The Blood of Flowers (22 page)

All the way through Four Gardens, the sun beat on my head and the ground seemed to burn through my thin shoes. The light was so bright it hurt my eyes through my picheh. Even the river glinted sharply in the heat. Someone was grilling liver kebab, and the dirty smell of it seemed to catch inside my picheh. The thought of eating in this heat nauseated me. My belly churned. I stopped and bent over, longing to vomit, but nothing would come out.

When I arrived at Naheed's, she ushered me into her rooms and asked the servants to bring in lemon sharbat right away. "You look hot," she told me.

After I had refreshed myself and the servants were out of earshot, Naheed removed the latest letter from its hiding place in the sash around her waist. "You won't believe this," she said. "Just listen to what he writes."

Light of my heart, in recent months, I have come to know you better than any woman except those in my own family. God gave us the blessings of the word and the pen, but never did I expect that a woman could wield both with such beauty. Your alefs are like a cypress tree, straight and tall; your behs, with their sweet dot beneath, are like the beauty mark on a lover's cheek. They have taken me captive; with every letter you write, my heart is more and more deeply ensnared. So completely have your words imprisoned me that I have begun seeing them in your face--glimpsed only once, alas, but enough beauty seen in that moment to last a lifetime. The locks around your face are like the letter jim, curling without regard to the way they hook a lover's heart. Your rosebud mouth, which is piercingly red, is tiny and precious like the letter mim. But most of all, when I dream of you I imagine your emerald eyes, as pretty and elegant as the letter saad. I am in a state of longing for your every word. Leave me in this state of distress no more! Consent to be my wife, to share every moment of your days and nights next to me, and I will promise to cherish you until the last letter of our lives is written.

When Naheed finished reading, her eyes overflowed with tears and she sat still without wiping them. I had never seen a woman fall in love before, and I envied the purity of her feelings.

"Voy, voy!" I said. "What a gem, what a prince among men." But even as I said that, my heart was shedding the tears that Naheed was able to shed openly with her eyes. No one loved me the way Iskandar loved Naheed. I had not learned how to make Fereydoon's heart soar with love and longing, but, despite my grief, I must remain silent. I could not share my sorrows and dip into the sympathy and comfort I knew Naheed would have showered on me. That was the worst of all.

"Yes, Iskandar loves me," said Naheed, the words like honey on her tongue. "And my heart has been lost to his. I want nothing more than to spend my hours by his side, listening to his sweet words of love."

Now that I knew more about men and women, I didn't believe the polo player would only whisper words of love. He would want to nuzzle Naheed and to part her thighs, like Fereydoon had parted mine.

"Insh'Allah, he will love you with his words, but also with his body," I blurted out.

Naheed's eyes seemed to get clearer for a moment. "I have never heard you speak that way," she said. "What do you mean?"

I shouldn't have said anything, but it was too late. I thought back quickly to the things I had heard in my village. "Back home, after my friend Goli got married, she told me how important it was to her husband to take her at night," I said.

"Oh, that!" said Naheed with a look of disdain. "I suppose he will do whatever he wants to--that will be his privilege when I am his wife."

I took a sip of coffee. "You're not worried about that, not even a little?"

"Why should I worry? I just want him to hold me in his arms and utter the honeyed words he writes in his letters. If I have that, I will be content."

The last few weeks had taught me that things had to work between a man and a woman in the dark, things that had nothing to do with words. Would it be different for Naheed and Iskandar because they loved each other already?

"We will be just like Shireen and Khosrow, the happiest of lovers once they were finally united!" said Naheed exultantly, and to me she looked like a woman in the middle of a happy dream.

I smiled. "Iskandar didn't see you bathing naked in a stream, but I believe he saw enough of your face to be as entranced as when Khosrow surprised Shireen without her clothes."

"I knew I could ensnare him! I knew it!" said Naheed.

The more I thought about it, though, the more Naheed and Iskandar reminded me of Layli and Majnoon, for those two lovers had loved without the benefit of being together. What did they know about each other? Majnoon had starved himself in the wilderness, composing poetry about Layli that found a home on every Bedouin's lips. Layli had been sequestered by her family, who were certain he was mad. The two had gone to their graves filled with longing, yet what would have happened if they had been united? What if they had fumbled in the dark, and what if Layli had had to listen to the lonely sound of skin slapping against skin? Naheed couldn't know if being with her beloved was a taste of paradise until they shared the same pillow.

I knew I must stop getting lost in my own sad thoughts and try to help Naheed conclude her quest. "How will you get your parents to approve the marriage?" I asked.

Naheed's crafty smile lit up her face, and I was glad to see her back to her plotting self.

"Iskandar wrote to me that his mother and his sisters always bathe at Homa's hammam on the first day of the week. He told them to start looking for a pretty girl for him to marry, and he described someone exactly like me."

"That was clever," I said.

"I wish I had the ripeness that Homa praised you for at the hammam. I've been trying to eat more, but it doesn't help."

I protested. "Naheed-joon, you are the prettiest girl I've ever seen. There will be no doubt of their interest!"

Naheed smiled, secure after all in her beauty. "I will try to get them to notice me. If they like me, and if an offer is made from his family to mine, my parents will never know that Iskandar and I have secretly corresponded all this time."

"And what about his family--will your parents approve of them?"

Naheed put on a brave face. "His father tends horses for a governor in the provinces," she said.

I was astonished that he came from such humble stock. "Won't your parents insist on a rich man?"

"Why should they, when I have money enough for two?"

"But Naheed--" I said. She looked away, and I didn't have the heart to continue. "May God grant your every wish!"

I prayed for her happiness with all my heart, but I felt much older than her, and wiser, too. While Naheed was singing the blessings of love from afar, I was mired in the problems of a marriage unfulfilled. And although I had arrived wanting to unburden my heart to her, I was beginning to understand that it probably would have been of no use. She was caught in the web of her dreams, and they were much prettier than the truth of married life that I had come to know.

Naheed put her arms around me and laid her cheek against mine. I smelled the sweet musk she used to perfume her clothes. "If I couldn't unburden my heart to you, I'm sure I would die," she said. "Thank you for being such a loyal friend."

It was good to feel the strength of her affection, for I had suffered a crimp in my heart ever since we had been caught at polo. I returned her embrace, but then sat upright and alone.

"For a while," I confessed, "I thought you wanted to be friends just so that you'd have a companion for the games."

Two pink spots appeared on Naheed's cheeks, and she looked away.

"Perhaps that was true at first," she admitted, "but not anymore. You are the kindest friend, the most unaffected, and the most true. I'll always be grateful you took the blame for me at polo. If it wasn't for you, my love for Iskandar would have been discovered and destroyed."

"It was nothing," I mumbled, blushing.

Naheed's eyes were bright and happy. "I hope you and I will share our secrets and our hearts forever," she said.

"I hope so, too," I said, and a much-needed spring of joy welled up in my heart, although it was quickly followed by melancholy, for I ached to confide in her as she had confided in me. But I didn't mind taking the blame for polo now that she had revealed how much it had meant to her. Naheed's love for Iskandar had softened her, like Layli's for Majnoon.

First there wasn't and then there was. Before God, no one was.

When Layli's mother told her about the man she was to marry, she responded with neither anger nor tears. Bowing her head, Layli replied obediently, "I am yours to command, Mother." For what did it matter?

Layli's parents had chosen a wealthy man from a respected Bedouin tribe. For her wedding day, the families erected tall black tents in the desert and furnished them with soft carpets, bowls of fruit, braziers of incense, and oil lamps. Layli wore a red gown embroidered with silver thread and silver shoes. Around her neck were fine silver chains with carnelian stones inscribed with verses from the Holy Qur'an.

When Layli's husband greeted her for the first time, she felt nothing but indifference. He smiled at her, revealing a gap where he had lost a tooth. As they exchanged their wedding vows, Layli could think only of the man she loved, Majnoon.

Majnoon was part of her tribe, and they had played together in the desert as children. He had once brought her a blooming yellow desert flower and dropped it shyly in her lap. Even when she reached the age of ten, had been veiled, and could no longer play with boys, she thought about Majnoon and loved him. He grew into a handsome young man, tall and thin in his long white tunic and turban. He could not suppress a smile when she walked past. And although he could not see her, her beauty was something well known about the tribe, as accepted as the light of the moon.

When he was old enough, Majnoon begged his father to approach Layli's parents for their daughter. They refused, for Majnoon had strange habits. He had already taken to spending days by himself in the desert. He would return thin, wasted, clad in nothing but a white turban and white loincloth, and it took time before his senses returned. That was how he had earned his nickname Majnoon, which means "crazy."

"What is wrong with your son?" asked Layli's father.

Majnoon's father could not answer, for he did not know what drove his son into the desert, or why he returned shattered, as if he had glimpsed the Divine.

After Layli's parents refused him, Majnoon fled to the desert and lived alone, surviving almost without food or water. Whenever he saw a gazelle or another animal in a trap, he released it, and soon the animals began gathering around his camp and lying down beside his fire. Predators became friends in his presence, and one and all protected him from harm.

With his beasts around him, Majnoon began composing poetry that mentioned the name of his beloved, verses so beautiful that passing strangers memorized them and brought them to other Bedouin camps. Soon Layli's name was heard everywhere and her parents decided she must marry, for the sake of her honor. Knowing she had no hope of marrying her true love, Layli accepted her parents' choice, for she must not defy them. And one man was just as unsuitable as the next if it was not Majnoon.

After the wedding festivities, Layli sat quietly on her marriage bed, waiting for her husband, Ibn Salam. Delighted to claim her as his prize, he entered and offered her a plate of the sweetest dates, carefully selected from the date palms he owned. She tasted them politely and spoke with him amicably, the very picture of an obedient wife. But when he touched her hand, she withdrew it. Even as the night fled, he did not dare approach her lips with his or put his sun-browned hands on her small waist. At dawn, he fell asleep beside her, fully clothed, and she curled up near him and did the same.

Life continued in this fashion for months. Layli greeted Ibn Salam with respect, prepared his tea and his meals, and even massaged his feet when he was tired, but would never allow him near her flawless treasure. For he was an ordinary man. He could ride a horse, hunt with a falcon, and earn enough from his date palms to keep them in comfort. But he would never compose poetry like Majnoon, nor make her heart soar with longing. Layli respected her husband and even admired him but felt no stirrings of desire.

Despite her indifference, Ibn Salam was falling more and more in love with Layli. That she should refuse to open her heart hurt him deeply. He once considered taking her against her will, for after all, she was his. But what good would that do? Layli was a woman who would come to him herself, or not at all. He resolved to wait and hope that she might one day soften, and that made his heart grow bigger with each passing day. Although she was as closed to him as a shell, he became as wide open to her as the sea. No man treated his wife with more tenderness or loved her more completely.

As months turned into years, and still Layli remained chaste, she at last began to wonder about her decision. All her friends had married and were bearing children. She alone knew nothing of a man's body or of holding her own child in her arms. Didn't she deserve the same life as others? Shouldn't she, the glory of her tribe, offer her husband all of herself, and hope that her love would one day blossom to match his?

In the market a few days later, she heard a new verse about Majnoon's love for Layli on an old man's lips.