Parnaz Foroutan - Home Is a Stranger

Amberjack Publishing

An imprint of Chicago Review Press Incorporated

814 North Franklin Street

Chicago, Illinois 60610

Copyright 2020 by Parnaz Foroutan

Printed in the United States of America. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, in part or in whole, in any form whatsoever without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

This memoir is a work of creative nonfiction. It is nonfiction in that this is a recounting of the authors memories, and creative in that the author has expanded on her memory to build a richer narrative. The events contained herein are accurate to the best of the authors memory. Names and minor details that do not impact the story have been changed as necessary to protect those involved.

Interior image reproduced with permission.

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Book design by Aubrey Khan, Neuwirth & Associates

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Is available from the Library of Congress

ISBN 978-1-948705-60-8

eBook ISBN 978-1-948705-61-5

To the friend G.d sent me,
in the darkest and loneliest hour of my need

A thousand years ago in Nishapur, a poet drew a map for the journey of the soul. A seeker, he wrote, travels through seven valleys. In the first valley, he comes to a place of questions, of uncertainties. In the second valley, he finds himself in the bewilderment of love. In the third, he comes to understand that he does not understand anything. In the fourth, he abandons his attachments to the world. In the fifth, he sees that all things are connected by love, and beyond all things, the Beloved. In the sixth valley, the wayfarer loses himself to wonder, to awe, and in this state, he enters the final valley, where he becomes timeless, placeless, annihilated.

Dear Father,

I am sitting at my writing desk, looking out the window at my garden in the morning light. There had been a drought for years. Then, this year, a fire burned through our town. Burned the ancient oaks, burned homes, charred the mountains black. It was followed by a deluge of rain, which was followed by a deluge of wildflowers and, now, a thousand butterflies in their migration pass by my window, all flying in the same direction, tumbling on the breeze.

You died on a morning like this, the first of May, twenty-two years ago. I was just a girl then. I could still feel you in the sunlight on my skin. I believed that if I listened closely enough, I could hear you laughing. I knew you had become the migration of butterflies, the seed, the blossom, the wilting, the mountain, the wind, the stone, the sea. I knew with certainty. So I threw myself into the world, searching for you in cities, in forests, on mountains, in music, through strangers.

I am no longer that girl, Father. Ive lost her, you see? I awoke one morning and knew that she was gone. And she took with her all her certainties.

In the last year of your life, you lost the ability to speak. I spend my days searching for words. Outside my window, the migration of a thousand butterflies and foolishly, desperately, I write Hills . Wildflowers . Breeze .

Dear Father,

You died on a morning much like this. I awoke that day, and the beauty of the world devastated me. Now, I write so that I can hold it, for a moment, on this page, before it is all taken from me.

T he girls in our boat undressed and jumped into the sea. And I stood there, in my red bikini, considering death. In my dreams, death was always a tremendous amount of water, a flood, a tidal wave, a rushing torrent. In that weathered boat, while the rest of the party swam and squealed and ducked and dove beneath the surface, I kept looking at that bottomless expanse of it all until I heard the fisherman say, Go ahead. Jump.

His job was not to talk to me, but to scan the horizon for patrol boats and, if he saw one, to give a sharp whistle to call us back into our respective boats. The boys would climb into theirs, and we girls would scramble into ours, to pull our hijabs over our wet bodies and veil our dripping hair and sit in pious contemplation of the blue and the horizon.

He sat there, leaning back, cigarette in hand, watching me.

Im not a good swimmer, I said.

I am, the fisherman said. Stay close to the boat. Ill keep an eye on you.

So I jumped.

I was suspended in the silent blue of it. There loomed the threat of being discovered by the police. But beneath the water, nobody could see me. I surfaced, gasped, looked at the boat, which seemed a little farther than I had expected. Then I went under, again. Eyes open. I turned and turned, weightless. It felt exhilarating to be in the waters of the Caspian with the bottom so deep, in Iran, with home so far away. I felt so brave, so alive. I surfaced again. I turned to find the boats and saw that everyone was scrambling in. Someone was calling my name above the deafening lull of the water. My cousin Javid waved at me frantically.

I swam over as fast as I could, the waves working against me. My arms felt leaden. I dragged myself through that water, terrified, frantic. Back in Los Angeles, I had heard about the dark prison cells, the beatings, the disappearances. I spent months worrying about these stories before I had made my decision to return to Iran. And was this moment it, my fate? I finally reached the boat and clutched the side and heaved myself up. The other girls were almost dressed, pulling their pants with panic over their wet legs, buttoning their manteaus with trembling fingers over their nearly bare breasts, tucking their dripping hair beneath knotted headscarves. I struggled clumsily with my jeans, shaking violently with fear. I was the only one still undressed. Then, the fisherman in our boat said, Its okay. Dont be so afraid, it is just some local fishermen. They are not the police.

He waved at the distant boat. The men in it waved back. It was a false alarm , I thought, trying to steady myself, I dont need to be covered in hijab. It is not the police . I gave up trying to cover my wet body with my unwilling clothes, threw my jeans onto the bench and drew a deep breath as the boat came nearer.

Relieved that it wasnt the police and looking in the direction of that oncoming boat, I didnt see that behind me the other girls sat dressed in full hijab. The fishermen we had hired to take us out in their boats had just seen us in our bikinis, so I didnt register that before these other local fishermen, who were not paid to look away, we must be fully clothed. Maybe because of the sun, or the exhilaration of having been in the bottomless sea, or the close encounter with absolute terror, I forgot the codes of conduct in Iran, forgot that this wasnt Malibu or Venice, and the closer that boat came, the more distracted I was by this unforeseen situation to notice the bulging vein in Alis neck, or the shock of the girls, or my male cousins horror at my indiscretion. I stood there, hands shading my eyes from the sun, waiting to see what these strangers wanted, in the middle of the sea.

Javid said, from the other boat, in English, Cover yourself up.

I didnt understand that he meant fully, in Islamic hijab. So I took my saffron silk headscarf and wrapped it about my torso, Tahitian style, the way I might have back home on the beaches of Southern California. I watched, mesmerized, the two older men who now stood in their boats before us, their faces wrinkled by the sun, their kind, curious, furtive eyes. They had thick mustaches, calloused hands. They wore knitted sweaters, wool caps on their heads, faded black pants, rubber boots with a tangled net at their feet. They turned off their motor and the three boats bobbed silently in the water. Then the older fishermen coughed, cleared their throats, and greeted the fishermen we had hired, barely glancing in the direction of the girls boat where I stood. They turned to the boys boat and asked if we wanted to buy their catch. They pointed to two large fish, gasping on the floor of their boat.