She yawned and stretched out on her side on a group of flat cushions, putting her hands under her cheek. I had the feeling Naheed imagined herself as lucky as the prince. I remembered sadly how I used to feel the same way about the tale of a princess who rejected all suitors until the right one wooed her.
Opposite Naheed, I stretched out on my cushions so we faced each other, and put my hands under my cheek to match hers.
“Do you think he told his second wife that he already had a woman?” Naheed asked.
“I hope so.”
“I would hate that,” said Naheed, looking angry.
“Being a second wife?”
“Or a third, or fourth,” she said. “My parents will never let that happen. I’ll be the first wife or nothing.”
“That’s the only good thing about coming from a humble family,” I said. “Most suitors of mine wouldn’t be able to afford a second wife, or even a concubine.”
Naheed raised her eyebrows. “Rich men always seem to have a few,” she said. “I think if my husband married another woman, I would try to cause her grief.” Her smile had a wicked edge.
I thought about what had happened in my own family. “After my grandfather took his second wife, who was my grandmother, the two families remained apart, and my father and my uncle Gostaham almost never saw each other,” I said. “But sometimes it’s not like that. When the richest merchant in my village married a younger woman, his first wife loathed her. But then she became ill, and the younger one took such good care of her that they became fast friends.”
Naheed shuddered. “Insh’Allah, that will never happen to me.”
“I don’t want to share, either,” I said. “But we don’t know what happened to the wives in Kobra’s story. She didn’t tell us that part.”
“That’s because the story wasn’t really about them,” said Naheed. “What man wouldn’t want a warrior woman to ride with and a fleshy woman to ride in bed?”
We laughed together, knowing that we could be looser with our language when only the two of us were present.
I had stayed with Naheed much longer than I had intended. Because it was nearly dark, she insisted on having a maid accompany me home. When we arrived, the maid handed me a large parcel, saying it was a gift. It was packed with bright cotton robes in shades of saffron, pink, and red, with matching sheaths to wear underneath and loose embroidered trousers that looked as if they had hardly ever been worn. The most dazzling item was a thick purple robe that fell to the knees, with fur at the cuffs, around the hem, and at the breast. I danced with joy at the sight of the bright clothing, and when I showed it to my mother, she gave me permission to stop wearing my mourning clothes, although she herself planned to wear black for the rest of her life. I was overjoyed; I could hardly believe my luck in having Naheed as a friend.
CHAPTER THREE
I awoke one summer morning, after we had been in Isfahan for half a year, thinking of a poem my mother often recited, about a beloved with cheeks like roses, hair as black as coal, and a teasing beauty mark near ruby lips.
Look in the face of your beloved,
For in that mirror, you will see yourself.
My beloved was not Naheed’s handsome polo player, nor the powerful old Shah, nor any of the thousands of sweet-faced young men who congregated on Isfahan’s bridges, smoked in its coffeehouses, or lingered around Four Gardens. The one I loved was more unknowable, more varied, and more marvelous: the city itself. Every day, I bounded out of my bedroll, longing to explore it. No eyes were hungrier than mine, for they had so memorized the buildings, people, and animals in my village that I was eager to feed myself with new sights.
Isfahan’s bridges were the perfect place to begin. From there, I could see the mighty Zagros Mountains, the river rushing below me, and the city’s domes twinkling like stars amid its earth-colored buildings. One of my favorite spots was the Thirty-three Arches Bridge, our first point of entry into the city. Standing in one of its famed archways, I would stare at the people streaming in and out of Isfahan. Some were from the Gulf, with skin as black as naphtha, while others, from the northeast, had Mongol ancestors who bequeathed them slanting eyes and straight black hair. Sometimes I even saw nomads with legs like tree trunks, for they walked high into the mountains in search of pasture for their lambs, carrying the newborns on their backs.
The city also fed my love of carpets, because everywhere I looked, I saw patterns. I studied the plants, trees, and flowers in Four Gardens to understand how rug designs were modeled on nature; the district itself seemed to me like a garden carpet writ large. For the same reason, I sought out the dead game and trophy animals for sale in the bazaar: the tough, muscled onager, the airy gazelle, even the magisterial lion, whose mane was tricky to draw. “They say you can draw steeds for a hundred years before the animal springs to life under your pen,” Gostaham had said.
I also scrutinized the carpets, which hailed from all parts of Iran, and learned to recognize the knots and patterns from each region. Even the buildings in the Image of the World had something to teach me. One day, I was passing the Shah’s private mosque when I observed that the tile panels near the doorway were like prayer rugs. They were indigo, with vivid white and yellow flowers surrounded by a field of clover-green. I promised myself that one day, I would learn to make a design just as intricate.
At home, carpets consumed most of my waking thoughts. I was determined to learn what Gostaham knew, and I worked day and night on the projects he gave me. I quickly finished drawing the boteh design and received his approval to make the rug. One of his workers set up a simple loom in our courtyard, which I strung with cotton. Taking the money Gostaham had lent me to buy wool, I went to the bazaar to shop for colors, just as he had as a young man. I had planned to buy simple hues like those we used in my village— rich camel-brown made from walnut husks, purple from the roots of old madder plants, red made from cochineal bugs, and yellow from safflowers. But in the Great Bazaar, what a richness of shades was at hand! I was enraptured by the sight of thousands of balls of wool hanging like fruit on a tree. Blues ranging from the turquoise radiance of a summer sky all the way to darkest indigo. And that was just blue! I stared at the bolts of wool and imagined different colors side by side in a rug. How about that lime-green with a startling orange? Or wine next to royal blue? I chose twelve hues that delighted my eyes, more colors than I had ever used in a rug. I found myself drawn to the bright colors: baby-chick yellow, grassy green, sunset-orange, pomegranate-red. Taking the brilliant balls of wool home, I attached them to the top of my loom and painted my design with watercolors, so that I would have a guide to knotting the colors I planned to use. I was eager to make the rug, knowing how important it was to prove my worth to the household. While everyone else was sleeping in the afternoons, I knotted for hours, and the rug quickly took shape under my fingers.
While I was consumed by the rug, my mother managed to separate herself from Gordiyeh’s supervision by making herbal cures. Medicines were costly, and although my mother had never been adept at brewing them, Gordiyeh agreed to the proposal because she seemed to think that my mother’s village origins gave her special powers.
My mother took daylong excursions to the foothills of the Zagros Mountains, where she collected plants, roots, herbs, and insects. She also haunted the apothecaries in the bazaar for information about herbs local to Isfahan. Back in our village, Kolsoom had given her a few recipes for fever medicine when I had been ill, which she still remembered. She also began learning about medicines for headaches and womanly complaints, brewing them over a fire in the courtyard. The resulting concoctions were black and slimy, but Gordiyeh believed in their powers. Once when her head was aching, my mother gave her a liquid that relieved her pain and made her sleep. “Such fine medicines should be made in abundance,” Gordiyeh declared. She promised my mother that once she had brewed enough for the household’s use, she could sell what remained and keep the money. That gladdened my mother’s hear
t, for now she could preside over her own domain, one that Gordiyeh knew nothing about.
NAHEED VISITED ME one day to see how I looked in her old clothes. I donned her saffron sheath and trousers, which my mother had hemmed, and the dashing purple robe. “You look so pretty!” Naheed said. “Your cheeks are as pink as roses.”
“It’s nice to wear bright colors after more than a year of black,” I replied. “Thank you for your generosity.”
“It is yours for the asking,” she replied. “And now I hope I may call on yours. Will you come with me to polo?”
I hadn’t planned on going to the Image of the World that day, because I had too much work to do. “Naheed-joon, I wish I could, but I have my chores,” I replied.
“Please,” she begged. “I need your help so much.”
“How will I finish all my work?”
“Call in Shamsi,” said Naheed, in an authoritative tone. Shamsi arrived wearing a pretty orange head scarf and a cheap beaded necklace from the bazaar. Naheed put a few coins in her hand and whispered to her that there were more coming to her if she took care of my work for the day. Shamsi left jingling the coins, a gleeful smile upon her face.
I still didn’t want to go, though. “Aren’t you afraid we’re going to be caught someday?”
“We never have been before,” she said. “Now let’s go.”
“Only for a short while, then,” I said, although I felt apprehensive about leaving. We slipped out when Gordiyeh wasn’t looking.
Naheed’s purpose this time was to convey a letter to Iskandar revealing her feelings for him. She didn’t read it aloud, saying she wanted his eyes to be the first to see it. It professed eternal love and admiration for him in fine sentiments like the poets use, she said. I knew that her elegant calligraphy would make her words go straight to his heart.
The sun beat down without mercy as we walked to the Image of the World. The sky was a blue dome with not a single cloud to shelter us from the sun. Breathing under my picheh was like inhaling fire, and I was sweating through my clothes. When we arrived, the game had already started. The spectators were shouting more than usual, for neither side could win. Dust hung in the air and settled on our garments. I hoped the game would end soon so that I wouldn’t be discovered away from my chores. But it went on and on until the players became sluggish and the game was finally called a draw.
Naheed hardly seemed to notice that Iskandar’s team had not won. “Did you see how masterfully he played?” she asked. Her voice sounded high-pitched and excited, as it always did after she had watched her beloved. As the crowd began to disperse, she found Iskandar’s boy and carefully slipped him her letter and a coin. Then we returned to our homes, parting shortly after we left the square. Because the horses had kicked up a veil of dust that coated my outer clothes, I planned to hide them as soon as I arrived home, but Zohreh was waiting for me at the door under orders to lead me straight to Gordiyeh. That had never happened before. With my heart pounding, I shed the outdoor clothing and balled it up in my arms as I went to her rooms, hoping she wouldn’t notice the dust. She was sitting on a cushion and applying henna paste to the tops of her feet. Without a word of greeting, she asked me angrily, “Where have you been?”
“At Naheed’s,” I said, although the lie stuck to my tongue.
“You were not at Naheed’s,” said Gordiyeh. “I couldn’t find you, and I sent Shamsi to her house to fetch you. You weren’t there.”
She beckoned me toward her because she didn’t want to disturb the henna. “Give me your hand,” she said.
I stretched my hand out innocently, and she struck the top of it with the thin wooden paddle she used to apply the henna.
I rocked back on my heels, my hand aflame. I was far too old to be hit like a child.
“Just look at your clothes,” she said. “How could they become so dirty if you had stayed inside?”
Afraid of being struck again, I quickly confessed. “We were at the game.”
“Naheed doesn’t have permission to go to the game,” said Gordiyeh. “A girl like her can lose everything if people start to talk—even if she has done nothing.”
There was a knock at the door and a servant showed in Naheed’s mother. Ludmila entered the room looking as sorrowful as if she had lost her only child. “How could you?” she said to me in a quiet, disappointed tone that was even worse than Gordiyeh’s slap. She spoke very slowly in Farsi accented by her native Russian. “What you did was very wrong. You don’t understand how much a girl like Naheed can suffer if seen in the wrong places.”
“I’m very, very sorry,” I said, with my wounded hand behind my back.
Like my mother and me, Ludmila was an outsider to Isfahan. She always reminded me of a delicate bird, flitting around her home as if she didn’t belong there, even after twenty years. Because of what she had seen during the wars in her country, she had an aversion to human blood. If a servant cut her finger while chopping meat, she trembled and took to her bed. Sometimes, Naheed told me, she screamed in her sleep about fountains of blood gushing out of men’s chests and eyes.
Ludmila’s face was white and scared. “Naheed told me how much you love polo and how often you beg her to go to the games. That is very selfish of you. I hope you understand the disruptiveness of your actions.”
I must have looked startled, for I couldn’t believe Naheed had blamed her misbehavior on me. But I decided to keep silent, knowing she would be in dire trouble if her mother found out what drew her to the games.
“I don’t always understand the ways of the city,” I said in a meek voice. “I will never do such a thing again.”
“As punishment, you are to collect the night soil every morning from all the rooms of the house until the next moon,” said Gordiyeh.
It was as if I were the lowliest of servants. To know the state of every person’s innards, every day, and to have to pour all the slop into one big basin for the night-soil collectors and then clean all the pans—I could hardly think of the task without feeling as if I might lose what was in my belly.
I was told to go to my room and confess to my mother what had happened. She was not at all sympathetic.
“Bibi, she hit me!” I complained.
“Why did you do such a thoughtless thing?” she asked. “You could have ruined Naheed’s reputation in a single day, not to mention your own!”
“You know that I have never liked polo,” I said, wanting my mother to take my side. “Naheed was the one who always begged me to go.”
“Why?”
I didn’t want to reveal Naheed’s secret, for that would bring her grave trouble. “It was exciting for her. Her parents keep such a close watch over her otherwise.”
“You should have refused,” said my mother. “You know better!”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I just wanted to do her a favor.”
My mother softened. “I know you were only trying to help,” she said. “But since you were wrong, I expect you to take your punishment without complaint.”
“I will,” I said bitterly.
“Now come here.” She rubbed the burning spot on my hand with a poultice made of lamb’s fat, which she had concocted from recipes that Kolsoom had once used. The poultice soothed away the sting.
“That’s much better,” I said.
“I finally found the right herbs,” my mother said. She was thoughtful for a moment. “Tell me this: Didn’t Naheed blame her escapade on you?”
“Yes,” I said.
“What kind of a friend would do that?”
“I’m sure she didn’t mean anything by it.”
“I certainly hope not,” said my mother sharply.
“No doubt she was caught by surprise,” I replied, but the thought that she had sacrificed me to save herself plagued me for days.
That was the last time Naheed and I went to the games. For the next two weeks, she was punished by not being allowed to leave home, as I was. I stayed home, did my chores, and collected t
he night soil. After that, when Naheed wanted to see me, a servant accompanied her to my house and waited for her there until it was time for her to go home.
Despairing over how to contact Iskandar during her confinement, Naheed confided in Kobra and offered silver for her help. The next time there was a game, Kobra went by herself and found the spot where Naheed and I used to stand. She brought the polo ball Naheed had caught, casually holding it in view after the game. Iskandar’s boy was sharp enough to realize that she was a messenger from Naheed, who had after all been holding the ball the first time he found her. From then on, Kobra met the child near the bazaar every few days to allow the lovers to exchange letters.
AFTER NAHEED AND I had fulfilled our punishments, we started meeting on Thursday afternoons at the sparkling hammam used by the wealthy residents of our district. As a precaution against further straying, Naheed’s family warned her that a maid would be dispatched sometime during the afternoon to make sure we were there.
I had been to that hammam a few times after I arrived in Isfahan, but it was too expensive to attend regularly, so Naheed paid the coin for me. I was grateful to her, because the hammam was one of our greatest pleasures. We spent most of the afternoon soaking, talking, and peeking at other women’s bodies. It was there that we learned of births, deaths, and engagements in the neighborhood, or discovered that a woman was pregnant from the slight thickening of her belly, or gleaned that a new bride had mingled with her husband the night before, and therefore had to make the Grand Ablution on a different day than usual.
Homa, the head bath attendant, was a great-grandmother whose skin had stayed almost as moist as a young woman’s from all her years in the steam. She washed and massaged me like a mother, and she always had stories to tell about the comings and goings of everyone at the bath. Homa was a skillful questioner, and often I let slip information about myself when I was nearly senseless from soaking in hot water and being massaged. She knew all about my life in the village, my father’s death, our poverty, and how it had ruined my marriage plans. I even whispered to her from time to time about the hardships in my household and my desire to marry one day and have a home of my own. “May God grant your fondest wish!” she would always say, but sometimes I thought I saw a doubtful look in her eyes.