Pomegranate Soup

by Marsha Mehran

  “Yes, the Delmonico place, you eejit! I’ve been waiting five years fer the bit of expansion any man in my position has the right to. Now she’s gone to openin’ that pisshole of a shop again without any prior warning from yer bleedin’ end! I have a good mind to tear the place down myself!”

  “Estelle Delmonico? Another shop? She couldn’t be thinking about that now—not at her age.”

  “How the feck would you know? You with your golf clubs up the arse while I slave away looking after this town! Where would this place be without me and my business, eh?” Thomas punched the air, grazing Padraig’s shoulder. He climbed into his car like an angry gorilla and rolled down his window. “I want you to find out what that old bag is up to. And meanwhile, tell Margaret and all she knows that if they want to stay on Thomas McGuire’s better side they’d better stick to Corcoran’s fer their daily bread.”

  “Are you sure it’s a pastry shop she’s got running again, then?”

  “Whatever it is, I want it empty and closed within the week.”

  Thomas revved the Land Rover and tore out of the parking lot, leaving Padraig numbed and unanchored. The feeble councilman placed one hand on the hood of his car for support as his blood pumped furiously through his small, hairy body.

  ESTELLE DELMONICO carefully maneuvered her croaky Honda into the cobblestone alleyway behind the café. The little widow had gotten up earlier than usual that morning, the gale-ridden moans of neighboring Croagh Patrick echoing her own as she pushed her brittle legs out of her feathery bed.

  Despite Estelle’s hearty laugh and steady eyes, she suffered from a degeneration of cartilage that caused her great misery. It had started with a seasonal prickling of wrists and fingertips that first year she and Luigi arrived in County Mayo, and had slowly but surely expanded like a piece of pulled dough until it wrapped her in a cannoli of excruciating pain. Years of helping Luigi knead and punch endless loaves of currant bread had exacerbated her affliction, and by the year preceding her husband’s death, Estelle’s arthritis had reduced her to sitting on a stool behind the store counter while Luigi ran around tending to customers and ovens alike.

  Of course, Estelle had tried the prescribed doses of steroid but found that it did nothing but give her unusually unmanageable underarm hair. She had even traveled to a Chinese acupuncturist, who in the height of the free-loving seventies, had set up shop in Dublin’s Henry Street. Although she was impressed by the Chinaman’s fortitude—Li Fung Tao practiced his morning tai chi in undisturbed serenity while fruit and veg hawkers spat their shrill wares all around him—his needles did nothing but make her feel like a piece of anchovy strung in an Alici marinade of oregano and chili flakes.

  Estelle had even tried her own concoction of rosemary and lavender, which she plucked from the little herb garden around the back of her cottage. Boiling the leaves down until only their dark oils remained, she would then mix in a good amount of Umbrian olive oil sent by her niece, Gloria, from London. The oil left her Mediterranean skin taut like snappy brindle berries, a fact that spurred envy among the old townswomen and prompted Dervla Quigley to spread rumors that Estelle Delmonico had made a deal with the fairies, for sure. Estelle didn’t mind the suspicious stares, even enjoyed them to be honest, wishing there was some truth to it all. Because no matter how aromatic and moisturizing, the rosemary and lavender massage was not magical enough to put an end to the arthritis.

  The Italian widow’s aches were acting up as usual on this day of spring reckoning, but she was not going to let them stop her from whipping up her famous osso buco for her sweet new tenants. She even made a side of her own mother’s gremolata, toasting the woody pine nuts until they turned dark brown. This veal masterpiece used to be Luigi’s favorite dish, and Estelle saved it for special occasions when the frangipani of her sunny homeland was especially missed.

  “Hello?” Estelle knocked on the old shop’s back door with her right fist and peered into its blue, yellow, and green stained-glass window. From inside the kitchen, her round face looked like that of a medieval Venetian harlequin come to life.

  Bahar, sitting closest to the back door, jumped at the unexpected knock. Her large brown eyes popped with anxiety, and she tightened her grip on the sharp knife she was using. It had been a long time since a knock had not set off a flutter of fear in Bahar’s small birdcage chest or made her duck for cover. Ten seconds, counted out in thudding heartbeats, passed before she realized the knock was benign, but by then her complexion had grown ashen, the color of unwanted oatmeal.

  Darkest among her sisters, Bahar considered her brown skin tone as yet another sign that she was the least desirable Aminpour sister. As the middle child, Bahar was inevitably stuck between Marjan’s intuitive compassion and Layla’s willowy optimism. And, as for many children who find themselves bookended by extraordinary siblings, the gnawing desire to stand out, to take center stage, became for Bahar an all-consuming, if subconscious disease. Drama is vital to this sickness’s survival, and many middle children are thrown from one emotion to another, within minutes going from extreme anger to acute sadness to euphoric gaiety.

  Marjan measured Bahar’s unpredictable temperament according to the ancient and treasured Zoroastrian practice of gastronomic balancing, which pitted light against dark, good against evil, hot against cold. Certain hot, or garm, personalities tend to be quick to temper, exude more energy, and prompt all others around them to action. This energy often runs itself ragged, so to counter exhaustion, one must consume cold, or sard foods, such as freshwater fish, yogurt, coriander, watermelon, and lentils. Most spices and meats should be avoided, for they only stoke the fires inside. (Tea, although hot in temperature, is quite a neutralizing element.) By contrast, for the person who suffers from too cold a temperament, marked by extreme bouts of melancholia and a general disinterest in the future, hot or garm dishes are recommended. Foods such as veal, mung beans, cloves, and figs do well to raise spirits and excite ambitions.

  To diagnose Bahar as a garmi (on account of her extreme anxiety and hot temper) would have been simple enough, had she not also suffered from a lowness of spirit that often led to migraine headaches. Whether in a garm or a sard mood, Bahar could always depend on her older sister to guide her back to a relative calm. Marjan had for a long time kept a close eye on Bahar and knew exactly when to feed her sautéed fish with garlic and Seville oranges to settle her hot flashes, or when a good apple khoresh, a stew made from tart apples, chicken, and split peas, would be a better choice to pull Bahar out of her doldrums.

  “Marjan? Who’s that?” Bahar got up from the round table where she had been chopping mint sprigs, still clenching the knife.

  “It’s all right. It’s only Mrs. Delmonico,” Marjan reassured her sister. “Did you eat anything this morning?” Without Marjan forcing her to take a bite, Bahar would not look after herself, often skipping meals altogether.

  “No. Too much to do,” Bahar said tiredly, relaxing her tensed jaw. She placed the knife on the table and opened the back door. At once she was greeted by a friendly smile and the zesty smells of lemon thyme and fresh tomato sauce.

  “Hello, Mrs. Delmonico. Come in, please. Let me help you.” Bahar leaned over and took the red enamel casserole dish Estelle was balancing on her left arm like a precocious baby.

  Marjan left the pot of soup she was stirring at the stove and, taking Estelle’s aching arm, gently led her to a kitchen chair. “Mrs. Delmonico, you look so tired,” she said. “You are welcome here, of course.”

  “I bring you my best cooking. Osso buco with pine nut gremolata. It’s good luck, you know. In Napoli we eat it on special times. So I bring it for your new year’s and birthday.” Estelle sat down at the round table, relieved.

  “You shouldn’t have,” said Marjan.

  “Please, Mrs. Delmonico. Would you like some tea?” Bahar was already running into the front room to pour a cup of hot water from the boiling golden samovar. Having worked for a year as a nurse in a Lewisham rest h
ome, she immediately recognized the signs of osteoarthritis.

  Estelle coughed and unwound her twisted spine. “Thank you, darling,” she said, wincing. “And call me Estelle. Mrs. Delmonico was my mama-in-law, and you know, she was a very hard woman to like. Believe me.”

  Bahar returned and placed a steaming cup of bergamot tea in front of the old woman.

  “Thank you. Agh—this Irish weather is going to kill me!” Estelle threw her hands up with all the Italian dramatic flair she could muster. Leaning into the vapor of the steaming tea before her, she inhaled the bitter orange oils of the bergamot flower. “Mmmmm, just like Napoli!”

  “Yes, drink. And you have to have some of my red lentil soup. It will warm you up.” Marjan smiled at the sweet woman as she ladled out the fragrant soup and placed a bowl next to her teacup.

  The combination of cumin, turmeric, and nigella seed produced a healthy blush in Estelle Delmonico’s face. Transporting her back nearly fifty years, the smell conjured up her first night of wedded bliss in Morocco. There, under a magical crescent moon, and with the smells of the spices rising from the bazaar below their open hotel window, the tumbling, bronzed bodies of the twenty-year-old honeymooners Luigi and Estelle made love with all the vigor of their Latin blood.

  “Mmmmm, wonderful, wonderful. So much food here, my goodness!” Estelle said, emerging from her romantic daydream.

  At only nine in the morning the kitchen was already pregnant to its capacity, every crevice and countertop overtaken by Marjan’s gourmet creations. Marinating vegetables (torshis of mango, eggplant, and the regular seven-spice variety), packed to the briny brims of five-gallon see-through canisters, sat on the kitchen island. Large blue bowls were filled with salads (angelica lentil, tomato, cucumber and mint, and Persian fried chicken), dolmeh, and dips (cheese and walnut, yogurt and cucumber, baba ghanoush, and spicy hummus), which, along with feta, Stilton, and cheddar cheeses, were covered and stacked in the enormous glass-door refrigerator. Opposite the refrigerator stood the colossal brick bread oven. Baking away in its domed belly was the last of the sangak bread loaves, three feet long and counting, rising in golden crests and graced with scatterings of poppy and nigella seed. The rest of the bread (paper-thin lavash, crusty barbari, slabs of sangak as well as the usual white sliced loaf) was already covered with comforting cheesecloth to keep the freshness in. And simmering on the stove, under Marjan’s loving orders, was a small pot of white onion soup (not to be mistaken for the French variety, for this version boasts dried fenugreek leaves and pomegranate paste), the last pot of red lentil soup, and a larger pot of abgusht. An extravaganza of lamb, split peas, and potatoes, abgusht always reminded Marjan of early spring nights in Iran, when the cherry blossoms still shivered with late frosts and the piping samovars helped wash down the saffron and dried lime aftertaste with strong, black Darjeeling tea.

  “If you think this is something, you should see the front. We’ve been working since midnight,” said Marjan, smiling with the realization that the hardest part of the day was nearly over. Everything was finally coming around, taking shape, in this place with such a funny name.

  Bahar continued chopping mint on the round table, every now and again stealing a glance at Estelle as she slurped the last of her soup and leaned back, satisfied and refreshed.

  “Oh, so delicious. I am a new woman. So, it is your birthday today, no? How old?”

  “Twenty-four.” Bahar’s shy smile was returned by a large set of teeth sparkling with various fillings of gold.

  “Ah, so young!” Hands over head again. “And what are you making there with the mint?”

  “It’s for Layla. I’m chopping this for her dugh.” Bahar’s knife expertly sliced across the mint leaves, striking emerald mines. Helping Marjan in the kitchen had given her years of experience in peeling and slicing. If Bahar hadn’t taken up nursing in London, she would have made an excellent sous chef, even gone to work alongside her sister in one of those trendy English restaurants. But then, that would have required her to spend hours over a hot stove, the burning pots staring up at her with gaping mouths, crucibles of a past that threatened to become present. No, Bahar was certain she could never do that. Even now she went to the stove only in emergencies. Only when Marjan had too little time and not enough hands for stirring all that she had cooked up.

  “Doo-oo-gghhh?” Estelle emphasized the word’s guttural ending, letting it tickle her throat. “What is that?”

  “Dugh is a yogurt and mint drink. We usually have it with chelow kabob—that’s rice and barbecued meats. But Layla’s been suffering from hiccups for an hour now, and it doesn’t look like they’ll stop. This dugh will put an end to them,” said Marjan, as she grabbed a container of yogurt from the refrigerator.

  Estelle watched as Marjan combined the yogurt, mint, salt, pepper, and water in a large pitcher, stirring vigorously until the color became a uniform creamy mint. She added some crushed ice to the pitcher and threw in a garnish of mint to remind Layla of the calming quality found in its green leaves.

  Layla was indeed still in the throes of a hiccup fit, but she was nowhere near suffering. The young girl was lying upstairs on the mattress the three sisters shared, splayed out like a star fruit with soliloquies of love-struck Shakespearean heroines running across her muddled brain. The image of Malachy’s sapphire eyes sent tremors through her body; the hot node below her belly tingled and sent waves of pleasure down to her toes.

  So this was how love was supposed to feel, Layla thought, like the ecstatic cries of a pomegranate as it realizes the knife’s thrust, the cesarean labor of juicy seeds cut from her inner womb. Like the gleeful laugh of oil as it corrupts the watery flour, the hot grease bending the batter to its will and creating a greater sweetness from the process— zulbia, the sugary fried fritters she loved so. Falling in love was amazing. Why hadn’t anyone ever told her so?

  Layla hiccuped again. Those sapphire eyes. Maybe she would see them again tomorrow, at her new school. For once Layla would not mind standing before a classroom full of staring faces.

  “Layla! Your dugh is ready. Come down! Mrs. Delmonico is here for a visit!”

  “I’m coming!” Layla answered. Marjan’s voice sounded tired, and Layla felt a twinge of guilt for not helping her sisters more with the cooking.

  Downstairs, Estelle Delmonico was drinking her second cup of bergamot tea.

  “So, my Gloria tells me that you girls escaped the revolution. Yes?”

  Marjan stopped stirring and cast a quick glance toward Bahar. Except for a dark shadow over her sister’s soulful eyes, there was no sign that the word revolution had caused Bahar any agitation.

  “Actually, we left Iran a little bit earlier. Just before,” Marjan said tentatively, still watching Bahar.

  The foggy control towers of Heathrow Airport flashed momentarily into Marjan’s mind. February 1, 1979, a date they would later learn had also welcomed a previously exiled Ayatollah, one with a penchant for mystic poetry, into power in Tehran. Ushered into the clear-paned interrogation cubicles of the airport’s immigration offices, the girls were completely unprepared for the barrage of accusatory questions and embarrassing searches of pockets and undergarments. Marjan recalled how little Layla had been forced to step out of her ratty panties, to reveal a wad of prerevolutionary exchanged sterling hidden where her underwear’s elastic should have been, financial stability in untouchable hearths.

  Marjan knew the kind widow was waiting expectantly for their story of escape but found that she could not tell that tale. Not yet. At least not in front of her sensitive sister.

  “We were lucky to get visas to the U.K., lucky to get good jobs with the economy so bad. . . . Layla was only seven, so she doesn’t remember much.”

  Despite her madcap moments, Estelle had an acute sense of boundaries and decided to leave the subject alone.

  “Yes, very young, seven. And where is that pretty girl, eh? She is not sick?”

  “No, just a teenager. Layla, com
e on!” Marjan yelled toward the staircase again, unaware that Layla had been standing the whole time at the top of the landing. No one could see her from there, but she had heard. And it wasn’t true. She remembered it all.

  She remembered the sirens. The blaring horns, mounted atop military jeeps that appeared without notice to signal the nightly curfew; circling in and out of the soft-hued residential streets lined with marigolds, households stocked with both dugh and Coca-Cola. Soon after came the flapping. Funny how she remembered hearing it before actually seeing it, the funeral tint of that female tent that was lately becoming so commonly worn, even in the more affluent northern suburbs. Chador, chador. Three square yards of scratchy wool strategically wrapped and clenched in chattering teeth, revealing nothing above blinking pupils, nothing below dripping nostrils. Chador, chador.

  Posters of these multiplying fabric ravens were popping up on university walls and shop windows daily, headlined with thinly cloaked threats. Bahar, who was sixteen at the time of the upheaval and very much under its influence, had used those same threats to induce Marjan and Layla to wear full-length veils. She would return home flushed with excitement after attending one of the many student revolts in Tehran’s central and southern streets, filled with stories of bullet-ridden banners and a stern-browed Ayatollah that made so many chadors swoon with delirium.

  The chants, the demands for death, were heard everywhere. “Death to the traitor Shah! Death to all things from the opiate West!” An end to the America that had brought Layla the Tom and Jerry cartoons and peanut M&M’s she loved so much. That had been enough to make her cry (secretly, of course), late at night in bed.

  Bahar was sixteen then, just a little older than she was now. Layla shook her head to dispel those dark thoughts. Maybe Marjan was right to change the subject, to try to put it all behind them. Layla hiccuped again, the sound releasing her from her hiding place. She walked down the stairs and smiled.

  “Finally! Your dugh’s on the counter there. Drink it before it settles. And say hello to Mrs. Delmonico,” Marjan barked, her nerves getting the better of her.