The Gardens of Consolation

by Parisa Reza

  “Give these kids a cordial,” the caretaker tells the old man. “They’re going to see Agha. They’re thirsty, poor boys.”

  The old man leans on his stick to haul himself to his feet then disappears behind a curtain. The boys stand in the middle of the empty room, heads lowered, eyes on the floor. The old man comes back using only one hand to carry a tray with four glasses on it. The caretaker takes the tray and hands it to the boys. Bahram takes a glass—it’s full of cherry cordial and ice cubes! It is so big he has to hold it with both hands. The boys’ eyes are popping out of their heads. There is an ice salesman on Shermiran Road; they sometimes see him breaking big blocks of ice, but only the rich buy it. They gulp down the cordial greedily.

  “Easy, easy, you’ll spill it on your clothes,” says the caretaker, who has already drained his own glass. There are only ice cubes left in it; he picks one out, rubs it on his forehead and cheeks, then pops it in his mouth. He looks at the boys as if inviting them to do the same. Bahram copies him, but having the ice cube in his mouth gives him a headache. He takes it out, holds it in his hand, and watches it melt. The caretaker crunches his ice cube and it makes a noise as it breaks between his teeth. Bahram and Ghassem put theirs back into their mouth and crunch them too—Bahram has a headache again. The caretaker takes a handkerchief from his pocket, wipes his face and hands, then wipes the boys’ hands.

  “Wait here, I’m going to see if Agha can see you now.”

  The old man says nothing, he has not said a word since they arrived; he is sitting cross-legged with his back to the wall again, as if waiting to die.

  The caretaker returns and asks the boys to follow him. They climb back up the five steps, come out of the house and onto the main drive. They think they will be going into the house through the main entrance but the caretaker takes a different path that leads to the garden.

  Djam is here playing with a small dog, a breed Bahram has never seen before.

  “These are the boys I told you about, sir,” the caretaker says.

  Djam turns toward them.

  “Go on,” says the caretaker, and he leaves.

  They have all agreed: Bahram will do the talking. Bahram takes three steps forward. Djam is wearing a sort of garnet colored robe in a precious silky fabric, held with a belt and worn over a shirt and pants. Later, in movies, Bahram will see men wearing dressing gowns like this, but for now it adds to the magic of the place. Djam is standing under a lamp holding the little dog in his arms.

  “I’m listening,” he says.

  He has a round face with fine features, and this makes him look gentle and kind. Bahram feels less intimidated. He stands to attention and recites almost in one breath: “Your very distinguished Majesty, Minister of Court, we are pupils from Djam School and we’ll be finishing primary school this year and we’d like to continue our schooling but there’s no high school in Gholhak, so we’ve come to ask if you would be kind enough to set up a seventh grade class in your school, please, your Majesty.”

  Ghassem has turned to stone. Hearing “Your very distinguished Majesty, Minister of Court” and meeting Djam in his garnet robe is quite an experience.

  Djam is moved by this working-class child reciting his request; his words are awkward, it has to be said, but they have so much conviction. And anyway, Djam is amused that these boys seem to mistake him for the Shah. He stares at the boy for a moment, without a word. The patriot in him is touched: If all Iranians had this strength of will, Iran would be the greatest of nations.

  Djam sets down his dog and Ghassem thinks, That’s it, he’s going to come and slap us, kick us, and throw us out.

  “Follow me,” Djam says, and he takes them into the house, across a wide corridor, and through a large living room decorated in European style, then opens the door to his office. Bahram follows him in but Ghassem and Siavosh wait in the doorway. Bahram notices two large paintings above the desk: portraits of the Shah and his father, Reza Shah.

  Djam opens a box, takes out a card, picks up his pen, and writes a quick note.

  “What’s your name?” he asks Bahram.

  “Bahram . . . ”

  “Come here, Bahram. Give this to your headmaster and you shall have your seventh grade.”

  Bahram takes the card, bows, and kisses Djam’s hand. He has seen peasants doing this to dignitaries.

  Before leaving the room, Bahram turns around and says in a voice quivering with emotion, “Thank you, your very distinguished Majesty.”

  Djam smiles and the boys leave. Djam thinks he has just done something good and noble, that this is his destiny. Bahram thinks this really is a roomy house.

  This is for you, sir.”

  “What is it?” asks the headmaster.

  The short message is addressed to the Minister of Culture, and in it Djam asks him to open a seventh grade class at Djam School in Gholhak.

  It is the first time Bahram has seen the headmaster lost for words. The man looks up, gazes into the distance for a moment, then puts the note in his pocket and keeps on walking.

  Bahram takes his exams to graduate from sixth grade at the Shapour High School in Tadjrish. During the exam, the headmaster takes the proctor to one side to have a couple of words, one about Bahram, the other about Hassan Rahnama. These two boys have to get through: Bahram because he is his protégé and Hassan because of his knife. Hassan is the school big shot, and even the omnipotent headmaster is powerless against him. He is four years older than Bahram and he lays down the law at school. He takes falak beatings without turning a hair, and is quick to unsheathe his knife. Over the years Bahram has managed to soften him up by giving him dried fruit from home. Everyone has their own way of handling Hassan: Bahram with dried fruit, the headmaster by making sure he graduates each year, in the hopes he will finally leave.

  Hassan Rahnama has to take sixth grade again but Bahram graduates successfully. As a reward, Talla buys him a watch, a West End watch.

  Through Ghassem’s father, who works at the Iran Cement factory, Bahram learns that Saname has gone to Switzerland, to one of those boarding schools where the rich send their children for a good education, to learn fancy European manners and become high-ranking civil servants, doctors, lawyers, and the like. Bahram remembers one last time those footsteps of Saname’s that he never heard . . .

  Talla turned forty that year, and started to feel tired. She felt she would soon grow old and that there must be something she should do, one thing people did while they still had the strength. The last thing she needed to accomplish. So she thought about going back to see Ghamsar, visiting the land of her birth before it was too late. She liked the idea of going there with her son, to show him Ghamsar. Bahram was a sturdy child who worked hard at school, had his sixth grade graduation under his belt, and was just finishing eighth grade. He deserved to see the land of his ancestors.

  Now that there were cars, more and more Ghamsaris came to Tehran, bringing with them dried fruits, rosewater, and news of family members and other villagers. Talla had heard that her mother had died, and later her father. She had wept for them and then forgotten them. But still the Ghamsaris came, reviving dead memories.

  She mentioned the idea to Sardar, who gave his consent but made it clear that he needed to look after the land and livestock, and could not make the journey with her. Sardar had no desire to go back to Ghamsar, which had always been a prison to him. The mountains all around, no outlook, a blocked horizon. Where others saw paradise, he saw a cage. He had succeeded in Tehran, he had his own house, his animals, his radio, a son who could read . . . He would not be returning to Ghamsar. She could go if it made her happy, she could take her son with her to show him the village. But he, Sardar, would not be going and would give no other reason than that he had livestock to tend.

  “Say hello to everyone for me. Here, take this money and give it to the two imamzadehs.”

  Talla we
nt to see the headmaster to ask permission for Bahram to be away for two weeks; she came with a pail of yogurt, some cream, and some eggs. She put all her gifts on the headmaster’s desk and said, “Please, sir . . . ”

  They left in Ordibehesht, halfway through spring, so that they would reach Ghamsar in time for the Feast of the Rose. They traveled by car as far as Kashan, taking two seats in one of the cars that transported people between the capital and the country’s other large cities. They sat together on the front seat. A family of five climbed in the back, two adults and three children. Throughout the trip the driver hummed popular songs and the children cried in the back. Talla was thrilled to see those immutable landscapes and the same fascinating route that had brought her to Tehran. But she preferred traveling on an ass’s back.

  In Kashan they spent the night in a caravanserai, and visited the city the next day. Talla was happy to be back in Kashan’s bazaar and to lunch with her son in a café she thought she recognized, twenty-eight years on.

  “Don’t travel alone from Kashan to Ghamsar,” Sardar had advised. “Pay someone to go and say you’re coming, they’ll come and fetch you.” Talla’s older brother would come for them.

  Perched on an ass, Talla arrived back in Ghamsar. Having left as a young girl of twelve, she was back as a forty-year-old woman. Her face was deeply lined, grey hairs peeped from under her veil, and she had noticeably fewer teeth. She did not recognize her brother: He was twenty-two when she left but now she was reunited with an old man. Everyone she knew was old now. They gazed at each other with tenderness and astonishment. Talla’s arrival meant they could gauge the passage of time. Talla saw herself in the mirror of their tired faces burned by the sun and the cold, in the crumpled, withered old skin of the women who had been her playmates when she was a little girl. And then she realized that she would not be growing old someday, she already had grown old. How the years had flown by!

  Talla regretted making the trip. The moment she set foot in Ghamsar she could see nothing had changed, everything was in its rightful place, not so much as a tree had moved, no path had been rerouted. None of the new inventions that were taking over the city had reached this place. And everywhere she saw images of Havva and of their sacrificed youth. What a disturbing feeling it was to be back in the identical landscape of her childhood when she herself was old.

  Only the Feast of the Rose succeeded in reminding her of the delights of her childhood and delivered her briefly from her heartache.

  They made the return journey in stifling heat and a fraught atmosphere. Talla wept all the way to Tehran and, desperate to get back to his friends in Gholak, Bahram kept complaining he was bored. He had found nothing to do or talk about with the children in Ghamsar, strange creatures who did not go to school, could not read, had never heard of radio or movies, and looked inquisitively at the unfamiliar thing he wore on his wrist: his watch. And he had had enough of his mother’s tears.

  Back in Ghamsar, Bahram is enthusiastic about returning to school. Before his trip, he went to see Djam for the third time. Djam granted them an eighth grade class last year, and is offering them a ninth grade this year. Djam is now a part of Bahram’s life, and in his own small way the boy is part of his. They meet once a year, knowing that no familiarity of any sort is possible between them, not one superfluous word, one uncalled-for gesture. But they have a solid understanding and each plays his part. They play their roles together once a year, and at the end of the performance they are proud of each other.

  On the last day of the academic year, the headmaster comes to find Bahram in his classroom and asks him to come with him. Bahram is unconcerned as he follows him along the corridor. He now knows that, for some mysterious reason, the headmaster is his protector. A peculiar relationship has developed between them, each owes something to the other, although Bahram does not fully understand this.

  The headmaster sits in his chair and, for the first time, invites Bahram to sit down.

  “I’m going to talk to you man-to-man today. I don’t know how you managed to get Djam to set up a class for seventh grade, then eighth grade, and now ninth grade, but you should know that by having a ninth grade class this school has now officially become a high school. From the beginning of the next academic year, the primary school will be transferred into new buildings. And I can no longer be headmaster here because I would need a university degree to be headmaster of a high school, and I don’t have one. So I’ve been invited to run the schools department at the ministry. I’m not complaining, in a way I’m becoming the headmaster of headmasters! Still, I’ll be sad to leave this school, I watched it being built, I’ve run the place and it’s now one of the best schools in the region.”

  He pauses a while to keep his emotions under control, then adds, “I thought I would change your fate and it’s you who’s changing mine.”

  Bahram feels awkward and does not know where to look. He lowers his head as much as he can. He feels so guilty he could cry.

  “I’m sorry, sir.”

  “No, don’t be! I have a wonderful promotion and you have your high school. And we both deserve it,” the headmaster says, smiling affectionately.

  It is the first time Bahram has seen him smile so genuinely. He really doesn’t understand what’s going on.

  “Now listen, Bahram, you’ve been my best pupil since this school started. Not because of your grades—there are other pupils with excellent grades across all subjects—but because you have talent.”

  In that moment Bahram’s drawings hanging in the headmaster’s office take on a new dimension. The bird perched in a tree, hanging behind his chair just beneath the portrait of the Shah, suddenly sparkles. You can almost hear it sing. Only then does Bahram understand that that’s what talent is. He has always been proud that the headmaster hangs his pictures in his office, but has thought all along that this was just because no one else in school did any drawing. To make the leap from there to acknowledging he has talent . . . that makes even his visits to Djam seem less exceptional. Bahram is an only child: He does not operate by hoping but by wanting, seeking, asking, and getting. Not that it makes him any happier, it is simply how things work. But at this moment his perception of himself makes a sudden shift: He feels the headmaster is marking him out as a prodigy.

  “I want you to keep going with this, I want you to make the most of your talent, I want you to go to university. This country needs a well-educated elite, and I want you to be part of that. But when you achieve that—because you will achieve it—never forget where you’re from. You’re a child of the people, and educating the people will be our country’s salvation. I’ve devoted my life to it. I could have been in trade and made much more money, traveled in Europe and driven a car. I chose to serve my country. Your parents have worked our country’s land with their own hands, you belong to that hardworking people. Never forget to serve your country first, before yourself. I’m counting on you. I’ll be hearing about you.”

  Bahram comes out of the headmaster’s office thunderstruck. All his convictions, his relationship with society, with his country, and with himself have just been forged in that office. With a strange mix of narcissism and patriotism, he already feels he has reached the top of the ladder and has a mission to accomplish for his country. And it is his school headmaster, the highest authority in his young life, who has entrusted him with it.

  Gabr knocks at the door. Gabr is a Zoroastrian, a hunting man and a traveling salt salesman. He is a great strong man with a mane of hair and an abundant beard. He comes by from time to time and trades five or six pounds of salt for dairy products. It is early fall and this will be his last visit of the year. He disappears in winter, claiming he heads south. If Sardar is at home when he drops by, Gabr takes out the shotgun he keeps hidden in his saddle. Since Sardar sold his own shotgun to Ghamsar he rarely has the chance to touch one. He strokes the barrel, aims at an animal, and mimes pulling the trigger. And it
makes both men happy.

  Talla is preparing ghormeh for the winter. A couple of days ago Sardar killed a sheep; he skinned and gutted it, then jointed it and cleaned the meat. Talla boned the joints yesterday. This morning she is cutting up the meat and using a large cooking pot to mix it with well-salted mutton fat. She will leave it to cook for several hours, then she will preserve it in sheep’s intestines she has been preparing over the summer. She takes the animal’s rumen, blows into it until it is fully inflated, then leaves it to dry in the sun. When she has filled these pouches she hangs them from the ceiling of the upstairs room, which is not heated in winter. And all through the winter, whenever she needs meat to cook, she will take it from these pouches.

  When Gabr knocks on the door, Talla’s hands are covered in grease. Bahram is lying under the mulberry tree reading Balzac’s Lost Illusions. Talla asks him to go open the door, and Bahram grumbles, unwilling to put down his book.

  Gabr asks whether his father is in. Bahram says he is so Gabr takes his hidden shotgun and asks Bahram to keep an eye on his donkey and his stock of salt. Bahram will be fifteen this year; he does not like taking orders from Gabr as if he were still a little boy. Irritated, he hunkers down in the shade of a tree, picks up pebbles, and starts lobbing them at the wall of the house opposite. The door suddenly opens and Bahram thinks it is someone coming to reprimand him for throwing stones, but three girls his age emerge from the building.

  The house opposite belongs to Mirza and Mahtab-Khanoum; seven adjoining rooms forming a horseshoe shape around a central courtyard. Mirza and his family occupy two of the rooms and rent out the others to other families. They also have a chicken coop, and their tenants sometimes bring their own livestock and keep the animals in the yard. Stepping into their home feels a little like arriving at a caravanserai; the place is filled with an unbelievable number of people of all ages and animals. When Bahram sleeps on the roof in summer he hears them talking, shouting, and laughing, and then all at once the noise drops as if someone has announced a curfew, everyone stops talking, even the children fall silent. How odd, Bahram thinks. I’ll go have a look one day, I’ll climb the wall and watch them in secret, to see if someone gives the signal: “Okay, time’s up, goodnight and no more noise.”