Zari nudged Roya aside and took up all the space in front of the mirror. She patted her hair and pouted. “This hairstyle makes me look like Sophia Loren. No?”
What could Roya do but say yes? She buttoned her own long-sleeved cotton blouse, slipped on her uniform of ormak fabric, and pulled up the dreaded knee socks. Roya had to admit that even she wanted to wear ankle socks, “American” socks, as the girls called them, but the headmistress punished girls who wore short socks. Roya hadn’t worked up the courage to walk into school, head held high, with tiny socks on her feet.
“He’s our hope!” Baba stuffed his mouth with bread and feta cheese at breakfast. “Prime Minister Mossadegh nationalized our oil so we could be rid of the chokehold of AIOC.” AIOC, the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, was Baba’s nemesis. “For the first time in decades, Iranians can feel in control of their own natural resources instead of being taken advantage of by imperialist countries. The prime minister is the only one who can stand up to the foreign powers. We’ll be a full democracy in no time with Mossadegh leading us. Now, if you girls study history and chemistry and mathematics, you can join the best professional class this great nation has ever known. Can you believe it? Do you see what’s available to you? The opportunities we have now for young ladies? What can I do as a government clerk? Push papers around? Sit and drink tea?” He took another long chug of his tea. “But you, my daughters! You will go further than your mother and I ever dreamed! Isn’t that right, Manijeh?”
“One morning!” Maman said. “Can’t we have one morning of no lectures? Just breakfast?”
Baba looked slightly wounded but did not stop entirely. “My Marie Curie!” He nodded at Zari. “My Helen Keller!” He winked at Roya.
The girls, eighteen months apart, knew all too well about their father’s puffed-up hopes. Seventeen-year-old Roya tried to live up to Baba’s wishes, but all she really wanted to do was read translated novels of writers named Hemingway and Dostoyevsky. Or poems of their own Persian greats such as Rumi or Hafez or Saadi. Roya also loved to cook, standing next to Maman, following the recipes for the best khoresh stews.
And her younger sister was far from becoming a future Madame Curie. Zari was obsessed with a boy named Yousof. She wanted to marry rich, to dance the tango and learn the waltz. She wanted to pay five tomans for a ticket at one of the popular kids’ parties, jump into a samba, and impress everyone with her moves. Most nights as they went to bed, Zari laid out all her dreams in detail for Roya.
“Off you go then!” Maman kissed the girls’ cheeks and took their tea glasses.
Zari saluted Baba in a mock expression of her devotion to his ideals. Instead of laughing, Baba saluted slowly and seriously back.
Zari glanced at Roya with a quick grimace only perceptible between sisters.
At the door, Roya and Zari put on their shoes. Even though Roya was a senior and Zari a junior in high school, they were still required to wear the black baby-doll leather shoes that were part of the school uniform. Roya pulled the strap and buckled tightly.
The girls walked from the inner andarun section of the house to the outer section, along a corridor, and down the steps leading into the garden. As they passed the turquoise-tiled koi pond, Roya envied the fish in it. All they did was swim in cool blue water. They weren’t supposed to become successful members of the best professional class the nation had ever known.
Roya closed the gate and they went into the alleyway and then the main street. Here they stuck together, hugging their books to their chests.
There were no demonstrators this early in the morning, but the ground was littered with pamphlets from a previous rally. Photographs of Prime Minister Mossadegh—his sharp hooked nose, his erudite, world-weary eyes—littered the ground. Roya couldn’t bear to see his face scattered like that where people could walk on it. She picked up a few of the papers, gingerly holding them face-side up.
“Oh, please, do you really think you can save him?” Zari asked. “There’ll be a communist demonstration tonight. There’ll be another one after that where the Shah’s supporters will show up. You can’t save the prime minister. He’s outnumbered by two factions who want to see him gone.”
“He has thousands, millions of supporters! The people, we, are behind him!” Roya said.
“The people have very little power and you know it. In this country there’s too much deal-making and corruption behind the scenes.”
Roya held her books and Mossadegh’s pictures tighter to her chest as they continued to walk. Of course, Zari had a point. Just last week a special assembly had been called at school. The headmistress had stood onstage with her hands on her hips and demanded that the students identify who was circulating communist papers amongst them. No one had spoken up. Roya knew it was Jaleh Tabatabayi who passed those pamphlets under desks and at recess, hidden in parchment. She wondered how Jaleh had access to such political papers. How she even dared to get them in the first place. Then, at dismissal, the police had shown up, bearing a megaphone, guns, and a water hose. Abbas, the school door guard, helped the thick-necked policemen attach the water hose to a faucet in the yard. Just as Jaleh walked out of school, the policemen turned on the hose and aimed the force of the water at her. At first, Jaleh’s expression was one of wonder, a kind of awe. Then her expression changed to resolute will. She sailed into the air to avoid the hissing snake of water. She landed with a thud smack in the middle of its force. A few seconds later, Jaleh was entirely soaked, her uniform clinging to her curves, her hair dripping and soppy.
One of the policemen had said, “That’ll teach you to disrespect your country by spreading communist lies. Don’t think we won’t eventually find every single one of you behind traitorous collusion with Russia. You girls need to focus on becoming decent young women instead of political donkeys.”
The headmistress had clapped.
The pro-king girls, devoted to the Shah, clapped and cheered too as they stood as a group in the yard. Several of the pro-Shah girls were from wealthy families whose fathers worked in the oil industry. A few deeply religious girls clapped with them. For the first time in a long time, families of the clergy and fans of the Shah stood as one.
The pro-communist girls ran to Jaleh and huddled around her as soon as the police and headmistress had left the yard. They tried to dry her with their cardigans, their handkerchiefs, the hems of their uniforms. Jaleh stood tall, though dripping, and said not to worry. She even laughed. Roya knew Jaleh would only spread more Marxist pamphlets now, not less. That’s how the Tudeh communist girls were. Fearless and resolute and always saying that Iran should follow in the steps of the Soviet Union.
Roya and Zari and the pro–prime minister girls had clustered in their own circle, shocked and shaken. If a fellow student asked whom she supported, Roya would say, “Prime Minister Mossadegh and the National Front”; to say anything different would have broken Baba’s heart. Prime Minister Mossadegh could get their country to full democracy. He’d studied law in Switzerland, become foreign minister, and gone all the way to the United Nations in America to testify that the British Anglo-Iranian Oil Company should give Iran ownership of its own oil. Roya liked Mossadegh’s independence and self-reliance. She even admired his pajamas (which he was sometimes photographed wearing).