The Septembers of Shiraz

by Dalia Sofer

  “Perhaps the same level of idealism is required of both poetry and jewelry making, Brother.”

  “There is no mention here of any friends or acquaintances. Who were your close friends? People you might have had over for dinner…”

  “I am an introvert by nature, Brother. I do not have any close friends. I enjoy being with my family, or spending time alone.”

  “Ah, a specialist in solitary confinement! Then we’ve brought you to the right place.” He laughs without looking up from the paper. “And of your trips to Israel,” he continues, “you write nothing.”

  “I have also not written of my trips to the many other parts of the world I have been to.”

  Mohsen walks to a door, which Isaac had not noticed when he first walked in. He opens it. “Brother, I’d like you to listen to something.”

  At first, he is not sure what the sound is. He thinks it may be a dog howling. After a few minutes, the voices quiet down. He hears footsteps, followed by the shuffling of papers. A pungent odor of sweat and blood spills into the interrogation room. A voice says, “No change of heart?” Another voice, much weaker, says something, but he cannot hear it. Then it comes, the unmistakable sound of leather hitting flesh, and the shrieks of a man, which he had first mistaken for those of a dog. The shrieks grow meeker as the cable grows louder, and with each hit the first voice says, “Speak or breathe your last breath…”

  Mohsen leaves the door open and walks away, his arms crossed against his chest. He leans over the desk. “You see how much awaits you that you don’t know about? Now speak!”

  “Brother, what do you want me to tell you? I have nothing to say.”

  “Tell me about your activities for Israel! And that brother of yours. Where is he?”

  Isaac says nothing. Mohsen walks to the door, where the voices have once again quieted down. “Brother Mostafa, your next man is ready for you.”

  No, no, dear God, please don’t. Not this. He feels blood rushing to his head, and a pain in his heart—a tightening. He cannot breathe. I am having a heart attack. Perhaps he should. Better to die here than under the cable, with his torturer’s voice as his elegy. A masked man grabs his arm and lifts him. He is dragged to the other room and is laid facedown on a wooden plank. His shoes and socks are removed. He feels cables snaking around his ankles and attaching them to two poles. Dear God, have mercy on me. So it is really happening. To him, Isaac Amin of Khorramshahr, son of Hakim and Afshin Amin. My name is Isaac Amin, my name is Isaac Amin. Where are you, my Farnaz? Come and see what they are doing to me. And my little Shirin. Come, look at your father. Come see what has become of him. Come, my Parviz. See your father barefoot and facedown on a plank of wood, about to be beaten like a dog. The cable slices the air before slicing his feet. It is a jagged pain, unidentifiable, which travels through his nerves to the rest of his body. One, two, three, he counts. Four, five, six, seven. “Will you speak now? No?” Eight, nine, ten. He no longer feels his feet. He keeps counting. Eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen. “Still nothing? Repent, you son of a dog!” Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen…

  Would you like some tea, Amin-agha? Yes, Habibeh, thank you. Shahla and Keyvan are having a dinner party on Thursday night; write it in your calendar. Didn’t they just have a dinner party? Yes, well, she is your sister, not mine. Baba-jan, what is the capital of Egypt? Cairo. It’s not Alexandria? No, it’s not Alexandria. Didn’t they burn a huge library in Alexandria? Yes, they did. Who did? First the Romans, then the Christians,

  then the Caliph of Baghdad. Bah bah, Amin-agha, welcome, welcome! Will it be just the two of you? No, we will be joined by our friends Kourosh and Homa. Very good. Come this way. We have an excellent fesenjan tonight.

  A hand shakes his arm. “Brother Amin, wake up.”

  He opens his eyes. His cell is dark. A guard places a tray by his mattress. “You should eat. If you don’t eat you will lose all your strength.” The door slams shut.

  Isaac sits up, leans against the wall. He cannot feel his feet. He bends and touches the soles; they are all peeled skin and raw meat. A burning sensation travels up his legs. He thinks of Mehdi. He pictures Mehdi in a wheelchair with no legs. He thinks of Ramin. He sees the boy’s body, naked, a hole in his forehead, lying in a morgue. He remembers the ill-fated Vartan, sees him in a metallic cubicle not far from Ramin, his long fingers now resting on his gray, swollen body. He takes the bowl on the tray and fills his spoon with rice. He forces it down his throat.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  To kill time before her meeting with Isaac’s brother, Farnaz walks through the bazaar, running her hands over the silks and chiffons in fabric shops, smelling the spices inside giant sacks, flipping carpets to examine their craftsmanship. She stands across from the silversmith, where last night, during a harried telephone call from a public phone, Javad begged her to see him. She watches the boxes of merchandise being rolled on handcarts, the reds and oranges of the produce being unveiled, the bargaining between vendors and buyers, the money exchanging hands—the hustle of another day unfolding.

  He arrives in a tired overcoat, which is missing two buttons. A dense black beard covers his chin. “How nice to see you,” he says. “Thank you for coming.”

  He smells stale—like someone who has lived in too many places in a short amount of time, without the luxury of hot showers and toothbrushes and laundry.

  “Good to see you also,” she says. “When did you grow this beard? You blend right in with the mullahs.”

  “Yes.” He laughs, caressing his face. His black, humorous eyes have not lost their brilliance. “The idea is to always blend in. That’s how you avoid trouble. Come, let’s walk.”

  “So what’s happening?” Farnaz says. “Where have you been?”

  “Oh, here and there, you know. The friend who told me about Isaac’s arrest tells me that the Revolutionary Guards are after me also.”

  “My God, Javad! They will get us all in the end, won’t they? What will you do?”

  “I’ve been staying at different friends’ houses around Tehran for over a month now, sleeping at each place for no more than a few nights. I can’t keep doing that, and besides, I’m running out of friends.” He laughs, caressing his beard again. “So I’m going to a small village up north, where I know a family that has agreed to take me in for a few weeks.”

  “And then?”

  “By then, I’m expecting to receive lots of cash for a transaction…I’ll use the cash to pay the smugglers who take people across the border to Turkey. I’ll be poised right on the border, you know.”

  “What transaction? Don’t get yourself in trouble, Javad-jan.”

  In a lowered voice he says, “No, no trouble. I’m importing vodka from Russia, and I have people signed up for case-fuls. You wouldn’t believe how many cases…”

  “You’re a bootlegger…” She looks around, wondering if anyone heard what she said, but realizes that their conversation is drowned in the staccato voices of the vendors and haggling buyers. She stops by a shop, looks at the rolls of fabric stacked some thirty feet high, forming colorful walls that stand in sharp contrast to the black-veiled women roaming below. “If they catch you, you’ll be executed right off, Javad! What are you getting yourself into?”

  “They won’t catch me. I’m dealing with real professionals.”

  “Who are these professionals? The Russian vory?”

  “Look, I can’t really talk about it. But the only thing is, I need a bit of cash to hold me over until the shipment arrives. I was wondering if you could help me.”

  “How much do you need?”

  “About ten thousand.”

  “Dollars?”

  “Of course, what else?” He smiles. “It just so happens that I owe some people some money also.”

  This is not the first time he has asked for such an amount. His constant requests for loans, which inevitably ended up as gifts, had long become a strain on her relationship with Isaac. “You not only fund his ridiculous schemes,
you also bail him out once he is in trouble,” she would say, and Isaac, having run out of arguments in defense of his little brother, would answer simply, “The money gives him hope to start over. How can I refuse?” Now it isn’t just the amount that troubles her, but the idea of helping him smuggle vodka. “I don’t know, Javad,” she says. “I don’t want to get mixed up in your schemes. If they find out I’m helping you they can make things worse for Isaac.”

  He stops walking, holds her arm. “Please, if I don’t leave Tehran, they’re bound to come after me. And I’ll tell you, with my track record, I don’t have much of a chance.”

  By the fruit vendor, where they stand, the sweet-sour smell of pomegranates in their red and golden skins and bowing crowns fills the morning. She looks at him, striped with vertical rays of light, his eyes pleading.

  “But if I take out that much cash at once they are bound to get suspicious. And I certainly can’t write you a check.”

  “I’ve thought of all that. A friend of mine, Shahriar Beheshti, has an antiques shop. You can write a check to him, and he’ll give me the money. If anyone asks you what you bought with ten thousand dollars, you tell them you got yourself a miniature painting from the sixteenth century. My friend can even lend one to you if you need to prove you have it.”

  “Javad, Javad, I don’t know. We have so much trouble as it is.”

  “Please. I have nowhere else to turn. They’ll kill me the minute they get their hands on me.”

  She tries to imagine what Isaac would do in her place. He had come to Javad’s rescue time and again, fully knowing that he would never see a dollar back. That she never particularly cared for Javad’s complicated schemes and wayward women and continuous demands for money is not the point. Not helping him would mean that he would most likely be killed, and she realizes that that would be something she could not live with, particularly for Isaac’s sake.

  “All right,” she says. They turn into an abandoned alley jutting out of the bazaar where empty crates and bags of trash are stacked one on top of the other. In the moldy air a colony of ants is feasting on a few bruised apples and malformed squashes. She takes out her checkbook. “So who is selling me this ten-thousand-dollar miniature?”

  “Thank you, Farnaz. You make it out to Fariba Antiques. When I get to that village I’ll send you a letter, under the name Hajji Gholam. When my cash comes I’ll send the money to the antiques dealer, who will return it to you. And when I have safely crossed the border, I will write you another letter. Look for the sentence ‘The children have grown up and they are looking to settle down.’”

  She hands him the check. “Good luck, Javad. May we hear good news.”

  He takes the check and slips it into his pocket. “You’ll see,” he says. “One day you and Isaac and the children and I will get together somewhere wonderful, by the Seine in Paris or by the Empire State Building in New York or at the Alhambra in Spain. We’ll sit under a tree and drink tea, and we’ll say, ‘Remember those days?’”

  “Javad-jan,” she says, “a pond with no water does not need goldfish.”

  “You have to dream, my Farnaz, otherwise how can you get by?” He straightens his coat, kisses her on the cheek. “Oh, one more thing.” He pulls something from his pocket: her missing sapphire ring. “This is yours. I needed collateral against some money I owed. I didn’t mention it because I knew I would return it. Here.”

  “My God, the ring!” She slips it onto her finger. “You didn’t think I would notice it was missing, Javad?”

  “I knew you would. But I also knew that I would return it. No harm done. All right, I should get going. So long, my Farnaz. Kiss your little Shirin for me. And God willing, I’ll see you on some other continent someday!” He turns around and walks away, a bounce in his step.

  In his twisted, scam-filled world, Javad has a code of honor, a set of principles about loyalty and respect, and this is what, in the end, endears him to her. She looks at her finger, happy to see the ring—Isaac’s first present to her. The weight of the stone on her hand comforts her, and she wonders, briefly, if it’s a prophecy of Isaac’s return.

  She walks back through the bazaar, the alleyway streaked with rays of light streaming through the iron rooftop. How could a life as orderly as hers had been turn into such chaos in such a short time? Imprisoned husband, sickly daughter, disloyal housekeeper, stolen possessions, and now, a fugitive brother-in-law—a marked man on both sides of the Caspian, smuggling vodka into the country, and himself out. And she, linked to him with the check she just handed him, in care of some alleged antiques dealer, from whom she must now pick up a sixteenth-century miniature.

  What an illusion, she thinks, the idea of an ordered, ordinary life.

  TWENTY-NINE

  Isaac stands on one leg. He has lifted the other and placed his foot in the sink, washing out the caked blood from his sole. He does this several times a day, cleaning one foot, then the other, in a time-consuming maneuver that requires great orchestration and willpower.

  Since the lashings he has come to realize that his so-called case is not so much a case as it is an endurance test. Nothing has changed here, except for Mohsen’s willingness to inflict more pain. Maybe Mehdi was right. Maybe one can tell when the end is near. “You smell it in your interrogator’s breath,” he had said. “You know he’s had it with you.”

  He lies down. Outside, snowflakes swirl in the wind. He has been here two seasons, almost. In his absence the tea harvest in Gilan ended, the orange and lemon trees in Rasht shed their fruit, the fishermen salted their sturgeon’s eggs and produced their caviar. He shuts his eyes. Six in the morning—the clink of milk bottles outside his door. Seven—the smell of steamed milk, Ceylon tea, and eggs. Eight—leather, paper, and tobacco. Nine—chairs screeching, typewriters buzzing, chatter about the morning traffic. Ten—a gift of freshwater pearls for Farnaz from a Japanese colleague. Eleven—a warm samovar, a new shipment of rubies sparkling on his desk. Twelve—I’m going to lunch now, Amin-agha. One—the sizzle of a steak, Farnaz’s hand stretched across the table. Two—a cup of Turkish coffee. Three—a nap on his sofa. Four—the smell of fresh ink on a new contract. Five—chairs screeching, engines starting, the hush of solitude. Six—LEGOs for Parviz, a Barbie for Shirin, an orchid for Farnaz. Seven—the warmth of a cognac before dinner. Eight—the smell of charcoal, the juice of kebab. Nine, ten—a movie. Eleven—bedtime! Twelve—a glass of steamed milk. One—the smell of Farnaz’s orange blosson lotion.

  Two, three, four, five—the sound sleep of a man who does not know his hours are numbered.

  “Brother Amin, it’s time for your lunch.”

  He opens his eyes. In the dim cell he cannot see the guard’s eyes. But it is daytime, and he assumes the man is Hossein. The man kneels down, holds his shoulders, and helps him sit up. “How are you holding up, Brother?” he says.

  Isaac rubs his face with his hands.

  “Brother,” Hossein says. “Try to cry. You’ll feel better if you cry.”

  “I can’t. I’m all dried up.”

  “Well then, try to eat. Tomorrow is your shower day. I will bring you some clean bandages for your feet.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Now eat.”

  BECAUSE OF THE snow and the state of his feet he cannot get fresh air. He sits on his mattress, his feet wrapped with the bandages Hossein brought him—some old cotton underclothes. Hossein sits next to him. He says, “So they did it to you, too. I am sorry. I like you, Brother. You seem to me a decent man, despite the way you lived.”

  Again Isaac hears the footsteps above his cell. “Brother, am I imagining things,” he asks, “or does a child run up and down the stairs all day long?”

  “No, you are not imagining. That’s Mohsen’s little boy.”

  “Why does he bring his child to this place?”

  “Mohsen is very proud of his son. You know, he was in this same prison for many years, and was tortured by Savak. That missing finger? Well, that’s n
ot the only torture he underwent. Let’s just say he never thought he could have a child.”

  So that little boy is his miracle child, the badge of his faith. Bringing him to the prison and letting him run free among the prisoners is his way of saying, to himself and to everyone else, What is God’s will, no frost can kill.

  “He is not a bad man,” Hossein says. “You may have trouble believing that after what you’ve been through. But he is not a bad man.”

  Isaac looks out the window. All morning he has noticed one distinguishable pair of boots, with a red stain on the left ankle, trudging back and forth in the snow. He thinks it is the fifth time the boots passed by his window; but he could be wrong.

  “Well, Brother,” Hossein says. “I must go. You have to believe that you will make it. Have faith.”

  DOESN’T EVERY PERSON who finds himself in dire circumstances believe, deep down, that he will make it, wonders Isaac. Doesn’t every man believe that he occupies a special place on this earth and will therefore be spared the cruelest fate? What, precisely, was he supposed to have faith in? That he is more deserving than the others in God’s eyes? That a young boy like Ramin could die with a bullet in his head but he, Isaac Amin, will walk free? And is it not ironic that the reason he is in prison is because of his supposed faith in a religion that has become more of a liability to him than a salvation? Why must he bear the burden of this religion, he who has led a secular life, who believed that the chief role of religious holidays was to bring families together? “Why is my name Isaac?” he had once asked his mother, and she had said, “Isaac was the son of Abraham. And he was very special because he was the proof of Abraham’s faith in God.” He had looked at her as she stood by the stove stirring a stew, a scarf tied around her head to keep her hair out of her face, and said, “But you and Baba and Javad and Shahla, you all have normal names. Why am I the only one with a Jewish name?” She had knelt down beside him. “Because you are extraordinary,” she had said.