The Temporary Bride
A Memoir of Love and Food in Iran
by Jennifer Klinec
Publisher: Abacus (2014)

You may recall beautiful blogs in iranian.com about a foreign woman's love affair in Iran. The Temporary Bride has now been published as a memoir by author Jennifer Klinec.

Publisher's Note: In her thirties, Klinec abandons a corporate job to launch a cooking school from her London flat. Raised in Canada to Hungarian-Croatian parents, she has already travelled to countries most people are fearful of, in search of ancient recipes. Her quest leads her to Iran where, hair discreetly covered and eyes modest, she is introduced to a local woman who will teach her the secrets of the Persian kitchen. Vahid is suspicious of the strange foreigner who turns up in his mother’s kitchen; he is unused to seeing an independent woman. But a compelling attraction pulls them together and then pits them against harsh Iranian laws and customs. Getting under the skin of one of the most complex and fascinating nations on earth, The Temporary Bride is a soaring story of being loved, being fed, and the struggle to belong.

EXCERPT

We choose Imam Square as our meeting place, a vast meidan the size of fifteen American football fields. We are due to meet somewhere near the fountains in the centre, opposite the breathtaking tiled heights of the Shah mosque. I pass through the stone pillars of the western entry gate, slipping into the open-air corridors that shield me from the sun.The long curved archways of honey-coloured stone resonate with the rattling of idling taxis and the giggles of schoolchildren. As I walk I hear the heavy footsteps of the turbaned mullahs Iranians call ‘cabbageheads’. Their surly bodyguards force a path through by shoving people roughly to one side. Young men hopeful of an emigration romance watch out for German tourists, waiting to tell them they have beautiful eyes.

I’ve already dreamed this moment in my head. I know how I want it to be. I hope he’ll notice my new coat, how its colour makes my eyes seem more green. At the edge of my scarf I’ve fastened my hair with a clip to the side to show off the streaks of blonde that have emerged from afternoons in Azadeh’s courtyard, exposing my head and arms to the late afternoon sun.

It isn’t lost on me, all the effort I am making, to go and meet a boy in a square on this clear blue morning. I feel a flutter in my stomach at the prospect, a nervousness that makes me light-headed. If I had anyone to tell, they might laugh at me, wilfully succumbing to courtship, here in this most hopeless of places.

I know Vahid’s family have consented for him to follow me here only because it could never have occurred to them. When his father had loaned him fifty dollars and his mother had tucked a lunch of lavosh, cucumber, mint and cheese, into his travel bag, they were thinking of him as my host and protector. They had enjoyed the sweet, temporary nest I had made for myself in their suburban Yazdi home and smiled at my quirky Western socialisation, seeing me as bold and animated where their daughter and nieces were reserved and shy, but they had never imagined the unthinkable.

For a traditional Yazdi family, a relationship was a mathematical formula: the correct variables of age, beauty, morality and finances were entered and the output was a successful, peaceful marriage. It couldn’t be, therefore, that their Iranian son could feel desire for someone six years his senior, someone who didn’t come to him pure and untouched. I was an amusing visitor from another world and soon enough I should return to it, fading quietly into an anecdote brought up over tea or a postcard taped onto the fridge; a photograph kept in a shoebox.There was nothing in their minds to worry about, for Vahid could never love such a girl as me.

I see him through the crowds before he sees me. He is sitting on a stone bench, his chin tilted downwards. His brown eyes look tired and his clothes are wrinkled from the six-hour bus journey from Yazd. Lying at his feet is a worn army duffel bag and the canvas circle of a folded Iranian tent. He’d said he had an uncle in Esfahan, but he has come prepared to sleep in a nearby park among the travellers you see without money for a hotel, families who barbecue chickens and boil kettles on open gas flames.A sense of responsibility for him flares up in me. We are in this new city: together, alone.

‘Hi, Jenny,’ he says, looking in the opposite direction when I sit down beside him. ‘Are you fine?’

He runs his fingers quickly along my hand to let me know that he is happy to see me. It has been six days since we’d last seen each other. We blush and exchange shy glances, gently pressing our ankles together. Vahid is more nervous than I have ever seen him. His face is even sterner than usual, his mouth pulled into a tight line. He tells me he has tried to dress like a baazgashteh, an Iranian emigrant coming back as a tourist. He wears a golf shirt two sizes too large, printed with a consult- ing firm’s logo, a gift his uncle had brought him from America. A National Geographic tote bag hangs from his shoulder, a Nike windbreaker is looped around his waist. He asks for my guidebook so he can carry it openly, the front cover facing outwards at all times. He hopes by looking as if he, too, is a foreigner in this country, maybe we’ll be left alone.

As we start walking it startles me to realise how out of place he is here. I feel a stab of guilt for encouraging him to come find me again, for tampering with his innocent and planned out life. In Yazd he’d always seemed agile and in control, switching smoothly between the local dialect he used with bazaaris and taxi drivers, and an educated Tehrani accent. He’d been fully at ease, wandering freely, knowing every crooked lane. Now he must constantly ask for directions, pausing every second or third street. He speaks loudly, unconvincingly, to me in English, a ruse to make it seem to outsiders that we have come here together from the same part of the world.

I take him back to my guest house and introduce him as my cousin. I tuck his tent under my bed and bring him soap and a towel to wash his face. I am clueless how such a thing can be managed, ashamed at how Vahid will be scrutinised by Azadeh. When she arrives I can tell she has no time for him, that he is what she would call ‘traditional’ in a dismissive, derisory way. His formal courtesies and gestures she returns with minimal interest. I can see by her face she pities me for being saddled with such a relative for a companion, that it is only for me she tolerates his presence, allowing him to linger on the veranda outside my room.

I make up a tray for Vahid of the leftovers I’d cooked with Ali and we eat lunch together. We don’t kiss or touch each other, but quietly dip our spoons into the same bowl and tear pieces of bread. It is enough to sit beside him, to share a meal.

Esfahan should be a romantic place to meet again, a city of pleasure gardens, wooden palaces painted with peacocks and nightingales, and a river criss-crossed with softly lit bridges. But in Iran, in this new city, we are growing accustomed to behaving like strangers.

See Excerpt 2

The Temporary Bride is available on Amazon.com