Family Reunion in the Mirror

It was late in the evening when Homa arrived in Tehran and she had not talked with her daughter Roya about her immigration plans. AbolFazl, Homa’s ex-husband, had allowed Roya to stay with her mother at her grandma’s house, but only for one night.

After dinner, as soon as Homa’s mother Shahnaz went to do the dishes, Homa approached Roya and said. “Let’s go to the other room to talk.”

Roya was sitting in front of the TV, flipping channels. “About what?” “About the meeting with your dad.”

“OK.” Roya reluctantly turned off the TV and followed Homa. In the guest room her luggage lay beside a tall mirror in a silver scrollwork frame from her wedding. She had put the mirror up for sale before leaving the country. A buyer had picked it but Shahnaz had taken it from his hand as she wanted it for herself.

Roya sat on the edge of a single bed and crossed her legs. Homa sat on an antique green carpet, watching her daughter who had grown into a beautiful seventeen-year-old girl during her absence. This was Homa’s third visit in ten years. This trip was like no other: she was back home with the specific mission to speak with Abol-Fazl and his wife Effat about Roya’s wish to immigrate to Canada.

Roya was silent. She wore a white shirt framing her slender body. She resembled Homa when she was her age and had fallen in love with Abol-Fazl. The same large brown eyes, the same frown, the same black curls shadowing her brow. She was also as withdrawn as Homa was before entering university. Her quietness at this moment bothered Homa more than all those times she had asked questions about Roya’s life on the phone. But why now? After all, the whole immigration plan was Roya’s idea. It was she who had asked Homa to come and negotiate with her father.

“Well, as you wanted me to, I have come to Iran for you,” Homa started talking while Roya remained silent. “I’ve travelled thousands of kilometers to help you fulfil your wish. Now tell me more about your plan.”

Roya clasped her hands on her lap. “I want to come to Canada to attend university there. That’s it. There is no more to what you call my plan.”

Roya’s straightforward answer was so hurtful that Homa would almost have preferred her daughter had slapped her across the face instead. “So, it was not about reuniting with me?” This was an unsettling thought. Yet, she tried to keep her composure and asked, “This is not enough for your dad. The good student you are, you can easily pass the entrance exam and attend a university in Iran.”

“My parents want me to study medicine. I want to study cognitive science. They don’t have that program at the bachelor’s level here.” “But our only option is to apply under the Family—”

As Homa started to talk, Roya cut her short: “And what if I cannot pass the exam? There are thousands of students who fail every year—” She then fell silent and started moving her leg up and down nervously.

“I hear you,” Homa said disappointedly, “Even though I was hoping that you wanted to immigrate to Canada to join me as well.”

“I don’t know, Mom. I am confused,” Roya said with an apologetic voice.

“You need to understand that for the Canadian government the only acceptable reason to apply for your immigration is family unification.” “I know this and I want to live with you in Vancouver and go to UBC.” “Ok, but we also need a solid argument to put forward to your father. We will need his legal consent for you to live with me in the future,” Homa raised her voice a bit, which made Roya look away. Homa could feel her daughter’s anxiety over uncertainties she should have expressed earlier. Well, perhaps this is my fault, Homa thought. I shouldn’t have assumed that she has the same kind of feeling I have for my mother. She could not suppress her disappointment so she snapped, “Please, stop bobbing your leg like that. It was also your dad’s habit and it makes me very uncomfortable.”

Roya uncrossed her legs and argued back: “I already told my dad that you have come to talk to them! You cannot pull out now.”

“I am not pulling out, Roya,” Homa said quietly, “I am here for you. My only problem is you wanting me to pretend it was my idea.”

“You don’t want me to live with you?”

Homa did not understand Roya’s question at first but once she did, anger started boiling in her. How could this girl think like this? Homa took her gaze from Roya and focused it on the green colour of the carpet to calm down.

Roya was quiet. It seemed that she’d understood how Homa felt inside.

Homa drew a deep breath but avoided looking straight at Roya. Instead, she started talking to her daughter’s image in the mirror: “You know how much I wish us to be together. But to make it possible, you need to be involved in the process as much as I am. The first step is to tell your parents you are one hundred percent sure you want to come to Canada and live with me when I’m there at their home to talk to them. You should say once again what you told me on the phone in front of them. Do you hear me?”

Homa’s heart thumping loudly in her ears contrasted with Roya’s silence. She was afraid that her daughter’s obvious indecisiveness would prevail and she would withdraw. What if Roya pulls out now, at this very moment? Homa felt a sharp pain in her chest that stopped her breathing for a moment. She gasped, thinking about the day she’d given up custody. On that day she could not imagine a time years later when she would become so frightened by Roya’s rejection. She wished Shahnaz would come and save her.

Homa watched Roya in the mirror looking down at the carpet. More long moments passed before she finally raised her head, only to face Homa and nod her bloodless face.

Her lips were violet like the times when she was a few months old and her breath caught inside her and she couldn’t cry. Homa immediately stood up and tapped on Roya’s shoulder before realizing Roya was a grown-up now: a grown-up who had just nodded her head, indicating that she’d chosen to live with Homa. Homa felt like shaking her for a clearer answer, but to give Roya comfort, she sat beside her daughter and put her arm around her. “Don’t worry. Everything will be fine.”

The next morning, Homa woke up to the voice of Shahnaz calling them. “Wake up, children. Let’s go to the park and exercise together.” Shahnaz looked exuberant in her velvet navy blue exercise suit which Homa had brought her from Canada. She wore a matching shawl on her dyed blond hair.

“Mom, I am also going to wear the exercise suit you brought me.” Roya jumped out of bed

“I like that,” Homa said, “To match you two, I am wearing mine.”

The park was in the street behind Shahnaz’s building. Shahnaz walked between Homa and Roya and held their hands. As they entered

through the cypress hedges surrounding it, Homa saw a group of women doing stretches in the distance behind the children’s playground. As they got closer, all heads turned toward the trio, including the instructor, the knotted ends of her scarf on her back and a whistle around her neck. Women cheered: “Wow, Shahnaz. You three look like triplets.”

After the exercise, everyone gathered around the trio, asking questions about Roya going to join Homa in Canada. Roya mumbled unclear answers consisting of only one or two words and moved her head right and left.

It was time to return home. Roya is overwhelmed, Homa thought. So she announced: “Excuse me, ladies, but I have jet lag and need to lie down.” She threw her head toward the park exit to make the women open their circle and let them leave.

“Thanks, Mom,” Roya whispered softly in Homa’s ear as they walked away from the crowd toward the well-trimmed hedges.

“No problem.” Homa smiled, thinking that she and Roya might get along after all. The sound of the instructor blowing her whistle confirmed her optimism and gave her such courage that she extended her arm and held her daughter’s hand.

Today is my lucky day, she continued thinking, marching forward. I should try again to talk to Roya about making a more concrete plan to talk to her parents to get their consent. As they walked past the hedges, however, her thinking was interrupted by a large woman in a black overcoat and scarf who entered the park at the same time and addressed them in a loud and surprised voice. “Shahnaz? . . . Roya?”

The trio and the burly woman stopped at the same time, facing one another. Roya jerked her hand away from Homa’s clutch and dropped her head.

“Shahnaz? . . . Roya?” the woman repeated, her curious eyes moving from one to the other. She stood over them like a principal who had caught children sneaking out from school.

Homa detected a subtle quiver under the skin of Roya’s face as she pulled slightly at her sleeve. She did not understand what the tug meant. The towering woman’s next question did not give her enough time to think of a clue.

“Are you two related? And you? You three look so much alike,” the woman asked Homa.

“Yes. I am Homa, Shahnaz’s daughter who lives in Canada. And Roya is my daughter.”

“I had no idea,” the woman said. “But I always thought it strange Roya looks neither like her father nor like Mrs. Effat.”

To explain her own relationship to Roya, she added, “Roya and Saba, my daughter, go to the same school.” She kept her unflinching gaze on Roya, who refused to look up at her. “I see Roya’s father, Mr. Mir, every month in the Parents Council and once saw his wife. I always wondered if she was her real mother— ”

“Mrs. Effat is also her mother. She is the one who raised her,” Homa explained while Roya blankly stared at the ground, as if what Homa said had nothing to do with her.

When they reached home, Homa followed her still-sullen daughter into the guest room. “Can you leave me alone, Mom?” Roya finally snapped. “I want to change my clothes. I am sweaty.”

“Okay.”

Homa stood behind the door. She didn’t go to the kitchen because Shahnaz was there. It’ll be awful if I burst out crying in front of Mom,

Homa thought, she’ll know I am not in control of the situation.

Homa pressed her back to the wall and her fingers into her palms to push away the tears welling up in her eyes. Nevertheless, she tried to put herself in her daughter’s shoes. Even though, for Homa, her act of giving up custody of Roya at the age of two was not abandoning her as she could only have her for seven years according to Islamic law, Roya probably did feel abandoned. She probably felt even more abandoned after I chose to leave Iran for good. Like her parents, Roya probably thought of me as selfish and irresponsible. Perhaps that’s why she did not want her classmate’s mother to know I was her birth mother. What kind of mother would leave her child? Good mothers stay with the most abusive husbands to be with their kids. After all, motherhood still means self-sacrifice in Iran, something I do not believe in.

That is why Homa was not willing to admit guilt. She still thought that leaving a bad marriage was the right thing to do. The myth of what is a good mother was made by men with no idea of the postpartum depression she had gone through. Only many years later, in Canada, had she learned that it was a common female experience that had nothing to do with being an unfit or unloving mother.

She still felt the trauma of those days gnawing away at her, when

she, a nineteen-year-old girl, was left alone with a constantly crying newborn in an apartment without a phone to call her mother for help. Days when she paced the rooms, crying along with Roya, scared to death that she was going to lose her mind. Abol-Fazl left early in the morning and came back at ten at night, expecting his food to be ready and warm on the table. He did not close his bookstore early even for a few minutes, or allow Homa to go to her mother.

“You are my wife and you must be at my home,” he’d said emphatically. Homa was in her last year at university when she gave birth to Roya. Abol-Fazl didn’t wish her to finish her studies but did not want to order her to quit, either. “You can attend your classes but you should take Roya with you. I am not paying for a babysitter.”

Homa knew that getting her own mother to look after the baby when she went to the university was out of the question. Abol-Fazl was not shy of expressing his hatred toward Shahnaz. Homa left his home after a fight on a Friday and they had just returned from their usual weekend visiting of Shahnaz. Her mother had bought Roya a golden pendant with the image of a mother and her child. As soon as they’d reached their home, Abol-Fazl had ripped off the thin golden chain that held the pendant loosely around Roya’s neck, jerking the baby out of her sleep. “Your idiot superficial mother cares only about appearance and beauty. This will give my daughter a rash.”

Roya had screamed, wearing a red mark from the tug at the right side of her neck. If Homa allowed her husband to insult her mother, she would set a bad example for Roya to allow her future husband to insult her.

No, she was not willing to regret her decision to leave right away after that incident and to ask for a divorce. Neither did she regret wanting to continue her education and work as a professional outside the home. She wanted to be both a good mother and to make something of herself.

“Subservient mothers raise subservient daughters. This is not what I wish for Roya,” she’d told Shahnaz once she’d opened the door, surprised to find her daughter back without Abol-Fazl.

Even though she finally left the country, she kept in touch with Roya through phone calls and letters and imagined the day when a grown-up Roya would tell her father that she wanted to emigrate and live with her independent mother who had made herself into somebody. Her hope was not false. This has already happened and I am not

going to lose the opportunity to win my daughter back. I’m not going to be defeated this time.

With this thought, Homa pushed the door open only to instantly notice that Roya had dropped her exercise suit on Homa’s suitcase with the Air Canada logo.

“You no longer want this?” Homa asked. She shivered from cold as the anger she’d felt behind the door had abated and her sweaty body started to cool down.

“I pulled your sleeve, Mom, so you would go silent and not say anything to that woman. But you did.”

“I don’t understand you. Was I supposed to lie and hide that I am the mother who gave birth to you?”

“Silence is not the same as a lie.”

“Maybe. But I also refuse to be silent. I am so tired of this game of hiding that you and your family have been playing for years. Why should I hide that I am also your mother? And that my mom is your grandma. Why?”

“You don’t understand.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Now, everybody in the Parents Council knows things about me. And soon the whole school will know. Starting from tomorrow, they’ll say—” “Will say, poor Roya, her real mother abandoned her?”

“No, they’ll say, poor Roya, she lives with a stepmom!” Roya shouted. Homa raised her eyebrows. “What’s wrong with living with a stepmom if she is decent?”

“You don’t understand.” Roya bit her lips.

“How is anyone supposed to understand you when you don’t express yourself?”

While Roya remained silent, Homa pushed harder. “It is not right that you sacrifice me for your own comfort to hide the fact that Effat is—” she did not complete her sentence as Roya’s sealed lips started quivering.

Homa waited until Roya took a deep breath, then she resumed: “I understand how society views stepmothers. But, first of all, it is not your responsibility to protect Effat against others. Secondly, the way to change this biased view is not to hide the reality. You should—”

“I am not you, Mom,” Roya said under her breath, looking away at the wall. Feeling hurt again, Homa watched her daughter’s scrunched-up face reflected in the mirror. “If you are not going to acknowledge me as

your mother, how do you want to live with me in the future? It seems that you have not thought through what it means to emigrate. You do not even have a concrete plan.”

“So, you are not coming to talk to them?” Roya talked to her own reflection in the mirror.

Strangely, in her white shirt, she looked exactly like Homa on her wedding day. Homa remembered how uncertain she had suddenly grown when, eighteen years ago, the Mullah sitting to the left of the groom asked for her consent to marry her to Abol-Fazl. They were sitting side by side on two short stools, facing the same mirror set between two long candleholders on an embroidered satin spread on the floor. The women standing behind them and holding a white cloth over their heads had gone silent. Abol-Fazl’s sisters, rubbing sugar cones against one another while the Mullah recited verses from the Koran, stopped, and were waiting for her answer. The first time Homa did not reply, as it was the custom, one of the sisters chanted: “The bride has gone to the meadow to pick flowers. Ask again.” The second time, the other sister repeated the same thing.

The third time, Homa had to answer, but she could not bring herself to say “yes” to the man beside her, who was impatiently jerking his knees. Homa came to herself as the Mullah in her mind summoned her: “Ma’am.”

But in the present time, it was actually Roya calling on her: “Mom?” “Yes.” Homa turned to her daughter who stopped bobbing her leg. “Yes, what?” Roya asked.

“Yes, I am coming to talk to your dad,” Homa announced. “You are my daughter. I love you.” She hugged Roya. At the same time, the door opened and Shahnaz stepped in. “What about me? Please take me to Canada, too,” she said, joining their embrace, framed in the silver-rimmed mirror.

“You are next on my list, Mom,” Homa laughed, “But there is one condition.”

“What?” Shahnaz chuckled.

“You should bring my mirror with you.”

“And also your exercise suit, Grandma,” Roya added, “So we can go exercising together.”