The Sun Hat

Rina Aqazadeh sat at the edge of the soccer field with her back against the setting sun. Her legs were curled under her and her hand rested in the long cool grass beneath a blanket that she shared with her sister-in-law and numerous dishes of food. The children walked carelessly around her, nibbling on chips, and half-eaten pieces of cake. The men were chatting at a short distance away. Her husband Farhad, and his brother Amir had finished playing soccer and had joined the Syrian, Hassan, who was seated in a lounge chair alone smoking a cigarette. Rina's sister-in-law, Desai, talked animatedly to Farhad's Aunt, an elderly Persian woman sitting next to the blanket in a lawn chair. They had recently purchased a new condo near the coast, and had sold another at a profit. Farhad's aunt explained her husband's real estate ventures and strategies as Desai listened eagerly.

The sun had now nearly set behind the field. Its last rays blanketed half of the park, and the shade in which the women sat grew darker and colder. Rina leaned forward as if to remark on the housing conversation. She was a very thin woman, originally from southern India and the state of Andhra Pradesh, a Cardiologist who had married an Iranian man while studying medicine in the United States. She was a deeply jealous woman, who clung to her husband as a grape vine does to its stake, at times neglectful of her children, due to her tendency to worry. It could be noted that she had an obsessive compulsive nature, an insecurity that lived just below the surface of her apparently normal and upper class life.

Now the thinness of her face seemed more deeply shadowed in the late afternoon. A wide brimmed black hat draped lazily over her head. Her medium length dark hair curled silkily over her shoulders. Farhad's aunt grew tired of real estate talk and she commented on Rina's hat. "It's a very soft material, and a unique design." In the meantime Farhad's friend Kasra had arrived with his blonde girlfriend. The girlfriend joined the women and introduced herself to them, she greeted the elderly woman in Persian, and Desai offered her a plate. She took some salad and sat awkwardly with the women facing Rina on the other side of the blanket. Rina did not acknowledge the girlfriend, but kept raving about her new hat. The hat, Rina explained, was a quality cotton material, for which she had been searching for several months. "The style is absolutely perfect", Rina went on, "and completely suits my face. It is a sun hat of functional quality and design, difficult to find, and which I am really lucky to have purchased."

The other women nodded their heads in approval and gazed in silence at Rina's hat. The newly arrived guest wondered why Rina was wearing a hat. She herself did not even have sunglasses on, although she faced the setting sun. In a half hour the sun would set and its rays were at such an angle now that one could look at the sun directly if one wished. On the blanket, in the shade of the hillside there was really no need for any sun protection. The girlfriend noted how skinny Rina seemed, almost sickly thin, and the black floppy hat made her think of the witch in the Wizard of Oz. Wasn't it odd, thought the girlfriend, for Rina to wear a black hat anyway in the perfect shade of a darkening day? However, Rina barely even looked at the girlfriend, in fact she seemed insensed by her mere presence. The girlfriend felt this tenseness and wondered if it were due to her speaking Persian with the aunt, or for some other reason that women so often understand as simply a negative current that cuts and isolates as it flows, creating something like a virtual open wound and perhaps stems from simmering jealousy. Or perhaps the woman is somewhat crazy, thought the girlfriend, and unsociable, like so many foreigners who attempt to take on the alienated, cold attitude of rich Americans after they assimilate into the country as immigrant students.

The children had returned to the blanket and began to eat the grapes and cookies that the girlfriend had brought. Desai drifted off to talk with her husband. The girlfriend spoke with the elderly woman, and Rina grew more and more silent. She began to fidget with her hands, and twitch nervously. She did not join in the conversation, and neglected to speak or touch her own small children who roamed freely from blanket to grass, their hands sticky with cake and their clothes stained.

After awhile Kasra and the Syrian joined the women at the blanket. Kasra and Hassan decided they and the girlfriend would hit a volleyball back and forth awhile with the older kids. Desai and Farhad returned to the blanket. The volleyball game went on while the sun grew dimmer. They played outside of the shade and the laughter of the game was warm as each dived for the ball and chased after it onto the brightness of the field. In the shade, the others sat quietly conversing, but Rina no longer sat under her wide brimmed hat with back to the setting sun. She had taken a fetal position on the blanket and her thin body lay limp in the darkening day. Farhad bent over her, a worried look on his face. Desai stood up, her hands on her hips. She told Farhad's aunt, "she is as cold as ice, she must be sick." By now Hassan had noticed the others leaning over Rina, and Farhad's aunt took another blanket and put it over her.

"What's wrong with her?" Asked Kasra, but the others only talked to each other saying, "she isn't feeling well, she has become ill".

"Wrap her in a blanket, we'd better take her home" said Desai.

"Is she ok?" Asked the girlfriend? Farhad said she was fine earlier, and couldn't imagine what the matter was. They wrapped up Rina, in two blankets. They stood her up. The aunt placed the hat back on Rina's head, and it partially covered her eyes. Desai thought they ought to walk her to the car and drive her home. Rina was barely audible now, she spoke in whispered hoarseness, however her words made no sense, and her face looked pale and withered. She turned back toward Kasra and the girlfriend who stood in stunned disappointed now that the picnic was coming to an abrupt halt just after they had arrived. The black brimmed hat now drooped over her sallow face and started to fall from her disheveled hair.

What in the world has happened to her thought the girlfriend? She suddenly became ill, when just moments before she had spoken passionately of her hat. As she pondered these words she could swear she saw a faint smile on Rina's lips, under the shadow of the hat. Farhad and Desai were walking her to the car, and she leaned on them like an elderly woman nearly incapable of walking independently. Farhad's aunt and the men started picking up the food and putting it away, wrapping everything up. The picnic was over. The children helped take some of the food to the cars. Kasra and his girlfriend packed up a few things and took the grapes and tomatoes they had brought.

The sun now set behind the field. It had grown cold and darkness spread across the soccer fields. The picnic blanket was lying wrinkled on the cool damp grass. In the distance, between Hassan's lone lounge chair and the sidewalk where the car was parked, lay Rina's black cotton wide brimmed hat, perfect for sun protection, which had fallen from her drooping head like a shadow falling from her dark eyes.