Rooftops of Tehran

by Mahbod Seraji

  Then it’s Doctor’s eyes staring at me. He must be wondering where the getaway plane is, why I’m not sacrificing myself to save him and Zari, as Humphrey Bogart did in Casablanca. He must be wondering why I gave him away. The man with the radio blows me a kiss. I open my mouth, and my voice is ripped from its silence as I scream at the top of my lungs.

  October is usually mild in Tehran, but this year it’s been particularly cold. Although it’s no longer possible to sleep on the roof, Ahmed and I still spend a lot of time up there. The colder the weather is, the quieter our alley, and the more peaceful our retreat into the depth of our souls to find answers to what seems utterly incomprehensible and unfair. I sense a change in Faheemeh, Ahmed, and myself. We’ve grown closer. Every day after Ahmed and I get out of our classes, we rush to Faheemeh’s school to walk her home. We spend hours pacing the streets together, sometimes without speaking a single word, and yet at the end of the day we have a hard time saying good-bye. When we do talk, it’s always about a future far, far away, a time when all of us are grown-ups, prosperous, educated, and traveling around the world. None of us wants to be present in the aftermath of Doctor’s death.

  When we talk, we discuss Doctor’s parents, the SAVAK’s ruthlessness, and the fact that it seems as if someone has sprinkled the dust of death over our neighborhood. We complain about the vulnerability of life, the absence of decency, and the seeming permanence of evil.

  I never mention Zari, but Faheemeh senses what I’m not saying. She says that Zari spends most of her time at Doctor’s house nursing his mother, who everyone says is “incurably insane.”

  “The poor woman doesn’t eat anything, and doesn’t talk,” Faheemeh reports. “All day long she sits still and stares at the door, as if she’s waiting for Doctor’s arrival. She hugs one of Doctor’s shirts, smells it, presses it against her cheeks, and quietly cries.” Faheemeh adds that she is worried about the impact of all this on Zari’s spirit. “I think she blames herself, as if she should have known about Doctor’s activities and stopped him. She says she never paid attention to what he was doing. Anytime he tried to discuss it with her she dismissed it as political talk, which she hated.”

  “How can she blame herself?” I whisper, thinking that I should be blamed for everything.

  “She can’t believe how naïve she was about the Shah and the SAVAK,” Faheemeh continues. “She used to argue with Doctor that the SAVAK organization probably didn’t even exist, that it was, for the most part, the product of the university students’ active imagination. That poor thing, she wishes she could take all that back.”

  One day, after we say good-bye to Faheemeh, Ahmed says that we should continue our walk because walking clears the mind and helps us see the big picture.

  We walk for hours, and I feel that for the first time in my life I’m absorbing the universe around me: the narrow alleys; the earthen, unpaved roads; the ugly, lifeless television antennas on the roofs; and the mazelike way in which our alleys weave through each other. I notice the unusual loudness of life around us: children playing football, mothers calling them, cars with broken mufflers passing by, their horns honking. The craziness of it all reminds me of how our alley used to be before Doctor was taken away. Life, as I remember it, was like a colorful musical projected onto a movie screen. Now it’s more like an old black-and-white photograph turned yellowish and creased.

  On our way home, Ahmed stops at the corner of an alley and looks at the street sign on the wall.

  “What is it?” I ask.

  “Nothing,” he says, and continues walking. At the next corner he stops again and looks at the sign for the next alley.

  “What?” I ask again.

  “Have you noticed how most of our streets and alleys are named after the Shah’s family members?”

  “Yes, I have.”

  “Most of these signs also tell you the size of each alley or street,” he says, a perplexed look on his face.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Look—this street is called the Twenty Meters of Reza Pahlavi, meaning that this street is twenty meters wide. That street is the Twenty-one Meters of Farah.” He looks at another sign, and starts to laugh. “This one is the Four Meters of Darabi. Darabi is not a member of the Shah’s immediate family, so his metric allocation is smaller.” He points to a large street several blocks away and says, “That one is the Sixty Meters of Shahpour. He’s the oldest brother of the Shah, so he gets the big number.”

  I have no idea where Ahmed is going with this.

  “Why do we need to know the size of each alley and street?” Ahmed asks.

  I suggest that the size must be a factor in determining the value of the properties in each neighborhood. Ahmed’s expression tells me that he knows I’m guessing.

  “Are these measurements correct?” he asks. “Our alley is the Ten Meters of Shahnaz. Do you really think our alley is ten meters wide?”

  “I don’t know,” I answer.

  “I doubt it,” he says, a worried look on his face. “What if it’s not? We should measure the width of our alley.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, what if our alley isn’t ten meters wide?”

  “Who cares?”

  “I care,” he says, his voice charged with emotion. “This could have a devastating effect on property values, you know?”

  The way he tosses my bullshit back at me makes me laugh.

  When we get back to our own alley, Ahmed goes inside his house and comes back out with a tape measure. He summons Iraj and another kid, and starts the process of measuring the width of the alley. He tells Iraj to hold one end of the tape, and asks the other kid to walk across the alley. A car comes through, and Ahmed waves at the driver to stop. He tells the driver that he’s in the middle of something important, and that he appreciates the driver’s patience. The driver says sure, and turns his engine off. Ahmed asks me if I think he should include the width of the sidewalks in his measurement. I say maybe he should measure it both ways.

  Kids from all over the alley gather around Ahmed to find out what he’s doing. A few more cars come through, and Ahmed stops them and notifies the drivers of his important mission, without being specific about the task or the reason for it. The drivers get out of their cars.

  “It’s twelve-point-two meters when you include the sidewalks,” Ahmed yells to me. “Write it down.”

  I don’t have paper or pencil, so I just shake my head.

  “Okay, let’s measure it excluding the sidewalks,” he directs.

  Iraj and the other kid start to move the tape. More cars have collected in the alley, and the commotion has attracted a lot of people. Ahmed’s project has the alley blocked, and no one can get through.

  “How wide is it?” Ahmed yells to Iraj.

  “Nine and a half meters.”

  Ahmed turns to one of the adults and says, “I can’t really trust that kid. Would you be kind enough to hold the end of the tape?” The adult walks over and takes the end of the tape away from Iraj, who runs to Ahmed to tell him he was doing it right. Ahmed smiles, points to me, and says, “Go stand by him.” Iraj walks over. I can tell from his smile that he has suddenly realized what Ahmed is doing. Ahmed asks, “What is the measurement now?”

  “Nine-point-six meters,” says the adult.

  Ahmed turns to Iraj and gives him a dirty look. Iraj smiles and shrugs his shoulders. Ahmed asks the second adult, “Are you at the edge of the sidewalk?”

  “Yes,” he answers.

  Ahmed walks over and examines the placement of the tape. People randomly divide themselves into two groups and position themselves behind each of the tape holders. All eyes are on the tape and the position of the holders.

  “This way, to the left,” orders one guy, who has closed one eye trying to imagine a straight line between the two tape holders.

  “No, no. Too far,” another guy yells from the other side of the alley. The tape holder moves back a few centimeters. A number of people begi
n to argue that the line is now slightly slanted.

  “Hard to tell,” Ahmed says. “We’re trying to figure out the straightness of an imaginary line. The Americans shot a man straight from the earth to the moon, and we can’t draw a straight line.” He then looks at Iraj and asks, “Do you know why the Americans were able to do that?”

  Iraj nods vigorously and says, “Yes, sir, because Americans are the most disciplined nation in the world!”

  One of the guys in the crowd says that he is a mason, and that he can do this with his eyes closed. He then takes one end of the tape in his hands and wiggles it around on the edge of the sidewalk a couple of times and says, “There, now you have a straight line.” The line does look straight.

  “What’s the measurement?” Ahmed asks.

  “Nine-point-four meters,” responds the mason.

  “And that’s exactly my point! This alley is not ten meters wide,” Ahmed crows in triumph.

  I look around, and see at least fifty people gathered in the alley. Traffic has come to a complete halt but no one seems to care.

  “Is that important?” asks one of the adults.

  “Of course it’s important!” Ahmed says with plenty of alarm in his voice. “This could have a devastating impact on property values. The prices of these homes are based on the width of the alley they were built in. The city could announce that everything in this alley is worth at least fifty thousand toomans less than what people are trying to sell them for.”

  “But the city doesn’t get involved in such things,” says one of the adults apprehensively.

  “Are you sure?” another adult asks.

  “Of course they do,” somebody else yells.

  “What should we do?”

  “We should measure the width of every street that has a metric number in front of its name, and be prepared to present evidence that the homes in this city are all overpriced.”

  I want to laugh, but I control the urge. I see a spark in Ahmed’s eyes, one that I know very well. One man says that he has no plan to sell his house, but should he decide to do so, the mayor himself couldn’t get him to drop his price. A woman says that she and her husband just bought their house in this neighborhood, and if they knew the alley was narrower than advertised, they might have looked somewhere else. The mason tries to convince everyone that a few centimeters doesn’t really matter, but no one listens to him. Ahmed has completely pulled himself out of the discussions. He looks at Iraj and me, and grins. We grin back.

  17

  Prove Your Innocence

  The next morning I hear my mother whispering to my dad that she is scared to death that Ahmed and I are going to get ourselves in serious trouble. “I’ve heard them talk about killing the man with the radio,” she reports, her voice tight with panic. “You need to talk to him, and to Ahmed, too. They’re young and inexperienced, and very emotional right now. They can’t go on like this.” Then, as if she’s afraid that someone might hear her, she whispers in a guarded tone, “Did you know that they went to Doctor’s grave site?”

  “No,” Dad responds.

  “What if the agents saw them? Oh, my God, I can’t even imagine. Please, talk to them,” she begs.

  My father assures her that he will talk to us, but my mother continues. “There is a rumor in the alley that Pasha planted the rosebush outside the house. I know he’s angry and depressed, and God knows what else he might be saying at school or to other kids in the alley!”

  The next day, my father has a private conversation with Ahmed’s father. A few minutes later we are summoned to Ahmed’s living room, and my father tells us that he has to take care of some personal business up north, and he prefers not to go alone. He would appreciate it if Ahmed and I went along.

  “One has to be careful all the time,” Dad says as soon as we get on the road. “In this country being innocent doesn’t protect you from suffering the fate of a criminal. That’s because we have a lot of nokars in this country. Servitude and blind devotion is what a nokar subscribes to.” Then he turns to me and asks, “Have I ever told you about Engineer Sadeghi?”

  “No,” I respond. “Who’s he?”

  “When you were about six years old, I was a Jungle Guard in Mazandaran,” he begins.

  I discreetly elbow Ahmed in the side. My dad always tells remarkable stories of his younger years. Ahmed nods a couple of times and winks without looking at me to let me know he’s listening.

  “The Shah had just nationalized the forests, and my job was to prevent the locals from cutting down the trees. One of the Shah’s own brothers was breaking the law only a few kilometers from where I was stationed, but I didn’t know anything about it. I was sitting in my office one day when a government inspector arrived from Tehran. His name was Engineer Sadeghi, a self-proclaimed man of high integrity and principles. He said that I had been accused of accepting a bribe to allow illegal forest shaving operations in the Kolahdasht area. If I were found guilty, which he was certain I would be, my punishment would be sixteen years in Evin Prison because disobeying the orders of the Shah was interpreted as treason by the high courts.”

  My father lights a cigarette and takes a huge puff. I can tell from the look on Ahmed’s face that he wants a cigarette, too, but he is totally absorbed in my father’s story.

  “I told him that I had never taken a bribe in my life,” my father continues. “He laughed and said that my denial was not out of character for a man of my corruptible standards. He asked me to surrender my badge and follow him to his jeep. He was taking me to Tehran to personally hear the sentencing I deserved. The accused has no rights in this country, so I did what I was told. I asked him if we could stop at my house to inform my wife of my predicament. He said no, and continued driving toward Tehran.

  “He was a peculiar man, surprisingly loquacious and brutally honest. It didn’t seem to matter to him that I was not interested in his long-winded stories about his ancestors who were as loyal as dogs to the family of the king. His father was a devoted servant to Reza Shah, as was his grandfather. He recalled Reza Shah telling his father that his family would be well provided for as long as the Pahlavis wore the crown. He claimed that the Sadeghis were a people of high integrity who wouldn’t dream of accepting charity from anyone, including the king himself.

  “He talked of his son and of his future daughter-in-law, whom he adored. They were to be married within a couple of months, and the prospect of having a grandchild, particularly a grandson, elated him.

  “He said that men like me made him sick, that he never once in his life took a step down the wrong path, and he could not understand the cravings of men like me for money and power. He didn’t understand the psychology of greed, and was in despair when he had to explain to his own son—the jewel of his life—why certain people would sink so low as to risk personal and family honor the way I had.

  “I sat quietly and listened as he continued to tell me of his high regard for fairness and social equality, of decency and morality, and the inexplicable corruption of humanity. He told me of the bribes he had been offered as an inspector, and his refusal to accept a single rial throughout his long and unfaltering career. Once, he was offered a huge sum that would have financed his son’s education at the finest university in the United States. He refused to accept the bribe, saying that he preferred an uneducated son to one whose quality of life was enhanced with money that came from illegal means. Another time, he turned down a new, fully furnished house in an affluent section of the capital city.

  “He said he knew well that his enemies were lurking in the shadows, waiting for an opportune moment to strike, but his principles were unwavering, and he preferred death to a dishonorable life.

  “I listened to him silently, thinking of the hardship that was to befall my wife and my dear child. What would my wife do? She hadn’t worked a day in her life, and now she would be saddled with the burden of supporting the family. I had saved no money, and owned no property that could be sold. She was
on her own. I could picture you getting slapped around by a master at a house or a shop, perhaps beaten for a small mistake you were bound to make as a child, or kicked just to be taught a lesson while I rotted in jail for a crime I did not commit. I was burning with pain while this imbecile, this self-appointed guardian of high principles and values, chattered away about his family’s devotion to a tyrant. I looked at his face from the passenger side and saw a symbol of everything that had gone wrong in our country, and I knew what I must do.

  “I could explode his skull with a single blow. My knuckles had cut down much bigger men in the ring, and now they were going to save my family from the greatest enemy we had ever faced. I clenched my fists and prepared myself.

  “I knew that I needed a plan before discharging the fatal blow. I would hit him, then grab the steering wheel and move to his side to bring the car to a stop. I would throw his body on the backseat, get off the road, then bury his body in a ditch and burn his car before catching a ride back to my office. No one had seen us together, and he had an army of enemies. No one would ever suspect me, since I, too, had lived an honest life—a simple life that was about to be destroyed by this man without a single shred of evidence.

  “He stopped the car right at the moment when I was ready to wipe his existence from the face of the earth. My silence had broken his rhythm. He told me that people in my predicament usually begged for forgiveness, or tried to make a deal or attempt to escape. He questioned, ‘What is wrong with you, man? Have you no regard for your reputation? Feel no remorse? Have no shame? No fear? Feel no pain? Explain to me what it takes to stoop to your level.’

  “I continued my silence as he got out of the car and shut the door behind him. He sat on the railing by the side of the road and lit a cigarette. I got out of the car and joined him without saying a word, still waiting for the best opportunity to discharge the fatal assault. He kept looking at the mountains and the little streams that ran through the valleys. He puffed on his cigarette. ‘Are you innocent?’ he asked.