Page 9 of The Sun Sister
‘Not really, no. Or at least, compared to others, I don’t. I was born in New York, as were my siblings, so we are Americans. As my father always says, the nation gave my parents safe harbour when they needed it and we must honour their ways as well as the old ways.’
‘Where were your parents born?’ I asked her.
‘In Iran...or Persia, as we all prefer to call it at home. It is a much prettier name, don’t you think?’
‘Yes, I do. So your parents had to leave their country against their will?’
‘Yes. They both came to America as children with their parents after the fall of the Shah.’
‘The Shah?’
‘He was the king of Iran and very Western in his ideals. The extremists in our country didn’t like this, so anyone who was related to him had to flee for their lives.’
‘So if he was a king, does that make you, like, royalty?’
‘Well,’ Mariam smiled, ‘technically, yes, but it is not like European royalty – there are many hundreds of us related to him...cousins, second, third or fourth by marriage. I suppose you would say in the West that my family was high-born.’
‘Jeez! I have a princess working for me!’
‘Who knows, if things had been different? I may well have become one if I had married the right man.’
I didn’t like to say that I’d been joking, but as I looked at Mariam, things fell into place. Her air of containment, her self-assurance, her perfect manners...maybe these were things that only hundreds of years of aristocratic breeding could provide.
‘What about you, Electra? Where is your family from?’
‘I have no idea,’ I answered, draining my champagne. ‘I was adopted when I was a baby.’
‘And you’ve never thought to investigate your past?’
‘No. What is the point in looking back when you can’t change the past? I only ever look forward.’
‘Then you’d better not meet my father.’ Mariam’s eyes danced with mirth. ‘He is always telling stories of the life he led with my grandparents in Iran. And the stories of our forebears who lived many hundreds of years ago. They are very beautiful and I loved listening to them as a child.’
‘Yeah, well, all I got wereGrimm’sFairy Tales, and the stories always had a scary witch or a troll and frightened me senseless.’
‘Our stories have those too, but they are calleddjinns. They do terrible things to people.’ Mariam sipped her water, eyeing me over the rim of the glass. ‘Papa always says that our history provides the carpet on which we stand and from which we can fly. Maybe one day you will want to find out your own history. Now, would you be up to listening while I go through the Paris schedule?’
An hour later, Mariam went back to her own seat to type up the notes she’d taken during our chat. I reclined my seat and watched as the sky began to darken outside, heralding the European night. Somewhere under that darkness lay my family home – or at least, the home of us disparate kids who Pa had collected from around the world.
I’d never really minded that we weren’t blood-related, but listening to Mariam talk about her roots – and watching her continue a centuries-old culture that she still celebrated on a private jet bound for Paris – made me almost envious.
I thought of the letter from Pa sitting somewhere in my New York apartment...I didn’t even know where it was. As I hadn’t opened it and it was most likely lost, I’d probably never get the chance to find out about my past. Maybe ‘The Hoff’ – as I’d privately nicknamed Pa’s lawyer – could shed some light on it...And I remembered that there were also those numbers on the armillary sphere that Ally said could pinpoint where we had originally come from. Suddenly, it felt like the most important thing in the world to find Pa’s letter, almost important enough to ask the pilot to turn back just so I could rifle through my drawers in search of it. At the time, when I’d arrived back in New York after the quasi-memorial that had been arranged because Pa had apparently decided to get himself buried at sea before we arrived at Atlantis, I’d been so angry I hadn’t wanted to know.
Why were you angry, Electra?
The therapist’s words rang in my ears. The truth was, I didn’t know the answer. I seemed to have been angry ever since I could walk and talk, and probably before that too. All my sisters loved to tell me how I’d screamed the place down as a baby and things hadn’t gotten much better as I’d grown up. I certainly couldn’t blame it on my upbringing, which had been pretty perfect, although odd, given the fact we were all adopted and the family pics looked spookily like a Gap ad due to our different ethnicities. If I ever questioned it, Pa’s answer was always that he’d chosen us especially to be his daughters and that had seemed to pacify my sisters, but not me. I wanted to knowwhy. The chances were, now he was dead, I’d never find out.
‘An hour to landing, Miss D’Aplièse,’ the attendant said as she refilled my glass. ‘Can I get you anything else?’
‘No thanks.’ I closed my eyes and hoped that my contact in Paris had been as good as his word and delivered what I needed to my hotel, because I was desperate for a line. When I was clean, my brain began to work, and I started to think about Pa, about my sisters, my life...and I just wasn’t comfortable doing that. Not right now anyway.
For a change, I actually enjoyed the shoot. Spring in Paris – when the sun was out anyway – was crazily beautiful and if I felt I belonged in any city, it was right here. We were in the Jardin des Plantes,which was awash with cherry blossom, irises and peonies, and everything felt new and fresh. It also helped that I liked the photographer. We finished way ahead of schedule and continued the chemistry in my hotel room that afternoon.
‘What are you doing living in New York?’ Maxime asked me in French as we drank tea from delicate china cups in bed then used the tray to do a line. ‘You have a European soul.’
‘You know, I’m not really sure,’ I sighed. ‘That’s where Susie, my agent, is and it made sense to be near her.’
‘Your modelling “maman”, you mean?’ he teased me. ‘You’re a big girl now, Electra, and can make your own decisions. Live here, then we can do this more often,’ he said as he clambered out of bed and disappeared into the bathroom to take a shower.
