We had looked. We didn’t.
He showed us the groupings: towns, portraits, vistas. Under this last heading we peered at everything he passed around, which didn’t look like much and wasn’t of anything in particular. Dusty spaces, lone trees, scrub brush, amber and purple horizons dawn to dusk.
“The charge was an obscene lie,” Ali concluded.
“They don’t worry about such details,” Kazem said modestly.
Ali leaned in. “Think about it. They already had a trumped-up charge against him. It carried a sentence. They claimed they had evidence, not that they’re obliged to prove anything! Then suddenly — they want him out. I keep asking myself why.”
“Maybe because they realized he was innocent,” I said.
He eyed me suspiciously, went on. “They call his father to prepare to come get him. But they ask about medication. What for? The next day they call in the evening and say Peyman is ill, and Mr. Bashirian panics. He was right to panic. I think Peyman was already dead then. Perhaps he’d died the night before under torture. His heart had stopped suddenly. It was a sentence carried out following a secret verdict. Even if it was an accident, what’s the difference? They’d managed to get rid of him quietly. So until when was he still alive? When they made the first call, or the second call, thirty-six hours later? Was he actually alive when they said, Something’s wrong, come right away? If he was, that’s good — at least they weren’t lying. Which means he had to die within the hour. By the time Mr. Bashirian got there. But what if he was already dead — and they called? That would prove there was a scheme. Pretty sinister. They had a corpse lying around and they call the father and pretend, saying, Come get your child! The coldhearted, shameless, lawless sons of bitches!”
“What’s your point?” Kazem said calmly.
“We must find out if Peyman was still alive the first and second time they called.”
“What are you talking about?” said Mr. Bashirian’s brother-in-law. “How can we? You kids are all the same. So idealistic.”
“Idealistic?” Ali said, incensed. “You’re his family. The only thing he left behind in this world. Go back to Komiteh. Pretend you believe the heart attack. Cry, plead! Whatever it takes. Ask to speak to the doctor. Ask for his photo albums, the diary. Say they’re precious mementos — all you have left of him. Can’t you do that?”
“For God’s sake,” Shahrnoush said, “you’re all so pushy!”
Ali looked to Kazem, then looked down.
“Who saw him alive?” Ali repeated. “Did they see him right up to the last day? Maybe another prisoner saw him. A guard. Forgive me for asking again, Mr. Bashirian, but what did you see?”
“I told you,” Kamal said flatly.
“I know.”
“When I got there, they kept talking about Military Hospital Number Two. I thought they’d already transferred him. They rushed me down a corridor. My legs felt wobbly. A man in a white coat came out of a room. He was a doctor and talked about a heart attack. How they’d called for an ambulance but it was too late — too late. We went in. He pointed to the steel table; the body was there on the table. He pulled back the sheet. Peyman was dead.”
There was silence. We shifted, uneasy in our seats. Ali nodded, tender and grave, disguising his considerable edginess. He wasn’t satisfied with the answer but let it go. Shahrnoush asked Kamal, “You’re ready to go back to Komiteh? Ready to face them again?”
“You go,” he said. “I can’t.”
She looked to her husband. “I don’t know how to talk to them. I mean —”
“Do what I said,” said Ali. “I told you.”
“It’s not so simple,” snapped the brother-in-law.
“You must begin somewhere.”
The brother-in-law looked away in stony anger.
The only way left was to see the lawyer the next morning. There was to be no more procrastination. They would have him write up the petition demanding an official inquiry into Peyman’s death. The sooner the better. None of us really held much hope.
“But you need prominent names,” Ali said. “Lawyers, judges, writers, anyone with balls left these days.”
Quickly he apologized, regretting the slip. Mr. Bashirian told him to gather up his photos and take them with him. “This house is no refuge from anything,” he said.
I WAS SPENDING more time at Mr. Bashirian’s house than at my own.
When I got back, the house was dark. On the console in the front hall by the antique French clock there was a list of phone messages scribbled in Goli’s crablike handwriting. Friends had called to thank us for our dinner party. As though I didn’t know all they wanted was to drag information out of me. We were the subject of the latest gossip in town. My in-laws had already called to tell me at work. My two best friends. And of course Pouran, from her grand central office — the hairdresser — early in the afternoon. I heard hair dryers whirring in the background, and the noisy chitchat of other women, bejeweled and fashionable arbiters of the city. Pouran repeated to me how the wife of the rear admiral was bad-mouthing me all over town, commiserating with Houshang for putting up with me. Who did I think I was? I’d insulted her husband, I was uncontrollable. Whose side was I on — the leftists’ and radicals’? Think of it, considering my family. What was I — playing pushy intellectual? Pouran quoted, suddenly prissy, sanctimonious. Taking advantage of the occasion. The very woman charged with maintaining the rear admiral’s mistress, now outdoing herself for the wife. From my mother-in-law and sister-in-law I got lectures on propriety and wagging tongues and the sheer stupidity of any political opinion. They were worried. Terrified of being out of favor, cut off from their only source of heavy income and oxygen — the right people.
Mother called with the uncanny prescience of a fortune-teller just as I stepped into my bedroom.
“What’s going on?” she demanded. “You’re never home.”
I sank into a chair, kicked off my shoes. Houshang wasn’t home again.
“Is your husband home?” she asked.
“He’s sleeping,” I whispered. “It’s late.”
“Why are you whispering suddenly? You’re hiding things from me.”
“Who could do that, Mother?”
“The phone hasn’t stopped ringing here. Your father is extremely upset! He doesn’t need this right after Sobhi’s death. What happened the other night at your party?”
“Nothing.”
“Who’s this prisoner?”
“He’s dead.”
“What’s going on with your marriage? I hear you and Houshang aren’t talking. I hear he doesn’t come home at night.”
I felt a rush of indignation. How did she know?
“Who says, Mother?”
“Goli reports.”
“She spies for you now? Since when?”
“Since I caught her in your bedroom in one of your evening gowns with your high heels and jewelry. I told her I wouldn’t tell.”
“Under what condition?”
“No condition. She’s been very forthcoming since that day.”
“I should throw her out.”
“It wouldn’t solve a thing. Anyway, she looked ridiculous. So what’s going on? Your father wants to know, the worrywart!”
“I’ll tell you tomorrow. I want to sleep.”
“Sleep — while we lie awake worrying ourselves sick! Just the sort of selfishness that runs in your father’s family.”
I heard Houshang come up after two in the morning. He slept in the guest room. Early in the morning he barged in for a change of clothes, his face and eyes puffy. He’d been drinking, maybe smoking opium with Iraj. On my dressing table he saw the list of people who had called.
“What a dinner party!” he said. “Everyone’s talking about it.”
“Thanks to that pompous upstart woman — who should be calling to thank us instead of gossiping all over town.”
“She’s waiting for you to call her and apologize.”
�
�What? Over my dead body.”
“I tell you,” he said. “You must apologize.”
He grabbed his clothes and walked out, slamming the door. War. Every step corrupting, distancing us from what it was we truly fought for.
TWENTY-NINE
THAT WEEK I got my passport. Jalal’s contact had been right: I wasn’t on the blacklist, not yet. So I had a passport for the first time, and now that I had it, I wasn’t sure I wanted to give it to Jalal. He’d asked me for it, but it wasn’t a request, it was barter. Ever since he’d informed me about the SAVAK raid against us, he wanted favors, each one more treacherous. I could see how they’d never end unless he left.
Early one evening his sister called me at work and said her shift was ending at Najmieh Hospital. She wanted to paint the town red. Dinner, the movies, one of those new cabarets. I got rid of her by saying I was leaving town. Mahastee called and said she had tickets to a lecture. Would I attend with her? She wouldn’t say where nor what it was about.
I had been scouring the papers, half expecting to see Jalal’s name any day. Ten days before in the evening papers: “Two Women Killed in Armed Struggle in Tehran — Simin Taj Hariri and Akram Sadeghpour.” Last week: “Bahram Aram Killed in Ambush on Shiva Street.” This week: “Mohammad Hassan Ebrari, Political Prisoner, Executed.” Then the long article stating officially: We have only thirty-three hundred political prisoners, and they’re all Marxists. In the next paragraph: Yes, we have torture. But we don’t need physical torture anymore, when we have psychological torture at our disposal.
What an admission! Obviously they don’t feel the need to win anyone over.
I took the bus to visit Mother. I sat with her and we smoked and sipped tea and listened to the radio. Zari kept to herself in the corner, sighing and brooding and blatantly ignoring me. When she left the room, Mother said, “Your sister’s turned mute ever since that husband of hers got beaten up that night in the street. She doesn’t even scream at the children anymore. If you ask me, it was better when she screamed. She’s told me it’s all your fault! Now he’s threatening to divorce her. You want to ruin her life?”
“Now it’s my fault?”
“She thinks I always side with you because you’re my favorite, even though I live with her. You beat him up! Didn’t you? Now go see what’s wrong with her.”
I was sick of the whole business, so I went out to talk to Zari. She was folding clothes in the other room and I asked if something had happened.
“He hasn’t hit you or the kids again, has he?”
She turned, red-faced. “Leave us alone. You don’t respect us.”
I asked if Morteza had shaped up. I felt sorry for her. Did she need money?
“My husband provides for me! I don’t need your handouts. What happened to our two bits of land in Varamin? It’s all I’ve got left in the world. Why can’t you do something? Why can’t you get that illiterate peasant Doost-Ali to cough up our money?”
“He’s always got excuses. The crop was diseased this year. He spent all the loan from the Agricultural Bank on a family pilgrimage to Mashhad. He swears he’ll pay us next year.”
“It’s already been three years! I hope he drops dead. Aren’t you ever going to sell the other land? The six hectares? I want my share! I want my money.”
“No one’s buying. I told you I’m going there this week.”
“Morteza claims you hide things from me and you’re going to sell the land and keep the money.”
“And you believe that?”
“He says you’re jealous of him. Because he’s bought a car and he does business and has a household with a wife and children!”
She wanted an upheaval again, to calm down. I turned to leave.
She turned shrill. “Don’t tell me he’s right?”
“How could I possibly be jealous of him?”
“Of course, Mr. Intellectual, who reads books and thinks big thoughts and prefers educated women. Morteza swears you’re a leftist!”
I wanted to see the children and sit with Mother, but I was tired of Zari’s harangue. So I told Mother I had to go see a friend in the hospital. “Which hospital?” she asked quickly. I said, “Alborz,” thinking of Mr. Bashirian. She asked why I’d bothered to come if I only intended on staying a measly half hour. Zari kept the children in the other room, away from me. From the doorway they stood and watched me leave, moping, their baby faces pressed against the door frame. Who knew whom they’d turn against once they grew up.
On the bus, lurching past the shop fronts along Baharestan Square, I thought about Jalal and Peyman Bashirian. It’s brutal how a man loses his innocence. One day he wakes up and looks around and it’s gone. Not only is it gone, but instead he has self-loathing for having ever possessed such innocence.
I called Mahastee from the repair shop in Shahabad. I’d left my radio there and it was ready. I was curious about this lecture she’d told me about the day before. She gave the name of an intersection that wasn’t near any concert or lecture hall. “That’s where it is!” she said. “See you at six.”
THIRTY
ICAME BY ORANGE TAXI to avoid parking. It was already getting dark. Reza was at the traffic light. I paid the cab, showed Reza the address I’d copied from the sheet at Mr. Bashirian’s house. “What is it?” he asked. I said it was the lecture the radical students had talked about that night at the Bashirian house. I’d decided to take the risk. I wanted to find whatever it was that I kept thinking I couldn’t find. I couldn’t have said to him on the phone that I felt compelled. I said if he didn’t want to attend I’d understand. I was sorry to have dragged him all the way there for nothing.
“No, you’re not,” he said.
I stared into the street. I was annoyed at myself for talking in circles. I knew attending the lecture would be considered a betrayal. I was incensed that it would. I’d called Reza because there was no one else to call.
I pointed to the address. He knew how to get there. He said it couldn’t be a school or institute but was probably a private home. They’d let people trickle in without attracting attention. He warned me about showing my face in such places, about informers in the audience. How such meetings and so-called lectures got raided. Sometimes they sent thugs. He was testing me.
“We’re not far from Qasr Prison,” he added.
We were in the backstreets.
“See,” he said, “you haven’t noticed anything. Those students, strolling at corners, like that one there. They’re on watch. They call ahead if there’s a raid. They see them coming.”
He told me that all those years ago after they left Morshedabad, it was in this neighborhood that his father had rented an old house for them. His mother had loved the house — the porches, the interior courtyard, the persimmon tree — until she’d had to give it up. I started counting the number of students we passed. One of them, holding a book, stared back when Reza greeted him. Then he pointed down the street, walked back to the corner. The address turned out to be a large brick two-story private house. At the front door a young man told us to go through the corridor, turn right, cross the courtyard, and turn right again to the back. I felt that fluttering sense of panic. Inside, the house seemed vacant. We went down a half-lit and empty corridor, across the tiled courtyard, where people stood talking — they stared, and I stared past them — then right again into the next house in the back, going through two empty front rooms, following others.
We were ushered in from a small side door. The long room was already packed, and people were wandering down the aisles on either side to find seats. Rows of folding chairs were set tightly squeezed together on the bare concrete floor. They’d done a pretty crude job of knocking down a wall in the middle to make a larger room. A metal roll-up garage door took up part of the far wall. Two impatient young men were directing people to get them seated as quickly as possible. A woman in a navy scarf and overcoat and trousers handed out leaflets, murmuring, “Please photocopy this and help circulate it.�
�� There were hardly any seats left. Reza spotted two way in the back. We grabbed our leaflets and made our way. The audience was all under forty and the majority looked like students. Reza joked about attending a lecture in a garage.
A young man in the front, in his early twenties, scrutinized the gathering, the commotion and the incessant reports coming from the sentries outside, the unanticipated number of people who had turned up. People were now cramming in, sitting on the floor along the aisles and in the front.
The speaker raised a hand to indicate they would start. He said if everything went as planned, there would be two lectures. He would give the introduction. He said they had a surprise lecturer, looked around the room and at two men standing in the doorway, then informed us that this guest hadn’t arrived yet. “He will!” he assured us. Then he turned to the young man beside him, who was unshaven like himself and had been attracting a great deal of attention, and, referring to him as one of their most inspiring speakers, introduced him as the first lecturer.
The young man looked back out to us stonily. He said that since the internal coup and split-up of their organization, the rival Marxist group had betrayed comrades to SAVAK. They’d shed the blood of their own brothers! They now called Islam a petit-bourgeois ideology! Tonight the two main speakers would directly address the rift, the ideological divide, the treachery.
In the Walled Gardens Page 27