“Maybe the goldfinches will chirp a lot and someone will hear them and let them loose. I’ll send someone to buy you some walnuts: and you can sit right here and crack them. I’ll even get you some elastic and you can make yourself a slingshot.”
“You make slingshots with leather cord, not with elastic,” Kolu said with an unhappy smile.
“All right then, I’ll send out for some leather.”
Kolu’s lips quivered again. “No-one will go to the goldfinches. The traps are far away from the village.”
Zari tried to distract him. “Look,” she began, “the master is going to the village. Maybe he’ll pass by the place you set your traps. He’ll hear the chirping. He’ll get down from his horse and take the goldfinches out of the traps and set them free.”
“But the master isn’t going to our village.”
Khadijeh’s voice came from the verandah. “Khanom!” she called out. “Telephone!”
Zari stood up. “Who is it?”
“Khanom Ezzat-ud-Dowleh.”
What could she be wanting, Zari wondered. Probably the woman wants to say what a huge favour she did us, and that she was the one who sent the horse back! When Zari came to the parlour, she saw Khosrow sitting idly by the window, staring out at the garden.
“For heaven’s sake, Khosrow,” she said, “go and play a bit with that poor orphan boy …”
He didn’t move. “Mother, don’t even think about my giving Kolu lessons,” he said.
Zari went to the telephone. It appeared that the very minute Ezzat-ud-Dowleh had set foot in her own home after their luncheon together, she had come down with a bout of her usual leg pains, confining her to the house. She had heard about her sister’s intended pilgrimage, and she longed to see all of them—including the twins—in the near future. They owed her a visit after all. In fact, fresh water was being brought for her private baths the next day, and Ezzat-ud-Dowleh wondered if they would honour her with their company for a bath and luncheon on Wednesday. Zari’s many excuses and protests were firmly turned down, and the date was set.
On Tuesday morning, Kolu went down with a fever. Zari darkened the pantry using reed blinds, and set up a bed in there so she could have him close at hand. Kolu would open his eyes wide and hold his fingers in front of them, straining to see. You could tell he was trying to focus, but wasn’t able to. Khosrow, Gholam and even Ameh Khanom were of the opinion that he should be sent to hospital. There was little doubt he had typhus, and that put them all at risk. But which hospital would take him? Even the town’s best doctors were down with typhus, and rumour had it that Khanom Massihadem and the three head-nurses at the Nemazee Hospital were in a grave condition. Khadijeh had heard from Sakineh, the woman who came to bake bread for them, that Dr Abdullah Khan, the town’s most skilled physician, refused to leave Khanom Massihadem’s bedside. He would soak two large white towels in ice-cold water, wring them out, and continuously cover the patient’s naked body with them. Sakineh, who had gone to visit Khanom Massihadem, had thought that she was already dead and they had spread a shroud on her. Before anyone could stop her, Sakineh was beating her head and searching for mud in the garden to smear over her hair in mourning. When they finally calmed her down and explained everything to her, she had rushed to the shrine of Seyyid Mir Mohammad to light ten candles in thanksgiving.
Nor was Sakineh the only one so concerned with Khanom Massihadem’s fate. Large numbers of men and women had covered their heads with the Quran at Mehri’s Rowzeh as a mark of urgent prayer for the sick woman, and had recited the Amman Yujib prayer for her deliverance. Akbar Khordel had circumambulated her bed with a sheep which he then slaughtered for her sake and distributed the flesh amongst the poor. The skin he had taken to the well-known mountain dervish, Baba Kouhi, so the old man would pray for her too.
Ameh Khanom made Zari call Khanom Hakim for a hospital bed. But Khanom Hakim merely said, “Unfortunately the beds of the Missionary Hospital be for the foreign officers and soldiers only and all the beds be full and even there be no place in the corridors.”
Zari hung up without saying goodbye. “Obviously the hospital was built for their own needs, not for the townspeople,” she told Ameh who was waiting to hear what the doctor would say.
They put their heads together and began their nursing. They gave him manna of Hedysarum, and they wrung towels in cold water and wrapped them around him. They plied him with watermelon juice which he accepted eagerly, being parched from the fever. They moistened fleawort, sewed it up in some thin cloth, and kept it immersed in cold water, to be dabbed from time to time on his blistered lips. Ameh Khanom resorted to the traditional rite of placing some item blessed at the Shah Cheraq Shrine next to the patient. In this case, she cut two hand-lengths of braided white cord from the shrine, tied it around Kolu’s neck, and sat by his bedside to recite the Hadith-i Kasa prayer. But despite all these measures, it was clear Ameh Khanom’s spirits were sinking again.
“Obviously the poor boy’s had a fever for several days and we hadn’t noticed it, putting it down as we did to homesickness,” she had begun to criticize as soon as Zari noticed Kolu’s high fever that morning. “Yes, nothing can replace a mother’s loving care.”
Despite trying all day, they could not even get a doctor to visit Kolu, let alone a hospital bed. The boy was now semi-conscious and delirious. “Goldfinches in the trap … chirp, chirp. Chirp, chirp. Beak down and feet up … in the air … no water … no seeds …”
At sunset, Zari pleaded with Khosrow to go with Gholam to Khanom Massihadem’s and persuade Dr Abdullah Khan to drop by for a minute to visit their patient. But Khosrow refused. “I want to take Sahar out for a ride, and then go to Mr Fotouhi’s with Hormoz,” he said. “Father didn’t say I couldn’t go.”
“What a stubborn child!” Zari snapped, losing her temper. “Fotouhi is as crazy as his sister. All he does is to mislead other people’s children!” She was about to say that he was a paedophile, but stopped herself in time. Instead, she lodged a silent complaint, “May God forgive you, Yusef! Look what trouble you’ve landed me in! What’11 I do if this poor child dies on my hands?” And she vowed to send Kolu back to the village as soon as he recovered, whether Yusef liked it or not.
Meanwhile, she felt she had no choice but to turn to Abol-Ghassem Khan for help. Gholam had returned without much success from Dr Abdullah Khan who had said he was getting old and hoped the townspeople would allow him to retire. Zari resolved to go back to Khanom Massihadem’s herself and beg the doctor to attend to their patient if Abol-Ghassem Khan was unable to help. Surely a doctor couldn’t take refuge by one patient’s bedside and tell all the others that he’s stopped practising, even if that particular patient is very young and has served the townspeople.
Abol-Ghassem Khan was at home. He picked up the telephone himself. “Well, to what do we owe the honour, sister?” He was in a chatty mood and didn’t allow Zari to get in a word edgeways. “I hear Sahar came back to Khosrow on his own feet! I wasn’t in town that day. I had to escape to the countryside, away from my honourable constituents. Can you believe they actually think I’m about to represent them? They’ve already started with their petty requests. One of them wants to have a patient hospitalized; another wants to obtain his rights in a court of justice; one fellow wants to have his daughter registered at the Mehrain School for free, and so on. For heaven’s sake, this position as deputy cost me all of seventy thousand tomans! Anyway, it seems Sahar’s escapade was quite a spectacle. Singer said my nephew charged into the middle of the crowd like a real hero wearing nothing but a pair of givehs and his shirtsleeves. Now sister, why wasn’t he dressed in some respectable clothes? Anyhow, Singer was saying that as soon as the horse spotted Khosrow, he came forward like a long-lost lover and started kissing and sniffing at the boy, nuzzling into his arms.”
With an effort, Zari forced herself to say, “Abol-Ghassem Khan, I beg you to help me. Kolu has come down with typhus, and I have him on my hands. I can’t get
a doctor or anyone to come to him. All of them are so busy.”
“Which Kolu? Why does this brother of mine bring the village sick into town? And in his own house too! Has he no thought for his delicate children? Didn’t he always say that things must be changed at the root and our charities were of no use? I heard him say that to you myself.”
“That’s right, but this Kolu is our shepherd’s son and his father died recently. He didn’t have a fever when he first came. He’s fallen ill now.” Zari knew if she said anything about Yusef adopting Kolu she would receive a one-hour lecture on how another man’s son will never behave as one’s own.
Finally Abol-Ghassem Khan consented. “For your sake, sister, and for the sake of the children, I’ll arrange to have him admitted at the Missionary Hospital.”
“I’ve already called the Missionary Hospital. They didn’t have any room.”
“They’ll have room for me,” Abol-Ghassem Khan said grandly.
It was eight o’clock in the evening when Khanom Hakim called. “Why haven’t you tell me it be Abol-Ghassem Khan’s patient?” she complained at first. Then she added, “There be an empty bed ready in the corridor and this be separated from an Indian sick man by a screen. And the Indian man also be sick with typhus. I be setting aside some pills for the family of Abol-Ghassem Khan which those who contracted … contacted the patient must be taking.”
At the hospital, tents had been put up in the grounds to house extra beds. A strong smell of phenic acid penetrated the nostrils. Most of the patients were fair-skinned and fair-haired. They could not have been typhus cases because they were either sitting upright in bed with bandages around their heads or their arms in slings, or else lying down with their legs in traction. Four men were sitting around a table playing cards. Their fair hair shone under the light of a lantern which hung from the tent-pole. They did not seem to be ailing or suffering in any way.
Gholam held Kolu all the way in the droshke and carried him to the bed prepared for him at the hospital. From behind the screen, the Indian patient could be heard crying, muttering words Zari couldn’t understand. “Seri rama! Seri rama! Krishna!” The crying became louder and he repeated names which Zari guessed must be those of his relatives, “Sandra! Sandra! Kitu!”
When Zari got home, Khosrow was still not back. At first she wanted to call Fotouhi, give him a piece of her mind and vent her anger. But she soon thought better of it. Why blame Fotouhi? These young boys were looking for a way to express their manhood. Fotouhi was merely a vehicle. She decided to wait until her son returned, and then interrogate him. She would be gentle at first, then give him a scolding, and finally raise such hell, he would have something to remember.
But when Khosrow came back, he was at his most charming, pre-empting any efforts at remonstrating or questioning. The minute he arrived, he threw his arms around her and kissed her, saying out of the blue, “Mother, you’re not an aristocrat, are you? I mean, your father was a worker from a … something class … oh no! I forget what you call that class … anyway, your father was a worker, right?” The questions tumbled out of his mouth.
“Why do you ask?”
“Well, the comrades were feeling sorry for Comrade Hormoz and me because we’re branded as aristocrats, and it takes so long to get rid of that label.”
Zari burst out laughing when Khosrow confessed that the comrades were even against well-ironed trousers, so he and Hormoz had decided to smear their trousers with dirt and rumple them up before going to the meetings. As for ties, well, they were completely out. Then he admitted to having cut a hole in his new grey trousers and fraying the threads around the hole to make the trousers look old and worn. He told her he had boasted to the comrades about his maternal grandfather who had been very, very poor. “Mother,” he said, “I told them my mother’s mother had nothing but dry bread to eat in the morning, which is why she had a broken front tooth. I told them my mother now takes bread to prisoners and mental patients every week in memory of the dry bread that broke her front tooth …”
“You’ve learnt to lie, too,” Zari interrupted.
“The comrades really liked it. Now tell me about the day you stood up to your English headmistress. You had quarrelled, I mean struggled, with her many times. You said so yourself the other night. Those struggles are very important to me.”
Zari felt depressed. What struggles!
She remembered the day when a group of Englishmen, newly arrived from London, were due to visit the school on a tour of inspection. Classes had been suspended in the morning so that Nazar Ali Beg, the Indian janitor, could sweep out the classrooms. The headmistress had sent the girls home and told them to come back in the afternoon looking absolutely spick and span, insisting that they all wear a spotless white shirt under their uniforms. Zari’s father had recently died, and she owned just the one black shirt which she wore in mourning under her black-and-white check school tunic. All the girls who went into mourning did the same: it wasn’t against the rules. But how on earth was Zari to produce a white shirt in the two or three hours she had, and with no money?
Her mother was ill in bed, complaining of sharp pains in her breast and little lumps the size of lentils in her armpit which she wouldn’t let Zari touch in case they were contagious. Zari couldn’t let her mother pawn the silver mouth-piece on her hookah, nor the family silver plate, at Deror’s the Armenian silversmith. She couldn’t sell them either, to buy white material for Zari. Besides, even if it were possible, how could the blouse be made up in time? Those were very hard times, the first few months after father’s death, as her mother used to say. They weren’t getting a pension then. Later on, the head of the Shoa’ieh School gave them the idea of writing a petition. He had called Zari’s brother into his office and quietly made him understand that his family could apply for a pension, giving suggestions on how to write the letter and to whom it should be addressed. When Zari’s brother had come home and related the incident, their mother had prostrated herself and kissed the ground in thanksgiving.
On the day of the inspection, Zari decided to take a risk. She washed and ironed her blouse and went to school. They wouldn’t kill her for it, after all, she decided. But when the headmistress spotted her, she was so upset, she nearly hit her. “You ugly little runt!” she shouted. “You’ve become quite disobedient, haven’t you?” Of all her compatriots, this one had learned Persian well.
“I’m in mourning,” Zari replied. “My father died less than a month ago.”
“And you answer back, too! When did your father ever believe in such superstitions?” Then she calmed down and said, “Too bad your English is so much better than all the other students and I need you to welcome the guests in English, otherwise I would expel you. Perhaps I was wrong to exempt you from paying tuition fees.”
Now it was all out. Until that day none of Zari’s classmates had known she didn’t pay fees. How could she ever hold up her head again?
Somehow within fifteen minutes, the headmistress had found a white blouse Zari’s size which she handed to her and ordered her to wear.
But Zari decided to be stubborn. “I’m in mourning,” she insisted, “my father has just died.”
The headmistress got down to it herself. In front of all the other girls, she carefully removed Zari’s uniform, then yanked off the black shirt, ripping a sleeve in the process. The white blouse she put on again with care.
Singer arrived before the others and assembled all the girls about him in the garden where they were scattered. Most of them knew him since they had bought sewing machines from him. He looked them over critically, saying, “Like so. They enter the hall, you pretty girls bow. These people pay money for school from own pocket. For the sake of Jesus they give large school.” Then he called Zari over. “Zari, you say welcome. Lady stretch hand to you. You kiss hand!”
The assistant headmistress rang the bell and all the girls lined up and filed into the assembly hall of the school to wait for the guests. Singer walked in after
a while followed by an assortment of ageing ladies and gentlemen, some stooped over, others stiff as a rod, some of average height, others short. Zari counted sixteen of them. Singer was being particularly respectful to one of the old women who was sporting a large hat with what looked like two sparrows buried in it. One was perched with open wings, ready for flight, the other’s head merely peeped out.
Zari stepped forward and spoke her welcome. The headmistress had a smile on her thin lips. Singer’s eyes were fixed on the old woman with the sparrow’s nest. When the woman stretched out her hand, Zari shook it. Singer frowned, but it was too late.
Then Zari joined the other girls in singing the hymn “Christ in Heaven”, ending with a resounding “Hallelujah!” Their Indian teacher opened the Bible, tossed her braid over her shoulder, and began to read St Paul’s letter to the Corinthians: “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels …” But when it was Zari’s turn to recite a poem, she involuntarily launched into Milton’s “Samson Agonistes” instead of Kipling’s “If”:
“O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon …”
When they were filing out of the hall, the headmistress squeezed Zari’s arm hard, whispering, “You little wretch!” This one knew Persian well. She even knew expressions Zari and her friends had never heard of.
14
Kolu’s illness and the confusion that went with it, caused Zari to forget all about Ezzat-ud-Dowleh’s lunch invitation. But Ezzat-ud-Dowleh herself had not forgotten. That distinguished lady had probably gone to great lengths to make preparations, because she rang bright and early on Wednesday morning to double check, reminding them of the invitation. Now it was Ameh’s turn to grumble.
“Why don’t you all go, sister. I, for one, am not going. I went to the baths only the day before yesterday. And sister, you didn’t say a word to stop me. Besides, I’m not in the mood for Ezzat-ud-Dowleh’s fuss and ceremony. She spreads a feast from one end of the room to the other, but her crossed eyes follow your every mouthful. She watches the sugar-bowl to count the sugar-lumps you take! And probably sees double, too.”