Rosewater and Soda Bread

by Marsha Mehran

  Layla bit her lip. “Sorry,” she said contritely, moving to the order carousel.

  “I'm sorry too,” said Bahar. She started to take off her coat. “I'll stay.”

  Marjan held out her hand. “No. You go. Take your break. But just some quiet next time, okay?”

  Bahar and Layla nodded, both still rather stunned. They couldn't remember the last time Marjan had reacted to their nitpicking in this manner, and they were not able to properly register it.

  There was quiet indeed after Bahar left. Layla did not say a word for a whole five minutes.

  And then, when she could no longer stand to see Marjan so sullen at the stove, she walked over and poked her eldest sister in the ribs.

  “Anyway, I think we should go with my theory about Bahar,” she said, nodding emphatically.

  “And what theory is that?” Marjan said quietly.

  “She's got a boyfriend, for sure,” Layla said with her customary naughty grin. “Some Irish lover with a beer belly and orange hair coming out of his ears.” She doubled over, laughing raucously at the thought.

  Marjan allowed herself a small smile. “Oh, Layla,” she said with a shake of her head.

  Bahar was the last person she could think of who would keep a romance hidden away, she told herself. Not anymore, anyway; not after Hossein.

  “AND THAT IS HOW Luigi found the secret to his cannelloni menta cream. One part cream, two parts sugar, three tablespoons peppermint extracto, and one drop of me. He said my sweat tasted like nectar. Imagine if these Irish people knew about it! They would have never even looked at Papa's Pastries, eh?”

  Estelle paused, nodding her head at the girl sitting in the hospital bed. She hadn't planned on revealing Luigi's secret ingredient,the sugary essence that made his pastries so dear, but had somehow gotten carried away with her story.

  The flush of delight in the young woman's usually pale face told Estelle it had been a wise decision. Her cheeks, which had had a sunken look to them only yesterday, were now rounded and hosting gingery freckles.

  She was looking much better than that first day, thought Estelle, when she had been lying with a fever in this big bed. Perhaps her love stories did more good than harm, she told herself.

  “I think it is time for a bowl of good food, yes? Plum stew the best for you!” Estelle waved her hands again.

  It may have been just a blink of the eyes, but it seemed to Estelle that the girl returned her nod.

  Since coming to the hospital, they had made do with a series of pantomime moves for everyday speech; along with the language of blinks and nods, these had been sufficient if not desirable for someone with arthritic tendencies.

  The power of speech should never be underestimated, the old widow told herself.

  She uncovered a bowl of heated plum stew and set it on the tray in front of the girl. “Marjan brought this last night, when you were sleeping, yes? She says this is the best for strength. We will build your blood now, make it thick and strong, okay?”

  The girl blinked again, encouraging Estelle to carry on with her tender nursing. She wasn't speaking, but that was okay. What was more important was that she did not try to hurt herself again. Estelle vowed she would do anything to stop that from happening.

  Bending slowly to retrieve a large silver soupspoon from the side table, the widow couldn't help but cringe at the creaks in her weakened hips. Every inch of the descent was a painful reminder of what it is to be human, to be moving toward an inevitable fate.

  Straightening with a grimace, she turned once again to her patient. “Yes, that is right. Open for strength,” she said, ladling some of the stew into the spoon.

  She nodded at the girl's opened mouth and smiled once again.

  The fragrance of plumped-up prunes, their burst skins cradling the fortifying strands of garm spinach and softened saffron lamb, swirled between them.

  She must make an effort to eat more from the list of hot foods Marjan had written for her, Estelle told herself. The darling had meticulously charted the best ingredients and dishes to take at such times, times when she felt not only the pain of her joints but the darkness that came from watching your body turn slowly to stone.

  Yes, she must remember the power of balance, thought Estelle, lifting the spoon toward the girl.

  Just as she was about to minister the heartening stew, it happened: a terrible force intervened. Her clumpy knuckles suddenly stiffened, opting for a last-minute retreat.

  Estelle's hand froze; she dropped the spoon, the silver shattering the stew's purple surface, splattering it onto the clean hospital sheets.

  “Santa Maria! Dio mio!”

  Estelle gasped, squeezing her eyes shut. She leaned against the side of the bed and panted, her calcified hands remaining in the air, suspended by a Svengali of pain. Lightning sparked every single nerve and membrane.

  “Please, God.” The old widow breathed heavily. “Take my hands, please take this pain.” She grimaced as needles stabbed her hands, arms, elbows, neck, and collarbones. Her spine was seizing up as well, the pain moving inch by inch toward her neck. “Please,” huffed Estelle, “Santa Maria, I don't want to be a statue today.”

  Estelle wasn't expecting an immediate answer to her prayer, but an answer came anyway—from as close as the hospital bed.

  The girl, the mermaid Estelle had rescued over a week ago, decided to return the favor today.

  Leaning slowly over the bowl of piping plum stew, she reached for Estelle's clenched fists.

  In a moment the widow would later remember for its intense warmth and little else, the girl fanned open her strange fingers, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath.

  CHAPTER VII

  “LADIES ARE HERE for their tea. Two kebab kuftidehs, one fried chicken salad, one gormeh sabzi, and a bowl of rosetachio ice cream,” Layla said, pinning the order to the carousel. “The last one's for Filomina Fanning. She says she heard a scoop of ice cream a day was good for the love life. Says she read it in a book called The Perfumed Garden. I've never read it, have you, Mar-jan?”

  Marjan placed the lid back on the saffron rice and looked up, mulling the title for a few seconds. “No, I don't think I have,” she said. Though she was sure such a book existed, even if she hadn't heard of it.

  As the town's librarian, Filomina had resources that ran the gamut of the world of letters: whether it was a question on Lap-landish garden trolls, or a treatise on Tahitian hygiene rituals of the late 1700s, Filomina could be relied on for facts.

  She had been the first person Marjan had turned to when she needed a copy of Avicenna's masterpiece; Filomina had promptly ordered the Canon of Medicine from a fellow bibliophile at the University College of Dublin, with a wink to forget about late fees.

  The only topic worth avoiding with the librarian was the latest sunbathing methods; Filomina was still reeling from the last time she'd tried to cultivate a tan and got severely burned by one of Thomas McGuire's faulty sun beds thirteen years earlier. She was one of many in town who had been glad to see the tyrant take to his thorny bed.

  “The Perfumed Garden,” Layla repeated. “Isn't that what you're growing out there?” She pointed to the blooming herbs outside the kitchen window.

  Marjan followed her gaze. The hour's rain had left fresh sparkles on the stalks of dill and swathed the mint in a lovely veil.

  She shook her head. “You know, I still can't believe they're growing so well, even in this weather. I'm half-thinking of planting a pomegranate bush next.”

  Layla set down the tub of vanilla ice cream she had taken from the freezer and jumped up. “Just like home! Oh, you have to, Marjan. Plant a pomegranate bush!” she said, clapping her hands.

  Marjan laughed. “We'll see, now. It's one thing to plant herbs, but a pomegranate needs constant sun.”

  She lowered the heat on the simmering plum stew and turned to the brick oven. Using a large paddle, she stoked the smoldering logs inside its large belly. The heat was just right for the keba
bs ordered by the Ladies of the Patrician Day Dance Committee.

  Marjan turned to Layla once more. “Do you think about Iran often?”

  Layla scooped three large, creamy balls into a turquoise bowl.“Sometimes. Not always, not as much as I used to in London.” She drizzled rosewater over the ice cream, then reached for a large jar of shelled and crushed pistachio nuts sitting on a shelf over the counter. She held the jar against her hip and stared at the bowl. “I mean, I think about good things, mostly.”

  “Like what?” Marjan said. She was surprised to find herself whispering.

  “I don't know, like my friends at school. Do your remember Christina from across the street? Her family was from Ohio?”

  Marjan nodded. There had been many American families living in their neighborhood in northern Tehran during the 1970s. Most had been under contract with the new companies sprouting headquarters like yesterday's barley, bringing with them a confidence in fast-food emporiums and a distaste for everything that was subtle and Persian.

  Unlike the British, who in previous decades had lived in dusty, make-do abodes while tending to the demands of their oil executives, the Americans had built themselves movie theaters and hot dog stands, replicating the good old Main Streets of their prairie homeland.

  Marjan stoked the embers in the oven again. “Christina… she was a couple years older than you, if I remember,” she said.

  Layla sprinkled a handful of pistachios onto the bowl of ice cream. “She was eight, I was four. She taught me to play hopscotch,” she said, grinning at the memory. Then her smile disappeared. “I remember Baba as well.”

  At the mention of their father, Marjan closed the oven door on the kebabs and turned to her sister. “What do you remember exactly?” She leaned against the counter and folded her arms.

  “I remember his Brut cologne, and that he liked to play chess with you. I mean, I know what he looked like, we have that one picture. The one at the ruins of Persepolis?”

  Marjan nodded, thinking of the exquisite palaces of Iran's Zoroastrian kings. “That was before you were born.”

  “I was in Maman's belly.” Layla smiled wistfully.

  A pang of loneliness shot through Marjan; Layla's memories were so potent, in spite, or perhaps because, of their diffused quality.

  Layla placed the bowl of ice cream on a small round platter etched with filigreed patterns. “I remember Baba's face, but only the one in the photo. I mean, I can't remember what he looked like before he died. Is that normal?”

  “Well, of course it is. You were a little girl then.”

  “I still think I should remember more about him. And about Maman, even if she died before I had a memory,” Layla said.

  Then, tossing her long black hair as though discarding the sad thoughts, she turned to Marjan. Her almond eyes were tilted up and shiny. “Filomina can't wait until the kebabs are done,” she said, holding up the tray of ice cream. “Three scoops for a really good day.”

  Layla exited the kitchen, leaving her oldest sister to conjure her own childhood memories, the Polaroids of that brief and golden age.

  THAT AFTERNOON, minutes before the Babylon Café was to close for the day, Marjan allowed herself an indulgence. Shutting the door to the bathroom in the flat above the café, she settled onto the covered toilet seat and opened her box of memories.

  The brass jewelry box, the same engraved keepsake Ali had bought her on that high school trip to the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul, was kept on the top shelf of the tiered medicine cabinet installed by Luigi Delmonico all those years back.

  The bottom three shelves were Bahar's and Layla's to fill as they pleased, but it was understood by all three sisters that the top tier would be reserved for Marjan and her few precious belongings.

  Marjan placed the jewelry box on her lap and opened its lid. She balanced the box on the edge of the bathtub, making sure not to shed any of the sand still embedded in its lining.

  The sand, along with a patch of kilim carpet woven by a Baluchi tribe, was a souvenir of their time spent crossing the eastern deserts of Iran. It had taken the three of them only a week to reach the border with Pakistan, that autumn in 1978, but by the time they arrived at the Red Cross refugee camp in Quetta, it had seemed as though a lifetime had gone by.

  The box's belly was soft, a pink satin with more than its share of secrets. Within its caresses were their baby gifts, among them the three gold identity bracelets, one for each of their infant wrists. Bought on the days of their births, the bracelets were engraved with their names—Layla, Bahar, and Marjan—in swirling Farsi script.

  Pity the bracelets were too small for any of them to wear now, thought Marjan.

  She picked through the bits of jewelry, the stud earrings and ruby ring that had belonged to their mother, Shirin. There was something almost meditative about this ritual of hers, combing through the photos and small keepsakes, even if she touched on some painful memories. It was as if her fingers were actually tracing the milestones each piece represented.

  Her hand closed on a smooth, round object, something resembling a marble egg. It was a miniature bar of lotus soap, still in its wrapper, bought on their last trip to the hammam. The public bathhouse had been a favorite spot of theirs, a place the three of them liked to go to on Thursdays, the day before the Iranian weekend.

  Marjan held the soap to her nose. She took a deep breath, inhaling the downy scent of mornings spent washing and scrubbing with rosewater and lotus products. All at once she heard the laughter once again, the giggles of women making the bathing ritual a party more than anything else. The hammam they had attended those last years in Iran was situated near their apartment in central Tehran. Although not as palatial as the turquoise and golden-domed bathhouse of their childhood, it was still a grand building of hot pools and steamy balconies, a place of gossip and laughter.

  The women of the neighborhood would gather there weekly to untangle their long hair with tortoiseshell combs and lotus powder, a silky conditioner that left locks gleaming like onyx uncovered. For pocket change, a dalak could be hired by the hour. These bathhouse attendants, matronly and humorous for all their years spent whispering local chatter, would scrub at tired limbs with loofahs and mitts of woven Caspian seaweed. Massages and palm readings accompanied platters of watermelon and hot jasmine tea, the afternoons whiled away with naps and dips in the perfumed aqueducts regulated according to their hot and cold properties.

  There was always a bridal shower carousing their way through the hammam's various tiled rooms. Equipped with bedroom banter and every hair removal product known to womankind, the ladies of these rowdy parties would pluck and prep the flushed bride for the next night's encounter.

  When Marjan had heard of Bahar's intended marriage to Hossein Jaferi, on that awful day she had returned from the detention center at Gohid, one of the only hopeful images she had clung to was the thought of a happy bridal party.

  She might not be able to change her sister's mind about marrying,Marjan remembered thinking, but she could prepare Bahar for her new life with a strengthening rosewater rinse. The tonic was sprinkled over the bride's head at the end of her ablutions, a cleansing ritual meant to wash away all doubts about her new life ahead.

  Marjan returned the soap to the box. She closed its lid, tracing her thumb over the engraved desert roses.

  She had never been able to throw her sister a party; as head of the neighborhood's most conservative family, Khanoum Jaferi abhorred such public displays of sensuality. Bahar's future mother-in-law had insisted on a more subdued bridal get-together, consisting of prayers to the Almighty and a long supper of khaleh pacheh, roasted sheep's head.

  “Are you all right?” A knock came from the other side of the bathroom door. It was Bahar.

  Marjan quickly placed the box back on the top tier of the medicine cabinet and opened the door. “Just finishing.”

  Bahar stepped aside to let her onto the landing. She looked at Marjan with concern. “What's wrong?�
��

  “Nothing. Why?”

  “Well, I don't know. After your outburst yesterday—”

  “It wasn't an outburst.” Marjan stepped down the stairs. “Honestly, Bahar, you're not the only one who gets overwhelmed by things in the kitchen. I am allowed to feel stress sometimes, you know.”

  Bahar followed her down. “But you never have before. What's wrong? Is it that Englishman? That Julian?”

  Marjan threw her a withering look.

  Bahar lifted a shoulder. “I'm just mentioning it. I've heard a few things, that's all.”

  “And what's the gossip today?” Marjan asked, undoing her apron. The kitchen was shining from its latest cleaning: Bahar had taken her worries out on the counters, it seemed. They smelled deliciously of rosewater cleanser.

  “Oh, just that he's got his eye on the street. Probably getting ready to buy shops after doing up that old house.”

  “And why is that a bad thing? If we have the right to build a new life, so should he, don't you think?”

  Bahar sniffed. “Maybe. Sounds fishy, that's all I'm saying.”

  Marjan shook her head. “What else have you heard on your daily walks?”

  Bahar blinked. “What do you mean, daily walks? What walks?”

  “Your walks to the shops. What other news have you gathered in that nest of yours?”

  “Nothing. Why?”

  Marjan turned to her sister. It suddenly crossed her mind to tell Bahar about the girl Estelle had rescued, about all that had been going on the last week at the hospital, but she quickly shook the thought off. Bahar would not be able to handle it. It would do neither of them any good to get into that story.

  “Marjan.”

  Marjan looked up. “Yes?”

  “You're daydreaming again.”

  “Was I?”

  Bahar drew her lips into a thin line. “Better not be about that Englishman,” she said, taking up the scrubbing brush next to the sink. “He's not worth it, if you want my opinion.”