al-majus

The story of my great-grandmother, Khanum Bozorg. Written in two vignettes, No. 2.

Ever since she fell off her horse and broke her nose into a calligrapher’s mim, Khanum Bozorg lost the ability to smell and taste food properly. She couldn’t tell the difference between rotten meat and fresh meat, wouldn’t know it by the sweet aroma of walnut and pheasant wafting through the house that the cook was making her favourite dish. She was oblivious when her daughter-in-law put too much fenugreek in the qormeh-sabzi, and immune when the stew left the entire family stinking like an old, dusty apothecary cabinet for a week.

Despite this unfortunate limitation, or else precisely because of it, Khanum Bozorg loved to eat. Every opportunity she had, she ate, trying fill the void of a tasteless, odourless existence. Under the fruit trees in the summer, in her bedroom late at night, out in the bazaar on a Wednesday, she was always nibbling, sampling, overloading. She ate her way through most of her youth, she ate her way through her marriage. When each of her six children were born, she ate; when they left home one by one…

After her husband died, she mostly ate alone, diligently grazing her way into old age, when she finally found herself an accomplice in Niku.

Niku never refused a bite of anything. She lived happily within the bountiful folds of her grandmother’s skirts and scarves, nibbling on the peeled almonds, figs and green salted plums that Khanum Bozorg dealt her with the quick, stealthy hand of a croupier.

When Khanum Bozorg was diagnosed with diabetes, the two simply relocated from the sitting room to Khanum’s bedroom, Khanum Bozorg knitting in bed with her swollen legs elevated on top a mountain of pillows, and Niku playing on the rug with her yarn.

She had a different colour every week. By the end of each, she’d hold up the frayed and pathetic remains in front of her grandmother, who would then hand her a new piece in a different colour, never failing to implore, “Please try and make this one last longer than a week, Niku-Jun. You’re going to use up all my yarn. Then I won’t have anything for you to play with.”

But after a week, Niku was back for more, to Khanum Bozorg’s secret delight. With the yarn she made cat’s cradles, cut the circulation off various fingers in her hand. She swirled it, twirled it, dragged it along after her like a pet. She stuck it in-between her toes as her aunts did when they were threading their own eyebrows. When she ran out of things to do with it, Khanum Bozorg slipped her a snack.

Sadly, new restrictions were constantly being imposed on these snacks as Khanum Bozorg’s health deteriorated, and Asqar Aqa could always be counted upon to monitor every crumb of food that entered his mother’s increasingly drooping mouth.

“No ice cream,” he would shrug, prying the tray of saffron-coloured dessert out of Khanum’s unyielding hands.

“No sherbet,” he’d sigh, shaking his head at the bribed servant who had snuck the drinks over to Khanum’s room.

“Tut-tut,” he would click, creeping up from behind a massive slice of Khanum’s watermelon, and then seizing it.

It was not until mulberry season came along that Khanum Bozorg finally put her purple foot down. She planned a fairly simple escape, while under the spell of one of her evening sugar highs. She would have to sneak out sometime soon after breakfast, as most vendors closed for siesta in the sizzling summer afternoons. Mehri would be in the basement helping the cook prepare lunch at that time and the servants would be busy with their morning duties. Khanum’s youngest daughter, Heshmat, would be at university until late in the afternoon, leaving Khanum with only one minor obstacle – her beloved son.

Asqar Aqa hardly ever left the house when summer came along, and even when he did, one never knew when or where he might pop up again. With Niku as her lookout, however, Khanum was willing to take her chances.

The next morning, with her canvas slippers tucked underneath her arm, Khanum Bozorg made a run for it through the corridor.

“And where do you think you’re going?” said Asqar Aqa from inside the sitting room.

Khanum Bozorg straightened her body and adjusted her headscarf. The man was like a jinn. “I’m going out,” she announced casually.

“You’re not going anywhere,” said Asqar Aqa, shaking his newspaper. He did not like to read. In fact, he had dropped out of school early because the letters made his head ache, but he liked the feel and smell of the paper with his late morning coffee. “You heard what the doctor said. You’re almost eighty, you’re diabetic. No more going to the bazaar and sampling fruits and sweets.”

“Sweets?” Khanum marched back towards the sitting room doorway. “Who said anything about sweets? I need to get out of this house. I need to go for a walk. I need to be around people. You can’t keep me prisoner in here!”

“Wait a couple hours. Heshmat will be back from university and you can go together.”

“I don’t want to wait for Heshmat. She’s always fussing over me. ‘Khanum, don’t walk so fast. Khanum, don’t walk so slow. Khanum, why are you dragging your sandals?’ Who the hell am I, Hassan Kachal?”

Asqar Aqa lowered his paper. “Khanum, I know what time of year it is,” he said, raising his eyebrows, just as Mehri, who had been listening in from the salon, walked in, pregnant as the day she married.

“If you like, I’ll go out with you, Khanum Bozorg,” she offered, rubbing her belly.

Khanum’s eyes scanned the ground. “Er, no, my dear, really. The smells in the market will make you sick. And I’ll only be out for half an hour–”

“Aha! See? I knew it! I know my own mother.” Asqar Aqa’s chubby neck wiggled in triumph. “She’s going to the market to pilfer the white mulberries, that’s where she’s going!”

Khanum threw one of her canvas slippers at her son’s head. It hit him with a thump and then landed on his newspaper. The three stood in silence for several moments, but Khanum would not be deterred. Her second slipper came flying towards Asqar Aqa, grazed his shoulder and then fell to the floor. Asqar Aqa did not move.

“While you were still shitting your pants, I was perfecting my Parthian shot!” cried Khanum. “I’ll eat whatever I want, whenever I want!” She flung her scarf over her shoulder dramatically and turned to leave.

“Khanum, you know that those berries are poison for you!” said Mehri gently, touching her shoulder. “Besides, we need you here with us for a long time. The children need you. Niku needs you.”

“Where is Niku anyway?” said Asqar Aqa suddenly. “Khanum?”

Khanum Bozorg looked straight into her son’s eyes without so much as a blink.

“You put Niku in the tree as your lookout again, didn’t you?”

“Lookout? What are you talking about, lookout? He’s gone mad.” She pointed her finger at him, chuckling nervously at Mehri.

“She could fall off and die for God’s sake!” cried Asqar Aqa, rushing outside.

Mehri and Khanum Bozorg followed. There, perched on the old maple tree was Niku, chin tucked in, pot belly out. Mehri and Khanum Bozorg watched in silence, as Asqar Aqa climbed up the wobbly ladder and carried Niku down.

“I think I will go to my room and lie down now,” said Khanum Bozorg to her daughter-in-law.

For the next few days, Khanum Bozorg kept a low profile. She ate her healthy meals without complaint, pretended to nap when she was told to do so, and went out for afternoon strolls in the garden whenever her son suggested them. But her nights were restless and she spent the greater part of each pacing back and forth in her bedroom.

One afternoon, when the family was taking its siesta, Niku, who had inherited both her grandmother’s aversion towards sleep and her passion for mythology, snuck away to sit on her favourite windowsill and re-enact a scene from Rudabeh and Zal. She tied that week’s especially long piece of black yarn to her hair and dangled it out of the open window, just as Rudabeh had dangled her two dusky ringlets down the parapet for her beloved. Cast as the beloved was an old crow whom she sometimes left walnuts for on the garden wall. She was sitting with her hand underneath her chin, awaiting her prince’s ascent, when she suddenly noticed her grandmother sneaking out the front door.

Niku rolled up her yarn and gathered her knees into her chest. Her father had clearly said that Khanum Bozorg was ill and had to stay in the house, but she also knew that if she told anyone of her escape, it would likely get her into trouble.

There was an uneasy, gnawing feeling in her belly, but in the end Niku resolved to stay put and wait, nervously wrapping the black yarn around her thumb, until the finger looked as if it had been broken, set in a cast and then hexed.

Twenty minutes passed before she finally spotted Khanum Bozorg’s navy and white headscarf inching along the wall and slipping back into the house. A wave of relief rushed over her, as she sat on the windowsill with the warm breeze trembling against her skirt. But before long, it was back. That gnawing feeling. She ignored it and went back to her yarn.

“Niku-Jun, do you want some tea?” asked Mehri a good hour later, as the family began to rise from their afternoon slumber. She was still groggy from her nap. Her short hair was pressed down in the back and her thin, wrinkled dress clung to her new bulge of belly. “For God’s sake, would you put that yarn away for one second? I’m taking Khanum’s tea in right now. Why don’t you come with me?”

Niku hesitated. “No.”

“No?” said Mehri, surprised. Niku never refused a trip to her grandmother’s room.

“No, I’ll wait here. Are Mehdi and Morteza awake yet?”

“They’ll be up soon enough. I’ll be right back. And come down from that windowsill please.”

Niku waited. And waited. When the boys woke up and asked her to come down and play, she didn’t budge. When Shuku and her aunt Heshmat woke up and asked if the tea was ready, she didn’t answer. When her father walked in murmuring his silly crow song, she burst into tears.

The crow was sitting atop our wall,

The crow flapped its wings and flew away,

But our wall stood fast.

“Niku-Jun! What is it?” said Asqar Aqa, collecting his daughter in his arms. His song had never inspired more than a shake of his wife’s head.

“Khanum Bozorg ate the white mulberries!” wailed Niku through a saliva-webbed mouth.

Asqar Aqa set Niku down and ran into his mother’s room, where his wife stood crying over Khanum Bozorg’s body. One hand held the tray of spattered tea, the other covered her mouth. Propped up on her pillows, Khanum had both her hands in a paper bag, her eyes wide open and a sticky, mulberry sap smile on her face.

written by Alaleh Mohajerani

an earlier version of this text was first published by Cardiff University in 2008

collage citations: Qajar woman; bird