Breathless from Their Disco Dancing
For Mina’s tenth birthday party, Darya measured and rinsed basmati rice all morning. She crushed strands of saffron, then soaked the cooked rice in dissolved saffron powder, delighting in each and every orange-yellow grain. Baba climbed out from under the dining room table after hiding wine and whiskey in a picnic basket under the tablecloth. Mamani came early to fry the onions. Soghra sat in the kitchen and dabbed her forehead with a rose-water-dipped handkerchief, moaning about all the work still left. Hooman and Kayvon swept and hosed down the front steps. Mina seeded pomegranates for her mother’s walnut stew. Her stomach fell at the thought of her tenth birthday party. At any minute, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards could barge in, seize the illegal alcohol, arrest her parents for forbidden music and dancing, and detain everyone. Baba would be handcuffed, Darya would faint and fall to the floor, Hooman and Kayvon would get flogged by the guards, and Mina would end up crouched in a corner, a ball of misery. Mina prayed for the guards not to discover her party. She also prayed with her eyes squeezed shut for Saddam not to pick her birthday night to bomb the city.
Everybody helped. Relatives and neighbors gave Darya their ration coupons for meat and eggs. Aunt Firoozeh came over in her billowy roopoosh.
“Take my kerosene coupons, Darya Joon. Keep your house warm. Your uncle Jafar, as you know, lives like a horse and can’t stand too much heat. Besides, he’s been talking about rice pudding for three weeks now. I’m ready to hit him in the head. I keep telling him we don’t have enough milk . . .”
“Aunt Firoozeh, don’t say another word! Please take my milk coupons.” Darya searched for her ration book.
“No, no, I wouldn’t dream of it! I just mentioned it because . . . well, I couldn’t take just a few of your milk coupons! You with those two growing boys, Hooman and Kayvon! And that Mina of yours, turning ten! No, I don’t expect anything in return for all our kerosene!”
“Aunt Firoozeh, please, I beg you. Take it. I won’t sleep at night until you do!”
Mina heard them insist with exaggerated politeness in the traditional style of Persian tarof. She remembered that a few years ago she’d embarrassed Darya at a family gathering because the hostess had asked her if she wanted a piece of cake, and she had said yes.
“Never,” Darya had whispered in Mina’s ear after pulling her aside later, “accept anything at the first request. Wait.”
Mina had looked at her blankly, the spongy cake still filling her cheeks, a few crumbs on her lips, unable to speak or chew or swallow. She nodded instead and then observed, learning to master indirectness. With Darya’s help, Mina learned how to use just the right amount of insistence and refusal, self-restraint and flattery. The next time they were at someone’s home, she remembered the art of tarof.
“Do you want a piece of cake?”
“Oh no, thank you, I’m full. I wouldn’t dream of having cake.”
Then the hostess asked again. “Please, I would rather throw dirt on my head than have you not eat my cake.”
“Oh no, I couldn’t, you’re too kind.”
“You must. A big piece.”
“That’s far too big, you’re embarrassing me.”
“Please eat it. Look at you so skinny. You’re too young to be on a diet.”
“In God’s name, no . . .”
“Here, may it feed your soul.”
“May God prolong your life. I thank you.”
Mina took the cake and ate it until a second piece was offered and the tarof started all over again.
THE GUESTS WERE TOLD TO COME at seven o’clock so Darya knew they’d come by nine. That’s how it was in the City of War. Everybody was later than usual. It took time to get ready—time for the women to cloak themselves in the now mandatory Islamic uniforms and veils, for the men to organize the backseats of their cars with flashlights, battery-powered radios, and bottles of water. Time for everybody to stop in the middle of traffic, get out of their cars, and crouch in ditches by the street when Saddam decided to burst open a bomb.
Poor Mr. Johnson showed up at 7:06. Darya opened the door pretending he was right to be on time and everybody else was embarrassingly late and uncouth. She wanted Mr. Johnson, an old friend of Baba’s who was a correspondent for the BBC, to feel at home. Despite the anti-foreigner slogans spray-painted on Tehran streets in bloodred, Mr. Johnson had not left. Mina had heard Mamani say that he was going to leave soon, though, and return to the orderly world of England. Mina wondered if he’d have fish and chips on his first night back. Mrs. Isobel, the Iranian-Armenian teacher Darya had hired to teach the kids English after school, often talked about fish and chips and tea and crumpets during lessons.
Mr. Johnson sucked on the ends of his glasses and smiled at Darya.
In her red, wrinkled purse Mamani kept a photograph of her sister’s oldest granddaughter, Leila. At a previous party, Mamani had made sure Mr. Johnson saw that photo. Conveniently dropped it onto his navy lap. Cousin Leila was nineteen and beautiful. And Mr. Johnson, with his blond hair parted in the middle, his tall, slim figure, and the ease with which he spoke Farsi, was not married. Mina had sat on Mamani’s lap as Mamani whispered into the phone, “Don’t worry, Sister. I’ve found someone for Leila. If all goes well, she can leave Iran before she’s twenty. She can study in England. She won’t have to suffer here anymore.”
KISSES AND HUGS AND HAIRSPRAY surrounded the guests as they arrived. Their house had one of the most coveted designs in post-revolutionary Iran: a big private foyer. Here, when the women arrived, they could stop and remove their heavy roopoosh, release their hair from their headscarves, and slowly transform themselves into the women they were—the women they had been before the revolution’s new laws. The state’s obligatory flat shoes were thrown off and feet slipped into stiletto heels pulled out of plastic bags. Flattened hair was fluffed and teased back into shape. Tight red dresses, shimmery tank tops, miniskirts, and mutually admired spaghetti-strap gowns emerged from under the roopoosh. The women joked and grumbled about the Islamic hijab as they pressed tubes of lipstick to their mouths and smeared eye shadow above their lids. They shared one another’s black-market Chanel No. 5, spritzing between their breasts and inside their wrists.
In the foyer, on special hooks Darya had hammered in after the revolution, hung the discarded roopoosh in a row. They were lifeless and colorless, even more so without their owners in them.
After greetings and cocktails, after dolmeh and pistachios, Baba announced it was time for a little music. He drew the blinds shut and made sure all the doors were locked. Darya pulled curtains over the blinds as an extra precaution, and Mina’s uncles piled chairs against the front door. If the Revolutionary Guards decided to break in, the extra buffer would buy them all some time.
“Don’t worry, they’re not around this neighborhood tonight,” Baba reassured the guests. “Big wedding in Yousef Abad. They’re all downtown, most of them anyway.”
“Well, last weekend they stormed the Honaris’ wedding.” Aunt Firoozeh sucked an olive off a toothpick. “They heard pop music and broke in, ten Comiteh Revolutionary Guards. Fined the host. Kept the guests in custody. Poor Niloofar said she should’ve never had a reception.”
“Firoozeh Joon, you’re being negative again,” her husband, Uncle Jafar, said. He sat stuffed in an armchair drinking homemade beer he’d brought with him in yogurt containers. “Don’t scare these good people. One shouldn’t be paranoid. Maybe think a little before you say things that scare children?”
Aunt Firoozeh glared at him as she sipped her wine. Mina had watched them argue all her life. “May God release me from this man and his criticism!” Aunt Firoozeh muttered, then stomped into the kitchen. Uncle Jafar continued talking to no one in particular. “Have you heard of Viktor Frankl? Have you read his books? He knows about the power of positive thinking.” He coughed, his eyes burning from the brew. “Also, there’s an American woman, by the name of Glooria Gay-Lord who has sung a song with which I’m very pleased. It is called ‘I Veel Survive.’ Have you heard it?”
A few men nodded politely and feigned interest because he was an elder. Other guests smiled and looked down. Darya then handed Mina a silver tray filled with bowls of different nuts and Mina trotted around the room, balancing the tray in her hands.
“Would you like some nuts?” she asked the old powdered aunts who sat with Mamani on the couch.
“Oh no, thank you, may your hands not ache.”
“Please take a nut,” Mina insisted.
“No, no,” the ladies politely refused.
“In God’s name, take a nut, please,” Mina said.
“Well, okay then, maybe just one.” Mamani extracted a few nuts from the bowl.
“May it nourish your soul,” Mina said, bowing her head. Darya always said that before people ate.
“Thank you, my soul is yours,” Mamani said.
Mina continued around the room.
AT NINE O’CLOCK, COUSIN LEILA arrived with her father, Professor Agassi, and her mother, Dr. Agassi. Tall and thin, Leila wore dark blue jeans and a white blouse. She was the only Iranian woman Mina knew who didn’t dress as if she were attending an opera every time there was a party at someone’s house. She didn’t wear any makeup, but she still looked better than the others. She had big dark eyes and long black hair that was always moving, fluid around her fair skin. Leila hugged Mina amidst the loud greetings and laughter at her family’s arrival.
“Tavalodet mobarak, happy birthday.” Leila was the only person who remembered what this party was actually for. Presents were piled high in the living room, but few others had uttered “Happy birthday.” “How’s it going?”
“It’s going. Aunt Firoozeh and Uncle Jafar argued already. Baba insists on playing music. My mom cooked my favorites. Mamani wants you to marry Mr. Johnson.”
Leila didn’t seem surprised at any of it. “Come on.” She took her second cousin’s hand. “I brought you a book. In English.” Leila spoke fluent English and tutored children in their homes. Darya always encouraged Mina to bolster Mrs. Isobel’s lessons with English conversation with Leila. “For your future, Mina Joon,” she would say. “It will be the language of the world one day.” Every Wednesday after school, Mina, Hooman, and Kayvon were dragged to Mrs. Isobel’s classes. Darya added an extra Monday session after the war began. She had heard from Baba’s brother, now seeking asylum in Chicago, that not knowing English made him feel blind.
Mina and Leila went to the bedroom and thumbed through the paperback: it was a book from the Michelle series. Michelle lived in a place called Portland, Oregon. She had a best friend, Sandy, and was learning how to babysit. Sandy and Michelle both liked a boy called Brett. But Brett only liked the cheerleader Marcia. Marcia smiled on the book’s cover, holding pink fluffy balls, her bare legs raised in the air.
“And the English-language bookstore can sell this?” Mina’s eyes widened at Marcia’s bare legs.
“The booksellers have colored over Marcia’s legs with permanent black marker now,” Leila said. “But I got this before.”
There was no need to say before when. Their world was cleaved into Before and After. Before the revolution. Before the new laws. Before the upside-down.
“You went to trouble, thank you,” Mina said.
Leila read out loud about Michelle and Sandy’s plan to stop Brett from taking Marcia to prom. Mina sat on her bed and tried to follow their problems, but she couldn’t help worrying about the Revolutionary Guards. If they burst in and arrested her parents for the party, it would all be her fault.
“Dinner’s ready!” Darya’s head popped into the room.
THE GUESTS HEAPED THEIR PLATES with rice and ghormeh sabzi, rice and barberries, and poured Darya’s walnut and pomegranate sauce on top of their saffron rice. They drank Baba’s illegal wine and insisted everything was the best they’d ever had. This time, Mina knew it wasn’t just tarof. Her mother’s cooking truly was superb. Mina broke some fresh naan and dipped it into her cucumber and mint yogurt.
“To the chef, the lovely lady at the head of the table.” Baba raised his glass.
Darya blushed. “May it nourish your souls,” she said.
“To Mrs. Rezayi!”
“Thank you, Khanom Rezayi!”
“May your hands not ache!”
“May you live long!”
Darya beamed, her eyes bright.
“And may God protect us from the Revolutionary Guards, damn them, and from the entire entourage of Secret Police that wrecks the lives of the innocent and tortures people’s children! And from British spies!” Aunt Firoozeh said, her face flushed with too much wine, as Uncle Jafar almost spit out a stuffed grape leaf.
SOGHRA ARRANGED THE BAKLAVA INTO tiny diamonds on Darya’s wedding china and made sure the rose-flavored ice cream was topped with threads of saffron. She poured dark chai into small hourglass-shaped glasses. Mina rested her head on her hands at the dining table, inhaling steam from the tea. So far, so good. No Revolutionary Guards, no Saddam. Maybe when dessert was over, they could open the presents.
Aunt Firoozeh chewed her baklava, looking sideways at Mr. Johnson. Earlier in the kitchen, Mina had heard Aunt Firoozeh say to Darya, “It’s the work of the Brits. They have a hand in everything behind the scenes, don’t you know. Just like when they helped the CIA overthrow our only democratic government in 1953. Wouldn’t they love to see this country ruined. So they can have our oil. That’s what they want!” She had waved a cucumber in Darya’s face as she said this. Darya had shooed the cucumber and Aunt Firoozeh’s theory away. “What things you say, Khaleh! Mr. Johnson is our friend!”
Mr. Johnson was engrossed in a private conversation with Mamani and hadn’t noticed Aunt Firoozeh’s glares. Mamani pretended to smell something in her arthritic hands and Mina heard her say “foody good” in English. Was Mamani trying to convey cumin? Cardamom? Rose petals? Mr. Johnson nodded and then pretended to smell an invisible spice in his own hand with exaggerated delight, raising his eyebrows at Mamani.
The lovely lesson in mime notwithstanding, Mina felt anxious to get to the presents before it got too late. She tugged on Darya’s blouse. Darya and Leila’s mother were talking in soft voices now, their heads close together, arms touching.
“The new officials,” Leila’s mother said, “want to pass a law saying female dentists can’t treat men. I can’t treat men and look into their mouths. Why? Because they’ve suddenly deemed it ungodly. Too much closeness between opposite sexes, they say. What, do they think that bleeding gums and teeth turn me on?”
“They’re sick,” Darya said. “Everything is about sex to these fundamentalists. We have to cover up so they aren’t tempted. In the Shah’s time, just because we wore miniskirts and our heads were free, did everyone go around obsessed with sex?”
“No,” Leila’s mother said. “Though you have to admit, Darya, our last year in university . . .” She broke off, giggling. “Remember those hikes with Behzad and Bahram?”
Darya and Leila’s mom burst out laughing over their bowls of ice cream, squealing ridiculously. Mina noticed the tiny creases that formed around their eyes as they squeezed them in pleasure. She suddenly felt an inexplicable anger. Darya and Leila’s mom had worn miniskirts in college during the Shah’s time and hiked in mountains with boys. But for her, all of that was outlawed. Darya’s prophecy had been correct. After much discussion within the government and despite protests by women and some men, mandatory hijab was now law. Mina would never feel the sun on her legs again, never sit next to a boy in class the way her mother had. Her hair would not know the feel of wind or sunshine.
Mina excused herself and went to the bathroom. She needed to escape from the political arguments and her mother’s squealing laughter. Mina closed the door and climbed onto the edge of the tub to nudge the window open. The cool night air washed over her, smelling of jasmine and dust. Mina could still hear Baba’s music. He had put on Googoosh, the most popular female pop singer, now banned as a voice of sin.
Mina mouthed the lyrics, then she heard a noise. At first she thought it was a car crash. But then she realized. An explosion. Of course. From the open window, she saw the night sky. Burning orange-yellow. Saddam.
WHEN MINA WALKED BACK, DARYA was clearing away dessert dishes, still talking to Leila’s mom. Aunt Firoozeh sat at the table, picking her teeth with a folded piece of paper. Leila leaned against the wall, talking with Mr. Johnson. He nibbled the tips of his glasses, then said something that made Leila laugh. In the middle of the room, Hooman and Kayvon practiced karate moves. Baba stood in front of the cassette player, arguing with Uncle Jafar, who kept showing him a tape with the English words “I Will Survive” marked on it in big letters. Uncle Jafar said something about its uplifting message.
“No, let’s play ‘Dancing Queen,’ ” Baba said holding his own black-market ABBA tape. He pointed to Mina. “See? ‘Dancing Queen.’ ”
Mina’s brothers pulled her into a group of people who were beginning to dance in the middle of the room. In a few seconds the emergency alarms would go off all over the city, alerting citizens to the bombs falling outside. They would have to drop everything, get in file, and go to the basement for shelter. The presents would have to be opened later, much later.
But for now, Mina swayed with the guests, dancing to the forbidden music. She threw her head back, pointed a finger in the air, and glided with the group. Uncle Jafar’s song had won. A few guests sang along. I veel survive. From across the room, Mina caught a glimpse of her mother. She was sashaying, her hands pressed onto her hips. A choo-choo train of dancing guests formed behind her. As the emergency bomb alarm sounded from speakers lining the street and drowned out the music, Mina and her brothers joined the queue. Baba brought up the rear of the line. And they all followed Darya, breathless from their disco dancing, as she carefully guided them down the basement steps.