September 2022
On a September day with air crisp enough for even the grumpy stationer to grunt hello at the high school kids, when leaves on trees are beginning their auburn transformation, at that tender time of twilight during which it is impossible to imagine a world ever robbed of hope, they see her on their screens. Her unexpected emergence pulsates like an echo, a memory unspooled, a wound from the past, a ribbon of hope.
Hours before the moment of her unexpected appearance, Leily and six of her high school friends had marched down Massachusetts Avenue. Past the numerous banks and nail salons of the town center, past the shoe shop founded a hundred years ago and the independently owned pharmacy, Leily led her friends and then stopped right next to the old-timey cinema.
In the window of Miss Ellie’s Café hangs a familiar green termeh tapestry. Delicate birds sewn with shimmery silver thread onto the cloth sparkle in the afternoon sun. On the glass door, a taped-on piece of paper declares, “Café closed for private party!”
Leily pushes open the door and the bell above it chimes. Inside, the air smells of coffee and cardamom and something yeasty. Seven circular tables with four chairs around each are all the café holds. As her eyes adjust from the brightness outside, Leily notices minuscule gold stars covering every table. Helium balloons festooned with “Happy birthday!” float around the room like ghosts.
Framed photographs and calligraphy verses cover the café’s walls. There are photos of the famous polo square in Isfahan, the Si-o-Se bridge and its thirty-three arches lit up at night, the poet Hafez’s tomb in Shiraz, and the iconic Azadi Tower in Tehran. In the picture holders of Persian calligraphy, flowy cursive spells out verses from ancient poems. And right behind the counter is a framed faded Polaroid photo of two dark-haired girls at a mountain vista, their arms around one another, both in slacks, one with her hair in a ponytail, the city of Tehran behind them.
Miss Ellie looks up, rushes over, greets the group, and kisses Leily’s cheeks. Her silver hair is in its characteristic chignon. She wears a yellow blouse, black pants, and her favorite boiled wool clogs. With each passing year, Miss Ellie grows shorter and rounder. But she is still quick on her feet and never misses a beat.
“Hi, Miss Ellie”; “Thank you for having us, Miss Ellie”; “The place looks great, Miss Ellie!” Leily’s friends sing out. Like everyone else in town, Leily calls her grand-khaleh “Miss Ellie.”
Leily notices now that Miss Ellie holds in her hand a small circular container that looks like a petri dish. In it are countless more gold stars. For a minute, Leily thinks Miss Ellie might raise her arm and sprinkle the kids with a confetti of stars. But she simply puts the container down on a table and touches, out of habit, the bird charm on the necklace she has worn for as long as Leily can remember. The tiny gold bird with the turquoise wing always rests in the hollow between her clavicles. In biology class, Leily learned this part of the body is called “the suprasternal notch.” The bird twinkles under the café lights.
“Heyo!” Leily’s mom appears from the back kitchen door as she wipes her hands on an apron emblazoned with a sneaker-wearing peanut and the words “I’m a health nut!”
“Hi, Bahar!” the kids call out as they sit down at the tables. Leily’s mom hates being called Mrs. Murphy and insists that her daughter’s friends call her by her first name.
In this historic American town, Leily’s family has built a café that serves traditional Persian dishes. Less than half a mile from the Battle Green—where the shot heard around the world in 1775 started a battle that turned into a war that led to a revolution that then created these United States—she serves up delicious plates that comfort both residents and tourists of Lexington, Massachusetts.
Since its opening twenty-seven years ago, the café has expanded not in physical size but in its offerings. No longer does it serve just coffee, tea, and pastries. Boldly and with the help of her husband (who Leily affectionately calls Babu Mehrdad) and Leily’s mom, Bahar, Miss Ellie introduced Iranian appetizers as part of a “Weekly Special” when Leily was in preschool.
Word about the new fare spread fast. All it took were a few rave reviews posted on the town-wide email list, and business exploded. Rather than become intimidated by the exposure and increased expectations, Miss Ellie embraced her new responsibilities with energy and drive. Now, tourists exploring the main street through which Paul Revere once galloped on his horse saunter in. Miss Ellie can charm even the most xenophobic terry-cloth-suited wanderers with heartfelt conversation and Iranian food too good to hate.
Leily knows her mom is super excited. She’s planned Leily’s eighteenth birthday party for weeks, written down what to buy on her Notes app, and cooked herself silly. They’d all worked together to prepare. They’d used the highest-quality olive oil and squeezed extra lemon juice on the shirazi salad. Leily’s dad (known to her friends as “Mr. Murphy”—he does not like being called “Steve” by high schoolers) had chopped the cucumber, tomatoes, and onions into tiny cubes. For the jeweled rice dish, her mom had sauteed the barberries, careful not to overdo it. Miss Ellie had arranged orange rinds on a tray to dry in the sun. For hours the chicken was marinated in saffron and lime. Leily decorated the platter for the fried kotlet meat patties with sliced pickles, sprigs of mint, and radishes shaped like roses.
Miss Ellie made sure the crushed cantaloupe was mixed with just the right amount of honey and vinegar to make Persian smoothie drinks. Everything had to be perfect for Leily’s eighteenth birthday party.
And it is perfect. For a fraction of time, Miss Ellie, Babu Mehrdad, Bahar, Steven Murphy, Leily, and all her high school friends revel in the food and the good cheer and celebrate Leily turning eighteen. In those moments, they forget their troubles and enjoy the shared food and drink together. To think that just two years ago, they were all locked down and isolated because of a global pandemic. How glorious to be together again!
And lovely it is.
After the birthday party is over, after Leily’s friends leave and the dishes are all taken to the small kitchen in the back, after Babu Mehrdad sweeps the café floor even as Miss Ellie warns that it could hurt his back, after they all help to load the dishwasher in the kitchen and wash the bigger pots by hand, they gather to sit quietly together in the café.
The heaviness in their hearts that was temporarily put on hold during the party returns. For the past week and a half, Leily’s entire family has been glued to the screen to see updates from Iran. A young woman named Mahsa Amini—her Kurdish name was Jina Amini—was arrested in Tehran by the morality police for improper hijab and brutally beaten. She went into a coma and died. The photo of this young woman lying in a hospital bed with white tubes protruding from her mouth has spread all over social media. The photo made Bahar shudder as her husband held her.
The death of this young woman has sparked protests that are spreading around the country like wildfire.
Leily has never been to Iran, but she harbors a huge curiosity about the country. When she sits at night and stares at her phone and watches reels of the protests in Iran, Leily is at once entranced, hopeful, heartbroken, fearful, and inspired. She watches on TikTok and YouTube and Twitter and Instagram the video clips of young women taking to the streets. These women bravely defy the mandatory hijab laws. They throw their headscarves into a bonfire and twirl, chanting for freedom and human rights. Men join them in the protests. To quash dissent, the government shuts off the internet. Arrests protesters. Beats them. Kills some. But still the protests go on. People have had enough. They are tired of being told how to behave, what to say, what to wear, whom to worship. Tired of their rights diminished. Their slogan, born of a Kurdish fighting slogan, is “Women, Life, Freedom.” In Kurdish: “Jin, Jiyan, Azadi.” In Persian: “Zan, Zendegi, Azadi.”
Leily knows she comes from a line of lion women. Miss Ellie and her mom have told her of her grandmother, Homa, and the work she has done for women’s rights throughout her life. They have told her all about her grandmother’s tireless, decades-long activism. How Leily would love to one day meet this grandmother of hers! To sit across the table from her and ask all the questions she has harbored since she was little. What made her grandmother so brave? What makes the women in Iran fighting on the streets now not afraid? Half of her runs with the blood of those women. Though her father likes to remind her that her Irish side is no less brave and no less accustomed to fighting oppression. Which is probably true.
“What news from Iran?” Bahar asks now at the café after the party.
Leily takes out her phone. She has been offline during her birthday party and she’s not sure what has transpired in that time, even though it is now the middle of the night in Iran. She brings up Twitter and scrolls the hashtag #MahsaAmini obsessively, as she has done every day since the protests began. Miss Ellie and her mom lean in to view her screen as Babu Mehrdad and her dad look on, waiting for Leily to relate what she sees.
Endless new photos, videos, and updates have trickled in from Iran despite the government’s internet crackdown. Leily scrolls. She can hear the breaths of Miss Ellie and her mom as they nestle in on either side of her. The videos show schoolgirls chasing a regime official out of their schoolyard, a young woman marching in the middle of traffic with her headscarf off and her hands holding the “V” sign being encouraged by people pressing down on their car horns, protesters running from tear gas and falling to the ground bloodied. Photo after photo goes by. Video after video is played as they watch in silence.
“Wait, wait, wait,” Miss Ellie says. “Stop right there.”
She asks Leily to replay a video. She points to it on the timeline on Leily’s screen. Leily goes back and replays it. It is twenty-one seconds long.
An old woman, her hair white, walks at night in a crowd of protesters. She holds her arm up in the air, her fist tight. Her gait has a limp, but she moves to the chants of the crowd. Her voice can be heard quite clearly: “Zan, Zendegi, Azadi.” Women, Life, Freedom.
Leily feels a throbbing in her ears; her face is now burning; she is transfixed. For Leily knows what her mother sitting to her right and her grand-khaleh Ellie sitting to her left know. This is her grandmother, whom she calls Maman Homa. They are watching, as they sit in the café her family built in the northeastern United States, her seventy-nine-year-old grandmother join the women protesting in the streets.
Tears stream from Miss Ellie’s eyes.
Bahar is very still, but there is the slightest quiver in her chin.
“Of course she’d be in the streets,” Miss Ellie whispers as she shifts closer to Leily to watch the video again. Leily plays it on repeat over and over again.
“I would expect nothing less,” Leily’s mom says.
The balloons float around the room. The minuscule gold stars on the tables shine on.