by Parisa Reza
The next day Bahram stayed glued to the radio until Darra arrived.
“I just came back from Tehran. People are going to demonstrate in the streets all the way from the bazaar to the Parliament building. Civil servants have decided to stop work, so have railway workers and even bus drivers. I almost had to come home on foot. Luckily someone in a car took pity on me.”
The National Front appealed to all Iranians to demonstrate on Tir 30th. Communists in the Toudeh Party, the country’s most significant political organization, also encouraged all its supporters to participate in this major demonstration. And Ayatollah Kashani, head of the religious reformists, openly professed his opposition to Ghavam. All the local young men were saying they would join in the protest.
Early on the morning of Tir 30th, Darra came to Bahram’s house with a beaming smile and bursting with enthusiasm.
“Let’s go!”
Bahram hesitated, trying to wriggle out of it. It was not that he doubted the cause—he certainly didn’t, Mossadegh was his god on earth, and he was a fervent supporter of nationalizing oil—but Bahram liked things on a more intimate scale, between friends, those he chose, among whom he shone . . . He thought of himself more as a Mossadegh or a Fatemi. Now he felt he understood what the headmaster of Djam School expected of him: to be that sort of man, educated, cultivated, a great orator, and someone with true presence. Which meant large demonstrations and the anonymity of a crowd had little appeal for him . . . But Darra insisted and Bahram did not want to appear cowardly.
“Let’s go,” he said eventually.
Just through Shemiran Gate, Tehran seems dead. They are surprised by the calm, and wonder whether the battle is over. They head toward the city center, and the outer neighborhoods feel empty. They walk in the blazing midsummer sunlight, the air is dry, the heat searing, and the light intense. They are wearing immaculate white shirts, Bahram has a watch on his wrist, a fountain pen hooked to the pocket of his shirt, and a sheet of white paper folded in four in the back pocket of his pants. Darra emptied his pockets before leaving.
All of a sudden they come face-to-face with two army tanks blocking their way. So that’s it. Bahram can see armed soldiers behind the tanks, and remembers Dr Hafezi’s words: “Don’t you go getting killed in one of these demonstrations! Don’t go spoiling my work.”
An incalculable number of people gradually appear from the silence of the city, as if emerging from underground passages. Bahram cannot understand how they failed to see them on their way here.
Seven hours later when Bahram and Darra walk back through Shemiran Gate in the opposite direction, Bahram’s shirt is black with dust, his watch is broken, his pen lost, and the sheet of paper has fluttered away. Darra has a torn sleeve and a split eyebrow. The city has been in turmoil for five hours. People of every leaning brandished their parties’ banners, Communists rubbing shoulders with religious figures, bazaaris, and National Front militants. They were all there, everyone from Tehran and its neighboring communities, even from outlying provinces. And the army fired shots, Bahram and Darra ran away, and then, pursued by mounted troops, they ran again. Some demonstrators fell, and they helped them back to their feet. At one point Bahram was struck so hard with a truncheon he was propelled forward several yards. It was a brutal blow. He could not tell who had struck him or when. He saw other people falling and felt invulnerable himself. The young believe they are immortal; that is their strength.
When Bahram got back to his feet he saw Darra grappling with a soldier who had him by the neck. His pride wounded, Bahram launched himself at the soldier, kicking him aggressively and managing to tear Darra from his clutches. Furious and contorted with pain, the soldier took out his pistol and pointed it at them. Darra came closer to him and looked him in the eye.
“Shoot if you’re a man,” he said. “Shoot your fellow countryman, go on, shoot, and live with it to the end of your days.”
The two of them stood motionless, eyeballing each other. The heroism of this scene galvanized Bahram.
“Yes, and shoot twice!” he said, coming to stand beside Darra and not really thinking what he was doing. “But before you do, have a good look at our faces so they can haunt you as long as you live. If you like I’ll give you my address so you’ll know where we’re buried. Come and visit our graves every Friday with your children and tell them why you killed us. Now, if you’re a man, shoot.”
The three men froze for a moment as if time were crystallized over them. Then the soldier looked around and saw all the faces watching him. There is no telling what went through his head, whether he was afraid of being lynched on the spot, whether he was shamed by the young men’s courage, whether he was aware this was an unequal battle despite his pistol, or perhaps he suddenly embraced the cause . . . He put away his weapon, took off his military cap and jacket, and, amid the cheers of onlookers, he melted into the crowd. Many other soldiers did the same thing. So many, in fact, that after five hours their commander was afraid of widespread mutiny and ordered his troops back to the barracks: The battle was over.
Bahram and Darra are heading home, the Shah will recall Mossadegh, and a new era will begin.
When Bahram arrives home that evening, Gholhak has that wet-soil smell of a freshly watered garden. Talla and Sardar are sitting outside their front door. Someone brought the news to them: The Shah instructed the use of firearms and cannons in Tehran, there were deaths. Talla cried, “Ya ghamar-e bani hashem!” and ran from house to house all over the neighborhood looking for Bahram. To his friends’ houses, his classmates’. But every boy in Gholhak had disappeared.
“They’re in Tehran, all of them, that’s where they are,” people told her. Then Talla ran all the way to Sardar’s fields, but he did not know what to say. Talla beat her own head and still Sardar could not think what to do. They strayed through Gholhak’s streets trying to find news, Talla even stopped cars on Shermiran Road. Tehran was in chaos, was all anyone could tell them. In the end Sardar dragged Talla home to wait and, exhausted by her hysteria, Talla let herself be led. They ended up sitting here.
They have been sitting here for three hours. Talla is praying, reciting the same verses from the Koran on a loop, in a trance. Sardar is trying to think about what is going on in this country that is swallowing up his son. He tries to remember what has been said on the radio over the last few days. As usual, there were words he did not understand so he imagined meanings for them based on the tone of voice and reached sometimes wildly wrong conclusions about what was being said. But he certainly grasped that Mossadegh had resigned, and claimed to be resigning so His Royal Majesty could appoint a prime minister of his choosing. Sardar thought this was a pleasant, courteous gesture, so why was everyone going to Tehran, and why was the Shah killing people? Has he gone mad? He thinks this thought very softly, really very quietly, afraid the Shah might read his mind. He thinks the Shah need only choose a prime minister and leave everyone in peace. He looks away into the distance but there is no one coming. Time goes by, Sardar starts to doubt, and his faith in life falters. He imagines his son’s body being brought to him.
When Bahram appears, Talla shrieks and beats her chest. Sardar hides his tears of joy. Talla wails that she nearly died, that she spent hours looking for him, wandering around like a madwoman. Bahram knows she will not understand, but for his own satisfaction he tells her that when the Spartans went to war their mothers handed them their shields and told them to come back “behind it or on it.”
“And I’m coming back with it,” he tells her. Then he looks over to Sardar, who does understand.
“God keep you,” his father says.
Bahram goes into the house and behind him he can hear Talla berating Sardar, “who doesn’t know how to control his own son.”
The heat is unlivable, more than forty degrees in the shade. The shade is exactly where Bahram is, fighting a fever that first took hold the day before. Thi
s morning his mother has drawn water from the well every hour and bathed his feet in cool water. It is not a violent fever, just an annoying one.
At noon someone knocks at the door.
“Come in,” Talla cries.
“Hello,” says Darra and then, seeing Bahram lying under the mulberry tree in his underwear, he adds, “but what are you doing?”
“I’m not going.”
“What! Are you crazy!”
“I have a fever, I’m sick, I can’t go.”
It is the day of the national university entrance exams. Bahram has signed up to sit for the humanities exam. He would like to study history. If he is admitted he will follow a course in history and geography because the two disciplines are currently taught as a single subject.
But Bahram does not have the strength to go through the process . . . Deep down he would like to spend the rest of his life under this mulberry tree. Why go any further when life is so wonderful here! This is a protest fever. Sitting those exams and being accepted would mean leaving this behind, and he resists that prospect like a child. Tough luck for everyone who’s put their hopes in him, all the Gholhakis who’ve treated him differently since he passed his diploma. He’ll easily find some administrative job in Gholhak or Tadjrish, and he’ll go to Tehran only for the movies or the cafés and restaurants . . . But Darra is not giving up; he volunteered to accompany him the day before and he is not backing down.
“What the hell does this mean? Let’s see . . . you don’t have all that much of a fever . . . don’t you see? If you don’t take these exams today, what are you going to do for the next year? You’ll waste a year doing nothing and it’ll just be harder for you to sit for the exams next year. Come on, come on, that’s not going to happen, get up, get dressed, we’re going. You want to go to university, you’ve told me that a thousand times, so you’re going to sit for these exams. Otherwise you’ll regret it . . . ”
Darra is right, he would regret it. Bahram sits for the exam despite his fever and lack of motivation, and he passes with flying colors: He is placed sixteenth of the forty candidates who are accepted to the history and geography course in the faculty of humanities at Tehran’s very prestigious university.
The headmaster of Djam School is first to know the results of the entrance exam; he sends him a congratulatory card full of encouragement for the future. He addresses the card to Mr. Bahram Amir—the most handsome reward.
On the first day of fall in 1331, when Harry S. Truman was president of the United States, Joseph Stalin was still very much in power, Sir Winston Churchill was back home, and they were all preparing to winter in the tentative peace of a world cut in two, favoring a hundred cold wars over one heated war, Bahram first went to university to study history, very aptly. At this point Iran was democratic, communist, socialist, totalitarian, religious, secular, and fundamentalist, and it was simultaneously pro-British, pro-American, pro-Soviet, in love with Hollywood, westernized, and faithful to its traditions. All these at once, and more. And in that chaos of ideologies and beliefs, everyone tried to devise a makeshift statement in clothing, a symbol of adhesion to—or rejection of—all or part of what inevitably happened: clashes between these factions.
At nightfall, though, they all withdrew from the flux of the outside world and returned to their civilized, loving, unchanging homes. They gathered together with glasses of tea that were constantly refilled because they could hold so little, and these glasses held so little precisely so they could justify this endless ritual of being refilled with tea served meticulously in the correct color, in the correct quantities, at the correct temperature, and accompanied by the correct courtesies. Amid this warmth and intimacy, people shared their treasure troves of stories, rumors, paranoia, and suspicion. Only one thing was sure and universally accepted: It was all the fault of the English, and always had been.
At heart these were ordinary people, pained by royal decrees, unsettled by all the foreigners who had come and gone in the last hundred years. Whether these foreigners had had good or bad intentions, whether they were English, Russian, French, Belgian, or German . . . the trajectory each of them had chosen had opened the way for doubts and a sense of unease. The mirror they all held up to each other reflected an indecipherable image. It was impossible to reconcile these random, incompatible civilizations. The nationalization of oil provided an opportunity for Iranians to reconfigure themselves, and each individual strove to find his or her source of inspiration.
And among them was Bahram who, at nineteen, was more handsome than ever: a perfectly sculpted face, dusky skin, piercing eyes under low black eyebrows inherited from Sardar. Black as his thick hair, which he wore swept back, black as the depths of his eyes. He was tall and, thanks to his running, had an athlete’s slender body. His suit was from Gholhak’s excellent tailor, and he wore it well. To keep his shirts white he used the same laundress as the town’s aristocrats and prominent figures. He wore dark glasses and ties in solid, sober colors. He had the hands of a prince and, God knows where from, a natural elegance. But what women would remember most about him was his smell. The impassioned smell found on the skin of men of the desert. In fact he had “the backbone of a snake,” as they say in Iran of anyone irresistible.
His time at Dar-ul Funun, his diploma, and his success in the university entrance exams helped him overcome his fear. Fear that he would be uprooted from Gholhak and torn away from his reassuring everyday pleasures; fear of entering high society, of being constrained, being a stuffed shirt, losing his freedom and the simplicity of peasant life. He lingered in sickness and regressed for months on end, as long as it took for him to accept the change, as if stepping back to leap all the further. Now that his neighborhood showed him respect, that he was recognized as the first Gholhaki to achieve a high school diploma, and everyone knew he was a gifted draftsman and a formidable athlete, he had become the incarnation of dreams of success. The elite that Reza Shah had envisioned; the very young men for whom he had instituted new ideas and introduced modernization, the great Iran, a new Persia. But Bahram respected everyone who played a part in his destiny, except Reza Shah. He felt no respect whatsoever for him, or his successor. He had not experienced the chaos before Reza Shah’s time, he had no memory of the days when all women wore chadors and roubandehs, he did not realize that he might never have seen the faces of all the young girls he enjoyed watching. In Gholhak a school opened just in time to take him in. And instead of admiring the man who gave them this school, they all admired the school’s headmaster; instead of admiring their university, they admired the university professors. Reza Shah told them to think, and think they did. He told them to take their example from the West, and they did. With the subtle difference that Reza Shah saw the broad sweeps of western modernization while the students he sent there absorbed its ideas. And so all they remembered of him were his authoritarian tendencies, like all those fathers who—for their children’s own good—made them do things with the threat of terrible punishments, and the children remembered only these terrifying punishments and none of their fathers’ good intentions. Children remember who their parents are more readily than what they teach, and Reza Shah was a dictator. So Bahram chose his camp: He opposed the monarchy.
He was all the more convinced in his choice because, since the Shah’s victory that summer, Mossadegh had grown more radical. He was distancing himself more and more from the court as well as from the more conservative wing of the National Front and from his religious support. The battle would be fierce, his adversaries had already drawn their knives. Bahram’s neutrality was no longer tenable—he had to choose and fight.
“I could have been an out-and-out Communist,” he told Darra, “but I’m not thrilled by the Toudeh Party’s connections with the Soviet Union. It’s almost as if they’d give Iran away, or even their own mothers, if Stalin asked them to.”
“Well, then, come to us,” Darra said enthusiastically. “Jo
in the Iranian Workers’ Party. You know we’re the party that communicates best with the youth. Our ideologies are inspired by communism and socialism, we don’t denigrate religion, and we don’t want to be bankrolled by the Soviets.”
“I know,” Bahram conceded. “The word ‘worker’ reminds me of my parents, of hardworking peasants. But what really matters is being loyal to Mossadegh and they’re abandoning him one by one, even you are. I’ve made my decision, I’m going to support Khalil Maleki. I think the split he brought about in the Iranian Workers’ Party by continuing to support Mossadegh was a good thing, it has to be done at all costs. I’m going to join the new party he’s just set up, the Third Power. It’s not Western capitalism or Soviet socialism; it’s a new power: the third power. You’re walking out on Mossadegh, but we’re sticking with him all the way.”
And so Bahram stepped definitively into the world of men, men of his own era: passionate, uncompromising, brave, self-centered, seductive, authoritarian.
The day after arriving at university, Bahram took a shortcut on his way home; he enjoyed discovering unfamiliar little back roads. He looked at the houses, one old, one modern, side-by-side, reflecting the city itself. On the balcony of a newly constructed building he noticed a large poster of a brightly colored parrot and it suddenly reminded him of Talla, the other Talla, his childhood sweetheart, because her sister’s name was Toutti, which means parrot. Memories of another time bubbled up.
I was so happy and carefree. Why do things have to change?, he thought, and he acknowledged nostalgically that if anyone asked him now which girl had meant the most to him, which girl would he never forget, he would indisputably reply: Talla.