Pomegranate Soup

by Marsha Mehran

  Never a bright student, Tom Junior felt he had died and landed in his own personal hell. Collapsing on the book-strewn floor, he slept four solid hours that felt like four long years, and awoke to find a stack of feathery paperbacks supporting his neck. Next to him, on a dainty white plate, was a glass of milk and two orange crème biscuits, and in a corner across the room sat the Cat, in one of two rocking chairs, with Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot clutched in his liver-spotted hands. The old tramp did not look up as Tom Junior made his way to the other rocking chair. He just kept rocking away as he read about his favorite limbo contestants, chuckling to himself over the many highlighted passages.

  Thirty-eight hours passed before the Cat ceased his slow rocking and looked up to find himself under siege in his reading corner. Stretching from one side of the wall to the other, and cutting him off from the rest of the small room he used as bedroom, parlor, and kitchen, was a wall. Four feet high and eight feet across, the wall was made up entirely of books, many of which were the Cat’s personal favorites: from the entire works of Nietzsche, including a frayed edition of Also sprach Zarathustra; from Camus and the Absurdists of the theater (Ionesco, Beckett, and that prisoner of life Genet) to the gossamer stanzas of Kahlil Gibran, the Lebanese poet with a heart of gold.

  Tom Junior had built the wall while the Cat was deep in a mental soliloquy on the meaning of meaning. Assuming that the young lost soul had made a hasty escape, the old thinker was overcome by a great sadness, but after using a wiry finger to nudge a book out of the precariously built barrier, the Cat discovered a new Tom Junior, thinned to the bone but present and more alive than ever. Tom Junior’s eyes, encircled in blue-black rings of exhaustion, were nevertheless filled with a renewed sense of being. On his lap sat the opened pages of The Prophet, and through his cracked lips came the words he had been reading over and over again:

  It is when your spirit goes wandering upon the wind,

  That you, alone and unguarded,

  commit a wrong unto others and therefore unto yourself . . .

  Tom Junior’s spirit had come home for a landing. He was beginning to see that his attack on Layla was just the symptom of an even deeper disease. A sickness he would tend to from this day on, starting with his sincerest apology.

  “I tried calling the café the night it all happened. A woman answered the phone, but I couldn’t find the right thing to say. I don’t know, but it was like I suddenly ran out of breath. So . . . so, I hung up. I thought a note would be best.”

  “What were you thinking calling those darkies?” Thomas McGuire said, bristling with anger. “You listen to me, boy, it’s taken a mighty hand to get Sean Grogan off me back. I’ll not be the one holding me bollocks in all of this, you hear? Feckin’ ‘find meself’! I’ll find ye all right.” Thomas slammed the crumpled apology note at Tom’s feet. “You look in on your mam, then get yer arse down to the Ale House, where I’ll be waiting. Don’t even think about getting out of work tonight.”

  He stormed out of the pub just as the Cat awoke from his alcoholic stupor with a loud belch that told little of the innovative theories running through his inebriated yet brilliant mind. Jimmy the bartender grimaced at the sour smell emanating from the darkened slump in the corner.

  Tom Junior picked up the ball of paper and smoothed it out so that his words were legible once again. He hadn’t really expected his father to give the note to the guards, let alone understand the epiphany that would forever mark his path.

  Hoisting a heavy, book-filled satchel (a going-away present from the Cat) onto his back, Tom Junior sidled up to the old drunk at the bar.

  “Jimmy, take care of my man here,” Tom said. He slapped the Cat on his hunched back, causing the crinkly old man to double over in a coughing fit. “Give him all the drink he wants on me. See you, Cat.”

  Tom Junior gave the Cat a thumbs-up before slipping a hundred-pound note into his soiled coat pocket. He then walked down to the pub’s back room, a cavernous carpeted ground of mismatched tables and chairs all facing a rotting dartboard. Pushing the emergency exit door open, Tom Junior stepped out into the wet cobblestone alleyway. He looked both ways to make sure that his father was nowhere in sight before creeping quietly up to the café’s squeaky back gate. There, with bated breath, he slipped his refolded apology note between two of the fence’s wooden boards, then turned and left the town of Ballinacroagh forever.

  MOMENTS LATER, JUST as Tom Junior disappeared down the alleyway, Marjan walked out into the café’s backyard. She knelt down among the dewy, bottle green cilantro and, encircling the stems with her thumb and forefinger, tugged firmly at the herb. She was careful to leave her other hand on the plant’s base to protect its roots. The tempest that had raged over four days had decimated her garden, tearing the delicate bluebells and velvety purple violas that had blossomed in June from their comfortable beds. The dead flowers lay scattered about the yard now, their once vibrant inner petals turned to clomps of rotting brown. The hardy cilantro, parsley, and mint, Marjan was happy to note, had fared better in the storm. As she pulled the last sprig of tall cilantro, she whispered safe keepings so that Bahar would come back home quickly. For this was home, she was sure of that now more than ever.

  Marjan walked back into the kitchen with her handful of herbs just as the phone rang. Fiona’s bright voice greeted her on the other end.

  “We’ve taped the Missing flyers on every tree and lamppost,” Fiona informed her. “Don’t worry, Marjan. We’ll find her. There’s not many petite, olive-skinned brunettes around these parts. Someone would’ve noticed her.”

  “I hope you’re right, Fiona,” Marjan replied, trying hard not to think of the multitude of hiding places in Ireland. Surely the endless green quilted fields, separated by the tidy pilings of rock borders, were ideal coverlets for escape.

  After several more minutes of reassuring conversation with Fiona, Marjan hung up the phone and began chopping the parsley, cilantro, and mint. She mixed the herbs in a bowl with ground lamb, onions, and seasoning, the meat squishing between her fingers, feeling like warm mud inviting itself between bare toes on a hot summer’s day. The familiar rhythm of mixing was soothing, and by the time she added the meatballs to the pot of hot broth, her hopes were singing once again.

  Unlike fesenjoon, in which the pomegranate taste is balanced by a robust walnut companion, pomegranate soup relies entirely on the fruit for its inspiration. A shimmering magenta when fully cooked, the pomegranate juice gives the broth a sour-sweet taste and is usually enjoyed as an appetizer rather than a main meal. There was no other dish with such a perfect balance of sardi and garmi, in Marjan’s opinion, the sard pomegranate and cilantro equaling out the garm lamb and split peas. She wished Bahar could smell it now. She would realize that there was nothing to fear—real or imaginary.

  Marjan stirred the luscious waves of pomegranate beneath her and thought about her sensitive sister. Had she done enough to help Bahar? she wondered. She certainly tried to be understanding and protective, Marjan told herself, but maybe she could have tried harder to ease Bahar’s painful memories, those headaches that plagued her daily. She knew how hard it was for her sister to trust her surroundings, but had she been as sympathetic as she could have been? Or had Estelle Delmonico’s observations been right; was she still playing the mother to her sisters?

  Perhaps the little Italian woman was right in her advice; there were some things that were out of even her control. Some things had to play themselves out, burn themselves cold, without her stirring hand, without her help. Because, maybe, it wasn’t all up to her.

  Marjan nodded silently, admitting a welcomed defeat. It was necessary. Bahar and Layla would just have to find their way without her always being there. Because she couldn’t do it anymore. She would have to learn to put her trust in something greater than them all; she would have to simply believe everything would work out in the end.

  Placing the lid back on the hot pot, Marjan turned away from the stove and
exhaled.

  Bahar was going to be all right.

  Layla was going to be all right.

  She was going to be all right.

  The lightness of her surrender carried her up the stairs and to an afternoon sleep that had been a long time coming. And behind Marjan, left bubbling on the stove for the first time in all her life, was the unattended pot of pomegranate soup.

  LIKE HER SISTER, Bahar was about to be lifted, rising to higher grounds. At the moment, though, as she looked around her hostel room, hope was the last thing on her mind.

  The patch sewn onto one corner of the checkered duvet read “Property of Castlebar Castle,” but the chipped plaster ceiling contradicted such grandiose claims. There is definitely nothing regal about this hovel, Bahar thought to herself. She couldn’t get used to the springy mattress or the shocking chartreuse walls of the stuffy room, even after two long days. The shag carpet, a psychedelic pattern of orange circles against a dark brown background, still smelled like deviled eggs; and the faded window blinds with their missing slats let in the gloomy gray light far too early every morning. The room’s only redeeming feature—a white, Victorian cast-iron fireplace carved with two cherubic angels on either side—was marred by a faded, larger than life, beaming portrait of JFK that hung in a gilded frame over the mantelpiece. The dead president’s glazed eyes had followed her as she stumbled into the room that first night, falling straight into the musty single bed in her wet clothes.

  She woke up with the worst migraine the next morning. After swallowing eight spoonfuls of the headache medicine she had packed in her suitcase, she pulled a creased piece of paper out of its side plaid pouch, and stared at the phone number scribbled on it in Persian numerals. The page had been torn out of an old address book that Bahar had flipped through the previous night, just before leaving the warmth of the café. She found the phone number sitting under the letter J, nestled innocently between the names and addresses of two of Marjan’s old schoolmates.

  Her plan was simple enough in theory: remove the dangerous element (herself) from the café, book a room at the Castlebar hostel, the same room she and her sisters had stayed in when they first arrived in County Mayo, and call Khanoum Jaferi’s apartment in Tehran. Then she would just wait until Hossein found her. Bahar was sure it wouldn’t take him long to come to the hostel, especially if he was already in Ireland. She would let him do whatever he wanted with her, take her back to Iran even, just as long as he left Marjan and Layla alone. Yes, it was a clean enough solution, thought Bahar. And it would have worked, had she actually had the courage to make the call. Instead, she had spent the last two days and nights locked away in her hostel room, pacing the expanse of the shag carpet and counting the water spots on the plaster ceiling above her.

  Bloody coward, that was what she was. She couldn’t even run away right. Can’t even go downstairs to the lobby and make a phone call, Bahar thought disgustedly, as she pushed her aching body up from the bed. Casting her eyes down to avoid John F. Kennedy’s disconcerting stare, she slowly crossed the room to the fireplace. Using her shoe, Bahar tentatively poked the small pile of turf ash inside the hearth, ready to jump back in case anything moved in the chalky residue. I could die in here and nobody would notice, she thought morbidly. Sighing, she stretched her arms wearily across the freezing iron mantelpiece and hung her head.

  Her stomach growled angrily. She would have to leave the room sooner than later, if only to get reinforcements; the food she had bought the night she arrived at the Castlebar Castle was nearly gone. All that was left was one green apple and a half-eaten package of Knorr crème biscuits sitting forlornly on the bedside table. Weakened suddenly by the thought of her meager food supply, Bahar lifted her head and stepped away from the mantelpiece. She turned around, about to flop dejectedly back on her checkered bed, when her eyes suddenly fell upon several brochures scattered across the mantelpiece. She had forgotten about the glossy leaflets, which the receptionist had handed her along with her room key the night she arrived. The pamphlets showcased the usual destinations favored by American tourists: Knock, Leenane, the Aran Islands. And Croagh Patrick.

  Bahar grabbed the first brochure from the pile: Hibernian Holiday Tours of Croagh Patrick. It contained a garish green and yellow foldout of the mountain with a brief history of Saint Patrick on one side and archaeological facts on the other. Gift shop hours. Mass times. Pilgrimage season. “Let Hibernian Holiday Tours take you up the mountain!”

  Hibernian Holiday Tours. It was the same tour bus company that had picked her up on the stormy road out of Ballinacroagh. The Irish bus driver, a portly man with a light case of eczema, had kindly agreed to drop her in front of the shabby hostel in Castlebar before driving off toward the more expensive lodgings, like Mountain Manor on Bridge Street.

  “Picking up the Americans at the Manor there. Irish Americans, they call themselves. Out here to have a look at the Reek. Better off going to the Bahamas, if ye ask me,” the driver had said, before winking at her in the rearview mirror.

  Bahar’s heart began to pound furiously. The Reek. Of course. That was it.

  She had been spending all this time moving, running, avoiding— but never in the right direction. Not across lands and small seas, not through valleys or shifting deserts, but up. Up! The source of the calling was mysterious; Bahar didn’t know where the soft voice in her head had come from, but all of a sudden it was telling her to go up. There was no other way but up.

  THE FLIRTATIOUS BUS DRIVER winked at her as she climbed up the bus’s steep, rubbery steps.

  “Back again I see. I’m not complaining, mind you. Always happy to see a pretty young face,” he said, throwing her a lopsy-sided grin.

  Hoping to avoid further unwanted attention, Bahar crouched low in her seat. She was thankful that none of the bus’s passengers—Irish American retirees who were retracing their fractioned ancestries—had tried to strike up a conversation with her. The jolly senior citizens were swapping addresses and sharing wallet-size pictures of their smiling grandchildren and took no notice of the young, dark-haired woman sitting in the front seat. As the bus pulled out of Castlebar bound for the mountain, Bahar kept her eyes glued to the rolling countryside. The rain-soaked heather and forests of oak with their awnings of dark green alder suddenly struck her as very beautiful. Ireland was an enchanting country, Bahar thought to herself.

  The Hibernian Holiday Tours bus joined a pack of fifteen other buses in a large car park situated at the eastern base of the mountain. Pilgrims, mostly well-fed Americans with new Nikes and bulging fanny packs, spilled out of the tour buses, some whistling sprightly renditions of “Danny Boy” as they all headed for a small brass-and-marble plaque at the base of the mountain.

  “Saint Patrick,” the tour guide started. “Patron Saint of Ireland. Tormented visionary. Benevolent missionary. Savior of the heathen Irish.” She paused, flashing the crowd an ironic smile.

  “Battled his own demons when he climbed the mountain. The devils came to him in the shape of blackbirds, shrouding the sky with their dark wings. But Patrick kept on praying, not stopping until the sky shone bright again,” she said, passing around complimentary shamrocks laminated onto small cards. “There’ll be no Mass as today’s Saturday, but don’t let that stop you from saying your prayers if the need strikes. I’ll be saying my own thanks, now that the storm’s gone.”

  The tour guide directed everyone to a narrow walkway that zigzagged up the steep mountain. Though a wispy veil of mist obscured the path ahead, and the short, pale grass on either side was littered with jagged stones, it did not stop a couple of the more dedicated climbers from walking with feet bared and souls opened. Bahar trailed behind the tour group, taking her time to breathe in the thin mountain air.

  Prayers, the tour guide had said. What sort of prayers could help her now? Bahar wondered. What did she have to be so thankful for? There was no way of undoing what she had done, the misery she had brought on her sisters when she married Hossein. And
she was still causing Marjan and Layla pain. Right this very minute, even as she was climbing this mountain. She knew they would be worried sick about her, thinking the worst had happened, but she still hadn’t phoned to let them know she was all right. All she had done was run away again.

  Bahar shook her head and grimaced. She was always running away. Not once, not one single time had she ever taken responsibility for her actions, apologized for not listening to her older sister’s warnings about Khanoum Jaferi and her disgusting, pock-marked son. Instead she had hidden behind her headaches, forced Marjan and Layla to tiptoe around her all these silent years, as if she was some sort of helpless invalid. Prayers. She was going to need a lot of prayers, Bahar told herself, as she hoisted her body up onto a granite ledge.

  As Bahar reached the last leg of her hike, the steepest, rockiest part of the mountain, a most curious thing began to happen. It seemed that the higher she climbed, the more lucid her thoughts became. She was well ahead of most of the American tourists by now, and had almost caught up with the sprightly tour guide, who had the happy advantage of toned calf muscles and a trusty walking stick. As she scaled the stony mountain path, Bahar found herself suddenly bursting with energy, her morning migraine long gone.

  Why, she asked herself, had she assumed that that strange sounding phone call had been from Hossein? The fact that he had found them in London, frightening as it may be, didn’t mean that he was going to follow them all the way to Ballinacroagh. And really, if she thought about it rationally for a moment, the phone call in the café could just as likely have been a wrong number or some neighborhood kids playing a prank. So why had she chosen the worst possible explanation and allowed her headaches and hysteria to fog her judgment? If she wanted to survive, if she wanted to move forward, then she’d have to learn not to expect the worst from situations—or people, for that matter.