Tremors: New Fiction by Iranian American Writers

Family Trouble

Family Trouble Taha Ebrahimi All the trouble began when my grandfather died and my grandmother—my father’s mother—came to live with us. I had never met her before. She had been dead for at least fifty years or more. Even my father could not remember what she looked like, because he was only three when she got the dysentery. We only had one photograph of her. I had stolen it out of a family album when I visited my father’s childhood home in Iran. In this black-and-white picture , she was posed in front of a tropical backdrop, wearing a dress, clutching a cloth purse, holding it in front of her stomach, maybe just thirty years old— my age. Her hair was bobbed, crow colored. She stared, unsmiling, at the photographer . Her own grandmother was the one that burned all the other pictures and her belongings when she died. “In Iran, if the family of someone who died was grieving to the point of being unhealthy,” explained my mother in English, “sometimes they burned a dead person’s belongings and images so nobody would be reminded. Her mother went blind crying for her death.” I first saw her in the hallway, in my parents’ apartment on East Seventieth Street in New York. I was visiting for Thanksgiving, a short day trip from DC, where I worked. She wore platform shoes from the 1950s, and her dress ended right below her knees. But otherwise the skin of her legs, her exposed arms, her face: none of it seemed ghostly, but like real human flesh. I told my father about the sighting at breakfast. My mother toasted the pita in the oven, setting the table with feta cheese, turnips, and sabzi (greens) like cilantro and parsley. “Did she say anything?” my mother asked, bringing the basket of bread to the table, sitting down with us. “No,” I answered, sipping my tea. “She just stood there, holding her purse just like in the photograph, saying nothing.” 71 My father did not respond. He never did in regard to his mother. Now that his father was dead also, I already knew that extracting any more knowledge about his family and culture was an impossibility. With my grandfather’s death, I had lost all of northern Iran, where my father came from—what was once an entire country, some mountains too. Then my grandmother began getting comfortable in this new home. My mother saw her too. We saw her in the kitchen, examining the modern oven. We saw her in the living room, watching Oprah on the television, the remote in her hand, back straight as a board like a proper lady. We saw her in the hallway often, pacing from one end to the other. She never wore a veil. She had died before that law was put in place. My father ignored her. He claimed not to see her, but if she was in the room, he would leave. She never spoke. But sometimes she broke dishes or slammed doors. It wasn’t about food (she never ate any) or cost (she never required a bedroom , fresh towels, or doctor visits). She did not need a wheelchair or extra care; we never worried for her safety since she was already dead. And we didn’t want to seem callous to throw an old woman out (even if she appeared as a young woman, my age). It’s just that guests who stay longer than three weeks and fail to entertain can begin to be psychologically burdensome, even if the guest is a family member, but especially if the family member is deceased. To this day, I feel guilty saying that. In Iran, extended family are expected to live with each other forever, sometimes building houses around a common courtyard if children became married. They have big, sprawling families. Perhaps we had become too American. I’m not sure, except that she had overstayed her welcome and broken my mother’s favorite vase. My grandmother could have chosen other homes to live in—my father had siblings, after all. I knew my father was indifferent, but to my mother and me: we’d had enough of this somber woman. It was unnerving, especially while brushing your teeth or taking a shower. The lady was everywhere. It was as if the more we ignored her and hoped she’d move, the more she made herself at home. I began to avoid...