It was in Falun that my dad decided my sister Fatti was going to marry one of Mehmed’s brothers. Mehmed lived in Södertälje and was one of the first to move to Sweden; he came even before the Shah was overthrown and Khomeini had us all under surveillance and was in the process of making the country into something better and which maybe one day it actually will be. But Fatti had eavesdropped on the conversations between Dad and Mehmed — she had been told to stay out of the way — by crouching down outside the door to the living room and when she crept back to bed in the room that we shared I heard her cry.
I got up and crawled into bed with her, which is something we always do when someone is sad or has a nightmare or is just alone. Fatti dredged up the terrible words she had just heard through the closed door, sobbing as she told me. She had heard Mehmed and Dad agree to marry her to Mehmed’s brother Faruk. Both of us knew who he was, he had a little shop in Hedemora and everyone took it for granted that Mehmed was supporting him since there were never any customers in there. Faruk often came to visit us at the weekends. Neither Fatti nor I liked him. He was nice, but perhaps it was that he was too nice, so you actually became afraid of him. And now Fatti was going to have to marry him.
She said she would run away, but she didn’t know where to. We both knew you can’t run away from your father; he would look for you for a thousand years and finally find you. I said this to my sister and that there had to be another way for her to escape a marriage with Faruk. Our mother was not going to be a help; she never did anything without asking Dad first, but maybe Nasrin could stand up to him. The following day was Midsummer’s Eve. I remember that Fatti and I walked down to the lake through the birch trees and talked with Nasrin. But Nana just got angry and said that Fatti should be grateful to get someone like Mehmed as a relative. I’ll never forget the fact that Nasrin talked about Mehmed the whole time even though Faruk was the man Fatti was supposed to marry. I could see how desperate Fatti was getting. Nasrin had been her last hope. She pleaded with her for help but Nasrin just kept on talking about how wonderful it would be to have such a well-established man as Mehmed in the family.
