It takes four seasons. To feel at home in a new country,” Baba said. “That is the rule. Once you pass four seasons, then you’re home free.”
They had arrived in snow. They rented a room in a tiny hotel in Manhattan, using savings from the old country. Darya leaned against the iron bars of the clunky gated elevator as Mina and Kayvon tap-danced their way up and down, pretending to be characters in an old Julie Andrews movie they’d seen in Tehran. In their hotel room, the buttons on the TV remote commanded seemingly endless channels. Thirteen TV stations in all! Mina never knew there could be so many.
On the street outside their hotel, small kiosks spilled over with newspapers and magazines and row after row of pink, green, and orange candies. They walked in the snow and bought the newspaper and tried to keep pace with the brisk energy of the city. Baba circled ads in the paper, got on the phone, and contacted the few Iranian expats he knew. He spoke to former colleagues, professors, scholars—the ones who’d left before them. One of Baba and Darya’s old university friends, now a chemistry professor at New York University, gave them the most important piece of information: the top ten school districts.
Number one goal—good school. A good enough school, in an affordable neighborhood. “What matters is the school. Once we have the school, we have our neighborhood,” Baba kept saying. Mina nodded. She knew that school was the key to her and her brothers’ future in freedom. There was a growing, gnawing feeling in Mina’s gut that they would be in America for more than just a year or two. Despite what Baba said. Mina and her brothers were now grateful that Darya had dragged them to Mrs. Isobel’s English lessons in Tehran.
In their first few weeks in New York, there were no sunny days. But then one morning, Mina was awakened by a warmth on her face. Apricot rays shone through the hotel window, straight into her eyes. She sat up, got out of bed, and rushed to the window. Sunshine lit up the slush on the street. Up until now, they’d had to wear hats outside—woolen beanies bought from the Pakistani man who sold hats, gloves, and small black umbrellas from his wooden table on Lexington Avenue. But today was bright, clearly warmer. While Hooman and Kayvon snored and Baba dreamed his Farsi dreams, Mina tapped Darya awake. She pointed to the sun and Darya understood. It was warm enough to go outside without anything on their heads. They were dressed in minutes.
Inside the clunky elevator, Mina tapped her feet. She practically ran out of the hotel, with Darya right behind her. Feeling their scalps warmed by the sun was new again. They laughed as the rays soaked into their hair. Mina’s thick mane swung down her back, black and lush, as she held Darya’s hand and they walked down Lexington Avenue. Mina noticed that Darya’s dark hair looked tea-colored in the light. How ordinary they must have seemed to others, mother and daughter strolling down the street. But no one knew their private joy. Was freedom just tiny moments like this? Simply knowing that no one cared if the sun shone on your hair?
Loud buses drove past, splashing slush onto their legs. No matter. The smell of burnt nuts and smoke was in the air; a man who looked as if he could be from central Tehran sold peanuts by the bag at a kiosk. The wisps of women’s hair blew in the wind. A grumpy young woman in a gray suit and sneakers held a briefcase in one hand and a paper cup of coffee in the other. She looked impatient and stressed, waiting to cross the street. Mina almost tugged at the young woman’s suit. Hey listen, it’s not that bad. Don’t look so upset. You can do whatever you want, wear whatever you want! Do you know how incredible that is?
The sign changed from “DON’T WALK” to “WALK” and the woman ran. Coffee spilled out of her paper cup. She cursed. Mina watched the woman sprint down the blocks in her sneakered feet. Of course she had work to do. Places to be. Everyone was so busy here.
The sun cast black shapes onto the pavement, covering forgotten pieces of flattened gum. Cars sputtered and coughed in the street, stopping more than they moved. Darya and Mina took in a lungful of the exhaust fumes as litter swirled around their feet.
“Do you think they’re happy here?” Mina asked Darya suddenly. She wanted to hear yes. It would be wonderful if they’d landed in the Land of the Happy.
“Happy?” Darya repeated the word as though it was completely irrelevant. “Well, nobody’s happy everywhere. I mean, not everybody’s happy in any country. It doesn’t work like that.”
“Oh.” Mina was disappointed.
“Then again, maybe they’re happy and don’t even realize it. It’s like that sometimes.”
“Maybe that’s why you’re happy. Because you’re not even thinking about it?”
“Something like that,” Darya mumbled. “Though in my opinion, happiness isn’t the goal of life. Happy, happy, happy! Who needs happy? They’re too concerned with being happy in your America.”
From the very first day of their arrival in New York, Darya referred to the U.S. as “your America” when she talked to Mina, Hooman, Kayvon, and even Baba. As though it already belonged to them but not to her.
Darya slipped into a place called Woolworth’s. Mina followed. Darya hovered in the hair-care aisle for a moment, then scooped up a box of crimson red dye. When they got back to the hotel room, Darya locked herself in the hotel bathroom and did not come out for thirty-five minutes. When she finally emerged, her hair was wet and red. Hooman, Kayvon, and Mina were confused. But Darya shook her newly red hair, and Baba clapped and cheered. Then Baba went in and scrubbed the bathroom walls clean. The colors that always remained of that first winter were the white of the snow in the early morning, the gray slush it soon transformed into, the red on the walls in the bathroom, and—an eternal memory—the dark crimson of those pomegranates dancing in Mina’s head, the ones her grandmother had gone to buy for her when the bomb came down. But dominating all the new colors was the jarring red of Darya’s hair, an unfamiliar defiance that screamed silently at the start of their American life.