The Girl from the Garden

by Parnaz Foroutan

  Khorsheed looks up from the sleeping baby in her arms at Rakhel, at the frantic look in her eyes, and she leans in, almost touching Rakhel’s chest with her own, and gently places the sleeping infant against Rakhel’s breast. Outside, a fine rain begins to fall.

  “He is my heart, my whole being,” Khorsheed whispers. She looks into Rakhel’s eyes and smiles. She steps back to watch Rakhel walk away with her son.

  Mahboubeh stands in the kitchen, staring at her mud-caked shoes. She’s scraped her knees. Her dress is ruined. She sobs and hiccups, sucking her thumb.

  “A girl of nine and your finger still in your mouth?” Rakhel says. “What man will want a bride like you, huh?” Rakhel pulls on Mahboubeh’s arm.

  Mahboubeh whimpers in protest. She hears a distant ringing.

  “So a group of goyim boys chased you home from school and taunted you, eh? Pushed you in the mud, eh? I told you to stay home. Stay home, learn to keep a house. A girl who sucks her finger and reads. Fine bride you’ll make. Covered in dirt. Don’t know a thing about cooking. Couldn’t darn a sock.”

  The ringing in her ears continues. Mahboubeh stops crying. “Your father got beat, too. When Yousseff was just born. A whole group of them beat Ibrahim like a mule in the streets, a group of goyim men, a whole mob of them,” Rakhel says. “We found him outside the door bleeding, half-dead.”

  There is an urgency to the ringing. Mahboubeh continues to look at her shoes, ashamed for sucking her thumb, ashamed for her father being beaten.

  “They hit him too hard in the head,” Rakhel says, knocking on her own head with her fist. “He stopped doing much after that. Let my husband do all the work, and just sat around and read all day. What man sits all day long and reads? Can you answer that?”

  Mahboubeh’s cheeks burn hot. The ringing becomes louder and louder.

  “And all you got today was a little taunting, huh? No bloody nose? No broken ribs? Go on. Go bury yourself beneath your books. Don’t bother me with your sniffling.”

  The telephone.

  The kitchen is dark. Mahboubeh starts for the phone. “Hello?” she says. “Hello?” She waits for a moment. No response. She puts the receiver back down. She turns on the lights. The propensity of familiar objects. The bulk of the refrigerator, kitchen table, stove. The reassurance of cabinets, drawers. The sink. The kettle. You are here, not there. She touches the kettle to solidify this fact. It is cold. She turns on the faucet to listen to the sound of running water. She cups it in her hand and splashes her face. It feels cool. She has been crying. “Foolish old woman,” she says. “Talking out loud to no one and nothing, even crying about it.” She looks at her shoes. They are caked with dry mud, her legs splattered with it. Her dress is torn at the hem. Her knees hurt.

  Ibrahim told her that story once, and only once, the day she asked him if it was true, if a mob of men attacked him and beat him in the streets. “Like a mule, Father. Dada said like a mule.”

  He looked at her for a moment. There should have been anger in response to even repeating such a sentence, but Ibrahim just looked at her, then began talking about what had happened.

  “It happened during the rains,” he told her. “A rain that started during Yousseff’s Brit Milah and lasted days and days,” he said. “I was walking home from the synagogue one morning, when I bumped into a Muslim man. Maybe he was a common merchant . . . perhaps an artisan of something.”

  Mahboubeh imagines Ibrahim walking. He gazes at the ground, at the puddles reflecting the clouds and sky. Rain dampens his face and hands. He listens to the sound of his own feet against the cobblestones. He does not see the other man turn the corner sharply, and since Ibrahim’s attention is on the reflection of the sky in puddles, he collides with the man. Ibrahim looks up and the two men’s eyes meet. Ibrahim mumbles an apology, and in the dream state of his thoughts, fails to see the quick flash in the other man’s eyes. Ibrahim continues walking slowly in the direction of home, his hands clasped behind his back, nodding his head in response to the dialogue in his head about G-d’s ability to work divine wonders. But the man turns and follows him, reaches out and grabs his shirtsleeve.

  Mahboubeh decides, as her father tells her this story and each time after when she imagines the event, that the man who grabs Ibrahim’s shirtsleeve is a tailor. While this tailor can recite some suras of the Quran, mostly by rote memory without understanding the meaning of the Arabic words, he is probably illiterate. He does simple business calculations using an abacas, but this particular skill, as of late, causes him much anxiety. The numbers he notes in the margins of the book he keeps from the years of a business he inherited from his father add up to one truth . . . he isn’t making money. The price of wheat increases weekly. Another winter approaches. He sees men in the streets wearing farangi shirts, poor quality, that tear in a season or two, while his own stock gathers dust. The night before this accidental collision, while his family slept, he concluded that he must begin to look for another line of work. And since all he knows is the art of tailoring, his only option is to become a common laborer. This morning, as he walks around the bend of the tight winding street, clutching the heavy key that opens the door to his shop, shaking his head at the prospect that his own son will not have a business to inherit, he walks right into Ibrahim.

  Judging from the Jewish man’s shirt, his qaba, the quality of the cloth of his pants, the tailor deduces that the Jew before him must be wealthy. He has heard, at Jomeh Masjid, sermon after sermon claiming that the wealthy Jew is in joint venture with the farangis to impoverish Iran. Perhaps a nagging part of the tailor questions the sermons, and he wonders if these speeches full of wrath against the Jew are aligned with the Rahman and Raheem, the gracious and compassionate nature of Allah, but then he remembers his son, and imagines his child a common laborer, and he wonders about the wealth of the man before him.

  “The Najis Laws that dictated everything from how Jews must dress, to what they must do when it rains so that the filth of their bodies does not contaminate Believers, hadn’t been in effect for decades, but culture is a beast slow to learn. There was that rain, and I was wet, and my body touched his body in passing,” Ibrahim said to Mahboubeh. “He beat me without compassion, beat me an inch from death and then he incited a crowd of other men, who also participated in the beating. The mob finally dragged me to a mullah. I remember hearing the men say over and over, Jude najis.”

  “That is what the boys called me,” Mahboubeh told her father. “That is what the boys said as they chased me home from school, Jude najis.”

  “Jude najis,” the tailor repeats. And the mob responds like one body, its faces contorted with anger, its fists and feet dancing with rage.

  The mullah interrupts the men. “Silence, please,” he says. “One cannot hear the subtle words of the Lord above the angry voices of men.”

  The mob slowly settles.

  “Now leave, please, so that I can pray and contemplate the situation. And let the Jew stay here. I will see to him.”

  Reluctantly, one by one, the men leave the mullah’s sitting room. The tailor is last to go. He looks at Ibrahim trembling on the floor, his knees drawn to his chest, his face covered in blood. Then he looks at his own hands, hands that crafted such fine shirts, hands that learned from the hands of his father. The tailor studies his palms, upturned as if in prayer or supplication. He looks at the lines, the scars from the accidents of his early years, the padding of his fingers thickened so that a prick of a needle hardly draws attention anymore. He looks at his hands with wonder in his eyes, as though he is recognizing them for the first time. Then he turns to see the man on the floor, who weeps and moans quietly, and his hands begin to shake. The tailor opens his mouth to say something, but the words fly away from him like startled mourning doves. He looks to the mullah, who watches him steadily, kindly. The tailor turns and runs out of the door.

  The mullah waits until the muezzins sing the afternoon azan. He waits until the town settles for their rest. Then,
he lifts Ibrahim tenderly and places him atop his mule. He covers Ibrahim with a blanket and leads the mule past the mosque, through the streets, to the Jewish quarters of Kermanshah. He asks until he finds Ibrahim’s home. Once outside the door of the estate, he carefully lifts Ibrahim off the mule and gently leans him against the wall. He knocks once, then turns and walks slowly in the direction of home.

  The light filters through the dust of the windows. Ibrahim watches the curtains billow out with the breeze, then settle back again and he thinks glass, dust, lace. Before that, the limbs and leaves of trees, and clouds. And the great expanse of the heavens. From its source before this light reaches me, how many other distortions?

  In the yard, the women come and go. If they did not speak a word, he would still be able to identify which of them passes his window by the sound of their feet on the brick of the andaruni. The shuffle of one, the staccato of another. He hears them, and their faces rise to the surface of his mind. All day, the women walk back and forth in the same enclosed space, now with this task, then with that, and sometimes, aimless, sometimes, it seems, in perpetual circles.

  In his lap is the Old Testament, his finger rests on a sentence. “Here I am,” he whispers. “Here I am.” He closes his eyes. Again, he sees the men’s feet. Some wrapped in rags and bits of leather in place of shoes. Some barefoot.

  First, there was pain. Then, the men’s voices sounded like distant music. He didn’t feel anything much, after that. And each motion, each kick seemed so graceful. The street wet with rain, droplets of water rising into the air, the foot, the fall, the thud. No hands, no fists, just the feet. And stones. They dragged him, finally relented and held his arms and legs. He saw their hands. Their faces. They kept their eyes from him. Glances, short, curious. Shy, perhaps. He rested as they carried him. Until they came to a door and a courtyard and threw him to a floor. They stood about him, listening to a man with a gentle voice speak. He watched them leave. Some quickly, others with reluctance. A last one and then only the man with the gentle voice remained, who crouched beside him and looked him in the eyes and said, with gold we test our servants and with fire, we test our gold. Ibrahim allowed himself to fall into darkness, then.

  As soon as he could sit again, Ibrahim asked for his books. Attar, Sana’i, Hafiz. He looked through the pages of the Mathnawi’ Masnavi. He searched and searched the pages of the Talmud, the Torah, the Bible, the Quran. The rabbi visited him, too, and Ibrahim asked,“Why?”

  “G-d saw it fit.”

  “I am a good man, a G-d fearing man. Why?” Ibrahim said.

  “There is something in this for you to learn.”

  “Compassion?” Ibrahim sneered.

  “Yes, son, compassion.”

  “For the men who beat me?”

  “They, too, suffered. More than you. Through their brutality, they distanced themselves from Hashem. That is a sad, terrifying place. A lonely, desolate wilderness.”

  “And so I must consider their pain? I, with my broken ribs, my broken pride?”

  “Ribs mend. Pride another subject for another time. But how does one regain their humanity, once lost? How does man heal a darkness in his heart?”

  Ibrahim continued searching for an answer. He read book after book. He’d look up from the book in his lap, repeating what he had read, over and over and over, until the words he spoke became nothing separate from the ray of light that seeped into the room through the dust-covered glass, through the veil of the curtains, until the words were the breeze, the beat in his own chest, the breath of his nostrils, the page in his hand, his hand, the dust of his skin. He read until he became word and word became him and he didn’t know if he spoke or if he was spoken.

  Asher returned in the evenings form the caravansary with his own answers. He’d knock on Ibrahim’s door and enter. Brother, I found one of the men who beat you. He will receive a visit from some guests soon. And again, each night, Brother, I think I found another of the men. Ibrahim always listened to Asher with his head down, his eyes on his hands clasped in his lap. He felt ashamed to look Asher in the eyes. Ibrahim had never witnessed anyone raise their voice against his brother, let alone their hand. He felt that the beating was somehow his own fault, a weakness in him that allowed for such shame. As Asher spoke about the need for retribution, Ibrahim nodded his head silently, a book open in his lap, a pile beside his hand, upon the table, upon the bed.

  Ibrahim looked up one evening and asked Asher, “Is this what G-d intended? For men to behave like dogs to prove themselves men? One more savage than the other?”

  “This is not a question of G-d’s intentions, brother,” Asher said. “It is a question of honor.”

  After that, Ibrahim just listened and after his brother had spoken for some time, always with a rising anger, always with a sideways glance at him to see if Ibrahim, too, shared his rage, but Ibrahim could only say, Forgive me, brother, I am tired tonight. And Asher would shake his head, sigh, and rise to leave.

  Ibrahim puts his book aside, rests his head on the pillow and thinks the Lord, Himself, is not shy to acts of violence. With such ease, He turns men to salt, women and children, too. Teases the thirst with blood. With such ease, He strangles the firstborn. With such ease, He raises the waters to swallow entire armies of men. With such grace. In the Torah, when He asks of Ibrahim to sacrifice his own son, is that not an invitation to the man to try his hand at being G-d through unthinkable violence? And since G-d’s time is not man’s time, but eternal time, having no beginning nor end, is He not sacrificing His own son, as the Christians say, breaking his ribs, nailing his hands to a crucifix in the same moment that he invites Ibrahim to try this same act . . . but why? Why this savage love of His?

  Outside he hears Khorsheed’s footsteps in the andaruni. He lifts the edge of the curtain to peer out. Khorsheed sits at the ledge of the fountain, and brings Yousseff to her breast. She begins singing, “What will your meals be? Bread, rice, and halvah, and manna sprinkled all over.” Her voice, sweet, clear, rings through the yard, carries to the street. Ibrahim feels an overwhelming desire for her, for the soft of her body, the warmth of it. This urge silences the other voice in his mind, the one that asks insistently, and seeks, and seeks. He shuts the window quickly and reaches for a book. The poetry of Rumi. Ibrahim closes his eyes and opens the book to a random page. He looks down and reads, “Like Yakov, I am crying, for the beautiful face of Yousseff is my desire. Without you, the city is my prison. Wandering, the mountain and desert are my desire.”

  Six

  The birds are a commotion of song in the naked branches of the trees. Mahboubeh stands by the kitchen window, a plate of bread crumbs in her hand. She looks at the seamless gray skies outside her window, then opens the kitchen door and walks into the bare garden. She puts the plate of bread crumbs in the grass for the hungry birds and walks along the perimeter of her yard. She spots a bit of green. It is that vine that creeps along the soil, and climbs the stalks of her rosebushes. She kneels down to uproot it. She holds it up in the morning light and shakes her head. “Unwanted,” she says. “And you persist.”

  “If he didn’t know the value of his own son, his firstborn, what makes you think he’d want a daughter? And you still persist?”

  Mahboubeh rises from the ground, shakes the dirt from her skirt, and keeps her eyes on her shoes. If she looks at the ground long enough, Dada will stop speaking, and walk away.

  “You are already eleven, old enough to be married and sent away, and you stay here, another mouth to feed, a burden on everybody?”

  If Mahboubeh shuts her eyes tightly, the tears stay in. If she holds her breath, and stills her heart, it doesn’t burn so much.

  “I tell him and tell him to find you a husband, and you, with your own ideas, come each morning to tell me you are off to school? A few chores you do and you think it earns you a place in this home? Go to your school, then. Useless, stupid girl.”

  “Do you hate me because I am a girl?” Mahboubeh asks out loud. D
ada does not reply.

  Mahboubeh looks up. Seamless gray skies. She stands in the middle of her yard, the small space of it, a bit of soil and grass, a few trees, and four brick walls, above which stretches the endless, endless sky. Someone knocks on the street door. From the corner of her eyes, Mahboubeh watches Dada turn and walk away to answer it.

  The old rabbi waits in the street, leaning heavily on his walking stick. “A bit of haste, daughter, I’m closer to the grave than you,” he says. The rabbi taps Dada’s leg with his wooden walking stick and she moves aside to allow him in. He stops to look at her face, squinting his eyes in the late morning sun until they almost disappear beneath the folds of wrinkles on his face. He nods his head at her once and walks slowly past her toward the courtyard. Before noon every Friday since the day they found Ibrahim broken and bleeding, Rakhel hears the rapping of the rabbi’s stick against the street door and each time she answers, he tells her about the need for her haste and his own proximity to the grave.

  She follows the old man through the outer gardens and into the courtyard. The trees in the outer gardens are naked, but at the tips of their branches tiny buds wait to reveal their flowers and new green leaves. As the old man walks beneath these trees, Rakhel watches his bent back, the curve of his legs, each step a delicate approximation of the next. She does not walk ahead of him for fear of offending him, but his pace inspires in her the desire to jump and run like a spring colt.

  The rabbi speaks to her without turning. “I imagine you’ve been anticipating the arrival of your guest?” he asks. “Remember, daughter, that G-d smiles upon the obedient and dutiful wife.”

  Rakhel smiles politely, but she is not certain who he means. Zolekhah did not mention that they’d have guests this Sabbath, nor did Rakhel notice any preparations for guests by the servants.

  When they finally reach the courtyard, Rakhel walks quickly past the old rabbi, who nods at her again, and enters Ibrahim’s room to announce his arrival. Zolekhah sits beside her son, holding his hands. She breathes in heavily and shakes her head. Ibrahim pats her hand with his.