In the Walled Gardens

by Anahita Firouz

  “Are you painting?” I asked him.

  He shook his head. “I pray.”

  He’d always been rational and solid, a man devoted to secular liberalism, measuring the progress of this nation inch by painful inch. I couldn’t imagine him fatalistic, submissive.

  “I’ve made a vow,” he said, “to Imam Reza.”

  Kavoos had told me to put him in touch with a certain lawyer. I put this to Mr. Bashirian. Here was something solid. I felt in this way I would wash my hands of the whole affair.

  He wrote the name and phone number in a small blue calendar he took from the inside pocket of his jacket.

  “You need time off,” I said. “Take a week. Why don’t you arrange —”

  He refused immediately. “Never! I need to work. More work. Anything to keep from agonizing.”

  I argued for a bit. He could be insufferably stubborn. I asked if he had any relatives in Tehran, but he said his sister lived up north, in Sari.

  “Any nieces and nephews?”

  “They live up north. Why?”

  For his own sake I said, “Say you have an ailing niece. She’s deathly ill. People are asking questions. They think something’s wrong. Don’t you see? Please, let’s give them some sort of answer. For now.”

  He agreed, reluctant, pushing his folders like a proud man fiddling with defeat.

  THE DIRECTOR QUESTIONED my judgment the next day. He’s hugely distracted and under enormous pressure, rushing to meetings and official events all week, arranging for conferences and endless foreign visitors. Recently the buoyant effect of all that has receded, leaving him looking oddly vacuous. He seemed deflated when he called me into his office. First we went over new papers for our journal and publications. “Statism and the Dangers of Economically Interventionist States Engaging in Monological Speech.” He said nobody read this stuff anyway, especially way at the top! He flipped through the article “The Rentier Economy and Rentier Mentality in Iran,” then skimmed through the first two pages of “Our One-Product Economy — Oil — and Patron-Client Relationship with Foreign Powers,” poking at it with his pen.

  He said, “As always it comes down to the obvious need for scientific study versus the obvious need for censorship.”

  Then he complained how he wasn’t pleased at all with Mr. Bashirian.

  “What’s going on? I hear he’s a poor manager. He’s hostile and curt with colleagues and impossible in meetings. I hear he’s sneaking home papers and photocopying documents.”

  “He would do no such thing.”

  “Then what’s the problem? His colleagues are complaining.”

  “He’s an invaluable employee.”

  “That’s not what I hear anymore. Ask Mr. Makhmalchi.”

  Mr. Makhmalchi was a snoop, a clever and overbearing toady promoted instead of Mr. Bashirian, whose competence and very principles were now in question.

  “Mr. Bashirian’s a hard worker and an honorable man. He hasn’t changed.”

  “Of course, you wanted him promoted. You’re biased. I’ll give him two weeks.”

  There was a message that Thierry had called when I got back to my desk. I called, but he was in a meeting. He called back in the afternoon.

  “About your friend,” he said. “Someone’s in town who’ll meet with him.”

  We weren’t to discuss Peyman Bashirian’s case openly on the phone.

  He said, “Here’s the opportunity to talk to a French journalist.”

  “I’m not so sure my friend will agree.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Try,” I said, fiddling with the pencils on my desk.

  “I’ll really never understand things here,” he said before I hung up.

  I called in the secretary, a most efficient woman and world-class gossipmonger. I couldn’t trust Mr. Bashirian to play the game nor deal effectively with rumors about his recent sullen disposition.

  I explained how I wanted several things typed, then offered her a cigarette, complimenting her outfit.

  “You’re always so well dressed,” I said.

  She launched into a shopping guide, from the cheaper department stores like Kourosh to the exorbitant boutiques on Shah Abbas, which got her into the bizarre story of the general’s wife. Everyone was speculating about it all over Tehran.

  “Haven’t you heard?” the secretary said. “The general’s wife was attacked by masked gunmen inside a boutique while fingering cashmere sweaters and high heels from Rome and Paris. Her enormous diamond ring and other jewelry were snatched. The men got away within minutes. The police were called and arrived in full force, sirens wailing. She made phone calls to higher places, screaming and cussing into the phone. She threatened the trembling boutique owner, saying she’d have him shot for complicity. She threatened the police and Special Forces when they arrived. Screaming at the top of her lungs, ‘Don’t you fucking know who I am? Can’t you fucking assholes do your jobs properly?’ Imagine, the woman’s a bitch and her jewels are financing a group of terrorists. Whoever they are, they’re armed and dangerous! The original plot was to kidnap her for ransom. They came in two cars, seven of them with face masks to hijack her and the bodyguard, but he fought them off alone and heroically, until he got shot. First they said he was dead. But he isn’t! Actually he’s alive. They say first the general gave him the beating of his life, and now SAVAK’s torturing him to get information. Of course, he must’ve been in on the plot. How else would the attackers have known exactly where and at what time she’d be shopping? To think urban guerrillas are stalking public officials and their families. The diamond ring isn’t even fully paid for. Imagine the nerve to call it yours! Imagine being so loaded with jewelry on a morning shopping spree! Imagine having her kind of nerve and clout and mouth to threaten the armed forces! She slapped an officer before leaving in an official car. She screamed, ‘You better mobilize all your fucking forces immediately to find my jewels!’ That diamond ring’s a slap in the face of the nation. A slap in the face of decent and hardworking people. Too bad they didn’t kidnap her! To think the general’s job is protecting and defending the honor of our country. The diamond’s being paid off with the general’s fat kickbacks from the millions of dollars dealt in American armaments. That’s how America keeps its foreign cronies on top! Bribing its puppets and fattening them up. We’re always selling out. It’s disgraceful.” The secretary leaned in. “They say it’s the biggest diamond in Tehran! An eyesore even for the royal family. The general’s in big trouble —”

  I cut in. “You know about Mr. Bashirian?”

  “No, why? Except he’s been weird lately. Everyone’s wondering why.”

  This, after the lawyer, was to be my last good deed for him.

  So I said, “One of his close relatives is sick, very sick. He’s heartbroken.”

  “What relative?” she asked. “Not the son? His son’s adorable. I saw him once on the street. A real looker! I mean — Mr. Bashirian’s ugly. A bit like a hippo — wouldn’t you say?”

  Poor Bashirian. Hostile, sullen, and now a hippo.

  “He’s so jumpy these days,” she said. “No one can talk to him anymore!”

  “Well, it’s the niece. His favorite niece. She’s in the hospital. Tragic for such a young girl to be struck with a fatal disease.”

  “What is it?”

  I whispered. She shook her head. Worse, I said the girl was about to be married, she had the white dress, the veil, the . . . Tears welled up in the secretary’s eyes. Still, she craved the more horrible details. She was easy to please. I told her to treat Mr. Bashirian with kid gloves and not to spread this around the office. She couldn’t wait to leave.

  THAT NIGHT HOUSHANG and I met downstairs in the front hall, all dressed up for another event. He’d come in late and showered and changed in fifteen minutes, and I’d been sitting with Ehsan and Kamran in the pantry while they ate dinner and I grilled them about homework.

  There were cars backed up all the way down the stre
et when we arrived. The reception, to be followed by a seated dinner, was at the house of an Iranian banker, an eligible bachelor with flair and perfect credentials. Thierry was the cohost. He couldn’t have been more charming and attentive. I’d seen him melt stone, the exception being my husband. He towered with his brilliant blue eyes and immaculately cut suit, deferring to Houshang, who seemed to nurse a perpetual grudge against him. My husband doesn’t like foreign competition.

  The big director from Thierry’s bank was in from Paris, graying at the temples, talking of Indochina and the Achaemenians and fresh litchis at Fauchon all in one breath. We chatted about museums and savory things, sounding conspicuously like glossy brochures from the National Tourist Organization. He said he was going to see the prime minister and spend a day in Ispahan, as he liked to pronounce it, instead of Esfahan.

  Houshang steered me over to the rear admiral, who was there with his wife. He sits on the board of the Bandar Kangan project. Slim and trim, with pale skin, shiny medals, and bright eyes. His wife had come dressed for a jubilee, all pleats and flounces and gossamer print. She had tiny teeth and tiny feet. Houshang and the rear admiral stepped out of the room. I found myself casing her for diamonds the size of plums, like the general’s wife’s, but she had rubies. And we ordered government ministries to trim budgets and scrimp. The only thing she knew about gross inflation was her ballooning budget. Going on and on about their new house uptown, decorated of course by Jansen of Paris! And their brand-new villa on the island of Kish.

  The rear admiral and Houshang were conferring in a corner of the hallway beyond the living room. I expected to see Houshang gratified; instead he seemed on pins and needles. The rear admiral’s wife carefully placed a rubied pinkie to her blond coiffure, saying she’d had it done by Nahid, the most exclusive hairdresser in Tehran.

  “I’d never entrust this hair and color to anyone else.”

  You’d think it was all about the upkeep of a national monument.

  We were interrupted by a couple, and I slipped away. The rear admiral came in and whispered to his wife, then whisked her off. They left with the sort of muted spectacle associated with kaisers leaving drawing rooms, only shaking hands with Thierry’s boss and Thierry and their Iranian host on the way out, the bevy escorting them to the door with unremitting panache.

  They had left early.

  “How’s the rear admiral?” I asked Houshang as we went in to dinner.

  “Things couldn’t be better.”

  I find myself distrusting much of what my husband tells me.

  At dinner I was seated next to the French journalist.

  He whispered to me conspiratorially, “Et cet etudiant en prison? . . .” sipping wine and reeking of anticipation. He wanted the full scoop on Mr. Bashirian’s son, as though Peyman were a juicy scandal.

  Mr. Mostaufi, our old family friend, embraced me and sat to my right, praising Father and Mother’s Friday luncheons. The foreign diplomat at our table greeted him. “Ah! Your Excellency,” he said warmly. Posted back in Tehran, he said he’d traveled the world and found nothing again quite like Iran in the sixties. Dreamy halcyon days!

  “Well, now the atmosphere’s downright tense!” scolded a Polish writer across from him.

  Someone had whispered to us that he was famous and was re-searching his next book. He kept referring to the perfection of his own objectivity. He liked irony, except regarding himself. He said he had talked to the people — he made it sound as if they were his, his people — on the streets. Breezed down his list, just short of an insulting caricature: our heady upper class, the disaffection and in fact virulent hatred permeating the lower classes and intellectuals — he meant for the Shah but didn’t say it — the shadow world of dissidents and leftists, the regime’s breach of human rights while it imported international hustlers and casino operators and Hong Kong sharks and Indian doctors and Asian nurses and Korean truck drivers, and of course, those brain-dead hicks, hordes of American army personnel.

  Mr. Mostaufi turned to him, red-faced. “Why, His Majesty has done everything — I repeat, everything — to elevate and educate and industrialize this nation in the shortest time possible. That, sir, is no crime! If we must arrest militants and provocateurs, it’s the price we have to pay for progress. But this regime isn’t criminal! It is being maligned. It has brought Iran for the first time ever to the very brink of Western civilization. With proud and distinguished and loyal armed forces. These are our glory days. Who will record that?”

  The Pole turned away, sulking, thereafter only talking to the foreign diplomat. The French journalist was relating his global exploits, brandishing his curriculum vitae. I couldn’t tell what sort he was. He said he was staying at the Intercontinental.

  “You could find a room?” I said, impressed.

  “No cot in the hallways for me. I’m too important!”

  During dinner he pontificated about reckless and ill-conceived economic growth. He was a heavy drinker. Later he came up to me with his glass of cognac, looking sheepish.

  “You were quiet in there. Something I said offended you?”

  “Let me warn you. I dislike preachy causes. This boy is a friend.”

  “I’d like very much to meet his father. Let me talk to him. His name and position will be protected.” He smiled at my silence. “Don’t tell me you’re reluctant? Then how will anything ever change?”

  It was the tone that got me, executed with indifference but definitely solemn. I told him I’d call the hotel the next morning.

  BEFORE DECIDING to call the Intercontinental, Mr. Bashirian asked me to take a walk with him during lunch break. We spent half an hour outside the office, going around the block. He equivocated so dreadfully I was ready to abandon him myself. He said he couldn’t bring himself to confide in a foreigner. He wasn’t articulate and experienced. He didn’t like their games. “What games?” I said, annoyed. He didn’t speak a foreign language. He didn’t want to discuss his son with a perfect stranger. He didn’t want to make waves. He just wanted them to send back Peyman.

  “I want the doorbell to ring. I want to go to the door one evening and see him standing there and hear him call out, ‘Father.’ So I can put my arms around him. I don’t want anything else.”

  “Did you call the lawyer?”

  He said they’d met. The lawyer had been loquacious, but legally he was without recourse. There were no laws to protect Peyman from being arrested and held by SAVAK. He could be kept without a hearing or sentence, tried by a secret military tribunal. SAVAK decided on and defined subversion — any deed, any word. He said the lawyer had asked him if Peyman was a Communist, Mojahed, Marxist Fedayee, follower of Shariati, or member of the National Front.

  “Anytime anything happens, out comes the list!” said Mr. Bashirian indignantly. “He follows no one! I told him. So he ended with a sermon on civil rights. Hinting at some soon-to-be association of jurists to protest cases like Peyman’s.”

  I knew nothing about this. Besides, no one could lecture the regime nor confront it openly anymore. An airtight regime, smothered by its own commendations of itself.

  “Here’s your chance.”

  “With a foreigner?” he said, starting all over again.

  “He’s a journalist. An uncensored one.”

  “That’s true. Why don’t you speak with him?”

  “But you’re the father,” I said.

  “You speak French.”

  I looked at my watch. “You’ve got to decide.”

  “What do you think?” he asked.

  “Nearly anything’s better than nothing.”

  “But what do you recommend?”

  He wanted the decision to be mine. I remembered our director’s baseless insinuations about his being unprincipled. Here was a man who couldn’t even decide to meet with a journalist when his own son’s fate was hanging in the balance.

  “You should do what’s good for Peyman.”

  “I’m not sure what that is anym
ore.”

  We made our way along the sidewalk thick with pedestrians and street vendors, the sun bright and high.

  “I don’t care what happens to me,” he said. “I’m just terrified I’ll jeopardize his situation in . . . there.”

  “You’ll be protected. This will be your testimonial.”

  “I’ve got no cause or political agenda of interest.”

  “Who says you do?”

  “I’m not a — an agitator.”

  “I know.”

  “Why should they care? These journalists want important people. I mean, why suddenly take an interest in my son? To use him for their own purpose?”

  “Exactly which purpose?” I said curtly.

  “How do we know this man’s reliable?”

  “We don’t. Except for his reputation.”

  “I’m not so sure this is right.”

  He hung his head. He agonized. Maybe there were other considerations he wouldn’t tell me.

  “Will you be there?” he said. “Please, I’ll do it only if you’re there.”

  THIRTEEN

  THURSDAY AFTERNOON I was there tutoring the two boys in the dining room when I heard Mahastee come in. I’d given the boys a quiz, and while they figured out the math problems, I heard her around the house and the phone kept ringing. The boys chewed the end of their pencils, eyes flitting about.