“Thank God, it’s no big deal, honey,” Kathy said. “Kids do such crazy things all the time, you can’t let yourself get all worked up about it.” She led Rana to a chair and offered her a glass of water. Rana seemed calmer, though she continued to shed silent tears. Kathy had no doubt that there was a lot more to those tears. What was it that tormented her friend so? She offered her the box of tissues.
Rana finally regained her composure and wiped her face. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know what made me cry so hard.”
“It happens,” Kathy said. “Sometimes I lose it, too.” She chuckled at the vision that came to her. “Last week, Frank refused to change the TV channel, but that was right after a week of his new assignments, his many absences from dinner, and whatnot. Oh, you should have seen the way I went off on him, you’d think he had declared war.” She reached over to the coffee table and opened a box of imported chocolates. “The best remedy for sadness, yet!” she said and offered it to Rana. She then gave some to Marjan plus a children’s aspirin for her headache. They decided it would be best if the girls watched TV while she and Rana finished baking. By the time Rana prepared to leave, the kids seemed fine.
“Can Claire spend the night at our house?” Marjan asked.
Rana shook her head, “No, not tonight.”
“Why not?” Marjan insisted. “My head is all better.”
Rana proceeded to wipe the counter, even though it had already been cleaned.
“Will Papa be sleeping at home tonight?”
Rana blushed, but didn’t respond.
Only after they left did it occur to Kathy how odd that question had been. The child had not asked if her father was in town, or if he’d come home late. No, the question would imply that while the Major was in town, he might spend the night elsewhere. It also indicated that he’d done this on more than one occasion. Could the rumors about the Major’s other woman hold any truth?
Rana’s hysterical reaction to a simple fall was bad enough. But combined with Marjan’s question, it pointed to something big. Rana’s melancholic silence was like a barbed wire that isolated her, making an approach impossible.
Kathy’s mind went to the many stories of abuse, rape, even bigamy. What did she know about Middle Eastern men? Could violence have anything to do with how obedient some wives were? Major Moradi acted like a gentleman, and one who adored his wife. If so, what could possibly be the cause of that deep sorrow in Rana’s eyes, or the deep secret that followed her like a shadow? These questions had nothing to do with curiosity. Kathy sensed danger and could tell her friend was in some kind of dilemma. If she were to help Rana, she had to find out what troubled her.
Chapter
Eleven
ON THE RARE OCCASIONS when everyone was out of the house, Rana cherished her time alone with Yalda. No longer obligated to divide her attention between her children, or pretend to be happy when she wasn’t, she could fuss over her new baby to her heart’s content. She took her time feeding Yalda, sang to her, and admired the developing beauty of her face.
Dayeh had planned to take the girls to the Bazaar, but that morning Marjan complained of a headache and said she wanted to stay home. Rana wondered how severe the headache must be. The girls loved their little trips to Bazaar-e-Vakeel and all the useless junk it offered: Tiny pots and pans for their dolls, plastic pails to play in the mud, and flashy rhinestone bracelets and rings. W hen Vida and Dayeh had left, she checked Marjan’s temperature and gave her a baby aspirin before sending her back to bed. The poor child’s forehead had a bump the size of an egg. No wonder her head hurt.
Major Moradi had been away on assignment for the past few days. Banu, taking advantage of the sunny day, had moved her washbasin and kettles of boiled water outside to do loads of laundry. Rana finished giving the baby a bath and took her down to the family room.
Minutes later, Banu brought her some tea and busied herself around the room. She appeared in no rush to leave. By now, Rana had seen this kind of lingering enough to figure the girl had something to report, but she knew better than to ask. Best to keep silent and let the girl say what was on her mind.
After a few minutes, Banu walked over to her and sat on the floor near the couch. Staring at the rug, she said, “Khanoom, now that Dayeh isn’t here to snap at me, I’ve come to plead for your forgiveness. You must know how sorry I am for being the one who told you about that awful woman the Major keeps.”
The girl sure didn’t mince her words. As much as Rana resented receiving such news, being kept in the dark was no better. In fact, there were times when millions of questions popped into her head and pride prevented her from using Banu as her informer. She was certain of the talks behind her back. Dayeh’s lips were sealed, so it had to be Banu who’d bring her the latest.
“Dayeh thinks it’s none of my business,” Banu went on, “ but, khanoom, how could I keep quiet when it involved your happiness?” She wiped her eyes with the corner of her scarf. “I remember how my mother’s days became black when my father took another wife. Oh, Miss Rana, that woman cried not just tears, but blood! And, I’ll never forget how my stepmother abused me after my mother— may she rest in peace—died.” Banu was now rambling on and at this point, her tragic story made her cry even harder.
“Stepmother.” Rana could feel her own tears gathering, but she took a deep breath and blinked them away.
“Everybody in the neighborhood speaks of you with much respect,” Banu went on. “Over and over, I hear them say how gracious you’ve been through this shameful ordeal, how you have kept your head high. That awful woman sure doesn’t deserve to walk the face of this earth. May she never see one bright day in her life, may God strike her with crippling ailments.” She made a fist and beat her chest.
“That’s enough,” Rana said. “How could you curse anyone, especially someone you don’t know?” She thought for a minute and added, “Or, maybe you do know her.”
Banu’s eyes widened. “Know her?” She shook her head violently. “As the creator is my witness, I saw her just once and only from a distance.”
“Oh?”
Rana was dying to know what this enemy looked like, but it would be beneath her to ask direct questions. Luckily, the girl had a habit of talking with or without questions.
“I was at the butcher’s to pick up the lamb Dayeh needed for dinner,” Banu went on. “I saw the Major’s Jeep stop at the curb and he got out to open the door for a woman. I’d never seen her, but sure as the daylight, it was her.” She made a face. “I’m telling you, ma’am, she’s got nothing over you. She’s a dry stick, you know, with no meat on her and long scrawny legs. Her eyes big as a cow’s and a head of black hair that wasn’t even curled.” She snickered. “Worst of all, she had this plain outfit, not at all as pretty as some of yours, ma’am. Ooo, she made a sour face, kind of miserable, may Allah give her more misery.”
The description didn’t help at all. Banu’s report on the woman’s looks was hardly the worst it could be. The image coming to Rana was a tall woman with dark eyes and hair that she left natural. That was neither vulgar nor cheap. For months, she had imagined her rival to be a common streetwalker, but the girl’s portrayal contrasted that. It had been much easier to hate a fat woman who wore layers of greasy makeup. How effortless it had been to despise the woman’s crude laughter in her nightmares. It would be much harder to hate a nondescript woman who, if anything, sounded sad.
Rana shook the image away and forced a smile. “You have nothing to be sorry about, dear,” she said. “Try not to take offense at what Dayeh says. She is like a mother to me, and asking you to keep quiet is her way of protecting me. I was bound to hear about this. I wish none of it were true, but I’d rather know what goes on behind my back. And she knew this would be the closest she could come to asking the girl to be her informer.
Banu nodded violently. “Exactly what I said to Dayeh, Ma’am. She said to keep my mouth shut, but I didn’t want you to hear it some place else. Would it be a
ny better if some stranger told you?” She moved closer and grabbed Rana’s hand and brought it to her mouth, but Rana pulled her hand away before the girl had kissed it. Banu cried again and said, “As God is my witness, it nearly killed me to hear of your husband buying a house across from the Khalili Garden for somebody else! Why must he go and have a child with another when you have blessed him with the best of them?”
Rana felt a chill down her back. So it was official. He did have another family, another home and of all the places, it would be in her favorite spot in the entire city. She felt weightless, as if being pushed off a cliff, suspended midair. Banu’s words had taken away her irrational hope that there may not be much merit to the neighborhood gossip. Pride would not allow her to ask the girl the many questions that haunted her. How old was the woman? Was her house bigger or better than this one? How far along was she in her pregnancy?
“I must ask you to forget the whole thing.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I mean it. Should anyone talk to you about the Major again, just walk away.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Now go back to your work.”
Alone with Yalda, Rana held the infant on her lap, and marveled at the tiny features that refined with each passing day. The child’s brown eyes no longer looked beyond her and she cooed as if to respond to each loving remark her mother made. Lately she had started her belly laughs and made sounds as if talking in long sentences. As she grew, Rana felt a tight connection to this one, as if she saw herself being reborn.
In a strange way, they were so alike; they shared the inability to take certain steps in life and neither of them knew how dark tomorrow could be. Sometimes, Rana felt so bitter that she even wondered which was worse. Was it any better to be emotionally crippled? How much of an advantage was there in having two healthy legs that couldn’t go far enough? Sad as she felt for her infant, she hoped that Yalda’s physical problem would cause her less pain than what her mother endured.
Banu had given her a fuzzy image of Parisa. “Across from the Khalili Garden,” the girl had said. That ought to be easy enough to find. She knew that area well and there weren’t too many houses across the way.
Khalili’s was a small private garden built by a wealthy man who left it open for the public to enjoy. Rana had memorized the last verse of a poem displayed at its entrance as it clearly reflected the man’s allocation.
“If not for the joy of sharing, then why
would a wise man believe
The futile value of a castle that someday he shall have to leave?”
The garden’s proximity to the Nemazee Hospital attracted many of its employees and students at lunch break. Rana often took her daughters there after a checkup. There they ran among flowers and watched the noisy young students in their white lab coats. But later in the afternoon, with only few visitors around, Rana loved to take a walk alone or read a book there. The garden was her private sanctuary. Its well-groomed flowerbeds, gravel paths, and inviting benches along the walkways provided a most relaxing environment.
A long time ago, her father had advised, “The best way to put your fears and worries behind is to face them.” He had said this when a classmate had bullied Rana and made her cry. “Don’t be afraid. Go look her straight in the eyes and you’ll see she’s nothing but another kid!”
Her father’s direct approach had helped her to overcome many silly fears of childhood. He would make her look at the bike that she had just fallen off, or stare at the needle the doctor was about to stick into her arm. Despite the horror she had felt, facing the source of her fears had helped each and every time.
Rana needed to find Parisa and see the enemy’s face. It was time to pay the Khalili Garden a visit.
Dayeh knew her way around the Vakeel Bazaar, enjoyed her frequent trips there, and moved down the long passage with ease. But Vida was bound to slow her down. Their taxi passed the Cyprus trees around Nemazee hospital and continued down Zand Boulevard. Despite having three lanes on either side, at no time did the traffic ease on this main street of Shiraz.
“You’re going to be patient,” she said, staring at Vida. “Your shopping will have to wait while I visit a friend.”
The driver pulled to the curb and stopped across from the Bazaar’s main entrance.
“What friend?” Vida asked.
Dayeh paid the driver and helped the child out of the car. “You don’t know her,” she responded. “She’s old and quite sick and I don’t want you near her.”
Ever since their return from Tehran, Dayeh had sensed Rana might be keeping a secret. She hid in her room and whispered on the phone, went out more than ever before and in general something about her seemed different. Unable to find out, she counted on the old soothsayer to give her some insight. She held the edges of her chador between her teeth, and grabbing Vida’s hand, looked this way and that before rushing across the street. Cars protested with blasting horns. Breathless, she stopped at the sidewalk to finish what she was saying. “If you promise to be good, I’ll buy you some faloodeh to enjoy while I visit my friend.”
“I love faloodeh,” Vida said.
Dayeh’s mouth watered at the mention of the treat and she could almost taste the sweetness of those rice noodles in crushed ice that smelled of rose water. She pushed her way through the crowd of pedestrians, beggars, and peddlers and looked down to make sure she didn’t step on anything. She ignored Vida’s protest that she was holding her wrist too tightly. They passed the main entrance, turned into a branch and approached a corner store to buy the frozen, sugary noodles she had promised. The store was dimly lit and smelled of rosewater and herbs. An old man in a green turban sat behind the counter, busy weighing something on his brass scales. Vida seemed to enjoy having all of Dayeh’s attention and she waited patiently while the old nanny made her purchase. Though it was a modest store, Dayeh knew it had the best faloodeh in all of Shiraz. She could almost taste its rosewater and fresh lemon juice.
Dayeh carried the plastic cup of frozen noodles, led the way to the end of a cul-de-sac, and pushed a door that opened to a small courtyard. She gave Vida her treat and pointed to the single tree in the corner. “You be a good girl and wait there for me.” And, nodding to a small wooden door, she added, “I’ll be over there watching you, so don’t you move from here.”
Happy with the treat, Vida settled down in the shade while Dayeh knocked on the narrow door. Soon it opened a crack and a familiar head wearing a scarf that only partially covered her white hair peeked out. Every time Dayeh saw Bibi Moneer she wondered, how the old woman, with her back so badly bent and her feet so swollen, could live all by herself? Bibi Moneer had told her of a dream that had brought her here years ago. In her dream, she had been promised a cure for her ailments on the condition that she lived in the shadow of the shrine of Shah Cheragh. She had no hope of a cure, but felt Shiraz was where she belonged.
Dayeh removed her shoes and entered the single room. A felt mat covered part of the cement floor and the single small window failed to fallow in enough sunlight to get rid of the dampness and musty odor. Bibi Moneer’s bright floral dress and her green scarf presented a contrast to her dull surroundings. Dayeh thought it strange that such an old woman selected colorful outfits over the more suitable dark ones.
Before the woman could close the door, Dayeh put the palm of her hand against it. “No, leave that open.” She nodded to where Vida was sitting. “I’ll need to watch her.”
“Why won’t she come in?”
“There are matters I don’t want her to overhear,” Dayeh whispered.
“Then you’ll have to pay a little extra,” she said and squinting her eyes, she added, “Leaving the door open could give me a chill. I can’t afford to catch a cold.”
“A cold? This time of the year?”
“I’m old. I can catch cold even when a summer breeze hits me hard,” she said, and the way she pursed her lips made her face look like a wrinkled sac whose string was pull
ed shut.
“I had already planned to give you three tomans extra. But not because you asked. Consider it my way of helping you out with your medications.”
The woman now gave Dayeh a toothless smile and thanked her profusely. “Oh, you good woman. May gold pour on your path as you find your way to heaven.”
At this point, Dayeh wasn’t even concerned with heaven, or gold for that matter. Believing in the old woman’s mystic powers, all she hoped for was that somewhere in her books of prayer and magic, the old woman might find an answer to Rana’s dark secret and maybe even a resolve for her dilemma. Beside a Koran and a tiny prayer booklet, Bibi Moneer possessed an ancient book of secret codes that had all the answers to the unknown. She never let that book out of her sight. She obviously kept it under her pillow at night because whenever Dayeh happened to go there in the morning, that was where she retrieved it from.
Over the years, Dayeh had come to believe in the healing power of the prayers in that book. Bibi copied special verses off her book, blessed, and sewed them in decorative beaded cloths. Worn on an armband or around the neck, these sealed prayers could ward off evil spirits and shield one against all harm. Bibi Moneer was not only a diviner, but she also could cast spells. Her potions cured infertility, brought men success, and could even make one’s worst enemies go away. Dayeh had known her for years, but only of late did she come to see her on a regular basis.
Months ago, she had promised that Rana would have a boy this time, but when another baby girl was born, she explained that the potion must have been used at the wrong time of the night, not to mention on the wrong night.
“Come in and sit down,” Bibi said and went back to take her place. “How are things in your household?”
“Oh, much the same,” Dayeh responded. “Still trying to get over the disappointment. But I must say, that little girl is turning more beautiful every single day.” And she put emphasis on the word ‘girl’.
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