Garbage swirls in the thick breeze as I trudge along the sidewalk in front of Crown Center, a tall facade of steel tubing and acres of glass and colored panels tied with bows.  My mother-in-law is escorting me into the cold dreary end to a cold dreary day.  The pedestrians we meet are hurrying through the darkness with pained looks on their faces.  Taillights brighten and dull in slow retreat from downtown, carrying silhouettes into temporary suburban exile.

Eventually we find a bank of thick glass doors advertised by banner-sized emoticons that blurt ENTERTAIN THE POSSIBILITIES!  We enter into Christmas and stylish tile and expensive brand name stores, with everything reflecting in the dark skylights far overhead.  My mother-in-law is covered in a shapeless black niqab that conceals everything but her face.  I’m wearing a crimson hijab wrapped around my long hair and a gray ribbed sweaterdress that hangs from my bony shoulders.  No wonder people are staring at us – we look like a frowning storm cloud and a windsock on a pole.  We pause at a mall directory backlit with neon, then click-click-click in our dress shoes toward The American Restaurant and its legendary four star cuisine.

I immediately feel out of place in the refined elegance of its interior.  The dinner crowd is thinned by the recession, strung out across plush booths and long tables draped in white linen tablecloths.  Candlesticks flicker everywhere, making wine and water glasses shiny, giving people reflective eyes.  Servers bustle around in uniforms of white dress shirts and black pants, delivering tiny entrees on huge plates and helping people like me pronounce “arugula” and “remoulade”.  I try to make myself innocuous, tilting forward so my bangs screen my lazy eye and patting down my hijab.

The hostess is a statuesque black girl with tiny University of Missouri studs in her earlobes.  She announces “Your party is this way!” in a twangy voice and sails across the dining room, closely followed by my mother-in-law.  I lag behind on backless heels that are supposed to be sophisticated but just feel uncomfortable.

She leads us to a plush semi-circular booth tucked into an intimate corner.  My first impression is three intent faces, six hunched shoulders, a million words flying back and forth in Farsi.  This is what happens when Saman’s uncles – Majnoon, Nasser, and Gamal – gather for dinner.  But Saman himself is nowhere to be seen.  I haven’t earned my phone privileges back so I can’t call and ask him where he is.  I have to settle for being told he’s tardy as usual, dawdling at the office.

As women my mother-in-law and I are greeted with respectful nods.  There’s an outbreak of hugging and cheek-kissing between the men when Saman finally shows up.  He slides into the booth next to me, taking the spot I warmed, blocking me in.  Under the table his hand pulls up my hem and gropes beneath it, checking to see if I’m wearing the garter belt and thigh highs he recently bought me.  As if.

Majnoon looks like a raisiny Albert Einstein.  His swarthy face is centered in a riot of wispy salt-and-pepper hair and his suit is rumpled, tie askew.  He emigrated before the Shah fell, which is cited as proof of his business acumen – “Uncle Majnoon chose to make a fortune in America rather than lose one in Iran”.  Kansas City has been his adopted home for longer than I’ve been alive.  He doesn’t have good things to say about the city, and the city doesn’t have good things to say about him either.  Sometimes his name appears in The Kansas City Star because of his run-ins with the City Council over zoning and assessments.

Next to him Nasser is a cheerful jewelry display who can’t shut up.  He’s involved in everyone’s life, a torrent of gossip and prying questions.  Almost every liver-spotted finger is adorned with a gaudy ring, both his wattled wrists are covered in bracelets.  Loose skin cascades from his chin into his collar, tight with a blue power tie.  My mother-in-law calls him a faldhi – old woman – behind his back, but he just seems like a politician to me.

Gamal is the youngest of the uncles, only a decade older than Saman.  He’s also the most religious, a veritable mullah who can cite extended passages in the Quran from memory and argue the finer points of sharia.  I’ve heard him describe America as godless and make jokes about living in the heart of the Great Satan.  That’s why he spends most of his time in Iran, where his wife and children still reside.  His suit is cheap and ill-fitting and he wears a full beard, “the mark of the believer” as he calls it.  He must get stopped by airport security all the time.

Majnoon is on a first-name basis with the wait staff.  The wait staff are on a last-name basis with him.  “Mr. Aforezeh!” they say with stilted respect whenever he ropes them into conversation about the wine list or some new entree.  Meanwhile I watch Saman for behavioral cues.  He just sits there, a slouching lump of ease, focused more on his mother than me.

I say nothing and try to fade into invisibility.  That seems to work until a waiter glances my direction and asks, “Is this one of the Aforezeh daughters?”

Majnoon chuckles indulgently. “No, Paul.  This is a happy addition to our family.  My nephew’s wife Nooshin.  They’ve been married five years now.  You haven’t met her before because they just moved here.”

Becoming the center of attention makes my skin crawl, but I force a smile anyway.

Majnoon is drinking cabernet that costs $100 a bottle, a corruption associated with his many decades in America.  The rest of us stick to ice water flavored with lemon wedges.  When it’s time to order, the men pause to debate which items on the menu are halal.  Majnoon has gotten loose in his practice – “bismillah” as Gamal calls it, a reference to invoking God’s blessing on food, any food, even pork.  The youngest uncle is an unwavering authority, steering us away from most of the menu.  When Saman orders for me, he chooses the gnocchi with truffle mole.

Conversation turns to male things – cars, sports teams, taxes this and taxes that.  My mother-in-law dozes in an upright position.  Watching me all day has tired her out, I guess.  I notice there are too many forks in my place setting, and maybe too many knives.  Are they breeding?  I eye my solitary spoon suspiciously, wondering if it will suddenly bud into twins through some inexplicable process of silverware mitosis.

I’m relieved when the entrees finally arrive, giving us the perfect excuse to lapse into silence while Majnoon luxuriates in his role as elder, talking in a raspy voice.  He discusses the latest events in Iran, everything from the abortive Green Revolution to gas rationing.  He brags about the family’s status in America, a tenuous foothold in the middle class underwritten by dollar stores and Subway franchises.  He praises Saman for his contributions to the family business, first in Iran, now here in America.  Saman bows his head modestly, a little embarrassed.  My mother-in-law beams with naked pride.

Eventually Nasser tires of Majnoon’s voice and shifts the conversation to me, asking how I like Kansas City.  I glance across the dining room at the massive windows.  They glitter with a nighttime vista of half-lit skyscrapers with navigation beacons pulsing on top, malls trimmed in Christmas lights, illuminated fountains.  The pattern of lights is familiar and unfamiliar at the same time.  I start to answer truthfully – this place is still new to me, since I spent last month wandering southern California – but then Saman squeezes my thigh under the table.  Hard.  I’m never to speak of our brief separation.  It never happened.

Gamal picks crumbs out of his beard, nodding sympathetically.  He even sounds like a mullah when he talks, using the measured cadence of a Quran reading.  “Ah, the burdens of following your husband to a new place.  But is it not fulfilling to make a house into a home?”

I say “If you think it’s so great, why don’t you try it yourself sometime?” but just in my head, not out loud.

Nasser’s bracelets jangle as he saws at charred beef flesh.  His gaze slides toward Saman, then me.  “So you lovebirds.  Planning to start a family soon?”

“Yes we are, God willing,” my husband nods.  His hairy hand pats mine fondly.  This is the man who threw away my birth control pills.

The room seems to mist over and I blink rapidly, watching halos form around sources of light.  I can’t fake my period forever.  I wonder how long before any residual hormones wear off, before I become pregnant.  I almost knock over my water glass reaching for it.

His uncles bump shoulders in amusement, smiling at their niece-in-law’s perceived shyness.  Meanwhile Saman is noticing my distress and warning about the late night, the early morning.  That leads to a parting round of conversation, a long Persian goodbye.  I hover on the periphery.  I can’t bring myself to nod, can’t bring myself to make conversational noises.  I just sink deeper and deeper into the cushioned leather, tilting my good eye upward to the glassed-in ceiling.  I’m trying to glimpse the moon through the dark overcast sky, but I don’t know where to look, or even if there’s a moon to see at all.