Mina had to stop Darya from marinating the hot dogs.
“But it’s absurd to grill meat without marinating it first!”
“I don’t think that’s how it’s done here.” Mina held her mother’s hand back.
“Olive oil, lime juice, salt, pepper, sliced onions, and dissolved saffron. For about six hours. It would taste so much better.”
“No, Maman.” Mina hid the saffron. Darya tended to overuse it lately. And this was, after all, a Fourth of July barbecue.
The Hakimians, the owners of the Iranian shop in Rego Park, had written a list for them. Hot dogs. Chicken. Hamburgers. Corn on the cob. Darya had marinated all the other meats. In her special combination from that other country. The corn would be grilled till its kernels went practically black, then dipped in salt water—rightful balal! This was a special barbecue. Their very first Fourth of July. Celebrating independence. They were all healthy. They had their freedom now. What more could they ask for?
“Fireworks!” Mr. Hakimian had said. “Wait till you see the fireworks.”
Mina had been especially looking forward to the fireworks.
Fireworks comprised the colors of summer. Kaleidoscopic colors, magical colors, colors that literally burst and splattered, then vanished, leaving Mina to scratch her head and wonder if they were ever really there. Summer was season three. Baba said it took four to feel at home in a new place, and here they were 75 percent of the way there, three-quarters of the journey done.
The hot air hung heavy and humid all day long and curled the edges of leaves on hedges, dampened the paper on Mina’s sketch pad, and stunned the spiders into slow demise. New York baked that summer. Baked and sizzled and roasted as its cement sidewalks seemed to melt. Mina and her brothers mopped their foreheads and fanned their faces and reapplied glossy shiny deodorants from American drugstores to their underarms as though that could prevent them from being cooked right through. Like the naked, unmarinated sausages sizzling on their Fourth of July barbecue, Mina and her brothers swiveled and turned and hissed as their skin grew darker and thicker in the heat. All of winter and spring (season one and season two), Mina had tried to avoid going to the dry cleaner’s where Darya worked, and now here, in season three in the midst of New York’s summer, the dry cleaner’s had come to her. The hot stifling air, the suffocating heat, the feeling that she could barely breathe; it was everywhere now. Stepping out of the front door was like stepping into Darya’s dry-cleaning shop. And how was it for Darya? Mina wondered. To walk from the steamy dry cleaner’s into a steamy world, to never really escape the all-encompassing invisible blanket of heat.
The promise of an air conditioner kept them hopeful. Baba hinted that they’d get one soon. That’s how it was now. You waited. Money wasn’t like before. You waited and worked and saved your dollars. And then maybe, you went and bought the desired item, most likely secondhand. “Get with it, Mina,” Hooman said. He was quick to pick up American slang. “Get with the program.” Air conditioners did not grow on trees in Queens. Mina slept in her white nightgown, the bedsheets sticky against her skin, nightmares free to roam and lodge in her newly American brain.
Mina’s top-ranking nightmare of season three: NYPD chases eleven-year-old girl for lack of proper Islamic hijab.
Scene one: Mina is standing outside, leaning against the brick wall of their apartment. She’s bouncing a small blue rubber ball or holding on to a crocheted orange bag or snapping pink bubble gum. Minding her own business. Footsteps. Mina turns around. Heavy footsteps. Approaching her. Clean-shaven, muscular, red-cheeked NYPD policeman approaches from behind. The faintest glimmer of panic begins its travel from the tips of her toes through her calves, up her thighs, to her wibbly-wobbly stomach. BAM BAM her heart starts to beat louder and louder. Panic, panic rising from fear. Mr. NYPD walks closer and closer to Mina. And then within seconds the metamorphosis occurs, the clean-shaven, rosy-cheeked NYPD man morphs into a dark-bearded, sallow-eyed, scowling Islamic Revolutionary Guard. Mr. NYPD is gone, and in his place stands the judgmental, scornful man in his heavy black boots who hated every strand of hair on her head, who deemed illegal and immoral the bumps forming on her chest, who thought sinful the curve of her lower back (too seductive), and who would get her for not covering her schoolgirl thighs. The thought that somehow her lack of proper covering would have a ripple effect and get her family into trouble engulfs her. Because the Revolutionary Guards work like spiders in a web, all they have to do is pull at one strand, and soon the family is found: mothers and fathers implicated, questioned, arrested, tortured, raped, killed.
Mina’s lungs fill with dark, thick black oil. She wants to breathe, wants to find the energy to run, to escape, but her lungs are clogged. If only she could cover herself. If only she had the hijab now, the long baggy billowing roopoosh to cover her legs, the coarse thick headscarf to cover her naked head. She looks for cloth to cover herself. She grabs at her T-shirt, wants to tear off a piece, find something, anything, with which to cover her head and lessen her crime. When she finally does manage to rip the T-shirt, the piece isn’t big enough. She breathes faster, and suddenly her lungs are free of the thick black oil and she can run. She runs and runs and runs, looking over her shoulder. The Islamic fundamentalist is right behind her, running in his heavy black boots, catching up with her, his rifle by his side, his face filled with disgust. Mina’s heart pounds against her chest, her hair flies everywhere as she runs. He mustn’t catch her, he can’t get her, can’t corner her. But when he does, when the thick-bearded, sallow-faced, black-eyed guard finally catches up with her and grabs her arm, she turns to see her grandmother’s face, scattered with bloodred pomegranate seeds.
Mina woke up screaming. She clutched at her hair, wished she’d never exposed herself, never taken her headscarf off, never ventured to endanger everything and everyone she loved. She sat shaking in her bed, sweating from the nightmare and the New York summer night.
Darya ran into Mina’s room. She sat by her bed, holding Mina tight. Over and over and over again she whispered, “You don’t have to be afraid. It’s okay. They are not here. We left. You don’t have to be afraid of them anymore.”