Playing With Fire
By Sarah Bahiraei
There's a saying that most of marriage is shouting, ‘What?’ to each other from other rooms. If I weren’t reading this text message at such a serious moment in my marriage, I would have laughed at the tired relationship stereotype coming true, like leaving the toilet seat up or the inability to agree on a restaurant.
I repeat the immigration attorney’s text to my husband as I stand outside the bathroom of our Turkish apartment, my voice competing with the gushing shower head's echo bouncing off the tiles. I had taken my first positive pregnancy test a few days earlier, and my hand inadvertently touches my stomach while I struggle to push down the anxiety creeping over my chest and up my neck.
“He wrote,”—I take a deep breath to steady my voice—“‘You will most likely NEVER be able to immigrate to the United States.’” I stare at the glowing screen and the five capitalized letters. Each word from the attorney’s message punctuates the darkness of the hallway. The finality of the sentence chills the air despite the steam coming from the shower.
For the entirety of our relationship, my husband’s immigration process has attached itself like an extra appendage. It's been an unwanted shadow following us everywhere we go. Marrying someone from a country banned from entering the U.S. meant finding ourselves thrown amid bureaucratic limbo. It meant being at the mercy of politicians who see others like chess pieces used for their advantage.
Resting my forehead against the bathroom door frame, I wonder why we can never feel joy with no other competing emotion. I think of the new life I’m carrying and of the celebratory calls made to my parents on the other side of the Atlantic. Grief always seems to thread itself over and under life’s happy moments.
With my eyes closed, I brace myself for a response from the shower. When there is none, I'm half-convinced he still hasn't heard me but I know he has. The little shred of hope deflates from within us both and circles down the drain.
***
We sit together on a jagged boulder, one of many that riddle Turkey’s landscape. We’re newly dating and come from opposite sides of the world. I'm a middle-class girl from the upper Midwest and have led a pretty uneventful life, up until this moment. He’s a boisterous, charismatic boy from Iran, who has crossed borders in search of safety and peace.
In front of us, buses roll in and deposit sleepy-eyed tourists, armed with backpacks and selfie-sticks. They make their way around the tall, spindly rock formations famous in this area of the country. The trees around us are bare, having lost their leaves a couple of months before. We warm up by drinking hot apple tea. He jokes about the sightseers, his smile starting at the corner of his eyes before lighting up his entire face. It’s a warmth palpable to everyone around him.
He tells me how he fled his home country, leaving behind everything he had ever known. He had to build his life from the ground up, learning the language of a country in which he didn’t intend to stay. He shares his dream of living in a place that is safe and stable. He fled home, he tells me, not for a better life, but for life itself.
Three countries define a refugee, he explains. The first is their homeland, a place that is no longer safe. The second is the country to which they flee. This is where many become stuck, caught amid red tape and hoops to jump through—immigration purgatory. The third is the country where they someday hope to resettle, but for many, this never comes true.
I struggle to understand what he means, so he grabs my hand. “See, your life is like this,” he says as he turns my wrist so my flattened palm faces up, solid and unmoving. “But my life is like this.” Still holding onto me, he takes his free hand from his coat pocket and shakes it back and forth.
We watch the tourists linger at the tea stand, looking for warm drinks. The late winter sun is strong and I squint into the light, straining to find the words to respond. I hold his story like a fragile gift, but I’m aware I have little to offer back, especially when my life is as steady as my flexed hand and his as shaky as the bare tree branches reaching for the sky.
***
Shortly after getting engaged, a new administration arrives and enacts a controversial travel ban, forbidding seven countries from entering its borders. The new jewelry on my left-hand sparkles in the light but our future together in the U.S. looks bleak. We grow weary of the world's shifting opinion on the suffering of brown people, going from indifference to suspicious to downright hostile. I’m ashamed the leaders of my home country push into the shadows those who look like the boy with the blazing smile. We patch together a wedding overseas, recalibrating our dreams of getting married in my hometown.
A woman pulls me aside one day and warns me of the person to whom I am about to pledge my life. “You’re playing with fire,” she cautions as if she knew more about my relationship than I did. Her unsolicited advice felt like it was missing words. If I had dared to pull back the layers, a deeper, more malicious meaning would appear. Where is the fire? I want to ask. Is it in a refugee? An immigrant? A person with skin a shade too dark? The interaction is like a bucket of ice water thrown over the festivities, an opposite emotion splashed across the colorful canvas.
We get married on a windy day, my family making the trek across the ocean to celebrate. They love him and his crinkly-eyed smile, and they don’t smell any type of fire. We exchange vows, rings, and a kiss. We promise to shoulder the other’s hardship even if it’s beyond our understanding. We vow to stand next to each other no matter how tightly sorrow twists itself among joy, no matter if life brings fires.
***
It’s been over a year since I was standing in the bathroom doorway when my daughter was once a tiny peanut hidden away. Now she’s here—and we’re still here. Nothing has changed in my husband’s immigration process, hanging like an ever-present cinder block around our necks. The attorney’s blunt words only add to the weight. Out of the three countries for refugees, what will this place be for our daughter?
I nurse a fussy baby who’s no longer inside of me, who’s no longer pink and new, who pulls at my hair and grabs the socks off her toes. When she’s finished, I pass her to my husband and he nestles his face against hers. She reaches for his nose and he pretends to bite her fingers, eliciting from her a happy squawk. He sings his version of Baby Shark, inserting her name into the lyrics. Her mouth is open in a grin, revealing two tiny teeth.
Standing with my back against the heater, palms spread over the warm grates, I watch them play on the bed. Tomatoes and chicken legs roast in the oven sending wafts of turmeric and black pepper throughout the apartment. There’s a Persian tapestry hanging on the wall with different shades of blue sewn together forming a border of tulips. The corner of the fabric has detached itself draping like an unfurled banner, a nod to what was once home.
If this is what the woman meant by playing with fire, then I don’t mind. Isn’t that what marriage is? Isn’t it choosing to enter into life with someone who holds pain and trusting they’re doing the same with you? If this is fire, then it’s a symbol of hope, a light in the darkness. When injustice pushes in from every corner, this fire in front of me is burning stronger. I look at my husband and baby, two pairs of penny-colored eyes, two swatches of dark hair. They both belong here and they both belong there, I think to myself. And their fire can change the world.
With his mouth close to her ear, my husband sings a string of soft words and our daughter quiets, content to have her dad’s voice cover her like a blanket. “What are you saying?” I ask him, my Farsi not good enough to understand. Four years later and there are new circles under his eyes and unshaven whiskers along his jaw. But that same smile is still there, the kind that sets the entire room ablaze. He winks at our daughter, like they share a secret, and continues to sing.
Guest essay written by Sarah Bahiraei. Sarah hopped a plane to Turkey in 2014 with a one-way ticket in hand. She lives there with her husband, Afshin, and daughter, Esther. She writes about faith, immigration, and living in the in-between on her blog onefootonboth.com.
This essay was the first place winner in our Love After Babies essay contest for our Exhale creative community. To learn more about Exhale, visit www.exhalecreativity.com.