After a quiet drive back into the city, we stopped at a famous pastry shop that I had visited a few days before. I had bought little metal boxes of pistachio and coconut baklava which were cut into tiny squares and sprinkled with rosewater.
As we walked inside I could smell honey, lemon and roasted almonds. The men working inside were lifting trays of Yazdi cakes out of the oven. They stopped, brushing flour off their hands and looked very happy to see us.
The kitchen was like a child’s fairyland. Everywhere were trays of tiny doughnuts ready to be rolled in icing sugar, little saffron biscuits flecked with cardamom and raisins and clover shaped cookies made from chickpea flour. They said the magic words: that I wasn’t to leave until I had tasted everything.
Hands and fingers appeared from all directions bearing sweets and cookies and cakes. Each pastry had its own unique texture. One was sticky, one was crumbly, one was covered in date syrup while the other had been rolled in sesame seeds. I tasted and nibbled and grazed until I was unable to move. They brought out glasses of rosewater lemonade and asked Vahid if we’d like to try making pashmak.
The pashmak machine was like a giant metal tarantula. Each leg was tasked with picking up the warm, fluffy, strands of yarn spun from sugar and sesame as they came out of a central orb that melted the ingredients together. As it hummed into action we collected the delicate gauze-like fibres and wove them around our hands, stopping only to place a tiny thread into our mouths and feel it melt on our tongues.
When we were finished we were surrounded by a pastel rainbow of spools of pashmak. Most of it was picked up and carted away to decorate cakes or be sold for weddings. One of the men picked up a few strands of pink pashmak and wound it into a kind of necklace. He lowered it over my head and smiled at me. I blushed and looked in the mirror – it stood out prettily against the background of my grey scarf. As we left the pasty shop, I felt Vahid’s eyes on me. I tried to read his mind but I couldn’t and as we walked through the alleyways behind the shop, we fell into an awkward silence.
The afternoon sun was beginning to drop and the streets were quiet. It was afternoon siesta time and most of the shops were shut and families indoors. I thumbed my little sugar necklace and glanced at Vahid. His face had returned to a scowl and his eyes seemed troubled. He was walking so quickly that I struggled to keep up. Finally I gave up and slowed down, leaving him to walk several paces ahead of me. It took several moments for him to notice that he’d left me behind.
He stopped and turned around. His face looked tense and he looked at me without saying anything. “Why are you rushing?” I asked. “What is wrong with you?”
He took a few steps toward me and stopped. We looked at each other and I started to feel nervous and confused. He took another step closer and I took a small step towards him. He was so close now that I could smell his body. It was a mixture of cologne, sweat, rosewater and sheep wool. He took my sugar necklace between his fingers and lifted it to his lips and kissed it. I could feel his warm breath on my neck and he turned to gaze into my eyes.
He lowered his lips again to my necklace but this time his lips grazed my neck as he tore into the silken strands of sugar that lay against my skin.
My scarf fell to my shoulders and my hair came loose. It was the first time that Vahid had seen me without a scarf. He reached out and touched a few strands of my hair. I struggled to fix my scarf but instead he grabbed my hands and looked at me. “It’s ok,” he said. “It’s safe here.” He looked into my eyes and the tortured expression returned to his face again.
“Can I kiss you?” he asked. He was 25 and I was 31. He was a Muslim virgin and I was a modern female from another world. “Can I kiss you?”
