Rooftops of Tehran Read online

  I loved boxing, but my mother’s remedy nearly drove me to quit.

  After a few months of training, as our punches became crisp—short and quick, but heavy when they needed to be—I began to ache for a rematch with the three bullies at school. My father overheard our plans for revenge and intervened.

  “Sit down, Mr. Pasha,” he said one day after practice. Then he pointed to Ahmed. “Would you join us, please?”

  “Of course, Mr. Shahed,” Ahmed responded, and as he was sitting next to me, he whispered, “I think we’re in trouble, Mr. Pasha!”

  “When one learns how to box,” Dad started thoughtfully, “he joins the fraternity of athletes who never raise a hand against people weaker than themselves.”

  My mother stopped what she had been doing and walked up to stand sternly next to my father.

  “But, Dad, if we don’t beat up people weaker than ourselves, who do we beat up?” I asked, stunned. “And wouldn’t it be dumb to pick on people stronger than ourselves anyway?”

  Dad was doing his best not to look at Mom, who was staring at him like a tiger checking out a deer right before the final, fateful dash.

  “I taught you how to box so you could defend yourself,” he mumbled. “I don’t want you to go looking for a fight.”

  Ahmed and I couldn’t believe what we were hearing.

  “I want you to promise me that you will always respect the code of our fraternity,” my father insisted.

  We must have been slow to react.

  “I want you to promise,” he repeated, his voice rising.

  And so Ahmed and I grudgingly joined the fraternity of athletes who never beat up bullies who break the faces of kids weaker than themselves. At the time, of course, we had no idea that such a fraternity never existed.

  “Iraj is lucky your dad made us promise,” Ahmed says later, making us both laugh.

  Iraj is a small, scruffy kid with a long pointed nose whose sunburned features make him look Indian. He’s smart, has the best grades in our school, and loves physics and mathematics, the two subjects I hate most.

  I am convinced Iraj likes Ahmed’s oldest sister, because he can’t keep his eyes off her when she is in the alley. Everyone knows you don’t fancy a friend’s sister, as if she were a girl from another neighborhood. If I were Ahmed and caught Iraj checking out my sister, I’d kick the shit out of him. But I’m not Ahmed. “Hey,” he’ll shout, trying hard not to smile when he startles Iraj, “stop looking at her or I’ll break my pledge to the sacred brotherhood of the boxing fraternity.”

  “Sacred brotherhood of the boxing fraternity?” I whisper under my breath with a smile. “Brotherhood and fraternity mean the same thing. You shouldn’t use them in the same sentence.”

  “Oh, you shut up.” Ahmed laughs.

  Iraj is the chess champion of our neighborhood. He is so good that no one is willing to play against him anymore. When we play soccer in the alley, Iraj plays chess against himself.

  “Who’s winning?” Ahmed asks with a smirk. Iraj ignores him. “Have you ever beaten yourself?” Ahmed asks. “You could, you know—if you weren’t so fucking preoccupied with my sister.”

  “I’m not preoccupied with your sister,” Iraj mumbles, rolling his eyes.

  “Right,” Ahmed replies, nodding. “If you have any trouble beating yourself, let me know and I’ll be happy to do it for you.”

  “You know,” I tease, “I used to get mad at him for looking at your sister, but it might not be so bad to have a chess champion as a brother-in-law.”

  “Bite your tongue,” Ahmed growls, “or I’ll raid your mother’s pantry to mix you a special brew that will grow hair on your tongue.”

  The threat has some weight, considering the way my mother has applied her unique brand of knowledge and listened to her gut to diagnose me as an extreme introvert.

  “Do you know what happens to people who keep everything to themselves?” she asks, not waiting for my answer. “They get sick.” When I object that I’m not an introvert, she reminds me of the time I was four years old and fell down the steps. My two aunts, two uncles, and grandparents were visiting us that day, and my mother estimated that watching me tumble down two flights of stairs nearly caused two heart attacks, three strokes, and a handful of small ulcers.

  “You broke your shin in three places!” she chides. “The doctor said he’d seen grown men cry after a break like that, but not you. Do you know what that kind of stress does to your body?”

  “No,” I say.

  “It causes cancer.”

  Then she spits three times to atone for the thought.

  In order to cure my introversion, she insists I drink a dusky concoction that looks and smells like used motor oil. I complain that her remedy tastes horrible, and she tells me to be quiet and stop whining.

  “I thought this potion was to bring me out of my shell,” I remind her.

  “Hush,” she orders, “whining doesn’t count. If you want to be successful in life you must force yourself to be an extrovert,” she explains. “Introverts end up as lonely poets or destitute writers.”

  “So,” Ahmed ponders one day, “the engine oil makes you an extrovert, and the horse urine helps you crawl back into your shell.” He shakes his head in empathy. “You are going to be one fucked-up person by the time your mother gets done with you.”

  2

  Faheemeh’s Tears and Zari’s Wet Hair

  Our summer nights on the roof are spent basking in the wide-open safety of our bird’s-eye view. There are no walls around what we say, or fears shaping what we think. I spend hours listening to stories of Ahmed’s silent encounters with Faheemeh, the girl he loves. His voice softens and his face quiets as he describes how she threw back her long black hair while looking at him—and how that must mean she loves him. Why else would she strain her neck to communicate with him? My father says that Persians believe in silent communication; a look or a gesture imparts far more than a book full of words. My father is a great silent communicator. When I behave badly, he just gives me a dirty look that hurts more than a thousand slaps in the face.

  I listen while Ahmed’s voice chatters on about Faheemeh, but my gaze usually wanders into our neighbors’ yard, where a girl named Zari lives with her parents and her little brother, Keivan. I’ve never seen Faheemeh up close, so when Ahmed talks about her I picture Zari in my mind: her delicate cheekbones, her smiling eyes, and her pale, soft skin. Most summer evenings Zari sits at the edge of her family’s little hose under a cherry tree, dangling her shapely feet in the cool water as she reads. I’m careful not to let my eyes linger too long because she is engaged to my friend and mentor, Ramin Sobhi, a third-year political science major at the University of Tehran whom everyone, including his parents, calls Doctor. It’s low to fancy a friend’s girl, and I shove all thoughts of Zari from my head every time I think of Doctor, but Ahmed’s lovesick ramblings make it hard for me to keep my mind clear.

  Every day Ahmed bikes ten minutes to Faheemeh’s neighborhood in the hope of getting a glimpse of her. He says she has two older brothers who protect her like hawks, and that everyone in the neighborhood knows that messing with their sister means getting a broken nose, a dislocated jaw, and a big black eggplant under at least one eye. Ahmed says that if Faheemeh’s brothers learned that he fancied their sister, they’d make his ears the biggest parts of his body—meaning that they would cut him into little pieces.

  Not one to be thwarted, Ahmed picks a day when Faheemeh’s brothers are in the alley and intentionally rides his bike into a wall. He moans and groans with pain, and Faheemeh’s brothers take him inside their home and give him a couple of aspirin, then immobilize his injured wrist by wrapping a piece of fabric around it. Faheemeh is only a few steps away, and knows full well what the handsome stranger is up to.

  Ahmed now rides his bike to Faheemeh’s alley without a worry in the world, spending hours with Faheemeh’s brothers and talking about everything from the members of this year’s Irania
n national soccer team to next year’s potential honorees. He says he doesn’t mind that her brothers bore him to death as long as he is close to her. They play soccer all afternoon in the alley and Ahmed insists on playing goalie, even though he stinks in that position. While the other kids chase the ball in the scorching heat of Tehran’s afternoons, Ahmed stands still. Supposedly he’s defending his team’s goal, but really he’s watching Faheemeh, who watches him from the roof of her house.

  After only a few games, Ahmed is forced to abdicate his post as the goalie. He is so preoccupied with Faheemeh that he is never prepared for the opponent’s attackers and his team always loses by at least five or six points. When Ahmed begins to play forward his team starts to win again, but now he has to run after the ball, which means he can no longer exchange silent looks with Faheemeh.

  So Ahmed comes to me with a plan. I am to accompany him to Faheemeh’s alley the next day. He will introduce me to his new friends and will make sure that I end up on the opposite team. I will aim at his knee during a crucial play and he’ll fake a bad fall and a serious injury. Then he will have no choice but to play as goalie again. He will be a goalie in agony, playing despite his pain, and that will undoubtedly impress Faheemeh.

  I agree to go along but worry deep down about what Faheemeh might think of me after I knock Ahmed down. I feel better when I imagine the day we tell her the whole thing was a setup to get Ahmed back in the goalie position.

  “Don’t hurt me for real, now,” Ahmed warns with a smile on his face.

  “Make sure the orthopedic surgeon is on call, pal,” I respond, getting into the spirit.

  “Oh, come on. You know I have fragile bones. Just touch me lightly and I’ll do the rest.”

  The plan is carried out masterfully. Ahmed deserves an Oscar for his portrayal of a boy in pain, and a gold medal for playing goalie after his dreadful injury. Looking at his face, which glows with the knowledge that Faheemeh is watching, I worry that he might really hurt himself with his courageous dives to the left, to the right, and under the feet of our attackers—all of this on asphalt. We can’t score on him. He scrapes his hands and elbows, and tears his pants at the knees. Each time he stops us he grimaces with pain, releases the ball, and looks up toward the roof where Faheemeh is watching attentively. I even see her smile at him once.

  One of Faheemeh’s brothers notices that I’m looking toward the roof, and I know from that moment on he doesn’t like me anymore, just as I don’t like Iraj for staring at Ahmed’s sister. He doesn’t shake my hand when I say good-bye to everyone. I size him up surreptitiously. He’s taller and bigger than I am. I leave with the comfort of knowing that I would not be letting down the sacred brotherhood of the boxing fraternity if he ever decided to be an asshole to me or to Ahmed.

  A couple of weeks pass, and I’m sitting on our roof in the dark, my ears and eyes filled with the rush and sway of the light wind that bends the treetops, when I hear the door to Zari’s yard open, then shut.

  Don’t look, I think resolutely, but my body resorts to quick, shallow breaths as soon as it recognizes the sound. It could just be Keivan, I reason. I decide to close my eyes, but my heart races as I realize that doing so has only sharpened my hearing. Bare feet pad across the yard, then the water in the hose begins to murmur with the slow churning of her legs as the pages of her book turn with the soft, rhythmic hiss so familiar from my own hours spent reading. She’s read four pages by the time Ahmed arrives on my roof. He sits silently on the short wall that runs between our rooftops and lights a cigarette with shaking hands. The momentary illumination from the match reveals tears in his eyes.

  “Is something wrong?” I ask, my chest growing tight at the expression on his face.

  He shakes his head no, but I don’t believe him. We Persians as a people are too deeply immersed in misery to resist despair when it knocks on our door.

  “Are you sure?” I insist, and he nods his head yes.

  I decide to leave him alone because that’s what I wish people would do for me when I don’t feel like talking.

  He sits as still as stone for a few minutes as the cigarette’s glowing coal creeps toward his fingers, then whispers, “She has a suitor.”

  “Who has a suitor?” I ask, glancing below at Zari; her ivory feet stir the moon’s reflection on the water’s surface so that it shimmers like liquid gold.

  “Faheemeh. A guy who lives a couple of doors down from them is sending his parents to her house tomorrow night.”

  It feels like someone knocked the wind out of me. I don’t know what to say. People who insist on sticking their noses into other people’s business seldom know what to say or do. I wonder why they ask in the first place. I pretend to study the blinking city lights that sprawl across the shadowy distance.

  “When did you find out?” I finally ask.

  “After you left this afternoon, her brothers and I went into her yard to get some cool water and that’s when they told me.”

  “Was she around?”

  “Yes,” he says, looking up hard at the sky to keep the tears from falling down his face. “She was pouring water from a pitcher into my glass when they told me.” He remembers his cigarette and takes a big puff. “I was sitting in a chair and she was standing over me, actually bending over me. She looked at my eyes the whole time, never blinked.” Ahmed shakes his head as his lips twist into the ghost of a smile. “She was so close I could feel her breath on my face, and her skin smelled clean—like soap, but sweeter. One of her brothers asked if I was going to congratulate their little sister, but I couldn’t make my voice come out of my throat.” Ahmed lets his face and his tears fall as he drops the spent cigarette and steps on it.

  “She’s too young,” I whisper. “For crying out loud, how old is she, seventeen? How can they marry off a seventeen-year-old kid?”

  Ahmed shakes his head again, mute.

  “Maybe her parents will reject him,” I say, to plant hope in his heart.

  “Her family loves him,” he says with a short bitter laugh as he pulls another cigarette from the pack. “He’s a twenty-six-year-old college graduate who works for the Agriculture Ministry, owns a car, and will soon be buying his own home in Tehran Pars. They won’t say no to him.” He lights the cigarette, then holds the pack out in my direction. I picture my father appearing unexpectedly and pinning me down with one of his dirty looks, the ones that hurt more than a thousand slaps in the face. I shake my head no.

  I look at Ahmed’s sad face and wish I could do something to help him out. This is a historic night for both of us. We’re experiencing the first major personal crisis of our young lives. It’s sad, but I must admit, on some level it’s also exciting. It makes me feel grown-up.

  “Do you know how bad this feels?” Ahmed asks between puffs.

  “Well,” I begin, wanting desperately to carry his pain, “I’ve only read about it in books,” I confess, somewhat embarrassed. Then I look toward Zari’s yard, and add, “But I think I can imagine.”

  Late the next afternoon, Ahmed asks me to go to Faheemeh’s alley with him. I do, despite my apprehension about seeing Faheemeh’s brothers again, especially the one who hates me for being like Iraj. The sun has just set, and the lights in the alley are springing on one by one. Some people have just watered their trees and hosed their sidewalks, as is customary in Tehran, and the scent of wet dust makes the dry heat of the evening feel more tolerable. A group of kids is playing soccer and making a lot of noise. I figure it must be the final game of the evening. The ladies stand close to each other trading talk while the younger girls run arm in arm, giggling.

  I have never seen Ahmed so consumed by grief. We walk up and down the alley, and he slows every time we reach Faheemeh’s house. “I can feel her on the other side of these walls,” he says, resting his forehead against the stone and closing his eyes. “She knows I’m here,” he whispers. “We’re breathing the same air.” Some kids walk by and recognize Ahmed. They want to chat, but neither Ahmed nor
I is in a mood to talk, and we continue to pace. When we reach Faheemeh’s house again he stops and presses both fists to the stone, like a tired warrior at the base of a fortress.

  Inside, a bunch of adults are discussing a lifetime’s commitment between two young people. The mother of the bride-to-be is usually happy and proud, unless the suitor is a real loser. The mother of the groom-to-be is civilized and calm; she makes mental notes to use later if a deal cannot be consummated, details that will stay fixed in her mind until the couple is happily married off. Who knows what will happen between two strangers? Good information can always tilt the balance in her favor if the union should fail. Everything is fair game, from the color of the wallpaper in the living room to the size of the future mother-in-law’s bottom. The fathers are agreeable and more concerned about drinking, eating, and bragging about the stuff fathers brag about: people they know in high places, the bargain they got on a prime piece of land by the Caspian Sea. Then there is the cast of aunts and uncles, best friends and family members, all happy to be there because they have nothing better to do with their time.

  Most of the discussions will focus on money. What does the groom have? Does he own a house? Does he drive a car? What model and year is it? Hopefully it’s an American car, a Buick or a Ford. How much is the dowry? How much does the family of the groom pay the family of the bride for this auspicious occasion? What would be the alimony if there were a divorce in the future?

  The bride- and groom-to-be normally sit far apart and don’t speak. They even avoid looking at each other. I know Ahmed is wondering what Faheemeh is thinking, sitting quietly in that crowded room. That’s what I would be worried about if, for example, I loved Zari and she were being married off to someone other than Doctor. I would wonder if Zari were thinking of me. I would wonder if she had made herself pretty, and if she had, I would be questioning why. Doesn’t she want my rival to think that she is ugly, and not worthy of marriage? I would be so jealous of the man who would be looking into her beautiful blue eyes, thinking of embracing her, touching her face, feeling her warm body against his. God, I’m so glad I don’t love Zari; poor Ahmed must be going through hell.