The Blood of Flowers (3 page)

My mother began wailing more loudly and tearing out her hair in clumps. Her scarf fell off and lay abandoned near my father. It was still tied and kept the shape of her head.

I grabbed my father's hand and squeezed it, but it was cold and still. When I lifted his heavy arm, his hand dangled brokenly at the wrist. The lines in his face looked deeply carved, and his expression seemed aggrieved, as if he had been forced to fight an evil jinn.

I uttered one short, sharp cry and collapsed onto my father. Kolsoom and my mother let me remain there for a few moments, but then Kolsoom gently pulled me away.

My father and I had both known that our time together must soon come to an end, but I had always thought I would be the one to leave, festooned with bridal silver, with his blessings alive in my ear.

THE DAYS AFTER my father died were black, but they became blacker still.

With no man to harvest the fields that summer, we received little grain from my father's share of the planting, although his friends tried to be generous with theirs. And with little grain, we had little to barter for fuel, for shoes, or for dyes for wool. We had to trade our goats for grain, which meant no more cheese. Every time we gave up a goat, my mother cried.

Toward the end of the long, warm days, our supplies started to diminish. In the mornings, we ate the bread my mother made with cheese or yogurt brought by kind neighbors, but it was not long before our evening meals became less and less plentiful. Soon there was no question of eating even a morsel of meat. My mother began trading my father's belongings for food. First went his clothes, then his shoes, then his turbans, and finally his precious walking stick.

Other people would have turned to their family for help, but my mother and I were unfortunate in having no elders. All of my grandparents had died before I was old enough to remember them. My mother's two brothers had been killed in a war with the Ottomans. My father's only relative, a distant half brother named Gostaham, was the child of my father's father and his first wife. Gostaham had moved to Isfahan when he was a young man, and we hadn't heard from him in years.

By the time it started to become fiercely cold, we were living on a thin sheet of bread and pickled carrots left over from the previous year. I felt hungry every day, but knowing that there was nothing my mother could do, I tried not to speak about the pains in my belly. I always felt tired, and the tasks that used to seem so easy to me, like fetching water from the well, now seemed beyond my ability.

Our last valuable possession was my turquoise rug. Not long after I finished knotting its fringes, Hassan the silk merchant returned to pick it up and pay us what he owed. He was startled by our black tunics and black head scarves, and when he learned why we were in mourning, he asked my mother if he could help us. Fearing that we would not survive the winter, she asked him if he would find our only relative, Gostaham, when he returned to Isfahan, and tell him about our plight.

About a month later, a letter arrived for us from the capital, carried by a donkey merchant on his way to Shiraz. My mother asked Hajj Ali to read it aloud, since neither of us had learned our letters. It was from Gostaham, who wrote that he felt great sorrow over the losses we had endured and was inviting us to stay with him in the capital until our luck improved.

And that's how, one cold winter morning, I learned that I would be leaving my childhood home for the first time in my life and traveling far away. If my mother had told me we'd been sent off to the Christian lands, where barbarian women exposed their bosoms to all eyes, ate the singed flesh of pigs, and bathed only once a year, our destination could hardly have seemed more remote.

Word of our upcoming departure spread rapidly through the village. In the afternoon, women began arriving at our home with their smallest children. Pulling off their head scarves, they fluffed their hair and greeted the others in the room before arranging themselves in clusters on our carpet. Children who were old enough to play gathered in their own corner.

"May this be your final sorrow!" said Kolsoom as she came in, kissing my mother on each cheek in greeting.

Tears sprang to my mother's eyes.

"It was the comet," Kolsoom added sympathetically. "Mere humans couldn't defeat a power that great."

"Husband of mine," my mother said, as if my father were still alive. "Why did you announce that life was going so well? Why invite the comet's wrath?"

Zaynab made a face. "Maheen, remember the Muslim who traveled from Isfahan all the way to Tabriz to try to outrun the angel of death? When he arrived, Azraeel thanked him for meeting him there on time. Your husband did nothing wrong; he just answered God's command."

My mother's back bent a little, as it always did when she felt grief. "I never thought I would have to leave my only home," she replied.

"God willing, your luck will change in Isfahan," said Kolsoom, offering us the wild rue she had brought to protect us from the Evil Eye. She lit the herb with a coal from the oven, and soon its acrid smell purified the air.

My mother and I served tea to our guests and offered the dates that Kolsoom had brought, for we had nothing of our own to serve. I brought a cup of tea to Safa, the eldest villager, who was sitting in a corner of the room with a water pipe. It bubbled as she drew in smoke.

"What do you know of your new family?" she asked as she exhaled.

It was such an embarrassing question that it quieted the room for a moment. Everyone knew that my grandfather had married my father's mother many years ago while he had been visiting friends in our village. My grandfather was already married to his first wife, and lived with her and Gostaham in Shiraz. After my grandmother bore my father, he visited occasionally and sent money, but the families were understandably not close.

"I know very little," replied my mother. "I haven't seen Gosta-ham for more than twenty-five years. I met him only once, when he stopped by our village on his way to visit his parents in Shiraz, the city of poets. Even then, he was becoming one of the exalted carpet designers in the capital."

"And his wife?" asked Safa, her voice tight from the smoke in her lungs.

"I know nothing of her, except that she bore him two daughters."

Safa exhaled with satisfaction. "If her husband is successful, she will be running a grand household," she said. "I only hope she is generous and fair in her division of work."

Her words made me understand that we would no longer be mistresses of our lives. If we liked our bread baked dark and crisp but she didn't, we would have to eat it her way. And no matter how we felt, we'd have to praise her name. I think Safa noticed my distress, because she stopped smoking for a moment to offer a consolation.

"Your father's half brother must have a good heart, or he would not have sent for you," she said. "Just be sure to please his wife, and they will provide for you."

"Insh'Allah," said my mother, in a tone that sounded unconvinced.

I looked around at all the kind faces I knew; at my friends and my mother's friends, women who had been like aunts and grandmothers to me while I was growing up. I could not imagine what it would be like not to see them: Safa, with her face crinkled like an old apple; Kolsoom, thin and swift, renowned for her wisdom about herbs; and finally Goli, my truest friend.

She was sitting next to me, her newborn daughter in her arms. When the baby started to cry, she loosened her tunic and put the child to her breast. Goli's cheeks glowed pink like the baby's; the two of them looked healthy and contented. I wished with all my heart that my life were like hers.

When the baby had finished nursing, Goli placed her in my arms. I breathed in her newborn smell, as fresh as sprouting wheat, and whispered, "Don't forget me." I stroked her tiny cheek, thinking about how I would miss her first words and her first halting steps.

Goli wrapped her arms around me. "Think of how big Isfahan is!" she said. "You'll promenade through the biggest city square ever built, and your mother will be able to choose your husband from thousands upon thousands!"

I brightened for a moment, as if my old hopes were still possible, before remembering my problem.

"But now I have no dowry," I reminded her. "What man will take me with nothing?"

The whole room became quiet again. My mother fanned the rue, the lines in her forehead deepening. The other women began speaking all at once. "Don't worry, Maheen-joon! Your new family will help you!"

"They won't let such a fine young girl get pickled!"

"There's a healthy stud for every mare, and a lusty soldier for every moon!"

"Shah Abbas will probably desire your daughter for his harem," said Kolsoom to my mother. "He'll fatten her up with cheese and sugar, and then she'll have bigger breasts and a rounder belly than all of us!"

At a recent visit to the hammam, I had caught my reflection in a metal mirror. I had none of the ripeness of nursing mothers like Goli, who were so admired at the hammam. The muscles in my forearms stood out, and my face looked pinched. I was sure I could not be moonlike to anyone, but I smiled to think of my thin, bony body in such a womanly form. When Zaynab noticed my expression, her face twisted with mirth. She laughed so hard she began pitching forward over her stomach, and her lips wrapped back over her teeth until she looked like a horse fighting its bit. I flushed to the roots of my hair when I understood that Kolsoom had only been trying to be kind.

IT DIDN'T TAKE us long to pack our things, since we had so very few. I put one change of black mourning clothes into a hand-knotted saddlebag along with some heavy blankets to sleep in, and filled as many jugs as I could find with water. The morning of our departure, neighbors brought us gifts of bread, cheese, and dried fruit for the long journey. Kolsoom threw a handful of peas to divine whether it was an auspicious day for travel. After determining that it was excellent, she raised a precious copy of the Qur'an and circled our heads with it three times. Praying for a safe journey, we touched our lips to it. Just as we were setting off, Goli took a piece of dried fruit out of my bag and slipped it into her sleeve. She was "stealing" something of mine to make sure that one day, I would return.

"I hope so," I whispered to her as we said good-bye. It pained me to leave her most of all.

My mother and I were traveling with a musk merchant named Abdul-Rahman and his wife, who escorted travelers from one city to another for a fee. They often journeyed all the way to the northeastern borders of our land, looking for musk bladders from Tibet to sell in big cities. Their saddlebags, blankets, and tents smelled of the fragrance, which commanded princely prices.

The camel that my mother and I shared had soft black eyes that had been lined with protective kohl, and thick, bushy hair the color of sand. Abdul-Rahman had decorated his pretty nose with a strip of woven red cloth with blue tassels, a kind of bridle. We sat on his back atop a mountain of folded rugs and sacks of food, and held on to his hump. The camel lifted his feet delicately when he walked but was ill-tempered and smelled as rotten as one of the village latrines.

I had never seen the countryside north of my village. As soon as we stepped away from the mountains' life-giving streams, the land became barren. Pale green shrubs struggled to maintain a hold on life, just as we did. Our water jugs became more precious than the musk bladders. Along the way, we spotted broken water vessels and sometimes even the bones of those who had misjudged the length of their trip.

Abdul-Rahman pushed us onward in the early-morning hours, singing to the camels so they would pace themselves to the cadence of his voice. The sun glinted off the land, and the bright white light hurt my eyes. The ground was frozen; the few plants we saw were outlined with frost. By the end of the day, my feet were so cold I could no longer feel them. My mother went to sleep in our tent as soon as it was dark. She couldn't bear to look at the stars, she said.

After ten days of travel, we saw the Zagros Mountains, which signaled our approach to Isfahan. Abdul-Rahman told us that from somewhere high in the mountains flowed the very source of Isfahan's being, the Zayendeh Rood, or Eternal River. At first, it was just a pale blue shimmer, with a cooling breath that reached us from many farsakhs away. As we got closer, the river seemed impossibly long to me, since the most water I had ever seen before had been in mountain streams.

After arriving at its banks, we dismounted from our camels, for they were not permitted in the city, and gathered to admire the water. "May God be praised for His abundance!" cried my mother as the river surged past us, a branch flowing by too quickly to catch.

"Praise is due," replied Abdul-Rahman, "for this river gives life to Isfahan's sweet melons, cools her streets, and fills her wells. Without it, Isfahan would cease to be."

We left our camels in the care of one of Abdul-Rahman's friends and continued our journey on foot on the Thirty-three Arches Bridge. About halfway across, we entered one of its archways to enjoy the view. I grabbed my mother's hand and said, "Look! Look!" The river rushed by as if excited, and in the distance we could see another bridge, and another gleaming beyond that one. One was covered in blue tiles, another had teahouses, and still another had arches that seemed like infinite doorways into the city, inviting travelers to unlock its secrets. Ahead of us, Isfahan stretched out in all directions, and the sight of its thousands of houses, gardens, mosques, bazaars, schools, caravanserais, kebabis, and teahouses filled us with awe. At the end of the bridge lay a long tree-lined avenue that traversed the whole city, ending in the square that Shah Abbas had built, which was so renowned that every child knew it as the Image of the World. My eye was caught by the square's Friday mosque, whose vast blue dome glowed peacefully in the morning light. Looking around, I saw another azure dome, and yet another, and then dozens more brightening the saffron-colored terrain, and it seemed to me that Isfahan beckoned like a field of turquoise set in gold.