Equal of the Sun A Novel - By Anita Amirrezvani Page 0,11

the tears angrily from her cheeks. “If only I could just grieve!” she cried.

A look of understanding passed between us. If she had been anyone else, she would have visited her father’s grave site every day for forty days and watered it with an ocean of tears. But Pari did not have the luxury of woe; she must get to work on the succession. I pitied her.

Shortly after dawn prayers, I arrived at the mourning ceremony in Sultanam’s quarters, where the royal women had gathered to lament the loss of the Shah. The Shah’s first wife was known by her honorific, which meant “my Sultan.” Her home had an open-air sitting area on the ground floor with views of the rose gardens, and the guest rooms were furnished with pink silk carpets and embroidered pink and white velvet cushions. Today the rooms were filled with the plaintive wails of the women.

I entered a large sitting room and put out my hands to accept the sprinkles of rose water offered to me by a servant. In the center of the room, an old woman seated cross-legged on a wooden platform was reciting the Qur’an from memory. The words flowed out of her so easily that I guessed she knew the entire blessed book by heart. The ladies seated on cushions on the floor around her wore black robes, and their hair was uncharacteristically loose on their shoulders, uncombed and wild. They wore no kohl on their eyes, no armbands, no earrings. Adornment was prohibited by grief, and its absence made them look more vulnerable than in their ordinary courtly attire.

Sultanam greeted a new arrival and accepted her condolences. Upright, she seemed to consume the space of two women. Her layered robes made her appear even wider than she was, despite her tiny feet and ankles, which looked too small to support her. Her curly white hair fanned out like a pyramid from her tea-colored face and slanted eyes, and it was easy to imagine her as a proud horsewoman of the Mowsellu tribe, which she had been long ago. Her face did not bear any of the puffiness that comes from sincere weeping, nor did tears well up spontaneously in her eyes. I imagined that nothing could be more joyous to her than the possibility that her son Isma‘il would be released from his confinement—and perhaps even crowned shah. But that was the kind of loyalty you would expect of a mother. Who knew if after nearly twenty years of prison, Isma‘il was fit to rule?

Close at hand was Sultanam’s plump maid, Khadijeh, whose face glowed like the moon. My heart sped up, but I forced myself to turn away as if she meant nothing to me.

The room was crowded with dozens of women who had been favored by the late Shah during his long life. His three other wives, Daka Cherkes, Sultan-Zadeh, and Zahra Baji, had claimed the best places close to the reciter. Next came eight or nine adult daughters of the Shah and their children—too many to count—followed by several consorts and their children, and finally, a much larger circle of women who had never shared his bed.

Pari was sitting close to her mother, Daka Cherkes. The two women had wrapped their arms around each other, and their heads were leaning together in sympathy. Daka was known for having a mild and placating personality, quite the opposite of her daughter, whom she often tried unsuccessfully to rein in. Copious tears watered Daka’s cheeks, and I suspected she was concerned about what the Shah’s death would mean to Pari’s future.

Sultan-Zadeh, the Georgian mother of Haydar, began tearing at her fine camel-colored hair. The older women disliked her because she was one of the few who had ensnared the Shah’s heart, and they had done everything they could to thwart her attempts to gain status. No wonder the tears in her green eyes looked real.

Pari whispered something in her mother’s ear, arose, and disappeared down a corridor. I followed her into one of the side rooms, where women were comforting one another in smaller groups. My blood froze at the thought of the Shah lying silent and cold in his death room in the palace. Something started to loosen in my own breast, and I concentrated on quieting myself as I scanned the room. Pari was sitting with Maryam at her side. Her walled-in silence was far more awful than the shrieks and cries of sorrow from the others.

I crouched

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