Divided Loyalties

by Nilofar Shidmehr

  Parvaaneh went back and sat down, her gaze fixed on the door. The imaginary butterflies had made their way from her head to her breast, flapping their wings with the same rhythm as the corporal’s words when he’d ordered the private to “shoot the poor bastard.”

  The good thing was that Parvaaneh was still dealing with men from the military, and not the Revolutionary Guards. The lower-rank army men, like the private, were ordinary soldiers doing their military service. Navid could have been one of them if he’d been conscripted and sent to a safe place like Astara, far from the war zones in the south and west. The higher-rank army men were officers who had completed their training and started their service during the shah’s time. They were not known for their revolutionary sentiments and could be more lenient toward men like Navid who escaped the military service. The sergeant Parvaaneh was about to meet belonged to this group.

  The sergeant arrived an hour later in a wheelchair. In his lap sat a police radio, its antenna pointing at Parvaaneh. Both his legs had been amputated above the knees. Landmines, probably, she thought as she jumped to her feet. Navid could have ended up like this, had he not just escaped. Perhaps this sergeant was one of the army officers sent to the front line in the early days of war. Perhaps his position as the head of this remote station was his reward for defending the country and pushing back the Iraqi army that had invaded Iran and captured a few cities. Parvaaneh had both pity and respect for the sergeant. If not for men like him, the Iraqis would have reached Tehran a week after they invaded, as they’d planned. God knows how many women would have been raped and how many children and civilians would have been killed.

  “Sit down,” the sergeant said.

  Parvaaneh sat down as the sergeant wheeled himself behind the desk and placed the radio receiver on it. Like so many members of the military from the shah’s time, the sergeant sported a mustache instead of a beard, which made Parvaaneh feel comfortable. She expected he would let her go very soon.

  “What were you doing down by the river?” the sergeant asked. He spoke with the accent of people from northern Iran. Men from there were known for their liberal attitude toward women.

  “Well, I was . . . you know . . . how to put it,” Parvaaneh stammered, trying to remember the story she’d made up earlier. As it came back to her, she continued in the even tone she’d always used to calm Navid down. “I was at Ardebil to see my aunt, Mr. Sergeant. She sent me to the village to get her fresh, local food for breakfast. She is originally from Namin, but now lives in the city. Last night, she woke in the middle of the night to tell me she craved eggs and dairy from her village. Next morning, the first thing she did was to send me to fetch them for her. I paid a driver to take me there. He took the money and left me in the middle of the road. I wanted to see the river. He said he would wait for me, but he didn’t. Thanks to God, your men came by. I have no idea what I would have done if they hadn’t shown up.”

  Catching her breath after the long speech, Parvaaneh hoped the sergeant wouldn’t send anyone to interrogate her great-aunt, although she was quite confident that the old woman wouldn’t understand a word.

  The sergeant gazed suspiciously at her face. He had piercing eyes Parvaaneh could not bear to look at. She lowered her head. Even so, she could feel him investigating her features. Maybe it was because they had arrested Navid. Their resemblance was unmistakable.

  “Are you from Turkmen Sahra?” the man asked. Parvaaneh’s narrow, slanted black eyes, thin lips, and small nose often led people to take her for somebody from that region.

  “No, I am from Tehran. But my mother is originally from Ardebil.”

  “Do you have your ID?”

  Parvaaneh handed the sergeant her birth certificate. It was good she had listened to the smuggler’s advice and brought it; at the time, his suggestion had seemed counterintuitive to her and Navid. She tried not to cower, and looked away. There were dents on the wall that seemed to have been made by a sharp object. A table? This table, perhaps? Parvaaneh’s skin crawled as she touched the cold metal surface.

  “Tell me the truth. We know why people come here, especially nowadays,” the sergeant said. “We catch runaway soldiers every day. The river gave up two of them just yesterday. The Aras makes our job easy; it kills them off even if we can’t catch them.”

  The sergeant chuckled at his macabre joke, and Parvaaneh’s heart lurched. The butterflies in her chest flew up her throat, beating their wings at full speed. She almost gagged as she lowered her head to prevent the sergeant from seeing the concern in her eyes.

  “Tell the truth and make your life easier.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Parvaaneh scratched her head through her scarf. “I told you, I wanted to go to the village to buy —”

  “Was it your husband or your son?” he asked as he opened her birth certificate. Parvaaneh went blank as the man checked the second page, where the names of one’s spouse and children are recorded. She gasped as she remembered Navid calling her Ana. It took her a minute to get over her confusion and realize her mistake: Navid was only her brother, and unlike the names of one’s children, those of one’s brothers and sisters are not recorded.

  Actually, nothing was recorded on the second page of her birth certificate; she did not even have a husband.

  The only way the sergeant could tell that she and Navid were related was to see her brother. Even though they were many years apart in age, they looked so alike it was as if they were twins.

  Glancing up from the birth certificate, the sergeant looked even more confused than she did. “You never married?”

  “No.”

  “You’re not ugly!” the man’s eyes roved over her.

  “I took care of my old father. He is ill,” she lied.

  “Where is your mother?”

  “She died many years ago, when I was very young.”

  “Do you have brothers or sisters?”

  “No. All of the children after me were stillborn.”

  “Strange stories you make up, lady. Do you really expect me to believe them?”

  “I’m not lying. You can check things on me.”

  “I will surely do that.” The sergeant put her birth certificate on the table but continued looking intensely at Parvaaneh, sizing her up.

  “Who do you live with?”

  “I already told you. With my father.”

  “Is he paying for you?”

  “Yes, Al hamd-o-Allah. We live on his retirement money,” Parvaaneh mumbled.

  “Is it enough?”

  “Sir, I don’t understand why you arrested me.” She stood up. “Can I go now?”

  “Maybe later. When I am convinced you’re not lying.” The sergeant motioned with his head, suggesting that she should sit back down. She did, feeling choked under his gaze as he constantly stroked his mustache with two fingers. He did not ask any more questions.

  Parvaaneh released her breath only when a knock on the door drew the sergeant’s attention.

  “Come in.”

  A soldier Parvaaneh hadn’t seen before entered, carrying two large glasses of tea on a tray. He placed the first glass in front of the sergeant. His left hand was wrapped in a bandage, and fresh blood oozed out onto the white cloth. The sergeant wrinkled his nose and turned his face away from the soldier’s hand and back to Parvaaneh.

  “Put down the tea for the lady and leave.”

  The soldier placed the second glass in front of Parvaaneh without casting a single glance at her. “Do you need anything else, sir?”

  “No. Just leave.” He waved his hand at
the soldier.

  The sergeant started drinking his tea as soon as the man left, scrutinizing Parvaaneh the entire time. The silence was unbearable. Parvaaneh’s finger burned as she touched her glass, and yet the man was gulping his tea down. His lips, framed by his bushy mustache, were wet like those of a wild dog that had just ripped the first bite from its living prey.

  “This war has left many women husbandless or without a male guardian,” he said, speaking as if to himself. “There are not enough men for every woman. Someone should take care of them.”

  Parvaaneh put her glass down. The man’s rambling was directed at her, and she felt the danger in his words. Her immediate thought was to to get up and ask the man to let her go, but the sergeant’s radio receiver crackled before she could move. Parvaaneh sat alert, listening to what he was telling the person on the other end of the line.

  “Stay there. I am coming over,” he said, his tone signaling that an important event was happening out there at that very second. Out there somewhere. Could it be about Navid’s capture or death?

  A shiver ran down Parvaaneh’s spine. How could she find out? As she looked over at the man preparing to leave, she came up with a plan. She would stay in the police station — at any price — and get her answer out of the sergeant. She had heard that the killed escapees were either buried in some unknown grave or thrown back into the river. Their families would never receive news of their fate. She couldn’t be one of them; she couldn’t go home waiting for the news of her brother’s death that might never arrive. A life in waiting was no life. If Navid had been killed, she wanted to know right now. There was even a possibility she could get the body, given that this man looked like somebody she could negotiate with.

  The sergeant put the radio back in his lap and wheeled himself out from behind the table. “You can go, lady. Don’t forget to take your birth certificate. Also, next time remember not to hop in a private car. ”

  She didn’t stand up. “You know, sir, the truth is that . . . I lied. That driver dumped me there on the road after he . . . after he finished his thing. He didn’t even pay me.”

  She broke into tears and started trembling, knowing how much she had degraded herself with this lie that suggested she was a prostitute. But the words had already poured out of her mouth, leaving her shuddering as hard as if an earthquake had just happened.

  The sergeant had already reached the door, but he paused now. Parvaaneh saw his hands press on the wheels in order to turn his chair around. She wailed loudly to further capture his attention; it was too late to change her humiliating plan now.

  The sergeant turned around and wheeled himself over to her. “So I was correct?” he asked, his face close to hers.

  “Yes!” Parvaaneh cried. “I am so miserable, but I have to pay for my sick father!”

  “But why come here? So far from Tehran? Do you really live there, or did you lie about that too?”

  “I live in Tehran, but if anyone finds out what I’m doing, my father will lose face.” Parvaaneh dropped her head. “I go with bus drivers who travel between cities. My father and neighbors think I work at some rich people’s villa in a northern city by the Caspian Sea.”

  “I see.” The sergeant rubbed his mustache with two fingers again. “I wish I could help you, but my wife already has a housemaid — a poor local widow who has three children — but let me . . . ”

  The crackling of the radio receiver cut the sergeant off. He picked it up and held it to his ear. “I said I’m coming.”

  “You stay here.” He turned to Parvaaneh as he hung up. “Maybe I can find some other way to help you. I’ll be back soon.” He paused before leaving. “Hand me your birth certificate from the desk.” She did as he requested.

  So Parvaaneh was left alone for a second time in the same room — this time without an ID and feeling more desperate than she had when she’d first been brought in. For a few seconds, she was unable to make sense of what she had done. What would happen to her now that she’d pretended she was a prostitute? She pushed the thought from her mind, telling herself that she should be concerned only about what had happened to Navid, and not about what might happen to her. She paced the room again to the smaller room at the back. There was nothing going on there. It appeared to be sleeping quarters. She turned, went back to the exit door, put her ear against the door, and listened. The corridor was silent. She walked back to the chair and sat, still alert and listening, but she did not hear any footsteps for the next hour. After a while, her body went completely numb. It was late afternoon and the room was hot.

  Sometime later, Parvaaneh heard a convoy drive up, followed by the sound of men talking. She ran into the yard, only to find the corporal and some other men climbing into a patrol van, which sped off. The soldier with the bandaged hand appeared. He nodded at the purse hanging from Parvaaneh’s shoulder and asked her why she was there.

  “I was looking for the washroom.”

  “It’s inside. Come with me. I’ll show you.”

  When Parvaaneh stepped out of the washroom, the soldier was gone and the corridor was empty again. She thought of sneaking out and finding a way back to Tehran, but she remembered the reason for her lie and chose to go back to the room and wait again.

  • • •

  * * *

  It was getting dark when the sergeant finally opened the door. He looked at her and his face lit up. Par­vaaneh’s first impulse was to knock his wheelchair over and run away, but she stayed frozen. She fixed her gaze on her shaking legs as the man approached, thinking that he was a decent man with a chivalric attitude. Maybe she could tell him the truth and ask him if he knew anything about her brother. Hopefully, he would know nothing about Navid, which would mean that her brother had safely crossed to the other side.

  “Listen,” the sergeant said, “I’ve figured out a way to help you and your father. I want you to stay with me. You know what I mean — but it should be done in the proper way. Temporary marriage is for times like this.”

  Parvaaneh could not have been more shocked if she’d heard Nasser make such a proposal to a widowed Mrs. Monir. So much for the high principles she’d stupidly thought this man had! At least members of the Revolutionary Guards stood on high moral ground. Her voice trembled as she finally answered. “But I can’t stay here for a long time, sir. I should go back to Tehran to my father. He is sick.”

  “I am not intending to keep you here permanently. As I told you earlier, I have my own family. I am doing this for God’s sake. You stay with me for one or two nights and I’ll pay your marriage portion. It is enough for you to go back and take care of your father for three months and ten days until you’re allowed to remarry. You don’t need to worry about getting pregnant. I’ll be careful because I don’t want to pay alimony for another child. After this period, I recommend that you to go to the Foundation of Martyrs and War Casualties. You show them the temporary marriage certificate as a proof that you were my sigheh. They can help you find your next temporary husband. In this way you won’t sin and you’ll be safe. You are still young. You can continue like this for a while. God willing, one day a good man will marry you permenantly.”

  The sergeant’s words washed over Parvaaneh like the waves of a swelling river and drowned her heart. She had made a huge mistake, and now it was too late to change anything or escape. Her knees were only an inch away from his wheelchair.

  “Should I take your silence as a yes?” the sergeant asked after a while.

  Ready to burst into tears, Parvaaneh could not open her mouth. But no, this wasn’t the time for self-pity. She clenched her jaw and p
ut her hand on the stump of the sergeant’s right leg, and immediately felt disgusted with herself. But what else she could do at this point? Her body was her bargaining tool. She had come on this journey for Navid, and she would see it through.

  The sergeant pulled himself back, letting her hand drop. “I want it clean,” he said. “I’ll take you to a clergyman, and he can perform the ritual.” He wheeled himself to the door. “I’ll make the necessary arrangements.”

  Parvaaneh felt completely numb after the sergeant left. Not being able to make sense of the events of the day, she sat there, wishing that what had just happened was not real. She didn’t know how much time had passed when the soldier with the bandaged hand came in and brought her a dish of rice and kebab with a Coke for dinner. He also had a black plastic bag, which he placed beside the tray of food. Even though she was hungry, she was too anxious to touch the food. She opened the bag and found a long and loose cotton dress with a flower pattern and a white chador. So the sergeant and his shameless proposal were real. And he could reappear at any minute.

  Parvaaneh felt nothing as she went to the small room with the bed at the back of the office, closed the sliding door, and changed into her new clothes. It was as if her body was empty inside, and a ghost who had somehow sneaked in was moving it around. The ghost was thoughtful, like a caring sister. In order not to have her clothes on display, it folded and hid them in the black bag and slid it under the bed. After a while, however, it left Parvaaneh by herself and vanished through the closed door.