The Book of Fate Read Free

imperative. But with my begging, pleading and irrepressible tears I managed to convince Father to stand up to them, and he enrolled me in year eight in secondary school.
    Ahmad was so angry he wanted to strangle me and used every excuse to beat me up. But I knew what was really eating away at him and so I kept quiet. My school was not that far from home and a fifteen- to twenty-minute walk. In the beginning Ahmad would secretly follow me, but I would wrap my chador tightly around me and took care not to give him any excuse. Meanwhile, Mahmoud stopped talking to me altogether and completely ignored me.
    Eventually, they both found jobs. Mahmoud went to work at a shop in the bazaar that belonged to Mr Mozaffari’s brother and Ahmad became an apprentice at a carpenter’s workshop in the Shemiran neighbourhood. According to Mr Mozaffari, Mahmoud sat in the store all day and could be counted on, and Father used to say, ‘Mahmoud is the one who’s really running Mr Mozaffari’s shop.’ Ahmad, on the other hand, quickly found plenty of friends and started coming home late at night. Eventually, everyone realised that the stench on him was from drinking alcohol, arak to be precise, but no one said anything. Father would hang his head and refuse to return his hello, Mahmoud would turn away and say, ‘May God have mercy. May God have mercy,’ and Mother would quickly warm up his food and say, ‘My child has a toothache and he has put alcohol on it for the pain.’ It wasn’t clear what sort of a tooth ailment it was that never healed. In all, Mother was in the habit of covering up for Ahmad. After all, he was her favourite.
    Mr Ahmad had also found another pastime at home: keeping an eye on our neighbour Mrs Parvin’s house from an upstairs window. Mrs Parvin was usually busy doing something in the front yard and, of course, her chador would always fall off. Ahmad wouldn’t move from his position in front of the living room window. Once, I even saw them communicating with signs and gestures.
    In any case, Ahmad became so distracted that he forgot all about me. Even when Father allowed me to go to school wearing a headscarf instead of the full chador, there was only one day of shouting and fighting. Ahmad didn’t forget, he just stopped scolding me and wouldn’t talk to me at all. To him I was the personification of sin. He wouldn’t even look at me.
    But I didn’t care. I went to school, had good grades and made friends with everyone. What else did I want from life? I was truly happy, especially after Parvaneh became my best friend and we promised to never keep any secrets from each other.
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    Parvaneh Ahmadi was a happy and cheerful girl. She was good at volleyball and was on the school team, but she wasn’t doing all that well in her classes. I was sure she wasn’t a bad girl, but she didn’t abide by many principles. I mean she couldn’t tell good from bad and right from wrong and had no clue how to be mindful of her father’s good name and honour. She did have brothers, but she wasn’t afraid of them. Occasionally, she would even fight with them and if they hit her, she would hit them back. Everything made Parvaneh laugh and she did so no matter where she was, even out on the street. It was as if no one had ever told her that when a girl laughs her teeth shouldn’t show and no one should hear her. She always found it strange that I would tell her it was improper and that she should stop. With a surprised look on her face she would ask, ‘Why?’ Sometimes she stared at me as if I was from a different world. (Wasn’t that the case?) For instance, she knew the names of all the cars and wished her father would buy a black Chevrolet. I didn’t know what kind of car a Chevrolet was and I didn’t want to lose face by admitting it.
    One day I pointed to a beautiful car that looked new and I asked, ‘Parvaneh, is that the