The Girl from the Garden (3 page)

Now, waiting in the empty alley, Rakhel begins to
worry that Naneh Adah might not come. Just as she peers from the corner of the building to look into the street once more, she feels the midwife’s strong fingers clutch her shoulder. She turns around quickly and Naneh Adah pulls aside the ruband covering her own face. “Did anyone see you, child?”

“No, I was careful.”

“Take this.” The old woman passes a piece of folded paper into the girl’s hand. “It is writing from The Book, the passage when G-d plants Yousseff in Rakhel’s womb so that she wins favor with her husband. Dissolve this piece of paper in water and drink the water. The next morning, bathe yourself and perfume your body, but don’t allow your husband to sleep with you. Just stay close to him so that he can smell you. Hover about him like a moth to a candle flame. For a night. Cat and mouse. You understand?” Rakhel nods her head yes. “After that, make certain he lays with you each night, for a week’s time. He is young, do what you know to lure him.” Rakhel looks down at her feet, blushing. Naneh Adeh takes her chin and raises Rakhel’s head so that she is looking into the girl’s eyes. “Come, daughter, you are no longer a child, you have been a wife for a few years now. No shame in any of this, forget that nonsense and think of it as a grave task, one that you must master, for your own sake. But follow my instructions as I’ve said them, so that your endeavors are met with success.” Rakhel takes the old woman’s hands in her own and brings them to her lips. “Enough, child. It is not I, but G-d who helps you,” Naneh Adah says as she turns the girl by the shoulders and pushes her back out
into the main street. “And may I not see you at the miqveh for nine months.”

Rakhel turns back to say good-bye, but the old woman already hobbles with haste down the alleyway, her black chador taking the wind so that it billows out behind her. Rakhel watches her for a moment, then walks into the empty streets toward home. The hammam proprietor still sleeps in his chair. A fly hovers close to his mouth, and settles on his chin. Rakhel passes him slowly. She does not need to hurry. The town men retire, still, in the curtained rooms of their homes, or in comfortable corners of their shops, or beneath some shade to rest through the heat of the afternoon. She listens to the hollow sound of her own footsteps against the cobblestones. She clasps the folded paper in one hand and traces with her finger the cracks along the high walls that enclose the mahalleh homes. Then she stops to look at the buildings crowding the narrow street. She feels the breeze on her cheeks and realizes that she forgot to cover her face, but no one is there to see her, to ask her what business a young woman has to be walking at this hour of the day, unchaperoned, with her face revealed. She closes her eyes and turns her face to the sun. She hears the chatter of children, their laughter rising from the
andaruni
of one of the homes. A woman quietly sings a folk love song from some hidden garden. Rakhel listens to the sound of caged birds, the coo of doves, finches chirping, a yellow canary, mad with song, longing for flight.

T
he
finches clamor in the yard, darting
in and out of a rosebush. Mahboubeh rises from the table and looks out of the window. It must be late afternoon, now. The scattered leaves in the grass mean autumn. She has lost something. Something has been misplaced. She turns and begins opening the kitchen drawers. Spoons, forks, matches. She opens cabinets. She looks behind boxes of dried goods, bags of rice. A silver tray. Perhaps. This silver tray. She reaches for it and holds it in her hands. She looks at it for a while, until the dusk settles, and the crickets begin, and the hum of the refrigerator
lulls her into a wakeful dream, where she finds herself sitting in the corner of her father’s room again, a child of no more than five. Ibrahim finishes his dinner and nods at her. Mahboubeh takes his silver tray, removes the dishes, sits on the floor, and cleans the tray with her skirt. He rises heavily from his place and leaves the room wordlessly. The refrigerator clicks off and the silence places Mahboubeh back in the kitchen once more, though it is dark now. Her hands, oblivious to the passage of time, hold the hem of her skirt and polish the silver tray. She switches on the light.

The reflection of her face in the tray, that has changed. But the tray itself . . . It is a substantial thing, certain in its weight, concrete in its form. She served her father tea, warm bread in this tray. It held the glass, the crumbs, it carried the print of his thumb. She holds this in her hands. She looks again at her reflection.
Nothing remains,
she thinks,
nothing is left behind.

She carries so much within her, the streets of her childhood, the garden of that andaruni, the sycamore trees, the shallow pool and its goldfish, the street peddlers’ songs, the bazaars, the caged birds, the beggars, the shahs, the revolution, the fear, the hope, and now the crowding of this other place, Los Angeles.

She remembers that other garden, in that home, in Kermanshah. Mahboubeh looks out of the window at the shadows in her garden. This is her home, now. It has been home for years. She turns off the kitchen lights and walks to her bedroom.

Mahboubeh lies in bed, in the cold darkness, and remembers a story she read in college, of Odysseus, lost at sea. He chances upon an island, and the goddess of that island entices him, and holds him while season after season passes, save that there are no changes, no shifts in the arc of the sun or the color of the leaves, so that Odysseus forgets time, and the ocean, and the beckoning of that land he left somewhere behind him, and the one that calls him to her shores, that place where in the recesses of his mind he knows as home, but cannot remember anything more of than a few scattered memories, the scent of her earth, a certain tree. And one sunny day, after another, after another, that other place, the one ascribed home, becomes more and more distant, until he forgets all about it save on a dawn here or there, when he awakens in proximity to his dream as a dog yaps outside his window and he hears, distinctly, from the warmth of his bed, the tired shuffle of a servant’s feet as she comes in with the kindling and a pail of water. But as soon as he tries to hold, for a moment, the sensation so that he can say
yes, I recall that place, it is also who I have been, other than who I am now,
it dissipates and he loses all traces of the past. And this loss is so shocking, the pain of it so acute, that he allows himself to forget again, and he rises from his bed and looks at the sun, as he knows it, and the cloudless skies, and the strange blossoms, no longer spectacular, as they know no death.

This place is a loneliness named Los Angeles
, Mahboubeh thinks.
Los Angeles is not home.
It is the place that erases all memory of the past
. Though home itself is no longer anything
more than a brief outline for her, a sketch done by the hand of a child. A certain tree. The unlikely orange of dusk. The proportions of the self too large in relation to the house in the background, the birds, black marks in a white sky, undecipherable pigeons or sparrows or crows, the rest a blank space.

Mahboubeh remembers that garden, in that other home, in Kermanshah. It belonged to two brothers . . . She closes her eyes and falls asleep.

Rakhel pulls back
the
curtains of the window facing the garden to look at the dark sky from the warmth of her bed. Her ankles rest on the windowsill, her toes press against the cool glass. A rooster crows, then another. The sky above is still dark when the first note of the muezzin’s song rises from the minarets to announce the morning.
Allah hu Akbar
.

She imagines the town awakening. The silent motions of believers, kneeling in prayer. The rustle of bedclothes as children stir in their sleep, the pouring of water into iron kettles, the crackling of fires, the tired shuffle of the feet of women walking across kitchen floors. The muezzin’s song ends.
La ilaha illallah
ripples the air, the rings growing wider and more distant and then a moment bereft of sound, until the silence is finally punctuated by birdsong.

She hears the approach of a street peddler, his song about the salt he sells growing louder and louder, “
namakee, ai, namakee
. . .” until he must be right outside of their
estate, behind the high walls in the narrow cobblestoned street. He stops singing and Rakhel imagines him standing in the middle of the mahalleh, placing his heavy burlap bag down, wiping the sweat off his brow with the sleeve of his torn
qaba,
considering the closed doors surrounding him, sighing and picking up his burden and his song once more.

Soon the men will open the creaking doors of their homes,
Rakhel thinks. She imagines them stepping into the street, securely closing the doors behind them, straightening their shoulders and taking the first public step of their day
.
And soon, the stillness of the morning will give way to the cacophony of exchanged greetings, news of the day, the transactions of business. The streets will be full of men and pack animals, braying and yelling. From the andaruni she will hear these sounds rise into the air and merge, now and then pierced by a whistle or a voice raised in anger, or another passing street peddler, singing of the salt he sells, or of his metal pots, or of his coal, or his needles, his pins, his thread.

When she wakes again, it is near noon. Someone knocks at her bedroom door. Rakhel does not respond. She watches the door, then the crack of light as Khorsheed pushes it ajar with her foot. Khorsheed balances a silver tray with both hands, walks in the room, and nudges the door closed with her hips. Rakhel turns to face the wall and pulls the blanket over her head. “Dada?” Khorsheed calls softly. Rakhel does not respond. “Dada?” she calls again. Khorsheed walks to the bed, places the tray down on the floor beside it, then jumps on the bed and reaches to pull the cover
off of Rakhel. “Have you gone hard of hearing?” she asks.

“You shouldn’t jump. Everyone knows it’s not good for a pregnant woman to jump,” Rakhel says. She keeps her face to the wall and continues to look through the black strands of her hair at the tiny cracks in the plaster.

“It’s your woman’s time again, isn’t it?” Khorsheed grabs Rakhel’s shoulders and struggles to turn her so that she could see her face. Rakhel resists silently. She is stronger than the younger girl. Khorsheed reaches under the covers, finds the softness of Rakhel’s belly, plunges her fingers into the flesh.

“Stop.” Rakhel wriggles and tries not to laugh. “I’m impure to your touch. Stop it. You’ll get hurt, stop. Stop!” she yells. Khorsheed pulls her hands away and caresses Rakhel’s face.

“Your eyes are so swollen,” Khorsheed says as she brushes the hair away from Rakhel’s face. “Crying really makes you very ugly. Naneh Zolekhah has been asking about you. I told her it was probably your woman’s time.” Rakhel continues to stare at the wall. “Have you eaten at all today? Come sit down and eat with me. I’m famished. Can’t eat enough.” Khorsheed edges her way off the bed and sits cross-legged on the rug. She takes a piece of rock sugar and strains to break a piece. “Come break this for me, your rough peasant hands are much stronger than my delicate ones.” Rakhel grunts a response. “Hands like a Kurdish woman,” Khorsheed continues, “hands made to milk goats.” Rakhel sits up slowly. She throws the covers back and looks at her own bare
feet, then she studies her hands resting on her shins. She turns and slides off of the bed onto the rug beside Khorsheed and clutches her knees to her chest. “Here.” Khorsheed holds out the chunk of gold sugar candy. “Use that
pahlivan
strength of yours to break me a piece.” Rakhel takes the sugar and without much effort, breaks it into five pieces. “Rostam,” Khorsheed laughs, “do you caress your husband with those big, strong hands?” Rakhel hurls the sugar pieces at the wall. They shatter and fall to the rug. Khorsheed gets up heavily, sighs, and gathers the pieces. Rakhel watches her back, the curves of Khorsheed’s wide hips beneath her
shaliteh
.

Khorsheed blows on the sugar pieces to remove the dirt and places them back into the bowl. “I was trying to make you laugh.” She drops one in her own chai. “Shall I put one in your cup?” She places another piece in her mouth. “Do you want a little cheese and bread?” Khorsheed asks.

Rakhel looks at Khorsheed’s face, her full cheeks and bright eyes, like the women in all those songs, eyes big like saucers, lips small like blossoms. Rakhel’s face begins to move without her consent. Her chin trembles. She fails to keep her lips from contorting. Finally, her face twists and breaks. “Why?” She pushes the word out with a sob. She shakes her head from side to side with her eyes closed. “Why, why, why?” She places her open palms over her face and rocks back and forth. Khorsheed tries to catch Rakhel in the embrace of her arms, but the minute she touches her shoulder, Rakhel screams, throws her head back and stares wildly at the ceiling, then falls forward, pounding her fists
against the rug and hitting her forehead repeatedly against the floor. “He will get rid of me,” Rakhel says.

“No. No, he won’t. Please don’t hurt yourself, Dada, please. Dada, please. He won’t, he won’t get rid of you.”

“Yes. He’ll divorce me. He’ll send me back. And who will take me then, my mother dead, my father an old man? Or will I be pushed into the corners of this house. Like a servant? A burden to him? Grateful for each crumb of bread I eat?”

“Dada, please, please stop crying.” Khorsheed clutches and wrings her hands in anguish. “Please, Dada, please. He won’t send you away, please. You’ll get pregnant soon, you’ll see. Sometimes it takes time, sometimes it takes a long time.”

When she is sad, she is no longer so pretty,
Rakhel thinks. In fact, she looks like that toothless old woman that comes around selling little bundles of herbs she grows in her garden. Rakhel laughs, a short burst that sounds like a choked sob. She looks at Khorsheed’s face again and breaks into uncontrollable laughter. Khorsheed stares back in bewilderment. After a moment, Khorsheed starts laughing herself, and the two girls laugh until they lose their breaths, their faces still wet with tears.

The heat of the afternoon pushes against the windows, the light filtering through the green leaves, their shadows dancing against the walls. The girls lie on the rug, their languid limbs and black hair spread across the blue patterns,
their smooth cheeks pressed against their folded arms. They are both exhausted and in the opiate of the warm afternoon, they drowse to sleep. “Khorsheed?” Rakhel whispers, her eyelids heavy.

“What is it, Dada?”

“Khorsheed . . . Naneh Adeh says I may be possessed by a djinn.”

“A djinn?” Khorsheed asks.

“Yes. Do you think I am possessed by a djinn?”

“Why, have you seen it?” Khorsheed asks.

“Sometimes, at night, when I am asleep beside Asher, I think I feel her.”

“You feel her?”

“I feel something deep inside me, and a weight on top of my body, like Asher, except she holds every part of me and when I move, she melts my flesh.”

“Your flesh melts?”

“It starts in the middle of my body, like waves, moves out, and I become a river, rushing out to the sea, then I rise like vapor and pour down like a summer rain.”

“How do you know it’s a djinn?”

“What else can it be but a djinn?” Rakhel asks. “When I feel her steal into my sleep, I know. And I could wake up, if I wanted to, but I don’t.”

Outside it rains. Shepherd boys huddle with their sheep. Cats run underneath fences, crouch low to enter stables where mules snort and toss their heads, their eyes rolling
in their faces. Old women run to gather white sheets that blow on the lines. Men rush toward the shelter of shops and homes.

The rain patters
on the roof of the house and against the windowpanes. Mahboubeh wakes with a start. She listens to the sound of water running through the rain gutters of her home. She closes her eyes and remembers the water in the open channels alongside the streets in the old mahalleh. For a brief moment, she sees clearly twigs and leaves caught in the currents of an open channel. A red ribbon from a girl’s braid snakes in and out of the eddies.

Mahboubeh is late for school. Dada did not let her sleep last night until she cleared the dinner plates, washed the silver, swept the floor of the kitchen. Mahboubeh stands in the street outside the closed gate of her school and stares at the rushing water. She holds an orange sycamore leaf in her hand, speckled gold, brown, the edges remembering green. She drops it into the channel and watches it catch in a current, swirl, disappear beneath the water, reappear and float fast away. At this hour, the math teacher is delivering her lesson. She will ask Mahboubeh to stand before the class, and recite the times table. If Mahboubeh makes an error, or forgets, the teacher will shame her, perhaps even switch the palms of her hands. “But I never forget,” she says to soothe herself. A car drives down the street. Mahboubeh opens her eyes. The nightstand. The clock. The electric green of num
bers, 6:37 in the morning. The minute changes. She closes her eyes again. She is not a schoolgirl, anymore. She is an old woman.