Butterfly Stitching Read online

  “You know that Gita’s dead. And so are my children. I want to help you, Samira . . . I still love you.” And with that, and a slip of his hand placing something into Maman’s pocket, the man was gone.

  The cries of the twins slapped the still air like whips cracking on a back, yet the lack of acknowledgment from the world suggested that no one heard them. Sahar and Maman stood in the wind, holding hands and clutching the twins. They watched the men fill the grave with dirt.

  PART II

  Hijri Calendar 1386 - 1399, Gregorian Calendar 1966-1979

  Kandovan, Tabriz, and Tehran, Iran

  1

  Samira woke up earlier than usual. Their farmhand, Farhad, was sick. So Baba asked her to milk the cows and gather the eggs. After these chores were done, she yelled to Maman that she was going into the field. She ran through the meadow leading from her house to the juniper trees, her arms stretched to feel the fresh air kiss her skin. She spent nearly an hour gathering dry juniper needles to burn over a wide container, catching only the needle ashes into a cup. She added the mordant to a big pot of boiling water that sat over an outdoor fire pit before pouring in the dandelion roots and sumac berries for the red, and boiled walnut hulls and acorns for the orange. The color in the pot was a striking red sunset.

  “Add some sunflower leaves to that, child,” Maman said as she walked by with the wash. “It’s much too bold.”

  “I’m not graying it out, Maman. It’s beautiful the way it is.” She placed the blank headscarf into the pot and stirred it into the color, then raised the pot further away from the fire pit to bring the boil to a simmer.

  Maman walked back over to Samira. She stood over the pot, scowling. “Don’t let it sit in there too long. It’ll become far too conspicuous.”

  Samira ignored her.

  “Don’t make me tell your baba.”

  Samira smiled at this empty threat. Baba let her get away with everything, and was far too busy with the dairy farm to even notice the color of her headscarf.

  “Maman jan, can I help with dinner tonight?” Samira said without touching the bubbling pot of orange dye.

  “Why don’t you finish that drawing instead,” Maman said, walking back toward the house. “I know you’ve been thinking about it.”

  She had been. It was, after all, her first drawing of Maman. And she was new to charcoal. Maman would help from time to time. Where Maman had learned to draw with charcoal, Samira did not know, but Maman knew just how to smudge the lines with a soft twist of her fingers. How to turn a line into a nose, and a circle into a sunset. Samira walked into the house and over to the small wooden box containing her drawing materials. Despite the disapproving looks of their neighbors, Maman and Baba allowed her to keep her materials in the living room. Easier access, Samira had argued. But the truth was there was no other place for them. She took out a pad of paper and some soft charcoal and began rough practice drawings of Maman’s eyes and lips. Seven sheets of paper later, she was interrupted by Maman’s voice coming from the kitchen. “The sun’s set, azizam. Go and get your baba for dinner.”

  Samira looked up at the sky. So clear. They should eat outside tonight.

  They threw a machine-made rug on the ground, close enough to the fire pit where Samira’s scarf simmered, to benefit from its light as they ate.

  “Child, please remove that fabric before it takes on an indecent amount of color.” Maman did her best to sound stern during dinner.

  “I will. In just a minute. Baba owes me a ‘t’!”

  “And I have the perfect one!”

  “Well I’m waiting!” Samira smiled.

  “‘The minute I heard my first love story, I started looking for you, not knowing how blind that was. Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere, they’re in each other all along’.”

  “I knew you would go with that one! Too easy!” Samira said as she walked over to the fire with a stick and scooped out the headscarf. Even Maman could not help but smile at its brilliance.

  “Would you like me to embroider a pattern onto it?” The thought of Maman giving her skill to Samira’s headscarf thrilled her, and with a grin she agreed.

  “How about butterflies?” Baba suggested.

  “White ones!” Samira said. “No—orange. Orange butterflies.”

  “I’ll start it tomorrow, once it’s dried.”

  After dinner, Baba helped the ladies take the dishes inside, then said goodnight.

  “Thank you so much for dinner, Maman jan. Mersi.” Samira plopped down on the old couch in their sitting room and put her after-dinner tea cup on the lace tablecloth that hid the elderly stains on their small coffee table.

  “You’re welcome, child.”

  “Maman, tell me the story again.”

  “Again?”

  “Please! I’ll let you wear my new headscarf!”

  “Vay Khoda, I could never wear anything like that headscarf, and you shouldn’t either, child.” Maman sipped her tea through the sugar cube on her tongue.

  “Please tell me the story, Maman. I’ve had such a long day.”

  “Basheh, basheh, stop your nagging now. Alright. Let’s see. It was in the spring.”

  “What month?”

  “Oh, you know I can never remember that. But I remember the year was 1372, and our village of Kandovan was even smaller then than it is now. I’d say less than three hundred people lived here. Here, hand me that hairbrush and turn around.”

  “Middle of spring? End of spring?”

  “End of spring. How many strokes?”

  “Fifty, please.”

  “Child, you really are spoiled.”

  “So go on. It was the end of spring . . .”

  “Yes. The end of spring, in 1372. That’s when it came. A letter! My very first! I was twenty and had never had a letter. I couldn’t read it, of course, and had no idea who could be writing to me since everyone I’d ever known lived in Kandovan. I went out to the fields to find your baba, like I did on those rare occasions—and they were rare—when I had no idea what to do. He was always a good reader, your baba. I still think he should’ve taught me. I could’ve learned too! But anyway, that day, I couldn’t find him anywhere. I heard from the farmhand that he’d gone to town for supplies. So I baked a plate of rice pudding and walked to the edge of the village to Mrs. Taherie’s house whose literate son, Mammad, loved my rice pudding.

  “There, I was told that the letter was misdelivered to me and was really meant for Reza Khan. For some reason, this disappointment made my water break! Right there, in the middle of Mrs. Taherie’s floor, in front of her literate son!

  “Oh, I knew from that first moment you were born that you were different. Our miracle child. Here you were after every midwife told me I’d never get pregnant. I knew that your baba would teach you to read and write. Someday you’d go to a real school. It would change your life. You could read letters in the village for money and have lots and lots of children and teach all of them how to read and write. Maybe even teach other village kids and women. Well, you’re already reading and writing, and you’ll do all the rest of that, too. One of these days we’ll see what we can do about enrolling you in school. I just know you’re going to have a wonderful life.”

  But fourteen was not that young and, despite Maman’s best wishes, their immediate sphere concerned and consumed all of their hardworking waking hours. That sphere did not include any kind of a formal education. So Maman settled for second best. If her daughter could not go to school, she could memorize all of the Hafez, Rumi, and Khayam poems. Why not? Her baba knew over two hundred and fifty verses by heart and would sing a few every night after dinner and sometimes at gatherings, too. And really, even literacy was not a requirement to understanding poetry. Just love for it alone will get you there, if you have someone to teach you. Samira had already out-performed even her baba. She had memorized more poems and sung them more lyrically than anyone else in Kandovan.

  “You would’ve memorized every poem ever k
nown if you hadn’t discovered watercolors!”

  Samira smiled.

  “Really child, you were always talented with a pencil, but I think its blackness bored you. When Jaja Khan gave you those watercolors it made all the difference!”

  “Do you remember when he gave those to me? They were practically brand new, too! How long ago was that?”

  “You were ten. Now let’s see—it’s been thirty brush strokes. You really want fifty?”

  “Yes.”

  “Will you tickle my back afterwards?”

  “Basheh.”

  “Where’d he get it from?”

  “Hm?”

  “The watercolor set. I never knew where Jaja Khan got it from.”

  “He said something about a land surveyor. Stopped by his teashop with his daughter. I think the little girl left the watercolors behind.”

  Samira could not understand how anyone could forget such a wonderful thing.

  “You really have very unusual skin, child.” Her maman brushed Samira’s hair away from her neck and flung it to the side of her shoulder. “That white skin, set against that dark hair. Where do you see another farm girl with skin like yours? I’ve never seen it, but I’m told your great-grandmother had such skin. Like Mumtaz Mahal! All of the rest of us with dark and weathered faces. You should be in the drawings, instead of drawing them! Of course if I spent all my time indoors reading Rumi or drawing pictures, I’d have better skin too! But you really are talented. After only four years of drawing, you’re already famous!”

  “By famous, you mean all the hundreds of people in Kandovan know me just like they all know every other person in Kandovan!”

  “And Jamshid, everyone there knows you because of drawings you hung in Jaja Khan’s teashop.”

  “Jamshid and Kandovan are practically the same village, Maman. I could throw a stone from here and it would land in Jamshid!”

  “And other villages too. Really, Samira, don’t underestimate yourself. Forty eight, forty nine, and fifty. Now it’s my turn.”

  Maman put the brush on the table beside her as Samira tapped her thighs. Then Maman curled up on the couch with her head on Samira’s lap.

  “You want your hair or your back?”

  “My hair.”

  Samira’s finger combed Maman’s hair and tickled Maman’s scalp. She thought about the pleasure she took in drawing. She colored the otherwise grim world of her fellow farmers with joy-provoking family portraits of wrinkled chins and cheeks, earning nothing more in return than her supplies. Her humble patrons gave her pencils, chalk, pastels, leather, cotton, and gloriously large sheets of paper.

  “Samira, is that your chador on the chair over there?

  “Hm? Oh, yes.”

  “But it hung like that on the chair earlier this afternoon!”

  “M’hm.”

  “So you haven’t moved it, which means you didn’t do your evening namaz.”

  “I’ll do it before I go to sleep.”

  “Child, you’re already late!”

  “Maman, I promise I’ll do it before I go to sleep.”

  “I don’t want you to forget.”

  “When’s the last time I forgot the afternoon prayer?”

  “Two weeks ago Wednesday.” Maman picked herself up from the couch. “I think you should do it right now. I’ve got a few dishes to wash before I turn in, anyway. I’ll wait for you to finish.”

  Samira threw Maman a futile look of protest before heading for the washbasin. She washed her face and hands as far as the elbows, then wiped her head and feet to the ankles, dried off, and rolled out her prayer rug to face Mecca. She placed the mohre—mottled, cool and heavy—on her prayer rug, put on her chador, and began praying to a compassionate, merciful and great God while Maman clinked and clanked dishes and Baba snored from the next room.

  Bismillāhir-raḥmāni r-raḥīm

  (In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful)

  Alḥamdu lillāhi rabbi l-'ālamīn

  (Praise be to Allah, Lord of the Universe,)

  Ar raḥmāni r-raḥīm

  (The Most Gracious, the Most Merciful.)

  Mālikiyawmi d-dīn

  (Sovereign of the Day of Judgment,)

  Iyyāka na'budu wa iyyāka nasta'īn

  (Thee alone we worship; Thee alone we ask for help.)

  Ihdināṣ-ṣirāṭ al-mustaqīm

  (Guide us to the true path,)

  Ṣirāṭal-laḏīna an'amta 'alayhim

  (The path of those whom Thou hast favored.)

  ġayril maġḍūbi 'alayhim

  (not the of those who earn Thine anger nor)

  walāḍḍāllīn

  (of those who go astray.)

  She bent her knees to the ground and touched her forehead to the mohre as she prayed. Felt the smooth, worn surface of the stone. Then leaned back to sit on her knees saying another verse. Rose again. Lowered again. Rose again. For goodness and for peace. For salvation of the spirit. She lowered again and rose again. Lost in the meditation of her movements. Lowered again and rose again. Reflecting on the divine sound of the words that were sung more than spoken. She closed her eyes and saw the words peacefully dance behind her eyelids, and felt more than ever the truth of Rumi’s lines:

  There is a life-force within your soul, seek that life.

  There is a gem in the mountain of your body, seek that mine.

  O traveler, if you are in search of That

  Don't look outside, look inside yourself and seek That.

  She felt God in the moonlight coming in through the window, in the wind, in the trees, and within herself. She lowered and again touched her forehead to the stone. Any anger in her heart, any sorrow or hate, vanished in her meditation and her drunken love for God. That was when it happened.

  The interruption was jarring and unforgivable because she did not know what it was. She thought that perhaps she had wet her pants but could not understand how that was possible at fourteen years of age. Well, her pants were wet and she could not pray like this. She needed to clean herself. She threw off her chador, hurried to put on her outdoor slippers and ran to the outhouse. It was not urine soaking her pants, but blood. She touched the blood with her fingers and shrieked, then quickly realized what was happening.

  “What is it? What is it, child?” Maman knocked on the door of the outhouse a moment later.

  “Um . . . nothing.”

  “Nothing? You screamed!”

  “Yes, but I’m not hurt.”

  “For God’s sakes, child, will you open this door and let me in?”

  Samira complied. The door to the outhouse swung open. Samira looked at Maman, then lifted her bloody fingers.

  “How did you cut your finger?” Maman asked.

  “It’s not my finger. I’m bleeding from down here,” Samira turned around to show the blood stain on the back of her pants. Maman studied her pants, and smiled.

  “You are a woman now!”

  A woman? Samira smiled, arched her back. A woman! But almost immediately after pride puffed out her chest, a surge of angst deflated her. A woman. She knew what this blood meant.

  “I was fourteen too when I first bled,” Maman continued when they were back inside and brewing a fresh pot of tea. “And I had already been promised to your baba by then. Well, of course, in our case it was many years before Khoda blessed us with you, but I’m sure it’ll go much quicker for you!”

  Many of the other young women Samira’s age were already promised and would wed by seventeen or eighteen. If she followed a similar course, she would be promised within a year, and married within three. The idea of a respectable union at an appropriate age should please her, but disturbed her instead.

  She took a sip of tea then looked at Maman, suddenly struck by the number of spots on her face. Were they all there yesterday? The lines on her hands. They definitely did not use to be this deep. The gray in her hair. Is this much gray normal for thirty six?

  “Maman joon?”
<
br />   “Baleh aziz?”

  If I marry, can I still draw?”

  “Maybe, aziz. But that’ll be up to your husband, won’t it now? But don’t you worry. I can’t imagine a man wanting to marry you if he didn’t like your drawing. It’s such a part of you, after all. I only wish . . .”

  “I can still go to school . . . maybe after marriage?”

  “Yes.” Maman had a liar’s look in her eyes. “There’s still time.”

  Samira knew that she would likely never go to a real school, with real booklets and real pens and real uniforms and real math lessons. But she was lucky. Lucky that her parents allowed her to spend all her time drawing and reading. She did not know another farmer’s daughter who was allowed these incredible freedoms. This luck, she feared, would run out once she moved from her baba’s control to a husband’s control.

  Over the next few weeks, she worked almost entirely with charcoal. Pencils are sturdy, reliable, precise. Charcoal, especially soft charcoal, is messy and intense. A velvety black. Allowing her to get more daring and expressive, to make mistake after mistake without getting caught in the details. At first she drew faces. Only faces. Then she went back to some of her older pieces and edited them. Like the one of the old lady who ran a small sandwich and soup shop down the street from her. Her white hair matched the cotton white dress that she wore on the day she posed for the portrait. The original drawing revealed the pain in her eyes, but Samira’s eraser had softened it. Framed her overworked face with a strange kind of light to make her suffering seem romantic. But now there was no such mercy in Samira’s charcoal. She ripped the old lady’s dress to take away from her perfection. Then turned her attention to the face. The old lady’s makeup was perfect in the drawing because it had been perfectly applied the day of the sitting. Now, Samira closed her eyes and imagined the lady slaving away in the backroom of a teahouse. Sweat and eyeliner melting together in the oven’s unending heat. Wrinkled hands gripping an over-used handkerchief. Anger in the eyes. Samira edited and revised. She took her charcoal, darkened the area under the eyes and extended the eyebrows further into the center of the forehead. Smudged mascara. The untouched angel transformed. Anger at a cheated life. The changes were lies, but still told the truth.