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much as possible. Would you be willing?
    Maryam would have been more than willing, ordinarily, but now she felt an inner pinch of resistance. Why should they have to put on these ethnic demonstrations? Let the Donaldsons go to the Smithsonian for that! she thought peevishly. Let them read National Geographic! All she said to Ziba, though, was, Won't it be too much for you, on top of your weekend in Washington?
    Too much? Why, no, Ziba said. Or ... are you saying it's too much for you?
    Certainly not. I'm not the one going to Washington! But the Haftseen table, for instance. It would need to be set up ahead of time, and you will both be away.
    There was no reason whatsoever that the table should be set up ahead of time. And anyhow, they were free to schedule this for any date they liked. Surely Ziba must have realized that Maryam was just inventing excuses, but she drew the wrong conclusion. She said, Oh! You prefer to give the dinner at your house?
    My house? Well, bu t Of course! I should have thought! It's just that our house has more room. If you prefer your house, though . . .
    Well, it's true that my house is quite small, Maryam said. But you're the one who's cooking. You should get to choose.
    You'll be doing the rest of it, though the decorating, the cleani ng up afterward. Your house makes more sense.
    No, that's okay, Ziba said. We'll use your house. That will be just fine.
    So Maryam invited the Donaldsons to her house.
    Ten days before the party, Sami took her to Rockville for some of the more exotic ingredients. (It was a longer trip than she felt comfortable driving alone.) Traffic on I-95 was bumper to bumper, and Sami muttered under his breath whenever the stream of red taillights lit up in front of them. We should just be glad this place is as close as it is, Maryam told him. When I first came to this country, your grandmother had to mail most of my spices from Iran.
    She could see those parcels still, clumsily stitched-together cloth bundles bulging with sumac and dried fenugreek leaves and tiny, blackened dried limes, the homemade cardboard address tags hand-lettered in her mother's shaky English. What we couldn't get shipped, we cheated on, she said. We traded around our secret tricks, the other wives and I. Pomegranate sauce made with frozen concentrated Welch's grape juice and tinned pumpkin-pie filling; I remember that one. Yogurt curd made with skim milk and goat cheese whirled in the blender.
    In those days, all of their friends had been Iranian, all more or less in the same situation as Maryam and Kiyan. (At one of their big poker parties a wife could call, Agha doctor! and every man in the room could answer, Yes?) Where were those people now? Well, many had gone back home, of course. Others had moved on to other American cities. But some, she knew, remained right here in Baltimore; only she had lost touch with them. Politics had increasingly complicated matters, for one thing. Who supported the Shah? Who did not? Then after the Revolution you could be sure that most of the new arrivals had definitely supported the Shah, had perhaps even held high positions with the secret police, and it was wiser to avoid them altogether. Besides, Kiyan was dead by then and she no longer felt comfortable in that two-by-two social circle.
    If only your father had lived to see the Shah overthrown! she said to Sami. He would have been so happy.
    For about three and a half minutes, Sami said.
    Well, yes.
    He would hate to hear what's going on there now.
    Yes, of course.
    She'd been listening to music from home one day on Kiyan's old shortwave radio while she ironed. Already there'd been public demonstrations and rumors of unrest, but even the experts had been unable to predict the outcome. And then in midnote the music had stopped and there was a long silence, broken at last by a man announcing, quietly and levelly, This is the voice of the Revolution. A thrill had run up her spine and tears had filled her eyes, and she