Chapter 2

The following day, Reza came into my hospital room, holding a canvas bag. He put it down on the floor, leaned over, and kissed me.

“How do you feel?” he asked, obviously controlling his sadness and maybe his anger at me for going to the castle.

I just could get out the words, “I’m sorry.”

“I brought your clothes. I’m taking you home.”

He helped me get out of bed and dress.

I wanted to ask, “Will you forgive me?” but the words got caught in my throat and I could not articulate them.

On the way out of the hospital, we stopped by the nurses’ station and found Fereshteh sitting behind a desk. In a kind voice she said to Reza, “Replace the bandages once a day.” Then, turning to me, she said, “Come back here in a week. Dr. Akbari will be in all day. You don’t need an appointment.” We both thanked her and left.

Outside, I realized this was the clinic that Tala and I didn’t want to give birth in because it hadn’t yet caught up with more recently built hospitals with better equipment and doctors. Its facade was gloomy—the brick walls were covered by soot, and the windows overlooked dark alleys and dismal courtyards. Part of it was closed off for repairs, as so many places still were years after the war with Iraq. Due to neglect in repairing the old castle, I had lost my baby. I couldn’t stop my next thought: I had given in to Tala’s pressure to go to the castle.

Reza took my arm and led me into a taxi. Soon we were in the midst of the hectic Tehran traffic. Drivers with old Paykans or Mercedes diesel trucks, many of them with dented sides, raced through the streets, not pausing at red lights, shouting curses at each other, honking their horns impatiently. Motorcycles and bicycles zigzagged through the cars. Pedestrians rushed to their destinations, scurrying through the moving traffic, slowing it down.

The taxi driver turned on his car radio. A male voice came on, saying, There is only one God, Allah, and his prophet is Mohammad, an introduction often used before an announcement. Then the announcer said, The number of deaths at Rey Castle’s collapse is inconclusive . . .

The driver turned off the radio. “More bad news every day,” he mumbled.

We were approaching Goo Alley, where our apartment was. We got out by the pharmacy on the wide Jamaly Avenue, and Reza filled the prescriptions Dr. Akbari had given—a painkiller, antibiotics, and a tranquilizer.

As we entered our alley, the smell of tobacco from water pipes, mingling with mint and cinnamon tea, came out of the Ramadan Teahouse. Khasem, the owner, was standing by the door, watching the customers coming and going, their footsteps sounding loud on the cobblestone ground.

“Everything Allah has created is for the good of humanity. There’s a purpose for what is ugly and what may appear disastrous,” Khasem said to no one in particular. The gold covering his front teeth, a display of prosperity, gleamed in the sunlight. Was losing my baby good for me? I thought, outraged at what he said.

The outside door to the two-story house where we were renting an apartment was open, and we walked in. The courtyard was quiet except for the stray cat mewing yearningly as it sat by the pool and stared at the goldfish floating in it. Reza held my hand, and we climbed up the stone steps, chipped at their edges, and entered the corridor on the second floor. With relief, I noticed that the door of the only other apartment on the floor was shut. Its tenants, a middle-aged man and his much younger wife, were conservative Shiite Muslims. They would perhaps report Reza if they knew he wrote under a pseudonym for an underground newspaper critical of many beliefs and practices in our culture. Hossein, the publisher of Reza’s newspaper, had inherited a sum of money from his grandfather; instead of spending it on himself, he founded a newspaper. Aware of social injustice and superstitions of all kinds, he made it his mission to awaken people. He kept the entire production hidden; otherwise, he would be arrested. The paper was distributed by members of the staff, including Reza, who left piles of them in the hallways of university buildings so that they could reach young people. The secrecy made it necessary for Reza and me to keep a distance from the tenants. The husband, Payman, had a lithography business, mainly making posters of ayatollahs. Rumor was that he was among the young students who stormed the American Embassy in 1979, taking the American staff hostage. Before the Revolution, he made posters of the shah.

In our apartment, Reza tucked me in bed like a child. He gave me two of the pills he got from the pharmacy with a glass of water. Then he left the room to make lunch. I looked at my face in the mirror on the wall across from the bed. Four gauze pads covered wounds on my forehead and cheeks. Oddly, I liked seeing the external reflection of the psychological pain I was feeling.

When I was pregnant, Reza had divided the room with a large wooden screen so that the baby would have its own space. Then he painted the apartment, making the baby’s area pistachio, ours linen white, and the living room pale blue. The kitchenette’s and bathroom’ walls and floors were covered by blue tiles.

His four sisters, three of whom had several children, were able to provide us with baby furniture—a crib, a chest—that their children outgrew. The freshness of the apartment and the baby moving around in my belly had filled Reza and me with gaiety and excited anticipation. We thought of names. We settled on Shadi for a girl, and Salim for a boy, both meaning happy and safe.

Our part of the room had enough space for the brass bed, the wooden wardrobe, and the small rug with a pattern of flowers and cypress trees that once belonged to my grandmother.

On the mantel stood our wedding photograph. Reza was wearing a navy suit with a red geranium in its lapel. I had on a white dress with blue, green, lavender, and red sequins around its neckline that my Uncle Ahmad, who owned a sequin shop, made for me. I was wearing gold filigree earrings and a matching bracelet and necklace, presents from Reza’s sisters. Reza had his arm around my waist, and we were looking into each other’s eyes, him with the same thoughtful expression he still possessed.

Next to the wedding picture was a photograph of Tala and me together when we were five years old. Our hair was the same length, to the napes of our necks, and parted in the middle. We were wearing blue dresses with belts tied in front, one of the belts white, the other dark blue—what Mum had wanted so that she could distinguish which one of us was Tala and which Roya. There were very minor differences, barely noticeable, between us. Looking closely in bright light, you might have seen a few green pigmentations in Tala’s brown eyes, whereas mine were just brown. We had the same shade of light brown hair, but again, you might notice a few strands of gold in hers. Those small differences weren’t visible in the photograph, and it was impossible to tell us apart except for the different colors of the belts. I only knew I was the one with the white belt because, on the back of the photograph, Mum had written our names and identified us by the colors of our belts. I thought about how Tala and I used to look in the mirror and ask each other, “Who is me, and who is you?”

As soon as Mum found out she was pregnant with twin girls, she, with Baba’s help, had to quickly shop for an extra crib and more clothes and select another name for the second baby. They called the unexpected child Tala (gold), because of the few strands of gold in her hair. They chose the name Roya (dream) for me because Mum saw something dreamy in the expression on my face. She herself had been a dreamer. Growing up in Olivera, a small town in Argentina, Mum dreamt of a future different from that of girls around her. In the evenings while the girls went out to bars and clubs and hung out with boys, she stayed home and studied. While most of her friends married before finishing college, she went to the US on a scholarship, finished college, and got a master’s degree in linguistics. She met Baba, who had also gone to the US to study, in one of their classes. Mum told us that when we were babies, she and Baba did tandem feeding; Baba would hold one baby while the other sucked on one breast. Then Baba would take that baby away and put the other one at the other breast.

Mum’s pleasure with us was captured in the photographs of her holding us in each arm and looking at us with an expression of delight on her face. In spite of all the pressure from the old-fashioned family members about the importance of having a son, she and Baba decided against more children. They wanted to devote themselves to us, provide us with the best.

Alas, we lost her when we were ten years old and then lost Baba when we were nineteen. Grandmother, who moved in with us after Mum died, passed away a few months before I got married. They weren’t here now to comfort me.

Under the burden of pain in both my body and mind, I drifted to sleep, though it was still daytime and light was pouring into the room from the window facing the courtyard.