1953
Tangled Tango Troubles
Roya’s life kept getting bigger, deliriously exhilarating. Just when she thought she had reached the cusp of something (for example, after she’d finished all the translations of Russian novels that Mr. Fakhri stocked in his shop), another exciting frontier came along. The country was awakening artistically with a new class of intelligentsia. The city blossomed with publishing, cinema, theater, literature, and art.
Now that they were engaged, she and Bahman could mix without chaperones and go out openly, even in the evenings, without worry.
Bahman’s friend Jahangir had a bona fide gramophone. He owned records from the East and the West. They started attending his social gatherings as a couple. At his parties, Roya heard songs in a foreign tongue that was so sexy it was sinister. So smooth, it softened hardship.
Jahangir’s dance soirees were on Thursday nights, the eve of the Friday holiday. His parents had access to all the latest gadgets, such as the gramophone. Bahman said that when his mother first found out that Jahangir’s family dripped with wealth, she’d greedily encouraged his friendship with him. Roya grimaced at this; Mrs. Aslan no doubt had been excited about the sophisticated, rich young ladies like Shahla who could be prospects for Bahman at Jahangir’s house.
“Bah bah, come in, come on in!” Jahangir hugged Roya and Bahman when they arrived. “Look!” he shouted to the other guests. “It’s the Perfect Couple! Do we know two more good-looking people? Just look at them! Tabrik! Congrats!”
Roya and Bahman’s engagement was shiny and fresh, their couplehood something to be celebrated. And based on the expressions of a few women in the crowd, something definitely to be envied.
“What’s on the menu for tonight?” Bahman asked.
“Tango, my friend!”
Roya couldn’t even make it to the table laid with goblets of crushed melon and ice. She and Bahman were surrounded. Bahman glowed with his usual charm as everyone jostled around him. Though Jahangir owned the gramophone and the music and the dance know-how, it was Bahman everyone wanted. With him, they practiced their first steps. For him, they flirted. Bahman had memorized the lyrics, in a language he did not speak, of Sinatra songs and Rosemary Clooney ballads. From being with him at other get-togethers since their engagement, Roya knew that if a part of the room grew quiet, if for a minute the conversation went stale, Bahman’s presence lit everything up again. It was hard not to be glued to his movements as he danced. Roya was well aware that she wasn’t alone in being enchanted by him. The girls laughed in high staccato near him, swooned when he told jokes.
“Come with me.” Bahman took Roya’s arm and pushed past everyone. He led her to the middle of the living room. A song for a waltz had just started. This she could do—it was one of the first dances Bahman had taught her, and she’d practiced with Zari for weeks. Zari had pulled Roya back and forth in their bedroom, scolding her when she made a mistake. Roya, remember. This isn’t our twirling hands/swaying hips Persian dance. This is serious. Concentrate! With Bahman’s instruction week after week and Zari’s forced practice, Roya’s confidence grew. Now she glided with Bahman across the room, inhaling his familiar scent.
“I need a drink,” she said when they finished.
He let her go.
At the refreshments table, Roya picked up a goblet of crushed melon-ice and a spoon. The sweet melon-ice filled her parched mouth. Suddenly there was a sharp tap on her shoulder.
She expected to see Bahman, but instead a tall, wavy-haired woman with olive skin and a movie-star mole above her lip (real or drawn on? If Zari were here, she would know) stared down at her. Shahla, the girl from the café.
“Thirsty?” she asked. Her voice was husky, coarse.
“Yes,” was all Roya could think to say. No hello, no introduction, no niceties.
“Well, you cast your net and caught him. Hoorah! He’s always been a slippery one. But somehow”—the girl studied Roya’s hair, her green dress—“somehow you did it. It’s mind-boggling.”
The melon and ice stayed in Roya’s cheek, frozen.
“To think, Jahangir didn’t want me to come tonight because he was worried it would upset Bahman or . . . you. Jahangir and I have been friends almost all our lives. Why should I not show up to his party? Besides, I had to see for myself up close what made Bahman such a lover boy. And now”—she looked Roya up and down again—“I get to see what the fuss is about.” Shahla looked down at Roya’s shoes. They weren’t the baby-doll shoes of her high school uniform. They were mules that had belonged to Maman: green suede with a small brass buckle on the side. “Please God, look!” Shahla shook her head, snorted, and then walked away.
“Everything good?” Bahman came over, face flushed from dancing. Roya hadn’t even noticed who he’d danced with after their waltz. She couldn’t stop people from being lured to his side. Men and women would always flock to him.
“Hey, what’s wrong?” he asked.
Roya cracked down hard with her teeth on the ice. “Nothing.”
Bahman glanced in the direction of the wavy-haired movie star look-alike, who had slinked to the other side of the room. “Please. Don’t worry about her. I saw her talk to you. I can’t believe she had the audacity to show up tonight. What did she say?”
Roya couldn’t speak.
He took the goblet from her hand and rested it on the table. He pulled her close and touched her neck. “Hey, Roya, come on. She’s nothing to me.” He kissed her forehead, right where Maman would claim her destiny was written in invisible ink. Shahla, wavy-haired and pouting from across the room, could not have missed this kiss either.
“She can see you. Stop. Everyone can see you.”
“Good. Let them. I want”—he kissed her again—“to kiss you in front of the whole damn world.”
“Basseh, enough,” Roya said. But after the fourth kiss, after he was so close that she could feel the perspiration on his shirt, she had almost forgotten about Shahla.
The soirees and the dancing, the music and the women mixed with men, the songs from America and the dances, the crushed melon in ice-cold goblets sometimes spritzed with what she was sure must have been alcohol—all of this was an unexpected secret scene for her. Who knew that the boy who would change the world even knew how to dance? That he had this group of friends? That he was so close to the ever-popular wealthy playboy Jahangir?
“I hope they all writhe with jealousy,” Bahman said, and nuzzled his face into her neck.
“I think you just want to writhe.” Roya giggled.
“With you? Always. How much longer till we get married?” He gently kissed her throat.
“Now, you behave, mister. I am a virtuous girl,” she teased. But she let him feel the contours of her neck with his mouth.
He looked up then with his dark eyes twinkling—the eyes that had struck her as filled with joy that first day at the Stationery Shop. “I’m counting down the days till we can be together. Roya, I love you so much.”
They stood like that, face-to-face. His breath was warm. Her heart pounded against his chest.
“Well, you’re stuck with me!” she finally said.
“I want to be stuck so badly,” he groaned, and laughed.
She picked a piece of lint from his collar. “Now then. As the boy who would change the world, can you please be a role model in front of all these people?”
“Bacheha! Kids!” Jahangir lifted his arms into the air and wiggled his waist. “The time has come to taaaango!”
He put on a new record, and sultry guitar chords filled the room. “Bahman, get over here!” Jahangir motioned from across the room. “I’d like to demonstrate with you.”
Bahman walked over and they stood face-to-face, cheek-to-cheek, Jahangir’s arm around Bahman’s waist, his other arm extended with his hand clasping Bahman’s. Jahangir drew Bahman in tight and slowly they moved. The song was sensual, almost alarming. It made Roya long for something she couldn’t even define, something forbidden and inviting. Watching Jahangir and Bahman dance felt like watching two strangers. Like watching what she’d never known she yearned for.
After the tutorial, after giggles and titters from the girls and the end of the song, Bahman dropped Jahangir’s hand and took Roya to the center of the room. They were joined by a few brave couples game enough to give it a go. When Jahangir started the song again, Bahman and Roya clasped each other. At first they got it wrong; they wobbled, and she almost fell over. The stubble on Bahman’s chin dug into her cheek. Being so close to him filled her with a desire so strong she had to force herself to focus on the steps. Her movements were wrong, but it just didn’t matter. Her body was flush against Bahman’s, her arm extended as one with his, her hand in his. Bahman stayed in character, imitating Jahangir’s serious and sexy look from the tutorial. It made Roya smile, and he frowned as if to chide her, so she quickly imitated his mock-serious expression. They tried and tried again until they were able to get across the room without looking like they’d collapse.
If she believed in fate, she would know that they were meant to meet, to fall in love like this, to want only to be together. Her body fit so well into his, it was as though she’d found her home. She was meant to have been in that Stationery Shop when he strode in whistling; she was meant to share Rumi’s poetry with him, to feel this connection with him. These things were meant to happen—it was impossible to think of a life without him now. She was his. It was that simple. It was more than destiny. It was reality, a practicality almost. It wasn’t a dream. It was simple fact.
“Hey, what are you thinking?” Bahman asked her as they glided across the floor.
“What?”
“Never have I seen anyone think so hard while dancing. You’re doing great, don’t be scared.”
“Oh,” Roya said. “Thanks.”
The sensual guitar music practically vibrated through them. He was right. Why worry? None of it mattered. They were together and that was all that mattered and would ever matter.
“Where are you? You’re so far away.” He kissed her neck.
“Could I be any closer to you? We’re practically stuck to each other! Your dream come true!”
“I’m not complaining.” He smiled. “But your thoughts. You look like you’re trying to figure out the world.”
“I know better than to try.”
“You had the same deep look of concentration when I first met you.”
“You whistled like a fool. You didn’t even look at me.”
She thought the dance was over, but the song just blended into another one. Bahman clearly had no intention of letting her go. Together they continued. Whether the other couples had stopped dancing she did not know. Her face was so close to his he must have tasted the melon on her breath.
“Last winter. The politics, the rallies. You saved me,” he said.
“Hardly.”
“You did, you have no idea.”
She wondered what he meant. Saved him from being sucked even deeper into politics? Saved him from being wedded eventually to Shahla? Saved him from the force of his mother? She wanted to ask, but she also didn’t want to get into it. That winter galvanized by politics had melted into a spring so soft, so sweet; it would forever be ingrained in Roya’s memory with the taste of shirini, the buttery pastries, and the bitter, intense, creamy coffee.
“You’re less political now,” she admitted.
“It matters less to me now. But I’m worried.”
“About us?”
“They want to oust Mossadegh.”
When she heard the prime minister’s name, her hand grew slack. “Of course. I thought it all mattered less to you now, you just said—”
“No such thing as no politics for us, Roya Joon. Politics drives every single thing in this country whether we like it or not. All of this: the dancing, the gramophone, these girls dressed like they’re in an American movie, do you think any of it could exist without the efforts of those who are political?”
She wanted another crushed melon-ice drink. She wanted to sit down. They were stuck together in an embrace that was sexy but also suddenly stultifying. If she even tried to peel her body away from his in the middle of this dance, it would probably be impossible, against the laws of nature, against fate.
“You’re worried,” she sighed. “About the prime minister. I see.”
“There are rumors that they want to overthrow him.”
“Who’s they?”
“The Shah’s forces. The English. The Americans. All of them together. I’ve heard that—”
“He’s crazy about you!” Jahangir suddenly tangoed past them with Shahla. Shahla, stiff in Jahangir’s arms, kept her gaze on the ceiling, looking stoically at the chandelier. “All I hear is Roya, Roya, ROYA!” Jahangir sang out.
Bahman held her even closer as Jahangir and Shahla spun by in a fury. Shahla’s glare could have extinguished the lights of the chandelier.
Bahman leaned into her and whispered, “Did you know that Shahla’s family works for the Shah? Her father is allied with his police.”
“Oh God. Please don’t tell me you think she’s a spy for the Shah.”
“I’m just saying. I don’t put anything past anyone.” His belt dug into her.
“Does she know you’re spreading Mossadegh’s speeches all through town? Would she . . . get revenge on you for not fulfilling your mother’s pact of arranged marriage?”
Bahman pressed his cheek into hers and was quiet. They didn’t talk about the prime minister anymore, they just danced, hanging on to each other tighter, as though they could lose each other right there in the middle of Jahangir’s living room. The Perfect Couple!
“Will Shahla and all the rest of these fancy friends cheshm us, give us the evil eye?” Roya asked as they danced across the room. “Sometimes their envy feels palpable. Like you can even touch it.”
“Oh, come on! Don’t believe in that evil-eye stuff. It’s superstitious junk. I wish our culture could move past it. What we have? No one can touch it. Anyway, this is meant to be.”
“I thought you didn’t believe in superstition.”
“I don’t.”
“Isn’t meant to be another way of saying destiny?”
He smiled. “Nothing can come between us. We can’t be jinxed. By anyone.”
“Your mother,” she dared to whisper.
He didn’t say a word.
She looked down at their feet, ashamed. “Sorry.”
“Look.” He was suddenly serious. “She’ll come around. You’ll see.” The music swelled into a crescendo, dramatic notes hitting a climax. Without warning, he dipped her. The blood rushed to her head, the room swam, everything was upside down.
“You can’t get rid of me,” he said as he pulled her back up. “I’m not going anywhere. Ever.”