by Parisa Reza
“Do you have something else to tell me?”
Bahram feels he must point out that she was a widow.
“And what else?”
Bahram does not reply.
“God alone is your judge,” the ayatollah tells him, “but if you came to ask my advice, I would tell you to fast for an entire month and never go back there, and if God chooses to he will forgive you. Now you must face him alone.”
Bahram stands up, kisses the ayatollah’s hand again, and leaves.
Sardar notices his son fasting and thinks a month of abstinence a little severe for picking up a scrap of paper, but the ayatollah knows what he’s doing, it must be serious in the eyes of the faith. Talla is intrigued by this sudden piety, and knows it is hiding something. She questions Bahram and Sardar, but does not get to the truth. Men show solidarity in the face of women’s curiosity, which tries to probe their secrets.
IV
FIROUZEH,
A WISE MAN’S DREAM
On Mehr 1st, 1330, the first day of fall, a cool wind sweeps through Baharestan Square in Tehran, swirling around the National Assembly buildings and Sepahsalar Mosque. Bahram is standing shyly under the porch of Dar-ul Funun Polytechnic College, its name inscribed in Arab script on a strip of Persian blue ceramic. On the lapel of his jacket he wears a white ribbon bearing the words “Nationalize Iranian Oil.” Dar-ul Funun is a symbol of modern Iran, the country’s first institution of higher education, and it is currently a prestigious high school. It is about to accept Bahram as a student, and he mops the nervous sweat from his brow before finally stepping inside.
Dar-ul Funun was founded exactly a hundred years earlier by Amir Kabir, chancellor to Naer al-Din Shah Qajar, for the teaching of medicine and the sciences. It was inaugurated in 1230 in the presence of the Shah, Iranian and European teachers, and thirty student princes. When Reza Shah created Tehran University in 1312, Dar-ul Funun became the capital’s most reputable public high school.
Gholhak’s Djam High School did not manage to open a tenth grade class. It would have needed ten students to set one up, but most of them left school after graduating ninth grade. Even Ghassem left to become a railway administrator, thereby realizing his father’s improbable dream. Bahram continued his studies at Shapour High School in Tadjrish to the north of Shemiran. A brilliant student, he has bowed to pressure from his teachers, who felt he belonged at Dar-ul Funun, and he has enrolled here for the last year of high school in the hopes of securing the most renowned school diploma in the country.
Bahram stands in Dar-ul Funun’s square courtyard that first day, surrounded by buildings with tall arches, in the shade of big trees, at a crossing of the pathways, which—as in every Persian garden—lead to an ornamental pond with water streaming from a qanat; his first thought is for Amir Kabir. When Bahram and Talla went to Ghamsar they visited Kashan and the Fin Gardens with their rectangular ponds, the site of Amir Kabir’s assassination two weeks after the inauguration of Dar-ul Funun. It is said that Kabir’s mother extracted the order for this killing from Naser al-Din Shah one drunken night. Bahram remembers the turquoise tiles in the pools, the small now-empty pond in which Amir Kabir bathed for the last time, his blood spilling from his veins after he asked his assassins the favor of choosing the instrument of his death . . . then he thinks of Naser al-Din Shah’s assassination and of Shah-Abdol-Azim. He has heard that, by some irony of fate or the serendipity of the place, having been struck by the bullet he took three steps back and fell into the Jayran room—the room he had given the same name as his favorite wife in his harem. He also remembers that Naser al-Din Shah refused entry to Dar-ul Funun to commoners; only the sons of princes and noblemen belonged there.
“What am I doing here?” he thinks, and yet he is aware of how things have evolved in those hundred years. But he also knows that the significance of social rank will never be erased from these walls or these paving stones, or his own heart. He knows he is the most brilliant, most gifted boy in Gholhak, but that he is and always will be the son of a peasant. Trapped by his ambivalent destiny, he can see two possible outcomes: either he will flee pathetically, expelling himself before he is expelled on an order from the king or—worse—the king’s steward; or he will be singing the victory hymn while brandishing his sword and Spartan shield (in moments of vanity like this it always the image of a Spartan that comes to mind, like something he saw in a film whose title he has forgotten).
It strikes him that everything here is absurd, Dar-ul Funun is the crossroads of all those broken trajectories: of people tragically propelled off course by events no one could have predicted. He feels intuitively that the chaos will not stop there, more unforeseeable factors will come to toy with fate. He thinks that when God created this country he made its first characteristic “tragedy,” the song of sacrifice, in the most Greek sense of the word. Perhaps that is what constitutes the curse of Alexander—a figure he hates to the deepest fiber of his being.
Did Mossadegh have these same thoughts when, not long after this, he stood before the United Nations Security Council pleading the case for Iran? Was Mossadegh nervous as he stepped into the UN? Was the situation within his scope? Or did he think only of the goal that his personal trajectory was meant to achieve?
Since Parliament voted in the nationalization of Iranian oil, since Mossadegh became prime minister in the spring of this year, life has completely changed for Gholhakis. Amid a turmoil of ideas and debates, Gholhak has seen its young men transformed into heroes setting out to achieve sovereignty for their country, whatever the cost. But they do not go blindly; they read and listen, discuss and concur. Even though they are united behind Mossadegh in opposing the English, each has his own opinion. Some feel he should have negotiated a 50/50 division of assets as the Americans did in Arabia; others that it is a question of principles, that the arrogance of the English means only nationalization could appease the Iranians’ anger. Still others feel the English might have accepted nationalization in exchange for the compensation Mossadegh was offering them, that they might then have managed to negotiate fifty percent exploitation rights. But they know that the refinery in Abadan with its 37,000 employees is peerless, the biggest in the world, so this was a question of prestige for the English. Bahram believes what Mossadegh believes; his support is unfaltering.
Since Mossadegh came to power Bahram has stopped reading Hugo, Balzac, and Jules Verne; he now reads the quantities of pamphlets published by political parties on every possible political subject. So many young men are consumed with what they read in these pamphlets and by the leaders of their day. Bahram is a fervent admirer of Mossadegh, but also of Hossein Fatemi, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, who is his role model, his idol—he wishes he could be him. There are plenty more he admires, including Abol-Hassan Amidi-e Nouri, founder of the Dad newspaper and a member of the National Front, who lives in Gholhak. Bahram sometimes sees him in the street and greets him respectfully. He would like the man to notice the “Nationalize Iranian Oil” ribbon stitched to his lapel. Surely he does notice it, and reciprocates the friendly greeting.
This ship will sail or fail through these eddies . . . a poet once said.
Bahram has just listened to Mossadegh on the radio making a speech to the United Nations to defend the nationalization of Iranian oil because the English have brought the case before the UN Security Council. He heads upstairs, sits on the window ledge, and puts his mind to memorizing Mossadegh’s words while drawing a picture of the garden. As is the custom now, he learns by heart anything that he thinks is important. He is still too young to have his own ideas; he absorbs and repeats what is said in the papers, in books, and by politicians . . . And drawing is his companion when he is concentrating like this. He draws the mulberry tree, the pond, and the little ginger kitten he has just adopted to replace his old cat who died two months ago. A huge black cat appears out of nowhere and launches itself at the kitten. Bahram yells and the cat run
s away, but the kitten stays sprawled on the ground. Bahram races downstairs to help it, and the mewling kitten manages to get back to its feet but its hind legs no longer work, its spine is broken. Bahram backs away. His parents come hurrying over and Bahram asks his mother to take the kitten away, he can’t bear to see it in this state. Sardar kills the kitten swiftly to spare it further suffering, then puts the little body in a sack and removes it. Bahram returns to his room and Talla goes up after him to console him, but he rejects her attempts. She heads back downstairs but warns him to beware the curse of cats: “This happened just after Mossadegh’s speech, it’s a bad omen for him. That’s how things will end for Mossadegh. Someone far more powerful than him will catch him unawares and break him in two. Don’t get too attached to Mossadegh like you were attached to that kitten!” But the harm is done, and Bahram will remember his mother’s words: the curse of cats.
Nevertheless Mossadegh went on to win his case before the UN, whose decision was not final pending a conclusion from the court in the Hague.
Bahram is to spend only an uncomfortable three months at Dar-ul Funun. He is eighteen, the age when an adolescent becomes a man. But all the signs are that he must not become a man in the tradition of his inheritance, he must be fulfilled by breaking with that continuity. This is what they all want, his father, the headmaster of Djam School, everyone. Except him. He accepts it but also rejects it. A part of him rejects it. He now goes to Tehran every day; he needs to break away from Shemiran and the benign surroundings of his childhood. Particularly as this is an era that calls for fighters, for rebels; he must choose his camp. And this transition can take place only with all the pain of change.
Halfway through a lesson in the late fall he feels a stab of pain, falls from his chair, and lies unconscious on the floor. He is taken to hospital: appendicitis. He has had pain in his lower abdomen for a month but the local doctor in Gholhak could find nothing. He will be kept in for the night and given an emergency operation in the morning. The staff ask him how to contact his parents. Bahram tells them to call Gholhak’s main telephone exchange, and ask them to pass the word on to the grocer whose shop is near the exchange—he will go and tell Bahram’s parents.
Talla is given the news. News is always conveyed in the same way here whether it’s the death of the king or Bahram’s appendicitis: Someone arrives, always in a tearing hurry, and announces the information loudly and clearly.
“Ya ghamar-e bani hashem!” Talla cries, and starts beating her head and pulling her hair. Neighbors come running, lots of them. Sardar comes home and finds his wife collapsed in their arms. He thinks once again that he has lost his son. When he hears the news he is angry.
“Come on, come on, he’s not dead!”
He wants to know where Bahram is. No one knows; the boy who relayed the information said only that he was in the hospital. Where was the boy from? From the grocery store. Sardar goes to see the grocer but he does not know either; he was simply asked to let them know their son was in the hospital. At the telephone exchange they have no idea, the operator who took the call has ended her shift and gone home. Where does she live? Sardar is told the address, and he goes straight there. She does not know either, she was given no details. In fact, all anyone has done is play his or her part it this little performance. The operator who took the message ran to the grocery store herself to pass on the news, then went back to the exchange and announced it to everyone there before repeating the facts back at home. The grocer called his son and told him to run and tell Talla, and he then informed all the customers who came by, right up until Sardar himself turned up. The boy ran to give the information to Talla, and to everyone he met both on the way and on the way back. And Talla screamed so loudly that all the neighbors heard the news. All of Gholhak now knows.
Sardar sits down outside the operator’s house and wonders what to do. He decides the best solution is to go to the police station, you never know. The duty officer is a good man. He advises Sardar to go home and wait because the hospital is bound to call again. But first he should stop by the telephone exchange and ask them if they could, if the opportunity arises, make a note of the hospital’s name for him. This is what Sardar does, and he arrives home tired and anxious, and has to contend with Talla’s lamentations all night.
At dawn the eminent surgeon Dr. Hafezi operates on Bahram. Not having seen his parents, the young man is very afraid as he is taken to the operating theater. He cries and the surgeon comforts him kindly.
“Come on, my boy, it’s nothing. I’m going to operate on you and you’ll be on your feet in no time. But don’t you go getting killed in one of these demonstrations afterward! Don’t go spoiling my work!”
Bahram comes out alive, but never goes back to Dar-ul Funun.
He continues to complain of back pain and goes from doctor to doctor, but no one can find an explanation for his pain. At high school he is constantly the sick student, the absentee. He spends most of his time in bed reading the manifestoes that the political parties publish every day. The only outings he makes are to local meetings where all the talk is of nationalizing oil.
In late spring an ageing doctor tells him, “You’re no sicker than I am, my boy. Your problem isn’t in your body but your mind.”
With that one sentence, the doctor cures him. At last someone who understands him. Bahram immediately gets out of bed and decides to sit for his school diploma exam. Without any preparation; there is no time for that. He does his best but comes away disappointed. He does not even envisage attending the oral exams. He persuades himself it doesn’t matter, he can start over next year, he’ll get his diploma.
For now the only thing that matters is that Mossadegh has made his speech before the court in the Hague, and they have rejected the English plea, saying it is outside their competence to judge a conflict between the Iranian state and a private company, the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, rather than the United Kingdom.
Every afternoon, silence descends on Gholhak. Shops and offices close at noon, and everyone goes home, has lunch, and then takes a sacrosanct siesta—adults take it willingly, children by force, and even pets go along with them. There is not a sound to be heard, no footsteps or whisperings, not even the rustle of leaves: Silence reigns.
Bahram is having his siesta too, under the mulberry tree as usual. The ants that live at the foot of the tree march over him in single file. He can feel them on his arm, it is part of his routine and theirs. He leaves them to it; sometimes he tries to count them with his eyes closed, and falls asleep.
But on this particular afternoon the sound of the door knocker disturbs the Amir family’s siesta and all their neighbors’.
“Bahram! Bahram!” someone cries from the far side of the door.
Bahram sits up, brushes off the ants, and says, “Come in, Darra.”
Darra is a boy from Zargandeh, a small village near Gholhak. He and Bahram met at a meeting of the Shemiran cell of the Iranian Workers’ Party. Bahram, who mixes with various groups but has not opted decisively for one or the other, went on the invitation of a neighbor, Ebrahim Soltani, who runs the cell. At the moment he likes to think of himself as a member of the National Front, without officially adhering to one of its factions.
Darra is a year younger than Bahram; he is dark with blue eyes and a dazzling lust for life, not someone who can go unnoticed, like Bahram himself, who is beginning to look like a movie actor. Darra was soon impressed by his presence and eloquence, and is now a devoted, unfailing friend.
Newspapers are delivered to Shemiran at around two in the afternoon, while the inhabitants are resting, so they wake to fresh news.
Darra is waving a newspaper. He bought it out of curiosity to see the list of this year’s students who have been awarded their diplomas, even though—other than Bahram—he knows no one who might possibly feature on it.
“Bahram, you got your diploma!” he announces.
&n
bsp; Bahram cannot believe his eyes, his name is right there on the list: Bahram Amir, son of Sardar, born in Gholhak, ID card number 1.
This is how Bahram hears the news that he is the first ever inhabitant of Gholhak to be awarded his diploma.
That year’s diplomas were soon nicknamed the Oil Diplomas. Malicious gossips claimed that everyone who sat the exams was given a diploma, that Mossadegh gave them out left, right, and center as a reward for coming out in favor of him and supporting his policy to nationalize oil.
A week later, on Tir 25th, 1331, came sudden news: Mossadegh had resigned. Bahram ran over to Ebrahim’s house. It was true, he had called through to Tehran, Mossadegh really had resigned, the Shah had not accepted his suggested candidate for Minister of War. The bazaari had already shut up their stalls and workshops.
“People just won’t let this happen,” Ebrahim said passionately.
The Shah immediately appointed the experienced politician Ahmad Ghavam, sometimes called Ghavam el-Saltaneh, as prime minister. Ghavam started his mandate by announcing a new era of governance for the country, instantly inflaming the Iranian political scene.