by Ramita Navai
Amir waded into the giant, ten-laned square, walking past the taxis, past the fruit-juice shop and headscarf stands and then slowly past the row of manteau shops bursting with custom on the east side of Haft-e Tir. A couple of vans full of Gasht-e Ershad morality police kerb-crawled beside the gangs of women who flocked to buy the latest Islamic wear. The morality police scavenged like circling vultures around the square, seeking their prey: young, skinny-jeaned girls in ballet pumps wearing nail varnish and buying bright, tight cloth. The local girls were also out in full force, known as the Beesto-Panj-e Shahrivar girls, the pre-revolution name for the square, which was the date that Reza Shah was forced to abdicate and when his son Mohammad Reza took over as King. The girls are ordinary Iranians in most senses – not poor, not rich. From middle- and working-class families. Students, secretaries, office workers, housewives, girlfriends, lovers. They watch satellite TV and have Facebook accounts. But there is nothing ordinary about the way they look. They wear enough make-up to make a drag queen recoil. Eyebrows are usually pencilled or tattooed at fierce ninety-degree angles in the style of Mr Spock. Hair is shades of blonde, stacked menacingly high, like eighteenth-century French aristocrats. A network of scaffolding keeps it aloft, hidden underneath wisps of headscarf, delicately draped across their heads in a thin strip designed to show as much highlighted hair as possible. Noses are rarely real. Shoes are rarely below four inches. It’s a look that has spread all over Tehran, but the Beesto-Panj-e Shahrivar girls are the experts.
A few women had clocked the Gasht-e Ershad rounds and they began to sign to one another surreptitiously, alerting the pack of the imminent attack by raising eyebrows, nodding heads and darting eyes towards the vans. Flogging and imprisonment are unusual, but humiliation, bullying and a permanent black-marked record await those caught and accused of inappropriate dress; as well as a fine, a few hours of morality-education lessons for the victim and the victim’s parents.
Even though Gasht-e Ershad poses a greater threat to women, Amir always felt nervous around authority and its presence unsettled him. He quickened his pace.
A cross between a fortress and a rocket ship, the Al Javad mosque was Iran’s first modernist mosque, true, in all its concrete glory, to the sixties style that plagiarized the ugliest modernist Catholic cathedrals and exported them to unsuspecting Islamic congregations.
Amir stood by the iron gates on the corner of Bakhtiar Alley opposite Bella Shoes, a pre-revolution relic with its seventies sign. He waited. From the other side of Haft-e Tir Square, Ayatollah Mohammad Beheshti stared across at him from his mural, his indignant words painted below his face: LET AMERICA BE ANGRY WITH US AND LET IT DIE FROM ITS ANGER.
The last time Amir had been inside a mosque was over ten years ago, for the funeral of a friend’s father. Mosques repelled him; no matter how impressive the architecture, he could not stand them. For Amir they symbolized the hijacking and ruin of the revolution. It was here the gullible were fooled and power-crazed mullahs delivering tittle-tattle sermons manipulated the God-fearing. It was here, on garish Persian carpets, in rooms that stank of sweating feet and cheap rose water, where beautiful verses from the Koran were corrupted. He had, of course, visited the Blue Mosque in Esfahan as a tourist and allowed himself to be overawed by its ravishing beauty, for this was a part of his history, part of a different era that did not belong to what he saw as a new brainwashed generation. The regime’s profligate obsession with enshrining every rule and morsel of its religion meant that mosques were multiplying across Tehran. And the more the regime constructed, the emptier they appeared; so many of the younger generation barely went to mosque at all. The government occasionally discussed plans to entice worshippers, such as opening up cultural centres, providing sports facilities and even sewing courses in mosques.
Many of the locals had never taken to the Al Javad mosque, preferring the old, homely mosques they were used to. When the Al Javad established itself as a stronghold of the Basij, the volunteer paramilitary force responsible for duties including internal security and some law enforcement, it attracted the regime supporters.
As Amir watched a few men enter the Al Javad, he realized he had not told a soul about the phone call. That had been easy; he had been a professional keeper of secrets from when he had spoken his first words. He felt a sudden unease. How naive not to have thought this might be a set-up.
He had recently been summoned for an ‘interview’. The request – an implicit order – came via a phone call from a private number. Amir had half been expecting the call from them. Ettela’at. Intelligence. Officers from the feared Ministry of Intelligence monitored and interrogated everyone, from university lecturers to musicians; telephones were tapped, emails intercepted.
Amir had been attending meetings with his activist friends and writing an anonymous blog satirizing politicians and poking fun at the regime. He used proxy servers called VPNs – Virtual Private Networks – to circumvent the government’s Internet filter, allowing computers to function as if they were in another country. One was a complementary service provided by the United States government as part of the game to weaken its arch-enemy, comfortably cloaked in the familiar and increasingly meaningless name of freedom and democracy. As fast as the Iranian government blocked the proxy websites, another one would spring up. Some of his friends refused to download VPNs, saying they belonged to the regime, that this was a conspiracy of entrapment.
He was careful about what he wrote, never daring to stray outside the red lines. Words were picked for their allusive qualities, strung together to create a vague blur of accusations, enough to send a shock of satisfaction through the reader’s mind yet exiguous enough in meaning not to rouse the mighty fist of the regime.
There were a few certainties that could knock you off-balance and straight into prison: criticisms of the Supreme Leader, the Prophet and any questioning of God or Islam. Amir’s own atheism was one of his most treasured secrets. But there were no rules in this game, when laws could be twisted and manipulated to whatever effect was needed. He scanned his mind for anything he had written that they could deem a threat to national security. But it was often the anodyne musings of nobodies like Amir that got them excited – it was easier to pick on a nobody as nobody would notice. It was no use believing the Islamic Republic had bigger fish to fry, because then you wouldn’t see them coming for you. The regime always loved a scapegoat: catching them is a favourite pastime of bored, sadistic bureaucrats. The cyberpolice, known as FATA, the cyber crime unit of the police force, had swooped on an unknown blogger called Sattar Beheshti. He had written an anonymous blog criticizing the regime for killing protesters in 2009 in the familiar language of Iranian youth, railing against injustice and blaming the Supreme Leader. He was a manual labourer from a working-class, religious family whose blog only got a few dozen views, yet he was still considered to be worth torturing to death.
As Amir was about to turn round, a black Peugeot 405 with tinted windows pulled up beside him. It was too late to run now. The back window slid down to reveal an old, plump man wearing a sharp suit and a crisp, tieless white shirt.
‘Salaam Amir. Get in.’ His smile disappeared behind the glass as it glided back up.
In the few seconds it took to get into the back seat of the car beside him, Amir began to shake.
‘Don’t be scared.’ His voice as smooth as his clothes; almost soothing. ‘It’s been a busy time for you kids.’ He shook his head knowingly, his bushy, coiffed badger hair bounced gently. The driver spun round on Haft-e Tir and forked left into Modares Highway. ‘Let me introduce myself. My name is Ghassem Namazi.’ Another generous smile spread across his face as he extended a pale hand. These were the hands of a moneyed member of the elite: soft, silken skin with bright, white nails. ‘I’m very pleased to meet you, young man.’ Amir was taken aback by his faultless manners. He was so goddam polite. The regime lackeys Amir had met – the technocrats, the intelligence officers, the stooges – were mostly all the sa
me: churlish and uncouth with their bad suits and crude behaviour that matched their second-rate Islamic education. The car was speeding along now, people and buildings melting away as the driver took full advantage of the afternoon lull in traffic. The old man paused, running a hand across his face.
As he came to speak, his head bowed.
‘I’m here to ask for your forgiveness.’ His eyes were fixed on Amir. There was no hint of sarcasm.
‘Do I know you? I don’t understand…’ Amir croaked.
‘You don’t know me, but I’ve known you for years. I’ve been watching you from afar.’
‘Who are you? You said you’re a friend of my parents?’ The driver’s eyes flicked into the rear-view mirror. The old man was breathing deeply, flared nostrils discharging short bursts of heavy, hot air.
Exhale.
Inhale.
‘I am the judge who sentenced your mother and father to death.’
Inhale.
‘Forgive me.’
Amir rocked back, his gums stretched taut as his mouth extended open like a Rottweiler ready to bite. He had been waiting for this moment for his entire adult life. For years he had fantasized about coming face to face with the man who ordered his parents’ execution. He would smash the man’s face so hard that blood would pour from his head. He would hear his bones crack. He would kick his groin into a soft pulp. He would watch the pain and the horror contort his face. He would show no mercy.
‘Forgive me, forgive,’ the old man was whimpering, tears streaming down his face, his fat belly trembling as he sobbed. Amir grimaced with disgust at the old frail man, helpless and pathetic. And disgust at himself, at his impotent fists that were hanging limply by his sides. There was no violent rage. Only blistering pain.
‘Let me out of the car,’ he could hear himself shouting.
The old man was whispering something, his mouth quivering. But Amir did not want to hear. ‘LET ME OUT OF THE CAR.’ His face was red and he felt his eyes bulging with the force of his voice. The driver was talking too now, turning round and gesticulating.
‘LET ME OUT OF THE FUCKING CAR.’ They weren’t listening. Amir couldn’t breathe. He opened the door. The car swerved as the force of the wind knocked against it. The old man was holding onto him as one of Amir’s legs dangled out.
‘Stop the car Behnam, stop it, let him go!’ The car pulled onto the hard shoulder and Amir stumbled out. Without looking back, he clambered up the steep grassy verge, clawing at the earth with his hands, trampling over the red petunias and pansies. The car had stopped by Taleghani Park, a green elevated expanse sandwiched between roaring motorways. Amir ran into its bowels, among the jacaranda and pine trees, where his sobs were muffled by the distant hum of the cars; where the drug addicts did not notice another lost soul; where lovers concealed in the bushes understood the unspoken language of the hidden.
Amir had not let himself cry about his parents since he had been a little boy. For the next two hours, stupefied by grief, he allowed himself to remember. For the first time in a long time, he felt sorry for himself.
Shiraz, May 1988
Shahla is laughing as she dances to Boney M’s ‘Ma Baker’, her red dress flapping round her legs as her husband Manuchehr spins her around.
Ma Ma Ma Ma, Ma Baker – she never could cry Ma Ma Ma Ma, Ma Baker – but she knew how to die
Shahla dances with uninhibited abandon, as though no one is watching. And she moves so beautifully, so joyfully, that everyone is always watching. Even at six years old Amir knows his mother is captivating, and whenever she dances he feels intensely proud.
Before the dancing is the business of dissent, and the evening started as these gatherings always start. The guests arrive separately, using the back door. It has been like this ever since Peyvand, another leftist comrade, was arrested at a similar meeting. A suspicious neighbour noted a group arriving at the house opposite and called local vigilantes. That was five years ago and Peyvand is still in prison. Since then, the situation has only got worse. Nearly ten years after the revolution, fear and suspicion are the daily currency of life.
A black shroud has fallen over the country. The war with Iraq rages; lives are lost. The revolution fights its enemies within; lives are lost. The lifeblood of the people is sucked dry, they are left limp and afraid. Even the landscape has changed. Antiquities are ripped out, paintings and murals vandalized as remnants of the non-Islamic empire are raped and shredded.
The southern city of Shiraz also looks different: the hillsides, once bright green with undulating vineyards, are a dusty brown, the earth beneath them still recoiling at being torched by the hands of the devout, who swear they will never again allow alcohol to drench this soil.
Like most of the group, Shahla and Manuchehr are not card-carrying members of a political party but they are proud to call themselves chapis – leftists. In simple terms, they describe themselves as ‘pro-poor and anti-imperialist’. They have, in turn, sympathized with Iran’s communist Tudeh Party and the Marxist Fedayin Party. In the last nine years, since the revolution, thousands of political opponents and ‘counter-revolutionaries’ have been killed. Now, only the brave or foolish continue. Manuchehr and Shahla do not see themselves as either brave or foolish – rather as unimportant in the grander scheme. They never admit this out loud, for to admit this is to acknowledge that they have no real stake in their future, that they are simply powerless armchair activists – although they do allow themselves to take solace in their insignificance when it is remarked on in terms of their protection, for they believe that as long as they are eclipsed by more prominent political players, they are safe. So they continue to fight the system as a matter of principle, as a matter of attempting to right something that, in their minds, has gone terribly wrong.
The group’s secret parties happen at least once a month, and are nearly always held at Shahla and Manuchehr’s house, as it is the biggest in their small neighbourhood in the north of Shiraz. It is an unlikely group of dissidents, a quixotic mix bred out of revolution and war. Shiraz’s intellectual class, which consists mostly of rich, educated Shirazis and a few Marxist-Leninist academics, is now shoulder to shoulder with a handful of fearless middle-class housewives, a group of students, some working-class farmers, two Jews, an Armenian, a few shopkeepers and a devout Muslim. The meetings are an opportunity to be subversive and to kick the machine while it is not looking, from the safety of the living room.
And here they are, Shahla and Manuchehr, huddled with a small group of friends in the kitchen. This is what their lives have become: a brotherhood of secrets, of back entrances and kitchens. They relay messages and share the latest arrests and executions. Somebody unfurls a squashed bundle of dog-eared typed pages, pulled out of underwear. It is the latest communiqué from a chapi leader. Somebody else has a photocopy from an illegal political publication.
Finally they discuss what is on everybody’s mind – the one issue that Shahla and Manuchehr try to evade. The threats. For the past year they have been receiving anonymous scraps of paper slipped under the door in the dead of night, messages scrawled in childlike, spidery handwriting. The missives are at first vague, but menacing:
WE KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING.
But the sender is getting brave. There is a bolder voice:
DISBELIEVERS DESERVE TO DIE.
Manuchehr and Shahla refuse to stop the parties and the secret meetings. Over the past year a few friends have been arrested and imprisoned, yet still the group continues. They tell the group they have not received any notes recently. But they are lying. The truth is that they are scared by the latest message:
WHO WILL LOOK AFTER AMIR WHEN YOU’RE GONE?
This arrived a week ago and Manuchehr immediately stopped his writing. Since he was dismissed from his job as a university history professor he has been working as a journalist for underground left-wing publications; rather, for any publications that dare publish his work.
Amir is shooed out of the room.
He is too little to understand the complicated conversations and he flits in and out unnoticed. Amir is told these are illicit meetings and that he must never, ever tell anyone. Manuchehr and Shahla test him; their exaggerated mock questioning, imitating a nosey neighbour, makes him laugh. Aged six, Amir is well versed in the art of lying. He has a ready stockpile of lies perched on the tip of his still-developing tongue, waiting for the cue for them to fall out of his baby mouth and into the ears of adults: grandmother’s birthday; a pilgrimage party; a family reunion. The lies are simple and pure and white enough for Amir to happily repeat them with utter conviction.
Food plays an important role and with every new agenda is a new course. Tonight it starts with dolmeh, stuffed vine leaves, and slowly moves on to the grand dishes: rich pomegranate, walnut and duck stew; lamb with saffron rice. And then the drinking, bootleg whisky and home-brewed vodka to warm up spirits so dampened by oppression. The need to dance and drink is as great as the need to dissent. The drinking always leads to dancing; eyes closed, trying to find a light in the dark.
Children are never banished in Iranian households when grown-ups play, and Amir wanders around the party being fed and petted. He falls asleep on Manuchehr’s lap, cocooned by the safe sounds of music and drinking and talking. Shahla carries him in her arms to his bed and kisses his face as she tucks him under the blanket. But tonight Amir gets bored with the adults, and wanders to the front of the house. He plays with his toy cars in the hallway, in the dark, for the lights here are always off at night so as not to attract attention. He hears rustling by the door. He is curious and walks up to it. There, on the ground, lit up luminous white by the moonrays streaming through the porch windows, is a note. He picks it up and runs into the living room. Everyone freezes at the sight of little Amir holding a note.