In the Walled Gardens (6 page)

Their forefathers had fought in the wars against the Ottomans and Russians. For centuries they had worked the land and owned
villages and orchards and pastures in Azarbaijan. But the newly wed couple chose to live in Tehran in a large house designed
by a famous Russian architect, with porches and columns, and there threw the most unusual parties for the most unusual mixture
of guests the capital had ever seen — with poetry and music and theater and women mixing with men — until the court expressed
displeasure with Fathollah
mirza
and sent him into exile, charging him with political intrigue. He had laughed it off and buckled down on a diet of yogurt
with mountain herbs and bread and fruit to write a travelogue, a history of eastern Azarbaijan, a classic study of the
qanat
underground water-channel system of Iran, three primers on fruit trees, a book on herbal medicine, and his memoirs, lost
to future generations through neglect. He had entertained there — intellectuals and poets and governors and free-thinkers
and French, British, and Russian delegates coming through Azarbaijan. They had enjoyed his hospitality and conversation so
much he’d been recalled to the capital, returning to favor in his elegant Russian coach guarded by his riflemen and followed
by his entire household and retinue of servants, and the formidable Delpasand, his old black nanny from Madagascar. Officer,
governor, and minister, Fathollah
mirza
— awarded the title Mosharraf-saltaneh — was also a constitutionalist. He had had five daughters and a son. Their firstborn,
a daughter, had died within the year, in the cholera epidemic of Tehran. In her grief his young wife had left for Tabriz and
there called for my grandfather, who knew her family well and was a respected religious man and Sufi, a gentle soul who had
come to console her. She had stayed on, and in time he had taught her the mystical texts and then brought his whole family
and his son, Alimardan, my father, then a young boy. She had grown so attached to this son that when returning to Tehran she
had insisted Alimardan return with her and enter into her house-hold, and she had prevailed.

Ten months later, on a snowy night, her second-born, a son, Nasrollah, had been delivered by a Georgian doctor from Tbilisi.
“A big, fat, healthy son!” she’d said, grateful year after year, telling everyone it was my father who had brought with him
from Tabriz her good fortune. And so he had remained in Tehran with the family and held a special place in her heart. And
the year she’d taken her pilgrimage to Mecca and become a
hajjieh,
he had become a
hajji,
because she’d taken him along with her other attendants. They always spoke Turkish together, Mahbanou
khanom
and Father, and she’d had him tutor her son and daughters at home so they would learn their mother’s first language. And
so in time when Father was appointed overseer of Nasrollah
mirza
’s estates, the two spoke Turkish together, for them a language about peasants and farmers and weather and land deals and
crop yields and local elections and their various troubles and private political convictions. When Father taught me Turkish
as a child, it was the language of his own father and mother and of another life abandoned early in Tabriz; and the stories
of that childhood, and speaking his mother tongue far away, drew him back there and to that time, and drew me. In that language
too he whispered to Mother a lifetime — though she spoke it little, she understood it — his private thoughts at the end of
the day, and his sudden endearments to her, which were so rare and true they made her blush and bite her lip and look away.

When Nasrollah
mirza
’s mother died, Father gave a eulogy for her outside Tabriz on one of her estates, and the entire audience of peasants and
family attendants and villagers from far and wide, standing before him and pouring out the doors and into the gardens, had
wept. Father said he’d seen nothing like her, her skin pale like the Russian pearl necklace she always wore, her eyes hazel
and arresting — I saw her in her old age, and her eyes were still arresting — perhaps an impossible woman, Father said, because
of the high standards she kept, her insight unequaled. For her son, she had brought tutors to the house in the turbulent times
of Mohammad Ali Shah, then sent him abroad to Vienna and the Sorbonne. To Father she had given one of her estates, named after
him, Mardanabad, which years later provoked a nasty land dispute and was finally appropriated by one of her nephews.

Nasrollah
mirza
had returned from abroad, feisty and charismatic, and served his country — well but erratically, Father used to say — now
and then allying himself with the wrong side, and at such times retreating to one of his gardens. Father, who had known him
since childhood, thought he actually preferred these retreats to all else. He said Nasrollah
mirza
possessed, of course, a sense of general superiority — understandable and appropriate, considering his breeding — but suffered
from a crankiness that often landed him in trouble and engendered bouts of solitude and gloom. In time the family’s large
estates shriveled with the years and the proclamation of the Land Reform Law, which, striking like an earthquake, abruptly
shattered a system entrenched for centuries. Father had overseen them all. He said the Mosharrafs talked about soil and orchards
and homestead and heritage the way the devout talk about God.

He’d known them all so long, he said they had become his family. And when he finally married, he asked and was given a distant
relative of theirs as his bride. Her father was a small-land owner who owned vineyards, and she brought with her a modest
dowry. Mother, reserved and devout, spoke seldom of her affection for them, perhaps because she was a poor cousin and knew
them little and felt far removed from them except through blood.

T
HE GARDENER GREETED ME
at the gates of their garden. He didn’t recognize me, and I had to tell him who I was.

“Good to have you back!” said Mashdi Hossein.

We shook hands and he held on to mine, all the while asking after Mother and praising Father’s memory. He’d grown bonier and
slightly stooped. He told me with pride, beaming, how his older sons now attended university.

The old house was exactly like before. I couldn’t even count the times I’d come and gone during my entire childhood and early
adolescence. I felt a surge, a strange fulfillment. Even the position of the flower pots hadn’t changed on the stone steps
going up both sides of the white-columned porch — pots of geraniums and fragrant white jasmine — the balconies on the upper
floor overlooking the gardens trailing wisteria. A garden unaffected by the world outside its walls. Friezes of lapis blue
and turquoise and yellow tile with foliations graced the pale brick along the entire front of the house. The stained glass
glowed red and blue and green above the front doors, backlit by the Russian crystal chandelier in the hall-way. Father had
brought me for years, his felt hat on his head, then in his hand as we passed through the doors.

I climbed the steps, hesitated on the stone porch. I had come back a changed man, not in the mold of my father. I was about
to see Mahastee. When I’d seen her at the concert in Bagh Ferdaus, she’d triggered emotions I’d long forgotten. Any moment
now we’d come face-to-face. This was her home, a house set long ago into my flesh and bones.

I
STOOD IN THE DARK
vestibule; the foyer just beyond was the axis of the house. Two magnificent oil paintings of the epic battles of the
Shahnameh
still faced each other on the walls. Corridors with numerous doors stretched to the sides and back, their tiled floors covered
in fine old rugs. The central corridor had double doors at the end with stained glass, mirroring the entrance, giving on to
a large garden of cypress and walnut and fig and mulberry.

Coming down the center hallway, the old nanny of the house-hold, Tourandokht, stalked a toddler with a bowl and spoonful of
food. Swaying and clucking like a hen, she was in slow and painful pursuit of the child until she saw me. The child escaped.

“Reza!” she cried in surprise, heaping endearments on hugs and noisy kisses. “Let me get a good look at you.”

She said I resembled Father more and more. She insisted I take lunch. I told her Nasrollah
mirza
was expecting me, and she understood and waddled away to tell him. Children I didn’t recognize ran down one corridor and
up behind Tourandokht, mimicking her waddle and giggling.

The elaborate chandelier with crystal prisms was dusty. The walls needed a fresh coat of paint. The old grandfather clock
was still in the dark corner — the word
Tehran
set large and gleaming gold above six o’clock, the placid pendulums stately in the etched-glass case. I could hear it ticking.
It was running eleven minutes late. I heard doors slamming and children laughing upstairs and the adults’ indistinguishable
voices in the drawing room and, to my left, the clunk and clatter in the kitchen every time its doors swung open. Lunch was
over.

Nasrollah
mirza
never keeps one waiting. Tourandokht emerged from the far room, waving impatiently.

“Come on!” she said, summoning me before the group.

I went, the moment strangely mesmerizing but distant, like nostalgia.

“My dear boy!” cried Nasrollah
mirza
Mosharraf at the thresh-old, embracing me. He called to his wife and all his sons, Kavoos and Ardeshir and Bahram, smiling
all the while as if the years gone between us didn’t matter.

The drawing room was crowded, and the women assembled at one end looked me over with polite society smiles as the men, snug
in tailored suits and old-world etiquette, scrutinized me. Behind them, the walls were adorned with friezes of plasterwork
set above Qajar court paintings; potted palms stood in the corners; and the scent of tobacco and cigars mingled with sweetmeats
and perfumes as a manservant took around a silver tray of tea, children threading their way past him, dodging mothers who
were telling them they had to go upstairs to take a nap. I saw them all in one sweep, but I was looking for Mahastee.

M
Y HUSBAND WAS EMBELLISHING
the gendarmerie attack in the dining room before my entire family.

“They’re gunning them down these days in the streets!” Houshang said.

He spoke well, judging by his audience. He has presence and impeccable timing, and his ambition is to enthrall, for which
I admit an ambivalent admiration. But he’s omnivorous. Sometimes he gets on his high horse and stays there all during lunch.
I get dagger looks from Mother, snide remarks from my brothers, who put him in his place from time to time, but not nearly
enough. He’s ire-pressible.

He stood at the far end of the dining table, directing the children to turn down the two o’clock news on the radio. Father
didn’t object. He preferred the news, hovering by the old radio with his bowl of
asheh-reshteh.
He savors his traditional Friday soup while listening to news. But he does like acknowledging his one and only son-in-law,
and Houshang takes advantage. Mother, stately and scented with Shalimar, kept her guests around the dining table. Mr. Mostaufi,
old-world politician and ex-ambassador, and his wife, a Qajar aristocrat and wistful poet. Mrs. Vahaab and the colonel. Mr.
Malekshah, poet and scholar. Dr. Atabak, with impeccable bearing, Father’s old friend and family physician, called away to
the phone as usual. Pushing back heavy strands of blond hair, Mother rearranged the greens and radishes, introducing her favorite
stews as if they were members of the family. She encouraged more forays on the food, impeccably arranged on the rose-medallion
china, interrupting Houshang as often as she could.

“More lamb? Try it with walnut pickle. Please take more
fesenjoon.
”

Houshang criticized the recent reshuffle of ministers in the cabinet, especially the four who had been dismissed. My youngest
brother cut in about the mayor, reelected the week before. He adores criticizing the political oligarchy, though his burning
ambition is to join it as soon as possible. Father complained the yogurt was too watery again. Wasn’t it from the bazaar in
Tajreesh? Dr. Atabak came back from his phone call and protested Mother had heaped too much food on his plate. The colonel
had heaped enough on his to feed an army, his mustache bobbing up and down as he ate. He looked even less intelligent when
chewing. Mother said the cook was now taking an inordinate amount of time to pray. It was so inconvenient! The colonel said
religion was our failure. A modern army and modern economy and modern factories were the only answer.

“Modern progress is marvelous!” he said.

Mother said the new maid, aiming to be modern, was making eyes at the oldest son of the gardener. A grumpy son, and surely
a leftist. “All leftists are grumpy!” said Mrs. Vahaab, stuffing the perfect O of her mouth with a morsel of bread loaded
with feta cheese and spring onions and baby radishes.

Of Father’s four sisters, the three there were having an argument about religion. The youngest was an armchair socialist and
once-marching suffragette. The other two, pious aunts, spinsters who lived together, were devoted to French novels and religious
vows and paid preachers who retold holy tragedies, and had taken the pilgrimage to Mecca and once taken me to Qom. Mr. Mostaufi
tried arbitrating between these impossible women, mustering the skills of an old-world diplomat but to no avail. Mother’s
youngest brother was complaining to Dr. Atabak about his brutal migraines. His wife, with theatrically penciled eyebrows,
tittered all over the room, eyeing Mother — her formidable opponent — furtively. And eyeing the Qajar glass lusters dripping
with cut-glass prisms — family heirlooms — their tall tulip-shaped globes bearing gold-leaf portraits of Nassereddin Shah.
My oldest brother, Kavoos, sat watching quietly. The way his wife — Miss Universe, as we call her behind her back — fritters
away his money would turn anyone mute. She sat across from him gossiping, blond and pale and groomed and combed and cosseted
into vacant perfection. He looked like he’d just stepped out of bed, maddeningly disheveled. He was once thrown out of a cabinet
minister’s outer office, he looked so slovenly. In a society where style means absolutely everything, they’d mistaken him
for a loiterer. Mother says he does it on purpose. The more ostentation he sees in the capital — and his wife — the more rumpled
he gets. Kavoos has Mother’s blue eyes, and such aptitude for business that he gets Houshang’s undivided attention. When dessert
arrived, they were off talking tariffs.