Read Online Together Tea by Marjan Kamali - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Marjan Kamali
Tags: Contemporary, Adult
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that Iâm in business school? You know, Kayvon, Iâve been thinking. I have this idea. I really want to . . .â
âOh no, not this again,â Kayvon said. âMina, you know you canât be an artist. Donât sweat it so much. We all have childhood dreams and then we grow up. I wanted to be a professional soccer player, but Iâm a contracts lawyer! Thatâs life. We all make choices, but itâs for the best, youâll see. Now get some sleep.â
Before Mina could even tell Kayvon about her plan to go to Iran, heâd said good night and good-bye.
So much for her buddy brother. Mina sighed and reopened the photo album sheâd taken out before her run, the only one theyâd brought from Iran. Darya had cleverly hidden photos of herself behind pictures of the kids so that the customs inspectors wouldnât confiscate the photos with no hijab. Darya in her bikini was hidden behind Hooman in a high chair. Darya with long flowing hair, her arm linked with Babaâs, was stuck behind a shot of Kayvon playing soccer. And photos of Darya at university, in her cotton blouse and billowing skirt, books hugged to her chest, were behind snapshots of Minaâs early artwork.
The album helped link Mina to a past that felt almost glamorous. There was the mother sheâd once known. Her hair black, not red. Her hazel eyes bright, hopeful. Darya looked happy, confident. Not tired and foreign. The Darya dressed in Jackie O jackets and pillbox hats was such a very different woman from the Darya of Queens. There she was standing by a fountain in Isfahan, her black hair blowing wild, a tiny Hooman and Kayvon by her side. There they all were on a London double-decker bus, waving. They didnât need visas back then. The world at that time didnât confuse them with terrorists. Mina pulled out an older photo: Darya in a hospital bed holding a scrunched-up newborn wrapped in a Mamani-knitted receiving blanket. It was their first moment on camera together. When Mina held the photo close, she noticed that Darya looked completely exhilarated and overwhelmed.
In America, the mother, father, brothers, and previous self that Mina had known before the revolution slowly melted away and evaporated. They became like characters sheâd read about in a book, people who lived in a different land, long ago.
âYou know weâre going back,â Baba would say some mornings in those early years as he ironed his pizza apron. âAs soon as this revolution thing dies down.â Hooman would concentrate on his cereal and mumble, âThatâs what you said a year ago.â Mina would think of her blue suitcase under her bed, ready to be filled with her clothes and paint set so she could return home to Bita and Agha Jan and Aunt Nikki and all the rest of her family and friends at any given moment.
When the TV host delivered his punch line, the studio roared with laughter and Mina was jolted back to the present. Young women in the audience clapped and flipped back their hair. Big men in baseball hats guffawed and hooted. What had she missed? What was so funny? What did those girls in the air-conditioned California studio do after the show? Go to a bar and sit on skinny stools and order drinks? Mina knew about the ancient Persian poets: Saadi, Rumi, and Hafez. She knew about bombs in Tehran in the 1980s. But she couldnât name more than one cocktail. She had never been comfortable inside bars. Darya and Baba found the bar culture unseemly. Wouldnât want her sitting on a skinny bar stool swinging her legs. Mina knew how to study and work very hard. She knew how to swing her legs on that hyphen that defined and denied who she was: Iranian-American. Neither the first word nor the second really belonged to her. Her place was on the hyphen, and on the hyphen she would stay, carrying memories of the one place from which she had come and the other place in which she must succeed.
âOh no, not this again,â Kayvon said. âMina, you know you canât be an artist. Donât sweat it so much. We all have childhood dreams and then we grow up. I wanted to be a professional soccer player, but Iâm a contracts lawyer! Thatâs life. We all make choices, but itâs for the best, youâll see. Now get some sleep.â
Before Mina could even tell Kayvon about her plan to go to Iran, heâd said good night and good-bye.
So much for her buddy brother. Mina sighed and reopened the photo album sheâd taken out before her run, the only one theyâd brought from Iran. Darya had cleverly hidden photos of herself behind pictures of the kids so that the customs inspectors wouldnât confiscate the photos with no hijab. Darya in her bikini was hidden behind Hooman in a high chair. Darya with long flowing hair, her arm linked with Babaâs, was stuck behind a shot of Kayvon playing soccer. And photos of Darya at university, in her cotton blouse and billowing skirt, books hugged to her chest, were behind snapshots of Minaâs early artwork.
The album helped link Mina to a past that felt almost glamorous. There was the mother sheâd once known. Her hair black, not red. Her hazel eyes bright, hopeful. Darya looked happy, confident. Not tired and foreign. The Darya dressed in Jackie O jackets and pillbox hats was such a very different woman from the Darya of Queens. There she was standing by a fountain in Isfahan, her black hair blowing wild, a tiny Hooman and Kayvon by her side. There they all were on a London double-decker bus, waving. They didnât need visas back then. The world at that time didnât confuse them with terrorists. Mina pulled out an older photo: Darya in a hospital bed holding a scrunched-up newborn wrapped in a Mamani-knitted receiving blanket. It was their first moment on camera together. When Mina held the photo close, she noticed that Darya looked completely exhilarated and overwhelmed.
In America, the mother, father, brothers, and previous self that Mina had known before the revolution slowly melted away and evaporated. They became like characters sheâd read about in a book, people who lived in a different land, long ago.
âYou know weâre going back,â Baba would say some mornings in those early years as he ironed his pizza apron. âAs soon as this revolution thing dies down.â Hooman would concentrate on his cereal and mumble, âThatâs what you said a year ago.â Mina would think of her blue suitcase under her bed, ready to be filled with her clothes and paint set so she could return home to Bita and Agha Jan and Aunt Nikki and all the rest of her family and friends at any given moment.
When the TV host delivered his punch line, the studio roared with laughter and Mina was jolted back to the present. Young women in the audience clapped and flipped back their hair. Big men in baseball hats guffawed and hooted. What had she missed? What was so funny? What did those girls in the air-conditioned California studio do after the show? Go to a bar and sit on skinny stools and order drinks? Mina knew about the ancient Persian poets: Saadi, Rumi, and Hafez. She knew about bombs in Tehran in the 1980s. But she couldnât name more than one cocktail. She had never been comfortable inside bars. Darya and Baba found the bar culture unseemly. Wouldnât want her sitting on a skinny bar stool swinging her legs. Mina knew how to study and work very hard. She knew how to swing her legs on that hyphen that defined and denied who she was: Iranian-American. Neither the first word nor the second really belonged to her. Her place was on the hyphen, and on the hyphen she would stay, carrying memories of the one place from which she had come and the other place in which she must succeed.
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