Song of a Captive Bird

by Jasmin Darznik

  “But he wouldn’t go.”

  What she said next, she meted out carefully. “He said too many people were counting on him. Something had happened and he couldn’t leave Iran.” For a moment she was quiet, wrapped in some dark thought. “Have you heard what happened up by parliament?”

  “You mean the assassination?”

  She nodded.

  There’d been no other talk in Tehran for days and days. I nearly asked her how she could possibly imagine I hadn’t heard the news, but then I stopped. It was clear she wasn’t thinking straight.

  “Yes,” I said. “I’ve heard.”

  “God help me, Forugh, but I can’t let myself think he’d be involved in something like that.”

  “You don’t know if he was.”

  She bit her lower lip and looked down at her hands. “That’s true.”

  “Do you have any idea where he could be now?”

  “There was a place he stayed once near the university, a safe house. A few times I’ve gotten as close as the campus gates. I wander around, poking my head around the coffee shops and bookstores, hoping I’ll run into him. But so far I haven’t had the nerve to go find him.”

  “Why not?”

  “He made me promise not to. He said it was just a matter of time before I was followed by SAVAK—if I wasn’t already being followed, that is.”

  SAVAK. The shah’s secret police. I’d heard there were thousands of them in the city, a vast network of agents and informers, and that they were as brutal as they were stealthy.

  “Do you think that’s possible, that someone’s watching you?”

  She answered with a helpless shake of the head. “Some days I think yes, and I see them everywhere—in the street when I go into town and even out in the fields around the house—but then I think no, I’m imagining it, there’s no one there, I’m being crazy…” Her voice trailed off and her eyes were round with panic.

  “But without a passport and money he’ll never get out of the country, right?”

  “I don’t think so, no.”

  “Then I’ll go,” I said. Even if I didn’t fully understand what he’d done or been accused of, I knew the effect of Rahim’s disappearance on Leila, the fear and hopelessness that had gripped her. If I could at least reassure her that her brother was alive, perhaps I could ease her distress. I owed her so much and here, finally, was a way I could help her.

  * * *

  —

  The rain fell hard the next morning, and runoff from the old waterways flooded the streets. I parked several blocks away from Tehran University. For some minutes I sat in the car, listening to the rain drum against the windshield and steadying my nerves. Leila and I had gone over the plan several times. No one could see the car and connect me to Rahim. I’d have to be quick, and if anyone stopped me and asked me why I was here, I’d say I’d come to visit a cousin. I did, in fact, have a cousin at the university. I hadn’t seen him in years, but it was something, a connection. An excuse.

  I pulled a dark-blue scarf over my head, tightened it with a knot under my chin, and pulled on the loose black overcoat that Leila had bought from one of her housekeepers. When I stepped from the car, I held my umbrella so that it obscured part of my face.

  The neighborhood around Tehran University was a honeycomb of densely populated streets, lanes, and alleys. It was Sunday and the bookshops and publishing houses were quiet, but I passed several coffeehouses in which I glimpsed students sitting together in pairs and small groups, their heads wreathed in cigarette smoke.

  I crossed the street, darting past the occasional umbrella, and ducked into a side street, only to find myself standing in several inches of water, my shoes and stockings soaked. The wind picked up and snapped my umbrella so that the fabric sagged and flapped. I was fumbling with it when I saw that there was a man standing across the street in a long black coat, looking my way. I thought I had seen him before, over by the university gates. He was watching me closely and now he suddenly started in my direction.

  I turned on my heel, picking up my pace, crossing one street and then another. After a while I paused, looking over my shoulder. To my relief, the man was gone. I was close now—nearly there. I scanned the building numbers but couldn’t find the address. You must not panic, I told myself. Keep your head, you’ll find it. I doubled back and eventually came upon the correct address, a two-story apartment building bordered by a grocer and publishing house, both of which were closed for the day.

  Inside the building, the ceilings were low and the warped wooden floorboards creaked. Toward the end of the hall I saw a door. It was painted mustard yellow, just as Leila had described. There was no answer when I knocked, but I heard a shuffling of feet and then scraping of chairs against the wooden floor, and so I knocked again.

  “Yes?” came a voice as the door opened a crack.

  The boy—he would seem to me immediately a boy, not a man—was nervous and unshaven. I pushed the scarf off my forehead. My coat was trailing water onto the landing, and I felt the cold water leaking into my sleeves. I dug in my pocketbook for the papers: a counterfeit passport, some letters and banknotes, tied together with string. I passed it all to the boy, through the narrow opening, then watched his eyes scan the passport and gauge the heft of the envelope with his hand.

  After a moment, he pulled the door open. As I entered the flat, I caught the smell of bodies pressed into cramped rooms for many days, shuttered away and hidden. There were three figures in the first room. They were sitting cross-legged on the floor, and one of them was smoking a cigarette. The windows had been papered over and the room was in near darkness, but I could make out their surprise when they saw me.

  “Did anyone see you come into the building?” the boy asked, guiding me toward a hallway.

  “I don’t think so.”

  He stopped and turned to look at me. “You’re not sure?”

  I shook my head.

  He stared at me and seemed ready to say something more, but instead he continued walking down the hall. I followed him up a staircase, which led to another door and then finally to a small room without a window.

  Stepping inside, I first saw a cot and then a figure underneath the sheets. Rahim. I moved toward him. I thought he’d resemble Leila, but his features were so disfigured with bruises and swelling that I could see nothing of her there. His eyes were blackened and swollen, the lids welded shut. A charred black scar ran down one side of his face. His hair was longish and matted to his scalp. He was shirtless, the skin of his chest pale, nearly hairless, and crosshatched with fresh lashings.

  I took a deep, shaky breath and grabbed the boy by the elbow. “You need to take him to the hospital. These cuts must be disinfected and stitched up or they won’t heal. And he may have more-serious injuries, broken bones…”

  He shrugged out of my grip. “Do you have any idea what’s going on these days? One look at him and any doctor in this city would call the police.”

  “But he’s bleeding, he’s—”

  “Listen,” the boy said. “There’s no way we’re going to let them make a martyr of him.”

  “A martyr?”

  “He’s as good as dead if he leaves here.”

  “But there has to be somewhere you can take him! He’ll die if you don’t get him some kind of medical attention.”

  A groan rose from the bed, and the boy and I both turned toward Rahim. He was hooking a finger in my direction. “It’s all right,” he said when I came closer. His voice was ragged and nearly inaudible. When he opened one eye, his gaze didn’t meet mine but hovered somewhere above it. “I’ll be all right.”

  I crouched closer and caught the scent of blood. The gashes on his chest were wet with it.

  Minutes went by before he spoke again. “Tell Leila I’m safe and…”

  “Yes?”

  “Be careful, Forugh.”

  I nodded and placed a hand gingerly on his arm. “Your sister sends her love. She wants you to be safe. She want
s to help you.” I’m not sure he heard me, as his eyes drifted closed, but already the boy was leading me from the room and I had no choice but to leave.

  Outside, the pavement gleamed with the rain from the downpour. My kerchief was soaked through, but I pulled it low over my head and knotted it tight. I had done what I was supposed to do. But what could I tell Leila? Her brother was not all right. Nothing was all right.

  “Be careful, Forugh,” Rahim had said. It wasn’t until later, when I’d left the safe house, climbed into the car, and driven back home, the image of Rahim’s ravaged body before my eyes the whole way, that I realized I hadn’t told him my name. He knew it already. I’d never discover how he found out, but he knew not only my name but that I would come. That I’d help him escape. He’d only been waiting for me to appear.

  * * *

  —

  Rahim was smuggled out of Tehran hidden under a tarp among ten thousand potatoes on the back of a truck. His convalescence took place in a village of less than fifty people and lasted three weeks. From there, he traveled by foot with nothing but a rucksack on his back. Usually it took five days to walk to the border from that place, but he was weak and fevered and it took him eighteen. He followed a narrow, winding mountain pass until he reached the border between Iran and Turkey. A Kurdish goatherd guided him over to the other side. Six more days of walking. His fever had not come down, his lungs were weak, and he developed a cough that would stay with him until he died, many years later, in a small bungalow in Berkeley, California. He got to Istanbul by train. In all, the journey took two months, and it would be another month before a cable reached Leila, telling her he was out of the country.

  Not long afterward there were rumors that Rahim had been granted asylum in America and was making noise about the shah’s regime. Human-rights abuses. Tortures and murders. After that Leila lost track of him, but for a while it was enough to know he’d made it out of Iran. She was calmer, sinking back into her translations, but she never fully recovered. He was her only family, the only one who’d mattered, anyway. Now he was gone and she knew—I felt sure of it—she would never see him again.

  26.

  “Do you want to direct your own movie?” Darius asked by phone from England.

  He called the studio one afternoon when I was at work. The operator connected us and there was a lot of interference on the line. My God, it was good to hear his voice. How was it possible that I missed him so much?

  When martial law had ended and I returned to the studio, I hated how much I wanted to see Darius again. Though I’d craved time on my own, he was never far from my thoughts. But when I went back to the studio, I found out he’d flown to London for an extended trip. It hurt me to know he’d left without telling me he’d be gone. Weeks had passed since then and I wouldn’t tell him—I couldn’t tell him—how lonely I’d been. Working and working, the empty apartment no longer a refuge but a taunt.

  “What do you mean, my own movie?” I asked now, all brisk professionalism. I was sure he’d catch the strain in my voice, but if he did he chose not to make a point of it.

  “A new documentary. The director’s dropped out, and I was about to scrap the project when I thought of calling you.”

  “But what happened to the director?” I said, twirling and tightening the cord around my finger. It seemed strange that someone would just abandon a project. Maybe he’d gotten into some sort of trouble with the government? You heard more and more stories like that these days.

  “Who knows?” said Darius. “He’s probably strung out on opium somewhere. It wouldn’t be the first time.” There was a loud buzz, and for a moment it seemed we’d been disconnected. “Anyway, there’s a crew waiting up in Tabriz.” He waited a beat, then said, “Do you want to step in and direct it?”

  Of course I did.

  “We’ve got some support from a government organization,” he went on, “but you call all the shots. It’s all yours.”

  “Who’s on the crew?”

  He rattled off some names, only one of which was familiar to me. “Obviously they won’t be expecting you.”

  “You mean they won’t be expecting a woman.”

  “Nothing you can’t handle,” he said, and then paused. “It’s wonderful to talk to you, Forugh. I’ve missed you.” The line went silent for a moment. “Are you still there?” he asked.

  I wanted to tell him how much I missed him, how much my body missed him, but there was a choked feeling in my throat and instead I said a quick goodbye and hung up the phone.

  * * *

  —

  The next morning, I packed up the company jeep with a camera, tripod, and film and drove to Tabriz. Once there, I met up with the crew that was waiting for me. Before leaving Tabriz we stopped for two canisters of fuel—there’d be no service stations the rest of the way—and then we settled in for the hour-long drive to the Bababaghi Hospice in a small village to the north. I had a crew of three men, a budget of nearly nothing, and twelve days to make a documentary on a subject about which I was almost totally ignorant: leprosy.

  Bababaghi was encircled by a tall fence, the wood worn and cracked with age. Walking through the colony the first time, I saw faces without mouths, hands without fingers, legs without toes or even without feet. As a child I’d been taught to think leprosy was contagious. A half hour of research the night before my trip taught me this wasn’t true. But no matter what doctors and scientists said, the mere mention of the condition still terrified people. Most of the people at Bababaghi had been forced to live their whole lives here, and their children, even the healthy ones, were prisoners as well.

  Everything I saw when I arrived at Bababaghi confirmed the necessity of documenting this place and its people. And yet I felt myself falter. The sufferings of these people seemed indescribable, unspeakable, inexpressible. That first day I sat by myself under the shade of a tree, working out some plan for how to proceed. A small girl with black eyes and pigtails tucked her doll in a wheelbarrow and pushed it past me. In the distance a man cried out, and there was no answer, anywhere, to his cry. For him, for all the people here, the world ended at that tall, decrepit fence. The colony wasn’t just a symbol of imprisonment; it was the essence of imprisonment, a thing so immovable, so cruelly relentless, that I realized it could never be shown in any way other than what it was.

  I had just twelve days to finish the project—there wasn’t money or time for an extensive shoot. Still, I decided the first few days should be given over to learning the rhythms and rituals of the leper colony. Once I’d established some measure of trust with the people, I’d devote the next eight days to filming the documentary. It was maddening, thrilling, and exhausting work, and when it was done I called it The House Is Black.

  * * *

  “I’ve barely recovered from my astonishment at your poetry, Forugh,” Bernardo Bertolucci confided as we stood together in the crowded amphitheater, “and now you’ve brought that same talent and vision to your work as a filmmaker.”

  It was the night of my directorial debut. Gloved to the elbows, I was dressed in a black satin sheath and three-inch-high sling-back pumps. The film world had been buzzing about Bertolucci ever since La commare secca came out earlier that year. Darius had sent him an advance copy of The House Is Black and invited him to travel from Italy for the premiere. The auditorium was bright and hot, filled with the usual mix of the prominent and the up-and-coming, the old guard and the avant-garde. There were a good number of foreigners in attendance, as well. A journalist from Argentina, another from Israel, a large group from the American Embassy. Leila was also somewhere in the room, looking resplendent in a raspberry-red dress and matching lipstick.

  My sister and her husband had come, as well, and they’d brought my mother along with them. We saw each other infrequently, so I was surprised when they’d accepted my invitation but grateful, too, and I told them so. When she saw me, my mother took hold of my hand and squeezed as hard as she could. Then my sister stepped
forward and kissed me on the cheek. “Oh, Forugh,” she said, eyes brimming. I’d never stopped feeling she disapproved of my divorce. Nevertheless, she called every few weeks, visited me several times a year. I’d gone to see her first play when it debuted and had attended the others she’d staged since then. Each time I published a book of poetry I sent it to her, and she’d always call to thank me. Whenever she wrote an article for a magazine, she would set aside a copy and give it to me when we saw each other. And now, standing together in the foyer, I felt her pride in me, and it just about crushed me with happiness.

  I’d chatted with my family briefly before someone pulled me away, leading me toward Bernardo Bertolucci. Gracious introductions, followed by compliments and more compliments. People were watching us. They were leaning close to hear.

  “You’re a true artist, Forugh,” Bertolucci declared.

  “It’s hard to accept a compliment like that from you, Mr. Bertolucci.”

  “Bernardo,” he said and smiled.

  “Bernardo,” I echoed. As I said this I stepped a little too close, smiled a little too long. But I didn’t care. I’d worked hard on the film and I knew it was good. This was my night, and I was determined to enjoy every minute of it.

  “Nonsense, Forugh! You’re truly an exceptional artist. I can see that your work comes from your own life. I want my films to do that, always. I’m against censorship of every kind, and I think I know something of the challenges you face as an artist here in Iran. Our countries are not so different—the history, the corruption, the struggles. Wouldn’t you agree?”

  I started to respond but then stopped. Not twenty feet away, Darius stood with a woman’s arm laced in his. I’d never seen her before, but I knew immediately who she was.

  I felt sick, light-headed, and I couldn’t look away. Bertolucci’s gaze followed mine. “Ah, I see Darius has arrived.” He turned back to me and held out his arm. “Shall we join him, Forugh?”