“Let them do whatever they want, but please don’t let them bring this war into my home. What do I care if the whole town has turned into a red-light district? My town, my country is this household … but they’re going to drag this war to my doorstep too.”
Yusef held his wife’s face in his hands and kissed away her tears.
“Go and wash your face,” he said soothingly. “It’s not the time for this sort of talk. I swear to God, you’re a thousand times prettier without make-up. Your face is like one of those they paint on tiles. Come on, my love. I want you tonight.”
Zari undressed, and put out the light. She didn’t want Yusef to see the ‘geography map’ on her stomach, as she called it. Even though Yusef always kissed the scars and said, “You’ve suffered this for me.” It was Khanom Hakim who had disfigured her belly with stitch-marks and puckered scars.
She climbed into bed, and when Yusef’s warm, hairy legs touched her cold ones, and his large hand caressed her breast moving lower and lower down, she forgot everything—the earrings, Captain Singer, Khanom Hakim, the bride, the military music, the drums, and the beady-eyed, squinting, bald wedding guests … she forgot it all. Instead, in her ears was the sound of water flowing gently over red flowers; and before her stood the image of a ship full of flowers, a ship that was not a warship.
2
When Zari woke up on Thursday morning it was still half dark. She crept quietly out of the bedroom, and when she had finished washing, she joined her sister-in-law at the breakfast table in the parlour. Ameh Khanom was sitting behind the boiling samovar. The twins, Mina and Marjan, were chattering like two little sparrows as they hung around the breakfast table. It was for their safe delivery, and also in thanks for the birth of their brother Khosrow, that Zari had vowed to take bread and dates to the prisoners and the patients in the asylum.
Because of her slender build and narrow hips, Zari had had a difficult time at childbirth. With each pregnancy she had hoped for a home birth, making all the necessary arrangements with the best midwife in town, but in the end she found herself resorting to Khanom Hakim and the Missionary Hospital on the one hand, and to vows and prayers on the other. And of course, Khanom Hakim was a great one for the scalpel. She loved to cut and sew. Delirious with pain at the first delivery, Zari had pleaded with God, vowing, as an act of charity, to take home-baked bread and dates every week to the mental patients. Then, when she became pregnant again five years later, she was so frightened, she made a vow in advance to do the same, but this time for prisoners.
Ameh Khanom poured her a glass of tea. “Well, how was last night?” she asked.
“You should have been there! I’m afraid there was yet another quarrel between the two heads of the family.”
“I know my brother Abol-Ghassem, I know Yusef too. Abol-Ghassem Khan isn’t straightforward. And since he’s taken it into his head to become a parliamentary deputy, he’s even less so.”
“He made me promise faithfully to go to the foreigners’ party. I don’t know how I’m going to carry out my vow.”
“Don’t worry about that. I’ll ask Haj Mohammad Reza, the dyer, to go to the asylum with Gholam. I’ll go to the prison with Hossein Agha, the grocer. Sakineh is here stoking up the oven, and the dough has already risen. I looked in after finishing my prayers. I think the bread is setting. You go to the party, sister. I don’t want any more quarrelling between those two.”
At that moment Khosrow came into the parlour.
“Here’s Khosrow!” Mina shouted gleefully, clapping her hands together. “He’ll let me ride his horse, won’t you, Khosrow?” Marjan, who was a quarter of an hour younger, imitated and followed her sister in everything. She clung to Khosrow’s leg and said to Mina: “First you play with him, then me, all right?”
“No time to play, I have to go to school now,” Khosrow said, patting them both on the head hurriedly. Mina pulled at the tablecloth. The samovar tipped and nearly fell over, but Ameh Khanom steadied it just in time.
“They can really drive you mad with their mischief,” she said, as she handed them each a sugar lump.
Khosrow reached for the sugar bowl. “Mother, may I? They’re shoeing Sahar this afternoon,” he said, taking five lumps and putting them in his pocket. Then he took some tea from his aunt, and reached out for two more lumps. As he put them in his pocket, his aunt said, “Don’t you want any sugar in your tea?”
“No, I’ll be late for school.”
“Abol-Ghassem has sent Seyyid Moti-ud-Din, the mullah, a sackful of sugar and twenty packets of tea belonging to his own peasants and workers,” Ameh added to Zari with a laugh. “I’ve heard my dear brother stands right behind the mullah when he leads the prayers in the mosque. Abol-Ghassem, who’s never in his life known which way to face when he prays!”
“Auntie, I’ve seen Seyyid Moti-ud-Din, the mullah! I saw him the day we went to the bazaar with Gholam to buy Sahar a saddle,” Khosrow exclaimed. “He was riding a white donkey. He brought his hand out from his cloak and held it up like this in the air … like this …” He waved his hand in imitation of the mullah, sitting astride his chair and rocking himself back and forth as if he were riding a donkey. “Everyone who passed by kissed his hand; Gholam and I kissed it too. He had to bring it lower down for me because I was shorter.”
Suddenly there was a knock at the garden gate. Zari’s heart leapt. Perhaps they had brought her earrings back from the Governor’s house! But so early in the morning? The sun was just rising. She went out to the verandah. There she saw Gholam in his nightshirt, coming out of the stables at the bottom of the garden. As always he was wearing his felt hat to cover his baldness. He opened the gate to let in Abol-Ghassem Khan who walked in with a brisk air. Disappointed, Zari thought to herself, “What if they send them back so late that Yusef is up and finds out … oh, how silly I am! What earrings? Who on earth is going to remember my earrings!”
She returned to the parlour and sat down. When Abol-Ghassem Khan walked in, Ameh said: “Talk of the devil. I was just singing your praises.”
“You must have been saying that with all this running about, I’ll finally make it as a deputy,” he said. “And I will. I’ve seen the Colonel and the Consul. The Governor has promised, too. Only the mullah is putting his spoke in my wheel. He flatters me in the mosque one day, and takes it all back the next.”
“Maybe the sugar and tea you sent him didn’t go down too well!” Ameh remarked.
“Sister, what are you talking about? What tea and sugar?” Abol-Ghassem Khan retorted sharply, throwing a look in Khosrow’s direction.
“I’m the eldest amongst you, and I’m entitled to give you advice,” Ameh said quietly. “You have not chosen the right path, brother. And besides, Khosrow is not a stranger.”
“So you think the path your precious brother Yusef has chosen is the right one?” Abol-Ghassem Khan replied angrily. “Taking sugar and clothing coupons from the government with one hand and passing them on to his peasants with the other? Well, what’s the young fool getting out of it for himself? Whenever he goes to his village he takes medicine for the peasants. God alone knows that all the medicine in the world won’t cure our peasants.”
As Khosrow stood up to say goodbye, Abol-Ghassem Khan asked, “Where’s Yusef now?”
“He’s getting up,” Zari replied. “He’ll be here soon.” She busied herself making fresh tea.
“Always sleeping, always sleeping!” Abol-Ghassem Khan complained. “In his village too, he’s either asleep or sitting under the mosquito net, reading a book. My heels are cracked, my face scorched and wrinkled from the sun, but his Lordship keeps himself wrapped up in cotton wool.” Then he added emphatically: “Peasants have to be afraid of their landlords. You must stand over them with a whip, like an elephant driver. You have to use the cane and the bastinado. Remember the old saying: peasants must be kept living from hand to mouth.” He took some tea from Zari before going on.
“Yusef doesn’t know about winter c
rops or the summer harvest. He can only keep his eyes glued to the sky, watching for rain. And if it doesn’t rain he gets really upset; not for himself, of course, but for the peasants and their sheep. And when you try to set him straight, he only comes up with his favourite saying, ‘What the peasant reaps belongs to him, even if the land doesn’t’.”
Ameh interrupted, “It’s his way of being charitable. If he can’t ensure his lot in this world, he will at least have his salvation hereafter. Besides, brother, why is it any of your business? It’s not your money he’s giving away.”
Zari could hear Sahar, Khosrow’s horse, neighing in the garden. She knew Khosrow must have gone to the stables before leaving for school and set Sahar loose in the garden. When he heard the neighing, Abol-Ghassem Khan stood up and looked out of the parlour window. His eyes followed the colt carefully.
“What a beauty he’s become,” he said. “Glitters like gold! Look at him rolling on the cool grass! Now he’s standing again. Wide-set eyes, broad forehead, good ears—a perfect creature! Look at that golden mane and arched tail. He holds his head high too, just like his mother.”
Sahar neighed again, revelling in his freedom. Abol-Ghassem Khan returned to his seat.
“Thank God you approve of one thing in this household,” Ameh Khanom said with a sigh.
Abol-Ghassem Khan laughed: “Everything he does is so fanciful. Who keeps horses nowadays? Apart from my brother, that is, who’s got three in his stables …” Mimicking Yusef, he said, “I like to go to the village on horseback. I ride the bay mare myself, my steward rides the roan, and the colt belongs to Khosrow.”
At that moment Yusef came in. He was wearing a light cloak over his shoulders. He greeted everyone, and looked with surprise from his brother to his sister. Then he threw Zari an enquiring look, but she merely shook her head.
“Has Khosrow gone?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Where are Mina and Marjan?”
“They’re watching Sakineh bake bread and probably chattering away as usual,” Ameh replied.
Yusef sat down. “Has something happened, God forbid?” he asked his brother.
Abol-Ghassem did not answer. Instead, he took a small book from his pocket and put it solemnly on the table. “Swear on the holy Quran,” he said, “that you’ll come tonight and that you won’t stir up any trouble with your usual comments. Now, if you don’t want to sell the surplus provisions from your village to the foreign army, don’t. But you don’t have to say so to them in so many words. Stall them somehow, until harvest time. You have to go to the lowlands in a few days anyway—tell them you’ll give it to them after the harvest. Who knows what’11 happen tomorrow? Maybe they’ll be defeated by then and good riddance to them. They say Hitler is having a bomb made that will wipe out the world … now swear!”
Yusef sighed. “I never said I wasn’t coming this evening,” he said. “There’s no need for swearing. But as far as fooling them goes, I’m a straightforward person. I won’t lie to save my skin.”
“For God’s sake, swear,” Abol-Ghassem implored. “I’ve never said this before, but now I will. Our father Haj Agha, God rest his soul, spent a great deal of money on your education, but not much on mine. When he was dividing his wealth he gave us equal shares even though I’m the older brother. Did I say anything then? Even when it came to marriage, you were the one who ended up winning the hand of Zari Khanom, Razieh Khanom’s attractive daughter. Now that there’s an opportunity for me at last, let me make something of my life too.” He quoted a line from a Hafez poem: “Of strangers I have no complaints. Alas, what I’ve suffered has been at the hands of my own kith and kin …”
“Brother,” interrupted Ameh, “one thing I know for sure is that neither your father nor his father before him ever begged a favour of anyone. Not from the unclean foreigners, nor from our own social climbers. Haj Agha never once took off his mullah’s turban. He remained a recluse all his life. In that assembly—I forget the name … who cares what it was called, anyway—he didn’t vote for the man they’d all been told to vote for. If Yusef was his favourite, it was because they had a similar temperament and believed in the same things.”
“Now I’m getting it from you, too!” Abol-Ghassem Khan shouted angrily. “If our Haj Agha had had a brain in his head, we would be rolling in money today. He spent everything he had on that Indian dancer, Soudabeh. My mother died heartbroken in a foreign land because of her. If he had had any brains at all he wouldn’t have married you off to that imbecile, Mirza Miyur’s son, who got himself killed on purpose, and you wouldn’t have ended up as a servant in the house of …”
Zari cut her brother-in-law short. “Abol-Ghassem Khan, Ameh Khanom is the eldest among us and the most respected. If it weren’t for her, I could never manage such a large place by myself. Besides, this house is her home.”
“Yes, I know,” he said. “She manages well enough for herself, and stirs up trouble for everyone else besides.” He got up and added in a surprisingly gentle tone: “I hadn’t intended to mention the dead and speak badly of our past first thing in the morning. On such a nice day, too. Well, it just happened. Don’t take it to heart, sister. Goodbye.”
Zari accompanied the two brothers to the garden gate. Sahar was grazing, but the moment he smelt a stranger, he stopped and lifted his head. His pink nostrils flared. Abol-Ghassem Khan stopped in front of him. The colt stepped back and neighed. His mother answered from the stable. When Yusef approached, Sahar nuzzled at his cloak and lifted his head, sniffing the familiar odour. Yusef caressed his neck and mane. Later, when husband and wife returned from seeing Abol-Ghassem Khan out, they found Sahar cantering from one side of the garden to the other.
“Zari, look! He’s chasing the butterflies,” Yusef said.
Sahar must have been getting hot, because he rolled over several times on the shaded part of the grass. Then he got up, and all of a sudden charged after a brown and yellow butterfly.
When they reached the verandah, Yusef paused and looked at the garden.
“Your town is looking pretty,” he said. “It’s a pity that it’s summer again, and I won’t have so much time for you or your town as I’ll be at the village.”
“My town?” Zari asked.
“Didn’t you say last night that this house was your town?”
Zari laughed. “Oh yes,” she said dreamily. “This is my town and I love every inch of it. The hill behind the garden, the verandah all around the house, the two streams on either side of the footpath, the two elms, the orange trees you planted with your own hands. That fruit tree to which you grafted a new fruit each year, the scent distillery next door, with its mounds of flowers and herbs in season, flowers and herbs whose very names make you happy … citron, willow, eglantine; and more than anything the orange blossoms and the scents which waft into our garden from over the wall. The sparrows and starlings and the crows, too, have made this their home. But the sparrows make me cross, you know. They build their nests above the windows, or in the trees, and their eggs are always falling and breaking all over the place. They’re so careless, those birds.”
“Your voice is as soft as velvet,” Yusef said with a smile. “Like a lullaby. Go on.”
“What shall I talk about?” Zari said. “About the people in my town? About you? About the children and Ameh and our neighbours?”
“About Haj Mohammad Reza, the dyer …” Yusef added with a laugh.
“About Haj Mohammad the dyer, with the colourful fabrics he ties on sticks, and leaves in the street to dry in the sun; with his arms dyed purple up to the elbows. About Gholam and Hossein Agha the grocer around the corner, and Hassan Agha the corn chandler … about Khadijeh … that’s enough now! You’re not letting me get on with my work.”
She was interrupted by the sound of tinkling bells. She knew it would be the donkeys arriving at the neighbour’s.
“They’ve bought orange-flower blossoms next door. What a scent!” Yusef exclaimed.
Zari couldn’t tear herself away. She waited until the donkeys entered the neighbour’s garden and unloaded their perfumed bundles. Only yesterday morning she had taken the twins to see the pile of orange-blossoms. Mina had clapped and said, “Oh look how many stars there are!”
And Marjan had laid her head on the heap of flowers and said, “I want to sleep right here.”
Zari meanwhile had been engrossed in the actions of the old distiller and his three sons. The old man had knelt before the orange-blossoms and piled them into baskets that the boys put on their heads to carry into the store-room. The old man had nicknamed Marjan ‘Nargessi’, and Mina ‘Narengi’. Zari had no idea why. And when his work was finished, he made Nargessi and Narengi a toy water-mill from an apple and four pieces of thin wood. He put the water-mill in the stream so that the running water turned it. The children were so happy—as if they owned the greatest water-mill in the world. And Zari kept on wondering why the old man hadn’t married his sons off. It was high time they were married.
Then she thought to herself: “Why should people who live with so many beautiful flowers need to get married anyway …”
3
When they had cleared the table, Zari brought the hookah for her husband. Khosrow had been restless at lunch and became more so as time passed. It even looked as though there were tears in his eyes which he was fighting back. Zari put the twins to bed for their afternoon rest and then returned to the parlour to take the pipe away. Khosrow was pacing around the room. His father’s eyes followed his movements.
“Tell me, why have we gone through all these preparations?” he asked his son.
“So he wouldn’t be afraid,” Khosrow answered sadly.
“It wasn’t only for that,” Yusef added.
Khosrow sat down next to his father. “Every time the blacksmith comes, I lift Sahar’s foot myself,” he said. “In the beginning he was very frightened and he shied, especially when the smith put the nails in. Of course, he hammered very lightly at first but yesterday he hit very hard.”