A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea (9 page)

Vultures. Vipers. Vermin.
Reza catches the look on her face and gives a reassuring shake of the head. “Leave her alone, Agha jan,” he says to the young mullah. “Smart girls should study.” At first Saba isn’t sure if she likes this comment, though later she decides that she does.
From across the
sofreh
, Khanom Basir is keeping an eye on her son. She nibbles on a piece of mint as Reza settles on a pillow. He accepts the cup of tea Saba offers him, stirs in two cubes of sugar, and places a third between his teeth, pouring the hot liquid in over it. Saba pushes a plate of
ghotab
bread toward him. This is another morsel that she has added to her stores: Reza has a sweet tooth. He hates mornings and he loves the Beatles.
“Saba, can you come here a moment?” Khanom Basir calls, an unlikely sweet smile stretching her face. “Saba jan, I say this in place of your poor mother, who isn’t here to tell you herself. But that skirt is bad for mixed company.” She takes Saba’s hand and pulls her close like a confidante, while Saba struggles not to crave her approval. “We have full view of your ankles. Go and fix yourself. Find a chador in the bundle, my good girl.”
“But I have my scarf.” Saba straightens her headscarf and smooths her skirt. She doesn’t want to drape herself like an old woman. She glances at Reza, her lifelong friend, wishing that he would listen and help her in these underhanded moments with his mother.
There is a knock. “Reza, go and get the door,” Khanom Basir orders. “Do you think it’s Ponneh? Now,
there
is a girl who doesn’t need to show skin to be beautiful. No fancy
bazi
. No trouble to her mother.” Khanom Basir sighs at Ponneh’s endless virtue, looks at her son for a reaction, and mumbles, “If only she was allowed to marry.”
Reza gets up and follows Saba out of the living room and down a few steps. One of the mullahs shouts behind him, “Watch out, don’t knock your head on the ceiling.”
In the hallway, Saba is afraid to look back at him, afraid to smile
.
She wonders if he too knows the things her father claims everyone knows. She walks down the hall feeling his presence behind her, unable to turn until he takes her hand.
“Stop rushing off, Saba Khanom,” he almost whispers, in his beautiful rural way. He interlaces two fingers with two of hers and she feels a heat bursting from her chest and crawling up through her blouse, creeping past her shoulders to her temples. It scorches her layers of fabric and leaves her naked. She tries to focus on his imperfections, his village accent and the awkward way he calls her Miss Saba. His voice is far too smooth and throaty, a ruttish eighteen-yearold who has learned to woo women from Western television he half understands. Saba knows this and she wants him more—because of this stupid attempt at touching her and because of the warm sweat on his hand and because of the way he’s trying to mask his height by stooping just a little.
They are standing a few feet from the door now and Saba tries to think of something to say. But before she can respond, she hears the demure clearing of a familiar throat, and Ponneh, having let herself in, stands watching them, the heart shape of her face outlined in a baby blue scarf knotted like a flower behind her neck, her almond eyes fixed on their fingers, which are intertwined for only a second more.

“Nice hostessing job,” says Ponneh, hanging her outer jacket on a nail by the door. “I had to let myself in. Oh no, no. Don’t kill so many sheep on
my
account.”

Saba waves her hand at Ponneh’s remark. “Don’t start the guest
bazi
,” she says. “I have no patience for it today.” Ponneh laughs and takes Saba’s arm, because she loves being reminded that she needs no welcome here. For years she has let herself in, has even sneaked into windows at night and raided the kitchen with Saba.

Reza, looking embarrassed and annoyed, wanders back into the living room. Likely he has already forgotten whatever impulse she ignited in him.

“What was that about?” Ponneh whispers, her lips almost touching Saba’s ear.
“I don’t know. What?” Saba shrugs. “Guess what? I got us some Neutrogena.” Ponneh gets American products only when they are offered by Saba, not just because she is poor but also because of her mother, the widow, who seems to enjoy suffering. Khanom Alborz has always been pleasant to Saba. But she is methodical, traditional in the bizarrest ways. She battles her fear of the unknown with arbitrary rules that she imposes on her five daughters, including the sick, bedridden one. If she found Ponneh with an unearned luxury, she would give it to her oldest daughter.
Back at the
sofreh
Saba leans her head on Khanom Omidi’s shoulder and the old woman pulls her close. She tries to avoid the pudgy gaze of her lumbering, oversolicitous cousin Kasem, who seems to have arrived via the back door. As she brings a hot cup to her lips, Saba hears more of Mullah Ali’s wisdom. It seems that the mullah has had too much of the pipe, maybe even a drink. Usually he refuses alcohol, except when he is alone with Agha Hafezi or when he is given the drink “accidentally,” without his consent.
Who’s hiding the bottle this time?
Saba glances around. There is something hard under Khanom Omidi’s skirt. When she tries to touch it, the old woman slaps her hand. The mullah is shaking his head at her father. “I’m not talking about their baby-age. What I’m talking about is their minds.” He taps his head with his finger. “It is a well-known fact that women who are not otherwise occupied . . . physically . . . get unhealthy notions. It’s well documented . . . and then, even if you do marry them off, they never respect their husbands. They question and nag . . .”
Khanom Basir sighs dramatically. “For God’s sake.”
“What about Kasem?” Mullah Ali hums and pats Kasem’s thick neck, as if expecting everyone to have followed his thoughts. “A fine boy. Saba should marry him.”
Saba sits up. She blurts out, “But he’s my cousin.” Beside the mullah, Kasem looks down and smiles through a deep, feminine shade of red.
Vomit!
Kasem is shorter than Saba and strangely proportioned. He isn’t overweight, but he has a surprisingly protuberant backside. He looks soft—in his physique, in his face; Saba imagines he is a bit soft even in his bones.
“Let the men talk, child.” Mullah Ali closes his eyes and addresses Saba with a hushed, almost weary voice, as if he is tired of repeating himself.
“You’re lucky your daughter hasn’t been to England or America,” the other mullah interjects. “You escaped a curse. America would have corrupted her.”
Saba imagines again Mahtab’s life in America, a less compliant coming-of-age. Is she happy there? Is she in love with an exuberant American? At the very least she would have a much larger pool of men to choose from. In Cheshmeh, though talk of marriage is a constant pastime, the war with Iraq has left few men her age—and none like Reza.
“He’s her cousin,” her father says, with finality. “She can’t marry her cousin.”
“The boy is my student. A fine choice. And you know cousins are a match ordained by God and the heavens.” Mullah Ali sits up, offended, determined to win.
Saba sees that her father is annoyed, that he wants to say something about genetics and chromosomes. Like the educated Westerners he admires, he holds his tongue. She knows that he won’t insult his nephew, who has been faithful to the family, kept their secrets, and spoken well of them to Mullah Ali.
Her father clears his throat. “In any case, they’re too young.” He waves away the topic like a lone mosquito, too small to merit much effort, too bothersome to ignore.
Victory,
Saba thinks in English, silently congratulating her father.
“You know who is a good choice for Saba?” says Khanom Basir. “Agha Abbas. Yes, he’s old, but he is rich and kind.”
Saba begins to object. Agha Abbas is the oldest bachelor they know, a widower even older than her father. “Saba and I will decide this later.” Agha Hafezi is quick to preempt.
She leans on a cushion and observes her father’s kind eyes, the way he doesn’t share food with the villagers and waves away their rural wisdom. Should she show him that she is thankful? No, he won’t understand what she means by it. He will probably pity her. She eyes the snaking blue lines on Mullah Ali’s ankles as he leans across the
sofreh
.
Varicose veins
, she thinks they are called.
She watches the clerics, and she waits for the darkest early hours when matchmaking will be safely out of every mind and an unmarried girl with too much spirit might have a moment of pleasure.

Since Mahtab left, Saba and her friends have hidden in the dark food closet of her kitchen during parties. They always find a moment to get away, even if for only ten minutes. Now they sit in a circle in the pantry. Ponneh produces a small soda bottle of clear liquid. Reza’s eyes light up and he reaches into his pocket. A half-smoked hashish joint.

Reza feigns nonchalance. “One of the men in the square.” Saba doubts that’s true. Even the Tehrani won’t meet her right out in the town square, certainly not with drugs.

Ponneh checks the door again. “Right here in the pantry? What about the smell?”
“Please,” says Reza. “This whole house smells funny. If they catch us, we’ll say we found it in Agha Hafezi’s bedroom.”
“That’s a lot better,” mutters Saba.
“So Mustafa proposed again today,” Ponneh offers. “He thinks that
pasdar
uniform is attractive. I’d rather die.” Saba giggles. Reza scoffs and lights the joint.
They sit there together for half an hour, consuming their stolen treasures, glancing at the door every few seconds. Saba relishes the intimacy of it, smoking together in the dark. It’s an indulgence that only the best of friends share nowadays. She lets a fat curl of smoke escape her open mouth and breathes it back in through her nose. Ponneh takes dainty puffs. She brings the tiny joint to her lips, locks eyes with Reza, and looks away. She passes the stub to him and leans back against a shelf full of cans.
When Saba and Ponneh return to the living room ten minutes after Reza, they find the adults occupied in similar ways. Telling bawdy jokes. Letting scarves fall onto shoulders. They sit on a carpet near a pile of pillows. Ponneh loosens her scarf around her neck and pushes it back farther, showing off four or five centimeters of silky brown tufts parted loosely just off the center. She does it with such a flourish. Saba tells herself that it’s the hashish making her paranoid. She smells her fingers, that delicious earthy dust. Saba too wants to cast off her
hijab
, but she has to wait longer. Saba is taller, shapelier—beautiful in sinful ways that make other women shake with furious piety, while Ponneh radiates an innocent loveliness they worship.
Saba busies herself by bringing more water with mint and lemon. When she returns, she hears her friends whispering, feigning casual talk.
“But why not?” Reza pleads. “We’re both eighteen. We’re old enough.”
“You know I can’t,” Ponneh whispers back. “You know Maman’s rule.”
“I’ve never heard anyone else with a rule like that,” he says.
“Well, there it is. I have three older sisters, and none of them are married. So that’s that.”
“And the sick one? She can barely stand up. We both know she’ll never—”
“That’s cruel,” she snaps. “You sound like Mustafa with his ridiculous
suffering
.”
There is some mumbling. He is whispering something in her ear. He is trying to comfort her, convince her. No one is listening to them and Saba too decides not to hear this. Reza is only a man and men are weak. Who knows what he would be saying if she was the one sitting beside him now. Saba knows Reza is confused. He believes in the old ways, yet he is obsessed with Western culture. He recites the oldest poetry and convinces himself that he can live in a world where men have enough love for four women and romance is a series of storybook snippets full of longing and revelation. He doesn’t understand politics, hates religion, and has never dreamed of anyplace outside Gilan. He follows Saba’s father because he imagines that one day he too will be a landowner in Cheshmeh and that he will be a hero to his family—that a dozen old women holding babies will sit in front of the house and watch him kick his old football between two trash cans, and he will reward them with songs as they squat in his tiny but wellstocked kitchen and cook him his favorite dinner. He lives in a world of women. To be deprived of any of them—Saba or Ponneh or his mother—would be unfathomable to him.
Later the younger mullahs leave and she is left with her father, her two best friends, the women, and Mullah Ali. When the cleric is nodding off and the others are free to have a sip—the small soda bottle holding the homemade liquor is now in plain sight instead of hidden under Khanom Omidi’s skirts—and Saba’s father has had a few puffs as well, the women laugh loudly and Saba crumples her scarf under a pillow. Even Khanom Basir has an indulgent look, having forgotten Saba’s inappropriate skirt. Then the requests begin. “Saba jan, please dance for us,” says Khanom Omidi.
“Yes, Saba, you have to dance,” Ponneh says, and starts to clap.
Her father laughs with real mirth, the way he once did. “My daughter is good at many things. She is like her mother. A creative soul.”
Mullah Ali nods sleepily. “Yes, yes.”
Still they wait till he has fallen into deep sleep. Since the revolution, no one dares to dance or sing in front of anyone but the most intimate friends. And though Agha Hafezi has received much protection from the mullah, Saba’s father is already tempting fate by having a party with unmarried men and women in the same room.
But soon the cleric is asleep and suddenly it is no longer this year, or this solitary season of life. Suddenly Saba is a girl from many decades ago, in an old Iran that may never have existed. Was it only an invention? Tall tales from her parents’ generation? Oh, but it must have existed because in those days Saba’s mother, despite her education and Western ideals, was known for indulging her untamed self, dancing immodestly in public, displaying her naked bliss or sorrow on
sofreh
s long cleared of food and tea.
Reza is already getting up to retrieve the guitar hidden in the closet behind Saba’s father. He settles across from Ponneh and the older women. Khanom Basir and Khanom Omidi clear the
sofreh
and Saba moves barefoot to the center of the carpet. Reza begins an old Farsi tune, slow and meandering, full of long, somber notes on which Saba’s arms and legs can linger. His fingers rouse the strings with the same miraculous ease with which his sandaled toes kick a football. She lifts her arms so they become a winding halo around her face and torso. She bends her head back and lets her long hair fall, knowing that in this hazy secret hour no one disapproves. No one will claim to remember. She is loved though she teeters on the edge of danger—a mullah sleeping just there in the midst of so much crime. How intoxicating! Despite the risks, her throat doesn’t constrict. She is alive— no sea waiting to swallow her, no Mahtab in the mirror.
Reza has closed his eyes and is moving his head to the music. Just before the end of the song, she turns and catches his melancholy look across the room to where Ponneh is leaning against a pillow. He fumbles a few notes and mouths,
I’m sorry,
but no matter how she replays the words in her mind, Saba can’t decide if they were meant for her.
She banishes the question. This is too rare a moment to waste. Her hair flutters over her arms and cheeks, awakening a hundred sleeping sensations. Her fingers reach for each note as if chasing feathers in the wind. They hover over her body and face, the body and face of a newly grown-up Mahtab across the sea, and she spins on the faded carpet to Reza’s song until all propriety is gone and she is herself again.