by Gina nahai
Minutes passed. Sabrina's hand swelled and her face became gray. Realizing that the poison had entered Sabrina's blood, Peacock put her child on her back and ran to the house of the nearest doctor.
“A knife," the man called, but by then Sabrina's eyes were fading. He cut a hole around the bite and looked for the poison. It was too late. Sabrina was cold and still.
Peacock held Sabrina's corpse until the hardness of death had set in and the child's arms were petrified. At the burial she washed Sabrina, walked her into the grave, and covered her shroud with violets she had picked in the wild. Then she went home and nursed Heshmat's eyes.
''We should leave this town," she heard Heshmat whisper in the dark. "We should go where people don't die."
The next month they were gone.
They set out for Tehran in the summer of 1892. They traveled for weeks in the vast and unyielding desert, and along the way, many in their caravan fell ill and died from the heat. One morning they looked into the horizon and saw a stunted city without domes or minarets, surrounded by a deep moat and, beyond it, a mud wall. This was the capital of the Qajars, the city they had chosen over Esfahan—over Shiraz and Kashan and Yazd—to house their throne.
The wall around Tehran was pierced by arched gates decorated with tiles. Through the gates, Peacock's caravan entered a long stretch of sand broken only by a few ruined houses where no one lived. Tehran was dry and dusty and unfertile. Not far to the north, along the shore of the Caspian Sea, the land was lush and green and generous. But Tehran was cut off from the Caspian by the mighty range of the Elburz Mountains—the peaks so high they stopped precipitation and humidity from reaching the desert on the southern side of the mountain. Riding through the wasteland outside the capital, Peacock could see the snow that covered the Elburz year-round. It was here, thousands of years ago on this frozen mountain, that Arash the Archer had thrown the arrow that saved Persia.
Their caravan stopped in Tekkyeh—Tehran's central square, where four large thoroughfares crossed. Here a horse-drawn trolley provided public transportation for Muslims. Herds of livestock blocked most of the square as they passed through the city. Dozens of mules, camels, and donkeys, flocks of hens and turkeys muddled through the crowd of pedestrians. Veiled women rode alone. White-turbaned mullahs sat on padded saddles. Beggar children stopped every rider.
Peacock and Heshmat left the caravan and advanced on foot toward the Jewish ghetto. Away from the Tekkyeh, streets narrowed into winding lanes between long stretches of mud walls. They were unpaved, dusty, covered with garbage from all the homes, plagued with dogs that fought the beggars for trash. The air, trapped under the arched roof of the alley, sizzled with heat and the smell of putrefaction. There were no trees here, no gardens in sight.
Peacock and Heshmat found themselves lost in the crowd of vendors and children, of mullahs in brown robes and green turbans, of half-naked dervishes covered only with loincloths. There were Arabs in white robes, blue-eyed foreigners in strange attires and riding in fancy coaches. A gentleman in expensive clothes rode an Arabian mare. Behind him, a dozen servants guarded his fool, the madman he kept on hand—such as all gentlemen owned—to amuse him with his lunacy.
Soldiers with torn uniforms and no weapons sold rotten fruit on the streetcorner. Palace guards loitered in the shade of a wall, smoking opium and chewing dates.
Outside mosques, government buildings, and the homes of the rich gathered masses of beggars—many among them blind, crippled, or mad. In every district, thieves, murderers, and pimps had formed their own union, with designated areas of operation and religiously observed rules of conduct.
They found the Jews' ghetto. It was smaller than the Juyy Bar in Esfahan, less crowded. Its streets—paved with up to a foot of mud and garbage—were covered with arched roofs that retained heat in the summer and humidity in winter. Its houses, made of raw, unbaked clay, were cracked and lopsided and forever threatening to collapse in one of Tehran's violent quakes. But the ghetto was positioned at the center of town, exposed to Muslim quarters through six gates that were open except in times of approaching pogroms; closer to the Shah, the mullahs were less powerful, and the Jews safer.
It was almost dusk when Peacock and Heshmat set out to find a room. They knocked on people's doors and asked if they could rent a room on credit, or sleep in a courtyard until they had found a home. They went to the ghetto's main synagogue, then the two smaller ones. Even the rabbis turned them away.
"Go to the Pit," everyone said. "You can sleep there on the street."
The Pit was the ghetto's square, its slaughterhouse and open-air garbage dump. It was never cleaned; every time the Jews tried, the mullahs stopped them. Enclosed on all sides with shops and houses, the garbage was piled higher in some places than the structures around it. Here the poorest of the ghetto's vendors sold rotten fruit, stewed lamb's entrails, and lentil soup. The doors of all the houses were broken, the windows sealed with patches of cloth, the rooms crammed with people and disease. Outside, the sun baked the blood of slaughtered animals as flies devoured what little the butchers threw away. Dogs fought hungry children for scraps. Lice crawled up the legs of pedestrians.
Peacock stood at the edge of the Pit and held Heshmat.
"We should never have come."
It was almost dark. They haggled with a vendor about the price of a bowl of lentils, split the food in half, and ate quietly. All around them on the street, others were preparing to sleep. When the food was finished, Peacock spread an old chador on the ground, used her bag of fabrics as a pillow for herself and Heshmat, and sat next to her daughter, waiting for night to fall. Slowly the moon rose and the sounds of the ghetto faded as men returned to their homes and women gathered their children into their beds and around their fires. Forsaken by the day, the Pit-dwellers sat around the edge of the square—the moon painting fear onto their faces, the night awakening their sense of desperation—and stared at the mountain of waste that was their home. One by one they stopped fighting their shame, lay down their heads, and prayed for sleep. The more recent arrivals, like Peacock, refused to lie down. She was sitting up with her back against a wall, Heshmat's head in her lap, and she had just closed her eyes when she heard a cry.
"You there!"
Peacock looked up.
"You, there. Don't sleep yet."
From the other side of the square, an impeccable white cloud moved toward her across the darkness.
It was a woman, dressed in layers of white, her hair, dry as corn leaves, unbraided and long around her shoulders. When she came closer, Peacock saw that the woman was old, her face covered with a cake of white powder, her lips painted amber. "I am told you sell fabrics."
She smiled with the charm of a three-year-old.
"My name is Zilfa." She extended a hand to Peacock, who did not know what to do with it. "I embroider handkerchiefs, and I'm looking for white silk."
Zilfa the Rosewoman was her father's only child and the inheritor of all his money. She had been pretty—long ago, in the days of her youth, before age ate away at her strength. Her hair had been fiery red, her skin was white, and her eyes—she insisted until the day she died—took on an almost jade glow if she stood in the sun at the right angle in the right time of day.
She had had suitors from the time she was three—men lured at first by tales of her father's wealth and later by accounts of her own fair skin. Her father, Mirza Davood of
Tehran, had declared her engaged seven times before she reached the age of fifteen, but each time, Zilfa the Rose-woman had refused to marry the man he chose. She had let Mirza Davood sit through hours of negotiation and interview, allowed him to promise her hand, and then, days before the wedding, announced she was not pleased with the choice.
Mirza Davood was a respected man in his community. He was the wealthiest of all the merchants, more educated than all the rabbis together. He owned the larger of the two wells in the ghetto and, in times of drought, always gave water away for free. He
knew he should force Zilfa to marry the man of his choice—the son of the moneylender, for example, with the blond mustache and the long overcoat that made him look like a Cossack, or the handsome son of Salman the Scent Seller, who always smelled of his father's perfumes and bowed before Mirza Davood every time he came into the house. But Mirza Davood respected Zilfa's wishes and allowed her a say in matters concerning her future. He was an enlightened man, he explained to his wife every time she cursed him for his softness. He had studied Hebrew and Arabic and even three years of medicine in Baghdad. He could plead and reason with Zilfa, but he could not force her to marry against her will. He held on to his liberal views until Zilfa ruined her life and brought shame upon her parents.
A man came to stay at Mirza Davood's house—a Muslim, with a tall black horse and eyes that had known no sorrow. His name was Sardar Ali Khan—heir to the throne of the defunct Zand dynasty in Shiraz. He lived on a three-hundred-acre estate famous across Persia for its gardens and architecture. In his house there were forty-seven bedrooms, three ballrooms, each larger than the ghetto square, and a polo field. The ceilings and the walls were all hand-painted with miniature figures of legendary heroes and fairies. The stables kept three hundred sixty-five horses—one for Ali Khan to ride on each day of the year. Zilfa the Rosewoman saw her father's guest the first night, and determined that he alone was the man worthy of her hand.
“It's Ali Khan," she declared to Mirza Davood, “or it's no one."
Mirza Davood was a good Jew, a prayer leader at every Sabbath service and a scholar in Talmudic law. That his daughter could even speak of marrying outside her religion brought despair to his heart and made him realize he had failed in raising her. He told Zilfa that Ali Khan was already married—to his niece, whom he had loved since childhood— and to a dozen other, younger women whom the niece had hand-picked and brought to the harem. Zilfa was undaunted by the news.
"He must leave them all," she concluded. "I will not share my man with another."
Mirza Davood hit Zilfa across the mouth, then locked himself in prayer to atone for the violence. His wife sat in the courtyard of their house and threw fistfuls of dirt onto her face and hair. Zilfa the Rosewoman, meanwhile, planned her meeting with Ali Khan.
She must be direct, she decided, but also subtle. She must leave a strong impression, command undivided attention. She was aware of the risk she was taking. She thought it worthwhile.
She took a length of white silk and sewed a handkerchief with lace edges, and white roses in each corner. She dabbed the roses with perfume she had received from the son of Salman the Scent Seller. One morning she woke up early to braid her hair and paint her eyes. Sardar Ali Khan stepped into the courtyard to saddle his horse. Zilfa the Rosewoman walked out of her room unveiled and called his name. She went up to him, her face glowing in the first light of day, and gave him the handkerchief.
"A token of admiration," she said, and Ali Khan was so charmed he took a bow of gratitude. But he rode away from Tehran and never came back.
Zilfa the Rosewoman had gambled with her life and lost. She remained unveiled, and was banned from her father's house. Mirza Davood sent her to live in the Pit, in a one-room rectangular house with no windows, and a tiny yard where nothing was expected to grow. Zilfa the Rosewoman came to her new home with joy and optimism. Ali Khan, she insisted, would send for her soon. In the meantime, it was her intention to make her house beautiful.
She would sleep in the only room, she decided, and use the basement as a place to “practice the arts." In the yard she would make a garden and plant roses. The neighbors laughed at her; nothing grew in the Pit but weeds and garbage, they said. Zilfa the Rosewoman planted seeds in the garden, and watched them bloom in full color.
With the allowance she received from Mirza Davood, she hired a voice tutor and a painting teacher. Samira the Seamstress came in once a month to make Zilfa dresses out of thin, clinging fabrics. Zilfa the Rosewoman insisted on transparent sleeves and refused to wear veils. She sent to the bazaar once a month for creams and perfumes from Salman's shop. She sat in her rose garden every morning and brushed her hair in the sun. She removed the hair from her legs with the flame of a candle, applied pastes made of vegetables and rose petals to her face, rubbed her hands with lard, and put snake oil on her lashes to make them long. And she waited for Ali Khan to come.
She waited five years, ten, fifteen. By the age of thirty she had become conscious of her age. Frightened by the deterioration of her skin, she soaked her face in goat's milk that she hid guiltily from the hungry children in the Pit. She worked less and slept more, and asked the women in the Armenian quarter—for she would never admit weakness to the Jews—for remedies against old age.
“Sheep's semen," they told her. “Apply it to your skin twice a week."
Zilfa the Rosewoman was disgusted and outraged by the suggestion. She would devise her own medicine, she decided, and came up with new herbal masks and mud potions. She practiced laughing with her lips close together— to keep lines from appearing around her eyes. She slept with her head lower than her body—to keep the glow in her cheeks. She wrapped herself from chin to toes in a tight sheet designed to keep the skin from sagging.
At forty she gave in and sent a messenger to Shiraz, to ask about Sardar Ali Khan's intentions toward her. The messenger returned too soon; Ali Khan had died in the Plague of 1866. His sons were all grown and married. His grandchildren had taken over the house.
Zilfa the Rosewoman threw the messenger out and cried for seven days. Then she came out and tended her flowers.
At fifty she sent word to all her old suitors and announced her readiness for marriage. She woke up later now, hoping to postpone the moment when she saw the world and realized she was still alone. Leaving her bed, she rushed to cover her face with powder, painted her lips and her eyes, then sat in the garden and embroidered white silk handkerchiefs with roses on each corner. She sewed two dozen handkerchiefs a day, stacked them in neat piles at the corner of her basement, and told her visitors she was saving them for her dowry. A year later she had filled every inch of her basement with white handkerchiefs and was still shopping for silk.
"I will show you my samples first,” Peacock lied to Zilfa the Rosewoman, as she fumbled in her sack for the best of her pieces. "I want you to get an idea of the kind of merchandise I offer.” was conscious of the accent that marked her immediately as a stranger, trying to hide from Zilfa the faded scraps of fabric that dropped from the bag. She took out a green taffeta, part of a dress that had belonged to Mad Ma-rushka.
“This is an antique,” she told Zilfa the Rosewoman. “It belonged to royalty in Esfahan."
Zilfa the Rosewoman looked as if she had been insulted. She turned her head away from Peacock and forced a halfsmile.
"Thank you." She was already walking away. "Perhaps another time."
"Wait," Peacock called her. "I have more. That was not my good piece."
She emptied the bag on the ground and began to sort through the rags. Reluctantly, Zilfa stopped. She knew she had come to the wrong peddler.
"White," she reminded Peacock. "I only need white."
Peacock extended a piece of brown silk at her.
"Yes." Zilfa looked for a way out. "But I need white."
Peacock showed her a yellow, stained piece.
Zilfa the Rosewoman was about to protest, but she saw Peacock all flushed and flustered, and realized the extent for her need. She straightened the row of pearls around her neck and summoned patience.
"Where do you come from?" she asked, ignoring the fabric extended to her.
"Esfahan." Peacock was relieved to have stopped Zilfa. She pointed to Heshmat. "This is my daughter."
"Pretty girl," Zilfa remarked honestly. "But where is your man?"
The question surprised Peacock. For the first time in her life, she was among people who did not know her past.
"I don't have a man."
"Is he dead?"
Pea
cock was at a loss to explain.
"He's not dead. I left him."
Zilfa the Rosewoman raised her chin in disbelief.
"What do you mean, you left him? Do you mean he divorced you?"
"I mean I left him." Peacock was irritated and embarrassed.
"You ran away." Zilfa tried again. "He abused you and you ran to save your life."
Peacock stuffed the yellow fabric back into her bundle. She had lost interest in the sale. She wanted only to distance herself from Solomon's memory.
"He married someone else," she said. "He fell in love with a thirteen-year-old girl and brought her into my house, so I took my children and left."
She motioned to Heshmat that they should leave. She straightened her chador on her head, tightened the cheap metal clasp that held together the corners of her veil behind her head, and was about to walk away when Zilfa stopped her. She reached over casually and lifted Peacock's veil.
"But you're beautiful," she exclaimed, embarrassing Peacock even more. "Why would he have left you?"
Peacock rearranged her veil and began to walk again.
"Wait," Zilfa commanded, so engrossed in the effort to solve Peacock's mystery that she had become oblivious of the rules of etiquette she so ardently observed in normal times. "Did you love him, then—this husband you say you left?"
Peacock would not answer.
"You must have loved him," Zilfa declared, thrilled to have discovered a love story. "You wouldn't have left unless you were jealous."
Heshmat liked Zilfa. She let go of Peacock's hand, and approached the old woman.
"My father is here in Tehran," she said. "He's married to Tala Khanum, the daughter of Zil-el-Sultan."
Zilfa the Rosewoman was pleased with the new revelation.
"So you came to get him back," she decided for Peacock. "You came to reclaim him from the Qajar."