A Handbook to Luck (20 page)

Leila Rezvani

L
eila tentatively entered the beauty salon in northern Tehran. It was hidden behind the courtyard of a curios shop that sold gold and coral jewelry. She'd gotten the name of the place from Yasmine, who'd gotten it from an actress friend who performed with an underground theater company. The salon was simple, with fake flowers and worn furniture, but it was welcoming and warmly heated on this chilly day. Inside, a dozen women without head scarves were chatting and smoking heavily.

The owner, Farideh Sadhrapoor, greeted Leila with an embrace and offered her melon and pistachio cookies. “We've been expecting you, dear.”

Leila hoped to visit California next summer and she was determined to look good when she arrived. Since Enrique had written to her (he said that he hadn't received her letter for two years), Leila had started working out at a private aerobics studio near her home. She avoided starches and sweets, and swam for an hour every night after Mehri went to bed. So far, she'd lost twelve pounds. She'd begun stockpiling new lingerie, too, sexy bras and panties from France that she bought on the black market for a hundred dollars a pair. They were the opposite of the industrial-strength Iranian bras sold by the street vendors, who punched the cups with their fists to show how sturdy they were.

At the salon, Leila opted for the full bridal treatment. It cost a fortune—two months of an office worker's salary—but in five or six hours, the owner assured Leila, she would be fully coiffed, depilated, moisturized, massaged, manicured, pedicured, and given a stimulating multigrain facial. In a word, she would be transformed.

“Our motto is ‘Kill me, but make me beautiful,'” Farideh smiled, shaking a bangled wrist. “So what's the special occasion?”

“I'm going to Los Angeles,” Leila said quietly, “to visit a friend.”

“A
friend
?” Farideh teased, raising her eyebrows until they nearly merged with her flaming red hairline.

“No, it's not like that.” Leila was embarrassed, but she was pleased that Farideh would think her capable of having an affair. Maybe all was not yet lost. She had to fight the urge to tell her about Enrique's tattoo, a pair of dice on his left biceps entwined with her name in Persian lettering (he'd sent her a picture of this). But she couldn't risk crossing the line from daring to outright scandalous.

“And your husband has given you permission to travel?” Farideh asked incredulously. “By
yourself
?”

A few women drifted over, trailing smoke from their cigarettes. They were in various stages of beautification—highlights here, half-tweezed eyebrows there, mustaches and facial hair awaiting removal by thick sewing thread. Everyone wanted to hear about Leila's upcoming trip.

How could she tell them that she was barely sleeping from the anticipation? Enrique had written that he was married and had three children—three!—but he was eager to see her again and hadn't stopped thinking about her. He'd quoted a line from a Cuban poet: “‘Love happens in the street, standing in the dust of saloons and public squares: the flower dies the day it's born.'” Then he'd added, “I look forward to resurrecting our flower.”

“I'll be taking my daughter with me. Mehri was born in the States, but we moved back home when she was a baby.” Leila could feel the envy and excitement in the room. “We're going to Disneyland.”

“Ahhh!” the women exclaimed. They knowledgeably compared the merits of the original theme park in California with the vast Florida compound. Every woman at the beauty salon had relatives in America. They told of uncles and cousins who'd gone there to study and had stayed, or returned for visits only to criticize life in Iran. Often, the men changed their names to Mike or Fred, short names like the bark of a dog. How could these compare to their beautiful Persian names?

“There's no respect for women there,” the wife of a wealthy bazaar merchant complained, stubbing out a contraband cigarette. “College girls go drinking and whoring with no one to look after them. Where are their fathers and brothers?”

“I hear so many lies I don't know what to believe anymore.” A middle-aged woman frowned, her head rattling with foil packets of highlights. “But everything they hear about us is also untrue.”

“Things have changed so much,” sighed a thick-browed woman with shimmering nails. “We used to drink in public and pray in private. Now we pray in public and drink in private.”

Everyone laughed, although the joke was familiar.

“Now, ladies,” Farideh interrupted. “We need to get started on our new customer.
Eshkal nadare?
Come this way, dear. Some tea, first?”

“Yes, thank you.” Leila sat on a flowered sofa and accepted a steaming cup from the samovar. She noticed a woman at the far end of the salon, her hair done up in braids and pink ribbons. She wondered if her husband liked her this way.

It hadn't been easy convincing Sadegh to let her go to California. She had had to agree to his conditions. In fact, he'd had a lawyer draw up a contract, with a smattering of seals and signatures. Above all, Sadegh wanted an unlimited number of temporary wives for the duration of their marriage. Leila pretended that this was a great sacrifice on her part. Of course, she knew her husband wouldn't have the nerve to do it. He would be too embarrassed by his impotence.

Sadegh demanded that Leila go to California for no longer than seventeen days, that she was not, under any circumstance, to visit Disneyland—referred to in the document as “a cesspool of American degeneracy”—or to wear shorts or bare her arms above the wrist. Leila was also contractually obligated to purchase for her husband a long list of American products, including boxer shorts, chunky peanut butter, Pop-Tarts, and instant mashed potatoes with packaged gravy.

At first, Sadegh hadn't wanted to let Mehri travel. He said he would miss her too much and didn't want her corrupted by Western ways. Leila knew that Sadegh loved their daughter. Not once did he mention Mehri's weight (she was growing quite plump) or her increasingly unsightly nose. He brought her chocolate ice cream every night and took her for visits to his nuclear facility, where Mehri got to wear what they affectionately called her “space suit.” Leila was worried about radiation contamination but her husband dismissed her concerns.

Sadegh tried bribing Mehri to stay with him in Tehran instead of going to the States. He promised her a brand-new rifle and a trip to a shooting range (something she was longing to try) but in the end, the chance to go to Hollywood proved too alluring. Leila wished they could leave Iran for good, but this was impossible. Sadegh would track them down in California, kidnap Mehri back. Then he would make certain that Leila lost all maternal rights.

Her husband didn't discuss his years in the States except to say that they were the worst years of his life. “Nobody should live with their enemy” was his only response to questions about his studies abroad. When Sadegh referred to America at all it was as that ruined country,
mamlekat-e-kharabshodeh.
He never mentioned their trip to the Grand Canyon or returning home to find his twin brother dead in their dining room. Sadegh had stuck to his lies for so long that the lies had become the truth, even for him.

Leila secured a sugar cube between her teeth and sipped the scalding tea through it. Sugar was not on her diet, but surely one tiny cube couldn't hurt. In the United States, she would need to remember to drop the sugar cubes
in
her tea. She looked around and felt a kinship with the women here. Why hadn't she sought them out before? Trying to look good in this country was a radical act. To show a bit of ankle or a polished nail was the height of subversion. Unfortunately, this obsessive preoccupation with appearance left little energy for more serious pursuits.

Who would she miss, Leila wondered, if she left the country? So many of her relatives had already fled—to Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, France. Her Uncle Kazem and his second wife, an Italian biologist named Claudia, had shocked everyone by declaring themselves Marxists and moving to the Soviet Union. Aunt Parvin had left, too, after Uncle Masood died. Nowadays she was living in London off the largesse of her former archenemy, Leila's own mother.

Last year, Maman had finally married the horticulturalist, in a wedding that made the society pages of every British newspaper. She and Mr. Fifield owned a town house near Hyde Park and a country estate in Sussex with award-winning gardens, a showpiece for prospective customers. Maman continued painting her watercolors, distributing them among her friends and family as gifts. Even Mehri had received one of a basset hound for her birthday.

Leila worried about her daughter learning to become a woman in Iran. Once she'd overheard Mehri praying to God to change her into a boy. Who was she to discourage her? Worse still, she feared that her daughter was turning into a younger version of Sadegh—serious, impatient, forever dissatisfied. Mehri revered her father and wanted to be just like him. If she wasn't the best at everything she did, she threw a tantrum. Her teachers had sent her home from school on numerous occasions for fighting with her classmates. Leila suspected that her daughter shared her father's disdain toward her.

Besides Mehri, there were only two people Leila would miss if she left: her father and Yasmine. But Yasmine wasn't long for the country either. Since she'd been caught drinking and dancing at a private party (the local
komiteh
had been summoned by a jealous neighbor), she was plotting her escape. Yasmine had been charged with decadence and spent a week in jail. Her friend was lashed so viciously that her back looked like a butcher's display of ground lamb. And she was one of the lucky ones. Hundreds like her disappeared every day and were never heard from again.

Only Baba remained steadfast in his support of the country. He was like a stubborn captain who would go down with his ship. It was a question of loyalty, not to the government but to the land, to
his
land, which he refused to abandon. Dr. Nader Rezvani was condemned—yes, that was the word—to Iran like thirst to a desert. Leila decided that there was something self-serving about her father's stance. Hadn't Baba always done what he believed without regard for the consequences to his family?

When Leila had confided to him that she was thinking of divorcing Sadegh, he'd joked, “Elizabeth Taylor has nothing on my daughter!” Then Baba had grown serious. “Here, my light, real virtue is admired but not practiced. You must do what you believe. Whatever your decision, you can count on my support.” He hadn't said another word about it. Why hadn't he asked her more questions? Didn't he care how she felt? Her father, she concluded, was a man first. One man didn't interfere in the marriage of another.

After Leila finished her tea, Farideh led her to the masseuse. Leila stripped off her clothes and let the sinewy woman—she introduced herself as Bita—coat her body with an amber oil that smelled of oranges and mint. Bita massaged Leila's neck and shoulders, then methodically worked down her spine, popping two vertebrae. As Bita pushed against her lower back, Leila's nipples tightened. It had been so long since anyone had touched her with the slightest intention of pleasure that she began to cry.

“I'm so sorry. Am I pressing too hard?” Bita asked.

“No, no. It's fine.”

“The body is intelligent,” Bita said softly. “It tells you what it needs.
Eyb nadare.
Cry all you want. This often happens the first time.”

“Please continue,” Leila said, wiping her eyes.

She tried to imagine Enrique seeing her naked again after so many years. Would he still find her beautiful? Trace his hands along her waist? Gently rest his head on her breasts? What did his wife look like? Enrique had written that Delia had been born in Cuba, like him, but grew up in the States. Leila knew all too well the pull of the familiar. In a contest for his love, who would win?

“Now breathe deeply and we'll have you relaxed and ready for the rest of your treatments. When you leave here today, nobody will recognize you.”

“Motashakkeram,”
Leila said.
“Kheyli mamnum.”

Recently, Sadegh had been acting more kindly toward her. Not warm or loving, just less angry and violent. He hadn't hit her since the day before New Year's. That beating had left bruises that took nearly a month to heal. Leila attributed the change in his behavior to his health worries. Her husband wasn't old or overweight but at his last checkup Dr. Banuazizi had told him that his blood pressure was a little high for a thirty-four-year-old. Now Sadegh was convinced that a heart attack was imminent.

Since then he'd stopped having sex with Leila, claiming that it overtaxed his circulatory system. His bluffing about temporary wives hadn't diminished, a contradiction Leila found amusing. At least she was no longer forced to embrace him. More and more, Sadegh dispatched her to their villa on the Caspian Sea on the pretext that he needed a few days' peace. She welcomed these retreats from the city. Sometimes she stayed away for weeks.

Leila settled on a squeaky swivel chair to get her hair dyed chestnut brown. She'd been using a packaged coloring product made in Austria, but it turned her hair dry and brittle.

“You're too young to be all white,” the hairstylist said, picking at Leila's roots with the long handle of a comb.

“It's hereditary,” she lied.

Would her brother's hair have turned prematurely white if he were alive? It was impossible to picture him any older than he'd been on their last day together. She still visited Hosein's grave and felt his presence beneath the rotting figs. But she was no longer comfortable speaking to him aloud. There was no privacy at the cemetery. With the war still raging, people were paying respects to their dead day and night.

A customer wearing cropped pants and a bright orange top waved around a cassette that she'd bought from a Turkish vendor in the alley behind the salon. “He told me it was the latest hit in Ankara,” she announced, slipping it into Farideh's tape deck. A lively pop song filled the air. Several customers clapped along to the rhythm.