The Blood of Flowers (41 page)

After they left, I looked around at the dim room in dismay. My mother and Davood lay on stained bedrolls. There was dirt near the door where we left our shoes, and the room smelled of unwashed bodies. I hadn't had time to bathe myself. I could not believe that I had once been anointed by my own bathing attendants, washed clean and plucked until I was as smooth as an apple, dressed in silks, and sent to minister to a man who changed houses the way others changed clothes.

My mother opened her eyes for a moment and called out for me. I rushed to her side and stroked the hair away from her face. "Is there any soup?" she asked in a rasping voice.

The despair I felt was as wide as the sky, for I had none to offer her. I was silent for a moment, and then I said, "I'll make you some, Bibi-joon. Something hot and healing."

"God willing," she said, closing her eyes.

I could not sit still, knowing that she was hungry; I must do something to help her. Wrapping myself tightly in my picheh and chador, I walked to the carpet sellers' section of the Great Bazaar. The young merchant was at his usual post. Hardly daring to breathe, so great was my hope, I asked if he had seen the Dutchman. He clicked his tongue against his teeth, his eyes sympathetic. Disappointed, I thanked him and took my leave.

The Dutchman's blue eyes had seemed so innocent of guile. How could he have done such a thing? I had believed he would follow the rules of honor. I had not considered that, as a farangi, the Dutchman might leave whenever it suited his cold merchant's heart.

His treachery would be judged by God, but that thought didn't release me from my sorrows. What could I do? How could I help my mother? I thought of the young musician and the beggar with the stump. If they could make their living on the streets, I must try to do the same. My heart pounding, I walked through the bazaar until I reached the Ja'far Mausoleum, where crowds came to pay their respects to a religious scholar who had died more than a century before. It seemed like a respectable place for a woman on her own to ask for charity. I stood outside and watched an old, blind beggar man whose alms bowl gleamed with silver. After listening to him at work, I removed my sash, put it on the ground for coins, and began to repeat what I remembered hearing others saying.

"May you have eternal health!" I whispered to a group of women who were leaving the mausoleum. "May your children never go hungry. May Ali, prince among men, keep you safe and well!"

The blind beggar man gestured in my direction. "Who's there?" he barked.

"A woman only," I said.

"What ails you?"

"My mother is ill, and I have no money to feed her."

"What about your father, brother, uncles, husband?"

"I have none."

"What ill fortune," he said gruffly. "Still, I don't share my corner."

"Please, I beg you," I replied, hardly believing that I must now beg a beggar man. "My mother will starve."

"If that's true, then you may stay for now," he replied. "But speak up! They'll never hear you if you mumble that way."

"Thank you, graybeard," I said, using the term of respect for a wise old man.

When I saw a smartly dressed fellow, in a clean white turban, leaving the mausoleum, I cleared my throat and began my pleas in what I hoped was a clear, but sorrowful, voice. He passed without dropping a coin. Shortly afterward, a young woman paused and asked me to describe my plight. I told her about my mother's illness and how hungry I was.

"Are you married?" she asked.

"No."

"You must have done something shameful," she concluded. "Why else would you be here alone?"

I tried to explain, but she was already walking away.

The blind beggar man was earning well. He had been begging there since he was a child, he told me, so people knew him and his great need. "May all your prayers be fulfilled!" he said to them, and they felt comforted by their own charity.

"How are you faring?" he asked me at midday.

"Nothing," I replied sadly.

"You need to change your story," he said. "Look carefully at the listener before you start speaking, and then tell them something that will open their heart."

I thought about that for a few moments. When an older woman passed me, I noticed that her beauty had been great but was fading.

"Kind Khanoom, please help me!" I said. "My fate is very hard."

"What troubles you?"

"I was once married to a man who owned more horses than there are mosques in Isfahan," I said, trying to sound like my mother when she was telling a story. "One day, his second wife invented a tale about how I planned to poison him for his money, and he cast me out. I have no one to go to, for all my family is dead. I have been left with nothing!" I cried.

"Poor animal," she replied. "Those second wives are the real poison. Take this, and may God remember you." She dropped a coin onto the cloth.

When two young, well-muscled soldiers approached the mausoleum, I was emboldened to tell them something different.

"My parents died when I was very young, and my brothers have been killed," I moaned.

"By whom?"

"By the Ottomans, in a battle to protect our northwestern border."

"What bravery!" said the men, leaving me two small coins.

Men stopped far more often than women to talk to me. "I'll bet you're as pretty as the moon," said a boy who was just getting his first beard. "Why not lift your picheh so I can have a look?"

"Your father is frying in hell!" I said, between gritted teeth.

"Just a peek!"

"Hassan and Hossein, O saints among men, protect a poor woman from cruel strangers!" I cried in a loud voice, and he sped away.

A fat man who had dyed his beard with henna was even more brazen than the boy. "I don't care what you look like under that picheh," he said. "How about a quick little sigheh, just for an hour?"

He held out his palm, which was gleaming with silver. His thick fingers were knotted with calluses.

I grabbed the cloth containing the few coins I had earned and rushed away. Behind me, the fat man said, "I have a meat shop in the bazaar. Look for me if you're ever hungry!" And then he threw a few small coins at my feet, which scattered around me. I turned my back, but then I thought of my mother's wan face and stooped to gather them. The butcher was laughing as he walked away.

"I'm leaving, graybeard," I said to the beggar man, for now I had enough money for the soup. "Thank you for your generosity."

"May God reverse your bad fortune," he said.

"And yours, too," I replied, but then I felt ashamed, for I knew nothing would remove his blindness.

I went to the food section of the bazaar and spent all my coins on onions and lamb bones. As I returned home with my bundles, the price I had paid for them weighed on my heart. To have to invent stories to earn the pity of strangers, and to endure solicitations from foul-minded men--it was all I could do to keep myself upright as I walked through the bazaar toward Malekeh's squalid neighborhood. But I suppressed my keening, for it would not help me now.

WHEN I ARRIVED HOME, my mother was curled up on her thin cotton bedroll, the blanket knotted around her legs. She was in one of her calm moments between fevers, but her eyes frightened me. It was as if they had died in her face. I rushed to her side, laying my parcels around her.

"Bibi, look! I have onions and bones! I will make a soup to infuse you with strength."

My mother shifted slightly on her bedroll. "Light of my eyes, there is no need," she said.

I took her cold hand in mine and felt the sharp bones in her fingers. Her body had wasted away since she had become ill.

"I cannot eat," she added, after a pause.

I thought of the young man's taunts and the fat butcher's leer. I would have gladly endured them again if only my mother would eat a morsel or two. "Please try, Bibi-joon," I begged.

"Where did you get money for food?"

She knew I had spent the last of our coins from the sale of her herbal cures, so I had to admit I had gone begging at the Ja'far Mausoleum. She closed her eyes as if she could not bear my answer.

"Did men ask you for favors?" she whispered.

"No," I said quickly.

I plumped up the pillow around her head and smoothed her long gray hair away from her face. It was matted and stiff from days of not being washed. My mother turned her head; she hated not being clean.

"You're looking much better today," I said brightly, trying to convince myself it was true.

"Am I?" she replied. Her skin was yellowish, and the circles under her eyes were darker. "I feel better," she said, in a thin, weak voice.

I dipped another cloth in cool water and wiped her face and hands. She sighed and said, "Ah, how good it feels to be fresh."

"As soon as you get better, we'll go to the hammam," I said in my cheerful voice, "and we'll spend all afternoon soaking and scrubbing."

"Yes, of course," said my mother, in the voice she used to indulge a babbling child. She turned carefully onto her side and said, "Akh! Akh!" Her illness had attacked her hips, legs, and back.

"Shall I massage you?" I asked. She dipped her chin in assent, and as I began releasing the muscles, her face slowly became more calm.

"While you were gone, I had a wonderful dream," she said, her eyes closed. "It was about the day you and your Baba brought home the ibex horns."

My mother touched my cheek. "That was the most blissful day of my life, except for the day you were born."

"Why that day?" I asked.

"After you fell asleep, your father and I joked about how we had never needed any aphrodisiac like the horns. Then he took me in his arms and told me how thankful he was that he had married me and no other."

"Of course, he loved you," I murmured soothingly.

"There is no 'of course' to love," she replied. "Not after fifteen years without a child!"

The sharpness in my mother's tone startled me and made me wonder how my parents had fared in the years before my birth. I knew that every month, my mother had gone to Kolsoom for herbs to make her pregnant, until in desperation she had visited the stone lion in the Kuh Ali cemetery and rubbed her belly against it, praying for a child. I understood now how she must have felt. I had tried only for a few months and had been saddened at the sight of my own blood every time.

"Was my father angry?" I asked, pressing my fingers into the spongy muscles of her calf.

"He was desperate," she replied. "All the men of his age were already teaching their young sons how to ride and how to pray. Bitterness grew between us and sometimes we would pass a day and a night in silence. I wrestled with myself for a year until finally, I decided I would sacrifice myself to relieve his misery. 'Husband,' I said to him one day, 'you must take a second wife.'

"He looked surprised, but couldn't conceal his hope for a son. 'Could you truly accept a life with another woman by my side and under our roof?' he asked.

"I tried to be brave, but my eyes filled with tears. He was such a loving man that he never raised the subject again. Soon after that, I became pregnant and our world was bright again."

My mother placed her hands on her middle. "The day my belly began to cramp, your father was hard at work on the harvest," she recalled, her face soft. "I was surrounded by my women friends, who massaged my feet, gave me cool water to drink, and sang to you. But try as I might, you would not come out. I labored all through that long day, and all through the night. In the morning, we sent a boy to Ibrahim and begged him to set free one of his sparrows, so that you, too, would be released from your bondage. The boy came back and reported that the bird had flown like the wind. Once I heard that news, I turned myself toward Mecca, squatted, and gave a final push. There you were at last!

"In the years after that, your father still longed for a boy," she continued. "But on the day he brought home the ibex horns, he told me he was thankful he had married me and no other. That's how much he loved us. And you--you were more precious to him than any son."

My father had loved me like the light of his eyes. It had seemed natural to me to be blessed with such love. Now that I was older, I could easily imagine how different things might have been.

My mother's face radiated joy, and she looked beautiful despite her pale, wasted body. "Your father is gone, but I will never forget how he made his peace with God," she said, "and now I can do the same. Daughter of mine, I accept our fate--yours and mine--just as it is."

Knowing how deeply my mother disapproved of my behavior in Isfahan, her blessing made my heart shed tears of blood.

"Bibi, I would sacrifice myself for you!" I cried. My mother opened her arms, and I curled up beside her on the stained bedroll. She put a thin arm around me and stroked my forehead. I breathed in her maternal smell, sweet to me even in her illness, and felt her gentle hand on mine. It was the first time she had caressed me in weeks, and I sighed with contentment.

I wanted to stay curled up with her, but as the afternoon waned, I knew I must arise and attend to the cooking. Perhaps my mother would eat some soup, after all. I tried to slip away, but she tightened her grasp on my hand and said in a whisper, "Daughter whose face I love, you must promise me one thing."