What We Owe Read online

  Zahra and Leila and Anne and Firozeh. They’re all here. They came right away, they were here within an hour. I didn’t even manage to open my eyes before they were all here. I think of my notes, lying in the hamper. The ones about my loneliness. I want to show them, say: Why did you wait until now to come? Why didn’t you come before, when I was so alone? But I don’t know. At the same time, I feel I ought to tear those pages into a thousand pieces. Because I was never alone. Right? I don’t know. What is loneliness? Is it sitting alone wishing for company, or is it sitting alone waiting to die? Maybe I was never alone.

  I hear them start to whisper. I don’t listen at first, but soon I understand. They haven’t told Aram. I want to stand up, make a scene. I asked you for one thing! One single thing! But I restrain myself. I know this is far from the first thing I’ve asked them for. Know it’s asking too much.

  Zahra rises, makes a call. Whispering. I can hear she’s not talking to Aram, no. She’s talking to someone else. She asks her own child to tell my daughter. What cowards we are! The revolutionaries. None of us has any guts. Maybe you only get a certain amount of guts in your life. Maybe we left ours on the bloody streets of revolution. I wonder who will tell Aram I’m dying. Realize I don’t know, and that I won’t get up to find out.

  I often stand at the window looking out. my view is exquisite, like a painting. I point to it when I have a new visitor.

  “Look,” I say. As if it were possible to avoid.

  I live on the thirteenth floor, and one wall consists entirely of windows. Outside you see only sky. Sky, and sky never ending. Down below lies the sea, your eyes can follow it until it joins the horizon. And at the water’s edge stands the forest. A thick line of trees that holds the seasons.

  For most people it’s nothing special. Sky, water, trees. I want to explain to them, to my visitors, exactly why it’s so special. But I have a hard time making myself do so. I want to say to them: Do you know what I had around me when I was growing up? When I walked the streets, when I walked to school. Sand and stone. Sandy stone. It might be hard to visualize. Yellow sand that covered our shoes. That covered our houses. Our mother swept it out the door several times a day. Imagine, I who come from sand now live with sky and water. It’s a transformation of elements. I want to say, This is immense. It’s grand. Also, sad in a way. What you once were has disappeared. It has been replaced by something else.

  But I say nothing, and I know why. I don’t want them to think I come from the desert. That I’m of a desert people. They already think that of me, and I refuse to plant more weird images of who I am in their heads. What I’m talking about is sand, not desert. They’re two different things, but people wouldn’t understand.

  One thing about me, i just can’t keep my mouth shut. I usually know when I should. At least in retrospect. But still, I can’t help blurting out what’s on my mind. You’re not supposed to do that. Not as a human. As a mother. You’re supposed to keep your hurtful thoughts to yourself. But I can’t.

  I’m alone in my pain. I’ve come to that conclusion now. Aram should be the one to share this sorrow with me. Pain passes from woman to woman. But she doesn’t.

  She didn’t come until four hours and forty-five minutes after I got the news. After I found out I was going to die. I know no one told her earlier. I know she didn’t know. But I still feel annoyed. Yes, there are others here. But that’s something else. They’re sad. They will miss me. But my daughter . . . She will never recover from this. We share that. I want to share that with her. The finality.

  I’m still lying on the sofa with my eyes half closed when she arrives. Everyone stands up and greets her. I hear her voice—it’s tired. I want her to come in screaming. Screaming and weeping. In panic. But she doesn’t. She enters and says hello to my friends and sounds tired. I don’t get up. I let her come to me. She takes her time. Stands for a moment in the hall. She asks questions. Tries to understand. I know that is what she is doing. But it doesn’t feel that way. It feels like she’s standing around chatting, and it makes me angry. Here I am with everything falling apart, and it takes her four hours and forty-five minutes to show up, and even then she doesn’t rush to me. She just stands there. I can feel my body tense up, my calves, buttocks, hands, face. When she does sit down on the rug next to me, I say nothing. I squeeze my eyelids shut.

  “Hi, Mama,” she says.

  “You have no mother,” I reply. “You have nobody. You’re an orphan.”

  I hear her gasp, and everyone in the room along with her. I hear the pain I’ve created, the pain I sent into the air. I hear the grief. She’s not the screaming and crying type, my daughter, I know that. So I hear how the grief plants itself in her body, making it hard for her to breathe. A little time passes, maybe a few minutes. Then she gets up and leaves. She goes into the bathroom to take care of herself. Just like she’s always done.

  I feel the tears well up and run down my face. Down into the folds in my neck. My friends cluster around me when they see me crying. Take my hand, stroke my head. Everyone surrounds me. She’s over there, alone. I want to ask somebody to go to her, but the words won’t come. She’ll have to get used to it, says a voice in my head. If she’s not already used to it, now’s the time.

  Aram reads poetry to me. she doesn’t usually do that, and it surprises me. I think she used to do that kind of thing with Masood. Maybe she’s hoping I can take her father’s place. I can’t. I sit on the sofa, and she sits down next to me with her legs folded beneath her.

  “Mama, listen: My father said: Since no one who belongs to you is buried in this earth, this earth does not belong to you.”

  I stare emptily at her.

  “Do you understand?” she asks me. “‘Since no one who belongs to you is buried in this earth, this earth does not belong to you.’ And now we’ve buried Dad.”

  She watches my silence, filling it in, as if that would help.

  “A Persian girl wrote that.”

  I want to tell her it’s ridiculous. First and foremost, the earth belongs to no one—that’s just patriotic crap. No one owns any land. Your father was cremated, I think. The only thing inside the earth is his urn. He’s not part of Swedish ground. I’m someone who says things like that. So I say it. I hear myself say it out loud. I regret it instantly. I can see the pain shoot up from her chest, see her throat turn thick.

  She’s searching for meaning. Of course she is. She wants to find a way to tie it all up, make a conclusion, from all this chaos. I want to apologize, but I don’t. I say:

  “And if that’s so, what happens after me? What happens when you’ve buried two of your parents here? Do they give you a medal? A Swedishness medal?”

  She stands up and goes to the kitchen. Turns on the tap, pretending to get some water for herself, I guess. I should go to her, but I don’t. I lift up the remote and change the channel. It takes a bit for her to come back. She doesn’t say much more. After a while:

  “I’m going to go home now.”

  I look at her in annoyance.

  “You just got here.”

  “I’ve been here for four hours, Mama. I have to go now.”

  I don’t want her to leave.

  “If you’re going to leave so soon, don’t bother coming,” I hear myself say.

  She nods. She leaves. I can’t make her stay. It’s been a long time since I managed to do that.

  Is it possible you use up life faster if you live intensely? People have always told me I laugh too loud. Imagine if every laugh, every laugh that was too loud, took days off my life. What if you’re only given a limited number of breaths, and they run out more quickly when you laugh too loud, talk too loud, dance yourself breathless. When you shout slogans and run from soldiers and guards. Breath, breath, pant, it all runs out. I wonder.

  I’ve started treatment. it took three months. Easter got in the way.

  “How much has the cancer spread in the last three months?”

  I stare hard at the specialist, C
hristina. My eyes say, If I die, it’s you, you and your waiting times, that are to blame.

  Christina says nothing at first. She is trying to understand my question. She is both an oncologist and a gynecologist. The cancer originated in my ovaries. It was my female parts, my mother parts, that had caught fire. It was ironic. I told her so the first time we met, isn’t it ironic how much we are punished for being women. That time too she looked at me like this. Silent. Wondering.

  “It’s hard to wait, I know,” she says. “But we do our best.”

  “You could have done your best three months ago! Then I might have had a chance.”

  She looks down at her papers.

  “We’re admitting you now. For a few days.”

  That’s all she says.

  I hear Aram asking a lot of questions. Things I never would have thought to ask. She’s done her research. I reach for her hand. She’s the type who does her research.

  “Are you a doctor?” Christina asks her.

  “No,” she replies. “No. This is my mother.”

  Her voice cracks, and I see the doctor hesitate.

  In any case, I understand it’s spread even further. They want to monitor me, in the event the tumors cut off some bodily function. They talk about my bodily functions as if they’re separate from me. I stop listening. Let Aram speak for me.

  When they’re finally done, we leave the small room. They have a bed ready for me, and I sit on the edge. Stare at the hospital gown, the grayish-white sheets. The blue blanket. Aram is still holding my hand.

  “We’ll make it homey, Mama.”

  She leaves me to go buy juice and newspapers, and I don’t move. I don’t move a millimeter while she’s gone.

  She comes back quickly, breathlessly. She has two bags in her hand, which she drops on the floor. She takes a few running steps and embraces me. Hard, hard, she holds me. I sit on the bed, my arms hanging at my sides, and I let them hang. I let her hold me. Resting in her arms. She hangs on to me a long time. Rocking me gently. I feel her heart pounding against my cheek, and I think, I made that heart. Her heart once beat inside me, and now it beats against me, and soon it will beat without me. Soon, my heart will fall silent, and hers will beat on, carrying my rhythm with it. Somewhere in her heartbeat, I’ll remain. I want the idea to be a comfort, but it’s not. I want my own heartbeat. I want it for myself, and I want to carry it myself, and I don’t want to exist as only a shadow in somebody else’s body, in somebody else’s memory.

  I raise my hands and push her away, push her with force. She stumbles and almost falls backwards. She looks like a frightened child, like a lost baby bird thrown out of its nest with no warning. In my eyes, she meets nothing. I’m empty. She turns away in the end and fumbles for her bags. She sets the table. Bottles of juice. Magazines. All with pictures, intrusive paparazzi photos. She knows I don’t have the energy to read. A bag of Werther’s Originals, which she pours into a plastic cup. They remind me of my childhood, so far away in time and space. Then she picks up a small white rabbit with soft ears.

  “I thought . . . I don’t know if you want it.”

  I take it in my arms. Caressing it while she fetches a vase and fills it with water from the tiny sink. She sets out flowers, one of those bouquets that will soon die. The kind you find in a hospital gift shop. I want to say, They’re dying, just like me. But I hold back, try to hold back for just a little while. She sits down on the stool next to the bed.

  “Okay,” she says. “Okay. I have to go, I have to go to work.”

  She holds my hand again. I let it lie limply in hers.

  “When will you be back?”

  “I’ll come tomorrow, Mama. But I’ll call tonight.”

  Tomorrow. I look at the clock: 11:27 a.m. I count the hours I have to be in the hospital room alone, awake. I want to ask her to stay, but how do you do that. She says that she has to go, she doesn’t want to stay. I feel a lump in my throat. No one wants to stay. I look up at her.

  “Those ugly flowers will die soon,” I say. “Just like me. You can take them with you.”

  She jerks, as if I slapped her in the face. Looks down at the floor. A few seconds pass, maybe a minute. It’s quiet.

  “Go then,” I say finally. And I turn away.

  She rests her hand on my shoulder. Then she is gone.

  My mother still doesn’t know i’m dying. i haven’t told her, and I’ve forbidden anyone else to do so either. Why should she have to be tormented by that thought. Why should she have to lose another daughter. Loss. Sometimes I want to say to those who accuse us of coming here to rip them off. To take something that isn’t ours. I want to say to them, Do you think I’ve won? Do you think I’ve gained more than I’ve lost? And you. Do you think you’ve lost more than I’ve gained? Do you think your loss is greater than my gain?

  The day i was born, i was a disappointment. I was the sixth girl in a family with no sons. I was not what my parents had hoped for. But I wasn’t the biggest disappointment. When Noora was born six years later, we were all deflated. I don’t really know why they wanted boys. In more-conservative families, a boy meant getting a breadwinner. A girl just cost money. But that wasn’t the case with us. When I was born, Maryam was already twenty years old and a teacher. She moved out to the provinces, to the villages that needed teachers. She lived on her own and earned money. Money she brought home to us.

  Soon all my older sisters worked. As teachers and research assistants. Their money was our money, and we lived in a cocoon of sisterhood and pride. My mother brought customers to our home. She cut and dyed their hair. She plucked and threaded their faces. I learned how early on, and I helped her. The women lay on a mattress, and I leaned over them with my back curved and a thread between my chubby baby fingers. I don’t like to tell these things to people here in Sweden. It goes against the way they look at life here. My poor sisters who worked hard and had to give their money to their mother. Noora and I, who swept up hair, threaded brows, and worked for the family. No real autonomy for them, no real childhood for us. One might say. But I think our lives were wonderful. My sisters, imagine the freedom they had. And me, with all these women, with the promise of femininity and self-sufficiency. All at the same time.

  When i was young i was a person with great potential. I was intelligent. Ambitious. Hard-working. Words you’d think mean something. Lead to something.

  I got into medical school. You can’t imagine what an accomplishment that was. It was like a dream. The dream. My mother, my sisters. They were so proud they cried and cried for days after the notice of admission was published in the newspaper.

  Toward the end of the summer my sisters invited our neighbors to a party, in celebration. My mother didn’t like that. She didn’t think you should advertise good news. The evil eye was what she feared the most. That some begrudging person would look at us with envy, and their evil eye would destroy our world. But she helped us prepare anyway. We were eight women in a steamy kitchen. Mama and her seven daughters. It sounds like a fairy tale when you say it like that. I suppose it was.

  Maryam, the sweat glistening on her forehead while she fried eggplant and cooked pot after pot of meat. Mahvash, Gita, Shoohreh, and Shabnam in their miniskirts and bleached-blond blow-outs. Four independent working women who looked like dolls. I was the one who cut and blow-dried their Farrah Fawcett hairstyles. That was the kind of world we pined for. Charlie’s Angels and The Godfather. Strong and brittle. To save and be saved. Things that don’t really exist in any reality. They sat on the floor with their legs stretched out and cleaned vegetables and Mama glared at those long bare legs and eventually hid them with a blanket. She didn’t want us to show skin. Show off. She didn’t want us to provoke.

  And then Noora. Our baby, just turned twelve. She ran between us with her braids bouncing in the air and talked. Boy, how she prattled on.

  “I don’t understand why we can’t invite agha Hossein and his boys?”

  “We can’t, Noora,” our m
other replied.

  “But I don’t understand why? We’ve known them all our lives. Won’t they be offended?”

  “They don’t want to come, Noora.”

  “But how do we know, did we ask?”

  Maryam stepped in during those situations, when she sensed our mother’s energy was flagging. That was always her role. Deflect, protect, take over.

  “Noora, they don’t want to come because they’re ashamed to come.”

  “But why are they ashamed?”

  “Because Mustafa was here and asked for Nahid’s hand and she said no, remember? That kind of thing is not easy for a man, Noora.”

  “But that only shows that he likes her, so it’s obvious he wants to be here and celebrate.”

  “No, Noora. It’s not obvious.”

  Me, I was the opposite of Maryam. Short and hard, no interest in protecting anyone.

  “It’s just the opposite. He’s a man and his pride is all he has. Do you think he can handle the girl who said no to him making something of herself? Becoming a doctor? When no one in his family, not one of six healthy boys and men, has gone to university? Half didn’t even finish high school. They don’t want to celebrate us! They’re probably sitting around calling us witches and whores.”

  “Nahid!”

  I lowered my head and fell silent. Maryam rarely spoke sharply.

  “Witches and whores!” Noora laughed delightedly and danced across the kitchen floor. “Witches and whores,” she sang, and Mahvash and Gita sang along.

  Noora lifted the blanket Mama had placed over them. With a coquettish wink she threw it over her head like a chador.

  “Witches and whores, they said of Dr. Nahid, witches and whores, that’s what we are.”

  I met Maryam’s eyes and we both started laughing. Soon we were all on our feet, someone had put on a vinyl record, and we sang and danced with lettuce and meat cleavers in our hands. Witches and whores gave way to Hayedeh, a pop icon.