Persian Brides Read online

  PERSIAN BRIDES

  DORIT RABINYAN was born in 1972 in Kefar-Saba, Israel, to a Jewish family that had emigrated from Iran. Persian Brides is her first novel, which she wrote at the age of twenty-one, using her family stories. She has also written a book of poems and a second novel, Our Weddings (Bloomsbury, 2001).

  YAEL LOTAN is an Anglo-Israeli writer and translator. Apart from writing her own novels, she has worked as a journalist, editor and translator. As well as this prize-winning translation of Persian Brides, her translations include The Great Madness by Avigdor Hameiri.

  ‘Whoever loved Sami Michael’s Victoria will love Persian Brides too.’ Tamar Rotem

  The new young star of Israeli literature . . . a beautiful mix of fantasy, myths, sagas and legends.’ Hervormd Nederland

  ‘entrancing . . . Reading Persian Brides is like visiting a beautiful, savage, unknown land . . . Rabinyan is a fierce new talent.’ The Big Issue (London)

  ‘Rabinyan skilfully brings to life an alien world. Although usually harsh and often tragic, this debut also has a warming sense of humour and triumph that establishes Rabinyan as one of the leading lights of Jewish literature.’ The Times

  ‘a wonderfully voluptuous rendition.’ Die Woche (Germany)

  ‘This raucous and colourful first novel by Rabinyan, an Israeli journalist and playwright, convincingly re-creates the complex texture of life in the Jewish quarter of a Persian village at the beginning of the 20th century . . . Rabinyan’s portrait of their “almond tree alley”, often reminiscent of Sholom Aleichem, is distinguished by knowledgeable descriptions of the rituals of birth and burial, and peopled with such memorable supporting characters as a prostitute rumoured to be the lover of the village demon. A very assured and entertaining debut performance.’ Kirkus Reviews

  ‘Two hundred pages of colourful prose . . . the author offers in long, well crafted sentences a modern Arabic fairy tale.’ Elle (The Netherlands)

  ‘Persian Brides reads like a new experience, full of foreign sights, sounds, and smells . . . Rabinyan tells her story with admirable simplicity and her approach serves to enhance the political and moral context of the story.’ The Herald

  ‘[Persian Brides] describes in almost magical fashion the inhabitants of a small Persian village at the beginning of the century. Vivid descriptions of cruelty and sensuality mix with the descriptions of everyday life . . . the storytelling is superb.’ Library Journal

  ‘a ripely imagined tale of Jewish life in Iran at the turn of the century . . . is a feat of sorcery. The characters, comic, sodden and sly, spill out of this small book like clowns in a ragtag circus, but the author’s gift is that each one, even the stalwart Nazie, the story’s Cinderella – plucking chickens and pitting dates – maintains a passionate, steely dignity.’ The New Yorker

  ‘Within the framework of a modern fairy tale about love and marriage lies a strong political and social commentary, and Rabinyan’s narrative comes across powerfully and undogmatically. Rabinyan’s timely novel calls for a balance between spiritual and material values and an appeal for cultural plurality and religious tolerance.’ Scotland on Sunday

  ‘From the first page of this fascinating and beautiful novel, overflowing with sensual descriptions of a Jewish quarter in a small Persian village at the beginning of the century, it is evident that the author’s sharp, ironic and amused eye keeps this novel from becoming simply a work of folklore . . . pity, wonder, horror and laughter overcome the reader . . . Persian Brides is a stirring work.’ Batya Gur

  ‘It may be true, as Tolstoy wrote, that all happy families resemble one another, but it would be next to impossible to find a family anything like the Ratoryans, the 19th-century Jewish clan engagingly depicted in this first novel – or a writer who could conjure them up more vividly than Israeli journalist Rabinyan . . . the novel tells one poignant, bewitching story after another, seducing us with vivid language and outrageous tales of deception, devotion and magic. Rabinyan crams every page with evocative details . . . [and her] brisk, fetching prose expertly summons a long-vanished land and renders it dazzling and delicious.’ Publishers Weekly

  ‘She’s got a hell of a talent . . . Rabinyan has created a tapestry in which each detail is described with delicate precision. Her [language] is rich and mesmerising. She has an incisive eye, sharp senses, good taste, humour and most of all a rare ability to endear her characters to us.’ Yediot Aharonot

  ‘Only twenty-one when her book was published in Hebrew, she writes with the wise and leisurely assurance of a town bard recounting communal myths. In this translation by Yael Lotan [which is] lush, lyrical and disturbing . . . Rabinyan’s marvellously digressive style and rich prose give the story the feel of a night-long wedding feast. Persian Brides is an auspicious debut.’ The New York Times Book Review

  ‘this novel is a joy to read. The style is exuberantly poetic, the atmosphere evocative, the characters richly alive and the translation inspired. Persian Brides will leave you full of wonder at the author’s gift for portraying the indomitability of the human spirit.’ The Historical Novels Review

  ‘a major figure on the Israeli literary scene.’ Modern Hebrew Literature

  First published in Israel in 1995 by Am Oved

  First English language edition in hardback published in

  Great Britain in 1998 by Canongate Books Ltd,

  14 High Street, Edinburgh, EH1 1TE

  First paperback edition published in 1999,

  second papaerback edition published in 2000,

  third paperback edition published in 2002

  This edition published in 2004

  This digital edition first published by Canongate in 2013

  Copyright © 1995 by Dorit Rabinyan and Am Oved Publishing House

  Worldwide Translation Copyright © 1995 by the Institute for the Translation of Hebrew Literature

  English Translation Copyright © 1996 by the Institute for the Translation of Hebrew Literature

  Forewords copyright © Paul and George Soros, 2000

  Translation, Editor’s Afterword, Notes and Works Cited copyright © Humphrey Tonkin, 2000

  The right of Dorit Rabinyan to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

  A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library

  ISBN 978 1 84195 510 0

  eISBN 978 1 78211 299 0

  Typeset by Palimpsest Book Production Ltd, Falkirk, Stirlingshire

  www.canongate.tv

  Contents

  PART ONE

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  PART TWO

  10

  11

  12

  13

  PART THREE

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  1

  That night Flora wanted to eat watermelon. She had started to cry earlier in the evening, when she sat with Nazie in the kitchen, fatter than she had ever been, her tears too fatter than ever. But then she cried not for a watermelon but for her husband. Nazie could no longer bear to see Flora crying so hard and fetched her the big cushion embroidered with white swans from the parlour. Flora took a deep breath before resting her palms on the floor and raising her big bottom in the air, signalled with her eyes to Nazie to hurry and shove the cushion under it. The pair of white swans vanished under her heavy body and her dress spread over them. She rested her back against the scarred kitchen wall, c
lutched once more her swelling belly between her hands and wept fat tears. Nazie too slid down from the worn cane stool and sat on the cold stone floor, her little legs somewhat splayed, her ankle-bones as angular as little elbows.

  Into the cloth bowl formed by the wide skirt between her legs Nazie poured all at once hundreds of bitter white rice grains. Her eyes narrowed at the sight of the green mildew which had spread through them because of the dampness in the bean shed. She lowered her head, letting her plaits fall between her thighs, the better to see the damaged and infected grains, and the tiny stones and winged insects which had sneaked into the rice bag pretending to be innocent grains. With supple and skilful fingers, the fingers of an eleven-year-old who bit her nails to the rosy quick, Nazie picked out the good rustling grains and put them in the cooking pot. The bad, squeaky grains she gathered in her sweaty fist and tossed them every now and then into the mouth of the oven, where they danced and crackled on the ever-glowing embers until they fell silent.

  Flora was fifteen years old, four years older than Nazie, and this was her first pregnancy. All the village women who emerged, veiled and pinned, from their sooty kitchens, nodded their chins in agreement, closed their black eyes firmly and compressed their lips. They all admitted that they had not seen such a difficult pregnancy as Flora Ratoryan’s for a long time, unless you count Mamou the Whore’s impregnation by the king of the village demons, whose sprouting seed was sharpening her belly into a hump, and who knows what will come out of it before long, they sighed, and God preserve us from any more of these kuchik madar, little mother, pregnancies. Nazie had also heard that all these troubles had fallen upon the village because the night that Flora became pregnant was a cursed night of a lunar eclipse, when even hens lay rotten blood-red eggs. The strict ban on impregnating virgin brides, let alone very young ones, on such a malevolent night, when souls tremble in dread and babies shriek in their sleep, was known to all men, except to Shahin Bozidozi, the short, thin-haired cloth merchant who married Flora.

  Six months had passed, starting in the spring and ending in the early winter, since the day Shahin entered Omerijan through the itinerants’ gate, his arm broken, his garments shredded by wanderings, stinking of long-fermented donkey’s piss. He had started out from his native town Babol, on the shore of the Caspian Sea, a town whose men are crooks and whose women are flighty, heading for the petroleum harbour of the southern city Abadan. As poor and dishonest as when he had left, he returned on his long-eared ass to the northern villages, where, according to his father, lived the simplest and most honest Jews of the country. On his way north he stopped in Tehran, where he encountered a splendid ambassadorial procession held in honour of the king, Reza Shah Pahlavi. Thousands of soldiers in glittering uniforms lined the main street leading from Medan a-Safa to the Gulistan Palace, the site of the ‘golden throne’, the royal seat that the king had brought from his journeys in India. Behind the rows of soldiers thronged the subjects of the king, among them Jews, Armenians and fire-worshipping Zoroastrians, led by their communal leaders holding burning candles and joining the crowds in songs of praise for the king and his ministers. Shahin recognized the opportunity, veiled his squinting eye and seduced a girl apprentice from the royal tailor’s workshop in the Shamsol Amera palace in the city square. The girl, who had gaps in her teeth and pins stuck in her garments, led him through the maze of sewing workrooms, and when she was caught she was led out to be hanged.

  In his flight from the palace cellars Shahin removed from the shoulders of a headless dummy a handsome velvet cloak which the royal tailor and his assistants had been sewing for the king’s son. It was made up of three layers of scarlet cloth, with the royal lion, holding a brace of swords in its mouth while the sun rose behind its back, embroidered in gold on its collar and cuffs. Shahin used his merchant’s scissors to mutilate the cape, and the cloth he sold sufficed for holiday gowns for four far-from-thin women and one girl-child of good family. But the golden swords which had been crossed by an artist and placed in the lion’s maw betrayed the theft from the palace, and the five vain females were eventually hanged along with the little seamstress, still wearing their scarlet gowns.

  While they were being led to the gallows, the scarlet trains trailing on their heels, Shahin reached Omerijan where, washed and shaved and smelling of kerosene, he married Flora Ratoryan the poulterer’s daughter, impregnated her and disappeared without a backward glance. He left her a baby in her belly and lice in her hair. He journeyed as far as the villages around the city of Isfahan, whose red-cheeked apples have a sweet intoxicating aroma, and assured the notoriously foolish villagers that the cheap Persian silk in his bags had been smuggled in slave-ships from India, and to prove it he would leap from side to side, chanting songs in Hindi, his walleye rolling this way and that. Clenching his teeth, he had promised that at the end of two round spring months he would return with a good income to his giggling new wife, who smelled of honey like her bee-keeper grandparents, and who had a mole in the hollow of her throat like a drop of chocolate which had fallen there from her greedy mouth. Two months, he said, or at the most three, and he thrust out his square jaw, promising to bring her rosy Isfahan apples. But since then a savagely hot summer had passed, sprawled like a black veil over the village, and still Shahin did not return to the village whose houses stood close together, like the stalled carriages of an engineless train.

  Down from the villages of the Alborz range to the northern coastal plain marched golden and orange camels, carrying on their backs merchants and intinerant pedlars whose minds had become addled, their turbans as ragged as their shoes, and in their mouths rumours as hollow as their teeth. Speaking in an ancient Persian dialect originating in sun-and-citrus rich Shiraz, they told of a deceitful young cloth merchant from Babol, whose return was awaited by three young brides and one widow, all of them pregnant. They told also of a Bokharan girl he had left intact, who in her despair drowned herself in a bog, whispering the meaning of his name in her mother-tongue. But since they could nor agree if it was his right or his left eye which squinted, Flora preferred to believe that it was not her husband they were talking about. Seeing that she doubted their stories, they lavished praise on his charms and his high shoulders, and fell into the trap they had dug with their tongues. Flora’s mother chased them from her house, cursing the wicked rumour-mongers who crushed hearts like eggshells. But like the dead Bokharan girl, whose hair floated on the black muck, Flora was unable to chase their words from her hungry heart.

  ‘Why isn’t my husband coming, Nazie? Why? Why? . . .’ Flora mumbled on the kitchen floor, swaying from side to side, her bottom revealing alternately the snowy neck of one swan and the tail of the other. She lifted the wide hem of her dress to wipe her tears and to fan herself between the thighs. She blew her congested nose on the corner of the chador, the great half-moon cloth shawl which she wrapped around the shoulders, forehead and chin, exposing only her lovely eyes, nose and lips, whose curves, the villagers said, invited kisses. When she cried her teeth also showed, not standing in two orderly rows but climbing over each other in a heap, as if they too wanted to burst from her mouth with the moaned words, which they graced with the ivory gleam of her laughter and smiles. She slapped her great golden-brown thighs with the outspread palm of her hand, leaving red stamps on the skin of her crossed legs, drawing the pain from her heart.

  Nazie saw Flora sunk in grief and her heart went out to her cousin. For a moment she considered telling Flora what she had heard in the bath-house regarding the lunar eclipse, to console her by blaming the heavenly bodies, but she desisted before opening her mouth. Her orphan existence had taught her that no excuses, not even involving all the stars that twinkled over the roof, could dispel the pain of loneliness. Holding the slipping ends of the chador to her hidden chin with one hand, Nazie rubbed the rice grains with the knuckles of the other. She liked the cool feel of the grains. Dry, free of mildew and insects, their rustling was sharp and clear and overcame Flora’s w
ails. But when they swelled in the boiling water on the range, and doubled their bulk and grew sweet and white, then they were as quiet as Flora was in sleep.

  Nazie could have sworn by her dead mother and father that even in the month of Nissan the previous year, when Flora’s elder brother Moussa locked her in the house because she kept laughing and eating, and forbade her to go out and meet people from the eve of Passover to the feast of Pentecost, and Flora became as thin and yellow as a stalk of wheat, she had not looked as wretched as she did now. In her longings Flora scarified the flesh of her cheeks with her fingernails, and the scratches which ran from her temples to her chin, having healed blue and purple, opened anew and reddened. ‘Ah yes,’ nodded the women in the bath-house. ‘Despair has rubbed off on Flora Ratoryan like nettles on the hands.’

  Even Fathaneh Delkasht, whose house adjoined that of the Ratoryans, whose ear was always pressed to the wall and whose mouth blabbed all over the village, said that Flora was blinding her black eyes with weeping. Her bold glance, which had lusted after all the sweets in the market and aroused the lust of all its traders, was now sunk between her fat heavy eyelids, and sulked behind a belly containing a baby whose father was lost.

  ‘I shall tear out my eyes, beloved, azizam . . . I shall tear out my eyes, for their light to shine only in your heart . . .’ Flora began to sing the song she had learned from her aunts and her paternal great-aunts, who flocked in from the neighbouring villages to advise her how to bring her little traitor of a husband back home. In their aged hands, speckled with brown patches like spotted cats, they shuffled cards like magicians, upturned coffee-cups and solemnly studied the convolutions of her fate. They instructed Flora to pass her first water of the day, the thickest and strongest tea-coloured pee, on a hen’s egg which had been laid at dawn, then break the pissed-on egg under a blossoming tree. In the evening she was to burn crackling espand seeds on a censer, fill her innards with their smoke, and plead with the moon to remove the curse which it had laid on her.