Pomegranate Soup: A Novel by Mehran Marsha

Author:Mehran, Marsha [Mehran, Marsha]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2007-12-18T07:00:00+00:00

Wash vegetables and dry well with paper towels. Combine all ingredients in a large bowl. Ladle out the mix into sterilized canning jars. Leave lidded jars in a dry, cool place for a minimum of 1 month.

chapter eight

UNLIKE THE STANDARD pickled cucumbers one finds on supermarket aisles in most Western countries, gentrified and cut into slices or wedges, vegetable torshi comes packed in a variety of sizes, shapes, and colors. On Persian tables or upon the venerable spread of a sofreh, a hand-sewn cloth which requires limber, cross-legged positions from picnickers, torshi is nearly always the first platter served. The most common variety is a combination of fresh vegetables and herbs, pickled in good-quality white wine vinegar, but the list expands to mango chutney, date pickle, eggplant torshi, and fruit chutney, all marinated in all-spice and a pinch or two of salt. Integral to most Persian meals, not only does torshi complement dishes but its briny, vinegary crunch reminds the palate never to take any taste for granted.

Bahar was given the task of preparing the twenty jars of torshi that Marjan had promised the ladies of the Patrician Day Dance committee for their table of charity. Although a great fan of sour cauliflower florets herself, she wasn’t keen on the lasting spray of vinegar that would take several showers to scrub off. Drying the clean vegetables thoroughly, she added them to a large bowl of salt, pepper, cayenne, and the torshi all-spice. After ladling the torshi into six canning jars, she tightened the lids, pumping her powerful forearms with a renewed gush of blood.

Bahar’s muscles had always served her well, especially when she had worked as a nurse in Lewisham’s Green Acres Home for the Newly Retired. Her sturdy arms had pushed many decaying, insubordinate Englishmen back into their bedpans whenever they insisted on showing her their withered willies. Despite her stern hand, though, Bahar’s heart broke every time she witnessed her elderly patients’ sad attempts at virility. It was this very withering away of life, she knew, that was behind the second and less appetizing definition of the word torshi.

In a tradition where fifteen was the average age of marriage and twenty full-blown motherhood, twenty-five was the hallmark for spinsterhood. As a result, many an unmarried Iranian woman had been branded with the dreaded T-word. Of course, in the latter part of the twentieth century, the marriage age in Iran had risen considerably, but the use of torshi to describe a girl who had a certain use-by date, and who was left to dust away on the shelves of love, was still common in gossipy circles. As a teenager, Bahar would never have thought that by the age of twenty-four she would be not only single again but also quite happy to see the vast lonely road before her. The single life was actually quite satisfactory, in her opinion; maybe Layla had her little boyfriend, and Marjan, well Marjan had her planting and cooking and the café and who

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