It starts with a microphone screeching to life in a brief wail of feedback.  Then a couple of coughs – not deep ones, just a man clearing his throat.  Finally a voice begins chanting in mellifluous Arabic.  The call to prayer swells through the apartment and into our bedroom:

God is the most great. God is the most great.
God is the most great. God is the most great.
I bear witness that there is no god except the One God.
I bear witness that there is no god except the One God.
I bear witness that Muhammad is the messenger of God.
I bear witness that Muhammad is the messenger of God.
Come to pray! Come to pray!
Come to success! Come to success!
God is the most great. God is the most great.
There is no god worthy of worship except the One God.

There’s a pause of scratchy background noise, like a tape recording turned up too loud.  Then the noon prayer begins.  It’s the second of five daily prayers in Islam.  I peek out of the bedroom.  My mother-in-law has taken over the living room, creakily struggling to stand and then bending down again.  Her favorite muezzin from Iran is broadcasting from the stereo.  He sells more tapes and CDs than most Persian pop stars.

I retreat behind the bedroom door and flop on the bed.  I’m pretending to have my period.  Menstruation is the only form of birth control I have left.  Saman is terrified of PMS and periods and female hygiene products.  Maybe most men are, I don’t know.  Having my period also means I’m religiously unclean.  I can’t touch a Quran or enter a mosque.  Even better, no praying with my mother-in-law allowed.  What a relief!

Of course, I can’t fake my period forever.  But I’m so desperate I don’t care about forever.  I just want to make it through today – without getting pregnant, please God, please.

“Daughter-in-law!”  My mother-in-law’s voice is a harbor horn.  “Come here, daughter-in-law!  I have a Quranic tape for you to listen to!”

Grumbling, I dawdle out to the living room.  My mother-in-law and I have a relationship that’s strained at best, insufferable at worst.  She never liked me.  I’m not up to the standards of Azovidegh women and definitely not good enough for her son.  My lazy eye is the Devil’s mark, or just proof that I’m retarded.  Why do I have to be so tall, so skinny?  My Farsi has improved but I still don’t speak it like a real Iranian.  I have the grace of a donkey.  And when am I finally going to give Saman a son?  After a few minutes around her, what little self-confidence I have is gone.  Extended visits leave me shattered and mute.

My mother-in-law is holding out a cassette tape.  “Here.  Take this.  You can’t pray with me, but you can still listen to the Quran.”

“Okay,” I sigh.  I don’t want to listen to a scripture reading.  I want to listen to the music that Nick sent me, my last trace of him.

“I see you’re disappointed that you can’t pray.  What a typical American reaction.  Here women want to do everything that men do.  They think being unable to pray during their cycle is unfair.”  She laughs, a mocking noise.  “Only God knows the pains we suffer during our cycle.  It is truly proof of His mercy that we are excused from prayer.”

I’m looking down at the tape.  Its label is a cursive challenge of right-to-left swirls and dots.  I know how to speak Farsi, but I’ve never been much good at reading it.

“You’ll learn that old age has at least one benefit.  Your monthly cycle will end and you can pray every day.  It’s God’s way of bringing us closer to Him as we near death.  Blessed is God and His infinite mercy!”

“Blessed is God and His infinite mercy,” I echo.

My mother-in-law settles herself in Saman’s recliner.  I’m not allowed to sit there.  It’s “his” recliner, not ours.  But my husband never says a word to her when she sits in it.  He just moves humbly to the couch.  Extending the footrest, she fixes me with a sour look.

“What?”  I clutch the tape to my flat chest, bracing myself.  “What have I done wrong now?”

“Can’t you even tell time, daughter-in-law?”

Stupid me.  It’s almost half-past noon.  Her soap opera will be on.  She wants a cup of honeyed tea and a dish of pistachios.  I hurry into the kitchen.

Her disapproval chases after me.  “Your eyebrows.  They look like mustaches.  You need to pluck them.”

I start to defend myself – “I like thick eyebrows…!” – but what’s the use.  I’m indefensible.

I return with a serving tray of tea and nuts.  I place the tray on a stack of magazines.  The stack was sanitized for my mother-in-law’s benefit.  The Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition has vanished, and every abused copy of Maxim too.  Saman is such a hypocrite.

My mother-in-law glances around the apartment, frowning.  Life’s disappointments are carved deeply into her face, a premature aging blamed on the Azovidegh family’s declining status in Iran.  I think there are other reasons she’s in her 57th year but looks older by a decade.  Her arranged marriage has produced three sons and two daughters and little if any happiness.  She originally came from Tuzbak, an oasis village in the great salt desert of Dasht-e-Kavir.  The only time I asked about her ancestral home, she described an upbringing of hardships – sandstorms that blew salt instead of sand, outhouses and kerosene lamps and always being hungry, a solitary mosque with no minaret that barred female worshippers.

“Where did you put the remote?” she finally snaps.

I startle and look around.  “Um…”

“Well, don’t just stand there with your mouth hanging open.  Find it!”

All my frantic searching accomplishes nothing.  Other than making me look like a lazy wife who doesn’t stay on top of her household.  Saman has managed to lose the remote again.

“I’ll miss the beginning!” my mother-in-law wails.

I resort to turning on the television and satellite box by hand.  Saman prefers to watch American TV but still has a glut of channels from the Middle East, including Jame-Jam from Iran.  The soap opera is an Egyptian one with Farsi subtitles.  I glimpse too-pretty actors on a cheap interior set.  I don’t know the characters and plotlines, and I don’t particularly care to.  I’m not really a soap opera kind of girl.

She only moves her eyes toward me.  “Are you going to listen to the tape now?”

“I guess so.”

“The reading is Sura 4.”  Her eyes go back to the television.

I’m vaguely familiar with Sura 4.  A chapter of the Quran better known as “Women”.  I’ve tried to put as much distance between me and it as possible.  Raping women if they’re non-believers?  Up to four wives, or temporary marriages to a prostitute?  Husbands beating their wives with God’s sanction?  That’s not my Islam.

I drift into the kitchen.  The tape is right where I left it, on the counter next to the honey.  Its inscrutable Farsi label is an accusation.  Saman isn’t the only hypocrite here.  What is my life now but a scene from Sura 4?  A traditional Iranian man has certain expectations, and so does his family.  But I chose this marriage anyway.  It was a choice made naively, fearfully, even stupidly – but it was still a choice.  The only real choice I’ve ever made about myself.  That’s why I hover miserably, pawing at my wet cheeks with a dishcloth.  Unmaking my choice is the same as unmaking the girl who made it, the wife who’s lived it.  What will I be left with if I unmake me?