She took her place on the pillow and let out a sigh. “Thank you for sending Jafar. You didn’t have to do that. You are too kind to me.”
“It was my pleasure. Besides, that boy can use some exercise.”
They looked at each other and laughed, each of them cupping her chador over her mouth. As soon as the laughter subsided, they let go. Bibi-Khanoom shook her head as she took her amjid off the hose and handed it to the midwife. “I worry for him so.”
“It’s just baby fat. He’ll grow out of it.”
“No, not for that.”
“He still hasn’t spoken?”
“Not a word.”
“And at school?”
“Just reading and writing.”
“And what does your husband have to say about it?”
“He said, ‘Let the boy be. He’ll come to things in his own way. Everybody talks but how many people can listen?’ I should never have let him tell Jafar he was adopted. I think it frightened him. He insisted that the truth would make Jafar strong, but I think it made him sad.”
“The only truth that matters is that he is your son and you have raised him.”
The midwife slid her amjid out of her bra and put it on the hose. She kept everything she owned pinned to her bra. Whenever someone needed something, she would reach in and pull it out: tissues, pins, stockings, lip stain, and even a small container of rubbing alcohol. She also kept her jewelry in there. And if anyone looked at her strangely, as she dug around, trying to find something, she would say “keep what you need close to your heart and let the rest fall away.”
The midwife had delivered Jafar. She was the only one who knew the identity of Jafar’s mother and he was the only child that she had ever delivered who had been born in the caul. The moment she split open that amniotic sac, she knew she was exposing him to a world of fiction, because she would never tell a soul that his birth mother was a prostitute who lived in a shack across the road.
Jafar’s mother had refused to look at the child and put her hands over her ears so that she would not hear him and finally screamed to have him taken away. The midwife pumped the mother’s breasts and fed the boy herself. His mother lay in bed, despondent and stoic like a factory cow. Even after the midwife had taken the boy to Bibi-Khanoom’s, she returned to the mother to collect the milk and bring it to the orchard, only once speaking of the boy—to falsely declare that a family had been secured for him in Mash’had.
The midwife pulled deeply on the ghelyan and let out a gust of smoke.
“The pickled eggplants were delicious,” she said.
“I made them for you.”
“They are my favorite.”
“And the tahdig? I think it turned out perfectly this time.”
“What tahdig?”
Bibi-Khanoom stood up, muttering to herself, “That boy!” She pushed the window ajar and whisper-yelled, “Jafar.” Half asleep on the platform, he opened his eyes in terror. He knew why his mother was calling him and he began to hiccup-sob, just as the mullah let rip another clarion call of gas.
TEA AND SUNSET
The post-siesta tea always began as a nebulous affair with everyone still groggy with sleep. The men gathered outside the house by the tea service and fruit, which Mirza had set up for them.
The women gathered in Bibi-Khanoom’s room to take their tea, oohing and aahing over her winter sewing projects. This time, she brought out a stack of mittens she had crocheted for skin exfoliation called leafs. Most of the leafs were natural white, save for the baby blue with red flowers. That, Bibi-Khanoom handed to the midwife. Ghamar and Nasreen tried on the others for size.
Next she spread out the brightly colored chadors she had sewn. Ghamar and the midwife inspected the various flower-print fabrics in blue, pink, and white, while Nasreen looked on with disinterest. Ghamar held one out to her daughter as she spoke. “You don’t want one?”
“I don’t need one.”
“But you used to love mine. I always had to go get them from your room.”
“It was fun for playtime. I wore them as floor-length dresses. Not draped over my head.”
“Nasreen, watch your mouth. This is not a joke.”
Bibi-Khanoom jumped in. “Now, come. It’s just a piece of cloth. How you wear it is how it’s defined. For Nasreen it’s a dress and for us it’s a tradition. To each her own.”
Ghamar stared at Nasreen as if to say, “Wait until we get home.”
To change the mood, Bibi-Khanoom brought out her jewelry box. She opened it for the ladies. Whichever piece a woman seemed to notice with intensity, she offered as a gift. At first, the woman modestly refused, then, at Bibi-Khanoom’s insistence, she gleefully accepted. Much to everyone’s surprise, the midwife took a jewel-encrusted bobby pin. She pulled her chador off her head, revealing a shock of bright orange hennaed hair with inch-long brighter white roots. She looked like a sunflower. She swept her hair to one side of her brown face and stuck the pin in. Then admired herself in the handheld mirror. Ghamar took a gold chain from which hung a teardrop-shaped piece of turquoise. She opened the clasp and tried to close it around her neck but the necklace was too short. She huffed and pouted until Bibi-Khanoom dug out a longer gold chain from the box and transferred the turquoise teardrop to it.
Nasreen sat back and watched. Only she had noticed that each spring Bibi-Khanoom gave away another piece of her material life. Her gold bangles she had given to Nasreen, one by one. Today, Bibi-Khanoom pulled off the last three remaining and pushed them onto the young woman’s arm. Nasreen looked up at her in disbelief, but Bibi-Khanoom smiled at her and quietly said, “It’s all right. They’re all yours now. I am far too old to make so much noise. It is your time now.”
On the deck, the men took their customary positions on the floor pillows. Each poured his tea into the saucer to cool it. The mullah motioned to Mirza to bring some dates. When Mirza returned, bending down to set them in front of the mullah, the cleric caught a whiff of his breath and his face reddened. “Go wash out your mouth.”
Mirza put his hand over his mouth and hurried into the kitchen unaware that the scent of wine lingered on his breath. He stood at the sink and took handfuls of water into his mouth and gargled.
Outside, the mullah launched into the morality tale of why alcohol was forbidden to Muslims. How drunkenness made one forgetful of God and prayer. He cursed the bars and liquor stores that had opened for business over the past several years, selling the forbidden liquids with impunity. He went on and on about the evils of intoxicants, eventually moving on to the perils of games of chance. “If a man does not stand by his principles,” he said, “he cannot call himself a man.” From there, he somehow found a way to work Imam Hussein into the speech, which was a gift that all clerics seemed to possess. There was not a subject in the world that did not somehow relate to Imam Hussein.
Madjid was not surprised by the mullah’s reaction. He knew the Islamic stricture on drinking. Even though under the present regime there was no law against alcohol, it was still frowned upon. What did strike him was that the mullah chose to make his point by humiliating a man who was clearly his subordinate. He leaned into the judge, who sat motionless, listening to his brother go on, almost longing for a cold shot of vodka as a reprieve from all the righteousness. “If a man degrades his fellow man,” he whispered, “he cannot call himself principled.”
This drew a smile from the judge’s face. But the mullah kept going. His eyes were half closed and he was completely unaware that all three men in front of him were drinkers. None suffered more from the mullah’s sermon than Shazdehpoor. Shazdehpoor despised