A Persian Requiem (18 page)

B
ut Ezzat-ud-Dowleh did not get to the point till late that afternoon. Even then she built up to it with much preamble, explanations and beating about the bush. It was early evening and her guests were sitting around cross-legged on a large,
twelve-segment
wooden takht placed over the pool for cool air. The takht was covered with layers of carpets over which soft, striped sheets had been spread. Carpet-covered cushions had been arranged against the tall latticed railings of the takht. Ezzat-ud-Dowleh had taken up her usual place at the head of the takht, fanning herself. Ameh Khanom and Zari were seated on either side of her, but were not using fans.

The air had cooled. The blossoms of jasmine bushes, in large flower-pots around the pool, seemed to twinkle like so many stars at the reluctant sun, unwilling to set over the orangery.
Ezzat-ud-Dowleh
had managed to send Mina and Marjan off with Khadijeh, Ferdows and her children, to the police-chief’s garden to watch the Pahlavan Kachalak puppet show.

Zari didn’t even quite realize how the conversation turned to her charities at the prison and the asylum. She found herself explaining about the women’s prison. “It’s not too crowded there,” she said. “They’re not too restricted, either, because the crimes are generally not more serious then stealing a ewer. Yes, I’m allowed to sit privately with the prisoners on the little rugs their relatives bring them and listen to their complaints. But I don’t see the men. I just take their food to the Karim Khani citadel, and deliver it at the warden’s office. What happens to it after that, is a matter between God and the warden! But there’s a belief among prison wardens that whoever steals from rations will be stricken with leprosy.” She added, “One day I insisted on taking the food to the male prisoners
myself. That day they were cleaning out the Dosagkhaneh latrines which are in the hallway. The stench makes you want to die.”

Then the conversation turned to the madam of a ‘hospice’ who had recently been imprisoned.

“I wanted this woman imprisoned myself,” Zari said, “but I wasn’t the one who reported her. It was the regional officer who’d accompanied us. Mahin Khanom and I had been on an inspection tour of the houses in the Mordestan District, on behalf of the Women’s Society. No matter how long we knocked at this woman’s house, no one would answer. The regional officer started kicking the door. Finally the madam herself let us in. It was getting dark. We inspected all the rooms. Mahin had them open up some of the beds and she ordered fresh pillow cases and sheets for the
mattresses
. In the end, when we had gone to the madam’s room to give her a supply of anti-flea powder and disinfectant, I saw something wriggling under the sewing-machine stand in the corner of the room. First I thought it was a cat. Only a black little head was visible. I reached out and switched on the light, motioning for the regional officer to take a look. Sure enough he pulled out a seven-or eight-year-old girl from underneath the sewing-machine table. The little girl was wearing a glittery, wrinkled dress, and her breasts hadn’t yet fully developed. She was shivering like a sparrow in snow. Despite my quiet nature, I lost my temper. I shouted at the madam and asked whether she wasn’t ashamed to use children of this age for work like that. At first she swore frantically that the girl was her niece who was staying with her for the night, but then she broke down and confessed. ‘Well, what can I do, Khanom?’ she said. ‘There are too many customers. One Indian sergeant major has been waiting some time for a young girl. You can’t let the customers down. We’re constantly being ordered from above to keep our customers satisfied, and now you’re here criticizing us? What brings you here, anyway? Isn’t it to clean up the place to ensure the satisfaction of the foreign customers? After all, I’ve been in this business for many a year and no one has ever come to inspect us for anything else.’”

Zari stopped talking. But when she sensed her hearers’ eagerness to know more, she went on.

“Later it transpired that the madam had had ten or twelve of these children working for her and that day she had sent them off to escape over the roof—all except the little one who hadn’t been able
to get away in time. But what bracelets the madam herself was wearing! She had on at least ten pairs of gold bracelets.”

“Shameless woman!” exclaimed Ezzat-ud-Dowleh. “May she pay hereafter for what she did to those innocent children!” Then she added, “They’ve got our maid Nana Ferdows in prison too. I expect you’ll see her tomorrow when you go there.”

“On what charge?” Ameh asked.

Zari suddenly understood. She realized the favour needed of her somehow related to the women’s prison and Nana Ferdows. She waited. But Ezzat-ud-Dowleh was taking her time.

“What I suffer because of this child of mine! My husband—may he never rest in peace—had no idea how to raise a child. He didn’t even let Hamid do his compulsory military service. He faked the medical certificate by slipping pebbles in the boy’s urine sample and bribing the doctor to diagnose a kidney stone condition. If they’d taken him for military service, maybe it would have done him some good. May he never rest in peace, my husband! He would go whoring with a fifteen-year-old boy, and my poor Hamid caught gonorrhoea at sixteen. His wife isn’t capable of making a man out of him now. How I wished he’d married Zari! It was not to be, I suppose. Like father, like son. May he turn in his grave, my husband, may he never rest in peace!”

“But I heard Hamid has given up his extravagant habits and settled down,” said Ameh Khanom.

“Settled down? With all the money he throws away and that shrew of a wife? I kept insisting that he should do up this big house and come to live here, but he wouldn’t listen. Or rather, his wife wouldn’t think of it. The woman kept repeating that she would get depressed living in these back alleys and nothing would do but that she had to live on a main street.”

Ezzat-ud-Dowleh fell silent for a while and fanned herself.

Then she went on. “There’s an old saying that only children turn out either mad or crazy. When my boy was five, all he did was to fly kites with coloured paper-lanterns. At seven or eight, he became obsessed with pigeons. When a person is born under an unlucky star … even now as a grown man all he does is play with pigeons. He’s made three hundred nests on his roof-top for them. Every evening he flies his pigeons, and he claims that when the birds fly up and away, his heart flutters to the rhythm of their wings, and only comes to rest with them when they’ve returned.”

Ameh sighed. “He was playmates with my poor son,” she said. “When my child died, I couldn’t bear to see your Hamid. But now, time has taken care of all that. I miss Hamid.”

“He’ll come to see you in a little while. I told him his aunt would be here and he said he’d come early this evening to pay his respects. He misses you very much too …”

The black maid appeared just then, carrying a tray of afternoon refreshments which she placed in the middle of the takht. There were all sorts of seasonal fruits as well as a variety of imported biscuits. She also brought in a brazierful of hot coals standing in an ornate copper tray. This she put in front of Ameh for her
opium-smoking
. She made tea in a red china teapot with floral designs which matched the china bowl of the opium pipe. The flowers on the design were white poppies. The tongs and the pipe-rod gleamed like gold.

Ezzat-ud-Dowleh went on. “How I’ve suffered because of that child! You probably know that he sends foreign officers and soldiers here on the pretext of seeing antiques. In reality they sell us whatever extra bits and pieces they may have like biscuits, soap, shoes, stockings, silk, and so forth. I sell the goods in turn through Nana Ferdows …”

Ameh interrupted her harshly, “Come now, Ezzat, do you think no-one knows? It’s hardly a secret that you, a distinguished lady as you say, have turned into a smuggler! I didn’t want to mention it today, but at our house I tried to give you some hints. You kept evading the issue and I didn’t insist. Your son’s driver told the story of your Jahrom haul in front of everyone at the Do-Mil teahouse. He said you and Nana Ferdows looked as if you’d put on quite a bit of weight overnight! He said you spent two whole hours wrapping up your body in silk to hide the smuggled arms. Apparently you also packed two big canvas sacks full of goods in the boot of a car which could have cost you a twenty thousand toman fine. Why have you become so greedy? A little bit of self-respect and dignity go a long way, you know.”

Ezzat-ud-Dowleh controlled herself. Only the corner of her mouth twitched as she said, “That driver was probably the one who betrayed us. I kept telling Hamid not to dismiss him in this
godforsaken
summer with all the sickness and famine around. But he wouldn’t listen. What I go through because of that boy! But then you know, as I’m sitting here by myself of an evening, he comes
along with a special rice dish, or a plateful of best quality apricots or some large tangerines … he’ll say, ‘Mother, I was thinking of you.’ Then he’ll kiss my hand, my foot, lay his head on my bosom and with all this pampering, I know that the next day he’ll get anything he wants out of me.”

Ameh Khanom opened the small jewel-studded case before her, took a piece of opium, and smelled it. “What good quality!” she said. She warmed the opium and stuck it to the pipe-bowl.

“Forgive me for being so bold,” Zari said, “but you have a great deal of assets and property.”

“May he never rest in peace that husband of mine!”
Ezzat-ud-Dowleh
exclaimed. “What assets and property? He would steal the title-deeds of my land, cover his sister with a chador and take her to Sheikh Gheib Ali the notary and introduce her as his wife. He would sell my land, and have his sister—well-hidden under her chador—thumb-print the foot of the sale transaction as signature. All the money was spent on his women … and on that bedroom! His private room where he took the prostitutes, with that
double-bed
he brought over from India. He bought every pack of old playing cards to be found in this town so he could paste all the aces, queens and jokers on one wall of that room. He hired a painter to illustrate another wall with every imaginable kind of love-making position. Whatever money was left over, at the end when he was confined to the house, he smoked away in opium.”

Ameh Khanom took a puff and said, “He left enough for your family to live on respectably for several generations. But if you’re hinting at my addiction, too, let me just say I don’t smoke away anyone else’s money … it’s my own. Besides, I’ve vowed to give it up the instant I set foot in the shrine of Imam Hossein. Right then and there, I’ll break my opium-pipe in two. O Lord, please give me the strength to do it!”

“Sister, why have you become small-minded?” Ezzat-ud-Dowleh asked. “And why so touchy? I swear by my only son that I meant no offence to you. As for giving up opium, I’m certain that you’ll be able to do it. You’re one of those people who can do whatever they want.”

Ameh Khanom took a long puff. “What good opium! Where do you get it? It brings the scent of the poppy-fields right to my nostrils! How often I used to ride around those fields! Field after field of poppies, and each one a different shade … the scent of it at
sunset intoxicated both me and my horse. When the flower-petals have fallen, the yellowish, moss-green seed-heads nod in the breeze as if to talk to you, and you’re certain they’re alive. They have something no other flower in the world has. At sunrise, they come to cut them. The dew is still sparkling on the seed-heads, and drop by drop the pretty sap oozes out.”

“Since you like it so much, I’ll tell them to prepare some more pieces from the same batch for you to take with you on your trip. You can think of me when you use it.”

“Curse the devil! Even if it kills me I’m going to give it up. The beauty of the poppy-fields is quite a different thing from its poison.”

Zari was beginning to feel anxious. She had planned to visit Kolu in hospital earlier in the evening, but it was too late now. She was worried about Khosrow, who had gone to join Hormoz so the two of them could go to Fotouhi’s together in the evening. Khosrow had inadvertently mentioned the night before that although they might not be accepting him at any party branch because he was under-age, Mr Fotouhi had generously allowed him to join Hormoz and his friends as an ‘independent observer’. This was the same group whose members pitied those with
aristocratic
blood.

Zari turned to Ezzat-ud-Dowleh and said, “I’m beginning to
understand
now. Nana Ferdows was caught red-handed smuggling.”

Ezzat-ud-Dowleh sighed. “I wish it were that simple,” she said. “This time she was actually smuggling arms.”

“By Allah, the Almighty!” exclaimed Ameh, putting her pipe down next to the brazier.

“Yes. Two Brno guns, ten revolvers and a box of ammunition. God knows we were very careful, very cautious. Four times
previously
Nana Ferdows had delivered the same load safely to its destination. But this time she was caught. I’m certain it was the driver who gave us away and was probably paid well for it too. A curse upon him! Nana Ferdows was supposed to take the load at sunrise before the women’s public baths opened, to the Khani Hammam and deliver them to the Mirza Agha Hennasab.”

“Which Mirza Agha? The son of your own wet-nurse?” Zari asked.

“Oh no. No-one knows where my wet-nurse’s son is. They say he’s joined the Communists …”

“I see. Go on.”

“Yes, she was supposed to deliver the load to the Mirza Agha Hennasab and tell him, ‘Mirza Agha, these are Khanom’s bath things. I’m leaving them in your care. When it’s the women’s hour at the baths, give them to the bath-keeper’s wife.’ And Mirza was supposed to call out casually to one of the errand boys and ask him to take the bundle to the back of the hammam for safe-keeping. I’d wrapped up the ‘bath things’ myself in the dead of night. Even Nana Ferdows didn’t know what was in it. I packed the guns end to end and wrapped them tightly inside a small rug. And even though my fingers were pricked till they bled, I pinned both ends of the rug so the guns wouldn’t slip out and the fringes of the rug would cover up any parts that were showing. I placed the rolled-up rug on the porter’s tray myself and put the large copper bowl which had the box of bullets hidden inside, next to it. The revolvers I rolled up in bath towels and carefully wrapped that in a cashmere brocade. These I put inside the large copper bowl as well, with part of the brocade cloth showing. I even sat down and prayed for the safe delivery of the load.”