“What are you doing here?”
It was Meshang, raw with rage. At the far end of the corridor, Lochart saw Zarah come into view and stop. “Good…good evening, Meshang,” he said, his heart pounding, trying to sound reasonable and polite and why the hell doesn’t she open the door and this isn’t the way it’s supposed to happen. “I came back to see my wife.”
“She’s not your wife, she’s divorced, now get out!”
Lochart stared at him blankly. “Of course she’s my wife!”
“By God, are you simple? She was your wife. Now leave my house!”
“You’re crazy, you can’t divorce her just like that!”
“GET OUT!”
“Get stuffed!” Again Lochart hammered on the door. “Sharazad!”
Meshang whirled on Zarah. “Go and get some Green Bands! Go on, get some Green Bands! They’ll throw this madman out!”
“But, Meshang, isn’t it dangerous to involve them in ou—”
“Get them!”
Lochart’s temper snapped. His shoulder went into the door. It shuddered but did not give so he raised his foot, slammed his heel against the lock. The lock shattered and the door burst open. “Get Green Bands!” Meshang shrieked. “Don’t you understand they’re on our side now, we’re reinstated…” Then he rushed through the door too. Blankly he also saw the room was empty, bed empty, bathroom empty, nowhere else she could be. Both he and Lochart turned on Jari who stood at the doorway, staring with disbelief, Zarah cautiously behind her in the hall. “Where is she?” Meshang shouted.
“I don’t know, Excellency, she never left here, my room is next door and I’m a light sleeper…” Jari howled as Meshang belted her across the mouth, the blow sending her reeling onto her hands and knees.
“Where’s she gone?”
“I don’t know, Excellency, I thought she was in be—” She shrieked as Meshang’s toe went into her side. “By God, I don’t know I don’t know I don’t know!”
Lochart was at the French doors. They opened easily, already unlatched. At once he went out onto the balcony, down the stairs, and to the back door. He came back slowly, in turmoil. Meshang and Zarah watched him from the balcony. “The back door was unlocked. She must’ve gone out this way.”
“Gone where?” Meshang was flushed with rage, and Zarah turned on Jari who was still on her hands and knees in the bedroom, moaning and weeping with fear and pain. “Shut up, you dog, or I’ll whip you. Jari! If you don’t know where she’s gone, where do you think she’s gone?”
“I… I don’t know, Highness,” the old woman sobbed.
“Thinkkk!” Zarah shrieked and slapped her.
Jari howled. “I don’t knowwww! She’s been strange all day, Excellencies, strange, she sent me away this afternoon and went off by herself and I met her near seven o’clock and we came back together but she said nothing, nothing, nothing…”
“By God, why didn’t you tell me?” Meshang shouted.
“What was there to tell, Excellency? Please don’t kick me again, please!”
Meshang groped for a chair. The violent pendulum from total terror when the mullah and Green Bands were announced to total euphoria at his reprieve and reinstatement to fury finding Lochart here and Sharazad gone had momentarily unhinged him. His mouth moved but there was no sound and he saw Lochart questioning Jari but could not understand the words.
When he had rushed back into the dining room to stutter the God-given news there had been rejoicing, Zarah had wept with happiness and embraced him and so did the women, and the men had warmly wrung his hand. All except Daranoush. Daranoush was no longer there. He had fled. Out the back door. “He’s gone?”
“Like a bag full of fart!” someone called out.
Everyone had started laughing, their private relief that they were no longer in any immediate danger of guilt by association, together with Meshang’s totally unexpected rocket back to wealth and power, making them light-headed. Someone had shouted, “You really can’t have Daranoush the Daring as a brother-in-law, Meshang!”
“No, no, by God,” he remembered saying, quaffing a glass of champagne. “How could you trust such a man?”
“Not even with a bucket of piss! By the Prophet, I’ve always thought Dirty Daranoush overcharged for his services. The bazaar should rescind his contract!”
Another cheer and general agreement and Meshang had drunk a second glass of champagne, gloating over the glorious new possibilities opened up before him; the new contract for the bazaar’s waste which he as the injured party would of course have, a new syndicate to finance the government under his guidance and greater profit, new associations with more important ministers than Ali Kia—where is that son of a dog?—new deals in the oil fields, monopolies to maneuver, a new match for Sharazad, so easy now for who would not want to be part of his family, the bazaari family? No need now to pay out a usurious dowry I agreed to only under duress. All my property back, the estates on the Caspian shores, streets of houses in Jaleh, apartments in the northern suburbs, lands and orchards and fields and villages, all of it back.
Then the servant destroying his elation, whispering that Lochart had returned, was already in his house, already upstairs. Rushing upstairs, and now helplessly watching the man he hated so much questioning Jari, Zarah listening as intently.
With an effort he concentrated. Jari was saying between sobs, “…I’m not sure, Excellency, she…she only…she only told me the young man that saved her life at the first Women’s Protest was a university student.”
“Did she ever meet him alone?”
“Oh, no, Excellency, no, as I said we met him at the march and he asked us to take coffee to recover,” Jari said. She was petrified of being caught in the lie but more petrified of telling what had really happened. God protect us, she prayed. Where has she gone, where?
“What was his name, Jari?”
“I don’t know, Excellencies, it might have been Ibrahim or…or Ishmael, I don’t know. I already told you, he had no importance.”
Lochart’s head was pounding. No clue, nothing. Where would she have gone? To a friend’s? To the university? Another protest march? Don’t forget the rumors in the market about university students rioting again, more explosions expected tonight, more marches and countermarches, Green Bands versus the leftists, but all non-Imam-sponsored marches forbidden by the Komiteh and the Komiteh’s patience ended. “Jari, you must have some idea, some way of helping us!”
Meshang said gutturally, “Whip her, she knows!”
“I don’t I don’t…” Jari wailed.
“Shut up, Jari!” Lochart turned on Meshang, his face pale and violence absolute. “I don’t know where she’s gone but I know the why: you forced the divorce, and I swear by the Lord God if she comes to harm, any harm, you will pay!”
Meshang blustered, “You left her, you left her penniless, you abandoned her and you’re divorced, yo—”
“Remember, you will pay! And if you bar me from this house whenever I come back or she comes back, by God, be that on your head too!” On the edge of madness, Lochart stalked toward the French doors.
Zarah said quickly, “Where are you going?”
“I don’t know… I… To the university. Perhaps she’s gone to join another march though why she’d run off to do that…” Lochart could not bring himself to articulate his real terror: that her revolt was so extreme that her mind was unhinged and she would kill herself—oh, not suicide, but how many times in the past had she said, “Never worry about me, Tommy. I am a Believer, I always try to do God’s work and so long as I die doing God’s work with God’s name on my lips I will go to Paradise.”
But what about our child-to-be? A mother wouldn’t, couldn’t, could she, someone like Sharazad?
The room was very still. For an eternity he stood there. Then, all at once, his being swept him into new waters. In a strange clear voice he said, “Bear witness for me: I attest that there is no other God but God and Mohammed is the Proph
et of God… I attest that there is no other God but God and Mohammed is the Prophet of God…” and the third and last time. Now it was done. He was at peace with himself. He saw them staring at him. Stunned.
Meshang broke the silence, no longer in anger. “Allah-u Akbar! Welcome. But saying the Shahada is not enough, not by itself.”
“I know. But it is the beginning.”
They watched him vanish into the night, all of them spellbound that they had witnessed a soul being saved, an unbeliever transmuted into a Believer, so unexpectedly. All of them were filled with joy, degrees of joy. “God is Great!”
Zarah murmured, “Meshang, doesn’t this change everything?”
“Yes, yes and no. But now he will go to Paradise. As God wants.” Suddenly he was very tired. His eyes went to Jari, and she began to tremble again. “Jari,” he said with the same calm, “you are going to be whipped until you tell me all the truth or you are in hell. Come along, Zarah, we mustn’t forget our guests.”
“And Sharazad?”
“As God wills.”
NEAR THE UNIVERSITY: 9:48 P.M. Sharazad turned into the main road where Green Bands and their supporters were collecting. Thousands of them. The vast majority were men. All armed. Mullahs marshaled them, exorting them to maintain discipline, not to fire on the leftists until they were fired upon, to try to persuade them from their evil. “Don’t forget they’re Iranians, not satanic foreigners. God is Great… God is Great…”
“Welcome, child,” an old mullah said gently, “peace be upon you.”
“And upon you,” she said. “We’re marching against the anti-God?”
“Oh, yes, in a little while, there’s plenty of time.”
“I have a gun,” she said proudly, showing it to him. “God is Great.”
“God is Great. But better that the killing should cease and the misguided should recognize the Truth, renounce their heresies, obey the Imam, and come back to Islam.” The old man saw her youth and resolution and was uplifted, and saddened. “Better the killing should cease but if those of the Left Hand do not cease to oppose the Imam, God’s peace on him, then with the Help of God we will hurry them into hell…”
TABRIZ—AT THE PALACE: 10:05 P.M. The three of them were sitting in front of the wood fire drinking after-dinner coffee and watching the flames, the room small and richly brocaded, warm and intimate—one of Hakim’s guards beside the door. But there was no peace between them, though all had pretended otherwise, now and during the evening. The flames held their attention, each seeing different pictures therein. Erikki was watching the fork in the road, always the fork, one way the flames leading to loneliness, the other to fulfillment—perhaps and perhaps not. Azadeh watched the future, trying not to watch it.
Hakim Khan took his eyes off the fire and threw down the gauntlet. “You’ve been distracted all evening, Azadeh,” he said.
“Yes. I think we all are.” Her smile was not real. “Do you think we could talk in private, the three of us?”
“Of course.” Hakim motioned to the guard. “I’ll call if I need you.” The man obeyed and closed the door after him. Instantly the mood of the room changed. Now all three were adversaries, all aware of it, all on guard and all ready. “Yes, Azadeh?”
“Is it true that Erikki must leave at once?”
“Yes.”
“There must be a solution. I cannot endure two years without my husband.”
“With the Help of God the time will pass quickly.” Hakim Khan sat stiffly upright, the pain eased by the codeine.
“I cannot endure two years,” she said again.
“Your oath cannot be broken.”
Erikki said, “He’s right, Azadeh. You gave the oath freely, Hakim is Khan and the price…fair. But all the killings—I must leave, the fault’s mine, not yours or Hakim’s.”
“You did nothing wrong, nothing, you were forced into protecting me and yourself, they were carrion bent on murdering us, and as to the raid…you did what you thought best, you had no way of knowing the ransom was part paid or Father was dead…he should not have ordered the messenger killed.”
“That changes nothing. I have to go tonight. We can accept it, and leave it at that,” Erikki said, watching Hakim. “Two years will pass quickly.”
“If you live, my darling.” Azadeh turned to her brother who looked back at her, his smile still the same, eyes the same.
Erikki glanced from brother to sister, so different and yet so similar. What’s changed her, why has she precipitated that which should not have been precipitated?
“Of course if I live,” he said, outwardly calm.
An ember fell into the hearth and he reached forward and moved it to safety. He saw that Azadeh had not taken her gaze off Hakim, nor he off her. The same calm, same polite smile, same inflexibility.
“Yes, Azadeh?” Hakim said.
“A mullah could absolve me from my oath.”
“Not possible. Neither a mullah nor I could do that, not even the Imam would agree.”
“I can absolve myself. This is between me and God, I can ab—”
“You cannot, Azadeh. You cannot and live at peace with yourself.”
“I can. I can and be at peace.”
“Not and remain Muslim.”
“Yes,” she said simply, “I agree.”
Hakim gasped. “You don’t know what you say.”
“Oh, but I do. I’ve considered even that.” Her voice was toneless. “I’ve considered that solution and found it bearable. I will not endure two years of separation, nor will I endure any attempt on my husband’s life, or forgive it.” She sat back and left the battle for the moment, nauseous but glad she had brought the matter into the open but frightened all the same. Once more she blessed Aysha for forewarning her.
“I will not allow you to renounce Islam under any circumstances,” Hakim said.
She just looked back at the flames.
The minefield was all around them, all mines triggered, and though Hakim was concentrating on her, his senses probed Erikki, He of the Knife, knowing the man was waiting too, playing a different game now that the problem was before them. Should I have dismissed the guard? he asked himself, outraged by her threat, the smell of danger filling his nostrils. “Whatever you say, Azadeh, whatever you try, for the sake of your soul I would be forced to prevent an apostasy—in any way I could. That’s unthinkable.”
“Then please help me. You’re very wise. You’re Khan and we have been through much together. I beg you, remove the threat to my soul and to my husband.”
“I don’t threaten your soul or your husband.” Hakim looked at Erikki directly. “I don’t.”
Erikki said, “What were those dangers you mentioned?”
“I can’t tell you, Erikki,” Hakim said.
“Would you excuse us, Highness? We must get ready to leave.” Azadeh got up. So did Erikki.
“You stay where you are!” Hakim was furious. “Erikki, you’d allow her to forswear Islam, her heritage, and her chance of life everlasting?”
“No, that’s not part of my plan,” he said. Both of them stared at him, bewildered. “Please tell me what dangers, Hakim.”
“What plan? You have a plan? To do what?”
“The dangers, first tell me what dangers. Azadeh’s Islam is safe with me, by my own gods I swear it. What dangers?”
It had never been part of Hakim’s strategy to tell them, but now he was rocked by her intractability, aghast that she would consider committing the ultimate heresy, and further disoriented by this strange man’s sincerity. So he told them about the telex and the pilots and airplanes fleeing, and his conversation with Hashemi, noticing that though Azadeh was as aghast as Erikki, her surprise did not seem real. It’s almost as though she already knew, had been present, both times, but how could she possibly know? He rushed on: “I told him you could not be taken in my house or domain or in Tabriz, that I would give you a car, that I hoped you’d escape arrest, and that you would leave just before
dawn.”
Erikki was shattered. The telex’s changed everything, he thought. “So they’ll be waiting for me.”
“Yes. But I did not tell Hashemi I had another plan, that I’ve already sent a car into Tabriz, that the moment Azadeh was asleep I wo—”
“You’d’ve left me, Erikki?” Azadeh was appalled. “You’d’ve left me without telling me, without asking me?”
“Perhaps. What were you saying, Hakim; please finish what you were saying.”
“The moment Azadeh was asleep I planned to smuggle you out of the palace into Tabriz where the car is and point you toward the border, the Turkish border. I have friends in Khoi and they would help you across it, with the Help of God,” Hakim added automatically, enormously relieved that he had had the foresight to arrange this alternate plan—just in case it was needed. And now it’s happened, he thought. “You have a plan?”
“Yes.”
“What is it?”
“If you don’t like it, Hakim Khan, what then?”
“In that case I would refuse to allow it and try to stop it.”
“I would prefer not to risk your displeasure.”
“Without my help, you cannot leave.”
“I’d like your help, that’s true.” Erikki was no longer confident. With Mac and Charlie and the rest gone—how in hell could they do it so fast? Why the hell didn’t it happen while we were in Tehran but thank all gods Hakim’s Khan now and can protect Azadeh—it’s clear what SAVAK’ll do to me if they catch me, when they catch me. “You were right about the danger. You think I could sneak out as you said?”
“Hashemi left two policemen on the gate. I think you could be smuggled out—somehow it should be possible to distract them—I don’t know if there’re others on the road down to the city but there may be, more than likely there would be. If they’re vigilant and you’re intercepted…that’s God’s will.”
Azadeh said, “Erikki, they’re expecting you to go alone, and the colonel agreed not to touch you inside Tabriz. If we were hidden in the back of an old truck—we only need a little luck to avoid them.”
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