Tehran at Twilight

by Salar Abdoh

  Water made him think of New York. Sometimes he took long walks by the Harlem River, crossing the bridge at 181st Street into the Bronx, walking alongside the kinds of housing projects Candace mentioned in her writing. He’d peek into basketball courts where teenagers, often stripped to the waist, played hard basketball and would turn around briefly to glance at him like he was some crazy white guy who had either lost his way or come slumming.

  He scrolled down to the second part of the e-mail where Candace had added, Like I feared, my kids’ pops is coming around these days hassling me a bit. It’s okay, I think I can take care of it all. Be proud of me, professor.

  Malek signed out. And the next time he looked up at the window for a glimpse of the sea, there was someone blocking the way.

  Fani said, “You ought to be careful of the company you keep in this country, Mr. Malek.”

  Malek thought for a moment of telling this man, who had a habit of popping up from nowhere, to get lost. “I’m just a tourist here, Mr. Fani.”

  “If so, then you should be even more careful.”

  * * *

  It was possible Fani was a desperate man, Malek concluded. The idea of just how desperate Fani might be came early to Malek as they sat in a rustic teahouse high up in the hilltops overlooking the sea. You could not work alone in this business; you had to have a team or you’d be rolled—the term they used for it at the ministry was just that, being rolled. Yet Fani seemed to be working alone.

  Malek went straight to the point: “Let me guess, you can’t get to Sina Vafa because he has some kind of protection with the people he does work for. So you keep flagging me down instead. What is it you want?”

  Fani looked lost for a moment. He gazed off at the expanse of blue on the horizon stretching to the Russian shore. He twiddled absentmindedly with a Bic pen. Then, recovering, he said, “Do you see this place we’re sitting at, and every square meter of land from this spot to the waterline? All this real estate used to belong to your friend’s father.”

  Old news. The landholdings, the sports teams, the stadiums and recreation centers—it was an endless river of wealth that had been theirs before the revolution. Years ago, Malek had found out that even his own father had ultimately been just another employee of the great Mohammad Vafa and his dynasty. Malek Senior was a mere accountant in one of Vafa’s chain of restaurants.

  Fani said, “In the old days, when your friend and I were working together, he gave me power of attorney to try to repossess his father’s confiscated properties. That power of attorney had a time limitation. I want your friend to renew our contract so I can do my work.”

  Power of attorney. It was like some open-sesame magic act everyone wanted to get or give around here. “You mean you and Sina were colleagues?”

  “That isn’t the issue now. But, all right, I was his case officer.”

  “And you’re divulging this piece of information so easily?”

  “If I lost something in telling you this, I would not tell you. Besides, I’m not in that line of work any longer.”

  “What is your work then, Mr. Fani?”

  He was a hustler and didn’t mind saying so. He was a middleman, a fixer, a guy who kept contacts in every ministry. He greased palms on a regular basis, brought people together, and when push came to shove he would make a call to a midlevel cop or a band of thugs in Tehran’s south side who would then empty a building or occupy it or burn it down. He belonged to that class of men without whom nothing could get done. About a decade after the revolution, men like him had become particularly indispensable to folks who had lost their fortunes. The exiles had begun returning and staking claims on their seized properties. But they couldn’t do it alone. A fellow like Fani did the legwork and took his commission. Everybody was happy that way. Why? “Because what good is a frozen property to anyone, Mr. Malek?” This way the little men in small but key positions who worked in government offices also got paid off. They would sign the necessary release forms and receive their cuts after the business or property was sold by the original owner. It was a slimy merry-go-round of men with mock smiles. A pyramid of deceit and easy money. Malek had worked here long enough to see how the network operated. So it wasn’t like Fani was telling him anything new. What he didn’t know was exactly how Sina had been trying to work his way through that system.

  But it was also possible that Sina didn’t even care about any of this anymore. He seemed content now. He had found his niche, working with those ogres at QAF. He had always wanted to belong to something bigger than himself. Now he did.

  All of which brought up the questions: Why did Sina still want to give a power of attorney? And why to me?

  Malek observed, “It wouldn’t be the first time someone simply made up a phony power of attorney. I know of several cases myself. Why not just do it? You are connected. You could get away with a lot more than that. Why not make up a document that gives you the legal right to go after Sina’s estate?”

  “You are not wrong. Anyone can make a document out of nothing. It’s kind of like you writing a book, Mr. Malek.” Fani smiled, no doubt thinking he’d really nailed it with that comment. “One minute there’s just a blank piece of paper and the next minute you fill in the blank and that becomes your new reality. Yes, I could do it. But the prize in question, the Vafa riches, is too big to go after illegitimately. There are other eyes on it. Powerful people. Therefore, this particular power of attorney has to be completely legitimate. No way around that.”

  Iraq again. An Arab man setting himself on fire. It had been in Kirkuk. Malek and Clara had gone to the Office of Reclaims where people brought in their grievances about land that had been unjustly taken away from them during Saddam’s time. In protest, this particular man had taken all his documents to the courtyard, poured gasoline on them and himself, and lit a match. People running around screaming that somebody should put out the fire. But no one did. Malek stared transfixed as if he were watching some act of sorcery. Clara inside interviewing the new Kurdish head of the office who insisted he did not need a translator and that Arabs should go back down south where they belonged. And so Malek had stood there and watched as the man and his land claim and the power of attorney and whatever else he had on him all burned to a crisp. That evil smell you never got used to. And that courtyard full of stacked documents from the previous regime. More land claims. Some of them real, some of them not . . . And fifty minutes later, when Clara had come out of the chief’s office, she still knew nothing about the act of self-immolation that had just taken place. Malek had said nothing about it either. And when they’d made love that night, she had told him to stop being so damn tender.

  Fani was offering him a ride back to Tehran.

  “Thanks, but I’d rather stay here another day or two. Get my head together.”

  “As you wish.” Fani called for the bill. On his insistence they’d eaten a big stew with copious portions of rice. Malek was feeling heavy. He could sleep right here.

  Fani got up. Two tables away, several loud businessmen were in a heated debate about land prices somewhere nearby. Flies buzzed in little armies around the leftover food. The smell of raw onions and sweat stuck to the nose.

  “A word of advice,” Fani said, peering down at Malek. “Your friend, the American, the journalist, and that business in Qum the other day . . .” He shook his head. “You are playing with fire, Mr. Malek. It means nothing to me, and I am only saying this to you as someone I don’t wish to see in trouble. That foreign lady is trouble. And the fellow she is working with, sooner or later those in power will build a case against him.”

  “I have no say over what Ms. Vikingstad decides to do.”

  “But you went with her to Qum. I know about it.”

  “I teach at a university in America, Mr. Fani. I’m here for a few weeks on my summer vacation. Then I’ll go back to my safe, boring life.”

  “I would at the very least tell your journalist friend that she’s playing the wrong side.”


  Malek didn’t blink. “What if it is her intention to play the wrong side?”

  He knew the gravity of what he’d just said. And Fani understood it too. His serious expression turned to one of slight admiration and he replied, “Your American friend plays a deeper game than I would have thought.”

  “Americans usually do. Except most of the time they don’t even know they’re playing.”

  Fani laughed and sat back down. “Oh, how I wish you and I could have worked together years ago. You are a man after my own heart.”

  “What exactly is it you want from me, Fani?”

  “I want you to talk some sense to your friend. Working with QAF is not a living; quite the opposite. Take it from someone who knows. Those guys are not interested in him recovering his father’s wealth. But I am. The QAF people, they only care about one thing: the end of the world.”

  “What if that’s the only thing my friend is interested in too? What if he doesn’t want to recover anything anymore?”

  He could see Fani was considering this possibility for the very first time. He was frowning. He didn’t like the idea that you could not talk sense to a fanatic. “I have a hard time believing that. I have a hard time believing Sina Vafa is no longer interested in getting back what is rightfully his.”

  “That’s only because you are measuring Sina Vafa based on your own way of viewing the world. I don’t see you and me across the border right now sticking our noses into what the Americans are up to in Najaf and Karbala. No. We’re sitting here eating too much food. Sina Vafa, on the other hand—”

  “Do you mean to tell me he’s a true believer?” Fani asked, looking genuinely intrigued.

  “You were his case officer once. I imagine you know what goes on in his head as well as anyone.”

  Malek broke a long pause by asking Fani to drop him off at his motel. Once in the car, Malek remarked, “Nothing is without a reason.”

  Fani, who had become strangely silent, concurred without taking his eyes off the road. “A more certain thing was never said.”

  “So I’m thinking, how about yourself, Mr. Fani?”

  “Me?”

  “You shouldn’t be chasing after someone like Sina Vafa all by yourself—no matter how much he is potentially worth. You could have stayed with, you know, your own people, former colleagues. Why did you leave the service? What happened? Was there not enough to go around in the drug-transit business from Afghanistan to Turkey? Or from the black-market ports out of the Gulf? Your former colleagues control everything in this country, not to mention southern Iraq and western Afghanistan. And, truth be told, there is just one degree of separation between them and those end-of-the-world freaks at QAF.”

  Fani kept his eyes on the twisting jungle road. “Yes, but sometimes that one degree of separation is everything.”

  “Exactly. So why not stay in the service? I imagine it might have turned out far more profitable in the long run. Did you cross one of the bosses? Is that what happened to you?”

  “What I do now, Mr. Malek, is something clean. I bring back to life dead assets for people who have lost all hope of ever getting them back. In the process, I collect my fee. It is a lot different than the drug trade, a lot different than profiting from American blockades against us. In short, what I don’t do is import baby-milk powder and hold out until the price is right. What I don’t want is to make my fortune over hungry babies and junkies.”

  Nice speech. Admirable sentiments. Maybe half true. Maybe all of it lies. “But why insist on Sina Vafa? There must be a thousand cases like his.”

  “None is bigger than his case. I can retire after this one. Besides, Sina Vafa owes me. I got his father’s confiscated house back for him. Don’t look so surprised. He never told you? Ask him when he returns to town. Better yet, ask his mother.”

  “His mother?”

  There was acid in Fani’s laugh. He was recalling something and he was not happy about it. He actually stopped the car, checked his cell phone for a number, and asked Malek to enter it into his own. “Give his mother a call. You are here for now. You might as well find out a few things.”

  “What makes you think I’m interested in finding out?”

  “Because when I was Sina Vafa’s case officer, he talked a lot about you.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said that he trusted you unconditionally. Even though you considered yourself an American. He said you would do anything for him, and he for you. He said that the love you have for each other could make everything right. Mr. Malek,” Fani’s face turned serious, “do that! Make everything right.”

  * * *

  The Sarv skyscraper complex, surrounded by a network of highways and brown hills that gave it an eerie California appearance, looked like an aging bride down on her luck. It was a row of tall buildings once fashioned for rich families like Sina’s. The revolution and the ensuing confiscations of properties had left the place a ghost of its former self. Eventually, new money had moved in. New money meant conservative merchants of the Grand Bazaar of Tehran with deep ties to the Islamic Republic. Nowadays the buildings were a combination of the old money and the new, living side by side and despising one another with a venom that made the place feel decidedly malevolent.

  Malek had to remind himself that he was only here for a very specific reason: his best friend, his brother, had gone bad, and a special kind of bad that turned everything it touched, including Malek’s life, into a lie. So at some point between the taxi ride from the Caspian shore to Tehran he had decided he was going to get to the bottom of Sina’s case. His friend was somewhere in Iraq right now. Doing what? Teaching some strapped and ready-to-die twelve-year-old boy how best to approach an American roadblock? There was an inconsistency here. Things should not have panned out this way, at least not for someone of Sina Vafa’s background.

  So if there was an answer, it was on the thirteenth floor, buzzer three of building C.

  A slight, gray-haired man with moist eyes opened the door and welcomed him in. Malek was immediately surprised at how tiny the place was. He had expected Sina’s mother to be living under better conditions. From the doorway, he could see a cramped living room, a single bedroom, and a tiny kitchen that was not much bigger than his own in Harlem.

  Yet standing tall in front of a frayed old couch was Sina’s mother, a picture of elegance dressed entirely in black, as if she were in mourning. She looked like something out of a Mughal painting, more Indian than Persian, with piercing dark eyes that held him in check for a moment so that he was not sure if he should approach her or wait to be addressed. In truth, everything here was incongruous. This woman was of another time. Semiroyalty. Malek was aware that her sixty-some years of life had seen it all—from dream homes and holidays spent in wealthy playgrounds like Monaco and Gstaad, to the revolution, and finally this, an oppressive little apartment and a second husband who in another time might have been her chauffeur.

  She seemed to read much of what was on Malek’s mind.

  “Nobody wants to live on the thirteenth floor, Mr. Malek. Bad luck. The units on this floor used to be servants’ quarters in the old days. In fact, our own servants lived here back then. When Sina returned to Tehran and threw us out of the penthouse, Afshar and I managed to scrape enough money together to buy this place. It is all we have. Forgive our appearance.”

  Malek turned for a second look at Afshar. The fellow had probably been some midlevel clerk thirty years ago. Purged from his job after the revolution. Thrown to the dogs. Travel a thousand miles in any direction from Tehran and you’d find plenty like him. Men who had been plugging away at their little desks until something changed, a revolution or a military coup or even a bloodless changing of the guard. And suddenly they were out of jobs, made obsolete, left dangling. For Malek, looking at Afshar was like looking at his own father and the army of aging men like him who had been waiting year in and year out to be unpurged.

  He didn’t know how to address Si
na’s mother, so he began to say, “Mrs. Afshar,” but she stopped him.

  “Please, call me Azar.” She finally smiled and, sitting down, gestured for him to join her. “I’m surprised that you’ve come. I never expected to see a friend of Sina’s here.”

  Afshar excused himself and disappeared into the kitchen.

  “About the penthouse you just mentioned—” Malek began.

  “I assume you know that everything Sina’s father owned was taken from him. It is odd that a man like him did not have the foresight to keep at least some money out of the country. But that was him, so sure of himself. He thought Iran was his playground. And he died, so I’ve heard, a desperate man, without a dollar to his name in Los Angeles. But I remained behind. We were already living apart, mind you.” She glanced away and seemed to try to recollect exactly when everything had gone to pieces. Malek gave her time. He felt like an accidental detective all of a sudden. None of this was really his business. Or—if he was going to agree to be Sina’s legal representative in this town—maybe all of it was his business. He wanted Azar to give him something to bite on, something meaty that would suddenly explain everything that Sina had become in the past decade.

  She perked up and smiled again. “Do you know, I heard about you. You wrote a book. Yes, yes. I saw you on a satellite show a couple of years back. One of those shows they beam from America. It’s illegal for us to watch them, of course, but we all do.”

  Malek gave his thanks. At that moment, Afshar walked back into the room with tea and some sweets. After serving them, the husband went and sat in the far corner by himself, watching them, his intent rheumy eyes looking like they weren’t attached to a body.

  “Maybe it’s that Sina partly blames me for his father’s demise. Maybe he thinks it would have been different if only I had been there with them! I know Sina had a hard life in America. It’s true?”

  Malek nodded. “It wasn’t just him. We were all exiles back then. But each of us made it somehow and it got easier after a while. Sina and I went to college together.”