A Canopy of Rose Leaves (5 page)

Where the maid was concerned, she had to admit that Dr. Mahdevi was more than kind. He speedily put her at her ease and the whole story of the injustices of her life came pelting from her, culminating in the quick divorce her husband had insisted on so that he could marry a young girl, young enough to be his granddaughter, whose family agreed to the match only because they had been offered large sums of money by the husband.

‘What about your children?’ Dr. Mahdevi asked her.

‘I had three children,’ she answered sadly. ‘One son and daughter died when they were still babies. The other daughter is married. She is in France with her husband while he finishes his training. Naturally, no one wished her to go, but she was afraid he would forget her while he was away. It is unfair that foreign girls should marry all our boys while our girls have to sit at home and wait! But while they’re in France they have no home here and I have nowhere to go.’

‘You have us,’ Deborah told her through Dr. Mahdevi. ‘We need you to do all sorts of things for us.’ The old woman nodded, completely satisfied. ‘I shall shop and cook and clean, and you will pay me some money?’

‘Yes,’ said Deborah. ‘And little by little we shall be able to talk to one another and then you won’t be so lonely.’

Toobi took Deborah’s hand in her own and kissed it. ‘It will be good to talk to such a one as yourself,’ she murmured. She swelled with her new importance, barely listening to Dr. Mahdevi, and now, only a few moments later, she waved him out of her kitchen and set about planning her menu for that evening.

‘Goodness knows what Howard will say,’ Maxine murmured when she heard about the new arrangements. ‘He’s very hot on hygiene and, from what I’ve seen of Toobi, she is not.’

‘She looks clean enough to me,’ Deborah protested.

‘Yes, she is,’ Maxine acknowledged, ‘but she dips into everything she cooks and never washes the spoon, and it will be a long time before you have enough Farsi to cure her of that!’

A sentiment with which Deborah could only agree.

After three days, Deborah felt quite at home in her new surroundings. She and Maxine enjoyed each other’s society and, if she was less enchanted with Howard’s anxious brand of charm, he was hardly ever at home, and on the few occasions when he was, he was far too busy trying to impress his redoubtable sister to pay much attention to the newcomer to his household.

‘Poor Howard!’ Maxine would mourn. ‘He won’t see that we’re both “also-rans” and come to terms with it. I’m never going to be a great artist and he’s certainly not going to be the all-American brain of the century!’

Deborah, who had seen enough of Maxine’s paintings to feel able to form an opinion of her hostess’s talent, had looked at her over the top of the book she was reading. ‘Not great, but your pictures are very pretty and anyone would be glad to have them on their walls. They please the eye. You have a nice sense of colour.’

Maxine had been immediately interested. ‘Why not great?’ she had demanded.

Deborah had thought about it. ‘They’re all on the surface,’ she had said at last in apologetic tones. ‘Especially your portraits. They look like the sitters, but they don’t reveal anything else.’

‘You’re right!’ Maxine had said, struck by this criticism. ‘Damn you! I guess it’s because
I
don’t see beneath the surface. I’m sure that’s what Reza thinks about me. He practically said so the last time he was here.’

‘I thought you were interested in Roger,’ Deborah had reminded her. She liked the Persian doctor, but she was surprised that Maxine should care what he thought of her.

‘Roger doesn’t care what women are like as long as they have attractive bodies,’ Maxine had sighed. ‘I sometimes wonder how he copes at the university, because a good third of his students must be girls. He’s paid to worry about what they think!’

‘He’s probably constantly surprised that they do,’ Deborah had observed. But the conversation had drifted back into her mind on more than one occasion since. She would have liked to have stunned Roger Derwent with the quality of her wit, or better still, have slaughtered him in argument, silencing him for all time!

He hadn’t been to see them once in the last three days. Maxine had wondered why, audibly and at length, and even Howard had noticed, fretting because he couldn’t ask him the questions he wanted to about Shiraz’s two famous sons and poets.

‘I’m going to forget all about him!’ Maxine declared at breakfast on the fourth day. ‘Out of sight, out of mind can work both ways!’

Deborah didn’t have to ask who it was she was talking about.

‘Good idea,’ she said, helping herself to some more coffee.

‘Yes, isn’t it?’ Maxine grinned, her face taking on an innocent look that Deborah already recognised as meaning that she was planning some kind of mischief.

‘You were right when you said he was stuffy!’ She leaned forward over the table, her mind made up. ‘It’s time we got about more,’ she began persuasively. ‘How would you like to visit the holiest shrine in Shiraz this morning?’

Deborah was surprised. ‘May we? Will they allow infidels inside?’

‘Sometimes they do,’ Maxine enthused. ‘We’d have to wear
chadors,
and once we’re decked out in those who’s to tell what we are? Everybody says it’s the most marvellous place! Do let’s go!’

‘What is this place?’ asked Deborah.

‘It’s called Shah Cheraq. That wasn’t the name of the saint who’s buried there, though. He’s called Ahmed ibn Musa and was the brother of Imam Reza, if you’re any wiser?’

‘Not much,’ Deborah admitted. ‘All I know is that Iranian Moslems are different from Sunni Moslems because they followed Mohammed’s son-in-law and cousin rather than some elected representatives. Didn’t they have twelve Imams after that, the last of whom is hidden and supposed to be still alive?’

‘I wouldn’t know,’ said Maxine. ‘I know there’s a difference and that’s about all. I mean, they just love their shrines here, which is rather different from refusing even to mark the graves of their great men as in Saudi Arabia, isn’t it? Anyway, the thing is, are you game to come?’

Deborah nodded. ‘On condition that we leave at once if anyone asks us to. I don’t want to scandalise the whole city!’

‘No,’ Maxine grinned at her. ‘Just Roger!’

The bulb-shaped dome could be seen from afar. It was not particularly old, the previous dome having collapsed in an earthquake some time in the last century. It was, however, beautiful. The colours of the tiles were brilliant in the sunlight and the shape was elegant, floating above the more utilitarian buildings that surrounded the shrine.

Deborah borrowed her
chador
from Toobi, preferring to learn from her how to arrange the folds so that it didn’t slip off her head, or fall apart to reveal her clothing underneath. She soon came to the conclusion that it was not a garb that went with handbags and bundles of shopping, and resolutely put everything she thought she might need in her pockets before going out.

Once out in the street no one took a second look at her, so she couldn’t have looked as odd as she felt.

‘How are you getting on?’ Maxine asked her at intervals.

‘It takes concentration,’ Deborah replied. ‘Do I look all right?’

‘Must do,’ Maxine assured her blithely. ‘I had to look twice to make sure it was you I was following. I only hope I manage as well!’

Deborah hoped so too. She was short enough, and dark enough, to merge in with her surroundings, but Maxine, tall and a strawberry blonde, had much less chance of disguising herself as just another Iranian female, made anonymous by the
chador
she clutched about her.

There was a stall in the square outside the shrine that hired out
chadors
for the cost of a few rials. Maxine riffled through them and chose, one she thought would suit her. It was white with a strong ziggly pattern in black. Maxine looked very fetching in it, but she didn’t look Persian.

Standing in the doorway was an important-looking official carrying a heavy silver mace. Deborah watched him nervously out of the corner of her eye. It was time to consider what her motives were in trying to get into the shrine, she reflected ruefully. If it were only to spite Roger, it didn’t seem a very good thing to do. She assured herself that it wasn’t
her
reason. It couldn’t be, because Roger had never mentioned the shrine to her, and if it was Maxine’s reason that was none of her business. Now that she had come, she wanted
£o
see the shrine badly for herself. If the people of Shiraz considered it a holy place, and had done for centuries, it was hallowed ground, bearing the imprint of the people who had made it so. That was what she wanted to see and, if possible, understand.

She stepped over the bar at the front of the door ahead of Maxine and found herself in a rough-looking courtyard full of people. Women in
chadors
stood about in groups, gossiping, and a vast number of men came and went, their faces set and dreamy as they went about their business.

Carefully following everyone else, Deborah crossed the courtyard, bearing over towards the right, and left her shoes at the little kiosk beside the entrance. The man who took her footwear said something to her and she pulled her veil across her face and lowered her eyes, hoping against hope that Maxine had enough sense to cover herself completely before she was spotted.

They were both together when they stepped on to the carpeted floor of the shrine. Deborah looked about her in wonder, for the walls were covered with tiny mirrors arranged in geometric patterns that shimmered as they reflected the light from the switched-on chandeliers. It was all too much, much too much, but it had an awesome splendour that took her breath away. In the centre of the main prayer hall was a square pillar-like erection around which people flocked, their faces pressed against the windows in the strength of their devotion. Deborah crept past them, narrowly avoiding treading on a man as he prostrated himself in the direction of Mecca while he said his prayers. He was dressed in black, with a black turban on his head, and Deborah stood beside him for a while, gathering her wits and trying to remember what she had been told about the different colours of the men’s turbans. Green meant descent from the Prophet; that she was sure about. Black, she thought, meant that he was a Mullah, a man qualified to teach others the exegesis of the Koran, the Moslem Bible, and to lead them in prayer, as well as being a descendant of Mohammed. A white turban meant he was a mullah only.

The man looked straight at her and she turned away quickly, riveting her attention on a beautifully illuminated old Koran that was kept in the same corner.

‘
Madame
!’ the man said. ‘Excuse me, please.’ He pulled the lower corners of her
chador
into position. ‘It is better so!’

Deborah swallowed. ‘Thank you,’ she whispered back.

He stood up, his prayers finished. ‘You should look at the patterns on the ceiling,’ he bade her. ‘They are very fine. You see they are the same patterns in the carpets below.’

She looked upwards, holding the loose cloth of the
chador
firmly over her mouth and chin. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it,’ she said in truth.

‘Do you like it?’ he pressed her.

‘In parts,’ she murmured. ‘It is certainly magnificent!’

‘It is different from the mosques you are used to,’ he soothed her. ‘When the Arabs brought us Islam we submitted to Allah as they taught us to do, but we kept our own traditions of decoration and brilliance. This is not the greatest example of our artistic achievement, but one can’t ignore it. You must go to Isfahan,
madame.
You may go into any of the beautiful mosques there and no one will say you may not.’

Deborah flushed. ‘I hope I haven’t offended you,’ she said. ‘I know it’s a very holy place to you.’

‘We? Are you not alone?’

Deborah searched the people around her for anyone of Maxine’s height, but the American girl was nowhere to be seen. ‘I had a friend with me,’ she whispered.

‘Ah, she must have been the one who was taken outside. Come with me,
madame,
and I will see you safely out. Some of us don’t like to see strangers in our holy places, not even when, like yourself, they come not to mock but to praise Allah for his works among men.’

‘Thank you,’ she said again.

She was glad he was with her when she found she had to retreat out of the shrine backwards, never turning her back once until she was outside the heavy doors. She was glad, too, that he was there when she retrieved her shoes and crossed the courtyard again, making for the outside doors as fast as she could go. ‘Did you see all you wanted to?’ he asked her.

‘You’ve been very kind,’ she told him. ‘I hope you didn’t mind my being there?’

‘I? God is great. Your presence is not going to affect that either way. Goodbye,
madame
.’

She wished him goodbye and tried to express her gratitude all over again, but he would have none of it, only closing the door into the courtyard firmly in her face. She turned, worried as to where Maxine could have got to, when her arm was grabbed from behind and an only too familiar voice accosted her ears.