Digging to America (11 page)

Well, I certainly never expected that you would pick an Iranian girl.

I don't know why not, he said.

This wasn't entirely truthful, because in his heart he too had always thought his wife would be American. As a child he had longed for a Brady Bunch family a father who was relaxed and plaid-shirted and buddy-buddy, a mother who was sporty rather than exotic. He had assumed that his schoolmates enjoyed an endless round of weenie roasts and backyard football games and apple-bobbing parties, and his fantasy was that his wife would draw him into the same kind of life. But then his senior year in college, he met Ziba.

Unlike the daughters of his parents' old friends, Ziba had a nonchalant, sauntering style about her. She was confident and plainspoken. She came right up to him after their first class together (The Industrial Revolution, spring semester) and said, Iranian, right? Right, he said. He braced himself for the usual chitchat about what-part, what-year, whom-do-you-know, all voiced in that combination of flirtatiousness and cloying deference that Iranian women put on with the opposite sex. Instead, she said, Me too.

Ziba Hakimi, and she breezily trilled her fingers at him and moved off to join her friends American friends, male and female mixed. She wore jeans and a Tears for Fears T-shirt, and her hair in those days was short enough so that she could gel and spike it into something resembling punk.

As he came to know her, though (as their exchanges grew slightly longer each day, and they fell into the habit of walking out of the classroom together), he noticed how much they understood about each other without discussion. A cloak of shared background surrounded them invisibly. She asked him in mid-March if he planned to go home the next weekend, and she didn't need to explain that she meant for New Year's. He passed her on the library steps where she was eating a snack with a friend, and her snack was not chips or cookies or Ring Dings but a pear, which she was slicing into wedges with a tiny silver knife like the ones his mother set out with the fruit tray after every meal.

That summer after graduation he drove over to Washington often to take her to dinner or a movie, and he met a whole string of her relatives. To him the Hakimis seemed both familiar and alien. He recognized the language they spoke, the foods they served, the music they were listening to, but he was uncomfortable with their lavish parties and their collector's zeal for the most expensive, most ostentatious brand names Rolex and Prada and Farragamo. He would have been even more uncomfortable with their politics, no doubt, if he had not had the good sense to avoid discussing the subject. (Ziba's parents all but genuflected whenever the Shah was mentioned.)

What would his mother think of these people? He knew what she would think. He brought Ziba home to meet her but he left Ziba's relatives out of it. And his mother, although she welcomed Ziba graciously, never proposed that the two families get together.

But she might not have in any case. She could be very unforthcoming.

In the fall Sami and Ziba went back to the university Sami to work on his graduate degree in European history and Ziba to start her senior year. They were deeply in love by then. Sami had a shabby apartment off campus and Ziba spent every night with him, although she continued to keep all her clothes in her dorm room so that her family wouldn't suspect. Her family visited constantly. They showed up every weekend with foil-wrapped platters of eggplant and jars of homemade yogurt. They hugged Sami to their chests and kissed him on both cheeks and inquired after his studies. In Mr. Hakimi's opinion, European history was not the best choice of fields. You propose to do what with this? To teach, he said. You will become a professor, teaching students who'll become professors in turn and teach other students who will become professors also. It reminds me of those insects who live only a few days, only for the purpose of reproducing their species. Is this a practical plan? I don't think so!

Sami didn't bother arguing. He would chuckle and say, Oh, well, to each his own. Somehow, though how did this happen?
by the time he and Ziba were married, late the following June, he had agreed to work in her uncle's development company. Peacock Homes built and sold houses in the more upscale areas northern Virginia and Montgomery County and they were expanding to Baltimore County. At first Sami's job was temporary. Just try it, everyone said, and go back to school in the fall if he didn't like it. He did like it, though. He grew to enjoy the wish-fulfilling aspects of it the couples confiding their cherished, touchingly specific dreams. (Got to have an eye-level oven. Got to have a desk nook next to the fridge where the wife can make out the week's menus.) He studied for his real-estate exam and passed it. He and Zib
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moved into the company's newest project, and Ziba found work with her cousin Siroos at Siroos Design (Serious Design, customers tended to call it), decorating the houses that Peacock Homes sold.

If Maryam was disappointed that Sami had given up his studies, she never said so. Well, of course she was disappointed. But she told him it was his decision. She was cordial to the Hakimis and affectionate with Ziba; he knew she liked Ziba, and he didn't think that was only because Ziba was Iranian. For their engagement she had offered them a ring he'd never seen before, an antique ring with a diamond that satisfied even the Hakimis. Or maybe it didn't. It wasn't huge. But at least they had professed to be satisfied. Oh, everybody on both sides had been exceedingly well behaved.

Sami didn't exempt the Donaldsons from his tirades about Americans. If anything, he was harder on them. They were such easy targets, after all especially Bitsy, with her burlap dresses and her more-organic-than-thou airs and her with-it way of phrasing things. She called her mother's funeral a 'celebration,'
he told the relatives. She said, 'I hope you two will come to the celebration for my mother.'

Did she misspeak, perhaps, out of grief? Ziba's father asked. No, because she repeated it. She said, 'And please will you tell Maryam about the celebration, too.'

In this case it was Ziba who objected. What's the matter with that? she asked Sami. People say all the time they're gathering to 'celebrate a life.' It's a very common expression.

My point exactly, he told her. It's a knee jerk, trendy, chic expression.

Well, for shame, Sami. The Donaldsons are our best friends! They've been wonderful to us!

It was true that they had been wonderful. They were so good-natured, so warm, so hospitable. Best friends, though? There Sami had his reservations. It wasn't that he could come up with any better friends, but Bitsy really got on his nerves sometimes. And he couldn't resist poking fun at her. She just invited it! Listen to this, he told Ziba's sisters-in-law. A few weeks back, Bitsy decides it's time to toilet-train her daughter. She's going to bring it about by 'positive reinforcement.' Bitsy's very big on positive reinforcement. So what does she do? She throws a Potty Party. She puts Jin-Ho in Wonder Woman underpants and sends off invitations to four other kids the same age, including Susan. I believe the suggested dress code was underpants for the guests as well, but she didn't insist, which was lucky for us since Susan hasn't a clue yet. We brought Susan in her diaper. But Jin-Ho was wearing underpants she kept lifting her dress to show us and so were two of the other kids. And someone I'm not naming names, here must have had a little misadventure, because gradually all the parents started getting funny looks on their faces and sniffing at the air and sliding their eyes toward each other, and finally one of them said, 'Um, does it seem to you ... ?' By then it was too late, though. Way too late, because evidently this misadventure had happened in the backyard where all the kids were playing, and they must have run through it a dozen times before they came inside for refreshments and tramped across the rugs, climbed up on the dining-room chairs . . . He was laughing so hard that he had to pause for breath, and the relatives were shaking their heads and trying not to laugh too. I mean! he said. Talk about your theme party!

Ziba said, Oh, Sami, show a little mercy.

And while we're on the subject of parties, he said, doesn't it strike you all as quintessentially American that the Donaldsons think the day their daughter came to this country was more important than the day she was born? For her birthday they give her
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couple of presents, but for the day she came to America it's a full-fledged Arrival Party, a major extravaganza with both extended families and a ceremony of song and a video presentation. Behold! You've reached the Promised Land! The pinnacle of all glories!

Ignore him, Ziba told her relatives.

Her relatives, after all, were thrilled to have arrived in America themselves; but even so they couldn't help smiling. Sami told them, You understand. And guess what: this second time around, we're the ones who have to throw the party.

We don't have to throw it; I offered, Ziba said. It's our turn, she told the relatives. They threw the party last year. Only they served just cake and beverages, and I always think it's nicer to give people a whole meal.

Yes! An Iranian meal, one of her sisters-in-law said.

With kebabs, another said, and morgh polo and sabzi polo and perhaps a nice shirin pol
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Sami said, Whoa, but he was drowned out by Ziba's Aunt Azra. I've just been given a secret recipe for making real rosewater ice cream, she said, and then she leaned forward and cupped her mouth with one hand, as if she worried about spies, and whispered, You take a quart of Cool Whi
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You've missed my whole point! Sami told them.

But he could see he had lost his audience.

There happened to be seven relatives visiting at the time of the Arrival Party: two of Ziba's brothers and their wives, two young nieces, and Aunt Azra. And naturally Ziba's parents had to drive over from Washington to share in the excitement; so this meant nine extra people milling around the house preparing for the party. It took them a week. Or it took the women a week. The me
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steered clear of it all. They sat in the family room attached to the kitchen, out from underfoot but separated only by a counter and close enough, therefore, to eavesdrop on the women's conversation; and they drank their tiny glasses of tea and thumbed their ropes of fat amber prayer beads and gave little grunts of amusement when they overheard something choice.

Aunt Azra, for instance, was leaving her husband. She had traveled alone from Tehran to visit their children in Texas, and now she had made up her mind to stay for good. She had decided she didn't like sex. (The men raised their eyebrows at each other.) It was a lot of mess and effort, she said, and she clapped a lid on a rice pot. The women wanted to know how her husband had reacted when she told him. Well, she said, I telephoned on a Friday morning, early. Friday morning was best because at home it would be afternoon, and I knew he'd be going to his brother's house later on for poker. He would have people there to console him. His brother's wife, especially Ashraf. Do you remember Ashraf? An unfortunate greenish complexion but very kind, very comforting. That time I had that miscarriage she came to my house and she said, 'I'm going to make you a little halvah to build up your strength, Azi -june.' I said, 'Oh, I don't have the appetite,' but she said, 'Trust me.' And then she went into the kitchen, sent Akbar away this was in the days when people still had servants; remember Akbar? He and his twin brother came to us from some village, hardly old enough to talk and dressed in rags, both of them. The brother walked with a limp but he was very strong, and he took over our garden and he grew the most beautiful roses. Never before or since have our roses bloomed so well. In fact my neighbor, Mrs. Massoud, once said this is the Mrs. Massoud whose son fell in love with a Baha'i gir
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But your husband? Ziba's father bellowed across the counter. What about your husband?