Cry of the Peacock: A Novel (24 page)

“I will leave you here," Ezraeel the Avenger said. Having served as Peacock's introduction and escort, he now entrusted her to Djouhar's care, smiled in encouragement, and walked away.

Djouhar led Peacock up to another curtain.

"Inform the Chief Eunuch that Ezraeel's servant has arrived," he commanded one of the eunuchs guarding the curtain. The man disappeared behind the curtain, then returned with the Chief Eunuch. They asked Peacock's name and business, confirmed that she had been introduced by Ezraeel the Jeweler, then allowed her to enter.

"Hear ye, hear ye!" Djouhar screamed at the curtain. "Strangers are entering. Let there be no female in sight."

The curtain opened onto the main harem grounds.

There was a flowered stage—an endless courtyard spotted with dozens of pools, hundreds of fountains, thousands of birds singing in the branches of cypress trees. There were small green hills covered with narcissus and Persian hyacinth and, running across them, hundreds of women and children in colorful robes, rushing playfully in every direction as they escaped the eyes of the intruder who had just been announced. The women were all dressed in ballet skirts, the latest fashion in Nasser-ed-Din Shah's court. He had gone to Paris, attended the opera, and liked the ballerinas' skirts. Returning home, he had brought with him a dozen French seamstresses who sewed the new skirts for his wives and daughters.

Peacock watched the women escaping into their apartments around the field. Even after the court had emptied, she could hear their voices and feel their eyes staring at her through the etched-glass windows of their rooms. She followed the Chief Eunuch toward the Queen's chambers.

They went up a marble staircase onto a balcony with stained-glass doors, where Peacock was received by the Queen's Badji—mistress of the maids. The Badji was an old woman, vigorous and difficult and known for her cruelty. She had come to the harem as a beautiful girl of thirteen, discovered by Fath Ali Shah's eunuchs and brought to him on a year-long temporary contract of marriage. At the end of her contract, when she was discarded from the harem, the Badji had been employed by another wife as her maid. She had stayed on and learned the harem intrigue, protected her own position by destroying other maids, served her mistress by spying for her against the other wives, sneezing when the Shah called on a new find, poisoning enemies, rewarding friends. Three times, when the Shah's queens had borne him sons, the Badji had killed the children by placing in their beds the pillows used by other children infected with measles. She had killed two rival maids by giving them smallpox: she had brought in bathwater from the homes of people with the disease, and poured the water into the healthy maids' bath. In this way, the Badji had established her position within the harem and become more powerful than any wives she served. When Nasser-ed-Din Shah became King, she was assigned to the Queen Qamar-ol-Dowleh; the Queen had married the Shah against her will, under great pressure from the palace, and for years the talk around the harem was that she might try to escape.

“Follow me," the Badji commanded Peacock with open resentment. “Don't stay long."

They entered a room furnished with rugs and heavy drapery, with brocaded cushions and cashmere tablecloths. A huge candelabra of colored crystal hung from the hand-painted ceiling. Underneath it was a table of white and black mosaic, covered entirely with white narcissus.

At one end was a window with long, stained-glass portals. Next to it was a bed with long posts and white chiffon curtains.

The Badji left Peacock next to the table and disappeared from the room. Peacock looked about her, waiting for the Queen.

“Salam-ol-aleikom,"
a voice greeted her from behind the curtains that surrounded the bed. "Come closer and let me see you."

Peacock moved toward the bed. A hand emerged through the layers of chiffon, pushing back the curtain to reveal Qamar-ol-Dowleh, Queen of Persia, Moon of the Empire.

Queen Qamar-ol-Dowleh
was one of Nasser-ed-Din Shah's four official wives. She was twenty years old, stunningly beautiful, her face untouched by rouge or antimony, her figure small and thin and still childish. Her father, a wealthy landowner and tribal khan, commanded great influence and enormous power in his own territory. He had received many offers of marriage for his daughter—then named Leila—since she was a child of six. He had refused a proposal by Nasser-ed-Din Shah's uncle, then governor of Shiraz. He had also rejected an offer by Persia's Grand Mullah—an old man who pledged earthly delights and heavenly salvation if only he could have Leila. The Khan was not swayed by wealth; he wanted his daughter to have a happy marriage.

But the time came when Nasser-ed-Din Shah, always seeking to expand his harem, heard of the Khan's beautiful daughter, and decided he must have the one no one else had been able to reach. He sent messengers to the Khan, asking for Leila's hand in marriage. The Khan refused. Nasser-ed-Din Shah made repeated requests, promised ever-increasing wealth, then lost patience. He wanted Leila, he said, or he would declare war on the Khan's tribe and massacre them.

"You choose," the Khan told Leila when she was sixteen. "If you decide against marriage, we will fight the Shah to the last man."

Leila married Nasser-ed-Din Shah, had her name changed to Qamar-ol-Dowleh, and came to her prison in the harem. She brought her nursemaid, the woman who had raised her since birth, but the Shah fired her and assigned Badji to wait on Qamar-ol-Dowleh instead. Soon after that, he found another wife—Ayeshah—and forgot the girl he had so ardently pursued. He gave Ayeshah the Palace of the Sun, five hundred feet away from the Palace of Roses, and he hardly ever called on Qamar-ol-Dowleh again.

"Welcome,” the Queen said, and smiled at Peacock with infinite sadness. She sat reclining against large white pillows. "Our friend Ezraeel Khan promises you have brought Us great treasures."

Quickly, Peacock knelt before the bed and opened the velvet pouch in which she kept her stones. She laid them in small rows across the satin sheets: rubies and emeralds, green and yellow sapphires, cut diamonds the size of apricot seeds, enormous pearls—the best of Ezraeel the Avenger's collection.

The Queen glanced at the stones, then waved her hand.

"Put them away," she said. "No jewel in this world will help lessen the boredom of my life."

She noticed the yellow patch of cloth attached with a pin to Peacock's shirt. She sat up, suddenly interested, and asked Peacock to lift her veil.

"So you're a Jew, then," she said with childlike excitement. "I don't think I ever saw a Jew before."

She jumped down from her bed, barefoot, and circled around Peacock. She gaped into Peacock's face, touched her hair, the top of her forehead.

"But you have no horns," she said without malice. "I was told Jews have horns—small ones, you know, like the Devil." She began to search for a tail. Then suddenly she looked up, visibly scared, and went pale. The Badji had kept an invisible guard outside the room and was now upon the Queen with a threatening face and disapproving eyes.

"Your Majesty must not leave her bed," she said, taking Qamar-ol-Dowleh's hand and leading her back into the sheets. The Queen obeyed her resentfully, climbed into the bed, and waited for the Badji to leave again. She motioned to Peacock to come closer.

"That woman is always spying on me," she whispered, tears in her voice. "It seems I am pregnant, you see. My first one miscarried. This time Hakim Bashi—the Court's doctor—has confined me to bed."

She swallowed her sadness and forced a smile.

"You must come back," she whispered, hoping the Badji would not hear. "The eunuchs don't like for me to have a friend, but I will ask His Majesty's special permission. Now that I'm pregnant, he will grant my wish."

A thought clouded her eyes. She leaned closer to Peacock.

"Tell me," she asked, "is it true you drink the blood of Muslim children?"

Once a month after her first visit to the harem, Peacock was summoned by Qamar-ol-Dowleh to the Palace of Roses; she was admitted under the pretext of offering jewels to the Queen. She went at first to satisfy Qamar-ol-Dowleh's curiosity about Jews, but after a while she became her only friend. Most of the time she found the Queen alone in her bed, crying and homesick and trapped in her own rage.

"The hardest thing about my predicament," Qamar-ol-Dowleh confided in Peacock, "is knowing it will never change."

Peacock became a familiar sight at the harem. She was allowed to mingle with the other wives—always under the Badji's watchful eyes. She befriended the thousands of eunuchs and chamberlains and pages, the courtiers and spies, the door-listeners and detectives. She came to know the mullahs, professional confessors, and star-readers in permanent residence at the harem. She recognized the mascots and interpreters of dreams, the boys and girls with lucky faces, the sneezers and the food-tasters. Everywhere, Peacock looked for Arash.

She could not ask for him, for the Badji would have killed her if she knew Peacock had come to claim a royal child. She listened for his name in every conversation, but he was never mentioned. She wondered if Tala had changed his name. She learned that Tala lived with Solomon in a mansion in Shemiran, that she had many children of her own, that Solomon the Man had become Nasser-ed-Din Shah's close friend—so much so that the Shah had excused Solomon from having to bow before his own children: Tala's children were of royal blood; Solomon the Man was not. Every other husband in that situation would have had to go through life bowing before his own children from the time they were born.

In the end, Peacock asked Qamar-ol-Dowleh.

"It is hard to tell," the Queen sighed. She was moved by Peacock's tale, eager to help, but she had little power, and even less knowledge about the harem. "I see a thousand children inside these walls. I don't know any of their names."

She saw Peacock's disappointment. She reached over and held her friend's hand.

"But suppose you found him," she echoed Ezraeel the Avenger. "What would you do if ever you found him?"

Nasser-ed-Din Shah
was going to have the celebration of the century. He had been King for fifty years—by far the most powerful of the Qajar kings—and he planned to commemorate the half-century mark with national festivities. He scheduled a nationwide jubilee for the summer of 1896.

All of Persia began to prepare. Governors of every province were requested to come to Tehran in May. Every regiment of warriors and every nomadic cavalry were ordered to march in parade. In his own honor, the Shah exempted all peasants from two years of taxes. He sent home the few young men still enrolled in his army, and promised amnesty for all prisoners.

In Tehran, triumphal arches were erected on every street, shopowners decorated their stores, and the royal kitchen began to feed all the poor. The Shah's eunuchs gave away new clothes to children. Shrines and holy places declared they would house any and all pilgrims. Mullahs were offered cough medicine to clear their throats so they could chant louder in praise of the Shah. Sacred fountains were enlarged to hold greater quantities of holy water, as miracles were predicted to happen on the day of the jubilee. Nasser-ed-Din Shah himself, close to seventy years old, announced he would empty his harem of his thousand temporary wives, only to replace them with new ones.

Peacock went to the palace now on a daily basis. Qamar-ol-Dowleh wanted no part of the celebrations, but the Badji insisted that the Queen must appear at her husband's side on the day of the jubilee. She had called in weavers and seamstresses to prepare a special gown for the Queen, ordered the stables to build a new carriage for the Queen, and summoned Peacock to bring her the greatest stones in the city. In the midst of the frenzy, just when she had stopped looking for Arash, Peacock found her son.

She had left the palace one late afternoon, and was walking slowly through the gates of the Square of the Cannons. She was not in a rush to get home that night; in the spirit of the celebrations, Nasser-ed-Din Shah had lifted the restriction on walking after dark, and allowed anyone to roam the streets freely. At the entrance to the square, Peacock stepped back to allow passage to a regiment of the youth division of the Persian Cossack Brigade. She saw the young boys riding past her in a cloud of dust, and did not move until she thought they had all passed. She started to walk again, but she felt someone looking at her, and turned around. There was a boy, mounted on a horse and wearing a Cossack uniform, staring at the yellow patch on her chador.

In the twilight he appeared pallid and lost, but his eyes were dark and his features pleasing. She thought he was the same age as Arash. She smiled at him. Then suddenly she felt the fear of death tear through her heart. The boy, she realized, was a younger image of Solomon the Man.

She raised a hand and beckoned Arash. He came on his horse, one hand resting on the gun he had not yet learned to use.

"Take a bow," he ordered, and put the tip of his whip on Peacock's shoulder.

Peacock reached for him. Frightened, Arash pulled back.

"Unveil yourself," he commanded, as if to identify the enemy. "Unveil and introduce yourself."

Peacock opened her veil. Arash went limp. His eyes filled with tears. She raised a hand to touch him, there on his knee that trembled against the horse, but in the instant that she moved, he drew his gun and backed away.

"Die!"
he screamed, cursing her for the years of longing and abandonment. "
You die!"

Arash the Rebel
was one year old when he arrived at Nasser-ed-Din Shah's court in Tehran. He had come with Tala and Solomon the Man, exhausted by the protracted journey from Esfahan, trembling with fear and consternation in his white starched shirt and the padded silk jacket Tala had insisted he must wear. He was terrified of Tala, of her tempestuous moods and impossible demands, terrified also of Solomon the Man—this father he had rarely seen before, who had suddenly taken him away from Peacock. During the trip he had ridden alone, in a coach, with only a maid at his side. Then, as throughout the rest of her life, Tala the Qajar refused Solomon closeness with Peacock's son. Arash the Rebel had sat in the carriage with the maid, and watched the endless yellow desert— bands of nomads traveling in caravans with camels and sheep and donkeys, the men dressed in loose white and gray clothes, the women in bright red and yellow skirts, or in black chadors. The journey had taken twice as long as expected: Tala refused to wake up in the dark, when the caravan was supposed to start each day. By the time she got ready to leave, the sun was up, and they had to wait in the tents for sunset. They reached Tehran with their animals sick, and their servants heat-stricken.