The Stationery Shop(3)
“I’ve been waiting,” he repeated.
Was it possible to slip so easily back? His voice was the same. It was him, all of it, the eyes, the voice, her Bahman.
But then she remembered why she had come. “I see.” Her voice came out much stronger than she’d expected. “But all I’ve wanted to ask you is why on earth didn’t you wait last time?”
She sank into the chair next to him, as tired as she’d ever been in all her years on earth. She was seventy-seven and exhausted. But as she remembered that cruel, disillusioning summer from which she’d never fully recovered, she felt as if she were still seventeen.
Chapter Two
1953
* * *
The Boy Who Would Change the World
“I would like it,” Baba said at breakfast, as they ate fresh naan with feta cheese and homemade sour cherry jam, “for you girls to be the next Madame Curies of this world. I would like that. Or even writers”—he smiled at Roya—“like that American woman: Helen? Keller?”
“I’m not deaf, Baba,” Roya said.
“She’s not blind, Baba,” Zari said.
“What does that have to do with anything?” Maman motioned for both her daughters to eat faster.
“You have to be deaf and blind to be Helen Keller.” Zari beamed, proud of her knowledge of American heroines.
“And mute. Don’t forget mute,” Roya mumbled.
“I didn’t mean that part.” Baba put down his tea glass. “I meant the genius part. I meant the writing eleven books part. That’s the part I meant!”
Fate had given Maman and Baba only two children, and girls at that. Baba was remarkably, exceptionally enlightened for his time: he wanted his girls to be educated and to succeed. Education was his religion and democracy his dream.
As high school students, Roya and Zari were on track to get the best education a girl could get in 1953 Iran. The country was rapidly changing, opening up. They had a democratically elected prime minister: Mohammad Mossadegh. They also had a king, the Shah, who continued the advocacy for the rights of women that his father, Reza Shah, had begun. “The Shah’s certainly a servant to the damn British when it comes to giving away our oil!” Baba always said. “But yes, he did help with women. I’ll give you that.”
Scorn and judgment from more traditional family members accompanied Baba and Maman’s enlightened views. How could they, aunts in the kitchen whisper-shouted at Maman, allow their teenage girls to walk everywhere without chaperones? Maman became expert at laughing it off. She had dropped the hijab as soon as Reza Shah enforced a no-veil policy for women back in the 1930s. She welcomed reforms for the emancipation of women even as her more religious relatives cringed at farangi foreign-embracing ways.
Maman and Baba sent their two daughters to the best girls’ high school in Tehran. Every morning, as Maman brewed the tea, Roya and Zari got ready for the day. Roya simply washed her face and braided her thick dark hair into two long plaits, but Zari dabbed a little color on her lips and proudly puffed into place the waves she created by pinning sections of her hair with newspaper scraps every night.
As her younger sister preened and primped, Roya looked at her own reflection in the mirror. Over the last year, Roya had changed a lot. Her face had lost some of its baby fat and her cheekbones were more prominent. Her skin, which had sometimes broken out with pimples, had cleared up. Her long black hair was naturally wavy, and she could have let it cascade over her shoulders as Zari so often recommended. But Roya still braided her hair. It kept her feeling more like herself, especially since the rest of her had changed so much physcially. She was still petite, but much more curvy and big-breasted—or, as Zari said, developed—these days.
Zari nudged Roya aside and took up all the space in front of the mirror. She patted her hair and pouted. “This hairstyle makes me look like Sophia Loren. No?”
What could Roya do but say yes? She buttoned her own long-sleeved cotton blouse, slipped on her uniform of ormak fabric, and pulled up the dreaded knee socks. Roya had to admit that even she wanted to wear ankle socks, “American” socks, as the girls called them, but the headmistress punished girls who wore short socks. Roya hadn’t worked up the courage to walk into school, head held high, with tiny socks on her feet.
“He’s our hope!” Baba stuffed his mouth with bread and feta cheese at breakfast. “Prime Minister Mossadegh nationalized our oil so we could be rid of the chokehold of AIOC.” AIOC, the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, was Baba’s nemesis. “For the first time in decades, Iranians can feel in control of their own natural resources instead of being taken advantage of by imperialist countries. The prime minister is the only one who can stand up to the foreign powers. We’ll be a full democracy in no time with Mossadegh leading us. Now, if you girls study history and chemistry and mathematics, you can join the best professional class this great nation has ever known. Can you believe it? Do you see what’s available to you? The opportunities we have now for young ladies? What can I do as a government clerk? Push papers around? Sit and drink tea?” He took another long chug of his tea. “But you, my daughters! You will go further than your mother and I ever dreamed! Isn’t that right, Manijeh?”
“One morning!” Maman said. “Can’t we have one morning of no lectures? Just breakfast?”