by Isobel Chace
Mrs. Mahdevi gave her son a surprised glance. Obviously this was the first she had heard of it. She recovered herself with a little start. ‘I see,’ she said. ‘Well, never mind that now, you will want to see your room and freshen up before lunch. We have everything ready for you.’
It was very dark inside the house. Deborah’s hostess flung off her chador to reveal her traditional Qashgai costume underneath, with skirts of emerald green and scarlet, and a vivid brocaded blouse, hung about with beads of agate, turquoise and jade.
‘How beautiful!’ Deborah exclaimed.
For the first time Mrs. Mahdevi relaxed a little. ‘I’m glad you like it,’ she answered. ‘Will you like to wear such a dress yourself?’ She spoke a pretty, accented English, hesitating now and again as she searched for a word. It must have been a long, long time since she had spoken it as a regular thing.
‘It wouldn’t look right on me,’ Deborah compromised.
‘But to please Reza you will do so?’ Mrs. Mahdevi insisted.
‘No, I don’t think so. Reza wouldn’t really like it. He’d know I would feel like being in fancy-dress. I much prefer to admire the real thing on those who are entitled to wear it.’
‘It will be expected,’ Mrs. Mahdevi said gently. ‘My husband taught me that it is important to conform in such a traditional society.’
‘Yes, but I’m a foreigner—’
Mrs. Mahdevi smiled briefly. ‘You think I was not? my people had been Zoroastrians, of the old religion of Persia. They came originally from Yazd, but they had lived in America for many years. To the Qashgai I was twice a foreigner. I was an American by nationality and, because I was connected to the Parsees in India, I was suspect for that too. My mother was a Muslim, and I have been Muslim all my life, but this they found very difficult to believe at first.’
‘Yet you married a Khan,’ Deborah reminded her. ‘Reza says I should address you as Madar-i-Khan since his brother inherited from his father.’
‘It is correct,’ Mrs. Mahdevi conceded. ‘My name is Najmeh. If you prefer it, you may call me that.’
Deborah hoped she would remember it. She repeated it several times to herself to make it stick in her brain as she followed the older woman through the numberless rooms of the house, all of them filled with Qashgai traditional carpets on both walls and floor and dozens of women and children doing she knew not what.
‘This is your room, Miss Day,’ Mrs. Mahdevi said at last, opening a door into a relatively secluded bedroom which had a Western type of bed covered by a gilim, or woven carpet, that gave it a rare look of luxury. ‘I will send someone with an aftabe of water for you to wash. The bathroom is through there, but our plumbing is less than desirable. It will be one of the things you may persuade Reza to do something about. His brother listens to Reza and will take such a suggestion seriously if it comes from him.’
‘Does the Khan live here too?’ Deborah inquired.
‘Sometimes. He is here at the moment. He is gathering up his people ready for the long walk to the north. That is the main purpose of this house—it’s somewhere for them to rest and prepare for the trek. Only I live here all the time. I have my women to talk to, and I continue to take an interest in all my husband’s people. It is enough for me.’
She went, moving silently across the tiled floor. A few seconds later Deborah caught sight of her in the centre of one of the courtyards outside, on to which opened a number of rooms, all of which seemed to be inhabited by whole families of tribespeople. With an autocratic gesture, Mrs. Mahdevi pointed towards Deborah’s room and issued a number of orders to one of the women, before going on her way to another part of the house.
Reza should have told her why he wanted her invited to his mother’s home, Deborah thought to herself. As it was, it was embarrassingly obvious as to what conclusions Najmeh Mahdevi had drawn. She didn’t want her son to marry outside the small circle of girls who were considered suitable to be the wife of a Mahdevi, that much was clear. And Deborah didn’t blame her. Someone from another culture, with a different religion and different values, was bound to be disruptive in such a closed family group. Maybe Reza hadn’t any thought of marriage in mind! It was possible, though Deborah found it distressing that any man would use his mother to further a passing affair with a relative stranger. More than that, she didn’t like being placed in such an invidious position, she reflected bitterly. As soon as the opportunity came her way she would explain to Mrs. Mahdevi in terms that no one could misunderstand, exactly what she was doing here, but not for the first time she thought how much better it would have been if she had waited until Maxine could have come with her.
When she had washed, pouring the water out of the narrow-necked jug the woman had brought her, her normal optimism returned and she began to look more closely at the tribal rugs on the floor, her excitement growing as she recognised their fine quality, and thought how pleased Ian would be if she secured a steady supply of them for sale in Aladdin’s Cave.
She was squatting down, examining the back of one of the rugs, when another woman came to the door, beckoning her to follow her back through the house to where her hostess was waiting for her.
‘The Khan is waiting to meet you,’ Najmeh Mahdevi told her, rising from here she had been sitting cross-legged on the floor. ‘Reza is with him.’ She hesitated, fingering the edge of her chador as though she were uncertain as to whether she should offer Deborah a similar covering or not. Finally she decided against it. ‘Come,’ she said instead. ‘I will take you to them.’
Reza rose to his feet as the two women entered the room, but his brother merely inclined his head arid went on smoking his hubble-bubble with an abstracted air. He was like Reza to look at in a way, but he wore traditional clothes, his long skirts tucked in round his feet. He took another puff on his pipe, the bowl of which rested on the floor and was filled with boiling water, before gesturing to his mother to sit down beside him.
‘Is this the girl?’ he asked.
Reza took Deborah by the hand. ‘This is Deborah Day,’ he introduced her with a curious intensity. ‘She’s been looking forward to coming here, haven’t you, Debbie/jun?’
‘Yes,’ Deborah whispered. She wasn’t often shy, but something in the attitude of the Khan made her very conscious that she was a stranger among them.
The Khan’s impassive face turned towards her. ‘You allow my brother to call you jun already? What else do you allow him?’
Deborah gave him a puzzled look. ‘I don’t know what jun means,’ she confessed. ‘I presumed it was a title, like our Miss, or something like that.’
‘It’s a commonplace endearment. I think you would say “dear” or “darling”,’ he told her without any change of expression at all.
‘Which is what she is!’ Reza chimed in.
‘I didn’t know,’ said Deborah. She was suddenly angry. ‘However, I’m not here because of Reza, I’m here to see your mother. I want to sell Qashgai goods in my shop in London. Surely you haven’t any objection to that?’
The Khan looked at his brother. Reza rushed into speech again, his grasp tightening nervously on Deborah’s wrist.
‘The shop belongs to the man to whom she was betrothed, but he married another girl. They have strange ways in England and the dowry was never returned to her family. Instead they sent her to where the brother is living.’
‘Oh, Reza, please! I’ve explained until I’m sick that. I’m just as much the owner of the shop as Ian is. Nor has Roger got anything to do with it!’
The Khan rearranged his skirts round his feet. ‘The brother has no claim on the girl?’ he asked briefly.
‘None!’ Reza insisted.
The Khan looked at Deborah. ‘You agree with that?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, of course I do. Nobody has any claim—’
‘Then she may come,’ the Khan cut her off. ‘We start tomorrow and she will be with us.’
Deborah heard his mother’s swift intake of breath and kn
ew that she at least disapproved of the decision. ‘I don’t want to go anywhere!’ she claimed.
Reza released her wrist, putting his arm about her shoulders instead and holding her close. ‘But this way you will get to know the Qashgai well, kouchuk. Isn’t this why you came to Iran?’
‘In a way,’ she admitted. ‘But I can’t just set off with you into oblivion! Nobody will know where I am! What will Maxine think? She’ll be worried out of her mind!’
There was a look of triumph on Reza’s face. ‘They are not expecting you to return,’ he told her. ‘They know that you came willingly with me, and why you came.’
Deborah could only stare at him. ‘Why did I come?’ she asked.
‘Because you are beautiful. It’s kismet that you should be here with me. Didn’t Hafez tell you that it was too late for you to draw back? That you were already known to the man who will possess you? That these are the days of celebration, of roses and jasmine—and love?’
‘But not with you!’ Deborah protested. ‘Never with you!’
He laughed. ‘You please me by learning the lesson of modesty so well, but you mustn’t play the part too well! I like your Western frankness very well. Confess, Deborah, you knew quite well why I brought you here alone, didn’t you?’
‘To kidnap me? It never crossed my mind!’ She suddenly felt weak at the knees. Roger had warned her! But she had paid no attention, like the fool she was, for she hadn’t believed him! How could she have believed him? Reza had lived in America for years. He knew that the girls there, girls like herself, earned their own livings and made their own decisions. He knew that she had only agreed to come because she had wanted to meet his mother so that she could buy things for her shop. He knew that! He had to have known! ‘I want to go home!’ she said firmly.
‘You are home,’ he whispered in her ear. ‘This will always be your home now. Tomorrow we must begin the long trek north, but after we arrive there you will be mine, and you will be happy. I promise you that!’
Deborah turned impulsively to the Khan, but he was not even looking at her. Defeated, she cast herself down beside Najmeh Mahdevi. ‘You must tell him,’ she pleaded with her, ‘that that isn’t why I came. You’re an American yourself. You know that things aren’t like that in the West!’
Najmeh’s eyes were kind. ‘I was fifteen when my father brought me to this house,’ she said. ‘I had never seen my husband, or any of his family. When my father left me here I thought I would die, but as you see, grief passes and I had my children to comfort me. It will be the same with you.’
‘No! No, I won’t! Reza, take me back to Shiraz at once!’
He shook his head. ‘There is nothing for you in Shiraz,’ he said soothingly. ‘Come now, Deborah, there is nothing more for you to cry about. I was afraid that my people might not accept you, but my brother the Khan has decreed that you may come with us and so it is decided. We leave tomorrow!’
Najmeh tapped her on the arm and signalled her to leave the room with her. ‘The men have no further need of us,’ she said in such social tones that, at another time, Deborah might have laughed. ‘You must be hungry, my dear. I have ordered our lunch to be served in my rooms where we can be comfortable together. We must begin to get to know each other, don’t you think?’
Deborah obediently followed her out of the room, her feelings plain on her face. There had to be some way of getting back to Shiraz, she surmised. There had to be!
‘Is there a telephone in the house?’ she asked as Najmeh ushered her into yet another elaborately carpeted room, with a table in the centre on which were placed innumerable dishes of rice and other foods.
‘A telephone? Here? The nearest is at the new hotel near Persepolis. Why would we have a telephone here?’
Deborah swallowed down the despair that gripped her. ‘Najmeh, you’ve got to help me! What kind of wife would I make for Reza?’
‘You would not be my choice,’ the older woman agreed. She shrugged her shoulders. ‘It’s not my decision. The Khan has agreed and that’s the end of the matter. Life seldom consults us women as to what we should like, or the world would be very different from the way it is now!’
‘I refuse to be so—so supine as to agree to be married off to Reza!’ Deborah declared. ‘I shall go and talk to the Khan again!’
‘Very well,’ Najmeh agreed placidly. ‘But first we shall eat, yes?’
Deborah was too angry and, though she wouldn’t admit it, too frightened to know much about what she ate. She remembered thinking the dish was pretty, with the whiteness of the long-grained, delicious Persian rice, and the red barberries that glinted like jewels on the top, and the orange-yellow of the saffron that had been allowed to stain only the top of the rice. Bedded beneath the rice lay enormous portions of chicken, and there were pats of butter to moisten the dish. Najmeh piled up Deborah’s plate before serving herself.
‘Eat, child. Fretting never solved anything!’
‘But there must be something we can do!’
‘If there is, I’ll think of it. Eat, kouchuk, and grow strong! You have a long way before you and you are not used to walking!’
Deborah tried to humour her by taking a mouthful or two. ‘I’ve never slept in a tent either,’ she said, ‘certainly not anything like the black ones we saw on our way here.’
‘The other women will teach you cook over an open fire, but dear me, you have so many things to learn!’
‘I don’t intend to learn any of them!’ Deborah said flatly. ‘I will not!’
Najmeh looked sympathetic. ‘But you have no choice. Reza is a good man, but he has never had the wisdom of his brother. Mohamed would never have become involved with someone like yourself.’
Deborah prodded her food with her fork. ‘It’s ridiculous! Reza is an educated man! He can’t believe in these barbaric customs! It may be all right if you’ve never known anything better—’
‘Most of the Qashgai children go to school now,’ Najmeh interrupted her, eager to defend her people. ‘We have had schools since Mohamed Bahmanbegui started our tent schools in 1953. The children have between five and seven hours’ schooling every day. We even have a teacher-training centre at Shiraz with more than two thousand graduates. We are not as backward as you think!’
‘Only the women!’
Najmeh shook her head. ‘The girls go to school too. The Qashgai marry young, it is true, the men often when they are sixteen or seventeen, the girls as soon as they are old enough to bear children, but they do so not from ignorance but because they are ready for marriage. We think there must be something wrong with a girl or boy if he or she has not married before they are twenty!’
‘Then there must be something very wrong with me!’ Deborah said bluntly.
‘Reza spent those years in America. It’s time now he married, and it would seem he thinks so too!’
But Deborah couldn’t bring herself to respond to Najmeh’s gentle mockery. ‘What am I to do?’ she said, close to desperation, and then again, ‘Najmeh, what am I to do?’
The older woman shrugged her shoulders. “It’s no good upsetting yourself,’ she said. ‘What can you do? If you had not wanted this to happen you should have stayed in Shiraz—or you should have told the Khan that Professor Derwent is in the position of your family here. Why did you deny it?’
Why indeed? Deborah could wonder at herself. Was it because she had secretly wished it to be true?
‘When can I see the Khan again?’ she asked. Najmeh looked thoughtful. ‘I will speak for you,’ she said. ‘It is not in your heart to bring happiness to my son and it is best that you should go away. I shall explain this to Mohamed. It may be that he will listen to me.’
‘Thank you,’ said Deborah with relief. ‘Will you also tell him that I lied to him? I didn’t mean to precisely, but I was afraid to tell him the truth. You see, when Ian Derwent married someone else, our families decided I should come to Persia so that his brother could—well, there’s nothing decided yet.
The Professor hasn’t said anything, but he wouldn’t, would he? I’d be the last to know!’
She watched closely to see what effect, this artless speech was having on her hostess and was satisfied that she had hit home when she saw her crestfallen face.
‘But the shop is half yours?’ Najmeh confirmed. ‘You said yourself that this was so!’
‘It is, but my family don’t like my going on working with Ian.’ That was true at any rate. Her family had been full of the difficulties ahead of her and had nearly driven her mad with their doubts. She lowered her eyes modestly. ‘Professor Derwent disapproves as well,’ she added.
‘I should think so!’ Najmeh exclaimed. She sighed heavily. ‘Much of Reza’s work is at the university. This could affect him very badly if he has made the Professor angry. The Professor is much liked and much respected in Shiraz.’
‘I should have told the Khan, but I was afraid,’ Deborah murmured. ‘It never occurred to me that Reza felt anything but friendship for me—as I do for him.’
Najmeh made a sound of utter disbelief. ‘What friendship can there be between a man and a woman?’ she demanded. ‘You must be a fool if you believe that!’ She got up and began to pace restlessly up and down the room. ‘The sooner I speak with Mohamed the better,’ she said at last. ‘I’m afraid that he, too, will be very angry!’
There was little doubt as to whom he would be angry with, but Deborah thought that that was a small price for her to pay. She was a little surprised that she could play the part of the submissive woman with such meekness. She had never suspected that she possessed any histrionic abilities at all, and yet the part was becoming more and more real to her by the moment. She could even feel a shiver of real fear when she thought about Roger’s reaction when he found out how she had made use of his name.
The afternoon stretched before her in unutterable boredom. There was, she soon discovered, absolutely nothing for her to do. Najmeh refused to allow her to mix amongst the women of the Qashgai, determined to keep her out of sight as much as possible. From the window of her room she could watch the comings and goings of the tribespeople as they made their preparations for their departure next day. The men sat in groups discussing the route they would take, while the women did everything else, even pitching the black tents for the night, as well as the cooking, the cleaning and guarding the children as they ran wild in the yard, busy with their own games and arguments.