“Yes. Father is so proud of it. Always telling everyone that it’s hand-stitched silk.”
“When you started school, I used to sit on that thing and stare at the motifs for hours. The medallion at the center is a square buttressed by a paisley, topped by two circles. If you sit in the center on the medallion and work your way outward, you see that all of the geometric shapes correspond to these three motifs. Even as they get smaller and smaller. Each cycle flips directions but still correlates to the central square, paisley and circles. Only once you reach the edge does the pattern fall apart.”
“And I’m the one smoking opium.”
Jamsheed held his cigarette with his teeth and slid his arm around his brother’s neck.
“Madjid, real life is neither elegant nor balanced. There are no patterns. You can think about our national character all you want but until you see the world as it is, you will have no place in it.”
“Is that what opium is? A place in the world?”
“No, brother. It’s a way out of it.”
SIESTA
After lunch, Mirza unfurled a massive gelim on the deck where the family had just finished lunch. Unlike the house rugs, the gelim did not have a pile weave or intricate designs, but rather bold and blocky tribal patterns. He laid down a pillow and folded sheet for each siesta taker. Inside, the men were changing into shalvar kordi. Even though Shazdehpoor relished the comfort of the pantaloons, their casualness unnerved him. Mohammad slipped into his with an air of relief, and Madjid poked fun at Jafar for pulling his up to his chest.
The mullah’s preparation for siesta was far more formal. He disrobed in a separate room in order to maintain the privacy and sense of decorum appropriate to his status. First, he took off his aba, which he carefully folded and set down on the carpet. Then he took off his ghaba, which he also folded. He then took off his turban and set it down on his clothes, leaving the skullcap on top of his head. He made his way to the platform in his pantaloons and white knee-length shift like those martyrs wear.
The judge always disappeared during siesta. No one knew where he went except Bibi-Khanoom. As soon as lunch ended, he washed up and took a long solitary walk on the dirt road that led to the sand dunes. He found a rock to rest on, closed his eyes, and stared at the sun. It was, in its own way, a kind of sleep.
The family gathered on the platform, waiting for the siesta to begin. Mohammad took his place on the edge of the gelim so that he could turn his head away from everyone, especially his wife. He had lived a measured life, meted out in one small increment at a time by another human being. To everyone around him, it seemed like a life of serfdom, a life in captivity under a domineering woman who controlled every moment of his existence, save his sleep. But he had only ever known such a life. Before Ghamar, he had lived with a mother who ran her household like a military prison—every day scheduled, duties allocated according to age and gender of each child, deviances dealt with harshly and quickly. For him, life with Ghamar was a continuation of the familiar, and gave him a sense of permanence that all beings crave, sometimes at the cost of their own happiness.
His fantasy life was an entirely different matter. Siesta time allowed him to lay his head on a pillow and slip away into his dreams, all of which were about one woman. A woman he had seen once as a young boy, the day his mother had taken him to the public hammam. He sat there, next to his mother, and watched this woman wash her hair. Wrapped in a linen cloth, she knelt next to the pool and poured bowlfuls of water over her head. She gently squeezed the excess water out, then threw her head back and looked up at the skylight. He saw her face at last—and the light and the warmth that emanated from it.
Over the years, he had built an imaginary life with this woman. He courted her, married her, and she bore him children. They quarreled and laughed together, made love and broke bread. He knew the contours of every inch of her face and body. She aged with him, always becoming more beautiful. He set up a home and she decorated all the rooms with fine silk-woven carpets and heavily embroidered floor pillows strewn about for guests. He had given himself a noble profession like that of a judge or a doctor, and this gave him a proper place in society. He was able to provide her with the most exquisite clothes for which she kept her figure trim. Their children were always clean and well behaved, and his wife doted on him and fulfilled his every wish. When Mohammad put his head on a pillow, a smile crossed his face and a calm swept over him, for he was about to see his beautiful, gentle, warmhearted wife.
Mohammad’s real wife spent the first few minutes of siesta staking her claim to space on the gelim. For Ghamar, napping was a full-contact sport. Once situated, she focused on falling asleep as quickly as possible by repeating observational phrases in her head, such as “that cheese was delicious” or “Jafar is a strange boy” or “Madjid is getting browner.” If there was one thing that she feared, it was to be alone in self-reflection.
Nasreen lay next to her mother, unbothered by her constant kicking and pushing. She closed her eyes and focused on the very particular scent of Madjid’s skin. It was elemental and organic like the smell of hard rain on dry rocks.
A safe, modest distance away was Shazdehpoor. He lay on his back staring up at the sky. For him, napping was yet another third-world humiliation he had to suffer. He went over future purchases he planned to make from the English gentlemen’s catalog. He had his eye on an amber glass ashtray, even though he didn’t smoke. And next to him was Madjid, who forced Jafar to lie down next to the mullah. It was always the same. Jafar would stare at Madjid with rounded maudlin eyes, worried already about the mullah’s propensity to release gas as he slept, gas potent enough to choke the life out of the hardiest of men, let alone a small boy.
The mullah’s gastrointestinal issue was a result of dairy intolerance, which would not have been an issue if he practiced moderation. And yet at every lunch he devoured an entire bowl of yogurt with sautéed spinach, browned onion, and turmeric. Poor Jafar was laid to waste in the aftermath.
Madjid looked at the dejected boy and whispered, “Just remember that someday you’ll be able to fart on someone else.”
The food induced sleep in everyone immediately, except for Madjid and Nasreen. They slipped out of the pile of bodies and tiptoed their way into the thick cherry trees. The whole affair felt exhilarating and dangerous; each time they met seemed wildly urgent.
It had been almost a year since their relations had become sexual. Their first innocent kiss that took them from friendship into courtship, followed by an afternoon where they devoured each other’s neck, Nasreen later concealing Madjid’s love marks with a chiffon scarf. Next, Madjid had explored her bosom. After that, it was not long before they were naked and entwined, fumbling their way through an act that was at once innate and acquired, at times even comical and inept.
And now, finally liberating.
After their tryst today, Madjid burrowed his head between Nasreen’s breasts. Then fell asleep, while she stroked his hair and looked up at the black cherry tree, its branches hidden by a thicket of oval leaves enveloping clusters of dark fruit. The wind let shards of warm sunlight intermittently cut through.
The sun was at its highest point and its strength washed over the sky. Crickets, wasps, and bees sang all around them, with a constant “zhhhh” that vacillated between a soft tone and a deafening, monastic drone. With eyes half-closed, Nasreen let herself fall into its trance, always aware that she could not let herself fall asleep.
She woke him with a gentle kiss to his forehead. He rolled onto his back and stared up at the canopy of trees with her. She squeezed his hand and turned to him. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Already? We have more time.”
“No. I mean out of this place. Let’s go to the capital. Anywhere but here.”
He turned to look at her. Their faces almost touched. He