Persian Pearl Tulip: In the Heart of Summer

By Rafic Daud

Jan Demir is a young, highly ambitious partner at LCI, Inc., an investment-planning firm he helped found, along with two other startups to his name. His stellar reputation extends beyond Portugal, where his family has lived for several generations. He is also a womanizer, and his immature, jet-set lifestyle matches his rapid rise. When his business partner and mentor, Pascoal, dispatches him to Tehran, Iran, he successfully closes the deal with a group of Iranian businesspeople, with whom LCR has been negotiating despite the threat of economic sanctions against the country. While in Tehran, the last thing on his mind is to meet the girl of his dreams. But the president of the company with which LCR has just partnered invites him to a private party at his residence. Jan makes a fool of himself on the dance floor and almost misses his chance to meet Golnaz before she utters a single word to him. They fall in love and proceed to turn their lives upside down, traveling back and forth between Lisbon and London, where Golnaz resides. Jan uses his old charms and tries hard to give her a good time. Only, she is not one of his old girlfriends. Old attitudes are hard to shed; his end up pushing her away. Though a skeptic by nature, he finds solace in the Great Persian poet, Hafez, whose poem appears to predict a bright future for them. She begs to differ. But Jan also has a secret weapon, and prepares a special gift for her. The opportunity to offer it fails to transpire. Yet, somehow he knows they will be together. No one can predict the future, not even Hafez!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris UK
• Release date: Jan 9, 2012
• ISBN: 9781469144245

Rafic Daud

Rafic Daud, is a successful international entrepreneur and a partner/senior executive at Daud & Daud, a real estate and financial-investments firm. He defines, designs and implements strategy for new investment funds. He has helped turn around the fortunes of Marionnaud Parfumeries and increased sales to double-digit percentages for other companies he has worked for in the past. He loves to travel around the world, both for business and for learning pleasure. A polyglot, he speaks seven languages. Rafic holds an Executive MBA at the Cass Business School (2010, London, UK); and a Master of Economics (2002, Lisbon, Portugal) at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa. He is also a two-time national junior chess champion.

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Copyright © 2012 by Rafic Daud.

Library of Congress Control Number:       2011963627

ISBN:         Hardcover                               978-1-4691-4423-8

                   Softcover                                 978-1-4691-4422-1

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4691-4424-5

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Xlibris

0-800-644-6988

www.xlibrispublishing.co.uk

302868

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

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- 2 -

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Acknowledgments

This novel was written in a dizzyingly short time. Though fictional, it is partly rooted in the most romantic, hopeful, insightful, depressing period of my life, one which ended as mysteriously as it began—all told, two and a half years. But it rose again, once, like a Phoenix…

In that brief instant, sadly, my father passed away. I will always treasure his intelligence and wisdom. My debt of gratitude to him is incalculable, and his contribution to this story—as indirect as it has been—is undeniable. I hope the echo of my words shall find you wherever you are. I am proud of carrying our name.

Several other people have contributed to this tale, in one way or another. I wish to express profound gratitude to:

Anthony F. Shaker, without whose exquisite command of the English language, this novel would never have been written.

Sepideh Radfar, for opening the door for me to an amazing culture and teaching me so much about life. Simine, thank you for helping me see the world through the eyes of a child once again.

Alexandra Madureira, for her unflagging support in my most trying hours during this entire endeavor.

Tiago Costa, twenty two times, thanks!!!

Many friends have been present during this journey: Susan, Egi, Massimo, Anqa, Noreen, Marisa, Pedro, Filipa, Manuela, Gilberto Gaspar, Alia, Fatima, Sayeeda, Rui, Ricardo, Alex, Vasco (Newlook), Clara and others—thank you all.

Finally, to my mother. She may not be fully aware of my journey, but she has never been absent from it; nor will she be absent, for that matter, from anything I will do during my brief worldly existence.

 - 1 -

The first object to which the old man’s eyes opened up, like every morning, was the solitary half-century-year-old painting hanging on the opposite wall of their bedroom. Next to it, a ray of faint, early spring sunlight lanced the air from a hidden cranny in the clouds, warming the pillow’s flapped extremity and the seam of the bed sheet, and goading the Persian rug lying next to their bed to display its finest tones.

Still in a slumber, he shifted his eyes slightly to the side—he knew better than to look straight at the image—and then toward the dormant figure of his wife. Breathing hard next to him on the bed, she gave a listless stir, as if in response to something someone might have said waywardly at dinner. She often did that closer to the wee hours of the morning, depending on her condition the previous day. Her eyeballs rolled and tumbled behind their lids; breathing accelerated and, on occasion, her limbs mimicked the wide flutter of a monarch butterfly. All this usually occurred in short cycles repeated again and again until the last rasp of breath escaping her chest roused her to consciousness.

Defiantly, the old man tried once more to home in, one-eyed, on the fiery golden hair of the young woman in the painting. But it remained foggy from moisture and he promptly gave up. Luckily, he still had his weaker eye—the dreamy one—by which to remember her and the swaddle of blossoms surrounding her figure. The blossoms flamed red, blue and orange all around; thick hues of emerald and green-aqua defined the roseleaves, and from behind, slightly to her left, burst the Persian Pearl Tulip of proverbs in an elegant delicate display of buttercup-yellow at the base and magenta ascending from its petals. Incredibly pleasing to look at!

A man’s heart had begotten it, all because of a woman.

A groggy tearful rolled down his cheek when he squinted harder at this mental apparition. It glinted the orbits beneath his cataract eyes and melted the dried-up flecks that had accumulated overnight in the corners, until he nearly dozed off again.

Slowly, though, awareness returned. It cleared his sight and brought with it an old Persian adage that taunted him fifty years on. He regretted not inserting it on his gift card: A red tulip sprouts every time a young soldier dies a patriot. The dying gasp of this patriotic soldier’s must have reached all the way to England, and England had to have married the East, because East and West had been fighting and feting each other for eons. The painting depicted a long Tudor Rose in elegant ascent from the female figure’s flank. Unmistakably, irrevocably English, this rose invoked the ghost of a certain Henry Tudor, who famously seized the Crown of England and ended the War of the Roses between the House of Lancaster and the House of York. His marriage effectively wedded the White Rose of the Lancasters to the Yorks’ Red Rose, thereby producing the new Rose emblem of the House of Tudor, now part of Britain’s heraldic tradition.

The angelic face, the comeliest feature in the painting, was in every sense of the word a lifelong emblem to the old man. And it reminded him of a Buddha statue. Not at half-mast with the eyelids half-closed, and without the protruding ears or the exaggerated, upward-curving eyebrows; nor the hair-thin lips or the hair bun pointing upward à la bhumisparsa mudra. Instead, he left her eyes completely shut, as if she had swallowed the whole earth, gone blind, and then had to unchain herself of worldly attachments just to be able to see again.

The symbolism had proved spot on, over the years, though neither friend nor family could quite agree on the correct interpretation. Separating the meaning from the artistic creation was no mean task. But shutting one’s eyes in order to see again, which was what he claimed the painting to depict—how excruciatingly boring could that be? Why should anyone care about worldly attachments, or that too many of them might, possibly, distort their perception of reality? But this was pretty much the general mindset, judging from their reactions. Most people preferred their life to hum along at a familiar clip to pondering the riddle of existence.

It made no difference to the old man; he and his ailing wife had already found their answer. This morning the painting belonged to both of them.

The old man carefully lifted his torso a few inches up against the headboard. As if by their own volition, his eyes wandered some then flitted back to the blind spot in the center of his vision as he faced the image. Some things in life simply couldn’t be helped. Unfortunately, the view failed to improve, and he let it be once and for all. It wasn’t like him to give up so easily. Younger he would have tried and tried till his last breath, in the belief that he possessed perfect vision for such a task!

That was all behind them now, thank goodness. They had built a life for themselves that was the envy of all. Their kids were grown up and having their own kids. Just the bedroom, he thought—while making a more determined effort to take in the view—represented their life with the elegance of an Expressionist tableau.

Because Baba- bozorg dearly loved art!

In fact, he regarded his whole life as a work of art. Only, good art sometimes came in the form of a riddle inside a riddle. Art had to be opaque in this sense, at least to some degree. No one would be able to make out color and texture otherwise. Nothing at all would be visible. The more smudges on a green bough, therefore, the brighter the shimmer dancing on a lake’s surface, the darker the menace of the stormy doom, and the deeper the artist can reach inside the beholder’s soul.

However, the old man—Baba- bozorg , as his children and grandchildren called him—insisted on bequeathing this art piece unfinished to progeny, exactly the way he had presented it more than fifty years ago. After all, his own life was and remains a work in progress, a story bristling with a thousand twists and turns. All the bad in it was now dead and buried, and in the winter of their life no desire remained in him to ask for what he had not yet received or deserved.

At your age, dear, desire may be an exaggeration, his wife liked to tease him, and there was no reason why her lips should not pronounce it again this morning. He would welcome it, because even a criticism would rub off on him like a balm on the spirit.

But he knew too well she would wake up as usual, her mind a little dimmer than yesterday, thirsty as hell, undecided about whether to surrender or to defy the law of gravity. Every breath counted. Any sane person would have considered her condition a burden too heavy for a couple to bear. But as withered as their bodies have grown, love shone brighter than still. To the old man, everything in life was a blessing, confirmed and celebrated by the image in the painting.

On the other hand, there were those—not a trifling number—who bore witness more to a man transfixed by a measly old wall painting, plain and simple. Not a pithy Shakespearean line, but an oil painting! To them it was unbecoming of his stature and vast talents; never mind that Mother shared his sentiments. They, of course, were not privy to the whole picture. Only his former business mentor and best friend was.

The absent glare Pascoal wore the day he set eyes on the painting for the first time, twenty years ago, was etched in the old man’s memory. A few years after retirement, the old man had brought the art piece to the office for a private showing after a luncheon meeting the same day with an Australian client. Pascoal had made an unforgettable observation, which he repeated a short week before his passing fifteen years ago.

What you love more than art itself, my old and dear friend, is talking to your grandkids about it, he said to him. Pascoal was seventy-four years old at the time; you couldn’t get more old guard than that—his generation still used expressions like computer and infernal machine for all fast-humming handheld devices.

I should have called this painting ‘Birth Pangs of a Painting’.

Why do you say this?

I still can’t understand how my life all came together… and is coming together, for that matter, replied his business partner.

Pascoal let out a knowing chuckle, glad to see him brimming with hope in the twilight of his years. It’s always ongoing with you, isn’t it?

Love is born, but does it ever get settled?

"Nothing gets settled with love. Or without it, for that matter. But you have a special knack, my friend. Some people might describe what you’ve gone through as a dog of a life."

What others thought hardly bothered the old man, because he knew he’d been handed the most precious gift anyone could ask for. He had never lost sight of this fact. He had a whole lifetime to offer as proof.

Tell me. How do you express thanks when your constant urge is to shed a respectful tear? he mused.

The old man still remembered Pascola’s rather unsympathetic reply: You don’t look like someone on the verge of crying.

*     *     *

His biggest fan was his eldest daughter, nine-year-old at the time and a bona fide art critic.

Now that’s what I call art! she once complimented him for the painting, as he crouched under the kitchen sink for repairs. It sounded comically like a moniker one might throw at another: You are a piece of work!

The unintended double-entendre broadened his bashful smile and gladdened his heart. Daddy, I want to be just like you and Mom, she told him, raising her voice a pitch higher than normal to get her father’s attention.

Depends, he exhaled.

Disappointment washed over her face. What do you mean ‘depends’?

Are you willing to do what you have to in order to get there?

You know I am. Besides, Daddy, you can teach me all you want—

Uh-uh, you can’t be both a pupil and free as a bird, sweetie, he cut her off, wagging his index for emphasis.

I can to! And you can’t stop me! she drew her line, as gently as she could but without success.

He looked into her eyes and, deciding to play along, assured her she was right on that score. It’s the only thing in the whole universe I won’t force on you, even if I wanted to.

Which means?

All right, all right… which means I won’t— he stumbled.

Won’t? she giggled.

Don’t push your luck, kiddo, he replied, and went on to become the proud recipient of a humungous kiss right smack on the cheek.

Daddy?

Yes, love?

When I have my own family, how do you want my kids to call you?

"Why, Baba- bozorg, of course"—granddaddy in Farsi.

*     *     *

A few minutes after rising, he stepped into a beam of sunlight in the kitchen that was illuminating the glass-pane pantry door and a oblong Venetian table made from oak that sat in the middle of the room.

Along the way he plucked a freshly cut tulip from the ornate vase posing on the island counter and placed it aside. Then, he grabbed the dry skillet he had scrubbed the night before, cautiously bent over and pulled open a large drawer close to the floor. He placed it inside.

Her breakfast consisted of croissants, white cheese and Iranian-style jam, or marabbeh, which her mother used to send them by the truckload ages ago, it seemed. His wife could handle small portions of cheese only if accompanied by warm tea, which her parched lips sipped ravenously every morning, when dehydration shriveled her body to its absolute limits.

He flung open the door of the fridge and took out the cheese, together with a few extras he knew she liked. The kettle was already on the burner; he switched on the power. Next, he turned to cube the cheese before placing it on the china inside the tray. While waiting for the water to boil he sat himself at the table and pressed one more button.

Instantly the electronic tablet glowed to life. With his finger a few centimeters from the screen he scrolled down to a personal letter he had begun composing. Most of what he wanted to say was already penned down—with a lead pencil and on imitation paper, before he read out the contents to the infernal machine before him. This morning, hurrying to finish his missal, he decided to set his magic fingers to the screen.

Until his mind went quickly blank.

Distracted, he let his fingers caress the rough texture of the imitation paper lying next to him on the table. Who ever heard of a husband and wife writing each other letters, anyway?

The kettle throbbed to a boil.

Nobody could deny them the right to correspond to each other. They had been doing it for fifty years! It was part of who they were.

He rose from his chair to pour the steaming water into the teapot, after which he rearranged the tray complete with a tulip in a flute cup, as if to mark her birthday. His reply to her last letter would have to wait a few more minutes.

Just before he carried the tray his ailing wife hobbled into the kitchen. Her eyes immediately fell upon the abandoned screen.

How’s she doing? she inquired.

Good. How’s your morning, love.

She had a long life, you know?

I know.

Her life couldn’t have been better. I hope you know that, too. His head popped up brusquely, but he didn’t answer right away. Then, And I hold you responsible for it. She feels understood. She thinks she has been loved exactly the way she deserves. I have no idea how that boyfriend of hers ever pulled it off with her. Do you? she said.

He maintained his gaze on her, as morning tears formed in the corners of his eyes.

She was finally coming out of this latest bout. Her illness had seriously damaged her memory, to a point where… He would give anything to forget how long her mind had been gone during this latest bout. Life dealt a single hand; one simply had to make the best of it.

His wife was vanishing before his eyes. Yet, there he was driveling clichés like a man who’d never lived a day in his life. It was all so unreal sometimes. He should have been emotionally immunized by now. He should have been immune three months into their relationship, back in 2004, when she had disappeared from his life, almost destroying him.

The comparison with the past teased a loving chuckle out of him, but he had little strength to laugh the pain out of his system—run it right out!

Wiping a swell of tears on the other side of his face, he said, I was going to bring you your pills a little later. Running kind of late this morning, I’m afraid.

She watched him count the capsules on the counter, then push them with the cup of one hand and guide them into their proper slots with the other. And what are you so giggly about this fine morning? she interrogated him.

Us, he said, and cleared his throat.

She shuffled over to him and, without warning, gave him a light slap on the arm, brush-like, as if to tar-and-feather him for an indiscretion. After that she paced herself toward the kitchen table, careful not to overexert herself. When her hand landed on the top of a chair’s back, he hurried over and adjusted it exactly to the position she liked best.

And ‘us’ is funny to you, silly? she mumbled, still unable to kill her own feeble smile.

He stifled another titter. Don’t you think we’re a funny couple?

Yes, but that’s besides the point.

What point is that?

She appeared to chase after a fleeting thought then mumbled something to herself. Empty-handed, she replied, That you’re acting silly again, silly, she teased. Despite the jocularity, her voice had a stern monotony, its timber grainy, subdued and almost otherworldly. He expected her to sound even less like herself as the day progressed.

I guess I can’t help it.

"Thank you!"

For being myself? Sorry, I’m being ‘clever’ again.

I love you, Jan, she softly said. There was an odd spark in her eyes, which looked on and touched him like a cool runnel on a hot day. Her expression of love gave him the sudden urge to shout out: Let’s get away from this place! Let’s go to a beach! But her sights had already migrated to a distant point beyond the glass of the kitchen window.

He watched her breathe heavily just to catch her breath. I have a suggestion, he said.

She blew air out of her lungs. Shoot.

Why don’t we—you and I…

I have a better idea, she said impatiently. Stop yammering about it and just send me to the Madeira Islands—pausing to let more oxygen into her lungs—I can always call for you later. It’s nice there.

"You’ve never been there. I told you it was nice!" It was also where her parents had spent their honeymoon.

Told me what?

He’d been waiting weeks for her humor to return, so he almost cracked a joke of his own, until he realized she wasn’t trying to humor him. That it’s nice, he reminded her.

What’s nice?

The Madeira Islands, love… and here I am the silly one! I should send you back to England ‘to see the Queen’, he tried harder to camouflage her lapse.

Why? So you can start sending me those devilish pastries of yours again?

They softened you up before the final conquest, you have to admit—

Won’t happen a second time, she assured him, "let me tell you that, lover boy."

I’ll just have to find new siege equipment.

Do you remember? she asked cryptically. Everything, he answered her in his soul. The sun rose ineluctably above the horizon behind them. It wasn’t always like this. Do you really remember, Jan?

 - 2 -

If in my weak conceit (for selfe disport),

The world I sample to a Tennis-court,

Where fate and fortune daily meet to play,

I doe conceive, I doe not much misse-say.

All manner