The Blood of Flowers, Page 2

  “We need some water,” my mother said, so I grabbed a clay jug and walked toward the well. On my way, I ran into Ibrahim the dye maker, who gave me a peculiar look.

  “Go home,” he said to me. “Your mother needs you.”

  I was surprised. “But she just told me to fetch water,” I said.

  “No matter,” he replied. “Tell her I told you to go back.”

  I walked home as quickly as I could, the vessel banging against my knees. As I approached our house, I spotted four men bearing a limp bundle between them. Perhaps there had been an accident in the fields. From time to time, my father brought back stories about how a man got injured by a threshing tool, suffered a kick from a mule, or returned bloodied from a fight. I knew he’d tell us what had happened over tea.

  The men moved awkwardly because of their burden. The man’s face was hidden, cradled on one of their shoulders. I said a prayer for his quick recovery, for it was hard on a family when a man was too ill to work. As the group approached, I noticed that the victim’s turban was wrapped much like my father’s. But that didn’t mean anything, I told myself quickly. Many men wrapped their turbans in a similar way.

  The front bearers got out of step for a moment, and they almost lost hold of the man. His head lolled as though it were barely attached to his body, and his limbs had no life in them. I dropped the clay vessel, which shattered around my feet.

  “Bibi,” I whimpered. “Help!”

  My mother came outside, brushing flour from her clothes. When she saw my father, she uttered a piercing wail. Women who lived nearby streamed out of their houses and surrounded her like a net while she tore the air with her sorrow. As she writhed and jumped, they caught her gently, holding her and stroking the hair away from her face.

  The men brought my father inside and laid him on a bedroll. His skin was a sickly yellow color, and a line of saliva slid out of the corner of his mouth. My mother put her fingers near his nostrils.

  “Praise be to God, he’s still breathing!” she said.

  Naghee, who worked with my father in the fields, didn’t know where to look as he told us what had happened. “He seemed tired, but he was fine until this afternoon,” he said. “Suddenly he grabbed his head and fell to the ground, gasping for air. After that, he didn’t stir.”

  “May God spare your husband!” said a man I didn’t recognize. When they had done all they could to make him comfortable, they left, murmuring prayers for good health.

  My mother’s brow was furrowed as she removed my father’s cotton shoes, straightened his tunic, and arranged the pillow under his head. She felt his hands and forehead and declared his temperature normal, but told me to fetch a blanket and cover him to keep him warm.

  The news about my father spread quickly, and our friends began arriving to help. Kolsoom brought the water she had collected from a spring near a saint’s shrine that was known for its healing powers. Ibrahim took up a position in the courtyard and began reciting the Qur’an. Goli came by, her boy asleep in her arms, with hot bread and stewed lentils. I brewed tea to keep the warmth in everyone’s body. I knelt near my father and watched his face, praying for a flutter of his eyelids, even a grimace—anything that would assure me life remained in his body.

  Rabi’i, the village physician, arrived after night had fallen with cloth bags full of herbs slung on each shoulder. He laid them near the door and knelt to examine my father by the light of the oil lamp, which flickered brokenly. His eyes narrowed as he peered closely at my father’s face. “I need more light,” he said.

  I borrowed two oil lamps from neighbors and placed them near the bedroll. The physician lifted my father’s head and carefully unwound his white turban. His head looked heavy and swollen. In the light, his face was the color of ash, and his thick hair, which was flecked with gray, looked stiff and ashen, too.

  Rabi’i touched my father’s wrists and neck, and when he did not find what he was looking for, he laid his ear against my father’s chest. At that moment, Kolsoom asked my mother in a whisper if she would like more tea. The physician lifted his head and asked everyone to be silent, and after listening again, he arose with a grave face and announced, “His heart beats, but only faintly.”

  “Ali, prince among men, give strength to my husband!” my mother cried.

  Rabi’i collected his bags and removed bunches of herbs, explaining to Kolsoom how to brew them into a heart-enlivening medicine. He also promised to return the next morning to check on my father. “May God rain His blessings on you!” he said as he took his leave. Kolsoom began stripping the herbs off their stalks and throwing them into a pot, adding the water my mother had boiled.

  As Rabi’i left, he stopped to talk with Ibrahim, who was still in the courtyard. “Don’t halt your praying,” he warned, and then I heard him whisper the words “God may gather him tonight.”

  I tasted something like rust on my tongue. Seeking my mother, I rushed into her arms and we held each other for a moment, our eyes mirrors of sorrow.

  My father began to make wheezing sounds. His mouth was still slack, his lips slightly parted, and his breath rasped like dead leaves tossed by the wind. My mother rushed away from the stove, her fingers green from the herbs. She leaned over my father and cried, “Voy, my beloved! Voy!”

  Kolsoom hurried over to peer at my father and then led my mother back to the stove, for there was nothing to be done. “Let us finish this medicine to help him,” said Kolsoom, whose ever-bright eyes and pomegranate cheeks testified to her powers as an herbalist.

  When the herbs had been boiled and cooled, Kolsoom poured the liquid into a shallow bowl and brought it to my father’s side. While my mother raised his head, Kolsoom gently spooned the medicine into his mouth. Most of it spilled over his lips, soiling the bedroll. On the next try, she got the medicine into his mouth, but my father sputtered, choked, and for a moment appeared to stop breathing.

  Kolsoom, who was usually so calm, put down the bowl with shaking hands and met my mother’s eyes. “We must wait until his eyes open before we try again,” she advised.

  My mother’s head scarf was askew, but she didn’t notice. “He needs his medicine,” she said weakly, but Kolsoom told her that he needed his breath more.

  Ibrahim’s voice was starting to sound hoarse, and Kolsoom asked me to attend to him. I poured some hot tea and served it to him with dates in the courtyard. He thanked me with his eyes but never stopped his reciting, as if the power of his words could keep my father alive.

  On the way back into the room, I bumped against my father’s walking stick, which was hanging on a hook near the door to the courtyard. I remembered how on our last walk, he had taken me to see a carving of an ancient goddess that was hidden behind a waterfall. We had inched our way along a ledge until we found the carving under the flow of water. The goddess wore a tall crown that seemed to be filled with clouds. Her shapely bosom was covered by a thin drapery, and she wore a necklace of large stones. You could not see her feet; her clothing seemed to swirl into waves and streams. She stretched out her powerful arms, as big as any man’s, which looked as if they were conjuring the waterfall at will.

  My father had been tired that day, but he had marched up the steep trails to the waterfall, panting, to show me that wondrous sight. His breath sounded even more labored now; it crackled as it left his body. His hands were beginning to move, too, like small, restless mice. They crawled up his chest and scratched at his tunic. His long fingers were brown from working in the fields, and there was a line of dirt under the nails that he would have removed before entering the house, had he been well.

  “I promise to devote myself to tending to him, if only You will leave him with us,” I whispered to God. “I’ll say my prayers every day, and I will never complain about how hungry I am during the fasting month of Ramazan, even silently.”

  My father began clutching at the air, as if he were fighting his illness with the only part of his body that still had vigor. Kolsoom joined us by th
e bedroll and led us in prayers, while we watched my father’s hands and listened to his anguished breath. I told my mother how tired he had seemed during our walk in the mountains, and asked if it had weakened him. She put her hands on either side of my face and replied, “Light of my eyes, it probably gave him strength.”

  In the blackest hour of the night, my father’s breathing quieted and his hands stopped doing battle. As my mother arranged the blanket over him, her face looked calmer.

  “He will get some rest now,” she said with satisfaction.

  I went into the courtyard, which adjoined our neighbor’s house, to bring more tea to Ibrahim. He had moved to a cushion near my turquoise carpet, which was unfinished on my loom. My mother had recently sold the carpet to a traveling silk merchant named Hassan, who was planning to return later to claim it. But the source of the turquoise dye that had pleased Hassan’s eyes was still a tender subject between me and my father, and my face flushed with shame when I remembered how my visit alone to Ibrahim’s dye house had troubled him.

  I returned to the vigil at my father’s side. Perhaps this terrible night was nearly over, and daylight would bring a joyful surprise, like the sight of my father’s eyes opening, or of him being able to swallow his medicine. And then, one day when he was better, we would take another walk in the mountains and sing together. Nothing would be sweeter to me than hearing him sing out of tune.

  Toward morning, with no other sound than Ibrahim’s river of prayers, I felt my eyelids grow heavy. I don’t know how much time passed before I awoke, observed that my father’s face was still calm, then fell asleep again. At dawn, I was comforted by the sound of sparrows breaking the silence with their noisy calls. They sounded like the birds we had heard on our walk, and I began dreaming about how we had stopped to watch them gather twigs for their nests.

  A wheeled cart creaked outside, and I awoke with a start. People were beginning to emerge from their homes to begin their chores at the well, in the mountains, or in the fields. Ibrahim was still saying prayers, but his voice was dry and hoarse. My mother was lighting an oil lamp, which she placed near the bedroll. My father had not moved since he had fallen asleep. She peered at his face and placed her fingers under his nostrils to feel his breath. They lingered there, trembling, before they drifted down to his slack mouth. Still searching, they returned to his nose and hovered. I watched my mother’s face, awaiting the contented expression that would tell me she had found his breath. My mother did not look at me. In the silence, she threw back her head and uttered a terrible wail. Ibrahim’s prayers ceased; he rushed to my father’s side and checked his breath in the same way before dropping to a squat and cradling his head in his hands.

  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.