“It is Fereydoon,” I whispered, so softly that I hoped she wouldn’t hear.
Naheed released me and jumped up out of her cushion. “I knew it!” she cried, her eyes angry again. “I sent Kobra to his little house on an errand, and she thought she heard your voice. I hoped it wasn’t true.”
I looked away, ashamed.
“I trusted you! I thought you always spoke the truth!”
“I always tried to,” I said. “Naheed, it happened months before your engagement to Fereydoon. How could I know that your parents would select him, of all the marriageable men in Isfahan? Our fates have been tied together, just as Kobra predicted when she read our coffee grounds.”
Naheed was staring down at me in the cushion; she would not spare me. “How long is your sigheh?”
“Three months.”
“And when did you first make the agreement?”
“Almost three months before your wedding.”
Naheed pointed an accusing finger at me. “That means you renewed it!” she exploded.
I sighed. “When you told me about your engagement, my mother and I had already accepted his renewal offer and his money. We were afraid to cancel the agreement for fear of offending Fereydoon or our hosts. We have no one else in the world to protect us, and no money of our own.”
“Money!” said Naheed in a tone of disgust. “Everything’s about money, just as it was with my Iskandar.”
“But Naheed,” I pleaded, “we were afraid of having to beg on the streets. You don’t understand. How could you know what it’s like to fear that your next meal will be your last?”
“I don’t know what that’s like,” she said, “and I thank God. All I know is that you have been disloyal; you have sat beside me, listening to my stories about my husband, pretending he was nothing to you. And you probably told him all the awful things I said about him. No wonder he has been ignoring me.”
“I never told him anything you said,” I replied. “We don’t talk much.”
“Oh,” she said, understanding more than I had intended. “How can you even stand it—to submit to him in bed?” Then, musingly: “Of course, you are paid and must do what you are told. He would expect that with a woman like you.”
“That’s not the reason,” I said, wanting to hurt her back. “At first it was for the money, but now I do it because I love it.”
She put her hands over her ears like a child. “I don’t want to hear any more,” she replied. “But don’t think you’re the only one—he also takes that young musician into his bed whenever he pleases.”
A sound of revulsion escaped my lips as I thought of the pretty, impudent boy with the smooth cheeks. He had always felt free to flirt in my presence, as if I didn’t matter.
When I recovered myself, I looked at Naheed for help, wondering if we could become allies. “In that case, we are all his to use as he wishes,” I said. “What shall we do?”
“I don’t know about we,” she said. “You know that I can do nothing about his wives or sighehs. The only thing I can do is bear him proper heirs. That’s something the musician can’t do.”
I looked at her closely; she seemed a little rounder in the face and belly, and I guessed she was pregnant.
“Naheed,” I said, “I beg you most humbly to forgive me. I know I should have told you sooner, and I regret my error. But now that fate has thrown us together in such a peculiar way, can’t you and I both be his wives, and raise our children together?”
Naheed laughed out loud. “You and I?” she said. “You say that as if we’re two chickpeas in a pot.”
“Aren’t we?” I said. “I have always loved and admired you. When I met you, I thought you were like a princess in a tale.”
“And I thought of you as a simple village girl who would accompany me to polo,” she replied in such a dismissive tone that I felt stricken to the heart. But then she was silent for a moment. Her face softened, and I saw moisture in her eyes.
“Everything changed when I began to know you,” she continued. “I grew to care for you because of your honesty, loyalty, and loving heart. But now I see that I was wrong, for you have hurt and betrayed me, and treated me worse than an unclean dog on the street.”
I felt great remorse, for I cared for her and had never wanted to cause her grief. But before I could say anything, Naheed shook her head as if to banish her tears, and her anger reared up stronger than before. “I should have known better than to befriend a girl like you,” she said.
“What do you mean?” I asked, feeling my own anger start to boil. “Because I was raised in a small village?”
“No,” she said.
“Because I work with my hands?”
She hesitated for a moment, and I suspected that was part of it, but then she said, “Not that, either.”
“Then why?”
“A respectable married woman like me does not associate with someone who sells sex for silver.”
I jumped to my feet, anger scorching my cheeks, for she made it sound as if I were no better than a prostitute. “Respectable, perhaps, but a rose never had so many thorns,” I shouted. “That’s why your husband turns to me, and groans with pleasure in my arms.”
Naheed arose, approached me, and bent her face so close to mine I felt her breath against my lips.
“I can’t force you to relinquish him, but if you bear his children, I shall curse them,” she said softly. “If a cherry sharbat seller poured them a poisoned drink, no one would ever be the wiser.”
Her eyes and her jewels glittered like knives in the late-afternoon light. I began backing away. Naheed’s hands curled into claws, as if she wished to grab and wound my organs of conception. I ran toward the door and pushed it open. A woman servant, who had been crouching nearby, fell over, surprised at my graceless departure. “Where’s my tea?” I shouted at her as I grabbed my outdoor garments from a hook and rushed outside, where I knew Naheed would not follow.
It was cold, but I could not bear to go home. I walked to Thirty-three Arches Bridge and ducked into one of its pointed archways. Clouds were gathering over the mountains, and the water looked like sharp green glass. I stared at rich women with silk chadors strolling slowly over the bridge in their wooden-heeled shoes, which raised them above the ground, while poor women shuffled along in dirty cotton rags wrapped around their feet.
I remembered how quickly Naheed had first offered her friendship, which meant that my usefulness was on her mind when we first met. But that didn’t explain all the time she had spent with me after we had been caught at polo, and all the attention she had lavished on me during my writing lessons. Naheed had trusted me with her most precious secret, and she had even told me that she hoped we would always be friends. But now I understood what she believed about poor village girls like me: that we should content ourselves with making the velvety carpets under her feet.
It was starting to drizzle. A man opened his palms to the sky to feel the rain, uttering his thanks to God for the gift of water. As I quickly retraced my steps over the bridge, the drops got bigger and began to sting. I imagined Naheed safe in her home. She’d be watching the rain fall in the courtyard from a heated room, and not even a drop would darken her blue silk robe. If her feet became cold, a maid would warm them with her own hands. I clutched my chador tightly to try to protect myself from the rain, but it was no use: I arrived home wet and chilled to the marrow.
When my mother saw me, her eyes opened wide with alarm. She stripped off my wet garments and wrapped me in a thick wool blanket. I shivered so fiercely that she had to drape her body around mine to keep the blanket in place. My tremors did not cease until well after the last call to prayer.
DURING THE NEXT FEW DAYS, I felt weary inside. My body seemed too weighty to carry around, my eyes burned, and I sniffled from time to time. My mother fussed over me and fed me her thick black herbal concoctions, believing that I was ill. When Fereydoon summoned me again, I went to him with so much heaviness in my heart, I cou
ld not conceal it.
“What’s the matter?” he asked as soon as he walked into the room. He sat on the cushion next to mine and stroked my face, and I leaned my head against his shoulder as if I were a sick child.
“I’m sad,” I said.
He pulled off his turban and sent it spinning across the room to make me laugh. I managed a weak smile.
“Sad about what?”
“Everything.” I didn’t want to tell him about what had happened with Naheed, for fear he would hurt her in return.
“Why?”
I wasn’t sure I could make him understand. “Don’t things ever happen that make you sad?”
“Not really,” he said. “I’ve been worried at times that I might be killed in battle, or that my father might turn against me, or that I might die too soon.”
“I’m always afraid of that.”
“What, of dying too soon? Not a young woman like you.”
“No, that other people will die or that things will end.”
Fereydoon looked away for a minute; I could see that he wasn’t going to make me any promises about our future, even about our sigheh.
“I know what to do to make you feel better,” he said. He put his arms around me and kissed my face, then held me quietly for a long time. When I became thirsty, he lifted a glass of milk and wine to my lips, which I drank slowly. I basked in his tenderness, which I experienced so rarely.
He asked if I wanted him, or just wanted to be held in his arms. I wanted both, so he gave me one and then the other. It was so slow the first time that the lamps burned all their black oil and extinguished. We twined together like silk and velvet, and when we were finished, I lay quietly in his arms, and he stroked my hair. Then we both slept a little.
I was the first to wake because my mind was so full of thoughts. Of how I had come to Isfahan, and how Naheed had seemed like one of the heroines in my mother’s tales. How the first time I had met her, she had said about her parents, “I’ll get them to do what I want.” How I had believed that a girl like her could always obtain what she desired. How I had hoped to be friends with her forever, and how I loved her and wished for her forgiveness.
Although he was still asleep, Fereydoon put his arms around me. The guilt I felt about hurting Naheed evaporated for a moment with the joy of being encircled in his arms. I began kissing his neck, and when he awoke, I was hungry. I flung myself at him, wanting to taste and bite. We were like lion and lioness together, fierce and playful, and Fereydoon’s eyes were heavy with gratitude.
“I never know what to expect with you,” he said, “except that I will be suffused with pleasure, and that every time it will be different.”
“I never know, either,” I replied, feeling proud of what I could do. Perhaps I learned slowly, but unlike Naheed, I had finally understood how to do this thing well. And now, in the dark of night, with our bodies wet with each other’s sweat, my heart was opening to Fereydoon. I rolled onto my side and looked into his face.
“Do you know why I was sad earlier tonight?”
“No,” he said, sounding sleepy.
“I went to see Naheed. She knows.”
He opened his eyes and looked at me. “About the sigheh?”
“Yes.”
I expected him to be shocked, but he yawned and rubbed his beard, and then his hands traveled down his chest in the direction of his thighs. When he found what he was looking for, a small smile appeared at the corners of his lips.
“What did she say?” he asked while rubbing.
“She wasn’t very happy,” I replied.
“And so?”
His words weren’t even cold; they were just indifferent. They sent a shudder through my body as if I had swallowed ice on a hot day. Before I had time to reply, Fereydoon grabbed my hands to help him with his task. I was reluctant and tried to pull away, for I wanted to tell him more. We wrestled for a while until finally I broke free, falling back onto the bedroll. Fereydoon rolled on top of me, and I saw a hardness in his eyes that reminded me of Naheed. There was a demand for silence within them and an insistence that I please him, right now, without another word.
I think my eyes must have shown my resistance, and that was the worst thing I could have done because Fereydoon viewed it as a game. He pushed my knees open with his and took me without another word. I grunted miserably, unprepared, and watched with pained surprise as Fereydoon’s eyes fluttered with extra pleasure.
I decided to show him I was angry. I allowed exaggerated noises of pleasure to escape my lips, although my eyes wore a bored look, and I thrust my hips into his with false enthusiasm. I expected that my feigned delight would give him pause, even shame him. Instead, to my astonishment, he stiffened until he became as hard as a tent pole. I moved my body around wildly, hoping to bend him or throw him off, but my fury only fanned his ardor. Just as in our earliest days together, it didn’t matter to him what I thought or how I felt. If I received pleasure from his body, he enjoyed that, and if I resisted him, he would find a way to enjoy that, too. The only thing that bored him was impassivity. Within moments, he squeezed my back with his hands and roared like a lion, making sure I understood the imperviousness of his pleasure.
As he rolled off me, his body glistening with sweat and his eyes soft with satisfaction, he tapped the heel of his palm against my cheek. It was the way a horseman might cuff a mare that had succeeded in jumping a difficult hurdle but still needed to be reminded who was in charge.
“Good girl,” he said. Within moments, he was snoring.
I lay beside him, my scalp burning with humiliation. Was my only role to please Fereydoon, whether or not my mind was troubled? I rolled out of bed, not caring if I woke him, and sat alone on a cushion on the other side of the room.
Fereydoon snorted and stretched out his arms and his legs, taking up the whole bedroll. The pillows flew off until only his remained. There in the gloom, I saw my marriage for what it was: a way for Gordiyeh to try to sell rugs, for my mother to feel calmer about our future, and for me to have a man without having a dowry.
I rubbed my face where Fereydoon had cuffed it. I had longed to love a man as deeply as Naheed had loved Iskandar, until I realized that her love was built on nothing but dreams. I had searched myself for signs of love for Fereydoon but had not found any deep roots. Now I knew I never would.
An owl cried out near the house, claiming the dark. I couldn’t even claim half of Fereydoon’s bed. I leaned against the wall and wrapped my arms around my body, holding myself in the night. Fereydoon never noticed that I had left. At dawn, I forced myself to curl up on the bedroll, for I didn’t dare anger him with my absence. When he awoke, I feigned sleep until he was gone.
THE NEXT AFTERNOON, I walked to the hammam in search of Homa, not knowing who else to confide in. It was a gusty day, and the wind blew my chador around my legs and threw grit into my eyes through my picheh. The weather was still chilly, and the clay houses near the hammam seemed to huddle together against the wind. A child’s head wrap flew by, chased by an anxious mother and her little boy. The wind made a low, lonely sound as it pursued them through the alley.
It was a relief to go inside. I shook the dust out of my chador and searched for Homa until I found her in the clothes-changing section of the hammam, which she was cleaning before it opened for women. I must have looked as green as fenugreek, because she immediately opened her arms to me and kept me enclosed while I confessed everything. I don’t think I’ve ever talked so much. When I was done, it was very quiet, and Homa was still cradling me like a child. She led me to some cushions, stretched out my legs, and fitted a pillow under my head. Then she dotted my body with rose water to give me strength.
“Did you know?” I asked.
“I suspected,” she replied, her eyes sympathetic, “but I didn’t guess the man.”
“Did I do wrong?”
“In the eyes of God, you were legally married,” she said calmly.
“But did I?”
r /> “What do you think?”
I sighed and looked away.
“Poor child!” she said. “I can see how sorry you are. If you had been my daughter, I would have told Naheed and her parents about your sigheh before her wedding. They probably would have married off their daughter all the same, for what wealthy man does not have his concubines? But then they would not have blamed you, and perhaps you would have retained your friendship.”
Deep in my heart, I knew she was right. “Homa, what should I do?” I asked.
She sighed. “What is there to be done now? Everyone will know the truth, so you might as well stay married.”
“Why?”
“Because you no longer have your virginity. Before, you were poor, but at least you had that to offer. Now what do you have?”
She was right, of course. “What if Fereydoon doesn’t renew?”
“Then you must be alone.”
I was too young to imagine spending the rest of my days on my own, with no children by my side. That was even worse than what my mother had endured. “I don’t want to be alone,” I said bitterly.
Homa stroked my hand. “My child, do not fear. If your sigheh ends, you will have some advantages all the same.”
“Advantages?”
Homa smiled. “If God is with you, and may He always be, then you will find a better man and marry again. If not, you can still contract your own sighehs. No one can tell you who to marry from now on.”
I hadn’t thought about that. “But Naheed told me her mother would have forbidden our friendship after my sigheh.”
Homa closed her eyes for a moment and dipped her chin in agreement. “It is not the most honorable of situations. That’s why most divorced women who contract sighehs do it in secret.”
“Why do it at all?”
“For money, for pleasure, for children, or in the hope that a man may someday make you his real wife.”
“But would people consider me low class?”
“They may.”