Softcore

by Zolghadr, Tirdad;

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m only breathing.’

  ‘No, you’re panting.’ Inside the apartment, she’s distracted by the view from the balcony, murmuring something in Swiss-German I cannot decipher, huarageil, in various intonations, huaraGEIL, HUarageil, hu-a-ra-geil. I take her hand and walk her back inside, towards the living-room table. As I pull down her trousers and fluorescent pink panties, I’m reminded of what Cyrus once told me as we were discussing sex and women and relationships and such, sharing a packet of Golden Love Deluxe at some party at Zsa Zsa’s. Once the underwear’s off, it’s jackpot time. The rest is afterthought.

  I turn her around, and she bends over the table, propping herself up on her elbows. As I slip into her, I instantly feel I’m about to ejaculate, so I pull out again in an effort to postpone the inevitable, and awkwardly come between her thighs. I quickly pull up my jeans and Armani cotton underwear and hurry over to the toilet to get a Kleenex box, wishing she would leave. She smiles half-heartedly at me as she takes the tissues, but I don’t smile back.

  ‘Let’s go for a beer,’ I mutter. She looks relieved, nodding and buttoning her pants.

  ‘Sure.’ We stand side by side at the window for a moment, gazing down at the city, then I open the apartment door, letting her pass in front of me in a gesture of old-school courtesy. The moment she’s outside, I slam the door shut and lock it behind her.

  I wait for five seconds to go by, keeping perfectly still, then look through the spy-hole. She’s standing outside, waving at me with a sarcastic, patronizing smile on her lips, then turns and makes for the elevator, shaking her head and rearranging her combat fatigues as she walks down the hall. I try to spot her at the foot of the building as she walks away, but then impatiently return to the living room to grab another VHS tape.

  Later, in the elevator on my way down, I’m joined by a drug addict who smells of Fisherman’s Friends and old sweat, wearing a light gray sweater saying, ‘Have a Great 98’. She screams at the door in Swiss-German, alternately scratching two infected pimples on her brow, until the elevator reaches the second floor, where she leaves, wiping small traces of pus and blood on her sweater. I watch her lumber towards the fire escape, wondering whether she might potentially grace the Promessa entrance during the opening – ‘Unique – Made in Switzerland’ – but the door closes on me. I may have to ask Stella.

  I step into the office of the Shiite Society on the ground floor of a light purple, postmodern office block in an industrial quarter of west Zurich, in the middle of an evening lecture. The room is covered in polyester flags of black, red and green, all with Farsi slogans, rallying cries, proverbs, logos, aphorisms, emblems and icons of Shiite bent and disposition. We Said YAA ALI, and Love Commenced.

  I’m obliged by the friendly but insistent lecturer to sit down, don’t feel uncomfortable, join the others, you’re welcome here, my dear. So I clumsily take off my trainers and sit down on the thick Qashqai carpet with parallelogram patterns, next to a group of men in baggy blue jeans with innumerable zippers and buckles, sporting waxy hairstyles and the distinct smell of Paco Rabane. I can hear them occasionally mumble to each other in Arabic, which explains why the lecture is held not in Farsi but in graceless, faltering German. The rest of the audience consists of parents with small children on their laps, ostensibly Swiss women and their, to all appearances, Iranian husbands. They listen attentively to the lecturer as he ruminates on the theological pros and cons, the dos and don’ts of anti-Judaism, the men in jeans interrupting him every two minutes or so, inquiring, arguing and objecting, quoting the Qur’an in fluent Arabic.

  As they leave the building after the lecture and the evening prayer, they check their phones for messages, then brutally yank their heads back and forth in different directions, loosening their neck muscles.

  ‘Forget Zurich. What are you doing here anyway?’ One of them asks me as he nestles a phone between his shoulder and his right ear, rolling up his shirtsleeves. ‘I mean, we’re talking Switzerland here, right? Which isn’t even part of the European Union. It’s a gap, a hole in the middle. Know what I’m saying.’ He grins and offers a Barclays 100.

  ‘Did you know the Swiss used to be mercenaries? All over Europe, all these kings and warlords used to hire these raging, screaming Swiss. That was the reputation, the Unique Selling Point. For centuries. And this, you know, at least this has some dignity if you think about it. Now: same nasty hostility, but without purpose. Just frustrated and furious in some weird way.’ He focuses on his phone. ‘Allu? Allu?’

  Though sympathetic, I cannot take the angry young men very seriously, and decide they may be deliberately misleading me, for reasons I cannot know.

  Walking towards Stella’s apartment block, I look up to see that the lights are switched on, the windows forming a splendid row of small, bright rectangles against the night sky. I start running to the main door, slowing down as I reach the entrance, and pressing the elevator button as calmly as I can. On my way to the top floor my muscles contract in a shrill, jarring manner reminiscent of the first few hours in Shekufeh. As I step out into the corridor leading to the apartment, I pause once again, trying to breathe the air all the way down into my stomach.

  Inside, the rooms are all dark. Everything in the apartment is precisely as I remember leaving it. Only the light bulbs are hot to the touch. I try to reach Stella, but her phone is switched off.

  On the Swiss Airlines flight back to Tehran the inflight entertainment package offers a ‘Punk Rock Retrospective’, which includes not only Sammy Hagar, Boston and Oasis but also the Red Hot Chili Peppers, a band I find more revolting than ever, if only because it reminds me of my road trip with San. I try to concentrate on the notebooks but wind up listening to the Chili Pepper tracks from beginning to end, immersed and attentive.

  I rarely turn away from what I find repugnant. I invariably stare, transfixed, every time I comes across magazine close-ups of medical anomalies, particularly those of acute skin diseases, of body parts covered in cysts, crusts and craters. In like fashion, I’ve never been able to resist the view of zoographic blowups of fleecy invertebrates devouring oozing insects. Or that of used Kleenex, white tennis socks, bushy armpits, bestiality, Bill Viola, Times New Roman font, or Che Guevara coffee mugs. Nor can I look away from newsreels of lethargic black Africans with houseflies crowding into the corners of their eyes and mouths.

  The Swiss Airlines stewardess slowly approaches, row by row, with a tray of plastic cups of Coke and orange juice. I take off my headphones and wait, continuing the list of visual delicacies in my mind, both seductive and repugnant, charming and putrid. Greenpeace sympathizers, Bollywood aficionados, art deco shopping malls, pacifist bumper stickers, women who talk about their period, women with narrow hips, sports culture theorists, Central America, anal sex in hot weather.

  ‘Coke or orange juice?’ The stewardess looks very much like San, only shorter. I wonder why she’s addressing me in English, despite my speaking to her in flawless German only minutes before, when I asked for an additional refreshing towel, and before that, as I was, incidentally, hesitating between the Frankfurter Allgemeine and Die Neue Zürcher Zeitung.

  ‘Orangensaft, danke, vielen Dank.’ When she returns with the food, I cannot help but clutch the Neue Zürcher Zeitung demonstratively in front of me, holding it aloft like courtly insignia at a medieval jousting spree. ‘Chicken or fish, sir?’

  ‘Huhn oder Fisch? Huhn, danke.’

  Just before landing at Mehrabad airport, she asks me to ‘please put your seat in the upright position, sir’. I ignore her and pretend to stare out the window at the vast, murky brine of blinking streetlights below. She reaches over to push the button on my armrest and yanks up the back of my seat without comment.

  Opening

  At home, I already have three messages from the I-CON secretary on the answering machine, insisting I phone the I-CON as soon as I can. I take a cold shower, check the tubes, pots and flasks by the sink, turn up the air-conditi
oning and dial the office number. The I-CON secretary answers the phone.

  ‘Congratulations for what must have been an impressive project presentation,’ she remarks. At first I cannot quite tell whether she’s being sarcastic. ‘Dr Christenhuber was impressed. But you do know, this is a scientific endeavor. To have enough critical distance, enough perspicacity, all that is key, you see. And you do realize you have to pull this through. You have a responsibility. Can’t rely on us here to do the job for you. We’re not Mummy and Daddy, you know.’ The cinematic touch of the situation is not lost on me, and I smile as I reach for my cigarettes, enjoying the role of the impulsive stud who makes things hard for himself, the bumbling, martyred Casanova.

  ‘So listen, Dr Christenhuber has looked through your file, and there are a couple of things you need to take care of.’ Could I possibly send a fax including a biography, a CV, a budget, four local and two international references, twelve hi-res color pictures of the locality, a floor plan, a safety record and a medical health certificate, along with a full description of the Promessa and the politics of its performative and socio-spatial coordinates, its epistemological raison d’être, its post-, anti- or subcolonial positioning, and a signed document stating that 50 per cent of all monetary profit over the next four years would be transferred to the Zurich I-CON as compensation for its overhead costs.

  ‘And by the way, Dr Christenhuber will be on Arte this coming Wednesday, in case you’re interested.’

  Alright mate how are things? You’re not writing back but I’ll give it another try. Keep thinking back to those good old days and I wonder what’s become of you. Since writing you last I went to Laos which was realy nice and “chilled”, as they say, then Vietnam which was more hectic, then Cambodia which I was not realy prepared for, lots of poverty and amputees due to the recent history. Plus I got food poisoning and got stranded minus cash in a monsoon-drenched seaside resort four hours on a dirt road with insane moped driver away from nearest bank. Probably the first time I thought what the fuck am I doing here. Plus missed two flights so far through being too relaxed with check-in times. Was offered a night with this 17 year old I met but to my surprise I declined the offer, it was just soo easy, one days flirting and voila. But also I was mashed on Tequila slammers at the time. Next to Malaysia which is totally and utterly different again, especialy the east coast which is more strictly Islamic. Went to amazing islands called perhentains, and went to nice beach there, very “chilled”, diving, snorkeling, 43 degrees, turtles, nature, ahhhh, I am a hippie really, despite my age. Drawback: being stared at like a zoo animal everywhere there. Now on west coast in Penang. more chinese and Indians with fantastic food, can’t stop eating. Going to see a Bollywood film called Shakti tonight. Have taken so many pictures but not developed them yet but secretly think they will be exhibited internationally as shining examples of untrained photographic brilliance, a natural eye that captures the essence of a moment so pure, using only the cheapest cameras known to man. Mosquitos are a fucker and they love me. But discovered that tiger balm eases the sting completely. Bought two tailored suits in Vietnam and had them shipped to Oz by slave children on rowing boats. Difficult to have wanks here, especially since so many bronzed bodies around and so few masturbation opportunities. Feel like instead of sweating, will secrete spunk soon. Take care. Your one and only Uncle Tan

  Tan Christenhuber was first introduced to the family when I was barely eight. I quickly grew to enjoy Tan’s company far more than that of my friends and classmates, not to mention that of my parents. I admired the stark contrast between the snow-white hair and the dark tan, and the way his skin wrinkled into countless creases and folds as he smiled and told stories about the St Pauli red light district, or about the gun-toting, single male Norwegians of Minnesota, or the Olero Creek oil plant: all the corrupt officials, the slothful workers and their screaming housewives, who keep threatening to occupy the oil fields, ‘get it all back now-now’.

  ‘Diese fetten afrikanischen Mamas’, he’d say, ‘I bet you they’ll do it. Perhaps not now-now, but sooner or later they will – and hey – who can blame them? Whooo can blame ’em? Their oil. Hey guys, we’re only here to help you tap this stuff until you can do it yourself. But the bottom line is: their oil, not ours.’

  When Zsa Zsa first paid us a visit in West Africa, I remember passionately impressing upon her what a generous, wonderful man Uncle Tan was. ‘The only cool friend you guys have. I like him more than Mom and Dad and you and everyone else put together.’

  Upon which she looked at me sternly from above her reading glasses, saying we should never trust ‘them’, that there was a Nazi in ‘every one of them’, and that she’d prove this to me in due course. Shortly after which she invited Tan and his German colleagues from the oil plant to an informal dinner, serving them beef stroganoff in Colman’s mustard powder and Merlot, with steamed red cabbage in cumin and grape vinegar. After the crème brûlée for dessert, I watched Zsa Zsa empty one imported Zuger schnapps after another, teasing the men as she drank, ‘You’re being outdrunk by a female, a meek and humble Oriental woman, you do realize? What would your buddies say if they saw you now?’

  Just as I was nodding off to sleep on my chair next to Tan’s, Zsa Zsa started singing the Hitlerjugend ditties she’d learned back in occupied Paris. Blonde und braune Buben passen nicht in die Stuben. Buben, die müssen sich schlagen, müssen was Tollkühnes wagen. Buben, sie sind von herrischer Art, Sturmvögel gleich ihre fröhliche Fahrt. By the end of the evening, the engineers are screaming Hitlerian ballads, tears streaming down the creases of Tan’s suntanned cheeks. Deutschland, du wirst leuchtend stehn, mögen wir auch untergehn. Zsa Zsa was watching me as she sang. After a long afternoon nap, I decide to call Tarofi and invite him out to lunch at Bol Bol Burgers again. Surely he’d be curious and grateful to hear about Zurich and Marguerite Duras, the I-CON secretary and the Shiite society, but Tarofi grimly refers to ‘urgent neighborhood business’ and ‘crisis meetings’ and says he doesn’t have the time, though perhaps next week, or after the Promessa opening. He doesn’t seem interested in Christenhuber, nor in Zurich, and has already heard of the Shiite Society on the Förrlibuckstrasse.

  ‘They’re only about three dozen devotees. Maximum. But they’re constantly begging and pleading for more and more funds. The guy, Pishraft, that cleric with the glasses, he calls the Tehran offices at least once a week.’ The foundation, Tarofi explains, had never been successful at making themselves heard, let alone gaining respect among the key players in the Tehran network.

  ‘Anyway, it’s not very interesting. But there was something else. Just listen to this. I’m doing all this research, gender studies research, as they say, and I found this book on women in medieval Christianity. Late-medieval European Christianity. Listen. Did you know that in medieval England the women were veiled? Are you listening? I mean, they all had to wear these head garments in public, you know? And then there were these women who shaped their hejabs into horns. They’d stuff them with wigs. And others had tails they attached to their dresses and dragged along behind them in the street, and these bishops would condemn them as devils’ nets that lure and destroy the souls of men and all that.’

  ‘I had no idea.’ I grab a cigarette, light it, stub it out again.

  ‘Neither did I. Listen.’ Tarofi starts reading aloud in his jagged English. ‘“In the woman wantonly adorned to capture souls, the garland upon her head is as a single coal or firebrand of Hell to kindle men with that fire.” A firebrand of Hell to kindle men with that fire! And this bishop, this guy, he offered special pardons to anyone who harassed and humiliated the girls in public. It was the adornments, the zeynat itself, see, not the exposure of flesh, that got them going. “They put on their head hair that is not their own or unnatural color on their face. For, to put hair on the head or give a new complexion is the special concern of God.”’

  I’m having trouble concentrating on the conversation. As I stare out the window at the d
usty drizzle over the Karaj freeway, I can hear the plumbing chirping at me through the bathroom door.

  ‘And this bishop keeps insisting how, when Christ was nailed to the cross, he was naked. Or this: “Even Mary, which hadde a premynence, above all women, in Bedlem whan she lay, at Crystys birthe no gret dispence, she wered a kovercheef, hornes wer cast away.”

  ‘Might be fun doing that at the opening. All these women in horns and tails and stuff.’ There’s a brief pause at the other end of the line.

  ‘Dress them up in horns? What on earth for? Like a carnival? This is gender research, do you realize that?’

  ‘Of course I do. It was just an idea. You know there’s this historical re-enactment festival in Isfahan, and, I mean –’

  ‘I shouldn’t be reading you this stuff. Puts the wrong ideas in your head. Go do your installations or something. I’m serious.’

  I start telling him about the Komplett Bar, thinking it might spark his curiosity, but Tarofi only half-heartedly teases me again, what a true Oriental macho romantic you are, then insists he really has very little time.

  ‘Crisis meeting in half an hour. Serious row at the National Library. They discovered six prostitutes who were working in the men’s lavatory.’

  ‘What does that have to do with you?’

  ‘I’m known for my sense of diplomacy. And my respect for human rights. You know they invited me to the Human Rights Conference in Rotterdam? And now I’ve been summoned to mediate between the library staff, the Women’s League, the neighborhood elders, the police, the district militia and the municipality. A true challenge, believe me. They all have rights, you know, the prostitutes, the staff, the neighborhood elders. You should drop by if you have the time. Learn something useful.’