Rosewater and Soda Bread (15 page)

Bending slowly to retrieve a large silver soupspoon from the side table, the widow couldn't help but cringe at the creaks in her weakened hips. Every inch of the descent was a painful reminder
of what it is to be human, to be moving toward an inevitable fate.

Straightening with a grimace, she turned once again to her patient. “Yes, that is right. Open for strength,” she said, ladling some of the stew into the spoon.

She nodded at the girl's opened mouth and smiled once again.

The fragrance of plumped-up prunes, their burst skins cradling the fortifying strands of
garm
spinach and softened saffron lamb, swirled between them.

She must make an effort to eat more from the list of hot foods Marjan had written for her, Estelle told herself. The darling had meticulously charted the best ingredients and dishes to take at such times, times when she felt not only the pain of her joints but the darkness that came from watching your body turn slowly to stone.

Yes, she must remember the power of balance, thought Estelle, lifting the spoon toward the girl.

Just as she was about to minister the heartening stew, it happened: a terrible force intervened. Her clumpy knuckles suddenly stiffened, opting for a last-minute retreat.

Estelle's hand froze; she dropped the spoon, the silver shattering the stew's purple surface, splattering it onto the clean hospital sheets.

“Santa Maria!
Dio mio
!”

Estelle gasped, squeezing her eyes shut. She leaned against the side of the bed and panted, her calcified hands remaining in the air, suspended by a Svengali of pain. Lightning sparked every single nerve and membrane.

“Please, God.” The old widow breathed heavily. “Take my hands, please take this pain.” She grimaced as needles stabbed her hands, arms, elbows, neck, and collarbones. Her spine was
seizing up as well, the pain moving inch by inch toward her neck. “Please,” huffed Estelle, “Santa Maria, I don't want to be a statue today.”

Estelle wasn't expecting an immediate answer to her prayer, but an answer came anyway—from as close as the hospital bed.

The girl, the mermaid Estelle had rescued over a week ago, decided to return the favor today.

Leaning slowly over the bowl of piping plum stew, she reached for Estelle's clenched fists.

In a moment the widow would later remember for its intense warmth and little else, the girl fanned open her strange fingers, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath.

“
LADIES ARE HERE
for their tea. Two kebab
kuftidehs
, one fried chicken salad, one
gormeh sabzi
, and a bowl of
rosetachio
ice cream,” Layla said, pinning the order to the carousel. “The last one's for Filomina Fanning. She says she heard a scoop of ice cream a day was good for the love life. Says she read it in a book called
The Perfumed Garden
. I've never read it, have you, Mar-jan?”

Marjan placed the lid back on the saffron rice and looked up, mulling the title for a few seconds. “No, I don't think I have,” she said. Though she was sure such a book existed, even if she hadn't heard of it.

As the town's librarian, Filomina had resources that ran the gamut of the world of letters: whether it was a question on Lap-landish garden trolls, or a treatise on Tahitian hygiene rituals of the late 1700s, Filomina could be relied on for facts.

She had been the first person Marjan had turned to when she
needed a copy of Avicenna's masterpiece; Filomina had promptly ordered the
Canon of Medicine
from a fellow bibliophile at the University College of Dublin, with a wink to forget about late fees.

The only topic worth avoiding with the librarian was the latest sunbathing methods; Filomina was still reeling from the last time she'd tried to cultivate a tan and got severely burned by one of Thomas McGuire's faulty sun beds thirteen years earlier. She was one of many in town who had been glad to see the tyrant take to his thorny bed.

“
The Perfumed Garden
,” Layla repeated. “Isn't that what you're growing out there?” She pointed to the blooming herbs outside the kitchen window.

Marjan followed her gaze. The hour's rain had left fresh sparkles on the stalks of dill and swathed the mint in a lovely veil.

She shook her head. “You know, I still can't believe they're growing so well, even in this weather. I'm half-thinking of planting a pomegranate bush next.”

Layla set down the tub of vanilla ice cream she had taken from the freezer and jumped up. “Just like home! Oh, you have to, Marjan. Plant a pomegranate bush!” she said, clapping her hands.

Marjan laughed. “We'll see, now. It's one thing to plant herbs, but a pomegranate needs constant sun.”

She lowered the heat on the simmering plum stew and turned to the brick oven. Using a large paddle, she stoked the smoldering logs inside its large belly. The heat was just right for the kebabs ordered by the Ladies of the Patrician Day Dance Committee.

Marjan turned to Layla once more. “Do you think about Iran often?”

Layla scooped three large, creamy balls into a turquoise bowl.
“Sometimes. Not always, not as much as I used to in London.” She drizzled rosewater over the ice cream, then reached for a large jar of shelled and crushed pistachio nuts sitting on a shelf over the counter. She held the jar against her hip and stared at the bowl. “I mean, I think about good things, mostly.”

“Like what?” Marjan said. She was surprised to find herself whispering.

“I don't know, like my friends at school. Do your remember Christina from across the street? Her family was from Ohio?”

Marjan nodded. There had been many American families living in their neighborhood in northern Tehran during the 1970s. Most had been under contract with the new companies sprouting headquarters like yesterday's barley, bringing with them a confidence in fast-food emporiums and a distaste for everything that was subtle and Persian.

Unlike the British, who in previous decades had lived in dusty, make-do abodes while tending to the demands of their oil executives, the Americans had built themselves movie theaters and hot dog stands, replicating the good old Main Streets of their prairie homeland.

Marjan stoked the embers in the oven again. “Christina… she was a couple years older than you, if I remember,” she said.

Layla sprinkled a handful of pistachios onto the bowl of ice cream. “She was eight, I was four. She taught me to play hopscotch,” she said, grinning at the memory. Then her smile disappeared. “I remember Baba as well.”

At the mention of their father, Marjan closed the oven door on the kebabs and turned to her sister. “What do you remember exactly?” She leaned against the counter and folded her arms.

“I remember his Brut cologne, and that he liked to play chess with you. I mean, I know what he looked like, we have that one picture. The one at the ruins of Persepolis?”

Marjan nodded, thinking of the exquisite palaces of Iran's Zoroastrian kings. “That was before you were born.”

“I was in Maman's belly.” Layla smiled wistfully.

A pang of loneliness shot through Marjan; Layla's memories were so potent, in spite, or perhaps because, of their diffused quality.

Layla placed the bowl of ice cream on a small round platter etched with filigreed patterns. “I remember Baba's face, but only the one in the photo. I mean, I can't remember what he looked like before he died. Is that normal?”

“Well, of course it is. You were a little girl then.”

“I still think I should remember more about him. And about Maman, even if she died before I had a memory,” Layla said.

Then, tossing her long black hair as though discarding the sad thoughts, she turned to Marjan. Her almond eyes were tilted up and shiny. “Filomina can't wait until the kebabs are done,” she said, holding up the tray of ice cream. “Three scoops for a really good day.”

Layla exited the kitchen, leaving her oldest sister to conjure her own childhood memories, the Polaroids of that brief and golden age.

THAT AFTERNOON, minutes before the Babylon Café was to close for the day, Marjan allowed herself an indulgence. Shutting the door to the bathroom in the flat above the café, she settled onto the covered toilet seat and opened her box of memories.

The brass jewelry box, the same engraved keepsake Ali had bought her on that high school trip to the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul, was kept on the top shelf of the tiered medicine cabinet installed by Luigi Delmonico all those years back.

The bottom three shelves were Bahar's and Layla's to fill as they pleased, but it was understood by all three sisters that the top tier would be reserved for Marjan and her few precious belongings.

Marjan placed the jewelry box on her lap and opened its lid. She balanced the box on the edge of the bathtub, making sure not to shed any of the sand still embedded in its lining.

The sand, along with a patch of kilim carpet woven by a Baluchi tribe, was a souvenir of their time spent crossing the eastern deserts of Iran. It had taken the three of them only a week to reach the border with Pakistan, that autumn in 1978, but by the time they arrived at the Red Cross refugee camp in Quetta, it had seemed as though a lifetime had gone by.

The box's belly was soft, a pink satin with more than its share of secrets. Within its caresses were their baby gifts, among them the three gold identity bracelets, one for each of their infant wrists. Bought on the days of their births, the bracelets were engraved with their names—Layla, Bahar, and Marjan—in swirling Farsi script.

Pity the bracelets were too small for any of them to wear now, thought Marjan.

She picked through the bits of jewelry, the stud earrings and ruby ring that had belonged to their mother, Shirin. There was something almost meditative about this ritual of hers, combing through the photos and small keepsakes, even if she touched on some painful memories. It was as if her fingers were actually tracing the milestones each piece represented.

Her hand closed on a smooth, round object, something resembling a marble egg. It was a miniature bar of lotus soap, still in its wrapper, bought on their last trip to the
hammam
. The public bathhouse had been a favorite spot of theirs, a place the three of them liked to go to on Thursdays, the day before the Iranian weekend.

Marjan held the soap to her nose. She took a deep breath, inhaling the downy scent of mornings spent washing and scrubbing with rosewater and lotus products. All at once she heard the laughter once again, the giggles of women making the bathing ritual a party more than anything else. The
hammam
they had attended those last years in Iran was situated near their apartment in central Tehran. Although not as palatial as the turquoise and golden-domed bathhouse of their childhood, it was still a grand building of hot pools and steamy balconies, a place of gossip and laughter.

The women of the neighborhood would gather there weekly to untangle their long hair with tortoiseshell combs and lotus powder, a silky conditioner that left locks gleaming like onyx uncovered. For pocket change, a
dalak
could be hired by the hour. These bathhouse attendants, matronly and humorous for all their years spent whispering local chatter, would scrub at tired limbs with loofahs and mitts of woven Caspian seaweed. Massages and palm readings accompanied platters of watermelon and hot jasmine tea, the afternoons whiled away with naps and dips in the perfumed aqueducts regulated according to their hot and cold properties.

There was always a bridal shower carousing their way through the
hammam's
various tiled rooms. Equipped with bedroom banter and every hair removal product known to womankind, the ladies of these rowdy parties would pluck and prep the flushed bride for the next night's encounter.

When Marjan had heard of Bahar's intended marriage to Hossein Jaferi, on that awful day she had returned from the detention center at Gohid, one of the only hopeful images she had clung to was the thought of a happy bridal party.

She might not be able to change her sister's mind about marrying,
Marjan remembered thinking, but she could prepare Bahar for her new life with a strengthening rosewater rinse. The tonic was sprinkled over the bride's head at the end of her ablutions, a cleansing ritual meant to wash away all doubts about her new life ahead.