Together Tea

by Marjan Kamali

If the mountain won’t come to Mohammed, Mohammed must go to the mountain.

This, the way they do it here, this is ridiculous. You can’t pick a spouse for yourself. How does one person, one young person know what’s right for them?

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. The hyphen was hers—a space small, potentially precarious. On the hyphen she would sit and on the hyphen she would stand and soon, like a seasoned acrobat, she would balance there perfectly, never falling, never choosing either side over the other, content with walking that thin line.

The old textbooks with the photograph of the Shah on the first page were replaced with brand-new textbooks with a photo of the new leader inside. The drawings in their old books of girls feeding roosters and going to the market were almost exactly the same, except headscarves and roopoosh had been added to the girls’ pictures. In the new books, the Persian kings were no longer dynamic and amazing. They were corrupt and cruel. Mina had to relearn the “facts.” She saw that the definitions of things like “history,” “good,” and “bad” shifted depending on who was in power. Mina realized that whoever had access to dispensing information drew and colored the world.

“Don’t get brainwashed, Mina,” Darya said at dinner. “Don’t let them get to you. No one can tell you what to think. No one can tell you what to do.

She felt again the overwhelming sense of responsibility that she’d gotten accustomed to ever since the birth of her first child: the stunning knowledge that where her kids were going was due in large part to where she, as mother, led them. This duty felt at times as if it could drown her.

How ordinary they must have seemed to others, mother and daughter strolling down the street. But no one knew their private joy. Was freedom just tiny moments like this? Simply knowing that no one cared if the sun shone on your hair?

“Is he kind?” Darya asked. “Because, Mina, there’s a lot to be said for education. And a profession. And family history. And, well, looks. But if there’s one thing that matters, it’s character. That’s the only thing that lasts. Degrees can lose significance, jobs can be lost, a family’s past really shouldn’t define a person, and as for looks . . .” Darya sighed. “Well, looks fade for the best of us. But character, Mina, is what lasts. Kindness will carry you through the ups and downs of life.”

This was the power her children held over her. They could walk into a room and just the sight of them would make her heart soar and then the next minute, they could open their mouths and say absurdities that rendered her helpless.