The Blood of Flowers

by Anita Amirrezvani

Genres: Cultural Heritage; Historical Fiction; Literary Fiction

Synopsis

A sensuous and richly-imagined historical novel that centers on a skilled young carpet weaver, her arranged marriage, and her quest for self-determination in 17th-century Persia.

In 17th-century Iran, a 14-year-old woman believes she will be married within the year. But when her beloved father dies, she and her mother find themselves alone and without a dowry. With nowhere else to go, they are forced to sell the brilliant turquoise rug the young woman has woven to pay for their journey to Isfahan, where they will work as servants for her uncle, a rich rug designer in the court of the legendary Shah Abbas the Great.

Despite her lowly station, the young woman blossoms as a brilliant designer of carpets, a rarity in a craft dominated by men. But while her talent flourishes, her prospects for a happy marriage grow dim. Forced into a secret marriage to a wealthy man, the young woman finds herself faced with a daunting decision: forsake her own dignity, or risk everything she has in an effort to create a new life.

Release date: May 2, 2008

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Print pages: 400

Sample

Prologue



First there wasn’t and then there was. Before God, no one was.



Once there was a village woman who longed for a child. She tried everything—praying, taking herbs, consuming raw tortoise eggs, and sprinkling water on newborn kittens—but nothing helped. Finally, she voyaged to a distant cemetery to visit an ancient stone lion, and there she rubbed her belly against its flank. When the lion trembled, the woman returned home filled with hope that her greatest wish would be fulfilled. By the next moon, she had conceived her only child.



From the day she was born, the girl was the light of her parents’ eyes. Her father took her on mountain walks every week, treating her as if she were the son he always wanted. Her mother taught her to make dyes from orange safflowers, cochineal bugs, pomegranate rinds, and walnut shells, and to knot the dyed wool into rugs. Before long, the girl knew all her mother’s designs and was deemed the best young knotter in her village.



When the girl turned fourteen, her parents decided it was time for her to marry. To earn money for the dowry, her father worked hard in the fields, hoping for a large harvest, and her mother spun wool until her fingers grew rough, but neither brought in enough silver. The girl knew she could help by making a carpet for her dowry that would dazzle the eyes. Rather than using ordinary village reds and browns, it should glow turquoise like a summer sky.



The girl begged Ibrahim the dye maker to reveal the secret of turquoise, and he told her to climb a hillock in search of a plant with jagged leaves, and then to search for something inside herself. She didn’t know what he meant by that, but she gathered the leaves and boiled them into a dye, which was a dirty purple color. When her mother saw the liquid, she asked what the girl was doing. The girl replied in a halting voice, watching her mother’s eyebrows form a dark, angry line across her forehead.



“You went to Ibrahim’s dye house alone?”



“Bibi, please forgive me,” the girl replied. “I left my reason with the goats this morning.”



When her father came home, her mother told him what the girl had done. “If people start talking, her chances of finding a husband are finished!” she complained. “Why must she be so rash?”



“Always has been!” roared her father, and he chastised her for her error. The girl kept her head bent to her mending for the rest of that evening, not daring to meet her parents’ eyes.



For several days, her Bibi and her Baba watched her closely as she tried to unlock the riddle of the dye. One afternoon, when the girl was in the mountains with her goats, she hid behind a boulder to relieve herself and a surprising thought struck her. Could Ibrahim possibly have meant . . . that? For it was something inside herself.



She returned home and made another pot of the purple dye. That afternoon, when she went to the latrines, she saved some of the liquid in an old pot, mixed it with the dull purple dye and the wool, and left it overnight. When she lifted the lid on the dye pot the next morning, she cried out in triumph, for the dye had paled into a turquoise like the pools of paradise. She took a strand of turquoise wool to Ibrahim’s dye house and tied it around the knocker on his door, even though her father had forbidden her to go there alone.



The girl sold her turquoise carpet to a traveling silk merchant named Hassan who desired it so much that he paid silver while it was still unfinished on the loom. Her mother told the other village women about her daughter’s success, and they praised the skill of her hands. Now that she had a dowry, the girl could be married, and her wedding celebration lasted three days and three nights. Her husband fed her vinegared cucumbers when she was pregnant, and they had seven sons in as many years. The book of her life had been written in the brightest of inks, and Insh’Allah, would continue that way until—


“That’s not how the story goes,” I interrupted, adjusting the rough blanket around my shoulders as the wind howled outside. My mother, Maheen, and I were sitting knee to knee, but I spoke quietly because the others were sleeping only a few paces distant.

“You’re right, but I like to tell it that way,” she said, tucking a lock of her gray hair into her worn scarf. “That’s what we were expecting for you.”

“It’s a good ending,” I agreed, “but tell it the way it really happened.”

“Even with all the sad parts?”

“Yes.”

“They still make me weep.”

“Me, too.”

“Voy!” she said, her face etched with distress. We were quiet together for a moment, remembering. A drop of freezing rain struck the front of my cotton robe, and I moved closer to my mother to avoid the leak in the roof. The small oil lamp between us gave off no heat. Only a few months before I had worn a thick velvet robe patterned with red roses, with silk trousers underneath. I had painted my eyes with kohl, perfumed my clothes with incense, and awaited my lover, who had torn the clothes from my body in a room kept as warm as summer. Now I shivered in my thin blue robe, which was so threadbare it looked gray.

My mother coughed from deep in her lungs; the sound ripped at my heart, and I prayed that she would heal. “Daughter of mine, I can’t get all the way to the end,” she said in a thick voice. “It’s not over yet.”

I took a deep breath. “Thanks be to God!” I replied, and then I had an idea, although I wasn’t certain I should ask. My mother had always been the one with a voice like mountain honey. She had been famous in our village for spinning tales about Zal the white-haired who was raised by a bird, Jamsheed who invented the art of weaving, and the comical Mullah Nusraddin, who always made us think.

“What if—what if I told the story this time?”

My mother considered me for a moment as if seeing me anew, and then relaxed her body more deeply against the old cushions that lined the walls of the room.

“Yes, you are grown now,” she replied. “In the last few months, I believe you have grown by years. Perhaps you would never have changed so much if you hadn’t done what you did.”

My face flushed and then burned, although I was chilled to the bone. I was no longer the child I had once been. I would never have imagined that I could lie and, worse yet, not tell the whole truth; that I could betray someone I loved, and abandon someone who cared for me, although not enough; that I could strike out against my own kin; and that I would nearly kill the person who loved me the most.

My mother’s gaze was gentle and expectant. “Go ahead, you tell it,” she said.

I swallowed a mouthful of strong tea, sat up straight, and began speaking.

CHAPTER ONE

In the spring of the year that I was supposed to be married, a comet launched itself over the skies of my village. It was brighter than any comet we had ever seen, and more evil. Night after night, as it crawled across our skies spraying its cold white seeds of sorrow, we tried to decipher the fearsome messages of the stars. Hajj Ali, the most learned man in our village, traveled to Isfahan to fetch a copy of the chief astronomer’s almanac so we would know what calamities to expect.

The evening he returned, the people of my village began assembling outside to listen to the predictions for the months ahead. My parents and I stood near the old cypress, the only tree in our village, which was decorated with strips of cloth marking people’s vows. Everyone was looking upward at the stars, their chins pointing toward the sky, their faces grave. I was small enough to see under Hajj Ali’s big white beard, which looked like a tuft of desert scrub. My mother, Maheen, pointed at the Sunderer of Heads, which burned red in the night sky. “Look how Mars is inflamed!” she said. “That will add to the comet’s malice.”

Many of the villagers had already noticed mysterious signs or heard of misfortunes caused by the comet. A plague had struck the north of Iran, killing thousands of people. An earthquake in Doogabad had trapped a bride in her home, suffocating her and her women guests moments before she was to join her groom. In my village, red insects that had never been seen before had swarmed over our crops.

Goli, my closest friend, arrived with her husband, Ghasem, who was much older than we were. She greeted me with a kiss on each cheek.

“How are you feeling?” I asked. Her hand flew to her belly.

“Heavy,” she replied, and I knew she must be worried about the fate of the new life inside her.

Before long, everyone in my village had gathered, except for the old and the infirm. Most of the women were wearing bright bell-shaped tunics over slim trousers, with fringed head scarves over their hair, while the men were attired in long white tunics, trousers, and turbans. But Hajj Ali wore a black turban, indicating his descent from the Prophet Mohammad, and carried an astrolabe wherever he went.

“Good villagers,” he began, in a voice that sounded like a wheel dragging over stones, “let us begin by heaping praise on the first followers of the Prophet, especially upon his son-in-law Ali, king of all believers.”

“May peace be upon him,” we replied.

“This year’s predictions begin with poor news for our enemies. In the northeast, the Ozbaks will suffer an infestation of insects so fierce it will destroy their wheat. In the northwest, troop desertions will plague the Ottomans, and even farther west, in the Christian kingdoms, inexplicable diseases will disarrange the lips of kings.”

My father, Isma’il, leaned toward me and whispered, “It’s always good to know that the countries we’re fighting are going to have miserable luck.” We laughed together, since that’s how it always was.

As Hajj Ali continued reading from the almanac, my heart skipped as if I were climbing a mountain. I was wondering what he would say about marriages made during the year, which was what I cared about the most. I began fiddling with the fringe on my head scarf, a habit my mother always urged me to break, as Hajj Ali explained that no harm would come to paper, books, or the art of writing; that earthquakes would occur in the south but would be mild; and that there would be battles great enough to tinge the Caspian Sea red with blood.

Hajj Ali waved the almanac at the crowd, which is what he did when the prediction he was about to read was alarming. His assistant, who was holding an oil lamp, jumped to move out of his way.

“Perhaps the worst thing of all is that there will be large and inexplicable lapses in moral behavior this year,” he read, “lapses that can only be explained by the influence of the comet.”

A low murmur came from the crowd as people began discussing the lapses they had already witnessed in the first days of the New Year. “She took more than her share of water from the well,” I heard Zaynab say. She was Gholam’s wife, and never had a good word to say about anyone.

Hajj Ali finally arrived at the subject that concerned my future. “On the topic of marriages, the year ahead is mixed,” he said. “The almanac says nothing about those that take place in the next few months, but those contracted later this year will be full of passion and strife.”

I looked anxiously at my mother, since I expected to be married at that time, now that I was already fourteen. Her eyes were troubled, and I could see she did not like what she had heard.

Hajj Ali turned to the last page in the almanac, looked up, and paused, the better to capture the crowd’s attention. “This final prophecy is about the behavior of women, and it is the most disquieting of all,” he said. “Throughout the year, the women of Iran will fail to be acquiescent.”

“When are they ever?” I heard Gholam say, and laughter bubbled around him.

My father smiled at my mother, and she brightened from within, for he loved her just the way she was. People always used to say that he treated her as tenderly as if she were a second wife.

“Women will suffer from their own perverse behavior,” Hajj Ali warned. “Many will bear the curse of sterility, and those who succeed in giving birth will wail in unusual pain.”

My eyes met Goli’s, and I saw my own fear reflected in hers. Goli was worried about childbirth, while I was troubled by the thought of a disorderly union. I prayed that the comet would shoot across the firmament and leave us undisturbed.

Seeing me shiver, my father wrapped a lamb’s wool blanket over my shoulders, and my mother took one of my hands between hers and rubbed it to warm me. From where I stood in the center of my village, I was surrounded by the familiar sights of home. Not far away was our small mosque, its dome sparkling with tile; the hammam where I bathed every week, steamy inside and dappled with light; and the scarred wooden stalls for the tiny market that sprang up on Thursdays, where villagers traded fruit, vegetables, medicines, carpets, and tools. A path led away from the public buildings and passed between a cluster of mud-brick homes that sheltered all two hundred souls in my village, and it ended at the foot of the mountain and the rutted paths where my goats roamed for food. All these sights filled me with comfort, so that when my mother squeezed my hand to see how I was feeling, I squeezed back. But then I pulled my hand away because I didn’t want to seem like a child.

“Baba,” I whispered to my father in a small voice. “What if Hajj Ali’s predictions about marriage come true?”

My father couldn’t hide the concern in his eyes, but his voice was firm. “Your husband will pave your path with rose petals,” he replied. “If at any time, he fails to treat you with honor . . .”

He paused for a moment, and his dark eyes looked fierce, as if what he might do were too terrible to imagine. He started to say something, but then stopped himself.

“. . . you can always come back to us,” he finished.

Shame and blame would follow a wife who returned to her parents, but my father didn’t seem to care. His kind eyes crinkled at the corners as he smiled at me.

Hajj Ali concluded the meeting with a brief prayer. Some of the villagers broke off into family groups to discuss the predictions, while others started walking back to their homes. Goli looked as if she wanted to talk, but her husband told her it was time to go home. She whispered that her feet ached from the weight in her belly and said good night.

My parents and I walked home on the single mud lane that pierced the village. All the dwellings were huddled together on either side for warmth and protection. I knew the path so well I could have walked it blind and turned at just the right moment to reach our house, the last one before our village gave way to sand and scrub. My father pushed open our carved wooden door with his shoulders, and we entered our one-room home. Its walls were made of packed mud and straw brightened with white plaster, which my mother kept sparkling clean. A small door led to an enclosed courtyard where we enjoyed the sun without being seen by other eyes.

My mother and I removed our head scarves and placed them on hooks near the door, slipping off our shoes at the same time. I shook out my hair, which reached my waist. For good luck, I touched the curved ibex horns that glowed on a low stand near the door. My father had felled the ibex on one of our Friday afternoon walks. Ever since that day, the horns had held a position of pride in our household, and my father’s friends often praised him for being as nimble as an ibex.

My father and I sat together on the red-and-brown carpet I had knotted when I was ten. His eyes closed for a moment, and I thought he looked especially tired.

“Are we walking tomorrow?” I asked.

His eyes flew open. “Of course, my little one,” he replied.

He had to work in the fields in the morning, but he insisted he wouldn’t miss our walk together for anything other than God’s command. “For you shall soon be a busy bride,” he said, and his voice broke.

I looked away, for I couldn’t imagine leaving him.

My mother threw dried dung in the stove to boil water for tea. “Here’s a surprise,” she said, bringing us a plate of fresh chickpea cookies. They were fragrant with the essence of roses.

“May your hands never ache!” my father said.

They were my favorite sweets, and I ate far too many of them. Before long, I became tired and spread out my bedroll near the door, as I always did. I fell asleep to the sound of my parents talking, which reminded me of the cooing of doves, and I think I even saw my father take my mother in his arms and kiss her.

THE NEXT AFTERNOON, I stood in our doorway and watched for my Baba as the other men streamed back from the fields. I always liked to pour his tea for him before he walked in the door. My mother was crouched over the stove, baking bread for our evening meal.

When he didn’t arrive, I went back into the house, cracked some walnuts and put them in a small bowl, and placed the irises I had gathered in a vessel with water. Then I went out to look again, for I was eager to begin our walk. Where was he? Many of the other men had returned from the fields and were probably washing off the day’s dust in their courtyards.

“We need some water,” my mother said, so I grabbed a clay jug and walked toward the well. On my way, I ran into Ibrahim the dye maker, who gave me a peculiar look.

“Go home,” he said to me. “Your mother needs you.”

I was surprised. “But she just told me to fetch water,” I said.

“No matter,” he replied. “Tell her I told you to go back.”

I walked home as quickly as I could, the vessel banging against my knees. As I approached our house, I spotted four men bearing a limp bundle between them. Perhaps there had been an accident in the fields. From time to time, my father brought back stories about how a man got injured by a threshing tool, suffered a kick from a mule, or returned bloodied from a fight. I knew he’d tell us what had happened over tea.

The men moved awkwardly because of their burden. The man’s face was hidden, cradled on one of their shoulders. I said a prayer for his quick recovery, for it was hard on a family when a man was too ill to work. As the group approached, I noticed that the victim’s turban was wrapped much like my father’s. But that didn’t mean anything, I told myself quickly. Many men wrapped their turbans in a similar way.

The front bearers got out of step for a moment, and they almost lost hold of the man. His head lolled as though it were barely attached to his body, and his limbs had no life in them. I dropped the clay vessel, which shattered around my feet.

“Bibi,” I whimpered. “Help!”

My mother came outside, brushing flour from her clothes. When she saw my father, she uttered a piercing wail. Women who lived nearby streamed out of their houses and surrounded her like a net while she tore the air with her sorrow. As she writhed and jumped, they caught her gently, holding her and stroking the hair away from her face.

The men brought my father inside and laid him on a bedroll. His skin was a sickly yellow color, and a line of saliva slid out of the corner of his mouth. My mother put her fingers near his nostrils.

“Praise be to God, he’s still breathing!” she said.

Naghee, who worked with my father in the fields, didn’t know where to look as he told us what had happened. “He seemed tired, but he was fine until this afternoon,” he said. “Suddenly he grabbed his head and fell to the ground, gasping for air. After that, he didn’t stir.”

“May God spare your husband!” said a man I didn’t recognize. When they had done all they could to make him comfortable, they left, murmuring prayers for good health.

My mother’s brow was furrowed as she removed my father’s cotton shoes, straightened his tunic, and arranged the pillow under his head. She felt his hands and forehead and declared his temperature normal, but told me to fetch a blanket and cover him to keep him warm.

The news about my father spread quickly, and our friends began arriving to help. Kolsoom brought the water she had collected from a spring near a saint’s shrine that was known for its healing powers. Ibrahim took up a position in the courtyard and began reciting the Qur’an. Goli came by, her boy asleep in her arms, with hot bread and stewed lentils. I brewed tea to keep the warmth in everyone’s body. I knelt near my father and watched his face, praying for a flutter of his eyelids, even a grimace—anything that would assure me life remained in his body.

Rabi’i, the village physician, arrived after night had fallen with cloth bags full of herbs slung on each shoulder. He laid them near the door and knelt to examine my father by the light of the oil lamp, which flickered brokenly. His eyes narrowed as he peered closely at my father’s face. “I need more light,” he said.

I borrowed two oil lamps from neighbors and placed them near the bedroll. The physician lifted my father’s head and carefully unwound his white turban. His head looked heavy and swollen. In the light, his face was the color of ash, and his thick hair, which was flecked with gray, looked stiff and ashen, too.

Rabi’i touched my father’s wrists and neck, and when he did not find what he was looking for, he laid his ear against my father’s chest. At that moment, Kolsoom asked my mother in a whisper if she would like more tea. The physician lifted his head and asked everyone to be silent, and after listening again, he arose with a grave face and announced, “His heart beats, but only faintly.”

“Ali, prince among men, give strength to my husband!” my mother cried.

Rabi’i collected his bags and removed bunches of herbs, explaining to Kolsoom how to brew them into a heart-enlivening medicine. He also promised to return the next morning to check on my father. “May God rain His blessings on you!” he said as he took his leave. Kolsoom began stripping the herbs off their stalks and throwing them into a pot, adding the water my mother had boiled.

As Rabi’i left, he stopped to talk with Ibrahim, who was still in the courtyard. “Don’t halt your praying,” he warned, and then I heard him whisper the words “God may gather him tonight.”

I tasted something like rust on my tongue. Seeking my mother, I rushed into her arms and we held each other for a moment, our eyes mirrors of sorrow.

My father began to make wheezing sounds. His mouth was still slack, his lips slightly parted, and his breath rasped like dead leaves tossed by the wind. My mother rushed away from the stove, her fingers green from the herbs. She leaned over my father and cried, “Voy, my beloved! Voy!”

Kolsoom hurried over to peer at my father and then led my mother back to the stove, for there was nothing to be done. “Let us finish this medicine to help him,” said Kolsoom, whose ever-bright eyes and pomegranate cheeks testified to her powers as an herbalist.

When the herbs had been boiled and cooled, Kolsoom poured the liquid into a shallow bowl and brought it to my father’s side. While my mother raised his head, Kolsoom gently spooned the medicine into his mouth. Most of it spilled over his lips, soiling the bedroll. On the next try, she got the medicine into his mouth, but my father sputtered, choked, and for a moment appeared to stop breathing.

Kolsoom, who was usually so calm, put down the bowl with shaking hands and met my mother’s eyes. “We must wait until his eyes open before we try again,” she advised.

My mother’s head scarf was askew, but she didn’t notice. “He needs his medicine,” she said weakly, but Kolsoom told her that he needed his breath more.

Ibrahim’s voice was starting to sound hoarse, and Kolsoom asked me to attend to him. I poured some hot tea and served it to him with dates in the courtyard. He thanked me with his eyes but never stopped his reciting, as if the power of his words could keep my father alive.

On the way back into the room, I bumped against my father’s walking stick, which was hanging on a hook near the door to the courtyard. I remembered how on our last walk, he had taken me to see a carving of an ancient goddess that was hidden behind a waterfall. We had inched our way along a ledge until we found the carving under the flow of water. The goddess wore a tall crown that seemed to be filled with clouds. Her shapely bosom was covered by a thin drapery, and she wore a necklace of large stones. You could not see her feet; her clothing seemed to swirl into waves and streams. She stretched out her powerful arms, as big as any man’s, which looked as if they were conjuring the waterfall at will.

My father had been tired that day, but he had marched up the steep trails to the waterfall, panting, to show me that wondrous sight. His breath sounded even more labored now; it crackled as it left his body. His hands were beginning to move, too, like small, restless mice. They crawled up his chest and scratched at his tunic. His long fingers were brown from working in the fields, and there was a line of dirt under the nails that he would have removed before entering the house, had he been well.

“I promise to devote myself to tending to him, if only You will leave him with us,” I whispered to God. “I’ll say my prayers every day, and I will never complain about how hungry I am during the fasting month of Ramazan, even silently.”

My father began clutching at the air, as if he were fighting his illness with the only part of his body that still had vigor. Kolsoom joined us by the bedroll and led us in prayers, while we watched my father’s hands and listened to his anguished breath. I told my mother how tired he had seemed during our walk in the mountains, and asked if it had weakened him. She put her hands on either side of my face and replied, “Light of my eyes, it probably gave him strength.”

In the blackest hour of the night, my father’s breathing quieted and his hands stopped doing battle. As my mother arranged the blanket over him, her face looked calmer.

“He will get some rest now,” she said with satisfaction.

I went into the courtyard, which adjoined our neighbor’s house, to bring more tea to Ibrahim. He had moved to a cushion near my turquoise carpet, which was unfinished on my loom. My mother had recently sold the carpet to a traveling silk merchant named Hassan, who was planning to return later to claim it. But the source of the turquoise dye that had pleased Hassan’s eyes was still a tender subject between me and my father, and my face flushed with shame when I remembered how my visit alone to Ibrahim’s dye house had troubled him.

I returned to the vigil at my father’s side. Perhaps this terrible night was nearly over, and daylight would bring a joyful surprise, like the sight of my father’s eyes opening, or of him being able to swallow his medicine. And then, one day when he was better, we would take another walk in the mountains and sing together. Nothing would be sweeter to me than hearing him sing out of tune.

Toward morning, with no other sound than Ibrahim’s river of prayers, I felt my eyelids grow heavy. I don’t know how much time passed before I awoke, observed that my father’s face was still calm, then fell asleep again. At dawn, I was comforted by the sound of sparrows breaking the silence with their noisy calls. They sounded like the birds we had heard on our walk, and I began dreaming about how we had stopped to watch them gather twigs for their nests.

A wheeled cart creaked outside, and I awoke with a start. People were beginning to emerge from their homes to begin their chores at the well, in the mountains, or in the fields. Ibrahim was still saying prayers, but his voice was dry and hoarse. My mother was lighting an oil lamp, which she placed near the bedroll. My father had not moved since he had fallen asleep. She peered at his face and placed her fingers under his nostrils to feel his breath. They lingered there, trembling, before they drifted down to his slack mouth. Still searching, they returned to his nose and hovered. I watched my mother’s face, awaiting the contented expression that would tell me she had found his breath. My mother did not look at me. In the silence, she threw back her head and uttered a terrible wail. Ibrahim’s prayers ceased; he rushed to my father’s side and checked his breath in the same way before dropping to a squat and cradling his head in his hands.

My mother began wailing more loudly and tearing out her hair in clumps. Her scarf fell off and lay abandoned near my father. It was still tied and kept the shape of her head.

I grabbed my father’s hand and squeezed it, but it was cold and still. When I lifted his heavy arm, his hand dangled brokenly at the wrist. The lines in his face looked deeply carved, and his expression seemed aggrieved, as if he had been forced to fight an evil jinn.

I uttered one short, sharp cry and collapsed onto my father. Kolsoom and my mother let me remain there for a few moments, but then Kolsoom gently pulled me away.

My father and I had both known that our time together must soon come to an end, but I had always thought I would be the one to leave, festooned with bridal silver, with his blessings alive in my ear.

THE DAYS AFTER my father died were black, but they became blacker still.

With no man to harvest the fields that summer, we received little grain from my father’s share of the planting, although his friends tried to be gener