Scent of Butterflies Read Online Free PDF Page B

“Devil’s Festival.”
    Proudly erect and decked in formal regalia, the Shah faced the tomb of Cyrus the Great and, with a strong voice filled with conviction, proclaimed: “Cyrus, we gather today around the tomb in which you eternally rest to tell you: rest in peace, for we are well awake and we will always be alert in order to preserve your proud legacy.”
    In eight years, the Pahlavi dynasty would be no more.
    That day, still innocent and unaware of the future, I sat next to Parvaneh in the school yard and waited for Ahmad’s soccer game to end. Afterward, we followed him to the water fountain, where he washed his face and dried it with his sleeves. I held out the bottle of Coca-Cola. Full of himself, rooster chest puffed out, certain this was a peace offering and that he had managed to bring Parvaneh to her knees, he gulped down half the concoction. He doubled over spewing and retching from the foul taste, but more so from embarrassment.
    Parvaneh, breathless and flushed, raised my hands and pressed her lips to the back of one, then the other, as if to crown me the empress of the Persian Empire. “You are amazing, Soraya! You’re never scared.”
    My heart darted around like a rabbit in my chest. From fear? From the pleasure of triumph? The reward of admiration? I’m not quite certain.
    What I know is that all through elementary school, the responsibility of confronting bullies who crossed her path fell upon me, even if that meant having to lie to Baba to explain why I sometimes tossed all feminine restraint down the Rostam Gorge and behaved like a fatherless dehati village boy, or acted like a beggar from the boondocks of Samereh. It just felt good. Me, the benevolent keeper of my friend.
    When we were twelve, Parvaneh became more serious and responsible. A bit more defiant. When her spinster aunt—who had moved into her home after Parvaneh’s mother died—was present, Parvaneh no longer cast her eyes down, but looked her aunt straight in the eye and wrapped her arms across her chest as if to protect herself from Tala’s lashing tongue.
    Aunt Tala carried the stale smell of Turkish coffee on her breath and the biting odor of discontent on her ash-gray skin. She resembled a clacking skeleton rather than a woman with flesh on her bones. Her smoke-colored, ankle-length dresses with their winglike sleeves added to her funereal appearance. Contrary to her name, which meant “gold,” her heart was made of cold stone.
    It was around then that Parvaneh began to ask a lot of questions. She wanted to know why a God, who was “Our Father in Heaven,” had allowed her mother to be invaded with a cancer that killed her in less than thirty-two days. And why, soon after, He struck again, storming her father’s brain with petrifying images that rendered him a helpless idiot who whistled sad, outdated tunes, wandering aimlessly in his own home.
    Having no one else to trust with her questions, she brought them to my Baba, who replied that God had his own mysterious ways and that we were too limited in our intelligence to understand. In answer to her dramatic declaration that she would die from grief, he chuckled under his breath and assured her that she would keep breathing and her pulse would continue to beat for a long, long time because it was far more stubborn than she could ever imagine.
    And Madar, always there, always worrying in the periphery of Baba’s world, ready to step in and validate, if he needed validating, would serve Parvaneh a cup of mint tea with rock sugar, pat her on the back of the hand, and offer her one of her restrained smiles. “Listen to Baba, Parvaneh. He is a wise man.”
    Madar did not mention that Baba was also the generous benefactor who paid for Parvaneh’s tuition, uniforms, books, and stationery. But Parvaneh must have guessed because soon she was drafting two different essays on the same subject, outlining the