Homa had to leave Isfahan for several months to take care of a sick uncle. The first time I saw her after her return, she was walking around the hammam as usual with her white hair loose, her long breasts nearly reaching the thin cloth tied around her waist. After many kisses and greetings of delight, Naheed and I disrobed and gave her our clothes, which she piled into a basket for safekeeping. Then Homa scrubbed Naheed with a kisseh to remove the dead skin from her body and washed her hair, while I rested in one of the hammam’s warm pools.
When Homa was ready for me, she called out my name. Her round face and white hair were illuminated by a beam of light that entered the hammam from oval windows in the roof. As I walked naked out of the darkness to the tap where she was crouched, Homa’s eyes widened with surprise.
“How you have changed!” she said.
“Things are so different here in the city,” I mumbled.
“No, that’s not what I meant,” said Homa. She pulled me into the light. “Look at you!” she said in a loud voice.
Naheed looked up from where she was soaking, and several women who were bathing nearby stared at me, too. My body was exposed in the sunlight streaming down from above. I tried to bend over at the waist to shield myself, but Homa wouldn’t let me.
“Last time I saw you, you looked like a little girl,” said Homa. “You had almost nothing here,” she said, poking the top of my chest, “and nothing there,” slapping my hip. “Now see what has happened in only a few months!”
It was true. I was still as short as ever, and my hands and feet had remained the size of a child’s. But from neck to hips, my body had rounded in ways that surprised me. My breasts, which had been so small, were now like two ripe apples, and my hips curved like a melon.
“What is the reason, are you secretly engaged?”
“No,” I said, blushing. All I knew was that I had been eating more meat, cheese, and bread than ever.
“Well, soon you will be,” she said good-naturedly.
Homa turned me this way and that, peering at every curve. I flushed red all over. In the hammam, there was nowhere to hide.
“Your body is as perfect as a young rose,” Homa announced with finality. “You will soon be blessed with a husband, God willing, who will cherish every petal.”
Homa began singing an old marriage song from the south in a voice as beautiful as a nightingale’s:
Oh mountain girl among the flowers,
With hair like violets and tulips on your cheeks.
Listen to the song of the birds no more,
For a fine young shepherd has come to sing your heart away.
A few of the women in the hammam joined in, and before I knew it, a group of them were on their feet, stamping and clapping. Not knowing what else to do, I began singing, too. The women encouraged me as if it were my wedding day. As I sang, I stood tall and forgot my shame.
When the song was over, there was much laughter and teasing. “I hear those fine young shepherds know how to tend to their wives!” said one woman, smirking.
“Why shouldn’t they, they watch their flocks at it all day!” cried another.
It was Homa’s gift to me to sing out my maturity to all the women in the hammam, who might know of a suitable husband. She was also showing me that I had something worth offering.
“Now you are one of us,” Homa said with approval, “except for a few details that you will learn about soon.” As the women in the hammam settled back into their bathing routines, she pulled me close and began scrubbing my back with the kisseh. She looked over at Naheed, whose body was still long and thin like a cypress tree. “Whatever you have been eating, Naheed should be eating, too,” she said.
Naheed’s eyes were closed, and she didn’t reply. I couldn’t tell if she was asleep or just pretending.
Why is it that we always think our neighbor’s chicken must be tastier than our own goose? For the rest of that afternoon, it didn’t bother me that Naheed’s skin was so white, her hair so curly, and her eyes so emerald-green.
AS MY REWARD for helping him with the dangling gems carpet, Gostaham had promised to show me a rare and wonderful rug, and one day he instructed me to meet him at the royal workshop after the last call to prayer to see a carpet that would be cherished for centuries to come. I could not imagine such a treasure: The rugs in my village were used until they frayed and were ground into dust.
I walked through Four Gardens right after the last call to prayer. People were streaming out of the Image of the World, for that call marked the end of the day. The hawkers in the square had loaded up their wares and were heading home. I passed a man with a cargo of unripened almonds, which I loved. The almond flesh was as soft as cheese, but more delicate.
I found Gostaham in the workshop I had visited previously, the one with all the looms. It was silent and empty of workers.
“Salaam,” I said, looking around. “Where has everyone gone?”
“Home,” said Gostaham. “Follow me quickly.”
He led me through room after room of carpets in various stages of completion. At the end of a long hallway, we reached a door bolted with a thick metal lock shaped like a scorpion. Looking around to make sure no one was near, Gostaham pulled a key out of his tunic and unlocked it. He lit two small oil lamps and handed me one of them. In the soft light, I could make out a large rug on the loom.
We approached it together, holding our lamps before us. “Look closely,” he said, holding the light to the surface of the rug. “Eight men have been working on it for a year, and it is only one-quarter completed.”
The carpet was already as tall as I was, but it was to be four times my height when finished. It had nearly ninety knots per radj, which made the design as detailed as a miniaturist’s drawing. Horsemen dressed in orange and green silk tunics, with white and gold turbans, pursued antelope and gazelle. Striped tigers and wild asses wrestled together like cousins. Musicians played their lutes. Celestial birds preened, displaying their jewel-bedecked tails. The creatures and humans looked alive, they were so true to nature. It was the finest rug I had ever seen.
“Who could ever afford such a costly rug?” I asked.
“It is for the Shah himself, to decorate his personal rooms,” said Gostaham. “It embodies all that is finest in our land—the softest silk, the richest dyes, and the best designers and knotters. This carpet will last long after you and I, and the children of our children, are dust.”
I peered more closely at the rug, holding my lamp well away from it. A figure seated near a cypress tree caught my eye.
“How do they capture a man so well?” I asked.
“It is not so much his figure, but rather his face, that requires skill of the highest order,” said Gostaham. “The other knotters bow to specialists when it is time to make a man’s eye. Otherwise, a face might look distracted, vacant, or even malicious.”
“What do you think of the colors?” I asked Gostaham.
“They are what is best in a rug that excels above others,” he said, with a teasing smile that I didn’t understand at first. “Look how the sparkling gold lightens the density of the pattern. Notice in particular how the dull tones—the faded green, the humble beige, the pale blue—emphasize the beauty of the more brilliant colors, just as the female peacock highlights the male’s more dazzling plumage.”
“The choices are remarkable,” I replied. “Whose work is it?”
“My own,” replied Gostaham, and we both had a good laugh.
After that, we looked at Fereydoon’s rug, which was almost finished. The gems in its design glimmered in the light of our lamps as if they were real stones. Gostaham had set each one of them off with thin lines of color, just as a jeweler separates gems with gold or silver. The carpet looked very delicate and feminine, I thought, compared to the Shah’s hunting rug.
“It is even more beautiful than your design,” said Gostaham, as if I had done it all myself. His generosity knew no bounds.
As we left the works
hop, I felt a twinge of sorrow. Had I been a boy, I might be working as one of the apprentices at Gostaham’s side, learning all the techniques he knew so well. I thought back with envy to the young knotters I had seen in the workshop on my last visit. They could devote themselves all day to their learning, while I had to work for long hours in the kitchen before turning my attention to carpet making. Yet I knew I had more privileges than most girls, for Gostaham had taken me under his care and helped me improve at my craft. For that I was grateful every day.
I RETURNED HOME elated. Gostaham had shown me a pearl that few eyes were ever permitted to see; and just a few days before, Homa had praised my new womanliness at the hammam. For the first time since my father had left us, I felt full of hope.
Passing through the courtyard, I stopped to look at my rug and saw my work in a new light. The boteh design was fine: Gostaham had seen to that. But I worried that I had done a poor job choosing the colors. I had once seen Gostaham looking at the rug with an odd expression, as if he had tasted something sour. Although he had not commented on my choices, he had told me several times that he would help me select the colors for my next carpet. Now I was sure I knew why. I had chosen each color for its beauty rather than how well it worked with the others.
Why hadn’t I asked for Gostaham’s help? I had been so eager to press forward, and so intoxicated by all the colors available, that I had leapt ahead. I hadn’t understood that a design of such intricacy demanded a more masterful approach to choosing hues. I could hardly sleep that night. While the stars were still shining, I arose and looked at my carpet again. The colors were not only bad, they were at war. I had an urge to strip the rug off the loom and begin again.
What had been good enough in my village was laughed at here. Ever since we had arrived in Isfahan, I had been reminded of my humble origins. Unlike a wealthy child of the city, I had not learned to read and write, to enrobe myself like a flower, or to behave with courtly courtesy. I wanted to shine as bright as anyone in Isfahan, the only city worth the title “half the world.” If my first carpet showed how much I had learned, perhaps I could escape the ill effects of the comet and set myself and my mother on the perfumed path of good fortune.
I had never heard of anyone starting a rug over. I could almost hear my father’s voice telling me not to do it, for I had already completed thousands of knots. But then I thought about how I had gone to Ibrahim’s dye house to discover the secret of the turquoise dye and made a carpet that had delighted the eyes of strangers, even though my parents had at first disapproved. I thought about how I had borrowed Gostaham’s pen and drawn a design that had resolved his quandary, even though he yelled at me for touching his things.
Filled with the same fierce desire as I had felt on those other occasions, I grabbed the sharp knife I used for slashing wool and began cutting the rug off the loom, string by string. Each one went slack as I released it. The thousands and thousands of knots I had made began to lose their shape; the very surface of the carpet warped and wobbled. When Gostaham arises, I thought, I’ll admit my error in choosing the colors right away. I’ll ask him for help, and then I’ll make a rug he’ll be proud of.
Before the first light of morning, I had removed the rug and started to restring the loom with cotton thread. Gordiyeh was the first person to see what I had done. She was bringing a large jar of sour cherry jam from the storerooms to the kitchen when she saw the empty loom and the ruined rug. She screamed, dropping the jar, which cracked and spilled its sticky contents around her feet, forming a deep red pool that looked like blood. Within seconds, the servants were all rushing into the courtyard. I stood rooted near the loom, quaking.
“Crazy!” Gordiyeh shouted. “You are crazy like that madman of the desert, Majnoon! What were you thinking?”
There was a big commotion as everyone tried to understand what had happened. Ali-Asghar bent down to ask Taghee, the errand boy, for information. Shamsi rushed to Gordiyeh’s side to ask if she needed a whiff of rose water to revive herself. Cook put her hands on either side of her head as if she were at a funeral. Gostaham hurried into the courtyard and stared at the carpet, which sagged on the ground as if broken. He looked from me to the carpet and back again, disbelief in his eyes.
My mother arrived in a panic, patting her scarf into place on her head. “What has happened?” she asked in a pleading voice.
No one even looked at her. “You village idiot!” Gordiyeh yelled at me.
Only then did she turn to my mother, appealing for an explanation, but my mother stood dumbfounded when she realized what I had done.
“Do you have any idea how much wool you’ve wasted—how much wool and how much work? Are you trying to destroy this household?” asked Gordiyeh, hitting her chest over and over with the palm of her hand.
“We take them in, and they try to ruin us! Why? Why has God put this burden on us? Tell me why!” Gordiyeh demanded of her husband.
Her words chilled my bones.
Gostaham turned to me with anger in his eyes. “Explain yourself,” he commanded.
He was the one person I had hoped to please. I could hardly force words out of my throat.
“The colors were bad,” I said haltingly. I put my hands to my flushed face, trying to hide myself.
Gostaham didn’t contradict me. “Your eyes were dazzled after last night, which is what happens to novices. But now you have destroyed months of work! Why didn’t you ask me first?”
“I humbly beg your pardon,” I whispered, for I still could not find my voice. “I did it because I thought I could make a better one.”
“Of course you could make a better one,” he said. “But why didn’t you stop to think that you might sell the first one and make the second one superior?”
“What a fool!” exclaimed Gordiyeh.
I cringed at that word. They were right; I should have thought of that, but I had been too excited that morning, possessed by the thought that I could do better. Now I could hardly believe what I had done. I stood abjectly by the loom, suffering even more under the pitiless gaze of the servants, who stared at me with scorn and disbelief.
My mother threw herself on her knees and reached forward to kiss Gordiyeh’s feet, her black sash trailing in the jam.
“Get up!” said Gordiyeh, with annoyance in her voice.
My mother arose, her arms outstretched in a plea. “Please pardon my wayward daughter,” she said. “I’ll pay you for the wool. I’ll brew extra medicines and sell them to neighbors. My daughter just wanted to make something pleasing. She has always been that way—sometimes she loses her reason.”
I hadn’t known that before she said it, but it was true. I stood there, shamed by my own inability to see the difference between a good idea and a calamitous one.
“Loses her reason? What reason?” asked Gordiyeh, hitting her own chest again.
Gostaham grimaced and pressed his hands together, as if he were trying to hold himself back. “Such a reckless action cannot go unpunished,” he said angrily. “From this moon until the next, you will not leave the house. You will do whatever my wife says. You will not even draw a breath without her permission.”
I knew better than to speak unless asked a question. I kept my eyes averted, my face burning with shame.
“First she goes to the polo games,” said Gordiyeh, “and now this. Why do we even give such people shelter?” she continued, as though talking to herself. My mother shivered, her worst fears hanging in the air. Gordiyeh tried to walk away but couldn’t move. She looked down in horror. Clumps of jam had pasted her feet to the ground. She kicked off her shoes and continued barefoot to her rooms, muttering, “Imbecile!” as she left.
Gostaham followed, trying to console her. The servants began cleaning the jam and broken crockery, whispering together about the waste. “That was a lot of work,” said Cook, who had made the jam herself.
“When will breakfast be sweet again?” asked Ali-Asghar sadly, for we all knew that Gordiyeh wouldn’t bu
y any for our bread.
I followed my mother, head bowed, until we reached our room. “A potato is smarter,” I heard Cook saying.
“It’s her bad star,” added Shamsi.
In our room, my mother didn’t look at me or berate me, even though I knew she thought I had lost my reason. She put her chador over her head and began praying, touching her head to the mohr— clay tablet—she had placed on the ground. After praying, she sat on her heels and called for help. “Please, God, protect us. Please, God, don’t let us become beggars in the street. I call on you, Ya, Imam Hossein, Ya, Hazrat-e-Ali, you who know what it means to be martyred, please save my daughter, who has made a child’s mistake.”
I wished I had considered my mother’s concerns about our future before I had removed the rug from the loom. When, at last, she finished her appeals, I crawled over to where she sat, staring straight ahead.
“Bibi,” I said, touching her arm. “I beg your forgiveness with my whole heart. If I had known how angry everyone would be, I never would have made such a bad decision.”
My mother’s arm was stiff, and she didn’t look at me. She moved away from my grasp. “How many times have your father and I told you not to be rash?” she asked. “How many times?”
I sighed. “I know,” I said.
My mother looked up to the ceiling as if appealing to God for a better daughter. “You don’t understand how lucky you have been,” she replied. “But this time, I am certain that your luck has ended.”
“Bibi, I was only trying to make it better,” I whined.
“May your throat close!”
I turned my face to the wall and sat there, my eyes dry, my agony all inside. I would have given the life that pulses through my heart to relieve my mother’s suffering. She went right back to praying out loud, as if the stream of her words could wash away my error.
The Blood of Flowers Page 11