The Drum Tower Read online

  For a while I stood and watched her. She couldn’t see me in the dark. The wind whirled in the hollow space, picked at locks of her long hair and whipped them into her face. But, unaware of the wind, she remained motionless and serene. This was my own sister, the sister who had been so close to me. But since Khanum-Jaan had banished me to the basement, she hadn’t even once come down to visit me. She was forbidden, true, but did she have to obey? Couldn’t she, like Daaye, hidden from Grandmother, come down and see me? Hadn’t she missed me? But she had her own worries—serious ones. Grandmother wanted to marry her off.

  She sensed a presence, looked up and saw me. For an instant I thought she was afraid of me, of my madness, and I prepared myself for her scream. But she said, “What are you doing up here?” in a calm voice, as if we were still lying in our beds in our adjoined rooms, chatting through the open door.

  “I brought you a blanket. It’s cold.” I opened the folds of the blanket and spread it over her legs.

  “Sit,” she said.

  I sat. She let me slip under the blanket and covered my legs. Then we squeezed close to each other and listened to the wind.

  “I hear them in my head sometimes,” I said.

  “Hear what?”

  “The winds. My head is the house of winds—like this tower.” I laughed.

  “What do you mean?”

  “They cry in my head and then they whirl and whistle.”

  She listened with her eyes wide open, tears rippling in them like the waves of the sea. Were the tears for me? Or did the wind burn her eyes?

  “You’ll be fine, Talkhoon. Fine,” she said, squeezing my hand.

  “If the winds leave, I will.”

  “They’ll leave. They’ll leave.”

  “I heard you crying, Khanum screaming—”

  “So you know.”

  “Not everything.”

  “Talkhoon, I’m in trouble. You understand? I love this other person. A sad man, a lonely, handsome man, a man with blue eyes and nothing else but thin blue sheets of paper filled with depressing poems. I see him every day and we’ve started talking. We go to this pastry shop to read poems and talk. I can’t marry anyone now. Not now.”

  “You haven’t passed your exams, either.”

  “To hell with the exams. I can’t love someone and marry someone else. If this man, this suitor, this general’s son, had come a few months before, I’d have married him right away—without love, but without worry. Cold, like this brick wall. Passive. You know what I mean? I’d marry him to help Khanum-Jaan. But I can’t do it now. I’m involved. And I can’t tell this to Khanum. I know I’m betraying her and I feel sorry for her. She is not forcing me to marry an old, ugly man, like some parents do. She thinks she has found the best match for me and maybe he is; I mean he could be, if I were not so involved. But how can I ever—? What about Vahid?”

  “Don’t, Taara! Don’t cry. We’ll find a way out. There must be a way. Maybe Father will come—”

  “Ha ha! Or maybe the Simorgh will appear! Or maybe Baba-Ji will wake up. Or, who knows? Maybe our mother will return after sixteen years.”

  “Taara, do you know where Baba-Ji’s feather is?”

  “No. Why?” she asked, then burst into wild laughter. “Don’t tell me you want to burn a barb?”

  “Not for the Simorgh to come.”

  “You don’t think the bird will ever come?”

  “She’ll remain in Baba’s unfinished book, Taara. All versions of her. The Rokh, the Feng Huang, the Firebird—”

  “You have to try to forget, Talkhoon. Forget the Simorgh. Forget Baba-Ji.”

  “I can’t.” I wept and Taara wept with me. Now we pulled the blanket over our heads like old times, when we were little and afraid of the sounds of the house. We both cried, loud and hard.

  “Do you know what is the worst of all?” Taara removed the blanket.

  “What?”

  “Assad has seen me with Vahid. He stopped me in the dark corridor the other night and whispered into my ear, ‘I know who you’re seeing everyday, Taara. Do you know what will happen if your grandmother finds out?’”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “Nothing. What could I? He has followed me. He knows Vahid. He knows about our letters—everything. Then he said, ‘If you do something for me, I’ll keep your little secret in my chest and I may even be able to postpone this engagement party that’s worrying you so much. I’m not saying I can change Khanum’s mind. But I may be able to postpone—.’”

  “What does he want, Taara? What does he want?”

  “He wants Khanum-Jaan’s letters.”

  “Letters to her dead father?”

  “The letters she writes in her room and hides in her marble box. Assad says they’re in five stacks. He has seen them, but hasn’t been able to read them. He wants me to bring one stack at a time. Five nights in a row.”

  “No! She’ll find out.”

  “He says if I bring just one stack at a time, she won’t find out. She may not write letters these days anyway, she may not even open the box. She is too busy shopping and cleaning the house for the General’s visit.”

  “Why does he want Grandmother’s letters?”

  “Maybe he is after her will—wants to know if he is included. If he is not included, then he’ll need time to get himself included.”

  “How?” I asked.

  “How would I know?” Taara said and brushed her hair away from her eyes. “More than anyone in the world, Assad knows the way to Khanum’s heart. But if he is looking for the will, and if the will is in one of these envelopes, he’ll find out that he is included. That’s what I think. I think Khanum will give more to Assad than to anyone else.”

  “But she may not even have a will. She’s not that old.”

  “She’s not?” Taara asked, surprised.

  “She must be around sixty-five. She is healthy. Except for her nerves, of course. And the spider veins on her legs.”

  “Now I’m going to mess up her nerves in a bad way, Talkhoon. In a major way.”

  “Don’t worry now. We’ll find a way.”

  So we sat on top of the tower, close to each other, and the wind wrapped us in a bundle. I was happy and anxious at the same time. My anxiety was for Taara and my joy for our strange reunion in the dark. Clouds passed swiftly behind the small portholes and gathered for more rain. Preoccupied, shaky, and excited, I tried hard to concentrate on Taara’s problem, to find a way out of Assad’s threat and out of the marriage with the General’s son.

  “Taara—”

  “Hmmm?”

  “I have an idea. Listen. Tell Assad that you’ll get him the letters. Tell him to postpone the engagement.”

  “How can I get the letters? Do I dare go to Khanum’s room? Do I dare open her box?”

  “I’ll get the letters for you.”

  “No, Talkhoon. Never!”

  “Listen to me. I’ve already opened the box. I’ve even read some of them.”

  “You have?”

  “Just a few. Try to take her and Assad out for a few hours every day. Take her shopping for five days. Pretend you’ve changed your mind. Tell her if she wants you to court the man, you’ll need new clothes, shoes, hair cut, manicure—. I’ll get the letters for Assad. But he has to promise to postpone the engagement.”

  “And after that?”

  “After what?”

  “After Assad postpones the engagement, if he does? Eventually the day will come that I’ll have to get engaged.”

  “We’ll think of something by then. Who knows? You’ll have time to know Vahid better. To see if he is serious about you.”

  “Talkhoon, who said you were crazy?”

  We laughed and hugged each other tightly.

  “You have to go now, Talkhoon. They’ll find you here.”

  “Taara, what if Assad is not after the will?”

  “Then what is he after?”

  “The Simorgh’s feather.”

&
nbsp; “Nonsense!”

  “Don’t you remember how he used to hide behind the door, in the dark corridor or in the shade of the trees to hear Baba-Ji’s bird stories?”

  “Yes, but he was young then. Now he knows that the bird doesn’t exist.”

  “Maybe he believes that it exists, otherwise why should he have a Simorgh on his belly that flutters its wings for him?”

  “What?”

  “A Simorgh on his belly—”

  “Talkhoon! Has he told you this?”

  I wanted to tell Taara about the day I pretended to be sleeping and Assad slipped under my blanket and pressed himself against me, but I didn’t. I just said, “He talks to me sometimes. But I hide in the closet. I don’t want to be in the room when he talks.”

  “Oh, poor Talkhoon. You have to come back upstairs again. I have to do all I can to bring you back to your room.”

  “Let’s get the letters first. Don’t forget that you have to take Khanum shopping for five days in a row. Now I’ll go.”

  On the landing I showed Taara the small wooden door on the right. “Do you remember this storage room?”

  “This is where the drums are. You and Vafa once broke into it.”

  “Some day I want to look at them again.”

  “I don’t think they’re drums anymore. They’ve been sitting here forever; their skins must be loose, or even turned to powder.”

  “One day I would like to open this door and look at the big drums.”

  When I reached the courtyard, the sky brightened; it happened so suddenly that I thought someone up in the heavens had turned the lights on. I raised my head to see the morning light, but instantly the sky shadowed again. This was either the shadow of an enormous cloud or a pair of wings flapping soundlessly in the false dawn.

  “Simorgh!” I whispered to myself. “Do I really believe you do not exist? Or do I pretend that I’ve lost faith?”

  “Boorrrr!” The parrot screamed with her annoying voice, as if ridiculing my thoughts.

  The Big Theft

  All day thunder cracked and small whirlwinds lifted the street trash and carried it to the courtyard. The winds grew stronger the next day and debris hit my window. Boor-boor, threatened by a scream louder that her own, opened her stony beak and shouted all day, “Boorrr . . . Boorrrr . . .,” but no one came to her rescue. I heard Khanum-Jaan and Assad locking the doors and windows upstairs and securing them with tape.

  Late that night, Daaye came down with a thermos and a bundle under her umbrella. She had brought me enough tea, bread, cheese and walnuts for as many days as the storm was going to last. She said the radio had predicted twisters and she couldn’t come down until it was over. Rain slashed her umbrella and the wind tried to lift her off the ground, so she ran upstairs without noticing the poor bird’s uncovered cage.

  On the third day, the strongest whirlwind uprooted Boor-boor’s cage and carried the parrot to the sky. Through the tides of water running down my windowpane, I saw the bird’s cage spinning, then flying among the black clouds. Anxious and confused (I wasn’t sure what to feel about the bird’s loss), I sat nibbling a cheese sandwich and sipping hot tea. I waited for the wind and rain to stop. At dusk on the third day, when they finally stopped, I heard setar melodies trickling down from upstairs, like dew drops on the calm surface of water.

  Taara had been playing all these days, fighting with the winds.

  Your fingers are bleeding, Taara. I know. I know.

  Four days after my visit with Taara in the tower, Daaye came down with a bowl of warm chicken soup, some fresh bread and a small note under the plate. “We’ll go shopping today. The house is all yours! T.”

  Daaye had caught a bad cold the other day and her temper was sharp. She sniffled, sneezed, and told me that Taara had agreed to the engagement and Khanum was the happiest she could ever be.

  “She is beside herself,” Daaye said and sneezed again. “She’s acting young. She’s spoiling the girl, taking her out to buy her fabrics, then to the dressmaker for measurements. But first they’re going to the pawnshop to pawn Khanum’s old emerald earrings. Unbelievable! The earrings from her emerald set! She’s gone mad with joy; she wants to spend like old times, but she is short of cash.”

  “Is Taara happy?” I asked.

  “The other night when they fought, I wasted my tears on her,” Daaye said, and blew her nose in a handkerchief the size of a headscarf. “She wants to marry for money. Let her. I don’t care anymore. I wash my hands of her.” She said this and left the room, coughing an old person’s cough. But then she came back and added, “I can’t read what she’s written to you, but I warned her not to write another letter, or I’ll tell on both of you!” She said this, sneezed, and dragged herself upstairs without noticing Boor-boor’s absence.

  Less than a minute after the black Cadillac left the garden, I was in Baba-Ji’s room, pushing his recliner closer to the window. I knelt next to him and lay my head on his bony lap. He had lost all his flesh. This was the skeleton of my grandfather. Outside, the sky was gray and raindrops dripped from the top of the stores’ awnings. I couldn’t see the street sweeper, but I could hear his long broom brushing the debris off the sidewalk. I lay my head on Baba’s chest, listening to his heartbeat. His body was warm.

  “But why are you so still, Baba? Why don’t you move at all?”

  I combed back his white hair. The strands felt dead and dry like the hair of my childhood dolls. “Baba-Ji, wake up, while I’m still here—please!” But he remained motionless. I kissed his cheeks and left the room.

  In Khanum-Jaan’s room I took the first stack of her letters out of the black box and spent the rest of the day searching for the sapphire feather. In each lost person’s old room, I looked for the feather, and when I didn’t find it I put on their clothes and looked at myself in the dusty mirrors. I wore my Father’s suit again, then my mother’s blue soiree gown, a huge cashmere robe of one of the aunties, Daaye’s rose-water black veil—the one she only wore to visit Imam Reza’s Holy Shrine.

  In Uncle Vafa’s room, I stole a cotton shirt and a pair of khaki pants, rolled them up and carried them away under my arm. I thought maybe some day I’d need these boys’ clothes. But this was a passing thought—I just enjoyed the thrill of stealing. I’d steal more things if it wouldn’t endanger my main plan. Then I looked into the old, rusty elevator, but didn’t dare to step inside. I was afraid of getting trapped in it. I climbed the dusty stone steps to the third floor. Except for a few carpets and heavy velvet curtains, the rooms were empty. I looked behind the curtains and under the carpets to see if, by any chance, Baba-Ji had hidden the feather there, but all I found were dust balls, mothballs, and spider webs. Now I entered Grandpa Vazir’s bedroom and saw the skeleton of a huge brass bed with brass posts erected on the four sides. I imagined a transparent gauze tent covering the bed, Khanum’s parents sleeping under it. When I heard a rattle and clatter and strange hissing and sighing sounds, I thought Grandpa Vazir and Grandma Negaar were in their old bed, making love. I rushed down the three flights, ran to the basement, and hid in my closet. I shook with fear until I heard the black Cadillac pulling in the garden.

  For five consecutive days, Taara took Khanum and Assad on shopping trips and walked them through covered and uncovered, ancient and modern bazaars until they collapsed. Taara complained that she didn’t have anything to wear, and if she was going to be engaged to the General’s son, she needed this and that. Meanwhile, Daaye stayed in bed alone, burning with fever. She had caught the flu when she brought food for me the other night.

  For four consecutive days, I went upstairs, took a stack of letters out of the black ivory box and handed it to Taara in the evening. She was now allowed to bring my tray down. In a dark corridor she handed the stack to Assad, and he read the letters in his slow way. These days I didn’t see Assad at all, but his light was reflected in the courtyard’s fountain every night.

  On the fifth morning, I made the mistake of roaming the
rooms for too long, and leaving the theft for the last minute. I was just putting the fourth stack in the box and picking up the fifth, when I heard the Cadillac pulling in. Jangi barked, and Khanum’s voice rose above the dog’s, echoing in the main lobby.

  “I’m not paying a black coin to this stupid woman anymore. I’m not going to let her touch my hair. Look what she’s done to me. She’s burned all my hair!”

  With choking panic, I closed the box, dashed out of Khanum’s room, passed the large bedroom and Baba’s study, and ran down the steps into my basement room. Only then did I realize that I hadn’t taken the fifth stack of letters, the one that belonged to this half decade.

  Fearing that Assad wouldn’t keep his promise and Taara would get engaged to the man she didn’t love, and blaming myself for my stupidity, I covered my face in my hands and sobbed.

  On the morning of the sixth day, a weekend when everyone was resting, I heard the lek, lek, lek of Assad’s slippers in the courtyard. He was coming down. I rushed to hide in the closet, but tripped over a pile of clothes and fell. When I stood, he was in the middle of the room. He moved forward and I stepped back, unable to scream, wishing that Boor-boor were here to shout and call someone down. But the parrot was gone and Assad kept approaching. His breath smelled of vodka.

  He pressed me against the wall and placed the flat of his palms on either side of my head next to my ears, and caged me in with his body. Now he rubbed his big belly against my body and grinned. With that prickly beard and the large beads of sweat that bubbled on his skin, his face looked dirty. But he didn’t kiss me; all he wanted was to press his belly against mine and move it in a circular way—clockwise and counter-clockwise. He grinned more and showed his yellow teeth and at last he let me go. I ran into the closet, closed the door, and sat in the dark, thinking that he’d come just to do this and now he’d go. But he didn’t. I stayed in the closet, looking through the hole. He sat on my bed, fumbled with my things and talked to me. But each word seemed to have a huge weight in his mouth and slipped off his tongue and was drowned in a pool of sadness that rippled in his voice. I saw him picking up my sleeping gown, holding it toward the window and gazing through it for a long time as if seeing the world through a thin, blue glass. He said things he’d never said before.