The Gardens of Consolation

by Parisa Reza

  Ever since he came to live here Bahram has spent time with the children from Mirza’s house—both boys and girls. They often play together: football with the boys, hide-and-seek with the girls. When he was younger, he regularly fell in love with one or other of the girls and would come home and beg his mother, “Please go ask for so-and-so’s hand, I want to marry her!”

  There is a newcomer in this trio of girls coming out of the house. A girl with blue eyes! Braham abandons Gabr’s donkey and follows them with a “hey, girls!” Talla, her name is. Another Talla! She has just moved in with her mother and sister. They have no father and her mother is Russian with golden hair and skin as white as milk. The memory of those German women tugs at Bahram’s heart yet again.

  He tells her she has the same name as his mother. It suits her, he thinks, because she has golden hair and Talla means “gold.”

  Bahram watches out for Talla all through the fall, but rarely has a chance to talk to her. Then comes winter, when everyone retreats indoors. The days grow shorter, it is icy cold, and parents do not let their children outdoors. People go to bed earlier, too, and Bahram lies dreaming in his bed. He imagines Talla in a swimming costume among the German women, and pictures himself standing beside her by the pool.

  That winter nothing can take Bahram’s mind off thoughts of Talla. Not even a mysterious assassination attempt on the Shah! Even though Mirza joins Sardar under the korsi every evening to listen to the radio, and the whole family hears Mohammad Reza Shah addressing the nation when he is discharged from hospital. Sardar and Mirza are very moved, and pray for him.

  “The man who shot the Shah was carrying a membership card for Iran’s Communist Party, the Toudeh, and a press card for an Islamic newspaper. That’s why the Shah’s banned the Toudeh Party and Ayatollah Kashani’s been arrested,” Mirza’s son Mohsen tells them.

  “Allahu Akbar!”

  But Bahram hears neither the radio nor their comments; he is writing love poems.

  With the arrival of spring, children come back out into the streets to play, and Bahram and Talla see each other again. That summer Bahram finds work on a farm, picking cherries for two tomans a day. Talla is proud that her son is working and earning money, and Bahram does it to make her happy. At work one day he finds some beautiful red apples under an apple tree, and puts two in his pocket to share with Talla. When he arrives home his mother notices his bulging pockets and asks him what he is hiding. His mother does not like the other Talla, and she justifies these feelings by telling herself the girl grew from a Russian seed, an infidel seed.

  Bahram tells her Talla’s father is Iranian and a Muslim; he is a Turk from Tabriz. He married Talla’s mother when he was studying in Russia, then they lived in Tabriz, but after the war he had to follow the Russian army and flee to Russia because he had been a politician in Tabriz; there has been no news of him since. Talla’s mother came here to find members of his family who, by contrast, fled Russia after the Communists came to power, and now live somewhere in Tehran. She hopes they will help and support her in her efforts to give her two daughters a worthy upbringing. But Talla is not interested in any of this. She wants to know what he has in his pockets.

  “Red apples.”

  “Give them to me.”

  “No, they’re for Talla. The other Talla.”

  This is Bahram’s first real love, and Talla is well aware of it. How painful it is when your son draws away and loves another woman. And an infidel, too, with blue eyes, and the same name as her—it’s more than she can bear. Talla confiscates the apples and, furious, Bahram tells he will not be going back to work on the farm.

  He sulks for several days, shuts himself in his room on the upper floor, reading and drawing. But he is soon bored. Sardar suggests he go and work for Mash-Rahim at the grocery store. Bahram enjoys being on the other side of the counter and serving locals. And he wants to earn some money so that he and Talla can have photographs taken. He wants them to have a photo of each other.

  For his visit to the photographer he wears his new suit, which dates from Norouz the same year. The photographer asks him to stand beside a column topped with a vase of flowers. He puts a white scarf around Bahram’s neck and ties it carefully under his chin. He takes three shots: Bahram resting his elbow on the column, Bahram with his hand at his waist, and Bahram looking relaxed with his jacket unbuttoned. Bahram decides to give the Talla the one of him leaning on the column. He likes the effect: He looks good and his face has come out perfectly.

  Talla gives him a picture of herself in exchange. In it her hair is scooped up into a chignon, she looks like a woman already. Bahram does not like it. He thinks she looks coquettish. He wants a photo that looks like her, he wants her as a young girl, the way she looks every day; he tells her so.

  After a few weeks, when Bahram’s mother can see her son is still resentful about the episode with the apples, she becomes more conciliatory and allows Talla to come to the garden and spend time with her son. They start making paper bags which they sell to tradesmen. They want to earn some money so Talla can go back to the photographer and have another photo taken, one that will appeal to Bahram. In the meantime, under the nest where a pair of nightingales come back every year to lay their eggs in Sardar and Talla’s garden, Bahram kisses a girl for the first time. Her lips are soft and moist, and Bahram’s hands tremble at her waist as much as his lips do on hers.

  But then one evening the mayor of Gholhak holds a reception in his garden. The music can be heard from a long way away. Bahram knows Talla and her family have been invited. He wonders why the mayor has invited them, so he and Ghassem decide to go see for themselves. They climb onto the garden wall and Bahram catches sight of Talla dancing with the mayor’s son—cheek to cheek, as they say. He jumps down from the wall, runs home, finds a stick, and comes back to hide in the shadows outside the mayor’s house. He wants to beat the mayor’s son and Talla when they come out. He is so angry he is determined to split their heads open, the pair of them. He stays by the door until midnight when his now-frantic mother comes to find him and bring him home by force.

  When Talla came to see him the next day he immediately drove her away. She could not understand this sudden fury and he gave her no explanation. He never forgave her that dance, he tore up the photo of her with her topknot and never spoke to her again. He had planned to marry her and in exchange she had dishonored him by dancing with someone else. No man could accept that. Even Talla senior tried to intervene in the younger Talla’s favor when the girl came to her weeping. There was nothing for it, he would not change his mind.

  The summer came to an end and Talla, her mother, and her younger sister, whose name was Toutti, left the area to go live in Tehran, and Bahram never heard of them again . . .

  The month of Muharram comes around. In the Islamic lunar calendar the tenth day of Muharram is Ashura Day, when the martyrdom of Imam Hossein is remembered. When Sardar settled in Shemiran he sometimes drove his flock to Varamine, a small village to the south of Tehran, for their summer grazing. In those days Muharram fell in the summer. He never saw a more spectacular ceremony than Ashura in Varamine. It took ten men to carry the allams, ceremonial constructions decorated with feathers and candles, and there were sumptuous Ashura costumes representing Imam Hossein and his martyrdom. Sardar has described these splendors to Mirza and suggests he comes along this year with their sons: Ali-Agha, Mohsen, and Bahram.

  They spend two days wrapped up in the rituals for Ashura, which are especially poignant in Varamine. On the first evening, men go to the great Tekyeh hall, where the walls are hung with black fabric as a mark of mourning. They sing Muharram hymns and beat their chests, first raising their hands to heaven then thumping them rhythmically onto their hearts. The pounding sound of palms smacking on bodies reverberates for hours on end. Dressed entirely in black, they beat themselves and chant in a trance, and tears flow over their cheeks. Women in black
chadors sit weeping along the sides. Tears glint amid a sea of black.

  The next day they join the procession through the streets of the small town. In the fervor of hymns and swaying Ashura banners, men flagellate themselves with chains, and Sardar is completely carried away by the emotion. The dense, black crowd, the river of tears, and above them the brightly colored feathers on the allams beat time to the rhythm of the wind.

  Bahram, on the other hand, is captivated by bewitching eye contact with a young girl who wears her chador with casual nonchalance. At seventeen he has grown into an irresistibly good-looking young man. Tall, slim, broad-shouldered, bare-chested with tan skin and hair so black it gleams in the sun like gold, he is the very image of virility as he beats his chest with exhilaration. They lose sight of each other and then make eye contact again. And the wind blows the young woman’s chador, now disguising and now revealing the outline of her body; and she certainly knows it. With all the intensity of the forbidden, their complicity is instant as well as unwise, but the crowd around them rolls on like a wave and separates them.

  That same evening, when Bahram is out in the square where Ashura plays are being performed, he spots her sitting on the roof of a house. She sees him, too, disappears for a moment, then comes back and throws him a pebble wrapped in a piece of paper. Bahram darts over to pick it up. She has written her name and address on it. Bahram stows the note in his pocket and goes back to where he was.

  Early the next morning, the five of them are standing beside the bus which will take them back to Shemiran. While waiting for it to leave, Sardar and Mirza smoke their pipes. Bahram and his friends are chatting quietly when the boy from the hostel where they spent the night appears from nowhere, running breathlessly toward them.

  “Run, run, they want to kill you!” he shrieks at Bahram and vanishes as quickly as he came.

  “What’s going on? What did he say?” asks Sardar.

  “Run, they’re coming to kill you!” Ali-Agha tells him.

  Almost as he says it, a troop of several dozen men comes running toward them, shouting and issuing threats: Bahram was seen picking up the girl’s note yesterday . . . this boy who is not from this town has sinned, he wanted to seduce a girl during Ashura, he must be punished. The men are descending on Bahram and he decamps at great speed. He can hear them behind him, and runs without looking back. Their baying gives him wings. He keeps running even when he can no longer hear them and has definitely shaken them off. He eventually stops on a plain in the middle of nowhere, and cannot see a soul whichever way he looks. He then starts walking north but when he reaches Tehran he realizes he has absolutely no money and cannot take the bus. He just keeps walking all the way to Shemiran and arrives home after nightfall. His father is hunkered down under the mulberry tree, his mother sitting on the step to the terrace.

  “What time do you call this? Why didn’t you come home with your father?” Talla scolds.

  Bahram grasps that his father has not told her the story.

  “Come and sit down, I’ll get you something to eat,” she softens.

  The moment her back is turned Sardar beckons Bahram over.

  “You have sinned. You need to go see the ayatollah to ask what you must do to secure God’s forgiveness.”

  Sardar does not say another word, he is relieved to have his son back safe and sound. He ran behind the crowd to try to help Bahram, but quickly realized that his son’s turn of speed meant he was safe from his pursuers, so he himself went back to the bus feeling reassured. But furious. He had suffered the greatest shame of his life in front of Mirza and all those other men.

  “It’s just a youthful little sin,” Mirza soothed when they were on the bus. “All Bahram did was pick up a note from a wayward girl . . . it’s not as if he touched her, thank God! God forgive him! The ayatollah will know what he needs to do.”

  And then, in front of Sardar, Mirza told his own sons not to mention this incident in Gholhak, not to Talla nor to their own mother, not to anyone. And the boys held their tongues.

  Bahram collapses as soon as he has finished eating. Tired from running and walking so far, but mostly overwhelmed by shame. He has never known his father to be so angry with him. Sardar rarely comments on his son’s life or actions, and almost never reprimands him. His anger is expressed not in words but in the intensity with which he furrows his brow. And yet, the unsettling glances from the girl with the note were still more powerful than Sardar’s furious expression.

  Two days later when Bahram was meant to be going to see the ayatollah, he put the girl’s note in his pocket and went to the center of Tehran, to Monirieh, which was a wealthy residential neighborhood in the days of the Qajar. He walked all around it and eventually found the road named on the piece of paper. But as he walked closer he noticed a group of hulking young men sitting on the ground. Bahram did not dare venture further.

  Two days went by and then, taking his courage in his hands, he set off for Monirieh again. On his way there he bought two chicks and asked for them to be put into a cardboard box with little holes so they could breathe. The big strong men were still there, sitting in the same place. He went up to them and asked them to show him which house was Mr. Makhmalchi’s. They gave him no trouble and pointed it out for him right away.

  Bahram knocks at the door and Mahine herself comes to open it. She gives a happy little yelp of surprise and invites him in. Her family must be rich because it is a beautiful big house. It is built in traditional style with a first “public” building, which in Qajar times would be the preserve of men, but he sees no one here; then there is an inner courtyard and a second “private” building intended for women. This family seems to use the first building for receiving guests and the second for everyday life.

  Mahine is surrounded by her mother, her grandmother, her little sister, two maids, and an old servant who works as a handyman. They are in the guests’ living room and the women, who are still wearing their chadors, offer Bahram a cordial and some fresh fruit. Then insist he stay for lunch. The maids spread the cloth on a large carpet on the ground in the courtyard. The two chicks Bahram has given to Mahine run around the garden, clearly happy with their new home.

  Before lunch, Bahram and Mahine find themselves alone for a moment. Mahine has been holding her chador under her chin with one hand but she lets it go: It falls open, revealing her torso and a glimpse of her breasts where her blouse is unbuttoned. All Bahram saw of her during Ashura were her big brown eyes; now he is free to study every inch of her alluring face, on display for him alone. She has high cheekbones, a small nose, and a large mouth with an upturned upper lip. Her dusky skin gleams healthily and she has full breasts. At the sound of footsteps, Mahine pulls her chador closed again and Bahram looks away.

  They all have lunch and then take tea. When it comes to siesta time, Bahram gets up to leave, and Mahine sees him to the door. Bahram tells her that sadly nothing is possible between them, they are not from the same social background, and Mahine’s father would never give her as a wife to a boy like him. Mahine laughs out loud and says this is nothing to do with marriage, she is a widow and this house belongs to her. Bahram would never have guessed, she’s so young!

  For the young of Iran, siesta time has always been a time of frivolity and transgression. Instead of opening the door to let him out, Mahine takes Bahram’s hand and leads him to another room. She locks the door and allows her chador to drop to the floor. Bahram is caught out, not quite sure what will happen next. And Mahine is in a hurry, because of her desire, because they have so little time, and because she is afraid someone might come. She grabs Bahram’s hand, slips it inside her bra, and presses it against her breast. There is something in Mahine’s eyes that Bahram has never seen before. Their breathing accelerates. She frees her hair and her breasts with sensuous, salaciously graceful moves. Bahram cannot believe his eyes: she is beautiful and satanic—she is the evil people wish for, the
sin they dream of. She hitches up her skirt, takes off her panties, and offers herself. Bahram thinks he might pass out, his heart is beating faster than when he runs the one hundred meters. She is in a paroxysm of desire, cannot bear for Bahram to take his hands from her breasts; her own hands are undoing his pants while her scalding lips burn they way over the young man’s face. She asks him to take her, all of her. Bahram does not know what to do. So she does it for him. Carried away by Mahine’s tempestuous passion, Bahram shudders and sways under the ardently writhing body of this woman he will never see again. It does not last long. But long enough for Bahram to explore the mystery of a woman’s libido. When his man’s thirst has been assuaged, Mahine smiles sweetly as a fairy and briefly strokes his panting chest while he kisses her hand before leaving.

  On the way home to Gholhak he feels like whooping for joy: A diabolical but sublime virtuoso has just—very graciously—led him over the threshold into manhood. What he cannot know is that life not only surprised him today, but more importantly it gave him the greatest of gifts. He has just tasted carnal love, and with that very first experience he discovered something that many men on this earth never know: a woman’s pleasure.

  As soon as he is back in Gholhak he goes to the ayatollah to ask for an audience, and is granted one the next day. The ayatollah studied in Nadjaf and has a reputation as a fair and moderate man. He sits on a cushion, alone at the far end of a large room. He is wearing a black turban, a sign that he is descended from the Prophet, and has a splendid white beard. Bahram comes in, kisses his hand, sits in front of him, and tells him about his sin: he looked at a girl and accepted a note from her during the Ashura ceremony. The ayatollah tells him to fast for two days, to buy two kilos of dates and hand them out in the street. He tells him he is young and has committed a young man’s sin, and God will forgive him. Then the ayatollah says he can go. Bahram stays sitting, his head lowered, still silent. The ayatollah quickly understands, and suspects something more serious. His face changes, his expression hardens.