Pomegranate & Fig

by Zaheda Ghani

Genres: Literary Fiction

Synopsis

'The women arrive first, on an afternoon like any other, when Henna is safely enclosed behind her desk at school. They come to start a conversation that is both taboo and a normal part of life. A small, intimate group . . . precious stones decorate their necks and fingers, the sond, embroidery, on their pantaloons and translucent veils catches the afternoon light. Their eyebrows are groomed into elegant curves. They float on a cloud of perfume to Henna's family home.'

A deeply moving novel about tradition, love, war and the sorrow & hope exile will bring.

Tracing the lives of three young people, Henna, her brother Hamid, and a man who will become her husband, Rahim, this lyrical and evocative story reveals the political entanglements and family dynamics that are heightened and shattered by conflict. Taking us from the streets of Herat in the 1970s, invaded by Soviet forces, to India in the 1980s and then to the suburbs of Sydney, Pomegranate & Fig vividly illuminates the disruption, displacement and tragedy that war unleashes.

Shortlisted for the Richell Prize, this is an unforgettable debut that heralds an exciting new Australian literary voice.

Release date: June 1, 2022

Publisher: Hachette Australia

Print pages: 352

Sample

If anyone asks thee which is the pleasantest of cities, Thou mayest answer him aright that it is Herāt. For the world is like the sea, and the province of Khurāsān like a pearl-oyster therein, the city of Herāt being as the pearl in the middle of the oyster.

— Jalal ad-Din Balkhi 1207–1273 A.D.

The youngest daughter of Khoja and Koko is so delicate that the 120-day winds of Herat could blow her away. Her bones are made from porcelain, rigid and fine. A diaphanous girl in cotton dress and pantaloons, she is lifted high above Herat, to the height of the ancient minarets of Queen Gauhar Shad and carried to a far corner of the world. As she floats, her hair twists and wraps itself around her white face, enfolding the arch of her long slim nose and the glass lids of her large, closed eyes.

Family and friends tell her lovingly that she is too sickly, too thin. She is not beautiful by the standards of the time which prefer curves and flesh. Her two rose-cheeked curvaceous elder sisters, Nargis and Roya, are considered beauties by all. But they become jealous. Because their beauty doesn’t seem to be enough. Because she receives so much more attention. They do the chores around the large house, they study through the night for exams. Henna studies alongside them. She stays awake all night to feed her brain, to replace her lack of beauty with an abundance of knowledge.

She must study even harder, given her mind seems never to settle long enough on one idea, doesn’t retain the biology, the maths, the chemistry. It retains the poetry and prose, but even that for only a short while. Every good mark she gets is the result of twice as much study as her sisters do.

This morning, she is wrapped in layers of woollens, proud and blue with cold. Her thin waist threatens to break as she lifts her heavy schoolbag onto her shoulder. Like most days, her elder sister Nargis will carry it for her through the forty-five-minute walk to school.

This evening, the strain over her study of several days and nights dissolves into a fever that lasts a fortnight. She takes medicine to alleviate the fever, but it cannot settle her anxious mind. She wishes for her life to be uprooted and scattered by the rush of the 120-day winds. She doesn’t know how real this wish will later become, this uprooting, brought not by nature’s fury but by the ferocity of war.

Henna and her family live on a large fertile estate filled with orchards and flower gardens. They share the land with the families who bake the daily bread, who clean the house, who drive the cars. Her father, Khoja, is an artist. Family legend has it that her father lost his first wife, Shah Gol, to childbirth, that Shah Gol died alone without him beside her; that the last time they saw each other was when she gave him water to drink from her cupped hands beside the well. A story he does not himself tell, a tale spoken about him in whispers.

Spring finally visits and she brings with her the nargis flowers. Henna and her sisters make afternoon picnics of sheer chai, creamy milk tea, and samosa pastries filled with sweetened ground beef. The bulbul birds sing and Henna finds two caught in the hedges of Khoja’s gardens, trapped dead in their romances.

Her elder brother, Hamid, doesn’t believe in her frailty. He sees a girl who will be someone someday. A girl who will perhaps join an important advisory board or lead a delegation of women contributing to education planning. He sees her struggle to take charge of her life. He sees her yearning to learn about life through her voracious reading of books. His mission is to prove the worthlessness of mere tradition; he questions the myths that underpin their lives. He recruits her on his landscaping projects around their home. He doesn’t heed Koko’s warnings that Henna’s bones will break, that the girl will end the day in fever and chills.

Now, a lady beetle lands on Henna’s dress and she brushes it away. It’s pretty but still, it is an insect with thin crawling legs which irk her. The sunlight through the naju tree carves pretty patterns on her hands and in her lap, on the rug around her, as she sits to daydream.

Later, a single drop of perspiration forms on her white forehead. She wipes it away with the back of her hand as she carries dirt in a wheelbarrow with handles thicker than her wrists. The sun shines on her. Today, she is made of the stuff of the mountains which mark the boundaries of her world, the weight of things she can lift, a contrast to the person she is on other days. She cuts a snake in two, using the courage given to her by Khoda jan, dear God, Allah. She uses the mouth of the spade as her weapon. She watches how the monster coils and twists in pain, surrendering to the permanence of death. Hamid approves. You must protect yourself in this world, he says.

Henna’s life unfolds languidly against the backdrop of Herat’s respected past and unsettled present. The year is 1973 when Prince Daud Khan leads the coup d’état to overthrow his cousin, King Zahir Shah, and becomes the first President of Afghanistan. Henna is seventeen. She is growing into a woman with narrow hips, cream skin, and serious eyes. Her proudest moment unfolds before her as she walks onto the stage to accept an honour award for her final year of outstanding secondary school. This award she holds close to her heart, the key that is opening the next two years of study at the teachers’ college, after which she will become a teacher.

She is of the age when khastgar, suitors, begin to visit. The well-bred, educated, and wealthy call upon Henna’s family to ask for her hand in marriage. They bring their sons dressed in suits and furnished with university degrees. Only a few families will have the means to look after a girl so spoilt and educated, from a family such as theirs.

Khoja manages things amicably so there is only a slight bruising of egos when they turn the suitors away, protecting his affectionately named hippy girl from the turmoils of adult life, from being pushed into marriage when she believes that she will never marry. But then, fate makes a date for Henna to meet Rahim.

An incessant mosquito lingers, landing now and then on his brown hand. There is a constant hum of insects in the air, of wing clapping against translucent wing. The warmth is thick like honey, the air smells green and yellow. He strikes the back of his left hand with the palm of his right, catching the insect between two hands. He opens his right palm to find the body of the mosquito lying in a flower of blood. He wipes his hand on a leaf, goes back to his reading, his mind building pictures as the words meet his eyes, sitting under the shade of the pomegranate trees, the book in his lap.

Rahim wears slacks and a shirt with the sleeves rolled up and ready for action. He has long legs, which carry him as he strides Herat’s footpaths and multicoloured bazaars, negotiating a clump of sheep being led by their shepherd, blocking the tight streets of the villages nearby, walking the length of local lantern-dotted festivals late in the night with his friends. He is a man of the law, so he sees what most people don’t see, the ugliness of crime, chasing criminals down Herat’s alleyways, rare alleyways which are unknown and forbidden to the clean women who exist in his life, his mother and aunts and cousins. He traverses this world hidden underneath the beating heart of Herat as if he is crossing a mud puddle, hitching up his bell-bottom trousers to cross. This is what he has learnt of life. That all people are created clean, like a fresh linen sheet, who, with misdeeds throughout life, create stains upon the sheet of their souls. He does everything he can to keep his sheet clean.

He loves his job as a prosecutor, doing his part to rid the world of crime, to make the underbelly of Herat clean, to make it safe, to rid it of the vampires who were once human but now survive by consuming others. He becomes possessed by some of the victims from the cases which come his way. Like the man who was thought to be murdered but whose body wasn’t found. The thought of a body discarded, abandoned without a burial ceremony, stayed with Rahim, day and night. Rahim dreamt of this man, and from the dream acquired memories of a time together with him.

The man began to linger here and there amid the shadow and the light of Rahim’s week. Finally, he appeared in Rahim’s afternoon nap one last time with a message. Rahim found the body by following the directions in the dream. The man’s wife, surprised that the old, long-hidden well could ever be found, confessed to the crime, thinking Rahim a friend of the djinn, spirits.

Another time, a Sufi master showed Rahim globes of light that nobody else could see, the lights floating just above the surface of the river late at night. Rahim saw them as a sign that he was being guided towards the beauty of a pious life which he strives to closely follow.

His hair is prematurely thinning and whitening because he reads and thinks too much, his mother says. He thinks of his mother a lot, perhaps too much, not because he is broken in some way but because he feels that she is. Underneath her stoicism and strength, Bebe is fragile like a bird.

He knows that many women open their eyes to the world in the same way that Bebe did, given in marriage at a young age, learning the traditions the hard way, by saying the wrong things, by being too honest about their thoughts. Bebe fell into traps set by women who came to visit the new bride, caught like a simple-minded sparrow in the net of nuances tied together by adult conversation.

Ah, you don’t miss your family? That’s odd, you must have been glad to get away from them. They asked her these questions, their eyebrows raised, their painted lips cast into shapes of cruelty, looking directly into her face, waiting for a response from the girl who openly liked married life.

She fumbled and was rescued by her watchful mother-in-law. She followed her mother-in-law’s ways, was enraptured by the wealth of the new city which became her home, the city that flourished, in tune with her own life, or maybe it was the other way around. Rahim hopes that if he marries, his bride won’t be subjected to the same social cruelty as his mother. That she may be prepared for those things said in adult company, that she will hold her own.

Bebe can’t read and write but she has taught herself enough to run the household finances, to manage the servants, to order things for the house, and this makes Rahim proud of her. She plays the role of gracious hostess to the wives of high-ranking officials, merchants and lawyers who arrive as guests of her husband Haji Mama, the Governor of Herat. His wife will be different, she will be educated. That is if he ever finds the girl. Bebe discreetly shows him girls at social gatherings; he is irked by her directness.

This isn’t a shop window, he tells her firmly, which makes her stop only to bring it up again next time.

Despite these frustrations, Rahim believes that heaven is found at the feet of mothers and so he knows that he exists inside her love, which exists inside the family, which exists inside Herat’s wild floral springtime, which exists within a vast universe of Khoda’s making. And while Rahim lives in a manner expected of a man of his lineage and station, he also occupies another world inside his mind. This is a scholarly world scaffolded by books and ideas which are sometimes controversial as they question tradition. But he is firm in his being, in his belief that Khoda made the heavens and the earth, gave man the ability to retain and pass on knowledge; that knowledge of the world and the sacred knowledge of religion are not separate avenues. Instead, the knowledge of the world leads to appreciation of the creator. So he reads about the sciences, about foreign belief systems and philosophies as if they are an anthropological study of the human condition, leading him to uncover the beauty of all creation.

Hamid can feel the sting of hunger, there are small insects gnawing on the lining of his stomach, creating little volcanos of pain as they go. Not long now, he thinks, it will be time for iftar. Time to break the fast. Even after a long fast with no food or water, Hamid likes to not rush his food, to taste every morsel, to eat and drink only until he is two thirds full. One third for food, one third for water, one third for air, as the Prophet did. We are not to fill ourselves, not on food, not on wealth, we are not to be extravagant, he tells himself. He loves to fast, he loves how close the feeling of hunger brings him to himself, how clear his mind feels, how free his hours from the thought of his next meal. Koko reminds him daily to eat, eat, eat, as they all settle on the cushions after sunset around the large dastarkhon, eating cloth, spread on the floor covered with food, fruit, dates and water.

Hamid, your stomach is stuck to your back, Koko says. Eat more.

I do eat, he says, in those moments when his mother nags him. Yesterday, when she did so, he looked up at Henna sitting across from him with mirth in her eyes; his sister knows their mother’s need to force-feed. Right now, he doesn’t want to think of the feast that will be in front of him later, it’s too tempting to start imagining the food.

Hamid is passing the washing fount in the Masjid-i Jami of Herat, the great mosque of Herat. He walks in the spaces between large columns. The columns and the walls are decorated with glazed tiles, which are being restored by his father Khoja’s tile studio, a schedule of maintenance which has been under way as long as Hamid can remember. He feels like he is in a garden when he comes to this mosque, a garden of blues cut into curvaceous flora, stubborn materials moulded to perfection, the dance of blue and white ceramics. Geometric intricacies swoon in between the garden of flowers and frame the calligraphy made by the flourishes of generations of different hands, like his father’s hand, in perfect strokes.

Men pour from the central courtyard, weaving in between the columns, mingling, chatting, a subtle grace defining their movements. They move beneath an arch that leads them to the steps and garden outside. They patiently wait for each man to gather his shoes from the wooden shelves near the outer door, to put them on, to bid goodbye, before they leave.

Hamid is a star in the constellation of bodies, moving slowly towards his sandals. He is scanning his skin for sensation with his mind’s eye, with his mind’s breath, from the top of his head to the tips of his toes as he walks, greets, talks.

Through muraqabah, meditation – which includes the five daily namaz, prayers, and zikr, remembrance, of Allah in seclusion – you can observe your spiritual heart, gain insights into the state of it. It’s where you find peace, Khoja used to say when Hamid was young, when Khoja wanted to teach him how to live. Khoja had taught Hamid that his physical heart is a vessel for his spiritual heart, which is a gift Allah gave him as an amanat, a loan, which he must return to Allah in the same state of purity that he received it. Hamid tells these things to Henna, reminding her often, to her delight. He can see that she enjoys this way of thinking. She likes to see another dimension to this life. Nargis and Roya laugh and tease them, but the two of them can see and feel what others cannot.

He likes to be present in his body, especially during namaz as he recites the words of the Quran. Sometimes it doesn’t work for him, and sometimes it does. When it does, he can feel his life force within, an energy that beats like a warm light within the palms of his hands, up his arms, down his back, around his waist, inside his stomach. He can feel his skin stretched tight across his muscular limbs, his organs, his bones, his veins flowing with blood.

He squeezes his hands into fists now, he can feel his arms flex inside his sleeves, his chest tightens under his embroidered white shirt. I need to increase my training sessions, he says to himself. He is going to compete in a local bodybuilding tournament in a few months’ time. Zibayi andam, the beauty of physique, as people call it.

Men of all ages greet him, he looks into their eyes as they smile – black, brown, amber and green eyes, eyes with specks of sunlight in them, eyes that crease in the corners, wrinkling with friendship.

He thinks of those in the north and centre of Afghanistan, who suffered a lack of rainfall and shortage of food in recent times, hopefully now recovering after crippling drought. He prays for them and for his country.

He is grateful to be in a crowd of men hungry with purpose, hungry with the purpose of cleansing the body, the soul, the heart, grateful for the quiet that comes from giving up something as precious as food and water. Khoda has given us free will, he thinks, as he watches the faces around him, we can use this will to fast, to abstain. Free will is the burden which the mountains refused to accept upon their shoulders, which only man is strong enough to bear.

Everyone knows him by his name, Hamid, the son of Khoja. He has a wide circle of friends, he loves to be in the company of others most of the time, especially when things are going well inside his mind. Greetings touch him from different directions, from the dry lips of men who stop and take his two hands into their own, warmly.

Salaam, how are you, how is Khoja, we are going to come see you tomorrow … Roza o namaz qabool, may Allah accept your namaz and fasting.

Some are dressed in business attire, some are dressed like Hamid in perahan tunban, long shirts worn over roomy pantaloons. Some of the men have turbans perched upon their heads, the long end of the turban flipped over their shoulder, donning an air of nonchalance. For some these clothes are a namaz shell, which they wear when they come to the masjid, leaving their business suits behind for a couple of hours.

Hamid lets himself be carried in the crowd, like a river carries a flower petal that has fallen from its branch.

Hamid thinks of Nixon and Johnson, his two Tazi dogs; they need to be fed before he eats his iftar. He grinds his teeth as he moves, his square jawline a delight to his friends who tease him about his good looks. The shadow of his beard is already there despite . . .