In the Walled Gardens

by Anahita Firouz

  “My son’s no Communist, if that’s what you mean!” said Mr. Bashirian. “He loves his country. He wouldn’t betray it.”

  “No political affiliations?” asked the journalist.

  “He’s never been trouble to me in any way. He wouldn’t make trouble. It’s not like him to cause grief or indignity.”

  “Holding a political belief is no indignity,” said the journalist.

  That struck me in a big way, as it did Mr. Bashirian.

  “He’s in prison for nothing,” repeated Kamal Bashirian.

  “He’s a prisoner of conscience, yes?”

  “You ask again if he’s political. How many times shall I tell you? He studied so hard he barely had time for anything else.”

  The journalist threw a sidelong glance at me. “What did he do for fun?”

  “Fun?” said Mr. Bashirian. “What fun? He studied.”

  “Did his friends tell you anything?” the journalist asked.

  “The one who came by that night, he calls regularly. But there’s nothing left to say. Several of them used to come to the house to study for exams. They stayed until all hours, and I fed them. That’s a tough university. My son passed all his exams with flying colors. The others looked up to him.”

  “Who’s the friend who calls?”

  “Kazem — he’s a nice boy, religious, very composed. He belongs to an association of Islamic students. He came to see me with a girl. She was nervous. In fact, high-strung. Several of their friends were taken that day. They’ve disappeared.”

  “Did the girl say anything?”

  “She had tears in her eyes when she spoke of Peyman. She was angry.”

  “What about?”

  “She detests the regime.”

  The journalist’s eyes sparkled. “Really?”

  “She said a lot of things in anger. She’s young. She thinks she has all the answers. Thinks she can save the world. What do you expect?”

  “She’s his girlfriend?”

  “My son’s not the lovesick type!”

  “What was she angry about?”

  “Censorship. The meaningless propaganda of the system, so remote from the people. The mindless westernization of our society. The fascist overtones of the Rastakhiz Party. The hyped nonsense of the White Revolution. I don’t know. The student arrests. She went on and on. Very indignant, very angry.”

  “Did your son ever speak that way?”

  “He’s quiet. Nearly withdrawn. He likes to take pictures. I showed Ms. Mosharraf some of them. He’s much better with a camera than with words. SAVAK took his albums when they came to the house. And some letters.”

  “What was in the albums?”

  “Photos of his travels. I think there’s something there they want to use against him.”

  “Like what?”

  “Something. Otherwise why would they take them?”

  “Is there something in the letters?”

  “He wrote me wherever he went about the color of the sky, the fishermen of the Gulf, the plants of the desert. He took pride in such things. I treasure them. I’ve devoted my life to him.”

  “If he’s as withdrawn as you say, he might have been withholding information from you.”

  Mr. Bashirian turned to me. “There he goes again. And they accuse us of believing in conspiracies. They’re no different!”

  I did not translate this.

  The journalist smiled blankly, shrugged. “Tell me about your son’s friend — the one who calls you.”

  “He’s a scholarship boy from Kerman. Quiet but intense. His father’s nearly illiterate and owns a grocery store back there. The boy used to come often for dinner. So shy at first that he always hung his head. Completely lost when he came to Tehran. Recently he looks like he’s found a new sense of purpose.”

  “What does he think?”

  “How should I know?”

  “You’ve never spoken to him?”

  “Of course I have.”

  “Anything political?”

  “Well, once. He was at the house, waiting for Peyman. There were just the two of us. He told me we’ve gone from feudalism to a society enslaved by Western capitalism. He spoke politely. He said there’s only one great enemy: imperialism and its local collaborators, who rule through propaganda and terror. Like SAVAK — a secret police trained by the CIA and Israeli Mossad against its own people. He said we’ve lost our self-respect and identity, and that only Islam can restore that to us. Because Islam inspires a sense of duty and struggle and self-sacrifice.”

  “An Islamic Marxist?”

  “There was no talk of Marxism.”

  “Perhaps he was being tactful,” the journalist said, not without irony. “What about the girl who visited you?”

  “She seemed quite fond of my son. I don’t know. She was nice to come. No one else did. She stayed late. She kept talking. She wouldn’t stop. In the end I got tired. She was very excitable. Quite outspoken about the regime. Fearless, actually, to say such things.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, she called them —” Mr. Bashirian paused, reconsidering. “She said they’re monsters and rapists and bloodsuckers and . . . torturers.”

  The journalist leaned forward, taut with attention. “Interesting . . .”

  Mr. Bashirian sat back, stony.

  The journalist jotted things down. Then he mentioned one of our writers in exile, released from prison after sixty-four days, thanks to international pressure. The journalist smiled at Mr. Bashirian as if to say this interview could do the same for Peyman. “It’s damning stuff he’s written abroad about the regime and its torture chambers.”

  Mr. Bashirian and I hadn’t heard about the articles.

  “I met him in Europe,” the journalist said. “He’s consumed with rage and loathing. He speaks ferociously.”

  Mr. Bashirian said, “That’s what they want to hear about us abroad?”

  “He’s a cultured man, an intellectual. With a scathing commentary about the evils of your history and kingship all the way from Cyrus the Great” — the journalist referred to some notes — “through Anoushiravan and Yaghoub-e-Leis and Shah Abbas and Agha Mohammad Khan and Reza Shah to the present. In fact, he calls them murderers and monsters! Each and every one.”

  “Really?” said Mr. Bashirian, red-faced. “We can’t do anything right!”

  The journalist threw up his hands, as if to say it wasn’t his fault all our illustrious kings had turned out monstrous. He quoted in-criminating excerpts from his notes, edifying us in an aggressive fashion. Mr. Bashirian looked more and more uncomfortable by the second.

  “Your compatriot.” The journalist shrugged. “I’m just quoting.”

  “Has he got anything to recommend?” said Mr. Bashirian. “Anything constructive? Criticizing is a religion for us.”

  “Tell me, then,” the journalist asked him. “What do you think?”

  Mr. Bashirian went blank. “It’s not what I think that’s important.”

  An awkward pause followed, then moments of silence beyond decency. His answer hovered like a pathetic affliction. The journalist was stretching time for effect, toying with Mr. Bashirian to make a point.

  “To be perfectly objective,” the journalist said finally, “his facts check out. I think he makes a good case for this terrible despotic trend in your history —”

  “You should talk, as a European!” Mr. Bashirian snapped back. “Your history’s pillaging and murdering and colonizing others over whom you’ve built your cities and museums and mighty industrial world. You lecture us with your two-faced humanism. Your exploitations have ravaged the world!”

  I’d never seen Mr. Bashirian like this.

  “Of course, anything disparaging about us is always convincing!” he continued, breathless. “Every time we slander and disgrace and slash ourselves to pieces, it’s interesting to you. It’s what you want to believe. It confirms all your darkest suspicions about us in the first place —”


  Mr. Bashirian’s voice broke off. His hands were trembling.

  The journalist shook his head. “Look here, SAVAK has taken your son. He’s in prison. You say they’ve —”

  “You think I don’t know what you want?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Please! You want me to make a fool of myself by spilling out my guts or to watch me dig my way out of this great big historical hole of ours by confirming what some writer told you in Europe!”

  “I only mentioned him because —”

  Mr. Bashirian was seething. “He’s the perfect example of the treachery of our intelligentsia. I’m dumbfounded you find him a remarkable source. That you have such bad judgment! You mean you’re all that gullible? It’s the worst kind of indignity I’ve ever heard — damning the entire history of a country. It’s self-serving and cowardly and pathetic. You think that’s daring? You think that’s intellectual? It’s downright vindictive. A detestable way to make a point. If this man was imprisoned, so is my son! I love my son. You don’t understand. I worship the very dust he walks on. But I’m not going to tear down my whole way of life, my entire heritage, to make cheap and repulsive points. Not now or ever. Qu’est-ce que vous pensez? Qu’on est des sauvages et des idiots?” Mr. Bashirian was suddenly speaking in broken French. “C’est ça! C’est ça que vous cherchez?” He got up abruptly, jolting the table.

  “Time for me to go,” he said to me in Persian. “I’m leaving.”

  I rose. “Wait, I’m leaving with you.”

  The journalist stared in bewilderment. Mr. Bashirian looked out of the window at the tarred flat roofs of the city.

  “My friend feels he can’t continue this interview,” I said.

  “Why? Look — there’s been a misunderstanding. Please ask him to —”

  Mr. Bashirian was making his way to the door. He grabbed the handle, yanked it open, stepped out, disappeared down the hall.

  The journalist turned to me. “You stay at least. We can talk more reasonably, you and I. He’s being irrational. He’s too emotional. At least you and I speak the same language —”

  “And what language is that?”

  Abandoning inconsequential words of etiquette, I rushed down the hall. Mr. Bashirian was waiting by the bank of elevators, impatiently pressing the Down button. Neither of us said a word.

  Going down in the elevator, he kept shaking his head bitterly. I was waiting for him to say something, but instead I felt him pull away, a hostile, disquieting estrangement.

  Before we parted outside the hotel, he said curtly, “Forgive me if I caused you embarrassment in any way.”

  For the first time ever I felt he didn’t mean it, that he didn’t care anymore one way or the other, so much was his disappointment. I walked to my car with an astonishing sense of regret.

  FIFTEEN

  SHIRIN CALLED, all breathy on the phone, to say her boss had just left on Swissair for Zurich and she could leave the office early. Couldn’t we go dancing? Couldn’t we go uptown and dine on steak with pepper sauce at Chattanooga and watch people? I said I had a busy night.

  “I’ve got something for you,” she said, unrelenting but sheepish.

  It wasn’t like her to be sheepish or insistent. I asked what she had, but she wouldn’t say, so I said I only had one hour.

  Her white car was at the corner as usual. We drove up Pahlavi past the Hotel Miami and parked by the towering plane trees opposite Sa‘yee Park. She slid out of the car in her tight skirt and heels, and I followed, watching her strut across the sidewalk, swinging her purse and blond mane, straight for a café marked Nice Teria. The place was overheated and smoky, swarming with lovesick couples, mostly students, crammed into narrow booths, with textbooks stacked on the tables under dim low-hanging lights.

  We got seated by a window of smoked glass. Shirin asked for tea and creamy roulette, then pulled out a cigarette. As I extended the flame of the match, she cupped my hand, lips puckered, eyes sultry. I found the artful gesture comic. She had oodles of eyeliner and green eye shadow and mascara. In the other booths they had heads together, all snug and whispering. The waiter brought tea and cake, Shirin joking around with him. We ate creamy roulette.

  “I love these new terias!” she said. “Nancy Teria and Pretty Teria and Fancy Teria and two opening in Vanak.”

  I couldn’t have cared less.

  “You know, my English teacher at the Iran-America Society? He says teria is a word in Tehran, not in English. We laughed when he explained!”

  “You let another foreigner patronize you again? Don’t be a sheep. You love everything foreign. Careful, or you’ll turn into a cheap imitation.”

  “I’m already one to you.”

  She slid a parcel wrapped in brown paper across the table. “Jalal gave it to me. He said if he ever disappeared to give it to you.”

  The brown paper was unmarked and sealed with tape.

  “You opened it?” I said.

  “You don’t trust anyone.”

  “I know you slept with him,” I said.

  She flinched, slid off the bench. “I have a headache,” she said imperiously.

  She sauntered off, swinging her hips, waiters eyeing her appreciatively.

  I TORE OPEN the brown paper of the parcel. It was a book, The Selected Poems of Forough Farrokhzad. I leafed through, and a white unmarked envelope fell out by my cup and saucer, a letter.

  I tore open the envelope. A single sheet of white, unlined paper with five lines in blue ink. I recognized his lousy handwriting: “If something happens, call the number written in the book I gave you. Call at night after eleven. Tell whoever picks up: ‘I bring news from Varamin.’ He’ll tell you where to meet him. When you see him, give him this message: The group has been infiltrated by two SAVAK agents. Tell him one of them is Omeed, and the other is Shaheen. It happened after the assassination of Colonel Fotouhi. I’m Omeed. I’m under surveillance. Trust me — I trust you.”

  There was no signature. A letter to no one from no one, only the bearer imperiled. I was stunned. Omeed — that was Jalal’s code name? He was a member of the secret police? A Savaki? Impossible! I looked around, reread the letter. I couldn’t believe what I was reading, couldn’t believe I’d been misled. It came up against all my intuition and years of experience. I could have sworn he couldn’t be a Savaki, not in a hundred years, not Jalal — he could never sell out, he was no squealer. The very idea was absurd. Since when did they hire agents who quoted poets like Nima and Shamlu? A new breed. I couldn’t accept that I’d been betrayed. Ice in my veins instead of blood. He wanted me to trust him. He had some nerve! If he was a Savaki, then where had he drawn the line? Had he reported me, our underground group? Set us up, then lied about the SAVAK raid against us this summer? Already late for my class, I flagged a cab on the street.

  THAT NIGHT we appraised the progress of the New Left — the Trotskyists, the Golehsorkhi group, and others. The new round of mass arrests at Aryamehr and Tehran Universities, where students had rioted and been hauled away, though we’d been told none were our recruits. Dr. Hadi sat pale and shaken. He said they had arrested his niece, an assistant lecturer at a technical university. She had called him from a police station, told him hurriedly that she’d be away at the Caspian all week — which he knew was nonsense — then managed to give the number of the station before getting cut off. Immediately he’d run out and called another number from the street. An influential lawyer had accompanied him to the police station, where they were told she’d been sent home. Two hours later they’d finally found her at her downstairs neighbor’s, severely bruised and beaten. Dr. Hadi had examined her contusions and given her sedatives. She’d refused to go to the hospital. They had arrested her during a lecture by an activist writer that night. She and the other detainees had been taken to the police station, questioned; then several of them had been told to report to SAVAK headquarters the next day. She’d been put in an unmarked car with several men in plain clothes to drive h
er home, but ended up on a deserted road, where they’d clubbed her in the dark and abandoned her. What mattered most to her was this — they called her a fucking whore. “You fucking whore!” they said, beating her. “We know you’re whoring around with faculty and students. Corrupting them. Fucking whores, all of you!” She wept with rage telling Dr. Hadi. “You see? If I speak up, I’m a whore in this country.”

  Our playwright said, “I must write a play about this! Why a woman is mother or whore in our country. I’ll write it like a Greek tragedy.”

  We got down to business. The clique of three from the provinces, who had feuded, then split from us, had now appropriated the name of our paper. They had just come out with a very second-rate issue. Our reputation was at stake, so for the first time we decided to officially denounce them. We discussed details on coordinating the upcoming strike at Tehran and Aryamehr Universities, for the eight political prisoners on hunger strike, as well as at the Pars Technical School, where our feelers had formed two new cells. For the next three nights, and in different safe houses each time, I was scheduled to lecture preselected groups. Lenin, Kautsky, Debray, the politics of insurrection.

  I reported on my friend from the confederation, Majid, and how I’d settled with him about renting the garden by the Karaj River belonging to his uncle. We needed a covered truck to move our printing press out of town and needed to keep two volunteers there. We considered suitable candidates, tallied how much money was in our account at Melli Bank under Dr. Hadi’s name. Again I told them about Majid’s ambitions for the Left. Again they accused the Left in exile of being factional while supposedly promoting a coalition. Of snooping and fraternizing just to case their competition. Of being infiltrated and funded by foreign hands like the CIA and SAVAK. Of championing guerrilla warfare instead of political process. We agreed to stay focused and refuse to be swayed. These guys who come back from abroad are always patronizing and theoretical.

  TWENTY-FOUR HOURS LATER I still had the letter in my possession. It lay in the inside pocket of my jacket — I couldn’t leave it anywhere else.