The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree

by Shokoofeh Azar

  However, this gave the bombastic gang the excuse they’d been waiting for to show off and spread fear. They grabbed both of them, shoved them in the car and carted them off. Once the passers-by and spectators realised what had happened, they quickly disappeared into stores and alleyways. In the car a gang member removed his shroud, violently ripped it in two, then used it to blindfold them. Both were terrified, and the bookseller, whose voice had previously been strong, now said with fear and pleading, “But sir, what did we do? We didn’t even say anything!”

  A voice yelled, “Shut up! Your fuck-up was defending a West-lover.”

  “Gentlemen, I don’t even know this man,” Dad spoke up. “Let him go. He didn’t do anything wrong.”

  Again, the cacophony of voices yelling and cursing, accompanied by slaps and punches directed at the two continued until the vehicle braked violently. A door opened and the bookseller was booted out. In the last second, one of their abusers thrust his head out of the window and screamed, “Get lost, you piece of shit! Let this be the last time you open your mouth like that!”

  As the car sped away, Dad was relieved that at least they’d released the bookseller. Then he felt the plastic bag of CDs being yanked from his hands. “Well, well, well! What do we have here? Didn’t I say he was a spy? You listen to banned music!”

  “I bought them right there in Enghelab Street,” Dad said. “From an authorised store with a permit from your Ministry of Islamic Guidance.”

  Scornfully, the man replied, “Sir, the pharmacy also sells rat poison, so go and buy some and take some of that!”

  Dad didn’t know how to respond to this kind of blind logic. The vehicle continued driving slowly through the alleys. After a moment, another voice that hadn’t yet fully deepened said with unnerving softness, “Sir, all these years since the Revolution, all those people martyred for the country, who fought and were killed; and in the end, you still put on a tie like that accursed Shah and listen to these kinds of CDs?”

  With a calm he didn’t know he possessed, Dad said, “Which Revolution, war and martyrs are you referring to that you didn’t even see with your own eyes? You weren’t even born yet.”

  The other responded with unexpected vehemence, “So you’re insolent too! Tell me what country you’ve been in until now?”

  For a second, Dad thought about lying and just naming a country in the hope that they would leave him alone, but then he remembered he didn’t even have a passport to prove it. So he said, “This country!” One of them said, “So you’re a royalist and you’re spreading anti-government propaganda. Which of their gangs are you associated with?”

  Dad said nothing. He tilted his head up to look out from beneath the blindfold. Two soldiers had rushed to open and close the doors from the inside of an underground car park of an ordinary apartment building they had now entered. They lead him up several floors, pushed him into a hallway and finally sat him down on a chair in a room. Then they tied his hands from behind and untied his blindfold. The room was dark. Several minutes later, the door opened and a weak light came on above him. The CDs he had bought were on a table in front of him. Before seeing the man, he heard his voice bellow at someone. “Who tied this man’s hands? Untie them. Hurry up!” The door opened and someone untied his hands, and then left. A middle-aged man with a shadow of a beard and shirtsleeves rolled up to above his elbows, sat down opposite him. On his forehead, a dark, circular, brand-like mark was clearly visible. Dad knew that in the years after the Revolution, it had become popular for Hezbollahis to brand themselves with a hot spoon to show their membership and power, and to give the impression of great piety as if they ground their foreheads so hard into the turbah14 during prayer, the skin had become calloused. Everyone said, and images in newspapers and on television proved, that anyone with any kind of position in this regime had three things in common: prayer beads in the hand, a mullah collar around the neck, and the mark of a hot spoon on the forehead.

  The man began examining the CDs. Then, placing a piece of paper and a blue Bic pen in front of him, he said, “Write!”

  “What should I write?”

  The man said, “Whatever you remember!”

  “Someone of my age remembers a lot of things,” Dad retorted. “So much, that it goes well beyond your patience and your large, lumbering system!”

  The man’s scowl deepening, he said, “I see that you have information about our system. Write about that then.”

  “That doesn’t require any special information,” Dad snorted. “Every child, from the moment they enter school, finds your system forced upon them.”

  “What do you mean by that?” the man asked.

  “You’ve set up a base of Twenty-Million Basij15 in every school and far away village, with the mosque, and Islamic Society.”

  “I see you don’t believe in God either,” the man exclaimed. “Do you know what the punishment for that is? Death! You are a Corrupter on Earth.”16

  Dad had never felt so serene. He gave a smirk, pushed the pen and paper back across the table towards the man and said, “So my crime and sentence are already clear. It’s not worth the effort to write anything.”

  The man leapt to his feet angrily and flung his chair into a corner. “It seems as if you don’t get it!” he screamed. “In half an hour, this paper had better be full!” He walked towards the door taking the CDs with him. Suddenly the muscles in his face changed. He gave a chilling smile, and before slamming the door behind him, he said, “Write whatever your nostalgic heart desires …”

  Dad glanced around the room. There was just the wall with the wooden door behind him. He looked at the pen and paper. Smiling, he thought to himself he’d been wanting to write his memoirs for years. It hadn’t been more than a few minutes when he said loudly, “Paper, please”. Immediately someone—as though listening by the door—brought him several sheets. An hour later, he again said loudly, “Paper, please”. The same soldier behind the door brought him a handful of paper. Two hours later he said yet again, “Paper, please. More! And a bit of water!” This time the incredulous soldier brought him an unopened package of five hundred A4 sheets of paper and set it on the table, together with a pitcher of water and a large plastic cup.

  Before leaving, he cast a look at the stack of pages Dad had written and, as though feeling sorry for Dad’s naivety, he shook his head despairingly as if to say, “Poor thing. Little do you know that with every line you write you give them more fuel for interrogation!”

  But Dad seemed to have something else on his mind. Otherworldly things, more important than his own life: his history and that of his family; the whole history of Tehran and Razan—what else did he have to lose? He loosened his tie, then unbuttoned his shirt cuffs and rolled up his sleeves. He had no sense of time passing. He wrote and wrote until he fell asleep. Early the next morning he awoke to the sound of the interrogator sitting across from him and reading the pages. “So, your son was executed, your daughter burned to death and your wife ran away!”

  Dad said nothing. He had a bad taste in his mouth. He was about to drink the last of the water left in the cup when the interrogator swiped the cup off the table, splashing Dad’s face and clothes. “With the way you’re playing around it’s clear you haven’t been beaten by the intelligence stick of the Sepah,” the interrogator yelled.

  Still Dad said nothing. The man yelled even louder, “You’re just making stories up! Your sister turned into a jinn and your daughter into a mermaid, and before going into the sea she gave birth to fish and shells?! There was black snow, and Zoroastrian ghosts prayed for you?! A ghost showed you a treasure map?!” He let out a loud, nervous laugh. Then suddenly he jumped to his feet and, leaning forward with his hands on the table he bellowed, “With your grey hair and those wrinkles of yours I thought you must be someone respectable with something respectable to say, but now I see you just dreamt up some children’s stories. Especially the part about the ghost of your dead daughter living with you! Hahahaha!
…You should be in the loony bin, not here!”

  Turning to the door he yelled, “Soldier!” A soldier entered with a salute. Squinting, the interrogator brought his face close to Dad’s and said, “I wanted to let you go quickly because yesterday they just wanted to make a scene by pulling you out of the crowd and bringing you here. But now that you’ve written this insulting nonsense, I need to teach you a lesson. Then I’ll let you get on with your miserable life”. Turning to the soldier, he said, “Give him some cool water. He appears to be thirsty!”

  Then he walked out the door. Several seconds later, two huge men walked in and dragged Dad somewhere in the basement. They snapped handcuffs on him and the interrogator reappeared. As he was being beaten and the taste of blood filled his mouth, he heard the interrogator tell the two men, “I still need his right hand”. It was thus that they beat his left arm, legs and sides with the handle of a shovel until he could take it no more.

  He regained consciousness once as he was lying on the cement floor of a dark cell, his teeth chattering in the cold. The next day he awoke to find himself in a hospital bed, his left arm and one of his legs in a caste. He was too old to endure such agony and brokenness. His body was wracked with pain when a nurse arrived and injected him with painkillers, whereupon he fell into a deep sleep and dreamed about Sohrab, Beeta and me. We were together in one cell. Sohrab had taken Dad’s hands in his own and was kissing them, tearfully. Then he pointed to a small window near the ceiling and said, “The only way is to look at the sky. Sometimes birds fly by.” Then Beeta caressed his wounded, broken feet and said, “The rest of the time, think of stories you heard as a child”. I was hugging his shoulders from behind just the way he used to when showing me how to place my fingers to play the tar. I said, “Wait for me”.

  I really wanted Dad to know I would soon be coming to see him—whenever he willed it. I mean, as if it were possible to abandon an old man like this to the hands of his torturers? That’s why, during the next interrogation when the interrogator heard that Dad was prepared to summon my ghost to prove my existence, he froze. He gulped, gave a laugh, and tried to say in a voice devoid of fear, “Tell her to come then!” The words hadn’t even fully left his mouth when I arrived. Turning off the light, I clawed at his body and tore his shirt. Then, I punched his face and flung him, along with his chair, against the wall.

  I had no idea that I possessed such power. I suppose it was hatred that had given me strength. The interrogator roared in terror, after which two armed guards rushed in. But they couldn’t get the light switch to work. Finally, they turned on a torch and saw Dad sitting in his seat with a broken arm and leg, and the interrogator cowering in a corner with blood dripping from his cheek and back, his shirt in shreds.

  That was the last time Dad saw that interrogator. The next interrogator was a broad-shouldered man of about forty with very short, cropped black hair. During their first meeting, as he was leafing through Dad’s now very thick file, he said, “So you’re in contact with ghosts and jinns. You know that in the Quran the punishment for sorcery is death. However, given your age I’ll give you another chance. Here’s a pen and paper. We spared your right hand so you could defend yourself—we’re such good people! Now, write. But this time, tell the truth.”

  And with that, he left the room. Perhaps he was afraid that if he stayed much longer I would attack him, also. Dad began to write. This time, too, he wrote for days. Every day the interrogator would enter and read what Dad had written the day before, draw some questions out of it, note them down, and ask Dad to incorporate their answers into his memoirs.

  Dad wrote everything again. This time he cut out all the parts he had realised were incomprehensible to their stale minds and embellished here and there to make it thoroughly believable. This time he wrote nothing about the black snow or my ghost, or Aunt Turan joining the jinns, or Beeta and Issa’s circular flames of love-making. In this new version, there was nothing about Homeyra Khatun’s enchanted garden and well or Effat’s black love, the magical sleep or Razan’s holy fire—all of which I had told him about. He wrote nothing about the prayers of the ancient Zoroastrian priests or the mating of the cows and roosters with wild birds and animals during the time of the black snow. This time he wrote neither that Roza was once able to walk through the air above Nasser Khosro Street with The Wayfarer by Sohrab Sepehri, nor that his brother, Khosro, could appear and disappear right before everyone’s eyes. Instead, he wrote that he had been completely opposed to the political system prior to his arrest, and that Beeta had lost her sanity and now believed she had been transformed into a mermaid, and was in a psychiatric ward; and that his wife, Roza, had Alzheimer’s disease and had gone missing. He wrote that I had died in a fire Revolutionaries had lit in our house and they hadn’t seen my body since. He wrote many things. Things that were partly his own dreams. He wrote that for years he suffered from depression and was house-bound until one day, he set off and travelled through most of the country, teaching and procuring illicit political books for young people. He wrote that he was neither a monarchist nor a communist nor a Mujaheddin; that he just wanted democracy and believed that religion, dress, political parties and the media should be free so that people had the right to choose. He wrote that he had no living family members and the story of his brother, Khosro, had merely been a figment of his imagination; and that he had never had a sister by the name of Turan.

  When he had finished, they read what he had written and transferred him the following day directly to Evin Prison. He was never interrogated again, nor did he ever set foot in any court. He lived the next five years in prison imagining that one day someone would come to tell him his court date had arrived. Even after five years, six months, and ten days when—because of old age—he was released, he thought he would be taken to court to learn of the crimes with which he had been charged. They released him only after they were certain he had lost his mind and would die sooner or later, and that he posed no threat whatsoever to the holy Islamic regime.

  Dad had long since returned to his family home in Tehran when I dreamt that I was dreaming that Dad had died. Perhaps after all those years the time had come; I no longer needed Dad’s permission. If Sohrab hadn’t disappeared like that and if Beeta’s fish-like mind allowed her to remember us, maybe we could have gathered together—as in years past—to sit around the fire and drink smoked tea; and listen to the mooing cows and baaing sheep. Perhaps we could have polished the grove’s rusty lock and oiled its hinges; and pruned the trees, ploughed the earth and planted wheat, as in the olden days; or at least sat together on the porch and read a poem by Bizhan Jalali or Ahmad Shamlu.

  Eventually, I decided to go and see Dad. He was alone in his bedroom and awake, but not surprised to see me. He was happy because we hadn’t seen each other for years. I didn’t need to see the wrinkles on his face and neck and his now, completely, grey hair and moustache to know that the time was near. Since his release from prison, he had done nothing but sit beside the window and stare at the courtyard. There wasn’t much of his hair left. I was embarrassed that he still saw me as a thirteen-year-old girl; while he, on the other hand, had aged so much in all these years. Perhaps it should be admitted that when I told him that Mum had been back home for a long time now, I expected him to quickly pack his bags and set off. But he just sat in the chair and let me sit beside him, in silence. He neither leapt up—although his brittle bones wouldn’t have allowed this, anyway—nor did he gather his things, nor even insist I stay with him a bit longer. No! He merely asked me to drink tea with him.

  * * *

  1A famous miniature painter who lived and worked in the royal ateliers during the 15th and 16th centuries in Herat and Tabriz.

  2A famous 16th-century Iranian calligrapher born in Qazvin.

  3A type of Iranian bread cooked on small hot stones.

  4One of the basic Zoroastrian maxims.

  5A leftist poet and writer who was assassinated in the serial assassinations of t
he 1990s, carried out by the Ministry of Intelligence against those who were ideologically opposed to the government. This string of murders left more than eighty people dead.

  6A husband and wife couple who led the Mellat-e Iran Party and were assassinated in their home by members of the Ministry of Intelligence.

  7A researcher and writer, and another victim of the serial assassinations.

  81931-1990. An Indian mystic, guru and philosopher.

  9Officially approved head covering for women.

  10This police force arrests people whose behaviour is not considered to conform to Islamic law i.e. physical contact between men and women or the wearing of nail polish, tight clothes, and bright colours, etc.

  11A reference to an episode in the Quran in which Eve is cast out of Paradise for eating a head of wheat.

  12The ‘Shroud wearers’ are an extremist, aggressive group that formed following the Revolution. Its members are willing to kill and be killed for the good of the Regime. The wearing of a burial shroud is a reference to this willingness to be killed at that very moment.

  13The Supreme Leader of Iran since 1989.

  14A small piece of soil or clay, often a clay tablet, used during salat (Islamic daily prayers) to symbolise earth.

  15A centre to sign up new recruits to be trained as Basijis.

  16An expression from the Quran and Islamic legal jurisprudence used to designate people deemed a danger to society. The punishment for such individuals is death.

  16

  Mum had returned and, surprisingly, took up her chores as if she’d never been away. The first day, she cleared the dirt and dust from the shelves, books and carpets with remarkable agility and, for the first time in years, entered her bedroom, which evoked in her hazy memories. She poured a petrol and lime mix on the ants, opened the windows, and attacked the weeds and grasses that had nosily sprouted everywhere, with a sickle. It was obvious she had learnt long ago how to stand up to life.