A Persian Requiem by Simin Daneshvar Page A

to comfort her. “I was saving it for Khosrow.”
    “Khadijeh!” Zari called out. “Come and take the children to Haj Mohammad Reza’s house and show them the snake he caught yesterday.”
    “Has he taken the teeth out?” Marjan asked. “Has he?”
    “Yes, dear, don’t be afraid,” Zari reassured her.
    Mina took Marjan’s hand, saying: “You play with him for a minute, and then I’ll play with him for a minute, all right?”
    “They play with snakes?” Abol-Ghassem Khan asked incredulously .
    “No, she won’t let the children touch the snake …” Zari replied distractedly.
    “Seeing that everything is done backwards in this house, I thought perhaps …” Abol-Ghassem Khan began with a laugh, but he never finished his sentence. Instead, he asked gently: “Did you find the snake here, in this house?”
    Zari, distraught at the thought of Khosrow parting with Sahar, felt the more she talked about the snake the better.
    “Yes,” she answered. “Yesterday as we were sitting on the verandah , a female snake fell from the windowsill on to the paving in front of the house. Gholam happened to be watering at the time and he smashed the snake over the head with his watering-can. But it kept moving so Gholam had to finish it off with the shovel. He told us that the male snake would eventually come after its mate. So he called in Haj Mohammad the dyer who went to the roof, found the nest, and caught the male snake.”
    “Now I’ve dropped all my precious opium in the fire!” Ameh complained.
    In the end, it was Abol-Ghassem Khan who returned to the main issue.
    “Please don’t imagine that I want to hurt Khosrow,” he said. “I swear on my son Hormoz’s life that Khosrow is very dear to me. I told the Governor’s secretary over the telephone: ‘This child is very attached to his horse; he doesn’t leave its side for a minute. I’m prepared to go to the village and bring my best horses for the Governor’s daughter,’ I forget her name—Gilan Taj, Milan Taj, or whatever . She said, ‘Well, Miss Gilan Taj has had typhus … she’s just recovering … and she’s been hankering after your nephew’s horse.’”
    Ameh Khanom prepared her opium pipe again. She drew on it long and hard.
    “Didn’t you tell them his father had gone to the lowlands and to wait until he returned next week for his permission?” she said. “Don’t you know that my sister-in-law doesn’t move without Yusef’s permission?”
    “As God is my witness, I did. The Governor’s secretary said: ‘Your brother’s wife would refuse you a worthless horse? They’ll pay for it, they don’t want it for free, you know.’”
    Putting the opium aside, Ameh poured tea for Zari and herself.
    “I know this mess is all your doing,” she said to her brother. “To become deputy, you’ll stoop to anything. How did that little minx find out that Khosrow has a horse? You’ve engineered this whole thing. And now you’re stuck with it.”
    “By God Almighty and all the holy prophets!” Abol-Ghassem Khan protested. “I swear on the Holy Quran that I never mentioned the horse. Don’t you know about Ezzat-ud-Dowleh? She’s at their house from morning to evening, plotting and scheming behind everyone’s back—a right old busybody … Anyway, I tried to ignore the whole thing, but just before I left, the Governor himself called me to ask about the horse. I said: ‘Your honour, my brother is away in the lowlands.’ He said: ‘Come, come, my daughter has just recovered from an illness. Send the horse over for a few days. When she gets tired of it, we’ll send it back.’”
    Zari thought that maybe he was telling the truth. She looked at Ameh, who was poking the ashes with the tongs. There were tears in her eyes. “This town has gone mad,” Ameh said. “I’m getting out of this place. I’ll go and live in Karbala, the holy city, as my poor mother did.”
    “What will you do for a passport?” Abol-Ghassem Khan shouted, his