The mullah saw doubt as weakness. He could hardly contain the disdain he felt toward his brother, a man who had been given every advantage in life, a man who had married into wealth and comfort, never knowing the horror of poverty, degradation, or abandonment, a man who had reached the pinnacle of power only to abandon it, a man of no conviction.
This chasm between them always left their conversations unfinished.
In the kitchen, Bibi-Khanoom and Ghamar stood at the kitchen counter over a pot full of triangular blocks of Lighvan cheese from East Azerbaijan, which Bibi-Khanoom had brined during her winter seclusion. Ghamar put a piece in her mouth. “This is perfection. The Bulgarians use too much salt, the Greeks too little. Those Turks finally got something right.”
Bibi-Khanoom shook her head. “Ghamar, don’t discriminate. It’s shameful.”
“I don’t discriminate, Auntie. I hate everybody.” Ghamar peered out the kitchen window at her daughter. Nasreen had picked up a broom and was aimlessly sweeping the deck.
She sucked her teeth but Bibi-Khanoom grabbed her by the arm. “Let her be. Don’t you remember what it was like?”
“Yes, I do. That’s why I’m going out there.”
“Madjid is a fine young man,” said Bibi-Khanoom, still holding on.
“How fine can the seed of a fokoli be?”
Bibi-Khanoom looked at her—shocked. “That is enough! So Shazdehpoor likes sitting on chairs and chocolat. This is not a crime.”
“He is an insufferable snob!” Ghamar pulled her arm back and left the kitchen. Through the window, Bibi-Khanoom watched her niece argue with her daughter, but it was for Ghamar that her heart ached. How unbearable must her misery be that she had no choice but to spit it on anyone who came too close: Shazdehpoor, Madjid, her daughter, her husband, Turks, Armenians, Jews, France, Europe.
A brisk wind moved through the trees, drowning out the voices on the deck and the clattering of Mirza as he beat the bedroom rugs. Bibi-Khanoom closed her eyes, listened to the sparrows and nightingales rustling through the trees, and thanked God for another spring.
Shazdehpoor rapped sharply on his son’s door with his walking stick. “Come, Madjid!” he said. “We are late already.” Shazdehpoor was the nephew of the judge and the mullah and the only child of their sister who had died giving birth. He was also the family’s fokoli. Today, like most every day, he wore a three-piece seersucker suit with a rose tucked carefully in his lapel. He took great pride in telling anyone who would listen that seersucker came from the Persian shir o shakar or “milk and sugar.” He was so thin the suit looked almost the same on him as it did on the hanger. His slim build made his nose and bushy eyebrows even more prominent.
He held up his walking stick and tapped on the door again. The stick was mahogany and had a silver lion’s head handle. He had purchased it from an English gentlemen’s catalog. It was his prized possession. He took it everywhere, using it to bat stones out of his path on the unpaved, provincial streets of Naishapur, while muttering “barbarism” under his breath.
“Coming, Father,” Madjid said as he closed his book. Madjid’s bedroom was the product of vigorous thought and raging hormones. Stacks of books lined an entire wall, some of them so dogeared that they resembled the bellows of an accordion. A shrine of photographs was taped onto his mirror: the iconic “Guerrillero Heroico” (Che Guevara’s steadfast gaze during a memorial for those killed in a CIA explosion on La Coubre off Havana); the impassioned Mohammad Mossadegh (defending the nationalization of Iranian oil against Britain’s Anglo-Iranian Oil Company at the International Court of Justice); and a defiant Muhammad Ali (surrounded by fellow black athletes at a meeting of the Negro Industrial and Economic Union explaining why he refused to be drafted into the Vietnam War). This disparate trinity—an Argentine Marxist revolutionary, a nationalist Iranian prime minister, and a black American Muslim athlete—were united by one thing: they were all men of conscience. Madjid longed to be such a man in this world but he had not quite figured out how to do this. He slept on a small cot and thought of only two things, the part he would play in the future of his country and being with Nasreen. Both of which he knew were intrinsically and irrevocably tied to the other.
His father had no place in his future. Shazdehpoor longed for a world of order and civility, filled with cobblestone streets and dining halls with gilded chairs. He had fashioned his room after a European salon and often sat up at night in his leather club chair, sipping cognac and listening to the Adagio from Schubert’s String Quintet in C major, remembering the contours of his dead wife’s face. A face that bore a striking resemblance to that of their son, Madjid.
Madjid’s father held up his walking stick as they proceeded through the orchard, Shazdehpoor swatting pebbles and muttering furiously under his breath, Madjid ignoring his father’s futile battle with the stones. The scent of plums and cherries mixed with the dust in the air. Madjid had grown up in the orchard. As a boy, it was the only place where he was free to roam without supervision or restriction. Half-naked, alone, his face stained with the juice of fruits he had shaken from the trees, he escaped bee stings and ran with a child’s ferocity, unaware of his scrapes and cuts. He stood over anthills and watched their efforts with total admiration. Then, just as easily, wiped them off the face of the earth with a kick of his foot.
The guilt helped him instinctively understand what he would consciously later learn, that a man’s character is determined by how he chooses to wield the power he has over others.
As Shazdehpoor and Madjid entered the house, Nasreen laid eyes on her beloved and felt her heartbeat quicken. Their first few minutes together always filled her with anxiety. She leaned against the kitchen doorway as he and Shazdehpoor greeted the family, waiting for his eyes to meet hers. Madjid had brown eyes. But not just any brown eyes. If you looked into them long enough, you saw the dark embers of his mind at work. Framed by long, almost girlish lashes.
Nasreen felt a sudden pinch and jumped.
“Stop standing around like a sheep,” said her mother. “Go bring more tea.”
Nasreen scurried to the kitchen, not looking back to see if Madjid had noticed her embarrassment. The samovar was percolating. She stood, fuming: Why was her mother so brutal and intrusive? Why did she try to control every waking moment of her life, crushing something as delicate as the anticipation of meeting her lover’s eyes? She did not hear Madjid’s soft steps as he came into the kitchen with the empty teapot. He stood beside her, leaning into her to reach the spigot of the samovar. As soon as his arm touched hers, all of the tension in her body dissipated. Knowing he could affect her so made Madjid feel protective of her, especially near his family, who he believed had no idea what was happening. As he finished filling the teapot, he whispered, “Hello, friend.”
Nasreen smiled. This was his new greeting for her, one he had given her after their first kiss. The kiss had happened at a Friday lunch the previous summer. They had stolen away during the afternoon siesta and walked side by side through the trees, as they often did, to talk. He spoke at length about theories, and she listened. But on that particular day they had been speaking about love. Madjid had been thinking aloud about the ephemeral nature of romantic love. How once the veil between two people dropped, the passion dissipated and all that was left was a circadian bind that was either