A Short Bob

Mehdi M. Kashani

Fresh snow carpets the road and glitters under the faint streetlights. Neighbors snuggle up in their homes, leaving the quiet roads a haven for strays. The air in my room is moldy and the crank on my window is broken, just like numerous other things in this house—the drain in the bathroom, which Mom asked me to fix before saying good night. She must be sleeping now, alone, on her side of her gigantic bed. I stare at myself in the mirror as my digital watch announces the arrival of midnight. To the day, I’m the age Dad was when he died: twenty-four years and nineteen days old. Mom has always repeated his age like a mantra, as if to remind Fate of his unfairly young death. To me, it felt like a countdown, a milestone, an age by which, when reached, I needed to do something.

Nearly a million people died in the Iran-Iraq war, my dad one of them. The Iraqis fired tank shells at him, and, in a split second, he vanished from the earth. Of him remained only a nameplate, a bag of memories, and a seed in my mom’s belly. My memories of him amount to those of a six-month-old fetus: nothing; not a thing.

Dad died the day before he was due back for a furlough. My mom was consumed with preparations for his return, beautifying the house and herself. She’d just returned from having her hair cut the way Dad liked best, in a short bob. It was then that the dutiful officer materialized at our door to deliver the news.

“What if someone else was carrying his nameplate?”

“Inshallah—God willing,” retorted the officer. When my mother tells the story, she sneers when she describes the officer. As far as he was concerned, she adds, whether the dead man was my father or someone else carrying his identification, the result was the same: one less soldier.

Mom never believed Dad was dead. She wasn’t a doubter by nature—she had no philosophical basis behind it, just the fact that, instead of burying a body, instead of taking a last look at his face before fastening the shroud, instead of watching a human form going down into the grave, she buried paltry remains. She never repeated that what if? question, though the words, I’m sure, got stuck in her throat, hindering any other what-ifs: What if she started a new life? What if she pretended Dad never existed? No, she couldn’t, because I existed—a souvenir of her past whose cells were replicating him at a remarkable rate.

One year after Dad’s death, all the relatives, even Mom’s in-laws, started pressuring her to remarry. They reminded her she was young and pretty, cautioned her she wouldn’t stay young and pretty forever, preached about the difficulties of living as a widow in Iran, and advised that children—especially boys—needed fathers. Mom’s ears were always gentle receivers of the elders’ suggestions, but she’d look down at me and smooth my bib or my collar while they chatted at her, as if seeking some kind of encouragement. Supposedly, every time someone suggested remarrying, I twisted my tiny copy of Dad’s face—eyes, nose, mouth, forehead—into a disapproving frown.

And she used this frown as her excuse, sentencing herself to sleeping alone in a huge bed for years to come, never encroaching on his half. Neither the mischief of her dreams nor the horror of her nightmares rolled her into that empty territory. When I began to walk, she allowed me to sleep with her a few times until I soiled the blanket and lost the privilege. “You can’t desecrate your father’s space,” she would snap at me whenever I pleaded with her.

Mom had many suitors over the years, most of whom I didn’t know. I never heard the news directly. Instead, it was carried on a serpentine odyssey, spread by close family and distant relatives alike. By the time the story reached me, adulterated by the hands of gossip and exaggeration, the man in question was already out of the picture. The topic of a new husband was taboo under our roof but hot everywhere else.

I once asked my grandmother why Mom didn’t marry again. “She’s ashamed,” Grandma dolefully admitted, “to be seen with a man other than your father.” She sighed and pointed out how much I resembled him.

It seemed that, in the eyes of others, I’d become an impediment to her quest for love. But I secretly knew I wasn’t the reason for her austere lifestyle. It was my father—Mom’s vague hope of his eventual return. She thought she’d buried it deep inside her, but the subconscious has funny ways of showing up.

When I was still small, in the midst of war, when casualties soared and the army desperately needed fresh volunteers, the national TV station invited us for a live interview to talk about my father—it was sensational, they said, that I opened my eyes just months after my father closed his. Mom flatly refused. The last time they called, she harshly asked, “Why don’t you interview the widows who saw their husbands’ bodies in one piece?” and slammed the phone into the receiver. The station didn’t call again after that.

Neighbors came and left. The shops and houses around us underwent renovations. Our street became wider, lined by the new trees the city planted. Our neighborhood, situated in northeastern Tehran, prospered. People tried hard to put the war behind them. They razed some of the old buildings, renovated the others. Open-concept kitchens. Western-style toilets. Side-by-side fridges. Islands. Our house, though, remained the way it looked when my parents moved in with new rings on their fingers. Everything changed except us. We became the permanent fixture. Mom didn’t have the money, nor the will. How could Dad find his way home if and when he returned? She never verbalized that concern, but her diligence in reading the list of the released prisoners whenever Iran and Iraq did a POW exchange was enough proof.

During my sophomore year at Sharif University, I worked part-time and helped with the bills. The small retirement allowance Mom received paid for our spartan lifestyle’s remaining expenses, and she retreated to the confines of our dull home. Little by little, her interaction with the outside world reduced to the essentials. I became the only channel for her thoughts, emotions, and dreams. And, thanks to the advent of cellphones, she saw it as her right to know my whereabouts and companions—even what I was about to eat or drink. When I was fed up with the constant questions, I turned off my phone. Then I felt guilty and called her back to provide verbose information, more than she’d have asked for.

She was wary of all my friends, particularly girls. According to Mom, some girls were foxes, the rest wolves. In her presence, I was cautious not to say the same woman’s name twice; otherwise, Mom would want to know who she was, why I was “smitten with her,” and whether she was a fox or a wolf. And the girls unfortunate enough to actually meet her? They were put on a trial whose judge, prosecutor, and jury were the same person.

Mariam used all her charm to impress Mom in the two-hour dinner we shared, and all Mom could say about my potential bride was, “She couldn’t even finish a sentence.” Of course Mariam couldn’t speak well under her laser glare. At least we learned she was a fox, with all her sly charm! And Sara’s voice on the phone was too bold. That tone? Definitely a wolf. Neda was too superficial. Harry Potter? Has she ever picked up Rumi? Samira too frivolous. She’s always late. Shirin’s skirt too short. This long, Mom said, illustrating the offending garment with her thumb and index finger. After a few of these screenings, I didn’t require Mom’s help any longer. I saw every woman through her eyes—I already knew what she’d say.

Perhaps Mom’s bitterness and skepticism weren’t entirely her fault. Maybe her chronic loneliness was taking a toll. I wasn’t privy to her romantic indulgences when she was younger. She might’ve blindly decided, as she claimed, to reject all suitors, but the mere presence of interested men confirmed she was desired, coveted. However, with the arrival of her first gray hair and the deepening crease across her brow, men began to disperse. Once, I overheard her on the phone with a friend, “What men? Show me one. A real one. Not somebody looking for imbecile Barbies.” On the other front, it’d been quite a while since the last time Iran and Iraq had exchanged POWs. It seemed that Saddam had cleared his prisons of Iranians to make room for captives his new wars would bring. With no prisoners left, Mom’s hope for Dad’s return, though unexpressed, died. Mom, who had lost battles to win the war, had now been defeated in the war with no battle left to win.

It was painful to see her surrender to the passage of time. I remember when she could have been taken for my older sister. Pretty soon, she’d pass for my grandmother. She raised me by herself during the war—full of energy. Now, she either slouched in a chair or turned over in bed to face the wall. She used to joke about how much she looked like this or that actress. Now, with that long, unkempt hair and those heavy eyebrows, she couldn’t bear to meet herself in the mirror.

A few days before the Persian New Year, without giving away the destination, I drove Mom to a beauty salon where I’d arranged for a makeover with money I’d saved. She reluctantly accepted. Once we returned home, she burst out laughing. She hardly recognized the young woman in the hallway mirror—the woman with a pert bob and bangs, the gray wisps gone. Her merriment was contagious. I joined in at first, but when her giggles turned to teared-up guffaws, I had to ask what was so funny. She couldn’t speak. She just stood there staring at her reflection, wracked with heavy laughter. I stopped hounding her, not wanting to ruin the moment. When she calmed down, she hugged me and whispered in my ear, “Thank you, my dear. You’re my everything.”

It’s now three minutes after midnight. Next to the mirror stands a framed picture of Dad. As I look at my reflection, the differences between us evaporate. In our storeroom, I open the old chest that holds his stuff from the war. A mixture of leather, lavender, and mothball smell infuses the air. I take out a gray and white checkered shirt, clean and ironed, and put it on with his khaki pants. Two strokes of the hairbrush later, and I am him.

Without knocking, I enter Mom’s bedroom. The faint glow of the streetlight filters through the thick curtains, casting a hazy aura around the room. As my eyes adjust, I find Dad’s side of the bed still empty, with the blanket pulled toward Mom. I silently crawl in, pull the blanket over myself, and caress her hair, now pitch-black and closely cropped. Her eyes are closed, immersed in a peaceful slumber. I murmur, “I’m back, Leila.”

She opens her arms, welcomes me in, and smiles, lost in her dreams.