The Alley of Love and Yellow Jasmines (18 page)

Years later, on his eighteenth birthday, the prince got lost while exploring the forest with his attendants. He kept wandering around, desperately looking for the path that had brought him there. Exhausted, the prince bathed in a steamy spring, praying in the moonlight. He slept inside the trunk of an ancient tree next to his horse tied to one of the thousands of branches of the tree.

The next morning he kept riding in the vast, emerald green forest, passing trees, steamy springs, and wildflower bushes that all looked alike, as though he were riding in a maze, until he found himself in a foreign land, where the natives spoke a different language and worshiped different gods.

The prince sold his horse first, to survive, then his jewels, and finally his royal clothing. Left with a faded caftan, he became a wanderer on the streets. Tired and hungry he found himself in front of a rug shop.

He entered quietly and started looking around. An old man was restoring a rug next to a pile of rugs in the corner. The prince used his little knowledge of this new language and asked the old man for a job. The old man gladly accepted but told him that he could only offer food and shelter in return.

The prince started working right away, and in just a few months he managed to make a name for himself and started designing rugs. His work was excellent, and the royal court of the foreign land ordered a special rug for a special friend of the court.

The nostalgic prince designed a rug similar to the one he had made for his mother, the queen, and wove his signature in it. The royal court sent the saffron-colored carpet with a huge paisley in the center of it to the king of the magical land, as a token of appreciation for the peace and prosperity in the region.

When the queen of the magical land saw the rug, she realized that her son was alive. She stopped mourning and started looking for him. She ordered the royal court to send a team of warriors to find the prince in the faraway land, and they did. The king and the queen came to take him home, and when they realized how he had survived, the queen laughed and said, “Now you know why I always wanted you to learn the craft.”

OH, HOW I
wished I had listened to Grandma’s bedtime stories thoroughly rather than getting captured in their atmospheric realm, so I, too, would have learned a craft that would help me survive in a faraway land.

I decided to start a small business in L.A. Many of my friends had started small businesses and were very successful. I had managed to save $20,000 while working in London and was able to secure a similar amount in a loan from Barclays Bank.

After a few weeks of thorough research, especially in the Santa Monica and Westwood areas where Iranian immigrants had found a safe haven after the revolution, I noticed that there were not many flower shops. I decided that would be it, I would open a flower shop. When I shared the idea with my friends all I heard was positive feedback. “Do it as soon as you can,” they said.

In my younger life in Iran I was surrounded by people who had an extraordinary love for flowers. My mother and grandfather were both fascinated by flowers. Grandpa knew exactly how many rosebuds were on the bushes in his garden, counting them every single morning, all year round. He would lose his mind if anybody touched the buds or somehow broke a branch. He would call all of the children to the backyard and interrogate us while our parents joyfully watched. We would all deny any wrongdoing, and he would walk away muttering, “One of these days I am going to catch the traitor and only God knows what I am going to do to him.”

After a couple of weeks I managed to find a small storefront on the corner of Westwood and Santa Monica, very close to my apartment on Ohio Street. It had been a warehouse and was located at the back of an Iranian restaurant called Deezzy, named after a special Persian meal with meat.

The building had character and was said to have a lot of potential. I rented the place for five years under one condition: I would either leave or sublet it after one year if the business did not work. The gentleman who rented the place to me owned Deezzy. He knew me from my films and plays in Iran and did his best to accommodate me.

I named the shop Pot Lady, after the play I had performed all those years ago. I thought that with a little investment I would be able to create my own business and generate some income. I was lucky enough to find a partner, Misha, a single, shy redheaded Iranian mother with a pleasant smile and two adorable young kids. Misha and I started exploring the flower market in downtown Los Angeles and kept looking for a florist, an artist who had studied the magic of designing flowers. We finally found her.

Her name was Kian, a blond Iranian woman with an incredible resemblance to one of my favorite actors, Faye Dunaway. She was a Laura Ashley type, wearing loose floral skirts and pastel tops. Kian had taken a course in flower design in Paris in the 1970s to decorate her own house and the lavish parties she threw back in Iran. Now she had to design flower arrangements to survive.

She had been married to a senator and had a great life in Iran, but like millions of Iranians, she had immigrated to America. She lived in a modest apartment in the Westwood area close to the flower shop. She did not drive but could easily walk to work.

Misha and I went to the flower market at five o’clock every other morning to purchase fresh flowers and those on Kian’s list for special orders. We opened the shop around nine. Misha and Kian would stay at the shop while I visited local restaurants, cafés, shops, and other businesses that might be willing to buy our flowers.

The problem was that small businesses could not afford fresh flowers, and the big businesses already had accounts with well-known flower suppliers, mostly with our large competitor, Mayflowers. Another problem we encountered was the delivery of the ordered flowers. The cost of using a professional delivery service was too high and I did not drive—or, I confess, I was
afraid
to drive. In my first year in London, I pulled out of a parking space without signaling and crashed into a taxi. Luckily the cab was covered by insurance, which took care of the damages. But I could never forget what the judge told me the day I appeared in court.

“Young lady, I beg you not to drive in this country anymore.”

I gave the judge my word and never drove again in England. I guess I was still keeping my word in America, hoping I would never have to drive in Los Angeles either. But that became almost impossible.

Misha had a huge old Cadillac with a manual transmission. Its air conditioner did not work. I still remember the day we used it to deliver a huge basket of flowers to a funeral.

The son of the deceased had personally come to the shop to place the order and asked us to put an eight-by-ten-inch photo of his dead father in the middle of the basket. After a round of negotiations he agreed to pay $150 dollars for the basket and delivery. The amount paid for the order barely covered our costs, but we were determined to make a name for our shop.

Kian was afraid of the picture of the dead father and begged me to hide it somewhere until the basket was ready to go. But she did a great job designing the royal-looking arrangement. We planted the picture of the deceased in the middle of the basket, and Misha and I went off in her Cadillac to deliver it.

It was a hot summer day. Misha was driving, and I was in the front seat with the map in my right hand and holding the basket of flowers with my left hand with all of the windows open. We were both new in town and had no idea how big the city truly was. The hot air blowing in felt like the heat of a hair dryer. We were wilting and so were the flowers. Getting lost for almost an hour on highway 101, we didn’t arrive at the funeral in North Hollywood until the mourners were leaving.

The two of us carried the basket of dying flowers inside. We kept pushing through the crowd in the opposite direction, as though we were on time. Someone finally told us that the funeral was over. Still, we placed the flowers in the church.

Sadly, the more we tried, the less we achieved. Our shop was too small and so was our refrigerator. Our Iranian friends had done their best to recommend us, but we were barely known in the neighborhood, and the money I had put aside for a rainy day was thinning.

MY FRIEND HOUSHANG
Touzie had just finished working on a movie,
Into the Night
, with Michelle Pfeiffer and Jeff Goldblum, portraying a backgammon club owner. He had also staged his first play written in exile,
All the Sons of Lady Iran
, with the help of an excellent cast.

I went to see his play. It was performed at the Lincoln Auditorium in Santa Monica, and it blew my mind. The audience laughed and cried throughout, and when it was over they gave him a long standing ovation. Houshang’s sociopolitical observations of his new environment were sharp, deep, courageous, and funny.

He was so surprised to see me. I told him how much I enjoyed the play and invited him to visit the flower shop. He could not believe that I had actually started my own business in such a short period of time.

Houshang was going to leave soon to tour Canada, but he asked me to read his latest play,
Café Nostalgia
, to see if I could envision myself in it.

In the play, Café Nostalgia is owned by an Iranian couple, an ex-history teacher named Mr. Akbar and his wife, Afagh. I was developing quite a crush on the devilishly handsome Houshang and I was more than eager to read it.

I devoured it in one night. My proposed part, Afagh, was a symbolic portrayal of every strong Iranian woman, someone who simply refuses to give up. She loves her Iranian heritage but is not as nostalgic about it as her husband, who would be played by Hassan Khayatbashi, a popular Iranian TV star.

Houshang and I met again, and I slyly told him how much I enjoyed reading his play and how eager I was to work on it. He said that he had already talked to a couple of Iranian actors in Los Angeles and wanted me to start rehearsals with them as soon as possible while he went on the road for three weeks in Canada. I was thrilled. I would close the shop at six in the evening and start rehearsals at seven. We would work for a couple of hours at my place every night.

Houshang called a few times from Canada, and I was excited to speak with him each time.

My roommate was the happiest one of all, because she had found a great excuse to “celebrate” every night. I got home early one afternoon just as an ambulance pulled over and three young men jumped out, running toward my building. I opened the door for them, and they asked me where the elevator was. I told them to follow me. We got into the elevator and I inquired which floor they were going to. They said, “Number two-one-three.” I thought, Oh, okay, they are going to . . . what?

“Did you say two-one-three?” I asked.

They said yes.

“That is my apartment. What is happening?”

“There’s the possibility of an overdose,” they said.

“An overdose, of what, and who?”

“Cocaine overdose, a young man,” they said.

We got out of the elevator and ran to my apartment. My roommate’s boyfriend, a tall and heavy young man, was lying very still on the floor, and my roommate was crying. The paramedics examined him to make sure that none of his bones were broken from his collapse on the floor. They kept asking him questions such as “What is your name? What is today’s date? What year is it? What is the name of the president of the United States?”

The poor man could barely respond. Finally the three paramedics put him on a stretcher and took him to the hospital.

I was shocked and speechless. I was aware of Mimi’s cocaine use but stupidly thought that she used it only occasionally. Besides, I do not like to poke my nose in other people’s business. It was not for me to tell her what to do. I was her roommate, not her mother. But the bigger problem was that she was two months behind in the rent and kept telling me that her brother in France would be sending her money.

That night I decided to move out and get a studio apartment in the same building. Enough is enough, I thought. I needed a place of my own, never mind how small.

HOUSHANG RETURNED FROM
Canada, and we started rehearsing extensively, every night, at a huge studio in the Valley. I had asked Misha to take care of the shop while I was working on the play. She did her best. I would sometimes go to the shop in the late afternoons to see how it was doing and have dinner with Misha or my other friends at Deezzy next door. The owner had designed it like a Persian teahouse and decorated it with posters of Persian paintings and calligraphies, neatly framed in wood. It even had a small stage where Iranian musicians played nostalgic melodies and sometimes hosted great Iranian singers. One night I sat with my coworkers from the flower shop, enjoying the atmosphere and each other’s company.

I saw Houshang. He was sitting with a girl, his friend Ali, and Ali’s girlfriend. On my way out I decided to stop by their table to say hello and overheard the girl next to him saying “ . . . and who the hell does she think she is?” Houshang replied, “Shohreh Aghdashloo,” just as I arrived at their table.

Houshang got up and introduced me to the people at the table but I was not looking at them at all. I ignored the offender completely and would not even make eye contact. I let Houshang finish the introductions then whispered to him that I was tired and was going home. He bent down to kiss my cheeks, but I turned my face and kissed his lips. Houshang was paralyzed. He is a shy and private man. I guess he could not believe what was happening.

I turned around and left, but I heard a commotion on my way out, and my friends told me to look back. Houshang was sitting on his chair, soaked in soda, his lips red with my Chanel lipstick. Apparently his date had poured a large glass of Coke on his head.

Houshang did not mention it at our rehearsal the next day, and neither did I. But something had changed between us.

One night Houshang was driving me home after a long rehearsal. We stopped at a gas station and he asked me if I cared for an ice cream.