If, perchance, you are one of my beleaguered faithful readers, I have one thing to say to you: thank you, you wonderfully patient saints. It is with no small amount of personal chagrin I look back on the updating history for this story. Let's just say—LIFE. The good news is, if you're reading this, the Sum of Earthly Happiness is complete, a bit edited, and somewhat overhauled. Whether you choose to pick up where you left off or start from the beginning to catch all of the little shifts and changes, I hope you enjoy the read! (though, I am always open to constructive criticism. Let's face it, I'm not much of a line editor.)

New material starts, I believe, on Chapter 37. I will be posting somewhat slowly so that new readers might catch up.

-A

The Sultan's crown, with priceless jewels set,
Encircles fear of death and constant dread
It is a head-dress much desired—and yet
Art sure 'tis worth the danger to the head?
-Hafez

My Dear Shadi,

I must admit to being quite surprised by your last letter. You have never before shown much of an interest in my life prior coming to my Europe—to be frank, you have never shown much interest in my life after coming to Europe either. Of course, I understand this. You are young and beautiful, educated and cosmopolitan, and above all, staring straight into the future. Why would a woman such as you care for the strange past of an old savage like me?

Do not believe that I am being snide. I do not flatter myself in believing that I am interesting, though I have seen interesting things and known interesting people. But how such antiquated matters would be of interest to you—knowing you as I do— rather baffles me. Your reasons are your own, I suppose, and it hardly matters if you choose to make them known to me. You have asked for a record of my personal history, and I shall give it to you. (I wonder if you are already regretting your request? No, probably not. You've never given countenance to regrets, and in that respect, we are alike.)

My record will be accurately given, but I dare not call it 'proper,' as you might view propriety. I am no longer accustomed to staying my pen or my tongue. For all that, I do beg your pardon if, somewhere in the following series of letters, I somehow offend you. It is not my intention. But I believe in truth for its own sake, even when the truth is not as beautiful as we might desire it to be.

Already I digress! I cannot quite figure where to begin. Coming to Paris is far too late for in the story to start—I was nearly forty by that time. My second marriage— the quiet years of my widowhood—my arrival to that amaranthine court of Mazandaran— all seem like too late a chapter to start the story. Of course, it strikes me as patently self-indulgent to start with something like "on a dark autumn morning, my mother bore me…"

I therefore suppose that the best place to start would be when Feridoon came to my father's house, seeking a wife.

You cannot imagine quite the stir this made in our lives. Feridoon was a blood relative of my mother, and that he sought for a bride within the family was not the least bit strange in of itself. However, he was also a high official in the Shah's court, a man of means. With his position and fortune, he could have easily made an alliance with any number of noble families in Tehran. Or, if keeping the fortune within the family was especially important to him, he had other, more cosmopolitan cousins to choose from. His bachelorhood was peculiar, though a wealthy man may be allowed his peculiarities. But that he was coming to our home and made no secret of his matrimonial motives was so far beyond peculiar so as to be rendered incredible.

I have no desire to cast my story in an overly romantic light, as if my family were in Cendrillon rags. My father was a landowner in Ghazvin and in possession of a sizable cotton plantation that easily supported our family, but Feridoon—Feridoon was something apart. My father could not help but feel the imbalance.

Nonetheless, he was receptive to Feridoon's overtures. How could he refuse? Before my poor mother died, she had given my father five daughters—and no sons. The eldest of our number had made a reasonable love match to a local merchant; the youngest and most attractive had become the second wife of well-to-do lordling. My father found some comfort in these matches but three unmarried daughters was still a source of consternation to him.

"I think we shall try to have Paniz betrothed before the year is out," he would say to me as we worked through a week's accounts, "and perhaps Jaleh sometime after that." Only once did he mention me, after he came through from a long and bad illness. "Oh, who shall care for my Mojgan when I am gone?"

I told him that I could care for myself and he seemed to take this to heart. When Feridoon came to call, it was my sisters who made careful preparations of themselves while I made careful preparations for the house. Not to say I was pushed aside in this matter—but it was taken for granted by all that either of my sisters would be a likelier bride for Feridoon than me.

Paniz was my older sister, and the greatest beauty that remained. Our mother's family had a touch of Nuristani blood, and it showed strongly in Paniz. She had elegant dark winged eyebrows that flew banner over blue eyes. For special occasions, she was in the habit of dying her hair with indigo, lending it a beautiful moonlight sheen. She was lively, but good-natured. A fine combination, I thought, for the sort of life I thought Feridoon led in the Shah's court. He had enough servants at his disposal to negate her poor housekeeping skills.

Jaleh was the younger, and as sweet and docile as a lamb. She did not quite have Paniz's beauty or my wit, but she was goodness itself. She was also young—just sixteen at the time, to Feridoon's thirty-six. There's a certain breed of man that always seems to prefer a younger wife, thinking that inexperience and malleability go hand in hand. I know that is not true for every young woman, but it was for Jaleh. She was earnest and optimistic and always taking pleasure in pleasing others. If anyone could turn a marriage of convenience into a love match, surely it would be Jaleh.

And I… I was practical, more so by nature than necessity. Early in my life I had developed an interest in things like sums and letters, and I liked learning the details of my father's trade. Slowly as a child, and then rapidly after my mother's death, I made myself useful. By the time I was seventeen, the household accounts were firmly in my control, and even my father's business ledgers were not forbidden to me.

If there was one complaint to be made over Feridoon's arrival, it was how little time he gave our family to prepare. It was a small mercy that he visited while the fields were still green, or else the honor of his presence might have been lost in the mayhem of the harvest.

Father made it clear that he wanted no detail left to chance. Our servants were good folk, but their idea of court life was stuck in the era of the Safavid shahs. It fell to me to make sure that Feridoon's apartment was well appointed, that the meal was the best we had to offer, and that my sisters were both being shown at advantage.

I cannot even recall the various little disasters that beset the day of Feridoon's arrival, but they were numerous. I remember that our old kitchen slave had become so nervous about cooking for 'a prince of the land' that she charred the lamb that was supposed to be the highlight of our evening meal. No amount of reassurances could sooth her nerves and I ended up taking off my brocaded jacket and jumping into the thick of the kitchen crisis. As it turned out, I was not even present to greet our honored guest when he arrived.

It was some time before I was able to make my way to out sitting room. I came bearing freshly made sweets, hoping to distract from my sudden appearance. The first thing I saw was Paniz and Jaleh, sitting next to one another like nervous birds in a cage. We wore our indoor clothing—positively indecent stuff, by your European standards. You probably do not remember the little costumes you had as a child, but they were in the same style—short, full skirts with silken blouses and heavily adorned jackets. The now-ubiquitous white tights were not yet in fashion, but anklets and henna were used liberally. I had hurriedly thrown on my white head-covering and best broach before entering the sitting room. I admit that modesty was not my primary concern. The previous, busy hours spent in the hot kitchen had frayed my braids.

I set my tray down before my father and Feridoon, and sat a little apart from my sisters. A water pipe sat between the men, but only my father seemed to be partaking.

"I think this is your other daughter," Feridoon began. His voice was unexpectedly mild. I do not know if he might have been handsome—I was too distracted by the astonishingly large scars that raked across his face. His eyes flickered up and then back down.

My father puffed contently. "Mojgan." He said nothing else, and Feridoon did not ask. His tea glass was half empty and I moved to fill it. He smiled vaguely at me. He later told me that I smiled back, though I have no memory of doing so.

The evening faded on; my father complacent, my sisters fidgety, and Feridoon quiet as a schoolboy. When the men finally set to dining, my sisters and I made our escape.

The kohl about Jaleh's eyes had faded—I suspected that Paniz had snuck away at times to reapply her own. Both seemed fatigued, and neither particularly excited. One would have thought that meeting a man of the great Shah's court would have proved to be more engaging.

I did not need to ask how they found Feridoon—Paniz immediately launched into a discourse on the subject.

He was not simply old, he was dull, and didn't know what the ladies in Tehran were wearing. He spoke in a too-quiet voice, and had too mild a way about him, and rarely even looked up from his teacup. I remember keenly her final comment: "And he only wears two rings!" (You must recall that it was the fashion at the time for men who could to wear as many rings as their wives—if not more.)

Even sweet Jaleh damned the poor man with faint praise. "He seems to be a… decent man."

I did not find this encouraging. Jaleh had said better things about the half-wit who ran deliveries for our father.

"He's dull," Paniz reiterated, "And he's rather ugly."

"I would not say he is ugly," Jaleh protested. "But his scars—like he did battle with a lion!"

Paniz snorted. "I do not think he is any sort of warrior."

I do not recall what else they said of him, but I went to bed with the impression that Feridoon did not favor either of them—and neither of my sisters would be putting forth any sort of effort to win his attention.

The days passed in much the same fashion as the first night. The neighborhood men made for a never-ending and little-varying stream of visitors. The women of the house stayed more or less out of sight. And so my own time spent with Feridoon was quite brief. And in that time, I found he was very like my sisters had described: he was decent, and he was dull in that he was not a keen conversationalist. His scars were distracting, but one grew accustomed to them. He later told me that he had acquired them when the Shah sent him to make inventories and estimates of the wealth in Herat—while the city was consumed by the war with the English. It was not a lion, but exploding shrapnel that had disfigured him. ("I had never a notion that accounting was a dangerous business," he said. "I now take care to warn all of my aides.")

One week turned to two, and it soon became obvious that Feridoon intended to set his suit in my direction. I had no particular opinion on the matter myself—I was not a romantic at that age. I found Feridoon to be tolerable company, and his position would assure me a comfortable life. You see, you have only known me as an older woman, accustomed to having my own way. I was much more practical in my youth. I knew the world came at a price, and Feridoon would allow me the means to meet it. I was right. Being practical on that one occasion gave me a foundation to escape the ill-results of my later follies, but, as I say, they are later.

With the infinite wisdom of youth, I did not question Feridoon's choice outwardly. Inwardly, I had many doubts. They called me Mojgan because I had fantastically long eyelashes even as a child, but I was not a beauty like Paniz. I had a good wit, and good hand with my pen, a head for numbers. A country man might have found of a use for me, I figured. I had always seen myself going on in very much the same life I had grown up in; a farmer's daughter turned to a farmer's wife. None of my talents were of the sort that won a woman a lordly husband. And, yet!

I think my father was rather disappointed when Feridoon asked for my hand. Neither of my sisters were of much help to him in the day-to-day affairs of his business. Feridoon was clearly also aware of this. He tried to soften the blow by providing me a more than generous mahr. Besides gifts of gold, he also deeded a quite few properties to my name, with the suggestion that perhaps my father could benefit from income of one or two of them.

Because of my father's high standing in our community, and because Feridoon was a man of means, our wedding celebrations lasted a full seven days. I do not remember much of that time. I hear this is often the case with one's wedding. Really, only one event remains vivid in my mind.

I remember sitting before the marriage sofreh with Feridoon. I remember what was on the cloth—the tray of spices, the display of eggs and nuts, bread, sugar, honey, gold… but most of all, I remember the mirror. It was silver-framed and had been used at my parents' wedding, and my grandparents' before that. I removed the veil that covered my face, and just as tradition dictated, I looked into that mirror and the first thing I saw was my husband.

He was blue-eyed like my mother had been, and when he smiled his scars did not seem so terrible. He smiled at me in the mirror then, and I could not help but smile back.

We stayed at my father's house for another month following the wedding. After that, I fully expected to be taken to Feridoon's home in Tehran. That was not what he had in mind, however.

He took me, instead, to Mazandaran.

But I think that is a tale best left for my next letter.

I sign my name with affection:

Mojgan Banu Khanum