Bita left the next day, back to Tehran, to her job at the advertising firm where she was the head of the department for highway billboards. Mina, Darya, and Agha Jan continued on to the city of Isfahan, glad to leave behind Shiraz and Mina’s kicking of the guard.
“He could have chased you and then where would we be?” Darya’s forehead vein throbbed.
“He couldn’t chase her because she had rendered him helpless,” Agha Jan said. He turned to Mina. “It was truly dangerous what you did,” he said, not for the first time, but Mina couldn’t miss the note of pride in his voice.
When they arrived in Isfahan, they checked into a grand old hotel with a red carpeted staircase and Persian rugs strewn across its large rooms.
“Isfahan is called Nesfe-Jahan, ‘Half the World,’ ” Agha Jan said over a lunch of kabobs and rice. “Go see the synagogue. Go see the mosque. Darya, go show this girl half the world.”
While Agha Jan took his afternoon nap, Darya took Mina to Isfahan’s main square. Horses and carriages lined up for tourists. At one end was a huge bazaar, at another was the main mosque with its glittering minarets. All around the square were handicraft shops. Darya wanted to spend time at the bazaar, but Mina was eager to explore the artisan shops.
They agreed to split up for an hour and then meet for tea.
Mina walked by the shops, occasionally stopping to take photos of the ancient buildings around her. He would call once they were back in the U.S., why wouldn’t he? She clicked her camera at the turquoise minarets and onion-shaped dome of the mosque at the end of the square.
In the window of one of the handicraft shops, a khatam box painted with delicate, colorful strokes in the style of old Persian miniature paintings caught her eye. On the box was the face of a young woman being kissed on the cheek by a man in a turban. The woman’s expression was one of bliss. Mina couldn’t take her eyes off the box. She stared at it for a few minutes, then went into the shop.
Inside it was dark and smelled of metal and glue and paint. Mina heard a tap-tapping, the banging of a small hammer onto something. As her eyes adjusted to the dim light, she saw a man bent over a table. He seemed to be in a trance, hammering at a metal tray. On the wall behind him were dozens of silver and copper trays and plates with patterns etched into them. Mina made out scenes of birds and deer, storks and flowers. The man’s hands flew, cutting the air with a rasp.
“Sit, rest, relax.”
She was surprised at his familiar tone. He’d used the singular verb conjugation of “you” in Farsi, as though she was family or a friend.
She went closer and was able to see that he was hammering out a rose. Like the one Ramin had given her in the park.
“Go on, sit down.” His gray eyes peeked out over round spectacles. Steel-colored tufts of hair stood out on either side of his head. His shirt was open at the top, revealing more steel-wool tufts on his chest. He wore gray suit pants with white plastic slippers.
Mina climbed onto a wooden stool near the table.
“Visiting?”
“Baleh. Yes.”
He etched out a bird next to the rose. “Where from?”
“America.”
“Ah.” He gave the bird wings. “Lots of you come back.”
Mina had only seen hands move so fast once before, when Uncle Jafar played the sitar for them when she was a child.
The man strummed out the body of the bird. He didn’t ask, Why did you leave? When did you leave? How do you like it here? He seemed too busy.
“Forty-five years,” he said after a stretch of silence, as if responding to a question Mina had asked, even though she’d said nothing. “That’s how long I’ve been doing this. Longer even, if you count my time as a child.”
A proud and beautiful bird emerged from his etching. Its chest was round, its wings spread out.
“Every day,” he added, as though Mina had just asked him how often he did this. He looked up and smiled. “Except Fridays. That’s God’s day.” He held up the finished tray.
“It’s fantastic,” Mina said.
“We artists,” he said. “Have to do our work. No?”
Mina wasn’t sure what to say. We artists? “Does the government tell you what you can and cannot make?” she asked.
“They tell me what I can and cannot sell. Display.” He cleared the filings off the table. “But nobody can affect what I can or cannot make.” He cleaned his hands on an old rag and stood up.
“Come,” he said. “Let me show you something.” The artisan moved to the back of the shop where a black sheet hung from nails hammered into the wall.
A cautionary voice that sounded just like Darya’s warned Mina not to follow strangers behind black curtains. But Mina rose and followed the artisan. The artisan swished the sheet aside.
Behind the curtain was a large storage room. From floor to ceiling, shelves were crammed with etched trays, decorated ceramics, and mosaic boxes. Piles of copper plates, painstakingly engraved, towered on one shelf. Mosaic khatam boxes in gold and blue and every possible color sat in groups on the floor. Leather canvases adorned with fancy calligraphy and dozens of paintings covered every inch of the walls. Scenes of lovers in embrace, men and women dancing and lounging under trees, dizzied Mina. One large painting stood out. It was of a long-haired woman in a purple robe, leaning against a tree, playing what looked like a small guitar. A man in flowing robes looked up at her. Mina recognized the woman’s face. It was the same one she’d seen on the box in the shop window. The woman had the same expression of bliss.
“You like that one?” The artisan walked up to the painting. “It’s one of my favorites. Come,” he said. “Let’s have some tea.”
“Oh no, I can’t . . .” Mina said.
“Please. Don’t tarof.” He went to a samovar set on a small table near a cot. Mina hadn’t noticed the cot before. A framed photo of a young man hung above it.
“I take my afternoon nap here.” The artisan handed her an estekan of tea and sat on the cot. “I heard that in America, you don’t take the afternoon nap. True?”
“People don’t usually . . . have cots at work.”
“Why not? Not so wise to skip the afternoon nap. It’s good for your heart.” He tapped his chest with ink-stained fingers. “As to your question about what the government allows me to make, please know, my friend, that governments come and go. We artists continue our work. Every day.”
She sat on a chair next to the cot and they drank their tea. She should have felt uncomfortable sitting in a storage room with a strange man, but she felt as though she were with a kindred soul, a spirit from another world.
He drained his tea glass, then got up. “Back to work,” he said matter-of-factly.
As they walked out, Mina took one last look at the painting of the woman playing the guitar, a man by her side, under the tree. She drank that image in.
With a swish of the black sheet, the storage room disappeared and they were back in the shop. The man slid behind his table, picked up his hammer and a nail, and within seconds was drumming out the legs of a stork.
“I’d like to buy the khatam box in the store window,” Mina said suddenly. “The one of the man and the woman.” She got out her wallet.
“My gift to you. Please.”
“No, no,” Mina insisted and put the money on the counter. “And thank you for the tea.”
He went to the window, got the box, and wrapped it in newspaper for her. Mina was at the door, her hand on the doorknob when he said, “My son died in the war.”
Of course. The photograph above the cot. The young man’s face.
“My wife has the most terrible of afflictions now. Afsordeghi. Depression. That’s her face on that box you’re holding and in that painting you liked. That’s her when she was happy.”
“I am so sorry,” Mina said.
“Our son was the light of our eyes. My wife is my soul. When I paint her as she was, she comes back to me,” the artist mumbled. “Go, then. May God protect you.”
“Khodahafez,” Mina replied.
She swung the door open and was once again in the glare of the square. The sun was blinding. The shops, the horse-drawn tourist carriages, the sounds and smells of the outside world engulfed her. She thought of the artisan, bent over his table, hammering out his images.
She realized that she wanted to capture every angle of the minarets and ancient buildings, Bita by the Persepolis sculptures, the grocer with his boxes of onions, the young people dancing in the living room of the apartment building. She never wanted to forget the tree in the People’s Park, the way the leaves fell as she listened to Ramin talk, the snow that landed on her hand in his. How could she stop these images from slipping through her fingers? Why hadn’t she painted? When did she stop doing what she loved?
The camera wasn’t enough. It never was.
She knew what she had to do.
DARYA WOVE HER WAY THROUGH the alleyways of the bazaar, stopping to sift spices through her hands, smelling the cardamom and cumin, feeling the rough edges of dried limes. Men called out to her, advertising their wares, and she walked on, pushing through the people who filled the lanes of the bazaar. She felt so far away from her job at the bank and math camp and her Spreading Spreadsheet Specs class. What on earth would Sam do in a place like this? He wouldn’t even know where to look, what to say. Then again, being such a “laid-back dude,” he would probably find a way to navigate these alleys, and before long, he’d be relaxed here too. He was that kind of person. So at peace. Which, she knew, was what made him so attractive to her. She loved his calm.
But the truth was, she missed Parviz. All that time in the U.S. she had missed Iran and now here she was back in Iran, and everything made her think of Parviz. He would have loved to see everyone again. He would have sat at the kitchen table and talked Agha Jan’s ear off. He and Uncle Jafar could have argued about music and philosophy again. She missed Parviz’s loud voice, even his self-help mumbo jumbo. She missed his action-oriented, goal-setting, life-seizing, triumphant leaps in the air. Everything in Iran reminded her of him. Hadn’t they been young together here? Hadn’t they had their courtship here?
What is done cannot be undone.
They had raised three children together. They had moved to a new continent and started life over together. Parviz was a part of her.
So, while she had enjoyed the attention from Sam—his smiles, his no-fuss ways, his quiet words during the breaks of their spreadsheet class—it was never going to be anything more than that. Ever. And now she knew she had never even wanted it to be.
Darya was so caught up in her thoughts that she walked right into a group of chadored women. “Excuse me,” she mumbled in English. The women frowned and walked off. So her reflexes were in English now. Darya tried not to bump into any more people and focused her attention on a bright silver tea set displayed on woven tapestries.
She was relieved when she looked down the alley of the bazaar and saw Mina walk toward her. Just seeing her daughter made her happy. Here was her daughter who didn’t know how beautiful she was, who could never know just how much she loved her and how her own world, Darya’s, had been reshaped by Mina’s presence in it. Here was the daughter she had raised with Parviz.
Darya slipped her arm through Mina’s. “Let’s go, Mina. Let’s go and have together tea.”
SHE WANTED MINA TO APPRECIATE the beauty here—she wanted to give her a taste of everything—but they had so little time left. She took her to a teahouse that she remembered from years ago near the Bridge of Thirty-three Arches. The door was tucked away under the bridge and steps led down to a cozy room where tea was served. Darya was delighted to find the teahouse as she remembered it. People sat shoeless on Persian rugs, leaning against crimson and burgundy carpeted cushions. Men smoked ghalyoon, women relaxed drinking. Darya showed Mina where to stow her shoes. She motioned to the waiter and they sat. How many tea bags bobbing in lukewarm water had she put up with in the States? But here, they would have real tea with leaves meticulously selected and mixed in just the right proportion. The brewing, the dam-avardan, would be supervised with care. At the right time, the tea would be poured into estekan and served with hacked-off pieces of sugar. Darya couldn’t wait to put the sugar between her teeth, to feel it slowly dissolve and melt in her mouth as she sipped.
When the waiter brought their tea and chunks of snow-white sugar on clear saucers, Darya decided the time had come to ask Mina.
“So,” she said, clearing her throat. “Are you a lover now?” She used the poets’ words. Eshgh/love. Ashegh/one who’s in love/lover.
“I beg your pardon?” Mina’s arm holding the tea glass froze in midair.
“Oh please, I can tell when a girl’s in love. And it’s not fair that I barely know anything about him. I know he has nice teeth. As if that means anything!”
“You’ve met his brother,” Mina said. “Graphed him. You know of the family.”
“Your father and I don’t know anything about him,” Darya said. Yes, she knew of the Dashti family because of the previous research for the older brother. But that did not feel like enough anymore. “I mean, who is he, even? What’s he like?”
“He’s . . . well, in the few times that I’ve seen him, he’s been quite thoughtful.”
“Is he kind?” Darya asked. “Because, Mina, there’s a lot to be said for education. And a profession. And family history. And, well, looks. But if there’s one thing that matters, it’s character. That’s the only thing that lasts. Degrees can lose significance, jobs can be lost, a family’s past really shouldn’t define a person, and as for looks . . .” Darya sighed. “Well, looks fade for the best of us. But character, Mina, is what lasts. Kindness will carry you through the ups and downs of life.”
“He is kind. Very.”
“Well, that’s a start.”
“But really, ups and downs of life? It’s not like we’re going to get married or anything!”
“No, of course not. That’s not what I’m saying at all.” Darya sipped her tea. “Wait, why not?”
“Because I barely know him! Plus, he’s in Connecticut. Long distance never works.”
“It’s only an hour away, Mina.”
“Who knows what will happen?”
“Everything works out if it’s the right person.”
“Can you just please promise me that we’re done with the spreadsheets and suitors? No matter what?”
Sitting in this teahouse near the bridge, with the sound of the water lapping overhead and the feel of the rug against her toes, Darya felt embarrassed by those spreadsheets. She had tried so hard to find the perfect formula for her daughter’s happiness when really there was no way she could control her daughter’s future. She’d always known that, even if she hadn’t wanted to admit it. Those spreadsheets felt far away, like something she’d done in another life.
“You know what, Mina? I’m beginning to think there is no one right person. No predestined soul mate. There’s no formula. Or if there is, a lot of different combinations can give you a right answer . . . or a right person.” Darya realized as she said this that she finally believed it. True, she’d spent her entire adult life with Parviz and been happy. What if Mamani had picked someone else? If Darya had married one of her other suitors, who was to say she wouldn’t have been just as happy? There was no magic value for the formula to work. Different variables fit into the equation. For example, in another lifetime, under different circumstances, she and Sam could have maybe been a wonderful couple together.
Mina sighed. “I have something to tell you.”
“You’re not going to get married, I know, Mina. Let’s just see how it unfolds. No pressure. I’ll stop . . .”
“No, it’s not that. I’m quitting business school.”
“Excuse me?”
“I have to. I want to paint. I don’t want to look back years from now and regret not giving it a shot.”
Darya was starting to feel dizzy. “Mina, remember your promise? That if we came on this trip, you’d actually go back and buckle down and focus on business school for a change, without constantly thinking you should be doing something else? Remember that?”
“I do. But I had no idea the power that this place would have over me. The problem is I’ve been doing the wrong thing. I need to be committed.”
“Yes, committed!”
“But committed to my art, not to Wall Street. I need to . . . devote the time. It won’t happen by itself. I have to focus. Quitting business school is the only way.”
As her daughter talked, Darya leaned against the carpeted cushions, exhausted. This was the power her children held over her. They could walk into a room and just the sight of them would make her heart soar and then the next minute, they could open their mouths and say absurdities that rendered her helpless. What was she to say to Parviz now? This trip that Darya had championed against Parviz’s better judgment was not supposed to make Mina quit business school. It was supposed to keep her more firmly in it.
Where was Parviz when she needed him? Where was he to just talk sense into this girl?
What had this trip done to her daughter?