The Girl from the Garden Read online

  Before Rakhel became Asher Malacouti’s wife, she was just a bread maker’s daughter. Rebbe Yousseff, Asher’s father, had already rested in the earth for many years before Asher came to the age when it was time for him to take a wife. By then, he had already multiplied his father’s inheritance exponentially, and everyone spoke of Asher Malacouti’s ability to turn even mule dung into a brick of gold. When Asher’s beard came in fully, he was the richest Jew in Kermanshah, and men much older than he, Jew and Muslim alike, who had been investing and selling and buying for years and years, came to him for advice. At home, he ran the household and took on the role of father for his younger brother, Ibrahim, advising him and tutoring him, even chastising him about the necessity of being more shrewd, more zealous in the pursuit of building wealth. Zolekhah watched her eldest son with great pride, and sometimes with a bit of fear. When one of the women at the hammam commented about her son playing the man without ever bedding a girl, she knew it was time to find Asher a wife.

  One day, when Zolekhah went visiting the sister of the widowed bread maker in the andaruni of their home, she saw the bread maker’s daughter helping with the dough, kneading it with her hands, flattening it paper thin, slapping it against the wall of the tanoor in their yard. “This one,” Zolekhah told Asher when she returned home, “this one is intelligent and not lazy.” She went to the hammam the following day, knowing that Rakhel and her aunts were attending, and she watched the girl from a distance. The girl had no deformities, her skin was healthy. “Yes, this one will be a good match for you,” Zolekhah told Asher later, and he agreed that she should approach the bread maker’s sister to speak her intentions.

  Once the women had the preliminary dialogue, it became the men’s business. The men entered the bread maker’s home and sat on the rug, against the cushions that lined the walls of the small room. Asher’s eldest uncle sat to his right, and Ibrahim to his left, directly across the room from the bread maker. Asher leaned back onto the cushion to survey the room, then quickly thought his posture suggested laziness, or indolence, and sat upright. The windows were open, and the breeze that passed through the dancing lace curtains felt cool against his perspiring forehead.

  “Are you nervous?” Ibrahim whispered.

  “I carry the better half of this deal,” Asher said. He wasn’t nervous. But the room. The room was stifling, with all those men gathered, and the excited whispers of the hidden women that peaked from behind the tattered cloth that separated this room from the only other room in the home. Asher felt the women’s searching eyes on his skin. They watched his every gesture, considered his height, measured the width of his shoulders, decided whether the tilt of his chin suggested strength or too much pride masking weakness, perhaps even laughed at the way he sat. Asher relaxed his shoulders and arranged the cushions behind him so that he could lean against the wall with his back straight. He looked at his own hands clutched in his lap and instead decided to hold each knee of his folded legs. Once he felt that his posture was correct and that his visage commanded respect, he turned his attention to the bread maker, without looking directly at him but focusing on the roses in a vase in the alcove of the wall above the bread maker’s head. The bread maker talked to the man beside him, his brother, a merchant of spices Asher recognized from the caravansary. The bread maker fingered the beads of the tasbih he held in one hand and patted his knee absentmindedly with the other. The brother spoke to him in low urgent tones, stopping to smile at someone on Asher’s side of the room, to bow his head in greeting a couple of times, before resuming his whispered counsel.

  “He is probably telling the old man to demand a higher dowry than the one we suggest,” Asher whispered to Ibrahim.

  “Allow Uncle Moshe to do the talking, out of respect,” Ibrahim said.

  Asher looked at his aged uncle sitting beside him. It should have been his father. It should have been his father, beside him, these many years. How proud Rebbe Yousseff would have been to see the way the men at the caravansary address Asher, how proud he would have been to see the loyalty of the Kurds. The two of them might have worked alongside each other, building this future together. And when his father would have grown too old, he’d leave the business in his son’s capable hands, and rest, surrounded by the joy of his grandchildren, Asher’s sons and daughters, who’d dote on him and give him living proof that there was some meaning to all that toil, that his life wasn’t a life lived in vain.

  Asher felt a heaviness in his chest, and turned his attention to the sound of a group of boys playing in the streets. A passing street peddler interrupted their play with his song, lima beans, lima beans, the greenest, freshest lima beans. The children took up the peddler’s song, their voices taunting, adding their own vulgar refrains until the peddler’s loud curses were followed by the sound of running feet. The other men in the room stopped their conversation to listen to the commotion in the street, and the silence that ensued hung heavy in the room.

  “Boy children,” Asher’s eldest uncle said, “a blessing, the devils.” The men in the room laughed.

  “Yes, a blessing. If they do not turn every hair on your head white with their antics,” the bread maker said. “Now a daughter, a true blessing, a comfort, a balm for the aching heart in old age.” The room resumed a grave silence for a moment, and then came the jingle of teacups on a tray. A hand reached out and pulled aside the curtain, and a woman in a chador, an elder aunt perhaps, stepped through and into the room amidst the men. She walked to Asher’s eldest uncle first, offered him chai and dates with a reserved smile on her lips. She whispered welcome, welcome, then served each man until she reached the bread maker last, who took his glass and saucer without looking at her. He held the glass delicately and tipped the chai with one hand into the saucer he held in the palm of the other. He blew noisily on the saucer, then sipped from it. The woman glanced around the room once, her gaze resting on Asher a moment longer than the rest, then bowed her head slightly and disappeared behind the curtain.

  “Your hospitality is commendable,” Asher’s uncle said.

  “For a guest of such great honor, it is nothing.”

  “No, truly, the honor is ours.”

  “No, no the honor mine, you have graced my home with your presence.”

  “We have come with intentions we hope worthy of you and your home. We have come to ask for your daughter as a bride.”

  “Ah, she is more than a daughter, more than a girl to me. So intelligent, she is, so hardworking. Worth twelve sons, that one.”

  “Asher is a jewel of a son, had I one like him, myself, though he is like my own.” The uncle nodded his head toward Asher. “This young man is one of the richest merchants of the caravansary, goyim and Jew alike. My brother’s wealth, zichrono livracha, grows like weeds beneath Asher’s hands. He owns three villages, and land in several others . . .”

  “Yes, yes, a praiseworthy young man,” said the bread maker. “Alas, how material wealth leaves the heart empty, though.”

  “Yes,” the uncle said, “but the belly full,” and he patted his own protruding stomach. The men laughed quietly and sipped their chai. The bread maker smiled and nodded his head. He placed his tea glass and saucer down, and picked up his tasbih once more.

  Fingering the beads, he said, “Rakhel is a gem. Unlike girls raised to sleep and gossip all day. She is a rare, rare gem. And since having lost my poor wife, I cannot bear the thought of losing her, too.” The bread maker shook his head. “I have yet to see a girl like her. I’m sorry, but I will have to say no to your admirable offer.” A silence settled on the room once more. Asher knew it was a ritual, but he couldn’t help feeling slighted. He cleared his throat, and his uncle touched his arm.

  “Well, we must be on our way, we have put your household through enough trouble,” his uncle said and he rose with difficulty. The rest of the men in the room stood. After much procedure, of bowing of the head and praise of the host, Asher found himself in the street once more. He stood in the la
te afternoon sun, blinking.

  “The requirements of custom are cumbersome, son,” his uncle said, patting Asher’s back.

  “Everyone in the room knows the fortune that has befallen the bread maker,” Ibrahim said.

  “Yes, but he must refuse in order to save face. It is important to do so,” the uncle said. “For Asher, as much as himself. We do not want people to say that Asher’s bride was thrown at him.”

  Asher smiled at his uncle. “When will we return?” he asked.

  “In a week’s time.”

  “And will I see her, then?”

  “I’m sure you will,” his uncle had said. “He cannot afford to lose your interest.”

  After being turned away, Asher and his uncles waited a week, then returned to meet again with the bread maker and the men of his family. Once they settled on the rug and leaned back on the cushions propped against the walls, there came a hushed commotion from behind the curtain. Then, pushed forth from the other room behind the tattered cloth, Rakhel stood before them. A swell in the cloth discreetly nudged her farther into the room. Rakhel took a halting step forward with the heavy tray, stopped, looked around until her gaze reached Asher, then looked down quickly. A moment, she waited, then raised her head firmly back up, a look of stone resolve in her eyes and she marched across the rug, balancing the tray in her hands with stoic grace. She lowered the tray before Asher’s uncle first and said, “Welcome.”

  Asher’s uncle took his saucer and glass of chai, then hesitated in his choice of pastry, his extended finger hovering over the beheshti, faltering before the baklava, until he selected a square of sohan and said, “Thank you, daughter. Surely sweetness offered from your hands is an omen of sweet days to follow.” Rakhel’s cheeks turned crimson and she looked back, for a brief moment, in the direction of the curtain. Asher studied her profile. A delicate face. Fine cheekbones. She took a step in his direction and he smiled to himself. She extended the tray, the amber liquid in the cups moving perceptibly, the silver spoons attesting to her uneasiness.

  “Welcome,” she whispered. She kept her eyes on the chai, the pastries on the tray. Asher looked at her neck and her defined collarbone. There was a certain grace to her body, despite how thin she was. He glanced at her hands. Her skin seemed so soft. She was a bit too thin, but then, after the first child, her hips would certainly widen. He realized his survey exceeded the accepted time allotted for choosing a pastry, and he quickly picked one before the host might presume his too-slow assessment of either his daughter or his baked goods an insult.

  Rakhel moved to serve Ibrahim, and Asher poured chai from his glass into the saucer and blew on it, the steam rising, swirling into the filtered sunlight of the room. The lace curtains cast rose-patterned shadows on the floor. He noticed Rakhel’s bare feet from the corner of his eyes. Despite her measured movements, her hennaed toes nervously clenched and unclenched the red wool of the rug.

  Yes, he thought to himself. She will do.

  Asher nodded at Ibrahim. Ibrahim smiled in response and shrugged his shoulders. Then Asher looked at his uncle, and the old man looked back without blinking, waiting for Asher to reveal his decision about the match. Asher nodded his head slightly and closed his eyes briefly to convey his approval. His uncle smiled and leaned over to pat Asher’s knee with his hand. Then, he cleared his throat. The bread maker looked directly at the uncle, who smiled again and nodded once. Rakhel had worked her way around the room and approached her father with the final glass of tea remaining on the tray. The bread maker took his glass and saucer and said something beneath his breath to the girl standing before him. She turned slightly so that she might see Asher from the corner of her eyes, and then disappeared behind the curtains once more. When women’s whispering in the other room ceased, the men proceeded to discuss the dowry items.

  The preparations for a wedding were a celebration in themselves. Mahboubeh remembers those days as the happier ones of her childhood. The house full of women laughing and gossiping, eating and preparing for the feasts. The children, caught up in the merriment, stole from the abundance of sweetmeats and delicacies, a conspiracy overlooked by the adults. So much noise in the gardens, in the rooms, for a moment Mahboubeh felt a sense of belonging.

  She looks about her darkened kitchen. A coyote yelps outside in the distant hills. Its brothers begin laughing in response. She imagines the rabbit they must be chasing, the pursuit, the frantic flight, the joy of the chase. Her house is cold. She picks up her cup of tea, but that has cooled, too. She closes her eyes and remembers when the women gathered, even to celebrate little things, in hope of dispelling the monotony of their days. They came together for the plucking of a bride’s eyebrows, the sixth night of a daughter’s birth, the first meal of a baby, the spilt blood after the first night of being a wife. And they gathered to celebrate holy days, too, and for the preparation of feasts for those sanctified days, and for Sabbath dinners. And sometimes, they entered each other’s homes just to bring news, to share the joy or spread the shame, to help with an ailing mother, to mourn, to console, to counsel, to tell stories, to eavesdrop, to bring a talisman against miscarriage, a remedy to win back a straying husband, to bring news about the misconduct of potential grooms, to gossip about the shamelessness of potential brides, to return borrowed china, to apologize, to pray, to forgive.

  They knocked on the heavy wooden door, the knocker to the right, a different pitch of iron against iron, to let the women of the household know that it was another woman at the door, a sister, a friend, a seamstress. If a man knocked, the knocker to the left sounded a deeper tone. Then, the woman answering put a finger in her mouth, in the corner of her cheek, to mask her voice before asking who called and for what business, so that the sweetness of her voice might not lead the man behind the door to sinful thought, rouse him to break open that very door and drag her down in shame. Rarely did a woman open the door for an unknown man, unless it was a peddler, selling needle and thread, or one of these men who did small tasks for coins, scouring pots, fetching pails from the bottom of wells, sharpening knives. But if it was a woman who knocked, then the women let in the cloaked figure, and if no men were home, then the woman entering through the threshold removed her ruband, her chador, her head scarf, let loose her hair, took off her shoes, rolled up her sleeve, entered the andaruni, laughing out loud, hitched up her skirt to wash her feet in the pool, splashed water on her face if it was a hot day, accepted the mint sherbet or the chai, and sat down to a feast of words.

  Mahboubeh remembers when, a year after Asher’s death, news spread throughout the Jewish mahalleh that Rakhel was searching for a bride for Yousseff, the sole heir to the Malacouti estate. All day the knocker announced the arrival of another potential girl, her aunts and mother in attendance, stopping by to pay their respects to Rakhel, on their way from here to there. Mahboubeh sat in her room studying for an exam when one of the servants came running to fetch her. Rakhel insisted that Mahboubeh keep the girl company while she entertained the women.

  Mahboubeh reluctantly earmarked the page in her book, closed it, and rose with a sigh. For an hour or so, Mahboubeh sat in the guest hall, sipping her chai and trying to speak with the girl so that she could report back to Rakhel whether the candidate was suitable or not. Sometimes, however, the girl was reluctant to speak. Often, though, the girl knew the opportunity this meeting afforded her, and so she went out of her way to chat with Mahboubeh. Usually, those girls did not attend school, or if they did, they were not too serious about their studies, so that the conversations between Mahboubeh and the potential bride hit walls of silence. Mahboubeh would look to Rakhel, who glared back at her until she attempted another avenue of dialogue. When the visitors left, Rakhel began the questioning. Does she read too much? Rakhel asked. Is she very interested in gold and trinkets? Does she seem docile? Vain? Lazy? Did you sense in her a harlot? A girl who’d demand this and that from her husband?

  Then, one day, a young girl arrived with her mother and aunts.
Beautiful. Shy. She held a doll to her chest and sat quietly, listening to the women talk. When Mahboubeh sat beside her, she looked up at Mahboubeh and asked, “Would you like to hold my baby?”

  Speechless, Mahboubeh took the doll from the girl and held it cradled in her arms. “What’s her name?” Mahboubeh finally asked.

  “Hannah,” the girl said.

  Mahboubeh handed the doll back. “She is very well behaved,” she said. “You must be a wonderful mother.” The girl smiled, and for the rest of the visit, she tended to her baby.

  When the girl and the women who accompanied her left, Rakhel looked at Mahboubeh and said, “That one reminds me of Khorsheed.” They sat in silence for several moments. Mahboubeh wondered does she have her face, or her mannerisms, is it the way she loved her baby, but Rakhel rose to leave before Mahboubeh could find the voice to ask.

  “Tell the servants a decision has been made,” Rakhel said without looking back. “Tell them to send the rest away.”

  Mahboubeh sits in her kitchen, in silence. She cannot hear the coyotes in the hills any longer. She considers turning on the lights, but outside her window, she can see her garden silver in the moonlight. Loneliness is a palpable sensation, she thinks to herself, the presence of an absence. She closes her eyes to shut out the darkness of her kitchen and the quiet of the night, when she hears the sound of women chattering. She sees Zolekhah, a week before Asher’s wedding, standing amidst them like a captain at the helm of a ship. Everyone around her engages in some industry, cooking or baking or washing. They come early in the morning and work well into the afternoon, until they leave for their own homes, where they make dinners for their husbands and brothers before those men return from the work of their day. The merrier the women are, the better the outlook for the match. And so the women laugh easily, and sing often.