A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea Read Online Free PDF

chador, a long loose garment she has worn since giving up fieldwork. It barely conceals a tinting mishap that has left her white hair a purplish brown. Sometimes the old woman Scotch-tapes her face to prevent lines. Her lazy eye searches through her stash of coins secreted away sometimes in the folds of her chador, sometimes in a cloth waistband, and she offers some to Saba, who guards these coins more vigilantly than all the wads of bills from her father.
Khanom Basir, the Evil One and Reza’s mother, says just as often, “Saba, come here . . . alone.” Her thin lips utter unwelcome words while her skinny, angular face scans Saba’s body for signs of womanhood. “Has anything special occurred lately . . . in the hammam or the toilet?” Each time she asks this Saba hates her, because she doesn’t know what Khanom Basir is looking for, and what she might be telling Reza.
The third witch, Khanom Mansoori, the Ancient One, just snores in the corners of Saba’s house, once in a while tossing out some ageold truth about children to the other two women. Unlike Ponneh and Reza, who live on a narrow street below the Hafezi home in a cluster of small houses with handmade curtains of lace and cotton and some basic conveniences (small fridges, kitchen tables, gas ovens), Khanom Omidi, the Sweet One , and Khanom Mansoori, the Ancient One , live in huts made of wood, straw, and clay mixed with chopped rice. Their squat dwellings pick out from under hipped rice-stalk roofs dotting the hills just a short bumpy ride or vigorous walk past the weekly bazaar. Isolated in a wooded area, they let chickens roam near front steps strewn with discarded shoes, and they sell the eggs at the market. At one point over many years, each of them has rolled up her pant legs and stooped in the rice fields—this is how they came to know Agha Hafezi, who chose them as caregivers for his daughters.
To Saba their houses are like pieces of pottery, like art. She loves the comfort of being cocooned in tiny spaces amid thick hanging canopies that separate two musty rooms, or sitting under low ceilings in cozy corners draped with blankets that are heated by coal stoves and oil lamps. In the mornings fresh tea flows from samovars, and four-pane windows opening onto green plains, inviting in the smell of wet grass. She is drawn to the enclave of mothers in hot, cramped kitchens, squatting on tunic-wrapped haunches, building mountains of chicken and garlic skins, eyeing bubbling pots, and squeezing pomegranate juice into cups that Ponneh and Reza pass back and forth, but that Saba is not allowed to touch. Sometimes to spite her father, Saba crawls into their bed mats, intricate hand-sewn throws arranged in all four corners where families sleep together. Their bedding smells like hair oils and henna and flower petals.
To keep Saba out of their homes, Agha Hafezi allows her surrogate mothers to roam free in his house, to use his big Western kitchen and play with Saba in her bedroom, where the bed rises up off the ground and there is a writing desk for her papers.
Now Ponneh seems to be in deep thought on the matter of Khanom Omidi’s secret life. “Well, I know one thing,” she offers. “Omidi has a plastic leg. Once, I saw her take it off and fill it with candy and flower petals so it wouldn’t stink.”
“That’s stupid,” says Reza, who loves the ever-humming, fleshyfaced Khanom Omidi as much as Saba does. “The candy comes from inside her chador.”
How does Reza know about the treasure chador? Khanom Omidi is Saba’s Good Witch—the standin for her missing mother. “No one believes that anymore,” she says. “I checked her leg when she was sleeping and it’s just full of meat.” Her friends give a gratifying laugh. “But the one about Khanom Basir is true. I heard she’s a real witch.”
“You’re lying!” says Reza, ever quick to defend his mother.
The girls look at each other and burst into a fit of giggles. Then come the private jokes