The Septembers of Shiraz

by Dalia Sofer

  These were the only words spoken between them that night. Later in bed, Shirin thought of her Monopoly game, of that square in the corner with the distraught convict behind bars. In Monopoly, too, prison is routine. Even the best players have to leave everything and jump across the board to that dreaded box, missing a few turns while the game goes on.

  “YOU THINK HE’LL come back, your father?” Leila makes herself a second sandwich.

  “I don’t know.”

  “My father says the people who are being taken to prison are sinners. He would know, since he works for the Revolutionary Guards.”

  “My father is not a sinner.”

  Since his disappearance Shirin has often tried to remember the last time she saw her father—what he had been wearing, what he had eaten for breakfast, whether he had waved good-bye as he left the kitchen table and walked out. She has come to believe that these final moments may hold in them the answer to his arrest, but she recalls nothing extraordinary about that morning, cannot even remember, for example, whether he had kissed her on her forehead before leaving, as he sometimes did. She has tried, also, to retrace the comings and goings of visitors during the few weeks prior to his departure, hoping to discover a clue to his arrest. The only visitor she remembers is Uncle Javad, who had come one afternoon, staying for just an hour or so. He had had tea and cake in the living room with her mother. He had been unshaven but in good spirits and from time to time Shirin overheard the two of them laughing. “No, I’m done with Fereshteh!” Uncle Javad was saying. “Any woman who tells me my feet smell like a wet mop is getting too bossy and has to go!” Later as he was leaving, he stopped by Shirin’s room. “And how is my beautiful girl?” he said. Uncle Javad was known for his collection of beautiful girls and Shirin liked the idea that he found her beautiful, too. He pulled out a paper bag from his pocket and handed it to her. Inside were two hairpins decorated with crystal-studded cherries. She walked to her mirror and pinned them to her hair, one on each side. As she fixed her hair she looked at his reflection, behind hers, and saw in his face a vague sadness. She wondered if it was caused by the shadow cast by his stubble, or if it was something more. “I like the pins very much,” she told him, and he said, “I like them on you.” People often spoke badly of Uncle Javad—they said he was a charlatan and a womanizer—but Shirin was fond of him.

  Leila’s mother, Farideh-khanoum, emerges from the kitchen with a wooden crate of apples, which she places on the floor. “Be a good girl, Leila-jan, and take this to the basement. My back is killing me. And while you’re down there, sweep the floor a bit, would you?”

  Farideh-khanoum is not a bad-looking woman, Shirin notices. Her brown eyes, honey-hued in sunlight, soften the rest of her tired face. But she does not possess the kind of beauty that her own mother does. People often called her mother magnifique. “Farnaz-jan, tu es magnifique!” they would say in French, the language they used for both praise and condemnation. Women would ask her where she had bought a certain bag, or a pair of shoes, or a silk scarf, and she would smile and say, “Oh, this? I got it in Paris,” or “Rome,” or “Hong Kong.” This pleased Shirin. The remoteness of these places safeguarded her mother’s uniqueness and, by association, her own.

  She offers to help carry the crate but Leila refuses. They open the squeaky door to the basement and walk down wooden steps. Leila pulls a hanging chain and a small light comes on. It is cool here, and damp. Crates of pears and pomegranates are stacked in one corner, and Leila rests the apples on top. Next to these is a bicycle, with rusty spokes and flat tires. There is an armoire with a broken door, filled with old clothes—pastel-colored skirts and geometric-patterned silk scarves where perfume still lingers. Framed artworks lean against a wall—watercolor landscapes and charcoal drawings. Dusty books are stored in shelves. In a corner, under a stack of old magazines, is a half-open box. Shirin shoves the lid with her foot and sees brownish bottles inside. She pulls one out, and recognizes it, the rectangular bottle with the picture of the walking man dressed in a tailcoat and tall hat. On the label are the words Johnnie Walker, in English. “Look, a box full of these bottles!”

  Leila takes the bottle and kneels to the floor. “Baba is always talking about how alcohol is forbidden…” She puts the bottle back, closes the box, places the magazines back on top, scattering them a bit. “Maybe they don’t know about it. Maybe they forgot they had it. Should I tell them?”

  “No. Maybe one of them knows about it but doesn’t want the other one to find out.”

  “Yes, you’re right. But if having alcohol is a sin, wouldn’t I be considered a sinner if I say nothing of it?”

  Leila’s religiosity always surprises Shirin, but she doesn’t contest it. She adds it to the list of differences between them, believes it to be another outcome of living on the floor. “If you withhold information in order to protect someone, God won’t punish you,” she says.

  Leila nods, considering the statement. She picks up the broom and begins sweeping. Shirin pulls an old skirt from the armoire and holds it up against her body. She takes out a few scarves, then a hat. As the shelf empties, she notices dozens of files stacked in the back. She pulls them out and opens one. She reads, Mahmoud Motamedi. Age: 36. Occupation: journalist. Charge: treason. Next to the charge is a log: eight o’clock, no one home; noon, housekeeper says they are traveling; midnight, guards break in, housekeeper gone also. Next attempt: suspect’s beach house in Ramsar.

  She opens other files. They are all the same, with different names, ages, and occupations, but similar charges—royalist, Zionist, advocate of indecency. What are these files, she wonders. Doesn’t charge mean doing something wrong, for which one must go to prison? But her father is in prison without having done anything wrong.

  She feels cold, as though a winter draft had just blown through the room. She looks over at Leila, who is busy sweeping, dust rising under her broom. She opens one of the files again and examines it more carefully. Here, in these files, are the names of men who, like her father, are destined to vanish. She glances at Leila again and finds her bent over a box of books, trying to sweep the space behind it. It occurs to her that if she were to make one file disappear, she could be saving one man’s life. She takes a file randomly and tucks it in her pants, under the long coat of her uniform, then quickly places the hat and scarves back in the closet.

  “I think I’ll call my mother and tell her to come get me,” she says, as casually as she can. “I’m not feeling well.”

  Leila looks up, her face red from her bent position. “Really? Do you want us to take you home?”

  “No, no. I can see you have a lot to do.”

  “All right. See you tomorrow.”

  UPSTAIRS AS SHE waits for her mother, she takes the file from under her coat and slips it into her schoolbag. Leila’s mother brings her a glass of rosewater. “Sit down, Shirin-jan. Drink this. You look flushed. Do you have a fever?” She places her hand on Shirin’s forehead. “You do feel hot…”

  Shirin brings the glass to her mouth. Her fingers quiver a little and she fears she may drop it. She wonders if Leila’s mother can see her heart pounding through her clothes. What if she suspects something?

  “You poor child,” Farideh-khanoum says. “You’re really not well…”

  When her mother honks she puts down the glass and reaches for her bag, but Farideh-khanoum lifts it first. “I’ll carry this to the car, Shirin-jan” she says.

  Outside the adults exchange formalities. “Thank you, Farideh-khanoum,” her mother says. “I’m sorry if she was a burden…”

  “No, Amin-khanoum! Please don’t mention it.” Farideh-khanoum places the schoolbag in the backseat of the car. Then standing upright and facing Shirin’s mother, she rubs her hands together, lets them drop to her side, and finally tucks them in the pockets of her skirt. She seems embarrassed, apologetic, almost—reactions that Shirin has seen her mother trigger in many people.

  “You’re getting sick, Shirin-jan?” her mot
her says in the car. “We’ll go home and I’ll fix you a nice soup.”

  In her room, she opens her bag and pulls out the file. Ali Reza Rasti, 42. Occupation: professor of philosophy. Charge: advocate of indecency. She hides the file in the bottom drawer of her desk, under her old notebooks. Is it possible that Ali Reza Rasti will avoid her father’s fate?

  TWELVE

  Once a week the prisoners are allowed to spend an hour outside their cells. Today Isaac sits by the prison mosque with Mehdi and Ramin and a few other men he has met since his arrival, some six weeks ago: Hamid, a low-ranking general from the shah’s army; Reza, a young revolutionary who was involved in the capture of the American hostages but ended up in jail, presumably for helping his father, a minister of the shah, escape the country; and old man Muhammad, whom no one knows much about, except that he has three daughters in the women’s block—one for being a communist, one for being an adulteress, and the third for being their sister.

  “What a day!” says the old man. “So clean you can smell jasmine in the air.”

  “You have a vivid imagination, Muhammad-agha,” Reza says. “All I can smell is Mehdi’s stinking foot.” Turning to Mehdi he says, “You have to insist they take care of that foot of yours, or else you’ll end up with a stump. Look at it, the tip of your toe is almost black.”

  Mehdi extends his leg, examines his bandaged foot from a distance, and shrugs.

  “Wait until it’s your turn, agha-Reza,” Hamid says. To Isaac this bitter admonition sounds more like a curse than a warning. Hamid has been subject to several interrogations, each accompanied by a round of lashings. His swollen feet bulging from brown plastic slippers are a sorry sight.

  “I shouldn’t even be here,” Reza retorts. “Everyone knows there has been a mistake.”

  “You and I are from the same stock,” Hamid says quietly. “There has been no mistake. Your father and I both served the shah dutifully, did we not? We all know you’re the one who helped your father escape.”

  “Nonsense. My father and I stopped talking a long time ago.”

  A guard approaches, points his rifle at the group. “Keep it down!” he yells.

  The men fall silent. Isaac brushes a hand over the cigarette burns on his chest and face, which throb from time to time. A pigeon flaps its wings overhead and lands a few feet away. It taps its beak on the ground, but finding nothing, takes flight and disappears into the blue sky.

  “I hear Fariborz got a carton of Marlboros,” Ramin says. “He just had a visit from his wife. He’s selling them for fifty tomans.”

  “Per cigarette?” Mehdi asks.

  “Yes.”

  Isaac smiles at the outrageous fee; prison commerce intrigues him. But what intrigues him even more is the possibility of a family visit, which no one has ever mentioned.

  “So there are visitation rights?” he asks.

  “What rights?” Hamid says. “It’s whoever manages to bribe the guards and slip through the gates. That’s your visitation rights.”

  “Why the interest, Amin-agha?” Reza says. “You think you can continue running your business here?”

  Isaac looks out beyond the men, at the horizon rising from the dust. He does not answer.

  “You know what your problem is?” Reza continues. “You have no beliefs. As long as you can buy your Italian shoes and your fancy watches and your villas by the sea, you’re happy. ‘Who cares what kind of regime it is, as long as I make money!’ Right? Am I not right, Amin-agha? Isn’t that what you’re all about?”

  Isaac senses the men’s eyes on him. He feels hot suddenly. He realizes that to a certain extent Reza is right; he does not have beliefs, at least not the way Reza does. Sure, he can discuss politics for hours, and in fact he often used to, sitting with his friends in his living room, whiskey on the rocks and freshly roasted pistachios fueling the men into the night. But a man like Reza is willing to die for a belief, something Isaac would not do.

  “So what?” he says finally. “So what if I wanted a good life? So what if I like hand-stitched shoes and tailored suits and waking up with my wife and children by the sea? Is that a crime? You know what is my belief, agha-Reza? My belief is that life is to be enjoyed. Don’t look at me bitterly because things didn’t work out the way you’d hoped.” In the silence that follows he remembers some Hāfez verses, which he had memorized long ago, when he was a student in Shiraz. He recites them, without further thought. “Give thanks for nights in good company…”

  The old man’s face lights up with recognition. He joins in. “And take the gifts a tranquil heart may bring…”

  The other men smile; some begin to recite whatever they can remember, throwing in words here and there. “No heart is dark when the kind moon does shine / And grass-grown riverbanks are fair to see.”

  They finish the verse with gusto, emphasizing “fair to see.” There is a moment of silence, then nervous laughter. Even Reza, who did not join the recitation, makes a strange movement with his mouth, which Isaac interprets as a smile.

  Back in his cell Isaac thinks of Reza and the thousands of revolutionaries like him—men and women who thought they were part of something big, much bigger than their daily lives—who thought they were changing the course of history. And here they are, having replaced crowns with turbans.

  He thinks of the day the shah left, that cold January day nearly two years ago, crowds cheering everywhere, drivers flashing headlights, honking horns, shopkeepers giving away sweets, cab drivers offering free rides, strangers embracing, young women dancing. He had stood on his roof and watched the city, radios and televisions buzzing over clotheslines swaying in the icy air—the woman in the house across from his peeling apples by her kitchen window; the old man leaning on his cane by the street corner, watching in disbelief; the street vendor offering passersby free charcoaled corn; the neighbor’s gardener clapping and smiling a toothless smile.

  “Shah raft, Shah raft!—The shah is gone, the shah is gone!” people cheered.

  Later that night he saw the departure on the evening news. The shah at the airport, bony and ill with cancer, with the empress by his side, the two of them forcing smiles.

  So this is how it all ends, Isaac thought. Here’s the end of the Peacock Throne and its White Revolution—those gilded decades of cultural and economic reforms. Watching the shriveled king on television he thought of the Darya-e-Noor—“Sea of Light” diamond, that immaculate, rectangular stone that weighed one hundred eighty-six carats and sparkled on the shah’s kepi on the day of his coronation. Standing with Farnaz in the Grand Hall of the Golestan Palace, Isaac had been unable to take his eyes off it. If the shah had seemed to him ostentatious, even ridiculous, his stone had not. Unlike this shah, and the many others who had worn it before him, the diamond, perfect in its luster and clarity, had in it something timeless and idyllic, something of the earth from which it came, a durability and purity that no human—or dynasty—could achieve.

  Was it not this very durability that the shah wished to emulate, only four years after his coronation, with the celebration of the twenty-five-hundredth anniversary of the Persian Empire—that extravagant affair held over three days in Persepolis? Guests from all over the world—heads of state and other dignitaries—had attended the ceremonies, designed to pay homage to Cyrus, the founder of the Persian Empire, and to Darius, whose magnificent city of Persepolis had once been the symbol of the greatest civilization. Among the stone ruins, just outside Shiraz, the shah had built a tent city for his visitors, inspired by Francis I’s camp created in the sixteenth century on France’s west coast to receive Henry VIII of England. Calling himself shahan-shah—“king of kings,” the shah had courted his guests with banquets prepared by Parisian chefs: quail eggs stuffed with caviar, roast peacock—the symbol of the Iranian monarchy—filled with foie gras, Château Lafite Rothschild 1945, Dom Perignon Rosé 1959. The guests, living for three days in the desert, surrounded by ancient ruins, drank and ate, indulging their host’s wish to p
aint himself as an heir to Cyrus. Yet the shah’s royal blood was in fact no purer than an estuary: he was the son of a common man who had risen from the military ranks to become king. Placing two wreaths of flowers on the tomb of Cyrus, the shah solemnly recited, “Kourosh, assoudeh bekhab ke ma bidarim—Cyrus, rest in peace for we are well awake.” In the minute of silence that followed his speech the desert wind blew stronger, swirling the yellow dust in the air and flapping the hems of the women’s long dresses, an event that was made much of in newspapers: Had Cyrus’s soul responded to the shah? people wondered.