"Listen, this isn't mathematics. It's just a simple get together. You can just go to the party, have fun, and go home; very simple! You don't have to date him or any thing like that. After the party, it is up to you if you want to continue seeing Mario. Nobody will force you. By the way, he asked me if he can have your phone number so he can call you himself and invite you. Can I give it to him?"
Their conversation brings Hana to a complete exhaustion while she is torn between her old way and the new one that she is pushed into it.
"I don't know Valery. Give me a couple of days. Let me think about it."
The next few days are so agonizing to her that she does not know how to cope with it. She, who had believed in decently all her life, now is faced with a different way of life that she believes it is decent, yet it is not her way. While she wants to accept the American way of relationship is better, a dramatic obstacle blocks her vision that it is not. She wants to go to Mario's party desperately, yet she is so fearful of her weak personality that the party seems like a trap. She has never practiced this style of living; and at age forty five, she is not sure if her character is like an adamant stone or a young, fragile tree; either seeing Mario again is going to hurt her or boost her vitality. She thinks about Valery's remark- her lonely life- her sons' independent lives- and her growing old and withered all alone. She knows deep in her heart that Valery is right. Whether or not she does something about them is another matter.
The culture and custom she was born and raised in, did not believe for women to have relation with men other than their fathers, brothers, uncles , and sons. Anything beyond those were supposed to be only in a married life and with their husbands. For an unmarried woman, relation with other men were obscene and act of degeneration. In America is quite different. While she thinks the Iranian custom of raising girls have cost Persian women to live a miserable lives, she sees that many American women, who raised differently, are not happy either.
Sam being far away from her, and Farhad, bitter by Karen's immoral act, is even further than Sam to her, results Hana's brave decision. She will go to Mario's party. When two days before party, she tells Valery her decision, the two friends laugh while hugging each other. However, Hana refuses to give her phone number to Mario.
On that Saturday, a couple of hours before Valery to come to her house to pick her up, Hana staggers in her room and tries all her clothes. Not having many of them, and having only very casual work clothes brings her to a disgusting anger and she screams in desperation: "I've worked all my life and I don't have anything to wear." Suddenly she conjures up a dream, an obscure and far one; the day that Saeid was supposed to come back home to talk to Behroz, her uncle, about his future with Hana. She remembers that in her dream she was searching for hours in her closet-like room for an enticing dress and ended up to wear the simplest one to go to the airport to see Saeid all bloody and surrounded with fog. That was the day that Saeid, her only true love, had killed himself. That reminiscence brings her to a mental shock and she wonders where Saeid, dad, mom, Van, Behroz, and all her loved ones are at that moment. She feels by going to Mario's party, she is betraying her true love for Saeid and the respect for her parents' belief. But did she not forsake Saeid in his grave by marrying Hamid? Suddenly she makes herself to believe that she has always been a disloyal, manipulative woman, who married Hamid only three years after Saeid's suicide, and left the country only one year after her mother's death!
Despondently, she calls Valery to tell her that she is not going to the party. When she finds out in desperation that Valery is not home to answer her call, the door bell rings, and there stands Valery as prettier as ever with her son, whom Hana meets for the first time. Valery notices Hana's swelling, red eyes.
"What is the matter? Why aren't you ready?"
Hana breaks into a flood of tears.
"I'm not going. I'm sorry."
"Why, is everything all right?"
"Yes, I just don't feel like it."
"Come on! We don't stay long. I can't anyway. You see John is with me."
"No, Valery, you go on. I don't want to ruin your evening."
When half an hour later, Hana finds herself in Valery's car, she does not know if it was Valery's logical insistence or her own curiosity that made her to go to Mario's party.
To Be Continued
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