Then Sakineh, the woman who came to bake their bread, told them, “Bibi Hamdam has hired forty people to read the Quran and chant the An’am verse every day. It’s hair-raising! Oh Lord, I beg you by the purity of the saints, to spare the life of Bibi Hamdam’s son, and meanwhile to spare this poor, sinful servant’s son from the military draft too!”
In despair, Zari took up her old addiction of reading newspapers. But she couldn’t find even the slightest mention of Malek Sohrab’s name in any newspaper. Her habit did, however, lead her to a certain news item in one of the leading local papers. She had been alone in the garden that evening when the newspaper arrived and she had taken it from the delivery-boy herself. It was two weeks since Yusef had left. The item read like this:
“In Gratitude”
“The gracious Khanom Ezzat-ud-Dowleh, one of the charitable and kind-hearted ladies of this town, has been appointed by the Women’s Society to visit and inspect the houses of the Mordestan District, as well as the women’s prison. All the houses of the above-mentioned district have been cleaned and disinfected under her supervision, and this charitable lady, out of boundless generosity, has bailed out and set free one inmate of the prison who, out of ignorance, had engaged in earning an illegal livelihood. The Governorship of Fars extends its gratitude to this humanitarian and benevolent lady for her services.”
Although Zari was not surprised to read this piece of news, it still depressed her. She crumpled up the newspaper and threw it away. She took refuge in the orangery, pacing about under the orange-blossom trees, feeling unequal to any task that might require concentration. She decided to go to the stables to find Gholam and ask him whether he had any more news of Malek Sohrab. But she changed her mind, knowing that the poor man might be half-undressed or even naked in the heat, or perhaps having a quiet smoke. For a moment, she thought of going to visit Bibi Hamdam, but decided against that too. She wasn’t in the mood for the loud chanting of Quran reciters, and she knew that the instant Bibi Hamdam set eyes on her she would begin to wail and press her for a solution to her problem. And of course, if Zari had any idea what to do, she would not be feeling so distraught. Everyone knew that Bibi Hamdam’s existence was tied to that of her son, and everyone knew too that Malek Sohrab, despite his size and stature, was nothing more than a child before his mother.
She thought of following Ameh Khanom and the children to Mehri’s house, but she realized she didn’t feel like putting on a long-sleeved dress and a head-scarf in that heat. Mehri’s second husband, Mohsen Khan, was a very strict man.
Zari knew her restlessness and depression had much to do with sheer fatigue. Every summer she would spend at least two or three weeks at their village where a change of air, long walks and horse riding prepared her for the autumn and winter ahead. But this summer, with its disease, famine and war, and her own unexpected pregnancy, had made a prisoner of her, confining her to the house, the prison, and the asylum. She decided to arrange a weekly reunion with her former classmates … an afternoon reunion, perhaps … first at her house, then at Mehri’s. Of course Mehri herself would be willing, if only Mohsen Khan would allow it. Their husbands didn’t get along, otherwise she and Mehri, regardless of how often they saw each other, were still the same steadfast friends.
She went to the bedroom and searched in her drawers for knitting needles and wool in order to knit away her anxiety and depression. But neither knitting needles nor wool could be found. Her glance fell on a box full of glass beads. She picked it up, along with her sewing kit and went out on the verandah to string the glass beads. She looked out towards the garden which seemed to have lost its bloom. Dust had settled on all the trees, smothering the yellow, burnt-out leaves. For an instant she thought the trees were staring back at her. Then she saw them shiver and nod and then quieten down again. “They’re getting ready for their sleep,” she mused, “but the sparrows are awake on the branches, complaining to each other like a bunch of mother hens at the public baths!”
The sun had completely left the garden when, suddenly, she heard the neighing of a horse. It was the mare, not Sahar. Thank God! Yusef was back from the village. It was true what they said about hearts that talk to each other. Whenever she began to miss him desperately, Yusef would somehow turn up all of a sudden. She decided not to complain about how long he had been away this time, how anxious and wretched he had made her, how endlessly he had abandoned her to imaginings and nightmares and frightening rumours and unjust expressions of gratitude!
Gholam came out of the stables. Seyyid Mohammad, Yusef’s steward, entered riding the mare, with the roan horse in tow. Zari felt a pang. She stood up. The box of glass beads in her lap fell to the ground and broke open, scattering the beads all over the rug. Well, perhaps Yusef had got off along the way, gone somewhere on an errand. Seyyid Mohammad dismounted and gave the horses’ bridles to Gholam, whispering something in his ear. Gholam threw his hat on the ground, and Seyyid whispered something more to him. Slowly, Gholam led the horses away to the stables. Zari ran toward Seyyid Mohammad, out of breath.
“Where’s the master?” she asked.
“He’s coming in Malek Rostam’s car. Don’t panic, nothing’s happened,” he answered.
Gholam and Seyyid started to behave mysteriously. Gholam ran out of the garden hatless, while Seyyid came to the pool to wash. He took out a comb from his pocket and combed his thick moustache. Then, taking a stone from the driveway, he washed it and placed it on the ground as he stood to pray. But Seyyid wasn’t one for praying. Besides, what kind of prayer was this? Without a proper ablution and, although the sun had set, without the evening call to prayers?
Then Ameh arrived. It was very odd. Wordlessly, she stood to pray on the verandah still dressed in her outdoor veil. Without her prayer-mat. And without bringing the children. It was a long time before the car carrying Abol-Ghassem Khan drove in. Zari was certain something had happened but she didn’t want to ask. She didn’t have the courage. They began themselves, brother and sister, to tell her.
By the time Malek Rostam’s green car drew up to the poolside and stopped, she knew what had happened, but she refused to believe it until she saw for herself. Malek Rostam and Majid got out and she knew her husband would not be stepping out. She knew he would never again climb in or get out of a car … where had she read that so-and-so was riding on a wooden horse? Yusef was sitting stiffly on the rear seat, covered with a cloak and his hat pulled over his eyes. She heard Ameh’s voice saying, “Welcome, brother. So you’ve come home …” and Ameh began to sob. Abol-Ghassem Khan was wailing at such a pitch that he must have been heard in every corner of the house. Zari placed a hand over Yusef’s ice-cold one, with those long stiffened and separated fingers. She looked at his ashen face, his chin which had been bandaged with a blood-smeared handkerchief, the blood which had already congealed. She took it all in, but could not believe it.
“Without saying goodbye?” she asked in bewilderment. Gholam let out a wail. Zari asked again, “All alone?” And now everyone wailed. She wondered where from within their throats they managed to bring out those sounds? And why couldn’t she? She could see that Ameh had torn open her collar and was sitting on the stone ledge of the pool. Zari kept asking, “But why?” And then the car, and the trees and the people and the pool all swam around and around and went away from her.
When she opened her eyes, she found herself stretched out on the rug on the verandah. All the garden lights were on. Did they have guests? There was an odour of mud-plaster in the air. Ameh Khanom was massaging her shoulders, and her body, neck and face felt moist. There was commotion all around. They had propped Yusef up on a wooden bed by the pool. A hatless Gholam was sitting behind him, rocking gently back and forth and repeating, “My master!” Haj Mohammad Reza the dyer, with his arms dyed purple to the elbow, was unsuccessfully trying to remove Yusef’s boots. Abol-Ghassem Khan was standing over them.
“Haji, cut the boot open,” he said. And he shouted for a knife.
Yusef didn’t have his cloak on. He wasn’t wearing his hat either, and Zari thought she must be dreaming. Lately she had had nothing but nightmares—perhaps this was yet another bad dream. She thought she was dreaming of a man they had forced to sit on the wooden bed, and they were cutting open his boots with a knife, but she couldn’t see his face. She dreamt that Malek Rostam was holding the torn boot in his hand and shouting, “O woe is me, woe is me!”
She thought, “What do they call this kind of shouting from the guts? Bawling? Bellowing? Hollering? No, there’s a good word for it, but I can’t remember it now.” Then she imagined she was dreaming that Majid had put his head on Yusef’s cloak by the bed, and was sobbing out loud. But maybe she wasn’t dreaming, since her eyes were wide open.
Abol-Ghassem Khan came to the verandah. He took out a white handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose as though he had a cold. His eyes and his long nose were bright red. He blinked and said, “Sister, how quickly you’ve been widowed! And not even thirty yet! Oh my! Oh my!”
“Control yourself, man! Don’t frighten a pregnant woman more than she is,” Ameh said.
“Pregnant?” Zari knew she was pregnant, but her mind simply refused to acknowledge what had happened.
“How did you know?” she asked Ameh.
“From your eyes.”
Again Zari had the feeling she was dreaming. A man seemed to be sleeping, sprawled over a bed, and despite the heat they had covered him with Yusef’s cloak. But she didn’t recognize the man. She dreamt that three men were sitting on the children’s bed, talking about the man who was laid out on the other bed.
She managed to distinguish the voices: “My sister is right,” Abol-Ghassem Khan was saying, “it wasn’t time for his ideas. Brother, if your spirit is present, forgive me. I envied your intelligence and understanding and education, but as I didn’t have those things, I’d make fun of you. Brother, you had the freedom of a cypress, reaching out—”
Then Majid’s voice, “Yes, but don’t be upset now. He knew himself that it wasn’t time for his ideas. But he used to say—many times he told me himself—that our duty is to hasten the time for those ideas.”
And Malek Rostam’s voice, “I know that any day now they’ll get my poor brother Sohrab, as well. They’ll set up a gallows in the Mashq Square and everyone will go to watch.”
The voices mingled with the sound of crying.
“Don’t you think one wants to say and do the right things? But when you’ve started on a downhill course, the only way to go is down and then you’re sunk …” Whose voice was that?
Footsteps could be heard on the gravel of the driveway. But they stopped when they reached the verandah and then resumed again. Zari closed her eyes, feeling as if all her life-forces had been drained and spent, like a squeezed fruit. It was as though a snake had slithered down her throat and coiled itself around her heart, with its head erect, ready to strike, and she knew that for the rest of her life this snake would stay coiled right there around her heart, so whenever she remembered her husband it could sink its fangs into her bosom.
At Ameh’s insistence, she got up and let herself be led by the arm to the parlour. Women were sitting all around on chairs or on the carpet, most of them fanning themselves and whispering together. The men were in the other rooms. She could hear their voices. It was as if they had all been waiting outside the garden gates for her husband’s corpse to arrive, with its fair locks bloodied beneath the hat, all the way down to the fair moustache where the blood had clotted, and then they could all come in … the women stood up at the sight of her, but Zari couldn’t see anyone clearly enough to recognize them. Ezzat-ud-Dowleh was the only exception. Zari’s gaze locked for an instant into her cobra-like face, framed by the gaudy hair, and then some sparkling yellow, red, blue and black glass beads took form and danced before her eyes. Most of the women peered at her carefully, shaking their heads and crying. From the other rooms, the men’s voices could be heard, topped by Abol-Ghassem Khan’s loud weeping.
“If anyone knows, please tell me too … I’m at a loss …” he was saying.
But Zari’s eyes and tongue were dry. Not a tear, not a word. She went out to the verandah and sat on the rug. Khosrow, riding Sahar, came through the garden gates and cantered straight to the verandah. He let Sahar go and rushed to his mother.
“Is it true?”
Zari bent her head and busied herself collecting the glass beads from the rug.
“Did you pass your exam?” she asked. All the lights were on. How could he not have seen his father’s sprawling corpse beneath that cloak? Why did he keep asking if it was true?
“Why are you so late?” Zari asked.
“Those of us who’d passed treated the others to paludeh ice-cream. But then the janitor came and told me uncle had called to say father was shot but he was just wounded, and he’d come straight home on horseback. Is it true? Where is he now? At the hospital?”
She suddenly hugged her son and kissed him, and then the tears began to flow.
Before long, a lot of people were embracing her and weeping aloud over her and her fate—to have been widowed so soon, to have to raise four orphaned children. Already everyone knew about the fourth. Ezzat-ud-Dowleh came forward too, but she neither embraced her, nor did she cry. She just said, “I hope this will be the last of your sorrows. At least he’s left you enough to raise your children in comfort.” Hardly saying goodbye, she went away, hobbling down the stairs with a hand to her back. She headed towards Malek Rostam who was sitting on a cane chair by the pool. Malek Rostam stood up and gave her his seat. You could tell Ezzat-ud-Dowleh was talking and Malek Rostam listening. She seemed to shed a few tears too, since she kept dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief. A voice announced: “The droshke is here.” Ezzat-ud-Dowleh rose and, on Malek Rostam’s arm, walked down to the end of the garden.
A few hours later Zari found herself lying on the bed in the cool basement with Khanom Hakim standing over her head. The fountain was on, and she could feel a cold, wet handkerchief on her forehead. She felt the sting of a hypodermic needle. Once, twice, three times … she could see Khanom Hakim placing the cold wooden ear-trumpet on her belly and listening.
“The baby be all right,” she said. “Tonight be best for the burial.”
Zari heard Ameh Khanom reply, “Why don’t you keep to your doctoring! Do you think my brother was a criminal to be buried at night?”
And again Khanom Hakim’s voice asking, “Why be so unpleasant? All three children be delivered by me. So will be fourth.”
Zari realized she was being questioned. “Why you be not coming sooner to me?”
Zari gave no answer, and Ameh replied rather harshly, “It’s all your ‘be this’ and ‘be that’ which has driven everyone mad! If only …”
“If only you would get lost.” Someone had said that in Zari’s mind, because Ameh Khanom didn’t finish her sentence. Nevertheless, Khanom Hakim seemed to have heard the voice in Zari’s mind.
“Be this the reward for service and self-sacrifice?” she complained indignantly in a trembling voice. “We be in strange town with dry air, away from brother and sister and friends … medicines be free, treatment free.”
This time the voice in Zari’s mind shouted, “Get lost! Everyone get lost!”
Khanom Hakim had gone, and Zari could see Khosrow with a fan in his hand. She felt a cool, gentle breeze on her face …
“Khosrow,” she murmured.
Khosrow brought his head closer.
“Do something for your mother … go to Dr Abdullah Khan early tomorrow morning … tell him what a disaster—tell him to come by and visit me for a moment.”
“I’ll go right now,” Khosrow said, getting up.
“No, my love, go tomorrow morning.”
Ameh came in and Zari heard her say, “Get up, son, go and eat your dinner. Then to bed. For your late father’s sake, be a good boy and go right away.” How quickly they beseech you by your late f
ather, thought Zari … and sometime after that Khadijeh’s voice announced, “There’s a man at the door. He says he’s come to give us a hand as an act of charity. He says he dreamt last night that one of Imam Ali’s devout servants had just entered the kingdom of God …”
Zari knew they had set up a tent around the pool, and were about to wash her husband’s corpse in the pool-water. She knew the pool would be emptied and the water drained that very night, channelled quietly into the garden. The water that had cleansed her husband’s body and washed away the dried blood would irrigate the trees. And Hossein Kazerouni would work the treadwheel from midnight to refill the empty pool by morning.
Her ears perked up at the sound of Seyyid Mohammad saying, “What can I say? Better left unsaid.” Whose question was he answering? Zari opened her eyes. Seyyid was squatting by the door of the basement, rolling a cigarette. Ameh was sitting on the bed at her feet. Abol-Ghassem Khan and Khosrow were there too. Seyyid licked the thin cigarette-paper and striking a match, said, “What can I say, really? No-one knew how it happened. The peasants were ready to die for their master. I don’t know. Maybe it was the work of the gendarmes, or some others … this business about Kolu’s uncle rushing all the way from Kavar to shoot the master and then racing back home is a load of nonsense. It’s trivializing the matter; it’s even an insult. Whoever had a hand in it, started this rumour themselves. When I got on my horse to come down to the plain, Kolu stopped me and said, ‘I shot the master.’ I said, ‘What did you shoot him with?’ He said, ‘With my slingshot.’ Later I heard he’d said a gun. Then he’d said his uncle had done it. I know they’ve told him what to say. They think they can fool us. We couldn’t find a single trace of Kolu’s uncle having been at the village, no matter how carefully we investigated. How could he possibly have gone there without being seen? Yes, he does have a rifle. The master bought if for him himself after Kolu’s father died.”