Read Online The Girl from the Garden by Parnaz Foroutan - Free Book Online

first.” And Rakhel, impatient with the need to breathe fresh air, slides out of the door and runs through the breezeway, beneath the fresco of Moses parting the Red Sea, down the marble steps, across the empty courtyard toward the outer gardens, with Khorsheed at her heels. Thewind catches the fabric of the girls’ chadors, whips it off their heads so that they clutch it at their waists as their hair trails behind them. Their feet fall into the soft earth, the mud splatters against their bare calves, their tumbans rolled up to their knees. Once they round the corner of the house, they stop to breathe. Their cheeks are flushed with the excitement of their escape. Khorsheed bends over her protruding stomach and rests her hands on her knees, breathing heavily. “Ibrahim forbids me to run, Rakhel.”
    “We didn’t run so much.”
    “Yes, but if he finds out. Or worse, if Zolekhah sees us out here, barefoot in the mud?”
    “We’ll be quick, and wash our feet in the pool before returning to the house.” Rakhel looks down at her feet and curls her toes into the earth to feel the cold, smooth mud squeeze between them.
    “I told you to ask the maids to pick some for us, Rakhel. I can’t play with you like this anymore, I need to be much more cautious.”
    “It’s different if we do it.”
    “There is no difference, you’re just being childish.”
    “If we do it, the blessing would be a gift from our hands.”
    The pomegranate trees are heavy with fruit that have skin like worn leather, some already cracked into a smile of ruby teeth, some almost half empty of their seeds, the white combs left hollow by the black crows or the squirrels that dangle from the limbs, stuffing their fat cheeks. Rakhel takes her chador from around her waist, holds two corners, and watchesthe cloth ripple out into the wind as she lowers it to the wet grass. She stands on the tips of her toes and reaches her arms up to the nearest branch. She clutches the fruit with one hand and pulls the branch lower until there is a snap and the branch bounces back, leaving her holding the pomegranate, surprised by the sudden drops of water that fall from the wet leaves onto her face. She tosses the pomegranate into her chador, the fruit bounces and rolls like a red ball. Khorsheed reaches both her arms to lower a branch so Rakhel can pick more fruit. After Rakhel’s arms are full, Khorsheed releases the branch suddenly and the tree rains down on them. Each time, the girls turn their faces up to the drops of water falling from the leaves that land on their eyelids, their lips, their cheeks.
    “My feet are cold, Dada, I’ll get sick.”
    Rakhel looks at Khorsheed, her cheeks red, her jaw trembling, her face damp, strands of her wet, black hair against her forehead, painted across the white of her neck. Khorsheed’s breasts are full and Rakhel notices the insisting bulge of her belly beneath her shirt. Fat drops of rain fall from the gray clouds against their foreheads and arms.
    “Come on,” Rakhel says, gathering the corners of her chador and throwing the bundle over her shoulder, her back bent slightly under the weight of the fruit. They walk across the garden, then peer from the corner of the wall to see if anyone is in the courtyard. “I’ll take the bundle and leave them by the kitchen, you start washing your feet,” Rakhel says and quickly crosses the courtyard.
    Khorsheed walks to the central pool and sits on theledge with her feet up, cups water from the pool and washes her ankles, rubs between her toes with her fingers. Rakhel returns, rolls the bottom of her tumban farther up, and steps her thin legs into the cold pool, scattering the goldfish this way and that, the water up to her knees. She walks around the pool, making waves, clutching her shaliteh high up around her waist, shivering. The water flows over the edge of the pool. Khorsheed jumps up, turns, and with a swoop of her hand against the surface of the water, splashes Rakhel,