The Heart's Desire

by Nahid Rachlin

  As Jennifer picked up the bus schedule for her return trip to Teheran, she asked a woman who was standing by the stall eating a large slice of watermelon, “Do you know where Dadghar Street is?”

  “Walk straight ahead. See that blue dome? When you reach it, look for Dadghar Street. It’s about twenty or thirty blocks from here.”

  Jennifer began to walk straight ahead. The streets were as noisy and crowded as in Teheran and dustier, the houses older, more squalid, but then on almost every block there were beautiful mosaic-covered buildings and mosques.

  Her way was obstructed for a moment by a crowd that had gathered around a man playing the flute and a large cobra twisting its long body rhythmically to the music and waving its tongue in the air. Children jumped up and down and gasped in excitement as the snake raised its head very high and then lowered it again. The snake’s yellow brown skin gleamed in the sunlight, its movements hypnotizing.

  Along the way a group of young men and women rushed out of an alley, some of them holding a banner in front of them, “Death to the Satanic West.”

  Two men walking ahead of her were talking about chemical bombs. “They get blisters all over them and then cough, they cough blood. Blood seeps out of their skin.”

  “Stop khanoom, stop,” Jennifer heard an unfamiliar male voice from behind her, then a man came forward and stood in front of her, blocking her way. Another man and two women joined him. Pasdars. Her heart sank.

  “You’re flaunting your hair,” one of the men said, staring at her.

  The horror of the scene she had witnessed by the bus stop in Teheran rushed back to her. Nervously she put her hand on her forehead and then pulled her chador over a patch of her exposed hair.

  “Your name?”

  She felt faint. Should I make up a name, should I let them know I’m an American?

  “Your name?” he asked again. “Jennifer Sahary,” she said finally. “American?” Again she hesitated.

  “American,” he concluded. “What’s your purpose in Iran? You know the language.”

  “I came to Iran with my husband and son to visit his family.”

  “You have to come with us for further questioning.” He pointed to a gray Paykan.

  “I don’t understand, for what?” She was becoming more faint. She had an urge to shout for help.

  “Get in or else we’ll have to force you.”

  Passersby stared at them furtively but no one paused.

  “Go on,” the pasdar said.

  She walked toward the Paykan. “I’m in Qom to pick up my son, he’s here with his grandmother, he’s sick …”

  But the man opened the back door, pushed her inside, and got in next to her. One of the women squeezed in with them. The other pasdars sat in front.

  “Where are you taking me? I haven’t done anything,” Jennifer protested. No one bothered explaining. “Please take me to where my son is with his grandmother.”

  The driver parked the car, not by a police station but, to Jennifer’s amazement, by a mosque. She followed them out of the car and into a courtyard faced by a row of rooms on each side. Prayers were going on in one of the rooms, shoes piled up in front of it. A large group of women was sitting in a circle around a mullah who was giving a sermon.

  The pasdars led her into another room. “Sit down,” one of the men said to her.

  She sat on the rug on the floor and then, one by one, the others did too.

  “You have to explain to Ayatollah Negari what you’re doing here in Qom.”

  “Why are you really in Iran?” one of the women asked. “Are you collecting information?”

  Four pairs of eyes were fixed on her.

  “I told you, I came with my husband and son to visit, it’s as simple as that.”

  They looked at her skeptically.

  “I spent a year in Rolla, Missouri, at the School of Mines. I wanted to become an engineer but I gave up the idea. Your people persecuted me because of my skin color,” the man who had questioned her said grimly, though his skin was not much darker than hers. He was very tall, broad-shouldered, and had piercing dark eyes. His sheer size made him menacing.

  Jennifer was silent. She had a helpless feeling that ordinary words would not reach these people. Would they take a bribe, she wondered. She had some jewelry and cash on her. “Can I give you a …” She was not sure how to word it. “A present?”

  One of the women said stiffly, “We don’t take bribes.”

  They all gave her contemptuous glances. The tall pasdar got up restlessly and went to the doorway. He stood there for a moment and then came back. Addressing the other male pasdar, he said, “The ayatollah must have been called away somewhere. Shall we take her?”

  “Where?” Jennifer asked.

  “Jail. You’ll be held there until tomorrow, the ayatollah should be able to see you then.”

  “This is absurd.” Her voice was barely audible to herself. This can’t be really happening.

  “Let’s wait another hour,” one of the women said.

  “Can’t you let me go?” Jennifer said, and again, “You must take me to where my son is staying … please …”

  No answer. Jennifer remembered the advice the school counselor had given her when she was going through a bad period in college: “As soon as a disturbing thought comes into your mind, try to replace it with a positive one.” Now, as if she were a young girl again, she tried to do that. But it was hard to conjure up anything positive. All she felt was a knot of anger and fear.

  Chapter 19

  Jennifer fidgeted anxiously as she sat trying to anticipate the ayatollah’s questions. Why are you in Iran? For how long? Do you have a mission? Answer him minimally, let him do most of the talking, she decided.

  One of the women got up and left the room. In a moment the two men left also, without explaining where they were going. The only pasdar remaining with her went to the mantle and came back with a wicker fan. She began fanning her face. “I can’t bear this heat,” she said. After a pause she added, “The ayatollah will want to know if you accept Islam.”

  “I’m a Moslem, through my husband,” she said, to appeal to the woman’s sympathy. But the Moslem wedding ceremony, now that she thought back on it in this atmosphere, weighed heavily on her, as if she had accepted a dogma, a force, designed to oppress women.

  The pasdar was staring at her. “Why do you, in America, need so much?” she asked. “So many things, so many useless luxuries; they snuff out a person’s soul.”

  “I could live without most of them myself,” Jennifer said, thinking how much she liked the sparseness of furnishing in Aziz’s house and in this very room, with only a single intricately designed rug on the floor and two large potted plants set near the doorway.

  A faint smile appeared on the woman’s face but she did not say anything.

  Jennifer was quiet too, staring at the rug. The mineral and vegetable coloring used in it had softened by age to sea green and pale blue. The lotus-shape medallion at the center was filled with roses and lilies, matching the floral designs at the edges of the rug. The flowers, stylized and delicate, were surrounded by abstract forms that could be foliage or mist or fire.

  The other woman came back in. She was carrying bottles of doogh and glasses. With a self-righteous look, she gave each of them a bottle and a glass. Jennifer drank hers quickly, she was feeling dehydrated. “What happened to the ayatollah?” Her voice was drowned out by a hum of voices flowing in from the room where the sermon was taking place. It seemed the sermon was over and the women attending it were talking among themselves. An airplane roared in the sky. When she was younger, Jennifer remembered, that sound made her yearn to travel, go to faraway places, experience new things. Now she was overwhelmed by a desire to be back home, in her own house with its green surroundings.

  An idea was hazily forming in her mind and then it became more clear. If I could find some excuse to go to the courtyard I could hide among the women as soon as they come out of t
hat room and leave the mosque with them. She surveyed the courtyard, then turned to the pasdar she had been talking to. “I have to use the toilet, could you tell me where it is?”

  The pasdar looked perplexed as if confronted by a huge problem she hadn’t anticipated. Then she said, “I’ll take you there.”

  “You don’t have to come.” She tried to sound mild, offhand.

  “But I must.” The pasdar started to go outside in a choppy, graceless way and Jennifer followed.

  Jennifer looked toward the room full of women and an aghound. He was holding a glass of tea, drinking it. The timing is wrong, she thought, despair washing over her. She asked the pasdar faintly, “Won’t you let me go, please?”

  The pasdar raised her eyebrow dramatically and then gave a shrill little laugh. “You really think I can just let you go?”

  When they reached the bathroom door the pasdar said, “I’ll wait for you here. I want to smoke a cigarette in the fresh air.” She began to rummage through the large pocket on the side of her uniform.

  Jennifer was astounded that this stern woman would indulge in a frivolous pleasure. Anyway she hoped she had caught her doing something wrong. “Is a woman allowed to smoke?” she asked.

  “Why not? It isn’t against Islam,” the pasdar said with annoyance as if Jennifer had displayed terrible ignorance.

  Inside the bathroom Jennifer immediately noticed an open window with a thin curtain covering it. She pulled the cloth aside and looked out. The window was not more than a few feet above the ground. Except for a beggar sitting against a wall, the alley was empty. Without hesitation, she climbed up to the ledge of the window but it was difficult to jump out with the chador on. She took it off, folded it around her overnight bag and purse, and threw the bundle down into the street. Then she jumped, feet first.

  A sharp pain shot up her legs and hips as she landed, but ignoring that, she quickly picked up the bundle, unwrapped the chador, and put it on. The beggar looked at her in a detached way, without saying anything.

  Jennifer glanced in both directions, wondering which way to turn. Just then the women who had been in the room inside, at least fifty of them, all in black chadors, rushed into the alley from the back door of the mosque. Reflexively, Jennifer joined them. For a brief moment she felt lightheaded, daring, before the fear of being caught began to take over. She glanced nervously toward the window through which she had escaped. No one was looking out of it. The pasdar must be still smoking her cigarette. Jennifer held the chador tightly around her face and kept her eyes downward as she walked with the women.

  When they reached the wide avenue running perpendicular to the alley, the women began to disperse, in different directions. Jennifer walked rapidly as she kept looking for a taxi but the few she saw zoomed by without stopping. The avenue was congested with heavy traffic, zigzagging, honking. She was almost choking from the cars’ exhaust fumes. An old bus rumbled down the street and stopped near her. She climbed in, paid the fare, and went all the way to the back.

  In about twenty blocks she got off the bus and looked around fearfully, wondering which way to go to avoid being caught by the pasdars who might be looking for her by now. She started walking on the main street, thinking she would be able to hide there among the large number of pedestrians passing by. After a few blocks she spotted the blue dome and went in its direction, checking the names of the side streets. She was full of longing for Darius, as if she had been apart from him for weeks. She yearned to be in a cool and comfortable place to rest a while, take a shower to clean off the dust and sweat. “Dadghar,” was written on a blue tile on the top of the wall at the beginning of a cobblestoned street. She turned into the street and looked for number twenty-two, but most of the houses had no numbers on them. A man was squatting by the joob, washing his face. She asked, “Do you know the house belonging to Batul khanoom on this street?”

  “Batul khanoom? Over there.” He pointed to a house, a few feet away, with a crude brick and straw wall around it.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  She went to the house and knocked. She realized she was trembling, feeling the delayed impact of having been arrested. I could have been locked up in jail with no one knowing my whereabouts, she thought, for days, months. It’s incredible I actually escaped.

  An old, stooping man opened the door. “Yes?”

  “Is Batul khanoom in?”

  “No one is home. They all went out.”

  “Darius too?”

  “He’s at the maktab.”

  “I’m Darius’ mother …”

  “Oh, his mother, come in, come in and have some tea,” the old man said, his face brightening. “He’s going to be happy to see you. He was crying this morning, asking for you.”

  “He was crying for me? Where’s the maktab?”

  “See that mosque, the maktab is inside of it.” He was pointing to the blue dome, visible above the walls of the neighboring houses.

  She took out fifty toomans and gave them to him. Behind him she could see a garden with several flower beds filled with rosebushes, snapdragons, asters. How ordinary and beautiful the sight was and how pleasant this simple old man, she thought, and I am out of the grip of those pasdars, very close to my son. But still she could not relax, be free of her anxiety. She started going toward the maktab, crossing from one side of the street to the other to be in whatever shady spots she could find.

  Chapter 20

  “Jennifer,” Karim called. “Jennifer” He moved his hand gently on her breasts, stomach. “Jennifer, don’t you hear me, Jennifer, Jennifer?” Why was she so silent? He leaned over and kissed her lips. He bit them, hoping for a response, but her lips were cold and still. He stared at her face and waited for her to smile, to say that it was all a joke. My God, this isn’t Jennifer, it’s an imitation, oh, God, what happened to her? His heart was pounding when he woke. It took him a moment to realize he was in his aunt’s house and then he recalled his uncle’s accident.

  He lay there, unable to shake himself from the mood of the dream. What was this abyss now between him and Jennifer? They had been so much in love. Meeting her had transformed him, uplifted his whole life, it had seemed at the time.

  Finally he got out of bed and began to dress. The oval window cast a rose-purple-amber rainbow on the rug. The antique clock chimed the hour. Through the lacy curtains he could see the garden—the yellow grapes on the arbor, the pomegranates bright in the sun, and Fereidoon throwing seeds on the ground and hens and roosters pecking at them. It was under the grape arbor, Karim remembered, that he had sat as an adolescent and written a poem.

  He had taken little Fereidoon on walks, played ball with him, helped him fly a kite in the fields. In early mornings he would watch his aunt make yogurt and cheese.

  He left the room and went into the courtyard.

  “Do you feel better?” Fereidoon asked him.

  “Yes, thanks, it was good to get some rest.” He went outside to get his stuff from the car. He took his overnight bag out of the trunk, then he looked in front for his briefcase. It wasn’t there. He looked under the seats. Nothing. What could have happened? Could someone have stolen it? Perhaps he hadn’t put it back in the car after he showed his passport and license to the police. He’d been so distracted that he might have just left it on the ground. It had all his important documents in it. To obtain a new Iranian passport would take months.

  Back at the house he said to Fereidoon, “I can’t find my briefcase. Either someone stole it from the car or I left it at the side of the road.”

  “No one ever steals around here. Why don’t we go back to look for it? We can take my truck.”

  Karim could almost see his briefcase lying on the ground with cars passing it by, but when they got to the scene of the accident, there was no sign of it. They decided to check at the shops lining the sidewalk to see if anyone there had spotted it and brought it in.

  “Did you by chance see a briefcase lying on the street over there?” F
ereidoon asked as they went from one shop to another.

  “You could call the police station,” the owner of a kilim shop, a short, fat man, said. “Use my phone. It’s working.”

  Fereidoon got the police precinct’s number from information and dialed. “It’s busy.” He waited and tried again until he finally got through. “Did anyone turn over a briefcase to you? It was left on the ground in the main intersection, yes, there was an accident…. I’ll check with you again later …”

  Karim thought he would try calling Teheran and he was surprised that someone picked up. “Hello, this is Karim,” but only a blast of static reached him, drowning out the voice on the other end.

  He hung up and tried again, “This is Karim, do you hear me? Do you hear me, Karim …” This time unfamiliar voices came onto the line, two women were talking about a wedding.

  He gave up. He put down a few toomans on the desk for the owner.

  “Have you just returned home from abroad? You have a different way of speaking,” the man said.

  “Yes, I live in America.”

  “I’ve never left Babolsar. It has all I want.”

  “You’re lucky to be where you want to be.” The man invited them to have tea. He went to a cubicle and came back with a tray holding tea glasses and sugar. Then while Karim and Fereidoon drank their tea, he unfolded some of the kilims on the floor for them to see.

  “They’re very nice. Maybe we’ll come back and I’ll pick one,” Karim said.

  In a moment he and Fereidoon thanked the man and left, Karim was anxious to get to the post office and send a telegram to Jennifer. He thought about wording the letter so that it would explain the delay without throwing everyone into a panic. “… We had an accident, are staying at my Aunt Khadijeh’s house until we get the car fixed. I hope Darius is all better by now. Send a telegram to Khadijeh’s address if you want to reach me.” He added the address.