Free The Good Daughter: A Memoir of My Mother's Hidden Life by Jasmin Darznik Page A

sailor suits that she sewed for him herself. Every few months she sat him down on the floor of the kitchen, placed a small bowl on his head, and then sang to him as she clipped his hair. And as Omid grew from an infant into a toddler, his capers charmed Kobra so far from her cares that for a time she did not seem to have any cares at all.
    One afternoon a portly, wizened woman named Touba Khanoom came to the house to pluck Lili’s eyebrows for the very first time. “She has a good hand for it,” Khanoom explained, and pressed a golden coin into the lady’s palm for good luck. Lili was seated on a chair, facing east, toward Mecca, and her hair was pulled back in a white kerchief. As Ma Mère and several other of Lili’s in-laws-to-be waited with coins clenched between their fists, Touba Khanoom cut a length of thread with her teeth, dipped it into a bowl of rose water, and then, with a great flourish, called out, “In the name of God, the Merciful, the All-Knowing!” At the first pluck, Lili’s aunts let loose the traditional wedding trills—unending waves of “Lililililililili!” that echoed Lili’s name.
    “May there always be weddings in this house!” Touba exclaimed as the women pressed more gold coins into her pockets. “May she give you ten sons!”
    At dawn the next day, two porters came to the house and took away the khoncheh , the two ceremonial wedding offerings. On one silver tray rested thousands of wild rue seeds that had been dyed and arranged into long, flowing arabesques. On the other lay foot-long sheets of saffron-spiced bread. Each of the porters lifted a tray and placed it on his head, straining visibly under the weight.
    The first nuptial ceremony—the aqd konoon —had been scheduled to take place exactly six months before Lili’s thirteenth birthday. Khanoom had insisted that it be held in the traditional fashion, withseparate wedding parties for the men and women. The first night, when the aqd was to be performed, was only for the men, and there would be musicians and a troupe of dancers to entertain them in the garden. The second night, a much less lavish affair in all but the foods to be prepared, would be for the women of the two families. The Khorramis thought this arrangement unspeakably backward but had eventually sent their grudging consent.
    Sohrab, meanwhile, had approved the marriage, but he’d informed Khanoom that he would not be attending the nuptial ceremony. It was generally thought this was on account of “that blue-eyed jinn,” Simin. She had not been invited to Lili’s wedding and had no doubt insisted that Sohrab not attend any event from which she’d been excluded. “Please tell him to come!” Lili had begged Khanoom and her aunts, and though they nodded and smiled, none of them dared press the point with Sohrab.
    On the night of the aqd konoon , Lili scanned the room for her father, sure he would come after all. Then toward the end of the evening she was led to a room with a silk banquette and seated there alone before the sofreh (wedding spread). The mirror shone brilliantly at her feet and the scent of burning wild rue began to fill the air. She could barely make out the words of the agha in the next room where the men had gathered, but when at last Kazem emerged and took a seat beside her she knew the ceremony was over and that her father had not, finally, come to see it.
    Though their formal marriage was still months away, after the aqd konoon the pair became mahram to each other, which meant that Lili could now appear before Kazem without a head scarf. When Kazem came to sit beside her on the banquette that evening, her gaze fell toward the mirror that had been set down in the center of the wedding spread. It was there in the mirror that she saw Kazem removing her veil, and there also that she saw him without his fedora for the very first time.
    Suddenly she knew that she had been right to worry, and she fought back her tears. Though Kazem’s features