Laughing Without an Accent Read online

  Then there was the issue of the phone ringing for somebody else. If we picked up the phone, and it wasn’t for us, we had to tell the caller to please call back. Answering machines did not exist, so if the desired person was not home, this meant the phone just rang and rang and rang. This usually led to my dad yelling at the phone, “They’re not home!”

  But the peaceful scenario didn’t end there. Sometimes after we had inadvertently picked up the phone and then hung up so the intended party could pick up, the phone would ring again and again and again. Eventually, we picked it up again, knowing it wasn’t for us, but it was either that or hurling the phone off the balcony. The annoying caller would then plead with us to knock on the neighbor’s door. “I don’t know why she’s not answering!” the caller would say in a worried voice. We then, being simple Abadanis perhaps, went up or down the stairs and knocked on the intended’s door. Usually they weren’t home, which is generally why people don’t answer their phones. The one time they were home, we discovered that the “emergency” the caller had in mind consisted of a discussion about a hair appointment. From then on, if we were asked to serve as phone messengers, we either stomped on the floor or hit the ceiling with a broomstick.

  I really missed my garden.

  One day, bored as usual, I decided to see if anyone was on the phone. I knew this was probably not a good thing to do, but when has that stopped anyone? I gently picked up the receiver and, sure enough, a conversation. Just as I was figuring out what the conversation was about, one of the women said, “Bebaksheed, excuse me, the phone is in use.”

  Having discovered that the voices belonged to mere mortals and not ghosts, I was no longer afraid. I kept listening. “Put down the phone please!” the voice said. I wanted to listen. After a minute or so, the women hung up the phone. There was a knock on our door.

  My mother opened the door. It was our upstairs neighbor. “Bebakhsheed, excuse me, but I was just on the phone and someone was listening from your apartment.” My mother was shocked. “I was nowhere near the phone. I was in the kitchen!” she exclaimed. “Maybe it was your daughter,” the neighbor suggested, craning her neck to see as much of our apartment as she could. “She’s only six,” my mother said, obviously insulted by this intrusive woman. “You don’t think she could have been listening?” the neighbor persisted, clearly surveying the Persian rug in our entryway. My mother was momentarily speechless. “Of course not! She is a very good girl and a very good student. She has been doing her homework in her room.” This was true. I had been doing homework, until I had decided to listen to the phone.

  Sherlock Holmes would have quit, but not this rubbernecked woman. “I hope it doesn’t happen again. We never had this problem before you moved in.”

  My mother was on the verge of tears. She shut the door and went to call my father, but the phone was in use. When my father came home that night, my mother told him that she had forgotten how mean big-city people were. My father wanted to confront this outrageous neighbor, but my mother talked him out of it.

  Forget the garden. I had found a much better hobby.

  From then on, every free moment I had, I listened. The neighbors complained a few more times, but they eventually gave up. Every once in a while, though, as I listened to a conversation, one of the speakers would say, “There is something I will have to tell you later, in person, since there is obviously somebody listening to this conversation, somebody who should have the decency to hang up and not listen to what is not her business.” I never took it personally. I had no TV, games, after-school activities, or playmates. It was either the phone or playing with matches. Luckily for the other tenants, I was afraid of fire.

  Listening to people’s candid conversations cut to their core. I found out the upstairs neighbor had something bad to say about everyone. Mrs. Bahmani’s rice was always sticky, and Mrs. Tabrizi’s khoresht-e bademjun was too salty. Elaheh joon’s seamstress did a sloppy job on her clothes, and Manijeh and Khosrow were having marital problems. The neighbor knew this because Manijeh had told her, but she wasn’t supposed tell anyone so please don’t tell anyone, the neighbor said. Half the time, I could barely control myself from commenting, “Stop going to Mrs. Bahmani’s house if you hate her rice so much!” I had fantasies of running into Manijeh and telling her never again to tell a secret to my upstairs neighbor. Of course I would also tell Manijeh to try to make things work with Khosrow since, from what I’d heard, he was the best man she could ever hope for, with that complexion of hers and everything.

  Our upstairs neighbor used the phone more than the rest of us combined. She had no life.

  Our downstairs neighbor’s conversations were nowhere as interesting, especially when the husband talked. He was all business. “What time will you be there? I’ll be there at six. If I’m late, it’s because of traffic. Traffic can be bad then.” He was the only tenant who never complained about my listening. His conversations were so dull that he was probably grateful that someone out there was bored enough to listen to him.

  When my father came home in the evening, I could no longer listen. My mother never noticed my listening since she was always in the kitchen, but my father would have noticed. Since they periodically had to defend me from neighbors’ accusations, it was vital that they not see me for who I really was.

  Every evening after dinner, my parents and I sat on the balcony while my brother Farshid did his homework in his room. Farshid attended a prestigious school that assigned so much homework that I never saw him anymore. My eldest brother, Farid, had not come with us to Tehran. He had gone to the United States to live with my uncle Mohammad Ali and his American wife, Linda.

  The balcony was tiny, but after dinner every night my parents and I squeezed in for our daily dose of excitement. We lived across the street from the police department, and every evening was a reality show. This being Iran and not Norway, the people who came to the police department were expressive and loud. People fought and swore and insulted one another’s mothers. Really angry people used their hands so much that spoken language seemed like an unnecessary accessory. When the traffic wasn’t too loud, we could hear the conversations, since most of the action took place in front of the police station. Sometimes we took the sides of the people, such as the members of a wedding party who were arrested for excessive honking. Seeing a bride and groom all dressed up and swearing was way more exciting than anything I remembered from Abadan. I couldn’t understand why they had been arrested, since all wedding parties honk, but my father explained that they were probably rich, and the officer just wanted a bribe. My mother said that maybe one of the officers was in love with the bride and he was trying to keep the wedding from happening. My father said that was the least likely scenario since, judging from the way that woman swore, her father must be rich to be able to get rid of her. I didn’t have an explanation but I knew that if the upstairs neighbor were watching, I would hear her theory the next day, along with a description of the wedding dress and why it was not flattering.

  One Friday morning, the only day of the week that Iranians do not work or attend school, I went into our kitchen and there, staring at me from the balcony, was a monkey. I recognized the monkey right away. He belonged to a local organ grinder who walked up and down our neighborhood collecting change while this poor monkey was forced to wear an unflattering jacket-and-fez ensemble made of crushed red velvet. The monkey didn’t dance or perform in any way. He was merely dressed like Liberace and kept on a leash. I hated the organ grinder but absolutely loved the monkey. That’s because I had a soft spot for monkeys.

  My favorite toy ever was a stuffed monkey that had been given to me when I was born. If as a child someone had asked me whom I loved more, my brothers or my monkey, I would have found an excuse not to answer that question. I spent every day with my stuffed monkey, Maymoon, talking to it and telling it every thought that ever entered my head. I had agonized over its name because I could never decide if it was a she or a he. I finally decid
ed to avoid that question by naming it Maymoon, which simply means “monkey” in Persian.

  I still have Maymoon. She no longer has any fur, and all her limbs and one ear have fallen off at least once and been reattached. She’s not pretty anymore, and I’m not sure she ever was. Her looks can best be summarized by my husband’s remark when we first moved in together: “Put it somewhere where I don’t have to look at it.”

  When the real monkey showed up on our balcony, it was by far the most exciting day of my life. I knew for certain that the monkey had chosen me because he knew that I loved him and his entire species. I envisioned Maymoon and the real monkey and myself living happily ever after together. As I went to open the door to the balcony, my father yelled, “Nakon! Don’t do that!”

  “But I want to hold him!” I told my father.

  The monkey, meanwhile, was standing erect and pounding on our glass balcony door, shrieking.

  “He’s a wild, diseased monkey!” my father yelled at me.

  My parents firmly believed that every animal equaled an affliction and danger. Dogs carried rabies, flies meant sleeping sickness, horses kicked you in the head, and cats scratched out eyes. And now, apparently, this monkey was also diseased, although my father did not elaborate.

  I started to cry. My greatest wish, which I had not even thought of wishing, had come true and my own father, previously my favorite grown-up, was keeping me from fulfilling it. I wanted the monkey, and the monkey wanted me. I could see it in his face, although the shrieking part was not the stuff of fantasies.

  In the meantime, my mother, who had come in the kitchen, kept telling my father to “do something.” This really angered me since I could usually talk my father into doing anything I wanted, but once my mom came into the picture, all bets were off. I knew she would never allow me to keep the monkey in our apartment. That’s just the kind of person she was.

  I begged my father, “Please, please let me keep him!”

  “Do something, Kazem!” my mother pleaded.

  My father said, “Firoozeh, go look out the front window.”

  “No,” I cried. “I just want to hug the monkey.”

  My father grabbed my hand and dragged me to their room. “Look,” he said, pointing to the street below. A large crowd had formed in the street. In the middle stood the organ grinder, his hands in the air, crying and pleading to both his monkey and God. “The monkey does not belong to us,” my father said. We must try to help him leave our balcony. Plus, he’s diseased.”

  Once I saw the sad organ grinder in the street, I knew that the monkey and I were doomed. “Let me just go look at him,” I begged my father.

  I went back to the kitchen where the little simian was still knocking on our balcony door. I fetched Maymoon and put it against the glass so they could see each other. The real monkey kept shrieking. Maymoon showed no reaction.

  The monkey stayed on our balcony for three glorious hours. By the time his owner lured him down with food, our entire street was blocked due to the hundreds of people who had gathered to watch the scene, which, even by Tehran standards, was quite unusual.

  From then on, whenever I saw the organ grinder, who now had the monkey on a much thicker rope, I felt like crying. The monkey and I had come this close to happily ever after. I wondered if the monkey remembered me. He never acknowledged me in an overt way, but I imagined that was probably because he was envious of Maymoon, who continues to grow old with me.

  My Achilles’ Meal

  Every generation has its own style. One generation wears pants that are long and flared, the next prefers them pencil thin and to the ankle. One year, they’re carefully hemmed, the next year, they’re fringed.

  Mourning, like pants, is also subject to styles. Of course, I am not referring to the actual act of dying since only God, and not the Gap, has a say in that. What changes from one generation to the next is how we react to death and how we explain it to our children.

  When I was six years old, my maternal grandmother died. We didn’t know she was sick. My mother found out through a dream. She dreamed that her father was very upset about something. This prompted my mother to call my grandfather, who reluctantly admitted that, indeed, my grandmother was in the hospital due to complications from diabetes. My mother and I flew to Tehran from Abadan. Two days later, my grandmother died.

  As was the custom at the time, no one told me about her death. I knew that something was wrong, since kids pick up on anything parents try to hide, but I didn’t know what death was, and nobody volunteered any information.

  It was decided that the day of the funeral I would go to the house of my cousin Mahmood’s new wife, Farah. Farah was a graduate student in chemistry who had met my cousin in college. They had been married for a few months. I had met her briefly at the wedding before I’d fallen asleep. I had, however, heard much about her, since every new addition to the family equaled hours and hours of tea-fueled gossip, speculation, and in-depth analysis, followed by more tea. Grown-ups always assumed that I, sitting by myself in a roomful of adults, was not listening, and even if I were, I would certainly not remember anything. Grown-ups are often wrong.

  Farah was considered a great match for Mahmood. She was smart, well-traveled, and cultivated. Our families could not have been more different. Farah’s family lived in a sprawling house in the Mahmoudieh section of northern Tehran. Their house was filled with books and artwork purchased during their travels abroad. It was, using the most complimentary contemporary word in Persian (though it’s actually French), chic.

  In addition, her house was surrounded by a large garden filled with cherry, peach, walnut, and (my all-time favorite fruit) mulberry trees. Their garden, like other private gardens in Tehran, was surrounded by a high wall, thus giving the whole place a magical quality for those of us lucky enough to be on the inside.

  The day of the funeral, Farah picked me up early. I was told that I would be spending the entire day with Mahmood’s wife. This I found extremely strange since I had never spent the day with anybody but my parents. My apprehensions soon melted when Farah mentioned that we would first go toy shopping. I liked her immediately.

  She took me to a department store in Tehran called Ferdowsi. My only experience shopping in stores was Alfi’s in Abadan, and Ferdowsi was much bigger. We went to the toy section, which held more toys than I ever thought existed. Farah said, “I have finals tomorrow, so I need you to entertain yourself. Pick any toy you like.”

  I froze. There were too many choices. It was like the first time in the cereal aisle in an American supermarket. Farah quickly realized I needed help. She immediately picked a pink stroller with a ruffled top. Then she said, “Let’s find a doll to put in it.”

  Once again, I was speechless. My father never, under any circumstance, bought me more than one toy per shopping trip. I assumed there was a law that set shopping limits. Little did I know that this rule existed only in my father’s frugal kingdom.

  Purchases in hand, we got into Farah’s car. We drove through the busy streets, surrounded by more cars than I had ever seen, all honking at once to avoid one another or perhaps honking because the driver next to them was honking. Amid the cacophony, I was thinking about my new purchases and how I would have to point out to my parents that I had not asked for two toys. This was key.

  Whenever I visited my grandfather, baba bozorgh, my mother always told me that if he ever asked me if I wanted any toys, I was to say, “No, thank you.” I found this to be a stupid rule. Here was a grown-up willing to buy me a toy, and I was to say no. So I did what any self-respecting, greedy kid would do. Whenever my grandfather asked me if I wanted any toys, I always said, “No, thank you,” just as I was supposed to. But then, later in the conversation, I would say, “Baba bozorgh, I really like those life-size inflatable elves, but I don’t want one.” This way, when my mother picked me up, along with my new life-size inflatable elf, I could honestly tell her that I had not asked for it. In fact, I had told baba bozorgh I
didn’t want it.

  When we arrived at Farah’s, a very friendly woman wearing a chador greeted us. The woman made a very strong first impression on me. She was tiny and ancient, far older than anyone I knew. But, more impressively, she was missing most of her teeth. I had seen babies with no teeth, but never a grown-up. When she kissed me, it tickled my cheek.

  And this is how I was introduced to Khaleh Tavoos, or Aunt Peacock. She was not really Farah’s aunt. Tavoos’s mother had been Farah’s grandmother’s maid, and Tavoos had lived with Farah’s family her entire life. She was a beloved member of their household.

  Farah later told me that Tavoos claimed that the secret to her longevity was eating sugar. Several times a day, she poured some sugar in the palm of her hand and ate it straight. Farah’s parents had purchased an expensive set of custom dentures for her, which she refused to wear, claiming she didn’t need teeth to eat sugar, and sugar’s all she needed. She lived to be ninety-two.

  That day, Tavoos took me by her shriveled little hand and told me that she was so happy that I would be spending the day with her. She asked me if I wanted anything to eat.

  No matter what time of the day you go into the home of an Iranian, you will be offered food. It can be one hour after you have consumed a wildebeest, but the host will still ask you. You can be bloated, lying on the floor, clutching your extended gut, top button of your pants burst open, but the host will still offer you food or drink “for your particular condition.” We are people who need to feed people.

  “No, thank you,” I said. Then Tavoos said, “Would you like seeb zamini sorkh kardeh?” my all-time-favorite food, which my mother never made for me: French fries. Even though I wasn’t hungry, French fries do not require hunger, only taste buds. “Yes, please,” I said.