‘Might actually do you some good, hayati.’ He smiles, raising his eyebrows at me as he sips on his Tanqueray and tonic.
I stand up from the barstool and brush past Tan, causing him to drop his glass, then turn around and kick it across the corridor to the far end of the bar, small, glittering chunks of ice, glass and lemon spraying out in all directions. I instantly regret the gesture, but proceed to the elevator and make my way out.
In Lagos, our family villa by the lagoon had steel bars on all the windows and padlocked metal doors in strategic places throughout the house. My bedroom was on the second floor. One morning, towards 3 AM, restless and tense after lying awake for five hours listening to the loud, steady burr of the air-conditioning, I stood up and walked over to the window. I peered down through the steel bars into the parking lot, where the night guard usually sat dozing on a green lawn chair or reading Frederick Forsyth novels. The night guard was an illegal immigrant from Chad.
I was amazed to see the night guard lying on his back under a thick blanket, sweating heavily, his face contorted as he frantically fondled his crotch. I watched him for a while, then hurried across the room to my desk, picked up a domino stone and took aim as well as I could through the bars across the window. When the domino hit him on the cheek, the night guard immediately pulled up his trousers, threw off the blanket, and started hurrying up and down the entire length of the compound, looking for the trespasser. Eventually he gave up and took to disbelievingly searching the cloudy night sky, still clutching the domino stone in one hand. I felt very pleased with myself as I fell asleep, and the next day I walked up to the guard, waved a domino in his face and laughed.
‘Remember last night?’ I asked, bouncing the wooden object up and down on the palm of my hand, ‘You do remember, don’t you?’
Several years later I was to visit the neighborhood once again, on a nostalgic holiday trip with my parents. As we were having an afternoon coffee with our former neighbors, enjoying their Schlaatemer Rickli pastries dusted with sugar, fresh from Basel, we were told about a recent armed robbery in the compound. Apparently, the day after that robbery, our one-time night guard, the one with the toothy smile, what was his name, the fellow from Chad, poor guy, well he had neither an alibi nor a residency permit to show for himself, so he was arrested as a scapegoat, and shot without trial, poor guy. Remember how sweet that boy was, he used to gobble those malaria tablets four at a time, primaquine, or was it chloroquine.
It’s raining in Tehran, and the whole city smells of wet concrete dust, like a moist sleeping bag. Or a paperback novel that hasn’t been opened in decades. I call Mehrangiz, who patiently listens to me elaborate on Lebanese seafood, the video artist in black leather, the talk, the diplomats, the eerie encouter with Uncle Tan. She then apologizes for not having much time, but perhaps I could call her again the next day. Slightly piqued by what I take to be a demonstrative show of indifference, I call her at half-past seven the next morning. Did I wake you? Hope I didn’t wake you. Sorry.
When she hangs up on me, I redial her number, only to hear an infuriating busy signal. After five consecutive attempts to reach her, I take a cab to block 39A, where I run up the stairs to her eighteenth-story apartment. Seeing as she refuses to open the door, I make a deafening scene in the hallway, buzzing the doorbell, kicking the door and screaming incoherent threats and sexist insults until the neighbors ask me to leave.
‘And so on and so forth, buzzing the doorbell, kicking the door and screaming until Mehrangiz’s neighbors threaten to call the cops.’ I’m having lunch with Tarofi at the Bol Bol Burgers branch on Vali ‘Asr Square. ‘The neighbors were all, like, you better get out of here, young man.’ Tarofi is once again dressed in his clergyman’s garb and Kojak sunglasses. We’re seated by a window overlooking the square, with its grubby water fountains set in enigmatic geometric configurations, and its gaudy Dubai-inspired façades. I’m having a Ceasar salad, while Tarofi is chewing on a Pizza Special. He scoffs and jeers at me for my early-morning tantrum, what a touchy oriental soul you are, then abruptly changes the subject. ‘So the reason I’ve been trying to reach you all this time.’
Tarofi has been talking to his friends among the upper echelons of the cultural bureaucracy, and the Promessa, they have assured him, won’t last long without the appropriate official backing. I had best pay a visit to the Ministry of Culture, where I could get in touch with old acquaintances and secure all the suitable stamps, seals and signatures for the file. ‘Oh and Badbakht will want the envelope with the Türknet DVD,’ Tarofi croaks. ‘Just leave it with his assistant.’
‘Are you sure it’s necessary?’
‘Sure what is necessary?’
‘All this paperwork.’
‘Of course it’s necessary. How long have I been trying to tell you this?’
‘I thought that in an oral culture, contracts don’t mean anything.’
‘You’re starting to sound like that Newsweek correspondent. San or Tan or whatever her name is.’
‘I was joking.’
‘Good.’ We finish our Zam Zam colas, watching tired businessmen chew on pizzaburgers and mumble into their cellphones. Petite students in white headscarves and thick make-up sit with their boyfriends, mostly wearing light-blue imitation Ralph Laurens and slicked-back hair. I cannot think of anything to say. ‘I like your new cape. The blue, it suits you.’
‘Thanks. Whatever.’
Walking out of the restaurant, I’m once again mesmerized by the airy elegance of Tarofi’s clerical robes wafting down the aisles, climactic Tehran soft rock in the background. None of the other customers seem to notice.
As we part outside the diner, Tarofi raises his sunglasses to look deep into my eyes. ‘And don’t worry about a thing. Just look into the matter tomorrow morning, and everything will be fine. And then give me a call next week, I’ll be back from Rotterdam. Very good nice.’
I offer all the standard formulae of gratitude and self-denigrating humility I can think of, promising to call him next week, then take a long walk down Enqelab Boulevard, past countless shoe stores, another Bol Bol Diner, the City Theatre, and the cat-calling transvestites off Hafez Avenue and Student’s Park, which is filled with cruising gay men, but also with families and straight teenage couples who do not seem to know, or care.
I buy a plastic cup of thick, unsweetened honeydew melon juice and sit on a concrete bench, watching the six-lane traffic through the oak trees along the sidewalk. Sitting at the other end of the park bench is a veiled woman in her forties, clutching a leather shoulder bag that says ‘Bye Bye Kitty’ in bright red. We sit silently side by side on the bench for roughly fifteen minutes, then I finish my juice and take a cab back home, reminding myself to check the lights in my apartment from afar as we approach Zirzamin.
Carrying the padded envelope with the Türknet DVD in my inside pocket, I spend the next two days visiting one government office after another, chasing Tarofi’s contacts (Mr Badbakht? He has just left for Tabriz. I’m so sorry.) or bartering with their substitutes (Can’t do anything for you without the consent of the honorable Mr Badbakht, but you might try Mr Kambakhsh.) and drinking black tea, shaking hands and smiling as I politely answer endless questions on European, US and African conceptions of Iran and discussing Hobbes, Hayek, Popper and Wittgenstein, whom the bureaucrats like to quote with an affected and mildly ostentatious air about them, particularly the testy, self-conscious Kambakhsh, in his notoriously oversized, thick-rimmed reading glasses. Really it would be wonderful if I could just have ten minutes of Mr Badbakht’s time, or could you at least give him this envelope when you see him, thanks so much.
The bureaucrats draw fleeting comparisons between thinkers Persian and Arabic, though without discussing the latter in detail, assuming I do not know a thing about them, which indeed I do not. So they prefer to ask for entertaining comparisons between Tehran and Munich, Tehran and Togo, Tehran and LA – and so what do you prefer, Iran or the US? – and then move on t
o extensive questioning regarding the multifarious opposition groups in Berlin, Hamburg and Stockholm, until I’ve assembled all the stamps, signatures, government health warnings, public safety certificates and gallery permits I think I might possibly need.
Later that day, I receive an email from Tan Christenhuber’s personal assistant at the Zurich I-CON, saying the Promessa project looks ‘interesting as well as engaging’. Unfortunately, however, a colleague is already covering the Middle East, a doctoral thesis on the politics of queering in public baths in Tangiers. So they had to consider this carefully but would be in touch.
Hello. I trust you’ve left the DVD with Badbakht’s secretary, magnifique, merci monsieur. Very good nice, as they say. And say hello to Mina thank you. Please do not forget to wear the Zahedan three-piece, I was going to mention something about that but cannot remember what. And FYI check out the link to the latest issue of the Lufthansa Gazette. Column entitled ‘Things to Remember, Places to Go’. Kisses, S
Things to Remember, Places to Go! Starting spring 2002: The Promessa Gallery Tehran! The Promessa is a sexy arty gallery space right in the heart of the Islamic Republic, founded by curator Tirdad Zolghadr. For a time, people were worried Zolghadr might be a real fascist because he’s known to wear military uniforms and lets himself be filmed walking around Tehran like a robot. And his exhibitions are always bold and orderly!! But Zolghadr adores living in a very multicultural corner of Tehran; he loves the diversity. That’s not very fascist at all! He also donates money to AIDS/HIV+ charities. That’s not very fascist either!! He just doesn’t like ‘pompous liberals’, or ‘elitism’, and reacts against that. Zolghadr wants to be ‘normal’ in one sense – partly in order to get attention from people who wouldn’t like ‘wacky’ curators – but then be subversive from within that position. He’s not even really posh. He comes from an extremely modest background. His acquired poshness is just part of his surreal sexy art pose. And why not? We met Zolghadr in London just a year ago, after his talk at the Photographer’s Gallery. As always he was very polite and kind and signed our leaflets (‘with love from’) very courteously and we couldn’t think of anything to say to him – there was no point complimenting him because he must hear it all the time. Zolghadr is a committed promoter of young artists and seems to delight in so being. So maybe you can’t even say he’s part of an elite art world. Although he is. Zolghadr once said: ‘I want the most accessible modern form with which to create the most modern speaking visual pictures of our time. My reason for curating exhibitions is to change people and not to congratulate them on being how they are.’ A noble aim for any man to have! Daily flights Frankfurt > Tehran page 89.
A day later I’m woken by a telephone call from Badbakht’s secretary. Mr Badbakht urgently wishes to see me regarding a minor and yet pressing detail. A signature on a photocopy that wasn’t legible, and other minor matters, if only I could pass by the office this morning, or in the afternoon at the very latest, Mr Badbakht would gladly explain everything to me in person. As a matter of fact, I cannot remember this particular secretary of Badbakht’s, a woman with a surprisingly husky voice, sounding much like the color-blind Zahedan transvestite with the skin disease who is to paint the SACs, and for a moment I wonder whether this isn’t a prank on his part, or Stella’s.
I take a cab to the Ministry the next day, but after walking up and down the aisles for nearly half an hour I still cannot seem to spot the right office, and when I ask a bored recruit on guard duty, stationed next to a water fountain on the second floor, he claims that Badbakht was actually transferred to a new post in Isfahan sometime last year. When I insist I was summoned by Badbakht only yesterday, the recruit smiles warm-heartedly, shrugs his shoulders and says it really isn’t his problem in the first place.
Sitting in Mr Kambakhsh’s office an hour later, a tulip-shaped clock and standard A4 color photocopies of the Revolutionary Leaders on the wall, Kambakhsh calmly explains that, needless to say, the recruit must have been referring to some other Mr Badbakht. Perhaps. For Kambakhsh could indeed vaguely remember two colleagues from the accounts department being transferred to Abadan last March, indeed, but as for the Mr Badbakht I had recently met, actually, incidentally, he, too, had left his post here at the Ministry of Culture, it was all very unexpected and unfortunate, just last night. A case of some embarrassing, some very embarrassing material found in his drawer. But in any case, he was not in a position to speak about the events here at the Ministry, which, needless to say, always touched on some question of national security or other. And that aside, there was the privacy of Mr Badbakht’s family relatives to take into account, poor fellow, may God be merciful upon him.
‘By the way, some are saying that at one point you handed Mr Badbakht a file, you see, on, well, on a video CD I believe it was. Or a DVD, perhaps?’
‘A DVD.’
‘Well, that makes sense, in a way. For it is actually precisely what Mr Badbakht was saying. He was saying you hadn’t handed him anything at all. But be that as it may, and quite needless to say, it’s pretty obvious you didn’t. How could you have gotten into his drawer if it was double-locked, right? Luckily for us, we had a spare key. But you see, sir, people like the honorable Mr Tarofi, they really want the best for you. Contrary to the other riffraff you associate with. You see, we’re still waiting for a gesture of good faith on your part. Something assuring us of your honesty and good intentions. Needless to say, it really needn’t be something we couldn’t do ourselves, just a personal gesture of some kind. I’m sure you know what I’m getting at.’
‘A gesture of good faith on my part.’
‘I think you do know what we’re getting at. After all, you did grant us your signature.’
‘I wasn’t aware it had anything to do with the Ministry.’
‘Be that as it may.’
I decide to nod, grimly and knowingly.
As I’m leaving the Ministry, Zsa Zsa calls from Karaj, suggesting I drop by for a party that very evening. The cultural attaché of the Chinese embassy is attending, ‘a cultivated man well known for his generous support for local cultural events’, particularly in the field of tribal arts and local handicrafts.
I switch on the portable TV, first to Balkan Bang, just long enough to see another horse carriage occurrence in the old parts of Prague, though with different actors, then switch through several local channels. I eventually sit down to watch a half-hour amateur documentary on a wedding ceremony somewhere in Zimbabwe. At several moments during the film one sees elephants, gazelles and giraffes standing nearby, looking as if they were witnessing the ceremony from within the bushes. It’s already dark by the time the film ends.
The plumbing chirps at me as I shower. I take ten minutes to choose a shirt to go with the three-piece suit, then put on Puma running shoes and call a cab. Just before leaving the apartment I change into another shirt.
In the taxi towards Karaj I roll down the window, light a cigarette and consider the chances of Mehrangiz being at the party, soon finding myself rehearsing familiar fantasies regarding her wide hips and ample thighs, her buttocks and shoulder blades. I flick cigarette ash off my sleeve and try to think of something else.
I’m wearing what is actually my favorite three-piece, with generous seventies lapels and thick stripes of light brown and dark gold. I found the suit in Zahedan, in a thrift store in an industrial warehouse. The entire front section of the warehouse was filled with clothes donated by the International Red Cross. The back, where I bought a nineteenth-century handcrafted milking stool, contained antique jewelry, antique doorways and artful wooden furniture. These had been looted from abandoned Afghani households, or hastily sold by the fleeing owners to middlemen with contacts in Zahedan, where other middlemen shipped them to feel-good ethnic art fairs in New York.
Zsa Zsa’s living-room is a den of peaked doorways, whitewashed walls, embroidered pillows, Qashqai carpets and an enormous brick fireplace. Playing in the background is Portishead and th
e NY Philharmonic. Live in Roseland. I help myself to pistachios, sliced celery, olives in ground pomegranate and potato chips with garlic yogurt. The blackness of darkness forever, says Portishead.
On the dinner table near the hearth I notice the cultural pages of a reformist daily, where someone has highlighted an editorial on Mehrangiz’s upcoming show at the Italian pavilion in Venice. Her piece, according to the cautiously critical editor, was a seven-minute loop called ‘Forced Marriage’, showing seven bearded men in collarless white shirts, chanting war slogans and chasing seven veiled figures up and down sand dunes. The piece was filmed in the Sonoran Desert.
As I walk out into the garden, I can see Zsa Zsa and Cyrus sitting by the far end of the swimming pool with their backs to the house, between them a young woman whom I only recognize as I draw closer, thanks to the sweet, musky smell of Chloë. The moment Mina sees me she starts patiently searching her leather satchel for some visibly indispensable object or other.
Aside from two thumb rings and several dozen silver bracelets up and down her arms, Mina has a pair of Oakley sunglasses suspended from her ears, dangling below her chin in a manner now fashionable throughout Tehran, both north and south. Seated next to her, Zsa Zsa, in her customary corduroys and checked shirt, is in an unusually talkative mood, telling favorite anecdotes from her student days, the larks and capers in thirties Paris, when she discovered how to withdraw considerable amounts of money from local banks by using alternating account numbers and surnames.
‘So this was how I paid for my university tuition, my nightlife, my cocaine and, later on, even for a car, even though I never owned a driver’s licence in my life, I mean I never needed one at the Legion,’ she says, wagging her ivory walking cane. ‘And so one night, it must have been the fifties, this copper, ce flic, he asks for my driver’s licence, and I’m thinking oh hell what now. So I just show my Iranian birth certificate and say I’m really sorry everything’s written in Farsi.’
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