“I hope you won’t take it the wrong way when I say that if you had learned to speak English fluently you wouldn’t have had that unforgettable embarrassing episode with the traffic cop a month ago, Grandpa,” Farhad says reminding Ferdous of an incident that has become the reason for poking fun at him now and then.
“If that stupid man could understand the clear expression I used to let him know my regret for driving a little over the speed limit, everything would have been just fine. There was no need for him to insult me the way he did,” Ferdous explains like he has done many times before whenever the subject has come up.
“Could you tell us what really happened between you and the cop, Grandpa?” Farhad asks with a smirk all over his face.
“I’ve told the story many times,” Ferdous responds, as Mike goes on breaking the eggs into the pan.
“Tell us again,” Farhad insists while he takes more slices of bread out of the loaf to put into the toaster.
“Well, I was driving down Santa Monica Boulevard when, all of a sudden, I saw the red light of a police car flashing behind me. Boy that scared me to death. So, I kept on driving. Next I heard this deafening siren. It scared me even more. Then I heard him over the loudspeaker, ordering me to stop immediately. I had no choice but to stop. He parked behind my car, got out and started to walk to my car. With all those gears, guns and all, hanging from his belt and from every other parts of his tall muscular body, he looked like a soldier ready to go to war in Iraq. Impolitely, with an ill-mannered gesture and a loud voice while chewing on tobacco and spitting out shit size of a fully-grown frog on the ground that nauseated me, he asked for my driver’s license, registration, and proof of insurance. I complied. He then started to write me a traffic ticket. I was petrified and besides I didn’t want to get a ticket, so I tried to ask him to forgive my minor violation of going a little fast, and let me go.”
“Then what happened, Grandpa?” Farhad insists.
“Nothing. I was trying to tell him I wouldn’t do it again. I mean drive too fast. So I translated the expression we use in Farsi back home, word for word, thinking the stupid young man would understand how sorry I was for going a few miles over the speed limit.”
Ferdous looks at Naghmeh who is on the brink of bursting out laughing and pauses. Mike and Farhad realize the reason for his pause.
“Go on, Dad,” Mike insists.
“I said, ‘Officer, I ate shit. I won’t do it again.’ The stupid young officer looked at me sideways as if I had said the most outrageous thing. He kept writing his stupid ticket. I thought he hadn’t heard me. So I kept repeating it, ‘Officer, I ate shit. I won’t do it again.’ I don’t know. I must have said that several times. After he finished writing the ticket, he handed me my documents and the ticket, adjusted his gun belt first then he relocated his testicles in his pants, lowered his head to my level, dropped a baby frog from his mouth on the asphalt, pointed to a nearby coffee shop across the street and with an ear-to-ear smirk he mockingly said, ‘Do you see that coffee shop, man?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘Go there and have a hamburger on me, so that you don’t have to eat shit.’ He then let out a thunderous laugh as he walked back to his car.”
Like many times before, Mike, Farhad and Naghmeh cannot control themselves from bursting out laughing. As if their laughter were contagious, Ferdous, at his own expense, begins to laugh as well.
“See, Dad. If you knew the language, you wouldn’t have embarrassed yourself.”
“You’re an engineer. What are you doing working as a clerk at The Home Depot?”
“What in the hell does you learning English have to do with me not currently having an engineering job? Besides, I haven’t done engineering for such a long time that I’m an obsolete engineer.”
“We surely owe everything we have to my late husband,” Naghmeh says quietly as if it weren’t for others to hear. She is referring to the fact that it was her late husband whose connection in the Shah’s regime provided Mike a high position in the previous government.
“Give us a break, lady,” Ferdous objects, as he picks up his cup of tea and leaves the kitchen, acting as if he has been attacked by an abominable sense of nausea. Naghmeh and Farhad eat their scrambled eggs, buttered toast and sour cherry marmalade, empty their cups of tea, and go upstairs. Only Mike stays in the kitchen to set the table for the rest of his family before going upstairs, hoping he can close his eyes for an extra hour before going to work.
He is so tired that even with all the tea he has drank, the minute his head hits the pillow, he falls asleep like an infant.
Chapter Three
The Perpetual Nightmare
It’s happening again. As if suffering from an acute case of apnea Mike’s breathing is momentarily suspended. Seconds later, awful noises reverberate from his throat in his desperate attempt to inhale and exhale. It’s as if a golf-size object has somehow wedged itself in his airway and is surely going to suffocate him. His respiration accelerates, a tremor extends to his extremities, and before too long, his pajamas-covered body twists and turns violently, palpitating, he goes into a seizure. It is only when a horrifying scream violently jerks his body, followed by several epileptic-like jolts that he awakens. Released from the claws of his nightmare, drenched in cold sweat, he sits up in an utter state of fright and confusion, shuffling through the scenes of the nightmare in his mind, trying to make some sense of it all.
Scared stiff, Mike cannot even blink. Like a person trying to come out of a hypnotic state of mind, he appears as if trying to find his world, the time and the place, whether what just went through his mind was real or just a series of nightmares. It takes a moment or two for him to find his bearings and realize that he is safe and sound in the security of his home in Santa Monica and that most of his loved ones are with him under the same roof. But for a moment or two, he wonders, what if all his nightmares come true? After all, since migrating to the United States, where he has anxiously and wholeheartedly subscribed to the distinctive feature of his adopted country’s culture that equates happiness to consumption and a life style of uncertainty and constant change, things haven’t gone as smoothly as he had expected. Still, there is no escaping the reality of his current personal life in America, in a place that promised him order, stability and tranquility, but is delivering nothing but series of unmanageable chaos. He wonders whether or not all the dreadful events in his nightmares, including his adulterous relationship with Parisa, are forming some sort of message rooted in the bottom layer of his subconscious that is trying to tell him something; something sometimes wonderfully delicious but often painfully appalling. If yes, then his case is a validation of Freud’s hypothesis on dreams that he vaguely remembers reading somewhere. Could they all be figments of his imagination? Are all these images stark reality that they rush forth, often overwhelm him with brutal directness, or they are only just nightmares that should be forgotten? If they are merely nightmares, then why are they always the same? Can it be that he is subconsciously cloaking himself in the memories of his past life, a past that is seriously demanding to become his present and even his future?
His wife, as usual, is hopelessly sedated well to the realm of deafness by a combination of a powerful anti-depressant drug and a tranquilizer, washed down with several big shots of hundred-proof vodka earlier that night to fight her past ghosts that have gifted her seemingly an incurable chronic depression. With her eyes closed her mouth half-opened, and moonlight powders all over her face, pale, she seems has expired hours ago. The screams that end his terrifying nightmares seldom wake her.
A feeling of emptiness comes over him when he realizes there is not much of a gulf between his nightmares and the troubles he is facing in his real life in America. Although the dilemmas he is encountering during his waking hours are totally different in nature, and presumably not life threatening, the intensity of their pain is almost the same. In short, nothing has gone according to his vision and expectation since he set foot on the shore of this country, where millions of other immigrants seem to have found the fabled “streets paved with gold,” enabling them to