The Temporary Bride Read online

  When their husbands came home for lunch we hid our faces in the kitchen and waited to take their still-warm places on the floor to eat their leftovers. We were smart and always made a surplus of food, feasting on Bedouin-style braised chicken and bubbly buckwheat crêpes soaked in herbed buttermilk. Each meal finished with the golden sesame wafers I adored, pulled hot from the oven and poured with honey bought from the nomads who came into the city twice a year with their full clay jars. When we finally gathered barefoot and hungry around the tablecloth, a blonde girl and a dozen women with headscarves, gold teeth and enough praises for Allah to last until nightfall, we always had enough food to sustain us for the evening ahead.

  The lifting and lowering of veils to eat and drink was tedious so staying in was just easier than going out. Evenings saw thirty of us squashed into windowless rooms a quarter of the size of my apartment, to eat sweets, smoke pipes and drink thick tea with cardamom and condensed milk. Children leaped from one lap to another and had their heads patted and their clothes straightened. The youngest waited on the oldest, refreshing cups of tea and offering the largest dates. Each woman, passing through the archway, threw off her covering to reveal elaborate clothing and makeup. A party for a fifteen-year-old second wife (the first wife served the tea and welcomed the guests) featured heavy sequins, big, stiff hair and Cleopatra-style, kohl-lined eyes. Another party celebrating the return of pilgrims from Mecca was a miniature fashion show of white, powdered faces and miniskirts. I quickly learned that these parties were more than just a chance to show off; they were a careful sorting exercise to align potential brides with available husbands. The palest girls would go to the wealthiest men and perhaps be taken to live in Russia or Saudi Arabia. The dark-complexioned girls or those who were cross-eyed were set aside for widowers, second cousins or the poor sons of neighbors who lived in the villages far away.

  In my simple, beaded skirts and unpowdered face I knew I looked plain to them. I could sense their curiosity and revulsion that I was unmarried and had no children, perhaps one of those “open women” they saw on satellite TV. To compensate they painted my arms and legs with a black rock they crushed with honey, a mixture that burned my skin and itched like fleas. Normally used to adorn new brides for their husbands, it looked strange and exotic on my pale limbs and I felt a shiver of pleasure on seeing myself in the mirror. With their approval I took my place on the floor and I felt an inexplicable longing to become one of the girls, to be judged solely on the fairness of my complexion, to have my fate defined by my elders, to be claimed by a man who had never seen my face. An idea that had always repelled me suddenly seemed sweet, innocent, even romantic. I was envious of the clearly defined simplicity that lay ahead of them, the empty place on the carpet where they would sleep next to their husbands, the meals cooked to please the family that would gather around them, and the children who would cling to their dark sleeves when out of doors, recognizing them by their walk, or a charm worn around their ankles.

  Twice I followed the sisters to the neighborhood hammam where my entrance had to be carefully negotiated. Amid the passing of ribboned boxes of chocolates and folded banknotes were abundant reassurances to the unsmiling bathhouse attendants that I would tell nothing of the women I saw inside. The privacy of their bodies belonged to them and their husbands, forbidden to the ears of foreign men. To smooth my passage I’d brought a plastic bag filled with European beauty products, conditioners, balms and masks I could arrange neatly, up for grabs beside the steaming buckets of water. In the dim lighting we undressed and changed into the awkward, floor-length, elasticized coverings we wore to wash ourselves, and I closed my eyes to the cockroaches that scurried up and down the damp peeling walls. During those brief, hurried stages of undress I stole envious glances at their bodies, their full breasts and the stretch marks that zigzagged down their thighs. In their company I felt embarrassed by my flat chest, my body unravaged by the efforts of child-bearing and nursing. In a country where women my age looked like mothers, by comparison I felt unutilized, as if I’d been left behind.

  But now, as I prepare to go to Iran, putting on a hijab is unavoidable. I am both nervous and excited to wear a scarf in public for the first time. I have been practicing at home for over two weeks. Each time I find myself alone I reach for the gray fabric that hangs over the silver knob of the bedroom door.

  I try it on in front of the mirror as one might an evening dress or new coat, twisting it with single and double loops around my head to help secure it in place. At first it feels so foreign I can stand to wear it for only a few minutes but gradually I become used to its weight and the constant rustling around my ears. I anticipate how my hair crackles with static each time I remove it, the fabric smelling of my shampoo, the creases in the material softening with wear.

  I had hoped I might be a natural, that I’d look breezy and elegant, but it feels strange to smile in clothing so somber. I pinch my cheeks hard, I pull strands of hair loose, anything to return color and life to my face. Normally satisfied without makeup, I have a strong urge to wear lipstick. My face seems to scream for rouge. Guided by photographs of Muslim fashion on the Internet, I forage through drawers in search of anything to make me feel feminine, trying earrings, eye shadows, decorative clips in my hair.

  I test my scarf by walking, running, going up and down stairs, checking its resilience to stay in place. Sometimes I leave one end long enough to drape across my shoulder while other times I flick it around my neck. In some moments I can completely forget its presence, reading a book, typing e-mails, eating slices of salted cucumbers sitting up in bed, yet talking on the phone or even turning my head quickly can still send it tumbling backward. Reaching to pull it forward and back into place, a sharp tug of one hand followed by the sweeping motion of the other, is, like my scarf, fast becoming second nature to me.

  Each time I remove my scarf I pass it through my fingers, in awe of what a simple thing it is, the dilemma it poses. The rules from the Iranian embassy are surprisingly unclear, open to bewildering interpretation. “The headscarf must cover the head and preserve the female’s modesty” states the guidance on the reverse of my visa application. But how much hair is allowed to come loose? Which colors are considered modest or daring? What will happen if I cross the line? My enthusiasm at the unfamiliar feel of cloth over my head goes beyond passing the small trials I set for myself: keeping it in place while vacuuming the floor, brushing my teeth, or whipping egg whites into a froth. I feel a childlike anticipation at going to Iran, a place where I know no one, wearing the hijab and making it my own.

  Friends shake their heads and feel pity for me, imagining me drab and silent, a shapeless figure among hundreds of other shapeless figures, but I picture myself differently, moving with confidence through crowded Iranian streets. As in my childhood of Catholic school uniforms, where I’d sought to stand out in the line-up at morning assembly or the roll-call in the courtyard, I am discovering again how sparkly jewelry, the removal of a few inches of fabric, the replacement of gray with violet or navy with yellow make a presence more confident and a step more bold. After three years of throwing on jeans and T-shirts, thinking little of whether I was fashionable, my concern isn’t the visas, the politics or the danger. All I can think about is what I might wear.

  It is not for men that I care how I’ll look, but the women I’ll be dressing for. I know my choice of clothes will open or shut doors and I am eager to fit in and make friends. I had long learned to identify Iranian women in airports in Paris, Montreal and Dubai, easily distinguishing them from passengers bound for Saudi Arabia, Qatar or other destinations in the Middle East. Standing out in their sunglasses and high heels, with brightly patterned scarves tossed loosely over their hair and clingy designer coats, they seemed more like Mediterraneans—Romans or Catalans—than the dark, hardened images relentlessly shown on the evening news. I admired the gracious way they interacted with each other, queuing in circles instead of lines, speaking loudly and laughing ea
sily, with little regard for personal space.

  The first person to see me like this will be the photographer. His studio in a grubby, basement corner of Charing Cross station is no bigger than a bathroom, occupying a cramped unit between a shoe repair shop and a small kiosk selling lottery tickets. Taking a seat on a wooden stool that wobbles when I sit down, I glance at papers taped to the walls showing dimensions for a dozen identity cards and passports, for Australia, South Africa, Schengen visas for Europe. The photographer smiles as he adjusts the position of his camera to allow for my height. He asks me to sit up straight as he pulls down a white canvas behind me. As he reaches over I notice his olive complexion and thick, cotton-wool eyebrows. I worry that perhaps he is Muslim and will find me ridiculous.

  I pull out the scarf in my bag, one I’ve picked just for this occasion. It was bought years ago from the glass cabinet of an expensive shop in Delhi, but has remained for years at the bottom of a drawer, still wrapped in the same peach-colored tissue paper. It is wide enough to reach to the base of my neck, long enough to go around my head twice. Black, with overlapping gold and silver threads. For reasons I cannot explain, it is important to me, in this first recorded moment of my wearing hijab. I chose this scarf in the hope it will look pretty.

  The still-new fabric feels stiff and unyielding as I pass it over my head and under my chin. I am conscious that it must look awkward, sticking up where it should sit flat, but I decline the offer to check myself in the small mirror he gestures to, that hangs from a nail on the wall. I am shy with inexperience and suddenly it feels intimate to be dressing myself in front of a stranger. Instead I turn my head and tilt my chin according to his instructions, waiting for the electronic beeps of the camera to finish before relaxing my face. When the photographs come out I look rigid and doll-like, my hair pressed against my forehead. I accept this is how I will look when my visa is peeled off and stuck into my passport at the Iranian embassy, the photograph surrounded by indecipherable, swirling letters that will spell out my name and birthday, taking up an entire page. It thrills me to imagine seeing my name this way, appearing in a context it feels it doesn’t belong in.

  I remember the first time I felt that way, when the new telephone directory arrived on my doorstep in Dublin. Thumbing through the fresh paper with ink that stained my fingers black, I found the same surnames repeated, row after row, some spread across several dozen pages. When I finally located mine it struck me as incredible, a single, distinguished, anomalous line. Klinec J., 1 Longford Terrace, Monkstown. At the end of the school year I tore out the page, tucking it away in a corner of my suitcase, as if to reassure myself that it hadn’t been a dream, a necessary reminder before boarding the plane that took me back to Ontario, to the Buicks and Ford pickups, the perfectly straight roads, the air-conditioned buildings of the place I no longer belonged to.

  I pack, prepared for the quiet, solitary nights I anticipate, taking cookbooks, a laptop, even workout DVDs and plastic armbands. I expect confinement, evenings when everything will close by 9:30, streets falling silent and inhospitable after dark. With my keys jangling in one hand, I take a final rushed look around the home I am excited to abandon, the neatly made bed, the empty fridge smelling faintly of bleach, the discarded papers tossed into a bin.

  There is nothing simple or easy about where I am going. But since I was a student eating my first Persian stew, tearing fibers of lamb between a metal spoon and fork, breathing in the scent of dried black limes, I have chartered a course to this place. It is the pursuit of love that drives me to Iran, a love that has haunted me since I was twenty. It is for love I am willing to sit alone night after night, eating in the empty women’s dining rooms of the few restaurants that survived the revolution. It is for love I will weave through the men in crowded, ancient coffeehouses, tolerating the whispering and unashamed stares. It is love that drives me to visit a country cloaked in fear, with a culture much overlooked and long forgotten.

  It isn’t for monuments, tombs, the great ruins of Persepolis that I will cover my hair and avert my gaze. I am going to Iran for its food.

  Not the hunks of skewered lamb on charcoal and raw onions consumed by working men and taxi drivers; I seek instead the food eaten behind closed doors. The long-simmered stews of chicken with golden plums and quince that sustain husbands after long commutes of two bus changes and a shared taxi, or children weary from school lessons where math and biology are fitted around compulsory modules on morality and the “history of the Islamic revolution.” I imagine the lamb braised with pomegranate seeds to be eaten after days of biting tongues and swallowing impatience, served with fistfuls of coriander, plucked by women who sit barefoot on carpets. The tough joints braised to falling apart, bought from a carcass purchased by and divided at the local mosque, the cuts of meat handed out at factories in plastic bags to each employee, a gift to celebrate the coming of spring.

  I crave food that is important and historical, recipes that have changed little in five hundred years, aside perhaps from the substitution of vegetable oil in place of the sheep’s-tail fat that used to be melted down in pans for cooking. I imagine food smelling of the charred insides of battered cooking vessels and the decades-old smoke of earthenware pots, food cooked by generations of women while their children played at their feet and, eventually, while the world as they knew it crashed in around them. I picture tables graced with the taste of proud, complex lives. Herbs carried in special baskets; bread wrapped in knotted, muslin cloths; thick stews soured with unripe grape juice; carrots boiled with sugar and rosewater; yogurt hung from dripping bags, its whey dried in sheets on trays in the sun. I see the rituals of bread formed by hand, indentations made with fingertips, little hollows shaped to catch pools of oil or broth.

  It’s true: what I seek is largely romance, the legacy of a country where women are compared to food—her breasts like pomegranates, her lips like ripe dates. I am charmed by the notion of families tucking their feet under a single low table, gathering under blankets to eat slices of watermelon and feta sweetened with rosewater, listening to stories recounted by grandparents. I see myself trespassing as if a character in a work of historical fiction, chasing the last shreds of scorched meat and caramelized sauce from the sides of iron pans, eating spoonfuls of resinous, saffron-speckled ice cream, the latter stretching magically from bowl to mouth in long, chewy strands.

  I have precise ambitions, one more specific than all. I want to eat that most famous of Iranian delicacies: I want to eat Iranian rice.

  Iranian rice is unlike any other. It isn’t boiled or steamed or thrown unceremoniously into a rice cooker. Iranian rice is first soaked and bathed like a Hindu princess, rinsed in three changes of just-warm water. It goes into the pot with a spoonful of salt, carefully simmered just until it begins to yield, its determined character and bite remaining intact. Finally it is drained and returned to the pot in a footpool of melted butter, over the gentlest of heat, until it is so impossibly light and fluffy it could fill the quilts and pillows of Buckingham Palace.

  Tipped out into a wide, shallow serving bowl, each grain of rice is perfectly separate and served piled high like wedding confetti, adorned with streaks of bright yellow saffron and dotted with a final, loving pat of yet more butter. But the best part of all is still to come: the tahdig. A crisp, buttery, golden crust of rice left to scorch on the bottom of the pan to just the right thickness, the tahdig is shattered into gem-like shards and scattered on top of the rice. It crunches and crackles and splinters in your mouth as you eat.

  Apparently, in Iran you could go to a restaurant and order a whole, luxuriant dish of nothing but tahdig, and I want to do exactly that.

  It is a long way from London to this place I long for, where I can untangle myself from everything. To Iran I was taking all my romantic ideas. I was bringing the best, kindest version of myself. In turn I hoped the best, most beautiful parts of Iran might reveal themselves to me.

  Chapter Four

  His “hel
lo” was more of a bark than a greeting and I’d expected him to be older when I glanced up from my book. He’d placed a hand across his eyes, squinting in the late afternoon sun to look at me. He had a broad nose and fine, sharp cheekbones, offset by long, almost feminine eyelashes, features I suppose could have been handsome if I’d stopped to consider them. But all I noticed was his distant expression and his mouth, how it seemed fixed permanently into a scowl. I guessed he was probably in his late twenties, yet his face was so stern it was hard to guess. He was wearing a white cotton shirt with an American-style collar and dark, loose-fitting jeans with wide pockets—the kind that seemed popular with young Iranian men; jeans made in Turkey but labeled “Italy.”

  I don’t imagine he approached me out of anything but boredom. I wasn’t even a person then, just a foreigner. A khaareji. I belonged to the trickle of fair-complexioned visitors who passed through his city on the edge of the desert, marveling at the walls made of packed clay and straw, tracing their hands along them as they walked through the old laneways around the bazaar.

  He began to question me, quickly but without enthusiasm, scarcely waiting for my answers before starting his next question. I sensed he was speaking more for the enjoyment of hearing his own voice in English than anything to do with talking to me. He’d later tell me he often approached tourists to practice, but had never seen a foreign girl, sitting alone.

  “Where are you from?”

  “What is your idea about Iran?”

  “What have you seen so far in our country?”

  Each time I answered he watched me critically, his eyes narrow and his face unsmiling. I looked down at my watch to check the time, thinking I’d give him five more minutes, at most.