Rooftops of Tehran

by Mahbod Seraji

  Ahmed interrupts. “Let’s organize a fund-raising event to raise money for his one-way ticket to the States.”

  Iraj ignores Ahmed again. “Americans have invented sophisticated technologies that enable them to spy on anyone, anytime, anywhere.”

  “See what your fucking Thomas Edison started?” Ahmed chides.

  Iraj whispers as if he’s sharing a top national security secret with us. “The Americans knew Doctor well, and were scared of him becoming knowledgeable of worldly affairs. They radioed someone inside Iran to get him.”

  Ahmed looks at me and says, “See, the man with the radio was talking to the crew of the American ship in the Persian Gulf!” I give Ahmed a dirty look for joking at Doctor’s expense. “Oh, for God’s sake,” he says. “He’ll be out soon. Mark my words; he’ll be out in no time.”

  Iraj says that Americans spied on another guy in the 1950s, someone much bigger and more important than our Doctor.

  Iraj is talking about Mosaddegh, the only democratically elected prime minister in the history of Iran. In 1953 the American CIA overthrew him for a trifling fee of $60,000. He was placed under house arrest after the Shah’s return until his death in March of 1967 at the age of eighty-four. Doctor used to say that Mosaddegh’s overthrow was the biggest American foreign policy blunder in history. “No one in the Middle East will ever again trust the Americans and their phony guardianship of democracy,” he declared angrily.

  “This guy,” Iraj continues, “was too popular, and killing him would’ve caused a revolution in Iran. Americans don’t want us to be strong because the balance of power in the area will be disrupted. They don’t want us to advance technologically, so that they can sell their technology to us.”

  “I’m only interested in the cameras that allow you to see through the walls,” Ahmed says. “I want to see how our neighbors make love to their wives.”

  Iraj looks around to make sure no one is close by, and whispers, “My father thinks the Shah is a puppet of the United States. They can kick his ass out anytime they want.”

  A street vendor is selling boiled beets, and Ahmed and I stop to buy some.

  “That stuff is going to kill you guys,” Iraj says. “Look at the guy who’s selling them. When do you think he last washed his hands?”

  I laugh. “Yeah, the newspapers are full of reports about people dying after eating boiled beets bought from street vendors.”

  “And he knows,” Ahmed says. “He’s read everything, including Suvashun.”

  I slap Ahmed in the chest with the back of my hand and continue eating my sweet delicious treat.

  Iraj blows his nose again, but this time doesn’t look in his handkerchief. “My uncle is a general in the army,” he says, as he puts his handkerchief back in his pocket. “My father could have been a general, too, but he purposely retired early because he knew that if things changed in Iran, the new regime would go after the generals before anyone else.”

  I nod, agreeing with him.

  “My uncle has already bought a house somewhere in New York, which is America’s largest city by the Atlantic Ocean,” he continues, a scornful look on his face. “He has a huge savings account in Switzerland. Everyone knows that my uncle would be the first one out of the country if there were a revolution. My father, however, is a true Iranian and will never leave the country he defended throughout his professional army career. I will never leave Iran either!”

  “What a shame,” Ahmed whispers. “The American ship in the Persian Gulf is probably wiring the news to the American papers right now. I can see the headlines: The next Thomas Edison has decided to stay in Iran!”

  Our all-boys school looks like a fortress. Tall cement walls surround the three-story brick building. The huge gate is guarded by our far-rash , a custodian who makes sure nonstudents don’t enter the school premises. The school yard is crowded with kids. You can immediately spot the newcomers by the nervous way they watch the kids around them. There are always one or two fistfights on the first day of school. The fights are normally broken up before our discipline teacher, Mr. Moradi, shows up with the long thick ruler that he uses to beat those who engage in violent activities.

  “You imbeciles, don’t you know that violence can get you in a whole lot of trouble?” he screams as he beats the troublemakers with his ruler. Mr. Moradi is also our gym teacher, despite the fact that we don’t have a gym in our school. He makes us line up in the yard once a week and takes us through his favorite warm-up drill in our street clothes.

  “One, two, three, four!” he shouts at the top of his lungs. “Jump now, higher, higher, you lazy fools!”

  When we are all sweaty and breathing hard, he divides us into groups of four and makes us run from one side of the yard to the other and back. The last ones back out of each group then compete against each other until the “laziest ass in class” is identified. I often wonder if Mr. Moradi knows the difference between lazy and slow. Being that today is the first day of school, Mr. Moradi decides to give us a lecture on discipline instead of making us run up and down the school yard.

  “The world would be a much better place if everyone was disciplined. Why is America such a powerful country? Because Americans are a disciplined nation. People in the United States respect rules,” he barks, a sparkle in his eyes. He says he once went to America to participate in an international wrestling competition, and was amazed at how people obeyed traffic rules.

  “Everyone stops at stop signs, even when there is no car coming from the opposite direction. That’s discipline for you. Discipline means respecting the rules regardless of the circumstances. We don’t even stop at red lights in this country. We feel that rules are made to be broken, and we feel justified breaking them because we are an undisciplined nation of rule breakers.”

  He shakes his head in disappointment and continues. “The British are a disciplined nation, too. Have you seen pictures of the guards at Buckingham Palace? Those guards don’t blink, even when there is no one around.” He points at Ahmed and adds, “Can you imagine Ahmed as a guard at Buckingham Palace?” Everyone laughs. I pray that Ahmed doesn’t strike back, and he doesn’t, at least not yet. Instead, he laughs, too, and shrugs his shoulders.

  “The government of America has installed trash cans every few meters on every street, and everyone uses them to discard their garbage,” Mr. Moradi lectures. “The streets of America are so clean, you can eat off of them. That is discipline for you.”

  He says that people line up and wait their turn in American stores. He shakes his head and says that in our country, we climb over one another to get to the front of the line. “Cheat, push, disregard others, get to the front of the line at any cost. It’s disgusting how undisciplined we are,” he says, raising his ruler in the air. “That’s why I chose to be a discipline teacher.” He huffs and puffs, looks around the room, and spots Iraj. “Your father was an army man. Tell me, what’s the most important characteristic of the best army in the world?”

  “Discipline, sir.”

  Mr. Moradi nods in agreement. Ahmed raises his hand. My heart sinks. I nervously begin to roll up my sleeves. Looking at Ahmed’s face and his patented smart-alecky smile, I know he’s about to ask a question that will infuriate Mr. Moradi. I think Mr. Moradi suspects the same because he ignores Ahmed long enough for me to roll my sleeves down again.

  “Yes?” Mr. Moradi finally acknowledges Ahmed.

  Ahmed’s thoughtful pose nearly cracks me up as my anxiety level heightens simultaneously. He asks, “Is it true, sir, that the most disciplined army in the world has a ship equipped with the most advanced spying technology docked in the Persian Gulf?”

  Mr. Moradi looks confused.

  Ahmed continues, now wagging his finger, as if he is interrogating Mr. Moradi, “And is it also true, sir, that the sailors on that ship listen to every conversation in Iran?”

  Mr. Moradi stares blankly at Ahmed.

  “And what about the technology that enables them to see throu
gh the walls? Because if this is all true, sir, I’m not taking a shower ever again.”

  Mr. Moradi is trying to hold back his smile. “Where did you hear that?” he asks.

  I see Iraj trying to hide behind the student sitting in front of him.

  “I heard it from Iraj, sir,” he says. “But I’m not sure I can trust him because he is a very undisciplined kid, and has no respect for rules—including the one that prohibits friends from checking out their friends’ sisters.”

  The class explodes with laugher. Even Mr. Moradi’s smile rushes to his face.

  Mr. Moradi is a strange man, but we like him better than Mr. Bana, our geometry teacher, who is about forty years old and has been teaching since the day he came out of his mother’s womb. “Geometry is the mother of all sciences,” he says. Ahmed once asked who the father was, and ended up spending the day in Mr. Moradi’s office, where he was lectured about the virtue of discipline in the classroom.

  When Mr. Bana enters the room, we stand up, as we do for all the teachers. Mr. Bana positions himself at the head of the class and stares at everyone. He says he can identify those who haven’t done their homework by the frightened look in their eyes. He always calls on someone from the back of the room because that’s where—in his opinion—the lazy students sit. As a result, there is always a fight over who sits in the front rows for Mr. Bana’s classes. Mr. Bana particularly loves to call on you with questions he knows no one can solve.

  “Euclid gave five postulates. The fifth postulate reads: ‘Given a line and a point not on the line, it is possible to draw exactly one line through the given point parallel to the line.’ What do you think about that?”

  A heavy silence always follows his questions.

  “If stupidity was the measure for greatness, you’d all be the greatest people in the world,” he mocks.

  At the end of each session, Mr. Bana asks if anyone has any questions. If you ask one, he shakes his ruler in your face and tells you that you are stupid for asking a stupid question. “The answer is on page eighty-eight. Look it up, you idiot!” he yells. If you don’t ask a question, Mr. Bana says something like, “So, you all know everything there is to know, ha? Well, we’ll see about that.” Then he points to an unfortunate soul and asks a hard question, which is normally followed by a good thrashing.

  I know what it’s like to be on Mr. Bana’s bad side. During our first trimester exam last year, I solved one of the problems using two different methods. Mr. Bana didn’t give me credit for either one, even though both my solutions were correct. He accused me of cheating, and eventually gave me a zero for the whole test. I went to Mr. Yazdi, our principal, and asked for his assistance.

  “What do you want me to do?” Mr. Yazdi asked.

  “I want to know why I’m being punished for solving a problem using two equally correct techniques.”

  “Mr. Bana is your teacher. If he says you cheated, then you must have cheated. There isn’t anything I can do about that.”

  “But where’s the proof?” I asked.

  “Mr. Bana is a teacher. He doesn’t need proof. His suspicion alone is good enough for me.”

  I ended up with a zero on my first exam. I told my dad the whole story. He said that I must prove Mr. Bana and Mr. Yazdi wrong by acing my next two exams. Then he would go to school to convince them to change my first trimester’s grade. I felt violated, and wronged. “Everything about this goddamn country stinks,” I complained to Ahmed. “I’m so glad I’ll be on my way to the United States soon, where the most disciplined people in the world understand logic and don’t accuse innocent people of an offense they didn’t commit.”

  I look at Mr. Bana now and thank God for not making any of my relatives teachers.

  Unlike Mr. Moradi, our religion teacher, Mr. Gorji—who also teaches dictation—has a strong disdain for the West, especially the United States. Mr. Gorji is a big fat man whose blustering boorish behavior irritates me a great deal. His face looks dirty thanks to a beard that he never shaves, but never grows beyond a few centimeters. He always wears a light brown suit that matches his unpolished, tattered shoes. His white shirt, always buttoned up to the top, is yellow around the collar. He never smiles, but when he talks, you can always see his yellow teeth. Ahmed says that every time Mr. Gorji looks at him, he feels guilty, as if he’d been caught peeling a banana. Then he winks at me to ensure I get the joke. Ahmed also says that he has heard rumors that Mr. Gorji is rich from lending money to the poor, and then charging them a fortune in interest. “He’s a fraud,” Ahmed says. “Practicing his brand of Islam will get you a one-way ticket to hell.”

  Sometimes Mr. Gorji gives us unannounced quizzes. “Any day can be a quiz day,” he says. “I do this for your own good because as a student you should always be ready to take a quiz.” I wonder, however, if Mr. Gorji is just too lazy to plan things. After all, as my father always says, we are a spontaneous nation; we do everything at the spur of the moment without much advanced planning.

  Mr. Gorji chooses the hardest words in the book, and reads each one aloud three times. “Ghostantanieh, Ghostantanieh, Ghostantanieh.” I guess he thinks we don’t hear the word the first couple of times. “Maghlateh, Maghlateh, Maghlateh.” It’s easy to misspell these words because letters like gh, s, and t can be written a couple of different ways. Most of the words in the quizzes are covered in previous lessons. However, to differentiate the good students from the mediocre ones, words not already covered could also be on the quiz. And getting a word correct does not necessarily guarantee you credit. Mr. Gorji also grades your handwriting. You can spell everything perfectly, but if he doesn’t like the way you write, you could lose two or more points. Mr. Gorji wouldn’t reward you with a twenty, a perfect score, even when you don’t misspell a word and have the best handwriting in the world. “Nineteen is the highest you can get. Twenty is God’s grade. He is the only perfect entity in the world,” he says, while kissing his rosary.

  If we get a word wrong, he makes us write it four hundred times in our notebooks. Sometimes he calls our names individually and asks us to go to the board to take a quiz as everyone else watches. He reads each word three times, and then moves on to the next word regardless of whether we are finished with our spelling. Each quiz is worth twenty points, and the passing grade is ten. Even a passing grade of ten to fourteen can get you a couple of slaps in the face and a good verbal thrashing: “You stupid jackass, you lazy cow, you temperamental dog—you will never amount to anything! If I asked you to spell the hardest female name you’d do it in your sleep, but you can’t spell words that make you a better person. That’s because all you think about is girls, girls, girls. You can’t wait for the hour to be over so that you can rush out to the nearest girls’ school and act like you’re cool. Go sit your fat ass down and write each word four hundred times. I’m warning you, you’d better watch your handwriting.”

  Mr. Gorji loves to insult us by calling us animal names. Our last year’s composition teacher, a young university student assigned to our school by the government, said it was impolite to call a person a “cow” to insult them. He said millions of people in India worship cows, and we should respect everyone’s religious beliefs, no matter how stupid they are! Every week, he would give us a new topic to write about, and then he would collect all the papers and read them carefully. No one ever got more than a fourteen in his class because he prided himself on being a hard grader. One time, he asked us to write a paper on the “Benefits of Technology.” He called on Ahmed to read his composition in front of the class. Ahmed read that contrary to Mr. Bana’s claim, he believed that technology and not geometry was the mother of all sciences, and that he wanted to put his mouth on mother technology’s large tits and drink until they were completely empty of the milk of knowledge.

  Our composition teacher yelled, “Stop, stop!” He then called Ahmed every animal name except a cow before throwing him out of the class. Last year, our composition teacher was caught in the bathroom with h
is pants down and a fifteen-year-old kid bent over in front of him. He was immediately reassigned to a school in another district. That day, Mr. Gorji told us that homosexuality is born of a lack of faith.

  “If you believe in God, you don’t desire anal sex.”

  Mr. Moradi said that homosexuality results from a lack of discipline, and respect for the rule that prohibits men from seeking other men. He was certain that there were no homosexuals in America because Americans were the most disciplined people in the universe.

  Our principal, Mr. Yazdi, said that we would have to be careful not to fall prey to the trap of homosexuals. “They are evil and psychotic,” he said. Then he told us the story of Asghar Ghatel, a man accused of molesting and murdering over one hundred teenage boys. I was dying to find out how Mr. Bana and his mother of all sciences would explain homosexuality in the next hour, but to my disappointment, he completely ignored the issue.

  11

  In the SAVAK’s Prisons

  No one has heard anything about Doctor since the night he was taken away, a little over two weeks ago. It’s as if he’s vanished from the face of the earth. His mother’s serious illness prevents her from going to the gates of Evin Prison anymore. Zari hasn’t been to the yard since Doctor’s arrest. When Faheemeh visits her, they spend most of their time in Zari’s room.

  Ahmed continues to assure me that Doctor will soon be freed, and things will return to the way they were. After one such conversation, he turns to me and asks how I am doing. I want to say that I am frustrated about not seeing Zari, and that I miss her terribly; that although I feel guilty for falling in love with her, I can’t stop thinking about her. Instead, I say that I need a diversion from our current predicament, that our teachers make me sick, that the thought of going to America makes me sick, and that sometimes I feel like the whole world makes me sick. I wish I could shoot the man with the radio, after I had a chance to break his nose and spill his blood on our sidewalk. Ahmed puts his hand on my shoulder and shakes his head in understanding. Then he says that we should go see an Iranian movie—the best cure for depression because they all have happy endings.