I'll Be Strong for You Read online

  “Yes. He used to call you Leyli. That’s more romantic than Leyla. But why are you thinking of Misagh?

  “I dreamed of him last night.”

  “I sensed that something was wrong with you today. Please, don’t think about him—just for today. Eat. Today is an important day. You should have good thoughts.”

  Something squeezes my heart. She’s right. Thinking about you has stopped being a good thing for a long while now. What difference does it make whether you called me Leyli or Leyla? What difference does it make that the furniture of our house was red instead of brown? That you wore your light blue coat instead of the dark blue one? That you liked the way Roja ate or not? What matters is that you shouldn’t have left, but you did. I should not be thinking of you on such an important day.

  “You’ve made a habit of feeling sad, Leyla. You’ve turned your life into a wake—all you are missing is some chest-beating mourners. Go ahead and dig a grave for Misagh and cry over it day in, day out, but don’t turn the rest of the world into a graveyard too. Eat your food.”

  I run my hand over my throat. The hard lump is back, blocking everything. The lump that has been in my throat since the day you left. No doctor’s prescription has had any effect on it. I took some pills for two months, then had some injections, and grew weaker by the day. Until Dad came to Tehran. But even he failed to see the lump.

  “It won’t heal, Dad. There is no way it can heal.”

  “Your throat is completely healthy, my darling. Who prescribed antibiotics for you?”

  Roja puts her hands on her belly and calls the waiter.

  “Can you please give us some to-go boxes? We’ll take the rest home.”

  I give her a look. She bristles at me.

  “Don’t be so bougie. You didn’t eat anything, so what do you care anyway? I’ll take it to Shabaneh.”

  She takes her phone out of her purse and makes a call.

  “Hi, Shabaneh. What’s up at the office? … My appointment took longer than I expected. I just had lunch with Leyla … Pizza and lasagna. I’m bringing you some lasagna … Okay.”

  She hands me the phone.

  “What’s up, Shabaneh?”

  “Nothing. I mean, I’ll tell you later. Was lunch good?”

  “Yes, not bad. Do you want anything?”

  “A sandwich.”

  “I’ll tell Roja to get you one. What kind?”

  “You know what, I don’t want anything. Don’t worry about it. We’ll go grab something together some other time.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. I’ll call you tonight. I need to talk to you.”

  “I’ll be waiting for your call.”

  Roja gets up. I hang up and say, “Let’s go together, Roja. I’ll give you a ride.”

  “Are you crazy? In this traffic, if you drop me off and go back, you’ll be late for work. I’ll just get a cab around the corner.”

  “But how long could it possibly take?”

  “A long time. You’ll have a hard time on the way back. Instead of giving me a lift, just walk to your office from here. Do some window-shopping, watch the crowds and the busy streets. Buy yourself something. It will do you good. Haft-e Tir Square is close by. Don’t you need anything?”

  Don’t I need anything? I do—scarves, manteaus, shirts, pants, everything. All my clothes are old now. Mom said, “Not even Ms. Molouk’s kid dresses like you do. Do you want me to ask Samira to buy you some clothes and mail them to you?” I didn’t want her to ask. But now that I’m going to work and I’m supposed to feel better, I can just go and buy everything I need and head to work with several bags of new clothes, like a regular happy twenty-eight-year-old. Then I can tell everyone that I was passing Haft-e Tir Square, saw these clothes, liked them, and bought them for myself.

  Roja says goodbye and runs with her purse and papers in hand toward Motahhari Avenue. There is now an empty parking spot in front of my car. I move it there. I can wander around until four and then head to the office. I walk toward the shops, and the crowds and busy streets make me feel better. I walk down the street and make a right. Then I walk along Mofatteh Alley all the way to Haft-e Tir. Every time I make a turn, the number of people grows, and they walk faster and faster, and like fluid molecules with Brownian motion, they bump into one another and pass by one another. The sidewalk and the street, the spaces between the large buses and small cars, are all filled with people who talk with one another or on their phones. Their lips move as if in a nightmare, and they speak strange words in a language I don’t know. There are thousands of people. They all seem to be speaking in my head. The heat is driving me crazy. The loud horn of a bus startles me. Someone bumps into me. I step aside and find refuge in a cool, uncrowded store. When I catch my breath in the cool air of the AC, I look up and see a wall of colorful socks. The shelves behind the saleswoman are full of scarves, and, under the glass counter, there is an assortment of glittery hair clips. The saleswoman has large lips and breasts and thin eyebrows. Frowning, she is busy fumbling with her phone. I can hear the sound of colorful balls being shot and exploding. She has dyed-blond hair under her black lace scarf. I’m not sure whether I am looking at her breasts or her lips when she puts the phone aside and asks me what I am looking for. Roja said I should buy something. I glance around at the walls and say, “A pair of socks.”

  “They are behind you. You can just take any pair you want.”

  My eyes search through the socks, from yellow to blue and from red to black, and I pause on the pink ones. They are decorated with a ribbon and two small white flowers on the top edge. Shabaneh would like them. I put them on the glass counter. “Five thousand tomans,” the woman says. When I pay, she puts them in a bright thin plastic bag and goes back to exploding more colorful balls on her phone. I walk out. The weight of the crowd collapses on my chest again. This is enough for today. I’ll come back another day to buy everything I need. Another day, when I’ve started work and feel better. I turn onto the least crowded alley and walk back to my car. The incline makes me short of breath. Roja once said, “It’s because you are not active enough.”

  She walked into the bedroom, took me by the hand, and brought me to the living room. She turned the music up and started to dance. Her colorful body twirled in the air. I stood by the counter and looked at her hands moving up and down. She took my hand and swirled me around the room.

  “Dance. Move your hands and twirl. You can’t keep living life like this.”

  I couldn’t twirl. The music sounded like guns, mortar shells, sirens, and rockets. Roja held my hand and kept turning around. Her feet shifted back and forth between her toes and her heels. Her arms waved like fish in the air. She shook her head, and her long curly hair fanned out in the air.

  “Why are you just standing there? Dance, Leyla. Move a little. Look, your body is as limp as an old woman’s.”

  I couldn’t. My brain couldn’t process the rhythm of the song. My arms remained hanging, indecisive, in the air, and I kept forgetting which foot had to go on tiptoe. The music was driving me crazy. I sat on the couch and covered my ears.

  I get into my car. I am approaching my new office. A new environment with new people. New, fresh, novel. All of it is good. I should be happy. I should think of good things. Maybe of you. When I think of you, my mind doesn’t wander around restlessly. Maybe you could be here, sitting next to me, giving me a ride to work. Maybe I had been out of work for a while, and you were going to work in the mornings, and whenever you came home in the evenings, the apartment was clean and dinner ready. Maybe in these months of unemployment I had turned into the woman of the house. Maybe you would say, “Now that you’re going back to work, should we order takeout?” And maybe I would laugh and look at you in a way that would imply, “What nonsense is this?” And you would say, “Your cooking was just beginning to get good!” “That’s not fair! When did I ever feed you bad food?” Then I would take a deep breath and say, “I’m really worried about this new jo
b. I’m afraid I won’t be able to handle it.”

  You would put my hand on the stick shift, under your own hand. I would look at my hand hidden under your long fingers. You would say, “Don’t worry. I’m sure you can handle it.”

  And add, “I’ll make dinner tonight.”

  My heart would burst with joy. When we would arrive at the office, my fingers would be all sweaty under yours. I would say goodbye in a way that meant I was head over heels in love with you and I would get out of the car with the weightlessness of a bird that has flown from a tree to pick a seed from the ground.

  I park the car in front of the office building. Salehi had given me the address. It’s a beautiful new building with huge plants in front of its glass doors. It doesn’t have a sign yet, but everything else looks like a first-rate newspaper office. A guard sitting on a plastic chair by the door follows me with his eyes. I tell him I have a meeting with Mr. Salehi.

  “Please go ahead. First floor, to the left.”

  I walk upstairs and strain my ears, hoping to hear a familiar voice. The building is quiet, and I can’t hear the usual newsroom sounds. To the right, there is a small room where an old man is busy talking on the phone. I don’t know him. Two workers are carrying a desk down the stairs. I hold my purse in my arms and step aside to give them space. When they pass, I see an open-plan office to the left that is full of desks. It looks like an apartment whose walls have been removed. If I utter anything, I know my voice is going to echo through the space. Two people sit at one of the desks, and at another, a man appears to be lost among bits of computer hardware strewn across the desk. He is separating entangled colored wires and connecting each to a different port. One corner of the office is partitioned off into a small room, perhaps for interviews or meetings or as one of the editors’ offices. I’m wondering if I should say hello. I hear a drilling noise. The man looks up from the wires, and I say, “I’m looking for Mr. Salehi.”

  I look around. If one of the people there is Salehi, he will look up.

  “Please take a seat. That’s his desk. He’ll be back in a moment.”

  I walk to the desk at the end of the hall. The sound of my heels on the stone tile floor makes me nervous. I tiptoe the rest of the way to Salehi’s desk. I sit and put my purse on my lap. I don’t remember whether, in such situations, I used to put my purse on the desk or on my lap or on the floor or hang it on the back of the chair. I have my back to the room, and the empty space behind me is making me anxious. I wish Salehi were here, talking to one of the men—to break the silence. I don’t know how much time passes in silence before I hear one of the men saying, “Amir, someone’s here to see you.”

  I turn around. A chubby man with long hair and a beard walks out from behind the partition. He wears a loose white shirt with nastaliq calligraphy on it. He dries his hands with a paper towel, smiles, and says a warm hello, as if he already knows me very well. I get up. Not sure what to do with my purse, I put it on the desk.

  “Welcome.”

  Salehi looks different than I had expected. I imagined him to be a tall, thin man, with glasses, with no beard or mustache, wearing formal men’s clothing. He would be serious and not talkative, his hands always in his pockets, giving orders without even glancing at anyone. But this Salehi looks me straight in the eyes and stretches his hand out. It is still damp, and I like that he doesn’t really care.

  “I’ve read your writing, both on your blog and in different journals. You write well. Saghar said you’re also organized and reliable.”

  He laughs. Perhaps he is a cheerful person—otherwise, why would he laugh about someone being organized and reliable? I laugh too, and my laughter tells me that I’m happy.

  “The team we work with is a good one. Other than Saghar, who else do you know?”

  He doesn’t wait for my answer.

  “It’s important to me that the staff be friendly with one another—it makes the work easier. That is, of course, assuming we don’t get tangled up in some nonsense.”

  He laughs again, and I too allow my laughter to find its way deeper into my chest.

  “Regarding the workload, I should say that we don’t have a big team. Our budget is limited for now. We have two journalists for each desk, and that makes the workload a bit heavy. I thought you would be a good choice for one of the desks that needs to wrap up its pieces before the evening shift. It’s culture-related entertainment news for a public audience. Things like which actor has reconciled with which director, how much an author’s book has sold, who’s spoken against whose Oscar prize, which philosopher has recently married and what he’s said about it, things like this that the average reader would want to know.”

  Happiness leaves the deepest place in my chest and disappears in the air like cigarette smoke. I look at my fingers. One of my nails has chipped. I start to pick at it.

  “Some of the articles require original reporting, but most will be translated from foreign sources. Your English is good, right?”

  I don’t want to hear more. My new job was not supposed to be like this. I wanted to be offered a serious cultural reporting job, an adult job. He should have said that I would need to get exclusive interviews, or write long reported pieces, or write reviews. Being part of the paparazzi reporting on philosophers’ weddings was not supposed to be my job. I have picked at my nail, and now it’s twisted on the other side. If I try to set it straight, it will dig into my flesh. To hell with it. I won’t accept this shitty job.

  “I’d better tell you about the financial aspect up front. We’ve set aside six hundred fifty-thousand tomans a month for the journalists. It’s not much, but we’ll try to pay on time.”

  He laughs once again. I turn away from his meaningless laughter—it’s making me anxious. What would you think if I told you I’ve joined a newspaper to write about philosophers and writers getting married? But what would I do with my life if I don’t accept? Once again the same dragging days that never turn into nights, once again insomnia, once again the daily calls to Roja and Shabaneh to ask what they’re up to later so that I don’t have to be alone in the sad evenings. If I accept, maybe I can stay with the team and then get another position. Perhaps they want to see my work first before they offer me to write for another section of the paper. I’m fooling myself. Like a lover who, instead of a kiss, has received a slap in the face and tells herself that if he didn’t desire her he wouldn’t … If they had another position, they would’ve offered me that. I run my hand over the sharpness of my broken nail, and my heart beats heavily in my chest. I wish I had a nail file in my purse.

  When are these detestable situations in my life going to end? These tormenting decisions between bad and worse. Junctures that all lead to a burnt city. The road to failure should be the only road available so that its suffering results only from that failure. There should always be just the one road, so you can simply go all the way to the end without any guilt, without the torture of temptation by the road not taken, which makes every step you take feebler than the previous one. There should always be just the one road. Just the one. A job needs to be either good or bad, so that I can clearly know whether to take it or not.

  He says, “So I’ve covered everything. What do you think?”

  I don’t have it in me to respond to his laughter with more laughter.

  “Do you accept? Any thoughts or suggestions?”

  I don’t have any thoughts or suggestions. I just don’t like this job. I wish I could ask whether they have a real culture-related position to offer me. I ask, “Do I have to respond right away?”

  “I can tell from the look on your face that you aren’t very happy with what I’m offering. Go ahead and think about it and give me a call in the next day or two. Do you want to see the newspaper?”

  I say no and thank him. I pick at another piece of my nail, and my finger burns. I squeeze it in my hand, and the pain, like a bright stroke of lightning, burns all the way to the bone. He gives me his number. I grab my purse,
no longer a nuisance, and say goodbye. Still sitting, he waves goodbye, saying he’ll be waiting for my response. The man who was fumbling with the colored wires has put them all in their places and has immersed himself in the computer on the desk that’s up and running. I say a loud goodbye and walk out.

  The hallway and the staircase don’t look the same way they did when I came up. The walls are closer now and the ceiling lower. As I’m getting into my car, I search for a feeling that can look me straight in the eye and tell me in a loud voice whether this is a good thing or a bad thing. I should make up my mind right now. When I get home, I won’t be able to think anymore. The advantages and disadvantages will weave so tightly together that I’ll get a headache and abandon any decision. I’m terrified of decisions—they are always wrong. It’s a fear I’ve had since I decided not to come with you. It projects an image of great uncertainty at the end of any road I want to take. But now I have to think. The decision not to be with you was one I made for the rest of my life. Jobs, though, are short-term, here today and gone tomorrow. Choosing them has always been easy. I never cared about the money, how much of my time they took, how they helped advance my career, or whether they were related to my major. A job was either good or bad—I either liked it or I didn’t. I didn’t even care what you thought. You said, “What are you doing? If you don’t want to finish your studies, then don’t. But go work with Shabaneh so you can build up your résumé.”

  I had just come back from Bagh Bookstore alight with joy. I had met an old man named Mr. Ferdowsi, who loved books. I had bought a few books from him and was about to leave when he said they were looking for a bookseller who loves books. Hearing the words “loves books,” wings of joy sprouted from my back, and I had felt that was my future embracing me. I was not as well-read as you were. But Mr. Ferdowsi had said that he would teach me everything I needed. We all had only a few courses left. Shabaneh had started an internship at an engineering firm. I wasn’t interested in that job. Roja gave private tutoring lessons and wanted to get a master’s degree. I didn’t want to. And you kept harping on the same string, saying that we should pack up our life and emigrate. Every day you went through and counted an armful of translated documents, recommendation letters, and forms, and put them in an evil, ugly, yellow envelope. You went to the Mofatteh post office and sent the envelopes out to many corners of the world. East and west and north and south. I hated those envelopes, but I felt assured that you would not leave without me. The only thing I wanted was a job. I wanted it so that I could know where I was going to be the next day and the day after that and in ten years. I wanted to plant you and me like trees in this very land and strengthen our foothold right here so you couldn’t go anywhere without me. I didn’t want to become an engineer. I was too laissez-faire to be dragged to work early every morning for signatures and contracts. You and Roja used to laugh and say that I was raised like a flower petal wrapped in silk and any hardship would cause me to wither.