The Blood of Flowers (7 page)

ON THE NEXT DAY, Friday, my mother and I arose before the sun and went to the kitchen, looking for breakfast. A pretty maid named Shamsi gave us hot bread and my first vessel of coffee. The rich taste of it brought tears of pleasure to my eyes. No wonder everyone talked about the wonder of the bean! If tea enlivened the appetite, coffee was rich enough to quench it. It was sweet, but I stirred in another spoonful of sugar when no one was looking. I began chattering with my mother about nothing in particular. Her cheeks were flushed, and I noticed that she, too, was chirping like a bird.

While we were eating, Gordiyeh stopped by and told us that her daughters would be visiting with their children, as they did on every holy day, and that everyone would be needed to help make the festive midday meal. It would be a large task, as the household was even grander than it looked at first. There were six servants: Cook; Ali-Asghar, who was responsible for men's jobs like slaughtering animals; two maids, Shamsi and Zohreh, who scrubbed, polished, and cleaned; a boy named Samad whose only job was to make and serve coffee and tea; and an errand boy, Taghee. All these people would have to be fed, plus my mother and I, Gordiyeh and Gostaham, their daughters and their children, and anyone else who happened to visit.

Ali-Asghar, a small, wiry man with hands as big as his head, had already killed a lamb in the courtyard that morning and suspended it to let the blood flow out of its body. While we peeled eggplant with sharp knives, he stripped off its skin and chopped the body into parts. Cook, a thin woman who never stopped moving, threw the meat into a cauldron over a hot fire, adding salt and onions. My mother and I cut the eggplant into pieces and salted them to make the sour black juice erupt.

Gordiyeh appeared from time to time to check on the preparations. Looking at the eggplant, which had only just begun to sweat, she told my mother, "More salt!"

I could feel words behind my mother's lips, but she didn't speak them. She sprinkled more salt and then paused.

"More!" Gordiyeh said.

This time, my mother poured until the eggplant was nearly buried and Gordiyeh told her to stop.

After the sourness had drained out, we rinsed the chopped eggplant in cool water, and my mother fried it in a pot bubbling with hot oil. When each piece was cooked, I patted it with a cloth to remove the grease, and put it aside. The eggplant would be laid on top of the lamb just before serving to allow it to marry the meat juices.

Since the meal was still hours away, Gordiyeh told us to make a large vessel of vegetable torshi, a spicy relish that added flavor to rice. Cook's recipe called for eggplant, carrots, celery, turnips, parsley, mint, and garlic by the basketload, all of which we had to wash, peel, and chop. Then Cook measured out the vinegar she had made and mixed everything together. By the time we had finished, my hands were tired and raw.

Gordiyeh's daughters, Mehrbanoo and Jahanara, arrived and dropped in to the kitchen to see what we were cooking. Mehrbanoo, the eldest at twenty-two, had two daughters, who were dressed and groomed like little dolls, in yellow and orange tunics with gold earrings and gold bracelets. Jahanara was a year younger and had one son, Mohammad, a three-year-old child who seemed small for his age and who had a runny nose. Both of the women lived with their husbands' families but came to visit their parents at least once a week. I was introduced to them as their father's half brother's daughter--"a distant relative," Gordiyeh said.

"How many of those do we have?" Mehrbanoo asked her mother, with a big laugh that revealed several rotten teeth. "Hundreds?"

"Too many to count," said Gordiyeh.

I was taken aback by this airy dismissal. As if in explanation, Gordiyeh said to my mother, "Our family is so large that my girls can't keep up."

Shamsi entered the kitchen just then and said to Gordiyeh, "Your revered husband has arrived."

"Come, girls, your father is always hungry after Friday prayers," Gordiyeh said, ushering them out of the room.

The whole kitchen began to bustle. "Hurry!" Cook hissed, handing me a few cotton spreads. "Lay these over the carpets in the Great Room. Don't delay!"

I followed Gordiyeh and her daughters, who had arranged themselves on the cushions and were chatting without paying me the least attention. I was eager to sit and eat with them, but Cook called me back to the kitchen and handed me a tray of hot bread and a dish of goat cheese and mint; she followed with the plate of honor, heaped with eggplant and herbs, while Zohreh tottered under the weight of the rice. My mother emerged with a large vessel containing a cool drink she had made of rose water and mint.

Back in the kitchen, Cook said, "We may as well begin the washing," although we hadn't eaten yet. She handed me a rag and a greasy pot encrusted with eggplant. I stared at them, wondering when we'd be called in to dine. My mother pushed a strand of hair back into her scarf and began cleaning the rice pot. Surely we'd be asked to join the family soon! I tried to catch my mother's eye, but her head was bowed over her task and she didn't seem to be expecting anything.

After we had completed most of the cleanup, Cook sent me back to the Great Room with a vessel of hot water so the family could wash their hands. Everyone had finished eating and was reclining comfortably against the cushions, their bellies large with food. My stomach growled, but no one seemed to notice. Zohreh and Shamsi collected the platters, and then Cook divided the remaining food among the six members of the household staff and the two of us. Ali-Asghar, Taghee, and Samad ate together outside in the courtyard, while we women ate in the kitchen.

Although the meal had been served, Cook couldn't seem to quit her labors. She'd take a bite, then rise to clean a serving spoon or return a stopper to a vessel. The flavors in her food achieved an exceptional marriage, but her nervousness dulled the pleasure of it. The moment we finished, Cook told each one of us what to do to finish the cleanup. When the kitchen was spotless again, she dismissed us for our afternoon rest.

I threw myself onto my bedroll, my limbs aching. Our room was so small that my mother and I were nose to nose and foot to foot.

"I have nothing left," I said, with a large yawn.

"Me, neither," my mother replied. "Did you like the food, light of my eyes?"

"It was fit for a shah," I said, adding quickly, "but not as good as yours."

"It was better," she replied. "Who'd have thought they would eat meat every week! A person could live on the rice alone."

"God be praised," I replied. "Hasn't it been a year since we've eaten lamb?"

"At least."

It had felt good to eat as much as I wanted for two days in a row.

"Bibi," I said, "what about the eggplant? It was too salty!"

"I doubt that Gordiyeh has had to cook in many years," my mother replied.

"Why didn't you tell her it was too much?"

She closed her eyes. "Daughter of mine, remember that we have nowhere else to go."

I sighed. Safa had been right; we were not our own mistresses now. "I thought Gordiyeh would have invited us to share the meal with them again," I said.

My mother looked at me with pity. "Oh daughter, whom I love above all others," she said, "a family like this one keeps to itself."

"But we are their family."

"Yes, and if we had arrived with your father, bearing gifts and good fortune, it would have been different," she said. "But as the poor relatives of your grandfather's second wife, we are not good news."

Feeling more tired than I could remember, I closed my eyes and slept as if dead. It seemed only moments before Cook knocked on our door and asked for help. The family would be up and about soon, she said, and they'd be anxious for their coffee, fresh fruit, and sweetmeats.

"What a honeyed existence!" I muttered under my breath, but my mother did not reply. She was asleep, her eyebrows knitted together in a furrow of worry. I couldn't bear to wake her, so I told Cook I'd work for two.

TWICE A YEAR, Isfahan's Great Bazaar was closed to men so that the ladies of the royal harem could shop in freedom. All the shopkeepers' wives and daughters were sent in to run the stores for three days, and all the women, whether buyers or sellers, were allowed to walk around the bazaar without their heavy chadors.

Gostaham kept an alcove in the bazaar with a few rugs on display, not so much for sale but to remind people such as the royal courtesans that he was available for commissions. Since these could be the most lucrative of jobs, and since they improved his contacts within the harem, he always put his most fashionable wares on display for the women.

Gostaham normally sent his daughter Mehrbanoo to run his shop during the harem's visit, but she became ill the night before. Gordiyeh was sent to sell the carpets instead, and I begged Gostaham to let me accompany her. I had heard stories about the Shah's women, who were gathered like flowers from every region of our land to adorn him. I wanted to see how beautiful they were and admire their silken clothes. I had to promise I would be as quiet as a mouse if Gordiyeh was making a sale.

On the first day of the harem's visit, we walked to the Image of the World just before dawn. The vast square, normally so busy with nut sellers, hawkers, musicians, and acrobats, was now the province of girls and pigeons. All men had been ordered away under penalty of death, lest they catch a glimpse of the unveiled women. The empty square looked even larger than before. I wondered how the Shah made his way between the palace and his private mosque on the other side of the square. It seemed a long way for royalty to walk in public.

"How does the Shah go to pray?" I asked Gordiyeh.

"Can you guess?" she asked, pointing to the ground beneath us. It looked like ordinary dirt to me, and I had to think for a moment.

"An underground passageway?" I asked, incredulous, and she dipped her chin in assent. Such was the ingenuity of the Shah's engineers that they had thought of his every convenience.

When the sun rose, the burly bazaar guards opened its gates and permitted us to enter. We waited near the doors until the women of the harem began to stream in, mounted on a procession of richly decorated horses. They held their chadors closed with one hand and the reins in the other. Not until all the horses and horsemen had disappeared did they shed their wraps and pichehs, throwing them off with merriment and frivolity. They lived in palaces only a few minutes' walk away, but such ladies were not allowed to travel on foot.

There were thousands of shops in the bazaar to answer every desire, whether for carpets, gold jewelry, silk and cotton cloth, embroidery, shoes, perfume, trappings for horses, leather goods, books, or paper, and on normal days, all kinds of foodstuffs. The two hundred slipper makers alone would occupy the women for some time. Although we could hear their chattering and their laughter, it wasn't until the end of the day that we spoke to any of them.

I had imagined that all the women of the harem would be beauties, but I was wrong. The Shah's four wives were in the fifth or sixth decade of life. Many of the courtesans had been in his harem for years and were no longer beautiful. And most of them weren't even ample. One pretty girl caught my eye because I had never seen hair like hers, the color of a flaming sunset. She looked lost among her sisters, though, and I realized that she didn't speak our language. I felt sorry for her, for she had probably been captured in battle.

"Look!" said Gordiyeh in a tone of awe. "There's Jamileh!"

She was the Shah's favorite. She had black curls surrounding her tiny white face and lips like a rosebud. She wore a lacy undershirt slit from the throat to the navel, which showed the curve of her breasts. Over it, she had chosen a long-sleeved silk sheath dyed a brilliant saffron. Flowing loosely on top was a red silk robe, which opened at her throat to reveal a golden paisley pattern on the reverse side. She had tied a thick saffron sash around her hips, which swayed as she walked. On her forehead pearls and rubies hung from a circlet of gold, which shimmied when she turned her head.

"She's the very image of a girl the Shah loved when he was a young man," Gordiyeh said. "They say she spends her days in the harem quizzing the older women about her dead predecessor."

"Why?"

"To curry favor with the Shah. She pinches her own cheeks all the time now, because the other girl's always bloomed with pink roses."

By the time Jamileh and her entourage reached our alcove, Gordiyeh was as nervous as a cat. She bowed practically to the ground, inviting the ladies to have something to drink. I fetched hot coffee, hurrying so that I wouldn't miss anything. When I returned, the white-cheeked Jamileh was flipping up a corner of each rug with her index finger and examining the knots.

After I served her coffee, she sat down, explaining that she was refurnishing the Great Room in her part of the harem. She would need twelve new cushions for reclining against the wall, each of which was to be about as long as my arm and knotted with wool and silk.

"To make him comfortable, you know," she said significantly.

Hiring Gostaham to design cushion covers was like paying a master architect to design a mud hovel, but Jamileh would have only the best. A fluent stream of flattery poured from her lips about his carpets, "the light of the Shah's workshop, by any measure."

Gordiyeh, who should have been immune to such flattery, melted as quickly as a block of ice in the summer sun. When the two began bargaining, I knew she was doomed. Even her first price for the work was too low. I calculated that it would take one person three months of knotting to make the cushion covers, not including the work on the design. But whenever Jamileh arched her pretty eyebrows or pinched her small white cheeks, Gordiyeh slashed a few more toman off the price or made another concession.