“Elephant ears!” Estelle clapped her hands like a happy child.
Marjan opened the sugary packages on Estelle’s handmade quilt and immediately eased the old woman’s icicle joints with the lush smells of sweet pastries and a still warm egg and herb pancake. She looked so healthy and calm after eating that Marjan took the opportunity to ask the widow for some precious advice.
“Let the two of them work it out by themselves,” Estelle began wisely, after Marjan finished telling her about her sisters’ fight. “They are big girls now, Marjan.”
“I know, but sometimes I can’t help feeling responsible for everything they do. I am the eldest, after all,” Marjan replied, twisting the paper bag absently in her hands.
“Big sister, yes. Mother, no. I was never lucky to have children, but I have Gloria, and let me tell you, girls are not easy. This Malachy. You say this boy is good?” Estelle looked skeptical; she knew Thomas McGuire too well to expect much from his offspring.
“He’s wonderful. A very good boy.”
“Well then, that is okay, yes? I met my Luigi when I was fifteen. I don’t say Layla is going to be married now, but if he is a good boy, then that is okay. His father, he is Thomas McGuire?”
“I was meaning to ask you about him,” Marjan said. She had heard all about the self-important man who had given Bahar such a hard time in the Ale House the day before. Marjan relayed the information from Emer Athey that Layla had finally remembered to pass down.
“Apparently Malachy’s father wants us out of business,” she said.
“I tell you something about Thomas McGuire and the rest of those silly people,” Estelle said. “They are all scared. You should see them when my Luigi and I moved here. Two, three customers a day for so long! You know what my Luigi did then? He take a table and put it out the window and everything on it was free! Free biscotti, free amaretto delights, free cannoli! Even free espresso! These people love free!”
Estelle sat forward on her bed and gestured excitedly with her warmed hands. “I say don’t worry. You smile at them all, at that McGuire, at all the women in church who look like they eat a bad egg. You teach them about being good.”
Buoyed by Estelle’s wisdom, Marjan decided not to worry but instead to smile and keep her doors open. The café was thriving with its daily patronage of regulars, and she could always rely on Father Mahoney and Fiona Athey to show up, if no one else did. As for the rest of the town, Marjan thought to herself, well, they would eventually succumb to the smell of her fried elephant ears and herb-filled kuku. Maybe she couldn’t get everyone in Ballinacroagh to come into the Babylon, but Marjan knew there would still be enough customers to keep Bahar, Layla, and her busy from morning until closing time. It was all she had ever wanted for the three of them and now it was coming true.
One thing was certain, though. They had not come all this way to sink to the likes of Thomas McGuire. Or anyone else, for that matter.
CHELOW, OR STEAMED RICE, is vital to Persian cuisine as it lays the foundation upon which other main dishes are built. Not only does chelow offer excellent companionship to stews, barbecued lamb, Cornish hens, beef, or fish but the rice can be combined with an assortment of goodies such as pistachios, lentils, dried cherries, and lima beans to make a complete meal in itself. The simplest and most popular recipe, though, is white chelow. The rice—each grain a separate pearl of wisdom—needs to be cooked slowly for half an hour before the famed tadig can be made.
Marjan busied herself with making the tadig, the crunchy bottom layer of the chelow that fries into a large rice cake dripping with goodness. She used a deep soup pot to heat the olive oil until it was popping with anticipation, before spreading an inch-thick layer of rice. The tadig would need to be covered and gently cooked on low for thirty minutes before it would form into the savory cracker whose crunch attracts diners to the table like nothing else.
The simple touch, the gentle touch, Marjan nodded solemnly to herself as she lowered the heat under the pot of rice. That was the way to approach any situation, whether in cooking or in life. She was glad she had listened to Estelle Delmonico’s advice.
The Babylon Café was doing so well three months after opening that Marjan had hired Jerry Mulligan—one of the boys who worked in Healy’s Hardware store—to moonlight as a delivery boy. The wiry, nineteen-year-old Jerry valiantly pushed his bicycle up the hilly roads with brown bags of lavash and dolmeh stacked in the basket behind his seat. The delivery service was available only at lunchtime, which was all that any of them could handle for the moment, especially now that the Babylon was closing later and later. As the summer months opened up, the afternoon tea farers prolonged their ecstasy by turning their pots of oolong and jasmine mint into early dinners, driving Marjan to bursting point as she rushed around preparing double, triple batches of everything. By June, school was out for the summer and Layla was able to help full-time in between play rehearsals, waiting on the busy tables and cleaning up in the kitchen. Her sharing the workload helped a great deal in easing the tension between Layla and an exhausted Bahar, and soon the two sisters were back on good terms, their relationship as calm as the lush valley that surrounded them.
June’s warm weather had surprised everyone in town. For, although the sixth month marks the solstice, summers in the west of Ireland are usually plagued by heavy, ominous clouds that send freezing rains to beat down upon the farmlands. Other counties may be basking in the start of sunny days, but for County Mayo, and Ballinacroagh in particular, June usually just meant more rain. But not that summer. June 1986 brought a sultry, steady sun that reminded a bitter Thomas McGuire of the balmy afternoons in Majorca and left the ladies of the Patrician Day Dance committee in a state of panic as to what to do with the upgraded outdoor heaters they had bought only last summer for the usually cold July night festival.
Most Ballinacroagh natives, though, welcomed the dramatic change in climate, and the exuberant pronouncement of sunshine and flora that came with it. Unnamed buds appeared overnight along ivy-covered walls; plain cottages awoke to bursts of magenta, sienna, and lilac flowers that had been slumbering far too long under moss-ridden stones. The soggy grass of surrounding glens rippled with tones of gold, baking in the sun, while the sky over Ballinacroagh took on a shade of untouched blue that previously had been seen only in the cobalt of Pompeii murals. Not surprisingly, this unexpected homage to her Italian homeland gave Estelle Delmonico much reason to rejoice.
Marjan, unfortunately, missed the start of summer’s magnificence, as she was too busy filling the daily orders of cherry rice and dolmeh that Bahar and Layla delivered at breakneck speed. It was only after the lunch rush had passed that she was able to take a quick breather. Leaving the kitchen cleanup to her sisters, Marjan would make her way out into the warm, sunny street, crossing Main Mall toward the Butcher’s Block. Leaning against a weathered aluminum poster for Clonakilty Blackpudding on the butcher’s brick frontage, she examined what she and her sisters had created.
The café windows stood open on their vertical hinges, and the warm afternoon breeze off Clew Bay carried zephyrs of fried cinnamon zulbia and cherry preserves, which they had made that very morning. Shoots of lilac and Persian jasmine she had planted were finally taking root, their flowers bursting out of two large hanging pots swinging above the windows. The jasmines fluttered their tiger eyes seductively in the gentle wind. With her own hazel eyes closed, Marjan could almost imagine that she was back in the afternoon gardens of her childhood home, in northern Tehran.
The Babylon Café. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon. This row of shop fronts, Marjan thought to herself, this Main Mall, was their hanging gardens now, their own small slab of paradise.
GRATITUDE FOR LIFE’S simple bounties, for the good fortune bestowed upon him, was something that Thomas McGuire, self-anointed nucleus of all that was Ballinacroagh, would learn only too late. Had he not felt the poker of ambition stoke his entrails with such insistence, he would have realized that everything
he needed in life was already his—healthy children, more money than he could ever spend, and a randy rhinoceros of a wife who knew how to keep things interesting in the bedroom (with the help of a mail-order catalog sent to her by Hans, a one-eyed Dutch sex toy entrepreneur). All in all Thomas McGuire was a lucky man, but he was the only one in town not to know it.
It had become obvious to the big bully that his boycott and intimidation hadn’t stopped the café from thriving. Most of Thomas’s cronies and those indebted to him had steered clear of the Babylon’s jasmine-tinged threshold, but there were plenty in town who had not. For some, Marjan’s abgusht was just as powerful a draw as the knowledge that simply stepping foot inside the café was an act of defiance against Thomas. This subtle rebellion was a sleepier, less conscious reason for the Babylon’s success than the obvious beauty of the food, but it was a powerful cause nonetheless. The combination of bodily satisfaction and independence of the soul is hard to beat. Still, Thomas was determined to do just that.
Abandoning his boycott, the town bully decided to return to the thing he knew best (next to disco music): competitive pricing and the ousting of rival businesses through the simple laws of supply and demand. Try as he might, Thomas had not been able to unearth the secret behind the Babylon Café’s success. Dervla Quigley’s scratchily written daily reports had revealed nothing new, and he certainly would never step inside the blasted place to find out for himself. Nor could he send Tom Junior to pick up some dolmeh or chelow for research’s sake—word would be out on the streets within seconds. No, he would have to take his investigation on the road. From Westport to Galway, from Tuam to Killala, he scoured the main streets of towns on the move, trying to decipher for himself why people kept going into the Babylon Café and not the Wilton Inn for their lunches.
Thomas finally found his answer in Galway City’s seaside Quay area, where a handful of ethnic restaurants had popped up over the last few years. As Thomas strolled up and down the bustling Quay, past the packed dining rooms of the Real Greek and Dim Sum More restaurants, it dawned on him why the Babylon Café was such a success. The solution had been under his nose all along, really. What Ballinacroagh had been crying out for, what had been lacking from the village all these years, was a bit of the exotic, a taste of the unknown. There was nothing particularly special about this Babylon Café; it had simply arrived at the right time, that was all. Had he not been so busy keeping the whole town plugged with mind-numbing drink, he would have seen it coming sooner himself.
Well, Thomas decided, if it was exotic the village wanted, then it was exotic it was going to get. But none of this Babylon shite for his hometown. Pushing his distaste of all things foreign aside, Thomas chose to look further east for his newest business venture—to a land of fried pork and surprisingly cheap electronic imports. A place where disco music was still thriving and the people revered tyrannical rulers. Thomas McGuire decided to build himself a palace, the Tom Tom Palace, Ballinacroagh’s very first Chinese take-out joint.
PATRICIAN DAY WAS still four days away, but already Ballinacroagh was set spinning on its own exhilarated axis. For the first time since anyone in the village could remember, the streets were packed with an influx of tourists that had in all other years kept to the bigger towns of Castlebar and Westport. Tourism had finally hit the village. Big time.
Stalwart devotees of Saint Patrick and pilgrims with a penchant for hiking streamed into town by the busload on Thursday. The religious-minded tourists came from as near as Balla and as far away as Chicago; they meandered up and down humble Main Mall with cameras and Bibles in hand, their mouths hanging open in awe as if they were beholding the relics of some great Mayan city. The excited pilgrims stocked up on bottled holy water and souvenir leather pouches filled with mountain pebbles in Antonia Nolan’s religious relics shop, and had their photos taken in front of the weathered Saint Patrick memorial in the town square.
The Donnelly twins, loitering as usual outside Fadden’s Mini-Mart, watched as the tour buses unloaded their cargo of eager pilgrims, many of whom sported sunburnt faces glowing from the combination of miraculous summer weather and the promise of spiritual fulfillment.
“How many minutes would you say, Michael, it’d take someone to notice one of those there buses missing?” Peter smirked, his sly eyes evaluating the line of parked Hibernian Holiday Tours buses.
“We’d be on our way to Dublin before they’d cop on, Peter,” Michael replied, reading his twin brother’s crafty mind.
“It’s something to think about, all right.”
“That it is.”
Within five minutes the hooligans had telepathically figured out how to hijack a tour bus. They would wait until lunchtime, when all the pilgrims would be packing into the Babylon Café. Michael would lure the driver out of his air-conditioned seat by asking him for directions, and Peter would grab the steering wheel and go. Later, Michael would meet him in nearby Louisburgh for the joyride of their lives.
“Think of the craic, Michael! The parties we could have in one of those things!”
“It’s a plan, all right. Let’s get a drink to celebrate.”
“Paddy’s, is it?”
“Na, the Mart for old times’ sake.”
Ever since graduating from secondary school the month before, the boys had abandoned their beer swapping game, believing the prank to be too childish for them now. Although they still shoplifted from poor Danny Fadden, they no longer replaced the stolen stout with felt IOU notes from Mr. Finnegan the Leprechaun. This omission had far greater repercussions than either twin could have guessed.
“Hello there, Danny. How’s that Finnegan of yours coming along?” Michael stood in front of the counter, artfully blocking Danny’s view of the beer shelves, where Peter was busy swiping two brown bottles of Beamish.
“Not well, laddie. Not well at all,” Danny replied sadly. His large glasses were smudged with countless fingerprints he hadn’t bothered wiping. In fact, the shopkeeper looked like he hadn’t washed himself in days. His meager supply of hair stood on end, and he was wearing his linty Aran sweater-vest inside out.
The truth was that Danny had grown quite depressed in the last month, ashamed of having been deserted by both human and fairy folk alike. It wasn’t enough that his wife, Deirdre, had left him five years ago, but to have his Finnegan leave as well just about pushed the shy man over the edge. Terribly saddened, he whiled away his lonely hours behind the shop counter, poring over tattered history texts and books on Celtic lore, hoping to find some solace in lives more tragic than his own. And as if he didn’t have enough misery in his life, Danny was now being harassed on a regular basis by none other than Thomas McGuire himself. The drink baron had stopped by the mini-mart twice in three days, the last time with a thick manila folder in his hand.
“Twenty thousand. That’s a good price I’m givin’ ya, Danny,” he had said, plunking the fat envelope on Danny’s counter. “Three times what this place is worth, you know yerself. I’ll leave it with you now, but I’ll be back soon for yer answer. I’ve got big ideas for this place.” If Thomas McGuire had threatened to knock his head in with a crowbar, Danny wouldn’t have been more frightened. He just stared at the envelope, his quivering lips forming a rejection that never came.
What was he holding on to, anyway? Danny wondered. What was he hoping to accomplish, sitting in this sad excuse for a grocery store day in, day out, staring at dusty shelves for a leprechaun who never showed his face? Who was he kidding? As if that sort of magic was meant for the likes of him, Danny Fadden of all people. And now here was Thomas McGuire, wanting to take this heap of rat droppings and wilted vegetable stalls out of his hands, and all he had done was gawk at the envelope in front of him like an eejit.
Well, maybe he would sell the mini-mart. Spend his days compiling entries for the fairy encyclopedia he had started writing. Now that sounded like a grand idea, Danny mumbled to himself.
Michael Donnelly shot his brother a worried look. Peter
nodded, understanding his silent message of concern. He placed the two bottles of Beamish he had hidden in his pants back on the shelf and walked over to the refrigerated section. After paying for two Lucozades, the boys said their good-byes to a crestfallen Danny and walked out onto the busy street.
“Do you suppose it’s not having the fairy to look forward to that’s got him so down, Peter?”
“I feel like a feckin’ eejit, Michael. We’re two rotten sods for it.”
“I’ll dip into Mam’s felt box this very afternoon. We’ll get his Finnegan back for him,” Michael decided.
The twins ambled up the rest of street in silence, each boy blaming himself for taking away Danny Fadden’s only companion. By the time they had reached the Ale House, though, they had exhausted their guilt and were ready for a pint. Peter was just about to open the pub door when out flew Tom Junior, thrown in the middle of a grand fight.
A CROWD OF curious pedestrians quickly gathered around the sprawled figure on the sidewalk outside the Ale House. One snap-happy pilgrim, a member of the Long Island chapter of the Saint Patrick’s Society, used up half a Kodak roll on Tom Junior’s unceremonious expulsion from the pub, catching on camera the young brute’s dazed look as he shook his dizzy head and picked his lumbering self off the pavement.
“Fookin’ knackers!” Tom Junior yelled, shaking his fists toward the pub door. The pious pilgrims gasped. The Donnelly twins, delighted at the prospect of a midmorning brawl, stood poised on their tippytoes with barely contained excitement. But instead of bulldozing back into the Ale House for a redeeming counterattack on the unseen assailant, Tom Junior pushed his tanklike body through the wall of gawking tourists and stumbled up Main Mall.
He arrived at Saint Barnabas’s back gate minutes later. Dropping to his knees, Tom Junior crept stealthily behind a hedge of prickly gooseberry bushes, taking care to avoid any branches that might scratch his already tender face. The right side of his jaw still throbbed from where the tinker had punched him, so he peeked with his left eye through the dark green leaves, across the overgrown back lawn, toward the church’s side entrance. Most days he would have been well-sequestered in his brambly hideout by now, but the bleedin’ fight had made him late today.
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