A Canopy of Rose Leaves (9 page)

‘I hope so,’ she said.

Toobi brought the coffee, her toothless mouth clamped tight behind pursed lips to show her disapproval. At the sight of Reza she broke into speech, flailing her arms in the air and pointing frequently in Deborah’s direction.

‘What does she say?’ Deborah asked at last.

Reza shrugged. ‘She was quoting an old Persian proverb. “A house without a woman is a body without a soul.” She is right—I have been thinking so myself. A woman’s place is in the home, not earning her own living as you have to do!’

‘But I prefer to work!’ Deborah exclaimed.

‘Toobi was speaking about after you are married,’ he returned. ‘It will not be suitable then for you to work for another man.’

‘What does she know about it?’ Deborah demanded. She had long ago abandoned any attempt to explain that she didn’t work for Ian, but that they were equal partners in their business venture.

‘Much,’ Reza assured her. ‘She has spoken with Professor Derwent about you. The man is his brother and she thinks this gives him the right to look after you while you are here. He brought you to this house.’

‘Yes, he did. What of it?’

‘You are leaving the house with me. She wanted to make sure that you had his blessing. She does not believe me that the Professor has no jurisdiction over you.’

‘He hasn’t been near me for days!’ she said.

‘She is afraid he will come while you are away. What shall I tell her?’ His bright eyes searched Deborah’s face and she saw the quick flash of triumph when she answered:

‘Tell her the Professor is nothing to do with me. Tell her that I am my own mistress and do as I like and that it is my affair if I choose to go and visit your mother!’

‘Is it true?’ Reza pressed her. ‘Is it true that you prefer to be with me?’

‘It’s true I’m going with you because that’s what I want to do,’ she compromised. ‘Why should Roger care what I do?’

Reza translated quickly, his eyes never leaving Deborah’s face. ‘It’s strange to us,’ he said at length, ‘to hear a woman being so definite about what she wants. Here, even when a woman is wed she refuses to answer at least twice when she is asked if she accepts the match. If you live long among us, my mother will insist that you appear more modest. It’s a pity, for it pleases me to hear that you like to be with me.’

Deborah gave him a uncompromising look. ‘Reza, you must understand that I’m going with you because your mother can help me get the Qashgai tribal goods I want to sell in London, not for anything else. I like you, of course, but I’m here to work, not to play around—’

He grinned at her, spreading his hands in a gesture of abandonment. ‘The Toobis of this world are ignorant women. They understand little of your ways in the West. She accepts now that you are going with me.’

Deborah drank the rest of her coffee in silence. It was a lonely departure, she thought, with Maxine still asleep and Howard totally uninterested in whether she went or stayed. Only Toobi showed any anxiety about her, plucking at her sleeve as she wound her scarf round her head to keep the dust out of her hair, and muttering under her breath long sentences that Deborah had no means of understanding.

Reza picked up her suitcase and put a hand on her shoulder, giving her a little push towards the door. ‘Come Deborah-un, I can’t leave the jeep any longer in this narrow street.’

Deborah bent her head and kissed the maid’s walnut-wrinkled skin to put off any further remarks. She was acute enough to know that whatever the
badji
was saying was making Reza angry, even though he was trying to hide it from her. She wished, as she had never wished before, that she spoke Farsi and could have reassured the old woman that everything was going to be quite all right. It was very unsatisfactory to have to rely on someone else to translate every word that was said to her.

‘Oh, let’s go,’ she said, ‘though I wish I could have said goodbye to Maxine and wished her luck with David Edgar.’

Reza shook his head at her and there was a slight note of censure in his voice as he said, ‘Miss Maxine will know that you are thinking of her, but it is well that you do not see this man. With Miss Maxine there are always men. She even went to school with some of them. It is not what I would expect of a well-raised young girl!’

Deborah repressed a smile. ‘How do you know what kind of school I went to?’ she asked.

His expression softened. ‘I can see at once that you have had little to do with other men—’

‘Even though I was engaged to be married before I came to Persia?’

He looked surprised that she should ask. ‘This man could have been your brother, he said gently. ‘Professor Derwent told me that it was like this with you, so he must be like another brother to you when you see him. Isn’t this so?’

Deborah thought Professor Roger Derwent had been a great deal too busy in the information he had retailed about her in Shiraz. Ian had not been her brother, and as for Roger, why, she didn’t think he had a fraternal bone in his body! A brother indeed! She averted her face as she stepped into the cabin of the jeep in case her feelings were as obvious to Reza as they were to her. How could Roger talk about her, first to Toobi and then to Reza of all people, the last person she would have wanted to know
anything
about her that mattered?

Reza edged through the narrow streets and turned into one of the main thoroughfares, quickening his pace as they joined the stream of traffic hurrying across the city.

‘We go out by the Koran Gate,’ he told her. ‘There used to be a Koran kept there for travellers to say a last prayer before they departed the city, or to make their thanksgiving for their safe arrival. It’s a good custom. When I first went away from home to study medicine in America, my mother herself held the Koran for me to kiss and sprinkled me with water, praying, “May God be with you. May God travel with you.” ’

Deborah smiled. ‘Is your mother a Muslim too?’ she asked.

‘Of course.’

‘I suppose your father insisted?’ she murmured.

Reza shook his head. ‘She was always a Muslim.’

‘But if she’s an American,’ Deborah asked, ‘how can she have been?’

He threw back his head and laughed. ‘Why not? There are Catholic Americans, and Jewish Americans and Maronite Americans, and there are Muslim Americans too. My mother was one of these.’

Deborah’s mental image of her hostess changed dramatically. There were Black Muslims in America, that she knew, and she supposed there were the more orthodox Sunni and Shi’at branches of the faith too, but she had never, pictured Mrs. Mahdevi as belonging to any of these. Rather had she seen her as a long-legged blonde in the same mould as Maxine: bright, beautiful, and confident that all things are possible if one only goes about them the right way. Now everything was changed and she didn’t know what to expect.

‘Your mother can speak English, can’t she?’ she asked.

‘Oh yes, she learned to speak it well at school,’ he consoled her. ‘She has an American passport still, but she lived there only a few years. When she was fifteen she came to Iran to be married to my father. Sometimes though, even now, she speaks of the freedom she knew in the States and what life was like for her there, but my father was an old-fashioned man and he would never allow her to travel on her own and he would not travel anywhere except on the long trek from the
garmsir,
the winter grazing land, the thousand miles northwards to the summer pastures. He was a true Qashgai Khan. A very great man.’

‘What should I call your mother?’ she said.

‘Madar-i-Khan is a suitable title. It means the Mother of the Khan—’

‘And that’s you?’

‘My elder brother. It is he who now leads the tribes on their long march. He has many houses where he stays on the way, but my mother stays mostly at our home near Shiraz. This is the best time of year for us, the springtime, when the tribes are moving north. You will see some of them beside the road as we go by.’ They went out of the city, as he had told her they would, through the Koran Gate and into the Allah-o-Akhbar pass, called that because so many travellers were supposed to have exclaimed at their first sight of Shiraz glimpsed through the gateway that there was none greater than God that such a beautiful place should exist. It was not for nothing that Shiraz became famous for her roses and nightingales, her trees and her wines, the domes of her buildings, the beauty of her gardens and the lyric qualities of her poets.

It was not long after that that they saw a group of Qashgais moving slowly along the side of the road. Their multi-coloured sheep snatched at the few dry blades of vegetation that came their way. They were smaller than any English breed, their backs were rounded instead of flat, and many of them had the fat tails that are considered such luxurious eating all over the Middle East. In amongst them moved the donkeys, the new-born lambs stuck into the sides of their panniers and sometimes a very young child as well. The men organised their passing from the backs of stocky ponies of uncertain temper. This was the traditional work of the men and they did no other, leaving everything else to their womenfolk, who cooked and wove their blankets and carpets, kept the houses and their families clean, and bore the children that would give them their status in society, often while they were on the march, going either northwards in the spring, or back southwards at the beginning of winter.

It was the women who attracted Deborah’s gaze more even than the animals. They wore several skirts of the brightest colours imaginable, their blouses glimmering with metal threads and their necks loaded with jewellery. They were beautiful as well, and, although their hair was invariably modestly covered by their veils, one or two of them had eyes that were quite as light as the blues, greens and greys that predominate in more northern climes.

Deborah rather hoped that Reza would stop and introduce her to some of these people, but he ignored her impressed exclamations and hurried on, hooting at the few strays who were doing their best to escape their keepers by crossing the road under his wheels.

‘Remember to be careful of the dogs you see with the sheep,’ he said suddenly. ‘They are very fierce and may hurt you. Never go up to any of them. You understand?’

She said she did, though they looked friendly enough, their long-plumed tails waving in the air. There would be few animals inoculated against rabies in these surroundings, she told herself, and these were working dogs, not pets, but they looked intelligent and healthy as they kept the sheep moving forwards, ignoring the fleeter goats who were apparently expected to look after themselves.

There were many other small groups traversing the hot plain and Reza hurried past them all, ignoring their shouted greetings when they saw who he was.

‘My mother will be waiting,’ he kept saying. ‘She will have lunch ready for us when we arrive.’

The outside of the house that he pointed out to her as his family’s home was disappointing to her. It looked rather like a child’s sand castle, with long fortified walls that almost hid the crenellated house in the centre, made of the same sun-dried mud and left without a lick of paint to merge into the surrounding landscape of unrelieved reddish, grey-brown.

‘It looks like a fort!’ she said in surprise.

‘That is exactly what it is,’ he answered. ‘Until recently we had to defend ourselves against our enemies. There were no gendarmes to keep order in the countryside then, and all the tribes fought against one another. Nowadays we are at peace and seldom fight, but we keep watch just the same. Our friends we know, but a stranger could well be an enemy come to destroy us.’

He drove off the road and the dust rose in a cloud behind their wheels as they picked their way through the half-cultivated fields towards the strange structure where Deborah was to stay. The dome of the mosque at one side of the entrance had been washed away in the last heavy rains and a couple of men were making valiant efforts to repair it before it fell down completely. A green flag flew from a mausoleum nearby which was completely surrounded by a warren of tiny adobe buildings where most of the villagers lived. The jeep could only just make its way to the Mahdevi house which was cut off from the others by yet another high wall, in which was set a solid metal gate.

Reza flung it open and turned to help her down from the jeep. He stood up very straight and his teeth flashed in the sunshine as he held out his other hand to a closely veiled figure within.

‘My mother! It is just as I told you, Deborah
-
jun
!’ You see how eagerly she awaits you!’

CHAPTER EIGHT

‘How do you do?’ Deborah extended her hand, her back very straight and her head held high. ‘It’s very kind of you to invite me to visit you—’

‘Reza insisted,’ Mrs. Mahdevi said coolly.

Deborah blinked. It wasn’t quite the welcome she had expected. Mrs. Mahdevi was taller than the average Persian and, as Reza had said, she was fair—only it was her face that was fair, her hair was black as night and her eyes were a peculiar shade of green that in some lights could be described as hazel, but in others were more like the green of the sea.

‘You see,’ Deborah struggled on, ‘I’m very interested in the handcrafts of the Qashgai. I help run a shop in London and we specialise in stuff from the Middle East. I’d like to get some firm supplies from Persia and Reza said you might help me.’

Mrs. Mahdevi gave her son a surprised glance. Obviously this was the first she had heard of it. She recovered herself with a little start. ‘I see,’ she said. ‘Well, never mind that now, you will want to see your room and freshen up before lunch. We have everything ready for you.’

It was very dark inside the house. Deborah’s hostess flung off her
chador
to reveal her traditional Qashgai costume underneath, with skirts of emerald green and scarlet, and a vivid brocaded blouse, hung about with beads of agate, turquoise and jade.

‘How beautiful!’ Deborah exclaimed.

For the first time Mrs. Mahdevi relaxed a little. ‘I’m glad you like it,’ she answered. ‘Will you like to wear such a dress yourself?’ She spoke a pretty, accented English, hesitating now and again as she searched for a word. It must have been a long, long time since she had spoken it as a regular thing.

‘It wouldn’t look right on me,’ Deborah compromised.

‘But to please Reza you will do so?’ Mrs. Mahdevi insisted.

‘No, I don’t think so. Reza wouldn’t really like it. He’d know I would feel like being in fancy-dress. I much prefer to admire the real thing on those who are entitled to wear it.’

‘It will be expected,’ Mrs. Mahdevi said gently. ‘My husband taught me that it is important to conform in such a traditional society.’

‘Yes, but I’m a foreigner—’

Mrs. Mahdevi smiled briefly. ‘You think I was not? my people had been Zoroastrians, of the old religion of Persia. They came originally from Yazd, but they had lived in America for many years. To the Qashgai I was twice a foreigner. I was an American by nationality and, because I was connected to the Parsees in India, I was suspect for that too. My mother was a Muslim, and I have been Muslim all my life, but this they found very difficult to believe at first.’

‘Yet you married a Khan,’ Deborah reminded her. ‘Reza says I should address you as Madar-i-Khan since his brother inherited from his father.’

‘It is correct,’ Mrs. Mahdevi conceded. ‘My name is Najmeh. If you prefer it, you may call me that.’

Deborah hoped she would remember it. She repeated it several times to herself to make it stick in her brain as she followed the older woman through the numberless rooms of the house, all of them filled with Qashgai traditional carpets on both walls and floor and dozens of women and children doing she knew not what.

‘This is your room, Miss Day,’ Mrs. Mahdevi said at last, opening a door into a relatively secluded bedroom which had a Western type of bed covered by a
gilim,
or woven carpet, that gave it a rare look of luxury. ‘I will send someone with an
aftabe
of water for you to wash. The bathroom is through there, but our plumbing is less than desirable. It will be one of the things you may persuade Reza to do something about. His brother listens to Reza and will take such a suggestion seriously if it comes from him.’

‘Does the Khan live here too?’ Deborah inquired.

‘Sometimes. He is here at the moment. He is gathering up his people ready for the long walk to the north. That is the main purpose of this house—it’s somewhere for them to rest and prepare for the trek. Only I live here all the time. I have my women to talk to, and I continue to take an interest in all my husband’s people. It is enough for me.’

She went, moving silently across the tiled floor. A few seconds later Deborah caught sight of her in the centre of one of the courtyards outside, on to which opened a number of rooms, all of which seemed to be inhabited by whole families of tribespeople. With an autocratic gesture, Mrs. Mahdevi pointed towards Deborah’s room and issued a number of orders to one of the women, before going on her way to another part of the house.

Reza should have told her why he wanted her invited to his mother’s home, Deborah thought to herself. As it was, it was embarrassingly obvious as to what conclusions Najmeh Mahdevi had drawn. She didn’t want her son to marry outside the small circle of girls who were considered suitable to be the wife of a Mahdevi, that much was clear. And Deborah didn’t blame her. Someone from another culture, with a different religion and different values, was bound to be disruptive in such a closed family group. Maybe Reza hadn’t any thought of marriage in mind! It was possible, though Deborah found it distressing that any man would use his mother to further a passing affair with a relative stranger. More than that, she didn’t like being placed in such an invidious position, she reflected bitterly. As soon as the opportunity came her way she would explain to Mrs. Mahdevi in terms that no one could misunderstand, exactly what she was doing here, but not for the first time she thought how much better it would have been if she had waited until Maxine could have come with her.

When she had washed, pouring the water out of the narrow-necked jug the woman had brought her, her normal optimism returned and she began to look more closely at the tribal rugs on the floor, her excitement growing as she recognised their fine quality, and thought how pleased Ian would be if she secured a steady supply of them for sale in Aladdin’s Cave.

She was squatting down, examining the back of one of the rugs, when another woman came to the door, beckoning her to follow her back through the house to where her hostess was waiting for her.

‘The Khan is waiting to meet you,’ Najmeh Mahdevi told her, rising from here she had been sitting cross-legged on the floor. ‘Reza is with him.’ She hesitated, fingering the edge of her
chador
as though she were uncertain as to whether she should offer Deborah a similar covering or not. Finally she decided against it. ‘Come,’ she said instead. ‘I will take you to them.’

Reza rose to his feet as the two women entered the room, but his brother merely inclined his head arid went on smoking his hubble-bubble with an abstracted air. He was like Reza to look at in a way, but he wore traditional clothes, his long skirts tucked in round his feet. He took another puff on his pipe, the bowl of which rested on the floor and was filled with boiling water, before gesturing to his mother to sit down beside him.

‘Is this the girl?’ he asked.

Reza took Deborah by the hand. ‘This is Deborah Day,’ he introduced her with a curious intensity. ‘She’s been looking forward to coming here, haven’t you, Debbie/
jun
?’

‘Yes,’ Deborah whispered. She wasn’t often shy, but something in the attitude of the Khan made her very conscious that she was a stranger among them.

The Khan’s impassive face turned towards her. ‘You allow my brother to call you
jun
already? What else do you allow him?’

Deborah gave him a puzzled look. ‘I don’t know what
jun
means,’ she confessed. ‘I presumed it was a title, like our Miss, or something like that.’

‘It’s a commonplace endearment. I think you would say “dear” or “darling”,’ he told her without any change of expression at all.

‘Which is what she is!’ Reza chimed in.

‘I didn’t know,’ said Deborah. She was suddenly angry. ‘However, I’m not here because of Reza, I’m here to see your mother. I want to sell Qashgai goods in my shop in London. Surely you haven’t any objection to that?’

The Khan looked at his brother. Reza rushed into speech again, his grasp tightening nervously on Deborah’s wrist.

‘The shop belongs to the man to whom she was betrothed, but he married another girl. They have strange ways in England and the dowry was never returned to her family. Instead they sent her to where the brother is living.’

‘Oh, Reza,
please
! I’ve explained until I’m sick that. I’m just as much the owner of the shop as Ian is. Nor has Roger got anything to do with it!’

The Khan rearranged his skirts round his feet. ‘The brother has no claim on the girl?’ he asked briefly.

‘None!’ Reza insisted.

The Khan looked at Deborah. ‘You agree with that?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, of course I do. Nobody has any claim—’

‘Then she may come,’ the Khan cut her off. ‘We start tomorrow and she will be with us.’

Deborah heard his mother’s swift intake of breath and knew that she at least disapproved of the decision. ‘I don’t want to go anywhere!’ she claimed.

Reza released her wrist, putting his arm about her shoulders instead and holding her close. ‘But this way you will get to know the Qashgai well,
kouchuk.
Isn’t this why you came to Iran?’

‘In a way,’ she admitted. ‘But I can’t just set off with you into oblivion! Nobody will know where I am! What will Maxine think? She’ll be worried out of her mind!’

There was a look of triumph on Reza’s face. ‘They are not expecting you to return,’ he told her. ‘They know that you came willingly with me, and why you came.’

Deborah could only stare at him. ‘Why did I come?’ she asked.

‘Because you are beautiful. It’s
kismet
that you should be here with me. Didn’t Hafez tell you that it was too late for you to draw back? That you were already known to the man who will possess you? That these are the days of celebration, of roses and jasmine—and love?’

‘But not with you!’ Deborah protested. ‘Never with you!’

He laughed. ‘You please me by learning the lesson of modesty so well, but you mustn’t play the part too well! I like your Western frankness very well. Confess, Deborah, you knew quite well why I brought you here alone, didn’t you?’

‘To kidnap me? It never crossed my mind!’ She suddenly felt weak at the knees.
Roger had warned her!
But she had paid no attention, like the fool she was, for she hadn’t believed him! How could she have believed him? Reza had lived in America for years. He
knew
that the girls there, girls like herself, earned their own livings and made their own decisions. He knew that she had only agreed to come because she had wanted to meet his mother so that she could buy things for her shop. He knew that! He had to have known! ‘I want to go home!’ she said firmly.

‘You are home,’ he whispered in her ear. ‘This will always be your home now. Tomorrow we must begin the long trek north, but after we arrive there you will be mine, and you will be happy. I promise you that!’

Deborah turned impulsively to the Khan, but he was not even looking at her. Defeated, she cast herself down beside Najmeh Mahdevi. ‘You must tell him,’ she pleaded with her, ‘that that isn’t why I came. You’re an American yourself. You know that things aren’t like that in the West!’

Najmeh’s eyes were kind. ‘I was fifteen when my father brought me to this house,’ she said. ‘I had never seen my husband, or any of his family. When my father left me here I thought I would die, but as you see, grief passes and I had my children to comfort me. It will be the same with you.’

‘
No!
No, I won’t! Reza, take me back to Shiraz at once!’

He shook his head. ‘There is nothing for you in Shiraz,’ he said soothingly. ‘Come now, Deborah, there is nothing more for you to cry about. I was afraid that my people might not accept you, but my brother the Khan has decreed that you may come with us and so it is decided. We leave tomorrow!’

Najmeh tapped her on the arm and signalled her to leave the room with her. ‘The men have no further need of us,’ she said in such social tones that, at another time, Deborah might have laughed. ‘You must be hungry, my dear. I have ordered our lunch to be served in my rooms where we can be comfortable together. We must begin to get to know each other, don’t you think?’

Deborah obediently followed her out of the room, her feelings plain on her face. There had to be some way of getting back to Shiraz, she surmised. There had to be!

‘Is there a telephone in the house?’ she asked as Najmeh ushered her into yet another elaborately carpeted room, with a table in the centre on which were placed innumerable dishes of rice and other foods.

‘A telephone? Here? The nearest is at the new hotel near Persepolis. Why would we have a telephone here?’

Deborah swallowed down the despair that gripped her. ‘Najmeh, you’ve got to help me! What kind of wife would I make for Reza?’

‘You would not be my choice,’ the older woman agreed. She shrugged her shoulders. ‘It’s not my decision. The Khan has agreed and that’s the end of the matter. Life seldom consults us women as to what we should like, or the world would be very different from the way it is now!’

‘I refuse to be so—so
supine
as to agree to be married off to Reza!’ Deborah declared. ‘I shall go and talk to the Khan again!’

‘Very well,’ Najmeh agreed placidly. ‘But first we shall eat, yes?’