Mirror Garden A Memoir

Chapter One The evening sun was melting through the stained-glass windows when my nanny spread the bedding out on the carpets. Nanny was old and, under her scarf, completely bald. I had seen her in the bathhouse, bald as an egg. She was beautiful nonetheless, with white skin and big, deep blue eyes, like the china doll my father had brought my sister all the way from Russia when the czar was still king. My grandfather had fallen in love with Nanny, the other servants whispered, but what could they know? They took turns falling in love with her themselves. But I knew that she loved her cats best of all, and everyone else would have to wait in line. I pulled my quilt a safe distance from my brother Hassan, so he couldn't steal it after wetting his own, and stared at the ceiling to calm my excitement as I waited for Nanny's story to begin. Lines of gold and black traced nightingales and roses on wooden panels of cobalt blue, the color of the night sky. I followed the winding stems of the roses across my wooden sky and counted the nightingales one by one, until Nanny spread her skirts on the carpet beside me and began. "Once upon a time there was, or maybe there wasn't, a girl who was just as big as you are now. She was dark-skinned and not very pretty, and oh! she was trouble, as naughty as a girl could be." "They cut off her head," Hassan decided summarily. "Who's telling this story? No, she kept her head, and a good thing too, because she had to be very clever to get out of all the trouble she got into after she fell down the well." For seven nights I lived with the fear that met the trouble-prone heroine at the bottom of that dark well. Each night I followed her into another of seven dark rooms. Each room lay behind a locked door that needed its own key, and each of the keys was held by a different jinn, or worse: a bear, a giant, a tiger. The tiger was the worst of all. When I could not bear it any longer, I dashed downstairs, across the courtyard, around the pool, taking a shortcut through the flower beds and down the stairs to the toilet. The tiger waited for me to finish and pull up my pants: it crouched on top of the wall at the far end of the courtyard, ready to spring. Its muscles rippled silver in the moonlight, just like the silver circles spreading slowly over the courtyard pool. I stopped in my tracks before risking one terrified step, then another. The tiger waited still, as inscrutable as one of Nanny's cats. The moon itself was its accomplice now, stalking me, moving only when I moved. I bolted for the safety of bed and the promised reward of the story's seventh night, when tigers and bears and jinns dissolved in the glow of a treasure chest spilling jewels. My courageous double grabbed the jewels and escaped through a hole in the side of the mountain, where she was snatched up and carried home, treasure and all, on the glorious wings of the Simorgh, king of the birds. I hid my hard-earned treasure in the basement storeroom next to the kitchen, where so many other treasures were stored. It would hardly be noticed by jealous brothers there. The jars of pickles, quinces in syrup, and petals suspended in jam captured the few dusty rays of underground light, glowing like jewels. There were huge trays of golden baklava and cookies baked in batches big enough to last for months. My mother's precious bowls of deep pink crystal stood by, ready to be filled the moment guests arrived. The storeroom stretched under half the house. The most wonderful spot in the whole room was the floating bed where the bread was kept safe from mice and bugs. A platform as big as a boat hung from the ceiling by four thick wires, a swing beyond imagining. I balanced on the ladder and stepped across space. Swaying on the edge, I surveyed my kingdom. It wHoushmand, Zara is the author of 'Mirror Garden A Memoir', published 2007 under ISBN 9780307266132 and ISBN 0307266133.