The Blood of Flowers

  Gordiyeh went to her rooms with a headache. I thought I would be gloating over how she had been disgraced, but my thoughts turned to Ludmila. She had always been kind to me, and now she despised us. I regretted that my desire for Fereydoon had made me agree to keep silent. What should I do now about his offer? That morning, I had wanted to accept it. Now I wasn’t sure. My heart turned first one way, then the other.

  AS SOON AS I had a free moment, I went to the bazaar to replace the comb that Malekeh had broken. I walked by the rug sellers and wool dyers to get to the part of the bazaar reserved for rug tools such as surface-shearing blades, fringe separators, and combs. The alleyways were dim and narrow in this section of the bazaar, and they were littered with trash.

  As I looked in the shops, I heard someone playing a searing melody on his kamancheh. I hummed along, for it was strangely familiar. When I realized why, I retraced my steps and found Fereydoon’s young musician sitting alone on a stone, playing his instrument. The ends of his turban looked ragged, and his face was streaked with dirt.

  I approached him and said, “Salaam. It’s me.”

  “Who is ‘me’” he asked in a surly voice without looking up from his bowing.

  I flipped up my picheh to show him my face.

  “Oh,” he said. “You’re one of his.”

  “What do you mean by that?” I asked, surprised by his rudeness.

  “Nothing,” he replied, as if the subject bored him.

  I concealed my face again. “What happened to you? I thought you were one of his favorites.”

  He bowed a note on the kamancheh like a cat yowling, and his lips formed a sarcastic smile. “He threw me out.”

  “Why?”

  “I gave him too much cheek,” he said. “He loves it until you say the wrong thing.”

  The sour notes he was playing hurt my ears. “Stop that,” I said. “What will you do now?”

  “I don’t know,” he replied. “I have nowhere to go.” I saw fear in his pretty, long-lashed eyes, and his smooth chin trembled. He was still hardly more than a child.

  I pulled out the coin I had intended to use to buy the comb and put it in his begging bowl. “May God be with you,” I said.

  He thanked me and bowed a sweet, melancholy melody as I walked away. It reminded me of the music he had played the first night I had spent with Fereydoon. How much had changed since then, both for me and for the young musician! How abruptly he had been abandoned to the street!

  Having lost my heart for shopping, I turned my steps toward home. On my way out of the bazaar, I passed a small mosque that I knew well. I entered it and sat quietly in one of its carpeted side rooms, listening to a woman read aloud from the Qur’an. She had arrived at one of my favorite passages, about how there are two seas, one with water that is sweet and nourishing, while the other is salty, yet from both emerge big, beautiful fish. The words calmed my heart, and when I heard the call from the minaret, I arose and prayed, touching my head to the mohr. After I finished, I sat down again on the carpet, listening to the woman’s smooth voice with my eyes closed. I thought of Fereydoon and Naheed and the knots of our friendships, which stayed knotted in my mind like tangled fringes. I still didn’t know what to do about Fereydoon’s offer, and my sigheh was due to expire soon.

  Whenever I used to be tormented by a problem in my village, my father would always relieve me of it with an observation. What would he say to me now? In my mind I could see him clearly as he looked on our last walk together, his walking stick in his hand. He lifted it and pointed it like a sword. “Open your eyes!” he said, his voice booming through me.

  I obeyed, and it was as if I were seeing the carpet under my feet for the first time. Its flowers began to flicker as if they were turning into stars, and its birds seemed to take flight. All the shapes I was so used to, like the yellow tiled walls of the mosque, the dome reaching heavenward, even the ground itself, now seemed as changeable as particles of sand in the desert. The walls began to wobble and buckle—an earthquake? I wondered—but no one else seemed to notice, and nothing was certain anymore, neither the ground nor the walls or ceiling. I, too, seemed to lose my physical form, and for a blissful moment a feeling of surrender came over me, dissolving me into perfect nothingness.

  “Baba,” I cried silently. “What should I do?”

  He didn’t reply, but his love rushed through my body. I felt joy in his nearness for the first time since his death. I remembered the day he had shown me the waterfall and the woman with the strong arms concealed behind it, despite his weariness. His love had never sprung from his own interests, nor did it depend on my pleasing him. To have known his love was to know what love should be. It was as clean and as pure as a river, and it was how I wanted to feel inside from now on. Khizr, a prophet of God, showed lost pilgrims the way to water in the desert; now my own father was showing me my way.

  The pulsing around me slowed and stopped. The walls became solid; the carpet just an ordinary one. I touched the rug to tether myself to earth, then arose on unsteady feet. The woman reading the Qur’an noticed my wobbling and offered me assistance.

  “Take care, for you look shaken,” she said.

  “Thank you, but I feel much better now,” I replied. When I left the mosque, my step was firm, and a decision about Fereydoon had flowered in my heart.

  I FOUND MY mother and told her what had happened at the mosque. My father’s voice was still booming inside me.

  “He told me, ‘Open your eyes!’”

  “And gaze upon the truth,” she added, finishing the poem he liked to quote.

  She beamed with joy. “How wonderful that he is still so much with you,” she said, her eyes misting. “He is with me, too.”

  “Bibi, he has helped me make a decision,” I said, knowing she would listen if it came from him. “I am finished with the sigheh.”

  Despite what I had told her, my mother looked shaken. “What! And ruin our future?”

  “He won’t always want me, Bibi. One day he’ll grow tired and find another.”

  “Well, why not just take the money until his attention flags?”

  “Because of Naheed’s parents. They despise us now. They’ve made that clear by refusing the rug they ordered.”

  My mother sighed. “They know a man will have his sighehs. They’ll learn to bear that burden.”

  I paused. “You sound just like Gordiyeh.”

  My mother drew back, offended.

  “There’s one thing you don’t know,” I added gently. “The last time I saw Naheed, she threatened to hurt any children I might bear. How could I live with such a fear?”

  My mother knew as well as I did that Naheed had it in her power to arrange such treachery. “What a scorpion,” she said. “I always wondered if she was truly your friend.”

  “I know,” I said. “You were right about her.”

  “But then what will we do?” my mother asked, looking panicked now that she saw how serious I was. “Gordiyeh and Gostaham have already been embarrassed and suffered a costly loss. If you offend Fereydoon, they may lose even more. What if they become so angry they throw us out?”

  My mother’s hair had become streaked with gray since my father’s death, and her face etched with lines. Her words tugged at me, for I knew she loved me beyond all others. After my father died, I was her only concern—and her only comfort. She poured out the cup of her life for me.

  “Don’t let us starve,” she said helplessly, and I knew she wanted me to change my mind.

  I tried to soothe her. “Bibi, nothing else will change,” I said. “I will be their carpet slave as I was before, and make and sell carpets of my own.”

  “You made a fine carpet in our village and we almost starved anyway.”

  “But now I know how to hire others to work for me, and how to get a fair price.”

  “How?” she asked. “You’re not a man.”

  “I can find a man to help me.”

  “You’ll get cheated.”
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  “Not if I find a good man.”

  “It’s too dangerous. We can’t eat a rug.”

  “But I will put aside some money, and then we will always have something even if my carpets don’t sell right away.”

  My mother moaned. “If only your father were still alive. Ali, prince among men, help us, save us,” she began, calling on the Prophet’s son-in-law as she always did in times of distress. “Ali, king of all the believers, I beg for your blessings and your protection . . .”

  As I listened to her pray, I felt prickles of irritation. My mother was disappointed in me, without even admitting it to herself. Had I been a beauty, I might have married well and saved her from hardship. Marrying me to Fereydoon was the way she showed her despair. Since I would not fetch all that much, we had better take what was offered. But I had been born with one thing my mother hadn’t expected. My skills as a knotter and designer had been tested in the city, and I had surprised everyone.

  “Bibi,” I said, interrupting her, “listen to me. We can’t rely on others for our protection. Let us try together to make our lives sweeter. I believe in my heart that’s what my father would have wanted.”

  My mother considered this for a moment, then clicked her tongue against her teeth. “Not at all,” she said. “He would have wanted you to marry well, and for me to live contentedly by your side, a grandchild in my arms.”

  “But I didn’t marry well,” I said angrily. “And whose fault was that?”

  It was the last weapon I had, and I used it.

  My mother put her hands to my cheeks, looking remorseful. “Well, then,” she said, with an air of defeat. “You are a grown woman now.”

  I knew by her answer that the decision was mine to make. I sent a prayer of thanks to my father for being my ally that night.

  “But I will only agree to your decision to leave the sigheh,” my mother continued, “if you do one thing. The next time Fereydoon summons you, tell him you love and desire him, and ask if he would ever consider making you his wife.”

  I felt humiliated by the idea. Wasn’t he supposed to ask for me? Who was I, to ask a wealthy man for a permanent knot?

  “If he married you, our lives would be sugar,” my mother added. “That’s the only certainty we have.”

  I sighed. “Don’t you think that if he wanted me, he would have asked by now?”

  “As you said, we must try every way of making our lives sweeter.”

  She was right: I had said so myself. “I will do as you say,” I replied, even though my womanly pride smarted at the thought.

  ALTHOUGH FEREYDOON HADN’T received a communication from us about his offer, he summoned me a few days later. He was so eager to see me that he banished all the servants before we had eaten, and began by catching my ear between his teeth. I didn’t feel amorous, but I made a show of pleasing him. Thinking of how Gordiyeh had gotten Gostaham to do her bidding, I groaned more loudly than usual in his arms, for I wanted him in a good mood for what I had to say.

  We dressed again and the servants brought the food. After we had eaten, he relaxed contentedly with a vessel of wine in one hand and a tobacco pipe in the other. I pretended to be looking for someone. “No music tonight?” I asked, expecting to hear what had happened to the boy.

  “Not tonight,” Fereydoon replied, sounding indifferent.

  As if to forestall further questions, he turned toward me and untied my sash with a practiced hand. “I had some peculiar news recently,” he said, his breath near my ear.

  “What’s that?”

  “Naheed told me that her parents have canceled the rug commissioned for our wedding gift,” he said. “She didn’t explain why.”

  He looked puzzled, as if he had no idea why such a thing could happen.

  “I know why,” I said, watching him.

  “Really?” said Fereydoon. He removed my trousers, rolled them up, and flung them across the room. “Why?”

  “They’ve discovered the sigheh, and they wish to punish Gostaham and Gordiyeh, as well as me.”

  “So that’s it,” he said lightly. “It’s a shame they’re so angry, but they will get used to it. After all, I’m their son-in-law.”

  “I suppose you could buy the carpet from Gordiyeh and Gostaham,” I said.

  “Not if Naheed’s parents don’t want us to have it,” he replied. “Think of how insulting it would be if they saw the carpet in our hallway!” He laughed as if charmed by the thought.

  Fereydoon’s nonchalance made me bristle, but I knew better this time than to show my anger. I thought I’d test him further, though. “Naheed is very wounded,” I said. “I believe she hates me now.”

  He lifted off my tunic and my sheer undergarment, leaving me naked except for the cloth covering my hair.

  “That’s unfortunate,” he replied, “because she is saddled with you for as long as I say. And I won’t have such defiance from a wife.”

  I felt goaded by his words and by the unfairness of things between us. The charm maker’s words came back to me: “You have a right to end things, too.”

  I squashed my feelings and tried to begin moving the conversation to what I needed to discuss. I began lightly stroking his chest.

  “When you were a child, did you ever imagine you’d marry two close friends?” I tried to sound playful, as if it were a great joke we all shared.

  “I often thought about women and how I should like to bed them,” he said. “My father sent me my first when I was thirteen. But I spent most of my time working with his horses, learning how to ride and break the savage ones.”

  “That sounds exciting,” I said. I imagined him out in the wild, stroking the animals and mounting their backs at will.

  “And when I was a little girl,” I added, feeling as if those times were a long way off, “I imagined that I would be married to a husband who would pave my path with rose petals. That’s what my father always said.”

  “And didn’t I do that?” Fereydoon snorted with laughter.

  “My father never would have guessed how,” I replied, for Fereydoon had in fact paved me with rose petals. He laughed again and began opening my thighs.

  I continued to talk. “I always wanted to marry and raise as many children as God would give me, with my husband by my side,” I said, feeling light-headed at my own audacity.

  “God willing, you shall,” he replied, but he said nothing about with whom. He opened my thighs further. “Let’s start making them.”

  I rolled myself on top of him, to try to ensnare his attention for a moment. “It must be nice to have a daughter,” I said.

  “She is the light of my eyes,” he replied, grabbing my buttocks and squeezing them. “I, too, hope for many children, daughters and especially sons.”

  “What if I had your sons?” I said, rubbing my breasts against his chest, and grabbing his center of pleasure.

  “That would be a blessing,” he said, his eyes becoming clouded. I continued stroking him with my hand, for I finally had learned where he was most sensitive, and he began groaning softly.

  I took a breath and stopped moving. “But would that mean a permanent knot of marriage?”

  His back stiffened, and he began softening in my hand. “I don’t know,” he said carefully. “It depends on who else my father wants me to marry, and if I had any other sons.”

  He rolled me over so that now he was on top of me. “What if my son was your only one?” I asked quickly.

  “Perhaps,” he said in a tone that didn’t convince me. He stroked my breasts and began kissing me, as if to change the subject. I opened my legs and moaned encouragingly, but my mind was elsewhere. How likely was it that a son of mine would be the only one? He could marry four wives, and I wasn’t even pregnant yet.

  When Fereydoon had finished kissing me, he paused for a moment. “I know what you want,” he said. “But I can’t promise anything.”

  My heart sank. “And in the future?”

  “Only God knows about the
future,” he said. He pressed against my thighs to open them. “Let us drain our cup of wine right now, as the poets say, before we become clay vessels smashed upon the ground.”

  Was I to be such a vessel? I didn’t have time to ask. For the next several hours, I was lost in sweet blackness and warmth. He was especially tender with me, as if to make up for not offering me a permanent knot. I loved to feel his arms around me, for I felt safe at that moment. But when we were done, I recalled bitterly that he had promised me nothing.

  In the morning, I awoke before he did and watched his face in sleep. It had become more plump since I had met him, as had his belly. His thick red lips exuded the smell of wine, tobacco, and me. The lines near his mouth were sharp. Why would he ever marry me? If he tied a knot with me, he’d have to pay my expenses, and my mother’s, for the rest of our lives. As it was, he only had to pay for three months at a time. He had always been a clever businessman, and the bargain he had made for himself was a good one.

  AFTER MY CONVERSATION with my mother, I was eager to show her that I could sell my carpet for a good price. During the next few days, I drove Katayoon and Malekeh to finish it, and together we worked as hard as a team of donkeys. As soon as the last knot in the upper left-hand corner was in place, the three of us clustered around the carpet and beheld it in awe, thanking God for His blessings. What a feeling that was, to knot the last of thousands upon thousands of knots! How astonishing to see how each tiny speck of color had its essential place, just like the humblest moth in God’s creation!

  I hired an expert rug cutter from the bazaar to shear the top of my carpet. When he was done, the surface was like velvet and the design seemed even sharper than before. It reminded me of a crisp spring day, when suddenly a pure white dove soars across the sky, as light as thought. Although I had seen hundreds of rugs in the bazaar, I believed mine could stand well against the finest home-knotted pieces.

  When the fringes were finished, I paid the women with the last of the money my mother had given me from the sigheh, and we said our farewells. I told them that as soon as I sold the carpet, I would hire them to make the next one. Then I gave them a little extra money for their good work.