by Deno Trakas
I wanted to call after him to ask if I could get Azi out, but I knew the answer, and she was probably warmer in the carpets anyway. Garrison, as if he knew I was thinking to him, turned around but kept walking backwards, and shouted, “Don’t turn on the heater or the engine or anything—we can’t afford to run down the battery or run out of gas.”
He turned around again and we watched for a minute as he took short strides down the middle of the dark, narrow, snow-covered road. As Garrison grew small, we observed our large surroundings—the mountain we were climbing overlooked a quiet, agricultural plain, dissected by a road or railroad, with the glitter of a town’s lights on the far side, and beyond it more snow-covered mountains. Oman said, “I like the scenery. The mountains back home near Monterrey look like this in winter sometimes.”
“Hills like white elephants,” I said.
“Hey, give the kid a PhD. Shit, you deserve one, a PhD in Iranian rescue missions.”
“We got a long way to go yet.”
“Yeah.” He rubbed his hands together. “And I think I’ll sit out this intermission inside the truck. It’s freezing out here.”
“Okay. I’ll check on Azi.” I went to the back corner of the truck, pulled up the tarp and called to her. No answer. I slid under the tarp and climbed into the bed, careful not to knee the center roll, pulled some of the bolts of cloth away, and lay down so that my head would be near hers. I called again, and this time I heard her muffled voice say, “Yes.”
“Are you okay?”
“Yes.”
“Are you warm enough?”
“Okay.”
“We got stuck in the snow in the mountains. Garrison went to look for help.” She didn’t answer, and I didn’t know what else to say. It struck me that we were almost strangers now because of what she had suffered, was still suffering. I thought of reminding her of things we had said and done while she lived in the States, but what would be the point—those were two other people’s memories. I crawled forward in my cave, set my shoulder against the cab, and wriggled my arm into the end of her carpet until my fingers reached the top of her head, which was still covered with the chador. “Can you feel my fingers?” I asked.
“Yes.”
I could barely reach her, and I was sure my touch was not comforting, but I said, “Don’t worry, we’ll be on our way soon. We’ll get to the coast, and then we’ll take a little cruise to Kuwait. Nadia will be so happy to see you.”
Oman tapped on the window of the cab and said, “Someone’s coming.”
I crawled out of the truck bed to see a troop carrier lumbering up the road from the direction Garrison had gone. It slowed, passed us, and stopped about thirty feet beyond us, and beyond the ice. Garrison jumped out of the back, along with about ten soldiers. “They’re going to help,” he said, and made a pushing gesture.
I nodded, remembering to be a confused Mexican. “Sí, sí, muy bien,” I said.
Garrison told Oman to start the truck, and the soldiers, who were young—some looked like they were thirteen or fourteen—seemed to be happy to help and took up positions with me and Garrison and began to push. In no time at all the truck was on the road, past the ice, right behind the Iranian army.
“Gracias,” I said as I shook the hands of the friendly boys nearest me, who, I realized, could be cousins or brothers or children of the three men we had killed.
They smiled and spoke and waved and climbed back into their vehicle. As they were pulling away, Garrison shouted something to them, and the soldiers erupted in a shouting chant, repeating what he’d said and lifting their rifles over their heads in a victory salute.
“What was that all about?” I asked as they sputtered up the mountain.
“I said ‘Karbala.’ It’s a holy Shi’ite shrine in Iraq where the great martyr Hosain is buried and which the Iranians would like to take. It’s like a war cry. Those guys were basiji, volunteer soldiers, on their way to the slaughter. Poor bastards. But they want to be martyrs too—they think they’ll go to heaven and be greeted by a host of beautiful virgins because they’re fighting for Islam. But what the hell, if they plow the road for us, I’ll root for ’em.” He flipped his worry beads, climbed behind the wheel, hung his beads over the rearview mirror, put us in gear, and followed the tracks of the troop carrier. “Lead us to the promised land, boys.”
CHAPTER 22
Following the troop carrier slowed us down, but it got us through the mountains and through Khorramabad, a town guarded by an ancient fort that rose above it like the Acropolis above Athens. The difference between visiting the Acropolis with a healthy Azi on a warm, moony, late summer evening and fleeing for our lives past this Iranian fort on a bitter winter night, with Azi stuffed in a carpet like a scarred, fragile treasure, was the difference between innocence and experience. What god, indeed, could create such fearful symmetry?
We stopped in the town and got gas, which was being rationed because the Iraqis had bombed the refineries at Abadan, and which, the attendant said, might not be available at all closer to the front. But somehow Garrison talked the guy into filling the tank and selling him a full ten-gallon can for an exorbitant price, along with more bread and bottled drinks. On the other side of Khorramabad, about midnight, we pulled off onto a dirt road that led into a stand of plane trees. In a small clearing, we rolled Azi out of the carpet and gave her more lemonade, the three of us sitting around her on the open carpet as if she were kindling. Her condition seemed worse: she looked frozen, sick, exhausted, hardly spoke, hardly moved.
“We can’t make her stay in the carpet,” I said. “She’s freezing to death.”
Garrison said, “We’re past the half-way point, guys. And the weather should be milder as we come out of the mountains and head south.”
In fact, the snow had stopped before Khorramabad, opening the night sky to a clear, cold, deep darkness. Now, at a lower elevation and in the shelter of trees, the cold seemed thinner and less penetrating. I put my arm around Azi nevertheless. She was shivering. “No, she’s got to go in the cab.”
“But we’re also getting close to the front,” Garrison said. “Azi, you’ll have to go back into the carpet one more time, okay?” She nodded.
“Then I’ll go in with her,” I said. “Wrap us both up so my body heat will help keep her warm.”
Garrison raised his eyebrows and said, “The carpet’ll look funny.”
“That or she goes in the cab,” I said.
“Shit.”
We lifted the carpet into the bed of the truck, and Azi and I lay on it, holding each other loosely, her face against my chest, her head under my chin. Then they rolled us up, and I told them to turn us so that we were both on our sides. “How’s that?” Garrison asked.
I hated the claustrophobic feeling and wanted to yell, “Get us out of here!” But I concentrated on feeling her body, so different from our visit to the Garden of God in Columbia, more like our being forced together at gunpoint in Athens. In any case, I’d made the right decision, she needed me, so I said, “We’re okay.”
I couldn’t see anything or hear much except for the dull drone of the truck’s engine, so eventually I dozed a little, but in an hour or so we came to another roadblock. This time the officer seemed, by his tone, more harried and more suspicious; he asked Garrison a lot of questions and probably examined their papers carefully. He told one of his men to check the back of the truck, and I held Azi tightly, perfectly still. But the man seemed careless, and my sense was that he only glanced in the bags, confiscated our gas can, and left the rest alone. Finally, the officer spoke emphatically to Garrison and we were on our way, but we pulled off the pavement, turned left, and started traveling slowly on a gravel road. After about a half hour, we stopped, and Garrison and Oman unrolled us.
I sat up, stiff, and helped Azi to a sitting position. “What’s going on?” I asked.
“We had to detour to the east because of fighting near Dezful. We’re going to have to take secondary roads
for a while.”
“This isn’t a trap, is it?” I asked.
“I don’t think so. I knew the Iraqis had taken most of Ahwaz and Abadan, but even though I hadn’t heard about Dezful, it doesn’t surprise me that the Iraqis have attacked there.”
“So, is this the front?” I asked.
“No, but the front isn’t far.”
“What does this mean for us?” I asked.
“I don’t know, I’ve never been on these roads. At best it adds an hour or so to the trip. At worst we run out of gas in the middle of fucking nowhere.”
“You should have chartered a plane, Garrison,” Oman said.
“That’s what the smart-ass colonel in Qom said. He asked why the big shot Mexicans didn’t fly to the oil fields. I said we had to make some stops along the way to check the pumping stations of the pipeline. He asked why we needed to check the pipeline if there was no oil flowing through it. I said there was some, just not much.”
“Good thinking,” I said.
“Yeah, well, having an M16 pointed at me clarifies my thoughts.”
“How long before we get to the coast?” I asked.
“I’d guess six hours, but I don’t know. Can you manage a little longer in the carpet? Are you warm enough?”
“It’s pretty damn cold, but I’m okay. Are you okay Azi?”
She nodded.
“Well, as I said, it’ll get warmer as we head south.”
We arrived at dawn. Skirting the edge of the delta and the foothills, well to the east of the front, we had avoided roadblocks and all contact with the military. We’d made one quick stop outside some town, just long enough to give Azi more aspirin and let us relieve ourselves, but she was so weak I had to help her walk to the bushes. It was noticeably warmer, and I thought Azi was more feverish than chilled, so I didn’t know if she’d be better off in the carpet or the cab. “The carpet is safer,” Garrison said, so we rolled up in it once again for the last leg of the journey.
Finally, the truck stopped, the doors opened and closed, the tarp came off, the tailgate banged down, and the carpet turned and turned—suddenly I was blinded by a sunny, muggy morning. Garrison said, “Welcome to Sarbandar City, a miserable place, but I bet you’re glad to be here.”
I didn’t answer. I blinked and sat up, looked around. We were on a short driveway next to a flat, one-story, cement house protected by walls just like the other one. Azi hadn’t sat up, so I looked down at her—she lay exactly as she had when I peeled away from her after the last flip of the carpet—collapsed on her side, limp as a bundle of rags, eyes closed, mouth open, barely breathing. I felt her forehead. “She’s burning up,” I said as I pulled the chador off her head and began to unwrap it. She mumbled in Farsi.
“Let’s get her inside,” Garrison said. “I’ll take her feet.”
I scrambled out of the bed of the truck, stamped my feet to restore feeling to my legs, and lifted Azi out by holding her under the arms. Inside the house, a short but powerfully built middle aged man wearing a military uniform kicked some cushions aside and pointed to a spot on a carpet against the wall in the otherwise unfurnished room. Her head lolled from side to side, and her eyes opened and closed slowly without focusing, as if she were coming out of anesthesia. I put my hand to her cheek. Oman knelt beside me and palmed her forehead, then put two fingers on her neck to find her pulse. The others looked on as I patted her and said, “Azi, Azi.” I looked at Oman who was staring at his watch to time her pulse. “She’s delirious,” I said.
“Yeah, and her pulse is wild.”
The Iranian said, “I make bath” and left the room.
“Take her in and try to bring her temperature down,” Garrison said.
Oman and I lifted her and followed the sound of running water through a short hallway and into a small bathroom with a sink, toilet, and a claw-footed tub. “We can take it from here,” I said to the Iranian who was kneeling, leaning over the side, swirling the water with his hand. He left and we sat Azi on the tile floor. She thrashed weakly, but Oman held her from behind as I pulled off the sweater I’d given her, her sandals and socks, and then lifted her prison dress. As it came up, Oman said, “Oh shit.” I looked over her shoulder and was horrified by what I saw: second degree burns, charred and blistered skin, half-healed, half-inflamed.
Oman called to Garrison, and he and the Iranian came quickly but stopped at the door where they could see all they needed. The Iranian said something in Farsi, which Garrison translated, “The Frying Pan. It’s a metal table heated with electric coils. They strap you down and turn it on.”
Tears came to my eyes. I hugged her twisting body that seemed to be trying to escape its own skin. This was my fault. This was the price Azi paid for meeting me in Athens, for meeting with the CIA. The Iranian knelt behind her and touched her back at the outer edges of the wounds as if he could work them in toward the center and make them smaller. He reached around and felt her forehead. “We must to stop fever.”
“Garrison?” I looked over my shoulder to where he was still standing in the doorway, shaking his head. “Do something! Go get a doctor!”
All three of them left and I pulled off the dress. She wasn’t wearing a bra, and I saw that her breasts were scarred too, especially the nipples, which looked as if someone had pressed a burning cigarette to them. I lifted her into the tub, submerging my arms in order to soften the contact. The shock of the tepid water caused her to jerk at first, but then she calmed down. I turned off the faucet and steadied her so she wouldn’t slide under and so her back wouldn’t touch the tub; then I took off my dripping coat and threw it toward the door. I held her up, and with my wet shirtsleeve I patted her face and said, “Azi, honey.” I tried to get her to look at me, but although she had stopped thrashing, her eyes were still unfocused. “We’ll get some help.”
In a little while I heard a knock at the open door, and Oman said, “Can I come in?”
“Yeah.”
He sat on the floor just inside the door and hung my coat on the knob. “How’s she doing?”
“She’s settled down some, but I don’t think she knows where she is or anything. Did Garrison go for a doctor?”
“He sent Hashemi, while he went to get rid of the truck and to check on things. He’s pretty uptight. Hashemi got a call about an hour ago saying that the police or Islamic guards raided the safe house in Tehran. One of Garrison’s buddies is missing.”
The news did not startle me or upset me as it should have. “So what are we going to do?”
“Sit tight until dark, then drive to the boat and haul ass for Kuwait. I think Garrison’s going to try to call Nadia while he’s out.”
Azi’s head was flopped over to one side, and her eyes were closed as if she were asleep, but she took fast, shallow breaths through her open mouth. I wet her lips with my sleeve. “Is there anything cold to drink inside?”
“I’ll take a look.”
He came back with a bottled drink I didn’t recognize, popped off the cap, and took a swig. “Tastes like Fresca or something, but I doubt it’ll hurt her,” he said as he handed it to me.
At first it just poured off her lips, but then she took a few sips without opening her eyes. I felt her forehead again. “I think her temperature’s coming down.”
We sat there for almost an hour. Every so often I drained some of the water and turned on the faucet to keep the water tepid, until Hashemi returned. He stood at the door with a paper bag and said, “I have medicine.”
“What about a doctor?” I asked.
“No doctor.”
Oman took the bag, opened it, and handed me two bottles of pills. He looked up at Hashemi and said, “What are these?”
“One for antibiotic. One for pain.”
Then he handed me a tube of ointment and Hashemi said, “For burn.” Finally he took out a roll of gauze and some tape.
“Thanks.” When Hashemi left us, I said, “I hope these work.”
“What’s that phrase
you say?”
“Insha’ Allah.”
“Yeah, that.”
I took one pill from each bottle, handed both to Oman, asked him to cut them, dropped them into the remaining soft drink, and got her to swallow them as before. “I guess we’d better get her out of the water. Do you see any towels?”
Oman got up, went out, and came back with one of the bolts of cloth, which he unrolled to make a pallet on the floor.
“Okay, give me a hand.”
When we lifted Azi out of the water, she moaned and said something unintelligible. As soon as she was out, I could feel the heat rise off her skin again—the fever wasn’t gone, not at all. We lay her down on her side and then turned her onto her stomach. I pulled off her wet panties, and we saw that she was also burned on her buttocks, thighs, and calves, but not as badly as on her back. I took off my shirt and used it to pat her dry. Then I applied ointment to her wounds and wrapped the gauze around her torso as well as I could. We dressed her with my sweater and the long chador, and Oman took our wet clothes somewhere to hang them up to dry. Finally, we carried her into the front room, laid her on a couple of carpets with a cushion under her head, and I lay down beside her.
Being hundreds of miles from Tehran, in a safe house that felt safe, with a few friends who were all helping Azi, I could feel the tension in my body easing a bit and my eyes growing heavy. But I couldn’t let go—I tossed and drifted in and out of awareness of the room, the people in it, the reasons for our being there. As Azi turned from side to stomach to side next to me, I couldn’t stop my mind’s reel of images: the cigarette burns, the frying pan . . . I could see her lying on her back, naked, on an autopsy table, strapped down, arching her back to get it off the searing steel, screaming.
On my other side, Oman slept flat on his back with his hands crossed on his chest and snored lightly, his mouth open. I admired his composure, his sense of humor that kept him clear-headed. I wondered if he regretted coming, if he’d gotten enough material for a book, if he would live to write it, if Azi and I would live to read it—I had no way of knowing if the danger had passed or if the worst was still ahead.