Among the Ruins

by Ausma Zehanat Khan

  “May I see your book?”

  It would have been customary for the man to introduce himself with a flurry of courteous inquiries as to the state of Khattak’s health, while urging upon him a list of attractions a visitor should not miss.

  Instead, the man reached out a hand for Khattak’s book.

  He wasn’t a covert agent, Esa thought. He had the patina of arrogance of someone with absolute power. Still, Esa expected greater discretion from the Ministry of Intelligence.

  Esa handed the book over, grateful Ali had had the foresight to give it to him. And he realized the Green Birds’ activities meant they would always be planning for these contingencies.

  The man made a show of flipping through its pages. Esa noted the way his eyes scanned the book for signs of hidden information.

  “What do you plan to see next?”

  “What would you recommend, Agha…”

  The man’s eyes narrowed. He wasn’t pleased by Khattak’s familiarity with Persian forms of address.

  “Larijani,” the man said. “I am Mr. Larijani. And you?”

  “Muhammad Khattak.” Esa gave his official name, hoping to ward off any background search Larijani might undertake. The name of every male in his family was prefaced with “Muhammad.” His middle name, Esa, was on his birth certificate.

  “Afghani?”

  This time Larijani seemed genuinely caught off guard. There were seven hundred thousand Afghan refugees and laborers in Iran. They worked in abysmal conditions for minimal wages and were considered compatriots in the Iranian labor movement.

  It told Khattak a great deal that Larijani was familiar with the origins of his Pashtun name, common to Afghanistan and the northwest frontier of Pakistan. But he didn’t think a discussion of the arbitrary lines drawn by empire was what Larijani had in mind. He would be thinking Esa was a spy.

  “Something like that,” he said politely.

  “How long have you been in Iran?”

  To deflect him, Khattak went over the details of his pilgrimage visa, recounting sites he’d visited in Mashhad and Qom.

  If Larijani wasn’t already aware of these details, he would make it his mission to confirm them. And that would buy Khattak some time.

  The prayer call of the azaan echoed up to the dovecote.

  “You came to the burj-e kabuthar alone?” Larijani asked.

  His questions had acquired a tone of impertinence.

  “Quite alone,” Khattak answered honestly. “It’s a restful place. The wonders of its geometry are like nothing I’ve ever seen. The Safavids were extraordinary builders.”

  “So it’s geometry that interests you.”

  The words were scornful. Khattak could imagine this man saying something similar to a detained journalist or filmmaker.

  You claim to make “art.” Your art is an insult, a perversion of what is natural and good. Your art corrupts the values of the nation.

  He wondered if Mohsen Makhmalbaf could make a film like A Moment of Innocence in the present climate. He thought it doubtful.

  “If you like geometry, Mr. Khattak, might I suggest you accompany me to the local mosque? You will be interested in its mihrab.”

  Larijani waved a hand at the far end of Mardavij Square, where an unexceptional dome reposed inside a garden of poplars.

  Khattak couldn’t think of a way to refuse.

  He scanned the streets that led away from the dovecote. From his vantage point, he could see no one lurking at the base of the tower, no cars or van nearby suggesting Larijani intended to take him somewhere other than the mosque.

  To be certain, he said, “A walk would be refreshing.”

  He let Larijani lead the way along the tree-lined boulevard, engaging in small talk as they walked. Khattak deflected the personal questions the other man asked. He spoke of the sights he had seen, the weather he’d experienced, the stunning copy of the Qur’an held at the Astan-e Quds library in Mashhad.

  “You’re comfortable praying at a Shia mosque?” Larijani asked with marked disbelief. “Behind a Shia imam?”

  If he wasn’t, Khattak thought, he wouldn’t have requested a visa to sites of pilgrimage in a Shia-majority country. But this time he sensed Larijani’s curiosity was apolitical.

  “May God accept our prayers and our differences. I hope to find myself welcome.”

  Esa felt a pang of sympathy at Larijani’s baffled expression. There was an arrogance of privilege associated with membership in a majority tradition, as with Khattak’s undefined upbringing in Canada. Perhaps in Iran, where the situation was reversed, Esa should have felt discomfort or alienation.

  But in the Canadian mosques of his childhood, sectarian divides had been remote. Sunnis and Shias differed significantly only on the question of the legitimate succession to the caliphate, after the Prophet Muhammad’s death. The word Sunni derived from Sunnah—the tradition and teachings of Muhammad. Sunnis considered themselves Ahl al-Sunnah, or People of the Tradition. In this, there was no difference from Shias, who shared the same tradition.

  The word Shia derived from Shiat Ali, or the Party of Ali, whom Shias considered Muhammad’s rightful successor. Ali was Muhammad’s cousin, and one of his closest companions. He had married Muhammad’s beloved daughter Fatima. In both branches of Islam, Muhammad, Ali and Fatima, and their sons, Hassan and Hossein, were greatly revered figures. Hossein’s assassination at the battle of Karbala was the defining element of Shia identity, the battle itself a paradigmatic event.

  Though Esa had been raised without denominational specificity, gatherings that retold the martyrdom of Hossein were part of Khattak’s earliest and deepest memories. The stories formed part of his identity. Then the influence of Wahhabism had crept in, spread by the influx of Saudi-funded indoctrination. Wahhabism as a variant of Sunni Islam had arisen from the Arabian desert in the mid-1800s, finding prominence and influence through a strategic alliance with the House of Saud. Its stringent recasting of a pluralist Islamic tradition had denounced Shia teachings as entirely heretical. And the friendly and familiar communities Esa had mixed in had divided into smaller and smaller sub-groups.

  Esa had despaired of the divisiveness of judging the different paths to God. And Shariati, the sociologist, had written about this as well, in his beautiful book On Selection and Election.

  Larijani recalled his attention.

  “Of course, Mr. Khattak. Our mosques are open to everyone, we don’t discriminate.”

  He meant it, Khattak could see. It made him appreciate the complexities of human nature anew.

  There was a contradiction between Larijani’s open invitation to Khattak and the persecution of minorities within Iran. While these included Kurds, Turks, and Afghans, Baha’is faced the most serious persecution, deprived of access to higher education and participation in the political process. What accounted for it, Esa could guess at, as so often difference led to prejudice and injustice. And there was a dynamic he’d encountered in at least some small segment of every community he visited: a sense of tribal superiority. Baha’is were persecuted on religious grounds. Kurds, Afghans, and others because they were held inferior to ethnic Persians. And in the particular case of Kurds, because their loyalty to the state was always deemed suspect.

  In Larijani’s mind, the warm welcome to the mosque could easily co-exist beside this disenfranchisement of Iran’s own minorities. It was a curious dichotomy.

  “Beh farmi,” he said to Esa, at the entrance of the mosque. It was the customary greeting of invitation.

  “Beh farmi,” Esa replied in Farsi before realizing his fluency in Farsi was a secret he should have kept.

  “You speak Farsi?” Larijani asked.

  If Esa admitted it, it would confirm Larijani’s belief he was a spy.

  He held up the guidebook Ali Golshani had given him.

  “This has been helpful.” He smiled a disarming smile. “I’m not sure about my accent. I give most Farsi words the Urdu pronunciation, since the voca
bulary is so similar.”

  “You are fluent in English,” Larijani observed.

  “As are you,” Khattak said pleasantly. “Higher education in the Indian subcontinent is conducted in English.”

  “You sound like an American to me.”

  Khattak said nothing to this. He followed Larijani into the mosque, his senses on high alert. If Larijani suspected him of being a citizen of the West, he would dig deeper into Khattak’s background. And Esa wondered how much effort it would take to uncover the details of his Canadian passport, where his full name was listed.

  He was so preoccupied by his companion’s actions, that for the first time he failed to take in the sights or to observe the mihrab Larijani had described.

  They’d missed the congregational prayer.

  Khattak prayed on his own. Larijani had rattled him, and he needed a moment to retrench—to remind himself what faith meant when he was surrounded by the ravages of the regime. His faith had provided him with the ethical framework for his life: everything the Islamic Republic stood for was antithetical to it.

  He nodded at strangers who came and went, engaged in their own pursuits. He knew there were minor differences in his performance of the prayer that would attract attention, but his experience at the pilgrimage sites had been one of curiosity and welcome. He thought of the warmth of the people he’d encountered during his travels, and contrasted it with the dyspeptic temper of the regime.

  There were an estimated one million Sunnis in Tehran alone who were not permitted to build schools or places of worship, or to disseminate their own religious teachings. And though this treatment of non-Shia minorities was unjust, the fate of ethnic and religious minorities in many Sunni-majority countries was exponentially worse. He had only to think of the violence against Shia processionals in Pakistan, or the increasingly disturbing attacks against Pakistan’s Christian and Hindu minorities. The country’s Hazara population, who were largely Shia, suffered extensive persecution by the Taliban, that was typically met with indifference by the state.

  Everything was twisted, Esa thought. Distorted into something brutal and ugly. As with the Iranian regime, whose grip on its population was a house of cards poised to fall.

  A house of lies.

  “Ya rab,” he prayed. “Deliver us all.”

  In that moment when his thoughts had turned despairing, Esa realized Larijani had left.

  Come to think of it, he couldn’t be sure Larijani had bothered to pray.

  He wasn’t waiting at the mihrab with the disinterested aplomb of a tour guide.

  There were three or four men in the mosque, none of them together. Esa lingered under the mihrab, scouting the empty upper gallery with his eyes.

  He took out his phone and snapped a few photographs. He pressed several notes into the mosque’s donation box, then found his way outside to the garden. Minarets pierced the clouds like torn veils, pools of light splashing over fountains in the courtyard.

  Mardavij Square was waking up, families strolling together under the trees.

  And Larijani was gone.

  20

  Interrogation

  “Why were you held at Evin?” They don’t like jokes, so I don’t tell them they should know better than me. I cough up a little blood, making sure to wheeze. I’ve been trying to analyze a question: Does my condition earn me any sympathy? Or are they ready to finish the job? “Respiratory infection,” Ahmed said. He was in the cell with me, a pre-med student who warmed my corpse and saved my fingers and toes. I told the others my tricks, what to do, how to fight when it’s their turn, but Piss-Pants doesn’t get the humor. He’s pale with terror, so we keep him at the back, and someone volunteers to take his turn. He’s a good boy, only fifteen. His older brother took him to Mousavi’s rally. They split up when the Basiji arrived, he doesn’t know where his brother ended up. He whimpers his brother’s name at night, but I tell him to swallow his weakness. “If your brother’s safe, keep him safe.”

  I can’t help feeling sorry for Piss-Pants, though the one I should feel sorry for is myself.

  21

  “This is the coolest thing that’s ever happened to me.”

  Vicky D’Souza gazed up at Nathan Clare with undisguised admiration. The reporter was pint-sized, using tottering black boots to give herself the illusion of height. Her spring coat was a shade of merlot that matched her lipstick, a contrast to her dark skin and shiny teeth. She wore wing-tipped glasses that rested low enough on her nose to draw attention to a beauty mark above her mouth that Rachel suspected was courtesy of a L’Oréal eyebrow pencil. It was smudged around the edges by the rain.

  She was brimming with energy, speaking in quick, clipped sentences that explained why she was more often off-screen than on.

  “Are those glasses real?” Rachel asked suspiciously. She felt like a giant beside Vicky.

  “Yeah, why? Do they make me look older? Sexier?”

  “Do you want to be considered sexy in your job?”

  “Not especially, but it’s important to know what kind of impression you make on others.”

  Rachel half expected Vicky to slap gum around her mouth, so determined was her Lois Lane impression of plucky young reporter.

  Nathan offered to take her coat, and she beamed at him.

  “Amazing, right? I haven’t broken a story in over a year, and here I am hot on the heels of Nathan Clare.” She snapped a quick picture of Nate with her phone, catching him with his mouth open.

  She’d leapt at the offer to join Rachel and Nate at the screening room, hoisting herself onto one of three tiny stools stationed before an oversized monitor. Nate chose to stand. Rachel lumbered onto the stool beside Vicky, cursing the gods who believed library patrons were four feet tall and ten inches wide. She could feel her thighs straining to stay on the stool. She straightened her back, hoping Nate hadn’t noticed. Meanwhile, Vicky was perched as daintily as a seabird on an ice floe.

  “So what gives?” Vicky prompted, beaming at Nate.

  Rachel thought it best to let Nate ask the questions. It was harder to say no to a celebrity, assuming that Nate counted as one.

  Nate pressed a button on the DVD player hidden on a shelf beneath the monitor.

  Rachel winced as a lurching opera score sounded over the posh tones of the BBC narrator. She’d already watched the coronation video twice. Now Rachel was watching Vicky’s reaction, no longer dazed by the opulence of the Shah’s regalia of state, or the profligacy of the royal consort’s sapphires.

  As soon as the documentary began to play, Vicky swiveled round on her stool. She hit the button on the remote to pause the film, fixing her attention on Rachel.

  “You want to talk about Zahra Sobhani. Am I a police witness?” She took out a Hello Kitty notepad with a matching pencil. “Do you mind if I take notes?”

  “Put that away,” Rachel said. She’d just had a quick lesson in not judging a book by its cover. Vicky D’Souza was nowhere near as flighty as the persona she inhabited. Behind the wing-tip frames, her eyes were as sharp as drill bits.

  “This is unofficial. We talked to Max Najafi, and he told us you were digging into Zahra Sobhani’s death. We want to know why.”

  “Why did you talk to Max Najafi?” Vicky didn’t put the notebook away. Instead she chewed on her eraser. “What does Zahra’s death have to do with Community Policing? If anything, this is a diplomatic matter.” She fastened on Nate, her whole expression brightening. “Is that why you’re involved? Is the government relying on your reputation as an envoy?”

  Nate slouched against Rachel, waiting as two patrons left the screening room and moved off to one side.

  “I hope not,” he said. “My interest in this matter is personal.”

  Rachel elbowed him in the ribs.

  “What?” Vicky asked, before Nate could. “Hold on a sec—where’s Inspector Khattak? He’s not with you? Why are you two together?”

  Rachel snapped Vicky’s notebook out of her hand, holding i
t up like a prize. She hadn’t anticipated how this might play out.

  “How about this?” she said. “You agree to keep our conversation off the record, and Nate will give you an exclusive interview on his thoughts about Zahra Sobhani’s death. He knew her.”

  Nate’s eyes blinked behind his glasses, at an outcome he hadn’t anticipated. It served him right. He was one of the leading minds in the country, yet confronted face-to-face, he responded like a bumbling uncle.

  Vicky D’Souza snatched the notebook back, her enthusiasm unabated.

  “Deal. But you have to tell me everything. Like everything, nothing held back. Where’s the inspector, what angle you’re working, all of it.”

  Rachel’s smile was noncommittal. She gave Vicky an edited version of events, ending with the Mossadegh letters and the coronation footage. She nodded at the screen behind Vicky’s head. When Vicky turned to look at the screen, Rachel mouthed the words be careful at Nate.

  “We’ve looked at all the available footage of the coronation we could find, and it turns out Zahra was right. The Shah’s arrival at his coronation wasn’t filmed. We couldn’t find any photographs either. We don’t know why it’s important, but we were hoping you could help us.”

  Vicky wrinkled her nose.

  “I used the CBC archives to do some research.” She counted off on her fingers, the nails painted a luscious red. A black lightning bolt was etched over the polish on each of her index fingers. “One, the letters disappeared the day Dariush Forouhar was murdered. Everyone assumed agents of the regime destroyed them. What you may not know is that Forouhar’s wife was murdered along with Forouhar. A book of poems she’d written and Forouhar’s diary were also taken.”

  Vicky gave them a quick summary of the Chain Murders. Rachel listened, appalled. She knew human rights abuses took place with alarming regularity around the world. Activists and journalists were particularly vulnerable when it came to authoritarian regimes, but the blatancy of the Chain Murders came as a shock to Rachel.

  “The diary was probably taken so the assassins could track down other members of the Iranian Writers’ Association. But we don’t know why the Mossadegh letters were destroyed.”