by Gina nahai
Rubi the Executioner did not give up his search. He went out every day, looking to buy a carriage he would drive himself, and everywhere he spread word of Solomon the Man's return. Crowds of people came to the caravansary to find Solomon. The great-grandson of Old Man Gholi knelt before him and kissed his feet. The Grand Keeper of Tehran's whores wept on his hands and offered him his youngest virgin. Ahmad Shah the Qajar sent his people to ask Solomon for news of his family in Odessa. Then a stranger came.
It was a woman, dressed in a black chador, trembling as she approached the entrance to the caravansary. Solomon the Man saw her but paid no mind; he had been vomiting blood all afternoon, and he felt as if he would faint any moment. The woman came closer and stopped before him. He thought she was a beggar, or that she had mistaken him for another. He wanted to look away, but she would not release him from her stare.
“Can I help?" he asked.
She remained still. Then she opened her veil.
Solomon the Man looked at the face before him and longed to remember. He smiled at her uncertainly, his lips barely parting, and tried to imagine who she could be: a whore, perhaps, that he had once loved; a servant he had left behind; a beggar he had once fed. She touched his arm. His memory, like a dormant plague, began to stir.
Peacock.
He waved her away, rubbed his hand over his eyes, and prayed that she would be gone when he looked again. He felt his vision become blurred. He tasted blood in his throat. Then his legs gave out and he slipped into a spell of unconsciousness deep and everlasting as death.
She took him home and called a doctor. The man came a day and a half later; he was dressed in a European suit, smelled of cologne, and revealed no sign of compassion for his patient. Peacock despised him.
The doctor took Solomon's pulse, listened to his heart and to his stomach. He shook his head. The patient, he announced coolly, would die before the end of the week.
Peacock walked the man out, and slammed the door behind him. That night she called Heshmat to come and watch her father. She was leaving, she said, on a pilgrimage to the tomb of Sara Beth Asher in the Zagros Mountains. God owed her a favor, and it was time He paid.
She rode in a carriage for eleven days, then trekked on foot through dry desert and dusty plains to reach the tomb. She arrived at sunset, and found a group of pilgrims already camped at the base of the mountain. It would be dark soon. Peacock had to wait for morning.
The next day, she was the first to climb. The others followed, each man or woman carrying a small child on his or her back. The tomb of Sara Beth Asher was a long and narrow cave—so narrow that only small children could crawl through it safely. Bigger persons risked being caught in a passage without air, far enough from the mouth of the cave that their screams would not be heard and they would suffocate before anyone could reach them.
But Peacock had come alone; she had to face God herself. She had to demand the miracle He had never before rendered.
She reached the cave at midmorning, and prepared to enter. A thousand years ago, Sara, daughter of Asher, had been pursued through the desert by hostile soldiers. She had come to the Zagros Mountains and tried to hide in the cave. The soldiers had followed her inside. She had pushed forward, crawling through the sinuous passage, praying for her life. In response, God had created an opening through which she had slipped into the gates of the Promised Land. Behind her, He had sealed the passage with a stone so heavy no man had been able to move it since. But He had made Sara His messenger, and her tomb a place of pilgrimage. As proof of His presence, He had arranged that air would seep through the stone and keep pilgrims from suffocating in the cave.
At the mouth of the cave, Peacock took off her chador and shoes, tied the corners of her skirt together, and pulled her single braid of hair into a bun behind her head. She lit a candle and held it in her teeth. Then she lay on her stomach, took a breath as deep as her lungs, and pushed into the cave.
She crawled through the darkness, feeling the air become thinner, keeping her eyes ahead and hoping to remember which way she had come. The cave, she knew, had many arms. On the way back, disoriented by her claustrophobia and the darkness, she risked slipping into the wrong arm and losing her way in an airless chamber.
Three minutes into the cave, Peacock felt the lack of air and realized that her candle was about to be extinguished.
She pressed forward, her arms tight at her sides, and propelled her body by the movement of her feet. Dirt filled her mouth and nostrils. Wax from the candle melted between her teeth and on her tongue. The flame sputtered, then died. She stopped. She had taken a wrong turn.
Panicked, she pressed her hands under her stomach and retreated. She felt the heat, the weight of her head, the slowing of her blood. She had gone back one body-length when her feet touched a stone wall. She was trapped, buried.
She closed her eyes. Sweat dripped from her lashes. She was going to die here and Solomon the Man would never know—never be saved. She put her head to the ground and lay there. Then suddenly she looked up: The candle's wick, she realized, was still red from the dying flame. She must be close to a channel of air.
She dug her teeth deeper into the wax and pushed herself forward in the only direction possible. She felt a breath—
Sara's breath—on her face. The candle erupted once again into flame. Weeping with relief, Peacock put her head to Sara's gravestone and whispered her prayer:
“Please, God," she asked, “save my husband."
In Peacock's house, laughter bloomed again. Doors were opened and light poured in. Sheets smelled of rosewater and bleach, floors were strewn with mint and lime leaves. Solomon the Man had been given new life and was about to recover.
Returning from Sara Beth Asher's tomb, Peacock found Heshmat waiting at the door.
“It worked," Heshmat cried. “He is awake."
Peacock rushed inside and found Solomon sitting in his bed. He had aged. His face was no longer startling, his eyes were almost extinguished. Yet before him Peacock felt belittled and awed; he was Solomon the Man, and the sky wept and the earth blossomed into a thousand fields of violets every time he smiled.
Solomon the Man began to eat, and his vision cleared of the spots that had blinded him. He sat in bed every morning and told Peacock stories of Russia. They were all happy tales, but he cried when he recounted them. Later, without Peacock asking, he told her of Tala, of his other children. Then, at last, one day he dared utter Arash's name.
“You would have loved him," he said to Peacock. "I loved him."
Peacock looked away from Solomon the Man, and waited for the pain to cut through her. She felt nothing— only a numbness where her heart had once been torn. Too many years had passed.
She stayed at home and refused to answer Ezraeel the Avenger's calls. In the years since she had first befriended Qamar-ol-Dowleh, Peacock had made a name for herself and established an ever-growing clientele. She catered to the richest and most respected of Muslims, commanded their trust, their confidence, and, in time, their friendship. But she never opened a shop of her own—Jews were barred from operating business in the bazaar—and she never left her partnership with Ezraeel. He loved her, everyone knew, and though he never demanded more than her friendship, he would not have allowed her to leave. Now he called for her every day, and Peacock did not respond.
She bought Solomon new clothes, cotton shirts and silk trousers and fur hats. She took him to the bath twice a week and paid a professional washer to help him. When he returned, she greeted him with cherry nectar and grated apples dipped in sweetened rosewater. She bought new clothes for herself. She dyed her hair with henna, wore perfume, put on white embroidered dresses that made her look like a bride. She was an old woman—close to fifty, she imagined, though she did not like to count—and suddenly she wanted to live.
People in the ghetto began to speak of Peacock with pity and derision.
"A grandmother already," they said, "and she thinks she's a new bride."
Solomon the Man saw her excitement and realized he could not disappoint Peacock a second time.
"Don't think I have recovered," he told her one day in his softest tone. "I am only having a remission. I have had them before. The next time I get sick, I know I will die."
Peacock laughed at him and tried not to believe. She went out that day, aiming for the bazaar, but on the street she forgot her destination. She knew Ezraeel awaited her, that he had sent for her and suffered when she did not come, that he wanted her now as he had wanted her in the past, wanted her and despised her every day and hour since he had first torn off her veil and seen the eyes of his father. Ezraeel the Avenger wanted her, but she did not go to him that day.
She walked aimlessly, through alleys full of children and dogs and the smell of burning coal, past houses bursting with the sound of their inhabitants' lives, into run-down shops that remained open after dark, the owners hoping to sell what no one had bought all day. Then at last she went home and called Solomon:
"I must know why you came.”
Solomon the Man stared at his child bride with the terrified eyes, and reached across the room to calm her. In the light of the oil lamp, her face was as beautiful as he had ever seen it. He lied:
"I came for you.”
He lived for another two months. By the time he died, Peacock felt she had never known bitterness at all.
Solomon the Man died in the last days of the Great War, in a time of famine and despair and hopelessness, but the day she buried him, Peacock swore that a novel era would begin. He had appeared in 1875, at the height of the Great Famine, and the moment he had arrived, the earth had become gentle. Now that he was dead, God would bring pity on the world and grant relief to the living.
In Persia, occupying Allied forces had destroyed ten thousand farming villages, stolen millions of cattle, and swept away every trace of law and order. A hundred thousand Persians had already starved to death before the government announced a famine. Epidemics swept the country, crime was rampant, and, even in the capital, no one dared step out at night. The rich stayed home and survived on hoarded supplies. The poor stole, or killed, or died.
In Tehran the treasury was so empty the government struck coins from old cannons left behind by the Russians, and which had been melted down for the purpose. In Gilan, on the Caspian Coast, Russian Bolshevik forces had organized a rebellion aimed at converting Persia to communism. In Azerbaijan, Kurdistan, and Khorasan, the population had risen against the monarchy and demanded self-rule.
In 1920, Reza Khan the Maxim was promoted to general and placed in command of all the Cossacks in Qazvin, near Tehran. He went to the British, to the mullahs, to his troops. He told them all he was about to stage a coup d'etat. He did not intend to dethrone the Shah, he said; he was only interested in saving the country from ruin. He gained everyone's support. On February 22, 1921, he descended upon the capital, and took Tehran without resistance.
He left Ahmad Shah in his palace, declared loyalty to the Crown, and appointed himself Minister of War. Quickly he reorganized the scattered troops of the Persian Cossack Brigade, and formed an army that he led against the separatist movements across Persia. When he left Tehran, he was just another soldier vying for power. When he returned, he was a hero.
The mullahs were displeased with Reza Khan's popularity. To make a show of force and assert their dominance, they called for a massacre in the ghetto: it was the “Mullah's Mule Incident,” the most famous of all the pogroms in Tehran.
A group of children were crossing the street outside the Alliance school in the ghetto. A man intercepted them, riding a mule. He was dressed in servants' clothes, and he forced the mule into the crowd of children without regard for anyone's safety. The Alliance teacher, Blue-Eyed Lotfi, had been raised in times of relative safety in the ghetto, and so did not know the proper rules of conduct. He, of course, would never have stopped a gentleman riding through the ghetto, but he did stop the servant, and asked him—lest they be trampled by the mule—to allow the children right of passage.
The servant was outraged, his mule incensed. They were no ordinary servant and mule. They were in the service of a clergyman—a grand mullah, a holy person. Blue-Eyed Lotfi had insulted a mullah's mule by asking that it yield to infidel children. He would not go unpunished, the servant promised. The entire ghetto would be made to repent.
An hour after the incident, the mullahs of Tehran called for a massacre. Blue-Eyed Lotfi, they said, had insulted a mule belonging to a grand mullah. His offense, by extension, was directed at the institution of Islam. As always, all Jews would be held responsible for the acts of one.
On Monday, September 4, 1922, mobs surrounded the Tehran ghetto. The Jews hid in their homes and barricaded their doors. That night, and through the next day, the siege continued. Since the entire massacre was for the benefit of Reza Khan, the mullahs were waiting to gather bigger and more impressive crowds. On Wednesday they ordered attack.
Someone screamed a prayer in Arabic, and thousands of men moved at once. They went through the gates of the ghetto, into the streets. They attacked the first homes, set fire to the first temple. Suddenly they stopped, shocked by the sound of gunfire from behind them. Everyone turned to look.
Reza Khan the Maxim had come with his Cossacks and surrounded the mob around the ghetto. He had ordered his men to draw their rifles and fire a warning salvo, then aim at the center of the crowd.
“Disperse!” Reza Khan bellowed. He had no special love for the Jews. But he would not allow the mullahs' lawlessness.
"Disperse now, or I will open fire."
The world stopped. No one made a sound. Reza Khan the Maxim was prepared to kill believers in defense of infidels. All that remained to be seen, now, was whether his troops would remain loyal.
In every other instance in history, when a Shah had sent soldiers to stop a massacre, the men had deserted their service and joined their brethren in holy war. It was the natural order, the reason why the Shahs could never exert force against the mullahs. Now, as the mob waited, Reza Khan faced the greatest challenge yet to his authority.
The soldiers did not move. Their rifles never wavered.
"Disperse!"
Through the graveyard streets of the ghetto, where even ghosts were afraid to walk, Peacock the Jew heard the echo of Reza Khan's voice, and shook with the ripple of Esther the Soothsayer's laughter.
In October 1923, Ahmad Shah the Qajar left permanently for Europe. Reza Khan the Maxim, the orphan child from Alasht, became prime minister and ruler of Persia.
He began with new names: Persia had been the old empire; Iran would be the new kingdom. He also invented a surname for himself—Pahlavi—constructed a noble background for his dead father, and chose a birthday: March 16, 1878. From there he set out to conquer the clergy.
He removed the mullahs from positions of administrative authority. Divorce and marriage, the registration of documents and property, the collection of taxes for the national treasury—were placed within the realm of authority of the central government. Penal and civil codes were reviewed to accommodate secular, modern ideas. Hands were no longer cut off as punishment for theft. Polygamy was still legal— Reza Khan himself had taken three wives—but girls could no longer be forced into marriage against their will. Then he freed the Jews.
He abolished the rules of impurity, opened the ghettos, and allowed Jews into the mainstream of life. He let their children into Muslim schools, gave them jobs in lower echelons of government, granted them permission to live anywhere in the city. He became the mullahs' greatest enemy, and every Jew's champion.
"Look at me," he told Peacock on the eve of his coronation. "I have fulfilled your soothsayer's prophecy."
Peacock went to see Ezraeel the Avenger.
She rode the horse-trolley through the center of town, and walked the rest of the way into the bazaar. She found half of the shops closed, the merchants absent, the counters empty. In the alleys, no porters ran about, no donkeys pushed at crowds of pedestrians. Ezraeel the Avenger's neighbor saw her approach, and came to greet her.
"You are late," he said. "Ezraeel died last night."
Ezraeel the Avenger had died in bed, in his sleep, where every night for half a century he had dreamt of Afagh screaming under Marushka's hands. Many years ago he had written a will, signed before the bazaar's most respected elders, and entrusted to Tehran's greatest scribe. Afterward he had summoned his children to the house, and warned them to expect the worst:
"So there will be no contesting it after my death," he had told them before witnesses, "I have left nothing of my wealth to my family."
They did not believe him. At his funeral, the Boys' Mother cried herself blind. Ezraeel the Avenger had asked to be buried alone, in a grave enclosed by a wire fence. His sons, he had ordered, must be buried elsewhere, far away from him who had not loved them in life and whose memory he despised. On the day of the reading of his will, the family gathered in his house in Tehran—greed in their eyes and worry in their smiles. They sat together on the floor and waited for the scribe to open the will.
The scribe chewed on his mustache, spat out the strands of tobacco stuck between his teeth, and began to read in a slow monotone. The men craned their necks and moved closer to listen. Halfway through the reading, they thought they had heard him wrongly, and asked that he start again. Once more they interrupted him. With every reading the audience became more agitated and the objections and cries of disbelief became louder until everyone had grabbed the will, examined its authenticity, and seen with his eyes what his ears had refused to believe: Ezraeel the Avenger had left nothing to his wife and five sons. He had willed everything to a stranger, a Jew by the name of Besharat, son of Assal, who lived in the Pit.