Tehran at Twilight

by Salar Abdoh

  She spoke to him: “You know, more than anything, Anna was a child of Tehran.”

  “All right,” he whispered back.

  “She never belonged here.”

  “No.”

  “Please, let’s leave this place in the morning.”

  “All right.”

  They were silent for a while and then he asked her if she would recite three more times just that last verse of al-Baqarah for him so he could fall asleep with it. And she said yes, she would, and began the recitation for her son.

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  Tehran Noir, edited by Salar Abdoh

  "The Whitest Set of Teeth in Tehran," excerpted below, is Salar Abdoh's contribution to the anthology Tehran Noir, the latest addition to Akashic Books' award-winning, city-specific noir series. For more about Tehran Noir—which includes fifteen brand-new stories by Iranian authors—and the Akashic Noir Series, please scroll to the end of the story, or follow this link.

  ________________

  The Whitest Set of Teeth in Tehran

  by Salar Abdoh

  The caretaker of the synagogue and his son carried the barrel to the garbage dump outside and emptied it. The thing seemed heavy and its contents looked like mud. Man and son glanced up for a moment in that dawn light, looking right at Lotfi’s apartment window on the third floor, and Lotfi imagined their worried faces asked him to turn a blind eye on them.

  He figured they were making wine for the synagogue. It wasn’t illegal. Not for them. But they still dumped the leftover grape skin and mixed it with earth so no one could tell it was alcohol they’d made.

  Lotfi had a headache. It came from a bad batch of bootleg vodka he’d bought from an Assyrian Christian. He wouldn’t buy from that damn Christian again. I’m an alcoholic in a supposedly dry country, he thought. Yet if anything, Tehran was the wettest place on earth. People drank like fish here. All that homemade arrack and the overpriced booze that came across the border from Iraqi Kurdistan. Except you never knew what was legit liquor and what could kill you. The khakham’s wine wouldn’t kill him, that was for sure. And maybe he’d just go down there one of these days and ask to buy some of their wine from them. Of all the places in Tehran he could have gotten himself an apartment, he had to end up right across from a synagogue. Again! Just like all the years he’d lived just off Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn, New York.

  He heard water running and came and stood by the bathroom. The door was open. She’d lit a fat blue candle and was washing him off of her. He considered her skin. Milky. Breasts, full and firm. She had short hair and the way her neckline sloped to her shoulders made him want to join her in that shower. They’d met two months ago at some rich folks’ weekend party a half hour drive away in Lavasan where mostly BMWs and Mercedes lined the driveway. He’d promised himself this was the very last time he was going to one of these gatherings. White pasta sauce dribbled from the mouths of potbellied merchants, and bleach-haired women who dressed like the Colombian soap opera whores they loved to watch on Iranian satellite television danced till the wee hours of the morning with their short chicken legs and gaudy, extra-high-heeled shoes. They were ugly, these rich people. They were ugly everywhere, not just here. Yet Lotfi had sat there wondering why he hadn’t chosen another part of the planet to move to instead of Tehran. What with the score he’d made on his one and only book, and the tidy sum from his brother’s life insurance policy back in America, for the first time in his adult life he had money in abundance. He was a millionaire suddenly. He could go anywhere he wanted to. If he had come to Tehran it was because he had unfinished business here. And maybe when he was done with this unfinished business he’d pack up and go again, go somewhere Mediterranean, a place with real liquor and with cops who were corrupt only half of the time.

  The woman turned to fully face him and smiled. She had a bruise near her right earlobe that showed clearly even in dim candlelight. It wasn’t too bad of a bruise. In fact it gave her boyish face a used look that aroused him. And now she beckoned him, but he only stood there watching.

  “Do you want me to talk to him?” he asked quietly.

  “Who?”

  “Your husband. Bache khoshgele.” It was his put-down for Aida’s husband, pretty boy. Lotfi could never get himself to call the guy anything else.

  “It’s not a good time for talking about it,” she said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because of the demonstrations.”

  Maybe she was right. It really was a peculiar time. The two months that they’d known each other had also been a time of street protests. At first Lotfi thought it was just a passing phase. But after a while there were pitched battles all across the city and wholesale arrests. Lotfi couldn’t care less about the protesters. They were just the sons and daughters of the same fools who had marched on these streets thirty years earlier. They’d brought on a revolution back then and the revolution had stolen everything his father had worked for. Later on, some bitch in Los Angeles had stolen his only brother’s life too. That was what Lotfi cared to focus on, the people who had done him wrong. He was a vengeful, hot-blooded Azeri Turk and he preferred to stay that way.

  He asked, “If you don’t want me to talk to him, then what do you want me to do?”

  “Love me hard.”

  He nodded. In the year he’d come back to live here, he had met a lot of women who wanted him for his American passport and his money. They would approach him at parties like the one he’d met Aida at and push him to dance with them. Tehran was a city of fourteen million, but there were circles where you always saw the same faces. These faces already knew he’d written some third-rate book back in the States about a gang of computer hackers and an improbable bank heist that Hollywood had given him a bunch of money for. What they didn’t know was how he’d come to write that book and why he was here. The night of the party, he had sat in a dark corner of the garden next to Aida and told her things. Maybe it was the good liquor that the host supplied in abundance, or the impression that this was the first time a Tehran woman had not tried to con him after two minutes; whatever it was, he decided he liked her. She wore neither gaudy high heels nor had her eyebrows plucked and lifted to get that sinister look of surprise that women liked so much around here. She was pleasant to look at and her rich, pretty-faced husband was on the other side of the garden just then talking about politics and street demonstrations.

  Lotfi had told Aida his story because he was lonely. Told her how the revolution had taken everything they had. Their house. His dad’s pharmaceutical factory in their hometown, Tabriz. He even told her how it had all been instigated by one of his old man’s lackeys who’d suddenly turned religious, grown a beard, and testified at the Islamic court that Lotfi’s father was a godless apostate who should have all his properties taken from him. Thirty years later that piece of shit, a fellow named Sarkeshik, owned the very same pharmaceutical factory and was living merrily with his two wives up there in a mansion in the northern part of the city while his sons ran jewelry stores in Houston and Albuquerque.

  “You are one bitter man,” she had said to him.

  Bitter? Bitter was right. His father had died bitter in jail. And once Lotfi and his brother escaped the country, Lotfi promised himself he would never speak a word of Persian again. He’d only speak the Azeri Turkish of his own father as a protest to what these people had done to his family. All those years of growing up in Tehran and hearing jokes about his native Turks. His father had once told him, Everything these Persians have, they have because of us Azeris. The bastards don’t want to do a day’s honest labor and they can’t stand to see us make money. So they make jokes about us. The joke’s on them and they don’t even know it.

  Yet here he was, speaking Persian again. Being amongst Persians again. And desiring their women. “And you?” he had asked Aida. “What’s your story?”

  She pointed in
her husband’s direction. “Like I said, I’m married to him.” It was as if she were talking about a used car, not a husband.

  Lotfi glanced his way. Unlike most of the other men there, Aida’s husband was tall and fit looking. But the unmistakable lilt of his voice gave him away as queer. He also had full, shiny black hair tied into a severe ponytail and his silky face was smooth and unnaturally unblemished.

  Lotfi observed, “But he doesn’t look like the marrying kind to me, does he?”

  “I am what they call a Phillips screwdriver in this town,” she said.

  “A screwdriver?”

  “He’s the son of a bazaar merchant. His father knows half the people in the government. It wouldn’t do for the son not to have a wife. I am a tool, an instrument. I’m a front. The family needed a wife and here I am.”

  “But why agree to it?”

  She laughed. “Agree? You forget where you’re living, Mr. Lotfi! One night the militia stormed into someone’s house, a house very much like this one. I was there, he was there, and some other people were there. The rest of the guests were couples. Except me and him. They took us to jail and the next day the judge forced us to marry.”

  “So it was a setup? He paid the militia to storm the place?”

  “Well, probably his father paid them off.”

  It didn’t make a difference to ask why; with all the women in Tehran who would have gladly said yes to marrying into a wealthy bazaari family like that, they had forced Aida to become their bride. Things happened here and they had their own mad logic. Maybe it was just luck of the draw, or maybe Pretty Boy had simply insisted to Daddy that if they were forcing a Phillips screw-wife on him, it had to be this one and none other.

  He was surprised that she revealed as much as she did, though. It wasn’t usual to give a stranger at some party all this personal information. And in Tehran, city of rumors and backstabbers, at that! Maybe she was just fed up with it all and didn’t care anymore. He knew something about that, about hitting rock bottom and no longer giving a damn. He had returned to Tehran thirsting for belated revenge. His intentions had been focused. As focused as when he’d decided to write that silly book to make money. Or when he’d fought those spineless insurance people to get his brother’s life insurance pay. But then something had happened in the months he’d been in the city. His resolve had gone soft. He had taken the apartment in the heart of the capital so that, he reasoned, he could be with the common people rather than around these rich bastards he’d grown up with. He liked venturing out on foot or on the cheap motorcycle he’d bought so he could lose himself in that Middle Eastern chaos. He thought he was living in history. His place was in one of the old quarters below Jomhuri Avenue where, despite the shoddy building frenzy of the last couple of decades, mosques and synagogues and churches and even Zoroastrian schools still stood within a few short blocks of each other.

  Yes, it was all quaint. Like living in some goddamn sepia-colored picture postcard from another time. But what about his resolve? It was only when the demonstrations had started that Lotfi began to find his purpose again. That, and the night when Aida told him about her “setup” marriage while he explained why he was in Tehran. It was like a pact. They knew each other’s secrets even before they knew each other. It was crazy. It was furious love. It was dangerous and not overly romantic and it drew them to pound into each other like it was the end of the world—therefore the bruise by her earlobe this morning.

  “Pass me the towel.”

  He did.

  She drew up and kissed him deeply. “As long as you stay in Tehran, I don’t care if I’m a prisoner of this awful city. I don’t need to travel anywhere else. I don’t need a passport. You’re my passport.”

  The law was explicit about this stuff: she needed Pretty Boy’s consent to get a passport to travel outside the country. But Pretty Boy wouldn’t give it, worrying that if he permitted her to leave she’d never come back. And he couldn’t have that. They had to keep up appearances.

  Lotfi asked, “Doesn’t he care you didn’t come home last night?”

  They’d been careful all these weeks. Meeting in secret and setting up times to see each other in advance rather than telephoning beforehand. But it was unnecessary precaution. The street demonstrations seemed to have put people outside of themselves. Times were different. In the past couple of weeks Pretty Boy had even become some kind of Internet hero amongst the protesters. He kept posting photos of the street marches on social media websites and commenting on how important it was for people to show up at the rallies in force. The little fucker, Lotfi thought, has become a freedom fighter all of a sudden. The same ladyboy who won’t let his wife have a passport and travel now wants liberty for the masses. Fuck your masses!

  Aida, seeming to read his thoughts, answered, “He’s too busy these days to care where I’m at. Not that he ever cared much anyway.”

  “But not coming home at all last night . . . I mean, this is a first.”

  She wrapped a towel around herself and started for the bedroom. Halfway there she turned around and looked at him intensely. “His father called me the other day. He was angry. He said that that son of his is playing with fire going to all those street demonstrations and posting pictures about it online.”

  “Well, he is.”

  “He said not even he has the pull to get his son out of jail if something should happen to him at a protest.”

  “Worse things can happen to a guy at a demonstration than going to jail.”

  She loosened the towel and let it drop to her feet. In that half-light he could still see how firm her nipples had gotten. So here was that hard bruise he had given her earlier while making love and those hard nipples that she was offering him now. He exhaled deeply. He was thinking revenge again. When you started to go down that road, you could just keep on going. It became easier and easier to work up hatred and love in measures you hardly knew existed.

  “Yes,” she said, “a lot worse things can happen to a guy at a demonstration. I’ve seen it with my own eyes, baby.”

  * * *

  The Afghan groundskeeper and his family lived in a separate dwelling at the end of the sprawling garden several hundred yards to the south of the mansion. There was happiness here, you could tell. They plied Lotfi with sweet sherbets and tea. Little Afghan boys played soccer on the grass and two young girls wearing bright-colored headscarves fussed about him with a string of little delicacies from their mother’s kitchen. Afghans were that way, hospitable to a fault. It was a scene from his own childhood of having servants. Except that this whole arrangement with the household help belonged not to his father but to the man who had stolen everything from them thirty years earlier.

  The Afghan looked visibly ecstatic at being able to host a guest of his agha. He didn’t look a day over thirty-five and already had a brood of half a dozen. “You’ve known our agha for a long time?”

  “Since I was a child. He worked with my father.”

  “Too bad agha is not in Tehran. He has a factory, you know. Medicines. All kinds of medicines. He has gone there to oversee something. But he will be back tomorrow. You should stay with us until he comes. Both khanums, his wives, stay abroad this time of year. It’s just agha here now. He will be happy to see an old friend.”

  “Tell me . . . his khanums, I don’t suppose they get along with each other.”

  The Afghan gave an uneasy laugh. “The khanums are like cheese and knife. They are like a strong wind and a mosquito.”

  “Ah! So they don’t get along at all.”

  “Agha built two separate quarters for them, as far away as possible. God be praised, but women can be mischievous creatures. And I have spoken too much.”

  Lotfi consoled himself that having two wives had done its damage to old Sarkeshik. The women’s hatred for each other made his domestic life miserable. It was small consolation, but better than nothing. Women, alas, could always take your revenge for you—and in this case, for all those fals
ely signed personal checks that Sarkeshik had produced at the Islamic court saying that Lotfi’s father owed him millions.

  He watched the Afghan, who actually looked like he might have walked off a set from one of those epic Chinese war films. The fellow appeared visibly wretched all of a sudden for having given his agha’s secret away so soon.

  “Your agha is good to you, is he?”

  The Afghan’s gaze went soft. “There is never-ending war in my country. Without agha, I would be back home digging graves now.” After a while he added, “My own grave probably. I have been with agha since I was seventeen. He has been very good to me.”

  Lotfi knew something about this kind of immigrant life. All the shit jobs he and his brother had had to suffer in America until they managed to pull themselves together. For Afghans in Iran, it was the same. They did all the menial work and received the blame for every crime imaginable. Still, there was something wrong with this picture. Here was his old nemesis, Sarkeshik, having apparently become a lifesaver to an Afghan immigrant and his family. The man had become a goddamn angel. What did that mean? And why am I even here? Lotfi didn’t know. He’d had this vague idea of how to go about taking his revenge. And today, after Aida had said goodbye to him and gone home, he’d decided he’d finally do something about it. He’d ridden out to Velenjak and hovered by the tall walls of the huge place, forgetting that a moneyed neighborhood like this in north Tehran was full of private security. Before long a pair of men were on him asking what he was doing there. He’d had no choice but to ring the bell to Sarkeshik’s house with the men watching. And now he sat in the servants’ quarters drinking sherbet and tea.