Houshang’s undivided attention. When dessert
arrived, they were off talking tariffs.
The servants brought in fruits and halva and cakes and custards and sweetmeats and tea and the dented green dome of the marzipan
cream cake.
“Look at the dent!” the colonel called to Houshang.
They exchanged dirty jokes, Houshang recasting the ambush as entertainment, yet another detail under control. Mr. Malekshah
interrupted him. He was sullen because everyone had kept interrupting him at lunch and hadn’t given him the chance to exult
in his high-minded scholarship. Mother was fond of putting him in his place, like a lion tamer standing over a squirrel. Mr.
Malekshah picked up the old argument he had going with the colonel about the state of our poetry since the Samanids, one thousand
years before.
“What’s it got to do with Marxists?” Houshang said.
“It’s more important, that’s what!” retorted Mr. Malekshah.
Houshang doesn’t really care about the Samanids, nor any of their poets, nor anyone since who hasn’t done really big business.
He thinks of Father’s old friends as fuddy-duddies of a bygone age. Irrelevant but tenacious, doomed to extinction.
Father had been saying he expected a guest at three-thirty, repeating it four times, but nobody had taken notice. He finally
told me.
“Who is it?”
“Hajj-Alimardan’s son.”
I could hardly believe my ears when Tourandokht came in to announce Reza.
H E STOOD IN the doorway. I flinched. He was a man now, strapping, solid. Face ordered around cheekbones, composed.
The last time I’d seen him, he was an adolescent with an Adam’s apple. He’d just started shaving, in that rite of passage
to becoming a man. Though already then he’d had that perfect virtue, being manly. Watching him across the room now, it seemed
as if he were returning only an hour later, so disconcerting was his presence and that face I knew well, its expressions and
entire set of motions fixed permanently in my mind. Clean-shaven, steely, se-date. I’d watched him up close for years. As
children we’d never hidden our feelings from others — that populated world of adults and relatives and strangers — climbing
plum trees, bickering with my brothers and ganging up against them, riding in the open fields of Morshedabad. Reza rode better
than the rest of us but never took notice of such things. We’d taught the village boys volleyball and organized teams, but
Reza tutored them all year and helped them do homework. He’d taught them how to swim, lined them up like soldiers by the lower
pool, overgrown with moss, and taught them to dive in. “What patience!” my brothers said. Then that last year he started to
defy his father and look away from his mother, and everything shifted, the way he and I looked at each other, looked at others.
From that weekend that last spring, when I brought records my parents had bought in Europe and threw a party for cousins and
friends. Reza didn’t show up, and I left the chitchat and laughter to go find him and persuade him to join us. He came out
under the grove behind the house and stood. Defiant, glowering. I went up and insisted he join us, then unexpectedly raised
my hand, rubbed my palm across his face, and laughed and teased how he was going to be prickly forever. He grabbed my wrist
and pulled, and suddenly we were two inches away from each other, staring, alone under the trees, our breaths close, our irises
dark moons in the sea of our eyes. Then someone called out my name and we pulled away. After that night and for that last
vacation there with him, everything was different, as if he and I had made a promise to each other and intended to keep it.
We’d hidden it well from others, what we felt for each other. And then they had left suddenly. And when he’d come back that
one summer night when we were sixteen and had kissed me in the garden, its fiery pleasure had stayed with me, that
arrived, they were off talking tariffs.
The servants brought in fruits and halva and cakes and custards and sweetmeats and tea and the dented green dome of the marzipan
cream cake.
“Look at the dent!” the colonel called to Houshang.
They exchanged dirty jokes, Houshang recasting the ambush as entertainment, yet another detail under control. Mr. Malekshah
interrupted him. He was sullen because everyone had kept interrupting him at lunch and hadn’t given him the chance to exult
in his high-minded scholarship. Mother was fond of putting him in his place, like a lion tamer standing over a squirrel. Mr.
Malekshah picked up the old argument he had going with the colonel about the state of our poetry since the Samanids, one thousand
years before.
“What’s it got to do with Marxists?” Houshang said.
“It’s more important, that’s what!” retorted Mr. Malekshah.
Houshang doesn’t really care about the Samanids, nor any of their poets, nor anyone since who hasn’t done really big business.
He thinks of Father’s old friends as fuddy-duddies of a bygone age. Irrelevant but tenacious, doomed to extinction.
Father had been saying he expected a guest at three-thirty, repeating it four times, but nobody had taken notice. He finally
told me.
“Who is it?”
“Hajj-Alimardan’s son.”
I could hardly believe my ears when Tourandokht came in to announce Reza.
H E STOOD IN the doorway. I flinched. He was a man now, strapping, solid. Face ordered around cheekbones, composed.
The last time I’d seen him, he was an adolescent with an Adam’s apple. He’d just started shaving, in that rite of passage
to becoming a man. Though already then he’d had that perfect virtue, being manly. Watching him across the room now, it seemed
as if he were returning only an hour later, so disconcerting was his presence and that face I knew well, its expressions and
entire set of motions fixed permanently in my mind. Clean-shaven, steely, se-date. I’d watched him up close for years. As
children we’d never hidden our feelings from others — that populated world of adults and relatives and strangers — climbing
plum trees, bickering with my brothers and ganging up against them, riding in the open fields of Morshedabad. Reza rode better
than the rest of us but never took notice of such things. We’d taught the village boys volleyball and organized teams, but
Reza tutored them all year and helped them do homework. He’d taught them how to swim, lined them up like soldiers by the lower
pool, overgrown with moss, and taught them to dive in. “What patience!” my brothers said. Then that last year he started to
defy his father and look away from his mother, and everything shifted, the way he and I looked at each other, looked at others.
From that weekend that last spring, when I brought records my parents had bought in Europe and threw a party for cousins and
friends. Reza didn’t show up, and I left the chitchat and laughter to go find him and persuade him to join us. He came out
under the grove behind the house and stood. Defiant, glowering. I went up and insisted he join us, then unexpectedly raised
my hand, rubbed my palm across his face, and laughed and teased how he was going to be prickly forever. He grabbed my wrist
and pulled, and suddenly we were two inches away from each other, staring, alone under the trees, our breaths close, our irises
dark moons in the sea of our eyes. Then someone called out my name and we pulled away. After that night and for that last
vacation there with him, everything was different, as if he and I had made a promise to each other and intended to keep it.
We’d hidden it well from others, what we felt for each other. And then they had left suddenly. And when he’d come back that
one summer night when we were sixteen and had kissed me in the garden, its fiery pleasure had stayed with me, that
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