Wedding Song (17 page)

Joon-joone-bandi drew a puff from the waterpipe, held it for a second, and, as if she was whispering a secret, she blew it into my grandmother’s ears. “A doctor! He is nothing but a coat and a tie,” she said. “That’s what your son respects, and what good came out of it? What did he do for you that we could have not?”

Khatoon-jaan rearranged pillows around Khanom-bozorg. “Is women’s wisdom for nothing?” she asked. “All these years, we took care of everyone, but now we are discredited.”

My grandmother agreed that the women needed to take charge. The three discussed a list of women to be invited to a private ceremony at the full moon. She gave Joon-joone-bandi the task of finding a soothsayer.

My father didn’t oppose the idea, although it deviated from Jewish beliefs. He allowed it for its psychological impact, he told me. At age six, I had never heard that word before. I knew it had something to do with my grandmother’s mind, that if she felt cured, she would be okay. I knew I shouldn’t believe in such nonsense: a bunch of old women getting together for hocus-pocus. My father didn’t want me there, but I begged. Such fun! I had to be there.

As the daylight disappeared a week later, the guests entered our yard without knocking and made themselves comfortable on a Persian carpet in the middle of the bricked backyard. The orange trees looked like creatures with arms and legs. I sat on my mother’s lap, wrapped her skirt around my legs, and wouldn’t move. Women sipped sweet fruit-essence drinks and took turns on the waterpipe, drawing smoke from its long wooden mouthpiece.
Bbllllla
, the water gurgled at its blue glass base, from which a gold-painted, surly Ghajar king stared at me, dressed in his fineries and crowned with jewels and feathers.

A woman tapped rhythmically on the back of a brass platter. Others joined her, clapping, making music with their hands. Joon-joone-bandi slowly raised her thick body with the pulse. She wrapped her
chador
around her waist, twisted her wide bottom around, clasped her hands over her head, snapping four fingers at each other to make a crisp, crackling noise like charcoal burning in a brass brazier. Her surname “bandi” was a
reflection of her job, weaving strings to hold men’s pants up at a time zippers were not commonly used in Iran. A widow, having hired other poor women to work for her, she made a small fortune. She pulled a long bundle of strings from underneath her
chador
, attached it to her front, and thrust her hips, singing a song about my father’s virility. The women roared. My mother giggled. I was astonished.

“Come on, Joon-joon,” my grandmother laughed for the first time in months. “Stop it! There’re young girls here.”

Slowly, the light dimmed in the yard. The full moon crawled to the center of a star-studded sky. I had fallen asleep in my mother’s lap in the comfort of the women’s chattering. I woke up with a start from a deep silence around me, fearing that I was left alone. My mother rubbed my back to calm me, then I saw the man’s shadow moving on the courtyard wall. I noticed that the women had pulled their
chador
s tightly around them as the soothsayer approached our circle. He held a canvas bag thrown over his shoulder. His eyeballs looked like watermelon seeds folded in fleshy droops around his eyes, reflecting the secret of something extraordinary, something unconnected with this world. Although his eyes were black, I thought of them as somehow connected with the stars.

Khatoon-jaan put the brazier filled with hot charcoals in front of the fortune-teller. He slowly undid the cord around his bag to reveal small bundles wrapped in old cloth and tied in small knots. He touched them one by one, turning them over, getting a feel for their shapes and weight. He finally picked one and slowly unwrapped it. We looked at him, mesmerized. The fire crackled and sent flames and amber in the air, its light blinding me. Then I saw it. He held a shiny block of metal in his bony hand.

“Is it silver?” I whispered to my mother.

“Shh! It is tin.”

The other women looked at us disapprovingly, “Sshhhh!”

“Tell me about your problems,” the soothsayer asked my grandmother as he wedged a thick, round vessel into the middle of the coals.

My grandmother’s eyes glimmered with anticipation, I thought, or maybe with hope. She rubbed her hands again and again. She wet her lips, dry and cracked, with her tongue. Khatoon-jaan put a glass of willow essence into her hand, which trembled as she took a little sip.

“I don’t know what to say.” My grandmother started her monologue without pausing to breathe between the words. “I was all fine, no problems,
all healthy.” She sighed. “Then, all of a sudden, out of nowhere, I am hurting all over. I can’t sleep. I can’t eat well. Everyone says my color is no good.” She poured out the words in rapid succession and sighed again.

The fortune-teller’s vessel turned red from the heat. He broke off a small piece of the metal, looked at the moon directly above, mumbled a few prayers, and dropped it in.

“Everyone says I was hit with bad eyes,” my grandmother said.

The fortune-teller nodded as he held his vessel with a thick cloth on top of the fire and swirled it around.

One aunt mumbled, “Yes, of course. That
is
the truth.”

My grandmother went on, “I’ve heard that you’re good at finding out the source of this evil.”

Adding small pieces of tin to the pot, the soothsayer said, “You’re right. I’m the best.”

I watched the metal melt and shine. It still looked like silver to me.

The magic man looked at my grandmother, “Are you ready? Let’s hope that the evil isn’t so strong that it can hide its identity.”

Khanom-bozorg nodded.

“Say a prayer and concentrate on your pain.”

The only prayers I had ever heard my grandmother say in Hebrew were the
shema
and the
brakha
over the candles. She imitated the voice of men rising to the balcony at the synagogue, distorted and unintelligible. Khanombozorg mumbled some prayers, pleading with
khodaye bozorg
, the Great God for mercy and help.

“
Ya khodaye bozorg
,” a woman repeated.

“In the name of the Great God,” the rest of women echoed.

“Cover your faces,” the only man among us ordered. “We don’t know how strong this evil is. Close your eyes.” He held the side of the vessel with a metal grip, and, averting his eyes, poured the molten metal into a ceramic bowl filled with water, and jumped back. There was a huge bang as the liquid metal hit the cold water. Smoke gushed out and the bowl broke into pieces. “Pretty strong enemies you have!” he told my grandmother. “See what happened to the bowl?”

The women gasped, muffled their screams, and huddled together as if in the presence of a ghost. I scratched my mother’s arms in the sudden confusion. She cried in pain and slapped the back of my hands.

The man searched the ground, found a piece of metal, and held it with a metal tongs for everyone to see. “Look! It is in the shape of a woman.”

I focused on the shape to see if that was really true. I couldn’t tell.

Khatoon-jaan pointed to a protruding part of the long object. “He’s right. Look, she’s smoking a waterpipe.”

“Who could that be?” Aunt Shams asked.

All eyes focused on my grandmother. She lifted the piece and turned it around. Even I knew she was looking for someone she disliked. “That pagan! She is no Jew,” my grandmother screamed. “This is Simin, the neighbor down the block. She came to visit the other day, when I had come back from the
hamam
. I should have known the way she looked at the braids around my face. I could see the jealousy in her eyes. She envies me because she thinks I have the time for such luxuries every week. She is the one who put the bad eye on me.”

My grandmother was back. She was feisty again, full of energy and emotions, even hatred. The magic had worked. I tried to sweep the belief out of my head, not allowing myself to believe in supernatural nonsense.

The soothsayer packed, but before leaving, he reminded everyone not to leave my grandmother alone. “Watch her at least till this moon dies and the new crescent of moon appears,” he warned.

Women whispered their remedies. The evil was strong. They had to employ all remedies. They consulted each other about the methods each had learned from her family. My grandmother spread herself on the carpet, a little smile hiding in the corner of her lips. Aunt Shams rubbed wild rue and salt all over her as she let a trilling noise escape her pursed lips to draw the evil out. She threw the concoction into the same fire in which the soothsayer melted his magic metal. Cracking noises accompanied a yellow flame.

Aunt Maheen rubbed a whole raw egg in its shell over my grandmother’s legs, arms, stomach, head, all the areas hurting and aching. The women started to chant a secret hymn:

For the giver of the evil eye who knows of it,
and for the one who doesn’t know;
For the one who has arrived,
and for the one who left town.
¹

A woman hid the egg underneath the dark cloth of her
chador
, and headed out to smash it against the wall of Simin’s house. Other women washed Khanom-bozorg’s legs in well water mixed with herbs and the
roots of trees that grew only in the desert outside Shiraz. Two women carried the water to pour over the stairs leading to Simin’s house. There was a sense of relief that I felt as well—a feeling of cleansing, of renewal.

Before leaving, all the women reminded my grandmother to be careful as the new month approached. It could determine her well-being for the entire month. The first time she saw the crescent of the new moon, she had to cover her eyes and to make sure the first person she looked at was happy, healthy, and lucky. That would help the spirits to make the month a good one for her too. That night, and every night until the new moon appeared, Khatoon-jaan and Joon-joone-bandi took turns sleeping with my grandmother, so she wouldn’t be alone when in a deep sleep. In such a state, her soul and body were the most vulnerable to both human treachery and the jinns’ malice. (Jinns are evil creatures that live beneath the Earth.) My grandmother was well for many months after that until the attention dwindled again.

During all my years with her, I watched Khanom-bozorg cover her face with both hands every time the new moon rose in the sky, calling for this person and that person so she could look at their faces. “Smile, smile, Farideh, so I can look at your face,” she told me if I was the appointed one that month. If she had a bad month, she pointed her finger at me, “See what you did! Didn’t I tell you not to be grouchy?”

I laughed at my grandmother’s antics for years—such nonsense. Then, many years later, when I had grown children of my own, one quiet evening my husband and I strolled in our Norfolk neighborhood. I looked up and saw the beautiful crescent moon peeking behind the trees. I turned my head to point it out. Instead, I saw the funeral home at the end of the block. My husband felt the sudden change of mood in me. “What’s wrong?” he wanted to know.

How could I tell him that my grandmother’s superstition had seeped into me, so suddenly, after so very many years? I felt dazed the entire month. I kept a close check on my family members. The very last day of the lunar month, I sighed with relief. The danger had passed. Since when did I believe in superstitious nonsense? I was appalled at myself for allowing the thought to cross my mind.

The phone rang right before sunset. My sister-in-law’s asthmatic father had died. He was in his home entertaining guests. He went to the bathroom
to wash his face and couldn’t catch his breath. With no one around to help, he had a heart attack. So, that was it. Was my grandmother correct after all? I became a believer. I never again opened my eyes after seeing the crescent of the new moon until I was sure my glance would fall on a happy face first. I had become my grandmother.

I always thought that the belief in the supernatural helped my grandmother and other women who lacked education to gain control over a world that was unknown and mysterious to them. But another reason, at least for my grandmother, was to gather people around her. After my grandfather’s death, she feared loneliness. She worried that her children might get busy with their own lives and forget her. So she found creative ways to have the family visit her.

Even now, my sister Nahid and I laugh as we remember a day when we helped my grandmother sew the covers on a quilt. I was sixteen, my sister four years younger. Two French doors were left open to bring in the sun and the smell of potted geraniums from the balcony. A handmade quilt with geometric designs on blue satin was spread on top of a white sheet, tinted with a blue hue, still warm from the sun. The three of us sat on a red Kashan carpet with designs of flowers and palmettes. One leg tucked underneath, one planted on the floor, my sister folded the sheet neatly over the quilt as if she were framing a picture in ivory. She secured the fold with a safety pin, expediting the job of my grandmother and me, who hemmed the edges with large needles and long matching thread.

We threaded Khanom-bozorg’s needle for her, made her a sour cherry drink, and ran down the street to buy a fresh bottle of skim milk (she never drank milk that didn’t have that day’s delivery date). We would do anything she liked in exchange for her memories.

She spoke of times when we were children and of the era before we were born, recalling family episodes and the way of life. She spoke of the houses in the
mahaleh
, separated with tall walls, but connected through flat mud-covered roofs, where one could travel the entire length of the ghetto by jumping from one to the other. “Do you remember it at all?” she asked me.

I remembered Aunt Fereshteh holding me to keep me from falling off the roof as I picked green apples from the top of our neighbor’s tree that hung over our side.

My grandmother was astonished. “Oh! You remember that?”

“Yes, a guy in that house converted to Islam.” By virtue of his new religion, he became the first in line to inherit his uncle’s fortune. He was rejected from the community, of course. His Jewish wife and children were sent to Israel by her family so he could not take the kids. In revenge, he took a wife from an anti-Semitic family and moved his in-laws to his house as well. From then on, they threw stones at us whenever we tried to pick the top apples. Our neighbor later regretted his decision, not being able to cope with his new lifestyle, but it was too late. The punishment for rejecting Islam was death. Although the Jewish community never forgave him for enabling a Moslem family to live amongst us, it came to his aid and secretly arranged for him to be smuggled to Palestine to join his wife and children. After his disappearance, the family he left behind cut down the apple tree.