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Prologue

            There are two stories as to how our family arrived in Kermanshah from Tehran. The first story is this, that once upon a time, your great, great, great grandfather worked in the royal court of  Fat′h Ali Shah as an expert goldsmith.  The Qajar king was so pleased with this Jewish goldsmith’s recreation of His Highness’ own radiant countenance on a gold coin, that he granted the goldsmith permission to create the coin currency of his kingdom.  And so, night and day, if you were to walk through the tang’e tarik alleyways of the mahalleh and pass the goldsmith’s shop, you’d hear the chinkchinkchink of his industrious hammer, and if you were to peer through the crack of the door, you’d see his back bent in the dim light, pounding out the details of His Majesty’s face, coin after coin after coin. 

            Now it just happened that this Jewish man had a most beautiful young daughter.  Hair like a field of golden wheat.  Eyes deep blue.  His Highness, Fat′h Ali Shah, earned a certain notoriety for his collection of beautiful young girls.  Indeed, the official count of the Royal Harem numbered 158 wives, from the Afshar lineage of princesses to the Zand, all of whom had certain unique traits that made them worthy of the King’s interest.  Despite the richness of his stock, Fat′h Ali Shah employed his most trusted eunuchs to continue scouring the cities and villages in search of his next sogoli. And it must have happened this way, that one of these eunuchs, in the sullen blue of the evening, passed the goldsmith’s shop and saw in the golden glow of the lantern not only the man bent over his toil, but a most exquisite young Jewess, her hair capturing the warm light, her skin the translucent pink of Darya-e Noor.   And the eunuch hurried off back to the palace to report to The Crown, who listened, mesmerized by the descriptions of the child, and He raised His arm from the bejeweled rest of the Peacock Throne and with a subtle motion of His ruby laden fingers, ordered the eunuch to procure the girl at once.

            When news of the Shah’s intentions reached the ears of the goldsmith, he put down his hammer and looked up from his work to see the eunuch’s face waiting expectantly behind the pile of coins.   For a young girl to become a wife of the King, such honor bestowed upon a Jew, no less, and the financial and personal gain it allowed the family... The eunuch smiled and nodded at what he thought was gratitude brimming over in the old man’s eyes.  The goldsmith mumbled that the King’s wish was his command and with that, the eunuch turned and left. 

            That night, the goldsmith gathered all his possessions, his pots and pans, his clothes and blankets, his tools, his kettle, his rugs, his goat and rooster and he loaded up his sad, old donkey with many bulging burlap bags and when the night watchman’s snores sounded through the silent sleeping streets, he slowly opened the door of his home and shooed out his wife, his sons and his beautiful daughter, the goat and burden-laden donkey into the alley and began walking with great haste in the direction of Baghdad. They walked all the way to the city of Kermanshah and when the old man felt he was far enough from the Qajar Court, he laid down his load and built a new home in the Jewish mahalleh of that city.  

            That is the official story of why your great, great, great grandfather left Tehran for Kermanshah.  The second story is this, that the Jewish goldsmith was appointed coin-maker for the King, and that he made coin after coin after coin.  Then, in the still of one night, without taking  official leave from the King’s court, he left Tehran with many bulging burlap bags and arrived in Kermanshah a very, very rich man. 

...

 

 

Chapter 1

            In the outskirts of Los Angeles, in the sprawl of suburban homes that sit in the lap of dry, gold hills, there is a garden. In the warmth of late summer evenings, the perfumes of honeysuckles and jasmines in this garden are maddening.  Earthen pots of cosmos and geraniums surround the yard.  Near the back wall grows a pomegranate tree.  A fig tree fruits in the late summer, the grape arbor hides her clusters in among the leaves, the boughs of the apple tree nearly touch the soil in autumn, and the orange tree, soaking beneath the Southern California sun, provides year round.  Mint vines creep to cover the grounds and nasturtiums explode in blossom.  This garden belongs to an elderly woman.  Her name is Mahboubeh Malacouti.  Her first name means the face of the most beloved.  Her last name means of the heavenly.

            Mahboubeh tends to the trees and flowers of her garden, dirt in the creases of her hand. She pats the trunks of her trees, and speaks to them softly.  “This you must learn,” she says to them, “that the word paradise is a Farsi word. It means the space within enclosed walls, a cultivated place set apart from the vast wilderness.” She talks to her roses, holds up a thorned stem and says, “First, I grate the end of your stalk.”  She rubs a small knife against the stem, “then bind you to the stalk of another rose.”  She wraps string about the two sticks and pushes them into the soil of a small pot.  She waters the bare sticks, and waits silently for the water to absorb.   Then, after a long while, she says, “You will take root, and once you have roots, you can grow in the soil of any garden.”  Her garden brims with blooming roses, yellow, pink, loose-leafed, petals in candy-stripe of red and white, pungent and scentless, long stemmed and short bushes.  Each year, she grafts more and more, searching for a rose with the color and the perfume of the one she remembers from another garden.

            Mahboubeh carries with her stories. They pour out of her and fill the spaces she inhabits, like so many hungry ghosts, begging to exist.  Sometimes, she forgets the parameters of that space, the dictations of time, and she slips into the past of her stories. The urgent horn of a car in the street outside her home sounds and, in her mind, Mahboubeh hurries through the crowded streets of Tehran a young woman again, with her books clutched against her chest, her heels click clicking against the sidewalk, her eyes focused on the end of the block, the turn that follows, to the gate of Danesh Saraye Alee. She greets the school master who waits outside to insure the safe passage of his charges.  She enters the school, walks up the stairs, against the marble of the hallway to the classroom, with its scent of chalk, its wooden desks, the chatter of girls, laughing and talking.  An instructor walks in and the girls rise immediately and, in unison, greet him, salaam Agha Mohebi, and he responds Be seated, class, before he picks up the chalk and begins writing on the board.  Mahboubeh copies furiously in her notebook, page after page, and at the end of the year, again, and again, and again, she is recognized as the best, the brightest among the students. The school master announces her name, and she hears applause until a neighbor shouts in English, “I’m coming, give me a minute.”  Then, Mahboubeh looks about her as though she is waking from a dream.

            She remembers the garden from her childhood.  A tall brick wall separated it from the streets of the Jewish mahalleh in Kermanshah.  Within those walls, the garden grew secretive and lush, teeming with flowers and fruiting trees. It encircled the family estate, and in the middle of those buildings sat a courtyard, surrounded on all four sides by the family home.  A large fountain gurgled in the middle of that courtyard. 

            There is a photograph of Mahboubeh standing before that fountain as a young woman, already married, returning to visit Rakhel on the day the family estate in Kermanshah is sold.  The remaining members, Yousseff’s widow and all her children, will move to Tehran, trailing an old, embittered Rakhel behind them, who cursed and damned fate and G.d and every member of the family on the whole of the journey there, and for the rest of her days, which she spent in the attic of the new mansion on Shah Reza street, yelling from an open window so that all those passing below could hear how she was cheated out of her fortune. 

            On that last visit, Mahboubeh asked Rakhel again, “How did my mother die?” 

            And the old woman sat there, quietly, pensively, reflecting.  Then she looked up at Mahboubeh and answered, “I’ve told you a thousand times, a thousand times.  Degh marg shod.  She died from sorrow.”

            That usually ended the conversation between them, but Mahboubeh knew that this might be the last chance she’d have at getting an answer from Rakhel and so she summoned her courage, looked the old woman in the eyes and asked, “What sorrow?”   

            “Degh.  Degh.  The kind that chokes you.  That one that clenches at your throat. Degh,” Rakhel said, holding her own throat with a bony hand. “All that anger and all that grief welling up inside you, and no voice to scream it out beneath the sky, so that you have to swallow it.  Until it turns into a poison inside and eats your heart.”

            “What was the source of sorrow?” Mahboubeh asked.

            “What do I know?  Why do you ask me?”

            “Because you were there.”

            Rakhel looked out of the window, at the gardens.  It was late summer.  The leaves were green, dusty.  The air carried the chill of an impeding autumn. 

            “I was there,” she said.

            “And you saw.”

            “Yes.  I saw,” Rakhel said.  She looked at Mahboubeh for a moment, nodding her head.  Then she turned to look out of the window again and said, “Do you think I could have done anything?  I had as much choice as she.  I swallowed my share of grief, too.  But she was frailer than me.” 

            “What did you see?  Tell me what you saw.”

            “Leave me be,” Rakhel said.  “Here I am, my own home sold from underneath me, with nothing more than this headscarf on my head to call my own, with that whore selling whatever she can get her hands on, selling the wealth I built, and me, a beggar now when I was once a queen... And you come here with your questions to steal the last bit of peace left me?” 

            Mahboubeh got up, quietly, and looked at the old woman glaring at her.  “I’m leaving,” she said.

            “Go.  To hell with the rest of them.  Go and don’t ever come to see me!” 

            Mahboubeh did see Rakhel again, in Tehran, but always in a crowd of relatives and family, so that opportunity didn’t afford a chance for them to speak privately.  When Rakhel became too old to attend the gatherings, Mahboubeh would see her peering out of the attic window, from behind the curtains, each time she rang the doorbell of the house on Shah Reza street.  Sometimes, Rakhel only looked down at her, then withdrew into the dark room.  Other times, she leaned out of the open window and yelled obscenities.  But by then, everyone in the neighborhood knew of the old woman in that attic, and they either chuckled or quickened their pace when passing.  When Rakhel died, she did so with a single breath.  The doctor emerged from the room and said, “She was just a shell.  So old.  Nothing left in her, but that last breath.”

            That was the October before the students took to the streets.  By then, nothing remained for Mahboubeh in Tehran.  Everyone she knew was either dead, or leaving.  So Mahboubeh packed her one suitcase, lined her coat with money, and hid her jewels in jars of powders and creams.  And she remembers thinking, as that airplane lifted her away, that she had finally escaped history.

            Mahboubeh walks into the kitchen from her garden to search for that photograph of herself standing in the courtyard of the old family estate in the album on her table.  She remembers preparing for that day.  She painted her mouth red and wore a tailored black dress with black heels that strapped around her stockinged ankles.  She cannot remember who took the picture, but she remembers turning afterwards to look behind her, to where the fountain glistened beneath the noon sun. And behind that fountain to where Uncle Asher’s home stood, stately and tall.  And somewhere, in one of the many rooms of that home, she knew that Rakhel sat waiting.

            Instead of the photograph, Mahboubeh finds a picture she clipped from the pages of a travel magazine some years ago.  It is of a hammam designated for Jewish women in Kermanshah.  A large, empty room, save for a single attendant, an old woman in a dark floral print chador standing beside the pipe that must have fed the baths with hot water.  Mahboubeh stares at this image for a long while. She remembers the proprietor of that hammam, waiting beside the door. 

            She sits at her table, holding the picture and remembering, and somewhere in the incremental spaces between the shifting of the morning shadows, Mahboubeh imagines Rakhel as a girl of fifteen, perhaps half a century before the time this photograph must have been taken, looking up to the ceiling of that same hammam, where a mosaic of mirrors reflects fragments of the bodies in the room below. Buttocks and thighs on the green tile work, legs stretched out over the edges of the large central pool, arms raised overhead, straight backs and curved backs and large hips, slender hips and sagging breasts, and breasts like apples, and flat girl chests, the wild hair below navels, stomachs round and protruding and flat and ribs beneath the skin. 

The old attendant scrubs Rakhel’s shoulders with a coarse mitt, moving her body  violently back and forth. Ash colored flakes of dead skin fall from her arms onto the marble floor. Rakhel’s sister-in-law Khorsheed sits naked beside her and worries over the skin of her heel with a pumice stone.  Her black abundant hair covers her shoulders and breasts, and her thighs and the plump flesh of her arms shake and jiggle with each move.  She stops, turns to Rakhel and says, “I don’t want my feet to become like yours, Dada.  Rough-skinned like some shoeless peasant’s.”  Khorsheed nudges Rakhel with her elbow to get her attention. “See how dainty and white they are?  Soft, too, like I’ve walked on rugs of silk my whole life.” She holds up her foot beneath Rakhel’s nose and wriggles her toes.  Rakhel pushes her foot away.  Their mother-in-law Zolekhah looks up at them in warning, then continues to apply indigo and henna to turn her own white hair a raven black. 

The steam rises and rolls thick into the air and carries the scents of rosewater and soap.  Suddenly, the door bursts open, pushed by a crowd of women that fills the room.  The women throw their heads back and their tongues rapidly hit the roofs of their mouths. The sound klilililili rings through the vaults of the large room, crashes against the stone and tiled walls, echoes in the corridors announcing the arrival of a soon to be bride. Servants balance on top of their heads wide silver trays laden with fruits and sweetmeats, they carry rugs and pillows as they walk through the hammam to the dressing room to arrange for the feast that follows the ceremonial bath.   The eldest hammam attendant begins clapping a rhythm. She walks around the room, motioning with exaggerated gesture for the women to join her, until all the women in the hammam are clapping to her beat. She stands in the middle of the room and sings, “Lips press lips…”

“Lips press lips,” the women chorus.

“Navel presses navel…”

“Navel presses navel.”

“An aleph straightens into qaf’s round ladle.”

“Vah, vah, Khadijeh khanoom! Where did you hear that one?”  An elderly woman says and the rest of the women laugh.

“Here’s one more polite for your taste,” she says. “Dum dum dadee dum dum…” The attendant waggles her head, snaps her fingers and moves her large hips to the rhythm of the women’s clapping. 

Rakhel turns to watch the young bride still standing hesitantly in the doorway.  Her breasts are tiny swollen buds, her nipples small and pink, her straight body without hips, yet, the beginning of soft brown hair between her legs.  The girl blushes and holds back until the mother of her betrothed finally takes hold of her shoulders and pushes her forward into the room. The bride’s own mother walks closely behind her, and burns seeds of wild rue in a small plate, the smoke to ward off glances of envy. 

Amidst the singing and the blessings, the family of the young bride and groom take her to a far corner of the hammam and sit her on a chair. They close in around her, part slightly to allow in NanehAdeh, the old midwife, and a sudden hush falls upon the room.  The older woman approaches the young bride, kneels before her, takes her face, looks her in the eyes and asks if she has known a man.  The young girl shakes her head frantically, her eyes wide and round.  The woman places her wrinkled hands on the girl’s thighs, pulls them open, holds the outer folds of her vagina with the dry fingers of one hand and explores the hidden folds with the fingers of the other.  All the women hold their breath and wait. No one moves. The silence is suddenly broken by the old woman’s confirmation that the girl is untouched.  The singing and dancing resumes and they lead the girl to another corner of the room to remove the down of her arms and legs and to pluck and shape her eyebrows. 

Rakhel turns to see her mother-in-law studying her back, her forehead wrinkled with concern.  “Rakhel, is Asher happy with you?”  Zolekhah asks. 

Khorsheed turns quickly to glance at Rakhel, who meets her look with alarm, then drops her gaze to the floor. 

“Does he send you to the miqveh each month?”

“Dada went to the miqveh earlier this week, Naneh Zolekhah,” Khorsheed says.

“I am speaking with Rakhel, child.  Rakhel, does my son have frequent husband wife relations with you?” 

“Yes.”

“Khorsheed has been with my Ibrahim for less than a year and she is already pregnant.” 

Rakhel is silent.  In the hollowness of the hammam’s vaults, she hears the accusation amplified and feels a hundred eyes on her skin.  Her body feels cold.  The attendant pauses a moment in her task, still holding Rakhel’s arm, and squeezes the girl’s hand in reassurance.

“Perhaps Rakhel khanoom is not eating well enough,” the attendant suggests.

“She eats well,” Zolekhah responds.

“Does she eat enough red meat?”  A woman from across the hammam asks.

“She eats well.”

“Have you tried camel rennet?” Another woman asks.

“It only works if she doesn’t know she’s taking it.”

“My cousin went to Meshed and walked beneath the city gates past the stone lion.  She bore a son nine months following.”

“Did it look like the lion?”

“Efat’s eldest daughter, too.”

“That was the Pearl Cannon in Tehran she walked beneath.”

“No, it was the stone lion at the gate of Meshed, everyone knows…”

“She’s too thin, she needs girth.  Put sheep fat in her meals.”

“Do you get up too quickly after he is done?”  Another woman chimes in.

“No.” Rakhel’s voice barely a whisper, she shakes her head no, no, no.  She keeps her eyes on the floor, studies the dark green veins of the marble as the women shout all around her.

“Don’t rise after he is done.”

“No, stay very still…”

“For an hour.”

“For more than an hour.”

“Stay on your back and raise your hips to the ceiling.”

“Yes, that’s the way to do it, but move your hips back and forth.”

“Like this!” 

Rakhel does not look up. 

The women laugh, clapping a rhythm to match the woman’s undulations.   “Yes, yes!”  They laugh and clap, “Shake it just like that.” 

An old woman’s voice breaks in, grave and steady, “Daughter, you should never run or jump, or make any sudden moves of any sort.”  The room is silent once more.

“Yes,” The crackling voice of another old woman chimes in, “You must remain calm, always remain calm.  Never raise your voice.  Never disagree too whole heartedly, swallow your anger quietly.”

“A peaceful woman makes for a peaceful womb.”

“And he will love you more the less you speak!” 

Laughter again.  Laughter rings through the vaults, ripples the humid air, waves of it break against Rakhel’s body.  Her eyes burn with tears.  She keeps her gaze to the floor. 

That night, Rakhel presses Asher to herself more frantically, wraps her legs tighter against his waist, raises her back off of the bed cloth, pushes her hips against him, pulls him into herself.  The muscles inside her hold him as she heaves and pants in her effort to take him in. She grunts, her body damp with sweat as her fingers clutch at his back and her fists pound against his shoulders.  And he holds her arms down and says be still as she struggles.  Be still, he commands, and she feels the spasms of his body, the slap of his thighs against her flesh.  When his breathing evens and she hears the soft, regular snore start in his throat, she turns onto her back, raises her hips and gently sways from side to side, weeping.

                                                            ...

            The gate in a neighboring yard slams.  For a moment, Mahboubeh can’t place the sound.  She looks down at her hands, resting on the lace tablecloth.  She can see the blue of her veins.  And her fingers, knobbed like the limbs of an old walnut tree.  She holds her hands up to the light, then drops them to her lap and looks through the open window.  Her garden.  Los Angeles.  Perhaps noon, a weekday.  Photographs from her album lie strewn across the table.  She picks them up, one by one, and wonders how they fell from their pages. 

            She finds among them a photograph of herself as a young woman, standing beside her father Ibrahim.  Her hand, fine fingers, smooth skin, rests on his shoulder.  Her brother Yousseff also sits beside their father, and Yousseff’s young wife stands beside him.  Yousseff’s children crowd behind them.  They move too much.  The photographer peaks his head out from the black cloth and tells them that they will blur in the image.  Yousseff’s youngest boy sticks out his tongue.             

            “Your face will remain like that, like an ape, forever,” Mahboubeh says.  Yousseff smiles, but their father Ibrahim’s face remains unchanged. 

            Mahboubeh grew up an orphan in that home in Kermanshah, despite Ibrahim’s presence, who spent his days reading poetry, lost in thought.  As a child, whenever she asked him what became of her mother, he’d respond with silence, or else he’d say, “She died from the complications of womanhood.”    

            Ibrahim’s gaze seems distant in the photograph and Mahboubeh feels a sharp pain in her breast.  She hurriedly places the picture back in the album before a distinct memory from her lonely childhood can take shape in her mind.  She picks up another picture.  Family and relatives crowd in the portrait.  An engagement party in Tehran.  Children sit at their parents’ feet, young women fret with their hair, mouths open mid-sentence, old men stare with eyes agape. Some faces are caught in surprise, some in exasperation, some in dream, perhaps, of the past, or the future, the photographer capturing the image one instant too soon, before the subjects have adequate time to compose themselves.  In the corner of the photograph, at the far edge of the group, Rakhel stands, her white hair covered by a modest headscarf.

            Mahboubeh recalls watching a reel of film from another party, a wedding of a niece.  For a few brief frames, Rakhel stood still amidst a dancing crowd.  She looked about her, then looked directly at the camera, one second, two seconds, three seconds. In the film, Rakhel appeared diminutive, vulnerable, bent with age.  She hardly reached the shoulders of those she stood among.  Mahboubeh had looked at that flickering image of Rakhel on the screen and even then, in a room certainly too distant in both time and space to allow for Rakhel’s reach, Mahboubeh felt a clenching at her throat.

            She shakes her head, closes the album and listens to the empty silence of the deserted streets outside her home. The children at school, their parents at work, only the mailman, the gardeners interrupt the lull.  She closes her eyes and thinks about the quiet afternoons of the old Jewish mahalleh in Kermanshah, when the men abandoned the streets for a few hours and the women emerged, softly shutting the heavy doors of their homes behind them, and walked briskly to their destinations, their shadows passing now on the other side of the towering walls that enclosed the inner courtyards where they lived out their days.  Rakhel would have left for the miqveh to do her ritual cleansing in the silence of those afternoons. 

            Mahboubeh imagines Rakhel as a girl, waiting by the women’s entrance to the synagogue, around the corner from the main door where the men enter, in the clutch of the narrow alley.  She sees Rakhel peering carefully around the wall searching for the old midwife.  The afternoon sun is languid, the streets empty, save for the hammam proprietor, sleeping on a chair propped against the wall, and the brown and yellow leaves that scatter at his feet with the passing of a breeze.  The man coughs and stirs in his sleep.  Rakhel hides quickly behind the wall.  After a few moments, she peers from behind the wall again.  The man’s chin rests on his chest, his limp hands dangle to the ground. She watches the street for the midwife and worries that the old woman won’t recognize her beneath her hijab. She reaches up and unfastens the ruband that covers her face.  The air carries a subtle coolness.  She closes her eyes and touches her own damp forehead.  Autumn, she thinks, another harvest.  And still.

Rakhel has seen Naneh Adeh many times, in the hammam, in the miqveh. Once at the bedside of her own dying mother, though there was nothing even the old midwife could have done then.  The women of the mahalleh call Naneh Adeh for births, but also for the grim maladies of the female body.  The old midwife enters their households to apply leeches for the cleansing of bad blood and hot glass cups to draw out malevolent spirits.  They ask her in whispers about how to apply fresh leaves of the date palm for the ending of a pregnancy.  They buy from her the little bundles of chasm-e khorus and taranjabin, which they secretly sprinkle on their husbands’ meals to reawaken baser appetites. 

Three days earlier at the miqveh, Rakhel had stood naked at the top of the stairs that led into the pool of rainwater below when the old woman spoke to her.  “No fire in the hearth, yet?”  Naneh Adeh had asked her. Rakhel shrugged and shook her head no. 

“How old are you?”

“I’m in my fifteenth year,”  Rakhel said. 

Naneh Adah looked at Rakhel with narrowed eyes.  She leaned in and sniffed the air near Rakhel’s shoulder, then took a step back to look at her again.  Rakhel wrapped her arms over her abdomen and breasts.  “There is nothing you need to hide from me, child.  I can see into the workings of your body.” Rakhel hugged herself tighter and looked down at her feet.  “How many years have you been a wife?”

“Three.” 

Naneh Adah raised her leathery hand, nudged away Rakhel’s arms and placed her palm on the tight flesh of Rakhel’s stomach.  Rakhel sucked in her breath. The old woman rubbed her dry palm in circles on Rakhel’s belly, closed her eyes and tilted her head to the side as if she were listening for a sound far away.  She opened her eyes and pronounced, “Nothing good, child, nothing good.”  Rakhel jumped back from the old woman and bent her body slightly forward, wrapping her arms across her middle again.  “Don’t be afraid, daughter,”  Naneh Adah said. “There may be a remedy.” 

“A remedy?”

“Ah, yes, child, if G-d sees fit, there is a cure to your problem.  Sometimes when a woman wants a child too badly and cannot conceive, it is because the djinn Al has settled deep inside her body.”

“Al?”

“Yes, child, sometimes Al takes the form of a beautiful woman, and enters the dreams of men to collect their spilt seeds.  Or she comes as a demon, the body of a goat, the head of an old woman, and snatches newborns from their mothers’ breasts.  Inside the womb, she takes the form of a fish, swims in your belly and eats the baby before it even has a heartbeat.”

“Can you help me?”  Rakhel said.  “Can you get her out of me?”

“I’ll see what I can do, child.”  Naneh Adeh stared at the mosaic on the wall for a few moments, nodding her head.  Then she turned to Rakhel and said, “Meet me in three days after the noon azan, by the women’s entrance to the synagogue. Go, now, cleanse your body in the rainwater below, and empty your heart, too, of is longing, so that you can begin your month in a state of purity.” 

Rakhel clasped the old woman’s hands in her own. 

“The want of the heart is a powerful force, child,”  the old woman said and patted Rakhel’s hand before motioning with her head for Rakhel to go.

Rakhel turned to descend the stone steps to the dark waters of the pool beneath the ground.  Naneh Adeh reached out and touched Rakhel’s shoulder.  “Though sometimes, daughter, no amount of desire, no potions or prayers or amulets, however strong, can change one’s qesmat.  I will try to help you, but the rest is the will of G-d.”  

The stone steps were cold and damp.  Rakhel placed one foot down, searched with her toes for the ledge, then brought down the other foot, stood firmly with both feet beside each other, her hands clutching the walls on either side of the stairwell, before her foot ventured out again in search of the next step down.  The miqveh was dimly lit and the further she descended, the harder she strained her eyes to make out the shape of the hole in the earth filled with dark rainwater.  There are no djinns in a holy place, she reminded herself.  No djinns waiting in the shadows to pull me under the water and hold me down.   When she reached the pool’s edge, she hesitated.  Her skin became her eyes, the tiny hairs of her thin arms and back rose, she felt the air for motion, for a slight change in the temperature, she listened to the drip, drip of water, her own heart pounding in her ears.  Then, she lifted her foot and touched the dark surface of the pool with her toe as she whispered the prayer for purification, Baruch atah Hashem, allowed her foot to find the submerged step, placed one foot down firmly, there were no more walls to hold onto, her arms stretched out for balance, Elokeinu Melech Ha’Olam, she brought down her other foot and her ankles now below the surface asher kidshanu, her knees now below the surface b’mitzvotav, her thighs, her slender hips v’tzivanu, she folded in her arms to hold her small breasts, her nipples taut, the water to her neck al ha-tevila and then, darkness, no breath.

She emerged with a gasp, water streaming from her face and hair.  She hurried out of the pool, knelt beside it, the skin of her knees against the smooth stone.  “Lord, grant me a child,” she whispered to the dark water. “Please, grant me a child.  A son, Lord.  If only a son, so that my husband will be pleased with me.  So that I, too, can have a place in his home.  Please, Lord, I must have a baby.” Rakhel sat on the ground, clutched her knees to her chest, and raised her eyes to the darkness above. “If You are there, if You can hear me...” Her voice a hoarse whisper, commanding now rather than pleading, she rose to her knees again, her body erect, moving back and forth. “Grant me a son.  Like the miracles they say You perform.  It is all I ask.  It is all I will ever ask of You.”

“Rakhel khanoom, who are you speaking with down there?”  Naneh Adeh’s voice had rung down the stairwell and filled the empty space between the walls. “Hurry, there are other women waiting for their turn.”   

“No one, Naneh Adah, I’m just praying.  I’m on my way up.”  She cupped water in her hands, splashed her face and quickly clamored up the stairs toward the light.

Three nights passed from her meeting with Naneh Adeh and each of those nights, Rakhel laid awake beside her sleeping husband, her breath short with the anticipation of the miracle, her palms on her abdomen.  She imagined the face of the son she would bear.  The dark curls of his hair, the fingers of his hands, the curve of his delicate ears. On the third day she asked Asher’s permission to visit the miqveh, told her mother-in-law about the necessity for further cleansing and set out for the synagogue during the noon azan, the hour the town settles for their rest.  Once the heavy door of her home closed behind her, she clutched her chador tightly below her throat and stared at the abandoned street through the mesh of the black ruband that covered her face.  When she saw that there was no one in sight, she ran in the direction of the synagogue.  She turned the corner into the side alley and bent over to catch her breath. 

Now, waiting in the empty alley, Rakhel begins to worry that Naneh Adah might not come.  Just as she peers from the corner of the building to look into the street once more, she feels the midwife’s strong fingers clutch her shoulder.  She turns around quickly and Naneh Adah pulls aside the ruband covering her own face.  “Did anyone see you, child?”

“No, I was careful.”

“Take this.”  The old woman passes a piece of folded paper into the girl’s hand.  “It is writing from The Book, the passage when G-d plants Yousseff in Rakhel’s womb so that she wins favor with her husband.  Dissolve this piece of paper in water and drink the water.  The next morning, bathe yourself and perfume your body, but don’t allow your husband to sleep with you.  Just stay close to him so that he can smell you.  Hover about him like a moth to a candle flame.  For a night.  Cat and mouse.  You understand?”  Rakhel nods her head yes.  “After that, make certain he lays with you each night, for a week’s time.  He is young, do what you know to lure him.”  Rakhel looks down at her feet, blushing.  Naneh Adeh takes her chin and raises Rakhel’s head so that she is looking into the girl’s eyes.  “Come daughter, you are no longer a child, you have been wife for a few years now.  No shame in any of this, forget that nonsense and think of it as a grave task, one that you must master, for your own sake.  But follow my instructions as I’ve said them, so that your endeavors are met with success.”  Rakhel takes the old woman’s hands in her own and brings them to her lips.  “Enough, child.  It is not I, but G-d who helps you,” Naneh Adah says as she turns the girl by the shoulders and pushes her back out into the main street. “And may I not see you at the miqveh for nine months.”

Rakhel turns back to say goodbye, but the old woman already hobbles with haste down the alleyway, her black chador taking the wind so that it billows out behind her.  Rakhel watches her for a moment, then walks into the empty streets toward home. The hammam proprietor still sleeps in his chair.  A fly hovers close to his mouth, and settles on his chin.  Rakhel passes him slowly.  She does not need to hurry. The town men retire, still, in the curtained rooms of their homes, or in comfortable corners of their shops, or beneath some shade to rest through the heat of the afternoon.  She listens to the hollow sound of her own footsteps against the cobblestones.  She clasps the folded paper in one hand and traces with her finger the cracks along the high walls that enclose the mahalleh homes. Then she stops to look at the buildings crowding the narrow street.  She feels the breeze on her cheeks and realizes that she forgot to cover her face, but no one is there to see her, to ask her what business a young woman has to be walking at this hour of the day, unchaperoned, with her face revealed. She closes her eyes and turns her face to the sun.  She hears the chatter of children, their laughter rising from the andaruni of one of the homes.  A woman quietly sings a folk love song from some hidden garden.  Rakhel listens to the sound of caged birds, the coo of doves, finches chirping, a yellow canary, mad with song, longing for flight.

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