Mariam's Wedding Gift

Louise Domaratius

In three months -- September -- Mariam's older sister, Haliyeh, will be married to a man she hardly knows, sixteen years her senior, a widower with two children nearly Mariam's age. Haliyeh, at this very moment, is leaning against the darkened windowpane of the room she still shares with her little sister. She looks pensive, as if the dust motes in the shaft of light entering the bedroom had some existential meaning she has to ponder. Her jeans and tee shirt lie piled where they fell alongside the black chador, the lot cast off in defense against the Tehranian heat, and Mariam admires her sister's slender, long-limbed body. Haliyeh's cotton underwear shimmers white against the dark honey of her skin, glistening with a delicate film of perspiration. It crosses Mariam's mind that before long it's the man, "the old man," as she thinks of him, who will contemplate her sister like this, then more than contemplate, according to his desires. The thought frightens her a little.
     "Haliyeh?" She can hear the hesitation in her own voice.
     "Mmm?"
     "Aren't you scared?"
     "Scared? About Nasser, you mean?"
     Mariam nods. Even if her sister is nine years older, they've always shared a wave-length.
     "You know, I'm twenty-seven, and I haven't found anyone. This makes Mother so happy. Someone to take care of me. It's been her main obsession since Father died. Nasser's a doctor." She shrugs. "That means a villa right away, household help. The kids don't bother me. Really, they don't. I like them."
     Mariam feels a twinge of annoyance. Is Haliyeh pretending not to know what she means or is she, Mariam, really being a silly child? But what difference does it make, eighteen or twenty-seven, if you've never done it before? "I meant sleeping with him."
     She doesn't have to play blasé with her sister, does she? They've always spoken frankly. "Sex," she adds grimly.
     "Oh, Mariam." Haliyeh turns toward the younger girl, kneels beside her and gently presses her forearm. "I'm not scared of sex. Just... something else." As soon as the words are out, she thinks she shouldn't have spoken them.
     "What?" Mariam's black eyes light up with alarm. "There's something you haven't told me? Is there something wrong with him?"
     "Heavens, no! At least, not that I know of. It's me." Now that the subject is out in the open, she might as well plunge ahead. Mariam's eighteen, anyway, not a baby. "There's something wrong with me."
     "With you? What could be wrong with you? You're beautiful. You're intelligent. You're kind. You're a good Muslim."
     Haliyeh looks away: embarrassment? reluctance? "But I'm not a virgin." She tries to guess her sister's expression. She's going to have to turn back and face it.
     If Haliyeh had slapped her face, Mariam could not have been more stunned. She looks all at sea on the blue-covered bed where she has been sitting, and her wide, ripe-olive gaze flashes fear.
     "Not a...?" The word stays stuck. "But what are you going to do? They know those things, don't they? Men. They're bound to find out. You can't get it back, ever. Haliyeh! When? How? You never told me." Her eyes fill, in spite of herself.
     Haliyeh pulls her sister to her, strokes the damp black kinks crushed by the scarf the girl has shed. "You were still little when it happened. I couldn't tell you those things then."
     "Tell me now."
     "When I was in high school. The grocer's son. You wouldn't remember him. I was the one who ran the errands. We did it in the little warehouse behind the shop. When his father was figuring his accounts. He was sure never to go into the back room then." Haliyeh laughs a little, remembers the shiver, the delicious apprehension of it. Without that, it would have been just groping, and physical, and yes, a little repugnant. She hadn't been in love with the grocer's son but with freedom and defiance. Mariam was right, though. The flower she'd rendered up to him wouldn't grow back. And the doctor could make a nasty fuss. A doctor, of all people. Who better to understand anatomy?
     "Weren't you afraid you'd have a baby?" Mariam's voice is hushed. Awe is what she feels now for this big sister so wild, so audacious.
     Haliyeh smiles. "He told me he'd know how to pull out in the nick, and he did. Smart guy. But I was crazy. A crazy teenager. A little fool, playing with fire. You're absolutely right. It could have been the end of me. It still may be, in fact. Married one day, repudiated the next. Scandal of the neighborhood, shame and dishonor of her family."
     "Stop, Haliyeh! How can you say things like that, as if you were reading the telephone book to me?"
     "Because it's going to be all right. Because I have a plan. Don't worry about me, Mariam. Really, it's going to be fine."
     This, of course, is when their mother, Najmeh, raps at the door. "Prayer, children," she says. "Grandmother is ready, too. She's waiting for us in the livingroom." Najmeh is already decked out in her praying garment of white cloth. A wimp hugs her plump cheeks, preventing the least wisp of her graying hair to escape. It ruffles against her chest, and she pulls the voluminous folds of the cotton tent around and over her already covered head. "Your prayer chadors, Daughters. Look at you!"
     "Mother, it's stifling," says Haliyeh. "Aren't you just dying?" Mariam wouldn't have dared, but Haliyeh is grown up and a fiancée now, to boot.
     "One comes modest and unspotted before the Almighty."
     "Oh, Mother, I can't then. I'd almost forgotten -- I'm impure. My period started this morning." Mariam doesn't tell her mother that she has been praying anyway, praying in fact in quiet, occasional parentheses since she awoke, but in a little chamber of her mind, darkened like their bedroom, without paraphernalia, without prostration on the Persian carpet. The little room in her mind has long fingers of sieved sunlight like their room at this hour. It is very peaceful, very comforting, and she retreats there at will. If God minded her period, why would he have made women bleed?
     "Then I'll pray for the two of us, for prosperity and fertility in your sister's marriage. Each day we must bring this request before God."
     Mariam catches Haliyeh's eye, but her big sister looks bored and abstracted, rummaging already for the cumbersome, immaculate wrap, which she will drape over an outdated dress of plaid seersucker. She kisses Mariam briefly on the forehead; it means, Don't worry, little one. All Mariam can think is, No longer intact. She is no longer intact. She wills God to make a miracle, to sew her sister up again. She is not spoiled, not violated, only unbarred, disclosed, pierced. All around the invisible, infinitesimal aperture stretches the bakhlava-gold beauty of her skin, of her youthful, curving flesh.

     Each day on her way home from secretarial school, Mariam passes a vegetable vendor's. Along the sidewalk, baskets of peppers offer their shiny pouches, round or elongated: green, yellow, red. Farther back, potatoes, onions, and purple egg plant rest in the shade. The merchant, ruddy and black-bearded, sits between his cash register and a pair of tinny scales with a set of weights in a small pyramid by their side. Mariam's gaze usually sweeps over the peppers, sometimes carries as far as the wine-robed egg plant. Today, coincidence has it that she looks up, and a small, white placard in a window above the shop catches her eye. "NIRVANA JEWELRY SALON," she reads. Odd that she has never noticed it before. What could they sell there? She has seen the jewelers in the bazaar with their ample exhibits of gold and silver trinkets. How to attract customers if you don't show your wares? This place must be for insiders, and perhaps it is no question of jewelry at all. With a frisson, Mariam thinks of opium, cocaine, powdery white ecstasies that would land a person in prison. But then, there would be no sign at all. People in the know would just know. She refrains an impulse to ask the vegetable merchant. Tomorrow -- she'll ask him tomorrow. She'll buy a pound of something and feign just having seen the sign. A girl can be curious. They may have proclaimed curiosity improper or unbecoming, but to her knowledge, it isn't a full-fledged sin yet. With luck and a little more attention, she may see a customer coming or going. Size them up. And then, who knows, maybe she won't want to find out after all.

     Haliyeh and Nasser have been at the family planning center. The course is a prerequisite for a marriage license, and, even though Nasser, as a doctor, could have won exemption, he has wanted his future bride to attend the lectures. Not far is the "No Scalpel Vasectomy Clinic," but Nasser tells Haliyeh with pride and tenderness that he intends for her to increase the number of his offspring. It doesn't occur to him to ask her opinion. Haliyeh makes a mental note of this but decides not to hold it against him, at least not for the time being. She will have her mental list, yes, ready just in case. You reproach me with this? Then I reproach you with this, this, and this.
     As they walk sedately side by side (each keeping his hands to himself, naturally), she remembers Mariam's expression when she told her her wedding-night plan. Operation Pseudo-Virginity, she called it, but her younger sister didn't laugh. "You gather nettles from the vacant lot beyond the marketplace (don't forget your gloves). Wash the little crop you've picked. Then sneak the mortar and pestle out of the kitchen. Crush the serrated leaves with the pestle to a dark green paste. Apply internally two hours before bedtime."
     Mariam had been horror-sticken. There? Put nettles there? You know what they do, just to your arms, your ankles! You'll be all burning, and swollen, and..."
     "And, yes! Harder to penetrate than the purest maiden on earth!"
     "But Haliyeh, the pain! And what if you're injured for life?"
     "Don't be silly! It'll go away. He'll have his wedding night's worth."
     "And what about the blood? You're supposed to bleed the first time."
     "Nonsense. There's a high percentage of virgins who never bleed. I didn't, in fact. Nasser's a doctor, so that's not going to be news to him."
     "You're sure?"
     "Sure, I'm sure. And if he wants blood, there's always a brooch or a sewing needle and a fingertip, after all. But he won't."
     "Where, where did you learn this trick?"
     "It seems like I've always known it. It's one of the things girls talk about. Some girls, I mean."
     "If girls talk about it, then doctors, too, maybe?"
     "I'll have to risk it. Maybe, even if he's suspicious, he won't really want to know. I can't see myself in for a medical examination on my wedding night. Come, dear Bride, lie on your back, push up your knees, open wide, that's it, move your bottom closer..."
     "You never know! You hardly know him."
     "I like him, or I wouldn't have consented to this," she'd told Mariam.
     There is something about Nasser's face that pleases Haliyeh. She looks at him now out of the corner of her eye, attracted by the lines on either side of his mouth. They make him look tense, virile, and a trifle unhappy. Haliyeh had heard how he'd mourned his first wife, and this satisfied her. In fact, this, and the lines, had swayed her decision. Nasser had petitioned for her hand for nearly half a year, but she'd asked her mother to let her think about it longer. He'd been kind and persevering, and one day she'd given in.

     Mariam makes bold. She is holding two large yellow onions and pretends to glance casually toward the door beside the greengrocer's open-fronted display, as she walks toward the cash register. "Is that the entrance to the jewelry shop over there?" she asks innocently.
     The merchant gives her a quick, amused look. "Go see for yourself, Miss. Funny jewelry, if you ask me, but yes, that's the way in."
     Relieved, Mariam stuffs the onions into her school bag. She has received neither a lecture nor an admonition. She has got to try it now, or she never will. She pushes open the unlocked door and finds herself in front of a narrow staircase. The stairs are steep; it's the beating of her heart that makes her breathless, along with the weight of her school things. A handwritten sign on a door on the first-floor landing repeats: "Nirvana Jewelry Salon." In smaller letters, awkwardly scrawled, she reads: "Ring bell and please to come in." If it had been a white slavery trap, the vegetable merchant would have told her so, assuredly. He'd have noticed that girls went in and never came out. Assuredly. She is ridiculous to be nervous. Her sister did a lot more than this behind a grocer's. She just wants to see... what they have for sale. She wants to get Haliyeh a wedding gift. Yes! Something pretty to wear. And she hasn't got much money saved. She can't afford the bazaar. She presses on the bell, then on the doorknob. The door gives, and Mariam pushes it open.
     A tall young man, black as the ashes from burnt paper, rises from the desk behind which he was sitting. He has on a beige linen tunic with very fine violet stripes. "Hello, welcome, don't be shy" he says, in funny, limping Farsi.
     Mariam has rarely seen Africans. The young man's cheeks have a near-reddish sheen in the afternoon light, and she thinks foolishly of cooking chocolate. "I... I came to see," she stammers. "I mean, it says 'Jewelry' on your sign."
     "It's a piercing parlor," the boy smiles. "You didn't know? I do noses, mostly. Navels and eyebrows and anything else people ask for, but it's usually noses here in Tehran. I don't have to tell you that girls don't want to uncover themselves."
     He grins broadly, and suddenly Mariam feels it's going to be all right. She relaxes the grip on her bag. A Bollywood actress with heavily made-up eyes and a strip of glittery stones across her forehead stares at her from a large poster behind the desk. Mariam rapidly takes in a gray, plywood screen in one corner and a table with a set of small instruments beside it. There are bottles, too, and a package of plastic gloves. Close to the window, there is a reclining, black armchair that reminds her of the dentist's.
     "Well, no, I didn't know. Piercing? You mean, like Indian women have? That's so beautiful. I never imagined. I was thinking…of a wedding present for my sister."
     "Well, then you'd have to send her around."
     "You're not from here?" Mariam asks, knowing he isn't.
     "Kinshasa. République Démocratique du Congo. Ex-Zaïre. Ex-Belgian Congo," says the boy.
     Mariam thinks he might be in his early twenties.
     "From so far? All the way from the Congo to a shop in Tehran? "
     The boy's smile flashes white again. "I've been places. Learned things. This is a good place to do business. Not much competition. You want to see the studs?"
     "Studs?"
     "The jewels. For your sister's nose. Or yours, maybe." From the desk drawer, the Congolese boy draws forth a navy-blue velvet-covered plaque. Tiny studs are planted in it like constellations in the night sky. Some are larger than others, some sparkly, others yellow gold or what Mariam takes for silver. "These are white gold," the boy tells her. When they catch the light, they're as bright as diamonds."
     Mariam feels a rush of desire; is it what they call covetousness? She wants one of these minuscule stars planted in her nose, in the little dimple just where the swell of the nostril subsides. Instinctively, she touches the spot with her forefinger.
     "That's right. It would be nice on you."
     "Oh, but I can't."
     "Why not? I make special terms. You can pay me in three-four times. The really tiny ones aren't so expensive anyway."
     "That's not the only thing." Mariam wants to change the subject. She doesn't want to leave, but she can't tell this boy she will buy his merchandise. "What's your name?" she asks on an impulse.
     "Jeremiah."
     "A Jewish name?"
     "It's in the Bible. That's our Koran, you know. I'm a Christian. My father was more of an animist than anything else, but my mother, she taught the catechism. She brought me up Catholic."
     "I thought Africans were Muslims."
     "Some are, some aren't. The Belgians brought us their religion, and they're not Muslims."
     "And you're allowed to... to make holes in people's bodies like that, in the Catholic religion?"
     "Why not? The body's just an envelope. It won't hurt your soul."
     Mariam has the impression he's laughing at her. That wouldn't be good business, though, and he has to deal with girls like her here in Iran. Boys, too, maybe. She studies his face with its full mouth, broad, sculpted cheekbones, and high forehead. She hadn't known Africans could be handsome.
     "In Africa, there's lots of piercing," Jeremiah goes on. "Traditional. But I learned to do this from a Hindu guy. We were together at a refugee center. I don't know where he's got to, now. I hope he has his jewelry studio too. Somewhere in the world."
     Mariam knows she should leave. It would be rude to let him think she's going to be a customer. But she can't bring herself to turn and go. "My name's Mariam," she says. "I was just passing by, and I was curious. How did you learn our language?" Asking questions is rude, too, but she thinks the regular rules may not apply with African Catholics. Before Jeremiah can answer her question, a cell phone lying on the desk begins to chirp like a cricket. Jeremiah frowns but turns to pick it up. She hears him reply in foreign sounds. When his voice dips into the deeper notes, there is something velvet-whispery about it. She thinks of ashes again, raked smooth. But he sounds annoyed. Mariam must go. Heading abruptly for the door, she makes a sign to him with her free hand.
     For a second, Jeremiah presses the phone to his chest. "Come back, Mariam, come another day!" She nods "yes" in spite of herself.

     Now, when Mariam approaches the Nirvana Jewelry Salon, she whisks past the vegetable vendor's with a closed, preoccupied look on her face, pushes open the lateral, wooden door and bounds up the stairs. She never spends more than fifteen minutes with Jeremiah -- her mother's watch is a precise thing -- but from fifteen-minute conversation to fifteen-minute conversation, she has touched a far corner of Jeremiah's world, one so different from hers, she sometimes feels dizzy on her way home. The language he was speaking on the phone that first day, he told her, is called Lingala. His native language, although he'd learned to speak French at school and Farsi since he's been in Iran, four years now.
     Lingala, lalala: the name is a song to Mariam. She chanted the syllables all the way back to her room the day she'd learned that, and she hadn't told Haliyeh. Haliyeh has been absorbed with choosing a wedding gown, anyway, and she doesn't need to know the special sing-song that Mariam has stored away in her private, sunlit mental chamber. She likes to think that God speaks Lingala. He speaks every language on all of the earth, and even if you pray with grammar mistakes, he doesn't care. He listens just the same. He doesn't hand out grades for sentence structure. She thinks God doesn't hand out nearly as many grades as people suppose.
     Haliyeh's wedding gown, at present laid out on Mariam's blue bed, is a shiny white concoction, as fancy as the iced cake she'll have. It has bulges, and tiers, and peaks of satin down the length of the sleeves and the sides of the long skirt. Nasser will be the only man to see her in it. The women will have their fete apart, where she can parade and show it off. Mariam knows Haliyeh prefers sleek, modern clothes; tight pants and sheathlike sundresses. "How can you stand the prissy, princess stuff?" she asks Haliyeh.
     "Your husband's just for you, but your wedding's for everyone," Haliyeh replies. "Mother and Grandmother both clapped when they saw the dress, so I agreed. Why hurt your mother's feelings, when it's only for a day?" If she'd been married at Mariam's age, she'd have protested and sulked, but now, she'll wear a grain sack if it makes them happy. And she'll be a virgin again, as snowy as the gown. Haliyeh represses an ironic smile and strokes the soft, lustrous material.
     Mariam has been designated Harvester of Fresh Nettles. Haliyeh won't have time, and her every step before the festivities will be monitored. Mariam can always slip out and back unnoticed. For her sister, she would do not only this but much more, if she could. Mariam feels the need to show Haliyeh how much she loves and admires her. For herself, she fears nothing, but how she hopes there is no risk to Haliyeh's health in this prickly subterfuge! At most, she'll be wretched for the night, Haliyeh has told her. The tissues are sensitive; she'll go easy, she promises. And, yes, she'll make sure no traces of the paste are left. "If Nasser were to get some on himself," she laughs, "he'd wonder at his own swelling!"

     "Teach me some words in Lingala," Mariam asks Jeremiah.
     "Ah, Lingala, the language of the outstretched hand," he says.
     "Why?"
     "Always my brothers are calling me. Send us money, we have nothing. They imagine, because I sell gold studs and live in the land of petroleum, that I am lolling in wealth. It's true, sometimes I have chicken with my rice. For a chicken leg, a man will kill another in my country."
     "How many brothers do you have?"
     "One from my mother, five from my father's other wife."
     "Catholic men can have more than one wife?"
     "My father married his two wives before he converted. The first one, she was always bitching, so he took my mother, too. I would quit answering the telephone, but I'm worried for my mother."
     "Why is that?"
     "She's in the hospital. Send medicine, they say, too, but I can't do that. Where can I get medicine for what's wrong with my mother?"
     Mariam thinks of Nasser; he's a doctor, after all... "What is wrong with your mother?"
     "Cancer of the blood."
     "Oh, no." Mariam looks at Jeremiah, but he is calm. The adorned Indian movie star on the wall behind his desk suddenly seems incongruous and insolent. "Do you write letters to your mother?"
     "In my family we don't write. When you meet up with people, you tell them your news, but letters, we're not used to."
     Mariam thinks she may know why. "Can she read?"
     "The Bible. A little. My mother, she is like the farmer who builds a wall around his well, every day he carries rocks, even too heavy rocks."
     Mariam waits, but the parable seems to be finished. She has noticed how Jeremiah illustrates his thoughts with little stories. Sometimes she guesses at the meaning, sometimes not, but she never interrupts with questions, or Jeremiah will offer another parable to explain the first, and she'll be only more lost. She listens to the Persian words roll off his tongue, and yet she cannot understand half of what he tells her. Every word is correct, even if sometimes the sentences aren't put together quite right. Every word, she could find in the dictionary. Yet all together, they add up to something she cannot follow. Mariam imagines a vast, rock-filled foreign field behind each word that Jeremiah uses. Each one is a sign-post for some reality she has never experienced and cannot conjure. Always, she had thought that if you spoke the same language as someone, then you would understand them. Now she knows that mere words are not enough.

     Mariam's mother has wanted her to stay home from class this afternoon to help with the tea. Nasser's children are coming with their two grandmothers. She, Najmeh, will be a step-grandmother soon, a member of their ranks, and making the right impression is imperative. Najmeh can get upset over the imperfect ironing of a tablecloth. Each small challenge life places before her she faces like an exam paper. Mariam and Haliyeh bustle in the kitchen, following orders. The confection they are preparing is thick with semolina, drenched in a syrup of clover honey and orange blossom water. Mariam, who has been grinding walnuts for it, dusts her hands on her apron and cuts a rectangle of aluminum foil from the roll in the pastry drawer. Once the cake has cooled enough to be divided in squares, she'll place one of these in the silvery wrapping and spirit it away under her bed, for Jeremiah to taste. The food in Iran, he has told Mariam, is wonderful, all except the sickening white-sauce the Turk on the corner puts with the kebabs he sells. Jeremiah had tried that, unsuspecting, and hadn't eaten again for twenty-four hours. What an idea, to coat one's food in liquefied wallpaper paste! Mariam guesses there are no sauces in African cooking.

     Nasser's children's hands are sticky from the cakes. The little girl, twelve, sits solemnly by her ten-year-old brother. They are on their best behavior, but the sweets have been irresistible. They look curiously at Haliyeh, then at Mariam, until one grandmother tells them not to stare. The girl lowers her eyes obediently, but Haliyeh kneels by her and lifts her chin. "Look at me all you want," she says. "And I'll look at you. You can't be friends with someone you've never seen, can you?" Then she bounds up to retrieve a long-unused pachisi board from the closet. "My sister and I used to play with this. Won't you come along to the garden? We can make a foursome!" The children follow gratefully, as the watchful ladies arrange their features in indulgent half-frowns.

     Today, Jeremiah opens the door to his "salon" before Mariam has pressed the bell. "Waiting for you," he says simply.
     "Has something happened?" The cake is instantly forgotten. Mariam notices his eyes, black and profound as the well in his story, and too bright today.
     "My brother called. Our mother passed away."
     Mariam feels tears rise to her own eyes. "I'm sorry. Jeremiah, I'm sorry. Are you going to Kinshasa?"
     "Can't go. In spite of what they think, I don't have any money."
     She has an idea. "We can pray together. Let's pray. Would you like to? I don't know any Catholic prayers, but you could teach me."
     Jeremiah doesn't need to be pressed. He holds out his hands, palms upward, and intones a chant she cannot understand. "That was Lingala," he says softly. "The prayer my mother always taught the children in her Bible class. Now, in French: Notre père, qui êtes au Cieux..." The words and the melody sound different, but Jeremiah's voice is the same, grave and muted. Mariam doesn't think she could repeat any of it.
     "I know a beautiful prayer in Arabic," she says. Mariam closes her eyes and recites. When she opens them, she sees thin, parallel streams on Jeremiah's dark cheeks.
     "She heard that, my mother did. And God, too," he adds. "Please come another time. I want to give you something in honor of your sister's marriage."

     Nasser wrote a very proper message to Najmeh after the tea-party. His children were so cheerful that evening, the letter says. He hadn't seen Laleh like that in months, playful and demonstrative. "Thank you for the wonderful present you are giving me," he goes on to say. That means Haliyeh, naturally.
     "He's a romantic, dear, and the children are very well behaved," Najmeh tells her daughter, quite tickled. "But you aren't the only lucky one. I quite agree with what he says!"

     A few yards from the greengrocer's, Mariam notices two girls slip through the door to Nirvana, as she thinks of it. She hasn't run into other customers of Jeremiah's, yet she knows he has some. Girls from liberal-minded families, or with eccentric husbands, or, maybe, as her mother would surely say, "floozies." Girls who don't care about their reputations and perhaps have none to protect any more. One of the two has a vivid red bolero over her black manteau. A peroxide lock of hair sneaks past the scarf on the second girl's head. Mariam cannot tell which of the two has a nose stud (perhaps both? Perhaps elsewhere on their bodies?) -- they have already run off. She climbs the steps to Jeremiah's workshop.
     He is beaming this time. "The wedding is soon, right?" he asks Mariam. She nods. "Make your choice." He holds the velvet plaque before Mariam's eyes. "Don't take this kind -- only cut glass -- I want you to have real gold. Yellow or white, which? The only problem is that you may be prettier than the bride."
     "Jeremiah, my mother would kill me."
     "She'll be too busy to pay attention. If you like it, it's yours."
     A thought occurs to Mariam. Of course, she could never detract from Haliyeh's beauty. The idea is absurd. But a piercing... she would share her sister's pain, utterly.
     "I'll do it," she says, surprising herself. "Thank you, Jeremiah. Does it hurt?"
     "Only for a second. It's over right away. I take all the precautions. Antiseptic, sterilized tool, gloves -- you don't have to worry. Just do what I tell you afterward for it to heal up right."
     "Only for a second? " she repeats.
     "You look disappointed. You want it to hurt?"
     "Well, yes, a little, after all. Otherwise, I'm not proving anything."
     "You're a funny girl, Mariam."
     "I'm tired of being a virgin."

     Mariam imagines every reaction her mother might have. She will either faint or scream, she decides. Or else she will tear into Mariam with a scolding such as she's never had before. She tries to steel her nerves for this. It will be like a storm -- bound to be over sooner or later, all the more as Mariam will explain coolly to her mother that it isn't irreversible. Later, she'll be able to insert or remove the nose stud as she wishes.
     Consequently, Mariam isn't ready for what really happens: torrential, unabated sobbing. And the praying, oh, the praying. The prayer chador is snatched from its shelf, but Mother shuts herself in her room and prays in such a loud voice that only Grandmother, who won't wear her hearing-aid, cannot hear her lamentations. "My little daughter, for shame, for shame! Save her, O, all-wise, all-beneficent One. Only You can see what a trial she is to her poor mother."
     Mariam's worry is that Haliyeh will resent the attention drawn away from herself so close to her wedding day, but the elder girl shakes her head in amusement. "You chose the right moment, if you were going to do it," she says. "Mother won't have time to keep this up for too long. As for Grandmother, you're lucky she can't see too well. She may be wanting to squash that pimple on your nose, though."
     They dissolve in laughter, as Mariam dunks her nose in a bowl of warm salt water. Giggling makes her snort, and the water splashes onto their bedroom floor. "If it should get infected, Heaven forbid, at least there'll be a doctor brother-in-law to take care of the wayward teenage sister," Mariam says.
     Haliyeh, looking like an ice-cream sundae in her wedding finery, basks good-naturedly in her guests' enthusiasm. To placate her mother, Mariam has drawn her paisley chiffon scarf partly over her right cheek; if it doesn't cover the object of her disgrace, at least the material casts a shadow that makes it harder to pinpoint. In five minutes, it will be time to go for the nettles. She'll have to run past the Nirvana Jewelry Salon on her way to the dusty weed patch where they grow. Before leaving the house, and despite the September sun, Mariam wraps a black chador over her party clothes. She thinks she has been nearly as brave as Haliyeh, even if her own iconic deflowering threatens consequences of lesser gravity. She catches up the folds of her mantle, so that they cover the lower part of her face -- this is no time to be stopped in the street by whatever guardians of morality may be lingering there, with nothing better to do than decide what is right for others and what is not. All Mariam knows is that Haliyeh, punctured or repaired, is beautiful and good, and that God loves her. She knows also that Jeremiah is beautiful and good, and that his God -- the same one, no? -- loves him. And she knows that the precious spangle embedded in the tender "v" at the fore of her right nostril is very beautiful, and that God is smiling at the sight of it.

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