The days in the collective cellblock go by surprisingly quickly, mainly thanks to friendly conversation with alternating clusters of monarchists and Mojahedin, over endless rounds of cigarettes and hot tea. The Mojahedin always snip the filters off their Love Deluxe before lighting them, while the monarchists have an obvious partiality for Menthols.
The cellmates greatly enjoy speculating on each other’s cases, including mine.
‘Six months, and you’re out of here. No worries.’
As I take in this particular piece of educated guesswork, I savor a fierce, crushing burst of self-pity rushing through me in thick, hot waves.
‘Six months? Must be about right.’ A second prisoner lights his Menthol with a tiny match and blows the smoke towards the ceiling. ‘Six months and he’s out.’
‘But if they decide to pin something on him, they can do anything. You don’t want to be convicted of spying. Khoda nakoneh.’ The cigarette smuggler from Kurdistan runs one hand over his bald head in small circular movements, as if he were polishing it. ‘So don’t sign any confessions or whatever. Bad idea. Just wait it out. Six months and you’re out.’
‘You’re scaring him.’
‘I am not scaring him. Really I’m not.’
‘And you’re doing it on purpose, you pimp.’
‘I’m telling you, I’m not scaring him. And please stop calling me a pimp.’
‘Alas, there is precious little I can do about your being a pimp.’ The monarchist looks over at me, stubs out his cigarette on an empty packet of Menthols, then stands up and leaves, idly scratching his ears as he walks away.
‘So the liability here is Badbakht.’ The smuggler is once again running his hand over his gleaming head. ‘Being a real goody-two-shoes. A real bleeding-heart reformist. Thinks he’s fucking Gorbachev.’ He produces a packet of Montana Lights and starts removing the filter of his last remaining cigarette with his thumbnail.
‘Yes’, I nod, conveying what I hope is a persuasive impression of someone in the know. ‘I thought so. I always suspected.’
He grants me a smile of candid condescension, trenchant but patient, almost affectionate, as if he were humoring a drooling infant. ‘Just tell Stella Badbakht’s assistant is quite forthcoming.’ He lights his cigarette, blowing the smoke towards the concrete ceiling.
Though Iran boasts several revolutions in the past century alone, popular, vanguardist, secular, religious, violent and mellow, in various combinations, none of them worked themselves out all the way, at least not in the sense of people leaning back and saying, oh, that was well worth it, good stuff, let’s celebrate at that new Mexican place, and I’ll finally wear those cufflinks you got me for my birthday. This may be the reason for the regime’s insistence on how revolutionary it continues to be. Revolutionary Leadership, Revolutionary Guard, Revolutionary Court, Revolution Square, Revolution Avenue, on and on.
Needless to say, the establishment is about as revolutionary as the proverbial Che Guevara T-shirt on Carnaby Street, as quaintly theatrical as it is thoroughly middle-class, and this, of course, is arguably the ruse. At some point, the very idea of a revolution became so laden with musty, hackneyed connotations, no reasonable Iranian adolescent would have dreamed of letting out his Oedipal fury on the state. To the extent that reformism was long considered the more critical and, as it were, revolutionary option.
What Iran needs most, I sometimes quote Stella as saying, is not the fury of yet another government overthrow, but a ‘new and improved public discourse’. You don’t need self-styled guerillas throwing eggs and light bulbs at abandoned police cars to have a revolution. All over the world, soft-spoken political science professors in Burberry overcoats and annoying John Lennon spectacles are now insisting that a revolution is ‘any change in the rules on how rules are changed’. A long-term, meandering, fatuous affair.
As I once confided in Stella, I’ve always considered it a shame that reformism ran out of steam so quickly. I always enjoyed endorsing the reformist position rather forcefully, since it offered a rare opportunity to be cutting-edge while keeping all options open. But my favorite conversational case in point has always been the White Revolution, which sounds like a Soho design studio, but was actually the Shah’s sixties top-down modernization program. A blend of political cosmetics, sweet intentions and ferocious authoritarianism, not exactly a revolution in the egg-throwing, soap-box orator sense of the term. And yet, one of its groundbreaking accomplishments was to launch a new tradition of furious urbanization, with cities quadrupling every other decade or so, prompting a flood of careless, quick-cash renditions of the International Style.
Zirzamin, on the other hand, was meticulously planned. If Shekufeh, for example, was an improvised, anti-monumental assemblage of bunkers, Zirzamin was a city at the end of history, masterminded by a heroic vanguard, sealing the happy, irreversible triumph of progress over traditionalism. Colossal slabs with Messianic pretensions, standing around in the middle of nowhere. People sure won’t like it, you can picture the architects snickering over their dry martinis, but they’ll have to get used to it.
From beneath the lower rim of my blindfold, I see agents in loose-fitting suits of turquoise, beige, maroon and scarlet come and go, all of them asking precisely the same questions, over and over. The interrogation has taken three hours thus far. Where was the film material we shot before ‘fire bombing’ the Courthouse, what did we think of the regime, who were we filming for, how did I meet the girl, did I have sex with her – come on pal let’s hear it you can tell us you know – what did I know about her father, who were we filming for, how did I meet Mehrangiz. And Stella: how come I, of all people, knew someone like Stella.
At noon, I’m handed buttered rice with beef, tomato and lentils in a picnic bowl. Shortly after lunch, before resuming the interrogation, the agents casually pick up a conversation slightly more gentle in tone.
‘You know we saw that women’s rights stuff on your bookshelf. Ebadi and Kar and Lahiji and the rest of it. Are those yours or are they Mehrangiz’s?’ I hesitate but then claim I borrowed the books from Cyrus. ‘Look. Ever been married to an Iranian? Nakheir, nope, you haven’t.’ I receive a chummy clap on the shoulder.
‘Iranian men, we’re all pussy-whipped. That’s what we are. We’re one big Pussy-Whipped Men’s Club.’ In the background, I can hear several agents chuckling and mumbling their approval. Vallah beh khoda.
This is followed by more of the same. Where was the film material, what do we think of President Khatami, what were we taking pictures for, how did I meet the Stella girl, what did I know about her family, why was I in Kuala Lumpur last year, what was I taking pictures for. After which, all of a sudden, a very different sort of discussion starts taking shape.
‘Work for us. You know how to build websites? And make video films?’
‘Perhaps.’
‘We need you. We need people who speak foreign languages. None of our boys know how to work outside Iran.’
I’m reminded of Zsa Zsa’s stories of incognito SAVAK agents sitting in the Promessa thirty years ago. ‘Gorillas in a tanning salon,’ as she once put it. ‘To think they were trained by Mossad. What a waste of time. Of taxpayer’s money.’
‘And about your friend Stella, see, we know a thing or two about her. Did you know she set you up? Did you know she’s using you? Plotting against you?’
‘Yes. Right. She hates me. And so do Dr Dre and Vanessa Paradis. They’re plotting against me too.’
‘Dr Dre and Vanessa Paradis.’
‘Never mind.’ Two minutes pass by in silence. I can sense that one of the men is sitting only inches behind me, while another is slowly walking back and forth across the cell, when the door swings open, and someone walks in with a kettle of tea. I can make out the scent of Earl Grey, and I can hear someone pouring the liquid into small glasses.
‘Look. Let’s not make this any more complicated than it already is. Just go visit the opposition groups abroad. Get the name
s.’ The interrogator’s breath is tinged with buttered rice and lentils. ‘Create a database. Get us some material, some names and addresses. There’ll be money. Lots of it.’
Upon which, rather than attempting to look like a hero, or a Foreign Legion guerillero, I haggle, lie, misquote, understate and hyperbolize, offering vague promises and obscure suggestions, until I finally sign a statement.
I am willing and able to contact Iranian opposition groups abroad and inform the Information Ministry on all that I come to know during the course of my meetings with the members of said groups.
I’m now led back to my cell, another chummy clap on the shoulder as I leave, the warden gently holding my upper arm, guiding me down the corridor. ‘And lay off the feminism. It’ll do your head in, vallah beh khoda.’
Perhaps, I try to reassure myself as I spread out my blankets on the spotless cell floor, perhaps it was precisely what Stella was meaning for me to do all along. Perhaps it made sense. Stella aside, it was evident that Zsa Zsa would have done the exact same thing. Surely. Surely she would have none of the masochistic heroics that straitlaced resistance would have demanded. Zsa Zsa, who is willing to compromise on anything but the firmness of her ironies. And on her enlightened sense of self-interest. She’s a shrewd, scheming mercenary, not some gullible foot soldier.
Which is why Zsa Zsa would never allow for the Promessa to be misused as a platform for any sort of high-minded cross-cultural nonsense. Which, in turn, is why I suggested the project to Stella in the first place, over that latte, or latte macchiato, back in Houston. But tonight, I’m no longer so sure about the tortuous ethical subtexts at stake, let alone what Zsa Zsa would have made of them. As I wrap my thin blanket around me, I decide it would be impossible to untangle the correct criteria of honor and credibility in this case, at least here and now, preferring to slip into a favorite fantasy of going down on Mehrangiz, somewhere out in the Schwarzwald.
Two hours later, as I’m finally falling asleep, my interrogator bursts into the cell without ordering my blindfold to be tied into place, holding a file in one hand, tense and apprehensive, chewing on his lower lip and wiping the sweat from his brow with his shirtsleeves, leaving minuscule patterns of moisture on the creased, off-white tunic. It’s the first time I’ve seen the interrogator face to face. Red cheeks, freckles and light brown hair, framing an anxious look of doe-eyed bewilderment. Not exactly what I pictured in my mind’s eye as the silky deep voice started crooning trick questions and terrifying threats from behind my back.
I watch the interrogator open his file to withdraw a small slip of paper and hold it under my nose, a blank check addressed to me in name, the recent ruminations on credibility and the family name come back to me with crushing velocity. This is when the door suddenly swings shut, and the interrogator is trapped in the cell, alone with me.
‘Where’s the bell?’
‘What bell?’ A long, uncomfortable silence follows. ‘You thought we had a bell?’
‘So what do you do to call the warden?’
‘Take the blue slip of cardboard and hang it outside the door’.
He follows my advice, initiating another long, awkward silence. We can hear the sounds of the cells next door, the languorous mumble of men with too much time on their hands, the occasional chink of teaspoons and small glasses. ‘What do you do then?’
‘You wait.’ He waits.
He then starts calling the warden, gradually getting louder until finally he’s screaming, banging his pudgy fists against the steel door.
Both Mehrangiz and I are released the following morning, after being driven to the very Courthouse we’d been filming a week before, to be tried by a young judge who apologizes for the inconvenience and also confirms that the Mojahedin had been filming the premises the day before they attacked the Courthouse, which is what led to the ‘senseless suspicion and paranoia’ on the night of the arrest.
‘It’s all a little embarrassing, I’m sure you’ll agree.’
I briefly wonder how the judge, or anyone else, (including Stella, for that matter) might be in the know about the Mojahedin’s video archives, but don’t bother to ask.
‘I have also been talking to our consulates and embassies in Europe and Africa,’ the judge tells us in a slow, paternal tone of voice. ‘Just to see what they might have in their files. And you are indeed guilty of no criminal action whatsoever. Neither here nor abroad. But I would simply like to insist. In future’, he pauses, looks at us sternly, ‘when in other parts of the world, do try and maintain the honor and the dignity of our Islamic Revolution. Please try and remember this.’
He bids us farewell, and as we’re leaving the courtroom, he mumbles, as if in passing, that any future offers to collaborate with the authorities in any way, ‘threats or blackmail, referring to any deals of any kind’, should be reported back to him personally. Mehrangiz is puzzled by the judge’s remark, but I don’t offer to explain or comment. I slip my check into a Moleskine, making a note to hide it somewhere safe the moment I get home.
It’s early March, but Tehran is still covered in snow. During the week in Shekufeh, Tarofi left nineteen messages, while Cyrus and Zsa Zsa each left three. Stella didn’t call, but then again she’s the type who rarely leaves messages. Some four dozen Afghani immigrants have asked the neighbors whether I’d be hiring waiters or kitchen help for the Promessa, and the interior designer dropped by twice, slipping handwritten notes under the door. I consider postponing or interrupting the renovations, or even calling them off altogether, finding it surprisingly hard to concentrate on these matters. I try to reach the interior designer at her office, but she’s never available, and I cannot find her phone number. I pour myself a small vodka. There’s no pomegranate juice in the fridge, so I make do with some ice cubes.
By and large, I never fail to make a point of scrupulously making my bed every morning, then invariably spend a good deal of time with my hair wax, conditioners, shaving foam, dental floss, scrubs and skin creams, eyebrow tweezers, aftershaves, deodorants and the odd disinfectant. I track the gradual depletion of creams, pastes and liquids in the respective tubes and flasks, carefully and, some would say, almost lovingly estimating the pending date of replacement by new plastic receptacles, as if they were esoteric calendars or Kabbalist treatises, marking a particular passage of time of great and mysterious consequence or referring to some similarly momentous date in the future.
As I shave my armpits, massage my temples, scrub my forehead and file my nails, I usually peer from my bathroom window into a living room on the nineteenth floor of the neighboring block. Ever since moving into my Zirzamin studio, I’ve never spotted any tenants in the apartment opposite, though I can make out two Louis XV couches, an armchair and a coffee table, in an otherwise empty and deserted living room.
Several days go by. My bathroom plumbing makes odd chirping sounds. No matter how long I live in this apartment, every morning, I will always stop what I’m doing and think, for a moment, that I heard the sound of birds nearby.
Over the following days I read several John le Carrés, skim over the printed pages of an Elizabeth Hardwick without really reading anything, watch four games of Iranian league basketball and record a CD compilation of seventies Tehran mambo for Zsa Zsa. After which I drive out to her farm and sit on the roof, smoking my Golden Love Deluxe cigarettes and wondering whether any of my art-scene acquaintances knew of my time in Shekufeh. And whether they’d be impressed if they did. From the rooftop, I can see a group of teenagers who spend most of their afternoons at the farm, smoking pot and kicking a soccer ball back and forth across the courtyard as Zsa Zsa watches from the veranda, her head cocked patiently to one side.
Wish you were here. It’s high season, and the Casino Carrasco is filled with elegant men and women playing roulette, and drinking Medio y Medio, a dreadful mixture of sticky white wine and cheap champagne, and all are high on Prozac, Tavor or Lexotanil. Algunos nacen con suerte, otros en Uruguay. Munich next week. T
here’s also Tan’s I-CON (Institute for Conjecture). Remember: Promessa as a blend of critical theory and critical practice, an interdisciplinary knowledge transfer, mapping and recontextualizing the space of the other. Along these lines please. Hope you said goodbye properly to your Khuzestani friends, possum. As for Kalegondeh: Rahati’s new girlfriend is apparently at the National Library reception desk. And when are you coming to visit? As I said I’m back in Munich next week, and San will be around, too, we could all go for Schweinshaxen etc. More anon, Gestella.
As I contemplate the I-CON website later that night, I’m puzzled by what seems to be an intellectual clubhouse with an interest in a surprisingly wide range of topics and questions, points and problematics, from comparative tea ceremonies to Peruvian Trip Hop, to amputee video artists, to shipworker labor unions in Cyprus. I write Dr ‘Uncle Tan’ Christenhuber a friendly email suggesting that the Promessa ‘maps and reinscribes the spaces of alterity in a critical attempt to call into question disciplinary boundaries and Eurocentric cultural premises’ and that I’d be very willing to drop by for a visit as soon as possible, and by the way long time no see, would be good to see you again after all these years and so forth.
The Information Ministry has scrutinized and photocopied my notebooks, one by one, page by page, and will probably find a translator to work on them in due time. Which, knowing Stella, was presumably the whole idea in the first place, what with all the exasperating edits and maddening rewrites on almost every single page.
A number of the older entries under ‘Networking’ I now have trouble fitting into any coherent storyline. Consisting largely, as they do, of disparate anecdotes, quotes and educated guesses regarding the Shah’s abrupt, unanticipated rise to power, the Shah’s abrupt, unanticipated fall from power, the Mojahedin as rhizome, the Mojahedin as home-grown agents provocateurs, Soviet psychic research and remote viewing experiments, Glasnost, White House radiation and typhus poisoning schemes, the Kulturindustrie in the eyes of the flamboyantly suspicious Frankfurt School, JFK, The Matrix, Eyes Wide Shut, Pynchon, De Lillo, the technically unfeasible phone call from the American Airlines Flight 77 seat telephone on September 11, Project Paperclip, Mein Kampf, Mount Weather antigravity research, Nazi relocation schemes and the Heideggerian Gestell.
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