Bibi-Khanoom and Ghamar stood together with Nasreen wedged between them. Nasreen had tears streaming down her face. She was grateful for the opportunity to weep for Madjid’s disappearance under the guise of a funeral. Ghamar put her arm around her daughter and consoled her with tenderness, surprising everyone. “I know. I know,” cooed Ghamar. “She was like a mother to you. She was there for your birth and watched you grow. It’s very hard to lose someone you love.”
Nasreen wept anew and threw her arms around her mother’s neck—not for the midwife or even now for Madjid—but for this rare moment of affection.
The gravediggers came and started shoveling the soil as the family watched in silence. Shazdehpoor noticed Jamsheed standing beside the mullah. His son wore a shirt buttoned to the top and he had worry beads in his hands. He was dumbfounded by the radical transformation. Jamsheed timidly inched over. “Hello, Father,” he said.
“Hello, Jamsheed.”
They stood together in awkward silence for a few moments before Jamsheed continued, “I think the last time we spoke was at—”
“Your mother’s funeral.”
“Yes, Mother’s funeral.”
They fell silent again. Shazdehpoor was ashamed of the disgust that he had felt toward his own son and even more ashamed that he had always felt this way about him. The opium addiction was simply an excuse he had used to abandon him. Even now, Jamsheed’s religious piety was as humiliating to him as his drug-fueled lethargy. But it never once entered Shazdehpoor’s mind that it was this very disdain that might have driven his son to such extremes. That would have been too great a burden for him to bear.
The quiet was suddenly broken by a shapely woman in a black chador tumbling toward the graveside, arms flailing about. Recognizing the professional mourner, Ghamar squinted and hissed, “Sekeneh.”
Sekeneh hurled herself inside the half-filled grave, followed by two young black-chadored women who kept yelling out, “No, Mother, no, please, don’t!” She landed at the bottom with a thud. Everyone ran over to see if she was all right. Sekeneh lay prone to the ground, grabbing mounds of soil, hitting herself over the head, wailing. The cleric motioned to the gravediggers to lift her up as he chastised her, “Woman! Get ahold of yourself!”
She fought the diggers as they grabbed her arms. Jamsheed helped them calm her. They sat her by the grave as her daughters tried to console her, to no avail. She continued to weep and whimper, hitting herself. One of her daughters looked up at the cleric and said, “Please forgive her, Haj-Agha. She loved the midwife very much.”
Ghamar leaned into Bibi-Khanoom and whispered, “That bitch did not once come to see the old woman. The only time they ever met was for the birth of those two retarded daughters, who have not had a single suitor. Do you know one of them is pushing thirty and the other one talks to herself in public? What do you expect with a mother like that?” Ghamar stared at the convulsing woman and continued, “I swear if that toothless hyena tries to take any of our gentle midwife’s things, I will pull the rest of her rotten teeth out myself. You are not letting her come to the orchard for lunch, are you? She will eat everything!”
Bibi-Khanoom started laughing under her chador, muffling the sounds as she said, “My God, Ghamar, you are a mean woman.”
Ghamar was taken aback and said, “I am not mean, Aunt Bibi! I am honest!”
Bibi-Khanoom straightened her face and leaned into her niece and said, “They are coming to lunch and you will be nice to them. Now, let’s go. I need to get back and help Mirza set up.”
Mirza had spent a harrowing morning in the kitchen preparing lunch alone. He had made gheimeh polo, the traditional funeral stew, from lamb, yellow split peas, and dried limes. But he had made too much rice. He decided to also use it for a zereshk polo ba morgh. Bibi-Khanoom loved zereshk polo ba morgh. He lifted the lid of the giant pot and smelled the saffron, the pistachios, the barberries. It was perfection. The rice was fluffy, the scent of butter from the tahdig was unburned, and the chicken was roasted and juicy.
Mirza was beside himself.
That morning, he had gone into the chicken coop to grab two birds for the impromptu dish. When he did not see any red ribbons, he thought perhaps Jafar had taken Mina out somewhere. It was only after he had beheaded and defeathered the birds that he realized that one of them had nail varnish on its claws. He panicked and ran into the coop and found Mina’s red ribbon on the straw of an empty brooding patch. He had killed Mina. He was sure of it. Guilt-stricken, he tied the red ribbon around another fluffy white hen and placed it back in the coop.
Through the open window, he heard Bibi-Khanoom and Ghamar-Khan—he always dropped the feminine “oom” when thinking of her—approaching the house. His lower lip quivered as soon as the women entered the kitchen. Bibi-Khanoom saw the pained look on his face and ran over to him and said, “Mirza-jan, what is it? What happened?”
“I killed Mina.”
Bibi-Khanoom looked confused.
“Jafar’s chicken,” said Mirza, gently.
She shook her head, claiming it was all right, today was a hard day for everyone. Neither of them noticed Jafar standing in the doorway, his face stained with tears. When they saw him, he turned and ran off. “Jafar-jan! I’m so sorry! Please! We’ll get you another one!” Mirza and Bibi-Khanoom called after him.
Mirza and the women set up the platform for lunch as the family arrived. Akbar-Agha walked ahead with his hands clasped behind his back, followed by Sekeneh, who was held up by her two daughters, stopping every few steps to whimper. Shazdehpoor was last, walking shoulder to shoulder with Mohammad, who kept throwing uncomfortable glances at Sekeneh.
Bibi-Khanoom noticed that the mullah and Jamsheed were not with them. “Where is Habib-Agha and Jamsheed?” she asked her husband.
“They had a prior engagement.”
“I see.”
There was a silence in which both thought the same thing. Habib had stopped coming to the Friday lunches for some time now. It was the final break from his former life. He was now solely a cleric in all of his relations. Bibi-Khanoom turned to her husband and said, “Well, Mirza made a lovely zereshk polo ba morgh out of Jafar’s pet chicken.”
Akbar-Agha started laughing and Bibi-Khanoom playfully slapped him on the arm and said, “Akbar! Stop it. Jafar is devastated. He’s hiding in the coop.”
Sekeneh and her daughters sat on one side of the sofreh for the lunch in honor of the midwife. Shazdehpoor and Mohammad sat on the other, next to Bibi-Khanoom and Ghamar. Akbar-Agha had made a plate with just the barberry rice and yogurt. He excused himself from the sofreh and headed into the chicken coop. Sekeneh buried herself inside her giant black chador. Bibi-Khanoom looked at her and said, “Sekeneh-jan, eat something. You need your strength.”
“I can’t,” Sekeneh whimpered, “I’m too upset.”
Ghamar sucked her teeth. Bibi-Khanoom pinched her leg and continued to address Sekeneh, “Please, Sekeneh-jan, for me. I insist.”
Sekeneh broke into a quiet sob and dug into the platters of stew, yogurt, herbs, and pickled vegetables, even managing to scoop up a good portion of the tahdig as she cried. “For you, Bibi-Khanoom! For the midwife, God rest her soul!” she said, through a mouthful of food.
Ghamar’s nostrils flared. She wanted so desperately to say something scorching to Sekeneh, but her aunt’s relentless pinching held her back.
Akbar-Agha opened the door to the chicken coop. He saw his son hunched over Mina’s brooding patch. He had taken the ribbon off the impostor chicken and shooed her away. Akbar-Agha set the plate down next to Jafar. He pointed to the plate and said, “I brought you some rice and yogurt. Will you eat?”
Jafar shook his head no.
Akbar-Agha bent down and said, “May I sit here with you?”
Jafar nodded yes.
Akbar-Agha sat back and took his worry beads out of his pocket and held them out to his son. Jafar looked up at his father wide-eyed. Akbar-Agha nodded at the boy and Jafar too
k them in his hands. He had never held the worry beads before but had seen his father flick them every day from the time he could remember. He started to flick the beads slowly at first, then picked up his pace, falling into a rhythm. Mirza opened the door of the coop, startling them both, and said, “Akbar-Agha, it’s the telephone.”
Akbar-Agha knew exactly what the call was about and jumped up. He followed Mirza back to the house. Shazdehpoor followed his uncle with his eyes as Akbar-Agha went into the house. He watched him through the window talking and nodding on the telephone. Akbar-Agha hung up the receiver and came out on the deck. He looked straight at Shazdehpoor, who was now standing, and said, “They have released him. He’s on the train heading home.”
PARIS
V
This late in the afternoon, hordes of Belleville residents spilled out of the metro onto the streets. Shazdehpoor stiffly moved through them on Boulevard de Menilmontant, shooing the more aggressive passersby with his lion’s-head walking stick. Believing the old man was blind, most of them apologized. Near the entrance to Père Lachaise, the crowds changed from determined locals to meandering tourists. The famed gate was supported by two pillars with Latin inscriptions. As was his custom, Shazdehpoor stopped to read the one on the left. Spes illorum immortalitate plena est. “Their hope is full of immortality.”
Shazdehpoor entered the gates and walked along the tree-lined main path of the cemetery, comforted by the murmur of birds and hushed human voices.
He had visited here more times than he could remember. It was the one place in this city where he felt at home. In 1979, not too long after he had arrived, he had first come to the cemetery to visit the grave of Sadegh Hedayat, one of his own countrymen.
The tombstone of Sadegh Hedayat, made of polished onyx, was almost identical to Saba’s. The first time Shazdehpoor saw it, he was overcome with the memory of his dead wife. Now he studied Hedayat’s name engraved in Persian calligraphy. The two dots over the last letter were encircled by a line in the shape of an abstract owl in homage to his most famous book. On April 9, 1951, Hedayat had plugged all the doors and windows in his apartment on Rue Championnet in the Eighteenth Arrondissement. Then he turned on the gas. It would have been a brisk spring day, not unlike today. Shazdehpoor had seen the photograph of Hedayat’s corpse lying on the bed in his suit pants and a fine cotton shirt and sweater vest, his wire-rimmed glasses placed on the nightstand. Before he had fallen asleep, Hedayat had left one hundred thousand francs on the kitchen table to cover the cost of his burial, so as not to impose on others after he was gone.
The propriety of this final act moved Shazdehpoor. He recalled the first sentence in Hedayat’s The Blind Owl, “In life there are certain sores, which, like a kind of canker, slowly erode the soul in solitude.”
He looked around, suddenly self-conscious, and busied himself clearing the fallen leaves and dead flowers left behind by other mourners. It embarrassed him to see a gentleman’s grave in such disarray.
Not far from here was the grave of Frédéric Chopin, another stranger from a strange land in a strange place. Inside the tomb was Chopin’s body but not his heart. On his deathbed he had asked that it be taken back to Poland, his home.
Shazdehpoor closed his eyes. He breathed in the cool spring air and finally looked up into the canopy of trees, the sun cutting through the leaves in shards of light. He listened to the crying of blackbirds and starlings, the choruses of the moths and crickets, and in that moment he was in the orchard. He could smell the saffron and butter. He could hear the women’s voices from inside the kitchen, Ghamar’s being the loudest. He could see Madjid sitting with Akbar-Agha under the black walnut tree, his son in rapt attention as Akbar-Agha read from Attar’s The Conference of the Birds. Shazdehpoor knew the last stanza by heart and recited it in a whisper, “Come, you lost atoms, to your centre draw, / And be the eternal mirror that you saw: / Rays that have wander’d into darkness wide return, / And back into your sun subside.”
He looked down at his watch. It was nearing five. The lion’s head of his walking stick fell as he lifted it. He had had to glue it on many times before. He let the walking stick fall as well. He headed up Rue de la Roquette, at first fighting the swelling crowds heading to the river with no walking stick to protect him, no handcart to anchor him. Finally he let the movement of the people take him to the water, as if he had been headed there all along.
THE SON RISES
Madjid had not spoken to a soul since his release from prison. When the train pulled into the station, he descended the stairs and stood on the platform holding the plastic bag that the prison guards had given him. Through the crowd, he spotted Akbar-Agha standing alone by the station door. Their eyes met and he felt such relief. He walked over quickly, almost running. As soon as they kissed each other on both cheeks, he started apologizing. “Sir, I’m so sorry for all of the trouble I’ve caused.”
“What trouble?” Akbar-Agha said, “We’re all glad that you are all right.”
Madjid furrowed his brows.
“Are you? All right?”
Madjid nodded feebly, then looked away.
“The midwife is dead,” said Akbar-Agha. “We buried her today.”
“How is Bibi-Khanoom?”
“She’s very sad,” said Akbar-Agha, who led him toward the street. “And so is Mirza. By accident, he killed Jafar’s chicken.”
“He loved that chicken,” said Madjid. “He wrote her name on the wall next to her brooding patch with some nail polish he stole from Nasreen.”
“Mina,” said Akbar-Agha as he looked down at the bag in Madjid’s hand.
“The prison guards gave it to me,” said Madjid. “It’s a bag of pistachios and a box of sohan.”
“They gave you souvenirs?”
They looked at each other and burst out laughing. Madjid laughed so hard that it convulsed his body. He laughed until the strain of his laughter turned into sobs. Akbar-Agha stopped walking and took the boy into his arms and held him as he wept.
They walked homeward together along the main road. In the distance, the sun was setting and cast a golden glow on Old Naishapur. The adobe ruins were once universities, mosques, homes, and caravansaries. “Old Naishapur must have been a beautiful city,” said Madjid. “But now it’s just a few mounds of sand.”
“Buildings crumble. It’s what happened inside them that matters. Did I ever tell you the legend of the apothecary?”
“I wish you would.”
“It’s a true story. It happened right where those ruins are now.”
It was the year A.D. 1221 and the old city on the border of the eastern plateau was a kind of desert port for all who passed on their way west and beyond. Local and foreign travelers mixed on its narrow streets, jostling toward the universities, shops, mosques, and market squares. In the distance, the turquoise mountains glistened as the sun cast its glow on this city in the midst of its golden era.
It was here that an apothecary lived and worked. He had a small shop on the main street, which he inherited from his father, who had inherited it from his father. He spent every morning inside, the doors closed and shades pulled while he hunched over the counter measuring, in the smallest weight units, medicines for the townspeople. Once he had finished this quotidian task, he opened his doors for business. Patients came from every quarter of the city to pick up their elixirs. Newcomers lined up by the dozens to describe their ailments and order tonics, salves, and medication. The apothecary sat behind his counter and listened to their stories. One woman could not sleep at night, sometimes staying awake until she could not tell whether she was asleep or awake. One man complained about indigestion after eating any sort of dairy but could not eliminate the foods due to his love of yogurt. One young man nervously cleared his throat as he relayed a problem in his bedchamber with his new bride. Sweat beads formed on his forehead as he spoke about the horror and humiliation he faced each evening, wondering if he would be able to perform his duties. A young woman, looking n
ervously at the door, spoke in hurried tones about the pain in her womb each month and how she dreaded its arrival.
The apothecary had become quite adept at ministering to the sick. He knew exactly what to ask and what to give his patients. After speaking to the woman with insomnia, he asked her to describe a time in her long, varied life when she felt safe. She told him about sitting in her father’s garden, splitting open sweet lemons. And so he advised her to split one open whenever she could not sleep. The man with indigestion he told to savor one bite of yogurt followed with lemonade to break it down. He gave the young man with bedchamber troubles a ginger-laced ointment to rub on his upper lip—a scent so vigorous it quickened his blood. To the girl with aches in her womb, he gave a salve with herb vapors to rub on her belly, which relaxed her muscles and released the pain. Though he knew a cure for every human ailment, what remained a mystery to him was the suffering of the human spirit.
One day he closed his shop and went on a journey. He traveled east and west, north and south, meeting people from the ends of the earth, and listening to their stories as he crossed seven valleys over seven years. Upon his return, he opened his shop again as though it were any other day, ministering to the suffering residents of the town. In the evenings, he closed the doors and pulled the shades and by candlelight wrote, mostly in rhyme, the stories he had gathered over the years describing their daily struggles and yearnings, their unforeseen disappointments and unbearable losses. Some had perished under the weight of their misfortunes, some had sought the comfort of prayer and worship, some had tried to fill the void within them by crushing others, and some had destroyed the very thing they loved by small, repeated measure. But above all, he told the story of those who had the grace and courage to seek truth.
To Keep the Sun Alive Page 18