A Persian Requiem

  The incident with my maid Ferdows and her mother? I suppose you heard rumours about that and now you want to hear the truth from myself? Well sister, I have nothing to hide from you.

  One night after my evening prayers, I was coming out of the door of the New Mosque, when I saw a little girl crying by the door, with a bundle next to her. The sight of her was so pathetic, it would have melted a heart of stone. When I asked her why she was crying, she said, “My mistress threw me out of her house where I was a maid and I don’t know how to get home to Baj Gah.” I took the child in as an act of charity. The next morning I sent for the midwife to examine her. I thought someone might have taken advantage of her and then the blame would fall on my poor, innocent son Hamid.

  To cut a long story short, sister, within a week either my husband or my son managed to take advantage of the girl. It never occurred to me that they wouldn’t even pass up a wretched little peasant girl. Of course, I didn’t find out which of them had done it. I scorched the girl with a hot iron but she wouldn’t confess; her screams pierced me to my very bones, but there was no way I could ask Hamid himself. A mother can’t talk to her son about things like that.

  Ferdows grew into a woman in our house. When she got her period, she bloomed into a rosy-cheeked, dimpled lass, with such a twinkle in her eye! I was worried all right, and I looked around desperately for a solution, but sure enough before I could do anything her belly was out there and I didn’t know who to blame—my husband or my son?

  Anyway, I was forced to latch her on to Kal Abbas, our doorman. Before that, his mother used to go to the Jewish quarter once a month and buy him a little girl for three tomans, dress her up in pink satin and bring her home. By the time the dress had worn out, so had Kai Abbas’s interest, at which point she would take the girl back to her family. But do you think Ferdows would consent to my plan for her? I locked her up for three days in our chilly basement in the middle of winter. She had no food but her own thoughts and tears … I said to her, “You shameless wench, what do you want from me? Should I be sending you back to Baj Gah with your belly full like this?” She said, “I can go to the police station to lodge a complaint against you, and then your family’s reputation will be ruined.” That half-size peasant wench certainly knew how to play her cards! “I’ll give you whatever you want,” I promised, “just get out of my house!” Obviously she had fixed all her hopes on that bastard in her belly. She said to me, “The child is yours; his inheritance and wealth will be worth piles and piles of money.” Finally I beat her as hard as I could. Fortunately she started to bleed and Khanom Hakim got rid of that loathsome thing in her belly. With the baby gone, she gave up all her trouble-making. She just settled for having her mother brought over from Baj Gah and I had her start work for me on six qaran a day. Nana Ferdows, the mother, is an able woman. She’s hard-working, but too bold as servants go …

  9

  Khosrow was back from his hunting trip, covered with sweat and dust. His gun was still hanging from his shoulder, and a few dead partridges dangled from his hand. He went to the howzkhaneh which had a small pool in it and which Zari was preparing for use during the hot summer days. He held up the partridges before his mother’s eyes as she was smoothing out the carpet.

  “Look, I shot them myself!”

  “I can see,” Zari replied, without looking up.

  “Aren’t you pleased to see me?” Khosrow asked.

  “Of course I am,” said his mother.

  “I’ll give one to Sahar. He won’t eat it, he’ll just play with it.” Then he added, “No-one’s happy to see me back. Gholam was sitting in Haj Mohammad Reza’s shop; he almost ducked when he saw me. I came to you first and you didn’t even kiss me. It doesn’t matter.”

  Zari bit her lip and said, “Take the partridges to the kitchen and give them to the cook to pluck. It’s warm weather and they’ll spoil. Tell him to serve them with rice tonight. Raisin rice, your favourite.”

  As soon as Khosrow had gone, Zari cursed the whole universe—she cursed herself and her ancestors and her fears; she cursed her English schooling and her cowardice and Ezzat-ud-Dowleh. When she said goodbye Ezzat-ud-Dowleh had promised Ameh Khanom to send Sahar back to his old stable within three days. So what had happened? Zari sat by the small pool and turned on the fountains. At first the water came out in short, muddy spurts, then it cleared and rose higher. Soon after, the twins came in. They both sat down by the pool and held their hands underneath the fountain while their mother reminded them for the thousandth time not to tell Khosrow who took Sahar, but to say instead that he was dead.

  When Khosrow came back he didn’t even notice Mina and Marjan.

  “Mother, where’s Sahar?” he asked.

  Zari didn’t answer. Instead she busied herself washing the children’s faces with water from the fountain.

  “My uncle was saying Sahar had caught the glanders disease,” Khosrow blurted, “and that glanders is dangerous. Is that true? Captain Singer said glanders has become epidemic. Mother, he even imitated father. I nearly hit him when he said to me, ‘This disease is yet another gift from the foreign army, as your father would say!’”

  “Singer was with you all the time?” Zari asked, carefully skirting the issue.

  “No, only for the first few days. There was a woman with him, too, who spoke good Persian. But she was just like a man. She even had a small moustache and wore boots. She rode well. Now tell me where have you sent Sahar?”

  “Well, why did they leave?”

  “Who?”

  “Singer and that old woman.”

  “How should I know?” Khosrow complained. “Why are you interrogating me? Now you’re probably going to ask me what we had for dinner, what we had for lunch … aren’t you going to tell me where Sahar is?”

  “You went off and left us for so long. After all, you were the man of the house. Now that you’re back, won’t you tell your mother where you went? Who was with you? Whether you had a good time?”

  “Well, we went hunting,” Khosrow answered impatiently. “On the third day when we came back after sunset, another foreigner wearing dark glasses arrived and took Singer and the woman with him. Uncle sent three armed men and one of his guides along with them. They headed for the mountains. Four-eyed Hormoz said, ‘You can be sure they’re off to see the tribe.’ Now tell me where Sahar is.”

  Zari bit her lip. “God help us!” she exclaimed.

  Mina got up from the edge of the pool. “Sahar was hurt and died!” she blurted out.

  “Died!” Khosrow shrieked. “But why? Is it true, mother?” he asked through his tears. “I guessed it myself. I saw the flowerpots on his grave.”

  “What could I do, my dear?” Zari said with a sigh. “It was his fate. Your uncle took you to the village on purpose so you wouldn’t see him die. At least he had a peaceful end. We buried him at the bottom of the garden just for your sake.”

  Khosrow squatted by the pool and said, “I knew inside me right from the start that something was going to happen. I could tell from the way my uncle talked. He went on about how a person should be patient, and what you should do when you lose someone you love. And after that he kept talking about the glanders disease. That’s funny, you know, I dreamt last night that I was riding after game. Uncle and Singer were there too. Singer had spread a map on his saddle, and at the same time he was looking through his long binoculars for game. The first day of the hunt he was doing that, you see, and my uncle kept saying, ‘Look how these foreigners do everything with calculation, even their hunting’ …”

  “Yes, especially when they’re hunting people …” Zari commented sadly.

  “But I was riding Sahar, not uncle’s horse. We were coming down the mountain. Suddenly Sahar reared up. His front legs and mane froze in the air, and there I was hanging in space on horseback. The earth looked like a nutshell under my feet. In the morning I told uncle my dream. He said, ‘It probably means something has happened to Sahar. Now don’t you get upset! I
t’s not worth it. Pick out whichever of my colts you like.’ I said, ‘Uncle, that’s impossible. When we left Sahar was perfectly healthy. How could it be? No other colt will ever take Sahar’s place for me.’” Khosrow broke off, sobbing. “Now I remember. When we were leaving, Sahar was stamping his foot and digging at the soil with his hoof. Poor animal knew he wouldn’t see me again, but stupid me, I didn’t know. Mother, why is my stomach turning so? I feel as if someone’s choking me.”

  Zari hugged and kissed her son.

  “Wash your face with some cold water, my dear,” she said, “you’ll feel better.” Her own heart was brimming with sorrow. “Why don’t you invite your schoolfriends over this afternoon to a mourning ceremony for Sahar? I’ll bring out some tea and sherbet drinks for you.”

  “Will you make some halva too?” Khosrow asked.

  “Certainly, if you want some.” She paused and added, “Yes, I’ll make some halva. As soon as the smell of halva rises, Sahar’s spirit will know we’re thinking of him.”

  “Can we come too?” Mina asked.

  “No,” Khosrow answered, kissing each of his sisters in turn. “The ceremony is for men only.”

  That afternoon, Sahar’s all-male ‘mourning ceremony’ really did take place in the garden. At least twenty children of various ages poured in. Gholam had swept over the make-believe grave, and covered it with a carpet. Watching from the verandah, Zari could see the children squatting silently by the grave. She noticed a small boy wearing a black mourning shirt, staring fixedly at something. When she looked more carefully, she realized that he was staring at his thumbnails. Probably to stop himself laughing. But finally he started to giggle and then burst out laughing. All the other children, besides Khosrow and Hormoz who was sitting next to him, joined in the laughter and the ceremony broke up. Zari couldn’t bear it anymore. She went to the parlour. Seeing a lot of flies buzzing around, she took a fly-swatter and attacked them, killing them left and right. She could hear the children playing in the garden and looking out from the parlour window saw that they were going at the unripe fruit on the trees. But Khosrow and Hormoz were still sitting on the carpet while Gholam walked toward them with some coffee and Khadijeh put the trays of halva on the ground. Hormoz whispered something in Khosrow’s ear and Khosrow slapped his forehead with a grown-up gesture, then covered his eyes.

  When the children had gone, Khosrow and Hormoz came to the parlour. Khosrow’s eyes were red and Hormoz’s glasses all fogged up.

  “Cheer up, my dear,” Zari comforted, “it’s not so bad after all. As Khadijeh says, the mare is young, she’ll give birth to another Sahar for you.” And she thought to herself, “If, as Ameh Khanom said, he ever sees that wench riding Sahar, then all hell will break loose! How we end up lying to our children!”

  “I’m trying not to cry,” said Khosrow, “but I feel so unhappy …”

  Hormoz took off his glasses. He took out a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped them. His eyes were puffy.

  “I keep telling Khosrow this is just the beginning,” said Hormoz. “We have a lot of ups and downs ahead of us. We mustn’t give up so easily. Besides, look how many people die of typhus or starvation each day. What’s a colt next to all these people?”

  Zari looked at Hormoz. She wasn’t sure whether they were his own words, or he had learned them from someone else. In any case, he was four years older than Khosrow. She thought with bitterness, “The real death of humans next to the fake death of a colt! Certainly there’s no comparison.”

  Suddenly her mind went back to that evening in the Missionary Hospital where her mother was spending the last hours of her life. Zari had had no idea how near the end it was, even though Khanom Hakim had told her, “Now the cancer be overtaking the whole body, and there be nothing more the knife can do.”

  Her mother had looked at Zari out of the corner of her eye.

  “Stay with me tonight!” she had said.

  But how could she stay? Khosrow was only three years old and would not eat unless she fed him nor sleep unless she were next to him. Besides, they had guests. Yusef had invited a number of people.

  “I have to go,” she had said. “We have guests. I’ll be back tomorrow morning.”

  “Tomorrow?” her mother had echoed. And didn’t insist anymore. She merely asked for some sacred soil to be brought her by Ameh Khanom. By the time Zari had gone home and Ameh Khanom had finished her prayers and her opium-smoking, put on her outdoor dress with the long sleeves and her gloves and her scarf, the evening had drawn on and she was unable to go all the way to the hospital by herself. In any case, no-one would have thought a person who seemed so alert one minute would die the next.

  Abol-Ghassem Khan had arrived before all the other guests and when he found out about the situation, offered to accompany Ameh Khanom. But he had no car in those days, and they couldn’t find a droshke. They managed to get there, nevertheless, though it was after eleven by the time they returned. Zari was serving dinner and Khosrow had not been put to bed yet. The guests were playing with him, taking turns holding him and listening to his sweet baby-talk. Zari didn’t even get a chance to ask Abol-Ghassem Khan how her mother was. As for Ameh, she went straight to bed. Later, at dinner, Abol-Ghassem Khan drank so much vodka that he became completely drunk. Tears streamed down his face and he babbled on about his own mother. He smashed several glasses against the wall and then threw up violently, upsetting the other guests. Finally they took him to the bottom of the garden so he could vomit as much as he liked. When the guests had left, they told Zari her mother had died, that alas, she hadn’t received the sacred soil she asked for, that no-one had been at her bedside, except a foreign nurse who didn’t speak her language …

  At that moment Mina and Marjan barged into the room, bringing Zari abruptly back to the present. Each of them was holding a doll.

  “Uncle gave me this,” Mina said.

  Abol-Ghassem Khan followed them into the parlour with Gholam in his wake, carrying two loaded sacks.

  “It’s our first picking of lemons,” Abol-Ghassem Khan announced. At a sign from Zari, Gholam took the sacks to the storage-room. Abol-Ghassem Khan embraced Khosrow and said, “Shall I send for that colt of mine you liked in the village?”

  “No, uncle, I don’t want a horse at all.”

  Mina, still holding her doll, put a hand on her brother’s knee.

  “Have you seen my doll?” she asked. “Do you want to have it?”

  10

  That week Zari finished early at the asylum, for typhus had reduced the number of patients to slightly over half compared to the week before. The warden, a short fellow with a dark complexion who received her every alternate Thursday, would only allow her to distribute bread and dates among the inmates after taking adequate payment for himself and his nurses. This week he told her that the epidemic had hit them hard and that his patients had been refused admission to the town’s hospitals. “He doesn’t look too well himself,” thought Zari, as she handed over his payment. Not that he ever looked particularly well, dealing as he did all the time with mental patients. His eyes had sunk into their sockets.

  When they entered the men’s ward, Gholam put the tray of food on the floor, but unlike other weeks, no-one seemed to show any interest. Zari looked around at the men, with their shaved heads and soiled white gowns, sitting silently in the room. They seemed to be listening to sounds only they could hear and to which one or other of them would occasionally mumble a reply. They took the bread and dates from Gholam absent-mindedly. Zari felt depressed. It was as if today her vow had not been fulfilled since she hadn’t made anyone happy. Downhearted, she began to distribute cigarettes and matches. One patient who claimed to be the Chief Commander of the World and who always asked for the Homa brand of cigarette, took an Oshno this time and without striking a match, listlessly put the cigarette to his lips. The sun poured in through the shutterless windows, and flies buzzed sleepily around the room, exploring every nook and cranny, as well as th
e untouched food in the patients’ hands.

  “Ali!” summoned the head nurse loudly. Ali was Zari’s favourite patient, a tall German-looking young man who had attempted three times to escape from the asylum. Twice his relatives had found him, each time in the neighbourhood of the high-school where he had finished five grades. The last time Gholam had found him on the hill overlooking Yusef’s garden. Apparently Ali had followed Gholam like a lamb, allowing himself to be led back quietly to the asylum. Hunger had taken its toll. He had told Gholam:

  “They tricked me. They whispered to me that the airplane is ready; please get inside it and go to Europe to your uncle. I came out and no matter how hard I searched, I couldn’t find the airplane. Maybe it left without me. I have many enemies, you see.” Later he confessed, “I’ve been drinking water from the gutter and stealing bones and bread from dogs. Yesterday I grabbed a piece of raw meat from a dog, and ran away with it. I washed the meat in the gutter and ate it. My stomach turned, and now I have diarrhoea. There’s blood in it too. I really looked everywhere, but I just couldn’t find our house. I know my father made our house get lost on purpose so I wouldn’t find it.”

  From that day on, they chained Ali in the asylum basement. Zari would visit him there and take him bread and dates. He always smiled when he saw her. Once he had asked her for ‘Essential English, Part III’, and Zari had brought him one. Thereafter, he refused to speak a word in Persian, talking instead in a language no-one could understand.

  Ali came in. He had lost so much weight that Zari felt distressed at the sight of him, and he did not recognize her. He threw her a blank look and, without using his invented language, proclaimed in Persian, “An attack of pliers equals typhus + famine + cheating in an exam. O madmen of the world unite!”