Persian Brides

by Dorit Rabinyan

  ‘Catastrophic storms are approaching,’ the women prophesied with their eyes shut, ‘blowing on Omerijan from the frost on the mountains and shaking the earth. They say that whole forests are being uprooted like little shoots. They say that roofs fly off like hats, and clothes, God help us, are torn off people’s bodies like washing off the laundry-line and disappear in the wind . . . This year everything will be carried off by the storm, and what the storm doesn’t take, the earth will swallow into its belly, like a hungry husband coming home . . .’

  ‘Ya Khodaia, O God . . .’ Fear of the quaking earth made the goggle-eyed women tremble, and they bit the soft flesh between thumb and forefinger. The old ones clasped their knees and wailed that they could feel the approach of the hellish cold in their old bones.

  Surrounded by the Zoroastrian amulets that Mahasti had hung on her cradle and the blue chicken eyes that Miriam Hanoum had set in silver and hung round her neck, covered by four red goats’ hair blankets, Nazie gazed at her mother with enormous eyes, amused by her amulets, jewels and dresses. Mahasti had conceived four times since her marriage, and had borne four daughters, all dead. Constantly tucking the four blankets around Nazie’s neck, she bent over them until they turned salty from her tears. In her heart of hearts she too believed that the demons would not let Nazie live but would give her to their children.

  But the winter was an ordinary winter, and the earth also contained itself and did not open its maw. But one morning when Mahasti untied the cocoon of blankets and diapers in which Nazie’s tiny body was bundled, she saw on the transparent skin of her daughter’s throat the pus-filled boils of the deadly disease blossoming like evil flowers. The world turned dark. She lowered her head into the cradle and tore at her hair.

  ‘That one died on you too?’ said her husband when he heard her weep, and got up to beat her. But Mahasti was already beating herself, pinching the thin skin on the backs of her hands, slapping her own cheeks and hitting her breasts.

  ‘Khodaia, what shall I do now, Khodaia?’

  ‘So that one died on you too? You stubborn woman,’ her husband raged and hit her on the head. ‘When will you give me my sons, when? Look what a weak belly you have, you filthy woman – daughters, lousy daughters, that’s all you can bear. Please God you’ll die soon too, stubborn like your mother and ugly like a demon. Another woman, I know, I need another woman, a woman with hot blood who will give me sons. A woman, are you? Disaster is all you give me with your cold blood. You chill my seed like rain, you do, all those dead girls coming out of your womb, you bitch . . .’ he roared and kicked at her legs, and Nazie, alarmed, shrank between her mother’s breasts.

  Hearing the screams, the neighbouring women left their houses and their noisily waking children, veiled themselves and went to Mahasti’s house. They guessed what had happened and called one another out of their dark kitchens, while their tongues practised words of consolation. ‘Pity on you, child, na kon, don’t do this to yourself . . .’ They formed a sorrowing ring around the woman who bent over her crying daughter, scratching her cheeks till they bled. Their hands caressed the air above her head.

  ‘Go away, whores,’ Mahasti screamed at them, raising the naked Nazie and shaking her, displaying her sores. ‘See what you’ve done with your evil eyes, God blind you! Go away, go to your children and your husbands, go!’

  ‘Leave them alone,’ hissed the father. ‘Shut your mouth, bitch.’ He took his daughter from his wife’s lap and coolly examined the swellings on her skin.

  ‘You pity me, do you?’ Mahasti jumped up and snatched Nazie from his hands. ‘You don’t have any pity for my daughter? Didn’t you say she would die when it snowed? But I sealed the windows tight, you snakes, and kept my daughter warm with blankets, and fed her warm milk from my breasts – why should she die? Why? It wasn’t the cold that got her, it was your evil eyes that sneaked through the blankets like ants in the wall. It was your bad words, whores, which cursed me and my daughters, curse you! Go, go, your lives should pay for hers, the poor little thing . . .’ She broke down crying and the tears drowned her words. The offended women wrapped themselves in their chadors and flew from her yard like alarmed birds.

  ‘Shame!’ Nazie’s father roared when they left. ‘Shame is all you bring me, you whore! It’s the devil in you. I’ve seen you at night opening your legs, you whore, for all the demons of Omerijan to come and impregnate you with the devil’s seed. Devil daughters is what you give me, dead, all dead, like you should be tonight, you bitch!’ But Mahasti had pulled herself together and stopped beating herself, because Nazie was crying harder. She knelt down at her husband’s feet and pleaded with him to put his coat over his head and go and call the Armenian doctor and Rabbi mullah Netanel the widower to come and save her daughter.

  The man relented and left. But, as his wife had feared, he walked slowly, hanging his head in resignation. The passersby who greeted him did not see an anxious father rushing to find a doctor to cure his sick daughter. His bowed back suggested a man unhurriedly searching for a grave-digger. His heart, full of bitter thoughts, gradually closed and stilled, and he dawdled in his search.

  Alone at home, Mahasti wept quietly about her stubborn husband, about the wickedness of the women in their windows, and about the dark sky. When Nazie’s whimpering grew weaker her patience snapped. She crossed the alley, fell on Miriam Hanoum’s neck, showered flattery on her and begged her to follow her husband’s crawling pace through the snow.

  ‘And if you don’t find him, azizam, take pity on me and go to the shop, ask your husband to look for the son of Janjan Sabzi Furush, and bring the doctor here quickly. Go, Miriam Hanoum, go and God will bless your legs, please go now.’

  ‘Let the girl die,’ Miriam Hanoum pushed her off. ‘Such a short and miserable life she’s had, your daughter, and if she lives, Mahasti, who will have her? Only a cripple or an idiot would take your daughter, hadn’t she better die now?’

  ‘She’ll live, you’ll see, she’ll live . . .’ wept Mahasti and the tears scalded the scratches on her cheeks.

  Miriam Hanoum poked her red-hooded head into the alley and looked up at the sky. A strong wind whirled the snow and black clouds rested on the dentated village walls facing God’s angry countenance.

  ‘If she lives,’ she said, withdrawing back inside and looking at Mahasti with clouded eyes, ‘if she lives, I’ll give her my Moussa for a husband. I make you this vow, Mahasti. But Nazie won’t live because she wants to die, I can already see a little smile of relief on her poor lips which don’t even want to suck at the breast. It’s only thanks to you, Mahasti, and your tireless hands, bless them, massaging her chest to open the way for her breathing – because her lungs are still closed like an unborn baby . . . Can’t you see she’s underdone, like a partly-pickled aubergine. I ask you . . .’

  ‘Go, I beg you, go fetch the son of Janjan, she’s going to die, go . . .’ Mahasti pleaded.

  Finally Miriam Hanoum went out into the alley. She left Flora at home with Moussa and carried the seven-year-old Homa in her arms into the cold. Her shoes sank in snow and mud, but she did not catch up with the father because, like him, she did not believe that the baby girl would live to see another day, which was why she did not hesitate to promise Moussa for Nazie.

  They found the Armenian doctor at the house of the Jewish miller, Pinhas. The miller had been dying for days, lying with his mouth open and his tongue swollen. Loud wails rose from his house, and the garden filled with neighbours sighing and mumbling the dead man’s praises. Nazie’s father and his twin brother and Miriam Hanoum with Homa in her arms pushed through the mourners and entered the darkened house.

  Pinhas’ wife and daughters, their dresses ripped, keened over him, while his daughters-in-law set copper pots filled with water on the stoves. His sons and sons-in-law sat in stunned silence around the covered corpse, listening to rabbi mullah Netanel speaking uneasily about the burial arrangements.

  The Ratoryans tracked mud and ice into the h
ouse. Speaking softly, they said some words of consolation to the bereaved family and then asked the son of Janjan Sabzi Furush to come and look at a dying baby girl.

  ‘All right, all right, wait outside, I’m coming . . .’ he waved them away, frowning. Whenever he was called to look at a patient he grumbled about the family’s exaggerations, which described every cough as consumption and every itch as leprosy. He ran his fingers through his hair which, like his mother’s hair, smelled of herbs, put on his furry coat and packed his leather bag. Janjan had saved every penny she could spare from the sale of mint and basil to send her son to the medical school in the capital. After serving for many years as a doctor in Reza Shah’s army, he returned to the village, highly conceited, and became its most eligible bachelor. He was obliged to take two wives, one a Jewess with common sense and the other a Moslem with body sense, and spent alternate nights in their beds.

  The doctor rubbed his hands in camphorated oil and sprinkled Nazie with sharp-smelling vinegar. Then he bent over her, felt her swollen neck and immediately declared that there was no hope, the baby was about to die. Mahasti, who was looking up at him in terror, burst out crying again. Miriam Hanoum pressed Homa’s head to her breasts to protect her from the approaching death. The doctor wrapped Nazie in her diapers and, submitting to the inevitable, put on his sheepskin coat. Like the rest of the village dwellers, he did not believe that such a tiny, frail creature could resist the dreadful disease, and was surprised that she had survived so long. Nazie cried till she almost choked, but he did not change his mind, and when Mahasti moved to pick up and cuddle her daughter, he pushed her aside impatiently, as if she were a tiresome fly buzzing about the room.

  Everyone stared at the grim-faced doctor as he exchanged a few quiet words with Nazie’s father. Silence fell in the room and they all stood still and tried to listen over Nazie’s and her mother’s crying and the chuckling of the demons’ children rubbing their hands in anticipation. Suddenly they heard the clamour of Pinhas the miller’s funeral approaching the almond tree alley. The neighing of the horses pulling the death wagon mixed with the keening of the women. Mahasti was astounded to see the doctor grab Nazie with one hand and rush out into the alley.

  ‘Na-azie!’ she cried and sprang to her feet to run after him, but her husband caught her in his arms.

  ‘Don’t move, I swear on my life I’ll kill you with my bare hands, I’ll strangle you, stand still!’ He pressed one hand on her mouth and with the other grasped her squirming neck.

  Outside, the doctor stood upright, raised his free hand in the air and stopped the funeral procession. The lamentation of the women overcame the mournful howling of the wind. The alleys of the Jubareh were narrow, and the mourners, who huddled close together against the chill wind, trailed in a long thin file like ants. They were carrying little oil-lamps with flickering flames. They still had a long way to go but their curiosity overcame their grief, and they stopped to listen to the doctor. The widow and the mourning women around the death wagon stopped scratching their faces and pinching their breasts. When the cries fell silent Rabbi mullah Netanel motioned to the doctor to speak up, because they were in a hurry. The doctor waited a moment longer until they were all looking at him in silence, hats in hands, as if he carried God’s words in his leather bag, along with the iodine and smelling salts, and was about to read them aloud.

  ‘My dear fellow villagers,’ he started, making a grand gesture with one hand while continuing to shake the crying Nazie with the other. The people narrowed their eyes and stretched their necks the better to hear him over the whistling wind.

  ‘Merciful people, this poor infant is the only daughter of Ratoryan the poulterer, and in a few minutes she is going to expire. She is trying to get her soul out of her body and return it to the Creator. And since the angel of death has already come down, ptui . . .’ – the doctor spat sharply through the gap between his front teeth, to cool down the over-eager demons, and the mourners spat after him – ‘Since he has already descended from heaven to the village, and taken the soul of the poor miller, and his six dark angels are waiting up there to carry out God’s will . . . I therefore ask permission of the honoured rabbi not to hurry to the cemetery while the angel of death – ptui ptui ptui – is labouring to take this infant girl’s soul out of her body. Let us wait, let him do what he needs to do and then set out again. This is what I beg of you, sirs.’

  He turned solemnly, his hair white with snow, to the relatives of the dead man, who were standing abjectly behind the rabbi. ‘This deadly plague is exhausting us, sirs. We run to the cemetery the way a man suffering from diarrhoea runs to the privy. Wait an hour until the poor thing dies and let us bury both unfortunates, may the God of us all have pity on them both. Why should we exhaust our strength making this journey four times in twenty-four hours? The strain would kill us instead of the disease. And let us spare the six dark angels, who may take pity on you . . .’

  The mourners grinned wryly. The doctor’s plea entered their hearts. The black crowd pushed and shoved closer to the Ratoryan house, like a swarm of ants around an overturned beetle. They stopped the death wagon opposite the house gate, and the doctor laid Nazie in a hollow he dug in the snow with his hands. The snow melted around the feverish little body. Pinhas’ relatives settled limply on the low stone wall. The accompanying mourners placed the oil lamps near them, spread their caracul coats on the frozen surface, sat down and listened to Nazie’s obstinate crying, waiting for it to cease.

  A pair of vultures circled overhead. The smell of the diseased corpse rose above the crowd, some of whom began to chatter and smile as the reason for their gathering in the almond tree alley faded from their minds. Others paced up and down through the standing and seated crowd, their heads bowed, their expressions grave, hands clasped behind their backs. The brilliant green market-flies buzzed among them. The children gradually slipped away from their mothers, pulled the knitted red caps off each other’s heads, threw snowballs and fought, until they were separated and once again shackled by their mothers’ clutching hands. When one of them happened to sneeze, unaware that sneezing during a funeral attracts the dead person’s misfortune, his mother pulled five hairs from his head until he shrieked.

  Suddenly Mahasti burst from the house. On the way out she grabbed two quacking geese, as white and fat as clouds, and ran shrieking into the alley. Her eyes stared and her lips trembled. She ripped open the throats of the struggling birds and her fingers tore the fat flesh apart, white feathers flying in all directions. Blood squirted out, spattering her face and hair. Dirty eggs fell from the bellies of the geese and broke whitish on the reddening snow.

  ‘Here, Jews, take! Take!’ she shrieked and flung the warm flesh to the crowd. Take it for a sacrifice and go do your burying in the cemetery!’ Dogs fell growling on the dripping pieces of flesh and tore them with their fangs.

  ‘You want another death, you lazy Jews? Here then, God carry you off, here – take it and bury it! Why do you suddenly want my poor daughter? What happened? She’s all skin and bone and boils. All of two kilos, and burning with fever. Take these fat geese instead, they’re ten kilos each, and leave my daughter with me, to die in peace . . .’ The mother’s voice broke, her tears mingled with the blood on her face, and she collapsed on the snow beside the fighting dogs.

  ‘Aoundareh, poor woman,’ Mahasti heard the villagers murmuring pityingly. ‘God preserve us, she’s gone mad from all those daughters, the poor woman . . .’ But no-one moved to leave, they all sat on and watched.

  With her face buried in the snow and her husband standing over her baring his teeth, she suddenly noticed that the baby stopped crying.

  Mahasti jumped up in alarm, ran to her daughter and shook her to make her cry again. But Nazie’s eyes were shut and she did not utter a sound. Mahasti pressed her ear to the tiny bruised chest and heard the heart beating strongly, as if trying to jump out of the ribcage into her ear and share its secret with her. Mahasti also closed her eyes,
put the tiny dying baby on her shoulder and slunk like a mourner after the barking dogs deep in the alleys.

  Nazie owed her life, said Sultana Zafarollah, her eyes filming dreamily, to mute Sherafat, whose solitary wisdom and melancholy advice saved her from the disease, so that she lived and grew to a height of a metre and forty centimetres.

  Mute Sherafat was an adept of mysteries and could read the future in the clouds, but she made little use of her knowledge. Only rarely did she talk to the villagers, being absorbed in her own wrinkled soul most of the time. She had not been much of a talker even in her single days, but she adopted her fishlike silence only after she married fragrant Yacoub, the perfumes and cosmetics seller, who also traded in healing stones and crystals. Every evening he returned to his house in the almond tree alley with his moustache and chest hair redolent of women’s scent like an adulterer. When they got into bed Yacoub would try to entice his wife, but the perfumes awakened her jealousy and suspicions and she would turn her back to him until he gave up and fell asleep. Only then would Sherafat turn to him, pressing her ear to his to listen to the rustling of his dreams, and grind her teeth till morning.

  In her vexation Sherafat ground her teeth so hard, as though crushing her rage between them, that they broke and crumbled and she spat them out like traces of food. Her gums were left bare and her empty mouth shrivelled like an old woman’s. Sultana said that Sherafat lost her sense along with her teeth and, to prevent anyone seeing what she had done to herself out of jealousy, she shut her empty mouth and fell mute. Eating only soft baby foods, she grew thin and ugly, and her fragrant husband began to betray her with the Moslem girls who came to anoint themselves with his scented unguents and to add precious stones to their silver rings.