The Blood of Flowers

  “What do you mean?” asked the woman, eager for gossip.

  In a loud whisper, he replied, “She uses the generosity of esteemed people like you to buy opium.”

  “What!” I said. “I’ve never touched opium in my life! I’m here because my mother is ill.”

  My protests only made me sound guilty. “Then you should spend your money on her instead of yourself,” the woman replied.

  “God knows what is right,” said the beggar man sagely.

  The two began conversing loudly about the perils of addiction. People who were walking by stopped and stared at me as if I were an evil jinn. I could see it was useless to stay, for they trusted the beggar man’s word. No one would give coins to an opium eater.

  “Good-bye, graybeard,” I said, with resignation. I hated to be cordial to him, but I might have to return. “I’ll see you next week.”

  “May God be with you,” he replied, in a kinder tone. Now I understood how he had survived at his corner for so many years.

  I visited two other mausoleums, but each had their regular beggars, who hissed at me when I tried to claim a corner. Too tired to insist, I turned my steps toward home. The sky was heavy with clouds, and there was a thin layer of snow on the ground. By the time I reached the old square, the cold had driven away all the vendors and shoppers. The few beggars who remained outside were shuffling to the old Friday mosque to take shelter. In the wan light, the dome of the mosque looked hard and frozen. I felt frozen, too. By the time I arrived at Malekeh’s, my fingers and toes were stiff with cold.

  My mother was asleep on her dirty bedroll. The bones of her face looked frighteningly visible through her skin. Her eyes fluttered open and searched my person for parcels. Seeing I had nothing, she closed them again.

  I pressed my cold hands against my mother’s face, and she sighed with relief. She was burning from the inside. Afraid that the fire in her body would vanquish her, I went out, collected some snow, wrapped it in the arm of one of my tunics, and laid it on her forehead. When she moaned for something to drink, I gave her sips of a strong liquor mixed with the juice of willows, a tonic for fevers that Malekeh had bartered for in the bazaar. My mother drank it under protest, then vomited it up right away along with green bile. I cleaned up the lumpy, smelly mess, wondering why the liquor seemed to be making her worse.

  There was no food for the family that night. Malekeh came home and drank some weak tea before going to bed. The boys were enervated from hunger and whined about their aching bellies before curling up on either side of her. The sight of them together filled me with longing for the times I had gone to sleep with my mother’s arm around me and her reassuring stories in my ear.

  As the moon rose, my mother’s fever rose with it. I gathered more snow to cool her and laid it gently on her forearm. This time, she inhaled sharply and drew back from the snow as if it burned. When I tried again, she crossed her arms over her chest in a weak attempt to protect herself. I was anguished about hurting her, but I continued to apply the tunic of snow to her body, for this was the only treatment that cooled her. Before long, she stopped moving her limbs and began to keen softly. Had she cried out and screamed, I would have rejoiced, for I would have known there was vigor in her. But this sound was as weak and pathetic as the cries of an abandoned kitten. It was all that her poor, tired body could force out.

  As I tended to my mother, I listened to the household’s nightmarish chatter. Salman cried out in his sleep about a terrible jinn chasing him under a bridge. Davood wheezed as if his lungs were half filled with water. A woman who lived in one of the rooms off of the courtyard wailed and called on God for protection as she endeavored to give birth.

  I don’t know how much time passed before my mother began trying to speak. Her lips were moving, but I couldn’t make out the words. I tried to smooth her hair away from her face. She stopped my hand and mumbled, “First there wasn’t.”

  “Sleep, Bibi-joon,” I urged, not wanting her to waste her energy telling a story.

  She released my hand and rolled restlessly on her bedroll. “Wasn’t,” she mumbled again. Her bottom lip cracked and began to bleed. I felt around in the dark until I found a vessel of lamb’s fat and herbs, which I applied to her mouth to halt the bleeding.

  Her lips worked fruitlessly as if she were still trying to finish the invocation. To help her, I whispered gently, “And then there was.”

  My mother’s mouth curved into something like a smile. I hoped she would be calm now. I held her hand and stroked it, as she had stroked mine so many times before. Her lips began working again. I had to bend my face close to hers to hear what she was saying.

  “Was!” she said insistently. “Was!” Her eyes were glazed and looked joyful in the strange, unhealthy way that an opium addict’s do.

  Sweat streaked her brow. I brought her some water and tried to lift her head so she could drink it. Excitedly, she averted her face and kept trying to speak. The words sounded as jumbled as vegetables in a stew. I thought of how she used to tell stories in a honeyed voice that entrapped listeners in her spell.

  “Bibi-joon, you must drink something—you are as hot as a coal!” I said.

  She sighed and closed her eyes. I soaked a cloth with water and offered it to her. “Will you suck on this, just for me?” I pleaded.

  She opened her mouth and allowed me to insert a small corner of the cloth. She made a sucking motion to please me, but after a moment or two, began to try to talk again. The cloth fell out of her mouth. She grabbed her belly and mumbled a few incoherent words.

  “What is it, Bibi-joon?” I asked.

  She massaged her stomach. “Pushed and pushed,” she whispered, her words like susurrations. She took my hand again and pressed it faintly.

  “And then there was . . . ,” she mouthed, and I could make out the words only because I knew them so well.

  “Please, please keep yourself still,” I said gently.

  Her arms and legs tightened, and her forehead knotted. Her mouth opened, and finally she breathed, “. . . you!”

  She reached up and touched my cheek, her eyes tender. Of all the tales she had ever created, I was the one written in the ink of her soul. I held her fingers against my face, wanting desperately to infuse her body with the strength of mine.

  “Bibi-joon,” I cried, “please take the life that pulses through my heart!”

  Her fingers became flaccid and slid away from my face. She lay motionless on her bedroll, her energy spent.

  I would have given my very eyes to go back to the moment that Gordiyeh and Gostaham had told me I must renew the sigheh. I would have begged Gostaham to remove me from that tangled knot in a suitable fashion, and if he had refused, I would have acceded to his demands to stay with Fereydoon until he tired of me. Anything at all to prevent my mother’s suffering.

  My mother was speaking again. Her words came out one at a time, at great cost to her. “May God . . . keep you . . . from need!” she whispered slowly. Then her body seemed to go limp.

  “Bibi, stay with me!” I cried out. I squeezed her hand, but there was no response. I shook her arm slightly, then her shoulder, but she didn’t stir.

  I rushed to Malekeh, who was still curled up with one child on either side of her. “Wake up, wake up!” I whispered urgently. “Come and look at my mother.”

  Malekeh wiped her eyes, sighing, and arose sleepily. She crouched beside my mother’s bedroll, and when she looked closely at her sallow, sunken face, she drew a frightened breath. She placed her fingertips near my mother’s nostrils and held them there. I stopped breathing, for if my mother was not drawing breath, neither could I.

  The first call to prayer from the Friday mosque pierced the air. People were beginning to stir. Outside, a donkey brayed and a child wailed loudly. Salman awoke and called to Malekeh, pleading for bread. She positioned her body in front of my mother’s, as if to shield Salman from the sight of her.

  “She is barely tethered to earth,” Malekeh fi
nally said. “I will pray for her—and for you.”

  SHORTLY AFTER DAWN, I covered myself in my chador and picheh and ran most of the way to the meat sellers’ section of the Great Bazaar. The sheep had already been slaughtered and skinned. A moneyed crowd buzzed around carcasses hanging on hooks and displayed on countertops. The marbled meat made my mouth water, and I thought of how much strength a fresh lamb stew would give my mother. Perhaps someone would offer charity. I put my sash on the ground and began to beg.

  I watched a small errand boy, no doubt from a wealthy family, order almost more meat than he could carry, while next to him a woman in a tattered chador bartered fiercely for feet and bones for her stew. An older man who was buying kidneys reminded me of my father, who loved kidney kebab and used to char it expertly over a fire. In the bustle, no one paid attention to me.

  Time was passing and I could not wait. I threw myself to the ground and cried out to passersby to remember the gifts God had given them and share them with others. People stared at me with curiosity, but my outburst did not soften their hearts.

  Wracked with worry about my mother, I abandoned my post and began searching through the meat bazaar for the fat man with the knotted fingers. I found him in his shop alone, hacking at a lamb’s haunch. His belly bulged against his pale blue tunic, which was spattered with blood, and his turban was smeared with long red streaks.

  “How can I serve you?” he asked.

  I shuffled my feet. “I’m the one from Ja’far,” I murmured.

  The butcher smirked and said, “Let me give you some meat.”

  He offered me a stick of kebab that had just been grilled. The rich smell of the lamb, which was dotted with coarse salt, sapped all my vigilance. I lifted my picheh and bit into the dripping meat. Passersby stared, surprised to see a veiled woman revealing her face, but I was too hungry to care.

  “Ah, nice and tender,” he said. I ate the kebab without speaking, the juice dripping down my chin.

  “And now I have been permitted to see your pretty lips.”

  I did not reply. When I had finished eating, I said, in a pleading voice, “I need food for my mother, who is ill.”

  The butcher laughed, his belly shimmying under his clothes. “Yes, but can you pay?”

  “Please,” I said. “God will reward you with fatter lambs next year.”

  He gestured around him. “There are beggars in every section of the bazaar,” he said. “Who can feed them all?”

  He was an ugly man, I thought. I turned and began walking away, although it was just a pretense.

  “Wait!” he called after me. He grabbed a sharp knife and slashed the haunch, which fell open to the bone. He chopped the meat into chunks the size of my hand and threw them into a clay vessel.

  “Don’t you want this?” he asked, offering me the bowl.

  I reached toward it with gratitude. “Thank you for your charity!” I said.

  He drew back before I could touch it. “All I ask is for an hour after the last call to prayer,” he whispered. His lips dropped into a leer that he seemed to think would entice me like a bee to a poppy. The thought of lying under his big belly and feeling his large bloody hands sickened me.

  “I need more than that,” I said haughtily, as if I were used to such filthy bargains. “Much more.”

  The butcher laughed again, for he thought he understood me now. He grabbed the haunch and cut me twice as much again. Throwing the meat into the vessel, he pushed it at me. I grabbed it out of his hands.

  “When?”

  “Not for a week,” I said. “Not until my mother is better.”

  The butcher laughed. “A week, then, until we sigheh!” he said in a whisper. “And don’t even think about losing yourself in the city. No matter where you live, I can find you.”

  I took the vessel, shaking with revulsion. “I’ll need more meat in a few days,” I said, still trying to play my part.

  “As you wish,” he replied.

  “Well, then, in a week,” I said, trying to sound coquettish as I walked away. Behind me, I heard the butcher’s greasy laugh.

  I took the meat to the pharmacists’ section of the bazaar and traded some of it for the best medicine I could find for fever. Then I ran home to check on my mother. When I arrived, she called my name weakly and I thanked God for sparing her for another day. I gave her water and spooned some of the medicine gently into her mouth.

  There was still so much meat that I was able to trade a small portion to Katayoon’s family for celery and rice. I made a large stew that would last, if kept cold at night, for several days, as well as a thick meat broth for my mother.

  Our feasting that night was beyond imagining. Malekeh, Davood, and their sons had not tasted lamb for a year. Davood sat up throughout the whole meal, which he had never done before. My mother was too ill to eat the stew, but she sipped the broth and took more of the medicine.

  “Where did you get this meat?” Malekeh asked.

  “Charity,” I replied, not wanting to tell her the truth. Rich people often sacrificed a lamb to fulfill a nazr, but they never offered such fine cuts. Had my mother been less ill, she would have suspected my answer.

  I sent my prayers of thanks to God for the food, begging for His forgiveness for the promise I had made to the butcher. I had no intention of ever seeing him again. I decided to walk a wide arc around the meat sellers’ section of the bazaar from then on.

  For the next few evenings, I heated the stew and served the family. The boys ate as much as they were given as fast as they could; Malekeh and Davood ate slowly and gratefully, while my mother barely wetted her lips with the broth.

  When the stew was nearly gone, a small, dirty boy entered our courtyard and asked for me. He beckoned me outside and thrust a large vessel full of shiny red meat toward me. I drew away from it, frightened.

  “Aren’t you pleased?” he asked. “It’s from the butcher.”

  “Ah,” I said, trying to behave as if it were expected.

  “The butcher is anticipating your visit,” the boy said, “after the last call to prayer.”

  Even in his young eyes, I could see contempt and disgust for what he thought I was.

  “How did you find me?” I asked, my voice unsteady.

  “It was easy,” he said. “I followed you home the other night.”

  I grabbed the meat and said good-bye in a curt voice. Inside, I put the meat in a pot with some oil and made another stew. When my mother asked where the meat came from, I told her the obvious: “From a butcher.”

  I didn’t know what to do. If I eluded the butcher, he would come to Malekeh’s house and degrade me in front of everyone. Then we would be called shameful and thrown out on the street again. I thought of the pretty, young musician and how he had been reduced to begging and to rags. As the meat began sizzling, I could feel myself perspiring, but the heat of the stove had little to do with it.

  That night I dreamed that the butcher led me into a small, dark room and broke all my bones with his thick hands. He put me on display on one of his bloody hooks, naked, and when someone wanted meat, he carved me while I was still alive. I screamed and screamed in horror, waking everyone in the house. When they asked what was wrong, I couldn’t tell them. I lay awake, agonized about what to do. My appointment with the butcher was in two days.

  GORDIYEH AND GOSTAHAM had cast us out and left us to our doom, and now I must return to them as a beggar, in disgrace. It was as if God himself wished to make my humiliation complete.

  Well into the chilly afternoon, I covered myself in my chador, not thinking about the condition of the tunic and robe I was wearing, and walked to their house. It was difficult to knock at Gostaham’s grand gates, and even more difficult when Ali-Asghar answered the door.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked, as if he had seen a jinn.

  “I’ve come for charity,” I replied, bowing my head.

  He sighed. “I don’t think anyone will see you.”

  “Can
you try?”

  He looked at my face closely. “I’ll remind them of your jaw,” he said finally, and disappeared for a few moments.

  When he returned and summoned me in, my heart began to pound. I removed my coverings and followed him to the Great Room, where Gordiyeh and Gostaham were seated on cushions drinking their afternoon coffee. Gordiyeh wore a velvet robe she had commissioned out of the fabric patterned with red and yellow autumn leaves, and her matching yellow shoes were placed neatly near the door. She was eating a rosewater pastry, which made my mouth water with hopeless longing.

  “Salaam aleikum,” they said together. They did not invite me to sit down, for I was just another supplicant now.

  I knew that nothing but complete submission would work with Gordiyeh. I bent to kiss her feet, which were hennaed bright red on the bottom.

  “I throw myself on your charity,” I said. “My mother is very ill, and I need money for medicine and for food. I beg you, by the love of Fatemeh, for your help.”

  “May Imam Reza restore her health!” said Gostaham. “What happened?”

  Gordiyeh peered at me, her sharp eyes understanding everything at once. “You’ve become as thin as a sheet of bread,” she said.

  “Yes,” I replied. “We are not eating the way we did here.”

  “What a surprise!” she replied, with satisfaction in her voice.

  I controlled my temper, although I believed Gordiyeh was pushing her advantage too far.

  “I beg you to place us under your protection again,” I said. “I would do anything to see my mother safe, warm, and well fed.”

  Gostaham looked pained; Gordiyeh triumphant. “I wish that were possible,” Gordiyeh said, “but the bad luck melted away after you left. Fereydoon paid for the dangling gems carpet and for the rug that Naheed’s parents had commissioned. I believe Naheed persuaded him to do that.”

  “I think I know why,” I said. “I told her I was relinquishing her husband and begged her forgiveness. Perhaps she encouraged him to make amends on my behalf.”

  “That was good of you,” said Gostaham. “It helped us a great deal.”