Song of a Captive Bird

by Jasmin Darznik

  “So come do your writing up here! It’s early in the season; everything shuts down in the middle of the week. We’d practically have the lake to ourselves. I bet you could use the time away from the city, and the swimming’s perfect here, Forugh. The water’s a little cold in the mornings, but by noon it’s perfect. There’s a kitchen at the cottage and I can cook for us…” She rattled off a list of dishes. “Pomegranate and walnut stew, crisped rice, saffron pudding, baklava.”

  I laughed. “Are you sure that’s enough food?”

  “Listen,” she said with mock seriousness, “if you don’t come up here yourself, I’ll have to drive all the way back to Tehran and kidnap you. You know I’m capable of it, Forugh joon.”

  “Fine,” I said, and laughed again, which brought me, very briefly, back to my old self. “When shall I come?”

  “Are you free tonight?”

  * * *

  —

  When I opened my eyes, all I saw was a shuttered window and a weak thread of light. Arriving in darkness the night before, I had seen a scattering of small cottages set against a dark hillside. It wasn’t until the morning, when I threw open the window, that I saw how beautiful it was here. The cottage was part of an old hunting lodge that had belonged to Leila’s father. Surrounded by acres of woodland, an orchard of pomegranate trees stretched from the terrace toward the mountainside, and in the distance I could make out poplars dancing against the sky.

  I pulled on a dressing gown and went looking for Leila. “You’re a real gypsy,” I said when I found her in the kitchen. There was the scent of bread baking, the fresh fragrance of herbs and of cumin and coriander and saffron.

  Wearing a white cotton dress, her curls pulled back with a scarf, she was standing by the stove in bare feet. The windows streamed with condensation. Rings of fire blazed under all the burners. I watched her move between the kitchen counter and the stove, a spatula in one hand and a wooden spoon in the other. She looked over her shoulder at me. “Better a gypsy than a princess,” she quipped.

  She poured me some tea, in a pretty but chipped china cup, and I sat down at the table. When she turned back to the stove, I took in the room. The polished oak armoire that stood at one end of the kitchen might have been transported from regal quarters, but the floors were covered in colorful tribal rugs, and everywhere I looked there was an impression of warmth and simplicity.

  “Now that you’re finally awake,” she said as she set an iron mortar and pestle and several cinnamon sticks before me, “you could help out a little.”

  I took a sip of tea and began grinding the cinnamon. When I finished I took a pinch of the spice between my fingers and began dusting the top of the saffron pudding with it. I arranged the slivered almonds on top, making a star at the center of the bowl.

  I glanced over and saw she was watching me.

  “Not bad,” she said, and I pulled a face.

  “You’re looking well, Leila.”

  The corner of her mouth lifted in a slight smile. “You say that as though you weren’t expecting it.”

  “That’s not true,” I told her. “It’s only that I know you don’t go out much anymore. And”—I swallowed—“you seemed upset that night. At the premiere, I mean. Just before the movie started and then later when we were at the party.”

  “Nerves,” she said, and shrugged. “It happens sometimes. Because of Rahim, because of what happened.”

  I swallowed. “Any word from him recently?” I ventured.

  She shook her head. “He’s out of the country. He’s safe. That’s all that matters.” She ran the back of her hand against her brow, sighed, and stirred the pot. “It’s getting so hot. What time is it anyway?”

  I checked my wristwatch. “Half past eleven.”

  “Already?” She lowered the heat on the stove and set down her spoon. “In that case, let’s go for a swim.”

  We changed quickly and set out for the lake. Following the narrow footpath through the woods, we tramped past dense columns of silver-leafed birch until we reached a clearing, and from there we looked out across dales and ridges to where the landscape was punctuated by a small blue-green lake.

  On the beach, Leila wriggled out of her summer dress and let it drop to the sand. She was wearing a turquoise bathing suit with a halter top and a high-cut bottom. Her skin was very fair and there were freckles on her shoulders and chest. Even without a stitch of makeup, she was about as beautiful as I’d ever seen her.

  I pulled my tunic over my head and kicked off my pants. My faded black tank suit was too big in the chest and the fabric sagged. I tried to straighten the straps, but it wasn’t much use. “Honestly, Forugh,” Leila said, as a smile crept onto her lips and her eyes took on a familiar gleam, “for such a famous temptress, you sometimes show a remarkable lack of style.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh. “I’ve missed you so much, Leila.”

  “Me, too,” she said. “I’m so happy you came up. I love the quiet, but it’s much better with you here.”

  She slung her arm around my shoulder, and together we made our way down toward the water. On the shore she stopped to tighten the tie on her halter. I was still picking my way gingerly over the large rocks that lined the shore when Leila surged past me and dove under the water with a fierce kick. Waist-deep in the warm water, I squinted against the sun and watched her. She swam beautifully, with strong, steady strokes. You had to be confident to swim like that, I thought; you had to have done it for years. All your life, maybe.

  “Don’t tell me you don’t want to get your hair wet!” she called out a few minutes later when she saw me dog-paddling with my head high above the water.

  She swam over to me and then dove down under the water, and for a minute I couldn’t see her, though I could feel her leg brush against mine once and then a second time. She bobbed up in front of me a moment later, splashing me so that water streamed down my face and soaked my hair.

  Afterward, when we were done swimming, we spread our towels on the beach. I sat cross-legged, looking out toward the lake and sifting the warm pebbled sand through my fingers. She slipped on her sunglasses and stretched out on the towel, her dark wet curls splayed around her. When I looked over at her, I thought she’d dozed off, but then she suddenly said, “So. What’s going on with Darius?”

  “What kind of question is that?”

  She lifted herself up onto her elbows and looked at me. “A direct one. A simple one.”

  “He’s not planning on divorcing his wife, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “Things aren’t how they used to be. People are getting divorces now. It’s happening more and more.”

  “I’ve been divorced already, remember? I know all too much about it. And if the point of his getting a divorce is that we’d get married, well, I’m not sure I want that just now, or ever, really.”

  She shifted on her towel, pushing her sunglasses onto the top of her head so that I could see her eyes. “All right,” she said, softening her voice. “Forget marriage. What I want to know is, are you happy with this arrangement?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “That’s really all you want? To be ‘fine’?”

  I was quiet for a moment. “Maybe it’s better to want less for a change.”

  “Oh, Forugh. Listen to you! You wouldn’t have said that a year ago. Or when you first moved back to Tehran and had far fewer choices than you do now.

  “You know I put as little stock in public opinion as you do,” Leila continued when I didn’t answer, “maybe even less, but that’s not the point. What matters is what you think, Forugh, and what you feel. You don’t conform to anybody’s ideas of what you should do with your life, but it’s not that you don’t care how you’re treated. You’re never going to be like that, however you try to pretend.”

  I pressed my lips together and stared out at the water. “Well,” I said finally, clenching fistfuls of sand and then letting them sift through my fingers, “it doesn’t matter. My fee
lings aren’t enough to persuade him to make some sort of change.”

  Her answer was quick. “They should be,” she said, pulling her sunglasses back over her eyes and lying back on her towel.

  * * *

  —

  We’d walked back from the lake in silence, both sleepy from sunbathing, tangled in our own thoughts. At dinner Leila tried to draw me out of myself, to tease me in the old ways, but I couldn’t shake loose what she’d said about Darius. She was right, of course, but I couldn’t tell her that just then. I slipped away to my room early that night, but it took me a long time to fall asleep, and I was still in bed when a screen slapped against the front door and I jerked awake. There were noises coming from the other room, a shuffling and then the sound of a door banging closed. A crash, as of furniture overturned, and rapid footsteps. But then the noises suddenly stopped. Just a servant tidying up the cottage, I thought. I sank back under the covers, drifting off to sleep, and woke to a noonday heat, the sheets damp and twisted around my legs.

  “Leila?” I called out, pulling on a robe and stumbling into the kitchen. A chair had been knocked to the ground. I picked it up and called out to Leila again. There was no answer, but I saw signs of breakfast—the little metal coffeepot sat on the stove and next to it was a cup, half full and with lipstick coating its rim.

  I rinsed out the coffeepot, made a fresh brew, and carried a cup from the kitchen to Leila’s bedroom. The door was closed, but a sliver of light showed through at the bottom. I knocked quietly. “Leila?” I didn’t hear an answer. I knocked again, then turned the knob and poked my head inside. Her bed was made, the pillows neatly fluffed and the quilt folded. I set down the coffee and sat on the edge of the bed. She must be down by the lake, I thought, but then from the window I saw her turquoise bathing suit hanging on a line in the garden, alongside our towels and my own black suit.

  I checked my watch—12:37. Maybe she’d driven into the village, not wanting to wake me? I walked outside but found her car parked beside mine. She must have gone for a walk. I went back to my room, dressed, and then poured myself a cup of coffee. I read for a while, nibbling at a piece of flatbread she’d set out on a plate for me. I couldn’t concentrate and kept reading the same page over and over. The quiet in the house was maddening. I checked my watch again—2:12. Finally I put down my book and scribbled a note and tacked it to the front door: “Down at the cove. Looking for you.”

  The first part of the walk took me past a row of pomegranate trees, the boughs heavy with deep-red fruit. I thought we had walked diagonally toward the lake, but we must have walked straight. I tried to work out the way Leila had taken me, but the footpaths all looked the same and I couldn’t find the birch-lined path from the previous day. Eventually I saw what looked like a wider trail and made my way in that direction. After wandering for ten minutes, I came to the cove where we’d swum together. The lake was still, like a sheet of glass reflecting a cloudless blue sky. I sank to the ground, knees to sand. The water near the shore was a clear pale green, dappled with sunlight. Overhead, birds circled the air, and there was the relentless buzz of insects in the trees. I looked out at the lake. On the opposite shore, I could see two boys fishing. I watched them angle their rods and cast their lures into the water. A few times the ends of their poles fluttered and dipped, and then they yanked them back to set their hooks. Once, one of them caught what I guessed was a trout, though from a distance it was hard to be sure.

  There was a sound then, a hawk’s scream.

  An instinct turned my head to the left. I clambered to my feet and dusted the sand from my skirt. I noticed another footpath leading from the shore into a copse of beech trees. The path was narrow, uneven, and studded with rocks, but I continued down the trail. Eventually the path grew thick with tall, leafy bushes that scratched at my bare legs. Twigs snapped under my feet; roots tripped me. I was running now. The lake disappeared and reappeared behind the trees, and then suddenly the trail opened up into a clearing, from which I could see another small cove.

  She was there, in the lake, not ten feet out from the beach. She was wearing her white sundress and a shoe on one foot. Her mouth had been gagged and her hands had been roped together in front of her. Her long black hair floated around her shoulders, and her still eyes were open to the sky.

  I stood there at the lip of the lake, not moving, not blinking, not breathing. I don’t know how long I stood there, staring at her dead body, but at some point I turned and ran back up the footpath, back to the house and to my car. When I reached the village, I was screaming unintelligibly and I could not stop.

  28.

  And this is me

  a woman alone

  on the threshold of a cold season

  on the verge of understanding

  the earth’s polluted existence

  and the simple sadness of the sky

  and the weakness of these hands….

  I’m cold,

  I’m cold and it seems

  I’ll never be warm again…

  I’m cold and I know

  there’s nothing left of the wild poppy’s dreams

  but a few drops of blood.

  —from “Let Us Believe in the Dawn of the Cold Season”

  Leila’s death cut my life in two: Before and After.

  After Leila died I became a different person. I drove to Darius’s house the night of her murder, half crazed, desperate, and afraid. He made me sit down and tell him what had happened. I could barely get the words out, choking on them through my tears. Taking it all in, his face turned pale and serious. For once, he didn’t seem to know what to do or what to say. Toward dawn, when light began to bleed through the window, I took three sleeping pills and slept for fifteen hours. When I woke, he was still in the room. He was sitting on the edge of the bed and his eyes were soft and kind, which made me remember what had happened and start to cry.

  BODY OF QAJAR HEIRESS FOUND IN AMIR KABIR LAKE, read the headline a few days later. The story ran in the last pages of the newspaper. It was three paragraphs long and revealed more or less nothing. Leila’s relatives had buried her quickly and quietly in the family mausoleum, and if they were planning any sort of memorial, I hadn’t been invited to attend, nor had anyone I knew. The authorities, meanwhile, refused to offer any sort of explanation for her death, apart from the assertion that she’d drowned.

  “Leila did not drown,” I told Darius. Tears blurred my eyes as soon as I said her name.

  “I know.”

  My body stiffened, then began to shake. When he reached for me, I buried my face against his shoulder. We sat together for a long time like that. My voice, when I drew back from him, was a whisper. “But why…?”

  He looked pensive and uncomfortable. It took a few minutes for him to answer, but then he said, “I think they wanted Rahim. He’s been making too much noise, and too many people have been listening.”

  “But what did any of that have to do with her?”

  “Maybe they thought he’d come back if he knew she was in danger.”

  My chest had tightened and I couldn’t get air inside. “He didn’t come back.”

  “No.”

  “I don’t understand. It doesn’t make sense.”

  “They probably wanted to send a message to his comrades. Who knows?”

  “We need to do something.”

  “Do something? What do you think you can do?” He shook his head. “Work, Forugh. Write your poems. That’s all you can do, and it’s more than most anyone can accomplish these days.”

  “It’s not enough.”

  “Nothing’s enough. Do what you can.”

  * * *

  —

  But I didn’t write. I couldn’t write. I went back to Tehran, and for the next several weeks I lived in a blur of grief, rarely leaving the house, rarely bothering to shower or change my clothes. Night after night I found myself up late, unable to sleep, pacing the room and thinking, It can’t be, it can’t be, it can’t be. But
it was.

  Her death was my fault. No matter how much Darius tried to convince me later that it wasn’t, I’d always believe I was to blame. Not that I could have saved her. No—I couldn’t have done that. But if I hadn’t stayed up so late the night before, I would have woken up earlier. I would have seen when they—or was it he?—came for her. I couldn’t have stopped what happened next, but she wouldn’t have died as she did. Alone.

  Despite what Darius told me, I felt as if I needed to do something, but I didn’t know what. I smoked endlessly and barely ate at all. A menacing presence seemed to lurk behind every window and every door. I no longer trusted anyone, not even people I knew. I hardly talked to anyone anymore. The longer this went on, the more difficult it became to imagine living any other way. It was as if I had never had a different life than the one I had now.

  Whenever I did go out and come back alone to the empty house, I’d walk in a hurried zigzag, looking over my shoulder every few steps. Once I made it inside, I’d search every room to make sure no one was there before bolting the door shut and barricading it with a side table and two chairs. Darius came by a few times, but the long silences between us made me miserable and I wanted to be left alone, in the darkness of my own thoughts and memories.

  * * *

  Once, when I was a small girl, I saw a man hanged. We’d spent the afternoon at the bazaar, my mother, Puran, and I. It was a warm spring day, and all up and down Avenue Pahlavi the trees had started flowering. I remember the air was thick with the scent of cherry blossoms.