Page 39 of The Mismatch

Tehran, 1977

Neda hid Baba’s bottles of wine in the cupboard, placed heavy blankets over them, and cleaned the house thoroughly. The good dishes were out, and the freshest, largest fruit had been bought. Watermelon was cut into thick slabs and placed in a clear bowl. Cherries, apples, cucumbers, plums and peaches were artfully assembled in dishes. Maman had ruled that all the women should wear hijabs for dinner.

Say what you want about Maman, but she knew how to adapt to her children’s various suitors during a khastegari.

The sofreh was on the floor; a large floral sheet, not the one the family sat on to eat every day, this one was special, for guests only. Displayed on it were dishes of ash, adas polow, salad olivieh, and jujeh kabab. Neda’s family sat on one side of the sofreh, minus Neda’s already married siblings, and Hossein, his mother and three sisters sat on the opposite side. His sisters, surprisingly, did not wear headscarves. Neda had assumed they would and could tell her own sisters were resentful that they were made to wear them.

‘You have a cute house,’ Hossein’s mother commented.

Neda and Rabeh cringed. The woman’s words were laced with double meaning. It made Neda conscious of hersurroundings, seeing them through an outsider’s eyes. She noticed for the first time the water stains on one wall, that the cracks in the wall weren’t normal, everything that indicated they were in some way inferior for living in a place like this. She wished she could stop this seeing, and go back to being clueless about their shabby home.

‘Cute,’ Maman repeated slowly. ‘Thank you.’

The familiar hum of the air conditioning filled the silence.

‘What is it you study, Neda dear?’

Neda puffed out her chest with pride. ‘Biomedicine.’

‘But you finish this year, correct?’ It became clear Hossein’s mother didn’t actually care what the subject was.

‘Yes.’

‘That’s good then, so you can look after the house following marriage.’

Neda looked over at Baba. He was leaning against the wall, legs crossed. He pursed his lips but said nothing.

‘Yes, of course, Neda is a lovely cook and very clean,’ Maman said, slightly too quickly. You could almost smell the desperation in the air, seasoned with reluctance from Baba, in addition to the strong stench of the kebab.

‘Very good.’ Her soon-to-be mother-in-law looked at Neda approvingly. ‘Well done. You would be surprised … girls these days are forgetting all their home skills in favour of academia. This is apparently the modern normal.’ She wrinkled her nose dismissively.

Hossein had a smile plastered on his face; he was equally uncomfortable with his mother’s comments. Neda was soondistracted by thoughts of how straight and white his teeth were, and how he was soon to be hers.

He had already made it clear he would support her studying and working, so his mother’s words did not faze her, but Baba’s reactions to them did.

She was reminded of one of their conversations after Hossein gave her the life-changing note.

‘You’re the only man who asked me first and not Baba,’ Neda had said.

‘I wanted this to be your decision.’ Hossein looked down at his hands as he spoke. ‘I didn’t know if your dad was strict, and the last thing I would want is for this to be an engagement you didn’t want.’ He stared deep into her eyes then, earnest as ever. Looking at him in that moment, Neda wondered how someone so beautiful, with eyelashes so long and eyes so welcoming, could also be perfect within.

She was brought back to the present.

‘He’s my only son, you know how it is,’ Hossein’s mum continued, taking a tentative bite of her kebab. ‘When his father died it was very hard on us … and having three girls and only one boy! Ay, it has been difficult, but this boy has been a real man of the house. He’s very special to us; I just want to make sure he has a good wife, you know. A good girl like Neda, I mean. I can tell she is a good girl.’ She said the last part quickly, realising all of Neda’s family were looking at her, their smiles turning into grimaces. ‘The food is lovely, by the way.’

‘What about Hossein?’ Baba said, breaking his almost steely silence.

‘What about him?’ she said.

‘He’s at the same university as our Neda,’ her father said. ‘But what exactly is it that he’s studying?’

His mum didn’t answer immediately and looked down as she spoke. ‘Science as well.’

Neda frowned unconsciously and her dad picked up on it.

‘Really?’ he said. ‘I thought it was something different.’

‘It’s sports science, sir,’ Hossein said, his voice steady. ‘I played football too, semi-professionally, but I had an injury.’