Tehran at Twilight

by Salar Abdoh

  In an alley off of Kargar Street, he’d watched as Pretty Boy tended to a teenage kid who had been hit with a brick. Pretty Boy wasn’t running away like the others; even when plainclothes militiamen were a hundred yards away and advancing, he still didn’t dash off. If Lotfi was going to stick it to him, this was the moment to do it. In that chaos of teargas and burning motorcycles no one would notice or care. All he had to do was go up and be as fearless and as quick as he’d been on the day he took on those two men on Gandhi Avenue. But he couldn’t do it. He realized the last thing in the world Pretty Boy could be was an undercover snitch for the government. At that moment, Lotfi saw the blood and the expression of utter shock on the face of the kid that Aida’s husband was trying to help get off the ground and he knew that he, Lotfi, was a sucker and a fool.

  Lotfi ran toward Pretty Boy and the kid. Together they quickly lifted the boy and dragged him to the next alley where they laid him behind a parked car. The kid was moaning but he seemed like he’d be all right. It was just a deep gash on his face, more shock than anything.

  “Thank you,” Pretty Boy said. “I know you.”

  Several of the white-shirted plainclothes men ran right past them without stopping. The popping of gun rounds could be heard in the distance. A woman shrieked somewhere, and when the plainclothes men were gone someone called to them from a balcony that they should get off the street before they got arrested.

  Neither paid the woman any mind. Lotfi said, “I am your wife’s lover.”

  “Yes, you are.” That same lilting voice that had rubbed Lotfi the wrong way. But a sober voice too. Sober, and meeting Lotfi with a gaze that was more curious than scared or surprised.

  “Your father sent two thugs to beat me up.”

  “My father is a busybody. I apologize.”

  “So you knew about it?”

  “I didn’t. Until you took out my father’s men. My father came to me then. They wanted to kill you. I talked them out of it.”

  “And why would you do that?”

  Pretty Boy sighed. “Because, I suppose, I’ve been waiting for someone like you to come along.”

  Now it was Lotfi’s turn to sigh. He couldn’t figure this guy out. And this wasn’t the time to play a game of twenty questions with each other. He said, “You stop to help a kid in the middle of all this. You risk getting beaten up and arrested. But you won’t allow your wife out of the country. Why?”

  He watched as Pretty Boy glanced down at the teenager who was quietly weeping to himself and not making any attempt to get up off the ground. Suddenly the area seemed hushed. As if they had all been part of a film set that had wrapped for the day. His adversary truly did look pretty. Not pretty; beautiful. Beautiful with his green bandanna and those dark eyes shining bright with courage on this Friday afternoon.

  “The kind of family I come from, I can’t have a wife disappear on me for good. And I know she would do that if she had a passport. But this much I can offer: if she stays in Tehran, she can do what she wants. Anything she wants!” He gave Lotfi a meaningful look and added, “Especially if I know she is seeing somebody I can trust.”

  “I’m that man. You can trust me.”

  “Yes, I know I can.” Pretty Boy stuck his hand out.

  Lotfi took the hand. “And what about your father?”

  “It’s time he saw some things differently about me. I love my wife, in my own roundabout way. I don’t want her to go. But I don’t want her to be miserable either.”

  There was an easy pause, intimate. And then Lotfi asked, “Do you not wonder how I happened to be here today?”

  “It doesn’t matter. What I want to do right now is take this boy home. He’s hurting.”

  Lotfi nodded. It was as if all of his life had converged onto that moment. For the first time in years he felt himself becoming a better man. He had transcended something today. The street march, the talk with Aida’s husband, the bloodied boy they’d helped together—it all seemed as if the universe was trying to tell him something: he was earning some serious karma points, for a change.

  On his way back to fetch his motorcycle, Lotfi even decided that he would go see his brother’s wife soon and apologize for what he’d done to her.

  Backtracking from Kargar Street to Hafez Avenue took unusually long; he had to keep to the smaller streets and avoid the militias. He was excited. He’d stay in Tehran. It wasn’t so bad. He’d have Aida. At the same time, because she was married, he would never have to worry about her insisting that they wed. He’d have the best of both worlds. Maybe he’d write another book now. A real book this time. He’d sit himself down and read the Persian classics at his leisure and then write a historical novel or something. He’d give his life some meaning. He’d honor his brother’s memory.

  The speeding car hit him just as he was crossing the turnoff at the bottom of Aban Street. The collision got him on the side and sent him flying in the air and landing hard on the sidewalk. He closed his eyes, unable to move. He felt himself immediately being lifted and thrown into the back of a car. The next time he opened his eyes he was in that empty garage.

  A half hour.

  Why was his mind intent that only a half hour had passed? Maybe it had been hours and hours. Days even. He was lying flat on that concrete floor and a man was smoking a cigarette, gazing out through the iron bars of the gate to the outside. When Lotfi tried to cough, every bone in his body revolted against it. Pain shot through his right side and he gagged.

  The man came and stood over him. “You should have renewed our deal.”

  He dragged Lotfi to a wall and made him sit upright. Surprisingly, this lessened the pain at first. Lotfi’s breaths were shallow and fast. Surely he had broken ribs. Did this mean a punctured lung? Did he have internal bleeding? Would he die?

  “If we’re near where you hit me, then Aban Hospital is just up the road. Take me to the emergency room and I’ll give you all the money you want.”

  The man laughed. Flicking his cigarette butt away, he replied, “Every offer has a time and a place. And you, my friend, have run out of time and places.”

  “Why are you doing this to me?” Lotfi’s voice had a gurgle to it. He could feel every organ in his body working double-time to keep him breathing. He had a craving for chocolate all of a sudden. He had paid this nondescript man with the pencil mustache and ridiculous brown loafers a whole bunch of money a half year ago to pay somebody off to pay somebody else off to take away his brother’s wife’s passport and keep her a prisoner in Tehran. Lotfi felt a choking in his throat. It wasn’t from pain, but sadness. What goes around comes around. Doesn’t it? He thought of how Aida would never get to leave Tehran again. He wished he had bought a bottle of wine from the khakham so he and Aida could have drank it together.

  The man was talking on his cell phone. “Yes, the last building. You can’t miss it. It’s a new building . . . Yes, you’re almost here. After you pass Aban Hospital, you’ll get to Warsaw Street. After Warsaw, it’s two more short blocks south. Then take a right. I’ll open the garage door.”

  So he’d been right. Aban Hospital was just up the road and they were but a stone’s throw from where he’d been hit by the car. He groaned, “You went to her, didn’t you?”

  The man turned around. “What? Sure I went to her. I told her if she wanted her passport back, she could pay.”

  “And she wanted to know who did this to her?” He was actually crying now. He should have bought a bottle of wine from those synagogue people. He should have written a better book than that stupid Hollywood crap. He should have told his brother not to marry the Cow when there was still time to tell him what not to do.

  “Of course she wanted to know who did this to her,” the man answered. “And when she found out, she made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.”

  “I’ll pay you triple what she’s paying if you get me to the hospital right now.”

  “Stop your crying, man. What’s done is done. Like we say, Eat a whole me
lon, and accept the shit that comes afterward.”

  “I’ll pay you,” Lotfi bawled. “Just get me out of here.”

  A car turned into the driveway and the man hurried to open the gate.

  She must have had her Jenny Craig diets shipped to Tehran. She didn’t look terrible, although she still had that awful chicken wattle. If anything, because of the dieting, the drooping skin beneath her chin looked more pronounced than ever.

  “Leave him here.” She didn’t even bother addressing Lotfi. “They’ll think he got beat up by the police today and crawled in here to die. It’s the best day for it.”

  The man went to the car and came back with Lotfi’s knife and the baton. “Look what I found on him.”

  She took the baton and played with it. “You think you can handle it?”

  “What? You mean with that?” The man pointed to the baton.

  “Yes, this,” she said with impatience.

  “I don’t know. I mean—”

  “Forget what you mean. I’ll do it myself.” Now she faced Lotfi, who had wiped the tears from his face and remained silent. “Don’t you know days like today can be hazardous to your health, Mr. Lotfi?”

  “You are an evil woman.”

  “All of you Lotfis are fools. Just a bunch of stupid Turks. You’re even more stupid than your dead brother.”

  “I should have killed you when I had the chance,” Lotfi murmured.

  “What?” she barked.

  Lotfi twisted his neck to address the man behind them. “I swear she’ll eventually destroy you too.”

  “The lady has class. She’s a dentist.”

  “She’s just a dental hygienist, you fool. You’re going to have the whitest teeth in all of Tehran. But that’s all you’re going to have.”

  He closed his eyes and heard the click-click of her high heels.

  “Enough of your stupidity, Tork e khar, dumb Turk.”

  The baton connected over Lotfi’s jaw and he felt the tooth-bridge on the right side of his mouth snap right off. He tasted warm blood dripping over his smashed face.

  As he was letting go and keeling over, again he thought of the synagogue wine he never got to share with Aida. “The whitest set of teeth . . .” he whispered with half-open eyes.

  “What?” she yelled.

  Click-click. Now the Cow with the wattled chin changed her footing to get a good angle for the finish. And Lotfi, seeing the stick come down, thought for one last time of all these at once: red wine, white teeth, Aida.

  End of Excerpt

  More about Tehran Noir

  ___________________

  Launched with the summer ’04 award-winning best seller Brooklyn Noir, Akashic Books continues its groundbreaking series of original noir anthologies. Each book is comprised of all-new stories, each one set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the city of the book.

  Includes brand-new stories by: Gina B. Nahai, Salar Abdoh, Lily Farhadpour, Azardokht Bahrami, Yourik Karim-Masihi, Vali Khalili, Farhaad Heidari Gooran, Aida Moradi Ahani, Mahsa Mohebali, Majed Neisi, Danial Haghighi, Javad Afhami, Sima Saeedi, Mahak Taheri, and Hossein Abkenar.

  From the Introduction by Salar Abdoh:

  "There is something of both the absolutely spectacular and positively disgraceful about Tehran. But most writers around the world are inclined to think that their own sprawling metropolis is the capital of every imaginable vice and crime, of impossible love and tenderness and cruelty and malice in measures that seldom exist anywhere else. For me, Tehran’s case is no different—except that there really is a difference here. The city may be a hothouse of decadence, a den of inequity, all that. But it still exists under the watchful eye of a very unique entity, the Islamic Republic. The city enforces its own morality police, and there are regular public hangings of drug dealers and thieves. Because of this, there is a raging sense of a split personality about the place—the imposed propriety of the mosque rubbing against the hidden (and more often not so hidden) rhythms of the real city . . .

  There is always an element of the end of the world about this place. A feeling of being once removed from the edge of the precipice. Elsewhere I have called it the “Seismic City”—the seismic sanctuary. All of this will end one day. Yes. And maybe sooner than later. And when it does, by God, we will miss it.”

  Tehran Noir is available in paperback from our website and in bookstores everywhere. The e-book edition is available wherever e-books are sold.

  Reading Group Guide

  1. The main character, Reza Malek, is faced with some tough choices throughout the story. He must, for instance, choose between his loyalty to his adopted country, the United States, and the country of his birth, Iran. He is also eventually forced to choose between his oldest best friend, Sina, and his new best friend, the Marine captain James McGreivy. In the end, Malek appears to hedge his bets somewhat. There are no clear cut "good" decisions. There is no black and white. How do you think a person should act in a world where oftentimes good and evil can be seen as relative and contingent on the situation?

  2. James McGreivy is also faced with divided loyalties. On the one hand, he is a decorated combat Marine. On the other, he feels that his country has let him down and the war in Iraq was executed with hubris and lack of understanding. McGreivy's idealism forces him time and again to stand against authority and also anger the people who have helped his advancement. Do you think McGreivy is right in his absolute idealism, or are there times when one should settle for less than an ideal situation for the sake of the greater objective?

  3. Fani, the shady middleman and former intelligence officer in Tehran, hints to Malek that when the Americans come to Iran, he would like to work for them. Fani is an example of a man who always sells his services to the highest bidder. He is, in other words, an opportunist. When faced with such people, should Americans deal with them and use these characters' knowledge of the territory and the people? Or should Americans draw a red line when it comes to working with unsavory people, even if working with such people might bring advantage?

  4. Clara Vikingstad is a capable, successful and courageous journalist and war correspondent who understands the Middle East better than most of her peers. But in pursuit of furthering her own career and winning journalism awards she resorts to some dishonest actions. If you found out that a journalist whose work you admire and read had not always followed a straight and upright path in their profession, would you still continue reading them? Why or why not?

  5. In revolutions, including the Iranian revolution, there is a lot of radicalism at first. In the book there is an example of an Iranian politician who at one point was amongst extremist elements and probably killed people in the cause of the revolution. Yet with time he has tempered his attitude and joined the reformist elements in government who want to bring change and moderation to the Islamic Republic. Do you think such a person should be trusted? Should they be forgiven for their former ways because they were operating in times of upheaval? Or should they also be brought to justice for some of the actions they carried out in the past?

  6. In the novel we find out that Sina Vafa has probably been targeting American private military contractors in Iraq. Private contractors in war zones earn quite a lot of money compared to what they might make back home. This is because of the risk they are taking to be where they are. Do you think that a government, such as the United States, is still obligated to its citizens to protect them when they knowingly enter into contracts which might cause their imprisonment, injury or death in a foreign country?

  7. At some point in the story, James McGreivy, who is now a professor at the same college as Malek, begins dating and eventually living with Candace Vincent, a thirty year old student and mother of two who attends the same college. The college administration tries to bring pressure on McGreivy because of this relationship. Do you think a college has the right to do this? Why or why not? In what cases do you think a college should have the right and in what cases they shouldn't?r />
  8. In the novel we find out the historical fact that many Polish refugees ended up in Iran during WWII and were eventually saved from both the Nazi war machine and Stalin's gulags. Amongst these refugees were many Polish Jews who went from Iran to what in a few short years became the state of Israel. In other words, a considerable number of Polish Jews, particularly some eight hundred children who later became known in Israel as the Tehran Children, would not have survived the Holocaust without the aid of the Iranian government and its people. What is your reaction to this information? Does it change or confirm previous views you may have had about Iran and Iranians?

  9. The theme of forgiveness is apparent throughout the novel. Reza comes to forgive his mother for having 'abandoned' him years ago. Sina's mother comes to forgive Sina for having been treacherous to her. Yet Reza's mother does not appear to forgive the Poles for the destruction of the Jews of the Polish town her friend Anna came from. Nor is James McGreivy ultimately forgiving of Reza for not having told him the entire truth. When do you think forgiveness is warranted? When is it not warranted?

  SALAR ABDOH was born in Iran, and splits his time between Tehran and New York City, where he is codirector of the Creative Writing MFA Program at the City College of New York. He is the author of The Poet Game and Opium. His essays and short stories have appeared in various publications, including the New York Times, BOMB, Callaloo, Guernica, and on the BBC. He is the recipient of the NYFA Prize and the National Endowment for the Arts award. His latest novel is Tehran at Twilight.