Free Rooftops of Tehran by Mahbod Seraji Page B

a picture of Ahmed’s grandma and her late husband. Grandma is standing still under a tree while he is walking toward her with a warm expression on his face. She seems oblivious to the fact that he’s only a few meters away from her.
    “He was a good man,” Zari says. “He used to give me candies when I was Keivan’s age. I really miss him.”
    There’s a caricature of Iraj surrounded by girls. His eyes are wide open, as if he’s trying to devour each girl with his gaze.
    “You’re an observant woman,” I say.
    “It’s hard not to be observant when you feel his eyes burning a hole through you!” she says, and laughs loudly. I laugh, too, but inside, I wish I could get my hands on that horny little prick and pluck his beady, shameless eyes from their sockets.
    Then Zari takes out a family album and shows me a picture of the Masked Angel.
    “She’s beautiful, isn’t she?”
    I glance at the picture. The Masked Angel is about the same height as Zari. Her long straight hair covers her shoulders and comes all the way down to her waist.
    “Her eyes are blue, too. Just like yours,” I say.
    “It’s our Russian background. Most girls in my family have blue eyes. By the way, this is the only time she has ever taken her burqa off in front of a camera.”
    “Your face lights up when you talk about her.”
    “She’s my best friend,” Zari says. “Her real name is Soraya. She’s a brilliant girl. She’s memorized all of Hafiz’s poetry, can you believe that?”
    “That’s incredible,” I say, as I think how grueling a mental practice it must be to memorize so much. “By the way, have you ever taken a fahll with Hafiz?” This is a customary tradition in Iran that involves closing your eyes, making a wish, and opening the book to a random page to find the answer to your dilemma.
    “Yeah,” Zari says. “That’s one of my favorite things to do, but Doctor says it’s an insult to Hafiz. He says Hafiz never intended to write a horoscope.”
    I laugh. I want to say that Doctor should relax, but I don’t. Instead I say, “One of these days, I’ll bring my Hafiz book here and we’ll take a couple of fahlls together. And we won’t tell Doctor. That’ll be our other little secret.”
    A radiant smile covers her face. “I would love that.”
    One day I’m standing next to her as she is washing dishes in the kitchen. “Are you nervous about going to America?” she asks.
    “Nervous?”
    “You know, being so far away, alone, in a foreign country. And then your father’s expectations; I hear he has big dreams for you. Doesn’t it all get to you?” She stops washing dishes and turns to face me. She apologizes quickly. “Sorry if I sound like I’m prying.”
    “No, you’re not,” I say, as I hear my mother’s voice in the back of my head: People are dying from hunger in Africa and you want me to worry about your father sending you to the States? Would Bangladesh be a more suitable place for you?
    Then I remember the time I was frustrated with Dad’s insistence that I go to America, and said to my mother, who knew how I felt about his plans, “See? Your engine oil is not bringing me out of my shell. I still can’t discuss any of this with him. So, would you please stop pouring it down my throat?”
    “You’re right, my medicine isn’t working,” she conceded. “What a pity!” And with that she doubled my daily dose. “This should do the trick.”
    A smile creeps across my lips.
    “Why are you smiling?” Zari asks.
    I tell her the engine oil story, and she laughs heartily and says that I do a great imitation of my mother.
    To answer her original question, I explain how a few days earlier my father came home with a magazine that was sent to him by a friend living in Europe. “It was the last three years depicted in pictures with a brief explanation of each photograph,” I explain. “People starving in Biafra, a Chilean mother running to an ambulance outside a morgue to see if her jailed