The Road to Larissa
By Nazli Artemia
Leonard Cohen died on November 10, 2016, two days after the presidential election.
I was introduced to him in 1998, by a young boy named Peymaan. Back then, Peymaan and I were college students. But even at that time, we were more than that; we were lovers. Almost every afternoon, after our classes, he and I would aimlessly roam around the streets of Tehran, talking about literature, philosophy, and our writing. His first present for me was the novel by Albert Camus, The Plague.
What we did, as lovers, was just that; walking in the streets and meeting at cafés and restaurants. We dated for almost two years, yet in that time, we never even held hands. Not even once.
Illustration by Yvette Pino
So one fine Afternoon, as we were walking around the streets like we usually did, Peymaan bought me the Persian translation of Cohen’s collection of poems, I was lost. From the bookstore, we went to one of the small parks nearby, on ValiAsr Street. We sat on a wooden bench, and looked at the crisp, dark, fallen leaves. It was autumn. He opened the book and read:
I was lost
when I met you on the road
to Larissa
the straight road between the cedars.
You thought
I was a man of roads
and you loved me for being such a man.
I was not such a man
I was lost when
I met you on the road
to Larissa.
I didn’t understand why he chose that poem, but I didn’t ask anything.
I haven’t been to Larissa, but I vividly remember walking with Peymaan on the narrow stony paths between elm and cypress trees of the Jamshidiyeh Park in Tehran. It was 2000, two years after our short relationship of constant on-and-offs. It was also the last time I saw him, until seven years later when I left Iran to come to the US with a one-way ticket.
Jamshidiyeh was –and still is- one of the quietest and most romantic places in Tehran to go to with your date. Peymaan and I decided to meet there and talk about where our relationship was going. That alone, was already a break-up sign.
We met, and we started walking. And by the time we reached the highest point of the park, we had broken up.
There was nothing more to say, but none of us had the emotional energy to leave. The last month of that relationship was a nightmare. Peymaan was torn between being with me or with another girl, who was staying at his apartment, initially because she didn’t have anywhere else to go.
According to Peymaan, she had found him in a café in southern part of Tehran, alone and sad, after one of our break-ups. She was also a student at the same college we studied at. She was writing poetry, and they had bonded through literature. After she moved to Peymaan’s place, nothing much happened. It was as if they were strangers, but slowly and gradually, they started falling for each other. And now here he was: broken in pieces, not being able to decide whether he should have stayed with that girl, or with me, who had returned to him again. But then, something else happened: The other girl got pregnant, and decided to have an abortion. Peymaan helped her.
Later, he expressed how guilty he felt for what the girl had gone through. It was at that point that I sensed he was not going to be able to leave her anymore. I felt like I had no place in that situation. No matter how many times Peymaan told me that he loved me more than her, I couldn’t stop judging him for sleeping with her. The more he tried to explain and convince me, the more it hurt. Finally, he asked me what I would have done if I were in his position. I said I would have stayed with the other girl.
Why did I say that? The price of such an answer was anxiously longing for Peymaan, for the rest of the years that were about to come. I had stepped back from love. I was a naïve twenty-two-year-old girl.
Before meeting Peymaan in college, I had never had a boyfriend. In high school, I had been attracted to a sophomore college student who was living in my neighborhood. I liked his serious face and his glasses. He passed by me every morning while I stood at the end of the street, waiting for the school bus. Finally, I gathered my courage and called his parents’ home from my grandparents’ land line. When he finally picked up the phone, I said that I was attracted to him.
He wanted to know my name, but I refused to tell. We were neighbors, so if he ever told anyone about me, I could have gotten into some serious trouble, and would’ve had to face the accusations of me dishonoring my parents and family. Girls calling boys and telling them they were attracted to them was a big taboo at that time. I couldn’t risk it. When we talked again on the phone over some time, I started to sense the boredom in his voice. And then, it got worse; he stopped picking up the phone. From that experience, I drew a drastic conclusion: I was boring. That was it. I had always thought I wasn’t attractive. And this incident concluded not only that, but also how I couldn’t even talk to, nor had nothing to talk about, with the opposite sex. I was depressed. Depression runs in my father’s side of the family.
In between all of this came my college entrance exams. I studied hard. I wanted to prove to myself that I was worthy. Besides, I really wanted to leave my hometown. I had heard many fascinating stories about colleges in Tehran: Girls and boys going to classes together, studying together, and working on projects together. I wanted to be one of those students.
At last, I got accepted into one of the best universities in Tehran, where Peymaan was a junior student in mechanical engineering. The first time I noticed him was at a book reading at the cultural center of the university. The meeting was about the novel Gadfly by the Irish writer Ethel Lilian Voynich. I don't remember much about the novel, nor do I remember what the speaker said about it, but I still have a note from that meeting. My close friend was sitting next to me. I passed a note to her which said “Who is this guy arguing with the speaker? What’s his point?”
She wrote back, “Peymaan something. He says the novel is not believable. The protagonist is innocently good and the others are absolutely evil.” On another corner of the note she wrote, “He says he’s tired of reading novels about western super-heroes every session here.”
I looked at the opposing boy. He was tall, had a southern accent, and his dark skin confirmed he was from the south. He wore glasses, and his jeans were loose on his skinny legs. His checkered shirt was dark green and brown, which looked in harmony with his dark jeans. Peymaan looked like that back then.
Later, he told me that he fell in love with me in that session. I still don’t know how or why. But I know something very well: his affection towards me, the way he got nervous around me, his romantic, satire flash fictions (he was one of the best writers among the college students), his tilted head towards me when we walked in the streets, his charm when he opened the doors for me, his accent, the books he gave me to read, his gifts, his poetic way of speaking, and countless other things; all of them gave me my faith back. With him I learned that neither was I boring, and nor was I unattractive.
But none of that could make me strong enough for not being confused about dating. I had grown up in a city where all men (outside of the family) were assumed to be wild and rapists. Even with me opening my heart and accepting Peymaan’s affections, I could never lower my guard against men.
There is a traditional saying, and Persian poetry is full of it in many ways, that if a woman likes a man, she should play the game of coyness and never reveal her love. My grandma kept telling me and her other granddaughters, “If you like a boy, hide your feelings. If you don’t, he will take advantage of you, and then will throw you away like a used Kleenex.”
So I couldn’t manage a normal relationship with Peymaan. One day, I recited romantic poems for him, another day, as I felt I had revealed too much emotion, I kept a serious face and tried not to smile. I confused him. He couldn't tell if I loved him or not.
So we sat in silence on the rocks in Jamshidiyeh Park after our permanent break-up. One of the branches of a tree in front of us was trapped under the heavy power cable. I kept staring at it, and then finally walked towards the tree. I shook the tree to release the branch. That was when I saw two officers of Islamic Guidance Patrol (or as they call themselves, ‘Morality Police’) approaching us.
“Excuse me, sir. Would you walk over here please?” One of them called Peymaan. He hesitated at first, but then stood up, shook the dust off from his pants, and walked towards the man. I stopped shaking the tree as the other officer approached. “Hi Miss. May I ask what your relationship is with this young man?”
Back then, the Islamic Guidance Patrol’s job was to make sure young girls and boys were not dating. If they were convinced that you and the boy you were with were siblings, or engaged, or legally married, they would have left you alone. But if you didn’t fall under any of those categories, they would take you to the police station, call your parents, and make you sign a bond that said you would never do anything against the Islamic rules (including dating) again.
Peymaan and I had never been caught by them before. I had heard from my friends, who were able to fool the morality police, that those guys were smart. They would question the girl and the boy separately. If they said they were siblings, they would ask questions like the parents’ names, home address, etc. from both of them and if their answers were even slightly different, they would take them. You had to be prepared for situations like these and Peymaan and I were not prepared at all. In fact, we never thought we would be caught, since our relationship was pretty much based on the routine of walking around and talking for hours, until it was time for me to go back to the girls’ dormitory (there was a time limit at nights for the girls to get into the dorm, and you had to have a very good reason for getting there after 8pm).
The officer was looking at my maanto (the women’s formal long-sleeved dress worn in public) which was covered in dust and dirt because of shaking the branches. I started cleaning it up. “Sorry. I was trying to release the branch under the cable.”
He looked up at the tree, “It’s not released yet, is it?” He went towards the tree and reached for the stuck branch. He tried shaking it. The other officer and Peymaan came closer. I looked at Peymaan’s face. It was as calm as before.
“What are you doing?” The approaching officer asked the branch releasing one.
“Nothing.” He shook the stuck branch one more time and the tree bounced back in the sky as the branch got released. “Here,” he said with a mild smile.
“Let’s go. They’re fine.” The other officer said. The officer who was questioning me didn’t hesitate. He shook his uniform and followed the other officer down the hill.
“khoobi? Are you ok?” Peymaan asked as soon as they left. I was fine. I hadn’t even gotten the chance to lie.
“What did you tell them?” I asked.
“Not much. I said we were dating but today we broke up, and he wanted to know why.”
“What did you say?” I wanted to know.
“I said you deserved a better man.”
A few months later, Peymaan sent me an email, in which he said he wanted to see me. But I had already decided to move on, and had started dating one of my classmates. However, the break-up had already triggered my depression. I visited a psychiatrist regularly and was taking prozak.
Peymaan was a romantic person, but more than that, he was also a nihilist. His theory of life, which most of the novels and poems he read and favored confirmed, was that nothing was worth living for, except love. A few weeks after our break-up, I heard from one of his friends in the cultural center that Peymaan had committed a failed suicide. I felt indirectly responsible, and the guilt was eating me up. I thought I had ruined him, and had killed the only beam of hope he had to live. I went into a deep depression. I failed my courses one after another, and was either listening to sad romantic music or was reading novels. My psychiatrist, who was also my therapist, kept telling me not to contact Peymaan. He said it wasn’t my fault, and Peymaan had to figure out the worth of living and being a part of the society on his own.
But he kept sending me emails and text messages on Yahoo! chat, saying that he had made a mistake, and that he was still in love with me, and later on, he said getting married to the other girl was the biggest mistake of his life. The news of his marriage changed everything for me. He was not my Peymaan anymore. He was a married man, and that was the end of our story.
After a few months, I stopped seeing my therapist. I was severely depressed and couldn’t handle going to classes any more. I needed to sort myself out. So I went back to my hometown and talked to my parents about my condition. My mother decided to come to Tehran, rent an apartment, and stay with me until I finished college.
Six months after my mother and I had lived together in Tehran, I got engaged to a college boy and moved in with him. My mother returned home. She was relieved that I was not alone anymore and had somebody who I was happy with. But I wasn’t, and I didn’t know why, until six months after our marriage I realized that my husband was just a distraction for me to not think about Peymaan. I felt that I was imprisoned. I had very low tolerance for his criticism. I got mad with any little argument and turned it into a fight. It was as if I wasn’t even trying to make it work.
The marriage didn’t last long. In the second year, he got hospitalized for a genetic mental disorder, and I took it as the chance to get divorced.
That was when I decided to go back to school and get my masters. It was the first year of Ahmadinejad’s presidency in Iran. Like many other young girls and boys, I felt that I didn’t belong to Iran anymore. How could I live among the people who had voted for an idiotic liar to become their president? I wanted to leave. I had to. So I applied for different universities abroad and got accepted for a master’s program in the US.
Three days before my flight to Chicago, I sent an email to Peymaan. “I want to see you”, it said.
We met at Jamshidiyeh Park again; seven years later, seven years older. We walked to the top of the hill, and sat on a wooden bench. I told him I was leaving Iran. It was Ramadan. He looked around, and then took a packet of cigarettes out of his pocket.
“It’s Ramadan. You shouldn’t smoke in public,” I said. He lit his cigarette carelessly. “Give me one then.”
“You always hated when I smoked.”
I nodded and grabbed the lighter from his hand. Giving it back, I touched his finger. He didn’t let go of my hand.
We saw two Islamic Guidance Patrol officers down the hill, talking to a young couple. “What if they see us?” I said.
“Then you’ll have to find another tree to shake.”
I was surprised that he remembered.
I left Iran in 2007. Like all other Iranians, my visa was one-entry. Because of the political tensions between the two countries, I wasn’t sure if, when I went back to Iran, I would have been issued a visa to re-enter the US or not. In 2011, the majority of Iranian students in America negotiated with Hillary Clinton’s team to pass an order which said that Iranian students could be issued multiple-entry visas. With that order being approved, my freedom to travel was back.
My first trip was to Iran. I saw my parents after six years. I also visited my old friends in Tehran, and I also saw Peymaan. He picked me up one afternoon at Vanak square and we went to Farahzad in northern Tehran. He took the car in a narrow ally where he could park. We got out and hugged each other. He held me so tight that I couldn’t breathe. We cried and kissed, and all the way back to Tehran, we held hands.
As he was looking straight ahead while driving, I looked at his car’s dashboard. A lipstick was there. I knew it was his wife’s. I started imagining her putting the lipstick on, and then kissing Peymaan. I knew that they were still together, and had actually filed for immigration to Canada as a couple. The thought of Peymaan and his wife together didn’t bother me. I was saddened that Peymaan and I didn’t end up together, but I also had someone amazing in my life, Yashar.
In 2011, in a trip to Boston, I met Yashar for the first time through our mutual friends. His voice was calming to listen to, his political views (when Iranians get together, talking about politics is inevitable) were resonating with mine, and I don’t know why, but I instantly had this strong feeling that I could get along with this man.
After leaving Iran, I had dated three Iranians, a Mexican, a Colombian, two Americans, a German, and an Iraqi. But none of those relationships lasted more than a few months (some even lasted for just a few weeks or days), and each left a scar on my self-confidence, which made starting the next one that much harder. It felt like I was back in high school. I was that same boring and unattractive girl who couldn’t keep anyone interested. So once again, I took a break from men and relationships, and focused on my career.
In 2012, I moved to Boston to attend school. I drove three days from south to north, to Boston. Throughout all this time, all I was listening to was Leonard Cohen singing “I’m your man,” among his other songs.
Yashar and I collided on one fateful night at an Iranian party, which had been hosted by a mutual friend of ours. Just a few months after that, I couldn’t resist. I just felt the sudden urge to write to him. I sent him a friend request on Facebook and after that, sent a message. I told him a story about a girl who was attracted to him. A girl who could see herself with him, but the more they dated, the more boring their relationship became, and finally they broke up.
He replied the next day, “What a sad story! But not every story is supposed to end tragically.” He thanked me for expressing my feelings -without mentioning how weird I sounded- and said that unfortunately, at that point in his life, he just wasn’t in a place to start dating.
His reply hit me. It hurt. But one thing that I might have learned from Peymaan’s wife remotely was that if you love a man, don’t give up. Peymaan’s wife was with him in all the hard times he had; when he tried to commit a suicide, and when he was arrested at the students’ protest in July 1999 at Tehran University for writing 'Down with the Dictator' with a black spray on a wall. So I wrote back to Yashar, and invited him for a cup of coffee at Starbucks café of the Harvard Square.
When I walked up the Starbuck’s stairs that day, I felt my heartbeat like never before. I was about to be rejected, but at least this time I was ready to fight for the man I liked. Yashar showed up and we talked for a while. He said he needed time to forget about the girl he had a crush on a while ago. Hearing that reply was a relief; he was not rejecting me because I was boring and unattractive. That thought alone was enough to make me want to keep on going. I told him that I understood his situation and that I would wait.
A month later, and we were on our first official date. He invited me to his place for lunch. He had cooked Tah-Chin in two trays, one with chicken (the traditional way) and one with chorizo sausage. Coincidentally, neither of us had bothered to check the weather. So, while we were there, we got to know that it was the time of the Sandy hurricane. So, after we ate and watched an episode of Big Bang Theory or some other comedy, we realized that I was stuck there and I wouldn’t be able to go back to my apartment.
Two days later, when we could get out, we drove to Walden Pond and walked among the broken trees affected by the hurricane. He sat on a fallen trunk and pulled me close to him, while grabbing my waist. I sat on his lap. He took a deep breath and said, “See Nazli? Look at the green mosses already growing on this dead tree. What is life, if not the stubbornness of the nature to fight its destiny?” For me, who suffered from depression almost her entire life, hearing those words was as if a door towards light and hope had been opened.
Sitting on his lap, I kissed him with the utmost passion. Yes. With that kiss, I sealed the deal with myself that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with this man, and I was ready to fight for our life together.
Peymaan and his wife moved to Montreal in 2014. I knew it because he was writing to me. “Can you believe it, Nazli? We’re just one border away from each other!” he texted me by his new Canadian phone number. He sent me flowers once, and said it was his first online purchase ever, using a credit card.
It was tempting to see him. I still had my US multiple-entry visa and could go to Canada. In October, I decided to drive to Montreal and stay for a weekend. Yashar couldn’t go with me. He was busy with work, even during the weekends.
So I drove alone from Boston to Montreal. On my way, I listened to Leonard Cohen’s new album, Popular Problems, over and over. In one of his melancholy songs, with that thick strong voice, he sings:
Did I ever love you?
Did I ever need you?
Did I ever fight you?
Did I ever want to?
Did I ever leave you?
Was I ever able?
Or are we still leaning
across the old table?
The questions still ring in my ears, for both men that I deeply care for and love.
The day after I arrived in Montreal, Peymaan and I met at the Old Port. It was the first time that we walked side by side without me wearing a headscarf and a maanto. At noon, we stopped for coffee at a local café in downtown. It was very crowded. I was about to enter the café when Peymaan called, “Nazli!” I turned and he kissed me on my lips. My heart skipped a beat by the excitement of that sudden kiss. Gone were the days when we had to drive to the narrow streets of Farahzad for a hug and a kiss. There was no need for that any more.
In the late afternoon, we walked into a bar and got drunk together for the first time. When the bartender asked us if we wanted anything else I told her, “I was in love with this man sixteen years ago, and today is the first time I danced with him. I want to say cheers to that, and nothing else.”
I am sure the girl didn’t understand my accent. She gave me a fake smile and left. I couldn’t care less.
At night, we walked along the Saint Lawrence River. It was cold and no one was in the streets. It was the same as old times; we talked about books and we talked about my writing. At some point Peymaan stopped, “Nazli? Have you ever thought about leaving everything behind and coming to live with me?”
I looked at him without knowing what to say. “Yes, Peymaan. Many, many times,” I replied after a long pause. “But we’re not twenty-something anymore. You’ve been with your wife for more than a decade now. And I am with Yashar. I love him,” I lowered my eyes. “The truth is with you, I am a nostalgic girl, craving for an opportunity to show you my emotions that I didn’t express before. You are a big part of my adulthood past. With Yashar, I make the present, and hopefully, the future. With you, I become that twenty-year-old girl again. With him, I am the present me, with all the life experiences I’ve had.”
He forced a smile.
“I love you, Peymaan. I really do. You see something in me that you, and only you, can see. And it’s refreshing.”
“It’s true. You’re like that to me too.”
“We both deserved this second chance. We owed it to ourselves. Life is short after all.”
He looked down. Like the old times when he was a shy college boy. “Kiss me,” I said.
The next day, he took me to Mount Royal, the top of a hill from where most of Montreal could be seen. We were both calm, as if we had resolved the mystery of our relationship once and for all. We took our first picture together. The contrast of his skin tone with mine is the first thing noticeable in that photo.
I left Montreal the next morning.
On my way back to Massachusetts, as I passed the hills of Vermont covered in colorful fall trees and mysterious fogs, I listened to Cohen’s album on repeat again. I was going back to the present, to Yashar.
Did I ever love you?
Does it really matter?
Did I ever fight you?
You don’t need to answer.
In the morning of November 10, 2016, I opened my eyes to a text message from Yashar, my husband, “Darling! Leonard Cohen passed away.” His message was followed by the sad emoji face. He was in Iran, visiting his family.
That morning I felt so exhausted; physically and emotionally. At the night of the election, I had stayed awake until 4am until Donald Trump gave his speech. The next day, I had spent most of my time reading the news, trying to make any sense of what had just happened. All the online polls had promised Hilary’s victory.
That night, I couldn’t sleep at all. What was about to happen to me, to us, as the immigrants in this country? And now, two days after, my most favorite living poet, Leonard Cohen, had passed away.
Another message came from Yashar. He had sent me the link to Cohen’s song, I’m Your Man, on Youtube. I started crying.
As I listened to Leonard Cohen saying that he was my man, I sent a text message to Peymaan, “My dear. Did you hear Cohen passed away?” He didn’t reply right away. I opened Facebook, and saw that he had already changed his profile picture to one of the last pictures of Leonard Cohen. In it he’s wearing a suit with a hat, and his right hand is on his heart. “Whenever I listen to him, I think of you,” Peymaan sent a reply.
I cried almost all day long. At the end of the day, I no longer knew for what cause I was crying; for losing Cohen and his romantic poems, or for the frightening future ahead of Yashar and me in the US.
