The Stationery Shop(44)

For the children. Roya knew that academics had always been tough for Zari. Did she still have a thing for Yousof? He was studying medicine at the university now. It seemed that Zari had had more than a passing flirtation with Yousof. Would she really want to leave Iran?

“Do you know how hard it was to learn how to apply to university in America? I had to put my own doubts aside. My heart is still filled with salt! It’s nerve-racking enough, let me tell you.”

Maman shifted in her seat.

“If my boss hadn’t offered to help with the applications and information about the scholarship, I don’t know how I could have done it.”

“Let Zari stay,” Maman said. “Why does she have to go? Let Zari stay.”

“Manijeh Joon, it’s safer if they’re together.”

“Safer? How on earth is it any safer? You are sending our daughters to America, where they know no one. Modernity has limits. Is it the new bourgeois fashion to send our children abroad?”

“The Shah’s sister went to—”

“We are not the Shah’s sister!”

Though the four of them sat at the table and Kazeb floated in and out with more butter and more tea, the discussion was a private battle between Maman and Baba, and Roya and Zari knew it.

“Manijeh Joon, I had to jump through hoops! Just getting the girls to consider it was hard enough. And figuring out the whole process hasn’t been easy. Don’t you know I had to use every connection I had, practically beg to learn how to do all this?”

“Who does this?” Maman was close to tears. “They are so young.”

“We need to join the modern way of thought. If my boss is willing to help, if they have this opportunity, why not try? They will come back. They will get an education that is beyond anything we ever dreamed. And then they’ll come back to us.” Baba motioned to Roya. “For months she’s done nothing but cry. She is becoming depressed and bitter here.”

Roya felt herself grow small. Her role had become that of the jilted lover, the object of pity and shrugs. It was beyond humiliating.

“And you saw what happened with the coup,” Baba went on. “The stationer is gone! So many died. For what? Iran just isn’t stable right now. I want it to be, you want it to be, it almost happened. Maybe it’s just not the fate of this country to be a democracy. God knows we’ve tried. My father was fighting for the Constitutional Revolution back in 1906. He was the same age these girls are now. His generation gave us the Persian parliament. But where are we now? It’s always two steps forward, three steps back with this country. Just when we have a prime minister who is decent, he is knocked aside. Now the Shah has solidified his grip. He is nothing but a lackey for the West. He is their puppet.”

“So the girls should go to the West? You make no sense!”

“We can’t count on democracy here. That dream is dead now. At least in the West, they won’t have to worry about coups or dictatorships! It’s an insurance policy, Manijeh Joon. We just need to be prudent right now. They cracked down on so many pro-Mossadegh people. Maybe we’re next. Roya was out there in the streets. She could have been shot!”

Maman dropped her face into her hands when he said this and was quiet.

“I’ll go,” Zari suddenly said. She sat up very straight. “Yes, Baba Jan. Let’s apply, let’s try. I’ll go. With Roya. And then we’ll come back. We’ll come back and be near you and Maman for the rest of our lives but with an American education that no one can take away from us.”

Baba looked like he could faint. “Zari!” he simply said. “Yes, yes. That’s what I’m saying. No one can take that education away from you once you have it. Do you know? You can take your degree from the university and put it in your pocket and it will be there for the rest of your life. That is all that I am saying.”

Dust motes floated in a band of sunshine from the window. The tea smelled of bergamot. Kazeb’s sounds in the kitchen were comforting, familiar. Outside a peddler moaned about his beets. Roya wanted to leave the humiliation, but she did not want to leave all of this: Maman’s soft presence, her city, her home. She did not want to say good-bye to her father.

“They can study here. They can apply here. Get that degree here,” Maman said.

Baba just shook his head. He didn’t have to say anything else. They all knew that here meant the city of the coup. The city where people were shot for no reason. And also the city of Roya’s betrayal by her fiancé. She still had a hard time going around town, in case she ran into Bahman. Or Shahla. Or worse, the two of them together.

Zari sipped her tea, and Roya wanted to tell her: You don’t have to come with me. You have a life here. I think you’re in love with Yousof. Of course you are. You stay. Just because one of us had her life derailed doesn’t mean both of us have to change course. You stay here with Maman and Baba. Live the life you were meant to live. My life is up in the air; yours doesn’t have to be.

She knew she should say all this to her younger sister. It was what a good older sister would do. But no matter how modern their family was, Roya did not have the power to override Baba. Or maybe she could not bear to go without Zari and was secretly relieved at the package deal that Baba had dreamed up.

In another neighborhood in that very city, Bahman was sitting with his new wife. According to Jahangir, Bahman had put off getting a job as a journalist for the progressive newspaper to work for a while in the oil industry. Just as his mother wanted. The boy who would change the world had simply listened to his mother. Roya imagined him waking up next to Shahla, getting dressed in front of her, going to work to learn how to maximize the profits of oil. This was the life he had chosen. The life his mother had chosen for him. And he had said yes to it all. Prime Minister Mossadegh was gone now anyway. Bahman and Shahla had a life together.