Equal of the Sun (28 page)

“I will do so.” With that, I protested that I had already consumed too much of her time and said my farewells.

I was stricken with concern for Khadijeh. What if the Shah had attacked her before coming to his senses? His mind was even more disturbed than I had realized, and his nighttime fears were the proof.

When I entered Mirza Salman’s waiting room for the first time as Pari’s vizier, I felt as if I had arrived at the pinnacle of my career. Mirza Salman’s salon was filled with qizilbash nobles and other men of high stature. Men went in and out of his rooms at a regular pace, an efficiency that pleased me. Because of my new status, I was shown in quickly.

Mirza Salman worked in a small, elegant room with arched openings in the walls, attended by two scribes who sat on either side of him with wooden desks on their laps. One of them was finishing a document, while the other sat poised for current business. Mirza Salman congratulated me on being appointed Pari’s vizier, and I thanked him for seeing me. I told him that Pari wished for him to know the sad news that her cousin Ibrahim’s brother, Hossein, had died unexpectedly in Qandahar, leaving the province without a governor. The Shah had honored Ibrahim and Gowhar by visiting them to express his sympathy, but had forbidden them from wearing black.

Mirza Salman frowned. “And so?”

“Hossein was running Qandahar as if it were his own. There were concerns he might rebel by making an alliance with the Uzbeks.”

“So now that Hossein is dead,” he said, “the Shah has no reason to be kind to Ibrahim?”

Mirza Salman had a quick brain.

“That is what the princess fears. She has written to Ibrahim and Gowhar to tell them she thinks they should leave town, especially since they supported Haydar. She wants to know if you can help them.”

“I will try.”

“Meanwhile, Pari has asked her uncle to advocate on your behalf. He remains in good standing with the Shah and will look for opportunities to suggest that you be promoted.”

“Thank you.”

“It is always my pleasure to serve.”

Mirza Salman scrutinized me for a moment. I sensed that he wished to take my measure now that I was Pari’s vizier.

“You say that as if you really mean it.”

“I do.”

“Your personal sacrifice is still mentioned at court as a paragon. What an uncommonly large gift you gave to the throne!”

“Larger than you could possibly imagine,” I joked.

Mirza Salman laughed but couldn’t conceal a slight shudder. He eyed me the way one regards an unpredictable sharp-toothed animal, with a mixture of curiosity and horror.

“With balls as big as that, perhaps you should have been a soldier.”

“I like this job better.”

“I have always dreamed of being a military man,” he said, and I noticed that he had decorated one of his walls with old standards used in battle. “But administrators like me are thought to be too soft.”

I made the obligatory sounds of protest.

“Now that your star is ascending, I will keep my eye on you,” he added.

“Thank you,” I said, wondering if I could goad him into revealing
some information. “I always wished to fulfill my father’s dreams for me, especially after what happened to him.”

“I remember your father,” Mirza Salman replied. “A good man, true to the throne. I imagine he was pulled off his course by smaller minds.”

I felt perspiration under my arms. My heart began to race and questions flooded through me, but I concealed my feelings.

“I suppose you are right,” I said agreeably. “Do you know who pulled him off course?”

“No.”

“Naturally, I have always wanted to know more about the circumstances of his death. We were never told.”

I tried not to appear overly eager.

“Did you check the court histories?”

I thought quickly about how to get him to talk. “There is only a brief mention of the accountant who killed him,” I lied. “No doubt you recall who it was. I have always heard that your memory far surpasses that of ordinary men.”

Mirza Salman looked pleased and thought for a moment. “He had one of those common names . . . Isfahani? Kermani? Wait a minute . . . Ah, yes! Kofrani, that is it. If I am not mistaken, his first name was Kamiyar.”

Finally, a name! I played along. “What a memory you have! How did you hear about his involvement?”

“Palace rumor, I suppose. It has been so long, I don’t remember the source.”

“Has he retired?”

Mirza Salman was watching me closely. “Alas, he went to meet God a few years after leaving palace service.”

I had been congratulating myself on luring Mirza Salman into my trap, but now I realized he was far too careful to make a slip: He wouldn’t have uttered the man’s name if he had been alive.

“May he meet his just reward.”

“Would you wish to revenge yourself upon him, if he were living?” he asked. “He was an excellent man. I wouldn’t be surprised if he thought he was protecting the Shah.”

I had to decide in an instant if it would be better for him to think me fierce or flaccid. For Pari’s protection, I decided on the former.

“I would cut him.”

Mirza Salman was no innocent, but he stared at me as if I were a crazed dog who might attack for no reason.

“But if he killed my father mistakenly, perhaps I would just lop off his male parts and call it even,” I joked.

Mirza Salman laughed uneasily.

“Do you know why he was never punished?”

“No.” His eyes flicked away, and I had a feeling he knew more than he was saying.

I thanked him and left, abuzz with the name that he had planted in my mind. Kamiyar Kofrani. The murderer of my father. The name was ugly, and the man must have been, too. But worst of all, he was dead, and Mirza Salman had confirmed my father’s guilt. Now I could neither argue his innocence nor revenge myself on his killer. After all these years, I had finally collected a missing piece of colored clay from the mosaic of my own past, but I was too late to do anything about it.

That night, I waited impatiently for Balamani to finish his work so that I could tell him what I had learned. I longed for the sweet relief of confiding in a friend, and I hoped he would be able to shed more light on what had happened. But he did not arrive at the usual time.

The hours went by, the moon rose, and still Balamani did not appear. I began reading the
Shahnameh
that Mahmood had given me, and its felicitous rhymes helped keep me awake for a long time before I succumbed to sleep, the book on my chest. When finally Balamani entered our chamber, it was daylight. He removed his outer robe and sat on his bedroll, his face drawn with fatigue.

“What happened?”

“One of the Shah’s women was pregnant, but she lost the baby a few hours ago. She is sick with grief.”

“Mahasti?”

“No, another slave. She was losing a lot of blood. We sent for a physician and a woman schooled in religion to console her.”

“That is terrible news.”

“Then I had to go to the Shah’s quarters and wait until he arose to tell him what happened. He took his time.”

Balamani looked more melancholy than I would have expected.

“What is troubling you so?”

He threw himself back on his bedroll. “While the lady was suffering, I was flooded with memories of my mother’s death. I was only about four years old. A group of women came to our house and shut me out of her room; I remember their awful wails. No one ever told me what happened, but now I suspect that my mother died in childbirth. Today I had the eerie feeling that I was one of the attendants at her deathbed. I feel sometimes as if all the moments of my life existed simultaneously—as if I am living in the past and present at the same time.”

“May God keep the souls of your family in His gentle embrace.”

He sighed. “You are lucky to have a sister. In memory of my lost sibling, I shall give double my usual amount to the orphans of Qazveen. And now, tell me your news. Why are you awake so early?”

I sat up. “Balamani, I have finally learned the name of my father’s killer. It was Kamiyar Kofrani!” I blurted out.

“You mean the accountant? How do you know?” He didn’t sound as surprised as I thought he would be.

“Mirza Salman told me.”

“Are you sure he is the right man?”

“Do you think Mirza Salman would lie?”

“Any man can lie.”

I thought his answer very strange. “What about this Kofrani—was he a good servant?”

“Yes. One of the best.”

I did not like the sound of that.

“And his children?”

“He had three boys. One of them is dead, but I am fairly certain
the other two serve the government in Shiraz, and have wives and children.”

“Which I will never have. I hope they all burn in hell.” I stared at him suspiciously. “How do you come by so much information about them?”

“Javaher, you know that I know almost every family who has served at court for the last fifty years.”

I lifted the blanket off my bedroll with so much force that it flew onto the floor.

Balamani shrugged off the rest of his clothes and got into his bed. “My friend, I can understand why you are angry. But since the man is dead, what can you do?”

I glared at him from my bedroll. “That is good advice—unless your father has been murdered, in which case something must be done.”

“Remember that I lost my father all the same. Or rather, he lost me to a slaver. But I haven’t been spending my time trying to track down the merchant who chopped off my eight-year-old penis and sold me to court.”

“Wasn’t it wrong?”

He snorted. “If it wasn’t, Muslims would castrate their own boys instead of buying gelded Hindus and Christians.”

“Aren’t you angry?”

“It is not that simple. If I hadn’t lost my
keer,
I would never have feasted on kabob, lived in a palace, or worn silk. My family was as poor as dirt.”

“Balamani, stop equivocating.”

Compassion softened his eyes. “My young friend, it is not just your father’s murderer you have to forgive.”

“Who is it then?”

“Yourself.”

“For what?”

“For what you did.”

Rage surged through me. “All this time, I thought you wanted to help me!”

“Of course I do,” he replied, but for the first time I could remember,
he sounded as if he didn’t really mean it. I maintained an angry silence. Balamani rolled over and began snoring before I could think of what to say next.

A group of Sufis met on Thursdays to whirl their way closer to God. From time to time, I attended their
sama
to imbibe the peacefulness of the ceremony. After hearing the news about my father, I decided to avoid the usual Thursday-evening leisure activities, which I had no stomach for, and go to the
sama
. I sent a message to Pari that I was ill and left the palace through a side gate.

The Sufis gathered in a large building with windows high in the walls and roof, so that the room was dappled as if in the shade of a walnut tree. When I arrived late in the afternoon, the ceremony had already begun. The anguished notes of the flute called out the desire of the reed for reunion with its maker, throwing me deeper into memories of my father.