Scent of Butterflies Read Online Free Page A

especially Mamabozorg’s wise words dispensed with juicy pomegranate seeds, dried berries, and cardamom-scented tea bags she purchased for me in the bazaar, aware I can’t tolerate dark tea.
    If you are ever forced to leave your country, she advised me the day Ayatollah Khomeini set foot in Iran, go to a place where the sky is the same color as Tehran’s. Young and naïve then, I had taken her words literally and had laughed out loud, reminding her that the skies are the same color everywhere. How wrong I was. This horizon is foreign and forbidding. It is not mine.
    Americans, too, might not accept me. Despite the passage of two decades, how could they forget the hostage crisis, the burning of their flag, the shouts of “Death to the Great Satan” as their people were led, blindfolded, around the walled compound of the American Embassy, their humiliating images projected on television screens around the world?
    Not many people walk the streets of Beverly Hills, and the few who do seem to be in a hurry. Commuters eat, drink, apply makeup in their cars. Joggers, speed walkers, and exercise fanatics behind health-club windows flaunt abnormally toned muscles. What function do these well-fed, well-exercised bodies have if they do not slow down to enjoy themselves, allow themselves to be admired? The neutral, sexless smells of perfumes and deodorants prevail in streets, restaurants, elevators. I miss the scents of excitement, fear, and arousal that permeated my past life.
    Men’s sensuality seems dulled here, their listless gazes turned inward. Aziz kissed with open eyes.
    â€”Feel me with your mouth and your eyes, Jounam —
    Does Parvaneh, that insect of a butterfly, lick the tips of your lashes, too, Aziz? Does she dream of your sleepy eyes that mirror the full range of your emotions—sadness, joy, and, above all, desire. Eyes that don’t shed tears. Not the day we were married. Not the night you heard the news that your mother—still young—had died when her car veered out of control and toppled off the winding Chaloos Road. Not even that day in the doctor’s office when you were convinced you’d never become a father.
    Is Aziz attracted to her yearning to become a mother, the erotic longing she carries in full view? He must have succumbed to the softness in her womb, taken in by her seeming vulnerability, her seductive innocence. Is she as timid in private as she pretends to be in public? No! The Parvaneh I’ve known as my best friend must be very different from the woman he holds in his arms.
    When did he first make love to her?
    Despite my efforts to avoid the most painful question of all, it lingers like stale sin. Does Aziz have sex with her or make love to her? How could he bring himself to kiss her on the mouth, taste her saliva, the humid warmth he had searched for under my tongue? Our kisses, Aziz and mine, were wildly intimate. No one else, I assumed, would ever come to decode the language of our kisses.
    I fooled myself into believing that I would welcome honest answers to my endless questions. But the last couple of days, in transient periods of clarity, I’ve come to realize that even if I had brought myself to ask, he would have been wise to lie. The truth is devastating.
    I adjust the camera strap against my shoulder and lock the door of the suite behind me, cross the hotel hallway—an expanse of varying shades of persimmon—and take the elevator down to the bar. I have some time before I meet a real estate agent the concierge recommended. I grapple with a sense of excitement and dread at having to build a new life in unfamiliar territory—purchasing a house in a foreign land—a conclusive act, so final. Mamabozorg Emerald believed that no well-respected family would think of leasing—pay in cash, receive the goods in return, yours to own, forever.
    â€”Forever mine, Jounam , and don’t you ever forget!—
    The hotel bar is