Pomegranate Soup

by Marsha Mehran

  “Hello there? Anybody home?” The singsong voice behind her gave Marjan a start. The unlocked back door creaked open slowly to reveal Fiona Athey, with an apologetic look on her face. She was holding a stack of flyers under her left arm. “I hope I didn’t wake you up, now. I’ll come back another time, then. Sorry.” She turned to leave.

  “No, stay,” Marjan replied. “I’ve been up since five. Making a new batch of bread. Why don’t you come in for a cup of tea?”

  “I couldn’t.”

  “Don’t be silly. Please. I could use the break.”

  “All right then. Just for one cup so, and then I’ll let you go,” Fiona said, closing the back door behind her.

  Wiping her floury hands with a checkered tea towel, Marjan placed the kneaded dough back in its bowl and covered it with a clean cheesecloth. She was glad to be free of its memories, even for a little while. While Fiona settled into one of the window-side tables, Marjan measured three big tablespoons of Darjeeling leaves into a pretty yellow teapot. The samovar was already bubbling away happily when she pushed its lever down to release boiling water into the pot. Fiona Athey, who had befriended many an Eastern European traveling troupe in her Galway theater days, recognized the shiny electric water boiler instantly.

  “That’s a Russian-made samovar, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. How did you know?” Marjan was surprised.

  “I haven’t always lived in Ballinacroagh. I was an actress once. Met a lot of performers from all over the world in my day,” replied Fiona, smiling proudly.

  “How exciting! And have you done anything lately?” Marjan asked, filling a platter with elephant ears, zulbia, and almond delights.

  “I stopped right after my Emer was born. At the time I thought quitting the theater was what I wanted, but now I realize my mistake. I threw away so many years, so much of what I loved for a man.” Fiona sighed and told Marjan all about Gerhard and the seduction that had left her out in the cold.

  “Yes, it’s a wonder what we do for men,” Marjan reflected.

  “Have you ever been married, Marjan? I hope I’m not being too forward by asking.”

  “Me? No, never married. I wouldn’t have been able to cram it into my busy schedule.” Marjan cracked a wry smile and shrugged shyly.

  “Ah, sure, men will always be there when you’re ready. But look at what you’ve done! This café, your food—now that’s something. This town doesn’t know how lucky it is,” Fiona said. She reached over and patted Marjan’s hand warmly.

  “Thank you. That means a lot,” Marjan said, feeling a sudden rush of gratitude for the caring hairdresser. She should definitely make a point of coming out of the kitchen more often, she thought to herself. “Now, are you going to tell me what those flyers are for?”

  “Oh, these?” Fiona waved her hand nonchalantly over the stack of papers, but her squeaky voice gave away her excitement. “Actually, I’m a bit terrified about it all. Seeing it’s been so long since I’ve tried my hand in the theater.”

  “Are you putting on a play?”

  Fiona nodded. “Thought it’d be just the thing for Patrician Day.” She handed Marjan a light purple flyer from the thick stack. “It’s for a bit of a laugh, really.” Fiona giggled nervously.

  Marjan held the flyer before her and studied the vibrant, fuchsia-colored print:

  OVER THE HILL PRODUCTIONS PRESENTS:

  FRUITS OF LABOR

  a play in two acts

  b y FATHER FERGAL MAHONEY

  ANY INTERESTED PARTIES PLEASE ATTEND AUDITIONS:

  Wednesday & Thursday, 3 PM

  New Gymnasium, St. Joseph’s Secondary School,

  BALLINACROAGH

  “Father Mahoney has written a play!” Marjan exclaimed.

  “I was surprised about it myself. He’s no stranger to the stage, so it seems. Used to be a comedian, would you believe! Told me so himself on the phone the other night,” Fiona relayed.

  Father Fergal Mahoney had indeed been a seasoned stage ham before he entered the seminary. A rising comedic star, to be exact. As a young man he played the circuit of crumbling town council halls, festivals, and fairs around his hometown of Listowel, perfecting his repertoire of impersonations and bawdy jokes. Fergal Mahoney’s comedy routine had become so popular that by the age of twenty he was opening for the great Jimmy O’Dea in Dublin’s famed Gaiety Theatre. Onstage his rendition of the British Royal Family’s bathroom etiquette left the whole house rolling in the aisles, but it was backstage that Fergal really learned the meaning of impropriety. After his performances, he not only mingled with third-tier celebrities and dodgy politicians but also enjoyed intimate moments with a surprisingly flexible Portuguese showgirl named Pepita. All in all, it was a grand life for a farm boy from County Kerry. Little did Fergal know then that, within a year, he’d be knee-deep in sacramental studies and endless readings of the Pentateuch at a Tipperary seminary.

  On one misty autumn night in 1945, after a session of piss and puns in the Brazen Head, the mother of all Dublin pubs, Fergal Mahoney was ambling across O’Connell Bridge on his way back to his swanky bachelor’s pad when Fate intervened. Fergal was so busy replaying the jokes he had delivered that night onstage, the roaring laughter and thunderous applause that had followed, and Pepita’s throaty love moans in his well-lit dressing room after the show, that he did not notice the rotten banana peel beneath his shiny shoes. Before he knew it, he had slipped on the peel and was sliding head-first over the bridge’s great Georgian wall toward the infested waters of the river Liffey.

  Time stopped for Fergal then. He heard nothing as his soft body tumbled into the Dublin night. For the longest five seconds of his life, Fergal was surrounded by complete silence. Just when he thought he was going to somersault all the way to the peaks of the great Himalayas, Fergal’s body abruptly stopped its cartoonish defiance of gravity and plummeted toward the dark river below. In a last-ditch effort to save himself, Fergal shut his eyes and prayed hard and fast for a divine intervention. He pleaded with God to save him; he promised Him that he would do anything, if only he could see his sweet Pepita’s sparkly face once again. Fergal didn’t expect his prayers to be answered, but he prayed anyway, hoping, like all last-minute converts, for a sign.

  The young comedian did not die that night. Nor did he even splash into the dreaded muck of the river Liffey. Fergal’s life was spared, his prayers answered when he landed on his whiskey-filled belly in the most reliable of river vessels—a hardy little tugboat. It took a full minute for Fergal to realize that he was alive and that his fall had been cushioned by the tugboat’s mountainous cargo load— cartons of bubble-wrapped, silver-crossed, Guatemalan rosary beads.

  Fergal Mahoney knew a sign when he saw one. He had been given a second chance by the big man Himself, and now he had a promise to fulfill. Bidding farewell to a tearful Pepita, Fergal left for Tipperary’s best seminary the very next day.

  Not until the moment he first tasted Marjan’s abgusht had Father Mahoney allowed himself once again to entertain his comedic ambitions. But after a monthlong battle with his conscience, he was finally able to pinpoint the strange exuberance that always coursed through his body after tasting Marjan’s delicious lamb dish. Hastily finishing his lunch one afternoon, the priest rushed home to the parish, pulled out his old electric typewriter, and began writing. He didn’t stop for Mrs. Boylan’s usual Thursday ham and chive colcannon and nearly missed the Henley twins’ christening that Sunday, he was so immersed in his new project. When Father Mahoney finally stopped writing a week later, he had before him a two-act play dedicated to the pleasures of the mind and body.

  “And I agreed to direct it for him!” Fiona gulped, her eyes fluttering with excitement.

  “How wonderful for you both!” Marjan exclaimed. “I’ll take two flyers, please. One for the window here and one for the door, so there’s no missing them. Are you making your way up the street with the rest?”

  “Thought I would. Start early and all, befo
re I open up the salon. Besides, it gives me a bit of headway before all those bleedin’ gossip tongues start flaring.” Fiona gave Marjan’s arm a friendly squeeze and wriggled her fingers as she left through the café’s front door.

  Gathering the dregs of their impromptu breakfast and tea, Marjan returned to the kitchen with a new spring in her step. She wouldn’t have thought so, but it felt good to talk to Fiona. It had made her strong somehow to hold a positive conversation with a new acquaintance. She felt lighter, as if something pressing had been raised from her chest.

  Marjan slowly lifted the cheesecloth off the bowl of lavash dough. The airy, white mass had risen in the time she had been away and felt almost weightless in her hands. She rolled the dough out once again, marveling at how much more easily it worked under her fingers this time around. Perhaps she too was like the lavash bread, thought Marjan; given some time and a warm, comforting environment, anything was possible.

  torshi

  2 large eggplants, cubed

  1 pound small cucumbers, cubed

  1 pound carrots, cubed

  2 large white potatoes, cubed

  8 garlic cloves, peeled

  3 cups cauliflower florets

  1 pound pearl onions, peeled

  1⁄2 pound green beans

  4 quarts white wine vinegar

  4 cups chopped fresh herbs (parsley, basil,

  tarragon, mint, cilantro)

  2 tablespoons salt

  2 teaspoons ground black pepper

  1⁄2 teaspoon cayenne pepper

  1 tablespoon nigella seeds

  Torshi all-spice mix (1⁄2 teaspoon ground turmeric, 1 table-

  spoon ground cumin, 1 teaspoon ground sa fron, 1 table-

  spoon ground cardamom, 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon)

  Wash vegetables and dry well with paper towels. Combine all ingredients in a large bowl. Ladle out the mix into sterilized canning jars. Leave lidded jars in a dry, cool place for a minimum of 1 month.

  chapter eight

  UNLIKE THE STANDARD pickled cucumbers one finds on supermarket aisles in most Western countries, gentrified and cut into slices or wedges, vegetable torshi comes packed in a variety of sizes, shapes, and colors. On Persian tables or upon the venerable spread of a sofreh, a hand-sewn cloth which requires limber, cross-legged positions from picnickers, torshi is nearly always the first platter served. The most common variety is a combination of fresh vegetables and herbs, pickled in good-quality white wine vinegar, but the list expands to mango chutney, date pickle, eggplant torshi, and fruit chutney, all marinated in all-spice and a pinch or two of salt. Integral to most Persian meals, not only does torshi complement dishes but its briny, vinegary crunch reminds the palate never to take any taste for granted.

  Bahar was given the task of preparing the twenty jars of torshi that Marjan had promised the ladies of the Patrician Day Dance committee for their table of charity. Although a great fan of sour cauliflower florets herself, she wasn’t keen on the lasting spray of vinegar that would take several showers to scrub off. Drying the clean vegetables thoroughly, she added them to a large bowl of salt, pepper, cayenne, and the torshi all-spice. After ladling the torshi into six canning jars, she tightened the lids, pumping her powerful forearms with a renewed gush of blood.

  Bahar’s muscles had always served her well, especially when she had worked as a nurse in Lewisham’s Green Acres Home for the Newly Retired. Her sturdy arms had pushed many decaying, insubordinate Englishmen back into their bedpans whenever they insisted on showing her their withered willies. Despite her stern hand, though, Bahar’s heart broke every time she witnessed her elderly patients’ sad attempts at virility. It was this very withering away of life, she knew, that was behind the second and less appetizing definition of the word torshi.

  In a tradition where fifteen was the average age of marriage and twenty full-blown motherhood, twenty-five was the hallmark for spinsterhood. As a result, many an unmarried Iranian woman had been branded with the dreaded T-word. Of course, in the latter part of the twentieth century, the marriage age in Iran had risen considerably, but the use of torshi to describe a girl who had a certain use-by date, and who was left to dust away on the shelves of love, was still common in gossipy circles. As a teenager, Bahar would never have thought that by the age of twenty-four she would be not only single again but also quite happy to see the vast lonely road before her. The single life was actually quite satisfactory, in her opinion; maybe Layla had her little boyfriend, and Marjan, well Marjan had her planting and cooking and the café and who knew, probably some white-faced Irishman with a good appetite on the horizon, but she was content to see her days out alone, in peace, God willing. She did not want a man in her life—never again.

  Shaking her head, Bahar twisted shiny purple ribbons around the lips of the torshi jars, tying them into proud bows. No, she would not be ashamed of being labeled a torshi, she decided. Despite the assault of vinegar, torshi vegetables somehow managed to survive their pickling period. And that was what she wanted to be: a survivor, afraid of nothing.

  Having packed and decorated the fat jars, Bahar lined them beneath the stairwell, where they would sleep and acquire their distinctive sizzle, the piquant edges of cayenne and nigella softened by the sour vinegar. The torshi would have sufficient time to marinate by the Patrician Day Dance in July.

  “Mrs. Delmonico’s just come in. She wants a bowl of lentil soup, a hummus and grilled eggplant wrap, and a pot of bergamot. Later she wants baklava and two pieces of zulbia,” said Layla, pushing into the warm kitchen. She slapped Estelle’s order on the kitchen island. “Can I go now, Marjan? Ms. Athey’s posting the audition results outside the school offices this afternoon.”

  “Yes, but be back soon. We might get a rush later on like last Saturday,” Marjan replied.

  “Thanks!” Layla shot out the back door.

  “I suppose I’ll have to go out front now,” Bahar said peevishly. “You know she won’t be back for at least another hour.”

  “Go easy on her, Bahar. This play’s really important to her. She auditioned for the lead role, you know. Fiona said she was really good.”

  “Why am I not surprised?” Bahar said, more grouchily than she felt. The truth was that part of her was proud of Layla. Her younger sister seemed to have quite a talent for finding friends in this new town of theirs, something Bahar had never had much luck with anywhere. Making friends required disclosure, the sharing of secrets and emotions, none of which Bahar could ever see herself doing with perfect strangers. Back in her Green Acres days, her reticence had kept most of her nursing colleagues at bay; she was never invited to after-shift drinks in Doc Watson’s Pub, and her lunchtimes were spent not in the cafeteria exchanging notes on petulant patients but rummaging for bargains in the thrift stores that lined nearby Aldersgate Street. Losing herself in the dust of pre-loved knickknacks had comforted Bahar somehow; each bargain buy, be it a tapestry throw from Tuscany or a battered but still lovable copper teapot, kept her mind off how lonely she felt.

  With an order pad in hand, Bahar shuffled out to the cacophonous front room, resigned to another afternoon of waiting tables by herself. She rushed back into the kitchen moments later, her face filled with concern. “You better get out there, Marjan. Mrs. Delmonico doesn’t look too good. Her skin’s bright red and she’s drenched in sweat.”

  Marjan dropped the fried chicken salad she was preparing for the Donnelly twins and hurried through the kitchen doors. Even from across the room it was obvious that something was wrong with the old lady.

  Ever since the day she brought her new tenants her famed osso buco, Estelle Delmonico had been one of the Babylon Café’s most devoted fans. Although plenty of women her age sat nearby with their daily doses of rosewater-infused treats, Estelle always took her tea alone. She would close her eyes and lick the sugared sweat from her upper lip before sipping her favorite brew, bergamot tea, and biting into an elephant ear or two. Sometimes, the Italian widow would even h
um a low aria to herself, one of the many songs her Luigi used to belt out of his robust lungs as he scraped curlicues from a chunk of dark chocolate at the kitchen island.

  Marjan usually waited until Estelle had finished her first cup of tea before sitting down at her table for a chat. Lunchtime boom or not, she always spared a few minutes out of the kitchen chaos to say hello to the little old lady with the rickety frame and hearty appetite. She had never watched Estelle for prolonged periods of time, though. As Marjan stood observing Estelle at her lone table now, it dawned upon her that the widow’s self-imposed seclusion was not entirely voluntary.

  Estelle Delmonico’s eyes gave her away. Every thirty seconds or so they would dart over to the long communal table where the ladies of the Patrician Day Dance committee sat, before flicking back to the spoon on her table. She would then dab at her swollen nostrils with an embroidered silk handkerchief taken from her small patent leather handbag. The committee ladies were too busy deciding on the Dance’s decoration theme (should they stick to the usual tricolored salute or take on a Caribbean flavor with the colors of terra cotta, pacific aqua, and hydrangea pink?) to notice they were being watched. They did not detect Estelle’s quiet pleas as Marjan did, recognizing the signs of desperate loneliness.

  Perhaps she could ask Marie Brennan to include the Italian woman in the next week’s committee meeting, thought Marjan. Surely, the ladies of the Patrician Day Dance committee could use an extra hand with all the activities they had planned. And, Marjan reasoned, once Estelle felt she was needed, she wouldn’t feel so shy about taking the initiative to make new friends herself. Pleased with her idea, Marjan eagerly approached Estelle’s table and was about to greet her kind landlady when something in the old woman’s face made her pause. Estelle Delmonico’s complexion was growing a more dangerous shade of red by the second, and sweat was streaming liberally down her cheeks now, too quickly to be wiped away. Startled, Marjan peered closer at Estelle’s flushed face and realized that the sweat was, in actual fact, tears. Large, fat tears. She dashed forward just as the Italian widow fell toward the floor, letting go of the crushed rose she was holding to her heaving chest.