The Septembers of Shiraz

by Dalia Sofer

  “You should try to get some honey,” Mehdi says. “I think Gholampour had some. They let him have it because of his low blood sugar. Now that he’s gone, you might as well…”

  “Honey?”

  “Yes. It helps heal the skin after a burn. And it prevents infection.”

  Isaac brings his hand to his cheek and touches the blister. It is tender and raw, a semiliquid bulb rising from his skin. The thought of a permanent mark on his face saddens him. But he realizes that “permanent” may not be all that long. “Did you get burned here also?” he asks.

  “No. They wasted no time with me. They took me straight for the lashings.” Mehdi stops polishing and observes his wooden creation—an oval vessel, pointed in the front and hollowed out.

  “So what are you making with that piece of wood?” Isaac says.

  “I’m trying to make a Dutch clog. Before they arrested me I had promised my little girl I would make one for her and we would paint it together. But I’m not very good.”

  “No. It looks like a boat.”

  “I know!” Mehdi looks at the shoe and shakes his head. “It’s a piece of shit, isn’t it?”

  Isaac smiles, but the movement stretches his skin, reminding him of his blister and his pain.

  “Ah!” Mehdi throws the shoe on the floor and lies down. “Enough artistic expression for today. I think I’ll take a nap.”

  Isaac turns on his left side, tucking his hand under his ear. He looks at the wooden vessel thrown on the floor—this so-called shoe—and sees, under its asymmetrical, jagged shape, the clean intentions of its maker, and the hope, however faint, that he will be reunited with his daughter. He admires Mehdi’s defiance, more so because he thinks himself incapable of it.

  The image that returns to his mind repeatedly now is Mohsen holding his hand and turning it around, palm upward, as if about to offer him something. In that brief instant before the burn, the two men, hand in hand, could have passed as friends. He wonders what Farnaz would do if she knew what just happened to him. The last time he saw her she was upset with him. It was the morning of his arrest. In bed she had spooned his body with her own, wrapping her arm around his stomach. He had flung the arm away. When he turned to her he knew it was too late. For some time he had been pushing her away, in invisible degrees. It had started with the flowers. He used to bring her a bouquet every now and then—lilies or roses, and whenever he found them, white orchids, because they were her favorite. But he had stopped and had not even realized that he had. “Is there a shortage of flowers also, because of the war?” she joked one night as he came home and found her, as usual, in front of the television. “Flowers?” he said. “The country has been destroyed and you’re thinking about flowers?” She shut off the television and looked at him. The sudden silence unnerved him. “How can you say this to me?” she said. “I have been watching the destruction scene by scene. Why do you think I kept insisting we leave, when we had the chance, when everyone else was leaving? Well, since it looks like we are staying, we might as well try to have a normal life.” She picked up her glass and took a thoughtful sip. “So where are my flowers, my dear husband?”

  He could not bring himself to say anything; he did not feel he had enough strength left in him for another argument. He decided that if she could convince him they should go, he would pack up. “Fine,” he said, half bluffing. “It’s not too late. We can still go. Travel may be restricted but we can run away through Turkey, or Pakistan. So many are doing it. I’ll start looking for smugglers.” She was startled, pulled her eyes away from him and looked at the floor. She sat quietly for some time like that, looking down, legs crossed, her slipper dangling from her right foot. Then she looked up and scanned the room—the sofa, the corner bar, the rugs, the miniatures. She took it all in before shaking her head no.

  “You see?” he said. “You don’t want to go any more than I do. How can you part with your stuff—your paintings and your china and your carpets?”

  She looked up, fire in her eyes. “Whose fault is it that we didn’t ship my stuff when we could have? I may not be able to live without my stuff, but you can’t live without your status. That, more than anything, terrifies you.”

  “My status? Maybe so. But may I remind you, Madame Amin, that had you not believed that I would one day reach this status, you would never have married me?”

  She got up and locked herself in the bathroom, leaving behind her familiar trail of perfume, which gave him a sudden headache. He sat on the sofa and finished her drink. Since the beginning of the riots he had been living in limbo—liquidating assets and sending funds to his Swiss bank accounts on the one hand, but continuing to expand his business on the other. In truth, he had been unable to make a decision. Listening to the sound of running water coming from the bathroom, it occurred to him that his wife’s distress might be caused more by the deterioration of their love than that of their country. He promised himself that he would once again do the little things he once did for her—warming her side of the bed while she put on her face cream and brushed her hair, surprising her with a pastry, bringing her flowers. But each night, on his way home, exhaustion would prevent him from making the detour to the flower shop and he would tell himself, “Tomorrow. The flowers can wait until tomorrow.”

  LYING NOW ON his mattress he thinks of her perfume and wishes he could kiss her. How ridiculous they had both become. He wonders why they let distance grow between them. It wasn’t that he didn’t love her anymore, or that he no longer found her beautiful. He was still fond of her black hair, her almond-shaped brown eyes, her lips—always slightly parted, as if she was about to speak, but wouldn’t. But she had lost something, something that had made him fall in love with her the day he had met her at the teahouse in Shiraz—a certain warmth, gone now, leaving her face beautiful but flat, like one of her prized paintings.

  “I’m sorry,” he had said to her that morning, believing at first that he was apologizing for flinging her arm away, but realizing, afterward, that he was sorry for so much more. She had nodded. But he knew he was not forgiven. He had promised to come back for lunch. They needed to spend more time together. She had agreed.

  He looks up at the ceiling. The room reeks of soiled bandages and sweat. He pictures water streaming down his body, washing him clean.

  NINE

  Of prisons, she knows little. The Tower of London, the Bastille, Alcatraz—these are places that Farnaz associates most readily with the word. Of course, she knows—has always known—that in her own time and her own city, prisons also exist. But does one ever really think about what goes on in them, these ugly edifices, crowned with barbed wire? She remembers helping Parviz with his history lesson on the storming of the Bastille, telling him about the mob that invaded the Hôtel des Invalides for ammunition and gathered outside the prison, about the fighting that erupted, and about the governor of Paris, a certain Marquis de Launey, who, finding himself impotent in the face of such fury, had opened the gates, and consequently led the way to his own death: only hours later his decapitated head was paraded down the streets on a pike. This last bit had so fascinated Parviz that he would repeat it to everyone—his father, Javad, Shahla, Keyvan, Habibeh—asking them, over and over, if they knew how the Marquis de Launey had ended up like a kebab on a skewer. His listeners would laugh and say, “Yes, yes! Thanks to you, how can we forget?” He tormented his little sister, too, reminding her, from time to time, of the ill-fated governor, and asking her, when she annoyed him, how she would like it if she were to end up like the marquis. “You think that story scares me?” Shirin would say, cupping her tiny hand around her neck.

  Driving now to a prison outside Tehran, she thinks of this story, coming to life all around her. For hadn’t she witnessed, only months ago, the charred body of a prostitute placed on a stretcher and paraded down the street, surrounded by a chanting, euphoric mob? Having set the woman’s body on fire, the mob seemed oblivious to the fact that her limbs, reduced to ashes, were fallin
g off her. And had she not seen photographs of the shah’s ministers in a morgue, naked, like mice in a testing laboratory—an experiment gone bad? And here she is, Farnaz Amin, on her way to the country’s most renowned prison, looking for her husband. Her visit to the previous prison had not terrified her as much, perhaps because its location in the city center made it seem less remote, making the events taking place inside it less forbidding.

  “You’re sure you’re going the right way, khanoum-Amin?” Habibeh says. She adjusts the black fabric of her chador to better cover her head.

  “I’m following the map. Do you feel it’s the wrong way?”

  “What do I know, khanoum?” She rolls down the window, sticks out her head, and takes a deep breath. “I don’t feel so good.”

  “What’s wrong, Habibeh? Shall I stop the car?”

  “No, no. Don’t stop on my account.”

  “Maybe I should have come by myself.”

  “No, khanoum, no! I wanted to come. I drank too many teas this morning, that’s all. Five cups, I think. My heart is racing.”

  The sprawling gray buildings emerge as the car makes its way to the top of the mountain. Gravel shifts under the wheels, stones hitting the sides of the car from time to time. She parks outside the metal gates. Her hands quiver as she pulls the hand break and adjusts her scarf. “You’re sure you want to come in with me?”

  “I’m sure, khanoum.”

  “All right. Just remember, if they ask you questions, say the minimum necessary. Don’t elaborate.”

  “Yes, khanoum. You told me already.”

  She wonders if bringing Habibeh was a wise decision. This morning, as she got dressed, her stomach churned as she pictured herself walking inside the prison, the gates slamming shut behind her. Bending over to tie her shoelaces, her undigested breakfast moved up from her stomach to her throat, and before she could get herself to the bathroom, she was vomiting on the carpet. Habibeh had rushed in, helped her to the bathroom, and cleaned her face swiftly and with urgency—as if this were a sight she could not tolerate. Farnaz had surrendered to Habibeh’s towel, and to the brisk hand that poured water over her face—the palms, callused from decades spent washing linen and holding whisk brooms—rough and unpleasant against her skin. Habibeh then kneeled on the carpet and wiped away the yellow-brown stain. “Shall I come with you today, khanoum?” she had said, without looking up, and Farnaz, still bent over the sink, her stomach sending small aftershocks throughout her body, had said, “Yes. Would you?”

  Now, having regained her composure, she regrets her decision, born out of a passing moment of weakness. Habibeh’s presence, which she had hoped would bring her comfort, now seems to her a liability.

  “What do you want?” a guard says. His face, greasy and pockmarked, gleams in the sun. A transistor radio on a small table next to him is broadcasting a sermon. Next to it is a box of sweets, flies hovering above it.

  “I am looking for my husband, Brother,” Farnaz says. “Would you tell me if he’s here?”

  “You’re wasting your time. We don’t give out such information.”

  “Brother, please. I just want to know if he’s alive. For three weeks I’ve had no news of him.”

  The man sizes up Farnaz, then looks at Habibeh. “And who’s this?”

  “I’m a friend,” Habibeh offers.

  He stands for a moment before unlatching a ring of keys from his belt. “All right. Wait here.” He opens the gate and disappears behind it.

  “You see, khanoum, it’s good that you brought me!” Habibeh says. “He liked the idea that someone like you would have a friend like me.”

  The second guard watches them as they wait by the gate, his rifle hanging from his shoulder, his black beard so thick that it darkens the entire southern hemisphere of his face. So much hair, Farnaz thinks—rough, dirty hair growing feverishly on chins and cheeks and necks throughout the country, like noxious weeds. From the radio comes the cleric’s sermon, “O God, destroy infidelity and infidels. O God, destroy your enemies, the Zionists.” The open lid of the box of sweets flaps in the wind.

  The gate opens and the first guard reappears. “Come in,” he says. Habibeh nods under her chador, mumbling to herself, “Basheh, dorost misheh—It will be all right.” The guard leads them to a desk where an official writes their names and the purpose of their visit. A woman then steps forward and runs her hands over Farnaz’s body, beginning from the shoulders and working her way down—the arms, the breasts, the waist, the thighs, the calves, the ankles, and the feet, and, at the end, shoving her hand between her legs and leaving it there, pressing her middle finger, slowly, against the fabric of her pants. Farnaz flinches, but when she sees the guard and the official watching her, she loses her voice—forgets, even, that she has one.

  A blindfolded man is brought in. He is thrown against the official’s table and told to state his name. “Vartan Sofoyan,” the man says, and Farnaz, standing next to him, gasps; he is a pianist, and was once a frequent guest at Keyvan and Shahla’s parties.

  “You know this man?” the guard yells.

  “No.”

  The man stands erect. His long fingers, which she had once so admired, rest on the desk, anchoring him in his blindness.

  “Then why the gasp, Sister Amin?”

  “It’s the blindfold, Brother…. It startled me.”

  The pianist’s shoulders droop slightly. She wonders whether he recognizes her voice. Years ago, when he had just returned from the Vienna Music Academy, Keyvan and Shahla, who had met him at a reception in Tehran’s Rudaki Opera House, invited him to one of their dinners, and he had charmed the guests with his renditions of Rachmaninoff and Debussy. He was Armenian, tall and thin—as Farnaz imagined a pianist trained in Vienna should be—and she had been taken with him from the moment she saw him. When he found out that she liked singing, that she had, in fact, taken voice lessons until the age of eighteen, when her father decided that it was no longer appropriate for a young woman to sing in public, he asked her to accompany him as he played Debussy’s “Il pleure dans mon coeur,” based on a poem by Verlaine. She was familiar with this song, as it was among those she had practiced as a young girl and which she had hummed, outside of her voice class, while preparing her father’s breakfast in the morning or brushing her hair at night, wondering what was the point of having a beautiful voice if one was not allowed to share it. “Il pleure dans mon coeur,” she began as Vartan played. “Comme il pleut sur la ville; Quelle est cette langueur Qui pénètre mon coeur?” Their performance was such a success that it soon became a ritual, and each time, upon seeing her, Vartan would hold her hand in his and say, “So how is my cantatrice?” With his long, agile fingers enveloping her own, she would feel an excitement she had not felt since she had first met Isaac in Shiraz, when he would recite poetry to her and enchant her with his growing knowledge of gemstones, making her believe that theirs would be a sparkling life of ghazals and jewels. But as the years had passed the poetry had left their lives, and the stones themselves had been ground into oval cuts or marquise cuts, stars or cabochons, turning her husband into the kind of man who could offer her the rarest luxuries, but little else, and herself into the kind of woman who had come to accept these terms.

  A guard wearing a black mask arrives, a file tucked under his arm. As he removes the pianist’s blindfold, Farnaz notices that a finger on the guard’s right hand is missing. “Brother Sofoyan?” he says. “Follow me.” Vartan rubs his eyes and blinks repeatedly. Seeing Farnaz, he nearly says something, but doesn’t.

  Another man in a black mask drags Farnaz through a dark, narrow corridor, and shoves her inside a windowless room, not much larger than a closet.

  “Do you know that man? Vartan Sofoyan?”

  “No. I’m here to find my husband.”

  “Sofoyan was a friend of the royal family. He played for them on many occasions.”

  “Brother, I really would like to find out where my husband is.”

  “Y
ou know what will happen to him, to this dandy of a pianist? He’ll hear his own recordings at his funeral!”

  The locked room is lit only by a bulb dangling from the ceiling. Anything could happen here, anything at all—and who would know about it? How many rooms, like this one, exist inside this prison, this city, this country? Is Isaac in a room like this, maybe just a few steps away from her? She thinks of Vartan, of the years he had spent training in Vienna, of the compositions he hoped to write. What had been the point of it all, if his days are to end here? Is this where it would be written, his magnum opus—Requiem for Vartan Sofoyan?

  The man opens a file. “You were once a journalist, isn’t that correct, Sister?”

  If they have a file on her, then most likely Isaac is here. Realizing that he is in this prison is like receiving news of a terminal illness: the waiting is over. “Oh, I wouldn’t call myself that,” she says. “I wrote once in a while.”

  “A dabbler, then?”

  “I suppose.”

  “Only those who can afford to be dabblers dabble. Those who have to work, work.”

  “I could afford it thanks to my husband, who worked very hard.”

  “Yes,” the guard smiles. “Worked very hard at amassing his fortune.”

  “Brother, the money did not fall from the sky. He earned it!”

  “Don’t talk to me that way!” He steps closer to her. “I could finish you off right here, do you understand me? Tell me about these articles you wrote.”

  Was coming here a big mistake? If they imprison her, what would happen to Shirin? “Brother, they were light pieces,” she says, trying to control the tremor in her voice. “Nothing worth mentioning.”

  “I’m feeling light this morning. Indulge me.”

  She had written travel articles—on the porcelain in Limoges, the sangria in Seville, the medieval towns in Umbria. She had been to these places with Isaac. Together they had stood in olive groves, basilicas, bell towers. How ordinary it had all seemed to her then, and how wonderful in its ordinariness it seems to her now. “I wrote about foreign places,” she says.