“May I watch you design Jamileh’s cushions?” I prompted. “I promise you, you won’t even know I’m there. I’ll fetch you coffee when you’re tired and help in any way I can.”
Gostaham’s face softened into a smile, which made his kindly eyes droop even further. “If you’re truly interested, you must ask Gordiyeh if you will have time outside of your household duties,” he replied. “And don’t feel too badly about your rug. Things are much more expensive in the city. Just remember, it’s a sign of appreciation that the price was so high, and the rug displayed so boldly.”
His words soothed me and gave me an idea. I could make another rug to sell, and perhaps I would earn all the money that Hassan had pocketed for himself.
THAT AFTERNOON, I found Gordiyeh in her rooms looking through bolts of silk velvet brought by a visiting merchant. He had never seen her, of course; he conveyed the fabric through her servants and waited in the birooni while she made her selections.
Gordiyeh’s fingers were lingering on a bolt patterned with leaves in autumn shades of red and yellow.
“Look at this!” she said. “Won’t it make a beautiful long robe for cooler weather?”
Staring at my black mourning clothes, I could only imagine how it would feel to wear something so beautiful. After admiring the thick silk, I told Gordiyeh about my visit to the workshop and asked if I might be permitted to observe Gostaham when he worked at home. Having seen how Gordiyeh had melted under Jamileh’s flattery, I spiced my request with awe over Gostaham’s carpet-making mastery.
“Why do you want to spend your time that way?” Gordiyeh asked, reluctantly putting aside the bolt of silk. “You will never be allowed to learn in a workshop full of men, nor will you be able to do such fine work without an army of specialists.”
“Still, I want to learn,” I said stubbornly, feeling my top and bottom teeth pressing against each other. My mother said I always looked like a mule when I didn’t get my way.
Gordiyeh looked doubtful. Remembering my mother’s words from a few nights before, I added quickly, “Perhaps I might one day become good enough to help Gostaham with small tasks for his commissions. That way, I would relieve some of the burden on him and on your household.”
That idea seemed to please Gordiyeh, but she wasn’t prepared to say yes. “There is always more work in the kitchen than there are hands,” she replied.
I was ready with an answer. “I promise to do everything for Cook that I always do. Nothing will change in how much I help.”
Gordiyeh turned back to her bolts of silk. “In that case,” she said, “since my husband has given his approval, you may learn from him, but only if you don’t shirk your other duties.”
I was so jubilant that I promised to work harder than usual, though I believed I was already doing as much as any maid could.
All through the next week, I worked long hours alongside my mother, Shamsi, Zohreh, and Cook in preparation for the New Year. We scrubbed the house from top to bottom and aired out all the blankets. We lifted the bedrolls, cleaning and polishing underneath them. We filled the house with vases of flowers and with mountains of nuts, fruit, and pastries. We cleaned what seemed like a field of greens for the traditional New Year’s dish of whole whitefish cooked with mint, coriander, and parsley.
On New Year’s Day, my mother and I were awakened in the dark by the bustle in the household. At twenty-two minutes past five, we kissed each other’s cheeks and celebrated with coffee and rosewater pastries. Gostaham and Gordiyeh gave their children gold coins and presented every member of the household with a small gift of money. I said a prayer of thanks to God for permitting us to survive the year, and for guiding us to a household with so much to teach me.
GOSTAHAM’S WORKROOM at home was located in the birooni. It was a simple place with carpets and cushions on the floors and alcoves for paper, ink, pens, and books. He drew his designs sitting cross-legged on a cushion with a wooden desk propped on his lap. I joined him the day he began the design for Jamileh’s cushions and watched him sketch a vase of tulips partially encircled by a garland of other flowers. I marveled at how natural his flowers looked and how quickly they sprang from his pen.
Gostaham decided that the blossoms were to be pink and yellow, with pale green leaves, against a black background. Touches of silver-wrapped silk thread would outline the blossoms, as Gordiyeh had promised. When I commented on how quickly he designed the cushions, he only said, “This is one commission that has already cost me far more than it’s worth.”
The following day, he laid out a piece of paper that had been ruled by one of his assistants with a grid. With great care, he drew the finished tulip design on top of the grid and painted it with watercolors. The grid underneath remained visible, dividing the design into thousands of tiny colored squares, each of which stood for a knot. With this guide in hand, the designer could call out the colors or the knotter could read it himself, like a map that tells a traveler where to go.
When he was finished, I begged him to give me a task to practice on my own. The first thing he taught me was to draw a grid. I took pen and ink to my little room and practiced on the floor. In the beginning, I had trouble managing the flow of ink. It pooled and smudged, and my lines were crooked and irregular. But before long, I learned how to dip the pen exactly, brush off the excess, and make a clean, straight line, usually while holding my breath. It was tedious work; one sheet of paper took me the better part of an afternoon, and when I stood up, my legs were stiff and cramped.
When I was able to make a proper grid, Gostaham rewarded me with my very own pen. It had been cut from a reed in the marshes near the Caspian Sea. Although it weighed little more than a feather, to me it was better than a gift of gold. From then on, Gostaham entrusted me with preparing the grids he used to make the final designs for private commissions. He also began giving me assignments to improve my drawing skills. He would toss off sketches of flowers, leaves, lotus blossoms, clouds, and animals, and tell me to copy them exactly. I especially liked to copy complicated designs that looked like flowers within flowers within flowers.
Much later, when I had gained more confidence, Gostaham gave me the pattern he had designed for Jamileh’s cushions and told me to reverse it, so that the bouquet of tulips leaned to the right instead of the left. Larger carpets often had patterns that went first one way, then the other, so a designer needed to know how to draw both. Every afternoon, during the hours when the household was sleeping, I practiced drawing. I sang folk songs from my village while I worked, happy to be learning something new.
WHENEVER I HAD TIME, I visited Naheed. We were becoming close quickly, now that we shared not just one secret, but two.
After my first experience of seeing her name in ink, I had asked Naheed to teach me to write. She gave me lessons in her workroom whenever I visited. If anybody came to talk with us, I was to pretend I was just drawing. It was not common for a village girl to learn to write.
We started with the letter alef. It was simple to draw, a heartbeat and the letter was done.
“It is long and tall like a minaret,” said Naheed, who always thought of shapes that would help me remember the letters.
Alef. The first letter in Allah. The beginning of everything.
I filled a page with tall, straight strokes, watching Naheed out of the corner of my eye. Sometimes I added a curving top to the letter to give it a long, low sound in the throat. When my efforts had met with Naheed’s approval, she taught me the letter beh, which was curved like a bowl with a dot underneath. This letter was much trickier. My beh’s looked graceless and childish compared with hers. But when she looked over my labors, she was satisfied.
“Now put the two together, alef and beh, and you make the most blessed thing in our land,” said Naheed.
I wrote them together and mouthed the word ab: water.
“Writing is just like making rugs,” I said.
“What do you mean?” asked Naheed, with a touch of scorn in he
r voice. She had never made a rug.
I put down my pen to explain. “Words are made letter by letter, in the same way that rugs are formed knot by knot. If you combine different letters, they make different words, and the same is true when you combine colors to make different patterns,” I said.
“But writing is from God,” objected Naheed.
“He gave us thirty-two letters,” I replied, proud that I knew this now, “but how do you explain that He gave us more colors than we can count?”
“I suppose that’s true,” said Naheed, in a tone that made it clear that she thought letters were superior, like most everyone did.
Naheed took a deep breath and sighed. “I should be working on my writing exercises,” she said. Her father had given her a book of calligraphic drills she was supposed to copy before attempting to pen a lion that spelled Allah-hu-Akbar: God is great. “But I can’t sit anymore,” she added, her green eyes jumping around the room. “My mind is too full.”
“Could this have something to do with a handsome polo player?” I said.
“I found out his name: Iskandar,” Naheed said, pronouncing it with obvious delight.
“And what about his family?”
She looked away. “I don’t know.”
“And does he know who you are?” I asked, feeling jealous.
Naheed smiled her prettiest smile. “I think he’s starting to know,” she said.
“How?”
“Last week, I went to the Image of the World with a friend to watch the polo game. Iskandar scored so many goals for his team that the spectators roared with excitement. After the game, I walked to where the players were being congratulated and pretended to carry on a conversation with my friend until I was sure he noticed us. Then I flipped up my picheh as if I needed to adjust it and let him see my face.”
“You didn’t!”
“I did,” Naheed said triumphantly. “He stared, and it was as if his heart had turned into a bird that had found the right spot for its nest. He couldn’t stop looking, even after I had covered my face.”
“But now how will he find you?”
“I shall have to keep going to the games until he knows who I am.”
“Be careful,” I said.
Naheed looked at me with slightly narrowed eyes, as if she wasn’t sure she could trust me. “You would never tell anyone, would you?”
“Of course not: I’m your friend!”
Naheed looked unconvinced. Abruptly, she turned away and called for a servant, who returned soon with refreshments. Naheed offered me a vessel of coffee and a plate of dates. I refused the fruit a few times, but since it would have been impolite to insist, I selected a small date and placed it in my mouth. It took all my spirit to prevent myself from making a childish face of disgust. I swallowed the date quickly and ejected the pit.
Naheed was watching me closely. “Was it good?”
One of the stock phrases rushed to my lips—“Your hospitality shames me, your obedient servant”—but I couldn’t say it. I shifted on my cushion and gulped a mouthful of coffee while I tried to think of what to say.
“It’s sour,” I said finally.
Naheed laughed so hard that her slender body shook like a cypress in the wind. “You are so much yourself!” she said.
“What else could I say but the truth?” I asked.
“So many things,” she replied. “Yesterday, I served the same dates to friends, including the girl I took to the polo game. She ate one and said, ‘The dates of paradise must be like these,’ and another girl added, ‘But these are sweeter.’ I tasted a date after they left and discovered the truth.”
Naheed sighed. “I’m tired of such ta’arof,” she said. “I wish people would just be honest.”
“People from my village have a reputation for being plain-spoken,” I replied, not knowing what else to say.
“That’s one of the things I like about you,” she replied.
Right before I rose to go, Naheed asked if I would grant her a special favor.
“It’s about the polo games,” she said. “My friend is too afraid to accompany me any longer, so will you come instead?”
I imagined that the games would be full of young men who assembled in packs and shouted for their favorite teams. Even though I was new to the city, I knew it was not a place for two girls of marriageable age to go alone.
“Aren’t you worried about what your parents would think?”
“Don’t you understand?—I have to go,” she said with a pleading look in her eyes.
“But how will we do it without our families knowing?”
“I’ll say that I’m visiting you, and you’ll tell your family you’re visiting me. We’ll be wrapped up in our chadors and our pichehs, so no one will recognize us once we leave the house.”
“I don’t know,” I said doubtfully.
A look of disdain clouded Naheed’s eyes, and I thought I must seem spineless. I didn’t want her to think of me that way, so I agreed to accompany her and help her ensnare her beloved.
NAHEED HAD SURPRISED me with her boldness in showing a glimpse of herself to a man she admired. Only a few days later, I revealed myself to a man I had never seen before. It was a Thursday afternoon, and I was returning from the hammam with my hair still wet. As soon as I passed through the tall, heavy door that led into Gostaham’s home, I tore off my chador, my picheh, and my head scarf and shook my hair free. I failed to notice a stranger waiting to be shown in to see Gostaham; a servant must have just gone to announce him. He wore a multicolored turban shot with golden thread, and a blue silk robe over a pale orange tunic. I caught a faint, fresh whiff of grass and horses. I was so startled I said, “Ya, Ali!”
If the stranger had been polite, he would have looked away. Instead, he kept his eyes fixed on me, enjoying every minute of my surprise and discomfiture.
“Well, don’t just stand there looking!” I snapped, walking quickly to the andarooni, the part of the house where women were safe from male eyes. Behind me, he burst out laughing. Who was this insolent fellow? There was no one around to ask. To find out, I flew up to the second floor of the house, which was little more than a passage to the roof. We used it to go outside and hang laundry. Like all the women of the house, I had discovered that there was a tiny nook off the stairwell where I could hide and observe events occurring in the Great Room. The plaster flowers and vines that adorned the walls formed a lattice through which I could see and hear.
Peering into the room, I saw the well-dressed stranger sitting in the place of honor and heard Gostaham saying “. . . deeply honored to be the instrument of your desires.”
I had never heard him talk so respectfully to anyone, particularly not to a man half his age. I hoped I hadn’t insulted anyone too important. I took a more careful look at the visitor. His slim waist, erect bearing, and sun-darkened skin made me suspect that he was a trained horseman. He had thick, fuzzy eyebrows that met perfectly above his nose, dominating eyes shaped like half-moons. His long nose curved toward his lips, which were plump and very red. He wore a beard cropped close to his skin. He was not handsome, yet he had a powerful beauty like a leopard’s. While Gostaham spoke, the visitor sucked on a water pipe, narrowing his eyes with pleasure as he inhaled. Even from my perch I could smell the sweet tobacco cured with fruit, which made the inside of my nose tingle.
Gostaham made sure that his guest felt welcome by inviting him to converse about his recent travels. “The whole town is talking of the army’s exploits in the north,” he said. “We would be most honored if you would tell us yourself what happened.”
The visitor recounted how one hundred thousand Ottomans had bombarded a fortress that guarded the country’s northwestern frontier. Hidden in tunnels, they had hurled cannonballs at its gates. “For many days, we thought that God had chosen to give victory to the other side,” he said.
From inside the fortress, he led a team of men through Ottoman lines to bring back supplies that helped the army w
ithstand the siege. After two and a half months, the Ottomans began to starve. About forty thousand soldiers were dead by the time their army began its retreat.
“The men inside the fortress were starving as well,” said the visitor. “Toward the end, we were eating nothing but bread made out of flour crawling with bugs. After a six-month campaign, I am grateful every time I eat hot bread cooked in my own oven.”
“As any man would be,” said Gostaham.
The visitor paused, drawing smoke from the water pipe.
“Of course, a man never knows what will happen while he is at battle,” he said. “I have a three-year-old daughter, dearer to me than my own eyes. She grew ill with cholera while I was gone and has survived only through the grace of God.”
“Al’hamd’Allah.”
“As her father, I am bound to give alms in thanks for her survival.”
“It is the act of a true Muslim,” agreed Gostaham.
“The last time I visited the Seminary of the Four Gardens,” said the visitor, “I noticed that some of their floor coverings had become threadbare.”
He sucked on the water pipe and exhaled slowly, while we waited and hoped.
“But even as I consider commissioning a carpet to glorify God, I have a special desire,” he continued. “This carpet is to be made to give thanks for my daughter’s health, and I want it to contain talismans to protect her in the future.”
“With God’s grace,” said Gostaham, “your child shall always be free of illness.”
At that moment I heard Gordiyeh calling my name, so I had to go. I hoped she might tell me more. I found her in the courtyard examining several donkeyloads of pistachios from Kerman, which Ali-Asghar was unloading into the storerooms. They needed another hand.
“Who is our visitor?” I asked her.
“Fereydoon, the son of a wealthy horse trader,” she said. “We could do nothing better for our future than appeal to his heart.”
“Is he . . . very wealthy?” I asked, trying to gauge how important he was.