The Girl from the Garden (18 page)

“Asher, you can’t.”

“Don’t tell me I can’t. Of course I can, it is my right.”

“I am in the state of my impurity.”

Asher stops. He steps back. He holds his forehead in his hand, shaking his head. He looks at Kokab. Then he turns and walks abruptly to the door.

“I will spend the next two weeks with Rakhel. When you can, attend the miqveh. When you are clean, we will try again.”

He hears the sound of the trees, branches snapping in the wind. He steps into the cold, cold dark without looking back.

Rakhel does not
need
to turn to know who enters her room. She knows the sound of the metal latch followed by the firm step. She listens to his heavy breath, the rustle of the
qaba falling off his shoulders, the guttural sound of his throat as he raises his arms to lift the shirt over his head, the crumpling of cloth against the floor. She knows he stands behind her, naked in the moonlight, watching the mound she makes beneath the bedclothes. An eternity of waiting and he does not even announce his arrival with words. He simply pulls the blankets back and settles behind her.

She tries to even out her breath, to feign sleep, but she fears that he hears the thudding of her heart. He raises her dress shirt above her thighs and she feels his hands explore her flesh, the heat of his breath on her neck, the urgency of his want against her legs. He doesn’t wait for her to speak, doesn’t speak her name, gives her no time to cry against his chest, to demand an explanation for why he forgot her for so many nights. She weeps, silently, as he finishes, turns and lays on his back.

“I will sleep here for a while,” he says.

Then, more silence until the soft snore begins in his throat. Only then does Rakhel allow herself to turn and look at him. She studies the outline of his face in the blue twilight. She leans over and smells the scent of the other woman on his skin. She brings her face closer to him, to find a trace of herself. She wants to reach with her fingertips and touch the flesh of the arm he folds beneath his head, but she hesitates, her hand midair, and brings it to her own face instead. She watches the rise and fall of his chest until her eyes close and she slips into a dream.

Mahboubeh stares at
the
ceiling of her bedroom, then turns to the clock on the bedside table. Rakhel won Asher back, once Asher realized that he would never beget children. But he needed a reason to divorce Kokab. And she gave him just that, the day she went to the wheat mill. Mahboubeh remembers that this was one of the stories that Rakhel liked to bring up, from time to time, even after so much time had passed, the day Kokab went to the wheat mill, a place no respectable woman would be seen, and Asher divorced her in order to save the family name from shame.

The minutes pass so slowly that time seems to unwind itself before her, at once present and the past. In this tangled darkness, Mahboubeh finally allows the ghosts to come and go as they please, loud with the urgency of their stories, begging her to give them voice, to explain, to her, to the audience of eternal silence, what happened once upon a time.

Kokab has not
emerged from her room for many days. She no longer comes to the sofre for dinner. Rakhel watches from the courtyard as Fatimeh takes food to her. The old servant walks into the farthest room with a tray in her hands, then comes out quickly, muttering
Allah Akbar
to herself and rushing back toward the kitchen.

“Fatimeh, is everything all right?”

“Too much suffering, Rakhel Khanum. That poor
woman suffers too much. She is somewhere else, her body empty of spirit,” Fatimeh says. She shakes her head and looks back in the direction of the room. “The look in her eyes makes the hair on my arms stand. It’s no good. I know this by the white hair on my head. She’s allowed too much sorrow to settle in her heart.”

“Does she eat?” Rakhel asks.

“Eat? Like Imam Hussein in the desert of Karbala, poor woman. I go to take another tray and pick up the last with the food untouched. Not even a sip of water from the glass.” And the old woman turns and walks away, shaking her head and wringing her hands.

Rakhel returns to her room and sits for a long while. The morning creeps toward afternoon, and Rakhel just sits quietly, looking at the motion of the shadows on the wall. But as the hour approaches for Asher’s arrival from the caravansary, Rakhel begins to become more and more agitated. Finally, she jumps to her feet, throws open the door of her room, and runs toward the farthest room. After several minutes of waiting behind the door, Rakhel finally opens it and stands there, holding her breath. Kokab, who sits in a corner and rocks gently, stops, looks up at her and says,“You have finally come to visit me?” She invites Rakhel into the room with a motion of her hand. Rakhel takes a hesitant step, and closes the door quietly behind her. She waits with her back pressed against the door.

“What news do the blackbirds bring from the neighbor’s garden?” Kokab asks.

“That you are no longer welcome here.”

“Asher has sent you to tell me this?”

Rakhel remains silent.

“He does not need to, does he? It is clear that he is done with me.”

Rakhel clenches her teeth and walks up to where Kokab sits on the floor. “You cannot stay here,” she says. “You no longer have a place here. You are just a burden now. A sad reminder to Asher. Another mouth to feed. It is best if you go.”

Kokab looks away, shakes her head sadly, and says, “Where can I go?”

Rakhel straightens her back and tilts her chin up. Her breathing is heavy. She must remain stern, authoritative, she reminds herself. She will not run, she tells herself, this is the time to act. “Perhaps you can kill yourself,” she says.

Kokab watches her for a while, then says, “I want to live for my daughter, if there is a chance I may see her again . . .”

“Then return to your brothers’ home,” Rakhel says.

“They would wish me dead, rather than returned once more,” Kokab says. She looks out of the window. “You are not cruel, Rakhel,” she says. “You are a child, and desperate. You could have been my own daughter, trapped where you are, afraid of losing the little bit of earth G-d has allotted you.”

Rakhel can no longer keep calm. She moves from foot to foot, at once trying to move closer to Kokab, then pulling back. Asher will be home soon. He will ask what business Rakhel had with Kokab. Perhaps Kokab will tell him what
they said. And if he goes back to her, despite the fact that there will be no children . . . If he decides to return to her, even still . . .

“Will you go? Please?”

“I am not free to go as I please, Rakhel.”

“You must give Asher reason to divorce you,” Rakhel says. “Give him reason to send you back to your brothers’ home. It doesn’t have to be something big, just an act to give him an excuse, and save him face. Asher will be happier once you are gone. And my life will be better, too. And the family will not have this turmoil. And your brothers are blood to you, you have more a place in their home than here. And your daughter, maybe the day will come when you can see her. If you leave, maybe then everything will be fine. If you go, maybe everything will be fine, again.” Rakhel does not look at Kokab as she speaks, but at her own hands, then the walls, then out the window, any other place, but Kokab. When she stops talking, she finally notices Kokab’s eyes, soft with tears. Kokab shakes her head and sighs.

“So this is how we finally make one another’s acquaintance?” Kokab says. “All this time, I wondered what we might say to one another, once alone.”

Rakhel looks away. She does not respond, but she cannot keep her body still. Her hands fiddle with the hem of her skirt, her feet step back and forth. Her body refuses stillness, and so she starts to speak again, to quiet the rest of her self. “If you go to a public place. You don’t need to do much else. You don’t need to create a reason for going, or explain what
you did. Just be seen there, alone, with no business. A place where only men go.”

Kokab looks at Rakhel, bewildered. And then she laughs. “Is this how my life plays out?” she asks. “My qesmat written by the hand of a girl child?”

“The wheat mill. Will you go there?”

“Such a serious gamble, Rakhel. The consequences so irrevocable. And why the wheat mill, Rakhel, why the wheat mill to crush your rival?”

“Because no one will be able to think of any reason for why you have gone there, other than the worst reason.”

“Of course. And if he kills me?”

“He won’t.”

“How do you know?”

“You have known him, too. He won’t.”

Kokab nods her head. She draws her knees into her chest and wraps her arms about them. She rocks gently, then places her cheek against the wall and closes her eyes. After a while she turns to look at Rakhel. She studies her for some time and finally says, “Don’t look so worried, Rakhel. I’ll go. There is no life for me here, but for you, there may be a chance.”

Rakhel looks down at her own hands, which hang limply now, tired after their frantic dance. She feels so tired. Her body aches for sleep. She wants to fall to the floor, right before Kokab, draw her knees into her chest, and cry. Kokab reaches out and takes hold of Rakhel’s hands in her own. With effort, she draws Rakhel into the fold of her arms.
Rakhel fights for a moment, then collapses into the embrace, burying her face against Kokab’s chest, where she weeps and weeps. They sit thus for some time, Kokab cradling Rakhel until she is spent of crying, until she hiccups with sobs every so often, and then settles into a calm half-sleep. The afternoon advances. The shadows grow longer. The air cools. The muezzins begin to sing the evening azan.

“Go now,” Kokab says. “Go before someone sees you here. I will leave for the mill in the morning.”

Rakhel clutches Kokab’s hand with both of her own. She brings them to her lips and holds them there.

“Go to your room, go prepare yourself for your husband,” Kokab says. “Go, before he arrives. No one but you and I will ever know.”

Rakhel releases Kokab’s hands and wipes her face with her sleeve. She rises with haste, then turns to Kokab. They look into each other’s eyes, speaking wordlessly, because there are no words, any longer, between them. Kokab nods her head. Rakhel looks down, then leaves.

Mahboubeh remembers
another
story about Asher, as a young man, before he married Rakhel. It happened that one day Asher decided to visit the farms in the outskirts of Kermanshah. Perhaps on a morning in late spring, a day much like this. Mahboubeh reaches down to pull from the earth the green vine that spreads, unruly, from the stalk of her trees to the walls, from there to the stems of her roses, then creeps
through the dirt, and grows among the vines of her grapes.

On that day, mist rose from the mountains, the dew evaporated from the tips of the tall grass and wildflowers, the whole landscape appeared dreamlike. Asher rode his mule on the narrow path that went up the mountain. The path was full of small rocks the size of a man’s fist.

The mule lost his footing, began to slide down the slope of that cliff and Asher jumped off the panicked animal, wound one hand tightly in the reins, grasped the harness with the other, dug his heels into the earth, threw the weight of his body back, and pulled with all his might.

Mahboubeh rises heavily from the ground. She looks at her hands. Dirt beneath her fingernails, in the creases of her skin. Blood, too. She has cut herself, in numerous places. She tries to remember when. She shakes her head and brushes her hands against her blouse. Her blouse is filthy with mud stains. She tries to remember when she changed it last. Surely it was clean this morning? She looks up at the sun. It must be noon, at least. Has she eaten? She can’t remember. She is not hungry. Just thirsty. Very thirsty.

Asher pulled until he saved that mule, but he tore something in his groin with the strain of his effort. Mahboubeh turns on the garden hose, holds it with one hand, and cups her hand with the other. She splashes water onto her face, then drinks from her cupped hand. She drops the hose, and walks away, forgetting to turn the water off.

This is the story the women told when anyone asked why Asher was unable to beget children. Somehow, perhaps
shortly after Kokab left, this story found its way into the mouths of all the merchants, the clerks, the maids. It was repeated in gardens and kitchens, whispered between prayers at the Sabbath services, told by women in the public baths, by men in the
zoor khane,
perhaps even reached the Kurds in the provinces. Generations later, this is the story they repeated, that Asher tried to save a poor, wretched beast, and his act of kindness cost him his progeny.

Mahboubeh walks toward her house slowly. “It was Asher Malacouti’s kindness,” she mutters to herself. “His mercy toward a dumb beast that cost him so dearly. And that is why, they said.”

K
okab
went where?” Zahra asks. The
chickens cluck and peck at the grain at her feet. She holds a handful and turns to look at Sadiqeh in the early morning light.

“To the mill,” Sadiqeh repeats.

“To the mill? What on earth was she doing there?”

The chickens look at her hand expectantly. Zahra remembers to throw the grain and reaches into the bucket again without taking her eyes off of Sadiqeh.

“I heard it from Fatimeh myself. Zolekhah
sent her secretly to follow Kokab when she saw Kokab leave without asking permission to go. Fatimeh followed her clear to the edge of town, until she reached the mill.”

“And Kokab went inside? What on earth for?”

“She stayed inside for more than an hour.”

The chickens cluck and pace about the girls, waiting.

“Did anyone see her inside the mill?”

“Everybody saw her.”

“How can they be sure?”

“She removed her ruband. And showed her face.”

Zahra places the bucket down and brings her hands to her mouth. “She removed her hijab in front of all those men?”

The chickens scurry to the bucket, stretching their necks over the rim to reach the grain. They hop onto one another to find a place to stand. Sadiqeh shoos them away with her broom and picks up the bucket. She hands Zahra the broom and begins to throw the grain to the dirt ground.

“Does Asher know?”

“If he doesn’t know, he will find out soon.”

“Well, Rakhel may become the sogoli of her husband yet, once he finds out what her havoo has been doing behind his back.”

Zahra sweeps absently. The chickens keep away from her broom. She stops and looks at Sadiqeh. “What will become of Kokab?” she asks.

The chickens cluck hungrily. “What will become of her?” Zahra asks, again.

The chickens tilt their heads up at Sadiqeh, who stands still, holding the bucket for a long, long time before she reaches in again and throws more grain to the earth for them to eat.

Zolekhah stands in
the breezeway before Asher’s study, holding the lantern. For a few years now, she feels the approach of the seasons in her bones. Winter stiffens her knees. She knows the approach of rain by the ache of her joints.
This is the body preparing to become one with the earth,
she thinks. She looks up to the fresco. Moses holds the stone tablets in his arms. Zolekhah shudders.
The correct course of action is clear,
she thinks to herself. She looks back to the painting of Moses. Here, the artist must have thought the greatest moment of illumination, Moses’s hair wild from his days in the mountains of Zion, his eyes burning with truth. Yes, she tells herself again, truth is the correct course of action. She raps on the door to Asher’s study. “Asher?” He does not respond. She knocks again, louder. She sees him from the window, sitting at his desk, facing the window looking out to the outer gardens. She waits a moment, then opens the door. “Son, why don’t you answer?”

Asher turns to face her. “Sorry, Mother, I didn’t hear you knock.”

“I came to discuss a certain matter with you.”

Zolekhah walks into the room. She looks at her son
sitting behind his desk, fingers absently moving the beads of the abacas in his lap back and forth, back and forth. “Asher, are you all right?”

Asher looks down. He shakes his head. A moment passes in silence.

“It does no good, son, to keep the pain in your heart. Tell me, tell your old mother what has you so heavy these past weeks.”

“Mother . . .” Asher stops and presses the knuckles of one hand against his mouth. Then he removes his hand and looks to the ceiling. He draws in his breath sharply. “Mother, I am incapable of fathering a child.”

“Is that all? Son, Kokab is not as young as she was, that is why. When a woman’s age advances, it becomes more difficult for her to conceive.”

“No, Mother. The problem is with me.”

“Nonsense, of course.”

Asher stands abruptly and walks to the window facing the courtyard. He presses his forehead against the window. Zolekhah walks to him. She places her hand on his shoulder. She looks out of the window, too. Her son’s breath fogs the glass, so that the fountain is at once visible, then gone. “Mother, I am not man enough to . . .”

“Hush, son, hush.”

“Please, Mother, let me speak the truth, at least between you and me.”

“Don’t say it, lest, G-d forbid, it comes to pass.”

Asher turns to face his mother. “It has passed, Mother, it has already passed.”

She takes his face in her hands. He lowers his face and she pulls him into her chest.

“Mother, I will never have a son.”

“No, my dear, no, you mustn’t say such things. You are simply anxious, that is all. It is not you, but her womb. Her womb is old. It is your bad luck, that’s all. She is no good. We will find another woman.”

Asher pulls away from his mother and wipes his eyes with the back of his hands. “What other woman, Mother? A third wife? And when she doesn’t get pregnant? The whole town will speak of my failure. Though they will speak of it soon enough, regardless, as time passes and Kokab remains barren. The most common man will feel that he is more man than I am. And he is. He is more man.” Asher holds his forehead in his hands. He clenches his jaw. “These farmers in our villages, blessed with so many children. Small, ragged little boys, scabs on their knees, sticks in their hands, running behind their goats and sheep in the fields. And these fathers . . . their eyes shine when their sons speak to me. They grow taller, these peasant men. They grow before my eyes. Their shoulders straighten, the tiredness of their muscles melts away, the burden of their loads lightens. They become so, so . . . proud.”

“Soon, my dear, soon you will be proud, too.”

“It won’t be long before every peasant at the caravan
sary knows, every bastard walking in the street. All of them whispering behind my back at the synagogue, the women with pity in their eyes. And Kokab, here, in that room, to remind me . . . that I am no man at all.”

Zolekhah turns from Asher and draws in her breath. “Son, I came here to talk with you about Kokab.”

“It is no use, Mother, I know the fault is with me.”

“No, Asher, something else.” She straightens her back and turns to face him. “She went to the wheat mill. She left without telling anyone. After she left, Rakhel came to my room and said she feared for Kokab, that the woman might do something to harm herself. I told Fatimeh to hurry and follow Kokab. She walked all the way to the mill. Fatimeh saw her enter. She waited over an hour in the street before Kokab came back out.”

“Why . . . what business . . .” Asher stops, the color drains from his face. He turns wildly and with one move of his hand, wipes all the objects of his desk onto the floor. The abacas breaks, the beads bounce and roll across the rug. “She has done what? Gone where?”

“Son, please—”

“Already taking my shame to the street? Already cuckolding me before the public?”

“Asher, I have not asked her, yet, why she went. I wanted you to ask her, to give her an opportunity to—”

“To deceive me? To make a further mockery of me?”

“Asher, we don’t know why she went.”

Asher grabs a vase from the shelf and smashes it against
the ground. “Perhaps to have her grains ground to flour, Mother?” He picks up another vase and hurls it against the wall. “To have it sacked and stored for the cold winter months?” He takes the book of his accounts, pulls off the cover, tears and crumples handfuls of pages with fury. “I should have known. I saw it, I’ve seen it in her eyes.” He throws the book at the window and groans, holding his head.

Ibrahim rushes into the room. “What’s happened?” he asks, a wide-eyed Khorsheed peering from behind him.

“Go from here,” Asher says. “Let me be. Let me be before I drag that whore here by her hair and kill her with my bare hands.”

Zolekhah tries to embrace Asher again, to calm him, but he pushes her away.

“What’s happening? What’s happened here?” Rakhel asks. She pushes Khorsheed aside to look into the room. Kokab walks in after her and stands behind Rakhel.

“You,” Asher says and points his finger. “You shameless harlot!”

Asher lunges toward her and Rakhel covers her face. He pushes past her and grabs Kokab’s arm, pulling her into the room.

“Wait, Asher,” Kokab says.

“Shut up, you whore, you wretched whore.” Asher shakes her violently. “Look at me, look me in the eye.”

Kokab looks at him, her chin firm, her eyes steady.

“No shame? Not a bit of shame? You deceive me and then look me in the eye without a hint of shame?” Asher
pushes her away from him, then slaps her hard across the face. Kokab’s head jerks and her lip splits. Blood trickles down her face and neck. She touches her lip, looks at the blood on her fingertips, then looks back at Asher.

“Enough, Asher,” she says.

“Enough? I’ll say when it is enough, woman.”

Asher grabs her throat with one hand. Kokab clutches at his hand. He takes hold of her wrists with his other hand and whispers close to her face, “Tell me, I leave you for a few nights and the hunger gets you, like a filthy cat in heat, huh? You go searching, huh? Or did you find your way out before, too?”

Kokab struggles to free herself. Ibrahim grabs Asher’s shoulders. Asher releases Kokab and turns with rage to face his brother. “Let me do what I must do!” he says.

“Brother, please, wait a moment, allow her to speak.”

“Move out of my way so I can break her neck.”

“Mother, get the women out of here,” Ibrahim says. “Brother, please, do not act in anger.”

Zolekhah starts pushing Khorsheed and Rakhel out of the room. She turns to grab Kokab’s hand and pull her along, but Kokab remains still.

“Come, child, come before he does something terrible. Come, there will be time for explanations, later.”

Kokab looks at Rakhel, who still stands by the door, trembling. Rakhel looks up and their eyes meet. Rakhel turns to walk out but then stops and walks back toward Kokab.

“After all my husband has done for you,” she says to Kokab. Rakhel looks to Asher, then turns and spits in Kokab’s face. She leaves, without looking back.

Asher glares at Kokab. “You,” he says, “you are an animal. At least an animal follows its appetites so it can procreate. You are lower than an animal.”

“Son, allow her a moment to tell us what happened,” Zolekhah says.

“It is between me and this whore I have taken as a wife,” Asher says. Then he spits in Kokab’s face, too. Kokab closes her eyes and moves her head back, as if he has struck her again. She opens her eyes and looks at him.

“Asher, you have known me.”

“Yes. Yes, I have known you. A fool I am to think that an animal might go against its own nature. You are inclined to such baseness.”

“Asher, you have known me.”

“Deception and lies. A fool you have made of me. Was I not man enough for you, either? Or is one man not enough for you?”

Asher pushes Kokab to the floor. He stands over her and clutches a handful of her hair. He pulls back his fist to hit her. Kokab looks up at him.

“The truth is before you, Asher, you choose to be deceived,” Kokab says.

Asher stops for a second, frozen by her words. He looks at her open mouth, blood still flowing from her lip. “I choose to be deceived?” he asks. Then he hits her with
his closed fist. “I choose to be deceived?” he asks again, and hits her once more.

“Please, Asher, she is a woman, after all,” Ibrahim says. He places his hand on Asher’s shoulder and Asher turns wildly to face him.

“Honor is a thing to be protected,” Asher hisses. “At all costs, honor is a thing to be protected.”

Zolekhah runs to help lift Kokab off of the floor. Kokab pushes her hands away and raises herself to her arms. She gets up slowly off the floor and stands before Asher. Zolekhah tries to pull her away from her son’s fury. “Come, woman, come before he kills you,” she says.

“I have been murdered, already. A thousand times,” Kokab says. Kokab turns and walks away slowly, holding onto the wall for support. She stands for a moment and turns to look at Asher, then walks in the direction of her room.

Asher pushes past Ibrahim to chase after her. He stops when he reaches the door. He paces back and forth wildly for a moment, then sits heavily on the floor and buries his face in the palms of his hands.

Fatimeh rises for
the morning azan. She unrolls her prayer rug and unwraps the black prayer stone from its embroidered kerchief. She rubs the cold stone between her fingers. The writing on the stone is worn smooth. She places it on the mat and stands so that her heart faces Ka’ bah. She raises her arms and brings her hands beside her face,
palms turned out to the world. She moves through the motions of her prayer, but her thoughts drift back to the night before. She had stood by the courtyard pool long after she finished rinsing the plates and watched Asher, Ibrahim, and Zolekhah through the window of the sitting room from the dark. She listened to pieces of sentences that rose above their tense whispers. Asher was to leave early this morning, accompanied by Ibrahim, and stay in the village of Tofangchi for several days.

Fatimeh kneels and prostrates. She keeps seeing Kokab’s swollen eyes. Blue at first, after a few days, bruised well into black. She tries to forget the look in those eyes, to focus on her prayer instead, but her mind keeps roaming back to Kokab, sitting in the dark of her room, silent, motionless. Fatimeh sits back on her heels and beseeches the Lord for mercy. She sits for several moments in thought, and then rises heavily from her rug. Perhaps Allah will forgive an old woman her indolence, and accept her prayers, imperfect as they are. She peers cautiously out of the window of her small room beside the kitchen. The men must have already left.

Fatimeh sees Zolekhah come out of Kokab’s room and close the door behind her with one hand while she pulls her black chador over her hair with the other. Fatimeh walks quickly out of her room to the pool under the guise of having to do her ablutions, just in time to walk across Zolekhah’s path.