The Septembers of Shiraz

by Dalia Sofer

  “That’s enough talk!” Hossein says, holding up his rifle. “Your time is up anyway. Go back to your cells. And remember what I told you.”

  Walking back to the cell, Isaac wonders whether he could, in fact, repent. Since he is innocent of any crime they may be charging him with, he could repent only for the act of living.

  TWENTY-ONE

  On the other side of the office gates there is noise and commotion—footsteps, boxes hitting the ground, car doors opening and closing. When Farnaz presses the buzzer, the noises stop and the gates open with a pained rattle. Standing before her is Habibeh’s son Morteza, the office manager, his face flushed, wearing a cap with a sharp visor that accentuates his narrow eyes.

  “What’s happening in there, Morteza?”

  “That’s nothing.” He gestures with his head toward the back of the courtyard. Farnaz tries to sneak a look past his shoulder, but except for a large green truck parked inside she cannot see much. “We’re transporting the stones and the equipment to a more secure location to protect them from the revolutionaries. We think they may want to seize them.”

  “Yes? And how do you know?”

  Morteza taps his fingers on the iron gate. “Trust me, Farnaz-khanoum,” he says with a strained voice. “I want to help you.”

  “I’d like to come in.”

  “No.” He stands before her, arms folded.

  “Where are you taking everything?”

  “To a safe place. We will let your husband know as soon as he gets out. Now go home. You must have other things to worry about.” He steps back and shuts the gate.

  How is it that a boy like Morteza, her husband’s employee and her housekeeper’s son, could talk to her like this? And how could the others gang up on Isaac and rob him of everything? Loyalty is so fragile, like porcelain. One crack, invisible at first to the naked eye, can one day shatter the cup.

  She calls Keyvan from a pay phone and he offers to come right over. She knows there isn’t much he can do in the face of two dozen men. Still there are times when one needs the illusion of authority. In the old days Keyvan, with one phone call to his father, could have had someone like Morteza imprisoned for life. She waits for him on the sidewalk, wishing for a cigarette. Isaac’s Jaguar is still parked outside, as if at any moment he may emerge through the gates and take her out for a quick lunch.

  Having lived with him for twenty-five years, she has never imagined her life without him—his presence, like the villa he had built for her, offering her great comfort along with much to fret about. When she met him, so many years ago in Shiraz, she had been studying literature. She saw him for the first time in the lunchtime crowd of a teahouse near the university. He sat alone, sipping his drink, his eyes on his book. Between them was a clear blue pool, terra-cotta vases on its ledge. When he finally looked up and noticed her, she looked away, even though she had planned to smile. The next day she returned to the teahouse, and so did he. Back then she attributed this second encounter to fate; later she learned that he had planned his return in the hope of finding her.

  He said, “Is that your parrot up there or is he just following you? I noticed he was here yesterday, also.”

  Looking up, she saw an emerald parrot with red feathers in the cypress tree above her table. She interpreted the bird’s presence as a good omen, and said, “I thought he was your spy, keeping an eye on me.”

  He introduced himself and told her that he was taking a poetry class at the university for the summer. He said he would have liked to study all year, but his work back in Tehran did not allow him to get away for long. She liked his playful eyes, but it was his confidence that most impressed her. It was only years later that she came to think of that confidence as stubbornness—hardness, even.

  When Keyvan arrives, he walks with her to the gate and presses the buzzer. Morteza opens the gate, looking more irritated than before.

  “What?”

  “What’s happening in there?”

  “I already explained to Farnaz-khanoum. We’re taking the gemstones for safekeeping.”

  “Where?”

  “I have no time for this.” He pushes the gate shut but Keyvan holds it open with his arm. “Look, I am asking you to leave, nicely,” Morteza says. “This is none of your business. Don’t let it get nasty.”

  Behind him Farnaz can see Isaac’s employees—and others she does not recognize—walking back and forth, loading the truck. But it isn’t just gems they are taking—it’s radios and leather chairs and file cabinets and telephones. She reaches into her purse, grabs a small can of hair spray, and presses the nozzle toward Morteza’s face. Morteza cries out and collapses to his knees, vigorously rubbing his eyes with his hands.

  When they walk in, all activity stops. The men stand still, some cradling boxes, others holding tables in teams of two, all of them looking down.

  “What’s going on here?” Farnaz demands. No one answers. The only sound in the courtyard is an occasional curse from Morteza. A few seconds into the silence a man she recognizes as Siamak from accounting resumes carrying a chair toward the truck. Slowly others follow, and commotion continues as if she weren’t in the courtyard at all. One man makes his way over to Morteza with a glass of water to wash his eyes.

  In the corner by the small fountain, Farhad, a stonecutter, stands idle, one hand resting on his belly, the other holding a cigarette. He looks on calmly, removed from the action. He smiles at Farnaz and looks down. She walks to him, stopping several times in order to avoid collision with the men. “Can you explain this to me, Farhad-agha?”

  He takes a long, pensive drag, then empties his lungs with a sigh. “I’m sorry, khanoum. Things have gone awry. I tried to talk sense into them, but there was no use. They said I’m blind to all the exploitation that has been going on for years. They said…”

  “Exploitation? These people were all unemployed gypsies when Isaac hired them. He took them in, paid for their education, gave them salaries they probably didn’t deserve. This is called exploitation?”

  “Well, we weren’t exactly gypsies, khanoum. We may have lacked education, but we…”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. Especially not about you. I just don’t understand how they can do this, how they can forget everything he did for them.”

  Farhad takes another drag and shrugs. “That’s how it is now,” he says. Quietly he adds, “I’m sorry.”

  Across the courtyard Keyvan is tangled in a conversation with Morteza. “This isn’t right,” he yells. “He hasn’t even had a trial yet.”

  “Trial?” Morteza laughs. “If you think there is going to be a trial you’re going to be very disappointed. In any case, all we are doing here is protecting his assets, but arrogant idiots like you mistake our kindness for thievery.”

  “Come on, Morteza,” Keyvan hisses. “It’s clear what this is.”

  “And what if it is? What are you going to do about it?”

  “Morteza,” Farnaz interrupts. “Why are you doing this? Was my husband ever bad to you? Did he ever refuse you anything?”

  “You see, khanoum,” he says, looking at her with eyes still red and teary from the hair spray. “You fail to understand. And I mean this sincerely. This isn’t about one man. It is about a collection of men—men who turned their backs to injustice, men who profited from a corrupt government, men who built themselves villas and traveled whenever they pleased to places the likes of me have never even heard of. God has answered the prayers of the weak. God answers the call of the faithful, not of sinners. God…”

  “Since when are you so ‘faithful’? Just a couple of years ago you would show up in your tight jeans and borrow our car to pick up one of your five girlfriends. You think that beard makes you a man of God?” Farnaz realizes that all activity has come to a halt and the men have gathered around, like spectators at a school brawl. “Farnaz-jan, Farnaz-jan—that’s enough,” Keyvan whispers in her ear, over and over, but she lets his words pass through her. She cannot
stop. “And since when is stealing people’s possessions the call of God? You are all hypocrites who have suddenly come into power, and you don’t know how to handle it.”

  “Shut up, you dirty Jew!” Morteza thunders. “I tried to be respectful but you won’t allow it. So I’ll call you by what you are.”

  There are murmurs around her now—some praising Morteza, a few admonishing him. She turns to the wall to hide her tears. Strings of ivy have crawled down the bricks over the years, like a carpet coming undone. The screeching of desks, the thump of boxes, the aborted single ring of a telephone as it lands in the truck, all buzz behind her in a frenzy. The day has turned cold. Keyvan places his hands on her shoulders. She feels the boniness of his long fingers and is startled by how different they are from Isaac’s stronger grip. He leaves them there a long time, and she lets him. He wraps his scarf around her neck and guides her out of the courtyard.

  When they arrive home he helps her up the stairs and sits her on the bed. He kneels down, removes her shoes, leans her body against the pillows. He prepares tea for her, offers her an aspirin with a glass of water. He sits beside her and rubs her forehead, and she dozes off, her bed drenched in sunlight.

  She wakes up disoriented and cold. The room is dark, predicting the anxiety of a long night to be spent alone. She sits up, hopes to find Keyvan somewhere in the room, but sees no sign of him, except for his scarf still wrapped around her neck.

  Behind the closed door of her bedroom, Shirin and Habibeh talk in low voices. She wonders how much Morteza confides in his mother. Is it time to let Habibeh go? But who would care for Shirin? Farnaz doesn’t feel capable of doing it by herself—not now. Lying there, listening to her daughter, she sees her own mother, standing by the stove, ordering Farnaz to finish cleaning the house in preparation for Sabbath, or for this or that holiday. She hears her father, remembers how he would stand at the head of the table on the eve of Sabbath, one hand holding the prayer book, the other the cup of wine, reciting the prayers with a sad baritone that hushed everything before him—the sparkling dinnerware waiting to be filled with stew, the crystal glasses expecting wine, and his radio, which remained on whenever he was home, reporting on the war in Europe and the arrival to the throne of the new shah, the so-called “spineless” son of the deposed Reza Shah.

  She recalls how after her Friday chores she would accompany her father through narrow unpaved streets to buy sweets. It was on one of these walks, when she was about Shirin’s age, that she had told him that her best friend Azar’s father was making the hajj—the pilgrimage to Mecca—and that upon his return he would receive the much-coveted title of hajji.

  “Baba, will you be taking this pilgrimage also?” she had asked him.

  “No, Farnaz-jan,” he had said. “We are Jews. Jews don’t make the hajj.”

  “Then how can we become hajjis?”

  “We don’t.”

  “That isn’t fair. How can we become holy?”

  “And since when, may I ask, are you so interested in being holy?”

  “I just want to know that I can become it if one day I decide to.”

  “I see! It’s like insurance. All right. I’ll tell you how. We can study the Torah. We can become rabbis.” Then he had repeated his oft-said line, “The Jews, you know, are the chosen people.”

  “Chosen by whom?”

  “Chosen by God. We are his special people.”

  “But don’t the others think they are chosen also?”

  “Every religion has its own beliefs, its own version of what happened.”

  “If there are so many versions, how can we know which one is true?”

  He had looked up, sighing. “If you were born a Jew, then you believe the Jews’ version. That’s how it works!”

  They had walked for a long time without talking, her hand inside his, her ankle twisting every now and then. The answer did not make sense to her. It was like saying, well, if you live in this house, then this is the nicest house on the block. If you live in the next house, then that one is the nicest house.

  “Are Jews still Iranians, Baba?”

  “Of course. The Jews have been in Iran for a long time—before the time of Cyrus, even. And they lived happily here for centuries, until they were declared najes—impure. That’s when they lost their businesses, their homes, their belongings. They had to move into the mahaleh, a kind of ghetto. And because it was located at the lowest point of Tehran, when it rained all the filth and squalor of the city ended up there.”

  She imagined living in this gutter, in a one-room house with her parents, the city’s excrement flowing into their soup bowls.

  “Did you live in the mahaleh, Baba?”

  “No. By the time I was born the government liked the Jews again.”

  “How come this government liked the Jews and the other ones didn’t?”

  “So many questions, Farnaz-jan! So many questions. Come, let’s get our sweets and forget about who likes the Jews and who doesn’t.”

  They walked inside the shop, and as her father selected pastries, she caught a glimpse of herself in the back mirror. People always said how pretty she was, how beautiful she would grow up to be. Looking at her reflection, she thought, How do the ghettos and squalor of the Jews concern me? Years later, when her parents emigrated to Israel, she stayed behind. “Why should I leave?” she had said. “This is my country, and I am very happy right here.”

  But this has become a country of informers, she thinks. To survive, one must either become one—or disappear.

  TWENTY-TWO

  “What’s your favorite flower?” Rachel says.

  Parviz has never thought much about flowers. A few come to mind—roses, sunflowers, carnations; none would qualify as his favorite. He remembers the white orchids that his father would bring his mother. “White orchids,” he says.

  “They’re beautiful. I like them, too. But they can be temperamental if you don’t give them the care they need—the right amount of sunlight, temperature, and humidity.”

  “My mother loves orchids. I guess they suit her temperament.”

  “Are you saying your mother is moody?” She smiles.

  He has come to see her on the pretext of buying flowers for a friend. All morning in class he had pictured her watering her plants, making their leaves bow to her with the weight of the droplets. He follows her through the shop now as she shows him the flowers. She seems to have forgiven him for the comment he made when he last saw her—about exporting religion.

  “This one,” she says, “is a gerbera. With the round face of a sunflower, but more delicate. That one, over there,” she says, pointing at a wiry branch with white cotton blooms, “is a gypsophila. The flowers are so light, like fairy dust. But you have to tell me more about your friend. What kind of person is she?”

  “My friend,” he says, “is reserved, but sweet. I don’t know her that well yet.”

  She looks at him with suspicious eyes. “Red camellias may be a good choice, or white daisies.”

  Mr. Broukhim, shelving bags of soil, looks up. “Don’t go down that road, Parviz-jan!” he calls out. “If I were you, I would buy yellow carnations, or purple hyacinths.”

  “Don’t listen to him.” Rachel smiles. “Yellow carnations mean disdain and purple hyacinths are for sorrow.”

  It fascinates him, this secret language. In a world without words, people could communicate with nothing but plants. There must be a plant to express every emotion—love, joy, solitude, fear, grief, even hope maybe.

  He buys the daisies, which Rachel explains convey affection, and when he arrives home he leaves them for her on the stoop, where she always stands. He wonders what it is about her that so appeals to him. She is not an exceptional beauty, nor is she particularly warm. He thinks of the girls he has come to know in class, attractive for the most part, but tiresome because of their forwardness. He thinks of those he had known back home—Mojgan and Nahid, and even Yassi, his girlfriend of two years—how despite t
heir teasing manners they safeguarded their honor, like jewelers awaiting appraisal of their stones—how pure, how precious, how much?

  Rachel is unlike all of them. Her religiosity, which not long ago would have repelled him, now offers him something no one else has since his arrival: quietude. Maybe it’s because he is incapable of such faith that he has deferred his unanswered prayers to her—being near her ignites in him, somehow, the hope that his father will survive.

  THE FOLLOWING AFTERNOON he steams hats with Zalman, his eyes on the door. When, near sundown, she still hasn’t come, he finds himself weak and feverish. “Rachel never brought you your snack,” he says as casually as he can.

  “She called to say she wasn’t feeling well,” Zalman says. “She went home after school.”

  “A cold?”

  “She didn’t say. She just said she wasn’t well.”

  Like a driver who finds himself at a dead-end, Parviz first blames the poor signage, then the poor visibility, and finally his own poor judgment.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Ramin’s mother and old man Muhammad’s eldest daughter were killed on the same night. Their names appear in the paper’s list of executed, and by the time Isaac and the other prisoners are taken outside for their weekly dose of air, in the early afternoon, the news has spread among the men like the warning of cholera in a damp city. The old man sits on the ground hugging his bony knees, the boy leans against a wall, arms crossed against his chest, glassy-eyed. And so it is, Isaac thinks, that three generations have bonded through death.

  “This country has fallen into the hands of savages,” Hamid says.