by Tom Avito
“Professor, now you will call home, tell the lady that you went to pick up your son at school and that she needn’t worry about the delay. Then you’ll go home, taking your time, obviously you won’t tell anyone about this call or about what happened. In the mailbox on your house’s gate, you’ll find a mobile phone, you will turn it on, the pin code is 3508. You will wait quietly for our next call. Mind you, professor, no strange initiatives, no one shall know, just make sure that your housekeeper shuts up and doesn’t disclose what she knows, otherwise all that will remain of Nicholas will be old photographs. Allahu akbar.”
The call ended, leaving no time for further replies.
Only then did Alexander realize that the man’s accent wasn’t Turkish or Armenian, but Arab.
CHAPTER 4
Milan (Italy), 09/11/2011 07:30 P.M.
-“Iran” -
The rhythms, the habits, the lifestyle that had become a part of them, forged in that portion of Africa that borders the Mediterranean sea, had been drastically changed, forced to adapt to the uneventful lifestyle of a couple living in an European metropolis. Their way of life had had to give in to the needs of that new reality, but they often felt homesick for Africa, a nostalgia that surfaced like an air bubble released from the depths of their soul.
The sudden metamorphoses that were still affecting the geopolitical order in northern Africa and the Middle East repressed any temptation to go find themselves a new home on the opposite shore of the Mediterranean. The terrorist wave that had started in Algeria had expanded to Egypt and Tunisia too, and these countries were even closer to the Western world, which made them ideal targets of the armed wing of Islamic fundamentalism. In other countries such as Libya, Yemen and Syria, the disorders and conflicts between rioters and regime forces expressed a necessary and rightful desire for freedom; behind it, however, was the fear that the same integralist wing was involved that was behind the attacks in Algeria, with its clear purpose of subverting the various ruling families and clans and placing the much-sought freedom under the powerful hegemony of pseudo-religious power. The Middle East, even more so, was a hotbed for tensions and concerns due to the presence of that small strip of land that had, over time, turned one of the world’s main powers, Israel, into a magnet for the hatred and spite of Islam. In this dangerous scenario, in the whole Cyrenaica area, Maghreb and the Middle East, any project for Nino to return to the path he had abandoned just a few years before had to be postponed.
This work opportunity in Iran, though, meant going back, albeit not permanently, to those much loved latitudes, and breathe a similar air to that of the north-Western coast of the African continent. This, at least, was what he hoped for. The pleasure of feeling the same impalpable sand between his fingers, his skin sizzling in the strong desert sun, the unmistakable scents of spices rising in the cool morning breeze, the muezzin’s chant calling worshippers to prayer, he missed it all, it was a part of his heart that had been forced to dormancy. The sole thought of being able to relive all of this made him feel euphoric, satisfied, taken back in time. He was impatient, excited at the perspective of leaving and having to accomplish an important task. He realized that these strong and unique feelings would have been enough to make him accept the assignment offered by Helson, beyond any economic or professional gratification.
The telephone rang in his house.
“Can you get that, honey? I’m caring for my poor ficus benjamin, it just doesn’t want to survive!” Sara asked, her left hand full of yellowish leaves that had fallen from the agonizing plant.
“Okay, but if you keep drowning it in tons of water, it will either turn into seaweed or ask you to let it die in peace!” Nino replied, moving towards the ringing cordless phone.
“Hello?”
“Masa’ alkhir! (good evening!)” A well-known voice boomed, sounding unexpectedly cheerful.
“Masa’ annur! (good evening!)” Nino replied, more than happy to recognize Amir’s unmistakable acute tone.
“You can’t imagine how glad I am to hear your voice again after so much time, my dear friend! How are you?”
“Well, let’s say fine, it has to be fine. I’m calling from a payphone, you know…” Amir’s voice had lost that cheerful tone and now showed a certain concern.
“Ok, sure, I get it,” Nino replied, understanding that it was a delicate subject. Due to the regime change and those long months of violence and attacks, the slightest suspicion that Amir had Western, Christian friends or acquaintances would have exposed him to significant risks. Since leaving Algeria, Nino had understood that many honest people who, like Amir, had created strong bonds with European foreigners, might have found themselves in deep trouble. In fact, he had avoided trying to contact his old friend for all this time, not wanting to give rise to dangerous pretexts that, in the hands of the wrong people, could have triggered retaliation. Throughout the rest of the conversation, he was careful not to speak the name of his interlocutor, trying to limit the possibility of his recognition, and he realized that Amir was doing the exact same thing.
“You old guy! I imagine you’re having a blast lately,” Nino added ironically.
“My wife sends you a hug too. We’ve been waiting for you to call, it’s great to hear from you and hear that you are ok,” he continued.
“I just wanted to say hello and let you know that I’m doing splendidly,” Amir promptly replied.
“I can tell you’re in a hurry, contact me on the face book if you want, maybe we’ll be able to talk and write more calmly. Beyond everything that’s happening, my dear friend, I hope we can meet again. You’ll see, things are going to change!” Nino continued, realizing Amir’s intention of keeping the conversation short and concise.
“Who’s that?” Sara intervened, curious about hearing him speak in Arab.
He interrupted the conversation for a moment, pressing the “mute” button, and asked her to wait in silence. Then he went back to listening.
“Gladly, I’ll get in touch and we’ll go over what happened in these past two years. It has been a great pleasure to talk to you, my brother. Excuse me, I have to go, and yes… yes, let’s hope we can meet again soon. Inshallah.” Amir waited for his friend’s salutation and hung up. The communication was brief, almost telegraphic.
“It was Amir, he sounded nervous, he was calling from a payphone. He wanted to let us know that he’s fine,” Nino informed her, perplexed.
“I’d have wanted to say hi to him, I’m so sorry for what he’s going through… I hope nothing happens to him,” Sara replied.
“He kept it short, I’m worried,” Nino said.
“The point is always the same, the honest and loyal people are the ones that run the greatest risks”. The bitterness in Sara’s words, her voice dropping, was clear.
“Yes. Sometimes I can’t understand if the world is spinning in the wrong direction, or if we’re swimming against the current.”
Thoughtful, the cordless phone still in his right hand, Nino dropped onto the leather couch next to the table, and it puffed slightly when the weight of his body pushed out the air from the soft seat.
“I met with Steve a few days ago. I told him about Iran and how I’m going to go about it, he asked me to leave as soon as possible for an inspection in Naft Shahr and Andimeshk. I was hoping to push it all to next year, after the holidays, but it seems that I have to go as soon as possible”.
“So soon?” Sara exclaimed.
“I have to say, this rush surprised me too, but Steve must have his reasons, seeing that he’s asking me with such determination,” Nino added with a pinch of concern.
“I’ll try to plan my trip tomorrow, it should only take me ten days or so and I should make it back in time for Christmas shopping. I have no intention of leaving my sweet wife alone with my credit card, in the midst of a shopping frenzy!” Nino concluded, trying to make light of the moment that made his upcoming departure official.
“You’re stupid! I’m warning you, do
n’t make me spend Christmas alone in Milan, or roses won’t save you this time.”
“You know, if some odalisque were to made me stay there longer, for some reason, I wouldn’t be able to… ouch!” The fingers of Sara’s right hand interrupted him, pinching his right side.
“Come on, I was just kidding! I promise I’ll be back in ten days.”
“You better!” Sara concluded, firmly but with a good dose of resignation too.
“Ten days will go by in a flash,” she said to herself, encouragingly.
****
He’d laid his blue suit jacket on the empty seat to his right, he was on an Air Iran flight to Tehran. After a quick glance from the window, which confirmed the usual white blanket of clouds on which the plane seemed to float, he took the now creased newspaper, looking for those few pieces of news that had attracted his curiosity and that he set left aside to read calmly and carefully at a later time. The first one was a small piece that sounded bizarre and macabre at the same time: “Camels: Australia heads towards extermination.” The government had authorized a sort of genocide of the population of the poor humped animals because they were drinking up the few water reserves in the desert, and especially because their flatulences made them more polluting than all of the heavy duty vehicles in the area. It sounded like a joke, his stifled smile hid the thought of all the people who might have deserved the same destiny. He hoped that such a measure would never be implemented and continued to flip through the paper. He reached the page with the news he’d been looking for: “The plot of Nicholas Wharz’s disappearance thickens, after all the doubts and assumptions made on the motives, only yesterday it has become officially known that his father Alexander, well-known professor at the University of Tubingen, has gone missing as well. At this point, the authorities are at a loss, lacking any trace that could be used as a starting point for the investigation, it is even more difficult to speculate…”. It was a report that he’d followed on the newscast a few days before: the picture of that child, his blond hair loosely flopping on his forehead and his blue eyes piercing the TV screen, had affected him deeply. Among the many pieces of news, be them bad or good, there is always one that for some reason, some small detail or strong feature, captures you and gets stuck in your memory. This one had passed all his stoic emotional barriers and had made it to the target. The thought that anyone could lay a finger on that innocent creature ignited a furious rage inside of him. He’d been wishing that the worst possible outcome wouldn’t come true and, in the following days, he had hoped to find out that the case had been positively solved. When he had identified with that child’s father, he had felt shivers running up the back of his head, as if his hair was trying to lift up, and he had felt something tightening at the pit of his stomach, closing up the walls of his esophagus. He knew that those feelings weren’t worth much in terms of solidarity towards a man, a father who was going through incommensurable pain. Now, the discovery that the professor had disappeared too, confused him and tore down all his speculations on what he had thought to be an abduction with extortion purposes, like sandcastles in a summer storm.
He thought about Sara, through some sort of positive transposition of those strong emotions, and realized that the time had probably come to start thinking seriously about a heir. The picture of that smiling blond angel made him realize how much he loved her and how badly he wanted to have a child with her.
The plane landed perfectly on time, the sky was clear as far as the eye could see, only marked by the trails left by two ordinary airliners whose paths intersected in the blue sky and formed a cross with faded edges. It looked like the only symbol recalling Christianity in a city with extremely different ideologies, as if it wanted to embrace the whole city.
As soon as he reached his room in the Laleh hotel, he freed himself of his jacket and tie, tossed them onto the armchair next to the wardrobe and dialled the number for the operator, requesting the line for an international call. He quickly dialled his home number. He needed to fulfill that anxious desire to hear the soft voice of his beloved other half. At that time, he felt permeated by the knowledge that Sara was the cornerstone around which his whole life turned, and never would he let fate or anyone else get between them and change this asset. Holding on to the illusory certainty that he was the only architect of his fate, he waited.
“Hello?” Sara answered.
“Hello honey, I just got to the hotel. Are you okay?”
“Yes, I’m fine, I miss you already. Please, hurry through what you have to do and get back to me as soon as possible,” Sara replied, sounding melancholy.
“Don’t worry, baby, I promised, I’ll be by your side before Christmas.”
“I can’t wait. What are you doing tonight?” Sara, heartened by his words, settled onto the couch, hoping that the days laying ahead before his return could be deleted in a split second like a pencil line disappearing under an eraser.
“Here in Tehran we are two and a half hours ahead due to the different time zone, it’s almost time for dinner and I’m starting to feel hungry, I’ll go see what the hotel restaurant has to offer. I’ll call you back soon.”
“Have a nice meal, then!” Sara wished him.
“Tomorrow I’ll meet the Iranian Petroleum representative and a collaborator of the deputy minister. They are taking me to Andimeshk first, then to Naft Shahr in the following days, I probably won’t be able to get in touch before next Friday. Bye baby, be good, these days will fly, don’t be afraid.”
“I hope so! Good night, love. Call me back as soon as you can.”
Since he had stepped off the last step and left the plane behind him, laying foot on the grayish concrete at the end of the runway, he had realized that Tehran didn’t have much in common with Algiers or Tripoli, and he had been disappointed. The first breath of Iranian air had filled his lungs, but it was cold and different from what he’d been expecting. The salty air typical of seaside cities was here replaced by a polluted air, made colder by the stinging wind descending from the Elburz mountains. He didn’t feel at home nor in a friendly place, the feelings in his gut were already distant from his earlier enthusiastic expectations, and he knew that his instinct was rarely wrong. This was surely also due to the greeting he had received as soon as he had stepped through the arrival gate, which, rather than a friendly welcome, had felt like an escorted abduction. A dark-skinned man, one of those commonly called Bandāri (port) in Iran because there is Arab blood in their veins and they come from the coastal areas in the South, had met him at the airport and driven him to the Laleh hotel. Throughout the trip, barely a word had been spoken. Not too tall, dressed according to Western canons, sturdy and stocky in build, like a bull. He had introduced himself as Hamid Bagheli, employee for the ministry of internal security.
Early the next morning, after his first night in Iran, he was greeted by the gorgeous view from the dining hall terrace, where the snowy peak of mount Damavand shone under the rising sun’s rosy rays.
“Sayd Avito, good morning. I am Arash Khatibi, a collaborator of deputy minister Al-Fadiri’s. Did you sleep well here at the Laleh?” were the first words - polite, almost too polite, bordering hypocritical - spoken by the slim emaciated man, whose tortoise glasses were too wide for his gaunt, thin face. His black eyes appeared enormous due to the zooming effect caused by the lenses; they looked like they belonged in a different, much larger head.
Nino was surprised; he had set the alarm earlier than necessary so as to have time for a slow breakfast and a walk outside the hotel, as he hadn’t been able to see much the night before when he had arrived escorted by Bagheli, to whom he now referred as “the Minotaur”.
“Good morning, Mr. Khatibi, I wasn’t expecting you so early,” Nino replied, displeased by the forced change of plans.
“You’re right, Doctor Avito, you know, I’m always so anxious! I’m afraid to be late to important meetings, so I always end up being a bit ahead of schedule. I saw you walking out of the dining hall,
so, here I am!”
He ended his sentence with a hinted sarcastic sneer that Nino noticed immediately, the deputy minister’s collaborator had betrayed the fact that he was maliciously aware of having surprised him and upturned his plans for the morning.
“Tehran is just bustling with lovely people!” Nino thought, searching - in vain - for a single feature in that man that wasn’t detestable.
“Mr. Khatibi, I suppose we’re leaving for Andimeshk immediately, right? Will we only be gone for four days as planned or will you surprise me again? I only packed a small case for the trip, I wouldn’t want to face any difficulties.”
“Don’t worry, Doctor Avito, we’ll be back on Friday, according to plans,” Khatibi answered.
“Give me ten minutes then, I have a few things to fix at the reception and I’ll be back,” Nino finished.
“Of course, I’ll be waiting here in the hall with Mr. Bagheli, who will escort us throughout the trip.”
He climbed up to his room, took his luggage and went by the reception, confirming that he would be back four days later, then headed towards the hall, where he knew they were expecting him.
“We have a long drive ahead of us to Andimeshk, it’s approximately 800 km. Today we’ll face the toughest part, we’ll stop to spend the night in Khorramabad on the Zagros mountains. Tomorrow at dawn we’ll get back on the road for the last stretch, we’ll reach the Andimeshk refinery industrial complex in the morning. Please, make yourself comfortable, we’ll have time to get to know each other better during this time,” said Khatibi, sitting next to Bagheli who was ready to start the Tata offroad. The vehicle was certainly practical, facing the imperfect and often unpaved roads of the inner Esfahan and Lorestan areas, but it definitely couldn’t be called comfortable.
“It will be a pleasure!” Nino cut short, settling in the back seat, realizing that his first stay in Iran would turn out to be not just an official visit, but a tiresome journey, at least as far as travels were concerned.