Persian Brides Page 7

  8

  That evening Flora ate four gondi dumplings, which are easy to bite into but hard to digest. These balls of chickpeas and chicken – which Nazie had laboured all afternoon to prepare, cooking them in dombeh sauce and serving them on a bed of white rice – are known as a man’s dish, good for plumping up shrunken testicles and rousing limp members. The women were expected to crumble the dumplings between their fingers before putting them in their mouths.

  Moussa and his father loosened their belts but nevertheless had to struggle to finish the second dumpling. Manijoun and Homa’s skinny husband were satisfied with rice, basil and parsley. Nazie poured over the wafer-thin labash a golden infusion of saffron, and Homa and Miriam Hanoum crumbled and pecked at a dumpling each. But Flora, her gaze absorbed and concentrated, ate four of the gondi one after the other. She wound the chador twice around her head, tucked its ends under her arms and pressed them to her sides to keep it from slipping. Using her grease-shiny palm curved into a little bowl, she scooped up ball after ball, pinching their cheeks with her podgy fingers, squeezing their crushed flesh and stuffing them into her mouth. When she finished the four dumplings she smacked her lips greedily and broke off a piece of bread, staining its whiteness with the yellowish oil on her fingers. She dipped it in the hot sauce until it was soaked, used it to gather the rice heaped on her plate and swallowed that too.

  She also found room in her stomach for two baked quinces, because her mother promised her that they would cheer up her sad heart. A man who shows a smiling countenance in the morning, Miriam Hanoum explained to Flora, is said to have had a piece of quince put in his mouth by his wife at bedtime. For it is known that the vapour of the quince rises to the sleeper’s head, driving away nightmares and sweetening the dreams. Then the men picked their teeth for leftovers and talked about the whore’s twins. They were to be placed in a pickles jar with formalin and the jar stoppered, for the disgrace to be preserved for all time and displayed in the centre of the village.

  Flora broke two pieces off the sugar loaf, placed them on her tongue and dissolved them in a glassful of hot black tea. As the tea slid down her throat she seemed to Nazie to be full and contented, resting her back on the soft feather cushions, sighing and breathing heavily. Her legs lay outflung on the Kashani rug, her hands were clasped on her curving belly, and her face sank into her fat chins like a brooding hen. And then, all of a sudden, she demanded watermelon.

  Later, Miriam Hanoum, speaking her dead father’s language, said that at that moment the house turned from a regulated beehive into a wasps’ nest in a hollow tree. Her face turned white and she exchanged alarmed looks with her husband, daughter, son-in-law, son, mother-in-law and Nazie. Manijoun was absorbed in her delusions, the contentment of her belly smoothing the creases in her grey face, but the faces of all the others turned as yellow as the remains of the rice on their plates. Their dropped jaws revealed the fragments of sugar on their tongues, and these dissolved quickly in the foaming saliva which they swallowed nervously.

  Apart from Flora, who had more greed than sense, whose body was big but her brain small, everyone was aware that it was already early winter and a whole autumn had passed since the red flesh of the last watermelon glowed in the summer heat. But they also knew that a pregnant woman’s belly must not be denied, that Flora had to have her watermelon, because if, God forbid, she failed to bite into the fruit she craved, her poor son might be born with an ugly birthmark shaped like a slice of watermelon dotted with black seeds in the middle of his forehead.

  Nazie was the first to recover, and she tried to persuade Flora to eat sugared red raspberries, or a juicy pomegranate which she broke open, filling her little hand with its red seeds, or even a plump red tomato which she put before her. But Flora rejected Nazie’s fruits and declared that she wanted watermelon, nothing but watermelon. Her black eyes skittered around the room, offended and wavering on the verge of tears, until she succumbed to them, broke down and cried bitterly. She bit the back of her hand, sucked the skin between her lips, and rocked back and forth like a man praying.

  Homa caught Flora’s earlobe with its silver hoops between her fingers. Large and crooked, she stood over her, pinched and pulled the earlobe as hard as she could, and threatened her with such a beating on her beautiful body that she would have a better reason for crying. Moussa marched up and down the room, stopping in every corner to cough throatily, and roared about honour and shame. Flora’s father knelt before his daughter and tried to distract her from the taste of watermelon by telling her horror stories about the cholera and smallpox epidemics which hit the village when she was a little child. Homa’s husband scolded him in his droning voice, saying that such stories could harm the baby’s appetite when it grew. Miriam Hanoum went from room to room, wringing her hands and calling down curses on her dead father, wishing that a herd of oxen would trample on his grave and efface his memory. She knew that on that night, a Wednesday night, the demons held their weekly feast, and on that particular Wednesday they had a special occasion for celebration because their king had just fathered a monster son on Mamou the whore. To divert them, she sent Nazie to fetch a bucket full of cold water and emptied it on the front doorstep, to placate the demons and restore calm to the house.

  Manijoun, too, became agitated. The shouting around her reminded her of past events, and she sat up in her basket, her face full of cracks like the wall, and rolled her eyes to the ceiling. She repeated the story of her dead daughter, the little sister of the twin butchers, the fathers of Flora and Nazie. They were triplets at birth, and when everyone was shouting for joy at the birth of male twins, out came the female who had been waiting patiently in the back of the womb, and gladdened her mother’s heart.

  ‘Khodaia! God! That’s all we needed now – your daughter! Zakhnabut, suffocate and keep quiet, lunatic!’ Miriam Hanoum told her off tensely. But Manijoun did not listen to her, and like a woman revealing her secret pain for the first time, talked about how long her daughter’s hair was and how thick. When she was seven, the gentile barber tied a handkerchief around her neck, carefully shortened the black tresses and then nicked the delicate neck with his scissors, and the child died of her wound. As if in remorse for telling her story, the old woman clutched her head, covered her ears to avoid hearing her granddaughter’s watermelon wails, and her tears dropped into the basket between her crossed legs. She tugged her silvery plaits, seeing the barber’s laughing face and his hand outstretched for the money.

  ‘Watermelon, I do so want a watermelon, Mother, Mother . . .’ Flora howled mindlessly.

  ‘It’s the middle of winter and the middle of the night and she wants watermelon!’ yelled Moussa, his face distorted with rage. ‘I hope she gets a little watermelon face with seeds all over it, like the pockmarks on ugly Nosrat’s mug!’

  ‘Baha, Baha, mashallah, that’s what comes of all those pumpkin and quince jams you feed her, all the rosewater Mother makes her drink for the sweet smell,’ Homa shouted, her eyes popping. ‘Now she thinks she is the queen of Persia.’ Homa’s husband said again that this is what happens when you marry a daughter to someone who is not one of us. ‘He passed by your window and peeped in, and right away you made him a member of the family. That’s what happens when you pick your bridegroom off the street, that’s what happens.’

  ‘Vavaila, stop! Stop talking so much, and Flora, dear heart, azizam, you should always have flowers and pistachio nuts falling on your head and down on your feet, stop crying, shhh . . .’ Miriam Hanoum pleaded, but she did not go near her daughter to hug and comfort her.

  Moussa yanked at his sobbing sister’s hair as if to uproot it, pulled up her head and butted it. ‘Look, just look how stupid you are. If you don’t stop crying this minute I’m going to smear a piece of dog-shit like that husband of yours on your forehead, and bring the mirror from Mother’s room for you to see how dumb you are, you piece of shit . . .’ Moussa’s voice choked and the pimples in his face almost burst. When he managed t
o draw air into his lungs he spat in her face and the saliva trickled down with her tears.

  ‘I want watermelon . . .’ sobbed Flora, who heard nothing, not even her own cries, which seemed distant and dim like someone else’s cries. Nor did she wipe the spittle off her face, only bit her lips and sucked them between her crowded teeth, which left a crooked mark on the flesh of her mouth.

  ‘Pay the money, you dirty Jewess, your pretty girl is waiting for you outside!’ Manijoun shrieked and sank into her basket, keening softly, brooding on eggs which would never hatch.

  ‘Enough, enough of your screams, God carry you off, all the Jews have gathered outside . . .’ Miriam Hanoum shouted at her mother-in-law and pinched her nipples as if trying to twist them off. She went up to Flora, took the kerchief from her head and wiped the girl’s running nose. ‘Enough, come now, enough crying, blow hard, hard!’ she said, pumping Flora’s nose. Then she wiped her face and tried to soothe her with soft words. But Flora went on snivelling, and Miriam Hanoum began cursing again, wishing that all her daughter’s mornings would be as black and evil as this screeching night.

  ‘What could I do, azizam, when he slaughtered my little girl?’ Manijoun asked the air above her. Her arms fluttered and flapped like a bird’s wings, while her hands tried to tear the girl’s plaits from her head.

  ‘Look, precious eyes, just look what a hole you’re making in your mother’s heart, maybe you’d like . . .’ Miriam Hanoum’s husband ignored his mother and spoke to his daughter in a soft voice that could hardly be heard in the commotion. Gently he stroked Flora’s dishevelled hair with his butcher’s hands, and his face grew red from the effort of self-control. His trousers, which were pulled up over his belly, revealed their short, roughly-sewn hems, uncovering his girlishly thin ankles above the slack socks. His moustache with its silver threads bent its sad smile towards Flora. Occasionally he shaved his moustache, which grew as thick as his greasy hair. Without it her father’s face looked naked to Flora, and with it like a stranger’s.

  ‘What she wants is for that husband of hers to push between her legs and give her what she needs. What she needs right now is for us to shove a hot skewer into her, maybe then she’ll calm down a bit and behave herself . . .’ Homa suggested, demonstrating with her hands. ‘Right, Flora? Khodaia, God, I hope your baby comes out squinch-eyed like his swindler father, amen and hope to God, you should have a baby like Mamou’s, exactly! We’ll see if he’ll bring you watermelons in the middle of the night, you bonehead! Rub, rub your backside on the floor until it burns and smokes, then maybe you’ll calm down a bit, you dumb bonehead!’

  ‘Homa, shut up!’ screamed Miriam Hanoum. ‘How you talk and talk! I hope your tongue tree goes up in flames and burns to the ground, damn that cursed tree that opened your big mouth. Shut up a minute, the Jews are like cats in the alleys. Shut your mouth!’

  Homa did not speak until she was five, and was believed to be mute. Her mother gave her mustard seeds to chew every morning, but they did no good. Finally one spring Miriam Hanoum travelled all the way to Isfahan, to pick a leaf from the forty leaves which sprouted every year on the tree of tongues. These leaves, which were meticulously counted, were red and perfect, elongated and rounded at their tips, remarkably like the human tongue. A healer from Isfahan had told her that if a mute drank well-water which had been boiled with a leaf from the tree of tongues his throat would open and his tongue would start to move. But, he repeated, not more than one leaf.

  But Miriam Hanoum picked three leaves, boiled them in water and gave it to her daughter to drink. A few days later Homa’s little mouth opened and she shouted her first words. ‘Corn on the cob! Corn on the cob!’ she yelled, imitating the cries of the hawkers in the alleys who fished yellow cobs from the steaming tubs. From that day on, Miriam Hanoum would say angrily, the girl never closed her mouth. She talked and talked and there was no end to her chatter.

  Moussa could no longer stand the female commotion around him, Homa’s jealous sermons, Flora’s howls, Manijoun’s insane mutterings and his mother’s pleas and curses. Full of bitterness, he went out into the cold Jubareh with a vase-sized silver goblet in his hand, to fill it with the neighbours’ saliva for Flora to drink. It was a particularly efficacious dervish charm against the evil eye, and his mother decided the time had come to use it.

  In the dark, Moussa’s hound looked like a wolf. He followed his master’s tense body, pouncing on every odorous cat and chirping cricket on the way. He did not understand that the game Moussa was after was the evil eye which had got into Flora. It started to rain and the two of them dripped water as they stood in the doorways of their neighbours, who woke up blinking from their sleep. Moussa bent under the low lintels and asked every neighbour to spit into the goblet. Fathaneh was wide awake, waiting for him with her forced smile, and spat with pleasure. Nor did the other neighbours resent the intrusion, but stretched their mouths in a great round yawn which ended with an eager smile. ‘What do you need a cup of spit for now, Moussa?’ they asked, their eyes glittering, avid for juicy tidbits of gossip which they would serve up to their own neighbours. They all swore that it was not their eyes which had driven his sister mad, then they hawked loudly and dropped their turbid foam into the cup.

  After Moussa left, Homa limped over to her skinny husband, gathered him into her bosom and the two departed in nervous silence to their house. On her way to the door, she hit her sister lightly on her head twice, then bent down and pinched her thighs.

  ‘Go on to your house now, Homa. Out you go now,’ Miriam Hanoum said to her, waving her hand.

  ‘Good thing she’s gone,’ she sighed in some relief when her daughter left.

  Nazie knew that it was not greediness or self-indulgence which made Flora crave watermelon, and she busied herself removing the stains left on the rug by the raspberries, pomegranate and tomato. Once Flora’s brother and then her sister had left the house, she hugged her cousin and stroked her belly with the thorough, circular movements she had used to clean the fruit stains from the rug. Flora’s cries gradually subsided, and Nazie felt that her palms were slowly overcoming them, their rounded rhythm setting the pace for the sobs. The big body snuggled gratefully up to the small one, and Nazie almost suffocated under its weight, but she did not budge and controlled her movements. Whenever a circle was less than perfect Flora perceived that she had been slack in her howling and promptly stepped it up. Nazie stared glassily at the embroidered pattern on the Kashani rug, which she had never worked out, as it always seemed to grow more intricate before her eyes whenever she tried to follow the endlessly writhing forms. Flora wearied of crying and waiting, and her howls of craving for a watermelon subsided into low murmurs of despair.

  Though Nazie pitied Flora, she was more concerned for the welfare of the baby, on whose forehead a stain was just then forming, and whose father was absent. She tucked her head into the hollow between Flora’s breasts and softly begged pardon of the demons which were raising the baby in her cousin’s belly: ‘Farhiz . . . farhiz . . . farhiz . . .’ – in the manner of mothers who ask permission of the demons that look after the sleeping baby to move it from its cot to the bed, so they would not be annoyed by the intrusion and would not put bad dreams into its head.

  Eventually a watermelon with white stripes on its green shell was found in a cellar. Flora’s shrieks had woken ugly Nosrat from her sleep, and her kindly heart remembered the days when the girl’s laughter and snorts and her warm smell had filled the kitchen. Dressed only in her nightgown, she went down to her cold cellar and took out from behind the wine barrels a watermelon which she had stored there to keep it from rotting. When Moussa reached her house and knocked on the door to ask her and her husband to spit into the goblet, the watermelon was waiting like a pregnant belly between her hands.

  It was a wild watermelon which had grown on the edge of the cultivated fields of the Dashti Kavir, the great salt desert in the middle of the country from which no-one who ventured in ever emerged ag
ain. The watermelons which grew on the edge of the desert were watered neither by rain nor by rivers, only by the morning dew that fell on the vines and quenched their thirst, sweetened the fruits’ flesh and increased their price. Wet with rain and red in the face from grovelling, Moussa also held the watermelon like a pregnant woman holding her belly, and urged ugly Nosrat to come to the poultry shop the next day. He promised to give her two ducks, their combined weight equal to that of her watermelon.

  When he stood on the threshold, even before he closed the door behind him, Moussa struck the watermelon with his hand and the striped shell burst. His fingers tore open the crack, exposing the red flesh. His face was contorted with revulsion as he threw a chunk at his sister, much as he tossed to his dog at the end of the day leftover pieces of fat and bones from the birds he had sold.

  Nazie moved away from Flora, who lusted for the fruit as for her husband’s kisses, biting into it furiously and chewing its flesh. Her blood seethed as it had not seethed that night in the Babol hotel room with the sunflower wallpaper. Her backside slid from the cushions onto the rug, and the whole family watched as she gathered the chunks of watermelon into the hollow of her crossed legs and put them to her mouth, biting again and again while the red juice ran from the corners of her mouth. But the chill of the cellar in which the watermelon had been stored did not cool her blood.

  Miriam Hanoum was the first to speak. ‘Please God this watermelon will cleanse Flora’s blood of all the poisons Shahin had put into it, and the demons will stop tormenting her,’ she said, and her husband added, ‘Please God, please God.’ But Flora did not hear, she only bit and sucked and let the red juice drip on her wrists and elbows and on her dress. When she finished there were only white shells left between her legs.