The Blood of Flowers

Naheed looked around herself with dead eyes. “I would have preferred a hovel, if it could be one I shared with Iskandar,” she said, and then her face tightened around her eyes. “Remember when the women were teasing me at the wedding? I was afraid, but I never thought having a man in my bed would be as bad as this.”

  I felt a thrill in my black heart. The better part of me wanted to tell her: It will improve.

  Naheed shivered, and the pearls hanging from her upper arms shivered, too. “During the day, he exhibits good manners and good breeding. But at night, he transforms into an animal. When I feel his hot breath at my neck, I want to scream.”

  That was exactly what I liked about him. He was like an animal in the dark, and being with him allowed me to be the same way. At home, with Gordiyeh, I had to be deferential and show myself to be a good worker; with Gostaham, I tried to be a good pupil; with my mother, to show respect; with visitors, to prove myself a well-mannered daughter. Only with him could I show the truth of my flesh. It had taken me a long time to discover that, and on the nights I didn’t see him, it was what I longed for.

  I cleared my throat, embarrassed.

  “You’re blushing,” said Naheed with a smile. “I suppose that’s only natural, for a virgin.”

  “Do you think you’d like it better if he were Iskandar?” I asked.

  “Of course,” she said. “The sight of him without his clothes makes me long for my beloved. His hands on my body feel as rough as a cat’s claws. Even his beard scratches my face. I want to throw him off, but I must lie there and wait until he is done.”

  “How does he like that?” I blurted out. I had felt shy when I had first lain with him, but never repulsed in the way Naheed described. The one time I had failed to please him, he had punished me for weeks. What would he do to her?

  Naheed looked at me with an odd expression, the corners of her mouth turning down. “He doesn’t seem to notice very much. It’s as if he’s just doing his duty as a husband.”

  Was it possible that he went to her bed because it was required, but saved himself for me? I wanted to believe it.

  “What if you praised him?”

  “I tell him that he’s as fierce as a falcon and as strong as a lion. I give him honey all the time, but it doesn’t matter.”

  Fereydoon disliked such hollow words, I knew. She would have to do better than that.

  “But you don’t believe those things about him?”

  “No.”

  “Perhaps, in time, you could learn to like it.”

  “I doubt it,” she said. “But I could live with it, if not for having lost the one thing I cared about.”

  “Iskandar?”

  “Not just him, but also his letters. Right before I got married, he and I agreed it would be too dangerous to continue.”

  “You were right,” I said. “But Naheed, now that you are married forever, do you think you can try to like your husband after all?”

  I could hardly believe I had uttered those words. I was caught between wanting my friend to be happy, and wanting her husband—and mine—for myself.

  “Never,” she said.

  “But then, how will you live?” I asked gently.

  “I don’t know,” she said, looking as if she were going to cry. But rather than sobbing in my arms, as she had done before her marriage, she quickly gained control of her face, though I could see how painful it was for her to hold herself back.

  “Naheed-joon!” I said sympathetically.

  “I cannot show myself here,” she whispered, and only then did she grind her teeth together to prevent her tears from rising. Her lips pulled back from her teeth, and frown lines etched themselves near her mouth. When she had assassinated the tears, she looked as beautiful as ever, but the grief in her eyes was terrible to see.

  As I was leaving, I remembered with a pang of guilt the twist of rainbow-colored threads hidden under my clothes, at my throat. The charm maker had been right: It had knotted up her love. I should have pulled the threads off my neck, but I could not bear to relinquish Fereydoon.

  THE DAY AFTER I saw Naheed, Fereydoon summoned me again. As I sat in the little room anticipating how Fereydoon and I would come together, I shivered with pleasure. While Naheed recoiled from him with her whole body, mine opened up pore by pore at the thought of him. How different it was from when I had first lain underneath him! Then I had been the slave, and he the master. Now he was sometimes slave to me. I waited for him that afternoon with the foreknowledge of where we would go together, yet with luxuriant uncertainty about how we would travel there. Fereydoon, I knew, did not plow a groove in the same way twice.

  When he arrived that day, it was with a large bundle that he told me promised heavenly delights. After the servants departed, Fereydoon asked me to remove my clothes on my own. I did so slowly in the semidarkness, while he sat cross-legged on a cushion with the bundle beside him. I started awkwardly, but by the time I reached my undergarments, I began to enjoy his gaze.

  When I was bare, he arose and lifted me into his arms, twirling me gently around the room. I felt giddy with my long hair swinging behind me and the air stroking my body. When we were close to the bedroll, he lowered me on top of it and told me to close my eyes. I lay there, warm and waiting. I could hear him untying the bundle; then he stood above me quietly. After a moment, I felt a delicate pitter-patter on my belly, the gentlest of showers. I smiled and arched my back. He crouched, pulled another handful from the bundle, and let the rain fall again. Still above me, he rubbed his hands together and the scent of a rosebush filled the room. I opened my eyes: my whole body was patterned in rose petals. Some were pale pink, others bright red, and still others mauve, a multicolored carpet of flowers. A hot red wave started at my toes, surged up my middle, bloomed on my cheeks. I reached for his waist and drew his hips to mine.

  “I want your dates in my milk,” I said, quoting a poem I had heard at the hammam but probably wasn’t supposed to know.

  He rubbed against me, crushing the rose petals between our bodies. Their sweet hot perfume filled the air, mingling with our musk. He covered my eyes with rose petals and, with me so blinded, did everything I hoped for and everything I demanded. We surmounted the peak together that night, blending our cries, as if entwined in the fragrant gardens of paradise.

  Judging from what Naheed had said about the dullness of her nights with Fereydoon, it was no surprise to discover that he wanted me more than ever. Every time I was summoned, I felt remorse over Naheed, but then when I imagined what I would do with Fereydoon, my knees went slack beneath my clothes, and I couldn’t stop myself from going to see him. And every time I went, I dreamed up new ways to please him, and to stop him from bringing our time together to an end. Sometimes it was the way I designed my body for him. Once I strung some blue ceramic beads on a cord and tied it around my hips. They rattled and marked the rhythm of our movements together, teasing his ears. Another time I told him he could not have me until he removed all my clothes using just his mouth. He did what he could, untying the strings that held my clothes with his teeth, pushing fasteners out of their loops with his tongue, pulling off my trousers with his lips. He had a sore jaw afterward, but I have never seen him happier.

  The secret I was keeping from Naheed was even worse than I had thought. Not only was I married to her husband, but I understood how to give him pleasure in ways she couldn’t even imagine.

  IN THE MORNINGS after I left Fereydoon, I returned home and worked with Malekeh and Katayoon. They came every day except Friday to work on a loom we had set up indoors. Both of them desperately needed the work. Malekeh’s husband’s illness continued to linger. Katayoon’s father, a bricklayer, had recently died after falling off the dome of a mosque he was helping to build. “Straight to God,” she had said, her lip trembling. I felt special sympathy for her because she was only fifteen, about the same age I had been when I had lost my father. Now that I was almost seventeen I felt much older, as if I had lived seven lifetimes since le
aving my village.

  Despite their problems, the women went about their work like an army of ants. Both of them knotted as quickly as I did. Malekeh was shy, but when she became more comfortable, she liked to tell me about her children’s antics. Katayoon was like a colt who just wanted to run wild. She kept herself tethered to the loom through an act of will. If I had not been her employer, she would have made a wonderful friend.

  Every morning when they arrived, they seated themselves at opposite ends of the loom. I sat behind the loom as I had seen the men do at the royal rug workshop, my design in my hand, and tried to call out the colors at just the right moment. If the chant was “red, red, beige, blue, beige, red, red,” they could easily lose the sequence if I didn’t make each call right before they had finished the previous knot. Katayoon was a little quicker than Malekeh; I had to tell her to slow down so they could knot the same colors at the same moment. Malekeh, on the other hand, had stronger arms, and when she compressed her knots with a comb, she made them tighter than Katayoon’s. I had to ask her to bear down more gently so the rug wouldn’t come off the loom with a shorter side.

  Every day, we worked from mid-morning until it was time to eat and then resumed again until the middle of the afternoon. I made sure they had plenty of tea and sweetmeats so they would work with ease; and at midday, we all ate together. I suspected it was the only meal they could be sure of. It made me feel good to help them, for I had once felt the ache of hunger myself.

  One morning Katayoon had a question about which color to use, for my design was not clear in that spot and I had stumbled in calling out the colors. I thought for a moment and said, “Use the red! And we’ll use it in that flower from now on.”

  “Chashm!” she replied, and did my bidding. I discovered that I liked the feeling of having authority, especially after so many months of doing what others had told me.

  Even though I had often spent the night before sporting with Fereydoon and had not slept, I made myself stay awake until Malekeh and Katayoon departed, and then I had a rest. If it was still light when I awoke, I continued knotting the carpet on my own. I wanted to finish it as soon as I could. Gordiyeh had no claim on this one, so whatever I earned would belong just to me and my mother.

  ONE MORNING, a stooped old woman knocked at our door and told me that Naheed wished to see me. I asked her to give Naheed my apologies, for I was busy with Malekeh and Katayoon, but she replied that she had been ordered not to return until I was within her care. With that, she sat down heavily in the courtyard and wrapped her shawl around her curved back, as if preparing for the night. I wondered why Naheed had decided to summon me so urgently. The thought that she might have discovered my secret made sweat break out on my neck.

  I returned to my knotters, hoping the messenger would get tired and go away. We worked through the morning, and after eating lunch and knotting a few more rows, Katayoon and Malekeh departed. I went to my room and slept. When I arose, the messenger was emerging from the kitchen wiping her mouth, and she asked if I might be ready. Sighing, I donned my picheh and chador, for I knew she would not leave without me.

  The streets were bitterly cold, despite a clear sky. The harsh sun seemed to examine all that lay beneath it without pity. The roastednut seller who sold his wares near Gostaham’s house had lines so deeply engraved near his lips they looked like the slashes of a knife. When the messenger turned to make sure I was still with her, a trace of green oil from our fenugreek and fava bean stew gleamed like a disease on her cheek. I was glad to be able to hide under my picheh from the glare of the sun.

  We passed the Seminary of the Four Gardens, where boys studied to become mullahs. I was still taking weekly writing lessons with Naheed, and the calligraphy on the building that had once just looked like beautiful decorations now called out to me the names of God: “The Kind—the Just—the Compassionate—the Fierce— the All-Seeing—the Implacable.”

  When we arrived at her house, Naheed pressed a coin into the hunched woman’s hand and sent her away. I kissed Naheed on each cheek and removed my wraps. I was thirsty, but she did not offer me any of her mint tea. Her face looked pale, and I suspected that her life had become bleaker than before. Fereydoon had begun to lose interest in her bed; he was already spending more nights with me. As the end of my second contract approached, I was certain that he would renew it again, so great was our mutual pleasure every time we joined together.

  “I would have come sooner, but I couldn’t leave my work,” I said. “Why did you send for me?” I had trouble forming the words with my dry tongue.

  “I just wanted to see you,” Naheed said, but her voice was cool.

  I shivered and shifted uncomfortably on my cushion.

  “You look cold,” Naheed said.

  “I am,” I replied. “May I have some tea?”

  “Of course.” She called for her servants to bring tea, but no one came. Usually her women were sitting right outside the door, ready to fulfill her smallest wish. I wondered if she had instructed them not to reply.

  “I saw Homa a few days ago,” Naheed said abruptly.

  “Really?” I said, trying to sound calm. It wasn’t common for Naheed to bathe in her old neighborhood now that she had a hammam and bath attendants of her own.

  “Did you bathe?” I asked.

  “I did,” she replied. “It was nice to see familiar faces again. Here it is just me and my women.”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t know,” I said, nervously rearranging my legs. “I would have met you there.”

  Naheed made a face. “Homa told me you had just been there, even though it wasn’t your usual day. She said she sees you at the hammam often—sometimes three times per week.”

  “Yes,” I said, “I go there a lot.” I didn’t explain further, fearing she would catch me in a lie. Every time I gave myself to Fereydoon, I had to make the Grand Ablution to purify myself in the eyes of God. In the morning, Fereydoon used the bath at his home, so I had to go elsewhere.

  “Why do you go so often?”

  “I like to be clean,” I mumbled.

  “You used to go just once a week.”

  I didn’t know what to say.

  Naheed looked angry all of a sudden. “You’re behaving as if you have a secret,” she said. I felt pinpricks of sweat under my arms, and I avoided her eyes.

  I put my right hand on my heart and lowered my eyes to give myself time to recover.

  “I beg your forgiveness,” I said, feeling my heart hammering against my chest.

  “For what?”

  I couldn’t think of a believable excuse for visiting the hammam so often. I glanced up, my eyes pleading for understanding.

  A hard light came into her eyes. “Tell me the truth,” she demanded.

  I twisted miserably on my cushion while she held me in her blazing gaze. I felt as exposed as if I had wandered onto the street with no clothes.

  “Well?” she prompted. Her voice was sharp and cold.

  Looking into her eyes was like staring at the noonday sun. I raised my hands to shield myself, for I could no longer bear her scrutiny.

  She could not know it was Fereydoon. Surely not, or her face wouldn’t look so calm.

  “It’s true,” I confessed.

  “So you are married.”

  “Yes,” I replied.

  “All this time, when I said you didn’t know what it was like to be with a man, you were laughing at me.”

  “Not laughing,” I said, “just trying to keep the promise I made.”

  “Why would you keep your marriage a secret? It’s not a crime.”

  “It’s not a regular marriage,” I said. “It’s a sigheh.”

  Naheed looked as if I had spoken a filthy word. “A sigheh?” she said. “But why would your family do that to you?”

  I sighed. “When you got married, your family gave your husband a huge dowry of gold and silk. For me, it was the reverse: My husband gave us money. That’s why.”

  Naheed looked
petulant; I still couldn’t tell how much she knew. “You should have told me and my mother. We would have advised you and found you a proper marriage—maybe with a carpet maker like yourself.”

  A carpet maker! So Naheed didn’t think I would be suitable for someone like Fereydoon. Why should her fate bring her so much privilege, while mine did not? Every soul was equal in the eyes of God.

  I could hear anger tightening my voice. “I wish I had,” I said, but it was only partly true, now that Fereydoon and I were like warp and weft.

  “My dearest friend, I’m sorry for you,” Naheed said, in such a scornful tone that I knew the marriage lowered me forever in her eyes. “If I still lived at home, my mother wouldn’t have allowed me to see you once she knew about your sigheh.”

  “I couldn’t help it,” I said bitterly. “Remember when I cut the rug from the loom because I wanted to do better? Gordiyeh raged at me about the loss of the wool. The sigheh offer arrived right after that, and my mother felt we had no choice.”

  I stopped there, wishing we could talk about something else.

  “So whom did you marry? Now you must reveal everything,” she said, smiling to encourage me, but I noticed her eyes looked harder than emeralds.

  “Naheed, you must already know,” I said miserably, the words clotting in my mouth.

  “How would I know?” she replied in an innocent tone.

  I hesitated. I knew that Gostaham, Gordiyeh, and even my mother would have advised me to make up a story to keep peace among the families. All I had to say was that my husband was a successful groomsman or a petty silver merchant—someone with modest success, but not enough status to make Naheed suspicious.

  “Don’t you wish to take me into your confidence?” Naheed asked, looking offended. “Or has our friendship ceased to matter to you?”

  “Of course it matters!”

  “Then tell me. Whoever it is, I’ll be glad for you.”

  “Do you promise?”

  She didn’t answer, but put her hand reassuringly on mine. I longed to unburden myself of my secret, which had weighed on me for too long. Naheed had valued me once for telling her the truth about her spoiled dates; perhaps she would value the truth again, and it would bring us closer.