“Oh, those abominations! Those debauched animals!” Apama howled from the opposite shore. “I’m going to denounce you to Sayyiduna and he’ll order you both castrated again. You’ve trampled my most beautiful flower, my delicate rosebud.”
The eunuchs exploded with laughter.
“What are you howling about, you loathsome mutt, you aged slut?” Adi mocked her. “Just wait, we’ll grind you with stones and shatter your bones, you vicious witch, you cross-eyed bitch.”
“You stinking wether,” Apama rasped. “So you’ve gotten a yen for young flesh, you castrated goat. Praise be to Allah that they clipped off your manhood while they still could, you broken-horned, black demon! Oh, how satisfying to know you couldn’t, even if you wanted.”
Adi replied amid a renewed barrage of laughter.
“Don’t you see how we scoff at you, you old baboon, absurd old loon! We could have all seven prophets at once, while you’d be falling all over yourself if some lone old dog so much as looked at you.”
Filled with impotent rage, Apama nearly lost control. She went flying to the water’s edge as though she meant to jump in and wade through it. Adi drew out one of the oars that he kept hidden behind a bush, leapt to the water, and skillfully slapped at its surface, sending a large spurt that drenched Apama.
The old woman wailed, while the eunuchs doubled over with laughter. Adi tossed the oar back into the bushes, then took off running with Mustafa. Apama waved her fists at them, swearing vengeance.
For the moment she took all her revenge on Halima. That same day she berated her in front of all her companions for being sneaky and rotten, and she called every punishment of this world and the next down on her head. Halima felt guilty for giving in to Sara, and she really did see herself as rotten, especially now that she dared to look Miriam so innocently in the eyes right after making love with Sara. It was because of this that Apama’s accusations struck her to the quick. She lowered her eyes and blushed deeply.
But when Apama had gone, Miriam reassured her that she shouldn’t take the old woman’s reproaches too much to heart, since everyone knew she was mean and hated the eunuchs; and, moreover, that none of the girls for a minute doubted the perfect innocence of their game. This profession of trust struck Halima as so undeserved and shook her so much that she had to withdraw to a corner where she could vent her tears of self-pity. She swore then to reform and stop giving in to Sara. But giving up old habits is hard, and everything continued as it was.
The days lengthened and the evenings were full of mysterious life. Crickets chirruped in the gardens, and frogs responded from the canals. Bats swooped past the lighted windows, silently catching winged insects. On evenings like these the girls’ most delicious pleasure was to listen to the stories and fairy tales that Fatima told.
Fatima was a remarkable woman in every respect. She knew a thousand wonderful things and never seemed to be at a loss. She knew a hundred riddles, and once she had revealed the answers to all of them, she came up with new ones day after day. She knew all of the songs that were sung from the far south of Arabia to Egypt and Syria and all the way to the north of Turkestan. But she also had other talents. In the midst of a grove the eunuchs had set up for her a longish building made of glass, inside of which, on branches broken off of the mulberry trees that grew at the river’s edge like willows, she raised silkworms. She liked to say that their cocoons would provide enough silk to clothe every girl in the gardens.
The girls most enjoyed hearing her tell stories from the Thousand and One Nights and from Firdausi’s Book of Kings. She was no less inventive than Scheherazade at telling these stories. Whatever the tooth of time had chipped away from her memory she compensated for out of her own imagination. Many stories were her own creation from start to finish.
Of all the stories, the one about the sculptor Farhad and Queen Shirin seemed to affect the girls most. It made them think of Miriam, and they had Fatima tell it to them over and over. It moved them deeply, and each time Halima would dissolve in tears. Like Miriam, Shirin was also a Christian. Her beauty was so great that even flowers would hang their heads in shame and envy whenever she walked through the lawns and gardens. She became the wife of the most powerful king of Iran, Khosrow Parviz. The whole nation rebelled when they learned that their new queen was an infidel. But the king loved her so much that he subdued all his opponents. Yet Khosrow Parviz was not only a strong ruler, he was a wise man too. He knew how fleeting earthly beauty is. And so, in order to preserve the beloved face and exquisite body of his wife forever, he summoned the most renowned sculptor of his time, Farhad, to sculpt her in marble. As the young artist gazed at the queen’s heavenly form day after day, he came to love her with an undying love. Wherever he was, whatever he did, by day and asleep, everywhere, her heavenly face was with him.
Finally he was no longer able to conceal his passion. The statue and the queen grew more and more alike. His work, the look in his eye and the sound of his voice all betrayed the storm in his heart. One day even the king noticed. In a rage of jealousy he drew his sword, but Shirin stepped in front of the sculptor and shielded him with her body. In gratitude for his creation, Khosrow Parviz spared his life, but he banished him to the barren mountains of Bizutum forever. There, Farhad went mad with longing and unrequited love. In his pain and passion he seized his hammer and chisel and began to sculpt an enormous image of Shirin out of the mountain’s rocky ridge. To this day you can see it, a godlike queen emerging from her bath. In front of her is the king’s horse Shebdis, young and muscular.
The king then sent a messenger to the mountains of Bizutum with false news that the queen had died. Farhad had no interest in outliving her. In his unbearable agony he threw himself on an axe, splitting his chest in two. As he fell, the blade stuck in the ground, and behold, drenched in the blood of the sculptor’s heart, the axe handle turned green, blossomed, and produced fruit. That fruit is the pomegranate, which in memory of Farhad’s death is cleft like his breast was, and which bleeds when you wound and open it. And that is why to this day it is called Farhad’s apple.
The girls listened to this story dewy-eyed. Only Miriam stared at the ceiling, apparently indifferent. Her eyes were curiously dry and seemed to be staring into some remote distance. Later that night both Safiya and Jada, who slept in the same bedroom as Miriam, heard Miriam tossing and turning in her bed.
They also liked hearing stories about the ancient Iranian hero Rustam, who in a duel unwittingly killed his own son Suhrab; then the tales of Ali Baba and the forty thieves, and of Aladdin’s lamp, and the ones from the Koran, which Fatima tailored in her own unique way. If she told how Potiphar’s wife, Zuleika, fell in love with Joseph, they all automatically turned to look at their companion Zuleika and smiled at her. In Fatima’s telling the Egyptian wasn’t a wanton sinner, just a tender lover before whom the young Joseph didn’t dare to lift his eyes. Gradually, in Fatima’s stories each of the girls got her counterpart, with whom she privately compared herself or was compared by the others.
Every now and then the girls would organize a banquet, where the food and drink would be exquisite. On those days Apama would be particularly mean-spirited, while Miriam quietly beamed. Among the girls it was rumored that Miriam had obtained Sayyiduna’s permission for these holidays as a solace to her companions. Apama was bitter that she had to do the cooking for these feasts.
On such occasions the eunuchs would bring in a catch of fish, and Moad and Mustafa made a point of leaving first thing in the morning with their bows and falcons to hunt for fowl. They would row off in their boat down a long canal until they reached a stretch of shore where the wild vegetation extended all the way to the sheer cliff faces at the foot of the Elburz. That particular spot was a hunter’s paradise.