by Gina nahai
Qamar the Gypsy had traveled east, toward Rasht, on the Caspian Coast. She crossed the mountains around Tabriz,
climbing high on treacherous roads where only bandits dared travel, across valleys so deep they swallowed entire caravans. Around Rasht the jungles were lush and dense, alive with the smell of sweet rain, roaring with the cries of panthers and leopards. Beyond them, in the flatland bordering the Caspian Sea, were the rice fields—light green and gold and silver at dawn. She stopped. She had heard the voice of Esther the Soothsayer.
“There is a boy in Juyy Bar with agate eyes," Esther said. “Find him. Give him children of light and laughter."
Qamar the Gypsy found her way to Tehran, and then to the holy city of Qom, where the greatest of mullahs received religious training. There she met a caravan of pilgrims and followed them south. The pilgrims were mostly poor men, traveling on foot or riding emaciated camels and donkeys. On their backs they each carried a large canvas bag with the remains of a relative or friend who had asked to be buried in the holy Muslim cities of Najaf and Karbala. There were shrines in those cities—consecrated places where for centuries the dead had been buried. They were placed tier on tier upon each other—to wait for the day when Allah would descend to earth and carry them all to heaven.
Qamar the Gypsy followed the pilgrims from a great distance. They were men on a holy mission and would not allow the presence of a Jew to spoil the purity of their vows. They walked in the early morning and late afternoon, resting at midday when the sun was too hot, and at night when the desert froze. Afraid to be seen by them, Qamar hid all day, and followed their trail in moonlight, guided by the sound of camel bells and the voice of Esther the Soothsayer. Even then she could smell the corpses that the pilgrims carried in their sacks. The laws of Persia and the Ottoman Empire required that bodies be buried for a year before being transported, to reduce the danger of spreading plague. But in the land of Islam, only the law of God was observed. The men carried the corpses fresh. To keep them clean, the pilgrims washed them in streams and rivers where others drank. To contain the smell of rot, they placed green apples in the sacks. They stopped in every village to buy new apples, and gave the old ones to beggar children who bit into them gratefully.
Noah the Gold whistled in the dark. He stood outside the teahouse late at night after his customers were gone, and whistled a tune he heard inside his head. The neighbors were terrified.
“Stop that sound," they screamed. “The ghosts of darkness will hear your tune and come to strangle us all."
Noah the Gold knew about the demons who responded to whistles in the dark. Still, the tune in his head was clear and compelling, and he whistled it until he had summoned Qamar the Gypsy.
She was small and thin, with a tiny waist and the feet of a porcelain doll. She had dark skin, tear-shaped eyes, and a halo of reddish-brown hair that flew about her like a wild sunset. She came to Juyy Bar without money or a friend— running, she claimed, from a massacre in the Tabriz ghetto, at the heart of the province of Azerbaijan. She spoke a language that was a mixture of Persian and Turkish, and understood little of the dialect in Juyy Bar. She arrived when the weather was gentle, and on her footsteps she brought the cold air of Tabriz—turning the summer in Esfahan into a winter of blizzards and frozen snow.
“I have run before the Plague," she told Noah with her voice that was as cool and soothing as the wind she had brought, "from beyond the mountains of Elburz, and on my way I have seen a world of wonders."
Noah the Gold took Qamar into his room and did not let her go. He kept her in his own light, clung to her as if for every breath. He touched her skin, inhaled the smell of pine trees and rain in her hair. Qamar's hands were calm and undemanding, her eyes never probed, her tongue— patient and calm—left a cool trace everyplace it touched. Weeks later, enraged at the scandal of a man and woman sleeping together without being married, Yehuda the Just forced his way into Noah's house and performed the rites of marriage between him and Qamar. Even then, they would not stop holding each other. They made love at noon, in a darkened room with the wind howling at their doorstep. At night, when the house was calm, they sat in the moonlight and talked with their faces close to each other. Against the columns of red mud that surrounded the courtyard, their shadows moved softly—like two figures dancing to a silent tune that only they could hear—and all those who saw them then believed they were creatures of a charmed life.
In the summer of 1834, Fath Ali Shah went to Es-fahan. One night in the palace, he stood surrounded by his Royal Dressers, donning a bejeweled gown that he would wear at dinner. Suddenly he dropped to the ground.
Twenty years after he had faced Esther the Soothsayer in the Hall of Mirrors of the Palace of Roses, Fath Ali Shah died. He left behind three hundred sons, and more than a thousand grandchildren.
Immediately upon the Shah's death, war broke out in Tehran: the Shah's three hundred sons all claimed a right to the throne. Each contender was backed by a different segment of the aristocracy, or another foreign power. Fath Ali Shah's Crown Prince, Abbas Mirza, had predeceased his father. Abbas's son, Muhammad Khan, was at last pushed at the throne with the intervention of the British military mission in Azerbaijan. The Russians, too, gave the King their blessing; he was a feeble man—in body and spirit alike— and he promised not to resist the foreigners in their endeavors in Persia.
Muhammad Shah's Prime Minister, Hajji Mirza Aghassi, recognized that the King had inherited his grandfather's belief in mystical powers, and immediately set out to use them for his own advantage: instead of ordering a new search for Esther the Soothsayer, Aghassi indoctrinated the Shah in the principles of Sufism, and from then on spent most of his time performing spiritual exercises with the King. The late Abbas Mirza's Vizir, Qa'im Maqam, recognized the danger of a ruler who had lost touch with reality and the world, and tried to warn the King against the ruse of his minister. He wrote letters to Muhammad Shah, lecturing at him as if he were still a schoolchild, enumerating all of the nation's ills without adding even a flavoring of pleasant lies. He told the Shah that he was making a fool of himself before the entire nation, that the two men at the head of the nation—the Shah and his Prime Minister—were being called ''the two dervishes of Persia." He claimed that Aghassi had indoctrinated the Shah in the path of asceticism only to render him powerless. Muhammad Shah was annoyed and angered by the letters: Qa'im Maqam, he believed, must understand a king's prerogative to see nothing but beauty, and hear nothing but pleasantries; Maqam had written the letters to torture the Shah and take away his peace of mind.
Muhammad Shah summoned his father's Vizir to a garden in Tehran, and had him strangled. Freed of the only voice of reason that had disturbed his peace, Muhammad Shah then continued his practice of Sufism till he died over a decade later, in the summer of 1848.
In 1836, Qamar the Gypsy became pregnant. She gave birth on a cold night, in the midst of a snowstorm that killed dozens. The winter she had brought with her from Tabriz had lingered indefinitely and became more fierce with time. Every day, children froze at their mothers' nipples and young men left home never to return. Someone found them late at night—corpses shrouded in ice.
All that time, Qamar had never felt the cold. When she was ready to give birth, she walked into the courtyard, and the warmth of her feet melted the snow. She went to the basement where years ago Esther the Soothsayer had borne Noah, and took out the large copper tray that all women used. She filled the tray with ashes from the bottom of the coal stove, then placed it on the ground next to the pool. The water was frozen, the frogs trapped inside. She sat above the tray, one knee planted on either side, and suffered her pain in silence.
It was night, but Qamar the Gypsy had sun in her eyes. At dawn, the birth occurred. From between her legs Qamar pulled an infant—a boy with white skin and golden hair and the eyes of the sailors, long ago in the nights of Bandar 'Abbas, who had first thrown the seeds of life into Esther the Soothsayer. A moment later another head app
eared—a girl's this time, with the same features, but who neither cried nor trembled like her brother. They lay on the ashes, glowing as snow fell on their naked skin.
Spring arrived in Juyy Bar. Qamar the Gypsy had named her son Moshe, and her daughter Leyla. She bathed them in the sun every day and combed their hair with her fingers wet from the morning dew. She let them sleep on the porch, where all the neighbors came to see them. She told them stories about the world outside the ghetto. When they could walk, she held their hands and took them to the edge of Juyy Bar, there at the gates where the desert lay unconquered, and gave them the yearning to leave:
“You must walk someday," she told them, "a thousand miles, a thousand days. You must walk and never stop until you have found your freedom."
They grew up. When they were eight years old, Moshe ran home one day from the neighbor's yard and called his father:
"Is it true," he asked, "you can make gold?"
Noah the Gold went pale. He understood that the days of his son's contentment had come to an end. In Moshe's eyes, he could see the same longing that had ruined Mullah Mirza.
He denied the story. Moshe would not believe him. He took the boy outside Mullah Mirza's basement.
"Look," Noah told him. "There's no trace of gold anywhere."
Still, every day as he watched his son grow, Noah the Gold saw Moshe tortured by disbelief.
Moshe became obsessed with the desire for wealth, suddenly conscious of his poverty, aware of his lowly predicament as a Jew. He realized that most Jews were ugly—small and unformed for lack of proper nutrition, carrying the scars and ills of their fathers as they intermarried and perpetuated their unhappiness. He realized that they were dirtier than Muslims, that their homes were more crowded, that they showed little mercy to one another. He felt humiliated by the restrictions imposed on him by Shiite law, but instead of blaming the mullahs, he blamed the Jews for claiming him as one of them. He understood that as long as he was a Jew, he would never have respect or money or peace, but instead of accepting his predicament, he dreamt about converting to Islam. When he was twelve years old, he learned the story of Esther the Soothsayer: the same children who had told him of Mullah Mirza now swore that Noah the Gold's mother had been unveiled and punished for adultery. For weeks after that, Moshe refused to leave the house.
He stayed at home, and slowly, as if to avenge himself against Noah the Gold, he slipped into a fever so deep his skin blistered from the heat. One morning Noah the Gold saw Moshe wiping his eyes and looking around as if to escape a bright light. He touched the boy's forehead, and drew his hand away in shock.
"Quick," he yelled at Qamar. "Help me."
They put Moshe on Noah's back, and carried him all the way to the house of Yehuda the Just, where there was a water-storage tank. They tied a rope around Moshe's waist and lowered him into the water, right through the hatch where years ago the rabbi's only son had slipped and drowned. Moshe stayed there all day, shivering. The water was dark and stale, full of dirt and the carcasses of animals that had lain in the dry gutters of the ghetto, decomposing in the sun until twice a week the mullahs opened the dams and allowed Esfahan's river into Juyy Bar. Then everyone ran to the gutters and filled their buckets and gourds. Those who had storage tanks channeled the gutter into their home and filled the tanks. In times of hardship, when the mullahs refused the river to the Jews, they sold the water in the tank for the price of gold.
Moshe sat still, and listened to the ghosts that inhabited the tank—demons, he had heard when he was younger, one-eyed giants who ate children. He was not afraid of them. He sat on the narrow platform under the hatch and let water cover him up to his chin. Away from his home and his torment, he was safe. He could pull his knees into his chest, gather up the darkness around him, and sleep.
The demons woke him.
"You have the fever of madness," they said with voices that were deep and slow and threatening. "When the light returns, the rabbi will come for you. He will take you to a doctor and leech your blood."
They were all around him, their shapes changing with every movement of the water.
"You must run away. Leave before he arrives."
Moshe stood up. The demons disappeared. There was only darkness, and the smell of rotting cats.
"Call a leecher." Moshe recognized the voice of Yehuda the Just.
The sun burst in Moshe's eyes. He was lying on the ground, outside the tank. People stood around him—tall, threatening. The rabbi's wife bent over to look at him. She had an air of decay about her, as if age had eaten away at her bones. For years now she had not moved from the courtyard of her house. She sat there day and night—guarding, she said, against death, which had come once when she was not looking and taken her son.
"He has the fever of madness," Yehuda the Just was telling his wife. "He must be leeched, drained of the evil blood that has flooded and impaired his brain and caused the fever."
Moshe panicked. He pushed himself up against the light, blinded by the white spots that glared at him in every corner. He stood up and began to run. The rabbi reached for him, but too late. Moshe went through the courtyard and out the door. As he ran, the water from his clothes evaporated in the sun and rose around him like fog.
He went through the alley, Yehuda chasing him, and tried to find his way home. Still blind, he pushed against people on the street, trampled the vendors' merchandise.
"Mama!" he cried as he ran.
Yehuda the Just was behind him and getting closer.
"Stop the child!" he screamed, and Moshe realized he was about to be caught. He ran faster, but he had lost his way. There were others chasing him now—children, their faces distorted by the light, their teeth gleaming.
"Mama!" He ran faster. The children surrounded him. They were singing a riddle.
"Mad, mad, Moshe has gone mad."
"Mama." The light was unbearable.
He tripped over something, almost fell, caught himself.
"Mad, mad, Moshe has gone mad."
He peered though the white spots. He saw the children—their faces monstrous, their eyes protruding, their fingers long, almost touching him. Yehuda the Just caught up.
The circle turned and turned until it became a single whirlwind of light and consumed Moshe.
Moshe woke up in the dark. There were noises in the room, the soft murmur of a woman, the smell of wild rue burning. He pulled his body up a short distance, enough to lean his head against the wall and look. At eye level, on the ground, there was coal burning in the small brazier that served as a heater during the winter. Qamar the Gypsy stood next to the box, chanting in a monotone. Yehuda the Just had brought Moshe back, and he was a prisoner in his parents' room.
"It's the fever of madness," he had claimed, pleased to find Moshe ill, vindicated in his prediction—made the day he and Leyla were born—that Esther the Soothsayer's grandchildren would meet nothing but disaster and disease. "You must call a leecher."
Qamar and Noah had resisted at first. But Moshe's fever had only burned stronger, and they realized they were about to lose him. They sent for the leecher, but now, in a last attempt to save her son from the torture of the cure, Qamar was performing the rites of "beating the evil eye."
She bent over the brazier, and threw a fistful of wild rue on the coal.
"Damn the Devil," she said, and in the instant when the seeds popped in the heat, the orange glow of the fire licked her face, leaving dark only the shadows under her eyes and her cheekbones, and the black hole inside her mouth where her teeth shone white.
She knelt on the floor, holding a raw egg in one hand, and reached into the coal box. With her bare fingers she drew tiny circles on the shell—to represent eyes. When she had covered the entire surface, she put the egg in the fire: if it burst, she would have managed to rid her son of the evil eye. She waited. The evil was stronger that Qamar's prayer. The egg remained intact.
She tried again, with another egg. She sang louder, drew more circles
on the shell, almost threw the egg into the fire. Still, nothing happened.
Just then someone knocked on the door—softly, as if in warning—and walked away. Moshe sat up, alarmed. Qamar the Gypsy touched his forehead to check the fever. Her fingers were ice-cold against his skin.
"The leecher is coming," she said. "Don't be afraid."
Moshe looked across the room, searching for help, finding no one. He heard footsteps in the courtyard.
One.
Two.
Three, and there was a pause—a split second in which Moshe realized the magnitude of the danger approaching.
One. Two. The leecher went by the pool.
He came closer to the door.
Up the steps.
He stopped.
Moshe grabbed his mother's hand. "Don't let him in."
His face was drenched in sweat. His eyes were pale, his skin gray. Crying, Qamar the Gypsy pulled her hand away— Moshe would never forgive her for this—and went to the door.
Lotf-Allah the Leecher stood in the frame. In one hand he held a whip. In the other he had a jar full of black leeches.
"Tie him," Lotf-Allah the Leecher ordered, pointing to Moshe on the floor. Two men came in from the courtyard to help. Under Lotf-Allah's command, they tied Moshe's wrists and ankles together, and stripped him of all his clothes. Moshe did not fight. He only cried—large tears of terror and anger that fell onto the bed and burned holes into
Qamar the Gypsy's heart. The room had filled with spectators. Lotf-Allah the Leecher began.
He picked up his whip and inhaled.
"Evil and foul spirits, beware. The master of souls has come to drive you to annihilation."
He struck the whip against the bare sole of Moshe's foot. He hit slowly at first, counting every stroke. Then he hit faster, faster, like the violent ticking of a furious clock. He screamed when he brought the whip down—a cry of fury and triumph that shook the house and robbed Moshe of his every defense.
"Oh, you misled and possessed spirits! Get ready to be driven out of this child's body! Leave now!" He hit one last time. Blood splattered his face and shirt. Then all was silent.