The Book of Fate

by Parinoush Saniee

  I was in the room when Father came home. I went and stood by the wall so he wouldn’t see me; it was darker inside than it was outside. He held on to the door frame with one hand, leaned his left ankle on his right knee and started to untie his shoelace.

  ‘Hello,’ I said, gently.

  His foot dropped to the floor and he peered around in the dimness. For a few seconds he looked at me with a smile full of kindness and then he raised his foot back up to his knee and as he continued to take his shoes off, he said, ‘What a surprise! You remembered us?’

  ‘I always remember you.’

  He shook his head, put on his slippers and, just like old times, I handed him his towel. He looked at me with reproachful eyes and said, ‘I never thought you would be this unfaithful.’ There was a big lump in my throat. These were the kindest words he could have spoken.

  During dinner, he kept putting everything in front of me and talking fast. I had never known him to be this talkative. Mahmoud didn’t come down to eat.

  ‘Well, tell me,’ Father said, laughing. ‘What do you feed your husband for lunch and dinner? Do you even know how to cook? I heard he wants to come and complain about you!’

  ‘Who? Hamid? The poor man never complains about food. He eats whatever I put in front of him. As a matter of fact, he says, “I don’t want you to waste your time cooking.”’

  ‘Huh! Then what are you supposed to do?’

  ‘He says I have to continue my education.’

  There was silence. I saw a glint in Father’s eyes and everyone else gaped at me.

  ‘What about taking care of the house?’ Mother asked.

  ‘It’s easy. I can do both. Besides, Hamid says, “I don’t care at all about lunch and dinner and household chores. You have to do what interests you; especially going to school, which in fact is very important.”’

  ‘Forget it!’ Ali said. ‘They won’t let you in school any more.’

  ‘Yes, they will. I went and spoke to them. I’m going to go to night school and I can take the standardised exams. By the way, I should remember to take my books with me.’

  ‘Thank God!’ Father exclaimed. And Mother looked at him with surprise.

  ‘Well, where are my books?’

  ‘I put them all in the blue duffel bag; it’s in the basement,’ Mother said. ‘Ali, son, go fetch the bag.’

  ‘Why should I? Doesn’t she have arms and legs?’

  Father turned to him with unprecedented anger and, with his hand raised ready to strike Ali in the mouth, he shouted, ‘Quiet! I don’t ever want to hear you talk to your sister like that… If you ever make that mistake again, I will crush every tooth in your mouth.’

  We were all staring at Father. Ali, looking irked and intimidated, got up and walked out. Faati sat tight against me and quietly chuckled. I could sense her satisfaction.

  When I got up to leave, Father walked me to the door and quietly whispered, ‘Will you come again?’

  It was too late to enrol in night school for the summer term. I registered for autumn and waited impatiently for classes to start. I had plenty of free time and spent most of it reading Hamid’s books. I started with works of fiction and moved on to the poetry books, which I read carefully. Then I read the philosophy books, which were very boring and difficult. Eventually, having nothing else to do, I even read his old textbooks. But as pleasant as reading was, it wasn’t enough to make my life fulfilling.

  Hamid hardly ever came home early and sometimes he would not show up at all for several days. At first, I would cook dinner, spread out the tablecloth and sit and wait for him. Many times I fell asleep waiting, but continued the same routine. I hated eating alone.

  Once, he came home around midnight and found me asleep on the floor next to the dinner spread. He woke me up and snapped, ‘Don’t you have anything better to do than to waste time cooking?’ Startled at having been jolted awake and wounded by his reaction, I went to bed and quietly cried until I fell asleep. The next morning, like a lecturer addressing an audience of idiots, he delivered a lengthy speech about the role of women in society, and then with controlled anger he said, ‘Don’t act like illiterate, traditional women or exploited, shackled women and try to trap me with foolish love and kindness.’

  Angry and hurt, I retorted, ‘I wasn’t trying to do anything. It’s just that I get tired of being alone and I don’t like eating by myself. I thought since you don’t come home for lunch and who knows what you eat, I could prepare a proper meal for your dinner.’

  ‘Perhaps consciously your intention is not to trap me, but subconsciously that is your goal. It’s an old trick women use. They try to snare a man through his stomach.’

  ‘Forget it! Who wants to trap you? After all we are husband and wife. It’s true that we don’t love each other, but we are not enemies either. I would enjoy talking with you, learning from you and hearing a voice other than my own in the house. And you would eat at least one home-cooked meal a day. Besides, your mother insisted on it. She worries a lot about you eating properly.’

  ‘Aha! I was right to try to find my mother’s footprints in all this. I know it’s not your fault; you’re just following her instructions. From day one, you intelligently and rationally agreed to never be an obstacle to my life, my duties and my ideals. So please tell Mother on my behalf, she shouldn’t worry at all about my meals. We have meetings every night and a couple of the guys are responsible for food and they are pretty good cooks.’

  From that day on, I never waited for him at night. He spent his life with invisible friends, in an environment that I knew nothing about. I didn’t know who his friends were, where they came from and what those ideals were that they were so proud of. All I knew was that their influence over Hamid was a hundred times more than mine or his family’s.

  With the start of night school, my days took on a regular schedule. I spent much of my time studying, but loneliness and the empty house, especially in the early darkness of cold and silent autumn nights, still weighed on me. Our life continued based on mutual respect, without fights and arguments and without any excitement. My only outing was on Fridays when Hamid would make sure to come home in time for us to go visit his parents. I was content to settle for even these brief opportunities to be with him.

  I knew he didn’t like me wearing a headscarf, especially when we went out together. In the hope that he would take me out more often, I put all my headscarves away. But his friends left him no free time to spend with me and, given his strange sensitivity, I didn’t dare complain or mention them.

  Hamid’s grandmother Bibi, who lived just below us, was my only companion. I took care of her and prepared her meals. She was a kind and quiet woman and far more hard of hearing than I had originally thought. When I wanted to talk to her, I had to scream so much that in the end I would get exhausted and give up. She asked me every day, ‘My dear, did Hamid come home early last night?’

  And I would answer, ‘Yes.’

  To my surprise, she always believed me and never asked why she never saw him. She couldn’t hear, but she acted as if she couldn’t see either. Once in a while when she was feeling lively, she would tell me about the past, about her husband who was a good and pious man and whose death had left a chill in her heart even in the summertime. She talked about her children who were busy with their own lives and seldom visited her. Sometimes she told me about my father-in-law’s childhood mischiefs. He was her first and favourite child. And now and then, she reminisced about people I didn’t know and most of whom had died. Bibi had been a happy and fortunate woman, but now it seemed she had nothing to do but wait for death, even though she wasn’t all that old. What was strange was that the others were waiting for the same thing. Not that they ever said anything or neglected her in any way, but there was something in their behaviour that conveyed this.

  Loneliness resulted in my picking up my old habit of talking to the mirror. I would sit and talk to my reflection for hours. I loved doing this when I was a chil
d despite the fact that my brothers always made fun of me and called me crazy. I had tried hard and broken the habit; but in reality, the desire had never left me, it had just been suppressed. Now that I had no one to talk to and no reason to hide anything, it had again surfaced. Talking to her, or to myself, however one should describe it, helped me organise my thoughts. Sometimes we visited past memories and cried together. I would tell her how much I missed Parvaneh. If only I could find her; there was so much for us to talk about.

  One day I finally decided to try to find Parvaneh. But how? Again, I had to ask Mrs Parvin for help. On one of my visits to Mother’s house, I also stopped by to see her, and I asked her to enquire around the neighbourhood and see whether anyone knew where the Ahmadi family was living. I was too embarrassed to talk to those people myself; I always felt they looked at me in a special way. Mrs Parvin asked around, but no one had any information, or perhaps because they knew about her relationship with Ahmad, they didn’t want to give her the Ahmadi’s address. One person even asked her if she wanted the address so that a knife-wielding thug could pay the family another visit. I decided to stop by my old school, but they no longer had Parvaneh’s file. She had changed schools. My literature teacher was happy to see me. When I told her I was continuing my education she very much encouraged me.

  One cold and dark winter evening when I was bored and had nothing to do, Hamid came home early and gave me the honour of having dinner with me. I was beside myself with joy. Fortunately, that morning Mother had come to see me and she had brought some white fish for us. She had said, ‘Your father bought fish, but he just couldn’t swallow a bite of it unless he shared it with you. I brought some so he could rest easy.’

  I had put the fish in the refrigerator, but I wasn’t in the mood to cook it just for myself. When I realised Hamid was staying home for dinner, I used some dried herbs and made herb rice to go with the fish. It was the first time I had cooked it, but it didn’t turn out bad. In truth, I mustered all my cooking skills to prepare it. The smell of fried fish had whetted Hamid’s appetite. He was idling around the kitchen and picking at the food and I was laughing and telling him off. When everything was ready, I asked him to take Bibi’s dinner downstairs for her. Then I spread the tablecloth and adorned it with everything we had available. It was as if there was a formal feast in the house and in my heart. Oh, how easy it was to make me happy and how they denied it to me.

  Hamid came back, quickly washed his hands and we sat down to eat. While picking the bones out of the fish for both of us, he said, ‘You have to eat herb rice and fish with your fingers.’

  And I spontaneously said, ‘Oh, what a wonderful evening! On this cold and dark night, I would have gone crazy with loneliness if you hadn’t come home…’

  He was quiet for a while and then he said, ‘Don’t take it so hard. Take advantage of your time. You have your classes to study for and there are all these books here. Read them. I wish I had the time to sit and read.’

  ‘There are no books left for me to read. I have even read some of them twice.’

  ‘Are you serious? Which ones have you read?’

  ‘All of them; even your textbooks.’

  ‘You are joking! Did you understand any of them?’

  ‘Some of them not very well. As a matter of fact, I do have a few questions I would like to ask you when you have some time.’

  ‘That’s strange! How about the short-story collections?’

  ‘Oh, I love them. I cry every time I read them. They are so sad. There is so much pain and suffering and so many tragedies.’

  ‘They reveal only a small corner of the realities of life,’ he said. ‘To gain greater power and wealth, governments have always forced the deprived and defenceless masses to toil and they have pocketed the fruits of their labour. The end result is injustice, misery and poverty for the people.’

  ‘It is so heartbreaking. When will all this despair end? What can one do?’

  ‘Resist! The one who understands must stand up against tyranny. If every freeborn man fights against injustice, the system will collapse. It is inevitable. In the end, the oppressed of the world will unite and eradicate all this injustice and treachery. We must help pave the way for this unity and uprising.’

  He sounded as if he was reading from a document, but I was fascinated. I was in awe of the things he was saying and, instinctively, I recited a poem:

  If you rise, if I rise

  everyone will rise.

  If you sit, if I sit, who will rise?

  Who will fight the foe?

  ‘Wow! Bravo!’ he said, surprised. ‘I guess you do understand a thing or two. Sometimes you say things that one doesn’t expect hearing from someone your age and with your education. It seems we can put you on the path.’

  I didn’t know whether I should take his words as a compliment or an insult. But I didn’t want a single dark shadow to fall across our cosy evening and decided to ignore what he had said.

  After dinner, he leaned against the backrest and said, ‘It was really delicious and I ate so much. It’s been a long time since I had a meal this good. The poor guys, who knows what they had to eat tonight. Probably the usual bread and cheese.’

  Taking advantage of his good mood and the comment he had made, I said, ‘Why don’t you invite your friends for dinner one night?’ He looked at me pensively. He was weighing things in his mind, but he wasn’t frowning. So I continued, ‘Didn’t you say every night a different person is responsible for food? Well, why can’t I be responsible for food one night? Let your poor friends have a real dinner for once.’

  ‘As a matter of fact, some time ago Shahrzad said she would like to meet you.’

  ‘Shahrzad?’

  ‘Yes, she’s a very good friend. Smart, brave, a true believer and she can analyse and summarise many of the issues much better than the rest of us.’

  ‘She’s a girl?’

  ‘What do you mean? I said her name is Shahrzad. Do they ever name a boy Shahrzad?’

  ‘No, I mean is she married or single?’

  ‘Oh, the way you all talk… yes, she’s married. I mean she didn’t have a choice; she had to get out from under her family’s control so that she could dedicate all her time and energy to the cause. Unfortunately, in this country no matter what position women have in society, they can never be free of social customs and their restrictions and obligations.’

  ‘But doesn’t her husband mind that she’s with you and your friends all the time?’

  ‘Who? Mehdi? No, he’s one of us. It was an inside marriage. We decided on it because in many ways it was to the benefit of the group’s cause.’

  It was the first time he was talking to me about his friends and their group and I knew that any strong or rash reaction on my part would make him grow silent again. I had to be a good listener and remain quiet even when confronted with a subject this strange.

  ‘I, too, would like to meet Shahrzad,’ I said. ‘She must be an interesting person. Promise me you will invite them over some day.’

  ‘I have to think about it. I will discuss it with them and we will see.’

  Two weeks later, I was finally given the honour and it was decided that Hamid’s friends would come for lunch on the following Saturday, which was an official holiday. I was busy all week. I washed the curtains and the windows and I kept rearranging the furniture. We didn’t have a dining room table. Hamid said, ‘Forget it, what do they need a dining room table for? Spread the tablecloth on the floor. It’s better. They will be more comfortable and there will be more room for everyone.’

  He had invited only twelve people: his closest friends. I didn’t know what to cook. I was so excited that I asked him several times. ‘Cook anything you like,’ he said. ‘It’s not important.’

  ‘Yes, it is important. I want to cook dishes that they like. Tell me who likes what.’

  ‘How would I know? Everyone likes something different. You don’t have to cook every single dish.’


  ‘Well, not all of them. For example, what does Shahrzad like?’

  ‘Herb stew. But Mehdi loves split pea stew and Akbar is still craving the herb rice and fish that I told him about. And late afternoon, when the weather gets cold, everyone gets a hankering for noodle soup. In short, they like everything… But you shouldn’t go to too much trouble. Cook whatever is easier for you.’

  I started shopping on Tuesday. The temperature had dropped and there was a gentle breeze. I shopped so much and hauled so many heavy bags up the stairs that even Bibi got fed up and said, ‘My girl, even a feast for seven kings doesn’t require so much priming and preparing.’

  On Thursday, I did some of the preliminary cooking. On Friday, we came back a little sooner from visiting Hamid’s parents and again I got busy cooking. I prepared so much food that simply reheating it all would take from morning until noon. Fortunately, the weather was cold and I had lined up all the pots and pans out on the terrace. Late afternoon, as Hamid was getting ready to leave, he said, ‘If I’m delayed, I’ll come back with the guys tomorrow around noon.’