The Girl from the Garden

by Parnaz Foroutan

  She carries so much within her, the streets of her childhood, the garden of that andaruni, the sycamore trees, the shallow pool and its goldfish, the street peddlers’ songs, the bazaars, the caged birds, the beggars, the shahs, the revolution, the fear, the hope, and now the crowding of this other place, Los Angeles.

  She remembers that other garden, in that home, in Kermanshah. Mahboubeh looks out of the window at the shadows in her garden. This is her home, now. It has been home for years. She turns off the kitchen lights and walks to her bedroom.

  Mahboubeh lies in bed, in the cold darkness, and remembers a story she read in college, of Odysseus, lost at sea. He chances upon an island, and the goddess of that island entices him, and holds him while season after season passes, save that there are no changes, no shifts in the arc of the sun or the color of the leaves, so that Odysseus forgets time, and the ocean, and the beckoning of that land he left somewhere behind him, and the one that calls him to her shores, that place where in the recesses of his mind he knows as home, but cannot remember anything more of than a few scattered memories, the scent of her earth, a certain tree. And one sunny day, after another, after another, that other place, the one ascribed home, becomes more and more distant, until he forgets all about it save on a dawn here or there, when he awakens in proximity to his dream as a dog yaps outside his window and he hears, distinctly, from the warmth of his bed, the tired shuffle of a servant’s feet as she comes in with the kindling and a pail of water. But as soon as he tries to hold, for a moment, the sensation so that he can say yes, I recall that place, it is also who I have been, other than who I am now, it dissipates and he loses all traces of the past. And this loss is so shocking, the pain of it so acute, that he allows himself to forget again, and he rises from his bed and looks at the sun, as he knows it, and the cloudless skies, and the strange blossoms, no longer spectacular, as they know no death.

  This place is a loneliness named Los Angeles, Mahboubeh thinks. Los Angeles is not home. It is the place that erases all memory of the past. Though home itself is no longer anything more than a brief outline for her, a sketch done by the hand of a child. A certain tree. The unlikely orange of dusk. The proportions of the self too large in relation to the house in the background, the birds, black marks in a white sky, undecipherable pigeons or sparrows or crows, the rest a blank space.

  Mahboubeh remembers that garden, in that other home, in Kermanshah. It belonged to two brothers . . . She closes her eyes and falls asleep.

  Rakhel pulls back the curtains of the window facing the garden to look at the dark sky from the warmth of her bed. Her ankles rest on the windowsill, her toes press against the cool glass. A rooster crows, then another. The sky above is still dark when the first note of the muezzin’s song rises from the minarets to announce the morning. Allah hu Akbar.

  She imagines the town awakening. The silent motions of believers, kneeling in prayer. The rustle of bedclothes as children stir in their sleep, the pouring of water into iron kettles, the crackling of fires, the tired shuffle of the feet of women walking across kitchen floors. The muezzin’s song ends. La ilaha illallah ripples the air, the rings growing wider and more distant and then a moment bereft of sound, until the silence is finally punctuated by birdsong.

  She hears the approach of a street peddler, his song about the salt he sells growing louder and louder, “namakee, ai, namakee . . .” until he must be right outside of their estate, behind the high walls in the narrow cobblestoned street. He stops singing and Rakhel imagines him standing in the middle of the mahalleh, placing his heavy burlap bag down, wiping the sweat off his brow with the sleeve of his torn qaba, considering the closed doors surrounding him, sighing and picking up his burden and his song once more.

  Soon the men will open the creaking doors of their homes, Rakhel thinks. She imagines them stepping into the street, securely closing the doors behind them, straightening their shoulders and taking the first public step of their day. And soon, the stillness of the morning will give way to the cacophony of exchanged greetings, news of the day, the transactions of business. The streets will be full of men and pack animals, braying and yelling. From the andaruni she will hear these sounds rise into the air and merge, now and then pierced by a whistle or a voice raised in anger, or another passing street peddler, singing of the salt he sells, or of his metal pots, or of his coal, or his needles, his pins, his thread.

  When she wakes again, it is near noon. Someone knocks at her bedroom door. Rakhel does not respond. She watches the door, then the crack of light as Khorsheed pushes it ajar with her foot. Khorsheed balances a silver tray with both hands, walks in the room, and nudges the door closed with her hips. Rakhel turns to face the wall and pulls the blanket over her head. “Dada?” Khorsheed calls softly. Rakhel does not respond. “Dada?” she calls again. Khorsheed walks to the bed, places the tray down on the floor beside it, then jumps on the bed and reaches to pull the cover off of Rakhel. “Have you gone hard of hearing?” she asks.

  “You shouldn’t jump. Everyone knows it’s not good for a pregnant woman to jump,” Rakhel says. She keeps her face to the wall and continues to look through the black strands of her hair at the tiny cracks in the plaster.

  “It’s your woman’s time again, isn’t it?” Khorsheed grabs Rakhel’s shoulders and struggles to turn her so that she could see her face. Rakhel resists silently. She is stronger than the younger girl. Khorsheed reaches under the covers, finds the softness of Rakhel’s belly, plunges her fingers into the flesh.

  “Stop.” Rakhel wriggles and tries not to laugh. “I’m impure to your touch. Stop it. You’ll get hurt, stop. Stop!” she yells. Khorsheed pulls her hands away and caresses Rakhel’s face.

  “Your eyes are so swollen,” Khorsheed says as she brushes the hair away from Rakhel’s face. “Crying really makes you very ugly. Naneh Zolekhah has been asking about you. I told her it was probably your woman’s time.” Rakhel continues to stare at the wall. “Have you eaten at all today? Come sit down and eat with me. I’m famished. Can’t eat enough.” Khorsheed edges her way off the bed and sits cross-legged on the rug. She takes a piece of rock sugar and strains to break a piece. “Come break this for me, your rough peasant hands are much stronger than my delicate ones.” Rakhel grunts a response. “Hands like a Kurdish woman,” Khorsheed continues, “hands made to milk goats.” Rakhel sits up slowly. She throws the covers back and looks at her own bare feet, then she studies her hands resting on her shins. She turns and slides off of the bed onto the rug beside Khorsheed and clutches her knees to her chest. “Here.” Khorsheed holds out the chunk of gold sugar candy. “Use that pahlivan strength of yours to break me a piece.” Rakhel takes the sugar and without much effort, breaks it into five pieces. “Rostam,” Khorsheed laughs, “do you caress your husband with those big, strong hands?” Rakhel hurls the sugar pieces at the wall. They shatter and fall to the rug. Khorsheed gets up heavily, sighs, and gathers the pieces. Rakhel watches her back, the curves of Khorsheed’s wide hips beneath her shaliteh.

  Khorsheed blows on the sugar pieces to remove the dirt and places them back into the bowl. “I was trying to make you laugh.” She drops one in her own chai. “Shall I put one in your cup?” She places another piece in her mouth. “Do you want a little cheese and bread?” Khorsheed asks.

  Rakhel looks at Khorsheed’s face, her full cheeks and bright eyes, like the women in all those songs, eyes big like saucers, lips small like blossoms. Rakhel’s face begins to move without her consent. Her chin trembles. She fails to keep her lips from contorting. Finally, her face twists and breaks. “Why?” She pushes the word out with a sob. She shakes her head from side to side with her eyes closed. “Why, why, why?” She places her open palms over her face and rocks back and forth. Khorsheed tries to catch Rakhel in the embrace of her arms, but the minute she touches her shoulder, Rakhel screams, throws her head back and stares wildly at the ceiling, then falls forward, pounding her fists against the rug and hitting her forehead repeatedly again
st the floor. “He will get rid of me,” Rakhel says.

  “No. No, he won’t. Please don’t hurt yourself, Dada, please. Dada, please. He won’t, he won’t get rid of you.”

  “Yes. He’ll divorce me. He’ll send me back. And who will take me then, my mother dead, my father an old man? Or will I be pushed into the corners of this house. Like a servant? A burden to him? Grateful for each crumb of bread I eat?”

  “Dada, please, please stop crying.” Khorsheed clutches and wrings her hands in anguish. “Please, Dada, please. He won’t send you away, please. You’ll get pregnant soon, you’ll see. Sometimes it takes time, sometimes it takes a long time.”

  When she is sad, she is no longer so pretty, Rakhel thinks. In fact, she looks like that toothless old woman that comes around selling little bundles of herbs she grows in her garden. Rakhel laughs, a short burst that sounds like a choked sob. She looks at Khorsheed’s face again and breaks into uncontrollable laughter. Khorsheed stares back in bewilderment. After a moment, Khorsheed starts laughing herself, and the two girls laugh until they lose their breaths, their faces still wet with tears.

  The heat of the afternoon pushes against the windows, the light filtering through the green leaves, their shadows dancing against the walls. The girls lie on the rug, their languid limbs and black hair spread across the blue patterns, their smooth cheeks pressed against their folded arms. They are both exhausted and in the opiate of the warm afternoon, they drowse to sleep. “Khorsheed?” Rakhel whispers, her eyelids heavy.

  “What is it, Dada?”

  “Khorsheed . . . Naneh Adeh says I may be possessed by a djinn.”

  “A djinn?” Khorsheed asks.

  “Yes. Do you think I am possessed by a djinn?”

  “Why, have you seen it?” Khorsheed asks.

  “Sometimes, at night, when I am asleep beside Asher, I think I feel her.”

  “You feel her?”

  “I feel something deep inside me, and a weight on top of my body, like Asher, except she holds every part of me and when I move, she melts my flesh.”

  “Your flesh melts?”

  “It starts in the middle of my body, like waves, moves out, and I become a river, rushing out to the sea, then I rise like vapor and pour down like a summer rain.”

  “How do you know it’s a djinn?”

  “What else can it be but a djinn?” Rakhel asks. “When I feel her steal into my sleep, I know. And I could wake up, if I wanted to, but I don’t.”

  Outside it rains. Shepherd boys huddle with their sheep. Cats run underneath fences, crouch low to enter stables where mules snort and toss their heads, their eyes rolling in their faces. Old women run to gather white sheets that blow on the lines. Men rush toward the shelter of shops and homes.

  The rain patters on the roof of the house and against the windowpanes. Mahboubeh wakes with a start. She listens to the sound of water running through the rain gutters of her home. She closes her eyes and remembers the water in the open channels alongside the streets in the old mahalleh. For a brief moment, she sees clearly twigs and leaves caught in the currents of an open channel. A red ribbon from a girl’s braid snakes in and out of the eddies.

  Mahboubeh is late for school. Dada did not let her sleep last night until she cleared the dinner plates, washed the silver, swept the floor of the kitchen. Mahboubeh stands in the street outside the closed gate of her school and stares at the rushing water. She holds an orange sycamore leaf in her hand, speckled gold, brown, the edges remembering green. She drops it into the channel and watches it catch in a current, swirl, disappear beneath the water, reappear and float fast away. At this hour, the math teacher is delivering her lesson. She will ask Mahboubeh to stand before the class, and recite the times table. If Mahboubeh makes an error, or forgets, the teacher will shame her, perhaps even switch the palms of her hands. “But I never forget,” she says to soothe herself. A car drives down the street. Mahboubeh opens her eyes. The nightstand. The clock. The electric green of numbers, 6:37 in the morning. The minute changes. She closes her eyes again. She is not a schoolgirl, anymore. She is an old woman.

  She remembers the day she went to Rakhel and asked her permission to attend school. Rakhel responded, “What does a girl need school for? You don’t need to know how to read to wipe a baby’s ass.” But Mahboubeh saw that her cousins Efat and Ismat studied, and read books, and could do mathematics, and she knew she was falling behind on something important. So she’d do little tasks around the house, clean and fetch things for her uncle Asher and for her father, Ibrahim, in return for coins.

  Of her few personal possessions, Mahboubeh owned a little gholak. She dropped each coin she earned into it and hid that gholak on a shelf behind some books in her father’s room. Then came the day she broke it. She stood with a stone in her hand and with one blow, the coins spilled onto the rug. Mahboubeh piled them into a single small, shining mountain. She stared at it for a moment, then worried that Rakhel might come looking for her. Quietly, quickly, she filled her pockets, found her shoes, and stole through the andaruni, and when she made certain that no one missed her, she opened the heavy wooden door and slipped into the street.

  Mahboubeh sees herself standing in the headmaster’s office. She must be no more than nine years old. He sits behind his large desk, looking at her from above the rim of his gold spectacles. He waits for her to speak.

  “I want to enroll,” she says.

  “You must come back with your father.”

  “My father is on a trip.”

  “Then come back with your mother.”

  “My mother is dead.” She reaches into her pockets and takes out all the money, two fistfuls of shiny coins. She does not know if it is a considerable sum, just that it fills both hands. She places her earnings on the headmaster’s desk.

  He looks at her for a long time, then asks her, “What grade are you in?” Mahboubeh has never been in school. She doesn’t know her aleph’beh or how to count, but she responds that she is in the third grade because her cousin Efat is in the third grade and they are the same age. She follows the headmaster down the hall to the third grade class and enters.

  Mahboubeh opens her eyes. The clock reads 6:40. The rain has stopped. A garage door opens. A car backs out into the street, the tires slick on the wet asphalt. Someone calls from a window. A man’s voice responds. The car drives away. The clock reads 6:41. A transient sunlight floods her room. In a moment, the birds will begin singing.

  The voices of men fill the garden. Their ya Allah, ya Allah drowns out the birdsong, the gurgle of the fountain, the silence of the women. The women of the household don’t have much time to prepare for the arrival of the Kurds. Though they know the time for harvest and though they know that each harvest, the Kurdish farmers arrive unannounced with the landlord’s share of the crop, they are still startled to find their inner yard full of a dozen men carrying bundles of wheat, unloading sacks of tobacco leaves twisted into ropes, burlap bags full of katira, milked from the gavan-e shireh plant of the high mountains, pails full of comb and honey.

  The men lead braying mules to the stalls, fill the troughs with water from the well, wash their own hands and faces in the central pool. They keep their eyes averted, looking to the dirt or at each other, their heads bent in respect for the women in the house, to give the women time to retreat to the hidden parts of the home, or to pull their scarves over their hair and to fasten the cloth of the ruband over their faces.

  The women peer into the andaruni from the cracks of doors, from behind drawn curtains, to see their inner yard full of unknown men, dressed in a billow of black pants wide in the legs, tight around the ankles. The men wear colorful scarves in bold patterns wound about their waists, held in place by belts, which secure their knives. From hidden posts, the women notice the dark proud eyes alive beneath heavy eyebrows, thick mustaches that hide youthful or toothless mouths, the loose sleeves of white shirts that reveal hard, veined, calloused hands, cracked nails, hands that know the feel o
f the earth, that goad and beg from her, that draw from her the abundance now spread in the inner and outer yards of their own home.

  Flustered and excited to have the monotony of their daily lives interrupted, the women rush from their hidden posts to cover their heads and faces, then steal into the kitchen to prepare the samovar and boil water in copper pots. They pour cups of rice into the boiling pots, then grind saffron in sugar with mortar and pestle. They fill silver trays with figs, and load bowls with crisp apples. They make a hurried dish of fried eggplants and tomatoes to fill the platters for this unexpected feast.

  When the Kurdish farmers arrive from the villages with the harvest, Asher pushes Rakhel and Khorsheed into the cellar. The girls are frightened by the urgency in Asher’s demands, but more so, they are disappointed that they can’t sit quietly in some corner and hear stories about the world outside of the heavy wooden door, or at least go to and from the sitting room like the maids, bearing trays of fruits and tea, catching bits of sentences about life in the villages, or the adventures of nomads on horses, or the retreat of the Russian soldiers, who take the cattle of peasants, pillage bazaars, tear down homes, and burn the wood for heat along their way.

  Inside the cellar, lined against the walls, rest large earthen pots, taller than a man, full of wheat and grains, wicker baskets full of beans, and large cylindrical mud jars full of rice. Bushels of grapes hang from the beams of the ceiling, strings of onions and garlic, pomegranates, baskets of apples, sacks of dried fruits and nuts pile on the floor, watermelons lay buried beneath straw, to stay fresh for the long winter nights. Shelves cut in earthen walls are filled with jars of pickled vegetables, preserved jars of quinces, pears, and apricots. The air always dry and crisp, the walls cold. The girls stand on the stone steps, their arms around each other, pleading behind the closed door.