as a child.” She sighed and added, “Those were the days.”

“What happened that your son was martyred?” Salim asked.

Grandmother breathed heavily. “Mosaddeq was coming out of the Parliament building. He said, ‘Right here, where the people are, is the Parliament, not in there . . . ’ There was no stool. My son bent down and Mosaddeq stood on his back and gave a speech, and my child was shot.”

Salim combed his beard with his fingers and was deep in thought. Hasti searched for the gaze of his eyes, but Salim’s eyes were traveling far away. That night they appeared more gray than blue. Perhaps his gray jacket and trousers had spread their color to his eyes. Why had he not worn a tie? He had taken the first step of a marriage proposal, hadn’t he?

“Your son’s name wasn’t Reza, was it?” Salim asked.

“No.”

Hasti knew the photos of the album by heart. Grandmother was turning pages and explaining on and on. The first photo was an image of a chubby child, dressed from head to toe, as though he was packaged, like a baby bear that does not control his hands and feet. They had placed him on a table, and in front of him was his birthday cake that had only one lit candle. And then other photos: the same child lying naked on his stomach, his head raised, and like a lizard, his tongue sticking out. How hard they must have worked to get the child to raise his head and look at the camera. Of course, the photographer must have said, “Look at the birdie,” but sticking out the little tongue was no doubt the initiative of the child himself.

Then the same child on Touran Jan’s lap. The same child in the arms of his father. The same child standing under a tree with Mehrmah Khanom holding his hand—Mehrmah Khanom who was not much more than a child herself. The same child sitting on a chair wearing short trousers and a jacket—he even has a bow tie. And other birthday photos with lit candles to which the passage of time had added one for each year, until it had reached eighteen lit candles. And now the child, through the blessing of time, has also grown a mustache.

They arrived at the wedding photos. Salim’s attention was captured. “Why has the bride’s photo been cut out?” he asked.

Touran Khanom answered, “I cut it out myself. That slut—that woman no longer had a place in my life. Not even one year had passed since my young son had departed when she left and married her first suitor. Shahin had not even turned one.”

So much the better, Hasti thought. If not, Mother Eshi would have nagged her and Shahin their whole lives, saying that she had wasted away her youth for them.

Photos of Mother Eshi had sometimes been completely cut out, sometimes partially. One place the upper part of her body was gone, but her hand and lower body cradled Shahin who was sleeping in her lap in swaddling clothes. In that photo Hasti sat in the arms of her father. She had tilted her head and was looking at him. “She was a clever girl,” Grandmother said. “She would do anything for her father. Every day, when it was time for him to come home, she would sit by the door, and when her father arrived, she would clutch his legs so tightly.”

Hasti remembered being motherless as more difficult than being fatherless. Even at five years of age she had wanted to take her mother’s breast in her hand and, not suckling, put her head over her mother’s heart and go to sleep to the tune of its beat. One time she climbed onto Grandmother’s lap and took her breast in her hand and called her “Mother Tutu.” Grandmother had become silent and had frowned. Hasti had called Touran Jan “Mother” or “Mother Tutu” several more times, and again Grandmother had frowned, until finally she lost her temper. She placed her course pack on the kitchen table and yelled at her grandchild, “Your mother is that slut, not me. Don’t call me ‘Mother’ any longer or I’ll smack you!”

“Can I call Mehrmah Khanom ‘Mother?’” Hasti had asked.

“No.”

“Akhtar Iran?”

“No.”

Nevertheless, we should be fair. Although Grandmother didn’t have time to caress or fondle them, she took good care of her grandchildren. In her senior years, she returned to her studies so that she could be relieved from the constant thoughts of her son, and also so that she could get a degree and advance from elementary school teacher to secondary school teacher.

Grandmother and Salim had become deeply engrossed in conversation. They weren’t talking about trivial things. They spoke seriously of history, God, and mysticism.

Salim was saying, “We must come to know God a new way. We must build a new history. With the transformation of the Renaissance, Satan inserted himself into history. It is our duty to drive Satan away.”

Hasti listened carefully. The words of this guy were fresh and unrelated to Morad’s words. She interrupted. “In my opinion, the era of rebirth or, in your words, Renaissance, is the greatest of human transitions. It’s a turning point in human history; the Renaissance’s focus on humanity is the most significant development that humans have achieved.”

“Humanity, yes,” Salim said, “humanism, no. People, whether left, right, or moderate, must first and foremost become truly human and humanitarian. But the seed of colonialism and exploitation of the rest of the world was planted by the humanism of the West. Even now, colonized countries imitate the West. These countries want the Western world to remain just as it is. Taqizadeh said, ‘Iran should become Westernized.’ But in my opinion, our era is the final stage of the transformation of the Renaissance. At the very least, countries like ours should not whole-heartedly grasp the colonialism born of the Renaissance. Countries of the Third World must look to the future.”

“One cannot wholly negate everything Western,” Hasti replied. “Western science, technology, art, philosophy, and ideas like socialism . . . We can at least gain inspiration from them.”

“We have had and do have sources of inspiration of our own,” Salim said.

“He means the Quran, Islam, and mysticism,” Grandmother said.

“Revolutionary Islam,” Salim added. “Revolutionary messianism. This type of religiousness is a departure from the advocacy of a Western system and from immoral modernism.”

Grandmother put her hand on her chest and said, “It’s as though you are speaking from my heart.”

“The Irish turned blindly to a Marxist revolution,” Salim continued. “Some countries have fixed their eyes on the Middle Ages. We should find refuge in Islam, and the totality of our own Islam.”

Just like Morad, Hasti thought, this guy lectures people, but the subject of the lectures is different. And he uses so many foreign words. This is such a charming habit. Why doesn’t Grandmother leave the two of us alone?

Hasti responded to Salim. “You mean return to ancient times? You mean despite being historic and having a long history behind us, acting exactly against history?”

Salim criticized her. “With such a mentality, how is it that you have hung Jalal Al-e Ahmad’s photo on the wall of your room?”

Hasti cocked her head. “I was and am very attached to Jalal Al-e Ahmad. He was a man who had—how shall I say it?—a halo . . .”

“Charisma,” Salim said.

“But a person,” Hasti continued, “doesn’t necessarily agree completely with all the opinions even of one’s beloved. His wife, Simin, speaks about ideology-strickenness. She says that all Third World countries, and even Western countries, are ideology-stricken. ‘Have correct political understanding, yes,’ she says, ‘but not ideology-strickenness of any kind.’ Excuse me for stealing some of your catch words and style of speaking.”

Salim laughed. “I should meet this Simin Daneshvar and . . . ,” he said.

Hasti finished Salim’s sentence: “And finish her off for training such impudent students.”

Salim became serious. “Having a correct political conception, yes, but denying religious ideology, no. Most people worldwide are religious. Humans need metaphysics, a refuge, a divine supporter beyond the powers of this world. In my opinion, appealing to religion and to mysticism in an autonomous way is a natural act.”

“Contemporary humanity,” Hasti said, “is becoming empty and hollow. It’s traversing the last stages of the industrial age. It’s tasting the information age. Contemporary humanity is in a state of eruption—an eruption the consequences of which are worse than those of the Mongol invasion. In my view, the end of human civilization has arrived.” She hesitated and added, “Our era is a Kafkaesque era. It’s a reflection of Kafka’s depressed subconscious and restless character.”

Salim looked at her with astonishment and said, “If you turn to God and put your trust completely in God, you won’t be so despairing.”

“My mother and my grandmother say that when I began to speak, the first word that I said was ouch. The first word is important.”

“It was just a word,” Salim said. “The idea that the first word a child utters shapes his destiny is a superstition.”

Hasti had to laugh. That was so similar to what Morad had told her: “Girl, banish these superstitions from your mind.”

Salim began to comb his beard with his fingers again. And then he combed his hair with all ten fingers. Hasti thought for a moment of going to get a comb and putting it in Salim’s hands. It was laughable, it seemed so inappropriate; beard and hair did not require this much combing. And in her heart, she said, Man, my laughter was from happiness. I was happy that you, despite your religiousness, are not superstitious and that you and Morad have suggested to me one concept through two different expressions.

“Mr. Farrokhi,” Grandmother said, “you were saying . . . ?”

Salim bit his lip and said, “The problem of humanity is not the arrival of the information age; the problem of humanity is Satan-strickenness, Miss Hasti Nourian.”

Hasti wanted to say, “You mean my inappropriate laugh,” but she didn’t.

“Satan is the carnal self,” Touran Khanom said.

“We have individual Satans and a group Satan,” Salim said. “In our era it is the group Satan. He has filled the entire earth. Humanity today considers itself God. This itself is a type of Satan-strickenness. The path of salvation is revolutionary messianism.” The annoyance had gone from his voice.

Hasti recited:

Past the course of the moon,

Yet, too far out of the sun’s reach.

“Who composed that poem?” Salim asked.

“Mehdi Akhavan-Sales.”

Salim took a notebook and pencil from the pocket of his jacket and asked Hasti to recite the poem again so that he could write it down. He put the notebook on the arm of the chair and said, “Perhaps you are right, and humanity will destroy itself with space research and nuclear weapons. But I’m hopeful that there will be a change in human life . . . a new way of safeguarding everyone’s security. We must struggle and fight to reach that goal, however. Individual prosperity is not enough.”

Again, Hasti disagreed. “If you want my opinion, Nietzsche’s prediction is correct that the distressed world will become full of clamor and commotion (just like the coppersmiths’ bazaar), full of narcotics, full of promiscuity. Our days are dark days.”

“These dark days,” Salim responded, “will come to an end, and humanity will come out victorious. The visible and invisible worlds, it is also in the Quran . . . ,” but he didn’t continue his sentence.

And again, the silence of three people.

It was Salim who resumed speaking. “I wasn’t aware that Iranian women have become informed and knowledgeable to this extent. My mother says that you are a painter and no more than twenty-two years old.”

“I’m twenty-six years old.”

“And this talk . . . ?”

“I have taken several classes with professors I admire. It’s possible that I have inadvertently stolen their words.”

Again silence.

Salim seemed to be thinking, and Hasti imagined that he was weighing whether he should take such a pretentious wife or whether he should leave by the same route he had come. She stood, put the vase of violets on the table in the middle of the room, and took the coffee-making supplies to the kitchen. She opened the refrigerator to bring out a bowl of fruit and saw that meat had been prepared for cutlets. Mint and tarragon had been put in a basket. Red radishes had taken the shape of roses. She took out the bowl of fruit. Washed lettuce was in the strainer on the table in the kitchen.

Hasti realized that Grandmother planned to keep Salim for dinner. With all that leg pain of hers, she had gone to Darvazeh Dowlat and bought fresh herbs, symbol of New Year’s, from Mohammad Aqa, along with expensive fruit, ground meat, and lettuce. She planned to tie the marital knot firmly that very night between Hasti and Salim, with his rust-brown beard. A youth whom she had never seen . . . whom she didn’t know . . . She had only heard of his qualities from Hasti. Grandmother had never made such provisions for Morad.

Hasti put the bowl of fruit on the table and heard Grandmother saying, “But what I want is for people to make peace with one another on earth. Now, if the path to this is, as one of Hasti’s friends says, Marxism, so be it, as long as it doesn’t bring God down from heaven to earth.”

Hasti filled a plate with an apple and a large orange and went looking for a fruit knife and fork. She heard Salim’s voice saying, “I believe in the last words of Dr. Shariati, who said, ‘Freedom, equality, mysticism.’ But I know that Marxism is also a type of West-strickenness—the same West-strickenness that has been going on, in my opinion, since the Renaissance.”

Salim took the orange and attacked it with the knife. The knife was old and blunt. “Marxism accepts modernity,” he said. “Therefore, religion becomes the opiate of the people. I don’t agree that God should be disregarded or that the proletariat should consider the world their property. In the meantime, I’m sure the continuation of Western imperialism is not the remedy, whether Marxism or black reaction, whether alcoholism or emphasis on sexuality.”

Salim gave up on peeling the orange and took the apple. Hasti knew that a knife that wouldn’t cut an orange wouldn’t cut the skin of an apple, either. She left and brought a kitchen knife that had a serrated blade and put it in front of Salim, but Salim had eaten the apple unpeeled. Hasti used the kitchen knife to peel for him the largest orange there was in the bowl; she separated the sections and put them on a clean plate.

A smile appeared on Salim’s closed lips. “Hasti Khanom, don’t be so despondent.”

“What should one hope for?” Hasti asked.

“Hope for a God who is all-embracing.”

Hasti responded: “Simin says that ancient Indians predicted that our era would be an apocalyptic one in which the earth would be annihilated, and that this apocalypse had already begun 2,500 ago. But she herself is an optimistic person. She believes that humanity will finally arrive at a rational solution and get life in order.”

Touran Khanom became angry. “All these nonsensical words that this wicked witch has put in your head; I’m fed up with this witch.”

Hasti pounded on the arms of the chair with both fists and said, “Don’t call Simin a witch!”

Salim was calmly eating the orange; he didn’t even raise his head. Hasti’s contrariness, her doubts, even her anger—none of these had yet driven him away. He took his notebook from the arm of the chair, opened it, and said, “What I have thought about from time to time, or have heard from someone, or have read somewhere and have liked, I jot down. This is the eighteenth notebook. I want to read several pieces of it so that you will know me better.” He paused and added, “In my opinion, your problem is bewilderment, a mystical bewilderment.”

It was the first time that Hasti had heard such a phrase. It was the first time that someone had examined her emotional state and had given a name to that state. Naming is important, she thought. When you give a name to something or some state, part of the issue has been resolved. “What is mystical bewilderment?” she asked. “It’s not the case, is it, that, because you have researched mysticism, you connect every ailment to mysticism?”

Salim read: “O Infinity, who are You? Are You the core of an atom around which electrons rotate? Is it because of the explosion of one mother atom, which was You, that life has begun? That existence originated? From You we have separated and to You we shall return?”

Hasti was tempted to say, “It’s like the literary sections of the magazines, Today’s Woman and Women’s Ettelaat, except at a higher level.” But she didn’t. She contented herself with saying only, “Then God is a woman?”

Salim became indignant. “God is beyond gender, Miss Nourian.”

Hasti made amends. She felt she was playing cat and mouse, pushing away with one hand, and drawing in with the other. “I long for a God,” she said, “that is love and hope and whose manifestations are conditions that attract me in humans and in the world.” And the words slipped out: “And a look that is also in your eyes and a smile that with those closed lips . . .”

Salim sat up straight and fixed his eyes on her. It was as though concern for religious modesty had left him. That look seemed so deep and so warm . . . His voice had the same warmth. “God is both love and hope,” he said. “Just as Sa‘di said, ‘It is closer to us than the veins of our neck. It pulls us, and from Its pull, the longing for union rises in us . . . ’ The jugular vein.”

For the first time Hasti welcomed her entrance into another world, a world beyond the one she had experienced until then. Magical eyes and a deep voice, as if from an exalted world, had tamed and calmed her. Did it mean that if she became Salim’s wife, that condition would continue?

Salim stood and said, “Well, I should go,” and he turned toward Grandmother. “May Hasti Khanom and I have permission to . . .”

Grandmother interrupted him and said, “Please stay for supper and dine with us paupers.”

Salim happily accepted and wanted to phone his mother. Hasti went to the bedroom, brought the phone, and connected it. Salim dialed standing right there and listened for a while. He hung up and dialed the number again, and then again.

Grandmother returned to the room and worriedly whispered in Hasti’s ear, “The cutlet mixture has become runny. I wish I had not grated the onions.”

Hasti laughed and said, “My dear, add a little chickpea flour.”

“We don’t have any.”

Salim dialed the number again, and apparently no one answered, since he said, “I will take my leave. My mother is expecting me for dinner.”

“It’s clear that our food is not worthy of you,” Hasti said, “especially since the cutlet mixture has become runny.”

“I’ll go home,” Salim said, “and let them know and then return for supper. And I’m perfectly happy with crumbly cutlet.” He put his hand to his beard and said, “Hasti Khanom, will you come with me?”

Hasti blurted out, “Why not?”

She went to the bedroom to get her purse. Grandmother followed her. “Cover your head with a scarf, dear. Please.”

Hasti stubbornly refused. “He must accept me as I am. If he doesn’t want to, all the better.”

When Hasti returned to the living room, Salim said, “If I make a request of you, will you agree?”

Automatically, Hasti said, “Of course.”

“I ask you to put on a scarf.”

The scarf was in Grandmother’s hand.

Salim started the car. “As the proverb goes,” he said, “‘The night is long and the dervish awake.’” The two did not speak until they were near Mokhber al-Dowleh Square. The streetlights were on.

“Do you see that statue?” Hasti asked. “A worker is slapping the head of a villager.” Since Salim didn’t express an opinion, she continued, “This intersection is waffling between being a square and being an intersection. It’s neither this nor that.”

The knot of the scarf was pressing on Hasti’s Adam’s apple, and she thought she would suffocate. She loosened the knot.

They stopped behind a red light. “Now let’s proceed to the main issues,” Salim said. “I was too shy to discuss them in front of your grandmother. I talked so much. I must have bored you.”

“On the contrary, your talk was refreshing, and I also expressed my opinions freely.”

“Despite your expression of opinions different from mine, you’re exactly what I’ve been looking for. My mother has introduced ten girls to me up to now . . .”

“And she’d probably seen most of them in the sauna!”

“It’s a good tradition, after all. In the old days they selected girls in the public bath; now it’s in the sauna.”

There was a large crowd in Sepah Square. This one was a real square. The swarm of men, women, and children was such that people had poured off the sidewalks into the street. Taxis, vans, buses, passenger cars, motorcycles, bicycles, and handcarts, full or empty, all searched for a way through the crowd. They went forward a foot and stopped. Swear words were on everyone’s lips. There were many helpless policemen, and the few police officers were even more helpless. Salim stopped so that a man holding the hands of two small boys, one in each of his hands, could pass. A woman with a child in her arms followed them.

There was no opportunity for conversation until they reached Sepah Avenue. Salim began. “We can spend some more time together and perhaps both of us, or maybe only me, will end up in love.”

Hasti grinned and said, “And me probably in a headscarf!”

“This is not a difficult obligation . . .” Salim said, “since my intention is pure and in accordance with religion.” He laughed and added, “With a scarf, our socializing is not against Sharia law, provided the two parties agree. But I must tell you that I have some commitments with respect to my mother.”

“But your father’s alive.”

“My father is always either taking a temporary wife or getting rid of one.”

“Well, he’s a Muslim man, after all.”

She shouldn’t have said that, and now that she had, she should make amends. Why, she asked herself, do I cause him pain? He who has told us about his beliefs. From the very beginning, I should have said “no” and spared him, as well as myself and Grandmother, with her runny cutlet mixture. When they reached Hasanabad intersection, she offered her opinion: “This one, too, is waffling between being a square and being an intersection.”

The light was red, and Salim put on the brakes. The congestion in the Hasanabad intersection was no less than that in Sepah Square. The line of men and women at the Mihan Cinema box office was disorderly. The people of Iran, Hasti thought, will never become accustomed to lines, not until eternity. There was a fight, too, and they even exchanged blows. The light turned green and turned red again, and there was no way forward. Some people selling black market tickets were wandering about up to three hundred feet from the theater. They would whisper into their customers’ ears, and, with a glance to the left and the right, they would sell tickets and search their pockets for change. Or they wouldn’t finish their transactions and would turn their backs on their customers. Hasti wondered what film they were showing.

Salim put the car in gear, and it moved forward. “Do you know what film they are showing?” Hasti asked.

“Vaxi, Taxi, something like that . . . with Raj Kapoor.”

“Mr. Farrokhi,” Hasti said, “it’s natural that you should protect your mother.”

“I’m my mother’s only joy,” Salim replied. “My sisters have married and left home. My older brother shows up once a year. My mother takes refuge from anger by eating and sleeping. I’ve convinced her to go on a diet and to go to the sauna, to exercise and get massages. Excessive weight is dangerous for her.”

“I know a good doctor,” Hasti said. “Dr. Bahari. Perhaps with diet pills . . .”

“She made a date with your mother to go see Dr. Bahari, but I’m worried that those pills will be harmful to her.”

Salim turned into a street to the right and stopped beside a large gate. The light above the gate was on, but Salim didn’t get out of the car.

“So you live in the same neighborhood as Professor Mani,” Hasti said.

“You know Professor Mani?”

“He was my professor.”

“I’m a stranger in this town, it seems. Your mother said that you have finished your studies at the Faculty of Fine Arts. But I didn’t know that Professor Mani was your professor.”

“He’s retired now, but I still have the honor of working with him at the Ministry of Art and Culture.”

“That reminds me of another issue I want to discuss,” Salim said. “Do you want to continue working after marriage?”

“Of course.”

“Why?”

“For financial independence. You well know that the result of men’s economic dominance is the greater exploitation of women.”

“Most Iranian men,” Salim said, “at least 70 percent of them, are not ready to tolerate the economic independence of women—that is, they don’t accept the reason that women have sought financial independence. Listen to me: You think that if you have financial independence, you will be less exploited. No. If you are married to an unsuitable man, he will take your monthly salary and say, ‘It’s in my house that you work, and the time that you should spend in service to me, my children, my family, and my relatives, you work in an office.’ Then you must again extend your hand to your husband and request your own money back from him for the expenses of toiletries, the hairdresser, clothes, etc.”

“You are in no way an unsuitable man,” Hasti said. “You are a refined and wise young man, and you will not exploit your wife, whether she works or not.”

“I look at the matter differently,” Salim said. “I don’t want my wife to work, whether at home or at the office. She will be tired enough if she only takes care of the children and her husband. Think about it: waking children from sweet sleep at the crack of dawn and passing them like footballs from aunt to aunt to grandmother so that a woman can go to work—is that right?”

“Several nurseries have opened, and more . . .”

“Measles, scarlet fever, whooping cough—colds and sore throats at the very least—await children there. They get them from each other. Since mothers are going to work, they leave the children no matter what their health.”

“More vaccines have been developed . . .”

Salim thought a moment and continued. “Some men become suspicious of their wives’ work in offices and lose trust in their wives. Why? Because . . .” And he was silent.

Hasti finished Salim’s sentence. “Because they fear that other men will cause their wives to stray. Or what’s more, that their wives will give up their feminine identity.”

“That is also an issue,” Salim said. “But even though I have not seen you more than two times, I trust you.” He paused and asked, “Now do you agree that we see one another for a while?”

“Certainly,” Hasti said. “But I should tell you the truth. I’m expecting a proposal from a friend I’ve known for years, but he keeps evading the issue and is not ready to take a wife. I’ll give him an ultimatum, and the next person to whom I will extend a hand will be you.”

Salim pressed his eyes closed. He bit his lip. “Does your mother know about this?” he asked.

“My mother has never taken him seriously.”

“How about your grandmother?”

“Grandmother loves him like her own child, but she doesn’t think he’s appropriate as a husband for me.”

“Are you in love with him?” Salim asked.

“Yes.”

Salim put his hand on the door handle. Hasti knew, or thought she knew, what Salim was thinking. He’s thinking how much time, energy, and hope have been uselessly spent; how much he has shown off his knowledge. He asks himself, “What monsters are these?” and “Why didn’t Hasti who, at twenty-six years of age, can spout out all those mouth-filling words, say the last word first?”

Salim opened the car door, and it occurred to Hasti that he would go and leave her there until she became tired and left. “Wait a minute,” she said. Salim shut the door and turned to Hasti. “Forgetting him will not be easy,” Hasti said, “but know that if I come to you, it will be with all my heart, body, and soul.”

Salim put his head between his hands, and Hasti thought, When he raises his head he’ll whine, “Why do you women play with the feelings of young men? Why do you all do the same thing—deceive young men and their mothers, draw them to your home, and in the end confess that you are in love with someone else?” His tone will no longer sound enchanting, his look will no longer have that magnetism, and he will say bitterly, “Miss Nourian, even if you are able to forget, the echo of the music of first love will forever mix with the beat of your heart, and so you will not be able to come to me with all your heart, body, and soul.” Yes, then he’ll bring forth yet another long piece of literature, but this time, from the depths of his own mind.

In contrast to Hasti’s expectation, what Salim said was not another long piece of literature, and it did not have the meaning that Hasti had imagined. Salim said, “As Dowlatshah, the Qajar poet, says, ‘And whom will the beloved choose? And whom will she desire?’” And then he displayed even greater magnanimity. “It is obvious that a girl of your perfection, truthfulness, and sensitivity cannot remain, until twenty-six years of age, a virgin emotionally. I understand that completely. So both of us will wait.”

“And we will continue our relationship. I enjoy our conversation.”

As Salim got out of the car, he asked, “Won’t you come in and say hello to my mother?”

“No,” Hasti said. “I’ll wait for you right here.”

The big gate was half open, and Hasti heard the sound of Salim’s footsteps on the sand for a time before a light went on and a door opened and closed. And the tops of the tree branches that hung over the large gate greeted Hasti.

There was no news of Salim, and again Hasti thought that he had left her in the lurch and it would be over right then. She knew the area well. Professor Mani’s house was at the end of the same street. She could go to Professor Mani’s house. No, it was too late, and Professor Mani was ill. Well, she could take a bus or van or whatever other vehicle came by and return home.

When Salim returned, he handed Hasti a package as he sat behind the wheel.

Hasti first pulled from the package a small jar with a tag taped onto it. “What’s this?” she asked.

“Chickpea flour.”

Then she brought out a fruit. “Is this a bitter citron?” she asked.

“No. It is a bergamot orange. I picked it from the greenhouse. The potted plant is so large with all these branches and leaves, but this year it produced only this one bergamot orange.”

As they set off Salim asked, “Do you know the story of the bitter orange and bergamot girl?”

“In our childhood, Mehrmah Khanom told it to us several times . . .” Hasti smelled the bergamot orange and pressed it to her cheek.

“When I was picking it,” Salim said, “I heard its voice saying, ‘Oh, don’t pluck! Ouch, he plucked!’ But would it separate from the branch?”

When they arrived at the house, Hasti went to the kitchen and gave the jar of chickpea flour to Grandmother. But the cutlet had already been fried and spread on a plate, and Grandmother had poured the thinly cut potatoes into the frying pan. They sizzled. “I went to Teimur Khan’s house,” she said, “and got chickpea flour from his wife.”

The fresh bread and carnelian-colored quince jam, the fig jam, and the basket of herbs on the dinner table were a testament to Grandmother’s effort, and Hasti knew that tonight, due to aching legs, sleep would not come to Touran Jan’s eyes.

Salim asked about Hasti’s brother, and Hasti explained that tonight Shahin had taken Mother Eshi and Parviz to the cinema. Afterward they would probably give Parviz hazelnut ice cream, and Mother Eshi probably wanted fried sausages and mustard, and probably they wouldn’t have found a means to get home yet. Salim noted that Eshrat Khanom has a car and driver.

Grandmother, who was tossing the salad, said, “Shahin doesn’t set foot in his mother’s husband’s car, and he doesn’t go to their house either.” She laughed and said, “I don’t know how my former daughter-in-law could get on a bus with those high-heeled shoes, or into a van or a taxi with those . . .”

To keep Grandmother from saying anything more, Hasti explained that sometimes Shahin takes Mother Eshi to a restaurant, or he gets tokens and they have lunch together in the Faculty of Dentistry cafeteria. “The reason for tonight’s outing is that Parviz really wanted to see the film Pinocchio.”

Salim praised Grandmother’s fig jam and asked, “You mean Shahin Khan is studying dentistry?”

“No,” Hasti said. “It’s just that the food at the Faculty of Dentistry is better.” She said that Shahin is in his fourth year at the Faculty of Law, in the field of political law, and that his favorite professor is Hamid Khan who, for New Year’s this year, will go on a field trip with all the fourth-year students.

When Salim had given his thanks, said good-bye, and left, Grandmother put her hand on her lower back, sat in the armchair, and rubbed her knees. “Girl,” she said, “you spoke so much nonsense today. You showed yourself to be more bitter than horseradish. Why? I don’t have a good opinion of your mother, but she’s found a perfect suitor for you.”

“All the time the offended figure of Morad was before my eyes.”

Hasti tossed and turned. Sleep had left her. The thought of Salim’s eyes—eyes that seemed as though their owner was not of this world, that seemed to be searching for or seeing something far, far away—and of his magnanimity did not let her rest.

Simin had taught her that whatever model she chose for her painting, she should pay attention to the eyes more than to all the other parts of the body. Simin had said, “From the gaze you will discover the secret of the model’s spirit.” In the words of Hegel, she had added, “‘The eyes are the body, and the gaze a spirit that has appeared in them.’ It’s like a jewel in the heart of a stone. The jewel is the spirit of the stone, but finding it is difficult. You must get to the hidden jewel by going through the stone; that is, through the solid body.” And she had said, “Sight is superior to all other senses, and the blessing of the gaze, the look, the view, the wink, the watch is superior to and more mysterious than words, smiles, touch, taste, scent. In general, to look, stare, fix your eyes, or see is better than all the other windows that link us to this world.”

And Grandmother would talk about the evil eye and would always burn wild rue incense for herself and Shahin and Hasti, and she would say that the gaze has so much power that it can cause a rock to burst. How well she remembered the evil eyes that had dried out perfectly shaped trees. That . . .

Hasti remembered the bergamot orange that Salim had given her and that Grandmother had put on the heater under the photo of her son. She had said, “This is a bergamot,” and Hasti had said, “No. It’s a bergamot orange.” Touran Jan had said, “Bergamot orange and bergamot are one and the same thing. We will make jam of it, and another night, when he comes . . .”

“No,” Hasti had said. “Leave it right there under the photo of my father.” Then she had kissed Touran Jan and said, “My poor dear, how hard you worked to show us in good light!”

Why had Salim given her a bergamot orange? Why had he reminded Hasti of the story of the bitter orange and bergamot girl? Had he wanted to say, “If I want to pick you, will you yell, ‘Ouch, he plucked; ouch, he plucked!’? Will you want to say, ‘Don’t pluck; it will hurt me. After all, here is my heart, here is my mind . . . ’?” The memory of Mehrmah, the memory of the story of the bitter orange and bergamot girl, the memory of Salim’s eyes, the memory of Morad . . .

Hasti’s eyes grew hot, and tears ran silently down her cheeks. Does all this attention to Salim’s eyes, she thought, and all these mental associations foretell the tearing of my heart from Morad? Eyes have the blessing of tears. Tears of joy and happiness, tears of sorrow, and Hasti counted tears of mystical bewilderment too. Yes, tears. They are the extract and crystallization of all bitterness, all happiness, all ambiguity in a person’s spirit. But tears are bitter because people’s misfortune is greater than their good fortune. Through the years, many dynasties had been overthrown, but the dynasty of tears still rules over people.

Hasti became aware of the associations and the depictions in her mind. Did she want to enter into the realm of poetry? Poetry was also dear, like eyes, and Simin would say, “The gradual perfection of every art is when it comes close to poetry.” But when she thought deeply about it, she realized that, from the time that one of the painters of the day, Sohrab Sepehri, had also become a poet, the desire of most painters was to become a poet-painter. A poet, like Sepehri, who wanted “to give a jasmine flower to the beggar” and who would say his prayers toward a red rose and whose father, when he died, saw all policemen as poets.