The Drum Tower Read online

  “His wife is bending too.”

  “It’s not for Khanum’s inheritance,” Taara said. “Khanum is broke and everybody knows it. All that is left is Drum Tower. And besides, the girl’s father is rich. They don’t need Khanum-Jaan’s old, rusty jewelry.”

  “So, why—?”

  “Why? He loves his mother!”

  “Nonsense!” I said, and I realized that I sounded like my grandmother. We burst into wild laughter.

  We watched the party from the window. Colorful food was brought in in many trays and dishes. Assad, with a kitchen rag on his shoulder and one tucked into the waist of his pants, limped up and down the porch steps; Daaye, panting and sweating, handed him heavy trays of saffron rice, pomegranate stew, eggplant stew, and cutlets. The guests all ate and drank and joked and jumped some more over the dying flames. Aunty Puran took her little lap drum—the tunbak—and held it under her arm as she played. Her sister, Turan, wriggled her shoulders while still sitting, then rose and began to dance. In her shimmering orange dress, a version of her sister’s red one, but a shade lighter, and her Cleopatra wig, she whirled, shook her bosom and moved her butt in all directions. Everyone clapped and snapped their fingers. Now they all insisted that Khanum should join the dance.

  “Oh, no,” Taara said. “Khanum-Jaan cannot dance with that little hump on her back!”

  “Do you remember when we were little, we’d ask Khanum what was hidden under her blouse?” I asked Taara.

  “If she was in a good mood, she’d say, my jewelry-purse.”

  “And when she was in a bad mood, she’d chase us out of the room.”

  Grandmother didn’t dance. Instead, she pulled the twins’ hands and lifted them up from their chairs. But Uncle Kia’s girls screamed, ran away, and hid behind the bushes. Their mother said the children were still new here and hadn’t learned the Persian dance.

  When everyone had danced and had eaten homemade pistachio ice cream and pudding as dessert, they needed calm and soothing music to go with their vodka drinking, reminiscing and gossiping, and they remembered Taara and her setar. In a minute Khanum-Jaan was in my room, scolding Taara for hiding herself all night.

  “What does this mood mean, anyway?” She asked, raising one eyebrow. “Bring your setar down and don’t keep the guests waiting. I don’t want to come all the way up here to call you again!” She left, but then she came back and said, “And if your sister is coming down, she’d better change and comb her hair. And tell her to say good evening to all the guests and kiss their cheeks.”

  “Are you coming with me?” Taara asked.

  “No. I’ll watch from here.”

  “Come!”

  “No. I don’t feel like changing. You go! Play the tune you made up this afternoon. I like it.”

  “It’s called ‘On the balcony of the tower.’”

  “Play it.”

  “For them?” She paused, thinking, then said, “No. That’s for you. I’ll play it just for you, some other time.”

  It was past eleven. With my chin resting on my hand and my elbow on the windowsill, I was dozing off. I’d heard Taara’s performance and the guests’ occasional applause. She’d played almost all of her repertoire. Now most of the guests were drunk. Assad, carrying up the empty dishes, swayed a little and walked in a funny way.

  “Are you talking about this system? This down-to-the-roots corruption?” Uncle Vafa’s voice rose above the guests’ murmur. Everyone became quiet.

  “Vafa! There is no need to bring this up here,” his wife advised him.

  “It’s corrupt down to the roots. The monarchy is breathing its last breath!” He announced.

  “Wishful thinking!” This was Uncle Kia, who sat next to him, holding a glass of cognac in his hand. He didn’t drink vodka. “The monarchy is as stable as it was twenty-five hundred years ago. No one can shake its foundations!”

  “This system is rotten, I say! Its stink is rising to the sky!” Vafa repeated again. “The army of Islam is gathering power, but most of us are blind, we don’t see the upcoming jihad!”

  Something was about to happen and I was all alone in the dark room. I wished Taara were here with me, holding my hand. I looked at my favorite uncle, my old playmate, Vafa, and couldn’t recognize him. He was an arrogant, angry man with a bearded face and a hoarse voice. Was this really Vafa?

  “Don’t argue with him, Kia!” Doctor Shafa advised Uncle Kia.

  “The laws of the prophet will be restored again!” Vafa announced, moving his forefinger in front of his older brother’s face.

  “It’s Nineteen seventy-eight, brother, wake up! How can you run the country with backward religious laws?” Uncle Kia asked in a calm tone. “The Shah is raising the country’s valor to the level of the European countries. Tehran is another Paris, another Geneva!”

  “And the people of the southern slums are starving while Americans are stealing our oil,” Vafa said.

  “Nonsense!’ Khanum said. “The people of the slums had better pull their pants up and go to work!”

  “Maybe there are no pants left on them to pull up,” Uncle Vafa’s wife raised her voice. “And where is work? Do you know the unemployment rate?”

  Now everybody was silent. No one had ever dared contradict Khanum-Jaan. Zahra didn’t know the rules of Drum Tower.

  “Now, now, now!” Aunty Puran said, and banged on her tunbak. “Let’s dance again! Assad, put that record on!”

  “No, we’re not dancing anymore!” Khanum-Jaan announced. “No one raises her voice in my house!”

  “No one raised her voice, Khanum,” Doctor Shafa said. “They’re just discussing politics. These days, in every house I go in, people talk about politics.”

  “Not in my house!” Khanum said. “I’m not fond of this imbecile Shah of yours, Kia, nor of his father who ended our dynasty. But I want to tell you one thing, young man!” She addressed Vafa. “No one can shake the strong roots of the monarchy in Iran. Understand? Only a powerful king, like Nader, can control the rioting, ignorant peasants.”

  Now she stood up and said, “I’ve heard that you’ve changed your name, Vafa! You can change it to whatever you want, but there is one thing you can never change, and that’s your blood, your family tree, your ancestry. You’re the grandson of Hessam-Mirza Vaziri, the War Minister of this country at the time of the old Shah, and the son of five generations of ministers before him, back to Nader Shah’s time, and you cannot change this fact even if you change your name one million times. Go now. See if you can change your blood!”

  Saying this, she walked away from the table to climb the stairs. Her posture was wooden and the small hump on her back looked larger. Doctor Shafa and Uncle Kia rose to pay respect. The aunties became emotional and wiped the corners of their eyes and sighed. Everyone was silent, waiting for Khanum-Jaan to finish climbing the stairs. Now Kia’s French twins burst into tears and Boor-boor screamed in her cage as if sensing a disaster.

  In a minute Taara was up, embracing me from behind, whispering in my ear. “Did you see everything?”

  “I did.”

  “They’re leaving.”

  “The party is over.”

  “Khanum won’t see Vafa anymore.”

  “If he wanted to argue with her, why did he come to kiss her hand?”

  “Strange,” Taara said and yawned, heading toward her room. “And Baba didn’t say a word, as if he was asleep all the time.”

  “Taara!”

  “What?”

  “Nothing.” I wanted to tell her that small winds whirred and people cried in my head, but I didn’t.

  The guests left and Assad took Baba’s arm and helped him up the stairs. For a second I felt an urge to go to my grandfather’s room, to help him undress, to put him in bed and spend the rest of the night at his bedside. But I kept sitting, listening to the sounds in my head and watching the reflection of the moon in the fountain and the parrot that was a green ball, hiding her head inside her feathers.

 
Now Assad came back and stamped on the fire to make sure it was out. He took the parrot out of the cage, kissed her, and put her on his right shoulder. He sat at the top of the table, fingering the desert dishes one by one. He ate from this dish and that, and put a candy in the parrot’s mouth. He poured some more ice-cold vodka for himself and drank it fast. Then he noticed Uncle Kia’s cognac bottle, poured some and emptied the glass down his throat. Now he munched pickled garlic and burped. He said things to himself, laughed and shook his head. He hadn’t changed for tonight. He was in his dirty house pants, stained shirt, and plastic slippers. Lek, lek, lek, he limped to the other end of the table, picked up a ring, and looked at it under the light of the lantern hanging from the post. This was Aunty Puran’s large ruby ring; she had taken it off to play her tunbak. Assad examined the ring for a long time, then put it in his pocket. Now he hummed a song for himself, “Bibi lost her panties! Bibi lost her panties . . .” He fed the parrot more candies and slowly cleaned up.

  Father in the Pantry Room

  After Father came and hid one night in the pantry room and then left at dawn, Baba’s brain failed. This was the day before Norooz, four days after Fire Wednesday.

  We had all gathered in Baba-Ji’s room, preparing a small Norooz table. This year, Khanum-Jaan didn’t want to receive visitors in the guest room. “Not before I paint the walls!” she kept saying. But we all knew that she was upset with Uncle Vafa and our father for not showing up even for the New Year.

  As we did every year, Taara and I painted the smooth surfaces of the hard-boiled eggs. Baba, with his shaky hands, helped us, but his eggs were ruined and he ended up with yellow and red stains on his pajamas. Khanum, who had stopped talking to us since Fire Wednesday (as if we were all Vafa’s secret allies), placed fresh bank notes inside the pages of the old Koran to give away as Norooz presents. But the notes were not hundreds, as in every other year; they were tens.

  Daaye and Assad came in and out of the room, carrying dishes of home-baked baklava and rice cookies. Assad placed a pot of the purple hyacinth in the middle of the table. The cool scent of the vanishing winter filled the room.

  Around dusk, the power failed and we heard random shooting. Assad brought candles and a portable radio and we all sat in the dim light, held our breath, and listened to the sounds of the disturbed street. This went on for a long hour, but the radio kept airing regular programs. There were no announcements.

  “These are the Moslem rebels,” Khanum-Jaan said with disgust. “Vafa’s slum gang.”

  “No one knows, Khanum. Let’s wait and see,” Assad said.

  “Call Kia, Assad, he must know what’s going on,” Khanum said. “Then call the Power Company. How do they dare leave people in the dark? Imbeciles! Can’t they catch a few thieves?”

  “The telephone is disconnected,” Assad said.

  Now someone banged on Drum Tower’s oaken double door and we all held our breaths. Bang, bang, bang, bang. Jangi barked in the garden and Boor-boor shouted on the porch. Assad rushed down to the gate and the rest of us sat in panic. A minute later, the door opened and in the dim light of the flickering candles, Father stood like an apparition.

  “Sina—” Khanum covered her mouth as if she’d uttered a forbidden word.

  Father was tall and dusty, his thick curly hair, salt and pepper. His coat, maybe black once, was gray and wrinkled; his shoes were old, beaten and crooked. He fell on his knees, and with his long arms embraced all of us at once. Baba-Ji was shocked, couldn’t say a word. Khanum kept repeating, “Sina—” Taara and I, who hadn’t seen our father for two years, held each other tightly and wept.

  It turned out that Father was not here to stay. He’d come just to hide for the night. For the first time, Taara and I realized that our father was a fugitive, an outlaw. Not the kind of rebel that Uncle Vafa was, holding a job and living his life, but much worse, the kind that had to hide. But hadn’t Grandmother said all these years that our father was a crazy wanderer in search of his lost wife? What we saw now was an aging man who looked tired and wore old, dirty clothes. True, he could easily be mistaken for a vagabond, but when he talked, he sounded as eloquent as a younger Baba lecturing in the university hall.

  Two years ago, when father had come and stayed for a few days, Taara and I hadn’t even thought about these matters. We were younger, and naïve. But now all these questions were raised in our minds—who was our father and what was he doing in this dark night?

  Father explained the political events to his parents. He talked about the upcoming revolution, freedom, the republic, justice. Our hearts pounded in our chests. We were waiting for Khanum to shout at Father to throw him out. But she sat motionless, listening. Father was her favorite son. Also, he had a calm voice and didn’t argue the way Vafa did. So he talked for a long time and used a vocabulary that we didn’t quite understand. This was neither the language of Baba-Ji’s Simorgh book, nor Vafa’s language of Jihad. Father seemed to be a different kind of rebel.

  Khanum closed her eyes and rocked like a pendulum, as if her suffering had gone beyond words. Baba-Ji listened with worried eyes, tears welling up behind his round lenses. It didn’t take long for Father to realize that Baba was not so well. He changed the subject and talked about a city on the eastern border where he’d stayed with his brother-in-law for a while, visiting a Baluchi tribe.

  Late at night, while sporadic shootings kept breaking the silence of the city, Father said he had to rest, not in a bedroom, but in the pantry behind the kitchen where he would be hidden. This precaution, he said, was in case the Guards broke in to search the house. Now he embraced his parents and urged them not to get up at dawn to see him off. Assad and Daaye took Father to the pantry and Taara and I stayed with our grandparents who were pale and still, as if turned to salt.

  “Am I dreaming?” Khanum asked. “Am I dreaming, Anvar?”

  “No, Khanum. He came and he’ll leave before dawn,” Baba said.

  “What is going on that’s beyond my understanding, Anvar? You never talked to me when I was young. Your talks were in your books, and later you spent more time with your children than you ever did with me—now tell me what the hell is going on in this country that I cannot understand? Why have two of our sons lost their way? Why have we lost them? What have we done to fail them? Did we neglect them, Anvar? Did we bring them up wrong? What did we do that they’ve turned against us? Against their own country? The Grandsons of Hessam-Mirza Vaziri, the War Minister of the old Shah, turned rebels? Did you see his clothes, Anvar?”

  “All I saw was his gray hair,” Baba said. “His hair has turned whiter than mine!”

  “What do your books say about all this, Anvar? What is going on?”

  “My books are not about humankind, Khanum. They’re not about this rotten world.”

  In this way Baba-Ji and Khanum-Jaan whispered to each other and sighed shakily. Then Khanum rose to give orders to Daaye to prepare a good dinner for Sina. Candle in hand, Khanum went in and out of the pantry, taking food to Father. Her hump looked larger, her body smaller. At last Father urged her to go to bed. He said he wanted to see his daughters for just a short while.

  It was past midnight when Taara and I went to the pantry. Father was surrounded by burlap sacks of rice, large cans of cooking oil, boxes of spices and jars of homemade pickles. He was lying on his side, his head resting on a rice sack. He was exhausted. His black socks had holes in them and the tips of his toes showed. He ate his dinner slowly and sipped cold vodka. Daaye had prepared him a pitcher with slices of lemon floating in the ice.

  Father asked Taara to bring her setar and play for him. He wanted to see how she’d progressed in two years. When Taara left, he poured some vodka, drank a little, and put a black olive in his mouth. Now he looked at me as if seeing me for the first time.

  “You’ve grown tall, Talkhoon,” he said. “How is your schoolwork? What grades are you making?”

  My face burned. Whatever I’d say would sound wrong. So I didn’t s
ay anything. I just dropped my head and avoided his eyes.

  “Is everything all right?”

  I nodded and didn’t say a word. I could have told him about Grandmother’s unkindness, the net gripping my heart and the winds blowing in my head. I could have told him about passing out in my math class, not wanting to live. I could have told him about the way I looked, so plain and dark, without hope that I would ever become pretty and fair. I could have said that I feared Drum Tower, the dense garden, and the ghost of Grandma Negaar wheeling among the willows or watching me through the picture frame. I could have confessed that I despised Khanum’s parrot and Assad’s dog, that Assad had recently looked at me in a way that frightened me. I could have told Father that Baba-Ji couldn’t write his Simorgh book anymore and the bright days of the bird were gone.

  But I didn’t say a word and silence deepened between us. Taara came with her setar and played her tunes. Father closed his eyes the way one does when the spring breeze caresses one’s face. Taara played the tune she’d said was mine and that she’d play only for me.

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

  Under the dryandra tree I play my setar and listen . . .

  Father kept drinking and I squeezed myself farther away, almost hiding behind a barrel of pickled garlic. In this way the night passed, and around two in the morning Khanum came and chased us out so she could have her son to herself for a while before he left. Father embraced us, fished in his pocket and pulled out two gold chains. From Taara’s chain a small setar the size of a pinky fingernail hung, and from mine a tiny bird holding a flower in its mouth.

  “Happy New Year,” he said. “Be good. Help your grandmother.”

  We were at the door of the pantry when he called Taara back. I stood in the dark corridor and held my breath to hear.

  “Taara,” he said. “There might be one or two old masters who can play the setar better than you, but your style is unique. Practice your art! When our country finally sets herself free, which won’t take long, I want to see you in the spotlight on a big stage!”