“Tarragon”—a short story

Grandpa didn’t think growing tarragon was possible. He grew all sorts of other herbs that filled the plastic container in the fridge year-round: basil, dill, parsley, coriander, peppermint, chives, spring onions, chilies, tiny radishes that Grandma turned into little red roses with two quick cuts of her sharp knife. When guests came over, she shaped spring onions into white hyacinths. With all those colors, Grandma’s herb container looked like the Garden of Eden. 

Tarragon was different. It was exotic, hard to find, harder to grow. One spring, Ahmad, a colleague of Grandpa’s, brought him a box of tarragon from the countryside. He tried propagating the cuttings in different pots, applying every farming trick he knew. None of them took. Everyone knew he had a green thumb, but tarragon defeated him. 

After that, he stopped trying. Instead, we bought tarragon from the Friday market. Merchants brought it from the south, near the warfront where Father served and which Grandma added to her Garden of Eden. She loved anything that came from the south, believing it carried Father’s smell. We examined the dark green leaves with awe. Grandpa looked at them with frustration. Grandma always saved a couple of batches of tarragon for the winter. She dried it on a big copper tray and stored it in jam jars, sealing the checkered lids to preserve their magic aroma.

And tarragon did work magic. A tiny amount was enough to turn a mediocre lamb stew sublime. On its own, it smelled divine. It was only later, after everything, that I learned it derived its name from the Greek word for dragon. A green dragon in a pot. Grandma knew its power, only adding a pinch to certain dishes. Tarragon was treated almost like saffron, with dignity and respect. 

When touched, our hands bore its scent for hours. We thought someone ought to make tarragon perfume. We didn’t know if anyone had because we knew little about the world, at least beyond the single television channel our small town received, or the pictures in Grandpa’s darkroom: black-and-white photographs of him in bell-bottom pants, posing at famous landmarks and beside exotic animals.

Until it happened, I hadn’t realized that Tara and I were two different people. We had always run after the same ball, dressed and undressed the same doll, pulled the trigger of the same toy gun. We wore blue, we wore pink. We were a creature with four lungs, breathing in the same air.

We were a creature with four lungs, breathing in the same air.

When southern tarragon arrived from the Friday market, preparing it became a ritual. Grandma spread a floral chador in the middle of the living room. The sun fell in a trapezoid onto the silk carpet, and that is where she sat, carefully stripping each stem. Because of the war, school was closed most of the time. We had to be kept busy, so we sat down and watched as Grandma’s fingers gently moved along the stem until all the lanceolate leaves fell into a sieve. When we did go to school, the radio was on in the principal’s office all the time. When a red alert was broadcast, the alarms went off and classes were evacuated. We pushed each other hard. Had no mercy. Like on the battlefront. They sent us down to the shelter, an ugly bunker dug in the yard, with an entrance behind the handball court. It smelled like feces, was full of cockroaches and rats. We sat there as the jets whistled above. We came out with our heads full of questions, childish but serious. There was a kid in our class whose father was a jet pilot. We asked him lots of questions, too. He knew some answers, but fabricated others.

Grandpa sometimes joined us on the chador. But Grandpa was not good with delicate things, and tarragon was delicate. Hurting the leaves made them go bad too soon, made them rot before all other herbs. Grandpa was good with shovels, with lifting heavy things, with watching the news while keeping his eyes void of all sentiment, with hiding the occasional teardrops that formed in his ever-squinting eyes. 

The other herbs were less elegant. Chives were muddy and dull, leaving our fingers stained green and smelling of onion. Dill was better, because we could eat the pale green buds and the firm stems around the roots. We chewed these secretly as we sat on the chador. If Grandma caught us, she scolded us for not washing them first. Afterward, when we belched, a dilly taste filled our mouths, lovely and disgusting all at once. It lingered for hours, clinging to the resin we chewed instead of the imported chewing gum we rarely got because of the war.

Grandma said too much dill could blind you. She said that about nearly everything. Coriander made us dumb. Cheese was bad for memory. Yogurt with pickles caused vitiligo. Bread was safe. Bread made you big and strong, ready for war. It filled you up for cheap. During the war, every meal was eaten with bread. Cheese with bread, meat with bread, yogurt with bread, Russian salad with bread — Tara’s favorite. Like all things Russian, that salad was an object of desire. Rich people called it salade Olivier, and everyone knew that anything with a French name was luxurious. We ate Olivier salad only at birthday parties (they were luxurious too). Tara loved it so much that she first finished her bread and then ate the salad on its own so the taste would linger in her mouth unspoiled. I always ate the salad first and was left with the bread. Nothing was free during the war. Nothing was easy. Everything had a price and nobody could believe anything. We lived in a world where children could get dumb by eating too much coriander. There were innocent lies like that everywhere. But when the truth is mixed with lies, nobody can trust anything.

Grandma was not to blame for the war. If anyone was, it was the generals, the arms dealers, those who kept a nation in line with the fear of a foreign enemy. Some said it could have ended in the fourth year, but the generals wanted to reach the holy land, to revive the empire, to “fight, fight until all the earth’s evils are wiped out.” The air was thick with all that. All the time, people talked. In taxis, long bread queues, barber shops, and under the “No Political Discussion!” signs that multiplied in public places. 

Grandma was not to blame for the war. If anyone was, it was the generals, the arms dealers, those who kept a nation in line with the fear of a foreign enemy.

Grandma didn’t care about any of that. She didn’t care about the raids, the missiles, the arms trafficking scandals, the frogmen found in a mass grave with tied hands, with all the identity tags that came back wrapped in flags stained with blood. At least, that’s what she said. She had more important things to focus on: a house to manage, tarragon leaves to pick, and answering two grandchildren who asked many questions. She had to pray for her son to come back alive, too. She said she prayed for everybody, but we all knew that everybody was her son.

Asking Grandma and Grandpa about Mother was not encouraged. It always made them uncomfortable, brought about tears. All Tara and I knew was that she went out for a protest and never came back. Grandma said she was in Paradise, where things were far better. But if Mother was so happy in Paradise, why did Grandma cry every time we asked about her?

Tara and I were always asking questions. Grandpa and Grandma divided up the task of answering them. When we wanted to know where babies came from, we were sent to Grandma. She knew how to conceal, to sugarcoat, to euphemize, to make children’s versions of things. For questions about the war, she sent us to Grandpa, even though he had never fought a war in his life. He was just a retired taxi driver, but he lived like a war hero. Living sometimes means fighting a war. We asked him how many Kalashnikovs were needed to destroy the enemy’s tanks. How many Katyusha rocket launchers it took to bring down American-made stealth bombers. 

Grandpa told us that the Americans and the Russians were fighting a cold war. We imagined them fighting in snow, under raids of frozen rain and sleet. In our minds, American soldiers looked like those in the dubbed Rocky and Rambo movies — muscular men with sunglasses and camouflage uniforms. We imagined the Russians as tall, skinny, shadowy men with cunning eyes. We asked Grandpa if the American fighter jets were more efficient than the Russian ones. Grandpa said this did not concern us. He believed our troops fought with their hearts, not with their guns. 

One day, we asked him what happened when a person stepped on a landmine. How did a person explode? What happened to their face, to their legs and intestines? Where did all the flesh and bone go? Grandpa told us about the mules that were sent to the minefields to clear the ground before the troops, but he didn’t know how many pieces a mule was torn into when it stepped on a landmine. 

One day, I asked Grandpa a tough question. 

“How is tarragon grown?” 

For a long time, he had avoided this question. Now, he nodded and asked us to bring him his reading glasses. Every request was a competition between us: to be the first, to be the center of attention, the most loyal. It must have been like that on the front too. Did the troops race each other to go to the minefields? Did the mules?

We handed him the heavy glasses. Grandpa put them on and pulled out the Darjeeling tea box, which he kept in a drawer in the TV cabinet. Embossed on the tin box was an image of an elegant woman entwined with an albino python. A crimson headscarf partially covered her brown hair, her right breast uncovered. I stared at her breasts whenever I could. Seeing it gave me a weird sensation. One day, Grandpa caught me looking. He didn’t say a word. I dropped the box and left the room, my chest tight with shame. The next time I checked, the woman’s breast was covered with duct tape.

Now, he opened the box. Inside were little packages of seeds. Each was wrapped in newspaper, labeled, and tied with a rubber band. Grandpa opened one in front of us. Inside were small round capsules, like chickpeas, only smaller, with a softer surface, hollow and light. They rattled in his palm. He squeezed one between his fingers. The capsule broke with a crack, revealing dark grey seeds. Grandpa put some of the seeds in our sweaty palms. We sniffed them like inquisitive dogs. They were odorless.

“What do you call them, Grandpa?” we asked.

“Esfand. The last month of the year.”

Esfand was used to repel bad omens, to fight the evil eye. It was the stuff Grandma put on a small brazier and moved around to spiritually cleanse the house. It made our eyes water. Esfand was the stuff the neighbors burned when Father returned for the first time. He had walked with a limp, talked with a heaviness, and grown three wrinkles on his forehead in just eight months. 

When Grandma saw Father walking like that, she’d started shaking. Then she burst into tears, cried like a generous cumulonimbus in the spring. Grandpa cried too, he couldn’t help it. It was the first time. Even when Mother died, he hadn’t cried. Everybody thought he was crying because he was happy to see his son alive. But we didn’t think so. It was clear even to us that he was crying out of sadness, out of desperation, out of helplessness. 

To celebrate Father’s return, the army had sent a butcher to sacrifice a lamb for him. It was protocol, a gesture of appreciation. We couldn’t watch. As soon as we saw the shining of the blade amidst the glorifying chanting and singing, we hid behind the wooden power pole, holding hands. The lamb was calm, before and after. According to Grandpa, that was how lambs were: calm in the meadow, calm in the cauldron. Blood gushed down the asphalt, finding its way to the slanted pomegranate tree opposite our house. Looking at the warm stream, we wondered where all the blood at the front went. What fruit it reddened. To this day, I can’t eat pomegranates.

The meat was sent back to the battlefront. At the time, I wondered if slaughtering the lamb was what Father wanted. Hadn’t he seen enough blood? A month later, he left. They said being in war was addictive.

We looked at the tiny dark seeds in our hands.

“But you said tarragon didn’t have seeds?” 

“I wish it were as easy as that, kids.” Grandpa smiled like the wise man he was. We wriggled like earthworms in the sun, couldn’t wait to find out.

“Tarragon is a hybrid plant,” Grandpa said. “Hybrid is a mix of two beings, two plants, two animals, like mules.” 

“Like the mules that tread on landmines?” 

“Yes. They are bred from male donkeys and female horses.” 

Grandpa explained the process, said that turnips were involved. We had no idea what he was saying. What did tarragon have to do with Esfand or turnips?

“To grow tarragon, we need to cut turnips into halves, then hollow each half with a brass spoon,” he said, emphasizing the word brass. “Then we place a few Esfand seeds into each half and bury them. The turnips act like the uterus, the recipient of the seeds.” 

Grandma noticed our confusion and stepped in to clarify. “The turnips are the mother and the Esfand seed the father.” Then she lowered her voice and said, “Rumor has it that soaking Esfand seeds in vinegar results in a stronger crop.”

Grandma went to the kitchen and returned with a couple of turnips, a brass teaspoon, and a sharp kitchen knife. She cut the turnips in half, and together we filled each half with two Esfand seeds. With a half turnip in each of our hands, we headed to the field attached to our backyard. We were so excited we couldn’t think straight. Grandma dug a few holes in the ground. We were about to bury them when Grandpa remembered his Lubitel camera and wanted to capture the great occasion. He asked us to fetch the camera. He sounded like a commander, the type who sends the mules before his troops. 

The alarm was loud and shameless. It came slightly too late. 

Normally, the two of us would have raced each other to the attic. But like the time when I ate all the Olivier salad and was left with the bread, I couldn’t move. The excitement paralyzed me. Tara, always more patient, rushed to the attic herself. She said that we shouldn’t touch anything until she returned. She must have been looking for the camera when the alarm went off. Perhaps she had been bending over the big wooden chest, holding the lid with one hand, rummaging through the contents with the other, her long chestnut hair falling forward, framing both sides of her face. The alarm was loud and shameless. It came slightly too late. We heard the whistle of the jets and then an explosion. Thick smoke bloomed from the front door, the roof, the windows. Shoals of dust. Schools of smoke. Someone screamed and the earth shook. The three of us stood in the orchard with the turnips in our hands, like mules on the edge of a minefield. We could smell the terror: gunpowder, charred plastic, burned wood, roasted flesh.

Tears fell on the turnip halves, on the unsoaked Esfand seeds, like vinegar in the soil. From them would rise dark, lush tarragon, fragrant and stubborn leaves that I could crush between my fingers and breathe in — enough to turn two lungs into four.