Among the Ruins

by Ausma Zehanat Khan

  Now Khattak was truly puzzled. Could Rachel be hinting at the coronation of Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran? The coronation had taken place nearly fifty years ago. There had been no coronations since, history interrupted and then re-formed by the Iranian revolution.

  The Shah had been in power for more than twenty-five years, his rule increasingly despotic, his SAVAK police a terror. Opposition to his rule had grown over the years—the people demanding a change. When the Shah had left the country on a vacation in 1979, his departure had sparked the Iranian revolution. Long in exile, Ayatollah Khomeini had been welcomed back to Iran with a national outpouring of support.

  Ten days later, the Shah’s regime had fallen. And Khomeini’s framework of Islamic governance had transformed the country from a monarchy to a republic.

  “All right,” Esa said. “Spring is an excellent tracking season.”

  He meant for Rachel to search for the footage and consider the question of why it had interested Zahra. There was no clear line from the reign of the Shah and his secret police to the present terrors facing supporters of the Green Movement. Other than that the Shah had made torture conventional, a tactic now employed by the regime.

  “That it is,” Rachel said. He heard the doubt in her voice. “Sir. It looks like our friend has vanished again, and no one seems to care. What should I do about that?”

  Khattak took a moment to work this out.

  Zahra Sobhani had died at Evin, her body delivered to her family.

  If she’d disappeared twice, it meant the authorities had returned to claim her body.

  To impound it.

  Because the flesh and bones of the dead told tales, a book of secrets laid bare.

  “Tim Horton has nothing to say?”

  It was his way of referencing the prime minister. Rachel bit off a laugh.

  “Ask Nate to use his influence, but if it’s legalities you’re concerned with—” He thought carefully, wondering about the wisdom of his next suggestion. He’d hardly been a harbinger of good news for his friend, the prosecutor. “The Crown might be the right person to ask.”

  He meant Sehr Ghilzai, a friend and colleague who’d worked a former case with him.

  There was a stretch of silence on the phone. He guessed there were many things Rachel wanted to say that circumstances prohibited. This was no way to conduct an investigation. Neither of them could speak openly, they couldn’t exchange ideas or draw encouragement and insight from each other, they were stuck on their own. And he found it a lonely place to be. He missed Rachel, missed her warmth and smart-mouthed tenacity.

  He was ready to go home. He wanted to see her again.

  “Yeah,” she said at last. “I’ll do that. But if it looks like the weather’s not agreeing with you, I recommend you catch the first flight home.”

  While you can.

  The words remained unspoken between them.

  He felt a surge of affection for her.

  “I will,” he said. “I’ve been here long enough.”

  From the whoosh of Rachel’s breath, it was clear she missed him as well.

  * * *

  As a precaution, Khattak removed the SIM card from his phone and crushed it beneath his heel. He’d purchase a new one tomorrow, and would hide the phone in the meantime.

  When he finished his meal, there were signs that pointed the way to the rooftop terrace. He paid his bill and made his way to the roof. The night was leavened by the dim glow of stars, a string of lights floating above a low stone wall. There was a haze of pollution over the city, lending the dome and minaret of the neighboring Masjid-e Shah a dusty romanticism.

  In one corner of the roof, a man and woman murmured to each other in hushed voices. A few feet away from Khattak, another man stood with his face wreathed in smoke, the tip of his cigarette flaring orange at his lips. A peculiar tang of smoke struck Khattak’s nostrils, spicy and strange, like tree bark and rich earth burning together.

  He sneezed twice.

  The smoker muttered an apology. He brushed past Khattak to the stairs, dropping his cigarette as he passed, leaving Khattak to grind out the burning ember.

  He hadn’t seen the other man’s face—a thin man of middling height and smoke-heavy breath. When the man had gone, Khattak sought a place on the roof where he could hide his temporary phone.

  Behind the couple in the corner was an ornamental woodstove, a bundle of Persian buttercups poking through its lid. He couldn’t think of a better place. He waited for the couple to finish their conversation, his fingers idly tracing his pocket.

  Its shape and weight were different.

  He plunged his hands in his pockets to find his new phone was gone.

  * * *

  There was no point in looking for the smoking man now, he should have paid closer attention on the roof. The man must have preceded him to the roof. He must have watched Esa and eavesdropped on his conversation. Thankfully, Esa and Rachel had barely been able to hear each other, their muddy code understood best by themselves.

  He would have to be more careful. He felt a sharp anxiety about the letters hidden behind the brick. He should have photographed them and mailed the images to Rachel. Too late now. And if the smoking man was following him, it would be a mistake to return to the guesthouse and reassure himself the letters and the drive were undisturbed. What he could do was burn the two books—the poems of Iran’s exiles and, for extra measure, the book Taraneh had given him, not because reading Shariati was dangerous, but because the book connected him to Taraneh.

  He should have done it already.

  He wandered back to the restaurant and cut across the square.

  He remembered that torches were lit at the exit of the smaller Jame mosque. If the caretaker was gone, he could drop the books inside the bracket of the torch.

  He meandered along the perimeter, re-tracing his steps several times. The door to the mosque was untended, the torches high and bright with fire. He palmed Shariati’s essay and dropped it into the flames. When the pages had crackled into embers, the poems followed suit.

  Something twisted inside him.

  He’d never had to worry his thoughts or political inclinations could condemn him, something he now recognized as the careless presumption of privilege. There were places he hoped to travel, Iran with its history and architecture had been at the top of his list, a crossroads of empire, a civilization whose vocabulary was threaded through his own. The Urdu language was heavily influenced by Persian, just as there’d been a long and fluid interchange between successive Persian and Turkic empires and the Indian subcontinent: culture, customs, and goods weaving a tapestry of exchange.

  He had loved Persia without knowing Iran. After these long weeks in Esfahan, his love had grown richer, deeper—bearing out his lifelong interest. It had allowed him to ignore other truths simmering beneath the city’s beauty. Like Zahra Sobhani, he’d thought himself protected by the privileges of citizenship, but as he watched the words of Shariati burn, he became aware the tentacles of authoritarianism could reach far enough, deep enough, to cause him to second-guess his own thoughts, his choice of reading materials, his private communications, his public conversations.

  These risks may have been worth taking on his own behalf; he wouldn’t have permitted Rachel to assume them in his place.

  Should I come? he could imagine her saying. Do you need me there with you?

  Zahra Sobhani had been killed by agents of the regime, agents who were now tracking Esa.

  You shouldn’t come, he thought.

  This city has fallen from grace.

  15

  Interrogation

  “Do you have a computer? Do you have a mobile phone? What are you doing in this country? Why are you colluding against the government? You’re a foreigner. You came from Turkey, you’re a peshmerga. You’re a traitor, you’re a spy, you’re a foreign agent. Tell us the truth. Tell us where the weapons are. Tell us where the money is.” I sob, I weep, I beg, I tremble. I s
peak my native tongue. “Do you have a computer? Do you have a mobile phone? What are you doing in this country? Where are you from? Where do you belong?”

  Iran, Iran, Iran.

  16

  The snow had given way to rain, the skies above Winterglass stormy, the waves of Lake Ontario dashing a doomed course against the shore. Even the Bluffs looked battered, their chalky outline misty and dull.

  Rachel honked her horn, and Nathan Clare appeared at his door, his elegance suborned by a hooded jacket made of heavy plastic. Though she had an umbrella in the car, Rachel had no intention of braving the rain to preserve Nate’s impractical choice of outerwear.

  “You did see the forecast today?” she commented as Nate slid into her car, adjusting the passenger seat to make room for his long legs.

  He glared at the umbrella in the backseat, and Rachel grinned.

  “You could have brought your own. And why on earth are you wearing plastic? I’m guessing Audrey didn’t buy that for you.”

  He’d told Rachel his sister was responsible for his usual sartorial splendor. The Clare siblings were exceptionally close, as Rachel had once been with Zach.

  “It’s not plastic,” Nate said, affronted. “It’s the same material mountain climbers use for protection at high altitudes.” Droplets of rain beaded away from the weave of the jacket, finding their way to Rachel’s passenger seat.

  “Hmm,” she said. “You know Toronto’s almost at sea level, right? And that your hair is wet?” Then sweeping her car round the circle: “Which way? Where are we meeting Sehr?”

  “Liberty Village. She has an appointment with a client who works at a boutique there. She said she can fit us in after.”

  Sehr’s career had taken a new direction. She’d had a distinguished career as a Crown prosecutor, achieving the rank of senior counsel at a young age, through enormous dedication. It was a career path that burned women out, leaving little time for the demands of family life, if there wasn’t a partner to share the load. Rachel had the impression this wasn’t a problem for Sehr. She hadn’t gotten to her position without a full complement of ambition in her makeup.

  Sehr’s new job was as in-house counsel to a small women’s NGO called Woman to Woman. Nate’s sister, Audrey, ran the organization, and just as Sehr had seemed at a loss for a new career direction, Audrey had found herself short of legal representation for the NGO’s clients. Sehr was a quick study. She’d familiarized herself with Canadian refugee policy in short order, putting her skills at the service of Audrey’s clientele. And like Nate, she was becoming more outspoken in her views. Rachel wondered if Sehr had political ambitions.

  Just like she wondered how the opening at Woman to Woman had so neatly aligned with Sehr’s search for a new position. She suspected Khattak had made a phone call to Nate, and the rest had fallen into place. Sehr was an old friend of the Khattaks and the Clares, a chummy little club where Rachel still felt very much on the outside.

  She liked them all but couldn’t quite find her place among them. If she had a place.

  The drive from the Bluffs to the boutique took an hour in the rain, the traffic slow and mostly careful. Rachel used the time to bring Nate up to speed on events in Iran, dismayed by his frowning response. She’d been right to think that Khattak was in danger, right to warn him against the meeting at the dovecote.

  They drove past the Canadian National Exhibition. When they’d crossed the train tracks into Liberty Village, Rachel parked along a side street, leaving her police ID on the dashboard. She didn’t like the changes to the industrial neighborhood, now a thoroughfare of steel-and-glass apartment buildings, the loft spaces of the old factories home to a new wave of media and design companies. The old buildings had character. The new façades didn’t.

  Sehr waved to them from the front door of one of these, stepping down to the rain-slicked pavement, dressed for the weather in a trench coat and leather boots. She held a matching umbrella over her head, and Rachel’s own Maple Leafs umbrella seemed decidedly out of place as they walked to a coffee shop called the Roastery at the corner of a redbrick factory. Shaking rain from their umbrellas, they ordered their lunch, Nate waiting patiently at the counter.

  Setting her umbrella down, Sehr smiled at Rachel.

  “You look well, Rachel. It’s good to see you again.”

  “You, too.”

  The former Crown prosecutor did look well, her russet hair longer, her intelligent face calm and worry-free. Rachel regretted she would be the one to change that. She had begun to develop some idea of Sehr’s feelings for Esa Khattak.

  Quickly, she went over the facts of Zahra’s death. She asked Sehr if she’d ever met Max Najafi or his mother.

  Sehr shook her head as Nate brought their food to the table.

  Rachel was cold. She’d ordered a hearty onion soup with sourdough bread. She soaked the bread in the soup, listening to the others talk as she ate, grateful they weren’t picking away at salads. Sehr had chosen a seafood pasta, Nate a spicy bowl of chili.

  “I don’t know them, no. But I’ve been following the story, of course. It’s such a terrible thing. And we have no leverage, no way of calling the Iranian government to account. There’s been an opening after the nuclear deal, the possibility of renewing relations between our countries. Zahra’s murder will scuttle all that.”

  Rachel and Nate exchanged a look. One of Sehr’s eyebrows went up.

  “Have I missed something?”

  “Najafi told us the Ministry of Intelligence has confiscated Zahra’s body. He wants it back, to bury his mother in Toronto. He asked if we could help.”

  “You know why, of course. They want to bury the evidence of what was done to Zahra. I imagine they’re exerting tremendous pressure on the family in Iran to cover things up.”

  “So they’ll force the burial?” Rachel asked. “There’s nothing we can do?”

  Sehr put her fork down.

  “I’m not a diplomat or an Iran expert—”

  Rachel waved this away. “Just tell us what you think.”

  “It’s been a week, yes, since Zahra was murdered? How long ago was her body seized?”

  “Two or three days,” Nate said.

  “They’ll have buried her by now. The diplomatic costs are too great otherwise, our government won’t want to squander this opening. Max Najafi, the Sobhani family—they just haven’t been informed yet.”

  “What about an exhumation? What if Max went to Tehran?”

  “We’re talking about an authoritarian state. As it relates to political detainees, the entire judicial process is a sham. Zahra would have been detained without charge, interrogated without counsel present, and denied contact with her family. She didn’t make it to a trial, but if there’d been a trial, it would have resembled a Stalinist show trial, complete with a forced confession.”

  Sehr turned to Nate. “You’re better versed in diplomacy than I am. You know there’s no chance of getting the body back, there’s no possibility of redress for Zahra’s murder. Unless there’s a change in the regime, but even that wouldn’t be enough. The entire structure would have to be dismantled before detainees at Evin or other prisons would be released. And the idea of a national accounting?” She shook her head. “Honestly, I don’t see it.”

  “What about the Green Movement?” Rachel asked. “What about the film Zahra made and the sequel she was planning?”

  Sehr looked doubtful.

  “Was she planning a sequel? Had she raised any funds, did she have a script? Did she really think she could gain filming permits inside Iran? Everything I’ve read about her doesn’t sound like she would be ignorant about these things.”

  Rachel took a final sip of her soup, letting it trace a long, hot trail to her stomach.

  “What are you saying?”

  Sehr looked from Rachel to Nate.

  “I know I haven’t given you any news you wanted to hear. I can’t help in getting Zahra’s body back. If there was any road to doing so, it
would have to be through Nate’s political contacts. But I can tell you if Zahra had returned to Iran, it wasn’t for a film.”

  “Yes,” Rachel said impatiently. “We know. She was there to visit her stepdaughter. She was trying to get her out.”

  “I don’t think so. Or at least, that was only part of her reason. Zahra would have had greater influence outside the country—by raising the profile of her stepdaughter’s case. Wouldn’t you agree, Nate? If she’d returned to Iran, she must have had another reason.”

  Rachel pondered this. She realized there were several questions she had failed to ask Max Najafi, sidelined by his grief.

  “If she wasn’t making a follow-up documentary, what do you think she was doing?”

  They had dropped their voices, as if the subject matter of their conversation could somehow implicate them.

  “I really don’t know. And if her son doesn’t know, we would need to follow her trail in Iran. But I don’t see how we could.”

  Nate cleared his throat. Rachel didn’t bail him out. She didn’t want to be the one to say it.

  “Esa’s in Esfahan,” he said. “He could follow that trail.”

  “What?” Sehr whispered. “What is he doing there? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Nate looked embarrassed. Rachel wondered if he’d guessed at Sehr’s interest in Esa. Or if he knew more about Sehr and Esa’s history than she did.

  “He’s taken some time off. He was approached by someone in the Canadian government, and told to sniff around. The government wants something on Barsam Radan. They think he’s involved in the murder.”

  Sehr began to gather her things. Her lips were stiff, and her eyes had darkened.

  She didn’t ask who Radan was, which meant she was familiar with the name.

  “Wait,” Nate said, his voice warm with compassion. “Let me get some coffee.”

  When he was at the counter, Sehr spoke to Rachel.

  “I suppose you think I’m a fool. Esa didn’t tell me he was going to Iran, so obviously we’re not that close. Nate already knows, he’s being gentle with my feelings.”