The Summer We Came to Life

Chapter

41





“I HARDLY KNOW WHERE TO BEGIN,” ARSHAN says from his chair on the sand.

The vacation club is on the beach. It’s afternoon, but the sun’s starting to falter. Isabel’s lying curled up with her head in her mother’s lap, Jesse looking down and softly playing with her daughter’s hair. Cornell is in his designated chair with Lynette sitting on the blanket between his knees. He has his hands on her shoulders. Everybody’s eyes are rimmed in red.

Arshan looks out at the waters that stole me from them. He looks at Isabel. The world takes so much away, when you have so much to lose, he thinks sadly. He’s imagining my father alone with the news of a daughter’s death. That man will never see the sea the same again. And I shall never return to Iran without seeing my Reza everywhere.

“Start like David Copperfield, my man,” Cornell says. “You know—I was born on a Friday.”

Arshan coughs as he struggles to recall Dickens’s opening lines. “As for whether I’m the hero of my own life…I won’t fare very well by those standards, I’m afraid.”

Nobody knows what to say, so Arshan begins like Dickens.

“I was born in Tehran, in the house next to Maliheh’s family. We were born six days apart. I came first, earlier than expected. That was our joke. That I was older, but I wasn’t ripe yet. She came second, fully formed and wiser.”



“Mina?”

“Shh, Sam, don’t do anything. Please. I waited my whole life to hear this story.”



“What was she like?” Cornell asks kindly.

“Maliheh was the very definition of beauty. Hair black as crow feathers. Eyes that were always laughing at you. Like Mina’s, but Maliheh’s eyes had tiny flecks of gold. She had eyelashes like reeds on a riverbank. Her eyes turned to obsidian when she was angry, but that was very, very rare.” Arshan breaks off to smile. “Oh—and she was tiny, like a little Yoda. Childlike but somehow ancient. If I hadn’t known her my entire life, she would have intimidated me, like she did the other boys. But I spoke to her every day of her life, and we always knew it would be that way.”



“Oh, Mina, wow.”

“I know. Shh.”



“Wasn’t that type of interaction taboo in Muslim society?” Cornell asks.

“Ah, well, Tehran was very different when we were growing up, and I suppose on top of that, our families were somewhat unusual. In the forties and fifties, the Shah and then his son were in power, and the drive was towards modernization, some would say Westernization. Things were much more liberal than you might imagine. My family was especially secular, and was becoming rich in the new economy. Mali-heh’s family was stricter in their faith, but our parents were best friends and jokingly matched us up as infants, so we enjoyed a special leeway.”

“What was good ’ol Tehran like back then?” Jesse asks.

Arshan doesn’t seem to hear her. He looks like he just remembered a private joke. “You couldn’t have invented two more different people. I was rash and opinionated. Stubborn as a donkey. Maliheh was a winding creek, easily adaptable and forgiving. Those eyes, so mocking, but so full of love. She taught me to laugh at myself. It was the worst thing I lost by losing her. One must remember to laugh at oneself, don’t you think?”

The group settles in for the long haul. This is not an interactive story. It is a story written and revised and rehearsed. Waiting all these years to be delivered.

Arshan shakes his head free of invisible cobwebs. “The Tehran of my childhood remains only as sugarcoated slivers of memories—our house with the stone tiles, the fountains, our enchanting garden, swimming pool, city palaces and public baths. We shopped in the winding labyrinth of the Bazaar, licking ice-cream cones. We vacationed on the Caspian Sea, took trips to the snowy mountains. Our houses overflowed with family, laughter and discussion. My father was a businessman, but his real passion was literature. My mother loved to sing, and always played music in the house. Vigen Derderian sang the soundtrack to my childhood.”

“We’ll have to look that one up on Google, Arshan,” Jesse says, and everyone except Isabel chuckles quietly.

Arshan nods in all earnestness. “Well, look up Googoosh on Google, too.”



“That’s funny! Mina, your dad is actually funny.”

“I told you. Now shut up. You’re so much louder than them.”



“At the end of every schoolday,” Arshan continues, “Maliheh and I met back at my house. We played and ate Zulbia—like funnel cake—while our mothers whispered and laughed over boiling stew and doogh.”

“Well, now that does sound like heaven,” Jesse says, and lights up a cigarette. “Except maybe the doogh. I’ve had it—a fermented, carbonated yogurt drink. It’s…peculiar.”

“Says the woman who eats pickled cactus from the can,” Lynette points out.

“We are all a product of nostalgia,” Cornell says. “By this age, who’s to say what is preference and what is habit?”

“Cornell, you will never convince me I don’t miss Mali-heh’s pomegranate chicken on merit alone.” Arshan’s view again fills with Maliheh’s laughing eyes. Talking about her aloud is such a strange sensation for him. For the most part, Maliheh is a dusty book in Arshan’s library, recited by heart for comfort. Describing her to strangers causes fresh details to rush back at him. Maliheh shockingly appears before him in the twilight as a vibrant, living being. It is delicious and excruciating.



“Mina, I can see her. I can see your mother through his eyes. Mina, can you see her?”

Mina is weeping.



“We were happy children. And we took it for granted, just like all happy people. Our life was composed mainly of laughter—beneath the juniper trees that lined our courtyard. Of course, when we became teenagers, the world grew more complicated.”

“What year we in now?” Cornell asks.

“I turned 18 in 1960. Inside the courtyard was still a happy world, but—” Arshan sighs. He looks around at the women’s faces and ends on Cornell’s. “It is not an easy thing to explain—a religious revolution. I think it’s like you trying to explain the legacy of African slavery to me. It’s slippery and complicated. And uncomfortable. I feel ridiculous posing as a representative of Iran.”

Cornell doesn’t say anything for a moment and then he puts one of his big hands on Arshan’s narrow shoulder. “I think we just talk to each other. Tell our stories. One generation at a time. Go on. Please.”

“I left to study physics in the U.S. at 18. Maliheh’s family would’ve sent her abroad if she wanted. It was somewhat fashionable for girls then. But she said she’d never leave Tehran. Why would she? The trees would miss her, she said. So I went off to the hated and revered world of America. It is hard to explain Iran’s feelings toward America. For most Iranians, both fundamentalist and secular, America is the symbol of hypocrisy, corruption, imperialism and sin.” Arshan avoids their eyes to look out over the ocean, still roaring. “My family, being middle class and intellectual, benefited from relations with the West, from the economic reforms, and they saved their rials for Western-style clothes and products. Later, they rejoiced in reforms like women’s rights, for example. But they resented America’s actions toward Iran and other countries like Israel, of course. So cocky, so intrusive—”

“All the things that we are,” Lynette says with an encouraging smile.

“True. Nobody likes to be forced to do anything. The veil was outlawed. The government shoved Westernization down the country’s throat. So, at the same time that we enjoyed certain freedoms of American culture, others saw a threat to Iran’s way of life. This was complicated by the actions of Reza Shah and how he was viewed as pandering to Western leaders. Eventually both sides, secular and Muslim, turned against him. And SAVAK, the Persian CIA, interrogated, imprisoned and executed thousands of people from the middle class—intellectuals, leftists—anyone they felt was a threat to the government. Oh, but wait. In 1960, I was at Georgetown University, before all that, writing letters to Maliheh and trying to sort out my feelings about my new host country. But by the second year, I decided I would never feel at home in America. I wrote to our parents and began preparations to return to Iran and marry upon graduation. Maliheh was pleased, but in her usual fashion, looked like she had known my entire reaction in advance.”

Arshan picks up a bottle of wine and pours the remainder into a plastic cup. He takes a sip.

“Summer break, after my second year, we were married. Our son Reza was born nine months later while I was away. Then Maliheh’s letters started telling me the horrible things about SAVAK. My uncle and then my cousin were jailed. Friends were picked off the street in vans and never heard from again. A lot of it I wasn’t told until visits on holidays. These were things people only whispered about behind closed doors. Reza Shah was building up to his White Revolution and wanted no detractors. There were good things—education, industrialization, healthcare, jobs. But it wasn’t enough. The divide between rich and poor was too great. It is very dangerous to make promises to desperate people. The role of a savior is not easily filled. Only promises have the power to inspire. Reality rarely satisfies. The Shah’s land reforms brought chaos to the farmers and factories. Jobless, angry young men crowded the cities. Even more dangerous, the reforms took land profits away from the clergy at the same time that they eroded their power and influence in government. This was an arrogant move for the Shah and the clergy responded as should have been expected. I came home to a strange mix of celebrations and parades, demonstrations and unrest. One man, a lowly clergy at the time, Khomeini, protested the Shah. He was imprisoned, then exiled. But the damage was done.”

“Our buddy Khomeini. Knew he was about to show up.” Cornell sits forward in his chair.

Lynette stirs, too. “But wait, Arshan, tell us more about your marriage, your home life. Tell us about your son.”



Arshan watches the baby while Maliheh gets dressed for dinner. Reza is not yet two, and chubbier than a super-size cherub. His black hair is so thick and straight it sticks up no matter how Arshan tries to smooth it down. Every time Arshan licks his fingers and tries, Reza kisses his hand. This makes Arshan laugh so now it is a game they play as he walks his son around the dinner table. The sofreh is piled with steaming dishes. In the middle, Maliheh has set out kebabs of barbecued beef skewered with onions and peppers. Nearby lies Arshan’s favorite—Khoresht Anaar Aveej—chicken with pomegranate juice and herbs. Arshan points out other dishes to a giggling Reza—Khoresht Aaloo, Morasah Polow, Khoresht Loobia-Sabz. Arshan’s stomach starts to rumble. He walks back in on Maliheh doing her makeup. She is dressed in a fashionable empire-waist sleeveless dress printed with green and gold flowers. She is plumper after having Reza, but Arshan thinks it makes her appear more womanly. Even his little wife moves about like a child, unhurried and playful. She is humming. Arshan smiles until he remembers the argument that drove him out of the room. About Khomeini’s exile. A fire ignites in his belly.

“I can’t believe you think—”

“Shh, Agha.” She instantly knows what he is thinking. Maliheh always knows her husband’s thoughts, moving with or against her own. “Let’s not discuss this now. He is gone, let that make you happy if it does. All I said is that his message will continue to ring true to many good Muslims. Now, give me my little Reza. Reza. Reeezzaaa.”

Arshan smiles. His wife is such a good mother. “Like you. You mean the message speaks truth for a good Muslim like you, as opposed to me—the scientist. But I am not happy with the Shah’s methods either. It is a violation of human rights, I agree. But this madman, Maliheh. His way of speaking. It will ignite the wrong kind of change. The wrong kind of following.”

Maliheh sets down her lipstick gently. She turns around slowly, rocking Reza, and gives Arshan a look he hardly ever sees, naked disappointment. “My husband. My best friend the scientist. Are you scared of your fellow Muslims? Of seeing more faith infused in our lives? Khomeini is silenced. Exiled for saying something I agree with—that perhaps our government should have asked before turning my beloved Iran into a garish, bargain imitation of the West. Maybe some women here do not want to be like the women in America.”

“Oh, so you’d like to take off that makeup and cover your new dress in a chador? You’d prefer that I want to hide your beauty?” He steals Reza back from his beautiful wife. He fingers her silky hair with a free hand. “How could I hide this hair from the world?”

“My beauty is for you. If you wanted only you to see it, why would that bother me?” Her response is firm, but Maliheh’s eyes glitter. She is teasing him. Before Arshan can answer, Maliheh snatches Reza from his arms and swings him up in the air. Reza jiggles with giggles, delighted to be so loved by both his parents. “Let’s go wait for the family, shall we?”



Arshan takes another sip of wine, thinks of the long list of things that are now forbidden in Iran. “Of course, that wasn’t the end of Khomeini.”

He clears his throat. “I got a position teaching science at the University of Tehran. My students represented the sliding scale of all the factions of society—from the socialists to the religious right. Everybody wanted change for one reason or another and took up the cry for revolution. The fervor swept over us all. By the seventies, the call for revolution in Iran had spread outside the universities. People crowded into teahouses and cafés. Over carrot ice-cream floats and lemonade, young men argued about the course of the New Iran. Tapes of Khomeini’s rants were distributed like candy, traded like baseball cards. Reza was a teenager by then, and just starting to find himself. He identified with the rebellion, like any teenager would. Demonstrations became a veritable job for the whole community. They took to the streets like a block party. Everybody expected all the injustices of their existence to be righted by the revolution. I knew enough to know better. Napoleon. Mao. One African dictator after another. Revolutionaries always claim they aren’t in it for the glory or the power, only to be exposed as slaves to those very same demons.”

Arshan tips his cup only to realize that it is empty. He picks up the bottle and sees that it is empty, too. “I think I’m going to need a steady supply tonight.”

He leaves the others on the beach to get another bottle and hit the restroom.



“I’m going after him.” Mina’s voice is a whisper, a whisper that is both childlike and wise.



As Arhsan washes his hands, he looks in the mirror. He rarely looks anymore. Imagine if Maliheh could see this face. He smoothes his beard with his hands. But you would be old, too, my darling. Imagining Maliheh anything but smooth and nimble was harder than imagining heaven. That is one thing about dying, huh, my love? You will be forever young and pretty. And mine. Inevitably, he thinks of Mina and me.



“Mina, now.”

“What?”

“Do something.”



Arshan covers his face with his hands. His mind is awash in pain and nostalgia, the bittersweet mixture of love and loss. When he opens his eyes, he flicks off the light and turns to leave. But out of the corner of his eye, he spies a gold journal sitting on the corner of the sink. When he opens the journal, his eyes widen and then fill with tears.



Arshan appears on the sand in a rush, the journal clutched tight in his hand. “Who put this in the bathroom?”

Everybody looks confused.

“What is it?” Jesse asks.

Isabel doesn’t raise her head but her eyes focus outside of herself for the first time that evening. “It’s Mina’s journal. To Samantha. I have one, too. So does Kendra.”

There is a silence of disbelief. Arshan doesn’t know if he is hurt or happy or angry. But he is confused. “Why did you put it there, Isabel?”

Isabel rubs her eyes like she’s being rudely awoken. “I didn’t. But you can have mine, too, if you want.” When nobody says anything, she finally looks at Arshan. The pain emanating from her is palpable to all. But especially to me.

“Samantha,” she says at last, “told me to read it like a crystal ball. To use it as a way to talk to Mina. But it doesn’t work. Mina’s gone and now Sam’s gone, too. I can’t talk to them ever again. I should have died, too. It has to hurt less than this.”



“Mina, I can’t take it. It’s breaking my heart. Come back to the dock.”