Together Tea

by Marjan Kamali

She didn’t want to get married. She wanted to quit business school and move to the mountains to paint all day.

The pursuit of well-respected, high-paying professions was the duty of the Rezayi children.

Just once, Mina wanted to hear the name of her old country mentioned in the same breath as “joy” or “freedom” or “gentle goodness.”

And Darya felt the joy infused with terror that only comes when a long-held dream is finally realized.

I’ve done it, Darya thought. He’s in his Let’s Solve This Problem by Taking Action NOW! Mode.

People here always ate and drank in front of others, when the others weren’t eating and drinking, which in Persian culture was considered beyond uncouth.

Yes, Darya decided, she would be more open-minded, as Mina would say, and give this fool a chance.

It was just a smile from a middle-aged man in a class taught in the basement of the public library by a woman who never ironed anything.

FOR A SOLID FORTY-FIVE MINUTES, they lost themselves in math. That was their rule. To stick to the project at hand for forty-five minutes, no veering, no break. They were allowed to talk, but only about the math problems. No one could go off topic.

And they stuck to that rule strictly because all three of them loved rules, and all three of them had deep disrespect for people who broke them.

She could “find herself,” like every character in every book she’d ever read about immigrants going back to the homeland.

Mina still felt a twinge of danger when Americans said negative things about their leaders. But you could get away with it here.

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.

She did not know she could stand so much love.

In those early days, she’d tripped over their scattered toys on the living room floor, not realizing that she’d soon be tripping over their unannounced friends, their political choices, their careers and mates.

They’d floated as a family of five, alone, for so many years. And now here they were, down to two. Just she and Parviz.

They acted as if every action they took were just for the sake of taking action. They acted as if everything were a race. As though the faster you moved, the more it mattered. As though by simply repeating something, you could make it true.

Baba seemed perpetually delighted by all the unexpected gifts of his own family.

“It’s always through the women that the men express their agenda. Now she has to cover up so they can feel like they’re in power.”

In order to live in a normal way, they had to leave their home.

It takes four seasons. To feel at home in a new country,” Baba said. “That is the rule. Once you pass four seasons, then you’re home free.”

“Tell me, are we even humans to them? Do they know we also mourn every life lost?”

The Persians and the Jews go way back, Baba would always say. Don’t fall for this current political rhetoric. Heck, most of us WERE Jews and Zoroastrians before the Arabs invaded!

Thou shalt study and work hard and get straight As, and then, once thou hast achieved thy college degree, thou shalt marry a Persian man who has a secure, respectable position in life, and thou shalt have babies and take care of thy husband, home, children, and career. Baba

“They tell me what I can and cannot sell. Display.” He cleared the filings off the table. “But nobody can affect what I can or cannot make.”

“Our son was the light of our eyes. My wife is my soul. When I paint her as she was, she comes back to me,” the artist mumbled.

How could she stop these images from slipping through her fingers? Why hadn’t she painted? When did she stop doing what she loved? The camera wasn’t enough. It never was. She knew what she had to do.

I’m beginning to think there is no one right person. No predestined soul mate. There’s no formula. Or if there is, a lot of different combinations can give you a right answer . . . or a right person.”

There was no magic value for the formula to work. Different variables fit into the equation. For example, in another lifetime, under different circumstances, she and Sam could have maybe been a wonderful couple together.

You are there. You are free. Quit? Why on earth would you quit? Pick up your paintbrush and paint if you want. But please don’t waste the opportunities you’ve been given there.”

I was an outsider, a foreigner there now. Sometimes I think to belong everywhere is to really belong nowhere.

How long had she floated precariously on that hyphen that separated the place where she had her childhood and the place where she now lived? How long had she hovered, never feeling at home on either side of that hyphen?

Darya looked around the coffee shop and saw that Sam had given the gift of her favorite song to every person there, handed it out like a present. She loved him for it.

for the symmetry of numbers that helped her cope with the asymmetry of her life and always would.

May their children grow up safe under their parents’ shadows.

She remembered teaching a three-year-old Mina these very moves, patiently playing the music over and over. The joy on that three-year-old girl’s face was right in front of her now. Only her daughter was now a bride. It had all happened in a minute.