Cry of the Peacock: A Novel (8 page)

Muhammad Shah summoned his father's Vizir to a garden in Tehran, and had him strangled. Freed of the only voice of reason that had disturbed his peace, Muhammad Shah then continued his practice of Sufism till he died over a decade later, in the summer of 1848.

In 1836,
Qamar the Gypsy became pregnant. She gave birth on a cold night, in the midst of a snowstorm that killed dozens. The winter she had brought with her from Tabriz had lingered indefinitely and became more fierce with time. Every day, children froze at their mothers' nipples and young men left home never to return. Someone found them late at night—corpses shrouded in ice.

All that time, Qamar had never felt the cold. When she was ready to give birth, she walked into the courtyard, and the warmth of her feet melted the snow. She went to the basement where years ago Esther the Soothsayer had borne Noah, and took out the large copper tray that all women used. She filled the tray with ashes from the bottom of the coal stove, then placed it on the ground next to the pool. The water was frozen, the frogs trapped inside. She sat above the tray, one knee planted on either side, and suffered her pain in silence.

It was night, but Qamar the Gypsy had sun in her eyes. At dawn, the birth occurred. From between her legs Qamar pulled an infant—a boy with white skin and golden hair and the eyes of the sailors, long ago in the nights of Bandar 'Abbas, who had first thrown the seeds of life into Esther the Soothsayer. A moment later another head appeared—a girl's this time, with the same features, but who neither cried nor trembled like her brother. They lay on the ashes, glowing as snow fell on their naked skin.

Spring arrived in Juyy Bar. Qamar the Gypsy had named her son Moshe, and her daughter Leyla. She bathed them in the sun every day and combed their hair with her fingers wet from the morning dew. She let them sleep on the porch, where all the neighbors came to see them. She told them stories about the world outside the ghetto. When they could walk, she held their hands and took them to the edge of Juyy Bar, there at the gates where the desert lay unconquered, and gave them the yearning to leave:

“You must walk someday," she told them, "a thousand miles, a thousand days. You must walk and never stop until you have found your freedom."

They grew up. When they were eight years old, Moshe ran home one day from the neighbor's yard and called his father:

"Is it true," he asked, "you can make gold?"

Noah the Gold went pale. He understood that the days of his son's contentment had come to an end. In Moshe's eyes, he could see the same longing that had ruined Mullah Mirza.

He denied the story. Moshe would not believe him. He took the boy outside Mullah Mirza's basement.

"Look," Noah told him. "There's no trace of gold anywhere."

Still, every day as he watched his son grow, Noah the Gold saw Moshe tortured by disbelief.

Moshe became obsessed with the desire for wealth, suddenly conscious of his poverty, aware of his lowly predicament as a Jew. He realized that most Jews were ugly—small and unformed for lack of proper nutrition, carrying the scars and ills of their fathers as they intermarried and perpetuated their unhappiness. He realized that they were dirtier than Muslims, that their homes were more crowded, that they showed little mercy to one another. He felt humiliated by the restrictions imposed on him by Shiite law, but instead of blaming the mullahs, he blamed the Jews for claiming him as one of them. He understood that as long as he was a Jew, he would never have respect or money or peace, but instead of accepting his predicament, he dreamt about converting to Islam. When he was twelve years old, he learned the story of Esther the Soothsayer: the same children who had told him of Mullah Mirza now swore that Noah the Gold's mother had been unveiled and punished for adultery. For weeks after that, Moshe refused to leave the house.

He stayed at home, and slowly, as if to avenge himself against Noah the Gold, he slipped into a fever so deep his skin blistered from the heat. One morning Noah the Gold saw Moshe wiping his eyes and looking around as if to escape a bright light. He touched the boy's forehead, and drew his hand away in shock.

"Quick," he yelled at Qamar. "Help me."

They put Moshe on Noah's back, and carried him all the way to the house of Yehuda the Just, where there was a water-storage tank. They tied a rope around Moshe's waist and lowered him into the water, right through the hatch where years ago the rabbi's only son had slipped and drowned. Moshe stayed there all day, shivering. The water was dark and stale, full of dirt and the carcasses of animals that had lain in the dry gutters of the ghetto, decomposing in the sun until twice a week the mullahs opened the dams and allowed Esfahan's river into Juyy Bar. Then everyone ran to the gutters and filled their buckets and gourds. Those who had storage tanks channeled the gutter into their home and filled the tanks. In times of hardship, when the mullahs refused the river to the Jews, they sold the water in the tank for the price of gold.

Moshe sat still, and listened to the ghosts that inhabited the tank—demons, he had heard when he was younger, one-eyed giants who ate children. He was not afraid of them. He sat on the narrow platform under the hatch and let water cover him up to his chin. Away from his home and his torment, he was safe. He could pull his knees into his chest, gather up the darkness around him, and sleep.

The demons woke him.

"You have the fever of madness," they said with voices that were deep and slow and threatening. "When the light returns, the rabbi will come for you. He will take you to a doctor and leech your blood."

They were all around him, their shapes changing with every movement of the water.

"You must run away. Leave before he arrives."

Moshe stood up. The demons disappeared. There was only darkness, and the smell of rotting cats.

"Call a leecher."
Moshe recognized the voice of Yehuda the Just.

The sun burst in Moshe's eyes. He was lying on the ground, outside the tank. People stood around him—tall, threatening. The rabbi's wife bent over to look at him. She had an air of decay about her, as if age had eaten away at her bones. For years now she had not moved from the courtyard of her house. She sat there day and night—guarding, she said, against death, which had come once when she was not looking and taken her son.

"He has the fever of madness," Yehuda the Just was telling his wife. "He must be leeched, drained of the evil blood that has flooded and impaired his brain and caused the fever."

Moshe panicked. He pushed himself up against the light, blinded by the white spots that glared at him in every corner. He stood up and began to run. The rabbi reached for him, but too late. Moshe went through the courtyard and out the door. As he ran, the water from his clothes evaporated in the sun and rose around him like fog.

He went through the alley, Yehuda chasing him, and tried to find his way home. Still blind, he pushed against people on the street, trampled the vendors' merchandise.

"Mama!" he cried as he ran.

Yehuda the Just was behind him and getting closer.

"Stop the child!" he screamed, and Moshe realized he was about to be caught. He ran faster, but he had lost his way. There were others chasing him now—children, their faces distorted by the light, their teeth gleaming.

"Mama!" He ran faster. The children surrounded him. They were singing a riddle.

"Mad, mad, Moshe has gone mad."

"Mama." The light was unbearable.

He tripped over something, almost fell, caught himself.

"Mad, mad, Moshe has gone mad."

He peered though the white spots. He saw the children—their faces monstrous, their eyes protruding, their fingers long, almost touching him. Yehuda the Just caught up.

The circle turned and turned until it became a single whirlwind of light and consumed Moshe.

Moshe woke up in the dark.
There were noises in the room, the soft murmur of a woman, the smell of wild rue burning. He pulled his body up a short distance, enough to lean his head against the wall and look. At eye level, on the ground, there was coal burning in the small brazier that served as a heater during the winter. Qamar the Gypsy stood next to the box, chanting in a monotone. Yehuda the Just had brought Moshe back, and he was a prisoner in his parents' room.

"It's the fever of madness," he had claimed, pleased to find Moshe ill, vindicated in his prediction—made the day he and Leyla were born—that Esther the Soothsayer's grandchildren would meet nothing but disaster and disease. "You must call a leecher."

Qamar and Noah had resisted at first. But Moshe's fever had only burned stronger, and they realized they were about to lose him. They sent for the leecher, but now, in a last attempt to save her son from the torture of the cure, Qamar was performing the rites of "beating the evil eye."

She bent over the brazier, and threw a fistful of wild rue on the coal.

"Damn the Devil," she said, and in the instant when the seeds popped in the heat, the orange glow of the fire licked her face, leaving dark only the shadows under her eyes and her cheekbones, and the black hole inside her mouth where her teeth shone white.

She knelt on the floor, holding a raw egg in one hand, and reached into the coal box. With her bare fingers she drew tiny circles on the shell—to represent eyes. When she had covered the entire surface, she put the egg in the fire: if it burst, she would have managed to rid her son of the evil eye. She waited. The evil was stronger that Qamar's prayer. The egg remained intact.

She tried again, with another egg. She sang louder, drew more circles on the shell, almost threw the egg into the fire. Still, nothing happened.

Just then someone knocked on the door—softly, as if in warning—and walked away. Moshe sat up, alarmed. Qamar the Gypsy touched his forehead to check the fever. Her fingers were ice-cold against his skin.

"The leecher is coming," she said. "Don't be afraid."

Moshe looked across the room, searching for help, finding no one. He heard footsteps in the courtyard.

One.

Two.

Three, and there was a pause—a split second in which Moshe realized the magnitude of the danger approaching.

One. Two. The leecher went by the pool.

He came closer to the door.

Up the steps.

He stopped.

Moshe grabbed his mother's hand. "Don't let him in."

His face was drenched in sweat. His eyes were pale, his skin gray. Crying, Qamar the Gypsy pulled her hand away— Moshe would never forgive her for this—and went to the door.

Lotf-Allah the Leecher stood in the frame. In one hand he held a whip. In the other he had a jar full of black leeches.

"Tie him," Lotf-Allah the Leecher ordered, pointing to Moshe on the floor. Two men came in from the courtyard to help. Under Lotf-Allah's command, they tied Moshe's wrists and ankles together, and stripped him of all his clothes. Moshe did not fight. He only cried—large tears of terror and anger that fell onto the bed and burned holes into

Qamar the Gypsy's heart. The room had filled with spectators. Lotf-Allah the Leecher began.

He picked up his whip and inhaled.

"Evil and foul spirits, beware. The master of souls has come to drive you to annihilation."

He struck the whip against the bare sole of Moshe's foot. He hit slowly at first, counting every stroke. Then he hit faster, faster, like the violent ticking of a furious clock. He screamed when he brought the whip down—a cry of fury and triumph that shook the house and robbed Moshe of his every defense.

"Oh, you misled and possessed spirits! Get ready to be driven out of this child's body! Leave
now!"
He hit one last time. Blood splattered his face and shirt. Then all was silent.

Lotf-Allah the Leecher waited until his heart had calmed. Then he picked up the jar of leeches. He had kept them hungry for weeks.

He brought the jar around and showed the leeches to Moshe.

"They will purify your blood," he explained. He took the leeches out one by one and placed them on Moshe's bare back. They dug into Moshe's skin and sucked out his blood. He screamed, and began to vomit in his bed. Then he fainted.

When the leeches had grown to six times their original size, they pulled out of Moshe's flesh to digest their meal. Lotf-Allah the Leecher collected them back into their jar.

"I will return tomorrow."

Every night for two weeks in the summer of 1848, the leecher came back to the house of Noah the Gold. He fed Moshe potions, tortured him by beating the soles of his feet. But he alternated the leeching with what he called an "air-suck."

He heated five glass cups until they were red, then let them cool just enough to prevent the flesh from burning deeply. He held the bottom of each cup with a cloth and reversed them on Moshe's bare and blistered back. He left them there as the skin turned amber, then suddenly pulled them up—sucking, he claimed, the fever and the “foul air" out of Moshe's soul. In the morning he would leave, drained of energy, weakened by the rage that consumed him as he battled with the devil in Moshe's spirit. By the end of the second week, the fever stopped. Lotf-Allah the the Leecher pronounced Moshe cured, collected his pay, and left.

Calm returned to the house of Noah the Gold. Moshe lay in bed cold and still, his lips white, his eyes so pallid they looked almost transparent. He never spoke to his father again. He never stopped yearning for wealth. He stayed at home for two months, recovering from the cure, and all the time he planned his escape: he would go to Esfahan, he knew, and become Muslim. He would change his name, deny he had ever been a Jew. He would become rich, respected, powerful, and someday he would come back to show Juyy Bar that he had triumphed. He rose from his bed and left the house.

He was twelve years old. He went through the ghetto, asking for a job. He knocked on every door and offered his services in return for a day's meal. Almost everyone refused him; he was the mad son of Noah the Gold, the grandson of Esther the Soothsayer, and no one could trust him to do good. He received one offer—to work as a gutter man, digging up human excrement that poured from the toilets of every house into the open gutters on the street— but he turned it down. Moshe knew where he wanted to work: in Honest the Antiquarian's shop, where a treasure was hidden. In order to get the job, he had to hide his ambition.