The Girl from the Garden (4 page)

She remembers the day she went to Rakhel and asked her permission to attend school. Rakhel responded, “What does a girl need school for? You don’t need to know how to read to wipe a baby’s ass.” But Mahboubeh saw that her cousins Efat and Ismat studied, and read books, and could do mathematics, and she knew she was falling behind on something important. So she’d do little tasks around the house, clean and fetch things for her uncle Asher and for her father, Ibrahim, in return for coins.

Of her few personal possessions, Mahboubeh owned a little
gholak
. She dropped each coin she earned into it and hid that gholak on a shelf behind some books in her father’s room. Then came the day she broke it. She stood with a stone in her hand and with one blow, the coins spilled onto the rug. Mahboubeh piled them into a single small, shining mountain. She stared at it for a moment, then worried that Rakhel might come looking for her. Quietly, quickly, she filled her pockets, found her shoes, and stole through the andaruni, and when she made certain that no one missed her, she opened the heavy wooden door and slipped into the street.

Mahboubeh sees herself standing in the headmaster’s office. She must be no more than nine years old. He sits behind his large desk, looking at her from above the rim of his gold spectacles. He waits for her to speak.

“I want to enroll,” she says.

“You must come back with your father.”

“My father is on a trip.”

“Then come back with your mother.”

“My mother is dead.” She reaches into her pockets and takes out all the money, two fistfuls of shiny coins. She does not know if it is a considerable sum, just that it fills both hands. She places her earnings on the headmaster’s desk.

He looks at her for a long time, then asks her, “What grade are you in?” Mahboubeh has never been in school. She doesn’t know her aleph’beh or how to count, but she responds that she is in the third grade because her cousin Efat is in the third grade and they are the same age. She follows the headmaster down the hall to the third grade class and enters.

Mahboubeh opens her eyes. The clock reads 6:40. The rain has stopped. A garage door opens. A car backs out into the street, the tires slick on the wet asphalt. Someone calls from a window. A man’s voice responds. The car drives away. The clock reads 6:41. A transient sunlight floods her room. In a moment, the birds will begin singing.

The voices of
men
fill the garden. Their
ya Allah, ya Allah
drowns out the birdsong, the gurgle of the fountain, the silence of the women. The women of the household don’t have much time to prepare for the arrival of the Kurds. Though they know the time for harvest and though they know that
each harvest, the Kurdish farmers arrive unannounced with the landlord’s share of the crop, they are still startled to find their inner yard full of a dozen men carrying bundles of wheat, unloading sacks of tobacco leaves twisted into ropes, burlap bags full of
katira,
milked from the
gavan-e shireh
plant of the high mountains, pails full of comb and honey.

The men lead braying mules to the stalls, fill the troughs with water from the well, wash their own hands and faces in the central pool. They keep their eyes averted, looking to the dirt or at each other, their heads bent in respect for the women in the house, to give the women time to retreat to the hidden parts of the home, or to pull their scarves over their hair and to fasten the cloth of the ruband over their faces.

The women peer into the andaruni from the cracks of doors, from behind drawn curtains, to see their inner yard full of unknown men, dressed in a billow of black pants wide in the legs, tight around the ankles. The men wear colorful scarves in bold patterns wound about their waists, held in place by belts, which secure their knives. From hidden posts, the women notice the dark proud eyes alive beneath heavy eyebrows, thick mustaches that hide youthful or toothless mouths, the loose sleeves of white shirts that reveal hard, veined, calloused hands, cracked nails, hands that know the feel of the earth, that goad and beg from her, that draw from her the abundance now spread in the inner and outer yards of their own home.

Flustered and excited to have the monotony of their
daily lives interrupted, the women rush from their hidden posts to cover their heads and faces, then steal into the kitchen to prepare the samovar and boil water in copper pots. They pour cups of rice into the boiling pots, then grind saffron in sugar with mortar and pestle. They fill silver trays with figs, and load bowls with crisp apples. They make a hurried dish of fried eggplants and tomatoes to fill the platters for this unexpected feast.

When the Kurdish farmers arrive from the villages with the harvest, Asher pushes Rakhel and Khorsheed into the cellar. The girls are frightened by the urgency in Asher’s demands, but more so, they are disappointed that they can’t sit quietly in some corner and hear stories about the world outside of the heavy wooden door, or at least go to and from the sitting room like the maids, bearing trays of fruits and tea, catching bits of sentences about life in the villages, or the adventures of nomads on horses, or the retreat of the Russian soldiers, who take the cattle of peasants, pillage bazaars, tear down homes, and burn the wood for heat along their way.

Inside the cellar, lined against the walls, rest large earthen pots, taller than a man, full of wheat and grains, wicker baskets full of beans, and large cylindrical mud jars full of rice. Bushels of grapes hang from the beams of the ceiling, strings of onions and garlic, pomegranates, baskets of apples, sacks of dried fruits and nuts pile on the floor, watermelons lay buried beneath straw, to stay fresh for the long winter nights. Shelves cut in earthen walls are filled
with jars of pickled vegetables, preserved jars of quinces, pears, and apricots. The air always dry and crisp, the walls cold. The girls stand on the stone steps, their arms around each other, pleading behind the closed door.

Zolekhah waits beside Asher as he locks the door and whispers
hush hush
to the muffled voices of the girls. He places the key in his breast pocket, and looks heavenward, either to beseech G-d for the safety of the young girls or to express his exasperation. Zolekhah pats his shoulder and follows him to the yard. She unobtrusively counts the mouths to feed as Asher walks among the dozen farmers, with Ibrahim beside him, their hands placed on the small of their backs, their chests thrust forth. Asher appraises the harvest of wheat and questions the farmers as they finish unloading. The old khan, strong and straight of back like one of the sculpted men Zolekhah has seen in the rocks of Bisotun, walks toward Asher and says, “May Allah give you strength.” He then nods at Ibrahim, who returns the greeting with a slight bow of his head.

“May G-d preserve you, may he keep tiredness from your hands. Please come inside and join us for a piece of bread and some tea to ease the fatigue of your journey,” Asher says.

Zolekhah has known the old khan since her sons’ childhood, when Asher stood beside his father, and Ibrahim hid his face in the folds of his father’s qaba. He has watched her boys grow into manhood, taught them about the seasons and how the earth can give, and how she can take. He stood
beside them when they buried their own father and helped them learn to become the owner of the lands.

“We will not burden you,” the old khan says.

“It is no burden, a piece of bread and tea, the men must be tired, please honor us with your presence,” Ibrahim replies.

As children, Ibrahim and Asher rode to the villages astride two mules that trotted alongside their father’s horse. During the ride, Asher debated with his father about the best seeds to sow, whether the white, or the red and yellow, or the
kuleh
seed, which sprouted a large, hard grain. Ibrahim, however, rode in silence, lost to the seduction of the soil, the undulations of a field of wheat stalks in the breeze. “Asher listens closely to the farmers talk about irrigation and rotation,” Rebbe Yousseff would tell Zolekhah when he returned from the lands, “but Ibrahim only listens closely to the snorting and whining of the mule.”

Zolekhah looks at her sons, now proud men, walking steadily amidst the Kurds. She closes her eyes to hold, for a moment, the image of her sons as boys, running back into her arms upon their return from their journey to the villages. She strains to hear the sound of their voices calling her, but that is lost to her. Instead, she remembers her husband’s funeral, and how Asher stood stoic beside the open grave. Ibrahim wept beside him, holding tightly to his brother’s mourning coat.

“We still have many hours to ride back to the village,” the old khan says.

“And so it would be wise to allow the men some rest.
It would honor our family if you would accept our invitation,” Asher says. Zolekhah watches the old khan pause at the threshold of the open doors of the guest hall, place his palm against his heart and bow his head. Asher returns the gesture with a deeper bow of his head.

Zolekhah enters the kitchen to find the old family servant Fatimeh and the two younger maids engaged in a storm of motion and words, an orchestrated cacophony accompanied by the clang and clatter of teacups, then the sudden commotion of an overturned box of silver spoons against the stone floor. “Is the chai ready?” Zolekhah asks.

Fatimeh stops in the middle of the kitchen and raises her hands to the ceiling. “I’ve had enough of these girls, Zolekhah Khanum, you would think they had never seen Kurdish farmers, Allah forgive them. Be’ Zainab, I have to do everything they have done once more over,” she says. She adjusts her head scarf to cover the few strands of hair that slip out, then slaps Sadiqeh’s ample thigh with the back of her hand and motions for the girl to cover her thick black braids with the scarf that hangs behind her head. Sadiqeh takes the end of one braid and places it between her teeth, then gives Fatimeh a coy smile. Zahra walks between them, holding a copper pot full of rice. Her rolled-up sleeves reveal long, white arms, delicate wrists adorned with a few gold bangles, and fingers hennaed red. Fatimeh steps in front of her and unrolls Zahra’s sleeves to cover her arms, almost causing the girl to drop the pot of rice on the floor.

“You see, Zolekhah Khanum, I must protect their honor
and see that they don’t spoil the food, besides,” Fatimeh says.

“It’s not me, Zolekhah Khanum,” Sadiqeh says. “It’s Zahra’s honor in question. She fancies the young Kurd with the long mustache and clear eyes.”

“I said he reminded me of my cousin Ghollum. Fatimeh, didn’t I say he reminded me of my cousin?”

“A married woman mustn’t look in the direction of another man, child, not even a cousin. It is haram by The Book.”

“Her husband is so old, Fatimeh, she could sit in that peasant’s lap fondling his mustache in the middle of her home and the old man wouldn’t notice.”

“Sadiqeh, hush up before you start trouble for me.”

“It’s true. You’ve seen him, no, Fatimeh? When he hobbles here to fetch her in the evenings?”

“Hassan Khan is a righteous man, not a blemish to his name.”

“Better old than a simpleton like your husband. Fatimeh, if you tell her husband that a man is a eunuch, he asks how many children does he have.”

“It’s true, Fatimeh. I tell him it’s a stone, he tells me it is cheese.”

“Zolekhah Khanum, these girls will drive me to the mortician’s bath with their antics.”

“Zahra, is the chai ready?”

“Yes, Zolekhah Khanum.”

“Don’t tarry any longer, the guests are waiting.”

“Yes, Zolekhah Khanum.”

Zolekhah returns to the sitting room, followed by
Zahra, the girl unidentifiable beneath the black fabric of her hijab, balancing the tray full of glass teacups and saucers, her white braceleted wrists revealed each time she stretches out her hands. Zolekhah stands beside the door and watches the girl as she moves underneath the sway of her long full hem, steps, kneels, places saucer and glass in the outstretched hands. The men, tired from the ride from the village, accept the hot chai and offer gratitude and blessings in return. They keep themselves from noticing the soft touch of the hennaed fingertips that brush their own calloused hands in the passing, they look away from the small toes hennaed red, pressed against the wool of the rug near their own feet.

The old khan takes his tea and a piece of rock sugar. He places the sugar in the corner of his cheek and pours some tea into his saucer, then sips. His men wait for him to take this first sip before they begin drinking their own tea. The room remains silent until he begins to speak. “They burned wheat fields,” he says. “Wheat fields. Before the harvest. We saw some of those farmers. Men walking with no direction. Hollowed eyes. They had watched their women raped, seen their children killed, and in the wake of that horror, those savages burned their wheat fields.”

“The Russians have no honor,” Asher says. “They don’t follow any rules in their war. Nor the British. In the streets of Tehran, the people wait for hours outside the bakeries and walk away empty-handed. The British purchase the wheat from the shah’s granaries above the market price. No bread comes of it for the peasants. They buy it for their own use.
And they come here with their treaties, speaking of friendship, of building this country. Upon the bones of its children?”

“Still, it is our shah who chooses to sell to them, son,” the old khan says. He shakes his head and places his cup and saucer before him. “There was a moment, when your father was still alive, may he rest in peace, when we held the reins of our own country, disposed of the Qajar king, created a Majlis of representative, when we fought for our right to be men,” he says.

“Neither the Russians, nor the British, would ever allow us that. To be men. Mules, at best, to carry the burden of their greed,” Ibrahim says. “But never men.”

Asher snorts. “Even if the foreigners allowed it, brother, do you think the clergy of our own country would allow you and I, two Jews, to ever be fully human?”

A silence falls upon the room. The old khan sips his tea and looks at Asher for some time. Then, he says, “Your father was a man among men, Asher. In the beginning, many refused to buy his wheat, for fear that it was
najis,
sullied by the touch of his hand. But soon he proved that he was a man of honor. A fair and just man.”