“It’s all right. But if we leave, it should be for something better. Not just to get away from something unbearable.”
“My mother is relentless. Every day it gets worse. The only time that I have any peace is when I’m in my room or with you. I want to go to the capital and try out for the theater troupe. Maybe work at the box office and work my way onto the stage. Take classes. Get an apartment. Meet up with friends at the coffeehouse. Talk about things that matter to me. Laugh as loudly as I want. Lie in a real bed with you—”
He was sitting up now, no longer listening to the litany of her desires, but watching the tears pour down her face.
“I don’t have a life, Madjid. And I want one. With you.”
He pulled her up, cupping her face in his hands as he spoke. “I know what you are up against. I see how hard it is on you. But you are more alive than anyone I know, and if we have to go somewhere else just so that you can see what I already see in you, then I promise you, we will do it.”
Nasreen brushed away her tears and smiled.
They began their walk back toward the house side by side. Right as they were about to step out from the row of trees, he turned to face her. They stood there in silence looking at each other. He kissed her on the forehead, and watched her walk back to the siesta, then made his way to Mirza.
Mirza lived in a small shack in the orchard that he had built himself near the entrance. It was one room with one door and one window. The décor was Spartan. The most prominent item was a carpet given to him by Bibi-Khanoom as a housewarming present. He took his meals on that carpet and he slept on it as well.
As Madjid reached the shack, he saw the door was open. Mirza was busy in the corner fiddling with the spigot of an oak barrel. He whipped around with a cup in his hand as he heard Madjid approach. “Some medicinal juice?”
Madjid let out a hardy laugh. “Of course.”
He took the cup and sat on the carpet as Mirza filled his own and took his place beside him. Mirza studied Madjid’s face. The flushed skin and tousled hair of a young man in love and full of lust gave him pleasure. He lifted his cup to Madjid and toasted him as he always did, with a quatrain from Omar Khayyam’s Ru’baiyat. “Come, fill the Cup, and in the fire of Spring your Winter-garment of Repentance fling: the Bird of Time has but a little way to flutter—and the Bird is on the Wing.”
They both threw back the wine and rolled their tongues around their mouths, tasting resin residue. Mirza bounced to his feet to refill their cups with an almost childlike enthusiasm. He tilted and shook the barrel to get the wine to flow. “It’s getting to the bottom. Time for a new batch at Chateau Mirza.”
Madjid remembered the first time Mirza had invited him to his room. He had sat on the carpet and, as he looked about, he had realized that other than the carpet and the oak barrel, the only things there were a wooden backgammon board, a small pile of clothes, and some toiletries. Not one book or photograph. Not one trace of a past life. “Who are you?” he had asked.
“I am no one,” said Mirza. “More juice?”
Today, Mirza spoke of mulching plants and pruning trees. He spoke of the turning of leaves and the migrations of the birds and insects. He spoke of the movement of the sun and the motion of the wind in spring, summer, autumn, and winter. He spoke of the moodiness of the hens and the stubborn old goat that would latch on to his pant leg during the morning feeding. An animated glee had swept over him as he went on about these things, and Madjid realized that Mirza had become the orchard itself. And he wondered how unbearable some lives must be that they have to be abandoned to go on living.
Mirza brought out the backgammon board. It was made of heavy walnut wood with intricate geometrical engravings. “Black or white?” he said.
“Black.”
They each took their checkers and set up at a rapid pace. Mirza tossed one of the rounded ivory dice to Madjid. “Less or more?”
“Less.”
They simultaneously threw them. Madjid’s landed on six while Mirza’s continued to spin. It landed finally on three and Mirza immediately grabbed the dice and started the game. They played fast, tearing through two games in under five minutes, with Mirza winning both. On the third game he was so far ahead of Madjid that it was likely he would beat him before Madjid was able to get all his pieces home. Mirza shook the dice in his hand, mocking the young man. “I smell the stench of marse.”
A double loss. But Madjid was not ready to admit defeat. Not yet.
Mirza blew on the dice and threw them. They both watched the dice spin and slow to a halt, landing on a double six.
“My God,” said Madjid. “What luck you have!”
Mirza looked up at him and smiled a smile that barely masked a sadness he would never explain. “My luck begins and ends with dice.”
Bibi-Khanoom stood at her kitchen counter with her ghelyan and a tobacco box. She refilled the base with fresh water and packed the bowl with tobacco and covered it with a screen. She placed a small square of coal on the screen and lit the coal. She gently blew on the coal and carried the ghelyan back to her bedroom to wait for the arrival of the midwife.
The midwife was Bibi-Khanoom’s oldest, dearest friend. She lived in a one-room shack just a few minutes’ walk from the orchard, on the outskirts of town. It was surrounded by sand dunes, desolate and barren.
The midwife had delivered Naishapur’s newborns for more than fifty years, but had been forced into retirement after a difficult birth that almost killed the child and mother. Though it was through no fault of her own, the townspeople no longer trusted her.
The midwife rarely came to the Friday lunches. She preferred spending time with Bibi-Khanoom alone during the siesta that followed. She would always show up to return the plate that Jafar had delivered, and they spent the afternoon together in Bibi-Khanoom’s room, smoking. Each would recline on a floor pillow, holding her own amjid, an ornate mouthpiece they put on the hose as they passed it back and forth. Sometimes they would play a few rounds of backgammon or a card game such as hokm or pasur. Other times they would sit silently inhaling and enjoy the lightheadedness of the nicotine, speaking in turn in a call-and-response. The midwife always went first. Lately, her subjects were morose. “I am afraid of death,” she said.
“How can you be afraid of what you do not know?”
“It is exactly why I am afraid.”
The midwife had spent her whole life in the service of creation, losing count of how many births she had facilitated. And yet the mystery and wonder of the act had never ceased to move her. That very moment when she would yank a blood-covered infant from the birth canal, holding it up and slapping a first cry from the child—a sound so primal, so primordial that she believed it was the voice of God, if ever there was such a thing.
But death was silent and this frightened her. “There is no wisdom that comes with age, Bibi-jan, only acceptance.”
“But that is wisdom, my dear.”
“Each night I go to bed fearing I won’t wake up. I am waiting to die.”
“We all are, my dear. It is just that those of us closer to it are waiting with greater anticipation.”
“I am tired of waiting with anticipation.”
“Some tea will make you feel better.”
“Yes, that would be nice.”
Bibi-Khanoom looked out her window now and saw the midwife coming down the path toward the house. She was a whisper of an old woman, gangly, hunched, and bowlegged, but she moved with the spirit of a young girl. When she reached the house