Rebekah repeated the triumphs of Teymour the Lame, a Mongol leader who, despite his handicap, rose to become the fiercest conqueror in history, and she sang the praises of Rostarn, a legendary Persian warrior. She reminded her daughter that life was like war and soldiers could teach her more than anyone else.

The noises of the night momentarily forgotten, Gold Dust hugged her mother and dozed off to her soft murmur:

“One day, you’ll meet an honest man who’ll come to you in the light of day. He’ll be fair and kind and sensitive. Not dark-colored like men who buy love in hiding. That day, you’ll know true love. Don’t ask me what it is. I don’t know….”

But Gold Dust knew. She had found love in the fair-skinned acrobat who had eyes the color of cloudless skies.

Waist-belted to a wheelbarrow that carried his massive wife, the matchmaker’s husband, like some kind of ass, galloped into Rebekah’s house. Unfastening the leather straps from around his waist, he drew labored breaths as if he were suffering from the last stages of consumption. Slumping on a cushion, he cursed his never-ending job. When he did not haul his wife from one house to another, he shoved a pot under her when the need arose, or stuck a pillow behind her back when she fell asleep in the wooden wheelbarrow he had built after she had come down with a mysterious illness that had caused her hair to rot and had loosened her teeth.

The matchmaker tossed her veil off, raised the hem of her skirt, and wiped off drops of sweat from her face. The small house suffocated under the acidic smell of her armpits. Her voice rattled through layers of phlegm. “Where is Gold Dust? I don’t have time.”

Rebekah curled her lower lip and winked at the husband. “First your proposal, sweetlove. Tell me about this man. Is he educated?”

Heshmat the Matchmaker huffed, trying to find a comfortable position for her crossed legs. “I hate small formalities! And please don’t ‘sweetlove’ me. Your daughter needs a husband. I have one. What else is there to say?”

“Well,” Rebekah sighed. “Is he educated? Is he rich? Is he young? Handsome? Versed in love?”

“Put a pillow behind my back,” Heshmat ordered her husband. She lifted one giant breast, removed a handkerchief concealed there, and blew her nose with great force. “My dear, your daughter is not exactly the Queen of Sheba. Can’t you see her eyes? One faces east, the other west. And don’t forget, she’s already a year or two above the marrying age.”

Rebekah sailed into the kitchen and came back with sherbets perfumed with the attar of roses. She offered a glass to the husband, then bent close to Heshmat’s ear. “Let me worry about my daughter’s age … and if you were a man, you’d appreciate the sensual twist of her eyes. Now, the information, sweet-love.”