Chapter 5
Mitra drove slowly along Maple Street toward her childhood home. More than half of the Jahanis’ neighbors had been Jewish, so at Christmastime there were displays of menorahs and blue lights. But now there were more Asians and Indians, which irked her father because he considered them ugly, passive, and smelly; he had no idea that he fit better in this neighborhood than he ever had in the past.
Here was Barbara Ferber’s house, which had once sported a brick façade on the lower level and was now painted all white with a red door. Barbara was a year younger than Mitra, and they played regularly until Mitra snipped at her long braids with a safety scissor and the hair fell out in her mother’s hands later that night when she went to brush it. Across the street lived Eddie Shapiro, the token neighborhood slob, whose family owned a Saint Bernard unimaginatively called Bernie, always with a slimy rope of drool hanging from his chops. The pink house had belonged to Rick Jones, who one day, together with Eddie, mixed up a Flintstones glass of water and dirt, put a spoon and straw in it, and told Mitra it was chocolate milk. It wasn’t for nothing that she’d learned, from all the time spent watching her father deal with construction workers, that when boys were extra nice to you, something was probably amiss, and after smelling the liquid, she slugged Eddie so hard his nose bled. Next door, the Helmans had a pool, but the Jahanis were never invited to swim in it, not even in the hottest weather; Ana and Mitra would peek through the slats in the wooden fence and watch them swim, eager as starving children not invited to the barbecue.
Hideous, Mitra thought as she pressed on the gas to make it up her parents’ steep driveway to the double front door. She hated this house. A “contemporary,” it was called: gray-stained wood, narrow windows, sharply angled roofs. A 1960s experiment in right angles. A Frank Lloyd Wrong. She yanked up the parking brake and waved at her mother, who stood in the middle of what Mitra called the not-garden, a series of terraces paved in geometric patterns of stones and pebbles that covered the whole front yard. This so-called rock garden, spotted with a smattering of sorry-looking plants and struggling ground cover, would have been a perfect slope for sledding, and therefore it was one of Mitra’s most profound childhood frustrations. Every other house up and down their street had a lawn where kids rolled and played catch and romped with their dogs, where daddies raked leaves, set the sprinkler up in summer, and hired teenagers to mow. Not the Jahani family. Iranians didn’t live their lives for outsiders to see; if there couldn’t be a ten-foot wall around the property, a rock garden would do. Passersby could tell they were aliens right from the edge of the driveway.
Shireen waved exuberantly and quickly poured what remained in a plastic watering can onto a sickly jasmine vine that Mitra had purchased for her two years before. Jasmine grew beautifully in San Francisco and in Esfahan, where her mother had spent her childhood vacations, but certainly not in New Jersey, and Mitra, on one of her devilish whims, imagined using the flowering plant—or its lack of flowering—to tempt her mother to come to California for a visit, at least once.
Before Mitra could emerge fully from the car, Shireen was reaching for her. Mitra stooped to rest her chin on her mother’s shoulder, taking in her Estée Lauder scent, dabbed on her pulse points even before she had her tea in the morning. “My daughter, my daughter,” Shireen whispered in Farsi. She pulled back, cupped Mitra’s face in her palms, and kissed her cheeks lingeringly. “You have become too skinny,” she said.
“I’m the same as the last time you saw me,” Mitra replied in English. That was how they often spoke: Shireen in Farsi and Mitra in English, though each peppered her sentences with words and phrases from the language of the other.
“You do not eat well, I know,” said Shireen. “Come. Come inside for some halva.”
Mitra made a point of looking at her watch. “What about lunch? I made a reservation at the Pilgrim Inn.”
“Oh!” Shireen said with a little jump. “Yes, of course. I just change my shoes.” She turned to walk back toward the door, and Mitra stifled a snort at her red plastic gardening shoes. Ana had called them Mom’s Ruby Slippers.
* * *
The Pilgrim Inn Restaurant irritated Mitra: Sunday nights at The Pilgrim, as if the Jahanis had been a normal American family after a day of church and football. They had a standing six o’clock reservation, despite the fact that they never ate before eight every other night of the week. The men in their navy-blue jackets with gold buttons, the women in white blouses and pearls, the kids with slicked-down hair and patent-leather Mary Janes. And then the Jahanis, their caramel skin and inky hair setting them apart like cacti in a lily pond. Her mother greeting people with a hand over her heart, bowing slightly. Her father strutting ahead, his pipe resting like a cocktail in his hand, responding only if someone greeted him first, and never if anyone called him Joe instead of Joseph: Nice to see you, Ted. Nice to see you, Bob. Nice to see you, Ed. At the table, Shireen picking imaginary lint off the tablecloth, tearing bread into bite-size pieces, cutting Anahita’s steak. The Woodards brought their new baby. She’s very cute. Yusef grunting, mumbling: Vice-President, Chase Manhattan. And then to Mitra and Anahita: Chew with your mouth closed. Use your napkin. Sit straight.
An elderly hostess led Shireen and Mitra to a table next to a maroon-draped window. Mitra peered at the faded ink on her menu. A waitress in a colonial-style barmaid’s uniform—square neck and ruffled apron—brought them water. Mitra glanced at a bow-tied gentleman who was wrestling with a wedge of iceberg lettuce smothered in Russian dressing. If Anahita were still alive, the three of them might have ventured to an Italian bistro in Tenafly or a fish place on 9W. But there seemed no point in that now.
The waitress was having trouble taking Shireen’s order. She wanted oil and vinegar with her salad—weenager—so Mitra interrupted and enunciated the word, trying not to show irritation, either at her mother or at the waitress. When Shireen emigrated to the States in 1956, Yusef hired a private English language tutor to come to the apartment three times a week, a ponytailed blonde from Ohio who worked as a secretary at the UN. Shireen didn’t know how Yusef had made her acquaintance, but when it became obvious that he was coming home from the office earlier on tutoring days, she told him she had learned enough English to get by and why waste money when she could learn the rest from her soap operas. She figured this would appeal to his stinginess, but when Yusef didn’t agree and one evening offered to drive the young woman home to Manhattan, Shireen fired the woman herself, telling Yusef she had quit to elope with her Italian boyfriend.
Mitra once asked Shireen why she hadn’t taken an ESL class at Hunter or Berlitz. She laughed and shook her head. “You know your father. He wanted me home.” Mitra knew, but she asked questions like this because she hoped they might inspire Shireen to defy Yusef.
Shireen sipped her water and blotted her mouth with a yellowing napkin, leaving a maroon lipstick mark. “I am sorry about the telephone call with your father this morning. It was my fault; I persuaded him to go later to the office today.”
Mitra shook her head. “Why do you do that, Mom? Take responsibility for his bad behavior?”
Shireen looked away and patted at her bun; this was an old discussion she wouldn’t have. “So,” she said. “You still like California.” It was not posed as a question, but with resignation, to let Mitra know that while Shireen hoped her daughter might one day say she’d grown to hate San Francisco and would be moving back east, she was not counting on it after all these years.
“Yes,” Mitra said. “You should visit me. You’d like it there too.”
“I can’t leave your father.”
“Just for a week or so.”
“I can’t leave your father.”
Mitra looked straight at her now. “You can’t or he won’t let you?”
“He needs me.”
“You need some time off, Mom. All servants get time off.” The sentence was out of her mouth before she could swallow it. Wasn’t she too old to make sarcastic remarks to her mother? Shireen’s eyes filled with tears. They were real, Mitra knew, but also a manipulation. “I’m sorry, Mom. Forget I said that.”
Shireen blinked and dabbed her eyes with a corner of the napkin. She looked sallow, age-spotted, older than her sixty years, like she was trying to keep pace with her seventy-two-year-old husband. “I know you are angry with him, Mitra-joon, but it is not fair to turn your anger on me.”
“You’re right,” Mitra said, now just wanting the subject to change.
“I wish, Mitra-joon, that you would make up with him. He is an old man now. He is your father who loves you. Make up with him. Do it for me, my daughter.”
Mitra avoided her mother’s pleading eyes and dug her nails into her palms. More manipulation. Why did she always forget how crafty Shireen was? She remembered only her mother’s meekness, her softness. “Let’s not talk about this, Mom.” She reached across the table and covered her mother’s hand with her own.
Shireen swallowed and forced a smile, lifted up her thumb and wrapped it around Mitra’s, squeezing. They parted as the waitress delivered their lunches. Mitra stared at her club sandwich and remembered that The Pilgrim Inn’s turkey was usually so dry and the lettuce so limp that she was going to eat only the fries, which were crispy and shiny with oil. Shireen drizzled more oil than vinegar onto her salad, a wilted mound of spinach sprinkled with bacon bits and sliced egg.
Mitra picked up a fry. “I spoke to Olga this morning. She sends you her love.”
Shireen chewed and swallowed what was in her mouth—Mitra had never seen an errant fleck of food on her mother’s lips or teeth—and finally, she said, “How is she? I do miss her.”
Mitra shrugged. “She’s lonely. I wish I could visit her.”
Shireen jerked her upper body toward Mitra, her face suddenly pale. “Never do that. I have told you this; Olga has told you. It is not a place for a girl like you, unable to hold your tongue. Even under the Shah, that summer we sent you, all your criticisms of the poverty and the SAVAK police. Imagine now! You would not even be able to stand the wearing of the hejab. I know my own reckless daughter; you will want your wine and be jailed in no time.” Pink blotches had appeared on her cheeks.
“Okay, okay!” Mitra said. “I didn’t say I was going, just that I wished I could visit her. Calm down, Mom.”
Shireen took several sips of water and patted her bun again. Finally, she said, “So, is Olga well? Last time we spoke, she complained of a tremor in her arm.”
Waving her fork, Mitra said, “That’s gone. She thought it was Parkinson’s. One of her neighbors has it.”
“You know how she exaggerates.” Shireen smiled and shook her head. “Whenever I took her to the doctors, they said she would live a long time.” In English, she added, “She is healthier than a mule.”
“Horse,” Mitra corrected.
“Yes, right.” Shireen expertly folded several large spinach leaves onto the back of her fork and directed them carefully into her mouth. Mitra decorated her fries with more ketchup.
“Olga was difficult to manage when she was sick and complaining,” Shireen continued. “Perhaps it was best that she returned to Iran. I’m afraid she might have become a burden.”
Mitra bit back a retort, as if Anahita were throwing her a pleading look. This was Shireen assuaging her guilt and salvaging her dignity. Any “burden” Olga might have brought to Shireen’s life in old age would have been eclipsed by devotion. Olga had been Shireen’s champion, standing up for her honor as no one ever had. Yusef called it meddling, and it finally became too much for him. Mitra didn’t know the details of the last brouhaha ten years ago that had compelled her father to put Olga out of the house with a one-way ticket to Tehran. She knew it had to do with one of her father’s infidelities, a subject she had always, very methodically, refused to think about. Unlike Anahita, she could do that. Compartmentalize. Anyway, Mitra hadn’t found out Olga was gone until after she was gone. And while Mitra was upset and angry about it, her emotions were blunted by the twenty-five hundred miles she’d put between herself and the family. Did she blame Shireen for Olga’s banishment? A little. She blamed her for deferring to her husband so completely, but she’d watched her mother do this all of her life. She couldn’t imagine Shireen being any different.
“Anyway, Mom, I’ve managed to bring a little bit of Iran into my house in California.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’ve got these two women—a mother and a daughter—staying in the apartment downstairs.”
“Iranian? Which family?”
Mitra shook her head and picked at the turkey meat along the rim of her sandwich. “You wouldn’t know the family; they’re village people from Gilan Province.”
Shireen bridled. “Village people? Goat herders?”
“They’re sort of like refugees. The mother’s even illiterate, and she wears a chador. The daughter is a teenager.”
Shireen was silent, struck dumb. Finally, she asked, “How did they get here? Where did you find them?”
“A relative of theirs is a doctor, and he sponsored them. The woman is a widow.”
It had been Julian who’d taken Mitra to the bungalow in Fremont, a city across the Bay that had become, through the infinite global family network, an island for Near Asian immigrants. The sponsor, whom Julian knew from the hospital, begged him to find another place for the two women; he’d gotten in over his head with refugee family members. To Mitra, it had seemed like the morally right thing to do at the time. Maybe she’d thought it would lift her spirits after Anahita’s death, though now she couldn’t imagine how she’d been so naïve as to think that. It was Julian’s way of thinking. It didn’t hurt that her tenant—a computer geek with five cats whose dot-com company had been bought by Microsoft for an obscene amount—had just moved out.
“Amazing,” Shireen said.
“No, really, Mom. Things have changed a lot since you and Baba were bringing maids over from Iran.”
“These women?” Shireen asked. “They are working for you?”
“No. I don’t think either of them would have much to contribute at a construction site. Besides, I don’t have any active projects going right now.”
“I mean, they work in your house?”
“As maids, no. I don’t need them. Carmen, my manager’s wife, comes once a week to clean.”
“The widow surely knows how to cook.”
“I’m sure she does, but I don’t want her messing up my kitchen. She’s not exactly the cleanest, and I’m not sure she’d know how to use my appliances.”
“You must teach her. They must all be taught when they first come over.”
“Mom, I didn’t take them in to be my servants. They need a place to live for a while.”
Shireen’s eyes were wide, pupils like pencil points. “You are making a big mistake, my daughter.”
“Don’t worry, Mom. I told you, it’s just for a little while. Just until her sponsor finds a rental near him.” Mitra pushed her plate away. “So,” she smiled. “Dessert?”
“Dessert at home,” Shireen said.
* * *
Her father’s cologne—Paco Rabanne—assaulted Mitra the moment she stepped over the threshold into her parents’ house. He didn’t have to be home for it to permeate the air like horse dung in a stable.
Mitra followed Shireen through the dining room toward the kitchen. She was glad to ignore the biliously decorated living room with its brass tabletops carved with lions, its overstuffed sofas, divans, kilim pillows, and iron filigree lampshades that cast prisms of light onto the ceilings, its walls covered with framed carpets and paintings of women in balloon trousers, chiffon veils, and sable unibrows holding trays of tea for men with pointy gold shoes to match their pointy, long beards.
At the kitchen threshold, Mitra halted, speechless. Gone were the pistachio-green appliances, speckled linoleum flooring, and knotty pine cabinets with wrought-iron handles. Where there had been a solid wall adorned with Persian brass trays, a bay window looked out onto the backyard.
Shireen twirled to face Mitra. “You like it?” she almost squeaked, smiling ear to ear. She stood next to a granite island where an oak table and chairs used to sit. The cabinets were lacquered white and topped by a heavy cavetto-style crown molding; several had glass panels behind which Shireen had displayed her Waterford crystal. The floor was Denizli ivory travertine, one of Mitra’s favorites: Turkish, expensive, and elegant. The appliances, alas, were General Electric, but her father always skimped (and bought American) on those.
“Wow,” Mitra said. “It’s beautiful, Mom. I feel like I’m in a different house.”
“Your father finally let me do it, after all these years.”
“How in God’s name did you convince him?”
Yusef’s answer to any remodeling suggestion had always been to scold Shireen for being ungrateful and remind her that superior architecture and construction never went out of fashion.
“Remember that Mr. Kasagian who was the architect for this house?” Shireen said. “He lives in Tehran now and he came to visit last year. He was astonished to see his old work, and he began laughing at it, especially the kitchen, in the way that a person makes fun of what he once foolishly considered fashionable. Then he began bragging about how his designs in Tehran contain precious stone and marble with Italian tile backsplashes, and the most modern German appliances. You know, Mitra, the same I have been telling your father about for years now.”
“So Baba was embarrassed.”
“Of course. It is necessary for him to hear it from someone he respects.”
“And that’s certainly not you.”
“That is not what I meant, Mitra. Mr. Kasagian is an architect.”
“Okay. Well, it’s beautiful. Congratulations.”
Shireen twirled again and walked over to the stove to pour tea. “Look,” she said in English. “Six-burner gas. Oven big enough for two rice pots.” She handed Mitra a glass of tea and a small plate of two diamond-shaped cumin-spiced halva pieces dusted with confectioner’s sugar. “Come,” she said, lightly pressing her hand into Mitra’s back. “We sit at the table; there is still some nice sun shining in the window.”
The table—glass and spotless—was in the bay window nook. Mitra imagined her mother cleaning it, sitting on the floor to wipe the underside. “I always thought there should be a window here,” Mitra said.
“Yes, you did. You drew it once.”
“You remember that?”
“Of course. I remember all of your drawings of buildings. Well, maybe not all of them, not the ones that were strange like triangles or with windows only in the ceiling—”
“Skylights.”
“Yes, right. But the drawings you did of our house, I have them all in storage.”
Mitra smiled. “That’s so sweet, Mom.”
Shireen waved the statement away and angled her chair so she could watch her daughter fully. Elbows on the table, she leaned in and said, “So, my daughter, eat!”
Mitra laughed. The halva melted on her tongue, an exquisite nostalgia of late-night snacks with Olga. She sipped her tea and looked at her watch. “I shouldn’t stay too long, Maman. I don’t want to get stuck in rush hour traffic on my way to Libby’s.”
“It is still a long time until traffic starts. You need a nap, joonam, after your long trip. Your eyes are crossing.”
Mitra popped another quadrangle of halva into her mouth, chased it with hot tea. She did feel suddenly sluggish; that was what sugar and a mother’s voice—not to mention a red-eye flight—could do. “All right,” she said. “A nap sounds good. A short nap.”
Shireen’s face brightened. “You can go upstairs to your old bed. I had Maria prepare it in case something like this happened.”
“Who’s Maria?”
“New housecleaner.”
“What happened to Raquel?”
“She vacuumed one of your father’s cufflinks.”
“Oh, dear. How utterly abominable of her.”
“My daughter, if you use words I am unfamiliar with, I will not be so kind to you when I speak Farsi.”
“Sorry.” Mitra stood up. “I’ll lie down in the family room on the couch. Will you wake me up in an hour, Mom? One hour, okay? I don’t want to chance running into Baba if he decides to come home early.”
Shireen’s face fell and she looked away. As she rose heavily from the table, she muttered, “An embarrassment that my daughter cannot stay the night in her own mother’s house.”
* * *
The smell of fresh herbs woke Mitra. There it was, at eye level on the coffee table: a bowl piled with dewy mint and basil leaves, radishes, and green onions—the condiments of every dinner she’d ever had in her parents’ house. Her lids closed, and she felt her eyes rolling up into her head.
All-nighters used to be easier, she thought. A vaguely familiar rat-a-tat sound came from the low-volumed television. She let her mind begin to sink back into a dream when the rat-a-tat came again and she realized what it was: the spin of the Wheel of Fortune. Her eyes flew open. Vanna was turning an E. Mitra jerked up onto her elbows; the coffee table was covered in a smorgasbord of cheeses, breads, grapes and figs, and a cold eggplant casserole.
“Shit!” Mitra spat as she leapt to a sitting position. It was nearly dark outside. “Mom! What time is it?”
Shireen appeared in the doorway leading to the kitchen. “Be calm, my daughter. It is all right. I had a message from Vivian,” she said, clasping her hands together and lifting her heels in a little hop of excitement. “Your baba is staying in Manhattan tonight, so you can stay here!”
Mitra swallowed. “Oh,” she managed, feeling a twinge in her temple that was the sign of a headache. “Okay.” She forced a smile.
“I called Nezam and Libby to tell them you will not be there until tomorrow. I have eggplant soufflé, your favorite, and we can watch Everyone Love Raymond and that funny blacked-skinned man after that.”
“Great,” said Mitra, willing her voice to sound more enthusiastic. She rubbed her eyes and suddenly noticed that her mother was wearing a flowered muumuu that she’d bought in Hawaii when Mitra was ten or eleven years old and had worn only on nights when Yusef was out of town. The house would take on a different ambience when her father wasn’t there; Shireen would let them eat omelets in their pajamas in front of the television, and the maids would join them for The Tom Jones Show. The first time Shireen wore the muumuu, Anahita and Mitra screeched with laughter. Ana made a beeline for their mother’s thighs and tried to wrap herself in the multicolored material. Shireen grinned, her hair miraculously loose to just below her shoulders.
“You look like Gidget, Maman,” Mitra said, expressing the ultimate compliment.
“Who is that?”
“A surfer girl on television.”
“What is this surfer girl?”
“She rides waves on a board.”
“Waves?” She pronounced it vawes, switching the v and w to create the most unintelligible and universally mispronounced English word uttered by Farsi speakers.
“In the ocean, Maman,” Ana said.
Unbelieving, Shireen pinched Ana’s cheek. “Silly!”
“I mean you look pretty,” Mitra remembered saying, and now repeated that line. “You look pretty, Mom.”
Shireen smiled. “Don’t be silly,” she echoed.
Shireen’s white leather slippers peeked out at the bottom of the muumuu. She had removed her makeup, and Mitra noticed her swollen eyelids. “So what’s in Manhattan that Baba has to stay overnight for at the last minute?”
“Why do you ask me such questions? It is business.” Shireen turned back toward the kitchen.
“Really.” Mitra couldn’t contain the sarcasm in her voice.
“Please, Mitra, do not start that. It is business. He does not discuss it with me. And I do not frustrate him with a simpleton’s questions.”
“Don’t put yourself down.”
“I am not. Now go bring your luggage from the car.”
Mitra sighed but did as her mother asked.
* * *
They sat on the couch and ate, laughing at the predictable humor of the sitcom until Mitra flopped back, rubbing her stomach. “I’m stuffed. Thanks, Mom.”
“Dessert?”
“Please, no.”
“In a little bit?” Shireen winked.
“Uh-oh. Why do I know that wink means hidden chocolate?”
Shireen laughed and got up. “Toblerone. I will take it out of the refrigerator.”
While Shireen was in the kitchen, the phone rang. Mitra muted the television to listen. It wasn’t her father; Shireen was speaking in full sentences, and there was a smile in her voice. “Yes, azizam,” she said. “Of course your baba can stay overnight on Friday. It is a good idea; he will be tired after the gathering. But you will bring him, right? You will be here for the afternoon. I have not seen you, darling, in such a long time.... Good . . . No, joonam, everything is taken care of; you are a good boy to ask. . . . Yes. All right.” And she ended the call with the usual Farsi sign-off, which translated roughly to I would die for you.
“Who was that?” Mitra asked when Shireen returned.
“Your cousin Kareem.” She avoided looking at Mitra and walked to the corner of the room to place a thin blanket over a small parakeet’s cage. “He has an appointment the evening of the One Year, so he can’t take Uncle Jafar back to his apartment.” She lifted an edge of the blanket to blow a kiss good night to the bird, the latest in a long line of parakeets, all named Tootie. “He wanted to know if Uncle could spend the night here.”
Mitra pressed the off button on the remote, and the room filled with a tense silence. Shireen shot her a quick glance, then busied herself rearranging the bird’s blanket. “Now, Mitra-joon, let’s not ruin a good night together. It was just a phone call. He is not such a bad boy, really. Just a little spoiled, like all only sons with dead mothers. But he is a helpful son since the glaucoma took his father’s sight, poor thing.”
“Baba takes care of Uncle Jafar, not Kareem. Everybody knows that.”
“Your father provides for him, which is what brothers do for one another. Kareem looks after him. And he calls me often too. In fact, he has become spiritual—can you imagine? He wants to be a Sufi.”
“That’s impossible, Mom. Don’t be so naïve. He’s vile. You don’t know; you just don’t know.”
“No, I guess I do not.” Shireen returned to the couch and curled her legs under her, still avoiding eye contact, but Mitra detected an almost imperceptible hint of annoyance, even of insult, in the way she picked at and straightened the fabric of her muumuu. “You are always telling me how I do not know, as if I am not worthy of knowing, not smart enough to understand. For years you have called Kareem wicked, and you expect me to accept this without explanation. He always was the most helpful of all the cousins, taking care of the elders, running errands. Have you forgotten how attentive he was to the younger cousins in the old days? Taking them to the movies, the park, the shopping center? Minding them when the adults were busy? All the other kids his age were out and about or hiding in their rooms listening to the rock and roll.”
“Oh yes, I remember perfectly,” Mitra said through her teeth.
“You judge him because he is not so smart as you, not so self-sufficient. Perhaps he seems insincere in the way he flatters people too much—”
“Ass-kisser is the word,” Mitra interrupted.
“—but that is because the insecure thirst for love.”
“Jesus, Mom, you should go back to school and study psychoanalysis.”
“Mitra!” Shireen’s dark eyes were wide with anger and tears, brimming with frustration. “You are just like your father!” Mitra winced. Shireen stood up, tugged two Kleenexes out of the box, and walked over to the window to stare out at the night.
Mitra turned her palms up. “What did I say?”
“You degrade me,” Shireen said in a lower tone, speaking, it seemed, to her reflection in the window. “I am not stupid. I have lived a life, and I have wisdom from this living. My opinions of others are valid.” She turned to face Mitra. “Perhaps I have a more trusting heart than you or your father with all your stubbornness and your black-and-white deductions about people. Look at you, you cannot even forgive each other! And you dare to go on about the flaws of others—”
“Stop,” Mitra snapped, coming to her feet. “Just stop, Mom. Come back here and sit down.” She pointed to the sofa. “It’s time I told you a story.”
“What story? This is not the time for stories. You think I am a child who can be so easily distracted?” Shireen stood her ground, and Mitra realized that she better soften her tone if she wanted her mother to stay in the room, let alone sit down and listen.
“Mom, please. The way I feel about Kareem isn’t trivial. There’s a reason,” and as she stressed this word, Mitra heard a whisper of warning from her cautious inner voice: Don’t tell her. Don’t hurt her. But it was too late. Shireen had heard the gravity in her daughter’s tone.
“What reason? What do you mean?” Her voice was smaller, her expression of determination melting, turning to trepidation.
There was no going back, Mitra thought. “Sit down, Mom, and I’ll tell you. But promise me you won’t blame yourself.” She pressed her fingers into her mother’s forearm. “Promise me.”
Shireen was frowning intensely, searching Mitra’s eyes for clues, for reassurance. Quietly, she said, “All right. I promise. Now tell me, my daughter, tell me quickly.”