A Handbook to Luck Read Online Free PDF

with their deceitful funnels. Lilies of the valley were excitable girls with an annoying tendency to swoon. Yesterday Leila had learned the word
virgin
from Yasmine, who’d heard it from an older cousin. It was curious to her that people could be defined as much by what they were as by what they weren’t.
    Her brother slept all day long. Not even the gusting winds woke him. Hosein was four years older and for most of their growing up had shown no interest in her. He hadn’t been unkind, just indifferent. Mostly Leila had watched him from afar, as if he were a god. Since his illness, Hosein spoke to her more often, bestowing small compliments: the becoming blue of her blouse; her glossy hair pulled back in a single braid. His attentions pleased Leila, but they also made her uneasy.
    Earlier today, Leila had brought him a bit of lavash and mint tea but Hosein wanted only sugar cubes to suck on. He said it was the last thing left he could really taste.
    During Ramezan, Hosein had been exempt from fasting on account of his illness. He couldn’t eat much without vomiting, anyway. Yet the scent of his meager portions of lamb and rice drove everyone mad with hunger and envy. Each day he drenched his bed with sweat, growing thin as a stalk of wheat. He missed the entire school year and wouldn’t be returning to Switzerland to finish his studies.
    Over Christmas, the doctors in London diagnosed Hosein with a rare form of leukemia. They prescribed their strongest painkillers and gave him four or five months to live. Out of desperation, Baba tried giving him experimental drugs. At first Hosein improved but then the treatments only made him sicker. By the time Baba turned for help to his superstitious sister, Aunt Parvin (who recommended an “egg breaker” to find out who’d cursed him), Leila knew her brother would die. No amount of medicine, or prayer, or exorcism would cure him.
    Nobody in the family admitted that Hosein was dying, but nobody denied it anymore either. Leila wondered what it would be like to be dead. Was it a permanent silence, where nothing, not a leaf or the slightest breeze, ever stirred?
    Next year she would leave for Switzerland to attend Hosein’s old boarding school on the shores of Lake Geneva. She would receive a generous monthly allowance and perfect her English and French (she’d attended the trilingual International Academy since kindergarten). Children from the world’s finest families were accepted to the Swiss school, Maman told her, and Leila would make many important friends. Eventually she would go to college in America, as Hosein would have done. But first, Maman insisted, Leila would need to have her nose fixed. (“We’ll just have that nasty Rezvani bump shaved off and bring in the tip a little…”)
    Leila entered the kitchen, rousing the cook from her nap. “Maman wants lemonade for the Englishman,” she said.
    â€œBesm-Allah-o-Rahman-e-Rahim,”
Nasrin recited automatically as she sliced and juiced ten lemons. She looked continually weary, as if her very existence burdened her. Around her, the copper pots gleamed.
    Leila found it irritating that Nasrin quoted the Koran for the most mundane of tasks. Polishing the marble floors and beating the day’s dust from the rugs called for longer recitations. Nasrin put cookies and pistachios in gold-rimmed dishes and arranged them on a tray with the fresh lemonade. She wanted to deliver the refreshments herself but Leila insisted on carrying the tray.
    â€œSilly girl, what took you so long?” Maman scolded her in English.
    Leila watched Mr. Fifield pour gin from a silver flask into his lemonade. He offered some to her mother and she accepted, giggling. This would likely go on all afternoon. The Englishman’s forehead was blotchy where his sunburned skin was peeling. Behind them, the sky spread its thick haze.
    Leila wondered if the changes in the garden were confusing to