"A young Iranian woman seeks her happily-ever-after in America."
Reviewed by Lenore Howard
Posted January 6, 2011
Women's Fiction Contemporary
Tamila "Tami" Soroush has two great loves: the United
States and Ike Hanson. Life seems perfect after Ike sweeps
her away for a whirlwind Las Vegas wedding, just in time to
keep her from having to return to Iran -- at least until the
immigration interview. She's looking forward to getting to
know her new husband and his family while spending time
with her sister, Maryam, who is pregnant with her first
child. But things don't go smoothly with Ike's parents. Not
only do they give Tami a chilly reception -- in fact, Mrs.
Hanson is downright hostile -- but they withdraw their offer
of money to finance Ike's business dreams. This causes
tension between Ike and his family, as well as between the
newlyweds. To make matters worse, Tami's own parents are
across the world in Iran. Her mother, who had been
imprisoned there, was so deeply affected by the experience
that she barely leaves the house. Tami despairs of getting
her parents to come to the states, even to see their first
grandchild. So Tami braces herself to face the immigration officials,
wishing she could be as positive as Ike seems to be. The
problem is that Ike wasn't the first man involved in Tami's
attempts to stay in the country, and although her decisions
seemed right at the time, she does not look good in the
retelling. And Mrs. Hanson has made it clear that she'll do
everything in her power to get Tami out of Ike's life.
Would fate be so cruel as to give Tami a taste of freedom
and her first true love, only to take them away? I liked and sympathized with Tami almost immediately. Her
struggle to understand Americans is often amusing -- there's
some fun with the peculiar language of text messaging -- and
she wears her emotions on her sleeve. Her lack of
assertiveness, which some readers might find frustrating,
seemed appropriate to me given her background, and made me
root for her. Ike is the kind of man any woman would fall
for: caring, patient and laid-back, but willing to stand up
for his woman when necessary and, more important, to help
her learn to stand up for herself. This story has a good
balance between the lightness of Ike and Tami's blossoming
relationship and the darker tone of the underlying threat
to their happiness, which will keep readers turning the
pages. (Note: This is a sequel, but there's enough
background given to get people up to speed without bogging
down the pace.)
SUMMARY
A captivating sequel to the national bestselling novel Veil
of Roses. Knowing she could never be happy in Iran, Tamila Soroush
took her mother's advice to "Go and wake up your luck" and
joined her sister in the United States. Now, after a
spur-of-the-moment exchange of "I do"s with her true love,
Ike Hanson, Tami is eager to start her new life. But not everyone is pleased with their marriage, and Tami's
happily- ever-after is no sure thing. With an interview with
Immigration looming, Tami wonders if she's got the right
stuff when it comes to love, American-style. Maybe her luck
is running out. Or maybe she'll stand up for herself and
claim her American dream.
ExcerptChapter 1My mother wouldn’t let me cling to her; she made me stand
tall. My world—the only one I knew, the only one I
remembered—stood still for
that last moment at Mehrabad Airport while she brushed away
my tears and told
me, Go, my daughter. Go and wake up your luck. At her urging, I did. All by myself, I flew halfway around the world, more than
twelve thousand kilometers, from Tehran, Iran, to Tucson,
U.S.A., worrying the entire time. You name it, I worried
about it—first, that the dangerously outdated
IranAir aircraft would simply break apart midflight. That
when I spoke in America, my English would not be good
enough and people would laugh at me. I was scared to
see Maryam again after fifteen years of only across-the-
ocean phone calls, concerned
that our sister relationship would be too different, or
else that it would be
too much the same. I was terrified by the possibility that
I might never see my
parents again, and equally anxious that I would fail in my
quest—my mandate—to
find a husband in America before my tourist visa expired,
and that I’d have to
go back. I was afraid I would find a husband, only
he’d
turn out to be maybe not so nice. I feared that Americans
might not see me for me, that they wouldn’t
understand I was separate from my
government, that even if some crazies in Iran thought
America was Sheytan-e Bozorg,,
the Great Satan, I did not. I was afraid I would not be
given a chance. Oh, how much has changed in three short months! This time when I fly into Tucson, I’m not alone. I’m with
Ike—my beautiful Ike, with his easy smile and ocean blue
eyes. He’s my husband
now! We got married yesterday in Las Vegas. Everything has
happened so fast there
has hardly been time to think. I’ve been too excited to eat
and far too excited
to sleep, and this time, when things get bumpy during the
plane’s descent, Ike
is here to take my hand. "Scared, Persian Girl?" He asks this with a tease in his
voice. While I’m Tamila Soroush to everyone else, to Ike I
am and always will
be his Persian Girl. "You’re not scared of a little
turbulence, are you?" I rest my hand on his warm, sure skin. He’s been quiet on
the flight back, studying me closely when he thinks I’m
unaware, probably
wondering just who this is, this woman he’s married, and
I’m glad now for his
light tone and gentle joking. "I’m not afraid of anything
anymore," I say. But Ike knows me better. "Oh, yeah?" He grins at me, a
sweet, naughty-boy smile. "Kiss me, then," he says. "Kiss
me right here, right
now." At this, I blush. All around us on the airplane are other
people—people going home; people leaving home; people
traveling for work, for
fun, for family, for love. The airplane is a bullet
shooting through the sky.
Life is happening all around me. We are all moving all the
time, and I realize—finally
I realize—that I am no longer in a holding pattern, waiting
for my life to begin.
Like everyone around me, like Ike beside me—I, too, am
hurtling toward my future,
one which, if all goes well, inshallah” will take
place in the land of the
free and the home of the brave. And yet, when it comes to
kissing Ike in
public, I don’t feel very courageous. For in my homeland of
Iran, the country that has woven itself into my psyche, for
both better and worse, love happens
mostly behind closed doors. "Okay," I admit, "I maybe still have some fears." "You know the best way to get over them, don’t you?" he
says. "Through repetition. You’re going to have to kiss me
over and over again.
Public displays of affection, it’s called." I feel myself blush as I give my new husband a friendly
kiss on his cheek. "Well," he says matter-of-factly, "I suppose that’s a
start." When he runs his fingers up my forearm, my skin
tingles with possibility.
Although the air on the plane is stale, I have never felt
so alive. Alive, and
suddenly worried. "What about you?" I ask. "What are your fears?" "Me?" He scoffs. "I’m not afraid of anything. I have no
fear. None. Zilch. Nada." I give him a look that asks, Really? "I swear, Persian Girl," he says. "Perfect love drives
out
all fear." "Wow," I say. "That’s very profound." Not to mention
incredibly sweet. But I know Ike a little bit by now. "Did
you come up with
this yourself?" He grins. "It’s U2. Do you know who U2 is?" "U2 is a band from Ireland, and they are very socially
conscious, yes?" I ask. "They have a campaign called Red
that raises money to
help poor people." "Very good!" Ike says. "Although actually they raise
money
to help fight AIDS—in poor countries. So you were close—
very close! But I’m
surprised U2 isn’t banned in Iran. They’re kind of
revolutionary, I’d think." "Everything’s available on the black market, no
problem," I
say. "But I know about them from here, from my English
class. Danny taught us
the song "Pride,"
which is about Martin Luther King, Jr., yes?" Danny’s my English teacher. He’s a hippie-style person
who
plays the guitar for us and teaches us American folk songs
and other songs,
too. The way he played the song "Pride"
was using only an acoustic guitar, and he sang it with
sorrow in his voice. I
liked his humble version better than U2’s loud one. "Partly it is, indeed," Ike says. "It’s a very cool
song."
He sings, "Free at last they took your life. They could
not
take your pride." My new husband does not have a very good voice, I’m sorry
to say. I try not to wince at how off-key he is. "Ike?" Thankfully, he stops singing. "Aren’t you afraid
for
what your parents will say about our marriage?" As of yet, they know nothing about it. Ike left a voice
mail for his parents before he boarded the airplane to Las
Vegas, saying only that
he was going to meet some friends. And then he married me.
He’s a planner by
nature, and I’m very much aware that marrying me was not in
his plans. Surely his
parents will be aware of this, too. If that’s a flicker of doubt I see in his eyes, he
quickly
pushes it away. "They’re going to love you, Tami." "And if they don’t?" "They will," he insists. "How could they not?" "Um—because I married their son in order to get my green
card?" "No, no, no." Ike corrects me. "You married their son
because you love him." "Yes." I agree, for this is true, too. "But I worry
they’ll
overlook that point." Ike assures me they won’t. Then he looks away, out the
window.
He’s watching our descent as if he’s landing in a new city
to which he’s never
before been—which isn’t the situation. We’re going back to
the same Tucson we left. It’s the two of us—married now—who
are different. The final buckle-up bell sounds, and Ike unconsciously
tightens his seat belt. "Are you ready?" I ask him. He takes my hand. "Ready for what?" I can’t help but smile. "For what comes next." "No." He grins. "But what the hell, let’s do it
anyway." What comes next is telling his parents we’re married,
and even if Ike isn’t nervous, I certainly am. I’ve never met them, and from what Ike has said, he’s
told
them very little about me. Here is what I know about these
people who are now
my family: His father, Alan, owns a small construction
company and a number of
rental properties. Ike is close to his father and often
helps him on
construction jobs. His mother, Elizabeth, used to be a full-
time nurse but has
worked just one or two shifts per week since Ike was young.
Besides Ike, who’s
the eldest, there are four girls in the family—Izzy, who’s
eighteen; Kat, who’s
sixteen; Paige, who’s fourteen; and Camille, who is six and
was adopted from Guatemala when she was a baby. Ike lives
in a backyard studio guesthouse that he built with
his father, and the girls share bedrooms. Ike and I hold hands as we walk through Tucson
International Airport. Holding hands in public is new for
me, and it feels both utterly
innocent and profoundly naughty at the same time. I pause
for a moment under
the sign that greets arriving visitors and take in its
message with new eyes: welcome to
tucson Welcome to Tucson. Welcome to America. My family lived in the United States before, back in the
1970s, when my father was a graduate student at the
University of California–Berkeley. We went back to Iran
soon after the Shah was deposed and the Ayatollah
Khomeini returned from exile. My family’s happiness ended
at that point. My
Western-leaning parents, who’d seen a successful democracy
in action, who
understood the wisdom of a separation between church and
state, got caught up
in the clampdown that followed. More than that—my mother
was arrested and
jailed for five months. Permission to leave has been denied
them again and
again, and so now they’re destined to live out their lives
in Iran’s repressive religious regime. For so long, their
only hope has been to see their daughters
settle once more in America. Maryam made it out first, fifteen years ago, when she
married Ardishir. Now it’s my turn. I’m so glad to have my
chance; I almost didn’t
make it. Although my family is modern, they encouraged me to agree
to an arranged marriage upon arriving in America. It was
the only way I would
be able to stay beyond the three months my tourist visa
granted. And so I
agreed, but on what was to be the morning of our wedding
day, my
hastily-agreed-upon fiancé, Masoud, a developer from
Chicago, handed me a
contract which demanded that I bear his child immediately—
before filing my
green-card paperwork—and that I give up all rights to the
child in the event of
a divorce. I couldn’t do it. I’d come to America for my parents,
yes,
and I’d come for myself, too—but most of all I’d come for
the children I hoped
to have one day. That they would never know repression.
That they would be
raised in freedom. I couldn’t let them have a father like
Masoud Fakhri, who
would so coldly cut their mother from their lives. If I
signed his contract, my
children and I would be hostage to his decisions, his
whims, his vices, his
control. He could divorce me at will and take from me my
children. And so for them—for the daughters and sons I hope to have
one day—I said no. When I walked away from this marriage, with my visa just
days away from expiring, I resigned myself to going back to
Iran, defeated, to a homeland where I never really felt at
home. And then Ike, my handsome American
Boy, Ike—the only one I’d wanted, the one I was sure I
could not have, the one
I’d secretly met for coffee day after day on my way home
from English class—knocked
on the door of my hotel room in Las Vegas, where my friends
and I were
celebrating the wedding of our classmates Agata and
Josef. This was yesterday, when Ike came for me, and I got that
flutter of excitement I always get when I watch the end of
romantic American
movies—after it has all fallen apart and when it seems that
love is not meant
to be and that life has turned out to be nothing more than
a cruel dictator of
fate, but then but then.
something happens to change all that. For me, it was a knock at the door. Ike came for me, and the storm clouds parted. The angry
gods softened toward me, and Ike declared his love. I’ve
been pinching myself
ever since, to remind myself it’s not just a dream. It’s
true. I’m married to the man I love. Thanks to
him, I got my
freedom. The question that remains: Can I keep it? So many things can and might go wrong, especially with
our
immigration interview. Will the authorities believe our
love is for real?
Maybe, or maybe not. But on this, my first full day as
Ike’s wife, standing
beneath the welcome to tucson sign, holding his
hand, I allow myself
to be hopeful. "What are you thinking, Persian Girl?" he asks. What I’m thinking is how nice it will be to put the past
behind me. What I’m thinking is how far I’ve come, and not just in
miles. What I’m thinking is wow. Just wow. Did
this really happen? Am I really here? I look into my new husband’s true-blue American eyes and
squeeze his hand. But I don’t answer him, for what I’m
thinking is too big for
words. What I’m thinking is: I just might get my happy ending
after all.
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