Teaspoon of Earth and Sea (9781101601990)

by Nayeri, Dina

  Saba shakes her head. No, she hasn’t forgotten. The memories of the Dallak Day are as fresh as ever and there is no cleansing for her despite the many afternoons she spends washing herself in her hammam. The details of that day expand in her mind, swelling and pressing up against her skull until there is room for nothing else. There is simply this: her breath quickening. Her hand flying to her throat. Her body splayed out on her bed and the blood beneath her. It happened more than a year ago, yet it comes back to Saba daily, nightly. It is happening again now.

  She gets up to try the doctor again, avoiding Ponneh’s gaze. In the living room she picks up the receiver and starts to dial, thinking of her wasted life here in this house. She considers the cruel torture she has inflicted on this man, and the way Agha Mansoori begged to join his wife in heaven. She thinks of her first few nights with Abbas, his anecdotes about the warmth of his first wife. Maybe Ponneh is right that he has lived a complete and blessed life.

  She dials a few numbers, her fingers heavy and shaking. What if Abbas heard her talking to Ponneh? He might be aware of the time it has taken her to decide his fate. He might even forget that he took the extra medicine himself. What brutal accusations will he make to all the medical and legal men who are bound to parade through here?

  Then Saba thinks of how Abbas nodded when she asked him if he remembered the routine. It’s possible that he took the extra medicine on purpose. The thought makes her chest constrict—the image of the old man reaching out for the company of his first wife the way Agha Mansoori did for his. Maybe this is a mercy. Maybe she should use the power she has been given and return this man to his true wife. Agha Mansoori tried so hard to die; he misplaced his pills and left ovens burning and begged Saba to help him. Like an angel of death, she held his hand as he moved on, and it was easy and timely and good. She can see that Abbas has been waiting to die, and that it is a kindness and a blessing to leave the world peacefully, without the sting of violence that accompanies so many deaths here. Abbas must realize this. She replaces the phone and returns to Abbas’s room, where Ponneh is feeling his forehead. She must feel guilty too.

  “I’m not calling the doctor,” she says, her voice exhausted. She falls into Ponneh’s arms. Ponneh strokes her hair and says that all will be well. If Saba talked to him, could Abbas hear her? She can’t be certain because the light is leaving his eyes. Ponneh whispers into her hair, “Tell him.”

  Saba fumbles with her shirt. The room has grown hot. She runs her hand through her long hair. “I don’t know what to say.” She sits on the bed beside him.

  Ponneh moves to the chair. “I’ll start,” she says, and shifts around. She begins to speak several times but reconsiders her words. Finally she says, “Good-bye, Abbas . . . Just repeat what I say, Saba jan. Go on . . . say good-bye to him.”

  “Good-bye,” she groans, unable to get out more than the one word.

  “May you find peace somewhere,” Ponneh says, confident even though she’s improvising.

  “I hope in heaven you find peace—” Saba says. It feels like a prayer, repeating Ponneh’s words. When she was a little girl, her mother explained the rules of prayer. She said that each person must have her own individual words. “That’s the difference between Christian prayer and Muslim prayer,” she told Saba and Mahtab. “We don’t chant. We tell God what’s in our hearts.” Now something inside stirs and she can feel all the words she wants to say bubbling up, rising to the surface from the mouth of the injured beast that lies there. She swallows hard and listens to Ponneh try to continue.

  “But what you did . . . God, that was . . . evil.” The steely quality of Ponneh’s voice is gone and she seems unsure, shaky, maybe too young for it all. But this is a poison that must be expelled. Saba doesn’t want any more help. She waves her hand for Ponneh to stop.

  She takes a breath and says, “That’s enough now,” then licks her lips. “Abbas . . .” She stops and considers the possibility that Abbas did this on purpose. Does he believe in heaven as Agha Mansoori did? If so, he too will need someone to bear witness that he didn’t commit the ultimate sin. “You made a mistake with the medicine. It was only a mistake, but I can’t fix it for you. I gave you plenty of time, and we were friends at first, remember? But that day—” She stops. There is no use in rehashing it. “I can’t help you now. You’re no longer my friend.” When she is finished, she lifts herself up, unable to recall her own words, though she can feel by their absence how heavy they must have been. She touches Abbas’s withered face, now grown cold, and adds, “I hope you find your wife.” With that she leaves the room, consumed by thoughts of what it means to be a Christian, and how disappointed her mother would be that Saba has chosen to drop her cross and walk away. But maybe the world doesn’t need so many martyrs and cross-bearers. Or maybe Saba just doesn’t believe.

  Ponneh shuts the door behind them. They wait outside, Saba stroking her neck because the tickle inside her throat has become unbearable. She takes a few gulps of air and tries not to hear his breathing. Ponneh runs to the kitchen to get tea and tissues. Saba doesn’t notice when she comes back. When the noises stop, she falls asleep in the hall outside Abbas’s room and doesn’t wake again until daylight.

  The next morning Abbas is dead and Saba is a rich widow, a fierce tern in crow’s clothing, dark eyes downcast, red mouth stained and shining like blood, mourning alongside a line of her black-crow sisters. The women around her touch her head and kiss her cheeks, some of them whispering that she has a very prosperous life ahead. But behind her black layers, she holds on to her lifelong wish to fly away, toward her mother in America. To explain her sins in person.

  Abbas’s death is pronounced accidental—a stroke that, given the number of pills left over, may have been caused by too much blood thinner. Though dazed and unsure of herself, Saba tells the doctor that he administered his own medicine that night. Maybe he took too much. She has learned to rub yogurt like an expert storyteller, and so has come into her very own Yogurt Money. She has become a grandmaster of maast-mali.

  An overdose is unfortunate, the doctors say, but he was an old man. In the end, no one thinks about it much. It isn’t such a strange thing, and uninteresting as far as scandals are concerned. Abbas had a full life and there is no mother-in-law to make a fuss.

  That’s the trouble with being old. No mother to make a fuss for you when you are sick or dying, or just drowning in an imaginary sea. I feel so old. Five days after her last period, again she leans over the porcelain hole in the ground, her feet firmly planted on the ridged footrests on each side, and packs herself with cotton. Her bleeding is erratic and she wonders just how damaged she is inside, in the places she cannot see.

  On her first night alone she has nightmares—about her mother, Abbas, Mahtab. She turns on the lights and reads books to protect herself from what she has done—letting Abbas die, letting Mahtab get on a plane or drop to the bottom of the sea. Either way, Saba was there. Could she have prevented the loss of Mahtab one way or another? And is it possible to love someone who spent so many months torturing her own husband?

  Sometimes she shocks herself by missing him and realizes that her guilt doesn’t come from letting him die but for having made his last year a sort of purgatory. Was that her right as a wife? Or as the victim of the Dallak Day? She attends Abbas’s funeral in black and faces the men who eye her, some suspicious, some sympathetic. There is something rejuvenating in the process. A slow clarity comes with hours of watching people pass by and pay their respects—the knowledge that none of them can take away what is hers. No one can stand in the way of a life that is now in her name, fully and independently.

  At the burial, she sees Reza. Though she does not speak to him—it is forbidden for a mourning widow—twice he holds her gaze with the tenderness of their years of friendship. He nods sadly and goes to pay respects to her father. Ponneh stays constantly by Saba’s side. In four months her
mourning period will be over and she will be allowed to marry again, though she has no such inclinations now. She will go to America.

  But first there is this: four months in crow’s clothing.

  Saba counts the friends of Abbas and her father as they say their prayers, and she takes stock of the people around her—those in her husband’s debt, in her father’s debt. Agha Hafezi takes her hand to reassure her, and Saba realizes that these bowed heads are now also in her debt. So much that belonged to Abbas and her father now belongs to her. Not only fortunes. But a name, a reputation, a power to change things.

  Maybe now she will be like Mahtab, the journalist. Maybe Saba can do even more than that. She remembers her mother’s words at the airport, about not crying, about being a giant in the face of trouble. What was it that her mother used to say?

  I’m no Match Girl, she thinks, and says aloud so that Ponneh can hear. Not because of her father’s unbreakable contract, but because of her own plans and suffering and patience. These truths become clear to Saba, so she accepts the mourners’ words of comfort, one by one, and she is transformed.

  Part 3

  MOTHERS, FATHERS

  Baby, Grandma understands

  That you really love that man.

  —Bill Withers

  Chapter Fifteen

  AUTUMN 1991

  Three months later Saba sits with her father in a mullah’s office in Rasht. The mullah speaks to Agha Hafez while Saba examines the soft lines of his face. He has kind eyes, though he doesn’t look at her, but nods in her direction every now and then as he explains that marriage contracts are still subject to Shari’a law. “I see that all funeral expenses and debts have been paid off,” he says, looking at a thin pile on his desk, “and other than this very informal marriage agreement, Agha Abbas left no will.”

  Saba holds her breath. This is absurd. The contract was as tight as could possibly be made and, in fact, much of the property and money was put under Saba’s own name. What if it was all for nothing? No, she thinks. Mullah Ali, who is an expert in Shari’a law, assured her father that there were no impediments to her inheritance.

  “If no entitled descendants exist—and I believe Agha Abbas had no children by any previous wives—then the wife is entitled to one-fourth of his estate automatically. That is God’s law. We do not dispute that your daughter deserves that much.”

  Saba breathes out, somewhat relieved. She can feel her father beside her, thrumming with anger, struggling to control himself. She fidgets in an itchy black chador.

  “Yes, but the contract we negotiated was very solid,” her father says. “It was in keeping with Islamic law and agreed upon by Abbas and myself. There were witnesses. Come now, Hajj Agha, do you see any other claimants here with us?”

  The mullah puts his hand up, feigning impatience, though he obviously respects her father’s education and standing. He continues. “The issue isn’t your knowledge of the law. It is whether any heirs escaped your notice. There are no other primary heirs in this case, since the man had no other living wives, no children, and so on. But we felt it necessary to do our duty toward Allah and the deceased to find any secondary beneficiaries. These would be residuaries who would be entitled to the rest of the estate.”

  “The rest?” Saba blurts out. Her father grabs her arm and tells her to hush. This seems to satisfy the mullah, who smiles patiently, ready to continue his speech. But Agha Hafezi, still holding Saba’s arm, jumps in.

  “Looking for secondary beneficiaries seems excessive. Agha, our family has looked already. Not to mention that secondary heirs will always appear if you advertise for them! Show me a dead man with money and I’ll show you forty Arab cousins crawling out of nowhere. Who are you looking for exactly?”

  The mullah sighs and adjusts his glasses as he reads from his notes. “Brothers, sisters, nephews, nieces. Clearly there is no possibility of living uncles or grandparents.”

  “Why?” Saba whispers, shocked that such a small, underfunded office with plastic chairs and a draft seeping in through the floor cracks would go to so much trouble to search all of Iran for the long-lost relatives of a dead recluse.

  The mullah raises both eyebrows. “Would you not have us do the right thing?”

  “Did you find any?” Her father sighs. When he becomes impatient, his voice takes on a condescending quality that he is now trying to control. He forces a smile and says, “It seems that if no one has come forward, this is a very simple case.”

  “Yes, I do see your concern,” says the mullah. “But we have found a brother.”

  Her father shakes his head, disbelieving. Saba hasn’t studied Shari’a law, but she does know one thing: a brother’s share is much bigger than a wife’s—never mind the fact that she was bruised and mutilated for Abbas’s sake, and that this man probably didn’t even know of Abbas’s existence until a few days ago. A cynical part of her congratulates the men of the world for a first-rate win.

  “Don’t worry, Agha Hafezi,” says the mullah. “He is only a uterine brother. He only shared a mother with Agha Abbas, and since that poor woman died recently, he is all that’s left. The man lives in the South and is near death himself, but alive enough to inherit. We have already contacted him. The law dictates that he receive one-sixth.”

  “And the rest?” asks her father.

  “In the absence of any other claimants, we divide the residue proportionally between you and the half brother.” He looks at Saba and slowly explains the logic, skipping over the parts with math for her benefit. “That means you will get the most, my child.”

  Sixty percent, Saba calculates in her head, just before her father says it aloud for the record. The mullah waits a moment. When Saba shows no gratitude, he says, “I discussed this with my colleagues. They wished to continue searching for male heirs. They were concerned . . . it’s so much money for a young woman, and this isn’t Tehran. I myself travel to Tehran often, and I know that many good Muslim widows manage their own money without scandal. But others aren’t so modern-thinking. You are very lucky, indeed. Women are not meant to shoulder such heavy responsibilities.”

  Agha Hafezi nods politely for the mullah. He pinches Saba’s arm as he used to do when she was small and they had an inside joke between them. “I will watch over her,” he assures the cleric. “I’ll make sure she buys a book and pencils once in a while, and not just fabrics and kitchen supplies.”

  Saba bites the inside of her cheeks. Her father used to joke that if she was let loose in a foreign bookstore without supervision, she would blow the entire family fortune. And she knows her father well enough to realize that the part about the kitchen supplies is his subtle message to her—that he has watched over her from their separate houses, that he hasn’t stopped at knowing her hobbies, but has cataloged all the daily things she considers worthless and mundane, a list very similar to her mother’s.

  “Good,” says the mullah. “Before we turn over the deeds, bank accounts, and other papers, I have to go over a few fine points, technicalities. You see, there are only two rules of eligibility to inherit. And since we know that your daughter didn’t kill her husband,” he chuckles, “we just need to have her testament that she is a true Muslim.”

  She considers all that she has lost, the high price she has already paid. The bleeding. “Yes,” she breathes, without looking at the mullah. “Yes, of course I am a Muslim.” This is just one more thing. One more lie to add to it all. This is simply the inevitable whitening that comes with secret stashes of undeserved money.

  Her father stares at the floor. There is sadness in his eyes and for an instant Agha Hafezi, savvy businessman, student of religion and wit, looks like a simple Gilaki farmer.

  When all the papers are signed, father and daughter get up to leave. “There is just one more thing I should tell you,” says the mullah, tentatively. He purses his lips a
nd flares his nostrils in a way that Saba has noticed is his habit when he is trying to find the right words. “You see, Abbas’s relations had no idea about the money. Abbas lived in a village, after all. How much could he have? It’s very much a windfall to them.” Agha Hafezi doesn’t comment, since he too is rich and living in a village. “The head and tail of it is that the family is trying to prove that the man is a full brother. You should be aware of the possibility that they might succeed, in which case they will inherit the majority.” He shakes his head. “It’s a shame. . . . Man is a greedy beast.”

  Moments later they cross the busy streets of Rasht, Agha Hafezi grasping the crook of Saba’s arm through her chador. Usually Saba finds the sharp sounds and pungent smells of the big city wonderfully overwhelming—the gasoline and car exhaust, fresh market fish and grilled kebab, perfume and body odor. Usually she relishes the sounds of the street vendors and traffic; the flashes of color displayed by brazen passersby, a scarf here, a bright collar there. But not today. Today it is all a dim yellow and dusty-blue haze, the color of faded fabric and low-budget movies. Saba can see that her father is angry. She can see that he feels cheated for her. Yes, she has more money now than any other woman she knows—enough to live on for the rest of her life—but the look on her father’s face makes Saba want to enumerate all the precious things she lost in that one transaction. Over and over she tries to forgive herself for the lie she uttered in the mullah’s office and begs God not to allow Abbas’s relations to create a legal frenzy and ransack all that she has earned. There are so many secrets that could lead to the loss of her fortune: the unconsummated marriage, the circumstances of Abbas’s death, her Christianity, and this man who claims to be Abbas’s full brother. . . . What if he really is?