Yes, Sarah was happy to have amused everyone. She was in love with her husband-to-be. And she was proud of the opulent wedding party her parents were throwing in one of Tehran’s most expensive hotels. The banquet hall was stunning, with its gold-trimmed ceilings and oversized chandeliers. And the food was exquisite. Earlier, when guests were settling in and waiting for the ceremony to begin, they’d been served a variety of flaky pastries that exploded a cool sweet cream with every bite, along with cardamom-infused black tea and a variety of fruits like strawberries, kiwis, peaches, plums, grapes, and small cucumbers. If the mullah ever finished, they would be treated to succulent dishes of lamb shank with dill-flavored rice, chicken, beef, and lamb kabobs, and, of course, the traditional sweet rice of weddings with slivers of orange peel, almonds, and pistachios.
Aunt Mehri’s sudden reversal regarding Ali’s suitability as a groom had been accompanied by dire warnings about the bad omens associated with insisting on marrying someone who’d fallen out of divine favor. But thus far, the wedding party itself had been a spectacular start to Sarah and Ali’s life together and a fine testament to God’s blessing on their union.
The tittering died down, and the mullah cleared his throat to announce, ahem, that he was starting over. As he took a breath to launch into his next lecture, Sarah heard Aunt Mehri’s sotto voce insult, “Che ajale dare . . . she’s certainly in a rush,” that was predictably followed by Cousin Zainab’s tsk of distaste over Sarah’s too-quick response and its implied eagerness for her husband’s bed.
Sarah knew without looking that Aunt Mehri would be standing next to her eldest daughter and confidante, Zainab, who by virtue of her domineering personality as well as the seniority of being two years older than Sarah’s mother, was the family’s deputy matriarch who supported and enforced all her mother’s decrees. The mother-daughter pair would be wearing matching rose-colored indoor chadors, pulled tight around contrasting body types that were as different from one another as their characters were alike. Tall and rail-thin, Cousin Zainab made a perfect number “1” whereas short and round Aunt Mehri was a “0.” The “10” they created together had ruled the family for years, and Sarah knew Aunt Mehri’s remark was her way of meting out punishment over the unusual experience of having been disobeyed.
“We’re in a rush too,” someone said.
It was Ali’s mother, Mrs. Rahimi. “We just can’t wait to have such a lovely daughter-in-law,” she said, her voice beaming with warmth.
Sarah was touched by these generous words and would have smiled her thanks at her soon-to-be mother-in-law if she hadn’t been worried about further angering Aunt Mehri. Mrs. Rahimi was so loving, gentle, and kind, just like Maman-joon. The two womens’ statures and speaking voices were so similar that, in their black chadors, shopkeepers kept mistaking them for one another during the many joint excursions where Sarah got to pick out one beautiful wedding item after another. In the drama of the past few days, Sarah had forgotten how well the two women had initially taken to one another.
The mullah cleared his throat again. “Now, Miss Sarah, take your time and think carefully about this important decision. Do you or do you not allow me to conduct this marriage contract for you with the honorable Mr. Ali?”
This time, like millions of Persian brides before her, Sarah sat quietly as the ladies crowded around the sofreh aghd answered for her.
“Aroos rafte gol bechine! The bride is picking flowers!”
It was a funny phrase. Sarah had heard it and even shouted it hundreds of times at other weddings. Where had the tradition come from? It might have made sense in, say, a village where the bride’s relatives were teasing the groom by pretending she was out picking flowers when he came for her. But in modern times when the bride was obviously sitting right next to the groom, it was a little silly to pretend she wasn’t there. It did, however, give the guests a way to participate. Maybe that was the point.
In the midst of the women chanting, Sarah heard someone shouting something different. She strained to catch the words. What else could anyone be saying? It wasn’t as if there was another version of the ceremony.
The mullah asked a second time whether Sarah would consent to the marriage. The ladies sang out, “Aroos rafte golaab biyare! The bride is bringing perfume!” ostensibly referring to the rosewater the bride was now making out of the flowers she’d picked.
This time, Sarah could hear the discordant voices more clearly.
“Marg bar diktator! ”
Death to the dictator? Sarah was so shocked, she lifted her head immediately to see who would dare utter such treasonous words in present company. Ali’s devilish nephews, nine- and ten-year-old Muhammadreza and Hossein—who, unfortunately, were young enough to be in the ladies section—had their little fists raised as they chanted words they’d surely heard at one of the street demonstrations that had racked Tehran over the past two weeks. Even more unfortunately, they were sitting cross-legged on the floor right in front of Aunt Mehri and Cousin Zainab.
At another time or in a different context, Sarah might have thought it was funny to see two little boys alleviating their boredom by disrupting a wedding ceremony. But now she felt something bordering on panic. She didn’t need anyone, least of all Aunt Mehri and Cousin Zainab, to be reminded of the political differences that had almost derailed the wedding.
Two months ago, it had been Aunt Mehri herself who’d decided Ali—the nephew of her childhood friend Mina, the friend who’d always brought Mehri sweets from her father’s chain of bakeries and who grew up to marry a diplomat that was currently representing Iran at the United Nations in New York—would be a good match. Over Sarah’s objections, Aunt Mehri had convinced Baba and Maman-joon that Ali’s family was too good a prospect to pass up and that they should agree to at least one courtship khastegari meeting.
On that khastegari day that would change the course of Sarah’s life—when she met Ali and started falling in love with him within minutes of having turned him down, and had furtively given him her email address so they could circumvent Aunt Mehri’s overzealous rules about whether and when they could communicate—the upcoming presidential election was the last thing on anyone’s minds. Sarah would have been hard-pressed to name all of the candidates vying to defeat the brash populist President Ahmadinejad, who was favored by the country’s supreme leader.
But after Sarah and Ali were formally engaged and the election neared, surprising political differences began to emerge. Sarah’s family were all Ahmadinejad supporters due to their longtime loyalty to supreme leader Khamenei. But Ali’s sister Azar and her husband Ibrahim, the parents of the little boys now disrupting the wedding, were outspoken supporters of Mir-Hossein Mousavi, the candidate who repeatedly implied that the supreme leader and his favored candidate had led the country astray from the original intent of the Islamic revolution. Azar’s husband even began working directly for Mousavi’s campaign during his hours away from Sharif University, where he taught economics.