I’m very excited. I think this is my calling in this world. And if I can help in this battle between good and evil, then that is a good thing and I will feel proud.
Just thought I’d let you know.
Tell the family hi for me.
Tell Mom I’m happy and doing well and that I think of her every day.
Sammy
Brighton read the message quickly, then typed a short reply:
Very good. I am proud of you. It is an incredible honor, but one you have earned.
I pray for your safety every morning and night. And if God could save his Stripling Warriors, I pray he will do the same thing for you.
Be safe. Be good.
Come home when you can.
Dad
Chapter Fourteen
Azadeh walked toward the bright sun, which was just cresting the top of the great Zagros Mountains. The craggy peaks, topped in dark granite, had sloughed off ten million years’ worth of broken rock, and a huge boulder field spread across the foothills on the west side of the range. Above the Zagros, the sky was clear and open, a deep blue that had not yet taken on the lighter hue of mid-morning. Azadeh breathed the air, smelling hints of salt water and rotting seaweed mixed with the deep musk of junipers and pines from the dry forest on the mountain ridges to her right. The morning was crisp and clean, and though it was still chilly she felt the soft rays of the sun beginning to warm the skin on her face and the backs of her hands.
This would be a good day. She felt it inside.
Earlier in the week, she had talked to one of the U.N. headmasters, a stern Muslim woman from some unknown village along the Pakistan border, about being allowed to attend classes at the improvised school. High school classes were held in the cafeteria tent between meals, but so far only the young men had been allowed to attend. There was talk now of letting the young women attend the classes as well, and Azadeh had been the first to sign up when the list of those who might be interested had been passed around. Today she would get her answer, and she was full of hope.
Standing outside her tent, a small, aluminum, semipermanent structure mounted on a plywood platform and covered with a wide sheet of canvas to keep the rain off, Azadeh sniffed the spring air, then glanced around, realizing she was going to be late for breakfast if she didn’t hurry along.
She was just turning toward the chow line when something seemed to stop her. She paused, thinking a long moment. Then words she had spoken in her morning prayer repeated themselves in her mind:
Show me someone I can help, for I would like to do something for You today.
She hesitated, wondering why the words would come back to her now.
Show me someone I can help.
She looked quickly around.
There was no one there. No one who needed her.
No. There is someone. The thought was clear in her mind.
Turning left and right, she confirmed once again that she was alone; the row of small tents under the canvas sheet appeared empty, and the dirt path that ran between the rows of tents was deserted as well. She could hear the low sound of the gathering crowd in the distance, up near the top of a small hill where the refugees were forming up in the chow line, but no one was around her, and she didn’t understand.
But she couldn’t shake the feeling.
No. There is someone near.
She shook her head, thinking, then put the feeling aside. Turning, she started walking to the cafeteria hall. She was already late, and those last in line got very little to eat.
Then another thought came to her, a feeling soft and subtle and yet unmistakably clear:
If you want to help me, you must listen when I speak.
Listen. When I speak! That was not how Allah worked. He had no voice, no spirit, no intention to speak directly to man. He caused. He controlled. He manipulated the outcome and dominated by his will. But he did not speak to his children. That was not how he worked.
Yet she stood there, unmoving, then slowly nodded her head. “I will listen,” she answered in an uncertain voice, sensing she was walking onto untrodden soil.
She closed her eyes, her head low, and waited. But she didn’t hear anything. And the feeling didn’t come back again.
A minute passed. Then another. She caught a whiff of coffee, hot oatmeal, and brown sugar drifting down from the cafeteria tent. The wind had picked up, coming now from the mountains. She remained still, and the shadows fluttered as the canvas over the tents flapped in the gentle wind.
Still she waited, unmoving.
She heard the sounds of the anxious voices diminish as the refugees who had been standing in line received their daily rations and started eating in silence. She felt the air getting warmer as the sun rose over the mountain peaks.
“I will stand here all day,” she said to herself. “I will stand here all year if I have to. I will stand here forever until I understand.”
Then she heard it, a soft sound from behind her, but not one she had expected to hear.
* * *
Pari al- Faruqi was too old to consider the possibility that she might one day actually live in freedom. She had been in the camp too long to even remember what it was like to live somewhere else, and the thought of leaving Khorramshahr was almost distressing to her now. Knowing she would never leave, she had accepted this place and sought to make it her home.
Pari’s assigned quarters was a small plywood and tin-roofed hut with prefabricated pieces of foam insulation tacked to the ceiling and walls. Most of the 600 refugees in Camp Khorramshahr lived in these permanent structures—the newest refugees stayed in tents only until a plywood hut came open—and Pari had decorated her small home to an almost ridiculous degree. A single, small window and door took up most of the front wall, but she had taken colored chalks and paste and painted fantastic murals on the other walls, the only paintable surface available to her in Khorramshahr. The colors were bright, with oranges, pinks, and soft hues depicting a sunrise over the mountains, spring flowers, and the black sand and deep green water of the Persian Gulf. The paintings were awkward (whatever talents Pari had, painting was clearly not one of them) but they were certainly more pleasant to look at than the bare, foam-insulation walls. Under the murals she had placed tin cans filled with wild chrysanthemums and croton plants she had gathered along the fence, back where a small stream kept the ground wet and agreeable. In one corner of the hut she had set up her small, foot-operated sewing machine (the only object from Iran she had brought with her to Khorramshahr), and through the years she had taken odd scraps of cloth and crafted dresses for the younger girls in the camp as well as colorful quilts, one of which was on top of her cot. Her clothes were neatly folded and arranged on top of a small bureau, and the only pair of shoes she owned was placed neatly at the foot of her cot. The floor was covered with a threadbare Persian rug, a gift to her from one of the U.N. volunteers who had worked in the camp some eight or nine years before. On the bureau was a black-and-white photograph of a young man, handsome, light-haired, with blue eyes and a thin nose, clearly not Persian. A silver cross, highly polished, hung over the head of her cot.
It was a home of poverty by any measure, humble but clean, warm enough but never quite comfortable, adequate, but without even the simplest luxury. But it was a home filled with as much love and beauty as she was able to create from the barren environment around her. Despite its lack of elegance, Pari was satisfied.
These walls are large enough for someone such as I. It is but one room, and not grand, but I have felt Christ’s spirit here.
And unlike many of the huts in Khorramshahr, this one had an air of permanence, as if Pari had accepted that this was the place she would die.
Through the years, Pari al- Faruqi had seen many come and go from Khorramshahr—a thousand children, a hundred families, far too many to remember. She had known orphans, single mothers, tiny babies, and old men who had lost everything. Few of them spent more than two or three years in the camp before they w
ere assigned a patron outside Iran or Iraq, someone who was willing to sponsor them in their country, provide them with a job, a little money, and someplace to live until they could get on their feet. But Pari hadn’t been so lucky and she never would be. She would die in Camp Khorramshahr, of that she was sure, for there was something inside her, something deep in her chest, that guaranteed she would live out her days here.
Though she was only sixty-six, she looked older, with frail shoulders, thinning gray hair, and so many lines on her face that the creases seemed to fall into each other. But her neck was long and slender, her fingers thin and elegant, and she carried herself with such confidence that it was clear to anyone who studied her for more than a moment that one day, long before, Pari had been very beautiful. And though she was now an old woman, her eyes were bright and alive, and they danced as if she knew a special secret that she would never tell.
Resting on her cot, Pari coughed deeply again. She had been coughing all night and she held a small cloth sprayed with blood in the palm of her hand. She lay there and wondered if she should get out of bed. Maybe not. Not this morning. Not until the sun had warmed things a bit.
Pushing herself against her pillow, she looked around the room and shivered. The inside of her hut was cast in a pleasant light from the sun filtering through the thin fabric over the window, but she still felt so cold. Turning, she saw that the flame on the small propane heater in the far corner had gone out again.
Wincing at the cold, she hacked through a coughing fit, then lay back again.
* * *
Azadeh followed the sound of the coughing.
Behind her tent was a double row of huts, all of them identical, with rain-stained plywood walls, tin roofs that were now rusting, and small prefabricated doors. She had never spent any time in this part of the camp, and she made her way carefully, not knowing if she would be welcome.
She listened, hearing the sound again, then stopped in front of the unpainted door. Knocking gently, she squared her shoulders and waited.
A long moment passed, but no one opened the door. She knocked again, the sound echoing off the wood walls. Then she heard a small voice answer, and she pushed back the door.
Azadeh poked her head tentatively into the room and saw the old woman waiting on the side of her bed.
“Hello, hello,” Pari said in a bright voice. She motioned with her hand, beckoning Azadeh to come in. “Well, well, what is this? Who is this beautiful girl?”
Azadeh smiled shyly. “I heard . . . ” she hesitated. “I heard you coughing and I wondered if you were all right?” She glanced around quickly, taking in the murals and flowers.
Pari adjusted herself on the side of her bed, then looked up, her dark eyes flickering in the morning light. She was wearing a deep blue cotton robe, and she pulled it tightly around her waist. Azadeh watched her, standing shyly at the door. “I’m sorry,” she tried to explain. “I was just wondering if . . . you know . . . if there was anything I could do?”
“Oh, how wonderful,” the old woman exclaimed. “I’ve been hoping to meet you. Your name is Azadeh, am I right?”
Azadeh nodded in surprise. “Yes, my lady, but how did you know?”
The old woman smiled. “I know most of the people in this camp. And someone as beautiful as you, well, it would have been hard for me not to take note.”
Azadeh lowered her eyes. She was not used to being complimented so easily and she did not know how to respond. “Bânu . . . madam,” she started, but Pari broke in.
“Your last name is Pahlavi?”
Azadeh looked up in surprise, instantly on guard.
Pari read the worried look on her face. “Come in, will you, please,” she said, gesturing toward the younger woman. There was a single chair in the corner, near the portable loom, but Pari patted the cot beside her. “Come, Azadeh, please sit down.”
Azadeh entered the hut carefully, leaving her shoes near the door, and stood in the center of the room.
“I knew several Pahlavis,” Pari began gently, as if she knew she was on tender ground. “It was many years ago. And a long way from here. I used to live in Tehran. When I was a little
girl . . . ” she studied Azadeh’s face as she spoke.
Azadeh kept her eyes on the floor. “My father . . . ” she started to say.
“ . . . was a grandson of the Shah?” Pari finished the sentence. Though the inflection in her voice indicated it was a question, it seemed she already knew.
Word spread easily through the camp; among people with little to do, there was plenty of talk. Badguyi. Gossip. Everyone knew everything. Azadeh had heard some of it already, the quiet whispers, the sideway looks. But she lifted her head defiantly. She would not apologize, nor would she try to hide who she was. She nodded, her lips pressed firmly, her chin held high.
“They were good men.” Pari offered in a soft voice. “A good family.” She paused and stared at Azadeh, choosing her words carefully. “I knew some of your family, Miss Azadeh, a very long time ago. My husband was a very . . . ” she stopped, thinking, then continued slowly. “Your grandfathers were treated poorly, very poorly, I’m afraid. I think they had the best intentions for our country, but most of them are . . . gone now.”
Azadeh nodded but didn’t say anything.
Pari patted the cot again, motioning once more for Azadeh to sit down. “Okay, Miss Azadeh Pahlavi, that is all we will say of that for now. We will talk of it later, if you want to, but come and sit down.”
Azadeh motioned to the door, still uncomfortable. “Bânu, I was just . . . I heard your coughing and I thought I might be of some help.”
Pari smiled. “Yes, well, that is a coincidence. You see,” she pointed to the propane heater in the corner and coughed. “I’m afraid I’ve taken a chill. It feels so cold in here. Yet I can’t seem to get the flame on my heater to be anything more than a flicker.”
Azadeh moved toward the propane heater and knelt down. It was very similar to the heater her father had kept in his bedroom, and she saw instantly what she had to do. Reaching around to the back of the unit, she turned off the gas. “Have you got a file? A toothpick, perhaps?” she asked. Then she saw a broom in the corner and she quickly stood up, removed a single straw, and went back to the heater. “Your outlet is clogged,” she explained as she worked. “We had a heater like this at my home. You have to clean the gas outlet every once in a while.” She ran the strand of straw carefully through the propane outlet, rubbing it against the sides of the valve, then broke it in two and ran both straws through the narrow hole. After several moments of this, she reached behind the heater and turned the propane on again. Pushing the igniter, she heard a sudden snap as the igniter clicked and the pilot light fluttered, a light blue flame at the base of the porcelain retainer. She turned up the valve and the flame kicked on, spreading bright and yellow across the base of the unit. She felt the heat instantly and stepped back and smiled.
Pari clapped her thin hands in delight. “Do you know how long, my dear Azadeh, I have been trying to get that heater to work? Too many nights I have shivered under the blankets in the cold.”
Azadeh smiled. “It was easy, Bânu.”
“Thank you, thank you. You have really brightened my day.”
Azadeh moved away from the heater. “You know,
Bânu . . . ” she paused, not knowing her new friend’s name.
“I am Pari al- Faruqi.”
Azadeh bowed politely while bending her knees and holding her hands across her chest. “Bânu al- Faruqi.”
“You don’t have to call me madam. Miss Pari will be fine. We are all equals here, Miss Azadeh. There is no rank in Khorramshahr; we all tread the same ground.”
Azadeh smiled, beginning to feel comfortable. “Miss Pari, were you intending to eat breakfast this morning?”
The older woman’s shoulders slumped. “I was feeling a little tired. And cold, as you know. I was thinking I might skip breakfast today.”
Azadeh look
ed at her new friend. She was so tiny and frail. The last thing she needed was to skip another meal. “I was just going up,” Azadeh offered. “I would be happy to bring you something.”
Pari smiled instantly. The warmth from the heater was beginning to spread through the small room, and she already felt better knowing she could get warm if she wanted without having to crawl under the quilts on her bed. She turned to Azadeh. “Perhaps it would be nice to eat. If you will bring me something, I would be very grateful. And we could eat here together. Would that be okay with you?”
Azadeh smiled. “What would you like?” she asked.
“Do I have a choice this morning?”
“Probably not,” Azadeh said. The breakfast menu was very basic.
“Then I’ll have a wheat roll and spice jelly, if you really don’t mind.”
Chapter Fifteen
Azadeh set a small plastic plate and two cups of steaming coffee on the bureau. While she had gone for their breakfast, Pari had put on a white dress with overly extravagant blue trim and white lace. She sat by the heater now, her feet near the flame, a thick, woven sweater covering her lap. Her hair was combed back and tied with a blue ribbon, and she looked a bit more alive than she had just twenty minutes before.
“You look lovely,” Azadeh said as she stirred the hot coffee. “Blue is a good color for you, Miss Pari.”
Pari looked proud as she pressed the long trim. “You think so?” she asked, moving her hand to the ribbon in her gray hair.
“Oh, yes,” Azadeh smiled, then bit her lower lip. The ribbon and lace looked oddly out of place in the bare hut, but then so did the flowers and the colorful quilt. She handed her new friend a coffee, noticing as she bent toward her that Pari had patted some foundation to cover the crow’s-feet at her eyes. Azadeh tried not to stare as she set the tray down. Makeup was forbidden, didn’t Pari know?
“It’s been so long since I’ve had a visitor,” the older woman said excitedly as Azadeh placed a warm cup in her hand. “I’m getting too old now. It’s harder and harder to get out anymore.”
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