11. Callum
CALLUM
T he beauty in the world is so captivating that it chokes you.
Beguiling luminescence is all-consuming, and you crave to be near it, no matter the cost. If we’re lucky, we witness this beauty once during our lifetime.
I’ve been fortunate to have experienced this wonder twice.
With the man who helped me discover my soul and with the girl I failed to save.
Perhaps my inability to help her when she was most vulnerable is what set me on the path to making her the center of my universe.
A part of me can’t help but think that my desire for her is rooted in the failure I see within myself.
My compulsion with her began out of nowhere, and it’s become a beacon of light, transfixing me.
My obsession isn’t healthy, and though I try to delude myself that it’s benign, I know at its core it’s a flickering light of deviance.
Yet even with my understanding of the disease she’s sparked within me, I can’t help myself.
I require her presence, even as a casual observer, to feel a modicum of sanity.
She’s a creature of habit, my beautiful girl.
Every Saturday, she goes to her foreign language class.
She’s learning Farsi, a language she should know since it was her mother tongue, but she succumbed to the desire for assimilation and lost her ability to speak it fluently.
Over the last year, she’s devoted herself to learning what she abandoned.
This brings me to her second task on Saturdays. After class, she visits a coffee shop, one of those pretentious establishments where all the hipster kids hang out. Those places with a million coffee flavors that draw the line at cow’s milk.
She spreads her books on an IKEA table as she sips an iced coffee. She likes her coffee sweet, half almond milk with so much sugar that I fear she’ll put herself into a diabetic coma.
“Can I help you?” the barista asks, drawing my attention from my sweet Mona.
“Tea, orange pekoe, black.”
“Name?”
I panic at her question and blurt the first generic all-American name I can think of. “Bob.”
The Barista arches her eyebrow and tilts her head. “Don’t get many British guys called Bob. Don’t you stick to Robert?”
Aren’t people in the hospitality sector supposed to be sickly sweet? This girl has a chip on her shoulder. “I’m not a Brit.”
“Oh. Where are you from?”
What the fuck is with the hundred and one questions?
“Scotland.”
“Oh!” she squeals as she claps her hand like an excited child. “I’ve always wanted to go to Scotland.”
I tip the rim of my Yankees ball cap toward her. “It rains a lot.”
I step away from the counter before the girl can ask me any more monotonous questions. Her shrill voice is a nuisance and distracts me from my pretty girl.
Three steps. That’s all it would take to sit at the table across from her. My Mona.
Some views are so striking that you feel like the wind has been knocked from your lungs.
But nothing has the same magnitude as Mona brushing strands of her dark hair from her cheeks, her face scrunched in concentration.
She is a vision. A transcendent work of art with the ability to inspire humanity into something better.
“Mona,” a chipper voice calls.
Mona's radiant smile appears as she waves to her friend, Ari. Will she smile at me with the same warmth and radiance one day? “Hey, Ari.”
Ari thumbs the books on the table and smiles. “You’re the only person I know who would spend a perfectly sunny Saturday afternoon couped up in a dimly lit coffee shop.”
Mona shrugs. “I’m having a few issues with the grammar and thought some practice couldn’t hurt.
My brother-in-law learned Persian in his teens and is now fluent.
He always tells me to practice more. If we went back to Iran, he could probably get by in small remote villages, while I’d have to get by around with the English speakers in Theran. ”
Ari pulls out a chair and sits. “You planning on visiting Iran soon?”
A pang hits my chest at Mona’s somber expression.
Her green eyes turn wistful as she stares out the window.
“As much as I want to, I don’t think that will be happening.
” She laughs bitterly. “It’s funny, you know.
When I was younger, I had no desire to form any attachment to the country with all its pain, religious persecution, death, and brutality.
I wanted to put it aside. I was ashamed of Iran and everything about it.
But as I get older, I realize Iran’s more than the perception displayed in western media.
Iran is so much more than the hostage crisis and the bullshit religious theocracy.
Being Iranian is more than a thirty-second sound clip from a middle-aged man who couldn’t even point to the country on a map.
But being Iranian is hard, both in Iran and in the diaspora.
Being Iranian is beauty wrapped in brutality.
Being Iranian means culture, art, science, and injustice.
Being Iranian means being proud, resilient, and scared. ”
Ari dabbed a napkin under her eyes. “Wow, Mona, that’s kinda beautiful. Sad, but beautiful.”
"It’s too bad it took me so long to see the beauty of it all.
I was just glad I didn’t have to grow up there.
I saw so many heartbreaking things in Iran.
That trauma took over, you know? I wanted to forget it was real.
I told people I was Italian or Greek when they questioned my ethnicity, but now, I’d do anything to connect with that land and its people again. ”
Mona casts her eyes down and concentrates on a line in her book.
“It would have meant so much to my mom to see this. She said it was okay when I rejected my culture, but I know it hurt her. My mom had so much love for Iran. If it weren’t for my siblings and me, she probably wouldn’t have left.
I wish I were more grateful for her sacrifices. ”
“I’m sure she understood,” Ari says softly. “And I know she’s smiling down on you.”
Mona laughs. “My mother is dead, Ari. Her body is well on its way to decay.”
“Girl, don’t say that. The Lord doesn’t like it. Besides, even if you don’t believe in the all-mighty, everyone needs a little hope. It’s sad to assume that once we die, that’s the end.”
“Humans.” Mona laughs bitterly. “The only species on the planet who think they’re important enough to get a do-over.”
Ari sighs as if frustrated. “Is that why you decided to learn Farsi? In remembrance of your momma?”
“No,” Mona says, shaking her head. “That’s only a part of it.”