IS IT MY FAULT? No, it’s not. It happened without my intention. I don’t know why everyone puts the guilt on men in these situations. Why is it my fault? What did he expect from me? I wanted to collect my belongings and leave—he wouldn’t let me. Well, then it happened. I didn’t mean it to happen. So it’s not my fault.
Is it my fault? No, it’s not. Yes, I betrayed Gholam, but I didn’t want to. The fact is, I didn’t choose him. How could I make a choice from such a long distance? Yes, I saw his photo, and a five-minute videotape, and I talked to him on the phone, once. That’s it. I just wanted to escape from that damn place. Gholam made it possible for me to do so.
Is it my fault? I don’t think so. But everybody put the blame on me. Yes, I shouldn’t have married a woman I didn’t know well, had only seen in a photo, and talked to once in a phone call. “A big mistake,” Kamyar had said. Not only Kamyar, but some of my other friends had also told me the same thing, directly or indirectly: “It might not have a happy ending.”
It was my mother’s fault. She came to visit me after seven years. She was shocked by my life, thought my apartment was a mess. “A pig sty,” is how she described it. “Oh, my God, so many girls in Iran looking for a man like you, and you are still a bachelor? When I go back to Iran I’ll do something about it –a suitable wife, that’s what you need.” Yes, it was my mother who sent me a wife. And now everyone thinks I am the guilty party.
What should I have done then? Gholam didn’t want me to leave. We had been roommates for a while and we lived in peace and harmony. It was Sima who caused the problems. Yes, it’s true that I was attracted to Sima from the moment we first met. She wasn’t a very beautiful or even a good-looking young woman, but she was sweet and cordial and there was something about her that was enchanting. We became friends quickly. I couldn’t believe she was raised in Iran. When I lived there, girls, women, were different. Most were shy and never got familiar with a man they didn’t know. But Sima was easygoing, as if she had known me for years. How can I put it? She wasn’t shy at all.
Kamyar and I became friends first. Well, I don’t like building a wall between people and myself. Both came to greet me at the airport when I arrived. At first glance, I liked Kamyar, but when Gholam handed me the bouquet of flowers, I realized he was the person I would be marrying. Everybody called it “a suitable choice.” What a choice! Kamyar was filming us. Gholam introduced him to me as his friend and roommate. We became friends that first night. We all lived in the same house.
She became more intimate with Kamyar than me. I was dazed and tongue-tied. I couldn’t believe this educated, charming, chatty, and friendly woman was my wife. Yes, I’m not as socially comfortable with women as Kamyar is. He says, “You’ve imprisoned yourself in your small world: work, work, and work, nothing else. You don’t read any books, you don’t watch any films, and you even don’t read the newspapers or watch TV.” He’s right, but why is that wrong? I don’t have time for those things.
I believe it was Gholam’s fault. I told him, don’t do it, it’s risky. “What’s risky?” he said. “So many people get married this way. I am not the first to do this.”
I told him, “There is a risk that you will not understand each other, or even like each other. How can you get to know her when she lives few thousand kilometres away, and all you have seen is a photo and a video?”
“When she arrives here, I will get to know her,” he said.
“I don’t think that is the right thing to do,” I insisted.
Gholam said I should have learned everything there was to know about him from the five-minute videotape I was sent, and from our short telephone call. How could I? When I saw him at the airport, even at first glance, I realized he wasn’t for me. If Kamyar weren’t there, I might have liked Gholam, but next to Kamyar, he wasn’t attractive at all. They were completely different. Kamyar was young, tall, and handsome, and Gholam was chubby, older, and almost bald. His name! Gholam! In Canada, they call him Gol. I find that terribly funny. In Farsi, “Gol” means flower! “You’re my wife,” he said. “You married me. You knew me.”
I replied, “How could I know you? How could I know anything about you at all?”
“You chose me,” he implored.
I wished I could tell him that if Kamyar had sent me his videotape I would have chosen Kamyar, but I didn’t have a choice—the only videotape I was shown was Gholam’s.
Yes, it was my fault, but many men marry this way and their wives turn out to be nice women and they have happy lives. It was my fault that I didn’t ask Kamyar to leave my house before she arrived. To tell you the truth, I couldn’t do it. We lived together for more than seven years, and we’d never had any problems. He wasn’t only my tenant; he was like a brother to me, a younger brother. He cared about me. He worked nights and slept during the day and was no trouble at all. Indeed, we were good friends.
When I heard his wife was going to arrive soon, I’d said to Gholam, “I’d better move out. Not be in your way.”
“No need to move out. Please stay,” he’d said, sounding hurt. “You’re like a brother to me. You know that.”
Well, we were like brothers, I can’t deny that. We never had a problem. He’s a patient, generous man.
Gholam is a nice man. It’s just that he’s not chatty. He normally has nothing to talk about, but he’s a good listener. When Kamyar is with us, I like to talk. But with Gholam I have nothing to say. It’s as if the words are stuck to in my mouth and won’t come out. There’s a distance between us, and it is getting wider and wider. Yes, he’s much older than Kamyar and me—fifteen years older. Kamyar and I are the same age. When I realized Kamyar was six months younger than me, I laughed and teased, “You’re still a child!”
“What do you mean?” he said. “Then, you’re a child, too!”
“No,” I giggle, “I will be twenty-five before you are.”
Sima and Kamyar always teased me about their age, reminding me that I’m getting old. In four months, I will turn forty. “I would never have guessed you are forty,” Sima said. “You don’t look like you’re forty.”
I said, “I am thirty-nine, I am not forty yet!”
Gholam looks like a person who has swallowed a stick: always upright, unable to laugh at any joke. Whenever we, I mean Kamyar and I, tell a joke, he shows no interest. If Gholam and I lived in Iran, with this attitude he has, I would have turned into dust by now; I couldn’t bear it. Life is not only formality and morality. To be free to talk, to live and to laugh as I like were my main reasons for wanting to leave Iran; otherwise, I would have been crazy to leave my family, my friends, and my home. We are in Canada, not in the Islamic Republic of Iran where laughter is an offence.
She’s friendly, sincere, helpful, and lively. When she arrived, my friends came to visit. She entertained them with her numerous jokes. Her loud, joyful laughter was contagious and everybody enjoyed her presence. I could see my friends were envious, thinking I was lucky to have such a good wife. I wished they were right. Yes, I have a good wife, but I was not sure I could keep her—and not because I didn’t want to keep her. I love her, but it seems she doesn’t feel the same way about me. She is more interested in Kamyar than me.
He should have realized that Sima wasn’t interested in him. They are made from different dough, completely different from each other. Even though she didn’t tell me at first, later, when we were more intimate, she admitted it was a big mistake. “What do you mean—a big mistake?”
Although I knew what she actually meant, I asked, “Coming to Canada was a mistake?”
“No,” she said. “Choosing Gholam as a husband was a mistake.”
“Well, did you have another choice?” I asked her.
“No, there wasn’t another one,” she answered. “In fact, Gholam was my only choice. But I do not regret coming to Canada,” she said, smiling mischievously. “Here, I have more choices.”
“How come?” I asked. “Well...” she started, but stopped to polish the apple in her hand. Then she carefully peeled it, cut it in half, and gave me a piece as she bit into her piece. Her eyes were shining and as the juice from the apple dribbled slightly from the corner of her lips, I couldn’t resist biting into my own piece and filling my own mouth with the apple’s sweet juice. It was only a week after she’d arrived. They were supposed to have gone on their honeymoon. But Sima postponed the trip, saying she was still tired from her long journey from Iran.
I got to know him much better on our honeymoon. He wasn’t unbearable. Not a bad person, actually a good person, generous, honest. He never said “no” to me. But he is boring and dull. I don’t know what he has done with his life. Yes, he’s educated, has an engineering degree, and is working as a programmer. But life shouldn’t be limited to work alone. On our honeymoon, I sometimes I felt I was lying next to a stone, or a statue that showed no compassion or enthusiasm for anything. I couldn’t ever tell whether he was upset or happy. He never showed any emotion. It seemed he had no experience with women and didn’t know anything about them. He didn’t even try to get to know me, didn’t ask me questions about what I like or don’t like. I don’t blame him for not knowing me. How could I? He sometimes stared at me as if I were a strange and alien creature. Once I asked him, “What do you see in me? Do I look bizarre to you?” He turned his eyes away from me and said nothing. He was really boring.
He quickly realized that Sima didn’t like him, and thought marrying him was a mistake. Sima’s silence was full of words: “What a damn choice.” But in her eyes I could see there was something else glittering, as if she were asking, “Why didn’t you send me a videotape and ask me to marry you? Why Gholam? If it had been you, I would have been the happiest girl in the world.” Yes, everything was obvious in her eyes; I could read them clearly. I tried to avoid Sima, not to make things complicated. I stayed in my room in Gholam’s absence, but temptation didn’t leave me. No, it wasn’t me who initiated it. She did.
I trusted Kamyar. We knew each other for more than seven years. He always said, “You’re like a brother to me.” Well, I was like a brother to him. I helped him to settle when he first arrived to Canada. He was young and naïve, and he knew no one. He was a refugee claimant. When a friend of mine introduced him to me, I invited him into my home, and didn’t ask him for rent until he found a job. I loved him, the way I loved my brother Nader, who lost his life for nothing. Kamyar was a good guy and he loved me, too. I encouraged him to go to university and get a degree. I told him, with only a high school diploma, you get nowhere. But he didn’t show any interest in continuing his education. “Take it easy,” Kamyar told me. “Life is too short.”
Kamyar spent most of his spare time reading or going to movies. He dreamed of being a filmmaker and spent most of his money on films and books. He filmed us with his camera in the airport. Before Sima, we didn’t have any problem with each other. Actually, because of his work schedule, we didn’t see each other very often, but he was there and I had a good feeling, as if I was living with my own brother.
My mother loved him, too. He reminded her of Nader, the son she lost in the war. “If you would like, I can find you a match, too,” she had said to him. “There are many girls yearning to leave Iran.”
But Kamyar took it as a joke, laughed loudly and said, “No, Mother, I’m not looking for trouble.”
He is young, and has plenty of time ahead of him, not like me, almost forty, almost bald, and of the few hairs that are left on my head, the grey hairs far outnumber the black ones.
It wasn’t my fault it happened. I didn’t want it to end like that. Yes, at first glance I wished these two could have changed places. But later … I understood their relationship. When Gholam told me they’d been living together for more than seven years, and Kamyar was like his martyr brother, Nader, I tried to look at him as a brother, too. In the beginning, he hid himself in his room. I didn’t want to go to his room but then it happened. A postman came to the door, and I didn’t know the language so I had to call Kamyar for help. At other times there were phone calls, and again there was a language problem and I had to ask Kamyar for help. And after that, we would sit and talk. I was a newcomer and didn’t know much about the city and life in this country. Gholam worked every day and I was at home bored. I talked to Kamyar about my life, about Iran. And he talked about his family. I was talkative when Kamyar was around.
It wasn’t my fault it happened. At first I simply liked her, like a sister-in-law. I never imagined betraying Gholam. It happened. It wasn’t Sima’s fault, either. She was lonely and didn’t love Gholam. I knew Gholam loved her. He looked at her as if she were from Venus. Sima isn’t very pretty: medium height and a bit overweight; she has narrow lips, an eagle nose, and a complexion the colour of wheat. Her long face didn’t match her height and her stout body. But her eyes were big, light brown, glimmering and cheerful. And she was always really happy when she was with me. At the airport, when she appeared from the transit hall, dragging her heavy bags, she greeted us as if she had known us for years. I was supposed to film them, but forgot totally about it and then I when I did film them, it was out of focus. When we watched the film afterward it was funny and we laughed. Not Gholam—he might have realized something, but what? Nothing had happened yet.
They thought I was stupid and realized nothing. They thought I was made of bricks, with no emotion. It was clear to me even that first night, when Sima mostly addressed Kamyar and compared me to him, I figured out he was the one she was attracted to. When we were alone, she asked about him, then excused herself. She didn’t even undress in front of me. She changed into her nightgown in the bathroom, turned the light off, and climbed into bed. She faced the wall, her back to me, and mumbled a good night. She excused herself, saying she was tired from travelling such a long way. But I was awake the whole night, and I couldn’t believe I had a woman in my bed, a goddess. Her perfume made me dizzy, but I didn’t dare touch her to wake her up. She slept like a log and I had to go to work the next day. I didn’t take a day off; I left it for our honeymoon.
On our honeymoon I realized I couldn’t live with him. He wasn’t my type. I couldn’t make myself love him. I knew my parents would be hurt and would turn against me. But what could I do? I couldn’t lie to myself. I told Kamyar, “I have nobody here except you. I don’t love Gholam. What should I do?” He looked at me in silence. How long? I don’t know.
I don’t know how it happened. Yes, I liked her. I liked her from the very first night. She bewitched me. I don’t know how we ended up in each other’s arms and later in my bedroom. She said, “What do we do now?”
I told Kamyar, “Let’s leave here. Here isn’t our place anymore. I can’t face Gholam. I know what I’ve done. In Iran, a woman who commits adultery is stoned to death.”
She was terrified. She imagined she would be condemned to death. I made her understand we weren’t in Iran and she was safe here, didn’t have to answer to anyone except herself. I told her, I will leave this place and you will behave as if nothing has happened.
Kamyar wanted to leave me and then I would have to cope with my sin alone. I beseeched and cried, “Please, don’t leave me. Aren’t you in love with me?”
He said, “I am, but I love Gholam, too, I respect him, he’s like a brother to me. He has done a lot for me and I can’t steal his wife from him in turn.”
I told him, “We’d better talk to Gholam and then leave.”
They’re waiting to hear the last word from me. To hear that they can be together and go to their own way. I paid for the wedding, paid for her jewellery, paid for the ticket to bring over a wife for Kamyar. They misunderstood me. I watched them and waited to see which one would feel guilty and break first. I know Sima can’t be a wife for me. But I didn’t want to lose her so easily. I want her to pay for this transgression. She must feel the shame of this. She thought she could take Kamyar away from me. I had a taste of what it would be like to have a wife; to come home and find my supper on the table, my house clean, and the aroma of a woman’s perfume making my legs tremble.
I look at Sima in silence and blame her without saying a word, making her feel ashamed of herself. And you, Kamyar, whenever you get close to my wife, I’ll be a thorn in your eyes. Wait, and I’ll show you.
When I introduced Mina to Sima, her eyes filled with tears, but she was able to keep herself from crying. I had known Mina for a few years. We were just friends and had never dated. I liked her. She was an independent woman; she lived by herself and was always busy. She’s twenty-four and always said, “I don’t have time for men.” When I told her about Sima, she said, “You’re in a big mess.”
“How do I get rid of this mess?” I asked her, sincerely looking for help.
She said, “Marry me.” She was serious.
I was shocked and asked, “Do you mean it?”
She replied, “Yes, of course, I love you.”
Within a week, we got married at the city hall. Gholam and Sima were our witnesses. They accompanied us to the airport. I couldn’t stay in that house another minute, or even in this city any more. I couldn’t do anything for Sima. She chose her husband from almost seven thousand kilometres away. Now it’s up to her what she wants to do with him.