By the time she reached the mosque near the market she was weeping bitterly, her feet hurt, and the rumour had swept over the village that the demons had turned Nazichi Ratoryan into a white dove, but she was unable to fly.
The bazaar was thronging with people carrying baskets, peasants yelling at mules laden with vegetables and fruit, sheep walking calm-eyed to slaughter, dogs fighting over a bone and cats exploring piles of garbage. The stalls were heaped with immense pumpkins, white cauliflowers like human skulls, cucumbers and carrots as long as the butchers’ knives. The odour of barley and rice which had been cooking all night in tubs invited the workmen to breakfast. The hardboiled eggs that had been buried in the porridge emerged looking brown and mottled. Slices of dry cheese and charcoal-roasted beetroots were sold and devoured in the corners of the square, and everyone talked in awe about Mamou’s demon baby with the double genitals and gave thanks that it was dead, clouds of vapour rising from their mouths into the cold air.
The dome of the mosque was perfectly round like a baby’s belly with a dagger thrust in its navel. Above it, the wind sent feathery white clouds flying across the sky. The date palms led Nazie to the entrance. Inside the courtyard she was seized by two men and she screamed and wept, saying that she had to see mullah Ja’afar, because only he could save her. Finally they pitied her and agreed to take her to him, but she had to drape a big worn camel-hair chador over her shoulders. For the first time Nazie saw the mosque from inside, its great arches, the carpets on the floors and the blue tiles on the walls. She waited in a small antechamber, and when they called her in she trembled all over.
When she entered his room she saw the mullah absorbed in his books. He had on an ascetic’s black robe and on his head the white amameh bonnet, which looked like half an egg. Flora’s wedding gown was wet and muddy and Nazie’s face was smeared with paints. A heavy smell of strange old women’s sweat clung to the dusty chador she was wrapped in, overcoming the scent of rose oil. She bowed deeply, greeted the old man politely and took the kerchief off her head, exposing her hair and her ears, which were burning with shame. Her shoulders rose as if a flock of pigeons was perched on them.
The mullah looked up from his books and stared in surprise at the little fledgling of a Jewess standing before him. Hesitant and curious, he put down the prayer stone and the string of amber beads and fingered his greying beard. Without a word, he poured water into a copper bowl and rinsed his hands, sprinkling his fingers, forehead, nose and bare feet.
Nazie had never seen him before, but she remembered that every time she picked her nose Miriam Hanoum said that if she did not stop, she would have a huge nose like mullah Ja’afar’s. When he looked up from the purification bowl the menacing nose appeared, surmounted by a pair of spectacles with thick lenses, through which gazed his kindly eyes that could read the alphabet of the English and decipher the handwriting of the demons.
‘Yes, young lady, what do you want from me?’ the old man asked, surprising Nazie by the gentleness of his voice.
‘I’ve come to ask for your help, your honour. I’m Nazichi the orph . . .’ she whispered, looking down at the tips of her wet cloth shoes.
‘What?’ he shouted. ‘I can’t hear you like that. Come closer and speak loud, don’t be afraid, young lady, come.’ When she moved closer she regretted that she had not worn the high-heeled shoes, because she felt smaller than ever. She knelt at the man’s feet and her knees sank into the pile of the carpet, which had a picture of lions rending deer woven in it. His big nose rose and spread above her, its skin full of black bumps.
‘Here, young lady, befarmai, please eat something.’ He offered her almonds and pistachio nuts on a copper platter embossed with pomegranates. The child sitting before him trembled, and her eyes darted from the window to the door and back. Her neck swivelled like a frightened bird’s, and there were bluish streaks of tears on her thin face.
‘Only you can help me, sir,’ she said in a piping voice. Then she remembered that she ought to straighten her back and stretch her neck, to fool the old man into thinking that she was older than she was.
‘Louder, my child, louder. I can’t hear you. I am, as they say, an old mule, and the ears don’t hear as well as they used to, and you are a little Jew girl and your mouth is small. How old are you?’ He stuck out his chin amiably and a pleasant smile formed in his beard.
‘I’m twelve years old, by my God, so help me if I’m lying, sir,’ she said quickly, and smacked her flat chest as if swearing an oath.
The man sighed. His forehead wrinkled, his nose grew still longer and his kindly eyes narrowed. The clicking of the amber beads combined with the clatter of the rain on the window. After they had been silent for a little while, Nazie told him haltingly about her parents and Moussa and Miriam Hanoum, and the vow her aunt had made to her dead mother. She also spoke about the people who gossiped about her and Moussa, swallowing the ends of sentences to start new ones. The old man’s eyes blinked doubtfully, and the words she had repeated in her mind on her way became scrambled in her mouth. When his pupils disappeared altogether behind his hairy eyelids she thought he had fallen asleep. The amber beads also fell silent. She wanted to shake him by the shoulders, to pull his nose and scream into his ears to wake up, because she needed him to help her, because she too wanted a baby and a watermelon, because if he did not listen to her, then Shahnaz Tamizi and the king’s new laws would take Moussa away from her and she would remain alone, alone, alone.
Nazie knew that before Reza Shah published the new laws, the kuchik madar were betrothed in their mothers’ bellies, and conceived before their first period. The cemeteries were full of girls who died in childbirth, lying in their small tombs beside their babies who were buried in still smaller graves. In the first proclamation the Minister of Health announced that a kuchik madar could be married only if it was shown that she had reached puberty. When the Shah’s counsellors realized that his officials and soldiers could hardly probe between the legs of all the girls in the realm, a second, amended proclamation was issued. Marriage was permitted from the age of twelve, provided the girl had reached puberty. Nazie was not yet twelve, and everyone knew she had not yet had a period. She had heard it said that mullah Hassan and the kadkhoda could be bribed with silver and gold to allow a marriage in violation of the law of the realm, but about mullah Ja’afar it was said, with head shaking and compressed lips, that he was honest and strict and hard to tempt.
‘And have you already, as they say, become a woman?’ The mullah surprised her, opening his eyes and revealing their light. Nazie blinked and remained silent, as though considering her reply. Her silence grew long, and the old man stroked his beard, as though seeking to lengthen it too.
In the first years of the law there were many offenders who married their daughters off in secret. Evading the eyes of the king’s officials, the pregnant kuchik madar hid at home for nine months, until their shrieks broke through the closed doors. The midwives of Persia stopped taking the women in labour out into the courtyard, despite the ancient belief that a woman who did not expose her pangs to the sunlight would give difficult birth to stubborn and inconstant children, the same as the women who conceived while riding on the husband instead of lying under him. Some midwives substituted tubs of hot water under the woman’s buttocks for the sunlight. The fathers who were caught were sent to prison for a hundred days, but the marriages held. Only the sworn testimony of two women who were not related to the family, vouching that they had seen the girl’s menstrual blood with their own eyes, could set the father free.
‘I understand,’ the mullah interpreted her silence. ‘And you, as they say, love this Moussa?’ he asked.
‘He’s in my blood, sir, he must not marry another woman. There’s a vow. He’s like nettles in my soul, sir, he’s in the blood . . .’
‘And your life, what is that? Look how small your bones are, how can you give birth with such short bones? And your body is so frail, as if you don’t eat at all.
They call you Nazie, don’t they? Truly, you are as delicate as a bird. Me, if only I could, my child, I would give all my remaining years for a single day from my childhood. And you want to give up your childhood – for what, for grey hair? Grey hair and sorrow in the eyes are not bought in the market, my child. You pay for them with childhood. With childhood. So, what shall we do now? Time, as they say, will make a woman of you. Wait a year or two, grow a little, and with Allah’s help . . .’
‘You don’t understand, sir, I must now, in the blood . . .’ she went on trying, the words scorching her mouth like glowing embers.
‘But there is a law, my child.’ Abruptly, he raised his voice and added firmly, ‘And I can’t let the law, as they say, be broken.’ He went on speaking with his eyes shut, as though unwilling to hear any more. Nor did Nazie hear any more. She broke into his speech and a great desperate voice came from her throat.
‘But he’s in my blood, sir, like nettles, and the time is passing and people are saying terrible things . . .’ she said and started to cry, feeling that she had lost the old man’s pleasant smile and luminous eyes, and that he had closed his face. She no longer looked at him but stared at the ceiling and shouted about honour and shame. Her shouting was heard outside, fetching excited men from the mosque courtyard, who rushed in to save mullah Ja’afar from the din that the Jewish girl was raising. Still shouting, Nazie stood up and the chador slipped from her shoulders. The copper platter was overturned and the almonds and pistachios cracked under her stamping feet.
Had Nazie contained herself a moment longer, wiped the tears from her eyes and looked again at the man’s face, she would have seen that his old heart had softened and gone out to her. But the room filled with angry men and Nazie’s patience snapped. Wrapping her head in a kerchief before going out into the rain, which sang in the window although the sun had come out, her fingers touched the golden fishes dangling from her ears. The coins tinkled delicately. Nazie grabbed the fishes and tugged hard.
The hooks of the earrings, which Miriam Hanoum had sneaked into the holes years before, cut through the lobes and split them in half. The blood gushed from the flesh and spurted merrily, as though it had been waiting for this moment. The ears competed with one another in spurting as much blood as they could on the big wedding gown. Nazie’s face twitched with pain and she saw great gouts falling on the carpet, bleeding on the bodies of the deer which the lions were tearing apart with their fangs. The men who had seized her arms to drag her outside were shocked and let go. Nazie put the wet earrings in the hand of the mullah, who had come up to her in astonishment, and closed his fingers on them. His jaw dropped in alarm, his eyes bulged, and now finally Nazie looked straight at them and asked that in return for the earrings he would grant her wish and allow her to marry her cousin Moussa.
15
Nazie’s whispers, farhiz, farhiz, before falling asleep had availed nothing – the laughing demons sneaked into Flora’s belly, pinched the baby’s bottom and pulled his ears. The sharp edge of the knife which Miriam Hanoum had slipped under Flora’s pillow when she found that her daughter was pregnant failed to keep the evil spirits away. Nor did the broom of paradise help. The foetus woke its mother from her slumber, and she lay on her back, her eyes open, to watch over it until it settled down and allowed her to sleep.
Little yawns fluttered between her lips, and she pressed her cheek to the pillow and gazed at the brazier through the open door of the room. A few embers still glowed amid the black cinders, and now and then a red tremor ran over them. The scent of rosemary blended with the sour smell of the watermelon vomit. Flora had not taken off her dress, but the ugly juice stains had already dried.
Beside her bed stood the pine cradle which Zuleikha’s husband had made for the awaited baby. Flora rocked it, and the new cradle squeaked softly, like a sleeping baby. The balls of socks, the folded diapers and the tiny woollen shirt slid from side to side. Through the darkness Flora observed the small mound made by Nazie’s body under the woollen blanket, rising and falling as she breathed. Flora thought that if Nazie curled up a little more she could fit into the cradle as Manijoun fitted into her basket, like an egg in a nest, and Flora could rock her and sing her rude lullabies until she slept.
‘Nazie,’ Flora whispered, rising on her elbows. ‘Nazie?’
She wanted to say funny things to her until morning, making Nazie stifle her giggles with her hand. Flora could make Nazie laugh till she cried, even without tickling her belly, armpits or the base of the throat. Once they had both walked barefoot from the market-place to the Jews’ quarter, like a pair of beggar girls, Nazie walking in front with her eyes down, Flora dawdling behind, her eyes raised to the birds. When they reached the synagogue Nazie stopped, turned around and shouted at Flora to stop looking at the clouds, because on the ground one can find silver coins which people dropped, or even rings with precious stones, or gold chains which had slipped from their necks.
Something flashed through Flora’s eyes. She looked down at the ground, picked up a small stone and without a thought threw it at one of the synagogue’s stained glass windows. A black hole opened in the colourful pane.
‘Flora, what have you done?’ Nazie squealed. ‘Let’s go!’
But Flora tiptoed carefully to the wall of the synagogue and cautiously picked up some pieces of glass, red, blue and yellow, which twinkled in the sun. Nazie giggled and looked around in terror, then followed in Flora’s bare footsteps, which turned back to the market-place and walked confidently to the house of Mamou the whore. Inside the yard, which reeked of urine, Mamou’s pampered orphans played at catching carrier pigeons in wicker baskets.
‘Don’t worry, dopey,’ whispered Flora, her hands full of shards of glass, to Nazie, who was clinging to her back. ‘Mamou’s orphans open their legs to anyone who passes and they even say “please”.’ She knew that Mamou made a lot of money from the men who visited her whores, and that she indulged all her orphans’ wishes, so long as they did not bother her and did what she told them.
Flora pushed her nose between the palings of the whorehouse fence, stuck her tongue out at the girls playing in the yard and boasted in a childish tone about her treasure. The foundlings pressed against the fence and gazed in wonder at the world through the pieces of coloured glass. They saw the crowded market-place glowing red, blue and yellow, and Flora sang: ‘What a beauty, what a colour, a lovely city just like abroad!’
They walked home clutching a small coin each, splitting their sides with laughter, Nazie pleading with Flora to stop laughing. She crouched and pressed her hand between her legs, to stop the pee from escaping, but Flora’s laughter grew wilder, and she bent down to Nazie’s fish earrings and whispered between snorts: ‘Psss . . . psss . . .’
Nazie landed on the path with a bump, and the urine flowed from her laughter, spurting with a hissing sound, wetting her hand and her bare feet. She looked wordlessly at the stain which spread like flowering shame on her dress, and Flora laughed and laughed.
Flora whispered: ‘Psss . . .’ and smiled to herself. If Nazie were awake, they would embrace, loosen their hair and whisper until sleep descended on them from the ceiling. Nazie’s triangular face peeped above the blanket, opened like a little fan, her hair tightly braided. Sleep had rolled out the lines in her forehead, the way she rolled out pastry dough. Her lips were open, and the minute coins in the tails of the gold fishes winked at Flora in the dark. She tucked the quilt between her legs and thought about Nazie, her lips which were always open, day or night, the look in her eyes, which trailed after her thoughts, her fingers which were forever toying with the fish earrings, sometimes clutching them suddenly, as if someone was after them and wanted to tear them from her ears. She wondered what would have happened if one night her mother pushed her fingers not between her legs, but between little Nazie’s legs. What would she have found there? Perhaps Fathaneh was right, and there was nothing there? Or perhaps the opening was too small, and her mother wouldn’t have been abl
e to insert a finger?
She heard a distant cry of a strange bird and touched her belly in alarm. In the last few weeks the belly had risen like Nazie’s yeast cakes. She thought about their good smell when they rose, plump and brown, when Nazie slid them out of the oven with the flat iron shovel and sprinkled them with melted sugar. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if she could turn the rising baby in her belly into flour and oil, yeast and sugar. What a pity that it was not possible to pour the time and Shahin and the baby into the sacks and casks in the larder.
The peculiar idea amused Flora. She grinned in the dark, turned from side to side and again looked at the brazier, which had turned quite black. She gave up trying to capture evasive sleep, and let go its squirming tail.
Rain beat down angrily on the village roofs, and the wind rattled the windows, loosening the dust in their cracks. Flora got off the bed and her plump feet sank in the layers of carpets. They only felt the night’s chill when she stood in the courtyard beside the water-butt, which was full of water and floating feathers, and washed her face. The sound of the door opening and shutting did not interrupt the snores of the family and Manijoun’s restless mutterings. When she returned to her room she folded her bedclothes neatly, took off her stained dress and rubbed her arms and neck with fragrant rose oil. Then she put on thick stockings and another pair over them, a quilted blue dress with ample sleeves fitted at the wrist, over which she slipped on a pleated gown made of the orange wool of she-camels, then drew on a pair of pantaloons belted with coloured ribbons. The mirror showed her how big she was. She looked at her puffy face above the broad shoulders and wrapped it in a white kerchief folded into a triangle. One end hung down on her back, and the other two she knotted under the fat folds of her chin. The hanging ends rose and fell on her breasts. Finally she encased herself in the great chador, which fell down to her legs, pulled it tight around her ears and went out into the street to look for her lost sleep.
Persian Brides Page 13