The Blood of Flowers (39 page)

"No, we will not," she said. "You have no understanding of what you have done. We are on the streets now, and we may die."

"But--"

"We should go back to our village," my mother said. "At least we have a roof there."

I imagined leaving the city the same way we had come, over the bridge built for the Shah. But I knew I could no sooner take my first steps on that bridge than I would turn around to look at the city again, if only to see its turquoise and lemon domes basking in the morning light. And then I imagined continuing a few more paces, only to stop at one of the bridge's archways to embrace the view of the city with my eyes. I had become the nightingale to the rose of Isfahan, singing an eternal love song to its beauties.

"I don't want to leave," I said.

"Don't talk to me anymore," snapped my mother. She began walking away and I followed, while the kind beggar begged us to make amends with one another.

Her steps led us to the Image of the World, where a bitter wind was whirling the dust in the square. A man passed us, rubbing his hands together and shivering. The vendors were like mosquitoes, buzzing around our ears with no respite. A knife seller kept thrusting "blades as sharp as Solomon's" under our noses.

"Leave me alone--I have no money," I finally growled. It hurt my jaw to say that much.

"That's a lie," he said rudely as he walked away.

A gust of cold wind blew dust in our faces. My mother caught some in her throat and began to cough. I called out to a coffee boy to bring us two steaming cups and paid him with one of my precious coins. The knife seller saw my silver from across the square and caught the sun on one of his blades, flashing it into my eyes.

I filled my lungs to hurl a curse, but my mother stopped me. "May your throat close, for a change."

Chastened, I sipped the coffee between barely parted lips. I had no idea what we were going to do. I knew I had to think of something before my mother started looking for a camel driver to take us back to our village.

"I have an idea," I said. When I stood up, my mother followed, and we picked our way among the vendors until I spotted a cluster of women who had spread out their humble wares near the gateway to the bazaar. One offered a hand-embroidered tree of life, probably the best thing in her household. Another was selling blankets she had woven herself. I looked for Malekeh and found her squatting on her two carpets. When she saw me, she sprang to her feet in horror.

"May God keep you safe!" she said. "What happened to you?"

"Malekeh," I whispered, "can you help us?"

She drew back for a moment, considering my bruised and swollen face. "What have you done?"

I wasn't surprised that she blamed me, for I knew how I must look. "Gordiyeh decided that we were too much of a burden," I said.

Malekeh's eyes narrowed. "Did you bring shame on your family?"

"Of course not!" snapped my mother. "My daughter would never do such a thing."

Malekeh looked contrite, for my mother was obviously a respectable widow in black mourning clothes.

"They became angry after I made an error of judgment on a carpet," I said, which was at least partly the truth. I didn't want to tell her about my sigheh, for fear it would make me low in her eyes.

"Malekeh, do you know anyone who would take in two poor women? We have money to pay."

I shook the little bag of coins hidden in my sash. I knew that Malekeh needed the money, and we needed to be under the protection of a family.

She sighed. "My husband is still ailing, and we have only one room for the four of us."

"I beg you," I replied. "We can care for him while you're out."

Malekeh hesitated, looking as if she was about to say no.

"I know how to make medicines," offered my mother. "I'll try to cure him."

Hope made Malekeh's face pretty for moment. "What can you do?" she asked.

"I can make a concoction of dried mountain herbs that will cure his lungs," my mother said promptly. She pointed to her bundle. "Here are the plants that I collected during the summer."

Malekeh sighed. "You helped me when I was very needy," she said. "I will not leave you to freeze or starve."

"May God rain His blessings on you, Malekeh!" I said. She had every reason not to believe my story, but she chose to help anyway.

My mother and I squatted with her, trying to help her sell her wares. Malekeh called out to passersby, enticing them to look at her carpets. Many men stopped to look at her instead, for she had lips like a rosebud and a pearly smile. My mother tried to distract them by detailing the carpets' merits, but the honey had left her tongue. I thought back to the way she had enticed the traveling silk merchant to buy my turquoise carpet, bargaining coyly until she got her price. Now she just looked tired, and no one stopped to banter with her for very long. I sat on the carpets while she worked, holding my hand against my jaw to quell the pain. The only person who was selling anything on that frozen day was the blanket maker, for her wares were irresistible.

Late in the afternoon, Malekeh still had not made a sale, and most shoppers had gone home. She rolled up her rugs, and she and I each slung one across our backs. My mother carried our small bundles, and we followed Malekeh through the bazaar, toward the old square and the old Friday mosque.

My mother walked ahead beside Malekeh, her body stiff. She did not turn and look at me or ask me how I felt. The pain in my jaw tore through my body, but I suffered even more deeply from her neglect.

As we traversed the old square I had walked through so many times on my way to see Fereydoon, I began thinking about him and the small, tree-lined street where his jewel-like pleasure house was located. He might be there right now, preparing to greet another musician or some other sigheh. I felt an involuntary gripping of my loins as if I were holding him there, and a surge of heat blossomed from my belly to my cheeks. I must renounce those pleasures now, and I might never have them again.

We kept walking until we were almost outside the city. I had never known that so close to Fereydoon's pleasure palace was a warren of streets where servants lived. Malekeh turned down a dark, twisting alley wet with mud. Piles of garbage lay in the street, with flies buzzing around them. Puddles of night soil stank even more, for there were no night-soil collectors here. Filthy wild dogs lunged at the piles of garbage, halted only by the rocks hurled at them by little boys with dirty hair.

Although it was still light outside, the streets became darker and darker as we twisted through the alleys, and the smells more rancid. Finally, after too many turns to count, we arrived at Malekeh's broken door. We passed into a tiny courtyard floored with broken tiles, where a gang of children were playing and fighting. Two of the boys rushed at Malekeh, their dirty hands outspread. "Bibi, is there chicken?" "Is there meat?"

"No, souls of my heart," Malekeh said gently. "Not today."

Disappointed, they rejoined their friends, and the squabbling continued.

"Those are my children, Salman and Shahvali," she said.

Malekeh pushed open the door to her room. "Welcome," she said. "Please be comfortable while I make tea."

We left our shoes near the door and sat down. At one end of the room was a tiny oven for heat and cooking, with a few blackened pots nearby. There were two baskets on the floor, which probably contained the family's possessions and clothes. The ceiling was brown in places where the rain had leaked through. I pitied Malekeh for having to live in such squalor. When I employed her, I had never realized how badly she needed the money.

Malekeh's husband, Davood, was sleeping on a bedroll in one corner, breathing heavily as if something were stuck in his lungs. She touched his head to see how hot he was and wiped away the sweat from his brow with a cloth.

"Poor animal," she said.

We drank weak tea together, barely speaking. I took care not to hurt my lips on the rim of my vessel, which was chipped. Before long, Malekeh called in her children for their evening meal, though she had only bread and cheese to feed them. My mother and I refused the food, claiming we were not hungry. I would not have been able to force bread into my mouth or to chew it, in any case.

"You need soup," Malekeh said to me sympathetically.

"With your permission, I'll make soup for everyone tomorrow," my mother replied.

"Ah, but with what money?"

"We still have some left," I croaked. The pain in my jaw was fierce.

When it grew dark, we spread the family's blankets on the floor. Davood slept near one of the walls, with Malekeh beside him and her children in the middle. Then came my mother and finally, me. When our bodies touched by accident, my mother moved away and kept her distance from me.

With all of us stretched out on the ground, there was just enough room for one person to arise and use the night-soil vessel, crouching near the oven for privacy. Davood wheezed loudly throughout the night. The children must have been having dreams, for they cried out from time to time. Malekeh often sighed in her sleep. I know I moaned, for I awoke to that terrible sound and realized it was mine.

It was a rainy night, and I was awakened by a drop of cold water that struck my face from a leak in the roof. As I wiped it away, I thought of Gostaham's Great Room, with its ruby-red carpets, its vases of flowers, and its perpetual warmth. I shivered and pulled the thin blanket around me. When I finally arose with the dawn, I was more tired than I had been the night before.

IN THE MORNING, my mother and I offered to stay behind to care for Malekeh's husband and children while she tried to sell her carpets. But before she departed, to make us honest in the eyes of God and her neighbors, she asked us to contract sighehs with Salman and Shahvali. They were only five and six, so the sighehs were not real marriages, of course. We simply pronounced our acceptances of the contracts, and suddenly we were family and would not have to cover ourselves around Davood.

"You are now our daughters-in-law," said Malekeh with a smile, "even you, Khanoom." It was peculiar to think of my mother as the daughter-in-law of a woman who was half her age, and yet necessary.

After Malekeh left, my mother asked the children to take her to the nearest bazaar, where she bought a bag of cheap lamb bones. She threw them into a pot full of water on top of the oven and boiled them with a few vegetables. Davood woke up, looked around the room in confusion, and asked who we were. "Friends," said my mother, "here to make you a healing soup." He grunted and rolled over to sleep again.

I stayed on my bedroll in a daze. From time to time I fell asleep, only to awake to the pain in my jaw and the ache of hunger in my belly. I had trouble sleeping, for Malekeh's home was noisy. Six other families lived in rooms right off the shared courtyard, including Katayoon, her brother Amir, and their mother, so there was constant traffic. I felt assaulted by all the smells: night soil, cooking oil gone rancid, the frightening odor of chicken's blood after slaughter, the acrid smell of boiling beans, the reeking shoes left in the courtyard, all the everyday stink of close living. And then there were endless sounds: a mother shouting at her child to do his lessons, a husband yelling at his wife, neighbors fighting about money, wheels creaking in the uneven mud alley, vegetables being chopped, mumbled prayers, moans of pain and distress--I heard it all. Gostaham's house had been as quiet as a fortress.

The only thing that kept me from despair was the knowledge that I owned a costly rug. When I recovered, I would seek out the Dutchman and complete the sale. As soon as I held the silver in my hands, I wanted to start a new carpet with Katayoon and Malekeh. My dream was to be able to hire others so that we would have many carpets on the looms at once, just like at the royal rug workshop. Then maybe my mother and I could finally earn enough money to keep ourselves and live as we pleased.

It took more than a week for my jaw to heal enough for me to seek out the Dutchman. I hadn't wanted to visit him while I was feeling so bruised and broken, for it would have been easy for him to think I would take any price for my carpet.

When I told my mother of my plans to find him, she said only two words: "I'll cook." She was still not speaking to me very much. Her anger seared me, and I hoped that the money from the Dutchman would soothe her.

My mother took the last of our coins to the small bazaar near Malekeh's house and bought a chicken. In the courtyard, she slashed the artery in its neck while all the other people's children looked on enviously, then cleaned the bird and cooked it in a pot with fresh greens. Malekeh came home that night to the smell of stew, a delight she had not had in a long time. We all feasted together, and even Davood sat up and ate a few bites of stew, proclaiming it "the food of paradise."

The next day was Wednesday, the Dutchman's day at the bazaar. My mother heated the leftover stew and bread for me late in the morning. I ate my fill before putting on the last of my good clothes-- Naheed's pink tunic and purple robe--although I knew no one would see them. "I'll be back soon, with silver, I hope," I said.

"Good luck," replied my mother dryly without looking at me.

I left off my picheh so the Dutchman would recognize me and walked through the bazaar toward the Image of the World. After only a short time with Malekeh's family, I no longer felt as if I belonged in the Great Bazaar with its view of the Shah's palace and his lemon-colored mosque, so bright against the blue sky, for now I lived in a place where even keeping clean was a struggle.