by Isobel Chace
In the evening Najmeh invited her to keep her company in her rooms, but when Deborah asked her if she had spoken to the Khan, she became vague and changed the subject, finally saying that it would be better if they didn’t speak of the matter again that evening.
‘There is time,’ she said softly. ‘There is time, and Reza has a persuasive tongue. You must trust in God, child. Perhaps He will rescue you from your foolishness.’
There was a certain amount of sense in what she said. If Deborah herself acted as though she were paying Mrs. Mahdevi a perfectly normal visit, perhaps Reza would understand that she meant what she said and had no intention of becoming his wife, or concubine, or whatever else it was he had in mind. For that was something else for her to worry about. She knew that Persian Muslims, unlike their Sunni brethren, could marry for a set period of time and that then, willy-nilly, the marriage came to an end. She had been told that in most marriage contracts the bride stipulated that the marriage was to be permanent one for that very reason.
Najmeh was hospitable in her own way. She served endless cups of tea and did her best to entertain her reluctant guest by showing her the double cloth she was weaving, a tribal skill of which she was justly proud. She explained how it was produced on a double warp with two contrasting colours.
‘It’s different from what we call the zilu, though it is also similar. The difference is that here we are employing two independent wefts so that there are in effect two fabrics, one behind the other, but they combine together on all those points where one warp changes from the front to the back and the other comes forward, and the other way round.’
Deborah followed the explanation closely. ‘I thought most warp-faced and weft-faced patterns have floating threads,’ she said. ‘You don’t seem to have any?’ Najmeh shook her head. ‘No, none. You see how the pattern comes out in reverse colours on either side? It looks almost as though it has been embroidered. It is pretty, no?’
‘It’s just the sort of thing I should like to sell in London,’ Deborah admitted.
Najmeh looked at her slyly out of the corners of her eyes. ‘Why don’t you learn how to weave it for yourself?’ she suggested.
‘I shan’t be here long enough!’
‘It is in the hands of God. Do you want to see how our carpets are made? My daughter is making one now and will be pleased to show you.’
Deborah accepted the invitation with some impatience. She was beginning to think the Khan was avoiding her. Worse still, where was Reza? If she could see him for a few minutes she would soon tell him the mistake he had made and she couldn’t really believe, even now, that a man who was a medical doctor and who had lived for so long in America wouldn’t let her go in the last resort.
‘Are you sure the Khan won’t see me now?’ she pleaded with Najmeh.
‘There is a tribal dispute,’ the older woman said helplessly.
‘Then where is Reza?’
‘Reza is with his brother. But there is time yet for you to see them both. You mustn’t worry any more now.’
But that was easier said than done. Najmeh’s daughter was extraordinarily like her mother to look at. They greeted each other affectionately and then turned to Deborah.
‘This is my daughter Mina,’ Najmeh began the introduction, but then, was at a loss as to how to describe Deborah. ‘Miss Day,’ she ended. ‘Miss Deborah Day. Reza brought her!’
Mina’s eyes widened. ‘Does she come with us?’ she lisped awkwardly in English. She was not nearly as fluent as the other members of her family.
‘Yes, unless—Mohamed has decided it. Reza is not to see her until the truth of the matter has been decided. It’s all very complicated.’
Deborah looked at Najmeh accusingly. ‘You’ve spoken with the Khan!’ she exclaimed. ‘You’ve spoken with him and you didn’t tell me!’
‘I didn’t wish to upset you further,’ Najmeh said uncomfortably. ‘My son, the Khan, says if you are speaking the truth about Professor Derwent he will come and find you once he knows you are gone. If he doesn’t come, then Reza is speaking the truth and he may have you.’
Deborah went white. ‘But it’s intolerable! Don’t my feelings count with him at all?’
It was Mina who answered her. ‘Reza says you have a fine dowry. He had many expenses becoming a doctor and he likes to live a very social life in Shiraz. He is not like the rest of our people.’
Showing the carpets became a duty on both sides after that. Mina carefully explained that all the tribal rugs were made of wool because it was so easily gathered from their flocks, but they all knew that Deborah was scarcely listening. She had room in her thoughts only for Roger, and the more she thought about him, the less she thought he would bestir himself to rescue her. He would conclude that she had gone of her own free will and she would never see him again! It was a desolate conclusion to take to bed with her, but there was none other that she could come to with any conviction. She might have fallen in love with Roger, but he wasn’t in love with her, and there was no reason to suppose that he even knew she had left Shiraz.
The house was buzzing with activity very early the next morning. Deborah dressed herself and wandered through the rooms looking for the Khan, determined to speak to him herself. She found him too. He was standing in the courtyard of his mother’s part of the house, watching Najmeh arrange a flower, a small white Koran and a bowl of water in which one leaf floated on a tray.
‘Come, Miss Day,’ he greeted her. ‘You are in time to witness our small ceremony of farewell, though as you are not a believer, perhaps it will mean little to you.’
Deborah clenched her fists and faced him. ‘Please let me go back to Shiraz,’ she begged him.
His eyes narrowed. ‘I have sent a message to the brother of your friend telling him that you are here. I can do no more. The rest is between you and Reza.’
Howard! He had sent a message to Howard? And Howard would do nothing. She knew that as surely as she was standing there. He would think it a fine joke—and he would do absolutely nothing! Her eyes were blurred with tears as she watched the Khan advance towards the tray his mother had arranged, giving her a running commentary as he did so.
‘I touch the flower to lay hold on its beauty. I kiss the Koran because all beauty comes from God, Allah is the beginning and the end of all beauty.’ His mother splashed him with a little of the water and held up the Koran so that he could walk under it, praying passionately in short, bursting sentences.
‘God keep you, my son.
God be with you wherever you go.
God return you to me.
My prayers will bear you company.
May God go with you.’
But if anyone was in need of her prayers it was Deborah at that moment. If God would bring Roger to her, it was surely a very small thing to ask.
‘Aga, please let me go!’ she whispered.
The Khan turned and looked at her. ‘Do you doubt that the Professor will come?’ he asked her, an edge to his voice. ‘If you were mine, I would find you beautiful enough to go many miles to bring you back to my side. If he thinks so little of you that he lets you go, you are better off with Reza.’ His expression softened a little. ‘Go and get ready, Miss Deborah. We have many miles to go.’
CHAPTER NINE
It was still only April, but Deborah had never been so hot in her life. Whenever she could without attracting unnecessary attention to herself, she stopped walking and pretended to watch the antics of the animals all round her instead. The goats, as agile as all their kind, frolicked about her, not really mixing with the sheep but always travelling in the same direction. At first she had resented the fact that it was the men who lounged at their ease on horseback and the women who walked, but as the hours went by she no longer cared about anything but the state of her own feet. By noon the rather unsuitable shoes she had with her had blistered her heels, by four in the afternoon she began to doubt her ability to take another step, by five, when the Khan finally called a
halt, she hoped for nothing more than an early death.
The other women laughed at her. They found her dress ridiculous and shoes even more so, but they admired the courage with which she laughed back at them, and they were scrupulous in always addressing her as knome, which as an address has the added convenience of applying to married and unmarried ladies alike. As they had no language in common, she couldn’t join in their long gossipy conversations which might have made the walk more bearable, but they tried to include her when they could, drawing pictures for her in the air, and grinning from ear to ear whenever they caught her eye.
The Khan himself came up to her as the other men occupied themselves making their arrangements for the animals for the night.
‘You found it a long way?’ he asked her.
‘More like slow torture,’ she answered him. ‘I’ve never walked so far in my life before!’
He frowned. ‘The Qashgai walk that far and more every day.’
‘The Qashgai are welcome!’ she retorted.
His reluctant smile warmed her frozen emotions a little. ‘I wanted to leave you with my mother, but Reza was determined that you should travel with us. Tomorrow you had better ride one of the donkeys—if you are still with us.’
Deborah looked at him full in the face. ‘You don’t understand our ways in the West any more than I understand yours. If he doesn’t come, it will only be because he won’t believe that I can’t look after myself. Women have more freedom and make their own decisions in England.’
The Khan laughed. ‘I think he will come. Or are women also unloved in the West?’
‘Unloved?’ she repeated. ‘Of course not! But we meet men on equal terms, not as their slaves!’
His grin grew broader. He was very like his brother, but he had more humour and was, she thought, by far the better man. ‘If you meet Professor Derwent on equal terms you must be a woman in a million. There are many men who are afraid of him.’
‘He’s very clever,’ she agreed.
‘And you are clever also?’ he inquired.
She shook her head. ‘If I were, I’d never had got myself involved with Ian Derwent, the Professor’s brother.’
The Khan looked interested. ‘Did you have any choice?’
‘Of course I had a choice! I told you, girls in England make their own decisions—they don’t have to have some man to make them for them! I thought I was in love with him—at the time!’
‘So it was your decision that you should marry this Ian?’ the Khan pressed her.
She nodded. ‘I thought I was in love with him,’ she explained. ‘But he married someone else.’
‘Leaving you to his brother? But, I think, it is not your decision as to whether you marry the Professor. He is not a man to allow a woman to decide such things for him.’
‘No,’ she admitted. ‘But he wouldn’t force me—’
There was a look of amusement in the Khan’s dark eyes. ‘You must be three years older than my sister, and maybe six years more than my wife, but beside them you are still a child, Miss Day. Only children pretend to themselves that they are more important than they are. When I tell my wife to do something, she does it. If your Professor told you, you would do it too. That is how life is.’
‘I know that! I’m not as childish as you think!’
‘No? You seem to me to be very like Reza, expecting the whole world to stop and bow as you go by. If this is the Western way, I prefer the ways of the East. My brother is a fine doctor and he went to school for many years. I can barely read and write and I learned my English when I worked in one of the oil companies for two years. Yet among my people we are only judged for the men we are, not for the advantages we have received.’
‘Then it isn’t because he is clever that you think so highly of Roger?’ she questioned him.
He smiled. ‘Nor because you are beautiful do we think more highly of you.’
‘Why should you?’ she said uncertainly. She was well aware that as a woman she hadn’t measured up to any of the exacting standards of the Qashgai tribesmen.
‘Your beauty is for your husband, but it is your courage that will make you worthy of him.’ He turned to leave her. ‘We must both hope your professor comes quickly, for you are not for Reza.’
She jumped to her feet, forgetting for the moment her blisters. ‘Then you’ll let me go? Even if Roger doesn’t come?’
‘That is Reza’s decision, not mine,’ he answered, and he was gone before she could argue with him further.
For a long time Deborah stood where he had left her, fighting a losing battle with the tears that threatened to break through the control she had imposed on herself all day. The worst part was that she knew she had no right to expect Roger to extract her from the very situation he had warned her she might find herself in. Only she hadn’t paid any attention to what he had been saying. She hadn’t thought about it at all, let alone take it seriously. If he didn’t come, it would be no more than she deserved.
Such was her misery that she didn’t feel the small hand on her arm until the girl pulled at her sleeve with greater violence.
‘Knome,’ the child said, and pointed towards one of the black tents.
Deborah followed her inside, bending almost double to do so. The inside smelt strongly of unwashed wool and she would have liked to have headed straight outside again, but the group of women inside were waiting for her and she didn’t want them to know that she felt sick after the long day in the sun, her aching muscles and now the suffocating smell inside the tent. She smiled wearily at them, her face white and drawn, and they clucked over her with concern, making her sit down on one of the hastily spread carpets on the ground and pouring her a cup of tea from a solid silver samovar that stood in the corner of the tent.
The atmosphere seemed less oppressive after she had drunk her tea. One of the older women was smoking and the tobacco had a strange, sweet smell that Deborah found soothing. When she was offered a cigarette herself, she was tempted to accept, but as she had never smoked, she refused from habit. It was only when she had done so that she wondered if it was indeed tobacco the woman was smoking. It could easily have been hashish.
She sat in the corner of the tent, determined not to be shocked by her discovery. She was sure she was right. She remembered having been told that the word assassin came from the same source, and that the first assassins had been a politically-orientated group in Persia who had followed the fabled Old Man of the Mountains, carrying out his orders with fanatical exactitude until even one of the Prime Ministers of Persia had fallen by their hand. They had had a castle in the Valley of the Assassins to which they had taken young men, promising them all the delights of heaven on earth if they joined the sect. And the sect still survived today, respectable and respected all over the world, led by the Aga Khan and very different from their forefathers. Nowadays, they probably didn’t smoke hashish at all, and yet Deborah was almost sure that this woman was. Perhaps many people did even nowadays in modern Iran. It had never occurred to her before to ask anyone about such things. It wouldn’t have occurred to her now if she hadn’t seen a policeman in a play on television sniffing at cigarette butts and loudly crying, ‘Here’s one, sir! It smells sweet!’
The woman gave her more tea and she leaned forward to admire the samovar more closely, enjoying the rich glow of the silver and the delicate tracery on the tap in the front that released the hot liquid through a handsome spout. The owner was pleased by her pleasure and began to show her some of her other possessions, some of them, some of the bowls for instance, as beautiful in their own way as the silver samovar, some of them no more than the coarse pottery that was coloured in bright greens and sold in every bazaar around for a few coins. Even the cooking pots were brought out for her to examine, each piece made individually by a craftsman and polished until the patina inside shone almost as brightly as the polished silver of the samovar.
As soon as she could, without hurting their feelings, Deborah withdrew
from the group and went outside. It was dark now and there was a wind blowing. The tents, no more than dark shadows against a dark background, flapped in the dusty breeze and the sheep bleated as one of their number was pushed back into the circle by one of the boys who was shepherding them.
Deborah moved a little way away from the camp. One of the Qashgai women, her skirts brilliantly coloured in the firelight, crossed from one tent to another, carrying an enormous dish in front of her. The Khan’s evening meal, Deborah guessed, was about to be served. After that they would probably all eat, and she had to admit that she was extremely hungry. She had been too miserable to eat all day, even if food had been offered to her, but it was a long time since her last meal and she was too sensible to think that she would help herself in her present plight by starving herself.
It was only then that she noticed that there was a vehicle drawn up beside the Khan’s tent. It was large and high off the ground, and she was tempted to go across and examine it. It was probably Reza’s jeep. She sat down in the dust and gave way to the despair within her. Just for a moment she had thought it might have been somebody else’s—it might have been Roger’s! The tears came hard at first, tearing at her throat and making her lungs ache with their intensity.
She cried until she could cry no more, and by then the damage had been done. Her head ached and her eyes were swollen and sore. If she could have washed her face, she might have removed some of the prickly discomforts from her skin, but she had no idea where to find any water. She didn’t even know where she was supposed to be sleeping that night!