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He watches from the doorway, silent and still, as Reza sleeps. Nadir does this every night he is home at his Mazenderan estate. He can’t help it. He watches the stuttering rise and fall of his son’s chest. He waits for sputtering coughs or nightmares. He waits.
Outside, the moon is high above the fringe of trees. She watches, also – the only thing in the world paler than Reza’s skin, Nadir thinks.
Time is growing short. He knows this. Has known this. But here, in the darkness, confronted with the stark whiteness of his son’s should-be brown skin and choking breaths, Nadir has to confront this fact. His son is dying. What more can he do, but stand sentinel? He has had every doctor but the Shah’s own physician examine Reza. They all say it is a childish malady. Some even say that if Nadir prays hard enough, that Reza will recover. If they only knew that his every spare breath goes heavenward, begging and bargaining. Reza only worsens. Only Erik speaks the truth. He gives Reza mere months to live. Months!
His son will never see again. Or walk. He will not hold an office or marry or have children of his own.
In the dark, with only the moon to illuminate his son’s nigh-translucent skin, to illuminate the truth, Nadir must accept that he will bury his son before the year is out.
And what, then, does he have to live for?
Tonight, there are no guests in the Khan household. No eerie violin to accompany or drown Nadir’s thoughts. No one to turn to for comfort in the way he needs. His sister cannot give it – she is supposed to be seeing suitors at long last, an endeavor that will be called off when Reza passes. His servants cannot give it – they are not supposed to see Nadir’s unmanly grief nor offer him anything such as the embrace he craves. And even if Erik were here, what would he do but solemnly agree to that horrid truth and make that vile suggestion once more.
Let me paint him a rainbow.
Nadir will pray to any god who could save his son, could offer him a fate better than that which lays before him. No matter what road Nadir chooses for his son, they all have the same destination: death.
He shakes now, holding back a cry, holding the doorframe so he doesn’t fall to his knees. His son was supposed to have a bright future – one with more laughter than pain, more joy than sorrow. More. So much more. So much better. He stays in the doorway until sunrise. As the morning glow paints Reza’s bedroom in pinks and gold, Nadir tricks himself into thinking there is a little color in his son’s cheeks this morning. Just a little more than yesterday.
But each morning, he is less and less sure. Even the sunlight can’t chase away all the pale sickness from Reza’s face. It only highlights the dark hollows around his eyes, his cheekbones, places no child has any right to look so aged. And as sunrise comes, Nadir departs from the room in silence to ready for another day.