The Blood of Flowers

by Anita Amirrezvani

  “What’s this?” he said. I couldn’t reply, as I was fighting my feelings. The musician kept playing. Fereydoon signaled him to stop, but he didn’t notice. Finally Fereydoon said loudly, “Enough! You may go.” The young man played a bit longer before he finally looked up. I noticed a strangely flirtatious smile at the corners of his lips as he thanked his master and departed.

  I felt wretched, as if I had already made a terrible blunder. But rather than being angry, Fereydoon reached over to me and began stroking the top of my hennaed hand. His hands were twice as large as mine, and his skin was the color of brewed tea against my red fingertips. His hand was softer than any I had ever felt before. He lingered over my callused fingertips, smiling as if he liked the way they felt.

  While Fereydoon was looking at my hand, I glanced at his face. He had a thick black mustache and a closely cropped beard that reached all the way to his ears. I could smell tobacco in the vicinity of his lips, which were as red as my tunic. I had never been so close to a man’s face before, except for my father’s, and I must have looked frightened. Fereydoon drew me into his arms and stroked the hair near my face and each of my hands. The warmth of his skin started to make mine glow in return.

  “So,” he said, “this is my little mountain girl from the south, so tough and hard on the outside, yet so buttery underneath! Who would have thought?”

  I wouldn’t have described myself that way, yet it must have been true. After my father’s death, tenderness had seemed an emotion for other people to enjoy.

  “From the day I saw you shed your coverings, I wanted to have you,” he said.

  “And yet, I snapped at you,” I replied, remembering how I had told him to stop looking.

  “As you should have!”

  “Why did you wait until now to ask my family for me?” I asked.

  “You weren’t ready,” he said. “But things had changed when Hayedeh saw you at the hammam.”

  I blushed, and Fereydoon kissed my forehead right underneath the string of hanging pearls. My body flushed. It was a wonder to be the one person who mattered to someone, if only for a moment, more than anyone else.

  I wanted to talk more, but Fereydoon took my hand and led me into a small bedchamber located through a carved wooden door. Light flickered from a few oil lamps placed in niches in the walls. A large bedroll with a pillow big enough for a couple filled most of the room. It was a chamber made for just two things: sleep and love.

  We sat down on the bedroll, and my heart began to beat so fast I could see the silk tunic respond to its thuds. Fereydoon removed Gordiyeh’s precious golden robe, tossing it aside with the casualness of a person accustomed to things of value. Then he gently lifted the tunic over my head. I shivered in the sheer silk undergarment that revealed almost everything. Fereydoon put his hands on my waist for a moment, and their warmth calmed and stilled me. I could feel him waiting for that. When I relaxed, he began caressing the front of my body very, very lightly with just the tips of his fingers, which were hot through the silk.

  I wanted him to continue, but Fereydoon removed the last of my garments rather quickly and gazed upon my naked body, while I tried not to twist away like a worm on a hook. A look of delight filled his eyes. “Breasts as firm as pomegranates, hips like an oasis! Somehow, I always know!”

  I was blushing from his words of praise. “Red roses are blooming on your cheeks,” he said gently. He cast aside his own garments, the precious fabric twisting up like rags. When Fereydoon removed his turban for the first time, I drew in my breath. His hair fell to his shoulders in thick black shining waves. I wanted to touch it, but didn’t dare.

  The wiry hairs against his body looked like velvet patterns on brocade. Though I didn’t look directly at his middle, I glimpsed something that made me think of sheep organs for sale in the meat bazaar: kidney, liver, and tongue.

  When Fereydoon took me in his arms, with nothing between us, I smelled fresh apple-flavored tobacco at his lips and felt the bristly hair on his face and chest. His body felt deliciously warm against mine. I was so innocent I didn’t know what to expect next. I had seen animals rutting in the fields, and I knew men and women did something similar. But when Fereydoon joined his body to mine, I held on to the bedroll to brace myself, for it seemed violent. As his passion flowered, I knew it was inspired by me, but I felt far away from it. I was indeed like a princess frozen in a painting, watching Fereydoon as he devoured me. When he ascended the seven heavens and shouted with joy, I observed him curiously through a half-open eye. After he fell asleep, I felt thwarted and confused. Why was what we were doing the source of so many jokes among the women of my village and, no doubt, among the men? Why had Goli looked rapturous when she talked about it?

  Sometime in the early hours, Fereydoon woke up and took me in his arms. It seemed he wanted to do the same thing again. I complied, although I felt like a raw sore. Inspired by his actions, I began moving my hips against his as if I knew what to do, increasing my efforts when I saw his eyes flutter like the wings of a butterfly. As I continued, he reared up out of the bedclothes and squeezed my back fiercely with his soft hands, as if he were trying to crush his body into mine. After a few long moments, his arms relaxed and he slid onto one side of the bed.

  “That was beyond compare,” he said, kissing one of my breasts. Before he slept, he smiled at me, and I had the feeling I had done just the right thing.

  I had a dream that night about polo. The rival horsemen were pursuing the ball fiercely and blocking each other from it. When one of them finally drove the ball through the goalposts, I expected the crowd to leap and roar, but no sounds emerged from their throats. I awoke with a start, thinking about Fereydoon’s thighs shooting between mine, and wondering why the feeling hadn’t been as delightful as I thought it was going to be.

  AS I WALKED home that morning, everything I saw—the old Friday mosque, the bustling bazaar, the plane trees sheltering the road through Four Gardens—seemed newly born under the hot sun. My skin tingled with the memory of Fereydoon’s embrace. My heart raced, like the day I had stood on the bridge looking into Isfahan and had longed to unlock the city’s mysteries. Yet I felt a hollowness inside as if something were missing, something I could not name.

  As I passed through Four Gardens, my eye was caught by a wealthy man’s pleasure grounds, which were planted with bright pink dog roses and lilies in an unearthly shade of blue. I wondered what it would be like to recline in the thick green clover under those shady poplars, with a picnic of bread, almonds, and sheep’s cheese— and a husband. A couple of lusty young men noticed I was dawdling and began begging for a sign from me. “She’s as plump and as pliable as a peach,” one of them whispered loudly to the other. “You can tell from the shape of their ankles.”

  As I turned toward Gostaham’s street, ignoring them, I smiled secretly under my picheh. Now I knew exactly what bothered them so much beneath their robes. I looked around at other women, delightfully hidden behind their veils. We were a surprise to be unwrapped layer by layer.

  My exhilaration was not pure. Something had been missing in my night with Fereydoon; something that caused others to celebrate the act in countless songs, poems, and knowing looks. “It is like a fire that catches dry grass and joyfully consumes it,” Goli had once said. But what did that mean?

  When I arrived home, my mother greeted me with affection and asked how my health was. I replied that I was well, thanks be to God.

  “And how was your evening?” she asked, anxious to know everything.

  I stretched out on my bedroll, suddenly tired. “I believe that everything happened as it was supposed to,” I replied.

  “Praise be to God!” she said. “Was Fereydoon pleased?”

  “As far as I could tell,” I said flatly, remembering how important his pleasure was to our future.

  My mother stroked the hair away from my face. “You sound as if you didn’t enjoy yourself.”

  It was as if she could read my thoughts. �
��How did you know?”

  “Don’t worry, my child,” my mother said. “It will improve from one time to the next. Just have patience.”

  “Why will it improve?”

  “You’ll get used to each other, and you’ll do things to please each other.”

  “Truly?”

  “I promise.”

  I longed to talk with a married friend like Goli about what had happened, but I knew no one like that in Isfahan.

  Naheed came to visit me that afternoon, knowing nothing of where I had been. I had not seen her in more than a month, for I had been punished most of that time and not allowed to leave the house or have visitors. When she arrived, I was sleeping. I arose to greet her, yawning. She hardly noticed my tiredness and didn’t even remark on my hennaed hands and feet. Naheed was in love, and she was unable to think of anything else. We kissed each other on both cheeks and sat on my bedroll while my mother went to the kitchen to have her tea.

  “I’m so excited,” Naheed said. There was a red blush on her cheeks, and her lips seemed full and soft. I had never seen her looking so beautiful. Compared with her, I knew I looked fatigued, with circles under my eyes from lack of rest.

  “Has anything happened lately?” I asked. I glanced at her hips, which looked thicker than usual. She was keeping his letters inside her clothes, tied up in the sash that hung low.

  “Yes,” she said, “I’ve brought his latest missive, which I’ve already read a thousand times over.” She pulled it out of her sash. “It is full of beautiful sentiments, but I will read you the line that is the most important.”

  Unfolding the letter, she read:

  Give me assurance that your eyes, as green as emeralds, will shine their love on me, and be assured that I will be as eternally true to you as a diamond.

  “That sounds like a marriage proposal!” I said.

  “That’s exactly what I thought,” she replied, “although he would have to make a formal offer to my family.” She sighed and leaned back into the cushions, her face a picture of bliss.

  I wished I could tell her that in the last few hours, while she was exulting over a letter, I had revealed my most secret parts to a man—and seen all of his. But then I would have had to tell her it wasn’t as wonderful as I had hoped it would be.

  Naheed sighed. “I can’t stop thinking of his eyes. They are so black and shiny, even from far away.”

  I thought about Fereydoon’s eyes. They were a warm brown color, and they had been so close to mine that I had seen the pupils contracting in response to the light of the oil lamps.

  “He is as handsome as Yusuf,” I said, “the pearl of his age.”

  “And his lips!” she said, as if she hadn’t heard me. “They are so thick and red.” She blushed, her creamy cheeks going pink all at once. “I wonder what it must be like to kiss him!”

  I could have told her what a kiss was like. When Fereydoon first put his tongue in my mouth, it seemed as fat as a worm, and he had pushed it between my lips and crushed my nose against his without giving me room to breathe. But I liked the way his tongue felt when it darted in and out of my mouth. Naheed, I believed, was imagining a kiss that would stop chastely at the lips.

  “I think of nothing but being wrapped in his embrace, feeling his chest against mine and the muscles in his arms.”

  How could she know of the strangely pleasant roughness of a man’s wiry chest against her breasts, as I did? But the other things we had done had been less pleasing: the strange hot pressure when I opened my legs, the sharp pain, and his exploding wetness later. I grew uncomfortable thinking about it.

  “You’re blushing,” said Naheed. “Do these things embarrass you?”

  “Perhaps,” I said, willing myself to bring my mind back to her concerns. If Fereydoon and I had been as deeply in love as Iskandar and Naheed, would I have conquered my shyness and enjoyed my night with him more?

  “I have only you to thank, dear friend, for my happiness,” Naheed continued. “This never would have happened if you hadn’t agreed to come with me to polo.”

  “It is nothing!”

  “My heart is yearning to hear from him again,” continued Naheed. “I need to hear more words of love to know if his feelings match mine.”

  I longed to tell Naheed about my sigheh, but Gordiyeh and Gostaham’s demand for silence made me fear that my new situation would diminish me in her esteem. Even if I had been able to confide in her, I wouldn’t be able to describe Fereydoon with the joy with which she discussed Iskandar. My marriage had been one of necessity; hers would be one of choice.

  “You aren’t listening to me,” said Naheed with a frown. “What is it? You look sad today.”

  I had been trying to keep my feelings out of our conversation, but it was impossible.

  “I just wish . . . that I was married to someone I loved!” I said abruptly, but it was more than that. Why couldn’t I have a fairy face, with creamy white skin? Why couldn’t my father be alive, to rain his blessings upon me? And why couldn’t I be with a man who wanted me so much that he would marry me forever?

  “It will happen for you, too,” said Naheed. “When you discover love, you will see that it is the most exalted feeling of the heart.”

  She threw her arms around me before we parted, unable to contain her emotions. I wondered if she was right. Naheed seemed to be swept away by the force of her own desires. Was that love? I didn’t know, but I was happy to see her blooming like a rose garden, even though my own heart felt hollow.

  FEREYDOON CLAIMED ME by night, but by day I still belonged to Gostaham. Shortly after my first night with Fereydoon, he summoned me to his workroom. Now that I knew the ways of men, I felt shy around him, but he treated me just the same, as an apprentice with a job to complete.

  My mother and I had already repaid Gordiyeh for the wool I had squandered using part of the sigheh money; the rest of the silver paid off the debts we had incurred in our village. After I promised to take Gostaham’s advice in choosing colors, he agreed to purchase the wool for another rug. I swore by the Holy Qur’an that I would not remove the rug from the loom until it was completed.

  Gostaham had drawn a new design in black ink and offered to tutor me as to how he chose his colors. I tried to keep my attention on our work rather than on my night with Fereydoon as he spread out the design in his workroom. It portrayed a vase surrounded by a garden of large fanciful blooms.

  “Shah Abbas favors this design so much, it has been named after him,” Gostaham said with a chuckle. “The design is not particularly complicated, which means that the colors become most important of all.”

  The vase had a narrow mouth and a body curved as generously as a woman’s. Was my own made as fine? I blushed to think of myself naked before Fereydoon, and of how generously he had praised my breasts and hips.

  Gostaham pulled out his tray of powdered pigments from a niche in the wall behind him. “Now watch carefully,” he said.

  At the very center of the vase was a rosette. Dipping his brush in water, he colored the rosette black with a cream center. The poppy holding the rosette became a bright orange, which he made float in a creamy sea of milk. The blossom enclosing the poppy became black, and the sides of the vase surrounding it, magenta.

  “Tell me the colors you see, in order.”

  I started at the vase. “Cream, black, orange; cream, black, magenta,” I said, becoming excited as I spoke. “It’s a pattern!”

  “Correct,” said Gostaham.

  The three large blossoms surrounding the vase contained succulent interior worlds of flowers, leaves, and arabesques. The first he colored mostly orange, punctuated with green; the second was mostly green with touches of black, orange, and pink like spots on a butterfly’s wings. It was no surprise that the third blossom was largely pink.

  “Watch the colors again,” he said.

  The third blossom began as a tiny pink flower with a cream center surrounded by black petals, which exploded into a mature magent
a rose in a black sea punctuated by tiny orange flowers. It was like seeing a flower blossom through all the phases of its life. It reminded me of how Fereydoon’s middle had seemed to unfold, stand tall, burst forth, and come peacefully to rest.

  “You didn’t answer my question,” said Gostaham.

  I hadn’t even heard his request for me to name the colors. “Cream, pink, black; magenta, orange, black,” I said, with more excitement than before. There was the pattern again, but in a different arrangement.

  “Good. Now look at all the blossoms as a group. Since I’m using the same colors repeatedly, why is it that the eye does not grow bored?”

  The answer was plain. “Although the blossoms are related, like members of a family, each is an unparalleled treasure.”

  “Just so.”

  Gostaham sketched ropes of smaller flowers around each of the large blossoms, encircling them loosely but affectionately, in much the same way that Fereydoon had first held me around the waist. From Gostaham’s pen emerged the wild red tulip, with its black center, purple-black violets, red-brick pomegranate flowers, black narcissus, and pink roses.

  “Now I have a test for you,” Gostaham said. On another piece of paper, he sketched a blossom from the side and colored it with a green-and-black center and blue leaves. “Where shall I put this in the design?” he asked, handing me the paper.

  I held the new drawing against the design, but it seemed to quarrel with the magenta and orange. Finally I said, “I can’t find a place for it.”