A Door between Us Read online

  Then she softened. “But I do feel for her. Sadegh, maybe you could ask and see what the story is. Where are they keeping Ali? What exactly did he do? And when and where will there be a trial?”

  Sadegh didn’t like the idea. “What difference does it make? And why should we involve ourselves to try to help these people? Anyone involved with this Green group deserves what they get.”

  Maman-Mehri reached out and stroked Sumayeh’s arm as a proxy for touching her adopted son. “We must be compassionate my dear, even to our enemies.”

  Sadegh shook his head. “I don’t know . . .” Sadegh was interrupted by the sound of the cuckoo clock. He looked up at the hand-carved home out of which a little bird flew three times to announce the hour as the weight driving its movement traveled down the wall. Sadegh’s father had bought the clock for Maman-Mehri during a business trip to Switzerland almost thirty years ago. With its warm wooden color, Sadegh thought it looked out of place in the formal white marble dining room. But Maman-Mehri adored it and dusted and wound the clock herself every week without fail. Besides, Sadegh knew he didn’t have much of an eye for decorating.

  The cuckoo bird returned to its home for the last time just as Sadegh was deciding it wouldn’t hurt to ask a few questions about Ali’s whereabouts. “Okay,” he said, “I’ll go see Ganjian this evening and see what I can find out.”

  Ganjian was Sadegh’s old high school teacher at the K–12 private school he’d attended with the sons of other wealthy, religious, and politically connected families. He was one of Sadegh’s favorite teachers, and his good nature, sincere devotion to Islam, and life of service had inspired Sadegh’s own piety. He’d left full-time teaching a few years back to rejoin the Basij unit he’d worked with during the war, which was now tasked with ensuring security in Tehran, but he kept in touch with Sadegh and some of his other former students. Sadegh supported Ganjian’s unit financially as much as he could and also liked to pitch in and help the men on the ground whenever possible. Since the election, that had been most nights and weekends.

  Maman-Mehri squeezed Sumayeh’s hand as she smiled at Sadegh. “Thank you, my son,” she said gently before resuming her usual tone. “Now eat something. You’re as skinny as a light pole.”

  * * *

  It was late afternoon before Sadegh and his little family got in the car to head home. Lulled by the hum of the engine, the children promptly fell asleep in the car seats Sumayeh’s mother had brought from the US, where it seemed, children used them until they were nearly old enough to drive.

  Sumayeh reached across the gearshift and laid a gentle hand on his thigh. Sadegh covered her hand with his and smiled at his wife. He enjoyed watching the dimple in her unmarred cheek appear as she returned his smile, and he admired her small Western nose with the slightly upturned end that betrayed her mixed heritage. From this perspective, Sadegh couldn’t see Sumayeh’s scar but knew it was still there as a silent reminder of the strength of his wife’s devotion.

  It had happened near the end of the long war with Iraq when a wailing siren indicated that the evening’s installment of Scud missiles was arriving earlier than usual. As was her habit, twelve-year-old Sumayeh refused to interrupt her prayers to head to the basement shelter. Her face was turned up in dua and supplication when the windows shattered and a particularly large shard of glass sliced her forehead, but—in a clear sign of divine favor—narrowly missed her eye on its way through her cheek, mouth, and chin.

  Many years later, when Sadegh heard Sumayeh’s story from his sisters, he recognized the same self-sacrificial obedience to God that he had seen in the war heroes he looked up to and the Basijis he worked with. Like Ganjian and his colleagues, Sumayeh had put her body and even her life in jeopardy as she worshiped God and sought to implement his will. Sadegh determined immediately that this was the woman he would marry and refused to be dissuaded by warnings that Sumayeh was older than him by four years, was likely to have picked up some strange habits from her American mother, and would have that ugly scar long after Sadegh’s initial fancy had passed.

  In seven years of marriage Sadegh had never regretted his choice. He trusted and respected his wife and was happy to let her take the lead in determining the shape of their domestic lives together even when—as in the case of her strictness with the children—he disagreed. She was a benevolent dictator who loved him and their children fiercely and was the spiritual heart of the family. Sadegh felt himself truly blessed.

  Sumayeh shifted in her seat. “Mahdi noticed what happened with Maman-Mehri today,” she said.

  Sadegh removed his hand momentarily from Sumayeh’s to shift to a lower gear and then returned to stroking her wrist and fingers, which were even more thin and delicate than Sadegh’s own.

  “What do you mean?” he asked, though he suspected he knew the answer.

  “When she pulled away from you,” Sumayeh explained patiently. “It’s only a matter of time before he starts to ask why his grandmother won’t touch his father.”

  Sadegh shrugged to indicate he didn’t think it was a big deal. “So we’ll just explain it to him.”

  Sumayeh pulled her hand from his and turned sideways in her seat to face him. Sadegh could tell she didn’t appreciate her concerns being dismissed. “Sadegh, how is he going to feel when he grows up and Maman-Mehri starts avoiding him too? And it just doesn’t make any sense. There is absolutely no religious reason for Maman-Mehri to be avoiding physical contact.”

  Sumayeh was right. According to Islam, all of a man’s children were mahram to all of his wives, meaning that since, like brother and sister or father and daughter, they couldn’t marry, there was no risk from or prohibition on their nonsexual interactions. Sadegh had pointed this out to Maman-Mehri himself when the story of his unusual parentage had come out.

  Maman-Mehri had been more flustered and uncomfortable than Sadegh had ever seen her before or since. “You’re right Sadegh-jaan.” She pressed her lips together as she spoke and swallowed several times as if chewing her words first would make them easier to spit out. “It’s just that I can’t be sure your father, God bless his soul, was actually, well, officially married when you were conceived. Or even, forgive me, that you were really his. That woman,” Maman-Mehri’s voice hardened as she changed topics, “was poison, Sadegh-jaan, pure poison. She bewitched your father, tricked him into feeling sorry for her, and attached herself to him to get at his money.” Maman-Mehri frowned and shook her head in disgust as she spat, “I can only imagine what else she tricked him into.”

  Sadegh turned onto Hemmat Highway and came to an abrupt stop in the bumper-to-bumper traffic it contained. He leaned forward and hugged the steering wheel to stretch his back. Their Honda Accord was roomier than most Iranian cars but still wasn’t entirely comfortable for Sadegh’s long frame.

  Sadegh turned to look at Sumayeh. “Sumayeh, you know how Maman-Mehri is with all her extra prayers and fasting,” he said. “She always likes to do more than is required just to make sure she isn’t inadvertently violating God’s will. And . . .” Traffic started moving again, so Sadegh sat back and put the car in gear. “Well, I think she’s afraid I might be haramzadeh.”

  “What?” Sumayeh gave a small laugh of disbelief.

  “She thinks my birth mother may have already been pregnant when my father married her. Does it bother you that you might be married to a haramzadeh?” Sadegh teased his wife. His voice was light, but there was a time when he’d been terrified at the thought that he might be a bastard and had started doing additional prayers and duas to scrub his soul of whatever sin might have been passed down from his uncertain parentage.

  “Don’t be silly,” Sumayeh answered. “That’s an Iranian thing not a Muslim thing. No one is to be judged for the sins of another, least of all an innocent baby.”

  Sadegh smiled. Sumayeh’s mother often claimed in her American-

  accented Farsi that
true Islam was more easily found in America, where it was shorn of cultural influences that polluted its pure essence. While Sadegh sometimes found her comments on the topic to be irritating, now he was grateful for her influence on his wife’s thinking.

  “Sumayeh, azizam. Have I told you that I love you?”

  “Twice so far today.”

  “So you’re tired of hearing it then?”

  “Never.”

  He told her that he adored her, and she leaned across the gearshift to rest her head on his shoulder.

  But Sumayeh wasn’t finished.

  “It doesn’t matter to me Sadegh, but it will matter for Mahdi and Sana. I’m going to talk to Maman-Mehri about it myself. Maybe she just needs some help to think this through.”

  Sumayeh’s head still rested on Sadegh’s shoulder and he twisted his neck to give her chador-covered forehead a kiss. Sumayeh and Maman-Mehri were extremely close, and Sadegh figured she had as good a chance as any to change Maman-Mehri’s mind. But he had his doubts.

  There was something in the way that Maman-Mehri had talked to him so many years ago that made him think her choice to observe the hijab in front of him stemmed from something more than her usual overzealousness. “Sadegh-jaan,” she’d said quietly, “you are the greatest blessing of my entire life. Your father’s betrayal . . . well, it almost broke me. But you healed our family in so many ways. The years after you came and before your father’s death were the sweetest of my life. You can’t imagine how good he was to me. How sorry he was for his mistakes. Oh, I miss him!

  “So you see, you were the answer to my prayers Sadegh-jaan! As painful as this separation is, this distance I have to keep from you, it is a small price to pay for the joy of having you. Do you understand? Vagh’an, truly, God is big! He knew I needed you and chose to deliver you in this way to test and strengthen my faith. I would endure much more than this silly hijab to prove my gratitude.”

  If Maman-Mehri thought of this physical separation from Sadegh as necessary remuneration for God’s blessings, Sumayeh was going to have a hard time convincing her to let it go.

  Sadegh turned the car into their alley.

  “Sumayeh, I’m going to go in tonight. Things are still crazy. And I want to ask about Sarah and Ali. I’ll help you get the kids inside and then go.”

  “No, it’s okay. Just drop us off at the door. I can manage the kids.”

  “But they’re asleep. I’ll carry Mahdi up.”

  “No, my love. We’ll wake him and he’ll walk up on his own two feet. He’s a lucky child if this is the worst of his troubles.”

  Sadegh stopped the car in front of their apartment’s garage entrance and got out to help Sumayeh get situated. Mahdi, displeased at being woken from his deep sleep, started crying piteously. Sumayeh spoke to the boy in her typically firm but kind way. “Let’s go, my son. Into the house. You can lay down when we get inside.”

  As Sadegh returned to the car, he wondered briefly whether his wife’s ability to tolerate their children’s pain stemmed from her mother’s American culture or whether her passionate love for God had interrupted and left less room for maternal instincts. Last week when Mahdi had come home from school heartbroken over having lost his brand-new soccer ball, Sadegh had thought he was handling things well when he yelled at his son for being irresponsible but promised to buy him a replacement. Sumayeh, stepping in, had actually hugged their son and expressed sympathy but refused to purchase or allow Sadegh to purchase a new ball. “How will he learn if we protect him from his own mistakes?” she had pointed out. But Sadegh wasn’t so sure. Wasn’t protecting children from mistakes part of the basic job description of being a good parent? And he was pretty sure that his scolding had made an impression so wasn’t that learning enough?

  Sadegh turned on the radio and flipped through channels, stopping for what sounded like a replay of the Friday prayer sermon he had missed.

  “Anybody who fights against the Islamic system or the leader of Islamic society, we will fight him until complete destruction!”

  Yes! Sadegh was glad to hear such stern words. The enemies of the beloved supreme leader should know his defenders were not afraid to spill blood. Mousavi would deserve whatever he got! Sadegh’s heart burned for Iran and Islam, which had so often been sacrificed and betrayed by self-interested politicians pandering to foreign interests. It was unbelievable that Mousavi, who’d actually led the Islamic Republic as Prime Minister during the brutal years of Iraqi attacks, could turn around and serve the very Western powers that had provided Saddam Hossein with the missiles and chemical weapons that had been used to kill and maim millions of Iranians like Sumayeh. Sadegh wondered what the man had been promised for changing his loyalties and what price could possibly be worth the hellfire that was surely awaiting him.

  What bothered Sadegh most about Green Wave leaders was the way they perverted Islam to lead people astray. Last week Sadegh had spent an evening with his Basiji comrades banging on doors and warning people against shouting ‘Allahu Akbar! God is Great!’ from their rooftops in support of the demonstrations. Sadegh would never forgive the leaders of this fitneh for putting him in the position of having to prevent people from chanting such a blessed phrase by making it a rallying cry in support of the Green Wave.

  Traffic was unusually light, and Sadegh arrived at the Kaj roundabout quickly. He parked in front of the bank that was housed in the outer arm of Sa’adat Abad Mosque on Sarv Street. As he walked toward the entrance, he took a moment to appreciate the beauty of the various shades of blue in the mosque’s dome, minarets, and tile work that were set against the slightly dingy yellow bricks out of which the structure, like so many in Tehran, was built. Sadegh’s artistic tastes tended toward the dahati or unrefined. He loved color, the brighter and more varied the better. When he was twelve and had chosen bright-red village qelims to decorate his bedroom, Zainab had complained that it hurt her eyes to go into his room.

  Sadegh removed his shoes at the mosque’s entrance and moved briskly through the main prayer hall toward the stairs leading to the small rooms and offices in the basement. The downstairs corridor was less chaotic than it had been in earlier weeks but was still packed with scruffy-bearded men and assorted boxes of clothes and equipment. The smell of sweaty feet and hairy armpits mingled with that of the weak black tea that was being served and the rosewater that must have been sprinkled recently as part of someone’s prayer ablutions. Several young men stood near the doorway of Ganjian’s office. Recognizing Sadegh they murmured greetings and stepped aside for him to enter.

  Ganjian’s thick bare feet were crossed and resting on a battered desk that reminded Sadegh of the one Ganjian sat behind when he was his high school math teacher. Ganjian had been unusual among the staff at Sa­degh’s elite school for having actually served and even having been injured at the war front. He would sometimes illustrate various math concepts with stories about his experiences. Sadegh remembered a complicated word problem having to do with the amount of gas in a truck’s tank, a leak in said tank, and whether much-needed supplies would reach their destination. In real life, apparently, the truck got stranded, and a severely dehydrated Mr. Ganjian desperately took to drinking radiator fluid and almost died.

  Ganjian was talking into a cellphone. Seeing Sadegh, he nodded his head briefly, waved him in, and rolled his disturbingly bloodshot eyes to share his irritation at whomever he was on the line with.

  “Look, I don’t care whose fault it is or what the problem is,” Ganjian exclaimed. “You tell him I can’t keep these kids another night! We don’t have room, and we don’t have enough people to guard prisoners. He either sends someone to come get them or I let them go. Simple!”

  A pause.

  “No! That’s not an option! We already got identification on all of them. You can round them up again later if you want. Otherwise, you send a bus by eight p.m. to pick them up. Got it? I have to
go.”

  Ganjian let out a heavy sigh, set the phone on the desk, and stood to shake hands.

  “How’s the weather up there?” Ganjian teased as Sadegh bent to offer the standard three-cheek kiss of the Basijis. “Every time I see you, you’ve grown another two inches and gotten thinner around the middle. Doesn’t that American wife of yours feed you?”

  “You don’t look so good yourself,” Sadegh teased his mentor back. “Why are your eyes so red?”

  “Goddamn pollution and allergies,” Ganjian said. “What are you doing here? I told you I’d call if we needed y—”

  The cell phone rang.

  “Bebakhshid. Sorry . . .”

  “Allo? ” Ganjian spoke into the phone as he sat heavily into his chair and gestured that Sadegh should do the same. He roughed a hand through a thick head of curly black hair that had clearly not seen scissors or even shampoo for a while. Not for the first time, Sadegh thought his friend ought to remarry. It was a shame about his first wife. Sadegh thought it was some type of cancer. But that was almost eight years ago. Ganjian should have someone to look after him. Someone to have children with. Sadegh would be lost without Sumayeh.

  “What? I can’t understand you,” Ganjian was saying. “What’s that noise? Calm down and tell me what’s going on.”

  Pause.

  “Yeah? So go scare them a bit.” Ganjian dug a knuckle into his right eye as he spoke. “Show them who’s in charge. Figure out who the leaders are and separate them out. Remember, you have all the power. Don’t be such a baby.”

  There was a pause. Sadegh figured Ganjian must be talking to Basijis who were having trouble at the safe house a few blocks away.

  He was glad he’d come in.

  “Yes, I know. They may have to fast a bit today. These spoiled brats don’t have much experience with that, but they’ll be fine. You can’t let yourself feel sorry for them, or they’ll sense weakness. You’ll be okay. I’ll send a couple guys to help out.”