Reza, in any case, found nomadic tribes at least as embarrassing as water pipes, if not more so, and took to luring the tribal leaders to peace talks or religious ceremonies, where he had them imprisoned or shot. This was the line of work my ancestors were in, before settling down in what was still a village a good stretch away from Tehran. Here, the family proceeded, rather typically for military stock, to bully, threaten and buy out the locals until they finally owned the village as a whole.
Unlike my father’s side of the family – very Blut-und-Boden, very happily belligerent – my mother’s was more affected and self-conscious but just as blessed, if not more so, with government connections, a healthy sense of opportunism and a more or less feudal standing, at one point even running a private railway on their estate. The family fortune was closely related to Shell discovering oil on the property in the early twentieth century. At this point, the only child, Zsa Zsa, had barely learned to walk, talk and ride horseback, when it was already decided that she was to learn four languages and study six more, including Latin, Greek, Aramaic and Sanskrit.
To this day, I do not know where precisely this piece of land might lie. In an interview with Paris Match, Zsa Zsa mentions Surkhana in east Azerbaijan. Various aunts and uncles, however, insist it wasn’t Azerbaijan at all, but somewhere in Georgian Abkhazia. I sincerely suspect they may be purposely misleading me, for reasons I cannot know. Stella has offered to contact friends in Baku who’d help find and perhaps even retrieve the estate, with the help of her own family lawyers if needs be. But I assume this would irretrievably place the land, and the resulting perks of all possible kinds, at the service of Stella and her many little schemes, networks and joint ventures, and am not quite convinced by her suggestion. At least not yet.
Be that as it may, one crisp November morning in 1917 the entire family leaves discreetly for France. Paris in the twenties is a confusing place, and the family soon blows everything it has on social clubs, fashion and cocaine. On 25 November 1941 Zsa Zsa becomes the third woman to join the French Foreign Legion and, over the next twenty years or so, she has a dazzling career as a driver and explosives operator in Algeria and Indochina, during which she loses half a lung, a part of her liver and four ribs, along with any sense of respect for human life, though she does win a Croix de Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur and an interview in Paris Match.
In the early sixties Zsa Zsa moves to Tehran to open the Promessa on what was then Palace Street, on the corner of Queen Elizabeth Boulevard, now renamed Palestine Street, on the corner of Farmer Avenue. Even in her sixties Zsa Zsa liked to spend most of her time entertaining her guests by the bar, or guepard hunting in southern Iran, or taking long evening walks with her nieces, including my mother. Every last Wednesday of the month she would buy them dozens of tiny wooden cages stuffed with disfigured, undernourished sparrows, so the girls could send them flying off into the sunset. The nieces all agree to become lawyers when they grow up.
Zsa Zsa also spends many an afternoon with friends from the SAVAK secret service. Together they sip Turkish coffee in her office, listening to Beatles and Bob Dylan tracks on her tape recorder. The pump don’t work cause the vandals took the handles. In the meantime, many other friends and acquaintances of Zsa Zsa’s – mostly smugglers, Maoists, Leninists, Trotskyists, Stalinists, ‘Third Way’ Communists, Social Democrats or Islamic Socialists – patiently hide from the SAVAK officers in the cellars of the Promessa. They smoke black-market cigarettes and struggle to keep their voices down as they debate the role and relevance of the Soviet vanguard within Iran, or bitterly accuse each other of countless forms of collusion and collaboration with all sorts of enemies within and without, the soothing sounds of the tape spools occasionally wafting down from the office above their heads. Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club band.
Stella tells me my colorful background – armed violence and dolce farniente – is exactly what she looks for in a friend and, especially, she adds warmly, in a colleague. She makes me tell the anecdotes over and over, demanding more and more details, sometimes expressing angry disappointment over facts revealed.
‘The desk was walnut? Walnut? Oh my God, walnut. OK, never mind.’
I’ve long realized these are the only occasions I’d ever see Stella moved by anything other than her own professional ambitions.
From its very opening night, the Promessa is frequented by Russian and Georgian exiles, disco glitterati, modish members of the gauche caviar, including the occasional Maoists, Neo-Leninists, Trotskyists, ‘Third Way’ Communists, Post-Stalinists and the odd Social Democrat; but also US Vice-president Spiro Agnew, the Shah and his Queen, the delightful ex-Queen Soraya and her alternating lovers, and Errol Garner, who indulges in an amour fou with Zsa Zsa. Rock Hudson is said to have very much enjoyed the onion blinis with sour cream and once tipped the waiter with an imitation gold Rolex. Freddy Mercury’s parents, the Bulsaras, are rumored to have met at the bar over Kir Royales and honey-roasted peanuts.
Late in the evenings, Zsa Zsa and her chums take to singing rueful Georgian gypsy songs, and together they cry and moan until they can’t lift their heads from the table anymore, so the microphone is propped up between two glasses and nudged into Zsa Zsa’s face while she sings and slobbers on the tablecloth.
Every once in a while the Shah insists on having the entire salon to himself. Simon, chef de cuisine, is obliged personally to taste the exclusively prepared appetizers in the presence of SAVAK officers. After his visits, the shah-n-shah-e-aryamehr, King of Kings of Aryan Virtue, a gentleman whose tie-pin collection costs more than Belgium, habitually leaves without paying.
His spouse, Queen Farah, on the other hand, prefers to have an aperitif among her subjects and appears incognito, in a gigantic pair of Christian Dior shades. But the SAVAK invariably secure the premises before she arrives, and the only subjects present are strategically seated agents and the family relatives themselves, obliged to pose as customers, politely enquiring about the vin du jour. This was pre-revolutionary Tehran, before things took a turn, not necessarily for the worse, in many ways indeed for the better.
The hangover is finally subsiding. Zsa Zsa’s swimming pool lies in the shade of an enormous oak tree, from which an occasional leaf or twig plummets down into the cool, dark water. Two men with shaved chests, gold chains and perfect tans are floating around on inflatable mattresses shaped into oversized cellphones. Visibly bored, they collect the twigs and stick them between their toes. A pop diva from Uzbekistan makes pleasant cooing noises from within the tape deck.
During the course of the evening, as the air cools down and mosquitoes and cicadas make their appearance, a drunken discussion on politics unfolds, reformism pitted against conspiracy, reformism as conspiracy, conspiracies tout court. Mehrangiz categorically stands up for the Iranian cause, the exemplary character of the Iranian model, the dignity of the Iranian people and the maturity of the Iranian masses, getting caught up in contradicting moral platitudes, until she finally falls quiet, staring down at her Charles Jourdan, sporting a furious expression on her peachy face.
Recently, in an uptown Hare Krishna restaurant, I watched Mehrangiz scream at a helpless waiter, a slender young man in fashionable spectacles and a dark orange T-shirt, for a period of almost four minutes.
‘A reservation? A reservation. Listen. Listen to me, darling. I’m not having any of your fascist propaganda.’
The restaurant fell silent, except for the waiter’s faltering apologies and George Harrison on the hi-fi. Goooh – vinn – daaa, said George Harrison.
Later, I can see Zsa Zsa standing by the garden gate, her ivory walking cane in hand, talking to five young men surrounding a small, bearded figure in a traditional kaftan frock. Having now given up trying to catch Mehrangiz’s attention, I walk over to Zsa Zsa, who introduces me to her ‘new neighbor’, who turns out to be the famous revolutionary clerg
yman Tarofi himself.
In the years following the revolution, Tarofi was a notorious political figure, a cleric, traveling judge and henchman in one. Along with other supporters of the budding Islamic Republic, Tarofi took it upon himself to rid the fledgling state of its enemies in an uncomplicated, down-to-earth manner. I recently learned that these enemies of the state – mostly the very Maoists, Neo-Leninists, Trotskyists, Post-Stalinists, Social Democrats, ‘Third Way’ Communists or Islamic Socialists who mingled in Zsa Zsa’s cellar and, later, at the Promessa – were betrayed by their own comrades, desperate to save their necks.
At the time, one of Zsa Zsa’s closest drinking buddies was an emphatic Trotskyist, who annoyingly insisted on calling himself Leo and who would sit on Zsa Zsa’s patio reciting early Soviet poetry, Supremacist machismo in delicate verse, duly translated into Farsi. One summer afternoon, Tarofi paid Leo a brief visit and dealt him a shot to the head in his own backyard.
These days, Tarofi is known to wear the same pair of vintage Kojak sunglasses at all times. His beard is remarkably thick, wooly and amorphous. For security reasons, he is continuously accompanied by his many sons. Tarofi insists on speaking English. He sounds a lot like Joe Cocker.
‘Europe: very good nice. Very nice, very good,’ he croaks. ‘Learn English in Birmingham.’
‘Birmingham. So you’ve been to England.’
‘Yes. Switzerland for gun.’
‘Gun.’
‘Yes. Switzerland. Engineers ABB. Brown Bovering.’
‘Guns for who?’
‘Guns for Iran. Very good nice.’
‘Yes. So you’ve been to Switzerland. Zurich or Geneva?’
‘Go Bern.’ He hesitates, smoothes his beard and adds, ‘You know Stella.’
I feign mild ennui. ‘Yes. Yes, I do know Stella.’
‘And Mr Badbakht? Have you met Mr Badbakht?’
‘I don’t believe I have.’
So we chat, in Farsi now, and all of a sudden Tarofi doesn’t sound half as imbecilic as he does in English, and I’m actually a little shocked to find him perfectly sharp and articulate. I eventually venture something like, ‘Mr Tarofi must have many anecdotes to tell about his exploits in the name of the revolution, he put in such great effort, may God give him life,’ and other standard platitudes, but Tarofi refuses to go there.
‘We’ve made mistakes, as everyone very well knows. What do you expect me to say? We believed in what we were doing. But things have changed. And so have we. Just be grateful for the mercy of a tardy birth, my friend. Do not judge history. Be grateful, that’s all.’
According to popular legend, after the victorious World Cup soccer game against the US some years ago, Tarofi saw dancing couples and unveiled womanfolk on the street and wished to express his approval. ‘I share your happiness,’ he grunted at them. When the dancers recognized him, they formed a circle around Tarofi, clapping their hands and jeering, ‘Hajji’s gotta dance, Hajji’s gotta dance.’ Tarofi, confused and disappointed, returned home to his many sons. Now, he turns back to Zsa Zsa, asks her a long list of questions on irrigation techniques – getting so expensive, how are we supposed to manage, I remember when a precision spraying pump was half, no, a third of the price, and do you have any idea where I can get those German pruning scissors, simply the best – then waddles quickly off into the Karaj twilight, his sons scrambling after him like keyed-up groupies.
On the way home from Zsa Zsa’s, the taxi follows the Alborz mountains until it reaches the Hausmannian boulevards of west Tehran. It’s three in the morning, and the radio is playing a keyboard version of ‘El Bodeguero’. The landscape is punctuated by small concrete sheds and brightly colored neons of pink and green.
As we approach Zirzamin, I look up to my apartment, fourth from the right on the twentieth floor, and I am, as always, relieved to see the lights are switched off. Ever since moving here, I cannot shake the fascinating, compulsive fear of arriving home one night to realize someone has been, or still is, inside the apartment.
Since first hearing of Zirzamin, only months ago, I’m amazed to find it evolving into a playground not only for international architects in Le Coq Sportif but also for budding political scientists and their doctoral theses. What we have here, they like to say, trying to sound apocalyptic, enthusiastic and nonchalant at the same time, is a remarkable example of the urbanization of consciousness in Iran and the re-inscription of the concept of a modern civil society as we know it. Note that in Zirzamin, inhabitants from completely different backgrounds, rather than live in separate parts of town, share a single space and are actually forced to get along. Gradually, a common discursive practice emerges, you see, that does not bear itself as a grand narrative, but sets itself apart from the grands discours of both High Modernism and the Islamic Republic.
That’s if they’re the Anglo-American, cultural-studies types, with light brown Manhattan Portage backpacks. If they’re French, they walk around making diagrams and surveys on Heroin and Unemployment in the Ghetto Wastelands of west Tehran, C’est vraiment le Bronx, then publish it in the Monde Diplomatique, with an illustration by Edvard Munch. I am seized, captured by an overwhelming notion of lyrical acumen, gushing prose, seductive and smooth. But already sensing that, when the taxi stops in front of my block, I’ll be finding myself staring blankly at a motionless 0.4 mm Staedtler rollerball in my hand, I leave the notebook unopened in my inside pocket.
I wonder whether I shouldn’t move the gallery showroom to Zirzamin, Zsa Zsa the genius loci notwithstanding. Of course house and ghost went together, and of course it’s always thrilling to witness past dreams and nightmares weighing on the living. But nothing compares to the exquisitely fascist thrust of what I see through the cab window before me. Not even a zebra-striped anal passage figuring as an entrance. Zirzamin, I muse, dreamily reaching, after all, for my notebook, may well be the perfect allegory for anything I could possibly think of saying on Tehran, Iran or suchlike.
The idea, of course, is pointless. Genius loci aside, I agreed on everything with Stella long before, down to the very last detail, so it’s a little too late to change my mind. There are only eight weeks left until the opening, and Stella isn’t one for surprises, to say the least. Nothing that isn’t planned to mind-numbing perfection, from the content of the notebooks to afternoon tea at Tarofi’s.
Bygones
In my early teens, I lived with my parents in downtown Lagos, in a small and inconspicuous modern villa by the Ikoyi lagoon. One evening, just after my fourteenth birthday, my parents throw a welcome dinner for the new cultural attaché of the Austrian embassy. My mother spends most of the afternoon with the kitchen help, preparing the entrées. Cocktail egg-glazed vol-au-vents with oyster mushrooms, Peri-Peri vegetable choux puffs with chilli prawn salsa. The kitchen help is an agricultural science student from Ghana. Before taking a seat at the head of table, she takes great care to explain how to decorate the main course, pig roast. ‘Don’t forget to put parsley in the nose,’ she tells her kitchen helper.
Most of the guests are West German and Austrian diplomats sipping on gin tonics, dressed in multihued ethnic garments, their wives in white linen shirts and discreet tribal necklaces. Along the walls are Yoruba masks of massive, black wood, tastefully arranged. Sitting to one side of the table is our family friend and nextdoor neighbor, Tan Christenhuber, who is to introduce me to Stella some ten years later. Seated next to him is a Swiss-German businessman from Basel with generous sweat patches up and down his back. The conversation takes a relaxed and familiar course: Paul Simon’s Graceland LP, the ever-pending military coup – would do the country some good, you know, a stronger hand to guide it along – the new edition of short stories by Heinrich Böll, malaria prevention. So I heard primaquine makes you blind you mean chloroquine oh yes chloroquine exactly well I gave mine to the steward I mean they are more robust than us you know. They’ve been through a lot I can tell you.
When the door finally swings open, the kitchen h
elp is standing in the doorway with generous bundles of parsley shoved up his nose and a pig roast on a silver platter.
‘Fabulous!’ shouts the Swiss-German, and a drop of red wine trickles out of his left nostril as he giggles and splutters into a napkin.
The blinds in my Zirzamin studio apartment are usually rolled down, admitting only cinematic, piercing shards of sunlight. The room is almost always empty save for a 1964 Corbusier sofa, a matching armchair, a portable Sony 220R and a Rebutia Aureispina cactus. A stack of olive-green notebooks forms a small pile under the armchair, next to which is a coffee table piled with several vintage ashtrays and fashion and design magazines, and printouts of several recent emails from Stella.
Pinned to the wall of my studio, just above the coffee table, is a large medallion, a cast bronze plaque with ‘Indochine’ inscribed above the silhouettes of three elephants – a gift from Zsa Zsa – and a Polaroid snapshot of Stella in a turquoise turtleneck and a satin paisley headscarf. Beneath the photograph is a frumpish, tacky postcard of Ho Chi Minh, waving happily at the camera with a senile grin on his face.
I turn on the Sony portable, switching to CNN for a habitual audio backdrop of jingles, headline fanfares and the subtle accents of globalized newscasters with Nescafé complexions and quirky surnames. For varying acoustic ambience, I at times resort to the BBC, Al-Jazeera, MTV Asia or East European soft porn channels, although this is now rare. I fear I may sooner or later give in to those alluring scenes of physical indulgence in Romanian pine forests and sparse Bulgarian bedrooms. The risk of one day catching myself in front of the screen with a box of Kleenex is a possibility I find humiliating and rather terrible.
I pour myself a scotch and add a shot of pomegranate juice, then switch over to the BBC. The newscaster is commenting on a press conference in Sacramento, a wry and unmistakable touch of irony in his voice. At the conference, an elderly Japanese-American is speaking to a cluster of amused journalists, most of them giggling, smiling and whispering to each other. The Japanese-American in question is a Hollywood tattoo artist awaiting trial for tattooing Japanese curses and obscenities on his unknowing customers, many of them celebrities. His scheme was exposed during Marilyn Manson’s Tainted Japan tour, when the local press commented on the tattoo around Manson’s navel, saying ‘Please Insert General Wu’s Chicken Here’.
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