Song of a Captive Bird
Page 23
“What did you think?” he asked when it was over.
I was surprised he asked me, and it took me a moment to respond. “The images are exceptionally vivid, but there’s a kind of cold authority to the voice-over,” I said. “It sounds as if it were narrated by God—or somebody’s idea of God.”
“And how would you do it differently?”
I knew I was treading close to danger, that I could easily offend him, but why not tell the truth since he’d so pointedly asked for my opinion? “Make the voice-over less authoritative,” I said. “That would open a space for a viewer to enter the story. If the voice is warmer, people will feel more sympathy and engagement.”
He said nothing, but when I left the room a minute later I could tell he was still turning the idea over in his head.
Was I wrong to have told him what I really thought? Later that afternoon, I got my answer. It came by way of an invitation.
“He’s traveling to Abadan with his brother and a few assistants for a new project,” Amir told me. I could tell from his expression he was as astonished as I was by the message he’d been asked to relay to me. “He wants you to join him.”
“Join him? Me?”
“That’s right.”
At first I didn’t grasp what he was saying, but once I did I felt my face flush and asked, “What’s in Abadan?”
Amir’s brow furrowed. “You really don’t know?”
I shook my head.
“Oil,” he said. “Oil and a whole lot of trouble.”
22.
For thousands of years, Iran’s oil was the earth’s secret. Whenever the Zoroastrians—the ancient Iranians for whom fire was the essence of life—came across oil, they took it as a sign of fire flaring underground and built temples to their god, but the oil itself was only useful to them when it cooled and hardened and could be used to carve statues or as caulking for ships. When the English descended on the country in the early 1900s, everything changed. No sooner did they discover oil in the southern provinces than they designed and built the machines to extract it and sent overseers to guard and ship it. In Abadan alone, three hundred thousand barrels were now loaded onto tanks and shipped every year to nearly every major city in the world. “Fortune brought us a prize from fairyland beyond our wildest dreams,” Winston Churchill would write of the discovery of Iranian oil.
Then came Mohammad Mossadegh. The Iranian prime minister looked like a man who’d entered the world brooding and indignant—and so far as anyone knew he had. Ever since his youth, he’d been consumed by the idea of Iranian independence. Eventually the obsession turned into a conviction that Iranian oil should belong to Iran. In London and Washington, politicians called him a madman, to which he coolly replied: “Iranian oil belongs to Iran.”
For a time it nearly was, but the 1953 coup ousted Mossadegh, propped up the shah, and tightened England and America’s grip on Iran’s oil. Still, in the 1950s, oil was everything. Every conversation, no matter the subject or speaker, circled back to oil: how it was extracted from the earth, who was allowed to export it and sell it abroad, what it would mean if the country ever finally gained sovereignty over its oil wells and the subsequent profits. Subterfuge, accusations, and, above all, greed—they raged and raged until one day in 1958 the earth itself answered with fire.
* * *
The train sped southward, the engine plowing past the darkened silhouette of the Zagros Mountains. Inside my cabin it smelled of leather and camphor and all was quiet except for the rattle of the wheels against the rails. I wore a pair of khaki pants and a loose cotton blouse I’d bought especially for the trip, my feet tucked into a pair of soft canvas espadrilles. My bag held a fresh notebook, Leila’s camera, and several rolls of film. When I settled into my seat and drew back the curtain, I could just make out the valley through the window. Then, half an hour outside the city, the train reached a spot overlooking the Salt Desert. Rimmed by the snowcapped peak of Mount Damavand and the valleys of the Zagros Mountains, this was the only remnant of the sea that had once covered all of Iran. Farther on I saw the blue-domed shrine of Fatima and abandoned villages crouching against the hills. And then there was only sand, stone, and sky.
It was a long trip. I slept, woke, read from a book, wrote notes to myself, wondered how the others were passing the time. There were six of us on the assignment. For Golshiri, this was just a scouting trip, so there was no need for a full crew, just his brother, Shahram, a camera operator, two assistants, and me. I was the only woman, which was why I had my own couchette; the others shared two compartments in another part of the train. My feelings for Golshiri at this point were a confusion of curiosity and frustration. I’d heard he only put together a full crew when he began to shape a film and knew for sure the story was worth pursuing. Later I’d find out he already knew there was a story in Abadan—a big story connected to much bigger stories. As for me, I’d accepted the assignment with little sense of what my role would entail, but I had a lot to prove, not just to the others because I was the only woman there, but also to myself, to my sheltered past, to the life I’d left behind.
* * *
—
We reached Khorramshahr the next day. Outside the station, I shielded my eyes with one hand and looked out at the horizon. The sun was white and swollen. At eight in the morning, the air was already scorching hot and I could feel the perspiration pooling in the small of my back.
It was clear the driver was confused by my presence. A woman traveling with a group of men? No veil or wedding band in sight? As the driver stood staring at me, mouth agape, Golshiri opened the front passenger door and motioned for me to sit. He handed me my bag, which I set under my feet. The seats were leather, already hot from the morning sun, or maybe they’d never cooled off from the day before.
We set out in silence, me in the front and Golshiri and two assistants in the back seat. Shahram and the cameraman traveled by another car. A small, narrow island of mudflats, Abadan lay at the extreme southwestern part of the country, close to the border with Iraq. A few miles from the train station, a grove of palm trees rose up, and then, closer to town, I saw smokestacks and flares in the far distance.
Bumping across a railroad track and onto a smoothly paved road, we reached a street with many small white houses. Each house was exactly like the one next to it. They all had window boxes, though they were empty of flowers, and the windows were tightly shuttered. The streets were quiet and empty, though once or twice I saw another car slide past, a driver in the front and the dark shape of a passenger in the back seat.
We drove on, past more shuttered cottages. Eventually the dusty roads broadened into paved avenues shaded by palms. There were signs, written in English, for a country club, and then we turned up a private road with the words HERTFORDSHIRE MANOR engraved on a wooden sign. “There’s the production house,” I heard one of the assistants say. From a distance it seemed beautiful: a large terraced home with a veranda, garden, and tennis courts. As we got closer, though, I saw that the swimming pool was empty and cracked; the lawn was rutted with patches of dirt, and the grass had turned yellow and dry as straw.
The air inside the house was still and thick with humidity and dust. My room was a large suite on the lower level; the others were lodged on the second story, and Golshiri took over the carriage house. I stripped the bed down to the bare mattress. Tomorrow I’d wash the sheets, setting them in the sun to dry on the terrace outside my room, but not now. The heat was unbearable and my head thrummed with a headache. In the morning we’d hike out to the oil fields to see the fire. All I could do now was collapse into the bed with my shirt and slacks clinging to my skin, my shoes still on my feet.
* * *
—
“This used to be a village of five hundred people,” Golshiri said the next morning as we set off together for the fire. He was freshly shaven, the comb tracks visible in his damp hair. He wore a canvas jacket and carried a leather satchel bulging with camera equipment.
The sky was a white haze. Gulls wheeled overhead. The road followed a corrugated metal wall, and in the far distance stood a long row of oil wells, their strokes stilled now by the fire.
“What happened to turn it from a village into this?”
“Iranian oil is unlike any other in the world, and the English knew it as soon as they got here. Back in the twenties an average well in most parts of the world extracted four and a half gallons in a day; here nearly ten thousand barrels gush from the earth each day. The British found they could skip the extraction process—that’s how readily oil gives itself here—and it wasn’t long before they brought their journeymen, wells, and equipment. Four years ago, BP—that’s British Petroleum—took over. They’ve turned these wells into the most lucrative British enterprise anywhere on the planet. All they need, all they’ve ever needed, is workers. Iranian workers.”
We crossed over a clearing and continued our walk on an unpaved road lined by a row of desolate storefronts. Two small boys crouched under a tree, tossing a marble back and forth in the dirt. Behind them stood a large billboard balanced precariously on rickety wooden stilts. COCA-COLA was written in Persian and English on the bottom, and the picture showed a pretty girl raising a green bottle to her lips.
“They call this the Paper City,” Golshiri said, pointing toward some hovels fashioned from rusted metal and dried mud. Small flies swarmed around us, and I tried to swat them off. It was no use. I covered my nose with a scarf and tried to breathe through my covered hand. It was nine o’clock and already ninety degrees; by noon the temperature would rise to nearly 120. The stench of oil filled the air. Later that night I’d rub myself raw in the bath, but when I went to sleep I would still catch the sulfurous scent, though I wouldn’t be able to tell if it was my skin or the air in the room.
“Before this there just were warehouses,” Golshiri continued. “Four thousand people crammed together inside. No bathrooms. Each family had a blanket and that was where they lived, confined to those few feet on the warehouse floor. Then BP came up with the idea to let the workers build shacks for themselves out of discarded oil drums. The men work eighteen-hour days in the oil fields. They’re paid fifty cents a day. There’s no spring season here, only winter and summer. In the winter the earth floods, and all around the mud’s knee-deep.”
“Where did all the workers come from?”
“When word got out that the English were hiring, villagers came from all directions. BP built everything here. All these shanties”—he gestured with his hand—“but also the country club and the tennis courts. Iranians aren’t allowed over there, not even to use the drinking fountains.”
“Two separate worlds,” I said.
“Exactly.”
Everything turned dark as we approached the oil fields. Smoke from the flames curtained the air and blackened the sky. Through the black plumes, fire shot like a geyser, and the force of the flames turned into a choking wind. Heat licked my face, and the only sound was the fire whipping in the wind. I followed Golshiri farther toward the wells, but the gusts were strong and walking was almost impossible. We staggered on. We didn’t speak, because there wasn’t anything to say. My eyes smarted from the fumes and the grit. I yanked my scarf from my neck and shrouded my face. Through the tall waves of heat, I could make out overalls and hard hats, then dark bodies and blackened hands. The workers. The heat obscured their faces, and I strained to make out their words over the din.
I looked back toward Golshiri. “How did the wells catch fire?” I shouted.
He brushed his hair back from his eyes. Already a layer of soot covered his face. “All anyone knows for sure is that a spark lit the air. Some people say the workers did it, but that makes no sense. Those wells are their livelihood. There’s nothing else for them. Nothing. Anyway, the oil company can’t afford that theory. Who else could they find to fight the fire? The locals are the only workers they’ve ever had around here.”
“How will they put it out?”
“That, really, is the question,” he said, his eyes fixed on the burning wells. “You see, a fire, especially a fire of such scale, won’t be easily extinguished. It either dies down slowly, over the course of months or even years, or else—”
“Yes?”
“It’s killed.”
* * *
—
By the time we reached Abadan, the fire had been burning for many weeks. Oil-well fires were notoriously difficult to put out, and the fire here had already burned through May and June, spreading from the wells into all directions. Instead of oil, the wells now carried water from the Karun and blasted it into the flames, but that hadn’t lessened the blaze. The gases were noxious, and there were dozens of stories about workers passing out from the fumes. All the foreigners had left for the gulf; any Iranians with the means had left town, too. With thousands of workers idle and the city at a near standstill, word was going around that there would be riots if the fire wasn’t extinguished soon.
In late June, a call was placed to Myron Kinley in Houston, Texas. The undisputed international authority on oil-well fires, he was a short but powerfully built man, with a limp and a scar-ravaged body he’d earned over the many years he’d spent practicing his profession. Having accepted the assignment, Kinley got on the first flight to Iran—an eight-thousand-mile journey.
Now it was July. Myron Kinley had been in Abadan for several weeks, but he and his men had not managed to put out the fire. And now he was faced with the problem of what to do with me.
“Get that woman the hell out of here,” he said as I approached. He pointed at me but addressed Golshiri, speaking in English. Until I came closer and could see his pale-blue eyes, I mistook him for one of the workers. He wore a hard hat, and his face and arms were totally black from the soot.
Golshiri strode forward. He answered Kinley in English, and I struggled to make out the exchange that ensued. “As you know, Mr. Kinley, we have permission from the authorities to film the fire. This woman is part of my crew, and I insist she stay with us.”
“Listen here, Mr….”
“Golshiri.”
“Golshiri,” Kinley repeated, though it came out in a thick Texas drawl. “I got a hundred-man crew here.” He wiped his brow with the back of his hand and then spit into the sand. “Three men have died already trying to put out this fire, and I call that lucky. Real lucky. I don’t care who all gave you permission to film here, but I’m not taking responsibility for that woman’s safety, so if you don’t get her out of here, your whole crew leaves.”
* * *
—
That’s how I found myself banished to the tent city, a makeshift camp on the other side of the oil wells. The women would be there, Golshiri told me, and suggested I take a look around.
The tents were a brilliant white, billowing faintly from the fire’s winds. As I approached, I could make out veiled figures. I knew it would be impossible to earn the women’s confidence bareheaded, so I unknotted the scarf at my throat, unfurled it, then tied it over my head to cover my hair. Inside the encampment the women wore long crimson veils over crimson dresses. Their eyes were heavily smudged with kohl and they had dark skin and tattooed hands. Arab blood. I hung back, but I was intensely thirsty and I had no drinking water with me. One of the women stood before an iron pot, cooking over a naked flame in the already agonizing heat. I stood there for some minutes, unsure how to approach her, but then she set down her ladle and walked toward me.
“Yes, lady?” she said. Her stomach was round and high and her red veil nearly brushed the ground. Like the others, she had coppery brown skin and black eyes. She w
as very beautiful, with a heart-shaped face and dimples, but what astonished me was her necklace. From a distance it looked like it was made of silver coins, but as she came closer I saw it was fashioned from Coca-Cola bottle caps.
“I’m sorry to bother you, but I’ve come from Tehran and—”
Her eyes widened and she clucked her tongue. “Tehran!”
“Yes.”
At that moment an older woman approached. She had the same heart-shaped face and the same kohl-lined eyes. This, and the familiar manner with which she placed her hand on the younger woman’s shoulder, told me they were mother and daughter.
“We’re here to make a film about the fire,” I told them after I’d greeted the elder woman.
The woman’s face gave nothing away. I waited for what seemed like ages, and when she did finally answer, she only said, “Why?”
The question took me aback. I’d taken it more or less on faith that what was happening in Abadan should be documented, but the woman was shrewd. She wouldn’t be satisfied with a glib reply.
“To show how the fire’s affected you,” I said.
For another moment she was silent, but then she gestured for me to enter the tent.
I followed her inside, unwound my camera from my neck, and sat down on a faded, threadbare carpet. There were three other women in the tent, and they regarded me with a calm curiosity. One of them rose and prepared some tea, which she served to me heavily sugared and in a small copper cup. At first I couldn’t make out much of the women’s talk, since their dialect was so unfamiliar. I listened more carefully and spoke less, which maybe endeared me to them, because they began to make a place for me in their conversation.
“Where is your husband?” one of the women asked.