Tehran at Twilight

by Salar Abdoh

  It was the typical catch-22 life of a refugee.

  And that had been Anna’s world. Maybe it was why his mother was so adamant about establishing a marker for her friend, a final place, even if that final place was bogus. Some intuitive understanding of two women from two different worlds who had ended up neighbors in the heart of Tehran.

  As spring kicked in and the semester began to wind down, he thought more and more about Anna. She was like an unattended ghost whose story would have to forever lurk in the periphery of other more pressing stories. Lost in life, lost in death. So to pass the time he had left before going back to Tehran, Malek delved deeper into Poland. He tried to follow Anna’s trail through other people’s books. First those Siberian gulags, then Central Asia, then Tehran.

  One day he found the book of a Holocaust writer who had compiled a report on Jews like Anna who’d ended up in Tehran. Malek called up the old survivor and visited him in DC where they had dinner together. He told Louis about Anna and her phony grave somewhere in Tehran, how she had been Malek’s mother’s neighbor for years and years, and how Malek’s mother was alone now and he was trying to get her out of the country.

  “I know something about needing to get out of a place,” Louis said. And the two men went on to drink late into the evening until both of them were a little wasted and gloomy. Then Louis called Malek a cab to take him to Union Station to catch his train back to New York City.

  The train ride itself brought Malek back to this time last year. That was when Sina had first beckoned him to Tehran. And he half expected that as the train passed through Delaware, his cell phone would ring again and there would be Sina asking when he was returning.

  Sina!

  Malek dared not ask James McGreivy what had become of the information he’d passed along. I have blood on my hands was what he had wanted to tell the old Holocaust writer. I lie for a living, Louis. I lie to save my own mother. Did you have to lie like that back then in Poland when you were a child?

  Being in DC had also brought the temptation to call Clara. But for all he knew, she was already in Tehran by now. The news from there was exciting. The opposition had taken off and it seemed like reformers had real support. Malek could not argue with the images he saw on TV and what he read in the newspapers. So maybe Clara’s man in Tehran had been mistaken. Maybe Clara was right and all was safe and good. Maybe he should be with Clara right now, interpreting for her again. Just like old times.

  * * *

  Candace Vincent was calling his name and knocking on his office door. “Professor! Looks like we need to feed you.”

  “How is the new life going, Candace?”

  She looked different. Her braided wine-red hair had gotten longer, sexier. She was also leaner, more muscular, healthy. There was a shine in her eyes too that hadn’t been there last year. Joie de vivre, Malek thought. That was the thing most different about her. She hadn’t had it even half a year ago, but she definitely had it now.

  “How come you never come see us?”

  “I did. About a month ago. But you and the kids weren’t there.”

  “You think what I got with your friend is bad for him?”

  She was still standing up. He asked her to shut the door behind her and sit. Malek had covered the stuffy, windowless room with Indian fabrics to make it a little less claustrophobic. He watched her take her boots off and sit on the Persian rug he’d laid on the floor. She hugged her knees and stared at him, waiting for an answer.

  “I’ll be honest, it’s not my business,” he said.

  “Yeah it is. You’re a part of my life. Our life. People pick and choose who to let in, who to keep out. It’s like being part of a tribe, you know? I seen you take a bad blow that day from my kids’ pops. And what do you do? You sit there, say nothing, give no one away. How come? ’Cause you one of us. Me, you, Jimmy—we the same people. Different skin, different hats. But the same people.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay, what?”

  “Okay, don’t be angry with me. And I do think you are good for James. And he for you.”

  “Good. ’Cause Jimmy said you avoiding him and you got your reasons and we gotta respect those reasons. And that’s all right with me. I don’t mind it. But, you know, we leaving here in a few weeks. Jimmy’s taking us to the West Coast. There’s no job lined up, but he says that’ll come. It always does. I’m only here to ask if you’ll have dinner with us just once. School ends next week. I’m graduating. I thought these fools would give me a hard time about what happened to you. But they didn’t. Jimmy says they tried to give you a hard time though. But you were a true friend. You didn’t budge.”

  “What happened to your kids’ father?”

  “Gone.”

  “Just like that?”

  “What do you think life is, professor? All clear-cut cause and effect? It ain’t. Sometimes shit just happens, you know? And then shit disappears, just plain goes away. Fella who hit you, he’s not a bad man. I told you that before. He’s just confused. And now his confusion took him elsewhere. I went to school four years in this place, just about got my degree now, and I can talk ghetto if I want to or I can walk into a job interview and talk like a princess, not forgetting my punctuation and grammar. My horizons, as they say, expanded. I can use words like quintessential and know what the hell I’m talking about. I can say apropos and my next door neighbor, God bless her, will look at me all bug-eyed thinking I come from another planet. My horizon did expand, professor. It did in all kinds of ways, not just in words. And James—Jimmy—he’s a big, huge part of that expansion. And I got you to thank for it. So I’m here today thanking you, goddamnit!”

  “You can call me Rez.”

  “Rez then. Won’t you come have dinner with us just once before we all go our separate ways?”

  “I will for sure.”

  So they were leaving for the West Coast and he was headed back to Tehran in another two weeks. He had actually run into James a few times at school. But a thickness had set in. An element of distance. It came from their secret. Sina Vafa sat between them like a crime they shared. And protocol said that neither should broach the subject anymore. Malek had done his part and James McGreivy had apparently done his. The rest was, well, in God’s hands—God and the United States Army in Iraq.

  These thoughts made him lonely. Which was why he hung on to Soaad more and more. And lately he had begun to have an irrational fear that something bad would happen to her. Now it was he who called her every day. The streets of Tehran, news kept showing, had turned into a carnival of preelection fanfare. There were celebrations and fights and marches and armed militias. Clara was there reporting officially now and she seemed fine. He’d already seen a couple of her reports. They were full of optimism, talking about “winds of change.” It surprised him. She was seasoned enough to know better. Change always carried a price. Often that price was that there would be no change at all.

  “Professor . . . Rez, you look like your head’s in the clouds.”

  Malek’s drifting gaze returned to Candace and he mumbled, “You and James, you guys are not just good for each other. You’re a miracle. I’m deeply happy for you.”

  Candace peered down for a moment, saying nothing. When she spoke again it was in a quieter voice. “But I came to tell you this too: every night Jimmy wakes up sweating. Got them nightmares. It’s not like these things they say about soldiers. It’s not stress and all that. It’s not like he drinks himself to sleep every night and needs a bunch of pills to stay standing during the day. None of that. I’ve been reading books about the soldiers having a hard time. James ain’t having a hard time. Know why? Because James been having a hard time all his life. He’s just a hard-time kinda man. You think some other woman could have understood and stood by him? I don’t think so. No.”

  “You don’t have to explain why you guys are good together, Candace. I already know you’re good together.”

  “But I want to explain something,” she insis
ted, raising her voice slightly.

  He was sitting on a chair at his desk staring down at her on the floor. At that moment Malek saw something distinct in Candace Vincent’s face: love. James McGreivy had found complete love. So much so that he could paint an apartment, redo its kitchen cabinets, and just two months later take his family and leave the place for good. He wanted them to live calm, beautiful lives at every moment of every day. James McGreivy, for all the night sweats and the boos from some of those former colleagues, was going to have a damn good life. James McGreivy was no casualty of Iraq.

  “Jimmy and me, we understand each other, Rez. That’s what it comes down to. Understanding. He won’t have that with no one out there in Long Island, you know? And I sure as hell didn’t find it in the hood. You know what I mean, right?”

  “I swear to you, Candace, I know exactly what you mean.”

  * * *

  So he went to their dinner. More like an afternoon get-together. He met Candace’s boys for the first time. They were polite and looked up to James in a way that they might not have if they were a few years older. But at their age, the possibility that some white guy might suddenly parachute into their lives and stay did not appear beyond reason. They’d all caught each other at the right time. They were lucky that way.

  Before dinner, they all went out to the courts. Malek, a stranger to basketball, sat beside Candace and they watched James and the boys. Soon there was a pickup game with neighbors and the kids went to another half-court to play by themselves. James gave as good as he got, his moves smooth and athletic. He high-fived with the other players and slowly, as the afternoon wore on, even his lingo switched ever so imperceptibly and blended into the courts. It was like he was wearing camouflage and disappearing into his surroundings. When he wanted to, McGreivy could become a part of the landscape.

  At their job at the college he hadn’t wanted to be a part of the landscape.

  Malek caught a glimpse of Candace looking on with satisfaction at the game. Then she turned Malek’s way and smiled, as if to say, Didn’t I tell you?

  After dinner, James walked Malek to the other side of the bridge.

  “I’ll drive you to the airport tomorrow if you like.”

  “No.”

  “I doubt we’ll be here by the time you get back.”

  “I’ll find you in California then.”

  James grabbed Malek’s arm and they stopped just short of Amsterdam Avenue.

  “I don’t know anything more about your friend’s fate, if that’s what you’ve been wondering.”

  “I guess if I go to Tehran tomorrow and see him alive and well, then he’s alive and well.”

  “And if not?”

  “James, I came to you with this thing. It’s not your war anymore. Go live your life in California. Get that beautiful woman and her kids out of the Bronx.”

  “You too. Get your mother out of that country.”

  It was a serviceable goodbye. Manly. Even the 181st Street Bridge looked more solid in the springtime as two fire trucks screamed across it.

  And it was not until four blocks later that James caught up with Malek again, calling out his name.

  Malek turned around.

  “If they take your friend, won’t it be trouble for you? I don’t mean trouble here, but over there. Won’t somebody in Tehran guess where the intelligence might have come from?”

  James’s eyes were on him. They were standing beside a Dominican barbershop blaring loud music.

  There was nothing he could have said that wouldn’t sound like a clumsy lie. So he offered the only response that at least had a grain of truth to it: “Just trust me!”

  James looked surprised. “Trust you?”

  “Yeah. That’s all I ask.”

  TEHRAN

  The world had changed.

  Malek watched as Soaad, breathless and happy, insisted it was their duty to stay with the demonstrators as they made their way toward the university. The crowd took up nearly the entire length of Revolution Avenue. He couldn’t tell how many there were. Tens of thousands? A million? He didn’t care. He didn’t want to be there. He hadn’t come to Tehran to go to street demonstrations.

  It was the third demonstration they’d been to together, with Malek only participating to make sure Soaad didn’t get hurt. In the chaos of the days that had followed the election, he had not managed to get anything done. Fani was nowhere to be found, never answering his phone. Sina too was underground again. Down at his shack, the boy who ran the little shop for him claimed Sina had been gone since before the election.

  Malek heard the rumbling of motorcycles before he saw them. The militiamen came in twos on the back of red motorbikes, armed to the teeth and wearing riot helmets and protective outfits that gave them an insectlike appearance. Somewhere near the Hafez Bridge, the throng that Malek and Soaad had been walking with was cut off from those just ahead of them.

  Malek grabbed Soaad and broke for the shuttered shops on the north end of the sidewalk. The sticks were coming down hard on the demonstrators. Car alarms went off as windows were smashed. Yet there was something feline and precise about Soaad. She moved with the body of a woman less than half her age. And when Malek got a momentary glimpse of her face, there was not a trace of fear. She was excited and willing to fight. This made him even more protective of her. She was all he had. Even in that ruckus of teargas canisters and garbage dumps going up in flames, his mind registered that if he failed her now he would be failing everything.

  A single file of three bikers came at them, and Malek’s hand automatically went for a piece of loose brick lying at the foot of a knocked-over newspaper kiosk. The first two bikes went right past them. In that moment Malek caught the eyes of the stick-wielder riding on the back of the third bike, and knew that the man was getting ready to aim at them. At Soaad! Malek let the brick fly at the helmet of the one riding in front. The impact disoriented them just long enough for Malek and Soaad to hurry past the bridge and up Hafez Avenue.

  It seemed a bit childish that they should be running like this, yet it felt like something that was long overdue and had to somehow be finished. Hadn’t it been these very streets, only with different names, during the Islamic Revolution? Malek, who’d been thirty years younger, running down the same alleyways, minus Soaad, to get a good view of the crowds as the adults fought and sang revolutionary songs and sometimes got killed.

  A yelp in the crowd not ten feet behind them brought everything to a standstill. A kid was bleeding badly. Maybe from the bullet of a sniper. They heard the chants of Allah Akbar go up. But the motorcycles didn’t stop. The batons kept coming. Then, in the melee that followed, Malek got separated from Soaad. A group of men were pushing him toward the motorcycles and soon fists and sticks were flying every which way and women were hugging the walls, screaming.

  * * *

  His clothes were torn but at least he had escaped without any bruises this time around. He stuck to the backstreets of downtown. People had improvised in their neighborhoods, bringing the injured in from the main thoroughfares and giving shelter to those being chased by police. As Malek passed each block, they saw his tattered clothes and offered him water. Some even offered him food and rest in their homes, telling him he should stay put until the roadblocks had been lifted.

  All he wanted was to get home to Soaad.

  A pall of smoke hung low over the city. Once in a while shots would ring out and echo through the narrow streets of downtown. People pointed and whispered about snipers on the rooftops of public buildings. It was such a different feel than the peaceful marches of just a week earlier. Now it was a free-for-all, like an end of something. How had it come to this? He tried calling Soaad’s house, but the cell towers in the downtown area appeared cut off. He asked a family if he could use their landline to see if his mother had gotten home all right. They were gracious; they let him in and gave him tea. A little girl brought him a wet towel so he could cool his face.

  Soaad didn’
t pick up. He thanked the family and kept walking, not really knowing where he was headed. It was impossible to get anywhere near Ferdowsi Square to Soaad’s apartment. They told him the whole area was cordoned off and police were hauling people into vans by the dozen.

  Malek sat by a thin stream off a relatively quiet street. He had come to Tehran to sign a few more papers, fetch his mother, and leave. Maybe leave for good. But after the election went bad, people had finally taken to the streets. He’d thought it would be a passing thing. So he’d lingered, taking his time to call Fani. He had the whole summer, he figured. He’d watch the show. But then the show had turned violent. Whatever made him think it wouldn’t? With time now on his hands, he had taken Soaad on another graveyard hunt. They’d visited cemeteries in the northeast of the country and in the south, where there had been other Polish camps during the war. It was like they were on holiday, mother and son—a Polish-cemetery holiday. And when they’d gotten back to Tehran the city was ready to go up in flames.

  In the rivulet of water by Malek’s feet, several plastic bags came together and quickly blocked the flow. Malek watched the murky liquid as it stabbed around the blockage.

  His phone was vibrating. Surprised, he took it out, thinking Soaad had managed to reach him.

  It was from the States. James.

  “You all right there?”

  “No.”

  “What’s happening?”

  “Blood. Bullets. Gas. Fire. Roadblocks. You know, same old. Baghdad. Not nearly as bad, to tell you the truth. But bad enough.”

  “What the hell are you doing there, Rez?”

  “You already know why I’m here.”

  “News here makes it sound terrible.”

  “News there always does. But you know better, captain. When you’re in the thick of shit, it’s never as awful. You get used to it. The smell. Everything.”