A Persian Requiem (27 page)

Then Ameh arrived. It was very odd. Wordlessly, she stood to pray on the verandah still dressed in her outdoor veil. Without her prayer-mat. And without bringing the children. It was a long time before the car carrying Abol-Ghassem Khan drove in. Zari was certain something had happened but she didn’t want to ask. She didn’t have the courage. They began themselves, brother and sister, to tell her.

By the time Malek Rostam’s green car drew up to the poolside and stopped, she knew what had happened, but she refused to believe it until she saw for herself. Malek Rostam and Majid got out and she knew her husband would not be stepping out. She knew he would never again climb in or get out of a car … where had she read that so-and-so was riding on a wooden horse? Yusef was sitting stiffly on the rear seat, covered with a cloak and his hat pulled over his eyes. She heard Ameh’s voice saying, “Welcome, brother. So you’ve come home …” and Ameh began to sob.
Abol-Ghassem
Khan was wailing at such a pitch that he must have been heard in every corner of the house. Zari placed a hand over Yusef’s ice-cold one, with those long stiffened and separated fingers. She looked at his ashen face, his chin which had been bandaged with a blood-smeared handkerchief, the blood which had already
congealed
. She took it all in, but could not believe it.

“Without saying goodbye?” she asked in bewilderment. Gholam let out a wail. Zari asked again, “All alone?” And now everyone
wailed. She wondered where from within their throats they managed to bring out those sounds? And why couldn’t she? She could see that Ameh had torn open her collar and was sitting on the stone ledge of the pool. Zari kept asking, “But why?” And then the car, and the trees and the people and the pool all swam around and around and went away from her.

When she opened her eyes, she found herself stretched out on the rug on the verandah. All the garden lights were on. Did they have guests? There was an odour of mud-plaster in the air. Ameh Khanom was massaging her shoulders, and her body, neck and face felt moist. There was commotion all around. They had propped Yusef up on a wooden bed by the pool. A hatless Gholam was sitting behind him, rocking gently back and forth and repeating, “My master!” Haj Mohammad Reza the dyer, with his arms dyed purple to the elbow, was unsuccessfully trying to remove Yusef’s boots. Abol-Ghassem Khan was standing over them.

“Haji, cut the boot open,” he said. And he shouted for a knife.

Yusef didn’t have his cloak on. He wasn’t wearing his hat either, and Zari thought she must be dreaming. Lately she had had nothing but nightmares—perhaps this was yet another bad dream. She thought she was dreaming of a man they had forced to sit on the wooden bed, and they were cutting open his boots with a knife, but she couldn’t see his face. She dreamt that Malek Rostam was holding the torn boot in his hand and shouting, “O woe is me, woe is me!”

She thought, “What do they call this kind of shouting from the guts? Bawling? Bellowing? Hollering? No, there’s a good word for it, but I can’t remember it now.” Then she imagined she was dreaming that Majid had put his head on Yusef’s cloak by the bed, and was sobbing out loud. But maybe she wasn’t dreaming, since her eyes were wide open.

Abol-Ghassem Khan came to the verandah. He took out a white handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose as though he had a cold. His eyes and his long nose were bright red. He blinked and said, “Sister, how quickly you’ve been widowed! And not even thirty yet! Oh my! Oh my!”

“Control yourself, man! Don’t frighten a pregnant woman more than she is,” Ameh said.

“Pregnant?” Zari knew she was pregnant, but her mind simply refused to acknowledge what had happened.

“How did you know?” she asked Ameh.

“From your eyes.”

Again Zari had the feeling she was dreaming. A man seemed to be sleeping, sprawled over a bed, and despite the heat they had covered him with Yusef’s cloak. But she didn’t recognize the man. She dreamt that three men were sitting on the children’s bed, talking about the man who was laid out on the other bed.

She managed to distinguish the voices: “My sister is right,” Abol-Ghassem Khan was saying, “it wasn’t time for his ideas. Brother, if your spirit is present, forgive me. I envied your
intelligence
and understanding and education, but as I didn’t have those things, I’d make fun of you. Brother, you had the freedom of a cypress, reaching out—”

Then Majid’s voice, “Yes, but don’t be upset now. He knew himself that it wasn’t time for his ideas. But he used to say—many times he told me himself—that our duty is to hasten the time for those ideas.”

And Malek Rostam’s voice, “I know that any day now they’ll get my poor brother Sohrab, as well. They’ll set up a gallows in the Mashq Square and everyone will go to watch.”

The voices mingled with the sound of crying.

“Don’t you think one wants to say and do the right things? But when you’ve started on a downhill course, the only way to go is down and then you’re sunk …” Whose voice was that?

Footsteps could be heard on the gravel of the driveway. But they stopped when they reached the verandah and then resumed again. Zari closed her eyes, feeling as if all her life-forces had been drained and spent, like a squeezed fruit. It was as though a snake had slithered down her throat and coiled itself around her heart, with its head erect, ready to strike, and she knew that for the rest of her life this snake would stay coiled right there around her heart, so whenever she remembered her husband it could sink its fangs into her bosom.

At Ameh’s insistence, she got up and let herself be led by the arm to the parlour. Women were sitting all around on chairs or on the carpet, most of them fanning themselves and whispering together. The men were in the other rooms. She could hear their voices. It was as if they had all been waiting outside the garden gates for her husband’s corpse to arrive, with its fair locks bloodied beneath the hat, all the way down to the fair moustache where the blood had
clotted, and then they could all come in … the women stood up at the sight of her, but Zari couldn’t see anyone clearly enough to recognize them. Ezzat-ud-Dowleh was the only exception. Zari’s gaze locked for an instant into her cobra-like face, framed by the gaudy hair, and then some sparkling yellow, red, blue and black glass beads took form and danced before her eyes. Most of the women peered at her carefully, shaking their heads and crying. From the other rooms, the men’s voices could be heard, topped by Abol-Ghassem Khan’s loud weeping.

“If anyone knows, please tell me too … I’m at a loss …” he was saying.

But Zari’s eyes and tongue were dry. Not a tear, not a word. She went out to the verandah and sat on the rug. Khosrow, riding Sahar, came through the garden gates and cantered straight to the
verandah
. He let Sahar go and rushed to his mother.

“Is it true?”

Zari bent her head and busied herself collecting the glass beads from the rug.

“Did you pass your exam?” she asked. All the lights were on. How could he not have seen his father’s sprawling corpse beneath that cloak? Why did he keep asking if it was true?

“Why are you so late?” Zari asked.

“Those of us who’d passed treated the others to paludeh
ice-cream
. But then the janitor came and told me uncle had called to say father was shot but he was just wounded, and he’d come straight home on horseback. Is it true? Where is he now? At the hospital?”

She suddenly hugged her son and kissed him, and then the tears began to flow.

Before long, a lot of people were embracing her and weeping aloud over her and her fate—to have been widowed so soon, to have to raise four orphaned children. Already everyone knew about the fourth. Ezzat-ud-Dowleh came forward too, but she neither embraced her, nor did she cry. She just said, “I hope this will be the last of your sorrows. At least he’s left you enough to raise your children in comfort.” Hardly saying goodbye, she went away, hobbling down the stairs with a hand to her back. She headed towards Malek Rostam who was sitting on a cane chair by the pool. Malek Rostam stood up and gave her his seat. You could tell Ezzat-ud-Dowleh was talking and Malek Rostam listening. She
seemed to shed a few tears too, since she kept dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief. A voice announced: “The droshke is here.” Ezzat-ud-Dowleh rose and, on Malek Rostam’s arm, walked down to the end of the garden.

A few hours later Zari found herself lying on the bed in the cool basement with Khanom Hakim standing over her head. The
fountain
was on, and she could feel a cold, wet handkerchief on her forehead. She felt the sting of a hypodermic needle. Once, twice, three times … she could see Khanom Hakim placing the cold wooden ear-trumpet on her belly and listening.

“The baby be all right,” she said. “Tonight be best for the burial.”

Zari heard Ameh Khanom reply, “Why don’t you keep to your doctoring! Do you think my brother was a criminal to be buried at night?”

And again Khanom Hakim’s voice asking, “Why be so unpleasant? All three children be delivered by me. So will be fourth.”

Zari realized she was being questioned. “Why you be not coming sooner to me?”

Zari gave no answer, and Ameh replied rather harshly, “It’s all your ‘be this’ and ‘be that’ which has driven everyone mad! If only …”

“If only you would get lost.” Someone had said that in Zari’s mind, because Ameh Khanom didn’t finish her sentence.
Nevertheless
, Khanom Hakim seemed to have heard the voice in Zari’s mind.

“Be this the reward for service and self-sacrifice?” she
complained
indignantly in a trembling voice. “We be in strange town with dry air, away from brother and sister and friends … medicines be free, treatment free.”

This time the voice in Zari’s mind shouted, “Get lost! Everyone get lost!”

Khanom Hakim had gone, and Zari could see Khosrow with a fan in his hand. She felt a cool, gentle breeze on her face …

“Khosrow,” she murmured.

Khosrow brought his head closer.

“Do something for your mother … go to Dr Abdullah Khan early tomorrow morning … tell him what a disaster—tell him to come by and visit me for a moment.”

“I’ll go right now,” Khosrow said, getting up.

“No, my love, go tomorrow morning.”

Ameh came in and Zari heard her say, “Get up, son, go and eat your dinner. Then to bed. For your late father’s sake, be a good boy and go right away.” How quickly they beseech you by your late father, thought Zari … and sometime after that Khadijeh’s voice announced, “There’s a man at the door. He says he’s come to give us a hand as an act of charity. He says he dreamt last night that one of Imam Ali’s devout servants had just entered the kingdom of God …”

Zari knew they had set up a tent around the pool, and were about to wash her husband’s corpse in the pool-water. She knew the pool would be emptied and the water drained that very night, channelled quietly into the garden. The water that had cleansed her husband’s body and washed away the dried blood would irrigate the trees. And Hossein Kazerouni would work the treadwheel from midnight to refill the empty pool by morning.

Her ears perked up at the sound of Seyyid Mohammad saying, “What can I say? Better left unsaid.” Whose question was he answering? Zari opened her eyes. Seyyid was squatting by the door of the basement, rolling a cigarette. Ameh was sitting on the bed at her feet. Abol-Ghassem Khan and Khosrow were there too. Seyyid licked the thin cigarette-paper and striking a match, said, “What can I say, really? No-one knew how it happened. The peasants were ready to die for their master. I don’t know. Maybe it was the work of the gendarmes, or some others … this business about Kolu’s uncle rushing all the way from Kavar to shoot the master and then racing back home is a load of nonsense. It’s trivializing the matter; it’s even an insult. Whoever had a hand in it, started this rumour themselves. When I got on my horse to come down to the plain, Kolu stopped me and said, ‘I shot the master.’ I said, ‘What did you shoot him with?’ He said, ‘With my slingshot.’ Later I heard he’d said a gun. Then he’d said his uncle had done it. I know they’ve told him what to say. They think they can fool us. We couldn’t find a single trace of Kolu’s uncle having been at the village, no matter how carefully we investigated. How could he possibly have gone there without being seen? Yes, he does have a rifle. The master bought if for him himself after Kolu’s father died.”

Seyyid broke off to take a puff. Then he continued. “Early that morning we’d gone to the store-rooms. The master broke the seals on the doors with his own hand and distributed pulses and dates
and flour among the peasants. He teased them and joked with them. He told the women that if they sold their share to buy gold bracelets or go on a pilgrimage, he would disown them. He told the men that if they dared convert their provisions into money to buy new bedclothes and new wives, he would know what to do.
Everyone
was happy. The master was the happiest of all.

“Before lunch we went up to the upstairs room in the old fortress. The master sat on his cushion. We’d rolled away the mosquito-net. Elias brought the hookah and set it down next to the master. I asked, ‘Shall I remove your boots?’ He said, ‘No, I’ll smoke a pipe and we’ll go down to the plain.’ Then he asked, ‘Has the
camel-driver
come?’ ‘Yes,’ I answered. Elias said, ‘Sir, this agent of Singer’s is back again.’”

Abol-Ghassem Khan’s voice interrupted Seyyid’s narrative. “Everyone who came here tonight told me to hush up the matter completely, that the situation is very dangerous. The whole thing comes from the very top—” And Zari wondered how a man who had been howling with grief only a moment ago could possibly speak like that now.

Ameh’s irate voice didn’t let Abol-Ghassem Khan finish his sentence. “Bless my soul!” she exclaimed, “Now they want to blot out the blood that’s been shed! Brother, listen to me. Hire a lawyer. If you don’t, I’ll do it myself.”

“Sister, I thought you were about to leave for Karbala?” said Abol-Ghassem Khan sarcastically.

“Now my Karbala is right here,” said Ameh with a cry in her voice. “Happy is the martyr whose blood is one night old. For us, it hasn’t even been one night yet.”