The Good Daughter: A Memoir of My Mother's Hidden Life (10 page)

After a lunch of pomegranate-and-walnut stew, they slapped their copper bowls against the tiles to make music and danced for each other in turn. So great was their din that some of the neighborhood women climbed onto the roof of the
hammam
and peered through the skylights for a glimpse of the festivities. After a final round of tea and sweets, they perfumed Lili’s hair, twisted it into tiny topknots all around her head, and then threw a veil over her head to shield her from jealous eyes in the streets.

At dawn the porters came to take away the final items of the trousseau. To announce the Night of Consummation, the porters would carry these offerings on their heads all the way from Khanoom’s house to the Khorramis’ compound. Once more her aunts and cousins groomed her. They traced
sormeh
all around her eyes and brushed her hair loose, then blotted her cheeks and her lips with rouge. Khanoom had surreptitiously affixed the thinnest gauze sleeves to her wedding dress, and now, as the dress was slipped over Lili’s head, they all stood back and studied the results of this and their many other labors. “
Masha Allah!
Praise God!” Khanoom exclaimed, her eyes bright with tears, and at this one of Lili’s aunts scurried to the kitchen to burn a last pot of wild rue to shield Lili from the Evil Eye.

Finally, in the hour before dusk, the two porters reappeared, this time in a gleaming white sedan.

Lili did not doubt that her grandmother and aunts and Sohrab’s stepmothers would miss her, but her belief was shaken when she learned that none of them would accompany her to the Night of Consummation. Khanoom always spoke highly of the Khorrami family name, and tolerated their modern ways on this account, but the wedding itself had provoked a genuine crisis. Though the Khorramis had consented to separate parties for the
aqd
, when the time came for the final wedding party (scheduled for the eve of Lili’s thirteenth birthday) they were no longer in the mood for compromise. It would be a mixed party—men and women all together on a single night—or no party at all.

“These Khorrami women, they only wish to show off their bodies to men!” Khanoom had exclaimed, shaking her head in disgust.

Talks and deliberations went on for many days, but with only a week to go until the Night of Consummation, no truce was yet in sight.

“We will not go,” Khanoom declared at last.

“What do you mean, Khanoom-
joon
?”

“I mean that even though they will soon be your family, we cannot go to the wedding if they insist on a party with strange men and women pressed close together in one place. It is indecent. Some of your other relatives will be there, I’m sure, but I am sorry,
madar-joon
, your aunts and I cannot come with you to such a gathering.”

When the car came for Lili that last day, Khanoom, Lili’s aunts, and Sohrab’s stepmothers all gathered around her by the door to hug and kiss her good-bye. Shedding copious tears, they reassured her that everything would be fine, that her marriage would be a good one, and that she would soon be very happy. On the threshold they passed the Koran over her head three times, and when she turned away they sprinkled water at her feet. Khanoom also gave her a necklace that had belonged to her own mother, and at the last minute her aunts had pulled off the heavy golden bangles from their own arms and piled them onto Lili’s wrists one by one.

“May God accompany you!” Khanoom called out as the white sedan pulled out of their alley and into Avenue Pahlavi.

Though it was the immodesty of the proceedings that prevented Lili’s grandmother and aunts from attending the Night of Consummation, it had never been customary for the bride’s parents to attend this particular gathering—their sole task being to await the bloodied handkerchief that was proof of their daughter’s chastity. Sohrab would not stay long enough to fulfill that task, though he did join the send-off on Avenue Moniriyeh. He brought her an exquisite ceramic bowl decorated with wild birds and flowering vines, which he’d had filled to the top with tangerines, grapes, and pomegranates. “It’s come all the way from China for you,” he told her with a wan smile. For the first time in many years he drew his arms around her and Lili smiled into his chest as he held her to him. “Good-bye,
dokhtar-joon
,” he told her. He kissed her, very gently, on the top of
her head, and before he turned away Lili thought she caught a tear in his eye.

But whatever the dictates of tradition, Kobra found she could not bear to send Lili to the celebration alone. At the very last minute Kobra pulled on a dress and made up her face. She dressed Nader in his one handmade suit and slicked back his hair with a comb. Then, as Khanoom called out her last blessings, Kobra passed a squalling Omid into Zaynab’s arms and climbed with Nader into one of the several cars that had come to Khanoom’s house.

In order to give passersby a chance to see the bride, the bridal cortege moved so slowly that sometimes it did not seem to be moving at all. The cars were followed by a half-dozen attendants walking alongside the cars and throwing fistfuls of sugared almonds and golden coins into the streets. The drivers blasted their horns in turn. “They’re bringing a bride!” someone would cry out from the sidewalk every few blocks, and for the whole length of the journey people stepped out into the street for a glimpse of the bride and the bridegroom. Lili was wearing the sleeveless pale blue wedding dress, but it was hidden underneath a lace-trimmed ivory veil that Khanoom had sewn to keep her safe from the hundreds of lustful glances of men and thousand evil eyes of envious women.

She would remember little from the party apart from one fateful dance. Of course there was much she might have remembered, or remembered better: electric lights strung through the spindly branches of the orange trees outside; white lilies brought over from a village five hours to the south; huge steaming platters of orange-rind rice; richly fragrant trays of barbecued lamb; saffron pudding in crystal bowls; a many-tiered wedding cake such as she had never seen. In the garden an enormous rectangular pool had been covered with wooden planks and transformed into a dance floor complete
with a European-style band. And the women’s dresses alone were nothing Lili could have imagined. Chiffon, velvet, silk, each a lovelier shade than the next. Some were no more than slips, or so it seemed to Lili, and even Ma Mère’s pistachio green gown exposed a generous expanse of the elderly matron’s bosom. Several of the women there held glasses of liquor as casually as though they were men, and a few even smoked cigarettes encased in long, silver cigarette holders.

For much of the evening Kobra sat by herself in one corner of the parlor. Lili and her mother did not exchange a word all night, but each time their eyes met she felt grateful that her mother had come along at the last minute. From time to time Lili would catch sight of Nader in his ill-fitting hand-me-down suit, ducking between the guests, gorging himself on wedding pastries, and throwing her an impish look. But of all that she might have remembered about the Night of Consummation, it was the tango Lili would never forget.

It did not happen very often, but from time to time her aunts and stepmothers danced for each other at the house on Avenue Moniriyeh. They would form a circle on the floor in the living room and someone would start thumping a
tonbak
. Soon enough one of the women would rise, step to the center of the circle, and begin to sway her arms and hips. They clapped and laughed like girls then. The shyest, primmest ones were often the most skilled and sensual dancers, though they were also often the ones who needed the most coaxing to get started. Lili hadn’t yet danced in the center of a circle like that, but when she was very little Kobra had sometimes pulled her up onto a chair and showed her how to frame her face with her hands as she moved her hips from side to side.

This, so far as she knew, was dancing, but on the Night of Consummation Kazem pulled her up from her seat, and before she could protest they were already surrounded by dozens of other elegant couples. All eyes were suddenly on her. She could not stand to look
so uncultured, but how was she to begin? She could not follow the tempo, much less the movements. Kazem had taken no more than two steps when she started stepping on his feet. First the heel of her shoe planted itself squarely on his toes. He winced and drew in a sharp breath. She tottered and tripped and once she very nearly brought them both crashing to the ground and her cheeks flushed with embarrassment, but each time they stumbled he merely set his jaw, strengthened his grip around her wrists, and pulled her closer to him.

Just past midnight, when the guests had left the house at last, Kazem and Lili climbed the stairs to the attic, where they were followed by Ma Mère and the eldest women of his family. Kazem opened the door and Lili followed him inside. Their bridal suite had been decorated with tuberoses, lilies, and white tapered candles. Her eyes fell on a peach-colored brocade cloth nestled on one of the pillows of the four-poster bed. She recognized it from the weeks her grandmother had spent trimming its corners with intricate golden braids, and she knew that tonight it held within its folds a single, perfectly ironed white handkerchief.

Kazem pulled off his jacket and caught her eye from across the room. A smile played, just faintly, on his lips. Working his fingers through the knot of his bow tie, he moved as if to embrace her, but instead he turned and left the room.

As soon as she heard water streaming from the bathroom faucet, she pulled the white handkerchief from its brocade cover. Then, just as she’d been advised, she laid it on the pillow, smoothed her dress, and waited.

When Kazem returned, she saw that his face had been stripped of all expression. She worried that he was still angry with her about her poor dancing, and was about to make an apology for her clumsiness
when he began to undress himself. She turned her eyes away quickly toward the wall, and all at once her arms and legs felt as stiff and as cold as marble. “It’s nothing at all!” her cousins had assured her, though some of the older ones hid their smiles behind their hands and giggled, but Kazem’s manner was so brusque that she was now beset with fear.

Kazem lowered himself onto her, raised her dress, and fumbled for a moment. Then he sat up abruptly. Something was not right.

“Get down on the floor,” he told her.

She reached for the handkerchief. She could hear the women on the other side of the door, whispering noisily to one another. She slipped off the bed, clutching the silk handkerchief between her fingers as she went. The fibers of the rug itched terribly, but she did not dare move. Kazem lowered himself onto her again, and when the pain tore straight up through to her belly and she opened her mouth to cry he grabbed the fabric from her fingers and pressed it firmly over her mouth. Time seemed to stop then, to slacken and dissolve and recede, but she knew it was over when at last he thrust the square of fabric between her legs and rose from the floor.

His eyes ran across the blood seeping quickly through the handkerchief, and then, opening the door slightly, he passed it outside to where the women stood ready to receive it.

“May God give you many sons!” she heard one of them cry out just as their ululations broke out from behind the door.

For a few minutes she lay on the floor, uncertain what to do next. She lifted herself slightly on her elbows and looked around the room. Kazem had returned to the bed. Was she supposed to sleep there on the floor all night? How would she manage without a blanket or pillow? She’d soil the carpet with blood, and what would happen then?

His voice interrupted these thoughts. “Now come up again,” he told her.

She lay awake for some time afterward, hugging her knees in her
arms at the edge of the bed, her throat raw. There were no more sounds coming from behind the door. The women had all left now. Kazem had fallen asleep with his back turned toward her, and except for his breathing the room was completely quiet and still.

When Lili awoke the next morning she felt nothing but a dull ache between her legs, but when she went to the
hammam
to purify herself she found two dark purple bruises on each of her wrists from where his fingers had gripped her when they danced the tango. It was the first day of her marriage and already she had learned to face the wall and to stifle a cry when it came.

Three

The Opium Dream

“She was a jinn, that woman—a witch—but you’ve never seen anything as beautiful as her blue eyes.” My mother paused for a moment before continuing her story. “Still, they never asked me if she was the one who gave me the opium, and I never told them, either. Even when they took the baby from me, I still didn’t tell them anything.”

F
OR
L
ILI, MARRIAGE HAD
meant the loss of her lovely gray school uniform and the company of her girlfriends, and it was a loss she felt keenly. But because the wedding had taken place in the winter, over the school holidays, Ma Mère convinced her to simply think of the suspension as a longer vacation. And so for a while Lili looked forward to the new public school Ma Mère promised her she would attend in the spring, and, in the meantime, she set about learning the ways of her new family.