The Septembers of Shiraz

by Dalia Sofer

  “Yes. You touted the virtues of alcohol, and gushed about cathedrals. Your pieces were propaganda for an indecent life.”

  “Brother, those alcoholic drinks were just specialties of the places we visited, the cathedrals were the historic remnants…”

  “Yes. And the Ice Palace in Tehran, what kind of historic remnant was that?”

  The halo around the light bulb expands, making her see dancing spots of light around her. The room spins. “Brother, why am I being interrogated? I came here of my own accord. I am not charged with anything. Please just tell me if my husband is here.”

  The guard steps away from her and opens the door. “It’s time you understood, Sister Amin, that the days when people like you could demand things from us are over. Now it’s our turn. Let’s go, Sister.”

  Standing in the dim room, hearing the pleading voice of a prisoner being questioned somewhere nearby, she feels the prison as a real place—made of concrete and steel, where people wake up, eat, use the toilet, and sleep, their tedious routine interrupted by the terror of interrogations. For most people, she thinks, the notion of death is no more than a wallpaper—present but rarely seen. Prisoners, who have little to distract them, have no choice but to stare at this wallpaper.

  They walk through the corridor and back to the prison’s entrance. Another guard opens the gate for her. “Your friend is outside,” he says.

  Habibeh leans on the car, tapping her hand on the hood. They drive away in silence.

  “I’m sorry, Habibeh, for dragging you into this,” Farnaz says as they approach the city.

  “I’m the one who’s sorry, khanoum. This visit made me realize that Amin-agha is in real trouble.”

  “Did they interrogate you also? Did they say anything to you?”

  “They told me, khanoum, that they will come to search the house for evidence of wrongdoing. They said that while Amin-agha may have seemed to be a nice man, he was involved in some dirty dealings, that even…”

  “What dirty dealings?”

  “I don’t know. They didn’t say.”

  “Anything else?”

  Habibeh bites her lower lip, as she often does when she feels unsure of what she is about to say. “They also asked me whether I like being a servant.”

  “What kind of a question is that? You’re not letting these people put ideas in your head, are you, Habibeh?”

  “No, of course not. But I don’t know, khanoum. My son says there is a lot of injustice that needs to be set right.”

  “What? Morteza has become a revolutionary now?”

  “Well, yes. He has joined the Guards. I didn’t want to tell you because I thought you might get upset with me. But when I listen to him, I realize he makes a lot of sense.”

  “What does he say that makes so much sense?”

  “I can’t say, khanoum. You won’t like hearing it.”

  “It’s all right. Tell me.”

  “If I tell you, promise you won’t get mad.”

  “I won’t.”

  “He says, why should some people live like kings and the rest like rats? And why should the wealthy, enamored with Europe and the West, dictate how the whole country should dress, talk, live? What if we like our chadors and our Koran? What if we want our own mullahs to rule us, not that saint—what’s his name?” She taps her fingers on the dashboard, trying to remember the name. “Morteza told me he is worshipped in Europe…I know! Saint Laurent, or something like that…”

  “Yves Saint Laurent?” Farnaz laughs. “He’s not a saint, Habibeh. He’s a designer. That’s just his name.”

  Habibeh blushes. She looks out the window. “You see, Farnaz-khnaoum, you belittle me every chance you get.”

  “I’m not belittling you. But you don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re just repeating some nonsense you heard. This Marxist gibberish has been invoked so often in so many parts of the world. And it failed every time.”

  “Khanoum, you’re doing it again.”

  How long has this resentment been brewing? Farnaz wonders if Morteza, whom Isaac hired a few years ago as an office manger, had anything to do with her husband’s arrest.

  “You’re entitled to your feelings, Habibeh,” she says. “But what I ask of you is that you don’t forget the friendship we’ve shared through all these years—the trips we took, the jokes we laughed at, and most of all, the troubles that we confided in each other.”

  “No, no, I don’t forget.” She looks out the window again, the wind flapping her chador against her face. “But khanoum,” she says, “am I a friend to you, as Kourosh Nassiri and his wife were? What do I know about you, after all? I may know what you like for breakfast, or how many sugars you take in your tea, or even—excuse me for saying this—the color of your underwear. But what do I really know?” She shakes her head and continues in a lower voice, “No, khanoum. I don’t think what we have is friendship. I believe it’s tolerance, and habit. Like animals in a forest, we have learned to live with one another.”

  THEY DRIVE THE rest of the way in silence. As they approach the house Farnaz feels a tightening in her heart, caused not only by her exchange with Habibeh, but also by the irrefutable knowledge that Isaac is in the harshest prison in the country. Parking behind his old Renault—the beat-up car of his youth that he refused to let go of—she realizes that she had not loved him as he deserved to be loved. Over the years she had come to think of him as a formal man—reliable, predictable, and shrewd—qualities she had insisted on before marrying him, but which she later found stifling. What was it that she had wanted from him? Had he remained a poet, in his little sun-drenched apartment in Shiraz, who would have married him? Not her, certainly.

  TEN

  Parviz’s exit out of the subway coincides with the end of studies at the neighborhood yeshiva, and scores of boys and young men in black suits and earlocks congregating outside the red brick building in clusters of twos and threes. He walks past the yeshiva, and past the neighboring houses and shops, where silver wine cups and candelabras catch the afternoon rays behind the glass windows. He passes by his landlord’s hat shop, sees Zalman Mendelson steaming a black hat with great care, the vapor rising from his machine in mighty puffs. Mr. Mendelson looks up and motions with his hand to invite him in.

  The shop is narrow and warm, rows of black hats stacked one on top of the other on shelves along the walls. He has been avoiding his landlord since their last encounter, even crossing the street whenever he had to pass by the hat shop. Today, distracted by an argument two people were having about the recent assassination of Anwar Sadat, the Egyptian president, he forgot to cross. On hearing the news, a few weeks earlier, Parviz had been startled that a man would be killed for nothing other than his attempt to make peace with his neighbors. So deep a hatred, he realized, could never be rectified with handshakes and treaties.

  “Hello, Mr. Mendelson,” he says. “I’m sorry but I still don’t have it.” He feels awkward as he stands in the doorway, his hands in his pockets.

  Zalman goes on steaming. “You think I called you in for the rent? No. If I want the money, I come and ask you for it. We said we would wait a few weeks, and a deal’s a deal, right? How are things with you, Parviz? You’re enjoying school?”

  “Sure. It’s all right.” Parviz examines the shop, the peeling yellow-cream walls, the antique cash register, and the framed photo of the community’s lead rabbi—whom they call “Rebbe”—with his black eyes and his full religious beard, frightening any viewer who cares to look long enough. “I guess this is the right neighborhood for a hat shop,” he laughs.

  “Like a hot dog stand at a ballgame,” says Zalman. “We’re keeping the hat business alive. In the old days, everyone wore hats. People liked to dress up. Now it’s just us. How many men do you know who own a fedora?”

  Parviz runs his fingers over the felt hats, feeling the firm cloth and the satin ribbon circling the base. “My father had a fedora,” he says. “He bought it with my mother during a
trip to Rome. But he hardly ever wore it.”

  Zalman places the steamed hat on a shelf, takes a new one and starts again. “And your father, how is he now?”

  “I don’t know. I think he is in prison.” Saying it out loud, like this, brings him relief, but also embarrassment. His private pain is opening itself to public sentiments, which will consist of sympathy, no doubt, but also scrutiny—and pity. He does not want to be the boy who garners pity.

  Zalman looks up and drops his hand, the steamer’s nozzle blowing vapor toward Parviz. The wet warmth, smelling of closed rooms with old radiators huffing in winter, is comforting to him.

  “My father, too, had been in jail, before I was born.”

  “Yes? Where?”

  “Leningrad. 1924. He was in the Spalerno prison. That’s where the rebbe’s father-in-law was also incarcerated.” He says this with pride rather than outrage, or sadness even. His blue eyes grow deeper, his chin moves upward, as if the association with the rebbe elevates not only his father’s suffering, but also his own.

  “What was he charged with, your father?”

  “Charged with? My dear Parviz, he was charged with being a Jew. He was charged with not relinquishing his religion when Lenin’s state demanded it.”

  “But it’s different with my father. He is not a practicing man. He is not like your father.”

  “Yes, yes, it’s different.” Zalman nods. “But in the end, it’s the same.”

  “Did he get out?”

  “Eventually. He was exiled to Vladivostok, in Siberia, where he met my mother, Rebecca, the daughter of another exile, Lazar Rosenfeldt. That’s where I was born.”

  On the windowpane is a framed black-and-white photograph of a bearded man, staring into the camera with dark, serious eyes—a look that could be interpreted as triumph, or as hardened grief. “Is that your father, Mr. Mendelson?”

  “Yes. This photograph was taken three weeks after I was born, in the winter of 1934. My father never smiled in public because a prison guard had knocked out his teeth. But he was a good man, a learned man, a bal toyreh.” He gets up with some difficulty and sighs, then disappears in the back of the shop.

  Zalman’s past vaguely comforts Parviz, making him see his own pain as only a blemish on the faded map of history. Others before him had endured grief, and others after him will, as well.

  What had it been like, Parviz wonders, to have grown up with a father who was ashamed of smiling in public? Did the father, over time, forget how to smile altogether? The poses that people assume for photographs often become the poses of their lives, don’t they? He thinks of his own grandfather, Baba-Hakim. In group pictures he always sat slightly apart from everyone, gazing upward—at the ceiling or at a tree—anything but the camera lens. His father, on the other hand, stared at the camera with defiance, as though daring it to negate his presence.

  Zalman’s eldest daughter, Rachel, walks into the shop, carrying a plastic bag in one hand and roses in the other. At sixteen, she is small and thin, with an angular, serious face, and large brown eyes that refuse to make contact with Parviz. “Tatteleh!” she says. “I brought you your snack.”

  “Right on time.” Zalman emerges from the back and takes the bag. “There was a lot of tumul coming from my stomach!” He unloads the contents—a banana, a yogurt, a slice of bread.

  Many times Parviz had tried to introduce himself to Rachel, but she always managed to avoid him, crossing the street or simply looking away if they were already too close.

  “Parviz,” Zalman says, “I’m sure you’ve met my daughter Rachel?”

  “Not officially, no.” Parviz extends his hand but she refuses to take it.

  “No hands!” Zalman laughs. “Men and women don’t touch. You have so much to learn, my boy.”

  “Sorry,” Parviz stutters.

  Rachel nods shyly. “I have to go help Mameh with dinner. Shalom.” She disappears from the shop with her roses.

  “Shalom, my angel!” Zalman dips his bread in the yogurt and takes a bite. “She is such a good girl, my Rachel. She comes here straight from work and brings me my snack. She hasn’t missed a day…”

  “Work? Doesn’t she go to school?”

  “She does, she does. But after school she works in a flower shop not far from here, and then, God bless her, she goes home and helps Rivka with dinner and chores. I was opposed to her working outside the home, but she insisted. She’s a stubborn one, so what could I do? I know something about stubbornness. At her age, I was even worse. I told her she could do it only if she stayed in this neighborhood. That was our little compromise.” He leaves his half-eaten yogurt on the counter, rinses his hands in a small sink, and resumes steaming. “Are you hungry, Parviz? Help yourself to the banana.”

  “No, thank you.” The banana, ripe and spotless, would have been the perfect antidote to his stomach’s disquietude, but how can he take it from a man who must feed six children and a pregnant wife, and to whom he is already indebted? Rachel’s resourcefulness shames him, making him wonder if his own lethargy is actually indolence. The rise of his debts—to Zalman, to Rivka, who from time to time brings him leftovers, or a slice of cake she has baked, and to Yanki, the local grocer who had allowed him to shop on credit for about a month—has not increased his ability to make an effort. “I cannot go on feeding you for free indefinitely,” Yanki had said. “Maybe if you weren’t such a traifener bain—non-observant Jew—life would start treating you better.” The comment had angered Parviz, but what could he have said to a man who had, after all, fed him for weeks?

  Lately he has been waking up every morning believing that after classes he would sit down and organize his life, slice his days into contoured, distinguishable hours—of classes, studying, and working a part-time job. But each day, as the afternoon arrived, fatigue overtook him and he told himself that surely a nap, followed by a cup of tea, would restore his body. Invariably he emerged from the nap even drowsier than before, and, resorting to beer instead of tea, he comforted himself with a single thought: Tomorrow. I will map out my life tomorrow. This is how his wasted hours accumulated, much like his debt, and he found himself impotent in the face of both.

  “I have a proposition,” Zalman says. “Work for me to pay off the rent. And I’ll even give you some pocket money on top of it.”

  “Work for you? Here in the shop?” The idea sounds ridiculous to him. “I appreciate the offer, Mr. Mendelson,” he says, “but I don’t think I would be any good as a shop clerk.”

  “It’s a request, my boy.” He stops steaming and looks up. “I know you’re going through a difficult period, but I can’t have you as a houseguest indefinitely. Do you understand?”

  He nods. He does understand. But why is it, he wonders, that no one understands his situation? This is not how his life was supposed to turn out. Only two years ago he was debating between an architecture school in Paris and another in Zurich, and his parents were considering buying him an apartment in whichever city he ended up in. That he should now be a burden on others both angers and shames him. “All right, I’ll do it,” he says.

  “I would need you to come three afternoons a week, with no excuses. Does that work?”

  “Yes, I suppose.”

  “Good. Be here next Tuesday.”

  “I’ll be here.” He feels hot suddenly, the steam choking him. He cannot stay in the shop a second longer. “Well, good-bye, Mr. Mendelson.”

  “Alaichem shalom—peace be with you!”

  HE WALKS INTO the gray, humid afternoon, where people are carrying on with the day—the woman buying bread from Yanki; the old man walking home, the fringes of his tallit peering from the bottom of his jacket a reminder, to himself and to the rest of the world, of who he is. All these people, gathered here from Warsaw and Berlin and Krakow—the residue of a generation—have a private history, a log of losses and longings, the specter of their dead interrupting their days. And yet life goes on here, as elsewhere in the world. Milk must be bought, brea
d broken, shoes shined, dreams dreamt. Life goes on for him also. His acquiescence to Zalman Mendelson fills him with sadness. It is proof of his fall—from son of a wealthy man to starving shop boy. It is also an affirmation of his desire to survive, which he views as both a necessity and a betrayal—of his past, his family, his father.

  ELEVEN

  Leila’s family seems to live on the floor—the floor is where they eat, sleep, pray. Until recently, housekeepers sat on the floor, people like Shirin and her family sat on sofas, the king sat on a throne. This was once the order of things and it had seemed right. Now the order has been muddled. The king has lost his throne and Shirin is on the floor with Leila. In front of them, on a vinyl tablecloth laid out on the carpet, is a plate of lavash bread and feta cheese, and two cups of tea. This is the meal that Leila’s mother most often prepares for them, and Shirin associates this with housekeepers also, because in her house it is Habibeh and Abbas the gardener who usually eat it. She doesn’t say this. Instead she sits next to her friend and eats her cheese. She knows that before the revolution she and Leila would not have been friends—they would not even have met. It is only because private schools had closed their doors and the city had reshuffled its students that the two of them happened to find themselves in the same class. Was their friendship, then, a good thing?

  “No news from your father?” Leila says.

  “No, not yet.” She talked to Leila about her father on that afternoon some two weeks ago when neither her mother nor Habibeh had come to pick her up from school. For three hours she had stood in the abandoned playground with the old man Jamshid-agha, the sound of each approaching car filling her with both hope and dread. “Don’t worry, she’ll come,” the old man repeated. Shirin nodded, wanting very much to believe him, but each passing, empty minute negated her mother’s arrival, and she began wondering if her mother, too, had disappeared, like the ring, the teapot, and her father. As dusk approached, and the playground darkened, the afternoon light turning red, then gray, she had looked at the old man and cried. Jamshid-agha had stood in front of her, his hands folded before him. Twice he unfolded them and nearly placed them on her shoulder, but both times he retrieved them and locked them again, in resignation. “Come, let’s call,” he said. They walked back inside the school, through the fluorescent-lit corridors, which, stripped of the chaos of the other children, seemed to her sinister and ghostly—a mausoleum. “The principal should not go home without making sure all the children are picked up,” Jamshid-agha mumbled. “What am I to do now?” She realized then that she had become a burden on the old man, that no doubt he had a long way to go in order to get home, that the following day he would be in the principal’s office, complaining, that the principal, too, would find out what happened, and soon the whole school would know that her mother had not picked her up that day. When they found the public phone Jamshid-agha searched his pockets for change. He slipped a coin in the slot and let her dial. Her rings went unanswered. She hung up, but the telephone ate up the coin. “Do you have a friend?” the old man said, searching his pockets for more change, and she felt bad about this also—that Jamshid-agha, a janitor in his old age, must part like this with his coins, which were no doubt very dear to him. She promised to pay him back and he said, “You don’t worry about that now.” She called Leila, who came to pick her up with her mother. In the car, no one said a word. The rumbling of the car’s old engine filled the silence. Later in Leila’s room, she cried and spoke of her father’s disappearance. When her mother finally called Leila’s house and arrived, frantic, she kissed and hugged Shirin, in a way she hadn’t done in months, then leading her to the car, she said, “Your father isn’t on a business trip, like I told you. He is in prison. But don’t worry, because prison is now routine.” She looked like she was about to cry, but Shirin wasn’t sure.