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Authors: Parnaz Foroutan

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“It is a mitzvah, this decision, an act of compassion,” Ibrahim says.

“Yes,” Asher says. “Kokab will be rescued from shame, her brothers will be free of their burden, and I may have children through her still, if G-d sees it fit.”

Rakhel stands up in alarm and looks about the room. The door. She must reach the door, open it to the cold night air, before this heaviness buries her beneath its weight. She walks slowly in that direction, reaches the latch, pushes the door open. Rakhel watches herself as though she is not within herself, but standing somewhere, a witness to her own escape. There is Rakhel, stepping out into the night, and there she walks, barefoot, against the ice-cold marble, down the steps, through the snow toward her dark room.

Rakhel enters the stillness of her bedroom, and walks to the mirror. She sees the reflection of her embroidered head scarf, her black hair, but she can’t make out the features of her own face. No eyes, no lips, no nose. She looks down at her feet and searches her memory to see if her face exists somewhere in the recesses of her mind. Her eyes are brown, yes, her nose has a slight bump, but it is not unattractive. She sees these parts as fragments, separate from each other,
but she can’t fit together the pieces to recall the whole they create. She puts her hands on the frame of the mirror, brings her face closer to the silver surface, and meets her own eyes. When she can see the reflection of her eyes, she takes a step back to look at the whole of her face. The girl looking back at her smiles. Rakhel shudders, turns away from the mirror, and covers her face with her hands.

In the sitting room, Khorsheed weeps. Zolekhah pats her hand repeatedly and says, “No, child, you mustn’t allow yourself to cry. Consider the poor lamb in your womb. You must be calm for your baby.”

“Khorsheed,” Ibrahim says. Khorsheed stops sobbing and looks at him. “Enough.” Khorsheed whimpers and wipes her eyes with the back of her hand. “Go to your room.” Khorsheed begins to cry, again, silently. “No more crying. Go to bed.” Khorsheed rises to leave.

Once she is gone, Zolekhah turns to Asher and says, “Perhaps you should have discussed it with me, first, son.”

“It was not a matter for discussing,” Asher says.

“Of course it is a topic for discussion. Look how upset you have made everybody. You are bringing another person into this family, somebody we all must live with.”

“Mother, it is not a matter for discussing.”

“There are ways of doing things, Asher. Proper ways of doing things.”

“Nothing has been done, yet. I have not gone to her brothers, I haven’t spoken to anybody. This was the private announcement of my intentions, that’s all.”

“You should have discussed it with me first. Then, I could have instructed you on how to tell Rakhel, first, rather than shaming her in front of all of us. There are certain words a man should say to his wife . . .”

“Wife? What sort of
wife
is she to me if she cannot do her sole task?”

“She is human, nonetheless. There would have been a better way to tell her.”

“What better way, Mother? What better way to tell her that I will marry again, that she will have a
havoo
?” Asher leans toward his mother, his fists clenched against his side and hisses, “And what business of hers is it, besides? A girl to decide my fate? A girl who cannot do what even a stupid cow can do with ease?” Asher picks up the bowl of pomegranate seeds and throws it against the wall across the room.

“Brother, please,” Ibrahim says and places a hand on Asher’s arm.

Zolekhah stares at her son steadily. Asher looks back at her, red with rage. “For what reason must I waste everything I have built? For what reason? For her, Mother? For a worthless girl?” Asher clenches his jaw, pushes Ibrahim’s hand away and stands to leave. “A man who has no son, Mother, is no man at all.”

In her room, Rakhel turns to look back at the reflection in the mirror. The girl in the mirror watches her, too. She studies the outline of Rakhel’s body. Too lean. Her breasts too small. Her stomach caves in, her limbs are too hard, her arms too long, her legs too long, her feet too big, her skin too dark.
“Why did You choose me to curse?” Rakhel asks. She throws herself at the mirror with her fists clenched, but the surface only bounces back slightly. She hits her forehead against it, hits her clenched fists against it, again and again and again, not noticing the small veins that cracked in the surface of the glass where she pounds, or the walls shaking. She hears a distant screaming, though it is her own voice. Then, the clear sound of shattering glass.

Four

O
utside
it is night. There will be
frost in the morning, the concrete treacherous, the grass white, the rooftops, too. The kettle whistles. Mahboubeh rises from the table and measures out tea leaves. She remembers the last time she saw her uncle Asher. He sat in the courtyard, in the snow, looking at the pool and fountain. He must have been returning from the caravansary, because he wore a heavy wool coat over his clothes. He walked into the courtyard, but rather than heading to his private study to place a record on the gramophone, which was his custom, he stopped and sat
on the steps beneath the fresco and looked at the fountain for a long, long time. A few days later, he died. Mahboubeh remembers that she was asleep in her room when Rakhel walked in and sat beside her bed and said, very calmly, “Asher is dead.”

By then, Rakhel already had her son, Asher’s sole heir. Her position in the household was firm. So when she announced Asher Malacouti’s death, Rakhel’s voice was clear of the panic that should have followed such a statement. And clear of sentiment, too. She spoke as though discussing a settlement of accounts. “Asher is dead,” she said, then rose and left.

Mahboubeh pours herself a cup of tea and wonders what her uncle sat reckoning that cold, late afternoon as he gazed at the fountain. He was not a man to give to idle thought. Perhaps in that moment, whether he knew of his encroaching final hour or not, he stopped to consider the value of his life. Certainly he had earned respect, built an empire, but what about love? Did he love, was he loved in return? Nothing in Rakhel’s voice hinted at a loss of love when she announced his death, though in those days, love was not a factor to determine any marriage.

Before Rakhel became Asher Malacouti’s wife, she was just a bread maker’s daughter. Rebbe Yousseff, Asher’s father, had already rested in the earth for many years before Asher came to the age when it was time for him to take a wife. By then, he had already multiplied his father’s inheritance exponentially, and everyone spoke of Asher Mala
couti’s ability to turn even mule dung into a brick of gold. When Asher’s beard came in fully, he was the richest Jew in Kermanshah, and men much older than he, Jew and Muslim alike, who had been investing and selling and buying for years and years, came to him for advice. At home, he ran the household and took on the role of father for his younger brother, Ibrahim, advising him and tutoring him, even chastising him about the necessity of being more shrewd, more zealous in the pursuit of building wealth. Zolekhah watched her eldest son with great pride, and sometimes with a bit of fear. When one of the women at the hammam commented about her son playing the man without ever bedding a girl, she knew it was time to find Asher a wife.

One day, when Zolekhah went visiting the sister of the widowed bread maker in the andaruni of their home, she saw the bread maker’s daughter helping with the dough, kneading it with her hands, flattening it paper thin, slapping it against the wall of the
tanoor
in their yard. “This one,” Zolekhah told Asher when she returned home, “this one is intelligent and not lazy.” She went to the hammam the following day, knowing that Rakhel and her aunts were attending, and she watched the girl from a distance. The girl had no deformities, her skin was healthy. “Yes, this one will be a good match for you,” Zolekhah told Asher later, and he agreed that she should approach the bread maker’s sister to speak her intentions.

Once the women had the preliminary dialogue, it became the men’s business. The men entered the bread maker’s
home and sat on the rug, against the cushions that lined the walls of the small room. Asher’s eldest uncle sat to his right, and Ibrahim to his left, directly across the room from the bread maker. Asher leaned back onto the cushion to survey the room, then quickly thought his posture suggested laziness, or indolence, and sat upright. The windows were open, and the breeze that passed through the dancing lace curtains felt cool against his perspiring forehead.

“Are you nervous?” Ibrahim whispered.

“I carry the better half of this deal,” Asher said. He wasn’t nervous. But the room. The room was stifling, with all those men gathered, and the excited whispers of the hidden women that peaked from behind the tattered cloth that separated this room from the only other room in the home. Asher felt the women’s searching eyes on his skin. They watched his every gesture, considered his height, measured the width of his shoulders, decided whether the tilt of his chin suggested strength or too much pride masking weakness, perhaps even laughed at the way he sat. Asher relaxed his shoulders and arranged the cushions behind him so that he could lean against the wall with his back straight. He looked at his own hands clutched in his lap and instead decided to hold each knee of his folded legs. Once he felt that his posture was correct and that his visage commanded respect, he turned his attention to the bread maker, without looking directly at him but focusing on the roses in a vase in the alcove of the wall above the bread maker’s head. The bread maker talked to the man beside him, his brother, a
merchant of spices Asher recognized from the caravansary. The bread maker fingered the beads of the
tasbih
he held in one hand and patted his knee absentmindedly with the other. The brother spoke to him in low urgent tones, stopping to smile at someone on Asher’s side of the room, to bow his head in greeting a couple of times, before resuming his whispered counsel.

“He is probably telling the old man to demand a higher dowry than the one we suggest,” Asher whispered to Ibrahim.

“Allow Uncle Moshe to do the talking, out of respect,” Ibrahim said.

Asher looked at his aged uncle sitting beside him. It should have been his father. It should have been his father, beside him, these many years. How proud Rebbe Yousseff would have been to see the way the men at the caravansary address Asher, how proud he would have been to see the loyalty of the Kurds. The two of them might have worked alongside each other, building this future together. And when his father would have grown too old, he’d leave the business in his son’s capable hands, and rest, surrounded by the joy of his grandchildren, Asher’s sons and daughters, who’d dote on him and give him living proof that there was some meaning to all that toil, that his life wasn’t a life lived in vain.

Asher felt a heaviness in his chest, and turned his attention to the sound of a group of boys playing in the streets. A passing street peddler interrupted their play with his song,
lima beans, lima beans, the greenest, freshest lima beans
. The chil
dren took up the peddler’s song, their voices taunting, adding their own vulgar refrains until the peddler’s loud curses were followed by the sound of running feet. The other men in the room stopped their conversation to listen to the commotion in the street, and the silence that ensued hung heavy in the room.

“Boy children,” Asher’s eldest uncle said, “a blessing, the devils.” The men in the room laughed.

“Yes, a blessing. If they do not turn every hair on your head white with their antics,” the bread maker said. “Now a daughter, a true blessing, a comfort, a balm for the aching heart in old age.” The room resumed a grave silence for a moment, and then came the jingle of teacups on a tray. A hand reached out and pulled aside the curtain, and a woman in a chador, an elder aunt perhaps, stepped through and into the room amidst the men. She walked to Asher’s eldest uncle first, offered him chai and dates with a reserved smile on her lips. She whispered welcome, welcome, then served each man until she reached the bread maker last, who took his glass and saucer without looking at her. He held the glass delicately and tipped the chai with one hand into the saucer he held in the palm of the other. He blew noisily on the saucer, then sipped from it. The woman glanced around the room once, her gaze resting on Asher a moment longer than the rest, then bowed her head slightly and disappeared behind the curtain.

“Your hospitality is commendable,” Asher’s uncle said.

“For a guest of such great honor, it is nothing.”

“No, truly, the honor is ours.”

“No, no the honor mine, you have graced my home with your presence.”

“We have come with intentions we hope worthy of you and your home. We have come to ask for your daughter as a bride.”

“Ah, she is more than a daughter, more than a girl to me. So intelligent, she is, so hardworking. Worth twelve sons, that one.”

“Asher is a jewel of a son, had I one like him, myself, though he is like my own.” The uncle nodded his head toward Asher. “This young man is one of the richest merchants of the caravansary, goyim and Jew alike. My brother’s wealth,
zichrono livracha,
grows like weeds beneath Asher’s hands. He owns three villages, and land in several others . . .”

“Yes, yes, a praiseworthy young man,” said the bread maker. “Alas, how material wealth leaves the heart empty, though.”

“Yes,” the uncle said, “but the belly full,” and he patted his own protruding stomach. The men laughed quietly and sipped their chai. The bread maker smiled and nodded his head. He placed his tea glass and saucer down, and picked up his tasbih once more.

Fingering the beads, he said, “Rakhel is a gem. Unlike girls raised to sleep and gossip all day. She is a rare, rare gem. And since having lost my poor wife, I cannot bear the thought of losing her, too.” The bread maker shook his head.
“I have yet to see a girl like her. I’m sorry, but I will have to say no to your admirable offer.” A silence settled on the room once more. Asher knew it was a ritual, but he couldn’t help feeling slighted. He cleared his throat, and his uncle touched his arm.

“Well, we must be on our way, we have put your household through enough trouble,” his uncle said and he rose with difficulty. The rest of the men in the room stood. After much procedure, of bowing of the head and praise of the host, Asher found himself in the street once more. He stood in the late afternoon sun, blinking.

“The requirements of custom are cumbersome, son,” his uncle said, patting Asher’s back.

“Everyone in the room knows the fortune that has befallen the bread maker,” Ibrahim said.

“Yes, but he must refuse in order to save face. It is important to do so,” the uncle said. “For Asher, as much as himself. We do not want people to say that Asher’s bride was thrown at him.”

Asher smiled at his uncle. “When will we return?” he asked.

“In a week’s time.”

“And will I see her, then?”

“I’m sure you will,” his uncle had said. “He cannot afford to lose your interest.”

After being turned away, Asher and his uncles waited a week, then returned to meet again with the bread maker and the men of his family. Once they settled on the rug
and leaned back on the cushions propped against the walls, there came a hushed commotion from behind the curtain. Then, pushed forth from the other room behind the tattered cloth, Rakhel stood before them. A swell in the cloth discreetly nudged her farther into the room. Rakhel took a halting step forward with the heavy tray, stopped, looked around until her gaze reached Asher, then looked down quickly. A moment, she waited, then raised her head firmly back up, a look of stone resolve in her eyes and she marched across the rug, balancing the tray in her hands with stoic grace. She lowered the tray before Asher’s uncle first and said, “Welcome.”

Asher’s uncle took his saucer and glass of chai, then hesitated in his choice of pastry, his extended finger hovering over the
beheshti,
faltering before the baklava, until he selected a square of
sohan
and said, “Thank you, daughter. Surely sweetness offered from your hands is an omen of sweet days to follow.” Rakhel’s cheeks turned crimson and she looked back, for a brief moment, in the direction of the curtain. Asher studied her profile. A delicate face. Fine cheekbones. She took a step in his direction and he smiled to himself. She extended the tray, the amber liquid in the cups moving perceptibly, the silver spoons attesting to her uneasiness.

“Welcome,” she whispered. She kept her eyes on the chai, the pastries on the tray. Asher looked at her neck and her defined collarbone. There was a certain grace to her body, despite how thin she was. He glanced at her hands.
Her skin seemed so soft. She was a bit too thin, but then, after the first child, her hips would certainly widen. He realized his survey exceeded the accepted time allotted for choosing a pastry, and he quickly picked one before the host might presume his too-slow assessment of either his daughter or his baked goods an insult.

Rakhel moved to serve Ibrahim, and Asher poured chai from his glass into the saucer and blew on it, the steam rising, swirling into the filtered sunlight of the room. The lace curtains cast rose-patterned shadows on the floor. He noticed Rakhel’s bare feet from the corner of his eyes. Despite her measured movements, her hennaed toes nervously clenched and unclenched the red wool of the rug.

Yes
, he thought to himself.
She will do
.

Asher nodded at Ibrahim. Ibrahim smiled in response and shrugged his shoulders. Then Asher looked at his uncle, and the old man looked back without blinking, waiting for Asher to reveal his decision about the match. Asher nodded his head slightly and closed his eyes briefly to convey his approval. His uncle smiled and leaned over to pat Asher’s knee with his hand. Then, he cleared his throat. The bread maker looked directly at the uncle, who smiled again and nodded once. Rakhel had worked her way around the room and approached her father with the final glass of tea remaining on the tray. The bread maker took his glass and saucer and said something beneath his breath to the girl standing before him. She turned slightly so that she might see Asher from the corner of her eyes, and then disappeared behind
the curtains once more. When women’s whispering in the other room ceased, the men proceeded to discuss the dowry items.

The preparations for
a wedding were a celebration in themselves. Mahboubeh remembers those days as the happier ones of her childhood. The house full of women laughing and gossiping, eating and preparing for the feasts. The children, caught up in the merriment, stole from the abundance of sweetmeats and delicacies, a conspiracy overlooked by the adults. So much noise in the gardens, in the rooms, for a moment Mahboubeh felt a sense of belonging.

BOOK: The Girl from the Garden
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