Softcore

by Zolghadr, Tirdad;

  The air outside block 44D is unusually humid. Once again, the cab driver is the young Brezhnev in the light gray suit. I’m surprised by the silence in the car. ‘Not into Neil Diamond any longer?’

  Brezhnev clicks on the radio without bothering to answer the question. The state radio is playing an instrumental, keyboard version of Shakira’s ‘Whenever, Wherever’, a drum computer playing a gentle, tapping rhythm in the background. As we approach Azadi Boulevard, we see a traffic jam stretching out for several miles ahead. The taxi comes to a complete halt next to a teenage couple in a bright orange BMW, smoking weed and listening to psychedelic Goa Techno at full volume, drowning out the tender, instrumental tune in our cab. I start tilting my head back and forth in different directions, trying to relax my neck muscles as I’d watched the Arabs do in Zurich last week.

  An hour later, the BMW is two cars behind us, the only indication of any movement whatsoever. I recount the remaining practicalities in my mind, hoping Cyrus will take care of the cocaine without any further reminder on my part, and remember I should leave the Promessa to pick up Dr Christenhuber at Mehrabad airport, around 1 AM. I attempt to distract myself with small talk. ‘Colin Powell. What a pimp,’ I venture.

  ‘Yes, well, you know.’ The driver sighs. A similar sigh to the bassiji officer’s. Sighing, I conclude, wishing I had my notebook, is an essential, integral part of everyday Persian rhetoric. Usually followed by ‘but that’s the way it is’, ‘dear God, what have we done to deserve this’ and other expressions of bittersweet, composed exasperation.

  ‘To tell you the truth, I wish they’d just come over. Bomb the hell out of everything, get it over with. So we can finally relax. Rahat shim, vallah.’ He sighs.

  ‘I see what you’re saying, but what can you do?’ I offer, noticing a new neon sticker on the dashboard, just next to the tape recorder. ‘Fresh Your Feeling’ it says, in happy letters of blue and orange.

  ‘Just wait and see what’s happening in Afghanistan,’ Brezhnev is saying. ‘Foreign investments coming out their ears. Ten years from now, they’ll overtake us. Wagging DVDs and Longines and Rolexes in our faces. What a disgrace.’ The driver sighs, lights a Bahman, rolls down the window, sighs again and cranks up the radio. A woman is now reciting sticky-sweet hymns of praise for the revolution to bouncy background beats that sound very much like Yazoo. ‘Our world-famous revolution, budding forth like a February flower, a glorious manifestation of love,’ she croons.

  I run my hand over the bump on my chest, tracing the outlines of Stella’s email in my inside pocket, then pull it out and slowly unfold the pages. The driver clicks off the radio, and grins. ‘Are you Christian?’

  ‘You know what I tell Christians?’ the driver continues without waiting for my answer, ‘I tell them: “Look. Listen to me.” As he speaks, Brezhnev bends forward and gesticulates over his steering wheel, as if the Christians in question had clambered onto the hood and were staring at him through the windscreen. “Listen. When you buy a computer, you get the newest model, right? Like when you buy a car, you do exactly that. Why get an old Volkswagen if you can have a new Nissan Patrol? Same goes for prophets. Islam is the latest revelation, not the Bible. Bible’s six hundred years older.”’

  I take a moment to think this over. ‘But some people prefer older models.’

  ‘That’s their problem, not mine.’

  Closing

  The A3 poster outside the Promessa gallery is an intricate medley of camouflage blotches, vertical stripes of varying width, and thickset letters saying WHEN YOURE GOING THROUGH HELL, KEEP GOING in Jordi Grotesk font. Palestine Street is filled with double-parked cars, and I can see more guests crawling up and down side alleys in Honda Civics and Range Rovers in search of a parking space.

  As I yank open the door to the Promessa, old school South Central Hip Hop spills out on the street, with far too much bass, distorting the sound almost beyond recognition, causing a rasping noise with each beat, precisely as I’d expected. Got my nuts on your tonsils. In the stairway, the zebra stripes now replaced by a pale shade of mauve, I bump into Cyrus and Mina, the two of them arm in arm, taking their time on the way down. Cyrus’s breath reeks of beer and tobacco. ‘Stylishly late? That the idea?’

  ‘Yes. Actually that is the idea. How nice to see the two of you.’ Mina doesn’t react. She’s wearing her Metallica baseball cap backwards over her headscarf, light blonde strands stretching out horizontally in several directions, her Chloë perfume more penetrating than ever.

  I brush past them to the gallery, where some sixty guests are helping themselves to the crystal flasks of raisin and date vodka, mixing the liquor with ice, sour cherry, grapefruit concentrate or Parsi Cola. Lined up next to the bottles are tiny ceramic bowls filled with pistachios, pickles, celery or olives in pomegranate. Two of the Afghanis are handing out glossy cardboard flyers featuring the Promessa manifesto, with hundreds of copies already lining the floor.

  Mina and Cyrus are still lurching down the stairs in slow motion, stopping every few steps to discuss something outrageously amusing, producing a queue of visitors behind them. The tall woman behind Cyrus looks strangely familiar, and for a brief moment of intense panic I believe I recognize San, but the moment passes as I recognize the interior designer, grinning over at me, raising both hands in a thumbs up. By the time they reach the end of the stairway, Mina has begun filming Cyrus with a digital Sonycam from up close as he giggles, looks around, then announces something to the camera and slaps the interior designer on her behind. As she turns around angrily, Mina moves up to her, holding the camera up into her face.

  ‘Cyrus, can I see you for a moment.’

  ‘Sooooo!’ Cyrus is still giggling. ‘The host himself!’

  ‘What happened to the coke?’

  ‘The coke?’ I turn around and make for the kitchen, where fresh herbs are being laid out on small silver platters, adding decorative touches to Russian salads, saffron rice cakes, eggplant dips, spinach in garlic yogurt, chicken Tah-chin, lamb kebab skewers, red peppers stuffed with split peas, minced beef with cinnamon, omelette slices with nuts and fenugreek, or turmeric and zucchini. The caterers, all in white Hugo Boss shirts and black 501s, start carrying the platters into the gallery.

  Knock yo teeth outcha mouth cause my dick’s gotta fit. As the kitchen door swings briefly open, I can hear the bass is still overtaxing the speakers, causing the same obnoxious grating sounds. I proceed to light the samovar, filling a ceramic bowl with spiky chunks of yellow, crystallized sugar, find an oblong ceramic platter and lay out two rows of jelly comfit and greasy caramel Sohan with pistachio brittle. Within a concealed drawer by the stove I find a wooden pipe and a round, bronze receptacle filled with ashes and chunks of charcoal.

  The back garden of the Promessa is a pebbled square with two wooden cots covered in straw mats and handcrafted Baluchi pillows, surrounded by untended rose bushes on all sides. Burning at the far end of the square is a small fire, which one of the Afghanis has been tending to all evening. I’m pleased and almost touched, since I remember mentioning it only once, in passing, the day before. I toss the coals into the fire, light a cigarette and wait, scrubbing the charcoal off my palms with a handkerchief. In the distance, cars and motorbikes are driving up and down the side alleys around Palestine Street. Within a matter of hours, I realize, it will all be over, and the Promessa will have hopefully found the epic finale it deserves. I fan the fire with an embroidered Turkmen wafting flap, then withdraw the charcoal and lovingly place it on the bronze platter, forming a small, shimmering pyramid of ash-grey and glowing orange.

  I can still feel the outlines of Stella’s emails in my inside pocket. I really should be rereading them, just to make sure there’s no misunderstanding. The first was sent two days ago. ‘Listen no need to bother about Christenhuber’s arrival, just be outside the venue at 1 AM. Due to the complications you’ve knowingly been causing you shall be executed by a shot to the head after the opening. I’m sorry. Stella.’
The second email, written almost an hour later, says, ‘Just kidding. Ha ha. XX S.’

  Someone has just walked into the garden from behind me. ‘Ah, yes, so what do we have here?’

  I turn around to see the Chinese cultural attaché, talking to someone who looks very much like Neil Diamond. ‘Opium. Naughty, naughty.’

  He wags a forefinger up and down at me, then turns to the spitting image of Neil Diamond standing next to him. ‘Neil! Shall we have a try? Have you ever tried?’

  Diamond is smaller than I would have expected and is wearing a black dinner jacket with generous shoulder pads and a red T-shirt saying NO PASARAN in bright yellow font, his white jeans ending two inches above his ankles. He seems very moved by something, looking slowly back and forth between the rose bushes and the glowing charcoal, reaching out to pick a white rose from a nearby bush to slip it into the outside pocket of his jacket. I try to regain composure and stand up to greet them, still holding the bowl of crystallized sugar in one hand.

  ‘Yes, and so this is the boy who takes care of this place,’ the diplomat is saying, ‘He’s very sweet. And his English is really good.’

  ‘I’m the founder. The host. This used to belong to, that is, it was run by –’

  ‘That’s right. And I’m sure you wouldn’t mind if we let Neil, mind if I call you Neil, if we let Neil have a first taste of opium, no? First cut is the deepest – baby I know. Love that song. Was that your first big hit?’ He walks over to one of the cots and lies down on his side, expertly propping himself up on one elbow. ‘See, let me show you. You make yourself nice and comfy, then you stick a liiiiiittle bit of this, tariyak they call it, sounds like Teriyaki right? Teriyaki chicken? Anyway you stick it riiiiight here on the pipe by the hole here on top.’

  Diamond walks over to him, undecided, turns around and takes a brief, suspicious look at me, then sits down on the edge of the other cot, opposite the Beijing diplomat.

  ‘So Neil, tell me, what does Farsi sound like to you?’

  ‘Well.’ Diamond watches the diplomat as he curls a chunk of opium into a tiny ball and sticks it unto the pipe. ‘Like a Jesuit walking through a rose garden. Who pricks his finger on the thorn of a rose and apologizes profusely to the flower.’

  In the kitchen, I take a flask of raisin vodka from the bar counter, fill a small glass and drink it straight, then immediately fill another. After which I light a Golden Super Love Standard and walk over to the door, from where I can comfortably watch the guests. Mina is still pointing her DV camera at Cyrus, who drunkenly greets whoever happens to pass by, boisterously drawing people into conversations by which they are visibly irritated as they frown and walk off, causing both Cyrus and Mina to giggle uncontrollably.

  The Promessa is filling up with heavily perfumed men and women in spanking new running shoes or dizzyingly high heels, most of them reaching for the stuffed peppers and meat skewers. Below the antique mirrorball, small groups of three or four have now started dancing, while others are sitting on Turkmen pillows near the entrance, smoking weed or cigarettes. The Cuban ambassador arrives, bringing with him his twin daughters, rowdy nine-year-olds in matching polo shirts and knee socks.

  They walk over to me to offer a gift, two Meadow Jumping Chipmunks for the terrarium, Pilar and Pepita, named after the two girls themselves. The ambassador looks very pleased, smiling at his kids as he gyrates his hips to the music. Cause if you fuck with me you fuckin with death row. A number of news correspondents, most of them prominent liberal voices from within the news establishment, are sitting around the Eames surfboard tables with various cultural attachés and local photojournalists.

  Huddling in front of the piece on the Sony plasma screen are some art critics and curators based in London and Copenhagen, trying to look apocalyptic, enthusiastic and nonchalant at the same time as the camera zooms up to a white lily, rapidly slipping in and out of focus. At one point, between two Hip Hop tracks, I make out the phrase ‘voices of a quickly disappearing world’.

  Mina, drunker than ever, suddenly grabs me by the wrist, generous smudges of makeup on her cheeks, and hanging from her eyelashes in tiny black blobs. ‘Everything OK? You look booooored, man.’

  ‘No, everything OK.’ I push past her towards the restrooms, in the hope of finding someone to share a line of coke with, opening the bathroom door to see Hare Rama Schröder seated on the sink, eyes shut, leaning back against the mirror. Someone is on his knees with his face buried between her legs, causing her to shiver and possibly moan, but I cannot hear her, thanks to the music and the rasping, granular bassline. I’m reminded, once again, of Cyrus’s erotic punchline, panties are jackpot, and glance down at the man on the floor, then back at Rama Schröder, who has opened her eyes and is looking straight at me.

  It’s past midnight, and Cyrus is standing near the entrance with a celebrity pop theorist from Vienna whose name escapes me. The celebrity theorist is smoking a cigarette in a self-conscious, sideways manner Vogue Homme International would presumably term ‘artistic’, wearing a white suit of immaculate fit, his hair combed into a faultless side parting, making me regret the decision of sticking to my Ceasar’s. If Hamburg Türknet cashiers are wearing Ceasars, it may be time for a change.

  I overhear someone on the other side of the circular bar reciting a Kalegondeh courtship ballad to someone wearing a BUCK FUSH baseball cap. You and I/ Together a silent voice/ United in our separation/ You and I.

  A small crowd of art students are standing nearby, clustered around a photographer whom I remember from the communist intelligentsia retreat in Beirut. ‘So you’re actually saying that, like, the Syrians have massacred more Palestinians than the Israelis.’

  ‘Well all I said was that it’s quite possible.’

  ‘Why does everything have to be so complicated? I mean I just couldn’t care less. I’m not getting into this. Fuck this political shit, man.’

  ‘No but basically it’s simple. Everyone goes for the Palestinians, right? I mean that’s basically it, right?’

  ‘This party’s too much. Let’s go to Aqua, no? Take our friend and go to Aqua.’

  ‘What’s Agua?’

  ‘Aqua. It’s a café place full of aquariums, even the outside façade is an aquarium, and the tables are cubic tanks full of exotic fish and seaweed and stuff. And you just watch them through the glass tabletop and have a Nescafé or a banana milk shake, or whatever.’

  ‘Relaxing place. Really a relaxing place. You can meditate, let yourself go, let your thoughts flow, actually kind of spiritual, you know?’

  ‘So did you know Michael Moore is here?

  ‘Michael Moore? Where?

  ‘The guy by the stairs. The fat guy.’

  ‘That’s not Michael Moore.’

  ‘Of course it’s Michael Moore. Course it’s Michael Moore.’

  ‘Oh my God, yeah you’re right. It’s Michael Moore. Is it?’

  Standing by the stairway, we can see Mehrangiz chatting excitedly with Michael Moore and Bono, all of them draped in black and white Palestine neckscarves. Not exactly Rock Hudson and Queen Farah, but gratifying nonetheless. ‘Going on and on and ON,’ Mehrangiz is happily screaming at her audience, ‘it’s, like, lady, please stop piling all those adjectives on top of each other.’

  Someone of perhaps seventy years of age, in a khaki suit with a white kerchief sticking out of his breast pocket, is standing alongside, watching me. He nods and smiles as he catches my eye, and immediately starts crossing the room. I cannot decide whether to wait or walk away, and by the time I opt for the latter it’s too late, the man already shouting into my ear to make himself heard over the musical backdrop, which is still decidedly West Coast. My dick runs deep so deep so deep put her ass to sleep.

  ‘I know your parents. And your grandfather, too. I met them right here,’ he jabs a long finger downwards, at the ground beneath them. ‘Promessa, Tehran, 1968.’

  ‘You did.’

  ‘And I know your grand-aunt Zsa Zsa. A great woman
. A true lady in every sense of the word. Quite a temper. But a true lady always. Honor came first. Always. And such wonderful tits. And so many stories about her. Do you know the tank story?’

  ‘Yes, as a matter of fact I believe I do.’ Walking past us, towards the liquor flasks, still arguing intently, the visiting curators interrupt their disagreement as they see me, to offer a friendly smile and cordially raise their glasses in a toast.

  ‘Ah. I must tell you that story.’

  ‘I said I already know that story.’

  ‘Your grand-aunt was courting this gentleman. Armenian. Beautiful smile, well-educated, exquisite dress, and very well-hung, or so they say. And a member of the Armenian Club. And one day, they start calling him a “swine”. Imagine. They call him a swine because he’s going out with “a Muslim whore”. Imagine that. A Muslim whore. So what happens? Your grand-aunt finds out. So you can imagine. And you know what she does? She gets a tank. One of those big old army tanks the Shah was buying from the Americans, by the truckload. By the hundreds. Thousands.’

  Over at the DJ table, Cyrus and Hare Schröder get into a playful scuffle over the music, and Ice Cube’s Predator LP comes to an abrupt stop, plunging the room into a barrage of shrieks, giggles and sluggish conversation.

  I briefly consider intervening when I realize with a slight panic that it’s already past 1 AM. I walk across the floor, breathing deeply, take the winding corridor to the entrance and step out on the sidewalk. As the door swings shut behind me, I can hear the bassline resume its course below. I cross the street, open the back door of a metallic-grey BMW X-5 and take a seat.