Aria

PROLOGUE
1953
 
Mehri opened her eyes. She was lying on a mound of carpets. “Does he look like his father?” she asked.
 
The old man, Karimi, was holding the baby. “She doesn’t know?” he whispered, turning to his wife.
 
“She feels it,” Fariba said, glancing at Mehri. Fariba was much younger than her husband, and she was Mehri’s one friend.
 
“I can tell she doesn’t know,” Karimi insisted.
 
“Keep quiet. Are you massaging the baby like I showed you?”
 
“Yes, yes.” He rubbed the baby’s chest and back.
 
“What have we got ourselves into?” Fariba said. “Keep rubbing.” She grabbed a chunk of meat from the cooler and put it in a frying pan. “It’s for the mother. Not for you,” she said to her husband. She glanced back at Mehri. “She ruined her life the moment she laid eyes on that man. I told her to work for you, here at the bakery, instead. But she said she’d rather be his wife. Now look what’s happened.”
 
After a minute, Karimi asked, “Wife, why doesn’t the baby make a sound?”
 
“Because her eyes are blue,” Fariba said. “And she’s cursed, like her mother.”
 
—
 
Mehri had stayed motionless under a blanket for hours, her back against the wall. She was ashamed to look at her friend.
 
“I warned you about marrying him, didn’t I?” Fariba said. “How many times did I say he’d beat you?” At last, Fariba wrapped the baby, pressed her against her own breast, and approached Mehri. “Don’t you want to hold her?” she asked.
 
Mehri said nothing.
 
“You can’t pretend she doesn’t exist. Yes, she’s a girl. But it’s not so bad.”
 
“He’s going to kill me,” Mehri said.
 
Karimi was leaning against the wall, too, his face hidden behind his paper. But his hands trembled. They ached from helping Mehri give birth. And now he was embarrassed to look at her.
 
“You know, husband, if we had a radio, you wouldn’t need to read the paper. You can barely hold it up,” Fariba said to him. “They say there are so many things to hear on the radio. Little plays. Would be nice to hear one of those.” She turned away from Mehri and lit a match to the coal in the stove.
 
Karimi pushed his reading glasses to the tip of his nose and folded the paper. “Nonsense,” he said. “You worry about your little radio when most of those northerners are showing off their televisions. And all those years ago I taught myself to read—so why shouldn’t I read the paper? Nobody else back then knew how to read. Not my mother, not my father. I was the only kid up and down these streets who could do it. Figured out the letters on my own, and you—”
 
What’s a television?” Mehri asked suddenly, looking up. She caught a glimpse of the baby’s hair under the light. It was a reddish brown, like the father’s.
 
“A movie screen, only smaller,” Karimi said, without looking up. “It’s small enough to fit in a room. They have them all over the North-City. Mossadegh was on one the other day.”
 
“Why was our prime minister on television?”
 
“To show he was alive. Somebody tried to kill him. Probably the filthy British.” Karimi turned back to his paper. “Damn them all. If it isn’t the communists, it’s the English, and if it isn’t the English, it’s those darned turban lovers thinking they’re as good as God. If it isn’t—”
 
Fariba slammed down the kettle. “This poor girl nearly died tonight, and you worry about your politicians?”
 
“None of your scolding in front of her,” Karimi said. “And dammit, nobody loves this country anymore. Except him. Mossadegh is great. Great, I’m telling you!”
 
Mehri closed her eyes again and pretended to sleep.
 
“This is a woman’s matter,” Karimi added, more softly, nodding at Mehri. “You want the neighbours to talk? We can’t keep her here.”
 
“That’s all right, Mr. Karimi,” said Fariba, “you just sit right there and drink your tea and read your paper. Just think about what your great Mr. Mossadegh would think of you.”
 
 
 
For the next two days, Mehri refused to hold the baby, even when the father, Amir, kicked at the door of Karimi’s bakery downstairs. Fariba hollered at Amir from the second-floor balcony that his son was no son, but very much a girl.
 
Amir said, “Then bring her down so I can kill her.”
 
“You need to name her,” Fariba said, turning to Mehri. “Now.”
 
But by the end of the day, the infant was still nameless. And Amir still sat at the door, waiting to kill the child.
 
“He barks at people when they walk into the bakery,” Fariba said. She bounced the baby in her arms. “I had to feed her dry milk, you know. Not good for her.” Fariba shifted her weight where she sat on the Persian rugs covering the floor. She gulped down the last of her gin from a tea glass. When she was finished, she slapped the glass on the rug. “There’s always your brother.”
 
“He won’t help,” Mehri said.
 
“You’ve always said that, but you don’t know. And that boy Amir would rather kill his daughter than pay for her. Got anybody besides your brother?”
 
“No.”
 
Karimi entered the room and sat beside his wife. “You still unwell, child?” he asked Mehri. His voice was kind but weary. He had known Mehri since she was thirteen, a younger friend of Fariba’s, who was five years older. He could hardly bear to see her pain.
 
Mehri covered herself with her veil and cast down her eyes. She bit into a soft corner of the material. It hadn’t been washed for weeks. Sometimes when she walked the streets she wondered if others could smell her.
 
Fariba unfolded her thick legs and stood up, the baby in her arms.
 
“Wife,” Karimi said, rising as well. “Put the baby down and come here.”
 
They whispered as they walked into the next room. Mehri could hear them—only pieces and bits, but enough.
 
“I can’t do it,” she heard Karimi say.
 
“Are you ready to pay their way?” Fariba said.
 
“This is my house. Don’t you forget where your place is, woman!”
 
“She’s my friend. I do what I want with my friends. And I know that girl. She’s lying about her brother.”
 
“The government won’t do anything for a family like that,” Karimi said.
 
“That’s their people’s burden, then,” Fariba said. “I don’t know what to tell you, husband. If it weren’t for the laws—”
 
“Other than the laws, what do we do about him?”
 
“Him, we’ll figure out later. I’ll cut off his orange-haired head if I have to.”