I'll Be Strong for You Read online

  I explained to you that it was because of the piano and taught you to play the bass E minor octave at the beginning of every beat while I played Chopin. You said, “I fell in love with you that very day. The day you sat at the piano in the auditorium and, I believe, played a piece by Chopin. Did you know I was watching you?”

  “Were you really watching me? I thought I was the one who first fell in love with you, on that day during the strike when you were sitting on the top step of the student union office, wearing a velvet French beret, more confident than all the others.”

  “I still love to watch your fingers dancing on the instrument when you play, unaware of your surroundings.”

  Whenever I practiced, I knew you were standing in the doorway, watching me. How can I play now that you are not here to watch me? You are not here, and my fingers have forgotten how to dance. They’ve become stiff, and I don’t remember anything of Chopin anymore. I have to fix things. When I go back to work and recapture the good days that are now escaping me, I’ll have the piano tuned. I’ll practice again until my fingers go back to how they were before you left. I have to find my sheet music.

  Why is today just dragging on and on? It’s not even one o’clock yet. I turn on my laptop and open my email, hoping for the one message that is never there. “Important, Important, Important.” “Three Methods to Prevent Breast Cancer.” “Beautiful Iranian Model in New York City.” I delete them all, close my tabs, and go to my blog. My post from yesterday has eleven comments. I’d written about my new job offer, about Salehi, the newspaper, and the good days that are to come, the simplest preoccupations in the world. The comments read, “Congratulations.” “When are you treating us to something?!” “Finally, you wrote something.” “Check out our page too,” and other similar notes. I like that I don’t have to see these people face to face. I like that whenever I want to say something, I can say it from far away and then hide and only hear their responses on my own time, at a distance. I don’t want anyone to sit in front of me and look at me and wait for a response; that’s why I like newspapers. I like sitting in the newsroom and writing, then, the following day, standing by the large plane tree in the alley in front of the newsstand to see how many people pause to read the headline of my piece while browsing the paper.

  The phone rings. It’s Roja. She says she’s done at the embassy. “When do you have to be at work?” “Four thirty.” I say, and add, “I lay there awake until the sun came up but forgot to wake you up. Did you get there in time?”

  She had. “Let’s go have lunch.” It’s only one thirty, and I still have time to kill before my meeting at the newspaper. “Coming?” she asks. “I’m not in the mood to go to work now. We’ll have lunch, then I’ll go to work, and you’ll head to the newspaper office.”

  Something is holding me back. I tell her I am not sure what to do.

  “What do you mean you’re not sure? Come on, let’s go. I don’t have a car. I’ll meet you at a quarter past two, at the intersection of Apadana and Niloufar. We’ll walk somewhere together. You’ll come, right? If you remain silent, it means you agree.”

  If I remain silent, it means I agree? No, I don’t. When I agree with something, I am not silent. I laugh. I open my mouth and say, “Yes, I agree.” But silence … I know I don’t remain silent. Maybe I had remained silent that day too, and you had assumed that I was agreeing. I sat in silence and packed your suitcase. I was not agreeing with you leaving; I was just silent, and then you left without me. Before leaving, you went to see your parents. Perhaps you laughed a lot and joked with your mother and asked her not to miss you too much. Perhaps you embraced and kissed your aunts who had come to see you before you left and told them you would be back soon. I opened your suitcase two or three times to make sure you weren’t leaving anything behind and closed it again, remaining silent all along. You wandered through the city with friends and said your goodbyes. Perhaps you urged them to keep me company and to take good care of me when you were gone. I remained silent and zipped your suitcase one last time, and perhaps you joked around and smiled with hope at everyone you were leaving behind. I locked your suitcase. You opened the apartment door and came in. I was silent, but I am sure I was not in agreement. I thought that you wouldn’t leave. I was waiting for you to come into the room, kiss me, and say, “I’ve changed my mind. I won’t go anywhere if you don’t support my decision.” I was waiting for you to come in and say, “Of course I won’t leave you. Where can I go without you?” I was certain you wouldn’t leave. Even when you called a cab and said you were headed to Imam Khomeini, I thought to myself that you wouldn’t leave without me. I stood in the doorway. You changed, and I looked away. You wore your new shirt and sweater. I had taken the tags off and put them on the bed. I had bought them myself for your trip, to make sure you would be the most elegant passenger on your flight. A lilac-striped shirt, a gray sweater, and a dark pair of jeans. Your light blue coat was on the bed too. You unzipped your backpack to put in the clothes you had just taken off.

  “I’ve packed new clothes for you. Don’t take these.”

  You said okay. You didn’t look at me. You grabbed your socks. I went and sat down on the couch in the living room and picked up my book. I had to stop myself from crying. You wouldn’t leave. I was sure you wouldn’t leave without me. You wanted to scare me. I heard the suitcase wheels. You were standing by the front door, and I looked at you over the top of my book. You were wearing your light blue coat. You put your backpack on the floor, put on your shoes, and tied the laces slowly. When you looked in my direction, I looked down.

  “Come into my arms.”

  I didn’t. I went to our bedroom and closed the door. Your clothes were on the bed—the only bright presence of yours to remain in the house after you. I listened until I heard the sound of the front door opening and closing and the sound of the suitcase wheels moving away. I had to stop myself from crying. You would come back. I was sure of it. You could not leave without me and live and be happy. You would come back very soon. Perhaps from the airport. Perhaps tomorrow or the day after.

  Out of all my clothes, I pick a dark pair of jeans and a gray manteau to wear. Can you see me? I look like you did when you were headed toward your new life. Now I’m the one heading toward my new life, and looking like you will bring me luck. I check out my face in the mirror. How many days has it been since I wore makeup? My eyes look so clean. I empty my bag on the bed in search of my eyeliner. I pull the corner of my left eye to unwrinkle the skin and draw a black line above my eyelashes. It goes wrong, like always, like all the lines in my life that I’ve drawn that went wrong, that I erased and drew again only to have them go wrong again. Like the hundred dashes I drew with a red pencil in between the words for “father” in black ink as we did our nightly homework drills, all of which went wrong, so I erased them and drew them once more and they went wrong again, leaving me with nothing but ripped-apart pages. I would beg Samira to draw the dashes for me. She wouldn’t. “You’re crazy. These are fine!” she said. And with eyes full of tears, I would keep erasing and drawing. But I don’t have any energy left to erase now. I just draw another line on top of it, make it thicker so that its twistedness gets lost in the black of the eyeliner.

  All my scarves are piled up on top of one another in the closet. Plain black, checkered blue, beige with orange flowers, a two-tone purple-and-brown one, and again plain black. One is ugly, the other wrinkled. I pull the purple one out. I haven’t worn it since I bought it with Roja a few months ago. It has remained all new for this very day.

  “Buy it. You’re light-skinned. Purple suits you. You should get used to wearing bright colors.”

  I should get used to wearing bright colors, to being happy and energetic. I am starting a new job. A profession I’ve loved forever. I open the drawer under the vanity mirror looking for a cheerful lipstick. I still have one. It is dark pink and smells old. I put it on. I look ugly. I wipe it off. The color that remains will do. I’m not going t
o a party.

  The black Peugeot that’s usually parked in front of my car is not there today, and I can easily get out of my spot. Perhaps today is going to be a good day. I turn onto the highway and get stuck in the mass of cars and sweaty drivers and horns and the heavy air invading me. Traffic shouldn’t be this heavy at lunchtime. Why doesn’t it want to be a good day? The car doesn’t work properly, and my feet don’t sit right on the gas and brake pedals. How long has it been since I last drove? I turn the AC on. The fan cools my neck, but the seat feels odd under my body. I move around, adjust my manteau underneath me. I move the seat forward, push the back down, unbuckle the seat belt … it’s no use. I roll down my window to let some air in. It is hot, hot and polluted. The settled heat of the month of Mordad is different from the fresh heat of Khordad. The heat of Khordad is new, and its sun is clean. It pours light all over you. But Mordad is so filthy, greasy, and musty that even its sun rays pass through a lot of dirt before latching onto your body, and there is no way to get rid of its dead, stifling smell. I want to turn around and go back home right now, sit under the cool water drops in the shower, lean my head on the wall, and listen to the sound of cold water dropping on the blue tiles. A car behind me honks, and something thumps inside my chest. There is no air. I feel like I’m suffocating. In my purse, my fingers brush over my phone and wallet and headphones and pen and dried cigarette packs and a notebook until I find my pack of Librium. The green pill is tiny and slippery, easy to swallow without water.

  “You are stressed, my darling. Try not to put yourself in stressful situations. Whenever you feel palpitations, take one. It won’t make you sleepy, and you won’t get addicted. Just don’t overdo it.”

  The palpitations had started a while ago. At inconvenient times, my heart would pound heavily on the walls of my chest, and something would flow from it all through my body. Then it would beat fast, so fast that it made me short of breath. I was afraid I would have a heart attack in my sleep, wake up suffocating, panting so hard I’d turn blue and die, alone. Nobody would find me for several days, and I would rot away and begin to smell. I felt ashamed, thinking of the people who would break into the apartment, covering their mouths with white handkerchiefs against the foul smell of my blue corpse. I made an appointment with Dad’s old classmate. He did an ECG and an echo, and then called Dad.

  “There’s no problem with her heart.”

  Dad told him to prescribe me some Librium. His friend handed me the phone to talk to him.

  “Take one whenever you feel distressed. Do you want to come stay with us for a while?”

  “No.”

  “Do you want me or Mom to come to Tehran and stay with you for a few days? Do you want me to tell Samira to send you a letter of invitation so you can go to France and stay with her for a while?”

  I didn’t want to. I didn’t have it in me to go. Neither to Ahwaz nor to France. Nor anywhere else. I just wanted my bed. Our bed. Like now. I don’t have it in me to fight against all these cars. I wish a large hand would drop down and pick me up and take me to the middle of the winter, on a dead-end street, under the shade of a large pine tree. I wish I could just ram into the car in front of me and push the accelerator hard enough to tear through the cars and crush them one by one to pass through.

  I turn onto Niloufar Street. I pass the chocolate shop, the sandwich shop, the doner kebab store, the fast-food store, the toy store, and the police station, then reach Roja, who’s waiting for me at the corner, talking on her phone. I call out to her and she turns around. She has dyed her hair red. It looks good on her with the dark green of her eyes. She gets in the car and says goodbye on her phone.

  “Your hair looks amazing. It looks good on you.”

  She runs her hand through her hair.

  “I did it yesterday to look nice for the embassy appointment. I like the color, too. How are you?”

  “The same. How did the appointment go?”

  “They took my documents and said it could be anywhere from three weeks to three months before I hear back.”

  “So is it three weeks or three months?”

  “I’m not sure. They didn’t specify.”

  She rolls the window down and loosens her scarf.

  “I’m super hungry. Where should we eat?”

  “Wherever. It doesn’t matter.”

  “What do you mean it doesn’t matter? You’re such a killjoy with this ennui of yours. Shall we go to Bandar? With your parking permit, we should be fine.”

  Bandar is close by, so I turn onto Mahnaz Street. Roja takes a few DVDs out of her purse and puts them on the back seat.

  “Watch these. They’re good. I picked them out from dozens, just for you.”

  “Thanks. Any news from Shabaneh?”

  “She’s doing fine. After your meeting at the newspaper, you should stop by our office to see her.”

  “I don’t know how long I’ll be. Are things okay between her and Arsalan?”

  “One day they are and the next day they aren’t. He’s not a bad guy. Shabaneh had to pick someone eventually. Why aren’t you wearing any makeup?”

  “I am … Can’t you tell?”

  “Are you serious? It’s your first day at work. You should’ve at least put on some blush to not look like a corpse. You’ll scare people away.”

  “There’s nowhere to park here. Where should we park?”

  “Just park in front of this gate. We’ll keep an eye on the car.”

  “We can’t. We’ll block their driveway.”

  “Just park! I’ll worry about the rest.”

  I get out of the car. I know she’ll take care of the rest. She always has the best solutions for taking care of “the rest” of everything. During our fourth semester in college, I fell head over heels for Misagh, who couldn’t stay put and made me feel like he wanted me one day and like he didn’t the next. When Roja decided to join the school camping trip in Tabriz, she said, “You just come along. Be a good girl, and I’ll take care of the rest.” By the time we got back from the trip, I was Misagh’s girlfriend, and the following year we were living together.

  Roja takes a pen and paper from her purse and writes, “We are at the restaurant.” Underneath, she draws a smiley face, and next to it, a big sandwich full of lettuce, and puts the note under the windshield wiper. She grabs my arm and drags me into the sandwich shop. It’s cool and crowded, and there is nowhere to sit. Roja walks up to a table for four and sits down even though a guy is already there, busy eating.

  “Excuse me, is it okay if we share the table with you?”

  I tug at her arm and whisper that I’m not comfortable sharing the table. She points to the man’s food.

  “He’ll be leaving soon. Look, he’s almost done.”

  She drops her purse and papers on the table, next to the man’s half-eaten pizza.

  “What do you want to eat? Oh, I forgot, you don’t care. I’ll order you something myself.”

  She walks to the counter. I don’t feel comfortable sitting next to the stranger. I get up and stand next to Roja, who has her hand on the counter and orders half the options on the menu with such precision, it’s as if she’s solving some component design calculations. When she notices me, she says, “Why did you get up? All my things are back at the table. Didn’t you see?”

  She pays, and we walk back to the table and sit. I feel uncomfortable but collect myself on the seat. The man is uncomfortable too. Irritated, he gets up and walks away, leaving his food unfinished.

  “Poor guy. He was eating. We made him uncomfortable.”

  “He should have been happy that we sat at his table.”

  She turns to the waiter, tilting her head and pointing to her belly. Then she pushes her stuff to the side and turns to me. “Why do you look so wiped out again today? Aren’t you headed to a new job? All your problems are solved now.”

  “Was my problem not having a job?”

  “Yes, it was. Didn’t you keep saying you only had one joy in life? W
hat’s the problem now?”

  The waiter brings our appetizers. Roja puts a potato salad in front of me.

  “Eat. You’ll feel better.”

  When did I ever feel better by eating potato salad? I check my watch. I don’t have much time left before my meeting at the newspaper, but my enthusiasm has already dwindled. I wish I could postpone it until tomorrow and just sit here all day.

  Roja says, “When you picked me up, I was talking to Samira. She said her husband is going to defend his dissertation in two or three months, and then they’ll be visiting Iran together for a few weeks.”

  “Hopefully she’s back in France when you get there so you’re not all by yourself.”

  “I should get used to being all by myself. At the embassy today, they asked me to provide an affidavit of support from someone testifying that they’ll put me up for a while. I asked Samira, and she said she would write the letter. It’ll be hard for her. She has so much work, a husband, a little baby. It will be a burden for her.”

  “Don’t worry. Samira loves to help out. Also, my mom has already set aside some spices from Abadan, saffron, and frozen herbs for you to take for her. So leave room in your suitcase.”

  The waiter puts a lasagna in front of me and a pizza in front of Roja. Roja puts both dishes in the middle of the table, next to each other. She takes a bite from one and then from the other. You loved the way she ate. You said watching her eat made you crave food, even if you were completely full. Why can’t I keep you out of my mind today? “Do you remember Misagh used to call me Leyli?”

  My heart begins to beat a thousand times per minute. It is one thing to just think about you all the time and another to speak of you out loud. When I speak of you, you become real. You become a wave in the air, and everyone sees you. Roja has heard what I said, and once again I share with her the joy of remembering you and the fact that you called me a name no one else did. You would put on your round steel glasses, look at me over the top of your book, and say, “Leyli means the beloved, embodied in the eyes of the lover. It means the purity of love, transcending the beloved. Leyli is the goblet, and love is the wine within. One should hold the goblet and get drunk with the wine.”