Danielle Steel - Family Ties (2010)

Everyone was very friendly to Katie as they got into the van, and one of Paul’s cousins carried her bag, as she got into the back row with Paul’s aunt, so the three cousins could sit together. She asked Katie if she was very tired from the long trip and promised her a good meal when they got home. She said that her daughters had stayed home to prepare it. Paul had told her that his aunt was a great cook.

As they drove toward the city, with Paul’s uncle at the wheel of the van, Jelveh admitted to Katie that she had never been out of Iran, and New York seemed so far away. And even to Katie it certainly did right now. And Jelveh complimented her on her interest in Iran to complete her studies. Katie didn’t explain to her that the genesis of her interest was not academic but romantic, and that she was in love with her nephew. The charade of their friendship had begun, and would have to last for the entire two weeks they were there. It seemed too soon to tell them that theirs was a serious romance, or that they were involved at all. Paul wanted them to get to know Katie first.

The traffic around the airport was heavy, and the roads into the city were choked with cars. It took them an hour and a half to get there, and their house was in the Pasdaran district of the opulent northern part of the city. Katie looked around in fascination as they drove into town, and she spoke very little. She was too busy watching everything and trying to absorb it all, as the whole family chatted animatedly in Farsi around her. But all of them spoke excellent English whenever they talked to Kate.

Tehran looked like a modern city, with mosques dotting the landscape; there were tall buildings, and short ones. There was a financial district, and she was dying to see the bazaar that Paul had described to her so vividly. She wanted to buy something for Annie there. Paul pointed out the university to her, and the Azadi Tower as they drove home. And Paul realized as he looked around that the city had grown since he left. It was even busier and more crowded than it had been then, with fifteen million people living there now. Katie realized with amazement that it was busier and seemed even more crowded than New York. But even in a city as metropolitan as this, Katie had a sense of being in an exotic place. She loved being there with him and felt comfortable with his family, who all seemed like nice people to her and treated her with kindness and respect.

She noticed too that his grandfather in the front seat spoke very little and seemed lost in thought as he looked out the window. And every now and then he would turn to look at Paul, seated in the row behind him, and as soon as he did, tears of emotion sprang to his eyes again, and once or twice he leaned back and patted Paul’s hand, as though to be sure that he was real and not simply an illusion. And then he would say something quietly to his son in Farsi. Paul and his cousins were chatting and laughing, and Jelveh continued to point out important landmarks to Katie as they drove home.

And when they finally pulled up in front of their home, it looked like a sprawling family house, no different than the ones she had seen in the suburbs of New York. This one was only a little larger and had beautiful arches over the doors and windows. Both of Paul’s female cousins were waiting for them on the front lawn, and they threw their arms around Paul as soon as he emerged from the van. It was a shock for him to see them since they had been five and nine years old when he last saw them. And now they were beautiful young women, with velvety brown eyes, the same honey-colored skin as his own, and Katie suspected they had dark, almost jet-black hair like their brothers, under their head scarves. They had stayed home to prepare an enormous lunch for Paul and Katie. The two girls and their mother had been hustling around the kitchen since dawn.

They all left their shoes at the front door, and the moment they walked into the house, with all the young people chattering loudly, Jelveh hurried into the kitchen to finish cooking the lavish meal. The house was filled with the delicious smell of cinnamon and oranges and lamb, which sparked familiar memories for Paul, as Kate wandered into the kitchen and offered to help Jelveh. She introduced Kate to Shirin and Soudabeh and commented proudly that Soudabeh was going to be getting married later that year. The four women worked together with the help of three young girls who worked for them.

“She has been betrothed to her future husband since she was thirteen,” Jelveh said happily as Soudabeh beamed. “We arranged a marriage for Shirin last year. Once her older sister is married, Shirin can get married too, next year.” Kate realized it meant that the younger one would be getting married at fifteen, which wasn’t uncommon here, and Paul had told her that in traditional families, marriages were often arranged. Both girls spoke excellent English and giggled when they talked about getting married.

Once the meal was properly organized, Jelveh offered to take Katie to her room. The men went outside to talk and catch up. They were thrilled to have Paul home. What Katie had seen so far was no different than any family scene in the States.

Shirin and Soudabeh led Katie upstairs, to a room on the second floor, near their own. It was a small cubicle with a narrow bed and a dresser for her things, and a small window high up on the wall that she couldn’t see out of, but it shed sunlight into the room. The room was sparsely decorated, and Katie saw as she walked by them that the two girls had similar rooms. Shirin commented that the boys had larger bedrooms, on the upper floor, and Soudabeh said that their parents’ bedroom was at the opposite side of the house, and their grandfather had a suite of rooms downstairs. He had come to live with them after Paul had left, and they said he had been sick.

Katie put her bag down in her room and left her passport in her backpack, with her credit card and traveler’s checks. She had the money in rials that she had exchanged in her pocket, with some dollars. She had been told not to bring her computer to Iran, when she got her visa. They had told her that there were Internet cafés everywhere where she could get Internet access. And she had a BlackBerry in her pocket.

As soon as she had put her things down, the girls beckoned her back down the stairs to the kitchen, where Jelveh and the girls put the lavish meal on platters, and the three servants helped take the food to the dining room.

The family was not fabulously rich, but it was obvious that this was a wealthy household. Jelveh was wearing a sober-looking black dress and a very nice diamond watch, and Kate noticed that the two girls were wearing gold bracelets, and the men in the family wore large gold watches, even Paul’s cousins.

And just as Jelveh was preparing the meal, Katie heard the adhan for the first time. It was the midday call to prayer, announced on loudspeakers all over the city, as the muezzin made the same haunting sound that they heard five times a day. And everything instantly stopped. There was no sound in the household as each member of the family listened to the seven verses in the call to prayer. Katie was mesmerized by the sound. Paul had told her she would hear it at dawn, midday, midafternoon, just after sunset, and for the last time two hours after sunset. It was the reminder to the faithful to stop and pray five times a day.

When the muezzin’s call ended, the house sprang to life again.

The food that Jelveh had prepared with the girls’ help was delicately scented with saffron, fruit, and cinnamon blended in. There were chicken and lamb and fish, and it all smelled delicious to Katie as the men came in from outside and Katie realized how hungry she was after the long trip, although she had eaten two meals on each flight. She had no idea what time it was in New York, but she felt as though it was in another world, on another planet, a million miles from here. She had only been in Tehran for two hours, but Paul’s family was making her feel completely at home.