“I always tell lies,” Khosrow finished her sentence for her.
“When I said enough, I meant enough!” Yusef reprimanded sharply. And he added thoughtfully, “It’s not your mother’s fault. It’s the way things work in this town; the best school is the British school, the best hospital the missionary hospital, and when a girl wants to learn embroidery, it has to be on a Singer sewing machine with Singer for a salesman. The teachers who’ve trained your mother have always tried to steer her away from reality, filling her instead with some etiquette and coquetry and embroidery. She can only talk about peace and quiet …” And suddenly turning on Zari he shouted, “Woman, what use is this peace and quiet when it’s based on deception? Why shouldn’t you have the courage to stand up to them and say those earrings are a wedding present from my husband, a keepsake from his late mother? After all, the poor woman died in poverty but she was still thinking of the bride her son would choose … How could you have given them up so easily? It’s not their value that matters. It’s the memory and the love behind them.” He paused for breath. “Woman, think a little bit. When you become too soft, everyone will bend you.”
Ameh Khanom who had been silent for a long time, decided she had had enough. “What’s all this about?” she said. “Why are father and son taking it out on this poor soul? Giving away the horse was not at all her fault. I was a witness. I even told her to give it away. As for the earrings, when I first heard the story from Ezzat-ud-Dowleh, I was very upset too, but after I thought it over, I decided she couldn’t have refused them. What can you do when there are people who govern your possessions and your life, not just your town? Now do you want to know the truth, brother? She is soft, she gives bribes, so they leave you alone. And that’s enough for one night. Eat your dinner and go to bed. Tomorrow morning it will all be water under the bridge. As for me I’m going to bed.” With that she got up and left.
“I’m going to show you what I can do,” Khosrow said, standing up. “I’m not my father’s son if I don’t get Sahar out of their clutches. First I’ll write a letter to the Governor himself and if he doesn’t answer, I’ll go to see him. My father and Mr Fotouhi are right. I have to solve my problem myself. If the Governor refuses to see me, I’ll do my best not to get upset. No one’s ever going to see me cry again. Mother, when they caught us, I was really crying for your sake because I knew you’d be worried about our being late. I hated crying in front of Hormoz, in front of the officers, but I couldn’t help it because I know how afraid you are about me or father … Comrade Fotouhi …”
“Yes dear,” Zari said, “according to you and your father and your teacher, I’m a coward, I’m helpless, I’m soft. I’m always afraid something may happen to one of you … I couldn’t bear it. But when I was a young girl I too had a lot of courage …” And turning to Yusef she asked, “Wasn’t it a mark of courage to walk off with you that day in the middle of a street riot … you, a total stranger … which girl would’ve …” she bit her lip and tried to change the subject. “But you’re right about the rest. Our English headmistress constantly harassed us about manners and how to live. Singer was always doing us a favour by teaching us to sew, and Khanom Hakim had us convinced that our cures and medicines lay in her hands alone. I knew in my heart there was more to it than they were willing to tell. Something was wrong somewhere. I knew all of us, all the time, were losing something … but I didn’t know what it was …”
“And that was why I married you,” said Yusef. “Why have you changed so much?”
“I’ve already told you; must I repeat it a hundred times? You’re too outspoken and deep down I know it’s dangerous to say the things you do. If I wanted to stand firm and put my foot down, I’d have to do it right here with you first, and then what kind of battle of wills would we have at home? Shall I tell you one more thing? You are the one who took my courage away from me … I’ve obeyed you for so long that subservience has become a habit with me.”
“Me?” Yusef shouted. “Stand up against me? No matter how fierce I am outside this house, you know well that once I’m within these four walls I’m as meek as a lamb before you! I think your courage has been all show. Prompted by pure, unrefined instinct.”
Zari thought silently that if she carried on any longer, they would have a real quarrel on their hands. She hesitated and then said, “Who knows, maybe I was a coward from the start and I didn’t know it. Time and again I stood up to that headmistress of mine without stopping to think whether I was committing an act of courage or rebellion. That day in Ramadan when she forced Mehri to break her fast … all the other girls abandoned the poor soul out of fear, but I stayed with her. I don’t know, maybe in those days I had nothing to lose … and now …” Without knowing quite what happened she lost all her patience and composure. She got up from her chair and slapping her belly hard, cried, “I hope this one in my stomach will miscarry tonight … I’ve gone close to death and back for your sakes. Khanom Hakim has carved up my insides … etched a map on my belly and here I am on trial for courage!”
She collapsed on the chair and burst out sobbing. It felt as though nowhere in the whole world was there a person as lonely and as tired as she. Yusef went to her and clasped her head in his arms. He kissed her hair and wiped her tears away with his fingers. He lifted her chin and looked her in the eye, fighting back his own tears.
“Don’t cry, my love,” he said. “Why didn’t you tell us all this earlier? I was completely taken by surprise.”
“Today I damn well wanted to get rid of this one,” she moaned, unable to hold back the tears. “Wasn’t I brave to keep it? When you bring a child into this world with such agony as I go through, you can’t bear to lose him so easily. Every day I … I turn the wheels in this household to nurture you, my precious flowers. I can’t bear to see people trample you. Like Hossein Kazerouni I don’t do anything with my hands for myself … I … I have no experience, I don’t know much of the world …”
“My love,” Yusef smiled, “instead of going to the mental asylum and getting tired and nervous, you should go to the new Anglo-Iranian Council here and teach Essential English II! Can you believe Singer sent me this message via McMahon?”
“You’re making fun of me!” said Zari from between her tears.
“You know I can’t bear to see you cry,” Yusef said gently. “I wanted to make you laugh with the suggestion … But my love, if only you’d told me the truth right away, we wouldn’t have gone on at you like this. You said you went to Khanom Massihadem’s office, but you quickly covered up the real reason behind it. Why did you keep it a secret from me? Now I feel guilty about the way I jumped at you.” Khosrow had sat down at his mother’s feet. He was holding on to her leg and listening silently to her words.
Zari wiped away her tears. “You had just got home from your journey,” she said. “You were tired and unhappy. I didn’t want to make you feel even worse.” She asked wearily and at a loss, “What can I do to please you two? What can I do to become brave, as you say?”
“I could teach you,” Yusef said with a laugh. “Your first lesson in bravery is this: whenever you’re afraid to do something, if you feel you’re in the right, then do it even if you’re frightened. My sweet little kitten!”
“For one thing I’m a person, not a sweet little kitten,” Zari said pensively. “What’s more, you give a first lesson to someone who has to start from scratch.”
In bed under the mosquito net, despite Yusef’s cool hand caressing her warm abdomen, despite his kisses, Zari seemed to have forgotten all sexual response. Instead, she kept thinking about her past, and wondering whether she had always been a coward or whether she had become one. Was Yusef really to blame? For one instant she even concluded that marriage was wrong at its very basis. Why should a man be tied for a lifetime to a woman and half a dozen children … or conversely, for a woman to be so dependent emotionally and otherwise on one man and his children that she couldn’t breathe freely for herself? It had to be wrong
. Yet she knew that all the joys of her own life stemmed from these very attachments.
She couldn’t sleep for remembering those carefree days of her girlhood. The memory of that day in Ramadan when the headmistress broke Mehri’s fast came back to her as if it were yesterday.
That year Zari and Mehri were taking their sixth-grade exams. Four months before the final examinations a letter from the Ministry of Education arrived at the school stipulating that sixth-graders must be taught the Quran and religious laws. Zari realized that her mother’s petitioning had finally worked. Because she couldn’t afford a private teacher to instruct her daughter in religious matters, she had been pressing to have these taught as part of the school curriculum. Letter after letter and notice upon notice from the Ministry arrived on the headmistress’s desk, upsetting her considerably. But Zari knew that behind this pressure lay her mother’s insistence …
Those days every lesson in ‘Ethics’ turned into a nagging session about the Ministry of Education. The headmistress would complain that the Ministry had agreed from the start to maintain a policy of non-interference. She went on about the impossibility of suddenly producing a suitable teacher in the middle of the scholastic year. She nagged about finding extra hours to fit in these lessons … and so on. She would say, “Why don’t you girls find an old mullah-baji somewhere on Sundays when the school is closed and learn your Quran and religious laws from her … or better still, ask your people to teach you at home?” She would use the idioms correctly, since this one knew Persian well.
Mehri, whose uncle was the head of the Sufi dervishes, was well versed in both the Quran and in religious law. Unbeknownst to the headmistress, she agreed to give her classmates lessons in these subjects when they came back to school after the lunch-break. Zari struggled to pronounce the Arabic word “Fassayakafikohomo’allah” correctly, but she didn’t always succeed. Still, Mehri was patient, being a year or two older than the rest. And then came the month of Ramadan. She had just been teaching them the Ayat Prayer for use in times of natural calamity, when that memorable incident took place. It seemed like yesterday.
Fasting was forbidden in the school, but Mehri was doing it anyway. When the headmistress found out, she stormed into the classroom and demanded that Mehri end her fast there and then by eating something. Mehri refused. The headmistress gave her a shove which sent her sprawling all over the classroom floor. Then she kneeled by her and holding the girl’s head with one hand, roughly opened her mouth and attempted to pour some water down her throat. Mehri bit the woman’s hand, at which the headmistress shouted at her and called her a pathetic wretch. Mehri sat up. “The dirty hand of an unbeliever in my mouth was enough to break my fast,” she said. “Give me the water and I’ll drink it to the last drop. The sin be on your head.”
The headmistress slapped Mehri across the face, and again sent the girl on to the classroom floor. She then left Mehri and turned to the class to rebuke them. But the other girls were whispering anxiously and no-one paid attention. Even their Indian teacher was just standing, staring round-eyed at the scene.
“In this school,” the headmistress shouted, “there is no room for superstition. Leave fasting and religious mourning to your aunties and grannies! Ask your nursemaids about religious rules on menstruation and childbirth. Fasting weakens the body. Why did I buy parallel bars, a vaulting horse, and a basket-ball net? To strengthen your bodies, that’s why! Now you want to ruin all my efforts by fasting? You don’t deserve any of it!” Then she barked again at the top of her voice, “The bell has rung—why don’t you leave the classroom? Mehri’s punishment is to stay right here on the floor till this evening. Come along now, girls! No-one is allowed to remain with her.”
The headmistress marched out, and the Indian teacher, tossing her braid over her shoulder, followed her. The other girls filed out too. But Zari felt she could not leave. She bent over Mehri and gave her a hand to stand up. She dusted her off and sat her on the teacher’s chair. Both of them searched for a handkerchief to wipe away Mehri’s tears but neither of them had one. So Zari dried her friend’s face with her fingers, and kissed her, saying, “I don’t think your fast is broken. You were forced to drink the water.”
“There were only two or three hours left to the end of the fasting day,” Mehri cried, “and I had managed to fast for twelve days. I’d even fasted two extra days. This year I was determined to fast all thirty days of the holy month, because by next year I’ll have my period and I’ll never be so lucky again.”
“Oh it’s a long way to next year! Besides, you said yourself that a woman in her menopause doesn’t get periods anymore. When you get to that age, you can fast all thirty days again.”
Mehri laughed at that, and Zari was pleased to have made her laugh.
“I know who’s been telling tales—it must have been Taji. That stupid girl has turned Christian. I know my saviour Imam Ali will strike at her and she’ll fail her exams! Tonight the dervishes are holding a chanting session for the Imam Ali and I hope my uncle curses her.”
That night, they went home together. As they passed the Sufi monastery, they heard the rhythmic chanting of the dervishes, “Ya Hu. Ya Haq. Ya Ali!”, as it drifted through the open doors of the house of Imam Ali.
12
All the quarrelling, reconciliations, and anxieties of the past days faded into insignificance when that very Friday morning Sahar walked back to the house on his own feet.
It all began like this.
They were sitting on the verandah at the back of the house which was protected from the morning sunlight, and which looked out on the hill Zari and Yusef had climbed with such fear and anxiety the night before.
Zari was using the breakfast table as an ironing board. The rugged hill lay bathed in sunlight, so still that it seemed hardly touched by the tread of human feet. Khosrow was sitting across from Zari, and had put a pen, paper and several books on the table in front of him. He was leafing through a book called Principles of Letter-Writing and reading out loud: “Write a letter to the head of an office and ask for a job. Write a letter to your uncle and ask him to … Write a letter to your friend and invite him for the Mab’ath holidays. With fondest regards and compliments … what joy to receive your latest missive … with reference to your letter of …” He put the book down on the table and said, “As Mr Fotouhi says, nothing more than begging and flattery!” then took another and started to flip through its pages.
Though still early in the day, it felt hot and there was no breeze to relieve the heat. Sweat trickled down Zari’s spine, and she longed for a cool, refreshing drink like willow-water or betony, or perhaps a piece of crushed ice to crunch between her teeth. She remembered how in each of her pregnancies Ameh Khanom had gone to great lengths to provide her with whatever she craved. From Hassan Agha the grocer she would order Indian magnesia, which was crunchy and white as snow, and reputed to be good for the baby’s bone structure. Other days it would be lamb’s rumen, which Ameh would buy fresh and clean out herself, cooking it with nutmeg and making Zari take it because it tightened the belly. If a single raisin proved too sweet for Zari, Ameh would ply her with tamarind sherbet, and if one sour grape was too acid, she made hot syrups for her. But ever since Ameh Khanom’s decision to follow her mother’s footsteps to Karbala, she had become listless and depressed. She had no patience for anyone, not even the children. It was very noticeable, but Zari had decided not to say anything.
Khosrow put down his book. “What rubbish!” he exclaimed. “There’s not a word in here about how you should ask for your rights!” He took another book and leafed through it. “I think I’ve found it …” he said, “what good sentences!” He raised his head and asked Yusef who was facing the hill in his armchair, reading a book, “Father, what does this mean? ‘His deep-toned voice resembled that of a violoncello.’”
“It means like the mooing of a cow,” Yusef answered, without raising his eyes from his book, “it won’t do for Sahar. Listen, why don’t y
ou just write what comes into your mind?”
Ameh’s voice could be heard ordering Mina to put down her coins, which were unclean from being passed around hundreds of hands. Ameh was sitting on a rug with her back to the hill, leaning against the verandah railings, sewing gold dinars into the lining of her coat. This had been her sole activity over the past few days and now she had started on her second coat.
Gholam came out to the verandah. “Khanom, are Kolu’s clothes ready?” he inquired.
“They’ll be ready in a minute.”
“I know it’s not my place to say this,” Gholam commented, “but why bother to iron them? Last night he only dreamt of cows and sheep. He kept waking up with a start to look for his kid goat. He kept me awake all night with his sighing and moaning. This morning he sobbed for an hour, asking for his mother, his sister, his brother … I don’t see how he can last here.”
Khosrow chuckled as he laboured with his letter, and Marjan tried to build towers with Ameh’s gold dinars which Mina would immediately scatter with a fling of her hand. As always, the initiative came from Mina who behaved as if she knew she had a headstart on her sister, having arrived fifteen minutes earlier into the world.
“Run along now!” Ameh Khanom shouted at the twins. “Money isn’t for playing! Call Kolu and tell him to come here. Gholam, take the girls to the stables.”
The twins pretended to cry and crawled under the table.
“Why don’t you put on the chadors your aunt made for you and show your father,” Zari said.
Mina emerged from under the table. “Auntie, can we have a prayer-stone so we can say our prayers?” Whenever Ameh stood up to say her prayers, they would also put on their chadors and bend or stand in imitation of her. When Ameh pronounced the ‘amen’ in Arabic, they would quickly put their foreheads to the ground to ask God for what they wanted. God alone knew what these little souls could be asking of Him … They would try hard to pronounce the Arabic ‘Wala-z’alin’ but they couldn’t, so they would turn to Ameh and say, “Now you say it.”