The Blood of Flowers (12 page)

We lingered as the players were being congratulated and the crowd thinned. Naheed was still holding the ball in the palm of her hand. After a while, a little boy with crooked teeth appeared in front of us and revealed a slip of paper hidden in his sleeve. Naheed took his hand discreetly and slipped the letter into her own sleeve before paying him with a small coin. After concealing the ball under her clothes, she linked her arm through mine and we began walking home. She unfurled the letter when we were away from the crowd, and I peered over her shoulder, wishing I could read.

"What does it say?" I asked eagerly.

"There's just one line, written in haste," she said. "'In a crowd of thousands, no one else shines like you, the brightest star of my heart.' It is signed, 'Your loving servant, Iskandar.'?"

I couldn't see Naheed's face, since she was completely covered in her picheh and chador, but I could hear the excitement in her voice.

"Perhaps your fates are intertwined," I said with amazement.

"I must know if that's possible," said Naheed. "Let's have Kobra tell our fortunes!"

Kobra was an old servant of Naheed's family who was known throughout the neighborhood for the accuracy of her readings. She reminded me of some of the women of my village who could look at the sky or a handful of peas and tell you whether the moment was auspicious for your desires. Her skin was the color of dates, and the fine wrinkles in her forehead and cheeks made her look wise.

Naheed summoned Kobra to her rooms a few moments after we arrived, and she came bearing two vessels of coffee and told us to drink it without disturbing the grounds. We consumed it in one or two gulps so that she could read our future in the remaining froth. First, she peered into Naheed's cup and smiled, showing us her nearly toothless gums. She began describing Naheed's marriage to a handsome young man with lots of money and a body as strong as the hero Rostam's, an event that was to be followed by the birth of more children than she could count. "You'll be spending a lot of time with your feet in the air!" she said.

The prediction was exactly what her mistress wished to hear, which made me wonder about its truth.

When it was my turn, Kobra peered into my cup for a long while. Several times it seemed as if she wished to say something, but then she stared into the cup again as if its message were troubling.

"What does it say?" Naheed prompted.

Looking at the grounds, Kobra mumbled that my future would be exactly like Naheed's. Then she gathered the cups and fled the room, declaring that she had work to do.

"That was strange," I said. "Why didn't she say what she saw?"

"She did!"

"How could my future be the same as yours?"

"Why not?" said Naheed. "You, too, can marry a handsome young man and have plenty of sons."

"But if it was that simple, why did she seem so afraid?"

"Oh, pay no attention to her," said Naheed. "She's old. She probably just needed to visit the latrines."

"I'm afraid the evil comet must still be following me," I said in despair. "It seems as if Kobra thinks my future is fated to be dark!"

"Certainly not," said Naheed. She summoned Kobra again and asked her to tell us more about what she had seen. Kobra clapped both her hands to her chest, one on top of the other.

"There's nothing more I can wring from the grounds," she protested, "but I can tell you the old tale that came to my mind while I was looking at them, although I don't know what it means."

Naheed and I settled back into the cushions and listened to Kobra's story.

First there wasn't and then there was. Before God, no one was.

Once there was a prince whose sleep was troubled almost every night. In his dreams, he saw the image of a woman who was moonlike beyond compare. Her curly hair framed a milk-white face. Beneath her rose silk tunic, the womanly parts of her body swelled like melons. As the prince dreamed more deeply, he could see that she was crying, opening her arms to the sky to show her desperation and helplessness. The prince awoke in a sweat, for he could not bear to see her suffer. He longed to help her, but first he had to find her.

One day, the prince set out to do battle with a fierce warlord who robbed travelers when they tried to cross a bridge through his territory. The prince and his men stamped across the bridge to invite an ambush, then fought the warlord and his tribe for hours in the midday sun. At one point, the warlord ran his sword through one of the prince's best soldiers before heaving his body off the bridge. With a great roar of rage, the prince jumped on the warlord, vowing to avenge his friend's death. The two clashed swords but the prince was stronger, and he forced the weapon out of his opponent's hands, threw him onto the ground, and sat on his armored chest. Then he drew his dagger, planning to savor the end of the man who had tossed his best man over the bridge like a leaf.

"Stop!" cried the warlord. "You know not what you kill."

"All men beg for mercy in their final moments," said the prince, "but you shall soon be begging before God." He raised his dagger.

"At least let me remove my armor so you can see who I am."

The warlord lifted off his helmet, revealing a face as smooth as a woman's and long, dark curly hair.

The prince was astonished. "What a pity that such a fair youth shall soon be dust! You fought so fiercely, I thought you must be a grown man."

"Not even," said the warlord. He removed his chest armor and raised his tunic to reveal a muscled abdomen and tiny breasts, like red rosebuds in the sun.

The prince's dagger wavered, then dropped. The lust to kill had been replaced by a different kind of lust. He bent forward and kissed the young woman's tender lips.

"What caused you to don armor?" he asked.

The woman's face toughened so that she looked like a warrior again. "My father was a warlord who raised me to kill. After he died, I continued to care for his men and protect his property."

During the next few days, the prince came to know and admire the fierce young woman. She could ride as well as he could, goad him into a sweat when they jousted with swords, and best him in a race up a hill. Her muscles were tight and lean, and she was as agile as a deer. She was nothing like the woman he had dreamed about so often, but before long he was smitten, and he married her.

After a year of happiness, the prince started being troubled again by his dreams. The moonlike woman began appearing to him every night on her knees, her head bent, as if her plight were more severe than ever. One morning, after another disturbed night, he kissed his warrior woman good-bye.

"Where are you going?" she protested.

"I have to find someone," he said. "Insh'Allah, we'll see each other again one day."

He mounted his horse and rode away without looking behind him to see the expression on her face.

The prince traveled for months, describing what he had seen in his dreams to anyone who would listen, only to hear the reply, "There's no one like that in this town." Finally, he came to a city where people wouldn't answer his question, and the prince knew he was in the right place. At night, under a full moon, he walked silently to the town's palace and hid himself outside its walls. Before long, he heard a piteous wail. He scaled the palace walls, landing on the other side as softly as a cat, and observed the woman his heart had longed for. She was kneeling on a roof, her arms stretched toward the heavens, her body shuddering with sobs. Her curly black hair gleamed in the moonlight, and the sight of her rounded form filled him with longing. He called to her from the palace grounds.

"Dear distressed woman, don't make the clouds weep. I have come to help you."

The lovely princess raised her head and looked around, astonished.

"Tell me the source of your suffering, and I will destroy it," said the prince, his muscles flexing with pleasure at the thought.

"Who are you?" she asked suspiciously.

The prince revealed himself in the moonlight, recited his lineage and the great deeds of his family, and repeated his desire to help the princess vanquish her sorrow.

She wiped away her tears. "My maidservant has my father's ear," she said. "By day she serves me; by night she wraps herself around his body. She has threatened to tell my father I have been conspiring against him with his top advisor. I have already given her all my jewelry and money. What if my father should believe her lies? I'll be banished or killed."

The prince hauled himself onto the roof and offered to take the lady away. Revealing his love, which had persisted in his dreams for so many years, he promised to treat her honorably by marrying her. Together they fled the town on horseback, and as soon as they reached a sizable settlement, the prince married his lady under the authority of a mullah. The two spent their first night as man and wife in a caravanserai fit for shahs. The princess was just as the prince had imagined, round and ripe like a summer peach. At last, his dream of many years had been fulfilled.

The prince took his new bride to the house of his first wife, the warrior woman, who bared her teeth at his new acquisition. Nonetheless, all three returned together to his father's house. Much had changed since he had left. He was a married man now and a proven warrior, not the dreamer who had set off on a seemingly impossible quest years before.

His father invited the prince to a special dinner in honor of his return. The warrior woman advised him to be careful about any food that he was served. He took her advice and fed his portion to a cat, who immediately had convulsions and died. His father, who had decided he wanted to take the warrior woman as his own wife, ordered his favorites to tear out his son's eyes and set him loose in the desert.

Left alone, the prince wandered for hours with his eyes in his hands, unable even to cry. When he heard the sound of a spring, he patted the earth until he felt wetness. He drank to satiation and sat down to rest. Leaves fell on him from above, and he crushed them in his palms and rubbed his eye sockets, seeking relief. They immediately stopped burning. The prince took each eye and popped it back in its socket. He could see again!

The prince returned toward the city. At its outskirts, he came upon a full-fledged battle. Even from far away, among the armor-clad soldiers he recognized the lithe figure of his warrior woman, whose sword flew mercilessly through the air. With a great war cry, he joined her in battle, and together they vanquished his father's men.

When the battle was over, the prince and the warrior woman returned to the city. He became shah and installed each of his women in her own lodgings, making sure he visited them equally and gave them the same number of gifts. With his first wife he hunted, jousted, and discussed battle plans; with his second, he explored the art of passion and lived contentedly until the end of his days.

When Kobra finished her story, Naheed and I were both silent. Kobra stood up and returned to her work.

"That was a strange tale," I said. "I've never heard that one before."

"Nor I," said Naheed. "What a lucky talisman that prince must have had, to get everything he wanted!"

She yawned and stretched out on her side on a group of flat cushions, putting her hands under her cheek. I had the feeling Naheed imagined herself as lucky as the prince. I remembered sadly how I used to feel the same way about the tale of a princess who rejected all suitors until the right one wooed her.

Opposite Naheed, I stretched out on my cushions so we faced each other, and put my hands under my cheek to match hers.

"Do you think he told his second wife that he already had a woman?" Naheed asked.

"I hope so."

"I would hate that," said Naheed, looking angry.

"Being a second wife?"

"Or a third, or fourth," she said. "My parents will never let that happen. I'll be the first wife or nothing."

"That's the only good thing about coming from a humble family," I said. "Most suitors of mine wouldn't be able to afford a second wife, or even a concubine."

Naheed raised her eyebrows. "Rich men always seem to have a few," she said. "I think if my husband married another woman, I would try to cause her grief." Her smile had a wicked edge.

I thought about what had happened in my own family. "After my grandfather took his second wife, who was my grandmother, the two families remained apart, and my father and my uncle Gostaham almost never saw each other," I said. "But sometimes it's not like that. When the richest merchant in my village married a younger woman, his first wife loathed her. But then she became ill, and the younger one took such good care of her that they became fast friends."

Naheed shuddered. "Insh'Allah, that will never happen to me."

"I don't want to share, either," I said. "But we don't know what happened to the wives in Kobra's story. She didn't tell us that part."

"That's because the story wasn't really about them," said Naheed. "What man wouldn't want a warrior woman to ride with and a fleshy woman to ride in bed?"

We laughed together, knowing that we could be looser with our language when only the two of us were present.

I had stayed with Naheed much longer than I had intended. Because it was nearly dark, she insisted on having a maid accompany me home. When we arrived, the maid handed me a large parcel, saying it was a gift. It was packed with bright cotton robes in shades of saffron, pink, and red, with matching sheaths to wear underneath and loose embroidered trousers that looked as if they had hardly ever been worn. The most dazzling item was a thick purple robe that fell to the knees, with fur at the cuffs, around the hem, and at the breast. I danced with joy at the sight of the bright clothing, and when I showed it to my mother, she gave me permission to stop wearing my mourning clothes, although she herself planned to wear black for the rest of her life. I was overjoyed; I could hardly believe my luck in having Naheed as a friend.