After the tea-leaf reading, I was glad when my father came home and surprised us by cooking food that his mother made back in Iran. He made khoresht-e-fesenjan, which is chicken in a pomegranate and walnut sauce. It is one of my very favorite things to eat in the world.
“It’s a celebration,” my father said. “Your mother and I have something to tell you.”
“What?” I asked.
“We have made a big decision about our life,” my father said. He reached across the table and touched my hand. “I am not happy working as a taxi driver. The dreams I had when I came to Canada have not come true. It is time for me to take action.”
I thought of the little lady in the turret telling me that I would know how to handle what lay ahead. Is this what she was talking about?
“Do not look so alarmed, Colette,” my father said. “I am simply going to Iran to talk to my family. I will ask them to help us and will only be gone a few weeks. I have put my pride aside. I will do what I have to do.”
My mother sniffed. “What is wrong with you both?” he asked. “Did something happen today?”
I wanted to shout, “The fortune-teller says there is danger here. You can’t leave us right now!” but my mother caught my eye and shook her head. Strands of hair drifted around her face like feathers dancing on the wind. My father smoothed her hair up toward her ponytail, but it came right back down. My mother put her hand over my father’s.
“We’ll miss you,” she said.
“I wish I could help you,” I said.
“You do help me,” my father said. “You give my life meaning.”
My mother beamed. My father says that when my mother smiles, she could light up the whole city of Toronto.
“Hamid,” she said, “I know we talked this through, but are you sure things can’t wait? Just for a little while longer?”
My father shook his head and sipped his chai tea. “Sometimes waiting and hoping for the best isn’t enough. You know that I have been trying for five years to begin a new career. Now it is time to act. My parents are expecting me, and my ticket is booked. Alice, we agreed on all this.”
“When are you going?” I asked him.
“I leave next week,” my father said. “I need to make peace with my father. I need to speak to my mother. I would like to become a teacher of mathematics. I have found out that I must go to school for two more years, and I am hoping my parents will lend me the money.”
“You’re right, Hamid,” my mother said. “Of course you must go. You will make such a wonderful teacher.”
“Can’t we go with you?” I asked. I remembered the photograph of the smiling people and how I thought they looked like they might be happy to meet me.
“I wish that were possible,” my father said. “But I have enough money for only one ticket. Since I will not be earning anything while I am gone, the rest of our savings must be used for you and your mother to live on.”
My mother gave me a gentle hug. “You must have faith,” she told me. “Everything will be all right.”
“Your mother and I have some things to discuss,” my father said. “Why don’t you go to your room? You must have homework, no?”
My father is always telling me to go and do my homework. My mother says education is fine, but experiencing things is good too. My father says education is the most important thing of all.
I closed the door to my room and looked at the posters of Iran I had pinned to my wall. A few years ago, my father had brought them home for me. He said a travel agency was taking all their posters of Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan off their walls and throwing them away.
My mother said that was like throwing away the baby with the bathwater. I laughed when I heard that, because it seemed like no one would ever do something that silly. But my father said that this is exactly what it was like and that sometimes English has very good expressions.
One of the posters showed the dome of a beautiful mosque covered in blue tiles that sparkled in the sunshine. A flock of pigeons was resting on the top, and worked into the blue tiles were other tiles in white, forming a graceful lacy pattern of flowers. My father told me that this was the dome of a famous mosque in Isfahan and that people came to see it from all over the world. The other poster showed a marketplace called a bazaar. This poster showed a smiling man sitting behind giant bags of spices that were the colors of fall leaves. My father said that the spices had names like turmeric, paprika, cumin, black caraway, saffron and sumac. My father has some of these spices in our kitchen, and once he caught me sniffing the cumin jar. He laughed when I told him I was trying to find words to describe the smell. He sniffed at the jar with me and we made a game out of it. Smoky, he said. Musky, I said.
I tried to imagine what it would be like in Iran. The air would be dusty and dry, because there is a lot of desert there. The pigeons on the dome would be cooing, like they were gossiping to each other. The people in the mosque would be quiet, because they’d be praying. A mosque is a church. I think someone would lead them in prayer, and maybe they’d be speaking, but there was so much I didn’t know. How could I ever write about it?
My door opened slightly, and my father asked, “What are you doing?”
I rolled onto my back. I pointed at my poster. “Thinking about what it is like where you are going.”
He sat beside me. “I grew up near Isfahan, near that mosque. I come from a small family. My older sister is married and has two children. Their names are Mohammed and Fariba.”
“How old are they?”
“They are teenagers now. I haven’t seen them since I came to Canada eleven years ago.”
I sat up and stared into my father’s face. “How come you haven’t gone to see them?”
“I have been angry,” he said.
“Why, Dad?” I asked.
“Because they told me not to come to Canada. I was stubborn and I was young.” He smiled. “Well, younger, anyway. I thought I would be able to work in my profession. But when I arrived, I discovered that it is very difficult to become qualified without a lot of money. Then I met your mother and we got married. And then we had you!”
“Did your parents ever meet Mom?” I asked.
He shook his head. “They were angry with me for my stubborn head and for marrying without their blessing. Many things were said between us. These words have stood in the way for ten years, like stones in a wall.”
“Do they know about me?” I asked.
“Of course they do,” he said.
“Do you think they would like to meet me?”
He reached over and ruffled my hair. “It would be their greatest delight.”
Again I wanted to tell my father that the tiny woman in the tearoom had told my mother and me that there was danger coming, but the look on his face stopped me.
“When I was small,” my father said, “I had a nursemaid who told me wonderful stories, all about ancient Persia.”
“Where’s that?” I asked.
“Persia is what Iran used to be called,” he said. “It is a very old country, full of history.” He hugged me close to him. “Let me tell you one of my nursemaid’s favorite stories. It is called Bahram and the Snake Prince.”
My father hardly ever talked about Iran. My mother once said he tried so hard to be a Canadian that he gave up thinking about where he came from.
“There was a time and there wasn’t a time in the long ago,” my father began, “when a son named Bahram was born to a cocoon peeler and his wife.” My father’s voice was deep and rumbly with the hint of foreign places, just like the spices in our cupboard. “But Bahram’s father died, and his mother had to raise him alone, and she was very poor. Soon the day came,” my father went on, “when Bahram and his mother had one last thing of value to sell, and that was their samovar.”
“Just like the one we have,” I said.
“Yes,” nodded my father. “Very much like that one.”
An Iranian friend had given the silver samovar to my father when he’d married my mother. It was our most precious possession, used for brewing tea on only the most special occasions.
“What happened next?” I asked.
“Well, Bahram’s mother did what she had to do. Although it grieved her to part with it, the samovar was sold for three hundred dirhams.”
“Is that a lot of money?” I asked.
“It was a great deal of money. Especially in those days,” said my father. “And Bahram was old enough by then for his mother to give him some of the money and tell him to go and buy some cocoons and learn how to make silk the way his father had.”
My mother poked her head in the door. When she saw that my father was telling a story, she came and sat on the floor beside the bed. She hugged her knees to her chest and rested her head against my father’s leg. “Go on,” she said. “I like to hear the stories too.”
“So Bahram took a hundred dirhams from his mother and went to the bazaar,” continued my father. “While he was looking for cocoons to buy, he saw three men beating a bag with a stick. Bahram went to the men and asked what they were doing. When they told him that there was a cat in the bag, Bahram told them not to beat a poor animal and to let it go. ‘Why should we release a worthless cat?’ they jeered. ‘If your heart bleeds so much for this animal, then give us a hundred dirhams, and we’ll let it go.’ So Bahram gave the men his money and set the cat free. The cat rubbed against Bahram’s leg and said, ‘Kindness is always remembered.’ Then it walked away.”
“What did his mother say?” I asked, thinking of the poor family with nothing to eat.
My father said, “Bahram’s mother did not scold him. Instead, the next morning, she said that he had done well, because animals were in the world before people, and we must protect them. Then she gave him another hundred dirhams and sent him to the bazaar to find cocoons to start his business.”
“I hope he does it this time,” I said.
“On the way to the bazaar, he ran into some children dragging a dog to the top of the town wall to throw him down. ‘Don’t hurt the animal,’ Bahram pleaded. They said, ‘If your heart bleeds for this dog, give us a hundred dirhams and he will be yours.’ Bahram gave the children his money and untied the dog. The dog placed a paw upon his knee and said, ‘Those who have done a good deed will receive good in return.’ Then it ran away.”
“Oh no,” I said. “Soon they won’t have any money left!”
“That may be so,” my father said. “But again, Bahram’s mother did not scold him. Instead, the next morning, she gave him the last of their money and told him that now he must save them from starvation. All day he searched for cocoons to buy, but by evening he was still empty-handed. At the edge of the town, he saw a group of men gathering sticks to build a fire. When the fire was blazing, one man picked up a box and started to add it to the blaze. ‘What have you there?’ Bahram asked the man. ‘It is an animal,’ the man replied. ‘Why would you want to burn an animal? asked Bahram. And the man laughed and said, ‘If your heart bleeds so much for this animal, then give me a hundred dirhams and it will be yours.’ And because Bahram could not bear to see an animal harmed, he forgot what his mother had said and gave the man his last hundred dirhams.”
“He didn’t!” I said, sitting straight up on the bed.
“Sometimes you must do what is right whether or not it is in your best interests,” said my mother.
“What was in the box?” I asked, poking my father and reminding him to get back to the story.
“It was a snake,” my father said. “Bahram jumped away when he saw it, thinking the snake would spit poison at him. But this was a very special snake. ‘Don’t fear me,’ he said to Bahram. ‘You have saved my life. Snakes do not harm those who bring no harm to them. Indeed, we are the guardians of the hearth.’
“Bahram hung his head in his hands. The snake asked why he was sad. ‘I have spent my last one hundred dirhams,’ Bahram told the snake. ‘My mother and I will starve.’”
“Exactly!” I said. “What is he going to do now?”
My mother shook my fingers lightly. “Tell me that you would have done the same thing,” she said.
“I couldn’t let you starve!” I said.
“But you couldn’t let an innocent creature die either, could you?” asked my mother.
“No,” I said. But I wasn’t sure. I didn’t know! “What happened then?” I asked my father.
My father glanced at his watch. “I think I will have to tell you the rest of the story tomorrow,” he said. “It’s after ten o’clock.”
“No!” I said. “I won’t be able to sleep unless I know what happens!”
“Tomorrow,” my father said. He yawned. “Even I am getting tired. I have to work tomorrow!” He leaned over and kissed my cheek. “Sleep well.”
After he left, my mother pulled the covers up to my neck and tucked the edges tightly under the mattress. “That’s how it must feel to be in a cocoon,” she said.
“Do you think Bahram and his mother starve?” I asked her.
“I don’t think so,” my mother said. “I like to believe that no good deed goes unnoticed.”
“I wish Dad didn’t have to go away,” I murmured.
“I wish he didn’t have to go either, but he does. He needs to do it just as much for himself as for us. Do you understand that?”
“Why can’t things stay like they are right now?” I asked. The words of the fortune-teller echoed in my head. Beware of danger.
“Nothing stays the same forever,” my mother said. “It is just the way life is.” She nudged me. “Not all change is bad, you know.”
I didn’t know about that. In one day, I’d lost my seat beside my best friend and found out my father was going far away. If this was change, who needed it?
“Go to sleep now,” my mother whispered. Then she went out and pulled the door shut.
I stared out at the night sky. There were ghosts out there, I thought—lots of ghosts, wandering around looking for places to sleep. My mother tells me that I need to think peaceful thoughts before bed, but sometimes my brain gets clogged up like a kitchen sink. One thought would not drain away. It kept swirling around and around and around.
Beware of danger, beware of danger, beware of danger.