Read Brides of Blood for Free Online Page A

meters.
    “Body found on 3400 block of Saltanatabad Avenue, Shemiran, approximately five A.M. , August twenty-first. Time of death, from eight to twelve hours. Gunshot wound of the right mastoid bone. The bone shattered but not swollen. A black hole, eight millimeters in diameter, rimmed by abraded skin with powder tattoos in a radius of seven centimeters. Body was found by the Pasdars and cleansed with acetone prior to examination. Body pale in color. Rigor mortis apparent in the limbs, and …” Baghai manipulated the head, a chiropractic adjustment. “Neck muscles.
    “Deceased’s hair is black and straight. Eyelashes black and mascaraed. Pupils round; irises dark brown. There is a purplish swelling around the left eye, and scabs approximately nine centimeters long and one half centimeter wide across the left cheek to the edge of the upper lip. Slight swelling on the left side of the jaw.”
    Darius noticed that outside the lace corset the breasts were flaccid, the colorless nipples inverted. Baghai dictated similar observations to the attendant.
    “… No surgical scars.” Baghai placed his hand on the flat, fishy stomach. “Pubis clean-shaven. Subdural hematoma approximately three centimeters in diameter on the upper right thigh, and …” He spread the legs indecently, and readjusted the light. “My God, this girl has been infibulated.” With a speculum he opened her. “In a lifetime I thought I had seen everything, but this—”
    The voice was not Baghai’s. Baghai had no feelings. When a cluster bomb had crashed into a Rey kindergarten during the war with Iraq, Baghai by himself had autopsied the mangled remains of thirty-seven children, and then gone out to a fine Firdowsi Avenue restaurant to explain his findings to military intelligence.
    “This woman may well have been Arab,” the imposter said. “I pray she is not Iranian, that we haven’t come to this.”
    Darius stared at the coroner.
    “You’re the expert on Arab women. Do I have to explain?”
    “An amateur expert,” Darius said. “They’re a hobby. Once were.”
    “This is not for amateurs.” Again the voice of dispassion. “Among our coreligionists on the Arabian peninsula, it is not unknown for the external genitalia of female children to be surgically removed. The rationale is that a woman will have no interest in engaging in illicit sex when she is incapable of taking pleasure from it. In West Africa, there are tribes that perform female circumcision because they believe the clitoris is a dangerous organ that makes men insane. This much, at least—” Baghai smiled halfheartedly, “is accurate.”
    “That’s what was done to her?”
    “And more. During infibulation, after the exterior genitals are removed, the legs are bound together for several weeks to prevent the scar tissue from being torn apart. The vulva is sealed; and a splinter of wood placed in the wound to allow for elimination. The vulva remains closed until it is cut again, or forced open. Infibulation permits virginity to be proven before the brideprice is paid. Our Arab cousins are obsessed with all this.”
    “At her age the scar is still intact?”
    “There was no scar,” Baghai said. “The operation was performed no more than two weeks ago, and the stitches ripped out before the wound healed. For a child, a baby, it would be torture. In a woman the agony must be indescribable. Why she would submit is beyond my understanding.”
    “There was a gun at her head last night. Probably it wasn’t the first time.”
    Baghai put down his instruments. He attached a flash to an old Japanese box camera, and tunneled between the girl’s knees.
    “The coroner’s office maintains a black museum,” he said. “The record of this case will have a special place. If you would like prints for your friends at the Komiteh and Pasdar—”
    Darius was blinded by the flash. “Don’t give them ideas.”
    He was in the viewing room, watching the frozen parade on the