The phantoms had come flapping out of their ghoulish graves when she wasn’t looking, the spring day in 1978 when she was released from Gohid Detention Center. The first person Marjan saw when she stumbled into their apartment after her secret incarceration was little Layla. Fattened with buttery dishes, her apple head wrapped in a matronly head scarf, Layla was sitting on the living room carpet holding a photo of a turbaned idol of the revolution in her plump fingers. Snatching the photograph into her own shaking hands, Marjan was about to tear it into a thousand pieces—as many as it would take to erase the furrowed face that was being painted on all neighborhood walls—when she saw the ghosts.
The kitchen was swarming with them. Black chadors and gremlin faces, their gapped teeth slurping at oily broths and overcooked chelow. Marjan almost fell over when she realized that one of them was her sister.
At sixteen, and in less than four days, Bahar had become a militant member of the Women’s Party.
The darling sister of the male-only Committee, the Women’s Party was a local organization led by their neighbor, a large, pointy-faced woman named Khanoum Jaferi. Born to a snake-charmer father and a gypsy mother, whose hobbies ranged from tea-leaf readings to midafternoon trysts with pubescent shepherd boys, Khanoum Jaferi had grown up to abhor all such excesses. She had taken to the veil and chador at the age of twenty and slowly moved up the ranks of pious women’s groups by attending monthly summits on the proper length of chadors and techniques for avoiding pleasure during dutiful matrimonial copulation.
In no time at all, the cunning Khanoum Jaferi had pushed her way to the forefront of the revolutionary movement by establishing her own corps of female fundamentalists—the Women’s Party. Weekly meetings of the Women’s Party were held in her lavishly carpeted apartment. There, devoted members spent hours extolling the virtues of the Turbaned One, the mullah who promised to rid the country of all evil decadence and establish an Islamic society. Over scalding cups of unsweetened black tea and goat’s tongue stew, Khanoum Jaferi preached passionately on the need to purge their beloved Persia of Western influence—the Shah, that sweetheart of America, included. She had been waiting thirty years for the Islamic Revolution to cleanse their society, she told the chador-clad women, and she wasn’t going to stop until she saw her dream realized.
Khanoum Jaferi, Marjan later learned, had come to the apartment with pots of rice and split pea soup when news spread that she hadn’t returned home from the Peacock Restaurant. Never one to miss a recruitment opportunity, the militant matron also came equipped with paint and white banners, setting Bahar to work on writing anti-American slogans while she reheated her tasteless pots of food.
If it wasn’t for Khanoum Jaferi and the Women’s Party, Layla and I would have starved, Bahar had said, disregarding Marjan’s warnings about the group of reactionary chadors proliferating in their kitchen. Independence, Freedom, Islamic Republic! Marg bar Amrika, Death to America, she exclaimed, before launching into Koranic passages so long and complicated that Marjan was stunned into silence by Bahar’s aptitude for rote memorization. The most frightening thing of all, though, was not Bahar’s newfound zeal for the revolution, or the weekly Women’s Party meetings she insisted that the three of them attend, but the unquestioning loyalty she now had to Khanoum Jaferi’s only son, the man who was going to be her husband.
Hossein Jaferi. A salamander of a man, not yet informed on the responsibilities of belonging to the human race. Severely punctured by mishandled forceps at birth, Hossein wore his slashed skin like a badge of honor, proud to have survived the first of life’s many obstacles. The metal contraption had marred Hossein’s baby face with such deep indentations that his mother had fallen off the high labor bed and broken her hip in two places from the shock of it all. As a young man, Hossein had been arrested by the secret police for burning an effigy of the diminutive Shah, but six years in jail had done little to stem his restlessness, and upon his release, the first place he visited was his local mosque. Inside its cool, mosaic-covered walls, Hossein received divinations encouraging him to establish himself as a leader of believing men. And so, prompted by God and his zealous mother, he joined a local grassroots initiative—the Committee. A perfect platform from which the sadistic, thirty-one-year-old Hossein Jaferi could launch his career in the open territory that was the revolution.
Marjan nearly fainted when she heard the name. The Committee. But her objections carried little weight; Bahar had made up her mind, and a whole community of underground chadors would back her decision.
On the sleepless night before Bahar and Hossein were to be married, Marjan passed the dark hours with her hands deep in sticky dough, trying to think of a way to stop her sister from ruining her life. It was Marjan’s job to bake the delicacies for the wedding feast, the baklava, the mulberry-almond paste, and the walnut, chickpea, and rice cookies. As she rolled out the pastry for the baklava (enough to feed the entire militant party of two hundred), Marjan tried to reason with her gnawing stomach, with that voice that was telling her to take her two sisters and run. This Hossein and all that came with him— the Molotov cocktail parties he organized, the martyred uncle he worshiped, his domineering mother, who seemed to have Bahar under an unbreakable spell—were wrong. All wrong. And there was nothing Marjan could do to alter her sister’s destiny.
The day after her ill-fated wedding, Bahar moved in with her new husband’s family. Her move relieved her sisters from having to attend meetings of the Women’s Party every week, but it also left behind such a void, such an empty space in Marjan’s heart. And although she lived only a few blocks away, Marjan did not see Bahar until nearly four months after her wedding day.
ASSUMPTA CORCORAN’S cold gaze seemed to have imprinted itself on Bahar’s temples. The tingling overtures of a headache accompanied her as she stepped inside McGuire’s Ale House, hoping to find Layla sitting in one of its ratty booths.
Now Thomas McGuire wasn’t the kind of man to let an attractive woman go unnoticed in his establishment. Although he reserved his true affections for the likes of Donna Summer, Gloria Gaynor, and Thelma Houston, and exposed his chunky private quarters only to the embraces of his lusty wife, Thomas was certainly not blind to the swagger of feminine hips. When Bahar walked into the pub, the owner was busy going over the weekly shift roster with his bartender, but he paused in midspeech to gawk at the young woman who had disturbed the stale fog of cigarette smoke and soft flatulence.
That’s no ordinary woman, Thomas realized with a sudden shudder. She’s one of those tarts from the café! He jerked his eyes off Bahar and, curling his thick lips in a soft snarl, gave his bartender a knowing nod. Bleedin’ Arabs.
Bahar approached the bar counter like a lamb to the slaughter.
“Sorry, hello?” she said, raising her hand like a schoolgirl. The bartender, a pudgy man with heavy ginger sideburns, mirrored his boss’s sneer. He turned his back on Bahar and pretended to make conversation with an inebriated old-timer slumped over in his own drool.
“I was just wondering if anyone had seen my—”
All the punters at the bar, from Thomas McGuire to Old Lady Lennon cradling her gin and tonic at the corner table, had turned their backs against her. Silence. Several seconds passed, during which Chaka Khan’s velvety voice could be heard purring from a large jukebox in the corner. Someone coughed as a lazy cloud of tobacco smoke drifted in front of Bahar’s eyes. She looked down at the diamond-patterned carpet at her feet, which was gritty with the previous night’s revelry of powdered potato crisps, cigarette butts, and peanut casings. Chaka Khan hit an unnaturally high note, and the jukebox lifted the record off, returning it to a fanned stack of shiny black LPs, and went silent. And still, no one turned to look at her.
Angry embarrassment washed over Bahar’s cheeks and sent her stomach into a spin. Something was very wrong here, not only in this dirty pub but in the bake shop next door as well. Something that went beyond the sad little curiosities of the old women in the butche
r’s. Whatever she thought of that kind of small-mindedness, it was nothing compared to the bald hatred before her. It was an exclusion as foul as she had experienced in those scary early years in London, when the whole city was under alert of terrorist threats, and anyone who looked slightly foreign was watched with suspicion.
Turning on her heels, which crunched on the littered floor, Bahar pushed through the pub door, anxious to escape the dread that was rising in her chest. Just as the door slammed behind her, a sinister voice called out: “Go back to yer stinking camels!” Raspy smokers’ laughs enveloped the rest of the smarting insult.
“OVER THERE. Right next to that cumulus that looks like a rabbit—that’s Jupiter. It’s always there, even during daylight hours. You should see it at night, though, with a telescope.” Malachy’s long arm pointed toward the sky over Clew Bay.
“You can see it from your bedroom?” Layla snuggled closer to him on a surprisingly warm patch of sea grass.
“Yeah, but I like to bring my gear out here when I can. Even if it gets up my dad’s wrong side.”
“Your dad?” Layla had forgotten about Emer’s warning. She wondered if the rumors were true about Malachy’s father wanting the café space but, sensing it would be a sore subject, let it go. Instead, she rested her head on his reclining chest and gazed dreamily up at the sky. “So are all the constellations named after Greek gods and goddesses?”
Malachy, relieved to have sidestepped the subject of his domineering father, smiled and nodded.
“Yup. Though the Babylonians discovered them before the Greeks. They had a whole system worked out.” He wiped his hand across the heavens, stopping on a slice of sky that blinked brighter than the surrounding pale clouds. “Next to that patch of sky there is Venus. You can’t see it, but trust me, it’s there.”
Layla gulped and nodded. Venus. Goddess of Love. Yes, it was definitely there.
Somehow, somewhere between the planetary blessings, the gentle lulling of the Atlantic tide, and the canopy of their linking fingers against the sky, they had fallen asleep. The next thing Layla knew, she was staring into the giggling black hole of a toothless six-year-old mouth.
“D’yis tink they’re dead?”
“Naw, they’re pr’bly jest shagging.”
Laughter and spittle landed on Layla’s and Malachy’s opening eyelids. An urchin gang of three boys and a girl, ranging in age from six to twelve, had surrounded them. The children were dressed in gray and navy tracksuits, their matted red hair and freckled faces streaked with dirt. Globs of mucus lined the corners of their eyes, and their mouths were edged with melted chocolate.
“Go on! Get!”
Malachy shooed them toward a distant cluster of trailer homes parked at the base of a sandy hill. A makeshift clothesline hung between two of the mobile homes, and several plastic foldout chairs encircled a campfire. Three women, wearing tight stonewashed jeans stretched across emaciated thighs, were shivering over the fire as they passed a long cigarette between them. They watched with boredom as a skinny rooster pranced around two mangy, snoring terriers. Layla was surprised she hadn’t seen the camp earlier. But then again, her attention had been wholly consumed by Malachy. She trembled just thinking about the boy at her side.
The tinker children laughed loudly and scampered off. The oldest boy jabbed two fingers up in the air, a time-honored insult, before disappearing behind the shoulder of a giant, shadowy dune. As if snapped out of a trance, Layla noticed that everything was suddenly dark around them. Even the stars were beginning to show their twinkling smiles in the night sky above.
BAHAR SAT AT the kitchen table with her head in her hands, crying and, for the first time in a long while, praying. It was all her fault they were stuck in some mean little village at the end of the world, with nothing but cooking burns and the stink of fried onions to look forward to. It was all her fault, and she had no way of remedying it.
“Bahar?” Layla whispered. She was standing just inside the kitchen doorway, afraid to move an inch.
Lifting her wet face from her palms, Bahar stared at Layla in silence. Opalescent shafts from the outside light converged around Layla’s head like a halo. Blinded by the bright glow, Bahar was forced to blink hard several times before she could make out Layla’s face, but once she was assured that her sister was alive and well, her anger was swift.
“Where have you been? I’ve been going crazy waiting here!” she yelled, staggering up from her chair.
“I was with Malachy. At the beach,” Layla replied casually.
“It’s seven o’clock, Layla!”
“I know. Sorry.”
Shocked by Layla’s carelessness, Bahar stared at her with wide eyes, her mouth falling open. Her sister obviously had no concern for what she had just been through, Bahar thought with increasing anger, searching frantically up and down the street, having to belittle herself in front of such ignorant people. She was with Malachy, simple as that. How dare she? As if she deserved such freedom, as if she had earned the right to go on dates at her age. Had Layla forgotten everything she had been through? Bahar searched for words that would put the fear of men into Layla, but what finally came out of her mouth was: “You’ll end up like I did—is that what you want? I forbid you to see this boy again!”
“Bahar!”
“No! I mean it, Layla! We didn’t come all the way here so that you could end up in bed with some stupid Irish boy!” Bahar’s voice was shrill.
“You just want me to be as bitter as you are!” Layla fired back. “I deserve some happiness, you know! Don’t forget it’s because of you we had to come here in the first place!”
Layla ran up the stairs and slammed the flat door, leaving Bahar choking on her angry, misplaced fear.
chelow
3 cups uncooked, long-grain basmati rice
6 cups water
2 tablespoons salt
1⁄2 cup olive oil
Place rice in a large bowl and wash under lukewarm water. Drain, then repeat two more times. Bring water and salt to a boil in a stockpot. Add clean rice, cover, and cook for 30 minutes, or until al dente. In another large pot, heat oil. Spread an inch-thick layer of cooked rice at the bottom of the second pot. Slowly scoop cooked rice into the pot, forming a pyramid shape so that the top layer is the point. Cover and cook on low heat for 30 minutes. Tadig will form at the bottom.
chapter nine
MARJAN PICKED ESTELLE DELMONICO up from the hospital the following morning. Although the doctors at Mayo General had wanted her to stay on for one more day, in case another fainting spell came along, the feisty Italian woman had insisted on being released as soon as possible.
“I am okay, not to worry so much. And you know, I can’t eat one more day of this horrible hospital chicken. No flavor, my goodness!” Estelle protested. Not even in the dark days of the World War, when her family had been forced to ration their weekly supply of linguine and clam sauce, had she ever tasted food as bland and uninspiring.
Remembering Estelle’s complaint, Marjan had packed some freshly made elephant ears and a large serving of herb kuku in a brown paper bag before leaving for the hospital. One whiff of the fried treats and the taste of boiled hospital meals would be long forgotten, she thought to herself.
Marjan couldn’t help but notice how frail the little widow looked in her thin hospital robe. Even so, Estelle had rejected the nurse’s offer of a wheelchair and would have walked out of Mayo General all by herself had it not been for her arthritis. Estelle’s joints were inflamed as a result of her spell, the stretched tendons in her fragile hips and knees aching with every step, so Marjan had to hold the old lady steady by her elbow and shoulder for their walk out to the parking lot. Luckily, the sturdy green van was narrow enough to handle the sharp mountain road to Estelle’s white cottage. Marjan helped her slowly down from the passenger’s seat, and together they tackled the steep gravel path leading up to the bright red door.
“That’s a beautiful rosebush,” Marjan admired.
“Thank you, darling. Yes, that’s my Luigi,” Estelle said, pleased.
“How lucky for you to have him so near,” Marjan replied, understanding the significance of the roses immediately.
“He is always close to me.”
Estelle handed Marjan a knobby, rusted key on a large metal ring. The door opened to reveal the dim, warm front parlor, a neat little room boasting cushiony cream furniture, lace curtains, and vases filled with gardenias. Both women paused at the threshold as the sea breeze fluttered the leaves of the rosebush behind them, Luigi’s own personal welcome. Marjan led Estelle across the cozy parlor’s polished flag-stone floors.
“Which way to your bedroom, Estelle?”
“Just down this hall, darling. Make a left.”
They turned into a brightly wallpapered hallway lined with framed portraits. There was a young Estelle on her wedding day, her hair in a pert chignon covered by an elaborate lace veil; another sepia-toned photograph with Estelle in her bride’s dress, this time standing next to a squat, jolly-faced young man with a thick mustache that curled at its ends. Luigi.
“Ah, so many memories!” Estelle exclaimed. She traced her feeble fingers over the prints, moving along the happy years; the Delmonicos on their honeymoon in Morocco; posing outside Papa’s Pastries on its first day of business; even one of her niece, Gloria, in her checkered chef’s uniform and tall paper hat.
They passed a sunny, daffodil kitchen on the right, crammed with a wooden table painted purple and chairs and cabinets stenciled with periwinkle blue daisies. Once they were in the bedroom, Marjan helped Estelle into a cotton nightgown and tucked her into her big mahogany and duck down bed.
“Wait here. I’ve got something for you in the van,” Marjan said. She returned promptly with the brown paper bag of treats.
Pomegranate Soup Page 13