A Persian Requiem (15 page)

“Yes dear,” Zari said, “according to you and your father and your teacher, I’m a coward, I’m helpless, I’m soft. I’m always afraid something may happen to one of you … I couldn’t bear it. But when I was a young girl I too had a lot of courage …” And turning to Yusef she asked, “Wasn’t it a mark of courage to walk off with you that day in the middle of a street riot … you, a total stranger … which girl would’ve …” she bit her lip and tried to change the subject. “But you’re right about the rest. Our English headmistress constantly harassed us about manners and how to live. Singer was always doing us a favour by teaching us to sew, and Khanom Hakim had us convinced that our cures and medicines lay in her hands alone. I knew in my heart there was more to it than they were willing to tell. Something was wrong somewhere. I knew all of us, all the time, were losing something … but I didn’t know what it was …”

“And that was why I married you,” said Yusef. “Why have you changed so much?”

“I’ve already told you; must I repeat it a hundred times? You’re too outspoken and deep down I know it’s dangerous to say the things you do. If I wanted to stand firm and put my foot down, I’d have to do it right here with you first, and then what kind of battle of wills would we have at home? Shall I tell you one more thing? You are the one who took my courage away from me … I’ve obeyed you for so long that subservience has become a habit with me.”

“Me?” Yusef shouted. “Stand up against me? No matter how fierce I am outside this house, you know well that once I’m within these four walls I’m as meek as a lamb before you! I think your courage has been all show. Prompted by pure, unrefined instinct.”

Zari thought silently that if she carried on any longer, they would have a real quarrel on their hands. She hesitated and then said,
“Who knows, maybe I was a coward from the start and I didn’t know it. Time and again I stood up to that headmistress of mine without stopping to think whether I was committing an act of courage or rebellion. That day in Ramadan when she forced Mehri to break her fast … all the other girls abandoned the poor soul out of fear, but I stayed with her. I don’t know, maybe in those days I had nothing to lose … and now …” Without knowing quite what happened she lost all her patience and composure. She got up from her chair and slapping her belly hard, cried, “I hope this one in my stomach will miscarry tonight … I’ve gone close to death and back for your sakes. Khanom Hakim has carved up my insides … etched a map on my belly and here I am on trial for courage!”

She collapsed on the chair and burst out sobbing. It felt as though nowhere in the whole world was there a person as lonely and as tired as she. Yusef went to her and clasped her head in his arms. He kissed her hair and wiped her tears away with his fingers. He lifted her chin and looked her in the eye, fighting back his own tears.

“Don’t cry, my love,” he said. “Why didn’t you tell us all this earlier? I was completely taken by surprise.”

“Today I damn well wanted to get rid of this one,” she moaned, unable to hold back the tears. “Wasn’t I brave to keep it? When you bring a child into this world with such agony as I go through, you can’t bear to lose him so easily. Every day I … I turn the wheels in this household to nurture you, my precious flowers. I can’t bear to see people trample you. Like Hossein Kazerouni I don’t do anything with my hands for myself … I … I have no experience, I don’t know much of the world …”

“My love,” Yusef smiled, “instead of going to the mental asylum and getting tired and nervous, you should go to the new
Anglo-Iranian
Council here and teach Essential English II! Can you believe Singer sent me this message via McMahon?”

“You’re making fun of me!” said Zari from between her tears.

“You know I can’t bear to see you cry,” Yusef said gently. “I wanted to make you laugh with the suggestion … But my love, if only you’d told me the truth right away, we wouldn’t have gone on at you like this. You said you went to Khanom Massihadem’s office, but you quickly covered up the real reason behind it. Why did you keep it a secret from me? Now I feel guilty about the way I jumped at you.” Khosrow had sat down at his mother’s feet. He was holding on to her leg and listening silently to her words.

Zari wiped away her tears. “You had just got home from your journey,” she said. “You were tired and unhappy. I didn’t want to make you feel even worse.” She asked wearily and at a loss, “What can I do to please you two? What can I do to become brave, as you say?”

“I could teach you,” Yusef said with a laugh. “Your first lesson in bravery is this: whenever you’re afraid to do something, if you feel you’re in the right, then do it even if you’re frightened. My sweet little kitten!”

“For one thing I’m a person, not a sweet little kitten,” Zari said pensively. “What’s more, you give a first lesson to someone who has to start from scratch.”

In bed under the mosquito net, despite Yusef’s cool hand caressing her warm abdomen, despite his kisses, Zari seemed to have
forgotten
all sexual response. Instead, she kept thinking about her past, and wondering whether she had always been a coward or whether she had become one. Was Yusef really to blame? For one instant she even concluded that marriage was wrong at its very basis. Why should a man be tied for a lifetime to a woman and half a dozen children … or conversely, for a woman to be so dependent emotionally and otherwise on one man and his children that she couldn’t breathe freely for herself? It had to be wrong. Yet she knew that all the joys of her own life stemmed from these very attachments.

She couldn’t sleep for remembering those carefree days of her girlhood. The memory of that day in Ramadan when the
headmistress
broke Mehri’s fast came back to her as if it were yesterday.

That year Zari and Mehri were taking their sixth-grade exams. Four months before the final examinations a letter from the
Ministry
of Education arrived at the school stipulating that
sixth-graders
must be taught the Quran and religious laws. Zari realized that her mother’s petitioning had finally worked. Because she couldn’t afford a private teacher to instruct her daughter in
religious
matters, she had been pressing to have these taught as part of the school curriculum. Letter after letter and notice upon notice from the Ministry arrived on the headmistress’s desk, upsetting her considerably. But Zari knew that behind this pressure lay her mother’s insistence …

Those days every lesson in ‘Ethics’ turned into a nagging session about the Ministry of Education. The headmistress would complain that the Ministry had agreed from the start to maintain a policy of non-interference. She went on about the impossibility of suddenly producing a suitable teacher in the middle of the scholastic year. She nagged about finding extra hours to fit in these lessons … and so on. She would say, “Why don’t you girls find an old mullah-baji somewhere on Sundays when the school is closed and learn your Quran and religious laws from her … or better still, ask your people to teach you at home?” She would use the idioms correctly, since this one knew Persian well.

Mehri, whose uncle was the head of the Sufi dervishes, was well versed in both the Quran and in religious law. Unbeknownst to the headmistress, she agreed to give her classmates lessons in these subjects when they came back to school after the lunch-break. Zari struggled to pronounce the Arabic word “
Fassayakafikohomo’allah
” correctly, but she didn’t always succeed. Still, Mehri was patient, being a year or two older than the rest. And then came the month of Ramadan. She had just been teaching them the Ayat Prayer for use in times of natural calamity, when that memorable incident
took place. It seemed like yesterday.

Fasting was forbidden in the school, but Mehri was doing it anyway. When the headmistress found out, she stormed into the classroom and demanded that Mehri end her fast there and then by eating something. Mehri refused. The headmistress gave her a shove which sent her sprawling all over the classroom floor. Then she kneeled by her and holding the girl’s head with one hand, roughly opened her mouth and attempted to pour some water down her throat. Mehri bit the woman’s hand, at which the headmistress shouted at her and called her a pathetic wretch. Mehri sat up. “The dirty hand of an unbeliever in my mouth was enough to break my fast,” she said. “Give me the water and I’ll drink it to the last drop. The sin be on your head.”

The headmistress slapped Mehri across the face, and again sent the girl on to the classroom floor. She then left Mehri and turned to the class to rebuke them. But the other girls were whispering anxiously and no-one paid attention. Even their Indian teacher was just standing, staring round-eyed at the scene.

“In this school,” the headmistress shouted, “there is no room for superstition. Leave fasting and religious mourning to your aunties
and grannies! Ask your nursemaids about religious rules on
menstruation
and childbirth. Fasting weakens the body. Why did I buy parallel bars, a vaulting horse, and a basket-ball net? To strengthen your bodies, that’s why! Now you want to ruin all my efforts by fasting? You don’t deserve any of it!” Then she barked again at the top of her voice, “The bell has rung—why don’t you leave the classroom? Mehri’s punishment is to stay right here on the floor till this evening. Come along now, girls! No-one is allowed to remain with her.”

The headmistress marched out, and the Indian teacher, tossing her braid over her shoulder, followed her. The other girls filed out too. But Zari felt she could not leave. She bent over Mehri and gave her a hand to stand up. She dusted her off and sat her on the teacher’s chair. Both of them searched for a handkerchief to wipe away Mehri’s tears but neither of them had one. So Zari dried her friend’s face with her fingers, and kissed her, saying, “I don’t think your fast is broken. You were forced to drink the water.”

“There were only two or three hours left to the end of the fasting day,” Mehri cried, “and I had managed to fast for twelve days. I’d even fasted two extra days. This year I was determined to fast all thirty days of the holy month, because by next year I’ll have my period and I’ll never be so lucky again.”

“Oh it’s a long way to next year! Besides, you said yourself that a woman in her menopause doesn’t get periods anymore. When you get to that age, you can fast all thirty days again.”

Mehri laughed at that, and Zari was pleased to have made her laugh.

“I know who’s been telling tales—it must have been Taji. That stupid girl has turned Christian. I know my saviour Imam Ali will strike at her and she’ll fail her exams! Tonight the dervishes are holding a chanting session for the Imam Ali and I hope my uncle curses her.”

That night, they went home together. As they passed the Sufi monastery, they heard the rhythmic chanting of the dervishes, “Ya Hu. Ya Haq. Ya Ali!”, as it drifted through the open doors of the house of Imam Ali.

A
ll the quarrelling, reconciliations, and anxieties of the past days faded into insignificance when that very Friday morning Sahar walked back to the house on his own feet.

It all began like this.

They were sitting on the verandah at the back of the house which was protected from the morning sunlight, and which looked out on the hill Zari and Yusef had climbed with such fear and anxiety the night before.

Zari was using the breakfast table as an ironing board. The rugged hill lay bathed in sunlight, so still that it seemed hardly touched by the tread of human feet. Khosrow was sitting across from Zari, and had put a pen, paper and several books on the table in front of him. He was leafing through a book called
Principles
of
Letter-Writing
and reading out loud: “Write a letter to the head of an office and ask for a job. Write a letter to your uncle and ask him to … Write a letter to your friend and invite him for the Mab’ath holidays. With fondest regards and compliments … what joy to receive your latest missive … with reference to your letter of …” He put the book down on the table and said, “As Mr Fotouhi says, nothing more than begging and flattery!” then took another and started to flip through its pages.

Though still early in the day, it felt hot and there was no breeze to relieve the heat. Sweat trickled down Zari’s spine, and she longed for a cool, refreshing drink like willow-water or betony, or perhaps a piece of crushed ice to crunch between her teeth. She remembered how in each of her pregnancies Ameh Khanom had gone to great lengths to provide her with whatever she craved. From Hassan Agha the grocer she would order Indian magnesia, which was crunchy and white as snow, and reputed to be good for the baby’s
bone structure. Other days it would be lamb’s rumen, which Ameh would buy fresh and clean out herself, cooking it with nutmeg and making Zari take it because it tightened the belly. If a single raisin proved too sweet for Zari, Ameh would ply her with tamarind sherbet, and if one sour grape was too acid, she made hot syrups for her. But ever since Ameh Khanom’s decision to follow her mother’s footsteps to Karbala, she had become listless and depressed. She had no patience for anyone, not even the children. It was very noticeable, but Zari had decided not to say anything.

Khosrow put down his book. “What rubbish!” he exclaimed. “There’s not a word in here about how you should ask for your rights!” He took another book and leafed through it. “I think I’ve found it …” he said, “what good sentences!” He raised his head and asked Yusef who was facing the hill in his armchair, reading a book, “Father, what does this mean? ‘His deep-toned voice
resembled
that of a violoncello.’”

“It means like the mooing of a cow,” Yusef answered, without raising his eyes from his book, “it won’t do for Sahar. Listen, why don’t you just write what comes into your mind?”

Ameh’s voice could be heard ordering Mina to put down her coins, which were unclean from being passed around hundreds of hands. Ameh was sitting on a rug with her back to the hill, leaning against the verandah railings, sewing gold dinars into the lining of her coat. This had been her sole activity over the past few days and now she had started on her second coat.

Gholam came out to the verandah. “Khanom, are Kolu’s clothes ready?” he inquired.

“They’ll be ready in a minute.”

“I know it’s not my place to say this,” Gholam commented, “but why bother to iron them? Last night he only dreamt of cows and sheep. He kept waking up with a start to look for his kid goat. He kept me awake all night with his sighing and moaning. This morning he sobbed for an hour, asking for his mother, his sister, his brother … I don’t see how he can last here.”

Khosrow chuckled as he laboured with his letter, and Marjan tried to build towers with Ameh’s gold dinars which Mina would immediately scatter with a fling of her hand. As always, the
initiative
came from Mina who behaved as if she knew she had a headstart on her sister, having arrived fifteen minutes earlier into the world.

“Run along now!” Ameh Khanom shouted at the twins. “Money isn’t for playing! Call Kolu and tell him to come here. Gholam, take the girls to the stables.”

The twins pretended to cry and crawled under the table.

“Why don’t you put on the chadors your aunt made for you and show your father,” Zari said.

Mina emerged from under the table. “Auntie, can we have a prayer-stone so we can say our prayers?” Whenever Ameh stood up to say her prayers, they would also put on their chadors and bend or stand in imitation of her. When Ameh pronounced the ‘amen’ in Arabic, they would quickly put their foreheads to the ground to ask God for what they wanted. God alone knew what these little souls could be asking of Him … They would try hard to pronounce the Arabic ‘Wala-z’alin’ but they couldn’t, so they would turn to Ameh and say, “Now you say it.”

Zari finished ironing Khosrow’s old trousers and shirt which she had let out for Kolu and handed them to Gholam along with some socks, a vest and underpants. “Put anti-flea powder on all of these,” she said. “Buy him a pair of givehs too.” And she sat down on a chair. She was feeling parched, perhaps from all that ironing in the heat.

“The powder is finished,” Gholam told her. “I mixed the whole lot with water in the ewer to splash around the stables. They’re infested with lice.”

“Send Kolu here,” Yusef ordered.

“Let him have his bath first,” said Zari.

“Agha, he won’t come,” Gholam complained. “This morning he was like a wild animal. He wanted to run off into the hills. He kept saying he was going to walk all the way back to his mother.”

After Gholam had gone, Ameh Khanom said, “Brother, you can’t keep the boy here. He’s like that wild fawn we finally had to get rid of … still, it’s none of my business. I’m only a guest in this house for a few more days.”

At heart Zari agreed with her sister-in-law about Kolu. When she had seen him the day before, his eyes had looked to her just like those of the wild fawn—large and outlined, with a shocked
expression
. Even though he had smiled at his mistress, deep down in his eyes lurked the fearfulness of a trapped animal.

“It really is too soon to take him away from his home,” Zari observed. “It’s no use being kind to him. We’re only making him
unhappy, and his relatives angry …”

“Once he’s lived here comfortably for a few days, he’ll feel at home with his new surroundings and he won’t even mention his village anymore,” Yusef said impatiently. “Next year I’ll send him to school.”

Khosrow stopped writing and giggled. “Not unless you send him there with his hands and feet tied inside a sack,” he said, “he’s too wild. And he’s too old, anyway; they may not accept him.”

“In a sack?” Yusef asked absently, folding his newspaper.

“Yes, father. I saw Davoud Khan’s son when they brought him to school from the tribe. They’d brought him straight there. I think I was in the second grade. At break-time we saw this tribal man with a big moustache arriving at school on a mule. He was wearing a felt hat and a slit tunic with a shawl wrapped around his waist. On his saddle was a big canvas sack tied up carefully at the top, with something wriggling inside it. The man got down from his mule and tied the bridle to the same tree I always use when I take Sahar to school. All this time he was holding the sack firmly with his other hand. He was being very careful with it. Then he hoisted the sack and brought it into the schoolyard. When he put it down and opened it, the Khan’s son jumped out, wearing nothing but long black trousers! He did a few somersaults—I don’t know what for. Then he started to run all around the schoolyard. As if anyone could catch him!”

Zari picked up her ironing and went to the pantry. She checked the cupboards. They’d completely run out of flower essence. In the kitchen she found Khadijeh, frying egg-plants on the stove. She was working stripped to
the waist in the furnace-like heat,
exposing
sagging breasts and hairy armpits, while below the waist she wore her loose, flowery-patterned trousers. On seeing her mistress, Khadijeh grabbed her veil to cover herself.

Zari decided to pay a visit to her neighbours, the distillers. Maybe they could supply her with some essence. She went out the garden gate with her purse and two large pitchers. The neighbours’ garden door was open, so she went in without knocking. There wasn’t the usual pile of flowers on the paving in the middle of the garden, and the old distiller himself was nowhere in sight.

“Is anyone there?” she shouted.

She approached the house, knowing that the distillery
store-rooms
were in the basement. She had an uncontrollable urge to fill a
china bowl with betony extract, add syrup to it and mix in some crushed ice … she would stir the ice in her drink with her fingers and with a ladle that had a carved handle … ah, how refreshing that would be! Even if the distillers weren’t there, she could go to the store-rooms, fill her pitchers and leave the money somewhere in sight.

Inside the house, she called out again, “Anybody there?”

Suddenly the head of the old distiller appeared behind one of the basement windows. He peered at her through the ornate stone lattice. Then he came out to greet her, dressed only in his drawers.

“Khanom, why go to the trouble of coming here yourself? You could’ve sent one of the servants …” And then he added, “Please come to the store-rooms. Take whatever you want. We were waiting for the last picking of eglantine which hasn’t arrived. The flowers will wilt. They say the whole town’s been blocked because some horse has taken off with the Governor’s daughter. They’re not even letting goods deliveries come through.”

Zari put the pitchers down.

“I’ll be going down to the garden door,” said the distiller. “I’ve sent my sons to fetch the load and I want to see if they’re here yet. I just know those flowers are going to wither. This town is turning into bedlam. Why does the girl have to go about riding a horse and getting herself into trouble? How can you make those fools
understand
that flowers don’t have the patience of human beings? Especially eglantine. They have to be picked at dawn and piled inside the store-rooms by early morning. Flowers can’t be kept waiting in this blazing sun!”

Zari didn’t know whether to be glad or upset. She felt for the child’s mother: she was, after all, a mother herself. She knew Sahar was a noble horse and wouldn’t throw his rider. But how terrified the girl must be! And how anxious the mother!

She took the pitchers and went to the basement. An intoxicating fragrance permeated the cool air of the cellars. The covers of the stone vats made especially for boiling flowers had been removed and leaned against the walls. The bamboo pipes leading from the vats to the tank were dry and, unlike the last time she had brought the twins to watch, were not dripping with thin streams of fragrant essences. Of the two tanks, one was full and the other half-full with rose-water. Flasks of rose-water were stacked neatly around the
store-room. She opened a small door and went to an adjoining cellar. She dipped her pitcher in the first tank there and filled it with betony extract. How she longed to lie down right there on the cool moist earth of the store-rooms, next to the sweet aroma of those tanks!

On her return home, the first thing she noticed when she went to the verandah was the noise in the distance. The others were
seemingly
oblivious to it, Khosrow still writing his letter and Yusef leafing through his book, chuckling. The noises, however, seemed to be coming closer, a mixture of the sounds of a crowd and the hum of car engines. Zari glanced towards the hill. Not a soul in sight.

“Where are the twins?” Yusef asked.

No-one answered.

She could see two cars now, one following the other at an angle to the slope. A voice rose, saying, “He’s heading for the hill!” Several people started in the same direction.

“There! I’ve finished my letter,” said Khosrow. “Father, will you listen while I read it to you?”

Yusef shut his book, got up from the armchair and looked out. “What on earth is going on over there?” he asked.

Khosrow stood up too and went to the edge of the verandah. “Look how many people there are at the foot of the hill!” he exclaimed. “Four … five cars!”

A voice in the distance shouted, “Did you see? Right there!” And another voice commanded, “Don’t shoot, you idiot!” Someone screamed. The crowd at the foot of the hill was growing by the minute. A policeman and two gendarmes arrived. Two more cars passed by the slope. The first car was sounding its horn like an emergency siren, and raising a great trail of dust and gravel as it drove forward.

“Is there a war, father?” Khosrow asked. Before Yusef could answer, another voice shouted, “He’s going up the hill!” Other voices were lost in the din of the crowd, and the revving of car engines.

“I think it’s to do with Sahar,” Zari said. “The distiller next door was saying that a horse had taken off with the Governor’s daughter.”

Yusef clapped a hand to his stomach and laughed heartily. “What a war!” he said, catching his breath. “All this to catch a colt! There
he is! Look, it’s Sahar all right! He’s standing at the summit. She’ll be lucky if he doesn’t throw her!”

Ameh Khanom, still sitting with her back to the hill, didn’t even turn round. She was struggling with a thread and needle. “It’s just like threading a needle,” she observed. “If you aim the thread exactly at the needle’s eye and your vision is good, then you get it right the first time. But if your eyes are like mine, on the blind side, you have to keep wetting the thread in your mouth, and guessing at the eye. The thread goes back and forth so many times until finally, by accident, it goes through the hole. Now Khosrow, your horse has come to you on his own feet by accident too. Go out there and let’s see how well you thread your own needle.”

Yusef put a hand on his son’s shoulder. “Your aunt is right, son,” he said. “Go ahead.”

Khosrow jumped down from the verandah and ran off. Zari, understanding Ameh’s hint, knelt down and threaded her needle for her. “But it can’t always be helped, you know,” Ameh
commented
. “In life you’re not always allowed to follow the right path, so only after a great many battles and a lot of failures do you finally make up for your mistakes.”