The Septembers of Shiraz (15 page)

A
t the breakfast table Shirin rests her sleepy head on one hand and plays with her omelet with the other. The radio beeps twice to announce the new hour—7:00
A.M
. “This is Tehran, the voice of the Islamic Republic of Iran…” They're running late this morning. Farnaz knows this as she cups the eggshells in her hand, piece by piece, to throw them in the trash, drops the frying pan in the sink, and returns the omelet ingredients to their respective homes. She knows it but her body refuses to move any faster. She doesn't tell Shirin to hurry up either. The two of them are defying time this morning, ignoring the inevitable duties that unfurl with its passage: the drive to school, the sad good-bye, the unending daylight hours, the empty dusk, the goodnight kiss, and the knowledge that another day will come and pass like this, without Isaac.

They make it to school, some fifteen minutes late, and as she drives to the antiques shop to pick up the miniature,
Farnaz thinks of the punishment Shirin will no doubt receive for being late—a sermon about responsibility in front of the rest of the class, or extra homework for one week—small humiliations accumulating in her young life. Why then had she not urged herself and her daughter to move faster, leave earlier? She doesn't know why. All she knows is that she is tired. And what's another humiliation, be it for herself or for her daughter, when there are already so many?

The art dealer, Shahriar Beheshti, with his silver mustache and wool cardigan, greets her warmly. “I was fond of Javad,” he says. “He was a good friend. I was once very ill and he came to the hospital every day to see me, with pots of soup and rice and kebab. I'll never forget that. He was strange, that way. I would trust him with my life but not with a dollar!”

“Yes, I know what you mean.” Farnaz laughs.

“Chances are, Amin-khanoum, you'll never see your ten thousand.”

“I know that, too. And believe me, it wouldn't be the first time…May I take a look around? You have such beautiful things.”

“Please!”

She surveys the shop—the pregnant belly of a sitar leaning against the round metallic face of a medieval shield, carpets and kilims hung along the walls, the footprints of their previous owners, now dead and buried, imprinted in their memory. There are French china sets, and Indian silk pillows. Silver tables engraved with figures of Cyrus or Darius stand in one corner, while in the other, in a glass-enclosed
shelf, are Achaemenian jewels—a gold pendant shaped like a lion, an armlet with griffins—prized relics of an age long gone but to which people cling like proud but destitute heirs to a dead tycoon.

“What riches!” she says. “How do you sleep at night, knowing all this is in your shop?”

“I don't. I leave late at night and come in early in the morning, praying in the interim that my metal gates are doing what they were installed to do. I am a slave to my relics, you see? Plus I worry that the government will come one day and confiscate everything. And I would have to let them take it all.”

“This one is incredible. How old is it?” She points at a gourd-shaped jug, verses from the Koran snaking around its neck.

“That dates to the period immediately preceding the Mongol invasion. Sometime between 1200 and 1215.”

She considers the sapphire stripes along the white ceramic, the cracks of centuries running like spider veins through the jug's arm. “My husband has a Mongol sword with a gold-leafed handle; it's one of his favorite pieces.”

“How is your husband? Javad had told me he was in prison.”

“I've had no word from him.”

“
Inshallah—God
willing, he will come out safe and sound.”

“
Inshallah.
Which brings me to the reason for my visit. Javad had said that you would hold a miniature aside for me, in case the government asks me what I bought with
the money. You know, they've already come to search our house once. I don't know how much they are monitoring my activities.”

“Yes, that Javad! He is distributing my antiques like halvah! Let me get it for you.” He disappears in the back of the shop, where dust particles float in the watery light of late morning. She watches their dance, their random ascent in space, imagines their indifferent landing on the objects below.

He emerges from behind the curtain with a large sheet that he slides on the counter. It is a miniature painting of a palace, one prince slaying another before the eyes of many viziers and courtiers, the scene drenched in sparkling reds, blues, and greens, with gold woven throughout.

“Is it from a book?”

“Yes. It's a leaf from the Tahmasbi
Shahnameh
, Ferdowsi's
Book of Kings.
You know, so many versions of the book have appeared since the tenth century, when Ferdowsi wrote it. This one was compiled in the sixteenth century for the shah Tahmasb. The book originally had more than two hundred and fifty miniatures, all painted by the best artists of the era—Sultan Muhammad, Mirza Ali, Abdolsamad, and the like.”

“My son used to perform scenes from the
Shahnameh
for his school play,” she says, remembering Parviz practicing his lines, sometimes even answering her in couplets to make her laugh.

“Now schools don't teach the
Shahnameh
anymore. But we should all continue to read it, so we can understand how great our nation once was.”

Farnaz looks around the shop. A woman is examining a china set, glancing in their direction every few seconds.

“Be careful,” Farnaz whispers. “You never know who's listening.”

“Yes, I should be more careful,” he says in a low voice. “But I am so tired, Amin-khanoum. Sometimes I just want to scream.”

Farnaz nods. She is all too familiar with this illicit rage threatening to unleash itself at the most inappropriate times. “Tell me more about the miniature,” she says. “Why was this page torn out?”

“That's the sad part of the story. In 1962 an American collector bought it, and he had the audacity to rip pages out of the book and sell them individually. He sold some to a museum in New York, others to private collectors.”

She looks at the orphaned leaf, its counterparts spread around the globe, each adopted by one museum or another, or locked in the cabinet of a European or American collector who picks it up once in a while and looks at it in his dim study, his acquisition filling him with pride not unlike that of a nineteenth-century colonialist in search of a piece of the Orient. “Do you think there is any chance that all the pages will be regrouped one day?”

“No. Many were damaged while in the American's care. As for the rest? What can I say? I suppose anything is possible.”

The painting—the thin, precise lines, the red and gold of a courtesan's robe, the indigo mosaic of the floor, where the slain king sits, his sword and shield by his side—
becomes for her the embodiment of loss, and she is pleased to have it, if only for a short time. She will place it in her armoire, between the folded shirts and Isaac's ties, and all the things that used to be.

“You are taken with it,” the art dealer says.

“Yes. Very much so.”

He walks to the back, pours a glass of tea. Farnaz notices that the other woman has left the shop.

“Some tea, Amin-khanoum?”

“No, thank you. I should get going.”

“All right. Just promise me you'll bring back the painting before you leave the country,” he says. “Because I know that you, too, will one day leave.”

“Of course I'll bring it back! But why do you think I will leave?”

“You could call it sixth sense. I call it statistics.”

“You may be right. In any case, thank you. You are very generous for allowing me to keep it.”

He stands in the back, the sun on his face, the dust particles floating about him. “No. I am not generous,” he says. “I am tired. One less object in the shop is one less worry for me. And I can sense that you will take good care of it.”

“I will.”

 

W
HEN SHE ARRIVES
home Isaac's mother is there, waiting for her. “Afshin-khanoum, how are you? Is everything all right?”

“What shall I say, my Farnaz? Hakim is not well. The doctors say he has only a few months to live.” She wipes her eyes with a wrinkled tissue.

“His kidneys?”

“Yes. He is so sick, you wouldn't believe your eyes if you saw him. He is all yellow, and his legs are as swollen as tires.” She looks out, shaking her head. “I don't know if I can stand it—to lose both my husband and my son.”

“Isaac is not lost,” Farnaz says, without quite believing it.

The old woman nods and wipes her eyes.

“This must be so difficult for you, Afshin-khanoum. I wish I could be more helpful to you. But I've been so preoccupied…”

“I know,
aziz
! I expect nothing more from you. It's my own daughter I'm upset with. When I called her to tell her about her father, she told me she couldn't talk because she was in the middle of some mess about a bag. A bag, Farnaz! That's what's preoccupying her. Apparently she had given several thousand dollars to some woman who was traveling to Paris so she would buy her a new bag. Well, the woman took the cash and never sent the bag…”

Habibeh brings out a tray of tea and pastries. “Shall I pick up Shirin from school today, khanoum?”

“Yes, Habibeh, would you?” Knowing that Habibeh was not the one to have stolen the ring has restored some of her faith in their relationship. She feels guilty, also, for having suspected her in the first place. Since their argument, they have addressed one another with the caution of a bare foot avoiding shards of glass. They have reached a cold truce,
each one offering the other a silent apology, but not much more.

The old woman goes on. “I said to Shahla, ‘What do you need a new designer bag for? So you can carry it with your Islamic uniform? How can you even think of bags when your father is so sick and your brother is in prison?' You know what she said to me, Farnaz-jan? She said, ‘Am I supposed to sit around and mope all day? There is nothing I can do about any of it, is there? Shall I pretend I'm dead, like the rest of you?' This is what she said to me, my own daughter.” She strokes the sofa, along the scars. “Look at me, complaining to you, when you have so much trouble yourself. Even your sofas have been torn up. I'm sorry. But I have no one to talk to. Sometimes entire days, even weeks go by before I realize I haven't said a word to anyone.”

“Don't be sorry. I'm glad you came to see me.”

“I wasted my life, Farnaz-jan. I have a husband who never loved me but whom I'll miss anyway because he's all I've ever known. I have a swindling son and an egotistical daughter. My only redemption is having brought Isaac into this world. And now even he has been taken from me…” She looks out the window again, her eyes narrow under the weight of her lids. She slowly dozes off, her head tilted back, her mouth hanging open, as though she were gasping for air.

In the quiet of the afternoon Farnaz watches Isaac's mother and considers the possibility of Baba-Hakim's death. To bury him without Isaac seems unthinkable. She feels sorrow, not for the old man but for Isaac, and she tells herself
that should the time come, she will arrange the burial, and pay for it, and pray with the rabbi after the father's passing—as Isaac would.

When Shirin and Habibeh arrive the old woman's face lights up. “Come here, Shirin-jan, I haven't seen you in so long!” Shirin walks over and lets herself be kissed and coddled.

“She is becoming so pretty!” the old woman says, examining Shirin's face. “There is so much of Isaac in this child.” She looks again, straight into the child's eyes. “Yes! It's the eyes. They have that look that Isaac had as a boy. How he upset me, with that look. I never knew what he wanted, only that whatever it was, I wasn't giving it to him.”

E
verytime she looks at her reflection in the oval mirror, Shirin sees another reflection behind it—her father's raincoat hanging on the coatrack by the entrance. The coat has been there all winter, and she wonders if Habibeh and her mother also see it each time they check themselves in the mirror on their way out of the house. The other hooks have remained empty; no one dares, it seems, to hang anything next to that limp coat.

She tucks the loose strands of hair under her scarf. She feels ugly in her scarf and uniform. Why should a person be forced to go out into the world covered up in dark colors—gray, navy, black—as if prepared for eventual mourning? We all know what the end is, the clothes were saying. So why pretend?

 

A
FEW CHILDREN
are playing soccer on the other side of the courtyard, banging the ball into a metal door every few minutes.

“I knew this would happen,” Leila says. “Since I questioned them about the files they won't let me play.” She watches the game for some time. After a while she says, “I think it was you.”

“What?”

“I think
you
took the files. Did you? Please tell me the truth.” She looks at Shirin with pleading eyes. “This morning my father told us that because of the missing files he has been expelled from the Revolutionary Guards. He was so angry that he asked me for a list of all my friends. He's going to investigate himself.”

My time is up, Shirin thinks. In the hands of Leila's father there will be a quick conclusion. She feels dizzy and out of breath. Her hand in her pocket searches for something to hold on to. She grabs the three cookies wrapped in a tissue and crushes them inside the pocket.

“Don't worry,” Leila says. “I left your name off the list.”

Shirin looks down, at her feet nailed to the ground. “Thank you,” she says without looking up.

Leila gets up, wipes the dust off her uniform. “I hope I did the right thing. But you were my only real friend. No one came to my house as often as you did. No one had tea and cheese with me, no one offered to carry my mom's fruit crates to the basement. I wouldn't want anything bad to happen to you.” Walking away, she says, “We probably
shouldn't spend so much time together anymore.” She heads to the opposite side of the courtyard, where she stands and watches the soccer game, alone.

I left your name off the list.
Shirin plays with the cookies in her pocket, the crumbs—casualties of another bad day—sticking to her hand. She wonders if Leila's father will have to go back to the morgue and stand, as he did before, on the receiving end of the garbage chute.

In the infirmary she drinks Soheila-khanoum's peppermint tea and looks out onto the courtyard, now deserted. Two flies are gliding on the window, happy, she imagines, to find themselves on the warm side of the glass. When she was younger, she would trap flies inside transparent plastic bags and watch them as they suffocated slowly—over three or four days. Each day she would examine their decline like a scientist, taking note of their diminished movement, their lethargy—their final surrender. Was she now being punished for her brutality? She watches Soheila-khanoum putting away vials of medications in a cabinet and wonders how many small cruelties must accumulate over the years to earn a person a dead daughter. Or a dead father.