deep violet, shaded her eyes with smoky kohl, tainting her lips cherry red and braiding her hair with turquoise beads as if she were queen of Sheba.
Her aunt warned her that if she didnât trim her nails, rinse off her Valentino eyes and vampire lips, no one would ask for her hand and she would shrivel into a spinster, become wrinkled and sour like pickled cucumbers, and end up in New City, a one-penny whore.
Her father, a few gray hairs spiking the top of his head, his once cleft chin puckered like a cockâs wattle, pointed a thick, yellow fingernail at his daughter and smiled one last time before catapulting into eternal silence.
Once we turned fourteen, an age when defiance was no longer tolerated in our community, and Parvaneh still refused to mature and settle down, I decided she was incapable of rising above her teenage mutiny. Born in a sexually repressed world and brought up by an abusive aunt, she was doomed to forever flap her wings against her gated boundaries.
I took it upon myself to free her from her cocoon. Why? I should have abandoned her there in the shallow darkness of her shell. What arrogance could have made me believe that I possessed the power to overcome all hurdles and change her world? Now, looking back, I recognize that I was young and reckless and rode high and proud on the egoistic conceit of an only child, the favorite of a grandmother who was nearly impossible to please and an iron-willed father who had, more often than not, given in to my demands. Yes, that was part of it. But I also longed for the friend Iâd lost. The friend who was there to listen, encourage, praise, defend, and lie for me when necessary.
So that day, fourteen and fearless, I promised Parvaneh that I would encourage Aziz to introduce her to his business partner, Hamid.
Her eyes sparkled against her skin and her dark pupils narrowed like a catâs. Her lashes, exaggerated with midnight-blue mascara, cast spiky shadows on her flushed cheeks. Her small teeth glistened against bloody lips. The scent of the Chanel No. 5 she had splashed on her armpits intensified.
âWill Aziz mind?â she whispered in cautious delight. âIâm sort of embarrassed.â
I imitated an old womanâs warnings. âGet over your embarrassment, my dear girl, and find yourself a husband before your maidenhead shrivels and disappears between your legs.â
She laughed so hard that she almost fell off her chair. âYou sound scarier than Aunt Tala. All right, Soraya, you win.â
âGo easy on the makeup. Men donât like too much.â
Two teardrops sprang to her eyes and slid down her lashes. âNot sure Iâm ready for this. Youâre so brave, Soraya, getting married when you turn fifteen. But me, I donât know.â
Never in my young life had I seen such a sweep of emotions, such a chameleon quality in a person. I admired Parvaneh for her spontaneity, for her vacillating moods, for blushing violently when she, at last, met Hamid, and for having clipped her fingernails short and having the sense not to wear makeup that day.
Yes! Butterfly did marry Hamid, Azizâs partner. Yes! I am to blame. I am the one who, with wide open arms, invited her into our life, mine and my husbandâs.
I tossed lovely Butterfly with her transparent, engulfing wings between Azizâs inviting thighs, left the two of them free to roam the high mountains of my homeland, hike the lush trails by the Darakeh River, drink in the crisp air from the snow-capped peaks of the Alborz, lie under weeping willows, and revel in peach sunsets, while I exiled myself to a terrain as flat and foreign as a strangerâs palm.
chapter 4
Steve Rivers steers the car through the gates of the Bel Air mansion and across a cobblestone driveway flanked by regal maple trees. The driveway leads onto a vast open space carpeted with saffron-colored gravel and bordered on both sides by a double-knot pattern of clipped