Odyssey... {}}{23- Deprived Memories

The sleeplessness of the night before seems to affect Hana at work. She, who suffers insomnia for so long, is drowsy and very tired specially today. She can not wait to go back home to do what she has promised herself and Lila the night before, to throw this indecent girl out of her house. Around two in the afternoon, she is called on the phone to find out from Farhad that Karen is gone, so does the television, VCR, Farhad's camera, and God knows what else. Regretting why she did not throw her out that morning, she takes the rest of the afternoon off and goes home. Farhad is very upset not only because of all the stolen things but because he believed in Karen and her life story. He thought she loved him as he did her.

Hana slowly goes through everything. She has always kept some cash at home for emergency. She discovers that not only the cash is gone but all her jewelry, specially her two rings, one a beautiful ruby with small diamonds around it, and the other a rich blue sapphire with diamonds are gone, too. She breaks down completely and faints on the floor. Farhad does not understand the reason of his mother's collapse for her rings; however, when Hana gains her consciousness, she tells him the story of the rings.

Those rings were the only things she had left from her past life. They were her mother's gifts to her when she gave birth to her sons. Her mother had gotten those from her mother, Hana's grandmother, and she had received them from her mother, and so on. Those rings went back about three hundred years, Hana was told. At the time of the smuggling, when she had sold everything including most of her clothes and all her jewelry, she could not sell something that the oldest or the only daughter in the family had inherited from their mothers. The jeweler in Tehran, whom Hana had sold her other jewels to, wanted to buy those rings, but Hana told him that they were not for sale; however, the jeweler appraised them.

"They are priceless, lady. Take care of them." That was all he said. Now they were gone. Her only belonging from her mother, her only memory from her grandmother, the only things that remind her of who she is and where she has come from. Her wedding band with a gold bracelet and necklace are stolen, too; but she does not care for them. She wants her rings, her mother's grandmother's, great grandmother's,... back.

When Farhad learns the story of the rings, he cries with his mother before confessing that he actually does not know anything about Karen. He has never seen her father, or where she used to live. She had told him not to call her at work since her boss does not like it. Calling police seems the last and only solution. The young officer makes a list of all the stolen things. He learns that Karen and Farhad were friends only for six months and she lived with them for three weeks; however, these mother and son have no clue of who that girl really was.

"Where did you meet her?" The officer asks Farhad.

Farhad looks at him while crying and does not say anything. He seems agitated by the officer's question. The officer, who sees Farhad's inside struggle, says:

"Let's go outside. I want to look around your apartment."

Hana knows instinctively that she is not invited; and her son has a secret about meeting Karen for the first time that he does not want her to know.

Outside the door, the officer repeat his question:

Where did you meet her?"

"I met her in a club. She was sitting on a bar stole and drinking beer."

"Why didn't you want to tell me inside?"

"My mom has never known that I go to clubs sometimes."

"What do you tell her when you come home late?"

"A friend's birthday party or..."

"Listen, I'm just curious. How old are you?'

"Almost twenty three."

"Going to clubs is a normal thing for young people here. Is your mother very strict? I'm just confused."

"No, sir, she is not strict. She is a very good mother. Her belief is different than yours and mine. I just respect her a lot. I just don't want her to work hard mentally to understand this way of living. She's already works hard physically. I want her to learn the differences slowly and gradually as they come to her not like a shock."

The officer put his hand on Farhad's shoulder and says:

"You're a very nice young man. I just don't understand how could you trust a woman you didn't know anything about and brought her to your home; and if you respect your mother so much, how could you have your girlfriend live here with you and your mother! Maybe her name isn't real either."

"I don't know. She seemed so innocent and loving and my mother even liked her. She said she loves me."

"That is how those con artists are. I hope you learned a lesson. Well, I must go now. I am going to do my best to help you and your mom, but I bet you that she's already pawned everything and pocketed the money."

And how the officer was right. Nobody knows who Karen is. The store manager, she said she worked there, did not know anything about her. It seems as though she was an alien from another planet who had come onto the earth to rob Hana's precious memories and Farhad's positive attitude towards life.

To Be Continued

Odyssey... ~{}~23- Deprived Memories

Karen, who practically lives with them, treats Hana like a maid. Hana sees everything; and while at one point liked Karen and treated her like another child of hers, now is very angry at herself for allowing another person to abuse her. She can not possibly talk to Farhad about it since he will not listen; and when she finds out one day that Farhad has given the key of the apartment to Karen, she is about to explode.

"How can you do this? We don't know her!"

Farhad gives a dirty look to his mother and says:

"Stop being so suspicious to everyone. She is not that kind of girl."

Very soon, Karen moves in officially. She, who had said she lived with her father, says:

"My father is transferred. I have no place to live."

Hana's soft heart aches for this fragile girl, whom her mother ran away with another woman when she was a only six years old, and her father did not care much for her according to what she had told them about her life. While Hana makes herself to believe that she has a daughter now, at night when she hears the squeaky sound of the bed next door, an afflicted hesitation changes her mind. Between work and college, Hana does not have much time to cook as before; and when one day she hears Karen's unbecoming compliant, she is quietly outraged.

"You don't cook any more. I'm tired of eating this ready made food of yours." Karen says.

Even Farhad shakes up by his girlfriend's comment.

That night, in her room, Hana brings Lila, her other self, to life with difficulty; and for the first time in a long while, asks her advice. Lila rebukes her, as it is her way, and then says:

"You never change. You always let people abuse you. What is it with you? Why are you afraid? What are you afraid of? Why did you let this rude girl move in with you in the first place?"

"I don't know. I guess I didn't want to make Farhad mad at me. I was afraid he might leave me and never come back."

Lila puts her hands at her waist, a gesture Hana always hated, and says:

"Oh, God, you're so simple, so naive. You think if you don't people run all over you, they won't like you anymore or they leave you? How stupid you are!"

"But we're not talking about any people; we're talking about my son." Hana desperately says.

"I know who you're talking about. But let me tell you something; if you don't respect yourself, nobody will. Farhad is not going to leave you. He may get mad, or raise his voice, but your proper action will make him, he won't admit it to you but he will to himself, that you're right."

"What you're telling me is to tell Karen to leave and if Farhad threatens that he is going to leave, too, I say fine. Is that what you want me to do?"

Lila laughs hysterically and says:

"Yes, now you're talking. He'll threaten you for leaving, but he won't. He can't even do his own laundry. You've raised your kids in a way that they depend on you for everything. They can't function without you; and like everybody else they use you."

Hana becomes angry.

"That is not true. Look at Sam. He is God knows where in army for his basic training without me being around. What do you think of that?"

"I have an answer for you which is going to blow up your mind. It wasn't you that raised Sam, it was me. He has my character not yours. That is why he moved away; that is why he'll become somebody. But look at Farhad. You raised him and pampered him so much that he knows he can get away with everything."

Lila's statement almost explodes Hana.

"That is not true. I've always thought that Sam is just like me. He..."

Lila interrupts her: "Maybe part of him is like you; but not the part that wants to be independent and to get away from all these chaos. He respects you so much that he didn't want you to work harder to put him through college; and that is why he joined army, something that you didn't want, I might add. Remember how much you tried to stop him!"

Hana desperately comes to realization that Lila is right. That entire night with open eyes and weary mind, she ponders over the abyss that she is drowning in it. She perceives in desperation that all her life she has let everyone to use her only because she has been afraid losing them or creating turmoil. Nevertheless, her entire life has been chaos and she has almost lost everything and everyone.

She decides for the first time to listen to Lila and ask Karen to leave the next day. Meanwhile, she pictures their discussion and Farhad's angry reaction. In her anxious mind, she pictures scenes of her strength, when she shows her son and his girlfriend how adamant she is and who the boss is in that house. When she finally falls asleep at five in the morning, she knows what she will do that day.

To Be Continued

Odyssey... ~~23- Deprived Memories

Hana Understands her son's solitary mind, for she was just like him. The pain is great, but this is not a grief of not knowing, but it is a vigorous understanding of a bitter reality that she, too had put her parents through what she is facing now. As she did not understand her parents' then, she can not possibly expect her son to discern her suffering and anguish now.

This conversation reminds her of a day, to be exact, a year and half ago, after Hamid's death, when Farhad told her:

"Mom, I don't want to go to college anymore. School is not for me. It's waste of money for you."

Hana's desperate argument did not change Farhad's viewpoint.

"I want to get a job."

"But you're very smart. It's a shame that you don't like school." She despondently said.

"You have all these education, look at you; you're altering people's dirty clothes."

Hana, hurt so much of something that she has already known it herself but did not expect it from her son, said:

"I have to support you , don't I? What can I do? I don't have the time and money to get a license for teaching. Besides this way I am making more money. I have to do something to bring money in."

"You were a teacher. Why can't you teach here?"

"I need my papers, my transcripts. They're all in Iran. I am a fugitive in the eye of Iranian Government. They're not going to release them. Do you understand?" She was deeply upset by her son's comment.

So Farhad quited the college and did not think about going back.

~

When Sam leaves in August to Forth Hood, near Kileen, Hana is lost in loss. She can not even go with her son to see what all these about because Sam wants to go alone. Her hands are tied and her feelings are in a way as though she has lost him for ever. She sobs for hours. Her purpose of living becomes the lowest at all times while her exasperated depression rises to the highest. Nevertheless, as time has always heels most wounds, she, too, slowly and gradually gets used to not having Sam at home. The days she expects his call; however, enhances her self esteem. As weeks go by, she can recognize a visible difference in Sam's demeanor which is even perceivable on the phone. Hana is not sure if she like this new man, her son. She wonders what happened to her baby, who used to fall asleep, using her legs as a pillow even up to age seventeen. She senses his strange, unfamiliar withdrawal which makes her to scold herself of perhaps she had done something wrong. His aloof silence becomes greater, while Hana sees in front of her eyes how uncommunicative they have grown in less than two months. But none of these despondent feelings stop her of the rapturous visit they will have after the end of his eight weeks basic training.

To Be Continued

Odyssey... 23- Deprived Memories

The purest flower nature had offered was to be thorny. The shinning glow of freedom in West, as Hana perceived and longed for, turned to be a different kind of slavery; since her fortune had been destined in a way that she had no way out of it. When they arrived in Dallas with empty pocket book and exhausted minds, Hana, almost thirty four, Hamid, forty, Farhad twelve, and Sam, eight, had different goals in their minds. Hamid thought of freedom that would allow him to buy liquor not making it, and to experience an immoral life as before, western style. Farhad's attention was all for fabulous television programs of America; nonetheless, he missed his grandma terribly, and he did not trust his father particularly and his mother somewhat. For Sam, it was strange. He did not want to be there. He did not understand the language, yet he would be the first to learn it and Americanize. For Hana was a long list of dreams; learning English, even though she was fairly good at it, good life, a moderate home, and above all to make it here with her family. She felt not being under political pressure and Persian style of family life, she could change Hamid to a decent husband and father. Wrong!

The early years were hard, so very hard that sometimes Hana wished her cursed homeland. Hamid did not even try to learn English. To him. that was the language of barbarians; however, he was able to manage to buy his liquor and learn about all places for immoral conducts. He never worked. One thing worked in their benefit and that was their smuggling. That helped with their immigration statues. With many people who spent thousands of dollars to get green cards, the cards came to them. Their smuggling and Hana's political activities in Iran enabled their lawyer to get them green cards as political asylums.

Dallas-

Today, ten years from the danger she put herself and her family through, she is alone, as she has always been. Her sons are not babies anymore. They have turned to be strong men and live their own lives. The reason they are still living with their mother is for her support, not for supporting her and she knows it. Farhad's girlfriend, is mostly there. She eats with them, uses them, and sleeps over frequently. Farhad shamelessly has her to sleep with him in front of his mother and brother. Hana rejects that in her speaking mind but she is never able to tell her son to stop that obscene act. She is afraid he may leave her. At night in her bedroom, Hana hears the squeaky sound of the bed, next door, where her son having sex with his girlfriend. The nights that karen stays over, Sam uses the sofa as bed since he does not want to sleep in a same room with his brother. Hana offers her bedroom to Sam, but he refuses.

Whereas Farhad, Sam is quiet. It has been so hard for Hana to know how her younger son feels or thinks. When May comes and he graduates from high school, he simply says to his mother:

"Mom, I am joining the army."

Hana can not believe what she hears, but Sam's stern look makes her wonder what she has done wrong.

"But why? Please don't do this to me. Let's talk..."

Sam interrupts his mother impatiently:

"Mom, I knew you're going to object this; but this is a done deal. I've already gone to the recruiting office in Dallas and applied. I've done all my physical and I've even taken series of tests. They're doing some background check on me now. Hopefully I hear from them soon."

Hana, shocked, says in a voice barely audible:

"But why? How did you learn about them?"

"Through school; they brought their brochures to school way back."

"Listen honey, don't do this. I want you to go to college and become somebody."

"Mom, that is the point. I'll go to college. They pay for most of my college. Then you don't have to work so hard to pay for my school."

"I don't mind to work hard. I get a second job. I don't mind it at all. Please don't do this to me. I am not against military. I just don't like you be away from me."

While begging her son, she realizes how much Sam is like her. His courage, determination, and attitude are what she had in his age. She remembers the days she hated her father, was annoyed by her mother's over protecting position, and wanted to run away.

"Is it me you can't stand, sweet heart?" She wishes for a no answer.

"No, mom, it has nothing to do with you. I want to be alone, to get away. I must do this. I'm confused."

Hana understands him while she can not imagine her son in army.

"I understand, honey. You have my support and love whatever you want to do."

To Be Continued