He swung around and held out a handful of silky brown threads. He thrust the bundle into her face and shouted, "Hair! This is hair, girl! Dozens of pigtails I had to lop off the heads of little girls before I boil 'em up!" The cook leered as he said, "The fuzzywriggles can't abide the hair, see? It makes the eyeballs hard to digest."
He bellowed out his laughter as she crawled between the hot iron ranges to a place dark and safe next to the wall. With Onan still laughing at his fine joke, she noticed a number of the fine brown strands on the polished stone floor. She crept between the hot ranges until she could reach out a hand and pinch up a bit of the hair.
She sat back in her dark place and felt the strands. It felt like hair. She smelled it. With all of the other smells in the kitchen it was hard to tell what the strands smelled like. She tasted it and jerked the strands from her mouth. It was just like hair.
She looked from between the ranges and saw more of the hair. It was protruding from the top of the garbage pail. When Onan wasn't looking, she slipped from between the ranges and went to the garbage pail. The hair came out of a strange-looking thing that might have been a flower with large, ear-shaped petals. The flower grew out of a purple-black shell.
She didn't know what it was, but she knew it wasn't the head of a dead girl. She took the thing out of the pail by its brown hair and walked around the ranges until she found Onan coming from the pantry with his arms loaded. She stood in the way and held up the thing.
The cook laughed when he saw her. He placed his burden down upon a counter and said, "Aren't you the clever little one? Do you know what that is, girl?"
She shook her head.
Onan went to the cool room and returned with a large purple-black lumpy ball. On its top was one of those flowers with a topknot of brown hair coming out of it.
"This is called a soldier melon, girl. The fuzzywriggles can't get enough of the things."
He went to his cutting counter and picked up his wicked-looking blade. He lopped the lid off the melon and placed it aside. Holding the ball of the melon down to her so she could see inside, Onan said, "Did you ever see anything like it?"
The flesh of the melon was pale blue. In the center were bright red seeds suspended in a lavender gel. "Go ahead," said the cook. "Stick your finger in it and give it a taste."
She touched her finger into the lavender gel and touched the finger to her tongue. Instantly her mouth filled with the most incredible bitterness. Her throat closed at the taste and she could feel her stomach begin to retch.
Onan laughed again. "That's the part you don't eat!"
She didn't run from the kitchen. Onan would play tricks on her, but she knew that he would soon feel bad about it and give her a biscuit, a sweet, or a taste of one of his puddings. She returned to her dark place behind the ranges to wait.
While she waited she fingered the veil over her head. She rolled the fine fabric between her fingers and was angry that she was supposed to wear it. She was angry and hurt that she was slapped for not wearing it.
She looked around and decided that she could trust her dark place. No one was small enough to get to her there. She pulled off her veil, wrinkled her nose at the taste in her mouth, and waited for Onan to call her for a treat.
The color of female was black. Her dress was black, as were her shoes and veil. The women would sign-call her Silent Her. Instead of spelling out her name fully in Mogam, the women would abbreviate it by representing the name Silent with the single finger held to their closed lips. That would be followed by the downward-held fist that was for the female of anything.
Once when her father was in the kitchen giving instructions to Razi, his secretary, about some building repairs, she heard her father say that he was the one who had given her the pet name. The name was a reminder to Duman Amin's second wife that her daughter could not speak.
Women were not allowed to have names, but as the guard Majnun said at the female wing's guard station one day, "You have to call women something, don't you? It's too chilly to call them 'second wife,' or 'wife of Majnun.' Too much of that and I'd soon find myself in a pair of hairy arms."
The other guard, Isak, had been listening and had shaken his head. "There is too much of that these days: men and men. In another few years they'll even be marrying."
Majnun had nodded at Silent Her and had said, "Be off with you, Si. None of this is for your ears."
The men called her Si, or Hush, or Silent.
God had forbidden women to have names, but they had names that were pet names. But pet names were not real names, so God didn't care about them. "All of that is nothing but Haramite nonsense," said Toi the gardener. Toi seemed very proud of not being a Haramite. Isak said to Toi, "You had best watch your mouth before you find yourself in front of a priest's court."
Later, in the kitchen, when Isak had finished complaining about the gardener, Majnun had shrugged and observed, "Without Duman Amin and the Reformists all of us would be looking at the world through choke loops."
Kind Lips had a name that was five fingers down and doubled, one finger up, and five fingers down: N-H-R. That was how Duman's first wife spelled her quiet name, Rihana. If a woman simply made the R sign, however, all of the females knew that it stood for Rihana, just as everyone knew that the H sign stood for IaD-H, Duman's second wife whose quiet name was Hedia. Hedia was Silent Her's mother. Silent Her never saw Hedia because her mother was kept locked up in a room on the third floor of the female wing.
Rahman was a name of mystery. Onan the cook would often say the name as though everyone knew who Rahman was. There were special meals for Rahman. A special party for Rahman. A holiday celebration for Rahman. A feast for when Rahman was baptized, another when he was confirmed, another for his birthday, and yet another on Rahman's first day of school.
On the second floor of the female wing, Rihana was marking on a piece of paper the letters of Mogam as Silent Her watched. First, from a center line a single vertical line above. Next to the first, a group of two vertical lines above from the center. Then three, four, and five. Following that, from the center, a single vertical line down. Then groups of two, three, four, and five all down. Drawing a new center line, Rihana then repeated the same five groups, but this time going through the line so that each group was above and below the center. Two more: First, two lines crossed through the center line and, second, a circle cut through its middle by the center line.
Using words Silent knew the sound of, Rihana marked the beginning sounds: four down for ship, the sound ess. Two down for light, the sound el. Five down for notch, the sound en. Three up for train, the sound tee. Then one up for harem, the sound aych. And a group of five all the way through the center for river, the sound ar.
Rihana then wrote them down in order from right to left, spelling out the child's pet name. Without a mistake, the girl wrote down the Mogam for Silent Her.
Rihana went through the rest of the letters, marking them with sound-words, and suddenly the girl knew the meaning of the marks in dust, the little scratches on walls, or on the bark of trees she had seen all her life.
Rihana signed, "Do you know my pet name?" The girl shook her head and Rihana wrote the single line straight through for em, the single line down for bee, and the five straight through for ar.