Lili had been checked before. The year she turned ten and found a spot of blood in her underpants, she had rushed to Kobra’s side. “Am I sick? Will I die?” she asked through quavering lips. Kobra took one look at the blood and slapped Lili hard and quick across both cheeks. “But why?” Lili whimpered. “I didn’t want to do it, azizam [dear one],” Kobra replied, her own eyes smarting with tears. “It’s only a custom. It will keep the blush on your cheeks until your wedding!”
One of her aunts had been troubled, though, by this early onset of menstruation, and had hauled Lili to a midwife to confirm that the all-important “curtain of chastity” was still intact. On the midwife’s finding Lili whole (and therefore still marriageable), her aunt and Lili returned quickly to the house and there all her aunts and stepmothers had gathered around her to sweeten their tongues. “You are a woman now!” they’d declared, beaming.
This time, for her marriage, the examination would be repeated with just a single point of difference: since the word of one female relative would be insufficient proof for the groom’s family, Zaynab and two of Lili’s other aunts would bear witness, too.
Lili was forbidden by her grandmother and aunts from seeing Kazem until the aqd konoon, the first nuptial ceremony, but he would often convey candies and small presents to her through a messenger. At No Rooz that first year Kazem sent her an enormous bouquet of tuberoses.
It was, however, the emerald ring that was her best proof of coming happiness. Except for the few times she’d managed to sneak it into her schoolbag, the ring stayed locked in a bureau at home, but whenever she began to ask about Kazem or the marriage she was allowed to retrieve it from its hiding place and slip it on her finger for a few hours.
The ring would cost her dearly. Sohrab had extended just one condition for his daughter’s marriage: that the Khorramis allow her to continue as a student at the School of Virtue. But a few months shy of the final marriage ceremony, it was discovered that Lili had been showing off her emerald ring to the other girls at school, and the transgression would swiftly upend Sohrab’s decree.
She’d been sitting in one corner of the schoolyard, surrounded by her girlfriends, when Mistress the Second descended upon the group, seized Lili’s engagement ring, and, for good measure, slapped her several times across the face.
“This is a serious school!” she screamed. “A modern school!”
With a good deal more composure, Mistress the Elder would later explain to Sohrab that the School of Virtue did not wish to have any child brides among its charges. It did not speak well of the school’s mission, and Lili was not to return the next day. Sohrab was furious. He rose to his feet, banged his walking stick against the floor, and then proceeded to curse the lady with a lavishness that failed to unsettle her even slightly.
The next day Sohrab began to cast about Tehran for another school, but he soon learned that the other private schools in the city shared the philosophy of the School of Virtue with respect to his daughter’s situation.
During this period, talk of Lili’s impending marriage would be eclipsed by news that Kobra had finally managed to conceive a third child, a development that, to Sohrab’s family at least, seemed only scarcely less incredible than the virgin birth itself.
Whereas a family with five and six children was thought quite ordinary and as many as twelve would have not have aroused comment or speculation, a family with just two children was regarded as an oddity. Clearly Kobra, still in her twenties, was fertile; her failure to become pregnant was therefore judged yet another sign of her husband’s lack of regard.
Over time this very lack of regard had only managed to augment Kobra’s love for Sohrab. As both her spirits and her standing in the family sank with each childless year, Kobra sought different strategies for wooing Sohrab back from the blue-eyed jinn who’d ensnared him. Kobra always set aside the most succulent pieces of meat and the very thickest pieces of crisped rice for him. By day she laundered and pressed his suits, and by night she painted her face, plucked her brows, and groomed her nails for him.
Such ordinary wifely duties were supplemented with supernatural devotions. She patronized back-alley spiritualists, called jadoo-jambals, who charged one fee to fend off plain mistresses and another, much higher fee to fend off beautiful ones. Every time, Kobra paid the maximum fee and returned with her head swimming with fresh hope and elaborate spells. She whipped up concoctions involving such things as cat urine, dill weed, and rose petals, recited the spiritualists’ recommended incantations, and proceeded to sprinkle her love potions along the doorways and windowpanes of Khanoom’s house.
One year on Chahar Shanbeh Soori, the first of the New Year festivities, Kobra grabbed a handful of golden coins, pulled on her veil, and picked her way through the bonfires in the streets. When she reached the Jewish baths, she disrobed and threw her lot in with the unmarried, the infertile, and the generally accursed who flocked there on this night for the Jews’ famed cures. As she was led from corner to corner of the bathhouse and doused with purifying waters, Kobra offered up prayers to Moses’ mother, Jochebed, then dressed without toweling off the precious moisture. Kobra passed back over the threshold of the house on Avenue Moniriyeh whispering the name of Moses’ father to herself over and over, just as she’d been instructed. “Amran, Amran, Amran…”
Nothing she did had any effect whatsoever on Sohrab.
Indeed, he might never have returned to her but for his ever-shifting fortunes. Kobra’s third child had been conceived during one of Kobra and Sohrab’s “reconciliations”—one of those interludes when Sohrab’s finances had dipped dangerously low and he therefore had no choice but to return to his mother’s house, and to Kobra’s bed. At such times Sohrab found in Kobra an unlikely but reliable source of financial support. He knew she regularly skimmed a few tomans off whatever housekeeping money he gave her, and although her savings did not amount to very much, on more than one occasion it would be just enough to pay off his most pressing debts.
He was not exactly kind toward her when he took her money, but Sohrab certainly grumbled much less than usual, and when Kobra sewed herself a long, pleated dress and began sweeping through the house in it, grinning and stroking her belly with great emphasis, it was obvious to everyone that she’d more than exacted her due. Kobra strung up a moleskin hammock—a nanoo—from one of her bedroom walls to the other, unfurled a mattress for herself on the floor, and waited for her baby to arrive. He was born in the spring and she named him Omid, which means “hope.”
For a long time Kobra believed that Omid’s birth would bring Sohrab back to Avenue Moniriyeh for good. When this did not come to pass, she simply threw all her love and longing at her little baby boy. As Lili was by then twelve (and fast approaching the date of her marriage to Kazem) and Nader eleven years old, Kobra’s days were taken up entirely with Omid. Never in her life had she been happier than when she was bent over his nanoo, cooing him into sleep. Kobra would have loved him no less if he’d been the picture of ugliness, but Omid was a perfectly beautiful baby—fair and plump, with a thick fringe of lashes around his black eyes and a sweetly dimpled chin. She dressed him in navy blue sailor suits that she sewed for him herself. Every few months she sat him down on the floor of the kitchen, placed a small bowl on his head, and then sang to him as she clipped his hair. And as Omid grew from an infant into a toddler, his capers charmed Kobra so far from her cares that for a time she did not seem to have any cares at all.
One afternoon a portly, wizened woman named Touba Khanoom came to the house to pluck Lili’s eyebrows for the very first time. “She has a good hand for it,” Khanoom explained, and pressed a golden coin into the lady’s palm for good luck. Lili was seated on a chair, facing east, toward Mecca, and her hair was pulled back in a white kerchief. As Ma Mère and several other of Lili’s in-laws-to-be waited with coins clenched between their fists, Touba Khanoom cut a length of thread with her teeth, dipped it into a bowl of rose water, and then, with a great flouris
h, called out, “In the name of God, the Merciful, the All-Knowing!” At the first pluck, Lili’s aunts let loose the traditional wedding trills—unending waves of “Lililililililili!” that echoed Lili’s name.
“May there always be weddings in this house!” Touba exclaimed as the women pressed more gold coins into her pockets. “May she give you ten sons!”
At dawn the next day, two porters came to the house and took away the khoncheh, the two ceremonial wedding offerings. On one silver tray rested thousands of wild rue seeds that had been dyed and arranged into long, flowing arabesques. On the other lay foot-long sheets of saffron-spiced bread. Each of the porters lifted a tray and placed it on his head, straining visibly under the weight.
The first nuptial ceremony—the aqd konoon—had been scheduled to take place exactly six months before Lili’s thirteenth birthday. Khanoom had insisted that it be held in the traditional fashion, with separate wedding parties for the men and women. The first night, when the aqd was to be performed, was only for the men, and there would be musicians and a troupe of dancers to entertain them in the garden. The second night, a much less lavish affair in all but the foods to be prepared, would be for the women of the two families. The Khorramis thought this arrangement unspeakably backward but had eventually sent their grudging consent.
Sohrab, meanwhile, had approved the marriage, but he’d informed Khanoom that he would not be attending the nuptial ceremony. It was generally thought this was on account of “that blue-eyed jinn,” Simin. She had not been invited to Lili’s wedding and had no doubt insisted that Sohrab not attend any event from which she’d been excluded. “Please tell him to come!” Lili had begged Khanoom and her aunts, and though they nodded and smiled, none of them dared press the point with Sohrab.
On the night of the aqd konoon, Lili scanned the room for her father, sure he would come after all. Then toward the end of the evening she was led to a room with a silk banquette and seated there alone before the sofreh (wedding spread). The mirror shone brilliantly at her feet and the scent of burning wild rue began to fill the air. She could barely make out the words of the agha in the next room where the men had gathered, but when at last Kazem emerged and took a seat beside her she knew the ceremony was over and that her father had not, finally, come to see it.
Though their formal marriage was still months away, after the aqd konoon the pair became mahram to each other, which meant that Lili could now appear before Kazem without a head scarf. When Kazem came to sit beside her on the banquette that evening, her gaze fell toward the mirror that had been set down in the center of the wedding spread. It was there in the mirror that she saw Kazem removing her veil, and there also that she saw him without his fedora for the very first time.
Suddenly she knew that she had been right to worry, and she fought back her tears. Though Kazem’s features were pleasant enough, his head, she now saw, was nearly bald, but in the front two thin, long tufts of hair had been brought together in the middle—joined, she would only later discover, by the sticky paste of quince seed he kept in a ceramic bowl next to his bed every night.
From then on Kazem came to Khanoom’s house once a week. Lili learned to predict his arrivals by what meats and herbs the servants brought back with them from the bazaar each day. Lamb almost always meant Kazem would be visiting, as he had a particularly large appetite for it.
“Kazem Khan is here!” a servant would call out, and all the women of the house would reach at once for their head scarves. Only then would Kazem enter in his suit and tie. Without fail, he would be wearing his gray felt fedora.
Lili would sit across the table from him, her eye trained on his plate, ready to offer him more rice and stew as he progressed through several generous portions. At the end of the meal she rose from the table, cleared his plate, and then served him tea and sweets.
Afterward, her grandmother led them into a sitting room upstairs where they were allowed to spend half an hour alone together. “This is the time for you to get to know each other,” Khanoom had explained the first time, urging Lili into the room with a reassuring smile.
In preparation for this part of Kazem’s visits, her cousin Soudabeh was routinely dispatched to recite a long list of rules: “Sit with your knees pressed together.” “Don’t let him take off your underwear.” “He cannot reach inside your blouse to touch your breasts.” These rules were coupled with another set of directions, whose sum was, “Be sweet and tender, for he is nearly your husband now.”
Kazem seemed always to enter the room with an understanding of these same rules, and so he satisfied himself by straddling her and rubbing himself vigorously against her thighs while she sat with her knees pressed together in the way she had been instructed. Often at these moments she thought of a picture she’d once seen of a snake eating a rabbit, its belly engorged with its kill. Kazem, though, seemed content with the arrangement and did not, strictly speaking, challenge the limits indicated by her stiff posture. In any case, his visits occurred regularly up to the wedding day.
On one occasion, Lili visited Kazem at the compound where his grandmother, mother, and aunts lived with their families. When Lili arrived there Ma Mère greeted her with kisses, and this time it was she who was waited upon and hers the first plate to be heaped with rice, stew, tahdig (thick crisped rice), yogurt, and a generous handful of fresh herbs.
At the end of the meal Ma Mère turned to Kazem with a gentle smile. “Would you like to take your pretty little aroos to your own house?” she asked.
Kazem led Lili out into the street and back into his own quarters. Unlike the main building of the Khorrami compound, which housed all manner of ornate French furnishings and Persian carpets, the two rooms that made up Kazem’s suite were practically empty. His bedroom held only a bed and a gilt-framed mirror that ran from the floor to the ceiling.
Lili found herself drawn to this mirror as if by a magnet. Up until that day she had seen herself only in Kobra’s old handheld mirror, an instrument with which Lili had been able to study only a few inches of herself at a time. But here for the first time she could see herself from head to foot, and she stood, entranced, before a body she scarcely recognized as her own.
“Do you like to look at yourself?” Kazem asked her. His voice was soft and tender, and she could see him smiling at her in the mirror. She watched as he advanced toward her with slow, even steps, and then she looked back at her own reflection and she nodded.
Kazem rested his hands on her shoulders. Their eyes met in the mirror and he smiled at her again.
Suddenly, with one swift yank, he pulled her dress over her head. For a moment she stood staring at herself in nothing more than a pair of underpants, and then she bowed her head and began to cry.
“Shhhh, be quiet!” Kazem hissed, and tossed her dress back at her before leaving the apartment.
They came for her one day with a droshky, a horse-drawn cab, to buy fabric for her wedding dress. It was late afternoon on a Thursday, the busiest shopping day of the week. All up and down Avenue Moniriyeh chador-clad housewives were bustling home from the bazaar, gripping their veils between their teeth so as to leave their arms free for their baskets, packages, and infants. Across the street from Khanoom’s house a peddler had set up two handcarts, one stacked with baked beets and the other with iced cherry sherbets.
Lili settled into the seat beside Ma Mère and peered out of the curtained window. The carriage turned down one alley after another until soon Lili was looking out at parts of the city she had never seen. When they reached the newly christened Electricity Avenue, she caught her breath at the faint orange glow of the streetlights at dusk. The carriage turned another corner and proceeded farther north. On the Avenue of the Tulip Fields, where the streets were much broader and also smoothly paved, an enormous building rose before her, seeming all of light. The letters above the crimson awning read: “Cinema Lalehzar.” Cinema of the Tulip Fields. Saeed, her father’s driver, had once told her about a movie house he’d snuck int
o uptown. “Pictures that come alive!” he’d exclaimed. “People bigger than trees!” She had not believed him, but here it was after all. She would have liked to hop out just then except for the promise of what was to come.
When at last they reached the row of shops and cafés near Execution Square, Lili stepped out of the droshky and was astonished to find that there was not a single veiled woman on the street. It was only after the prohibition against the veil had been lifted that her own grandmother and aunts went out into the city at all, and on Avenue Moniriyeh even a quick trip to the bakery three doors away always called for at least a kerchief. But in this part of Tehran there were dozens of unveiled women, and like Ma Mère and Kazem’s other relatives, all their heads were not only bare but also elegantly coiffed.
What’s more, from time to time a pair or a small cluster of fair-haired women would pass by, the click of their heels sharp and smart against the pavement. Foreigners. The only foreigners Lili had ever seen were soldiers, and even grown men cowered from them. But these women were beautiful, and she could not tear her eyes from their red lips and bare calves.
Ma Mère caught her staring and smiled. “Has our little bride come out to the world?” She laughed.
In the shop they picked a fabric for Lili and let her touch it. It was not white but the palest blue, with a hint of shimmer to it. She stroked it gently and the shimmers danced under her fingers. Did she like it? “Yes,” she stammered, she liked it very, very much. They took her to a back room and told her to undress. But as soon as the fabric was pulled around her torso, her hands went to her shoulders and she began shivering with fear. The dress would be sleeveless! What would Khanoom say? She had never been allowed to wear even a short-sleeved dress, or even one that left her forearms exposed, and now she was to wear a sleeveless dress to her wedding? Then all at once it seemed like ten pairs of hands were on her, pulling the fabric tighter, lifting the hem, smoothing the bodice. With the way the women were looking at her, smiling and cooing and fussing, her hands fell from her shoulders to her sides, and her worries slipped at once from her mind.
The Good Daughter: A Memoir of My Mother's Hidden Life Page 6
