The door opens. It’s Mahnaz.
“I’ve brought you some tea.”
She puts the tray down next to my mother and pours out two cups of tea. The brackets round my mother’s mouth relax, allowing a smile.
“I can’t thank you enough for your kindness … I’m so sorry we’ve caused you such trouble …”
Mahnaz hands my mother a cup of tea.
“Here, please have some tea. These days it’s important we all take care of each other.”
She stands up and leaves the room.
My mother stops staring at the door through which Mahnaz has just walked and turns to look straight into my eyes.
“What a kind woman! After you’ve left, I’ll give her a present.”
She soaks a sugar cube in her tea.
“Where is her husband?”
“He was executed.”
My mother takes the sugar cube out of her tea and drops it onto the saucer. It melts as quickly as her heart. Her horrified gaze travels out of the room to the corridor, where it alights on my battered shoes.
“May God be with him!”
She mutters something under her breath. Her trembling hands bring the sugarless tea to her anxious lips. She downs it in one gulp. As if she wants to wash the shame from her throat with hot tea. If she were at home, she’d get up and leave the room, she’d hold her hands under the cold tap, then she’d rewash the washed dishes, or rescrub Parwaneh’s immaculate school veil …
Yahya peeps his head around the door to stare at me and my mother.
“Yahya, come in.”
At the sound of my voice, the child steps into the room. But at the sound of his mother, he quickly goes back to Moheb’s room.
“She has a child?”
“Yes.”
My mother’s troubled eyes, looking more lost than ever before, scan the empty corridor anxiously. I dare not tell her that Yahya calls me “Father.”
“Mother, how did you find the trafficker?”
“Your uncle found him,” she says, her gaze still lost in the corridor.
“How much money does he want?”
“His payment is that carpet. We don’t have the money, so it’s the only thing I could think of.”
“Mother …”
She puts the cup back on the tray, drained of tea, filled with sadness.
The way she looks at me makes me lose track of what I want to say. She lifts her sky-blue skirt from the flower-patterned cushion, and stands up.
“I have to go. The laundry-woman is waiting for her veil.”
“No, Mother, I can’t go without you.”
“You must go. I’ll bring Parwaneh and Farid with me once I sell the house.”
I can hear the doubt in her voice.
She takes up the veil from a corner of the room.
“I’ve forgotten how to put it on!”
She laughs a small, bitter laugh. A laugh that makes me shiver. She adjusts the veil over her hair. The brackets around her mouth shake.
“Mother, I’m coming with you.”
She covers her face, as though she hasn’t heard what I said.
“Mother, I can’t just leave without seeing Farid and Parwaneh …”
She brings her grief-stricken hands out from under her veil and presses them against my heart. My voice fails. My eyes fill with tears. I put my face in her hands. My mother’s broken voice emerges from behind the folds of her veiclass="underline"
“May God watch over you …”
Why does she move away? Isn’t she going to kiss me goodbye? I need to look into her eyes again, I need to see the brackets that muffle her cries. I stumble toward her. I reach out to touch the veil that is covering her eyes but I cannot feel the exhausted face it hides. The veil is wet. My mother is crying. Crying without a sound. She is crying between those two brackets. She is crying under her veil. My mother is rinsing the laundry-woman’s veil with her tears.
She takes another step away. Her whole body is shaking under her veil. She moves into the corridor. She searches for her shoes. I stand there, lost, like a button dropped on the black and red patterns of the carpet. Yahya and Mahnaz come out of Moheb’s room. My legs won’t move. Without a look, without a smile, my mother says to Mahnaz, “God be with you … May God reward …”
Her words are swallowed by her veil. My feet have been sewn to the carpet by the threads of hatred and anger that were woven together by all those nameless women and children. My mother is gone.
My feet are sewn to the carpet.
My heart breaks at the sound of the door to the terrace closing behind her.
“Mother …”
My voice breaks.
The carpet is sewn to my feet.
“Mother …”
I am nothing but a pattern in a carpet.
“Father!”
…?!
“Father!”
Everything has gone black.
I have passed out on the carpet. When I come to, Yahya is sitting down next to me.
My mother is gone. She has left with my last sight of her hidden away under her veil.
Yahya hands me a glass of water. I disentangle myself from the patterns on the carpet and answer Yahya’s kind look with a smile. In agony, I haul myself up again onto the cushion under the windowsill. I drink the water that Yahya has brought for me.
“Where’s your mother?”
“In the kitchen.”
I get up. The smell of onions leads me to the kitchen. With her back to the door, Mahnaz is busy slicing them into rings. For a moment, standing by the door, I watch her in silence. What am I doing here? Why am I shaking?
Mahnaz senses my presence. She turns toward me. With the end of her sleeve she wipes the onion-tears from her eyes, and smiles at me. This is the very first time I’ve seen her smile. She smiles to make me understand that her tears have been caused by onions, not by grief. I try to smile back. I manage a hopeless parody of a smile.
Mahnaz slides the onions into a saucepan. As always, the smell of frying onions makes me hungry. The kitchen fills with the aroma of my mother’s cooking. As always, my heart beats faster. I want to take a piece of bread and steal some of the fried onions from the pan. I want to put my hands on Mahnaz’s shoulders. I want to tuck that lock of hair behind her ear myself.
“You must be hungry.”
“The smell of frying onions always makes me hungry.”
I lean against the door. I find myself imagining I’ve lived in this house for years, that I’ve known Mahnaz for years, that Yahya has called me “Father” for years, that my mother has visited us here for years. For years I’ve wanted to go away, but I haven’t been able to. For years I’ve been asking her the same question:
“Why don’t you come away with me?”
Mahnaz stops stirring the onions. My heart thumps. She turns to smile at me. A bitter smile.
“Dear Farhad, life is not that simple!”
She turns back to the pan. The smell of frying onions makes the house seem more homely.
“If I go to Pakistan, I’ll have to marry my brother-in-law.”
I stop leaning on the door and move over to the wall.
“But where is your family?” I ask her.
She pours boiling water into the pan, and her voice comes from the middle of a cloud of steam.
“Only my brother Moheb is left with me. The rest have gone to Germany.”
She stirs the onions with a wooden spoon.
“I’ve not been in touch with them for years.”
She takes a deep breath.
“When I was born …”
She places the lid on the pan.