The Drum Tower Read online

  When he was twenty-three, a graduate student of theology, he came to Drum Tower, kissed his parents’ hands and asked permission to get married. He was tall and lanky and had a bushy beard. In the kitchen, Assad told Daaye that Vafa was not the type of person who needed anyone’s permission to do anything; he had come back for a reason. What reason? Daaye asked. Khanum was getting old, Assad said, the boy wanted to be mentioned in her will.

  “Who is the girl’s family? What’s their last name?”

  These were Khanum-Jaan’s first questions, of course. When she realized that the girl’s last name was obscure and her father was in the grocery business and not a member of the aristocracy, she cursed and swore that she’d never let such a marriage happen.

  Baba-Ji was weak and weepy those days. When he saw that his son was back, he wiped his tears and blessed him. He had neither the mental energy nor the physical to argue with him. But Khanum-Jaan, in her black silk, sat at the head of the oak table and rested her bony fingers in front of her like a raven’s claws. She was ready to take Vafa’s eyes out.

  “You’ll have to step over my dead body to take this girl as your wife. Once was enough. I let Sina marry that rotten whore and look what happened to us. Over my dead body!”

  But the wedding happened without Vafa stepping on his mother’s corpse. I was sixteen then and this was just a few months before the winds in my head blew hard and commanded me to dive from the top of the tall tower.

  Since Vafa’s visit, I felt a sickness in my chest, a grip that nearly choked me. It was as if a net were entangling my lungs and imprisoning my breath. I was gloomy all the time and didn’t take any interest in anything. I stopped studying and pretended I had a cold and missed school. Twice in math class I held my breath, thinking that if I’d stop breathing for too long, I’d die. Either because of lack of oxygen or the power of suggestion, I really passed out, disturbing the class. Our math teacher was a gray-haired, soft-spoken old man. I was so pleased to open my eyes in his arms that I closed them again and passed out for the second time. My old angel knelt on the floor, held me in his arms and stroked my hair. The principal called home and I soon found myself lying on the back seat of the black Cadillac. Assad, noisily chewing chickpeas, drove me home.

  Doctor Shafa, our family physician, suspected asthma and visited me twice a week with a balloon for me to blow into and a big inhaler to take medicine into my lungs. After a few weeks he asked me how I felt. I said someone was breathing inside my head—it sounded like a mild breeze or a secret told in a whisper. The doctor stopped asthma treatments and didn’t visit me anymore.

  The memory of Uncle Vafa’s wedding is foggy and blurred. Clouds wrap and unwrap around faces and voices. I remember a commotion in the house, but I’m not sure if someone reported this to me, or I was present. Khanum kept screaming, “Over my dead body!” and opened her arms wide like a bat. She blocked Baba’s door, not letting him out. Baba in his tuxedo and red bow tie, the same old suit he had had since his youth and hadn’t worn since his last attendance at a university ceremony, stood confused, then covered his ears with his palms so as not to hear his wife’s screams. Assad held Khanum from behind and tried to calm her down. “Now, now, now—you’re hurting your nerves again.” Daaye cried and pleaded, “Khanum-Jaan, I beg you! Let me see my son as a groom!” Taara, half-dressed, barefoot, long hair disheveled, was sobbing. Baba fell into his recliner, held his forehead, and waved his hands. “Leave me alone! Leave my room, please! I just want to be alone!”

  I remember Assad calling Uncle Kia for help. After twenty years residing in Europe, he had returned with his wife and twin daughters a few months earlier and was now a counselor to the War Minister. He was constantly in meetings and conferences and barely had time for family matters. He was a counselor by nature, cold and remote, and of course he thought that his great stature put him above the family. But he was the only person who could calm Grandmother and he knew that, so he came.

  An hour-long conference occurred behind the closed door of the guest room. We were all half-dressed, waiting for the result. Finally, Uncle came out with his faint diplomatic smile, and announced with a tinge of French accent that we could all go to Vafa’s wedding, but Khanum-Jaan wouldn’t go with us. He and his wife couldn’t go, either—they were expected at the Minister’s house.

  Now we had to hurry to get ready. Daaye fixed Baba’s crooked bow tie and Taara and I rushed to our rooms to rinse our red eyes and finish dressing. Daaye wore her mothball-smelling black chiffon dress, permanently creased from long years of lying folded at the bottom of her trunk. Assad in a double-breasted, gray suit, now out of fashion and too large for him (it belonged to my father once), sat in the driver’s seat. We all crammed into the shiny black Cadillac and headed toward Uncle Vafa’s wedding, which was held in his father-in-law’s garden. We left Khanum-Jaan alone in the dark Drum Tower to feel sorry for herself and mourn her evil luck.

  My old playmate was in a black suit, smiling, but did not notice me at all. Instead, he looked deep into his bride’s eyes and the photographer took pictures of them in front of the fountains, the trees, and a tall, three-tiered cream cake. Now they invited us to pose with them. But Baba-Ji was blowing his nose in a big handkerchief, pretending he had a cold. It turned out that my uncle’s father-in-law owned a chain of grocery stores, not just one, and was quite wealthy. But we all knew that even this news wouldn’t change Khanum-Jaan’s mind. She’d say, “They’re shop keepers, commoners. No good blood.” Or, “Their name is a made-up name. No roots!”

  The wedding, as it happened, was the turning point of Taara’s life and, in a way, of mine, too. At seventeen, Taara’s beauty was blossoming. She was like a camellia that had taken a long time to bloom, but was gorgeous now in each stage of its slow growth. She played her setar that night and mesmerized more than a hundred young men who immediately fell in love with her. It was no secret now that Taara was unique. In her long, white, beaded dress, she seemed more a bride than the bride herself, and like a sun, wherever she sat, she attracted a party of men who rotated around her like small planets.

  They took turns dancing with her. A tall, young gentleman with a large, bony nose was the most arrogant of them. He took others’ turns and danced with Taara the rest of the night.

  “He is General Nezam-El-Deen’s son,” women whispered, and watched the couple with envy.

  Until that night I’d never compared myself to my sister, but now for the first time I realized I could never even remotely compete with her. Taara was heading toward pure perfection. But it was I who looked like our mother, not Taara. I heard this from the aunties who whispered to each other and ran their eyes over my developing body the way men do. I heard this from Assad, who stopped me in the dark corridors, blocked my way with his stocky body, and whispered, “Soraya!” his smelly breath assaulting my face.

  I didn’t hear anything from Khanum-Jaan, but I felt her resentment. The more I matured, the less she liked me. Once in a while, without any reason, she stopped talking to me, even frowned when we bumped into each other in a corridor. She found fault with the way I dressed, read, ate, walked, and almost everything I did. While she went to Taara’s room to scold her for something she’d done wrong, she never came to my room. Instead, she sent warning messages through Daaye or Assad about the rude way I’d behaved in front of the guests, or the wrong way I’d held the drumstick at the dinner table. The day finally came when my grandmother stopped looking at me altogether.

  “Soraya’s ghost has entered her body,” I heard Auntie Puran saying.

  “Nonsense!” Khanum told her sister. “What ghost? The bitch is not dead yet.”

  “How do we know? Huh? Maybe she has died and her ghost has possessed the girl’s body,” Auntie said. “Have you ever seen such a resemblance? She lies flat on her stomach, legs up in the air, reading story books for hours, exactly the way her mother used to do. Remember, sister? Do you want us to call Sayyed Mirza and talk to Papa?”

&n
bsp; “The bitch is still alive!” Khanum said. “I’d know if she’d died. The curse would be removed from my poor son!”

  Now the more they said I resembled my lost mother, the more I became obsessed with her. I went to the master bedroom where I knew my parents once slept. I sat in front of the tall oak dressing table, the ancestral vanity my mother used. I touched the shiny silver set of brushes, mirrors, and powder boxes. These items had originally belonged to Grandma Negaar and Daaye polished them carefully.

  I picked up the heavy crystal jar of green perfume, held it in front of the lamp and shook it. The liquid was so old that a layer of thick sediment, like moss, had gathered at its bottom. I looked at the feathery green particles in the jar and squeezed the puffy sponge. The scent of all the grasses of the world, of long forgotten springs, of unknown and nameless wild flowers filled the room. I was certain that this was the perfume my mother had used on her wedding night.

  “Soraya!” I whispered, and looked around. Then I lay on the wide bed that smelled of dust and mildew and closed my eyes. I tried to envision her, to draw her body in my mind. She was transparent, luminous, and seamless. When she called me, her voice was a breeze, soothing like the tunes of Taara’s setar. When she lay her moist palm on my forehead, her fingertips smelled of the red and yellow blossoms that grew around the pool, whose names no one knew.

  I lay on that bed for hours, daydreaming, weaving images and stories, catnapping, until Grandma Negaar’s dark, piercing eyes commanded me through the tall picture frame on the wall to leave the room. I tiptoed out, walking barefoot on the cold tiles, my heart pounding with fear until I reached my room. Like my mother, I was afraid of the house. I could hear its heart beating and its large lungs breathing inside the walls.

  The Last Wednesday of the Year

  Taara played with the four strings of her instrument. She didn’t strum them hard, but tickled them gently, murmuring a poem she’d just made, then humming the lyrics with the music she was trying to compose. We never closed the door between our rooms; I could see her sitting on the floor, one leg bent into her chest, the other stretched out, the setar in her lap, as if sucking milk from her breast.

  On the balcony of the tower I play my setar and listen

  Under the dryandra tree I play my setar and listen

  On the roof top room I play my setar and listen,

  No flutter, no scream

  The bird is not coming today

  On the porch and farther down in the courtyard there was a commotion. It was the last Wednesday of the year, “Fire Wednesday.” Khanum-Jaan and Assad were setting the long table for the party. The weather was mild for March and Khanum wanted the celebration to be outside in the courtyard.

  “I won’t have any party in the guest room until I can afford to wash those carpets and paint the walls. We sit outside. If anyone feels cold, he can wear an extra jacket!”

  Assad had splashed water on the brick floor and was now setting the Polish chairs around the table. The small piles of dry twigs were set in a row along the flowerbed. Later, at sunset, Assad would pour kerosene on them and light the fire. The guests would jump over the flames and pray for good health. Boor-boor sat in her gilded cage, hanging from the fig tree. She observed all this with a serious look on her face.

  Khanum-Jaan brought the china set herself. She didn’t let anyone else handle it. The stack of plates, saucers, and serving dishes were heavy. Click, click, click, she went up and down the steps, panting, grumbling behind her lips, then gradually cursing louder.

  “Why don’t you call someone to fix this damned elevator, Assad?” she yelled from the courtyard. “With these swollen legs, I have to go up and down a million times!”

  “No one will fix this kind of elevator anymore,” Assad said, holding Baba-Ji’s arm, helping him down the porch steps. “You have to install a new one and it costs a zillion!”

  “Why are you bringing Baba down? Nothing is ready yet.”

  “But he is ready and wants to be down here in the courtyard. Isn’t that so, Baba-Ji?” Assad hugged Grandfather and kissed him on the cheek with a loud munching sound. “Look at your husband, Khanum! Isn’t he handsome?”

  “His tie is crooked and he’s wearing too much cologne! Yuck! He’s washed himself in the damn thing.”

  “Your jam is burning, Assad!” Daaye screamed through the kitchen window.

  “Coming! Coming! Don’t you see I’m helping Baba down the steps? Just turn the thing off, can you?”

  Khanum and Assad placed Baba-Ji at the top of the table by the fountain. He was quiet and passive, letting people carry him around, pet him, button his shirt, tuck him into bed. Since Uncle Vafa’s wedding less than a month ago, he had become strangely remote. When he looked at us, he didn’t see us anymore, he saw through us. He woke up every morning and went to his desk and sat there dutifully until noon, but didn’t work much. He didn’t work in the afternoons, either. He lay in his recliner and fell asleep, a book open on his chest. It was as if a wire had come loose in his brain.

  Once I caught him sitting at his desk, holding his forehead in his right hand, covering his eyes. He heard me next to him, but didn’t remove his hand. Gently, I lifted his hand and looked into his eyes. They were wet.

  Now in his navy suit, white starched shirt and black tie, he sat at the head of the table, motionless. His silky white hair was slicked back with water and Vaseline. He still combed his hair himself, with great care. He didn’t forget his cologne either, which he splashed on his shaved face generously, spilling some in the sink. Khanum approached him and fixed the knot of his tie. She told Assad to bring a white kerchief for Baba’s pocket.

  From where I peered through my window, Baba-Ji was only a white head and I knew that, like my own head, it was full of cries.

  When I heard the aunties laughing and descending the steps to the courtyard, I closed the window and moved back. I was not going down tonight.

  “So where is your music, Assad?” I heard Aunty Puran saying. “What kind of a party is this without music?”

  “Where is your Turkish coffee, Assad?” Aunty Turan asked. “I want to look at everybody’s cups before it gets dark. It’s the last fortune telling of the year!”

  Soon a rhythmic music filled the air and covered over Taara’s melancholy tunes. She put her setar down and stood next to me, looking out the window. We both gazed at the top of the brick tower in silence. It swam among the waves of orange and blue clouds. The sun was setting.

  Now we smelled the wood burning. Taara opened the window and bent down. Assad had lit the twigs; long tongues of red flame stretched outward. We could hear children in the street screaming with joy. They had their own flames on the sidewalks and were jumping over them. Firecrackers exploded like gunshots.

  “Taara! Taara!” Khanum called and looked up at the window. We pulled back and hid in the shadows of the room.

  “Don’t you want to jump over the fire, sister?” Aunty Turan asked Khanum. “It brings bad luck if you don’t. Get up!”

  “No. I’m not doing it this year. It’s all nonsense. Nothing will change. I get older every year, and sicker and weaker. What’s the point?”

  “Ancient tradition,” Baba explained, but more to himself.

  “Ah! What a spirit!” Aunty Turan said, and passed one leg over a low flame. “My yellow is yours, your red is mine!” she addressed the fire.

  “Fire, water, wind, and earth,” Baba said. “The four elements! Firebird is the Simorgh. Russians used the same name for both birds. So they must be one. In the Indian tradition, as well as in the Chinese—”

  No one listened, but Baba went on lecturing, as if addressing his students. The Aunties had pulled their sister to the flames and were forcing her to pass at least one foot over the fire. Assad suddenly grasped Khanum’s narrow waist, lifted her up and carried her over the fire. She screamed and kicked her small feet. Her sisters laughed with joy. The parrot hanging from the fig tree cried, “Boor-boor—” and made a c
ommotion. Assad threw firecrackers in the flames. The rattle and smoke scared the bird—she screeched and fluttered her wings.

  “Taara! Taara! The flame is dying! Come down!” Khanum called.

  “Talkhoon! Where are you?” Assad looked up at my window.

  We both withdrew into the shadows.

  More guests arrived. Uncle Kia’s wife and twin daughters came down the steps; Doctor Shafa and Uncle Kia followed them. Behind them there was another man.

  “Vafa!” Taara whispered.

  “No!”

  “Yes. That’s Vafa. And his wife, too. What’s her name?”

  “Zahra.”

  “The doctor has brought them,” Taara said.

  A scene was taking place down in the courtyard. Doctor Shafa and Uncle Kia held Vafa’s arms and led him to Khanum-Jaan, who was now sitting solemnly on a chair, frowning.

  “Mother, Vafa wants to kiss your hand and apologize!” Uncle Kia said.

  Khanum-Jaan remained quiet.

  “Khanum, forgive the young man. He is here to kiss you and be accepted into the family again,” the doctor said. “You are older and wiser, he is young and—”

  “Young and stupid,” Khanum said. “Is his wife here too?”

  “They’re both here, Khanum, to pay respect. The New Year is coming; it’s not good to end the year in gloom. Forgive them,” Doctor Shafa said.

  “Doctor Shafa is right,” Aunty Puran said. “It’s New Year. Time to forgive and forget.”

  “Come, Vafa, kiss Mother’s hand,” Uncle Kia pushed his brother toward Khanum’s chair.

  The bearded Uncle Vafa bent and kissed Khanum-Jaan’s large emerald ring. Taara and I held our mouths to keep from bursting out laughing.

  “Oh my God! What a show! He’s really doing it!” Taara said, swallowing her excitement. “And kissing the ring, as if she is a queen!”