The Blood of Flowers (43 page)

I watched a small errand boy, no doubt from a wealthy family, order almost more meat than he could carry, while next to him a woman in a tattered chador bartered fiercely for feet and bones for her stew. An older man who was buying kidneys reminded me of my father, who loved kidney kebab and used to char it expertly over a fire. In the bustle, no one paid attention to me.

Time was passing and I could not wait. I threw myself to the ground and cried out to passersby to remember the gifts God had given them and share them with others. People stared at me with curiosity, but my outburst did not soften their hearts.

Wracked with worry about my mother, I abandoned my post and began searching through the meat bazaar for the fat man with the knotted fingers. I found him in his shop alone, hacking at a lamb's haunch. His belly bulged against his pale blue tunic, which was spattered with blood, and his turban was smeared with long red streaks.

"How can I serve you?" he asked.

I shuffled my feet. "I'm the one from Ja'far," I murmured.

The butcher smirked and said, "Let me give you some meat."

He offered me a stick of kebab that had just been grilled. The rich smell of the lamb, which was dotted with coarse salt, sapped all my vigilance. I lifted my picheh and bit into the dripping meat. Passersby stared, surprised to see a veiled woman revealing her face, but I was too hungry to care.

"Ah, nice and tender," he said. I ate the kebab without speaking, the juice dripping down my chin.

"And now I have been permitted to see your pretty lips."

I did not reply. When I had finished eating, I said, in a pleading voice, "I need food for my mother, who is ill."

The butcher laughed, his belly shimmying under his clothes. "Yes, but can you pay?"

"Please," I said. "God will reward you with fatter lambs next year."

He gestured around him. "There are beggars in every section of the bazaar," he said. "Who can feed them all?"

He was an ugly man, I thought. I turned and began walking away, although it was just a pretense.

"Wait!" he called after me. He grabbed a sharp knife and slashed the haunch, which fell open to the bone. He chopped the meat into chunks the size of my hand and threw them into a clay vessel.

"Don't you want this?" he asked, offering me the bowl.

I reached toward it with gratitude. "Thank you for your charity!" I said.

He drew back before I could touch it. "All I ask is for an hour after the last call to prayer," he whispered. His lips dropped into a leer that he seemed to think would entice me like a bee to a poppy. The thought of lying under his big belly and feeling his large bloody hands sickened me.

"I need more than that," I said haughtily, as if I were used to such filthy bargains. "Much more."

The butcher laughed again, for he thought he understood me now. He grabbed the haunch and cut me twice as much again. Throwing the meat into the vessel, he pushed it at me. I grabbed it out of his hands.

"When?"

"Not for a week," I said. "Not until my mother is better."

The butcher laughed. "A week, then, until we sigheh!" he said in a whisper. "And don't even think about losing yourself in the city. No matter where you live, I can find you."

I took the vessel, shaking with revulsion. "I'll need more meat in a few days," I said, still trying to play my part.

"As you wish," he replied.

"Well, then, in a week," I said, trying to sound coquettish as I walked away. Behind me, I heard the butcher's greasy laugh.

I took the meat to the pharmacists' section of the bazaar and traded some of it for the best medicine I could find for fever. Then I ran home to check on my mother. When I arrived, she called my name weakly and I thanked God for sparing her for another day. I gave her water and spooned some of the medicine gently into her mouth.

There was still so much meat that I was able to trade a small portion to Katayoon's family for celery and rice. I made a large stew that would last, if kept cold at night, for several days, as well as a thick meat broth for my mother.

Our feasting that night was beyond imagining. Malekeh, Davood, and their sons had not tasted lamb for a year. Davood sat up throughout the whole meal, which he had never done before. My mother was too ill to eat the stew, but she sipped the broth and took more of the medicine.

"Where did you get this meat?" Malekeh asked.

"Charity," I replied, not wanting to tell her the truth. Rich people often sacrificed a lamb to fulfill a nazr, but they never offered such fine cuts. Had my mother been less ill, she would have suspected my answer.

I sent my prayers of thanks to God for the food, begging for His forgiveness for the promise I had made to the butcher. I had no intention of ever seeing him again. I decided to walk a wide arc around the meat sellers' section of the bazaar from then on.

For the next few evenings, I heated the stew and served the family. The boys ate as much as they were given as fast as they could; Malekeh and Davood ate slowly and gratefully, while my mother barely wetted her lips with the broth.

When the stew was nearly gone, a small, dirty boy entered our courtyard and asked for me. He beckoned me outside and thrust a large vessel full of shiny red meat toward me. I drew away from it, frightened.

"Aren't you pleased?" he asked. "It's from the butcher."

"Ah," I said, trying to behave as if it were expected.

"The butcher is anticipating your visit," the boy said, "after the last call to prayer."

Even in his young eyes, I could see contempt and disgust for what he thought I was.

"How did you find me?" I asked, my voice unsteady.

"It was easy," he said. "I followed you home the other night."

I grabbed the meat and said good-bye in a curt voice. Inside, I put the meat in a pot with some oil and made another stew. When my mother asked where the meat came from, I told her the obvious: "From a butcher."

I didn't know what to do. If I eluded the butcher, he would come to Malekeh's house and degrade me in front of everyone. Then we would be called shameful and thrown out on the street again. I thought of the pretty, young musician and how he had been reduced to begging and to rags. As the meat began sizzling, I could feel myself perspiring, but the heat of the stove had little to do with it.

That night I dreamed that the butcher led me into a small, dark room and broke all my bones with his thick hands. He put me on display on one of his bloody hooks, naked, and when someone wanted meat, he carved me while I was still alive. I screamed and screamed in horror, waking everyone in the house. When they asked what was wrong, I couldn't tell them. I lay awake, agonized about what to do. My appointment with the butcher was in two days.

GORDIYEH AND GOSTAHAM had cast us out and left us to our doom, and now I must return to them as a beggar, in disgrace. It was as if God himself wished to make my humiliation complete.

Well into the chilly afternoon, I covered myself in my chador, not thinking about the condition of the tunic and robe I was wearing, and walked to their house. It was difficult to knock at Gostaham's grand gates, and even more difficult when Ali-Asghar answered the door.

"What are you doing here?" he asked, as if he had seen a jinn.

"I've come for charity," I replied, bowing my head.

He sighed. "I don't think anyone will see you."

"Can you try?"

He looked at my face closely. "I'll remind them of your jaw," he said finally, and disappeared for a few moments.

When he returned and summoned me in, my heart began to pound. I removed my coverings and followed him to the Great Room, where Gordiyeh and Gostaham were seated on cushions drinking their afternoon coffee. Gordiyeh wore a velvet robe she had commissioned out of the fabric patterned with red and yellow autumn leaves, and her matching yellow shoes were placed neatly near the door. She was eating a rosewater pastry, which made my mouth water with hopeless longing.

"Salaam aleikum," they said together. They did not invite me to sit down, for I was just another supplicant now.

I knew that nothing but complete submission would work with Gordiyeh. I bent to kiss her feet, which were hennaed bright red on the bottom.

"I throw myself on your charity," I said. "My mother is very ill, and I need money for medicine and for food. I beg you, by the love of Fatemeh, for your help."

"May Imam Reza restore her health!" said Gostaham. "What happened?"

Gordiyeh peered at me, her sharp eyes understanding everything at once. "You've become as thin as a sheet of bread," she said.

"Yes," I replied. "We are not eating the way we did here."

"What a surprise!" she replied, with satisfaction in her voice.

I controlled my temper, although I believed Gordiyeh was pushing her advantage too far.

"I beg you to place us under your protection again," I said. "I would do anything to see my mother safe, warm, and well fed."

Gostaham looked pained; Gordiyeh triumphant. "I wish that were possible," Gordiyeh said, "but the bad luck melted away after you left. Fereydoon paid for the dangling gems carpet and for the rug that Naheed's parents had commissioned. I believe Naheed persuaded him to do that."

"I think I know why," I said. "I told her I was relinquishing her husband and begged her forgiveness. Perhaps she encouraged him to make amends on my behalf."

"That was good of you," said Gostaham. "It helped us a great deal."

"Leaving Fereydoon was not to your advantage," said Gordiyeh, interrupting her husband. "Look at you now."

I looked down at my stained, tattered tunic. It was more unsightly than anything a maid in Gordiyeh's house would ever wear.

"When did you see Naheed?" Gostaham asked.

"I didn't see her," I replied. "I wrote her a letter."

He looked astonished. "You wrote her--by yourself?"

I could see no reason to conceal my skills any longer. "Naheed taught me to write a little," I said.

"Mash'Allah!" Gostaham exclaimed. "My own daughters can't even hold a pen." Gordiyeh looked embarrassed, for she herself could not write.

"I am no scholar," I said quickly, "but I wanted her to learn from my own hand how sorry I was."

Gostaham raised his eyebrows in wonder. "You are always surprising me," he said. He still loved me; I could feel it in his gaze.

"There are more surprises," said Gordiyeh. "You probably haven't heard that Naheed has birthed her first child. It is a boy."

I had suspected she was pregnant during my last visit to her. To forestall Gordiyeh from reminding me again about all I had lost, I said, "If only I had been so lucky."

"Luck has not favored you," Gordiyeh agreed.

"But it has favored you," I said, for I was getting weary of thinking of the comet and hearing about my evil tread. "Can you help a little, now that my mother is ill?"

"Haven't we done everything we could?" asked Gordiyeh. "And didn't you throw our generosity in our faces?"

"I deeply regret my actions," I said, for it was true.

Gordiyeh didn't seem to hear. "I don't understand why you are so poor," she said. "What happened to your rug? That should have brought you an armful of silver."

I started to answer, but Gordiyeh began waving at the air as if she were batting at a fly.

"I don't even know why I'm asking you," she said. "We've heard your explanations too many times before."

"But I've had to beg for food!"

"I know," said Gordiyeh. "Cook saw you in the meat market pleading for coins."

I shivered at the thought of the butcher. "We hadn't eaten for--"

"What do you mean 'beg'" interrupted Gostaham.

I tried to speak again, but Gordiyeh wouldn't permit it. "Never mind," she said sharply.

"Wait a minute," Gostaham said. "Let the girl tell her story."

"Why should we?" asked Gordiyeh, with a whip in her voice. But this time, her boldness raised Gostaham's ire.

"That's enough!" he roared, and Gordiyeh looked chastened for a moment. I was astonished, for I had never heard him stifle her before. "Why didn't you tell me Cook saw her begging? Do you expect me to let a family member starve?"

Gordiyeh fumbled for an answer. "I--I forgot," she said weakly.

Gostaham stared at her, and it was as if he saw, in that moment, every one of her weaknesses written on her face. There was a long silence, during which she did not have the courage to look at him.

Turning to me, Gostaham said, "What happened to your rug?"

"I sent the rug to the Dutchman," I replied, my voice becoming thick with grief. "But then I had to nurse my jaw, and when I went to find him, he had left Iran."

Gostaham winced; I couldn't tell if it was the mention of my jaw or my carpet. "He never paid?"

"No," I said sadly.

"What a rotten dog!" said Gordiyeh in disgust, as if she realized she must now treat me more charitably in front of her husband. "He picked up the rugs he had commissioned soon after you and your mother left. It's a good thing we demanded the money first. You should have done the same."