Together Tea (5 page)

Chapter Seven

Action, Not Reflection

Y
ou are in the right place at the right time. You are the best and the brightest. Your future is filled with wealth and opportunity.”

Mina bit into a slice of greasy pizza as she sat in the business school auditorium listening to Dean Bailey's monthly “Question and Answer Lunch Bunch!” which had been advertised all over the B-school buildings.

Mina knew that Dean Bailey couldn't answer any of her questions. Like whether she should just quit business school and once and for all focus on being an artist. But there was free pizza.

“You will go to Wall Street and create wealth. This economy is going nowhere but up. Financial success is yours for the taking. The first decade of the 2000s will be phenomenal. Unstoppable. And
you
will be at the helm.”

A drop of oil slid off the pizza slice onto Mina's white shirt. She watched as it soaked into the cotton fabric.

“You will go further than any previous generation. But remember: This school is a place for action. Not reflection. Reflection is for the MFA students.”

Some students laughed.

But Mina reflected. She thought of all the pizzas she'd had at B&K's Pizza where her father had pounded dough when they first moved to America. She reflected on her lunch with Mr. Dashti.
It isn't worth it anymore.
That's what Darya had said finally.
You are worth more.
Mina wanted an end to her mother's graphs and charts, an end to the parade and charade of men over for tea. She certainly wanted that. But now what would happen?

As Dean Bailey droned on about the excellent promise of the stock market, Mina fingered her pink coral necklace. It had been a gift from her best friend, Bita, given in a rush on her last afternoon in Iran. Where was Bita now?

Just after Mina left Iran, Bita had written about how she and her family shelled peas in the bomb shelter, and about what a vermin Saddam was for bombing them. How she had to wear a mouth guard at night because during the bombing she ground down on her molars. In the last letter that Mina had received from Bita, she said how good she looked, indoors, of course, with her new bob hairdo. Outside, she had to cover her hair like everyone else.

After the first few years, the letters stopped.

“And remember when the recruitment officers are here, the worst thing you can do is renege on an offer. We do not renege. No reflection. No reneging,” Dean Bailey said into the microphone.

With the hand that wasn't holding the pizza slice, Mina sketched strawberries and veiled women in the margins of her notebook.

LATER THAT DAY, PROFESSOR VAN HEUSEN
, her finance professor, lectured from the podium, water bottle in hand. Mina never understood how he knew which student to call on. He rarely looked up at them, preferring instead to stare straight down at the floor as he lectured. She hoped he wouldn't call on her today. She was completely unprepared.

“Who can review for me the CAPM formula and equity versus debt?”

Chip Sinclair, the finance superstar and first-class jerk, raised his hand. Mina listened to Chip review the formula as she plugged her laptop's internet adapter card into one of the newly installed internet connection sockets. After a few minutes, she was connected to the web via dial-up and a website about oil paintings popped up as her homepage. She pulled out her legal pad and copied down Professor Van Heusen's formulas from the whiteboard.

Darya would be breathless. She'd be up there in the front row, her hand high up in the air. “Oooh, oooh, pick on me, Professor, pick on me.” She'd tell Professor Van Heusen the value for alpha KD. A hundred times over. Her financial calculator would click the fastest of all. The financial calculator was a specialized machine that Darya said made all normal calculators feel like toys.

“If I get in an interest squeeze, am I going to fall off a steep cliff into oblivion or is it a bump in the road? Meaning, is it a big drop or a little drop?” Professor Van Heusen talked into his water bottle.

Chip Sinclair bedazzled with a labyrinthine answer. Mina copied down more formulas from the whiteboard.

“Competitors: Are you dominant? Are they dominant?” Mina's laptop screen showed the artwork from a recent gallery show in Marblehead, Massachusetts. In a painting of a lone china teacup, white and blue mixed perfectly. Mina copied down the brand of oil paint the website recommended, even though she hadn't done a real painting herself since college, which now felt like a very long time ago.

“Are these supply sources relatively flexible? If you get into trouble, are they going to help you or liquidate you?”

Mina remembered the mixture of blue and white on the dome of the mosque near her grandparents' house in Tehran. She wondered what it would be like to go back there. She typed “Tehran” in her search tab. Photos of universities and buildings popped up, none of which she recognized. Which university had Bita gone to? Had she gone to university? Was she being set up with Mr. Dashti types over there? Maybe she was already married and had a few kids.

“Are your dealers loyal?” Professor Van Heusen asked. “Will they desert you?”

Mina clicked through photo after photo. She had not been back to Iran in fifteen years. She often thought of what would happen if she ever went back. Would she see what she had left behind? Would it still be there?

A girl in a camel cashmere cardigan a few rows down typed as if her life depended on it. A tall redheaded boy next to Mina wrote diligently in his notebook.

“The higher the coverage, the more sensitive you are to interest.” Professor Van Heusen's marker squeaked as he wrote on the whiteboard. Some students nodded with understanding. They'd solved the problem. Mina had the germ of an idea: if she went back to Iran, she could figure out what her family had been, what they'd lost, what they'd gained. She could expel this sense of never belonging, feeling lost. She could “find herself,” like every character in every book she'd ever read about immigrants going back to the homeland.

But more important, she could find Bita.

Mina was excited about her new plan.

“What is the point at which debt starts to interfere with operation?” Professor Van Heusen asked the floor. “Ms. Rezayi, could you tell us, please?”

Mina stiffened at the sound of her name. The students up front turned around and looked at her. Mina had no idea what the question meant. She fumbled through her backpack for her calculator. Where the hell was it? She turned to her laptop only to see her screensaver staring back at her. She looked at her notebook. It was filled with formulas she'd copied down, the name of that brand of paint the artist from Marblehead used and endless strawberries and women in veils.

Professor Van Heusen blew into his water bottle. It made a hollow, whistling sound.

Mina's face grew hot. Her underarms grew sweaty. Chip Sinclair's hand shot up. A few others did too.

“Ms. Rezayi?”

Perspiration slid down Mina's forehead. Why hadn't she been paying attention?

“We are waiting, Ms. Rezayi.”

Mina had no answer. She pressed her keyboard. The screensaver disappeared only to be replaced by pictures of Tehran. It was pointless.

Professor Van Heusen tapped his foot. “Ms. Rezayi, I can't wait till the new millennium. Surely you were working hard to arrive at your answer?”

A small icon flashed at the bottom of Mina's screen.

“Check your mail,” the redheaded boy next to her muttered.

Mina quickly clicked on her mailbox. She had half a dozen new messages, with more coming in. She opened one of the messages. There in front of her was the answer to Professor Van Heusen's question, along with a formula for how to arrive at the solution. She clicked on the next e-mail. The same. Her classmates were sending her the answer.

“Ms. Rezayi?” Professor Van Heusen's voice was loud.

The screen blurred in front of Mina.

“Do you have the solution?”

“Yes.” Mina spoke up. “I do. I have the solution right here. And the method of arriving at the answer. It's all right here, in front of me.”

The redheaded boy next to her breathed a sigh of relief.

“But I can't explain because I wasn't working on the case. I hadn't even read it.”

Stunned silence. One did not admit to not reading Professor Van Heusen's case. One did not admit to not knowing in his class. One feigned knowledge or stayed up all night trying to attain it so that one's grades were high enough for a stellar investment bank or consulting firm to offer one a job. Starting salary: 100K minimum, plus signing bonus, plus perks. Mina knew all that. She knew Dean Bailey's lectures by heart. This was the school for the best and the brightest in finance. These were the good times. The year 2000 was just around the corner. Nothing could go wrong. Competition, Mastery, Success. Doubt was weakness. Action mattered.

“Well,” Professor Van Heusen finally said.

“To tell you the truth, I don't really know what I'm doing here. I don't really belong here.”

More students turned around to stare at Mina.

Professor Van Heusen looked up from his water bottle and squinted in Mina's direction. His face was surprisingly small when he actually lifted it up. The clock on the wood-paneled wall ticked loudly.

“Well, Ms. Rezayi,” Professor Van Heusen said. “I don't know where you
belong,
but I understand that you have not been with us.” He cleared his throat. “However, in business school, as in life, honesty is always the best policy. And that's a message for all of you. Let's walk through this problem again together. So everyone can arrive at the solution by actually knowing what it is they're doing. Shall we?”

Chip Sinclair groaned. A few emboldened students actually raised their hands and asked new questions. The girl in the cashmere sweater turned around and gave Mina a thumbs-up sign. The classroom went back to work. Fingers tapped on keyboards, pencils scribbled, calculators clicked.

Mina concentrated on the problem. She scribbled and struggled her way to the solution. And she suddenly felt better than she had in ages. Part of her had always been hovering in midair over the place that she had left. What if the country and history her parents loved was still buried there? What if she could find it? Could Mina go back and see what Darya meant when she said she wanted Mina to have “everything she had”? Mina had always wished that she could have known the Iran Darya had grown up in, instead of the Iran she herself had escaped from. Could she find it and piece it together if she went back there as an adult?

You will go to Wall Street, Dean Bailey had lectured. But first, she would go to Number 23 Takesh Street in Tehran, Iran. She would land firmly on that street and take in that other world again.

Chapter Eight

Life on the Hyphen

T
he river reflected the streetlights, and all Mina could hear was the passing traffic on the Drive. As she jogged along Riverside Park, Mina saw Mr. Dashti's doughy hands holding his tea and his look of hesitation when their eyes met. Of course he was like all the other men: well educated, polite, careful. But there was something different this time. Maybe it was the palpable
relief
she saw on his face when they didn't click. The sense that he was equally lost in this messy matchmaking business. He didn't want it either. Poor Mr. Dashti was just as stuck as she was.

Mina's sneakered feet hit the tarmac. How would she tell her parents about her decision to return to Iran? They would be so worried about her safety. She hadn't been back in fifteen years. What if she was accused of being an American spy and detained? The political situation there was unpredictable. Anything could happen. But Mina had to go. She wanted to know what Agha Jan was doing every day without Mamani to cook him his meals, talk to him, sing for him Googoosh's songs and recite Rumi's verses. She needed to know where Bita was. What was she doing? Over the years, Mina had put that world out of her mind. Stuffed it away, just as she had shoved her oil paints into plastic storage boxes and slid them under her old bed in her parents' house. She hadn't had time for reflection as the dean put it. To reflect on the place where her mother had grown up
in her element.
Because Mina was busy building, busy striving, busy making.

After her run, she practiced the karate kicks that her brothers had taught her when they were children. After all these years, she still loved doing those kicks. She raised her leg, put it in chamber position and leaned back the way Kayvon had taught her. Then she kicked out. Imagine getting Bruce Lee in the knee, the groin, the “precious place” Kayvon had drilled into her. Don't be afraid. Kick! Mina kicked over and over again at her imaginary opponent, then jump-switched to work her other leg.

Back in her apartment, she showered and got ready for bed. But she couldn't sleep. Maybe she was crazy for wanting to go. What if she could never come back to her life here? She turned on the TV. A late-night talk show host swayed in his suit and made fun of the president. The audience laughed. Mina still felt a twinge of danger when Americans said negative things about their leaders. But you could get away with it here. And now she was going to go someplace where the rules were vastly different. She had to call her brother.

“How did your lunch with the latest greatest suitor go?” Kayvon asked.

“Ridiculous. Embarrassing. As always. I can't keep doing this, Kayvon,” Mina said.

“Don't worry, kiddo. Mom will find a new hobby soon. This spreadsheet thing is getting absurd.”

“I know.” Mina sighed. It was a relief to talk to Kayvon. She had always been closer to him than to Hooman. Maybe it was because she was only three years younger than Kayvon and six years younger than Hooman. But it was also because of her brothers' different personalities. Kayvon was more easygoing, more relaxed. He could usually make Mina, or anyone for that matter, see the lighter side of things. Hooman was more serious. And now that they were all adults, Hooman's schedule as a doctor didn't leave him much time for small talk. Ever since he got married, he had even less time.

“She never did this with Hooman. Or you. Right? I mean, Hooman's married to an American. Your girlfriend's from Brooklyn. Why do I have to be matched with the perfect Persian? It is such a double standard.”

“You're her favorite, that's why. She just wants to see you settled. Happy. She's obsessed.”

“Isn't it enough that I'm in business school? You know, Kayvon, I've been thinking. I have this idea. I really want to . . .”

“Oh no, not this again,” Kayvon said. “Mina, you know you can't be an artist. Don't sweat it so much. We all have childhood dreams and then we grow up. I wanted to be a professional soccer player, but I'm a contracts lawyer! That's life. We all make choices, but it's for the best, you'll see. Now get some sleep.”

Before Mina could even tell Kayvon about her plan to go to Iran, he'd said good night and good-bye.

So much for her buddy brother. Mina sighed and reopened the photo album she'd taken out before her run, the only one they'd brought from Iran. Darya had cleverly hidden photos of herself behind pictures of the kids so that the customs inspectors wouldn't confiscate the photos with no hijab. Darya in her bikini was hidden behind Hooman in a high chair. Darya with long flowing hair, her arm linked with Baba's, was stuck behind a shot of Kayvon playing soccer. And photos of Darya at university, in her cotton blouse and billowing skirt, books hugged to her chest, were behind snapshots of Mina's early artwork.

The album helped link Mina to a past that felt almost glamorous. There was the mother she'd once known. Her hair black, not red. Her hazel eyes bright, hopeful. Darya looked happy, confident. Not tired and foreign. The Darya dressed in Jackie O jackets and pillbox hats was such a very different woman from the Darya of Queens. There she was standing by a fountain in Isfahan, her black hair blowing wild, a tiny Hooman and Kayvon by her side. There they all were on a London double-decker bus, waving. They didn't need visas back then. The world at that time didn't confuse them with terrorists. Mina pulled out an older photo: Darya in a hospital bed holding a scrunched-up newborn wrapped in a Mamani-knitted receiving blanket. It was their first moment on camera together. When Mina held the photo close, she noticed that Darya looked completely exhilarated and overwhelmed.

In America, the mother, father, brothers, and previous self that Mina had known before the revolution slowly melted away and evaporated. They became like characters she'd read about in a book, people who lived in a different land, long ago.

“You know we're going back,” Baba would say some mornings in those early years as he ironed his pizza apron. “As soon as this revolution thing dies down.” Hooman would concentrate on his cereal and mumble, “That's what you said a year ago.” Mina would think of her blue suitcase under her bed, ready to be filled with her clothes and paint set so she could return home to Bita and Agha Jan and Aunt Nikki and all the rest of her family and friends at any given moment.

When the TV host delivered his punch line, the studio roared with laughter and Mina was jolted back to the present. Young women in the audience clapped and flipped back their hair. Big men in baseball hats guffawed and hooted. What had she missed? What was so funny? What did those girls in the air-conditioned California studio do after the show? Go to a bar and sit on skinny stools and order drinks? Mina knew about the ancient Persian poets: Saadi, Rumi, and Hafez. She knew about bombs in Tehran in the 1980s. But she couldn't name more than one cocktail. She had never been comfortable inside bars. Darya and Baba found the bar culture unseemly. Wouldn't want her sitting on a skinny bar stool swinging her legs. Mina knew how to study and work very hard. 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.

But to now jump off the hyphen and return to Iran required vaulting over a few hurdles. She had to get her paperwork straight and trust that despite some horror stories of Iranian exiles going back and being imprisoned, she'd be safe. More important, she had to convince her parents that their daughter's going to the Islamic Republic for winter break was an absolutely brilliant idea.