The Space Between Us Read online

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  About the Author

  ZOYA PIRZAD is a renowned Iranian–Armenian writer and novelist. Her debut novel, the international bestseller Things We Left Unsaid (Cheragh-ha ra man khamush mikonam) published by Oneworld in 2012, won numerous awards, including the prestigious Hooshang Golshiri award for Best Novel of the Year, and has been translated into several languages. Her most recent collection of stories, The Bitter Taste of Persimmon, won the prize for Best Foreign Book of 2009 in France. She grew up in Abadan, Iran, and now lives in Yerevan, Armenia.

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  A Oneworld Book

  First published in English in North America, Great Britain & Australia by Oneworld Publications, 2014

  First published by Nashr-e-Markaz as Yek Ruz Mande be Eid Pak, 1998

  English translation rights arranged through agreement with Zulma, France

  Copyright © Nashr-e-Markaz Publishing Company, Tehran, Iran, 1998

  Translation copyright © Amy Motlagh, 2014

  The moral right of Zoya Pirzad to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  All rights reserved

  Copyright under Berne Convention

  A CIP record for this title is available from the British Library

  Hardback ISBN 978-1-85168-997-2

  ebook ISBN 978-1-78074-237-3

  Typesetting and eBook by Tetragon, London

  The characters and events in this novel are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Oneworld Publications

  10 Bloomsbury Street

  London WC1B 3SR

  England

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  CONTENTS

  Part I

  sour cherry stones

  Part II

  seashells

  Part III

  white violets

  Glossary

  Part I

  sour cherry stones

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  MY CHILDHOOD HOME was right next door to both the church and the school. Its courtyard, like all the courtyards in our small coastal town, was full of orange trees. In front of the veranda on the ground floor, there was a small rectangular flower bed where my father planted flowers in the spring and summer, and which overran with rainwater in the fall and winter. The ground floor of the house was an apartment with large, high-ceilinged rooms and wooden columns: in the mornings it was flooded with light from the courtyard, but in the afternoons it was very dark.

  No one lived on the ground floor. Effat, who came once a week to do the laundry, stored her tubs and soap there, and when the weather was rainy she would hang the washing from clothes lines strung between the columns. In there, Mother hid away items that she couldn’t bear to throw away yet: my cradle; my scooter; the bicycle she’d ridden in her own childhood; a wardrobe with two mirrored doors that she said was the only thing left from her mother’s dowry. My father’s hunting gear was down there in one of the rooms, too. Every time my father asked, “Why don’t you rent the downstairs?” my mother would shrug and say, “I don’t have the patience for tenants.”

  Until I started school, I filled my mornings playing downstairs in the abandoned rooms among the drying laundry and things that had no use. In the afternoons, I played upstairs in the sitting room with my toys, or flipped through newspapers and magazines and blackened the holes in the letters with a pencil. My bedroom was next to the sitting room, and before I fell asleep I would listen to the sounds coming from there. On the evenings when we didn’t have guests, the soft shooshing static of Radio Armenia could be heard, or the sound of my parents’ bickering.

  To reach the second floor, we used the narrow wooden stairs that began in the courtyard and led to the upper balcony, which was larger and wider than the veranda below. The windows of the upper floor on one side opened onto the balcony and on the other overlooked the courtyard of the school and church.

  The church was a rectangular gray stone building with six high, narrow windows that I had never seen open. My grandmother said that the church and school had been built by the first Armenian immigrants who settled in our seaside town.

  The school had two floors and a white stone facade. In the middle of every other stone a five-petaled flower was carved. When I was very small, I would pull a chair over to the window, sit with my legs crossed, and watch the comings and goings at the school and church. I could never follow the games the children played during recess: my eyes were fixed on the five-petaled flowers. I thought that when I went to school, I wouldn’t run around excitedly during recess, but rather, handkerchief in hand, I’d clean out the moss that gathered between the petals. I imagined that when I grew up, I’d be taller, and able to reach even the highest flowers on the lower floor. For the flowers on the upper floor, though, I was stumped. One afternoon when we were in second grade, Tahereh and I were playing in the schoolyard, and she said, “I know! We’ll build a very tall ladder. Then we can reach all the flowers.” Then, as if she read my mind, she added, “If you’re scared, you can stay down here and hold the ladder. I’ll go up.”

  The courtyard of the school and church was the only place where Tahereh and I could play together after school. Tahereh never came to our house, maybe because she knew that my father wouldn’t like it. The room that Tahereh shared with her mother and father, on the ground floor of the school, was small and didn’t have enough space for us to play. Also, if my father knew that I’d gone to the janitor’s quarters, he would have thrown a fit, and my mother and I would have been forced to listen to a long and repetitive lecture about class and religion and the differences between people.

  Behind the church there was a graveyard. There was no wall between the graveyard and the courtyard, maybe because there was no need for it. The principal had forbidden the students from going into the graveyard and the word of the principal was, for us, the highest and most daunting of all walls.

  It had been years since anyone had been buried there. The new Armenian cemetery was a few kilometers outside the city, on the road to Tehran. Grandmother said that the last “eternal sleeper” laid to rest in the old graveyard was her childhood friend Anahid, who had caught meningitis and by the time they got her to the doctor…

  Grandmother never spoke directly about death.

  It was on a rainy afternoon at my grandmother’s house, before I’d even started attending school, that I first heard the story of Anahid. Staring at the flames in the cast-iron heater, I imagined my grandmother’s childhood friend and, although I’d never heard her described, I was positive that she must have been a thin, blond girl with a mole on one of her cheeks. For a long time I kept asking my mother and grandmother and aunt, and every other adult around me, “When I turn twelve, will I get meningitis and die?”

  No one was able to persuade me otherwise.

  My mother asked my father angrily, “Why is your mother always talking about that dead person in front of the child?”

  My father defended his mother and as usual it turned into a fight. Meanwhile, I would hide in a corner of the house, crying over my own fated death at the age of twelve. Then one day my grandmother took me in her arms, sat me on her lap, and said, “Listen, Edmond. Anahid got meningitis because she was a girl. Boys never get meningitis.”

  My parents stared open-mouthed at Grandmother, but because I had finally heard what in my opinion was a convincing explanation, I was satisfied, and didn’t fear my death at the age of twelve any longer.

  That year I turned twelve.

  Early one morning, a few days before Easter, I stood on the balcony at the top of the stairs that ran down to the courtyard and ran my hand over the baniste
r. No sliding down today, I thought. It was still wet from last night’s rain. I went down the stairs one by one.

  From the kitchen my mother yelled, “Don’t drag your satchel on the stairs!”

  I slung my school bag over my shoulder, stood on the bottom step, and looked around the courtyard. The trees were in full bloom; a few more days and the town would be filled with the smell of orange blossom. I looked at the garden. It was amazing how high the snapdragons had grown since yesterday! And then suddenly…I closed my eyes and tried to make a wish.

  Mother always said, “Every spring, the first ladybug that you see, close your eyes and make a wish.”

  But I had no other wish except to see the ladybug. I opened my eyes and there it was, making its way along the stalk of a snapdragon. Its red body with the black spots looked so pretty on the pale green stem! I put my finger in its path and it crawled up.

  Mother said, “Once you’ve made a wish, let it go. By Easter, your wish will come true.”

  I thought to myself, I’ll just keep it with me until I make my wish.

  I shrugged my satchel onto the ground, keeping the ladybug in the palm of one hand and covering it with the other, and ran up the wooden stairs two at a time. When I reached the upstairs balcony, I crept past the kitchen, the dining room, then the sitting room, praying that neither Mother nor Father would look up.

  I was sure my father would say, “Stop being a baby!”

  I knew that Mother would have been happy to see the ladybug, but now wasn’t the time. I was going to be late for school.

  In my room, I opened one of the thirty or forty matchboxes that I’d collected and dropped the ladybug into it, whispering, “Stay here until I get back.”

  Just as I got to the top of the stairs, Mother came outside. “What are you doing here? The school bell already rang!”

  I slid down the wet banister, grabbed my bag, and ran.

  I was late.

  The other pupils were already standing in line, reciting the morning prayer. “Our Father, who art in heaven…”

  “…art in heaven,” I recited with the other kids and thanked God that the principal’s eyes were shut and he hadn’t seen me come in late.

  I found a place at the end of the line behind Tahereh. Tahereh’s eyes were closed. Palms clasped together, head bowed, the tip of her nose touching the tops of her fingers.

  “What did you find?” she whispered.

  I dropped my bag on the ground, quickly crossed myself, bowed my head, and recited, “Forgive us our sins…”

  I whispered back, “A ladybug.”

  Tahereh’s eyes sparkled as she turned towards me. “Did you make a wish?”

  The principal announced loudly, “Sixth grade.”

  Our line shuffled out towards the classroom.

  As we made our way up the stairs, I wondered how she knew I’d found something. I wanted to ask, but then I changed my mind. There were now a few other children between Tahereh and me. Anyway, if I asked, she would probably just cross her eyes or pull a funny face and say, “I’m a sorcerer!”

  Our first class was Armenian history. I had studied, so when the teacher called out “Edmond Lazarian,” I felt confident and jumped up to stand at the front of the class.

  The teacher asked, “Which Armenian king was known by the epithet ‘Beloved’?”

  But as soon as I opened my mouth, I forgot the name of the teacher and the lesson and all of the Armenian kings. Instead I remembered that I hadn’t made a hole in the lid of the matchbox and now the ladybug would suffocate and die.

  The teacher said, “I asked, which king of Armenia was known by the epithet ‘Beloved’?”

  From the bench in front of me, Tahereh whispered something.

  With my eyes on Tahereh’s mouth and my thoughts with the ladybug, I repeated what Tahereh had said. “Sultan Hamid the Second*.”

  The children started snickering and the teacher shouted, “Knock it off!”

  When the recess bell rang, Tahereh came over to me as though nothing had happened. “Where did you find it?”

  I put my index finger in my mouth, brought it out, and shook it at the ground. Meaning, I’m not talking to you. Tahereh shrugged and turned around so fast that her two braids hit me in the face.

  During the second recess, I leaned against the wall of the courtyard, gloomy and bored, watching the first-graders play hide and seek. Tahereh was handing out the marked dictation notebooks. I watched her out of the corner of my eye to see if she was coming towards me. I was still upset.

  She came over to me and beamed. “You got an A!”

  I put my finger in my mouth, pulled it out, and this time I shook it twice at the ground. I’m really not talking to you. Tahereh refused to look at me for the rest of the day and when the last bell rang, she rushed out of the classroom before anyone else.

  Angry with myself and feeling ashamed, I started to collect my things. Angry because I had sulked and refused to speak with her; ashamed because I hadn’t tried to meet her halfway. I tried to remember what my father always said: “All a man has is his pride.” I picked up my bag, and then remembered how my mother would snort and say, “Men call their foolishness ‘pride.’”

  I was still trying to decide who was right as I walked out of the classroom when suddenly someone leaped in front of me. “Boo!”

  I nearly jumped out of my skin.

  Tahereh laughed. “Did I scare you?”

  She didn’t even give me a chance to reply. She stamped her foot and said, “For Christ’s sake! Let’s make up.”

  Then she put her hand on my arm and tilted her head. “Please? You’re my only friend.”

  Being Tahereh’s only friend was my dearest wish. In fact, being Tahereh’s friend was the dream of every boy in the school plus the few girls who weren’t jealous of her. I held out my pinky finger. Tahereh put hers out, too, and we locked them together, shook them down three times, and said together, “Peace.”

  Just as I was thinking how nice it was not to feel sad anymore, I remembered the ladybug. I ran.

  At the bottom of the stairs I turned my head and shouted, “This afternoon in the courtyard!”

  Tahereh was standing on the balcony watching me. I ran through the school gates and bumped straight into my father, who was just outside. “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “Hello. Nothing.”

  I tried to nip past him but he grabbed my arm. “We’re going to the barber.”

  I despaired. Now the ladybug would die for sure. I searched for an excuse. “Can I go home and come back?”

  “Why? What for?”

  “Just…something…I want to put my bag in my room.”

  My father opened the door to our courtyard, took my bag, dumped it inside, and said, “Let’s go.”

  I couldn’t bring myself to mention the ladybug. If he knew, he’d immediately go and kill it if it wasn’t dead already. Then he would say, “How many times have I told you not to be such a sissy?” Then he’d blame my mother. “This is your fault. He’s learning all this prissy-boy crap from you.”

  Mr. Reza the barber shaved my head with the number-two setting on his clippers while my father and Mr. Abraham sat on two wobbly wooden chairs and talked.

  Mr. Abraham was my classmate Anush’s father. She was a chubby girl with frizzy hair who was always getting in fights and called Tahereh “Daughter of the Muslim janitor!” We didn’t get along either. Last week, we were playing a game of Duck-Duck-Goose in front of the church during recess when Anush picked a fight with Tahereh. When I defended Tahereh, Anush called out, “Mama’s boy, mama’s boy, you’re in love with the Muslim janitor’s daughter!” While I was still trying to decide how to respond, Tahereh marched over and slapped Anush’s cheek hard. That was when Anush’s nose started to bleed.

  The principal and all the teachers rushed outside. One of the teachers pressed a damp handkerchief to Anush’s forehead and the principal asked what had happened. Anush, sobb
ing and screaming, shouted that Tahereh had hit her. The principal came over to Tahereh, who clasped her hands behind her back, bent her head, and with the toe of her shoe kicked the sand in the courtyard back and forth. However much the principal and teachers demanded that she tell them why she had hit Anush, she wouldn’t say a word. That day, for the first time, the principal punished Tahereh. It was such an astonishing event that everyone forgot what the original offense had been.

  Now Mr. Abraham was whispering something in my father’s ear. I could see them in the mirror. Suddenly I was terrified. Had Anush told her father? Was he telling my father the whole story now?

  When my father chuckled softly, I let out a sigh of relief. He didn’t know. Still laughing, he put a hand on Anush’s father’s knee. “Come on! Tell the truth.”

  Mr. Abraham laughed. “Would I lie to you? Besides, there was a witness.”

  “Who?” my father asked. Anush’s father gestured with his left hand.

  To the left of the barbershop, just across from the school and the church and our house, was Mrs. Grigorian’s sherbet* shop. She lived in the flat above her shop and was a close friend of my grandmother’s.

  Mr. Reza glanced at his apprentice, who was sweeping the sidewalk in front of the barbershop, and yelled at him in Gilaki.*

  My father said, “But the shop isn’t open at night.”

  “She saw it from the upstairs window.”

  “What did the janitor’s wife say?”

  “First she cried, then she said, ‘Shame on you, you’re old enough to be my father.’”

  “What did Mrs. Grigorian say?”

  “She said, ‘I spit on you! You’re old enough to be my father, too!’”

  My father and Mr. Abraham started to snort and laugh, slapping their knees. My father, chuckling, said, “So, Simonian is still at it…”

  Mr. Reza untied the big white cape from around my neck.

  My father put a bill in Mr. Reza’s hand and turned to me. “You go home. Tell your mother I’ll be back late tonight.”