The Blood of Flowers (14 page)

Despairing over how to contact Iskandar during her confinement, Naheed confided in Kobra and offered silver for her help. The next time there was a game, Kobra went by herself and found the spot where Naheed and I used to stand. She brought the polo ball Naheed had caught, casually holding it in view after the game. Iskandar's boy was sharp enough to realize that she was a messenger from Naheed, who had after all been holding the ball the first time he found her. From then on, Kobra met the child near the bazaar every few days to allow the lovers to exchange letters.

AFTER NAHEED AND I had fulfilled our punishments, we started meeting on Thursday afternoons at the sparkling hammam used by the wealthy residents of our district. As a precaution against further straying, Naheed's family warned her that a maid would be dispatched sometime during the afternoon to make sure we were there.

I had been to that hammam a few times after I arrived in Isfahan, but it was too expensive to attend regularly, so Naheed paid the coin for me. I was grateful to her, because the hammam was one of our greatest pleasures. We spent most of the afternoon soaking, talking, and peeking at other women's bodies. It was there that we learned of births, deaths, and engagements in the neighborhood, or discovered that a woman was pregnant from the slight thickening of her belly, or gleaned that a new bride had mingled with her husband the night before, and therefore had to make the Grand Ablution on a different day than usual.

Homa, the head bath attendant, was a great-grandmother whose skin had stayed almost as moist as a young woman's from all her years in the steam. She washed and massaged me like a mother, and she always had stories to tell about the comings and goings of everyone at the bath. Homa was a skillful questioner, and often I let slip information about myself when I was nearly senseless from soaking in hot water and being massaged. She knew all about my life in the village, my father's death, our poverty, and how it had ruined my marriage plans. I even whispered to her from time to time about the hardships in my household and my desire to marry one day and have a home of my own. "May God grant your fondest wish!" she would always say, but sometimes I thought I saw a doubtful look in her eyes.

Homa had to leave Isfahan for several months to take care of a sick uncle. The first time I saw her after her return, she was walking around the hammam as usual with her white hair loose, her long breasts nearly reaching the thin cloth tied around her waist. After many kisses and greetings of delight, Naheed and I disrobed and gave her our clothes, which she piled into a basket for safekeeping. Then Homa scrubbed Naheed with a kisseh to remove the dead skin from her body and washed her hair, while I rested in one of the hammam's warm pools.

When Homa was ready for me, she called out my name. Her round face and white hair were illuminated by a beam of light that entered the hammam from oval windows in the roof. As I walked naked out of the darkness to the tap where she was crouched, Homa's eyes widened with surprise.

"How you have changed!" she said.

"Things are so different here in the city," I mumbled.

"No, that's not what I meant," said Homa. She pulled me into the light. "Look at you!" she said in a loud voice.

Naheed looked up from where she was soaking, and several women who were bathing nearby stared at me, too. My body was exposed in the sunlight streaming down from above. I tried to bend over at the waist to shield myself, but Homa wouldn't let me.

"Last time I saw you, you looked like a little girl," said Homa. "You had almost nothing here," she said, poking the top of my chest, "and nothing there," slapping my hip. "Now see what has happened in only a few months!"

It was true. I was still as short as ever, and my hands and feet had remained the size of a child's. But from neck to hips, my body had rounded in ways that surprised me. My breasts, which had been so small, were now like two ripe apples, and my hips curved like a melon.

"What is the reason, are you secretly engaged?"

"No," I said, blushing. All I knew was that I had been eating more meat, cheese, and bread than ever.

"Well, soon you will be," she said good-naturedly.

Homa turned me this way and that, peering at every curve. I flushed red all over. In the hammam, there was nowhere to hide.

"Your body is as perfect as a young rose," Homa announced with finality. "You will soon be blessed with a husband, God willing, who will cherish every petal."

Homa began singing an old marriage song from the south in a voice as beautiful as a nightingale's:

Oh mountain girl among the flowers,

With hair like violets and tulips on your cheeks.

Listen to the song of the birds no more,

For a fine young shepherd has come to sing your heart away.

A few of the women in the hammam joined in, and before I knew it, a group of them were on their feet, stamping and clapping. Not knowing what else to do, I began singing, too. The women encouraged me as if it were my wedding day. As I sang, I stood tall and forgot my shame.

When the song was over, there was much laughter and teasing. "I hear those fine young shepherds know how to tend to their wives!" said one woman, smirking.

"Why shouldn't they, they watch their flocks at it all day!" cried another.

It was Homa's gift to me to sing out my maturity to all the women in the hammam, who might know of a suitable husband. She was also showing me that I had something worth offering.

"Now you are one of us," Homa said with approval, "except for a few details that you will learn about soon." As the women in the hammam settled back into their bathing routines, she pulled me close and began scrubbing my back with the kisseh. She looked over at Naheed, whose body was still long and thin like a cypress tree. "Whatever you have been eating, Naheed should be eating, too," she said.

Naheed's eyes were closed, and she didn't reply. I couldn't tell if she was asleep or just pretending.

Why is it that we always think our neighbor's chicken must be tastier than our own goose? For the rest of that afternoon, it didn't bother me that Naheed's skin was so white, her hair so curly, and her eyes so emerald-green.

AS MY REWARD for helping him with the dangling gems carpet, Gostaham had promised to show me a rare and wonderful rug, and one day he instructed me to meet him at the royal workshop after the last call to prayer to see a carpet that would be cherished for centuries to come. I could not imagine such a treasure: The rugs in my village were used until they frayed and were ground into dust.

I walked through Four Gardens right after the last call to prayer. People were streaming out of the Image of the World, for that call marked the end of the day. The hawkers in the square had loaded up their wares and were heading home. I passed a man with a cargo of unripened almonds, which I loved. The almond flesh was as soft as cheese, but more delicate.

I found Gostaham in the workshop I had visited previously, the one with all the looms. It was silent and empty of workers.

"Salaam," I said, looking around. "Where has everyone gone?"

"Home," said Gostaham. "Follow me quickly."

He led me through room after room of carpets in various stages of completion. At the end of a long hallway, we reached a door bolted with a thick metal lock shaped like a scorpion. Looking around to make sure no one was near, Gostaham pulled a key out of his tunic and unlocked it. He lit two small oil lamps and handed me one of them. In the soft light, I could make out a large rug on the loom.

We approached it together, holding our lamps before us. "Look closely," he said, holding the light to the surface of the rug. "Eight men have been working on it for a year, and it is only one-quarter completed."

The carpet was already as tall as I was, but it was to be four times my height when finished. It had nearly ninety knots per radj, which made the design as detailed as a miniaturist's drawing. Horsemen dressed in orange and green silk tunics, with white and gold turbans, pursued antelope and gazelle. Striped tigers and wild asses wrestled together like cousins. Musicians played their lutes. Celestial birds preened, displaying their jewel-bedecked tails. The creatures and humans looked alive, they were so true to nature. It was the finest rug I had ever seen.

"Who could ever afford such a costly rug?" I asked.

"It is for the Shah himself, to decorate his personal rooms," said Gostaham. "It embodies all that is finest in our land--the softest silk, the richest dyes, and the best designers and knotters. This carpet will last long after you and I, and the children of our children, are dust."

I peered more closely at the rug, holding my lamp well away from it. A figure seated near a cypress tree caught my eye.

"How do they capture a man so well?" I asked.

"It is not so much his figure, but rather his face, that requires skill of the highest order," said Gostaham. "The other knotters bow to specialists when it is time to make a man's eye. Otherwise, a face might look distracted, vacant, or even malicious."

"What do you think of the colors?" I asked Gostaham.

"They are what is best in a rug that excels above others," he said, with a teasing smile that I didn't understand at first. "Look how the sparkling gold lightens the density of the pattern. Notice in particular how the dull tones--the faded green, the humble beige, the pale blue--emphasize the beauty of the more brilliant colors, just as the female peacock highlights the male's more dazzling plumage."

"The choices are remarkable," I replied. "Whose work is it?"

"My own," replied Gostaham, and we both had a good laugh.

After that, we looked at Fereydoon's rug, which was almost finished. The gems in its design glimmered in the light of our lamps as if they were real stones. Gostaham had set each one of them off with thin lines of color, just as a jeweler separates gems with gold or silver. The carpet looked very delicate and feminine, I thought, compared to the Shah's hunting rug.

"It is even more beautiful than your design," said Gostaham, as if I had done it all myself. His generosity knew no bounds.

As we left the workshop, I felt a twinge of sorrow. Had I been a boy, I might be working as one of the apprentices at Gostaham's side, learning all the techniques he knew so well. I thought back with envy to the young knotters I had seen in the workshop on my last visit. They could devote themselves all day to their learning, while I had to work for long hours in the kitchen before turning my attention to carpet making. Yet I knew I had more privileges than most girls, for Gostaham had taken me under his care and helped me improve at my craft. For that I was grateful every day.

I RETURNED HOME elated. Gostaham had shown me a pearl that few eyes were ever permitted to see; and just a few days before, Homa had praised my new womanliness at the hammam. For the first time since my father had left us, I felt full of hope.

Passing through the courtyard, I stopped to look at my rug and saw my work in a new light. The boteh design was fine: Gostaham had seen to that. But I worried that I had done a poor job choosing the colors. I had once seen Gostaham looking at the rug with an odd expression, as if he had tasted something sour. Although he had not commented on my choices, he had told me several times that he would help me select the colors for my next carpet. Now I was sure I knew why. I had chosen each color for its beauty rather than how well it worked with the others.

Why hadn't I asked for Gostaham's help? I had been so eager to press forward, and so intoxicated by all the colors available, that I had leapt ahead. I hadn't understood that a design of such intricacy demanded a more masterful approach to choosing hues. I could hardly sleep that night. While the stars were still shining, I arose and looked at my carpet again. The colors were not only bad, they were at war. I had an urge to strip the rug off the loom and begin again.

What had been good enough in my village was laughed at here. Ever since we had arrived in Isfahan, I had been reminded of my humble origins. Unlike a wealthy child of the city, I had not learned to read and write, to enrobe myself like a flower, or to behave with courtly courtesy. I wanted to shine as bright as anyone in Isfahan, the only city worth the title "half the world." If my first carpet showed how much I had learned, perhaps I could escape the ill effects of the comet and set myself and my mother on the perfumed path of good fortune.

I had never heard of anyone starting a rug over. I could almost hear my father's voice telling me not to do it, for I had already completed thousands of knots. But then I thought about how I had gone to Ibrahim's dye house to discover the secret of the turquoise dye and made a carpet that had delighted the eyes of strangers, even though my parents had at first disapproved. I thought about how I had borrowed Gostaham's pen and drawn a design that had resolved his quandary, even though he yelled at me for touching his things.

Filled with the same fierce desire as I had felt on those other occasions, I grabbed the sharp knife I used for slashing wool and began cutting the rug off the loom, string by string. Each one went slack as I released it. The thousands and thousands of knots I had made began to lose their shape; the very surface of the carpet warped and wobbled. When Gostaham arises, I thought, I'll admit my error in choosing the colors right away. I'll ask him for help, and then I'll make a rug he'll be proud of.