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pancakes that, while plain, kept her children’s stomachs from rumbling through a whole day at school. An old housedress became a pleated skirt for Lili and three pairs of knickers for Nader. Clippings from their haircuts became the wig for a hand-sewn doll or the mane for a lion puppet. And at such times Sohrab’s guests rarely left the house without Kobra sending Nader after them to ask for a few tomans . Mostly the gentlemen obliged, though one of them was in the habit of tossing a handful of coins at Nader just for the fun of watching him fish them out of the dirty waterways along Avenue Moniriyeh. Whenever that particular gentleman called, Nader returned from his mission bawling, his leather shoes heavy and dark with joob water and his pants sodden to the knees with it.
    But soon enough Sohrab’s fortunes would be replenished by a good night of gambling and he’d emerge from his room with a smile, sometimes even singing to himself and snapping his fingers as he skipped down the stairs, and once again he’d be gone from the house until late in the evening. It was then that Saeed the driver would reappear, his own smile a little bolder each time he returned.
    Even when Sohrab managed to gamble away all of his savings (and much of his mother’s besides), he’d somehow borrow enough money so that each morning Lili could dress in her dark gray pinafore and take her place among the other girls at the School of Virtue. Modeled on the schools of the French lycée system, this was an institution as stern as both its name and the expressions worn by its two headmistresses, a pair of middle-aged sisters known to the girls as Mistress the Elder and Mistress the Second.
    In the mornings two hundred pupils—all girls—assembled by the gates of the school on Avenue Pahlavi. The ones with the cashmere coats congregated near the front of the line, and the ones with shabby coats or no coats at all stood to the back. Lili’s coat was made of soft gray lambskin, and she always stood toward the middle and kept her eyes trained to the front. When the Mistresses Elder and Second called out good morning, the girls promptly formed a line and then, at the Mistresses’ signal, belted out Iran’s new anthem. “O Iran, jewel-studded land!” the girls cried, and only after this would they be let inside.
    Most everything at the School of Virtue was learned by rote, and questions of any kind were met with sour looks or else a quick rap against the knuckles. Long before they’d mastered the rudiments of reading and writing, the girls began reciting classical poems by heart. Fountain pens in hand and pots of ink at the ready, they proceeded to take pages and pages of Persian dictation. The study of mathematics, geography, and history advanced through similar feats of memorization and willed incuriosity.
    Lili enjoyed nearly all her classes, but one subject, Arabic, proved a perpetual torment. Before starting school she had known it as the language of her grandmother’s prayers and could never read the letters without hearing the sweet tenor and cadence of Khanoom’svoice in her head, but at the School of Virtue Lili was judged not on her memory of these prayers but on her knowledge of their meaning. In this and also in her penmanship Lili was found lacking. Whenever the Arabic instructor reached Lili’s desk, two deep creases sprang up between the teacher’s eyes. She’d bend over Lili’s shoulder, close enough for their breaths to mingle, and proceed to guide Lili’s hand through the letters with her own crushing grip.
    The girls wore gray pinafores with round-collared white blouses. Twice a week they stripped off their uniforms and pulled on knee-length black shorts and marched in formation in the school’s courtyard and performed the calisthenics that the Ministry of Education deemed necessary for their bodies. They were accompanied in their movements by military marches streaming from a gramophone—a marvel achieved by the