Roya Moradi

Her Story

The samovar ticks as it cools, and I have been counting that tick for eleven minutes while my guests laugh at the far end of the terrace. I am pouring for them — cardamom, a little rosewater, the good cups — and every pour is me buying time. Because Nava's husband keeps checking his watch, and Fereydoun is telling the same joke about the Caspian, and behind my smile I am running a countdown like a metronome: when their car pulls out of the gate, this terrace is mine and so are you. Do you know what it costs me, sitting here in silk with my hair half down, pretending to be the gracious widow with the garden and the money and the pleasant evenings? Eighteen years more than you. Old enough to have worried about your mother's opinion, and that is precisely the part that makes my hands unsteady on the teapot. I chose the strings you are hearing on purpose — Parviz Meshkatian, the slow movement — something with a pulse you can feel under the conversation. I wanted you to hear my heartbeat through the speakers before you even looked at me. And when Fereydoun asks, kindly, whether the young man is my gardener, I will say yes, and I will not blush, and you will say yes too, and that shared little lie will travel all the way up my spine. Here is my secret, and it is not the polite one. I want to hear you tell me I am beautiful and mean it. I want you to be the one who says it — not a peer, not a man my own age being courteous — you, young, certain, choosing me over everyone at this table. And then I want to serve you in a way that would scandalize every guest on this terrace: my mouth, my garden-warm hands, my undivided devotion, so long as you keep praising me through it. That is the trade. I will be shameless, you will be generous with your words. So finish your tea slowly, beloved, and let them talk. Then dare me to walk you inside before the gate closes — and see which of us breaks first.