The Gardens of Consolation

by Parisa Reza

  In three years Sardar had been to Tehran only once. When he first left Ghamsar he had stopped in Shahr-e Rey, believing he had reached Tehran. And yet, unlike other immigrants, he spoke the same language as the local inhabitants: Persian. But he had no real desire to mix with people or communicate with them. Sardar had always liked keeping his distance, living in silence, contemplating the world from above like a solitary eagle. He needed his horizon to be clear so he could see only the essence of life, as it was at the outset, before words existed; having people around, their chatter and bustle, interrupted the view.

  By the time Sardar realized Tehran was a little farther on, he had already found work in Shahr-e Rey so he stayed there. The urge to visit the capital gnawed away at him, though. As he was not a frivolous man, he waited until he had a good reason to visit: His return to Ghamsar three years later provided that opportunity. He surely couldn’t go back to his village without seeing the capital. When he left, he had said, “I’m going to Tehran.” And so he decided to go there to buy his wedding gifts.

  He headed straight for the bazaar and strolled through its narrow alleys and the various quarters devoted to particular crafts: the carpet bazaar, the goldsmiths’ bazaar, the spice bazaar, and so on. Marveling at such abundance, at this profusion of goods, he stopped in one of the bazaar’s cafés and he, who was usually so unforthcoming, had actually joined in conversation with the men drinking tea around him.

  “Allahu Akbar! Where does so much splendor come from?”

  “Aha, everything you see here is nothing compared to what you cannot see: the all-encompassing power of the stallholders!” one of the men said.

  “They’re the most influential men in the country. When times are hard, the thing the king dreads most is the bazaaris striking,” another whispered in his ear. “The day the bazaaris closed their shutters and the alleys of the bazaar were filled with a deathly hush, the king up there in his palace heard the silence of his own death.”

  “Oh, the bazaaris! They’ve controlled everything for the last few years, and it’s not over yet . . . ”

  Sardar felt that what he had seen and heard in Tehran was shameless, disturbing, and far beyond his grasp. “A man must know his place” became his new motto. He came to the conclusion that “Tehran is not for us,” and for years he avoided the city. But Tehran never failed to intrigue Talla when she saw it in the distance as she traveled from Shahr-e Rey to Shemiran in late spring, and on her return trip in the fall.

  When the time came for the shepherds to move their flocks to new pastures, their families went with them. For five years Talla spent the three summer months with Sardar in Shemiran, to the north of Tehran, in the foothills of Damavand, Iran’s highest peak. She enjoyed their time here; it reminded her of Ghamsar with its cool air, bright water, and flower-filled gardens.

  The first summer was pure enchantment. She walked the hills of Shemiran with Sardar, herding the sheep, gazing at the mountains, and sleeping under the stars. And it was on one of those hillsides in the shade of an old plane tree and beneath the placid eye of their sheep that they conceived their first child one summer’s afternoon.

  Talla returned to Rey three months pregnant and full of life and hope.

  But as soon as she was back in the village fortified by Hadji Agha Ahmad, she was confronted with the locals’ macabre gossip. All that the peasants could talk about was the socialist republic in the Gilan region and Mirza Kouchek Khan’s severed head. He was the symbolic leader of the Jangali rebels from the northern forest.

  The hawker who came to sell salt in the village had met a fellow from Rasht in Tehran: “He saw Mirza Kochek Khan’s severed head with his own eyes; it was being paraded around the square by soldiers. By all accounts, his head was then sent to Reza Khan, who had it buried without the body, and one of the dead man’s followers dug it up in the night to take it back to Rasht.”

  “And what does the master say?” everyone asked Abdullah.

  “The master couldn’t care less! All he is interested in are Reza Khan’s maneuverings with the four parties. Because there are four, you know: conservatives in the reformist party, reformists in the Modernity party, socialists, and even communists,” Abdullah said, counting them out on his fingers. “He says Reza Khan wants to have his laws voted in by parliament without attracting the fury of the mullahs, so he makes alliances with one group to pass a particular law, and then with others for different laws.”

  “They say he had blue eyes,” the hawker said.

  “Who? Reza Khan?”

  “No, Mirza Kouchek Khan.”

  “That’s interesting! Everyone knows you have to beware of people with blue eyes, you never know where they’re from . . . ”

  Then, whether he had heard them or simply made them up, the hawker reported the horrors Mirza had committed, and those that were inflicted on him.

  The rest of it was of little interest to the locals. As were Reza Khan’s dubious arrangements with parliament. They knew nothing of the arcane rites and titles of the one thousand powerful families that mattered in the country; their intrigues and pacts, which were the favorite tidbits of Tehran’s bourgeois society, meant nothing here. Unfortunately.

  Talla tells Sardar that this tittle-tattle about Mirza Kouchek Khan’s hideous death is a bad omen; Sardar nods his head but says nothing. In the image Talla constructed of him while she waited for him in Ghamsar, he talked more. But the real Sardar talks little, he is all caresses, eye contact, and smiles. And Talla speaks for two, because everything is necessary to make up a life, and nothing can replace anything else. And a misunderstood silence is more brutal that the most spiteful words, the void it creates more empty than any unspeaking mouth.

  And while Reza Khan’s expedient alliances progress, Talla’s pregnancy does not. Age thirteen and six months pregnant, she gives birth to a stillborn baby girl with long black hair. She most likely loses her because she has not been careful enough. She has been lifting heavy loads and carrying water, milk, lambs . . . and out on the plains, when she was alone with Sardar, she would take off her chador and blithely run in every direction and climb trees. But her young body could not be both a mother and a child. It was a difficult labor and she was devastated when she saw her stillborn child. She wept for a long time. She held the little creature in her arms for a couple of hours, called her Gohar, after her beloved aunt, and sang lullabies to her, as she used to in Ghamsar. She had once found a lifeless bird whose body was still warm, and she had held it in her hand and stroked it for several minutes, and all at once the bird had beat its wings and taken flight. Alas, she could not bring her daughter back to life.

  For the rest of her life she would talk tenderly to Gohar because she was as beautiful as an angel, and had long dark hair.

  Talla gradually recovered from her grief and life resumed, set to the rhythm of the flock’s movements. Only, she did not conceive again quickly. After a year, she started to worry. Prayer was the first recourse. She asked God’s forgiveness every day for sins she had committed without realizing it—although sometimes she did realize, such as when she spoke ill of someone or other. But another year went by with no result and so she sought other remedies. She consulted an herbalist who made her a preparation of herbs to improve her fertility. To no avail. Then she saw an amulet-maker to have her own talisman. To no effect.

  Only the army’s movements distracted Talla from her burdensome lot as a woman. This army was ever larger, ever better equipped, and she felt she could see it approach from far, far away, through the noise and dust, as soldiers came and went, quashing uprisings in every corner of Iran.

  The rest of the time she was obsessed by her own reputation. A woman who bears no children is an anomaly. In the fertile breeding pond of their fortified village, well-meaning neighbors wanted to see her pregnant at all costs. So they offered—no, insisted she take—their remedies. Older women stood in for the
mother Talla did not have by her side, asking her intrusive questions about her private life, about Sardar’s vigor. They came knocking at her door: “My girl, you must let him fertilize you once on the night before the full moon and then again on the night after the full moon. There will be a full moon tomorrow so it must be this evening, and when his water is in you, you must not move from your bed, you must hold your legs together and pray that it will take.” And they waited for a report the next morning: “So, is it done? Tell me you didn’t move afterward? Don’t forget you need to do it again tomorrow evening . . . ”

  The less well-meaning were convinced she was infertile, and believed there was nothing more to hope from her: “My friend,” they told Sardar, “a man should not feed a woman who will never bear a child. You need to get rid of her, replace her as soon as you can. Send her back to your village and we’ll find a pretty young girl to give you sons.” But Sardar was not in the least worried: a child would come when it was God’s will. “I have only one wife and I shall have no other, ever. Even if she dies, I will not replace her.” He said it steadily, without raising his voice, stating it as people state the truth.

  At last, after two and a half years, God forgave her—at least, that was how she saw it—and she conceived again. This time she was careful all through her pregnancy, and her sixteen-year-old woman’s body agreed to carry the child, and God gave her a son. He brought great joy. A happy Sardar sacrificed a sheep in front of his son to protect him from evil. Half of the meat was distributed to the poor, because there are always those who are poorer than you. And with the other half, they made a rich stew for the rest of the village; even the master had a share, preoccupied though he was with all the new laws Reza Shah was having voted in by parliament.

  Alas, this child also died. One day, when he was only six months old, Talla offered him a tiny mouthful of her own food, lamb stew with chickpeas. He liked it and craned his head for more; she gave it to him gladly; he wanted more again and she kept spoiling him till he died of indigestion. Of course when the child’s eyes started rolling, Talla called for help, she ran out without her chador and screamed, neighbors came running, lots of them, pell-mell, clustering around the child who had stopped breathing and Talla who was still explaining and praying . . . when they finally told her there was no hope she screamed: “Ya ghamar-e bani hashem!”

  Sardar was far away on the plain with his flock, a boy ran to let him know but could not find him. When Sardar finally came home that evening he saw people gathered outside his door. He needed no explanations; there was nothing to celebrate so it must be this. He smacked his head with both hands, sat down on the ground and beat his head again. Talla had been almost unconscious since the afternoon. The child was left in a corner till the next day. In the morning Sardar took him in his arms and buried him at the foot of a tree on the plain. He paid a mullah to pray for him.

  Talla’s grief was unbounded. The saying that bad luck comes in threes seemed to be made for her. Havva, her daughter, and now her son. The three had passed over so quickly, as if they were a burden on the world.

  Sardar did not blame her for what happened, Talla would not have borne it, she wept enough as it was. “That’s three now,” he told her. “It will be all right now, it’s over, you’ll see, next time there’ll be no heartbreak.” But other people did blame her; everyone seemed to hold it against her. No one came to comfort her, no women from the village wanted to hold her hand in theirs and weep with her. Talla could not recover from losing her son or from the severity of their judgment. “God gives and God takes away,” Sardar told her. Talla nodded but could not accept this, and she wept. “God gives and God takes away,” Sardar told everyone who spoke ill of Talla. They nodded, but did not change their views. They had judged her.

  Luckily, shortly after this, Abdullah announced the accession of the Pahlavi dynasty. This kept all those judgmental minds in the village busy, interrupting the snide comments about Talla for a time.

  “Reza Khan has become Reza Shah. He is now king.”

  “What does the master say?”

  “He says it’s better like this. Let him be king! He says it’s better for him to be king than to set up his beloved republic. God be praised, the uluma didn’t accept it, they wouldn’t have that sort of nonsense in our country.”

  Without truly grasping the significance of the event, Talla was relieved. But why all the fuss? What would it change? One king was replacing another without a war or a battle: From a humble peasant’s home, the view was still the same. For now. But from that moment on Reza Shah started flouting Iranian tradition, and the changes would prove devastating.

  The fuss was short-lived. For the peasants in Shahr-e Rey, who had to lower their heads and look at the ground in the master’s courtyard, the only thing that mattered was whether the king’s army would come pillaging and massacring in their homes. Reassured, they went back to their work and, at the same time, to the question of Talla’s womb.

  But Sardar was not prepared to let them. Toward the end of spring, when they were preparing to make their annual journey to Shemiran, Sardar decided, “Enough is enough!” He suddenly made up his mind: He went to see the master and told him he was leaving his lodgings. Then he went to find Talla and said, “Pack everything, we won’t be coming back here. They say there’s lots of snow in Shemiran in winter. You tell me that at night you dream of the thick snow you knew as a child, well then, let’s go!”

  At eighteen, Talla sets off to make her home in Shemiran forever. Beneath her black chador, sheltered from men’s prying eyes, she is a lone woman traveling. She leaves with a few bundles on the ass’s back, the flock of sheep ahead of her, and her husband walking in silence, but no child. As usual, the winds of life carry her as she leaves one place for another, heavy with memories of a death. She follows the road, such is her sorrow.

  Far from their families and with no friends, they mean nothing to anyone. It is just the two of them, and they will have to make do with this nothingness.

  Sardar is still as silent, Talla still as talkative. That is how they balance their world, between the laconic confidence of a man who has faith in life and the chattering mistrust of a woman who expects a new misfortune to appear every day. That first night in Shemiran, then, as they prepare to sleep among their sheep out under the stars at the top of a hill, Talla loosens her black hair; it falls around her face and her shining eyes as she offers her delicate breasts to Sardar. But before she allows their bodies to seal their union once more with passion, she makes him promise that they will have their very own home here, in Shemiran.

  Stretching out in the middle of Shemiran is the vast Davoudieh plain, given that name because the summer garden of Mirza Davoud Khan, son of Mirza Agha Khan Nouri, the second chancellor to Naser al-Din Shah, once flourished here. In the center of Davoudieh is a fortified Armenian village with its beautiful garden, its ice pit, and its large swimming pond. The local master is a Jew, and his house is in the middle of the village, surrounded by lodgings that he lets to peasant families, all of them Armenian. The neighboring land owned by him is marked out by centennial plane trees that bear witness to a long history, as does the abandoned hammam whose dilapidated walls are still adorned with ancient ceramic tiles.

  The master lets out his land to Armenian tenant farmers who grow watermelon, wheat, and barley. He agrees to let a room and a plot of land to Sardar and Talla. Sardar keeps his flock of sheep and, to hold the promise he made to Talla, he, too, starts growing watermelon in the spring. To support her husband, Talla continues milking the ewes and making dairy products; as well as this, she puts the old village oven back to use, baking bread and sweet biscuits that she sells to the Armenians and inhabitants of the surrounding area.

  Shemiran rekindles Talla’s strength and hope. She feels soothed. The climate suits her better, she will at last be able to tread deep snow again, and feel the mountain so close by that it seems she
could touch it simply by raising her hand. And more importantly, no one in Davoudieh seems interested in her problems with motherhood. What is more, thanks be to God, there is no fear here. The master here is clement. The peasants here are not his subjects but his tenants. And the people here are not afraid of vagrants or child snatchers or any sort of wrongdoer. Not like Tehran, where bandits, addicts, and thieves throng the streets in the neighborhood around the brothels, which is now called the “new town” and where Reza Shah has gathered together all the city’s prostitutes. The people in Shahr-e Rey talked about it all the time. They said the brothel-keepers in these places stole young girls, imprisoned them, and forced them into prostitution. They were even said to steal children. Everyone was always frightened they might head a little further south to Shahr-e Rey, which was an increasingly busy stopping-off point on the way to Tehran. All sorts of people came through, people who spoke languages no one understood, who came from everywhere and nowhere. New arrivals were always viewed with suspicion.

  On the other hand, the further north you go beyond Tehran, the less riffraff you see, and the better chance you have of meeting high-society folk. A great many titled and important families have summer residences in Shemiran, as do plenty of Farangi: English, Russians, and Germans, strange and distant figures who seem to have stepped out of fairy tales. These foreigners look so unreal to Talla that they seem inoffensive. Like pictures on the walls of her life. As if their existence were in another world that could not possibly coincide with hers.

  Seven years after the death of her first son, in a bedroom in the Armenian village and with the help of Mahtab-Khanoum, the midwife from Gholhak, Talla brought into the world a son: Bahram.