HE FIRST THING that caught Pooran’s eye in Khan’s house was the large yard. The hoez was drained, but there was no reason that come spring it would not be brimful with clear water in which the New Year goldfish would swim. Two flower beds flanked the hoez on each side. In one stood a young locust tree and two pines. The other housed a persimmon tree, a vine, and lantana shrubs. The next fall, orange persimmons would swing on branches. Some would fall into the water of the hoez and the sun would shine on the floating orange fruit. The house itself was a one-story red brick with a flat roof. The kitchen was as large as the apartment living room and bedroom combined. The warm water faucet even worked. She assigned the smaller room to Ahmad and directed him to heap up all their things there before she started the washing and dusting.
Ahmad scrubbed the floors for his mother and wiped all the windows until the only way to ascertain their existence was with a hesitant fingertip. One day he came home and found a desk in his room. It was light-brown wood and the top opened into a large space where he could keep his poems and pencils. The upholstery on the seat of the chair was simple, but new. Ahmad touched the velvet-like fabric and the wooden back. He ran into the yard to Khan and hugged him. Khan patted him on the back of the head.
Ahmad’s school was far from the new house. Khan offered to hire a buggy to take him to and from school every day, but Ahmad shook his head. Khan asked if he wanted to change his school. Ahmad shook his head fervently. Perusing Ahmad’s new report cards, the old man twirled his mustache. “This is good,” he said running a hand on Ahmad’s head, “but don’t get attached. You’re too good for this place. You’re leaving for Paris at the end of spring. You’ll finish high school there.” But Ahmad knew this was impossible. Nowhere in his mind did he see a future without Raana. He went to his room, took out the small lacquered box in which he had kept the ivory-white button from his father’s shirt since the day of Nosser’s death, and put it in his desk, at the bottom, in the corner.
One afternoon Khan came home and brought four cauldrons with him in the interest of cooking hats. Pooran was skeptical, and she worried about the gendarmes breaking into the house any minute. Keeping the cooking secret would not be an easy endeavor. The smoke and smell were what had exposed most of the previous cookeries. Something in the recipe produced a thick cloud of yellow smoke and a tang of raw fish and iron. Oozing through brick-and-mortar within a radius of forty contiguous houses, the odor woke babies in their cradles into uncontrollable fits of crying.
In horrified anticipation of the arrival of Khan’s appointed “cook,” Pooran scrubbed each cauldron by the empty hoez every day until the cracked skin on her fingers bled in the cold. At night, she pictured the moment when the cook would knock on the door and end the few calm days she had had in her new house. In a competition with an unseen rival, she cooked her best foods for her son and father-in-law. She lay on the sofreh plates of stew and dishes of saffron rice, complemented with sides of shallot yogurt and Shirazi salad. The days when Maryam and her family came to visit, Pooran would not let her daughter help with the cooking. Like an animal who saw a younger, fiercer beast closing in to dominate her tribe and territory, she expelled Maryam from the kitchen.
Finally, the day came. The cook walked slowly in and the first thing she did was pull out of her bodice a clean piece of rag. She took Pooran’s hand and bandaged her bleeding fingers. She was an old woman whose fragile body was wrapped in a white chador with a pattern of small flowers. Her hennaed hair showed from under her pistachio head scarf. She could hardly stand straight, but she had a blazing light at the back of her light-brown eyes. Ahmad moved the cauldrons into the basement. Nana Shamsi picked up the rusty padlock hanging on the latch door. “A new one,” she said, putting it gently down on one of the steps, “please.”