The car windows are full of another blighted East Los Angeles neighborhood. They smear together after a while, like old cooking spills. I keep seeing the same brown faces, the same Spanish-language signs, the same gaudy murals of desert landscapes and mustachioed revolutionaries and praying saints lit with golden sunrays. I don’t know whether we’re still in Upton Heights or if we’ve crossed into Terrazas Park. All I know is that we’re returning to the wrong side of LA. The east side. Twisting around in the passenger seat I catch glimpses of the shiny huddle of downtown, and past it the western sprawl known as Little Persia. Most Iranian families emigrated to Westwood and followed the retreating sun, to the even nicer locales of Encino, Reseda, Woodland Hills. But we didn’t have the money of most Iranian families. Not then, not now.
“Remember this part of town? It looks better than it used to, don’t you think?” Behind the wheel Nasrin’s profile is haunted. Her headscarf twists left and right, desperate for a glimpse of anything beautiful.
We’re returning from a visit to Aunt Irid, who is dissolving into the maw of Alzheimer’s. She passed in and out of conversations, becoming different people. A little girl in Iran who rode a donkey to madrassa — religious school. A wife in England who raised five children in a two-bedroom flat. A widow who buried her husband in the foreign soil of America.
In Aunt Irid’s fractured memory we became different people too. Nasrin would flinch in discomfort, trying to correct her. “I’m Nasrin. Nasrin, your favorite niece. You always gave me butter tarts. Do you remember me now?” I found the confusions and ambivalence oddly invigorating. I don’t want to be myself anymore. I’d rather be Aunt Irid’s long-dead mother, or the daughter who lives in Dubai now, or the home healthcare nurse who visits her.
“Don’t you think this part of town looks better?” Nasrin prods again.
I superimpose my memories and can’t see much difference. Gentrification is arriving slower than the police when we called 911. Most windows are still fortified with bars, or just plywood nailed tight. Some cars still hover on cinderblocks, wheels gone and insides torn out. A few homeless still push their overloaded shopping carts up and down the sidewalks in pointless migration. Only the graffiti is clearly different to me. At stoplights I have time to peer closer. Much of the tagging is commercial now, spray-painted billboards for stores and video games and cheap mortgages.
“It’s not that bad anymore. Really. It’s getting better.” Her words are a prayer with things moving underneath. She could be talking about the neighborhood. She could be talking about my marriage.
Another stoplight. I stare out the window at a motionless block of palm trees and crabgrass. “I met Saman in that park.”
“What? You did not!” Nasrin laughs, her eyebrows lifted into disbelieving curlicues. She’s just like Aunt Irid, unable to remember me. In her eyes I’ve become someone different. A little sister who looks over her shoulder at Iran. A steadfast Muslim who attends mosque every week. A wife who is almost-but-not-quite happily married.
Except I did meet Saman there. At the end of Norouz, the Persian New Year celebration. Right in the middle of that stupid park.
———————
Sizdah Bedar — the traditional outdoor picnic that ends Norouz — was always held in the only park in the neighborhood, a gritty but at least green block. Everything was tagged with graffiti, even the palm tree trunks. Crack vials and used condoms littered the bushes. We were a handful of Iranian families clustered around a picnic table and grill, surrounded by Hispanics playing volleyball and drinking from paper bags and just hanging out. This was East LA, after all.
Nasrin paused while helping herself to another bowl of ice cream. “I wish Grandfather was here,” she murmured in Farsi, voice wistful instead of cracking. Our pedar bozorg died years ago and we missed him with fondness instead of pain. Beneath her floral hijab she was smiling faintly. “Remember how he used to give us presents tied in straw? And pray to a glass of fresh water?” The old rural traditions were fading with him.
I glanced over at my sister, thick-waisted with her first pregnancy, and Grandfather’s loss suddenly hit me again. He was immortalized in our photo albums, an elderly man wreathed in a halo of Turkish cigarette smoke, looking down with kind eyes on two little girls. Wherever he was, I hoped he could still see Nasrin. Maybe I was his favorite growing up, but she became the perfect Iranian granddaughter he always wanted. Beautiful yet modest, respectful of elders and the Iranian ways, with a diamond ring on her left hand. A Persian flower, he would’ve called her.
“Nooshin, come meet Mrs. Fazel!”
Mom yelled to be heard over the boombox, which was blaring classical Persian music. The twangy wail of the kamancheh — a kind of giant long-necked violin — cut through the air. I wished the men would turn it down so I could hear the low-rider parked nearby, doors open, oozing the dark beats of Mexican gangster rap.
“Before we die, Nooshin!”
“Coming!” I sighed, unfolding myself from the cement picnic table. I was wearing my flattest shoes, a pair of flip-flops with plastic sunflowers across my toes, but I still rose taller than anyone else in the park.
Mom stood in a semicircle of Iranian women fanning out from the dreaded Mrs. Fazel. She was the most stylish woman I’d ever seen in person. Blond-dyed hair showed through her black lace hijab. She wore a clingy crimson dress with a little belt around the middle and black open-toed pumps. Her wrists were heavy with jewelry, mostly silver bracelets. A beaded purse was tucked under an elbow. Compared to her, I was a slob in my jeans and long-sleeved t-shirt.
Mrs. Fazel’s expert gaze was aimed sharply upward. Her kohl-lined eyes snapped me like a shutter. The appraisal was blunt. “Well, she’s no Nasrin.” But she didn’t flinch away when we greeted each other and shook hands. Flawed girls were her matchmaking specialty.
“Nooshin is a little tall,” Mom admitted, forcing a smile. “And that eye, well…” Her voice dwindled away. There was nothing that could be done about it. Nothing to say.
I stood there awkwardly, trying to remember my lines. Gravity pulled my gaze down, down, down. “I have lots of other qualities,” I told the dead grass.
“Her Farsi, just listen to it!” Mrs. Fazel recoiled. “And you can’t let her leave the house looking like this. Doesn’t she have any nice clothes?”
“Her closet is full of skirts and dresses,” Mom reassured Mrs. Fazel, then tugged reproachfully at my elbow. “Would it kill you to dress up every once in a while?”
Mrs. Fazel’s pedicured toes were tapping restlessly. “You’re graduating this year, hmmm?” she said. “Are you 18 yet?”
“I turned 18 last year.”
“How’s your cooking?”
“I — fine, I guess.” Staring at the plastic sunflowers across my toes, something leaped inside me. “And I’m getting good grades. Even in my advanced placement classes.”
Her shadow waved dismissively. “Your husband will care about your cooking, not your grades. Your cooking and housekeeping and child-rearing. Focus on that and you’ll make a good wife.”
“Don’t you think she’d be a good fit for that Nassehpor boy?” Mom said hopefully. “I’ve heard he wants to stay in America after his student visa expires. Mohammed, is that his name?”
There was a resounding silence from Mrs. Fazel. I watched a line of ants crawl industriously through my mother’s shadow, which slumped in despair. The staccato echo of a basketball game drew my attention.
“I like to play basketball,” I murmured, in a strange mixture of pride and shame. “I’m the center on our girl’s varsity team. Mostly because I’m tall like this. And my eye, it doesn’t stop me at all. I can do everything the other girls do, like shoot and pass and, um…”
My aunts were looking at me in vast pity. Mom wasn’t looking at me at all. I stared over their heads to the basketball court, where Hispanic boys in tanktops and gold chains were showing off for their girlfriends. I watched the chicas flutter around, flirting shamelessly, leaning into kisses. Some of them were already single moms. I would never even date before I married.
Mrs. Fazel adjusted her hijab with unflappable calm. She patted Mom on the arm reassuringly and smiled at my aunts. “You need the right match for Nooshin. A Persian husband. And by Persian, I mean Iranian. A traditional Iranian man who wants to emigrate to the United States. You can give him three great gifts — ” She ticked them off on fake fingernails. “– your daughter and niece, a union with your family, and American citizenship.”
It was all lip service. Even I knew the only thing that mattered was my citizenship. But I nodded along, wanting to believe my family and I were important too.
“Do you have someone in mind?” asked Mom eagerly. Too eagerly.
Mrs. Fazel patted her arm again, a just-you-wait gesture. “You’re a good Muslim, I take it?”
At first I didn’t realize that she was addressing me. “Beg pardon?”
“You’re a good Muslim?”
Actually I hadn’t been to mosque in months. Mrs. Fazel read the hesitation in me. “Well, at least tell me you’ve read your Qu’ran. You know all the traditions, how to set a hafteen table, hmmm?”
“Of course she does,” Mom interjected. My aunts looked doubtful.
“Then I believe this is the right match for Nooshin.” Mrs. Fazel produced a small headshot from her purse and passed it around, starting with Mom. Next my aunts scrutinized it. Finally the picture found its way to me.
I considered the face staring up from my palm. The man — and he was definitely a man, not a boy — was swarthy, with cheeks pockmarked by acne scars. He wore a thick mustache that made him seem resolute, even martial. Beneath it his mouth was unsmiling. He wasn’t attractive, but he wasn’t unattractive either.
“He’s an Azovidegh,” Mrs. Fazel was explaining. “They’re an honorable family trying to establish themselves in America. Very hard-working, very smart with their money. They own several businesses in the Midwest.”
“What kind of businesses?” an aunt asked. She probably hoped to hear something like jewelry stores or auto dealerships. If so, Mrs. Fazel’s answer disappointed her. The Azovideghs owned some dollar stores and a couple Subway franchises. They were grander merchants back in Iran, even boasting a Shiraz vineyard at one time, although they sold it after the mullahs came to power and began cracking down on alcohol consumption.
“But what about him?” I asked uncertainly, not even knowing his name yet. “What’s he like?”
“Saman is a traditional Iranian man.” Everyone seemed to be satisfied with that answer except me. Noticing my hunger for information, Mrs. Fazel added, “He got his accounting degree from Birjand University.” I’d never heard of Birjand University before. I only knew that Birjand was a small city in the mountains near Afghanistan.
There were other details, too — he was a tireless worker, a praiseworthy son, a devout Muslim. Mrs. Fazel seemed to be reading from a script. Slowly it dawned on me that she had never met Saman.
“Will his family ask him to return to Iran?” The question came from Mom, but my aunts nodded as well. They had all fled Iran, most of them after the disastrous Iran-Iraq War. Their hearts were still with the motherland, but they were conflicted about sending me to my fate there.
Mrs. Fazel smiled benevolently. “Saman wants to become a U.S. citizen and make his life here. But he will go back to Iran often. Most of his family is there.” She touched my elbow, a gesture that rattled her jewelry. “Have you been to Iran recently, Nooshin? Would you like to visit sometime?”
I didn’t want to visit Iran. At that time I wanted to visit Australia. I’d been learning about Australia in geography class. A nation of convicts and paupers and outcasts. People who made a new life for themselves at the far edge of navigational charts, a place no one else wanted, where the seasons were inverted and the trees shed bark instead of leaves. Australia was a country where I would be welcomed, my citizenship conferred by this ungainly height and board-flat chest and crooked wandering eye.
