“Yes,” she replied. “His father breeds some of the finest Arabian stallions in the land on farms in the north. He used to be just a country farmer, but he has made a lot of money now that everyone wants to own a horse of status.”
No one in my village had a horse of status, for even a nag cost more than most people could afford. I supposed she meant the high-class families of Isfahan.
“Fereydoon’s family is buying houses all over the country, and each one will need rugs,” Gordiyeh continued. “If we can please Fereydoon, we could earn a fortune from his family alone.”
Gordiyeh handed me a few pistachios to eat while we were unloading the heavy sacks. I loved pistachios, but I felt discomfited inside. Too often, my tongue leapt out ahead of me. Now that I was in a new city, I must learn to be more careful, for I hardly knew a man of power from a servant.
Later, Gordiyeh told me that Fereydoon had commissioned a rug and had promised to pay a very good price. I was so relieved that I offered to help Gostaham in any way I could. In celebration of the day’s good fortune, Gordiyeh freed me from most of my household tasks, and I went to visit Naheed.
AFTER FEREYDOON’S VISIT, Gostaham pushed aside all his other commissions and began working on the new design, and I joined him in his workroom and watched him sketch. I was expecting the design to emerge as easily as it had with Jamileh’s cushions, but now it was as if a demon had possessed his pen. He worked at the design for hours before flipping over the sheet of paper and starting over. When he didn’t like the new design any better, he balled up the paper and threw it across the room.
Gostaham’s hands became black with ink, and soon the workroom was littered with abandoned designs. When Shamsi tried to clean it, he roared, “How can I finish my work if you keep bothering me?” From time to time, he got up and picked through the discarded sheets of paper, searching for an idea.
The only reason he tolerated my presence was that I kept quiet. When he needed more paper, I prepared a new piece of the right size, and when his ink was running low, I refilled his bottle. If he looked tired, I fetched coffee and dates to revive him.
A few days later, when Gordiyeh saw the mess, she tried another tactic, complaining about the cost of the paper. “Woman of mine,” Gostaham bellowed, “stay clear! This is not just any carpet for any man!”
While Gostaham was preoccupied with his drawings, I thought about the talismans Fereydoon had requested in his rug. In my village, we used to knot in all manner of symbols, like roosters to encourage fertility or scissors as protection against evil spirits. But village symbols would have looked peculiar in a city rug, and in any case, a rug designed for a religious school must show no living creatures except for trees, plants, and flowers, to avoid the worship of idols.
One afternoon, when Gostaham had cast aside yet another sheet of paper and left the room in a rage, I put my hand to my neck and touched a piece of jewelry that my father had given me as protection against the Evil Eye. It was a silver triangle with a holy carnelian in its center, and I often touched it for blessings. Even though I knew I shouldn’t, I picked up Gostaham’s pen and paper and began to draw. I was not thinking very hard, just enjoying the feeling of the pen sliding across the page, and I watched it make the shape of a triangle with a circle in its center, just like my necklace. At the bottom of the triangle, I attached delicate hanging shapes resembling beads, coins, and gems.
Gostaham returned to the room, looking tired. “What are you doing?” he asked, as I dipped the pen in his ink.
“Just playing,” I said apologetically, returning the reed to the pen rest.
Gostaham’s face seemed to grow bigger under his turban, which looked as if it might explode off his head. “Your father is a dog!” he shouted. “No one touches my pen without my permission!”
Gostaham reclaimed the pen and ink with an angry look. I sat as still as a loom, fearing he would yell at me again. He quickly became preoccupied once again by the problem of the design, but I could see from his furrowed brow that he didn’t like what came forth. With an exasperated sigh, he got up and walked around the room, passing near me. He snatched the paper I had been working on, mumbling that he might as well use the other side.
Then he stared at the page. “What’s this?” he asked.
I flushed as Gostaham returned to his cushion. “It’s a talisman,” I said, “like Fereydoon wanted.”
Gostaham stared at the paper for a long time, while I kept my peace. Before long, he became absorbed in a new drawing, and his pen seemed to fly over his work. I watched him transform the crude, simple drawing I had made into a thing of beauty. He sketched triangular shapes with hanging beads, coins, and gems, connecting them so that they formed a delicate tiered design. The shapes looked pretty and dainty, which is how I imagined Fereydoon’s daughter.
When he was finished, Gostaham looked pleased for the first time in weeks. “Good work on the sketches,” he said, but I also saw an ember of anger in his eyes. “Let me make it clearer than daylight that you must never, ever touch my pen again.”
Looking down at the carpet, I begged forgiveness for being so bold. Later I told my mother that I had contributed to the design, but not exactly how, for she would have thought me rash.
Not long after, Gostaham took the design to Fereydoon for his approval. He had never seen a design like it before and wanted to know where it had come from. Gostaham was secure enough in his own mastery to tell him that a distant relation had contributed to the dangling gems design.
“It’s so delicate, just like my girl,” Fereydoon had replied.
“Indeed,” Gostaham said, “it is based on women’s jewelry from the south.”
Fereydoon had imitated the southern accent, and Gostaham had laughed and told him that was how his visiting niece talked. Remembering the way I had snapped at Fereydoon in that very accent, I realized that he now knew exactly who I was. I consoled myself that he must not have taken offense at my abrupt words, for he had accepted the design.
After his meeting with Fereydoon, Gostaham praised me and told my mother I had been a loyal helper. As a reward, he promised to take me to see a special rug, which he described as one of the lights of the age.
BECAUSE FEREYDOON’S COMMISSION was so important, Gostaham decided to have the wool for the carpet dyed to his specifications. He favored a dyer named Jahanshah who had a shop on the banks of the Eternal River, and he allowed me to accompany him one morning to see how he commissioned indigo, that most coveted of colors, whose recipe is cloaked in secrecy.
Jahanshah had thick white eyebrows, a white beard, and ruddy cheeks. He greeted us near his metal pots, which were full of water. Since the pots were cool, I thought he had forgotten about our visit.
“Her first time?” Jahanshah asked Gostaham.
“Yes.”
“Ah!” he replied, with a broad smile. “Watch closely.”
He wet a few skeins of wool and put them gently into a pot. The water inside was a strange greenish color, and when I peered at the wool, it looked unchanged.
We sat on stools overlooking the river. While the men discussed the rising price of lamb’s wool, I watched pedestrians cross the old Shahrestan Bridge, with its thick pilings, built four centuries before I was born. Older still were the swordlike Zagros Mountains, which thrust their pointed tips heavenward as if to carve the sky. No one had ever climbed to the top of those mysterious peaks, not even shepherds.
A gust of wind lifted off the water, threatening to pull off my head cloth. I held the ends down and waited impatiently for Jahanshah to add the magical indigo, but he seemed in no hurry. We drank tea while he languidly stirred the wool.
Nearby, another dye maker was hard at work over his boiling pots. He poured in a bag of dried yellow larkspur flowers, which danced their way into the liquid and whirled into a bright streak of yellow. I watched him drop in the skeins of white wool. They licked up the shade, transforming into the color of sunshine.
I wanted to
observe more closely, but Jahanshah handed me a pronged tool and said, “Lift out one of my skeins.”
I dipped the tool into his pot and fished until I caught a skein, which I raised in the air. It had turned an unappealing shade of green, like the puddles left behind by a sick horse.
I turned to Jahanshah, puzzled. “Aren’t you going to add the indigo?” I asked.
He burst out laughing, and Gostaham joined him while I stood holding the dripping skein. I couldn’t see any reason for their great mirth.
“Don’t take your eyes off the wool,” Gostaham said.
For some reason, the skein didn’t look as sickly as before. I blinked, feeling like one of those weary travelers who imagine greenery in the desert. But blinking didn’t change what I saw: The skein now bore the color of a pale emerald. After a few moments, it changed into an intense green like the first leaves of spring, which deepened into a blue-green, perhaps like the Caspian Sea, and then became deeper still, like the color at the bottom of a lake. I thrust the prong toward Jahanshah and exclaimed, “May God protect us from the tricks of jinn!”
Jahanshah laughed again and said, “Don’t worry, it is only one of the tricks of man.”
The skein was now such a rich blue that it brought joy to my eyes with its boundlessness and depth. I watched it, amazed, and then I demanded, “Again!”
Jahanshah let me pull out another skein and observe its transformation through a rainbow of green and blue hues until it became a rich lapis lazuli.
“How?” I asked, astonished.
But Jahanshah only smiled. “That has been a family secret for a little more than a thousand years,” he said, “ever since the Prophet Mohammad led his followers to Medina, home of my ancestors.”
Gostaham wanted the wool to be a slightly darker hue, so Jahanshah immersed it again until Gostaham was satisfied. Then he cut a strand of it for Gostaham and kept the rest for himself, so both men would be able to verify the color of the order.
When we arrived home, I had hardly removed my outdoor coverings before I asked Gostaham what I could do next.
He looked surprised. “Don’t you want to rest?”
“Not even for a moment,” I said, for seeing the magic of indigo had made me eager.
Gostaham smiled and put me to work on another grid.
From then on, the more I begged Gostaham to allow me to help him, the more he wanted me by his side. There was always something to do: grids to be drawn, colors to be mixed, paper to be sized. Before long, he let me copy the simplest parts of his designs onto the master grid. Sometimes, he even snatched me away from kitchen work. I relished those moments, for I despised the long hours of cleaning and chopping. When he beckoned to me, I relinquished my knife or mortar and pestle gratefully to join him. The other servants mumbled with indignation behind me, especially Cook, who asked sarcastically if the deer and onagers I was learning to draw would fill my belly at the evening meal. Gordiyeh didn’t like it, either. “With so many mouths to feed, everyone has to help,” she once said, but Gostaham ignored her. With my assistance, he was starting to complete his commissions more quickly, and I think he enjoyed my company during the long hours of design work, for no one could have been more keen.
Things were not as easy in Isfahan for my mother. She remained in the kitchen at Gordiyeh’s mercy and had to do the jobs I left behind. Gordiyeh always corrected her work as if scornful of our village ways. I believe she felt my mother’s resistance to her and tried to break it whenever she could. She must rinse the rice six times, no more or less, to remove the starch; must cut the radishes lengthwise instead of into roses; must make chickpea cookies with extra pistachio chips on the outside; yet for the heavenly sharbat, must use less fruit and more rose water. My mother, who had been mistress of her own household since she was my age, was being ordered around like a child.
One day, during the afternoon rest, my mother burst into our little room so angry that I could feel the heat burning off her skin.
“Ay, Khoda,” she said, calling on God for mercy, “I can’t bear it anymore!”
“What is it? What happened?”
“She didn’t like the pastries I made,” replied my mother. “She wanted squares, not ovals! I had to throw all the dough to the dogs and make it again.”
That kind of waste would have been unimaginable in my village, but Gordiyeh demanded perfection.
“I’m sorry,” I said, feeling guilty. I had spent the day with Gostaham, and my work had been pleasant and light.
“It’s not just the pastry,” my mother said. “I’m tired of being a servant. If only your father were alive, we could be in our own home again, doing things our own way!”
I tried to console her, for I loved what I was learning. “At least now we eat well and have no fear of starving.”
“Unless she throws us out.”
“Why would she do that?”
My mother snorted in exasperation. “You have no idea how much Gordiyeh would like to be rid of us,” she said.
She was exaggerating, I thought. “But look at how much we do for the household!”
She kicked off her shoes and collapsed on her bedroll. Her feet were bright red from standing so long while making the pastry. “Oh, how they ache!” she moaned. I arose and put a cushion underneath them.
“In Gordiyeh’s mind, we are draining this household, yet we’re not hired help that she can dismiss whenever she likes. She told me today that dozens of Isfahani women would give one of their eyes to work in her kitchen. Women who are young and who can work long and hard without complaint. Not women who want to spend valuable kitchen time learning about rugs.”
“What can we do?” I asked.
“We can only pray for a husband for you so that you can start a household of your own,” she said. “A good man who will consider it his duty to care for your mother.”
I had thought the discussions about my marriage had ended now that we had nothing to offer.
“Without a dowry, how am I to find such a husband?”
My mother stretched her feet to release the pain. “What an unkind comet, to have taken him away before you were settled!” she complained. “I have decided to make herbal remedies and sell them to neighbors to help build a dowry for you. We must not wait much longer,” she added, in a tone of warning.
It was true that I was getting old. Everyone I knew had been married by the age of sixteen, and most were married well before.
“I will start another carpet for my dowry,” I promised.
“Marrying you is the only way we can hope to live on our own again,” said my mother. She turned away and fell asleep almost immediately. I wished there were a way to make her life sweeter. I turned toward Mecca and prayed for a speedy end to the evil influences of the comet.
ONE EVENING, when I didn’t have anything to do, I picked up a large piece of paper Gostaham had thrown away and took it to the room I shared with my mother. Hunching under an oil lamp, I began drawing a design for a carpet that I hoped would grace a wealthy man’s guest room and make his other rugs blush. My design was filled with all the motifs I had been learning—I managed to fit in every one of them. I sketched leaping steeds, peacocks with multicolored tails, gazelles feeding on grasses, elongated cypress trees, painted vases, pools of water, swimming ducks, and silver fish, all connected by vines, leaves, and flowers. While I was working, I thought about an unforgettable carpet I had seen in the bazaar. It showed a magnificent tree, but rather than sprouting leaves, its branches ended in the heads of gazelles, lions, onagers, and bears. The merchant called it a “vaq-vaq tree,” and it illustrated a poem in which the animals discussed humans and their mysterious ways. I thought that such a tree could gossip all night about the mysteries of our new household.
I waited until Gostaham seemed in a cheerful mood before asking if I could show him the design. He seemed surprised by the request, but beckoned me to follow him into his workroom. We sat on cushions, and he unrolled the paper ont
o the floor in front of us. It was so quiet in the room that I could hear the last call to prayer from the Friday mosque. The evening caller, who sat high in the minaret, had a clear, sweet voice that always filled me with happiness and hope. I thought his call might be a good omen.
Gostaham glanced at the design for only a moment. “What’s the meaning of all this?” he asked, looking at me.
“W-well,” I stammered, “I wanted to make something very fine, something that. . .”
An unpleasant silence fell on the room. Gostaham pushed aside the paper, which curled up and rolled away. “Listen, joonam,” he said, “you probably think that carpets are just things—things to buy, sell, and sit down on. But once you become initiated as a rug maker, you learn that their purpose is much greater, for those who care to see.”
“I know that,” I said, although I didn’t grasp what he meant.
“You think you know,” said Gostaham. “So tell me—what do all these patterns have in common?”
I tried to think of something, but I couldn’t. I had drawn them because they were pretty decorations. “Nothing,” I finally admitted.
“Correct,” said Gostaham, sighing as if he had never had to work quite this hard before. He tugged at one side of his turban as if trying to pull out a thought.
“When I was about your age,” he said, “I learned a story in Shiraz that affected me deeply. It was about Tamerlane, the Mongolian conqueror who limped his way toward Isfahan more than two hundred years ago and ordered our people to surrender or be destroyed. Even so, our city revolted against his iron hand. It was a small rebellion with no military might behind it, but in revenge Tamerlane had his soldiers run their swords through fifty thousand citizens. Only one group was spared: the rug makers, whose value was too great for them to be destroyed. Even after that calamity, do you think the rug makers knotted death, destruction, and chaos into their rugs?”
“No,” I said softly.
“Never, not once!” replied Gostaham, his voice rising. “If anything, the designers created images of even more perfect beauty. This is how we, the rug makers, protest all that is evil. Our response to cruelty, suffering, and sorrow is to remind the world of the face of beauty, which can best restore a man’s tranquillity, cleanse his heart of evil, and lead him to the path of truth. All rug makers know that beauty is a tonic like no other. But without unity, there can be no beauty. Without integrity, there can be no beauty. Now do you understand?”