The Temporary Bride Read online

  Vahid looks at me, clearly shocked. I feel oddly victorious at seeing him so unsettled.

  He stares into the distance, his eyebrows furrowed, and again we return to sitting without speaking. We drain our glasses of tea in silence, the sun moving lower, until he turns, abruptly picking up his jacket.

  “We should go,” he says in a low voice. “It’s getting late.”

  The next day I wake up, dreading going back, lingering in bed for the first morning since I arrived. Instead of racing to the courtyard to eat a breakfast of warm bread, sliced peaches and cherry jam, I contemplate making up an excuse, forming alternative plans in my head. It should be easy enough, I tell myself—I am unwell, sick, have a stomachache. There are places I can visit, monuments I’ve read about. Who goes to a city and sees only the inside of a kitchen? When the phone eventually rings I nearly ignore it, knowing it is well after eleven, the time I would normally be reaching for a plastic colander, a knife from the drawer. Vahid’s voice has only the faintest trace of awkwardness. What time am I coming? When will I be there?

  An hour later I ring the doorbell but no smells are emerging into the hallway. When Vahid opens the door I see that he is alone at home.

  “My mom teaches religious Arabic on Wednesday mornings. Both my parents are out, but they suggested I take you sightseeing.”

  For the sake of his mother I trail him reluctantly down the stairs, through the open courtyard, and out past the entry gates. Vahid doesn’t think to tell me where we are going and by now I am used to his lack of commentary. I know I am expected to follow him without question. I have become his family’s responsibility and am under his charge. As awkward as it is, I no longer take offense as I did at the beginning, conscious that in a few more days I will leave Yazd and be free again. I allow myself to fall naturally to his right as we traverse the straight roads, to stand behind the arm he raises saying “Wait” before crossing.

  As we walk along a dusty path toward two rocky hills, I feel the lingering effects of yesterday’s awkward conversation. We say almost nothing as we walk together, our shoes kicking up small clouds of dust. I have made up my mind to pretend it never happened, and am hoping he will do the same.

  “I couldn’t sleep at all last night,” he blurts out suddenly. “I kept thinking about what you said to me. It was going around and around in my mind.”

  It is not my intention to comfort or reassure him, so I turn my head away and pretend not to hear.

  We reach the base of the pair of hills and I recognize where we are at once. It is the old Zoroastrian dakhmeh I had read about, special hilltop structures known as the Towers of Silence. They had been used up until the late 1960s by the Zoroastrians for laying out their dead.

  Vahid begins to tell me the history of these places, of the Zoroastrians who didn’t believe in burials. Instead they placed the naked bodies of their deceased out in the open on top of the towers, one for the men and one for the women, for vultures to come and feed on. The corpses would be arranged in a sitting position and a priest would stay with them to watch which eyeball was plucked out first by the scavenging birds. If it was the right eye, it signified luck for the deceased, if it was the left, it meant unrest in the afterlife.

  We begin to climb to the top of the men’s tower, over the rocks and up the dusty path. The hills feel abandoned, worn down by decades of neglect; there is nothing to signify the importance of their past. Their sole function now is to serve as a viewing point, a pleasure spot for local families from which to gaze over the tan-colored suburbs and planted fields below. As we ascend I am grateful for the breeze, the warming rays of the sun, an enjoyment only slightly marred by my smart leather shoes. Occasionally, we have to negotiate boulders or the track becomes steep, and Vahid stretches his hand out to me. I take it but I don’t need it, surprised by the coldness of his palms. He runs out of breath long before I do.

  Hoping to free him from the obligation to treat me with chivalry, I decide to tell him about my childhood. I used to climb trees in bare feet, I tell him. I was a tomboy until I was at least thirteen.

  “A tomboy?”

  “A girl who acts like a boy,” I explain. “I used to catch spiders in a jar and pull the wings off insects. I once got into a fight with the biggest bully in school. Every day I came home muddy and covered in bruises. I used to hide from my mother to avoid taking baths.”

  Vahid laughs out loud, which feels strangely rewarding, his rough, stubbly face becoming softer and less gruff. I can tell by his expression he wants me to continue; his pace has slowed and he is looking at me.

  I tell him about the flat countryside where I grew up. The unpaved roads, the nearest neighbor a ten-minute bicycle ride away. It should have been lonely with almost no children nearby, but our acre of land felt like the universe. Each day I remained outside from dawn to dusk, returning home only when my mother called me in for meals. I tell him my favorite pastime as a child was to pull crayfish from the algae in a neighboring ditch, presenting the bounty to my father in a plastic pail. That it wasn’t until years later I discovered he secretly flushed them down the toilet, breaking his promise to eat them for dinner. I describe the horrendously short haircuts my mother forced upon me, tired of combing knots from my hair. As a result, for years I was asked whether I was a boy or a girl. He looks at me, surprised, his brown eyes sympathetic, when I admit the relief I feel, even to this day, at being referred to as “she” or “her”; at the absence of any doubt that I am female.

  Vahid studies me as if trying to imagine me twenty years ago, a boyish little girl with dirty knees and a collection of insects. He pauses, as if unsure whether to speak, a weariness settling over him.

  “I was at the university of sciences in Esfahan,” he says wistfully. “It is one of the most famous universities for engineering in the country. I lived in a dormitory, four guys to a room, and was captain of our football team. We traveled to universities across Iran for competitions and I wore a red armband over my uniform. Sometimes the crowd supporting the local team were so angry they threw bottles and cans at us when we walked onto the pitch.” He rolls up his sleeve, proudly showing me a scar where flying broken glass had cut deep into his elbow. “I only came back to Yazd when my mom became sick. I was happy living away from home. She had cancer and went to the hospital for treatment so I transferred to the local university, to help my sister take care of her and my father.”

  He describes visiting his mother, seeing her frail in the hospital, her hair falling out in clumps after grueling sessions of chemotherapy. No meals were provided, so patients were fed by their families, but his mother couldn’t stomach the rice and cans of tuna fish he and his sister tried to cook. She lost nearly twenty pounds in the five weeks she was there, able to eat little more than dry biscuits and weak cups of tea. When she came home she was too weak to do anything but lie down. They made up a bed for her on the sofa. The only book she reached for was the Qur’an. Vahid describes how on occasion he helped to feed and bathe her. He describes the shame he’d felt helping her out of her clothes, seeing her thin and shivering in her underwear. By the following year she made a full recovery, but to him she is still fragile, still needing him to remain close by. It is why he moved home again after finishing military service instead of applying for jobs in Tehran. Her illness has formed a kind of trap around him, filling him with guilt, making it seem impossible to seek a life away from her.

  The trail gives way to a flatter, well-trampled path and I realize we have reached the top of the hill. The summit is deserted. The stone boundary of the pit where the bodies were once laid has begun to collapse on one side from neglect. We take careful steps as we pass around it as if trying to avoid disturbing any remnants of its morbid history. We sit on the edge of the tower wall and a gentle wind dries our faces. The view around us is nondescript, even dull, but I find the combination of sheep, gnarled shrubs and multi-story apartment buildings beautiful. I take some pictures of the scenery, the landscape, but no
ne of Vahid, capturing instead the streets where he once learned to ride a bicycle, to drive a car; the city where I imagine he will spend the rest of his life.

  “Can I ask you a question?” he asks, sounding shy, as if he’s debated asking it for hours. “How are you going to manage for one month in Iran without having sex? Won’t you try to have sex with someone while you are here?”

  For the first time I feel responsible, aware my answer will form a template for his thinking for years to come. I know his information is drawn from satellite television and Hollywood films, where characters fall into bed after the briefest of introductions.

  I gently explain that sex isn’t such a big deal, that I haven’t had a boyfriend in over nine months. There are no such rules, nothing is so rigid or predictable. Sex in many ways chooses you, I tell him. Although I’m not sure myself what that really means.

  I don’t tell him what I’ve discovered as I get older: that when it comes to sex I practice a self-protective restraint: the quick peck on the cheek, the slipping downstairs to get a taxi, the lack of expectation or certainty on both sides. I keep from him the sad realization of how quickly desire can dwindle, the gestures becoming empty, the initial charge often fading to nothing. I simply tell him such experiences were indeed plentiful, but they were also the most lonely of all. I know he doesn’t understand what I am saying, can’t imagine such a thing. I am no longer talking but thinking out loud. He waits for me to say more but I finish, slightly embarrassed at having said too much, at having answered questions he hasn’t asked me.

  “And what about you?” I ask.

  “What about me?” he says.

  “Have you ever done anything?”

  His expression turns serious and he glances downward. “No. I kissed a girl once at a party, but I didn’t love her.”

  He talks about the girls he sometimes sees in the teahouses and parks, describes the invisible barrier in being able to get to know them. How he wants to be able to meet a girl and talk to her first before going through the necessary steps of asking about her family and reputation. He tried once, he confesses, to approach a girl he used to see in the library. She gave him her number and they spoke on the phone a few times. They arranged to meet at the library and sit near each other, on one occasion feeling brave enough to step out for coffee. But she became frightened and found his advances too bold, he says, going to see a religious consultant who told her to sever all contact.

  We take a different route to my hotel and as we pass a mosque Vahid resumes his lecturing, tour-guide mode. But for the first time, it feels comfortable to tease him, to roll my eyes at him, and he punches me mockingly in the shoulder. We come upon a butcher’s shop where a tray of sheep’s heads are being stacked in the window, and I find myself pausing to stop and stare.

  “They are for making kalleh pacheh,” he says, noticing my interest. “It is a soup made from sheep’s heads and feet that we eat early in the mornings. It has a lot of fat, so we have it before going on long hikes in the mountains. It is really delicious.”

  I am at once thrilled at the prospect of tasting such a thing and frustrated by the difficulties. I know it will be served in some cavernous, male-filled den, a place polite women avoid. I can’t possibly think about going alone, not even as a foreigner.

  Vahid looks at me, puzzled, then smiles, comprehension spreading across his face.

  “I understand now!” he exclaims. “You aren’t interested in monuments or historical places. You are only interested in food! You came to Iran for its food!”

  “Yes!” I say, with growing excitement, and he strikes his hand to his forehead in realization.

  “Aha! So I will plan the rest of your days in Yazd for you. We will have a food adventure!”

  I can’t believe my ears; it is too good to be true.

  Looking pleased with himself at the prospect of being my new food ambassador, Vahid sketches out a plan for the following day. “We will have to start early,” he says, “at five in the morning to have kalleh pacheh, and then I will ask for the pastry shop you liked to show us how they make their baklava. And you mentioned you wanted to see the butcher that has camel meat.”

  He scrawls a set of precise instructions in Farsi and hands me the piece of paper. “I am going to meet you at five to start our day tomorrow. Give this to the taxi driver so he will know where to come to pick me up so we can get started.”

  I take my instructions like an enthusiastic schoolchild and Vahid continues to walk me home.

  We enter the low-ceilinged bazaar where the moonlight filters through milky, stained-glass panels in the ceiling, bathing everything in a warm, amber glow. The crammed shops selling cloth, metal wire and cooking pots are concealed now behind heavy metal doors; the vaulted stone passageway has emptied of the bustle of shoppers and the calls of hawkers. Except for the echo of our footsteps down the connected alcoves, the bazaar is entirely silent. Our shadows snake along the walls and spill onto the cobbled floor.

  “Would you like me to sing to you?” Vahid asks suddenly.

  “Can you sing?”

  “Yes, my friends say that I have a good voice.”

  The request is so random it makes me laugh, too irresistible and strange for me to say no. I watch the long, exaggerated silhouette of my scarf looming across the pavement, rising and falling as I nod.

  Vahid begins to sing a melody in Farsi, one of the old-fashioned, big-voiced songs one hears late at night in the kebab shops, where the men sing of women’s eyes and nightingales, sleeplessness and longing.

  It is the first time a man has ever sung to me, a fact that makes me blush. There is a subtle, unintended strain of romance to the gesture but, rather than feel awkward, we feed off the sensation we are doing something brave.

  We reach the heavy wooden door of my hotel and stop, our feet shuffling along the dusty stone floors.

  “Did you like my song?” Vahid asks.

  “Yes, it was beautiful.”

  “Bye,” he says abruptly, spinning around. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Chapter Six

  My hair is still wet under my scarf when I tug open the creaking wooden doors to my attic bedroom. I am careful to keep the squeaking to a minimum as I jiggle the brass padlock back and forth. I imagine this is where servants once slept, shaken awake at all hours with demands for cool drinks or to fetch wood for fires. Its sloping ceiling forces me to duck each time I enter and I am able to stand tall only when alongside the pair of single beds where I sleep. It is probably the hotel’s worst room but I like its isolated location, that no one ever wanders past. Mine is the only room this way. I sweep my own floors and make the bed each morning. No one checks on me to see how I am getting on.

  None of the other guests seems to know it is here or that this is the way up to the roof. The nights I spend here are quiet and undisturbed, a contrast to the noise and expectations of Vahid’s family’s apartment, the constant fuss where nothing goes unnoticed. Even the appearance of new freckles across my nose sends Vahid’s mother to break off a piece of aloe vera. Consequently when I return to my room at night my first instinct is to peel away my layers of clothing and strip down to my underwear, to stretch and sprawl lazily across the bed. After a day of my sitting stiffly erect on the floor, guarding the round necklines of my shirts from slipping and exposing more than my collarbone, the sensation of the bedspread beneath my bare legs, and only my thin, faded camisole covering my breasts and stomach, has become a private luxury.

  I tiptoe down two flights of stone steps, careful to avoid brushing against the wall that leaves chalky, powdery deposits on my navy coat. I slip past the hotel’s dormant kitchen where two large refrigerators hum and the oily light from a fluorescent tube casts shadows of its nightly catch of flies.

  It is something new and exciting to find myself being secretive, in this place where my comings and goings feel watched. Until now the desk receptionists have always nodded approvingly when I return each evening to colle
ct my key. I see them ticking a box on a sheet of paper that rests next to the phone, relieved I won’t be creating any trouble.

  I wonder what they might make of my waking at 4 a.m. and dialing Vahid’s number, hanging up after one ring. Or the childlike anticipation I feel in waiting for him to call and do the same to confirm he too has woken early and all was going ahead as planned.

  Placing my key on the reception desk, I imagine him a few kilometers away, stepping over his parents in the dark on the way to the kitchen to drink a glass of water, splashing a handful over his hair in an attempt to flatten it down. I picture his mother stirring slightly as he gargles and spits toothpaste into the sink. Clutching Vahid’s note to my chest, I slide the heavy wooden bolt guarding the hotel’s entrance to the side and slip out into the cool morning air.

  The sky is still pitch black. For the first time since my arrival in Yazd the roads are nearly empty. The only light comes from the bakery where men in white rubber boots and aprons pull hot ovals of sesame-flecked barbari from the ovens, wrapping them loosely in paper and selling them to the handful of people waiting outside. Turning away, I find the alleyways welcoming, quieter than when they are packed during the day. I enjoy the cold dampness that emanates from the stone walls, the sound of my coat swishing against my jeans, the sensation of striding purposefully with somewhere important to go.

  I step out into the bright lights of a main street and almost immediately a car pulls up alongside and honks. The driver looks to be no more than twenty-five. A gray jacket is draped over the passenger seat beside him, a satchel and flask rest in the space behind the gear shift. I suspect the car has been borrowed from his parents to earn the equivalent of ten or fifteen dollars in the few hours before he goes to work in a factory or office. I climb in and hand him my piece of paper. “Uh huh,” he says, scanning it, pulling away from the curb.

  I have no idea whether what I have shown him is simply an address or if the first sentence says something more elaborate, such as: “Please take this girl to…” The driver’s face gives nothing away. Yet I feel oddly at peace, as if I am part of a script that has already been written, being shuttled between places I can’t find on a map, guided only by a piece of paper.