by Doug Welch
“Missus Rowan?”
Gathering her wits she responded.
“Sorry, it came as a shock. No –no questions. I’ll be ready.”
Hanging up the phone, she ducked in for a quick shower. She dressed herself in travel clothes and scurried around the apartment looking for items she might have missed.
Edward had shipped everything they wanted to keep to his mother’s home in Scotland, so all she carried was her purse and a small suitcase with some toilet items and a change of clothing.
Satisfied she’d done a complete sweep; she sat on the divan and waited for the busses to arrive.
After a while, someone knocked at the door.
Thinking the busses had arrived early, she opened it, only to find Behrouz blocking the doorway, a triumphant sneer twisting his lips. He pushed past her and forced his way into the apartment along with two male companions.
“Going somewhere, Sister?”
Although fear tried to rule her, she struggled to suppress it. Despite her control, she felt a sinking sensation in her stomach and she nearly lost her breakfast. “What are you doing here Behrouz? You have no right to enter my home without permission. Leave at once, or I’ll call the municipal police.”
He turned to her, raised and cocked his eyebrow. “Call them. You’ll find they’re not very sympathetic to an Englishman’s whore. No, Dorri, you’re leaving here alright, but not with the Englishman, you’re leaving with me.”
Anger overrode her fear. “When Father finds you’ve abducted me, and he will, he’ll make you wish you’d been born to a different family.”
Behrouz lashed out with the back of his hand, striking her on the cheek. The suddenness of the attack and the pain of the blow made her anger boil over. She hooked her fingers into claws and leaped for his face, meaning to gouge out his eyes. The only things that stopped her were the two strong arms that grabbed her wrists and forced her arms to her side.
She stood, quivering with hate, restrained by his two henchmen, as Behrouz struck her again. Despite the pain she didn’t give in. “Afraid to face me without your communist friends, Behrouz?” She saw the men exchange puzzled glances.
Behrouz fury was evident on his face. “I already wish I was born to a different family, Dorri. The communists are fools. Once the revolutionary council rules Iran, they will be history. Father is to be arrested and condemned as a traitor and then I’ll be head of the House. As for you, you’re coming with me or I’ll give you to these two. I imagine they’re already hard, thinking about what they will do to you.” He removed her chador from the hook it hung on and flung it to her. “Clothe yourself properly to hide your whore body.”
She resisted and drew a breath to shout for help, but one of the men clamped his hand over her mouth. They wrapped her in the chador and dragged her, struggling, out of the apartment and into the street, to a waiting automobile. They held her face down on the floor of the back seat and drove for a short while.
The car halted and she felt someone slip a hood over her head. She was led, still resisting, to a flight of stairs leading down. She felt them push her and a door slammed shut. Ripping the cloth from her head and the despised chador from her body, she saw a mean, filthy room with a cot and a pot to relieve herself.
She sat on the cot and buried her face in her hands, weeping bitterly.
* * *
Edward waited for a month for word from the Embassy about Dorri’s whereabouts. Despite repeated attempts, it had been unable to locate her or her family and he nearly drowned in despair.
Soon, after the New Year, the Shah fled the country and a new revolutionary government ruled Iran. The British Embassy’s protection was turned over to the Swedes and the Ambassador returned to Great Britain.
Shortly after he returned, Edward requested, and was granted, a meeting. Sitting in the living room of the Ambassador’s mansion, he waited to be summoned. In a while, a servant led him to the Ambassador’s study and departed, leaving him in front of the door. He knocked, and heard a voice within the study announce, “Come in.”
Edward opened the door and walked into the comfortable study. Polished wood bookshelves lined the walls and the Ambassador sat behind an ornate davenport. He gestured to a sideboard containing brandy glasses and an amber decanter.
“Pour us a drink, Edward. I suspect we’ll need it.”
Edward opened the decanter and poured two finger’s full into two glasses. He handed one to the Ambassador, and sat in a convenient chair, facing him.
“It’s uncanny how accurate you were about Iran, Edward,” the Ambassador said, staring at the amber liquid in his brandy sniffer. “–Bloody near clairvoyant.” He took a drink.
“Likely nothing we could have done would have prevented it, Your Excellency.”
“Ambassador no longer, Edward, just a common British citizen. –You know, I’ve been dreading this meeting.”
Fear clutched at Edward’s heart. “Why?”
“Because I felt so bloody damned helpless, that’s why! I cringed at the thought I’d have to face you and confess that we couldn’t find Dorri. I think everyone at the embassy loved that girl and your marriage to her was nearly a fairy-tale ending, I doubt the cinema could have captured it any better.”
Edward started breathing again. For a moment he’d thought the Ambassador would tell him she was injured or worse.
“Has the Home Office discovered anything new?”
The ex-ambassador shook his head. “No... They’ve lodged the usual protests of course, and I listed her as both an embassy employee and as a British expatriate. I also contacted some of the Iranian nationals I knew who were friendly to Great Britain and emphasized our concern for her well-being. It’s difficult because it seems almost like there are two governments in Iran, one on the surface and secular, and the other a shadow and Muslim.”
Edward cringed at the mention of ‘shadow’ because from the intelligence reports he’d scanned at the Analysis Section, the term seemed to fit with what was happening to the country. Of course, he couldn’t say it aloud and maintain any creditability with MI5, but he held a nagging suspicion that Iran was in danger of becoming a shadow government. Dorri had warned him that the five hidden Houses of the Haft Khandan were radical fundamentalist Muslims and if allowed to take control of the Iranian Government, they would transform it into a theocracy. He should have listened.
“Is there anyway you can help me get Dorri out of Iran?” Edward asked.
He shook his head again. “No. I’m an ex-ambassador of a failed diplomatic mission and the Home Office does not look kindly on failure, despite the circumstances. However, I still have some contacts there and I’ll beg some favors and emphasize its importance.”
* * *
After the fruitless meeting with the ex-ambassador, Edward hounded the Home Office. He knew that left to themselves, they’d likely pigeon-hole the whole affair and he couldn’t allow that to happen. Emphasizing the abduction aspect and Dorri’s subsequent mysterious disappearance, had the desired effect because the Home Office knew that if the tabloids sniffed it out, they’d make her an international cause and an embarrassment to Her Majesty’s Government.
As MI5’s current top analyst for Iranian intelligence, all reports filtered through him and he read all of them for any clues to Dorri’s whereabouts. He found nothing. It seemed as though Dorri had vanished from the face of the earth.
Chapter 12
London – Spring 1979
Edward heard a knock at his office door. “Enter.”
Emily Robbins walked in and sat in front of his desk. Since Iran, he’d recruited her as an assistant analyst for the Iranian section. “We found something, Edward.”
He looked up from the document he’d been pursuing. “Oh? And what’s that?”
She compressed her lips and shook her head. “No, I think you need to see it for yourself. It was flagged for information with the Diplomatic Section because it has Dorri’s name attached to it.”
Leapin
g from his chair, he nearly knocked it over. He hurried from behind his desk and took Emily by the arm. “Show me.”
Emily led him through the crowded room, winding her way around people who briefly looked up from their desks and then returned to their tasks. She stopped at a glass walled section and rapped on the window. One of the analysts rose from his seat in front of a television and opened the door. He and Emily entered and the glass door hissed shut behind them.
Gesturing to one of the technicians, Emily indicated a vacant seat. “We’ve been monitoring Iranian television broadcasts since the revolution and one of the techs came across this. You need to watch it.”
Edward sat. Emily nodded to the tech and he loaded a tape into the player hitting the play button.
A scene of an unveiled female dressed in a chador and holding a microphone appeared on the screen. Edward automatically translated the Farsi.
“Foreign oppressors such as Great Britain and the United States have accused the Revolutionary Council of holding people against their will as international hostages. We’re at the apartment of two such people, Dorri al- Baraghani Rowan and her sister Shalizeh, to refute such scurrilous slander.”
The camera swung to frame two women dressed in chadors, their faces unveiled. Edward choked back a sob when he recognized Dorri and Shalizeh.
The technician looked concerned and he glanced at Emily. Shaking her head no, she indicated that he should let the tape run. Dorri, clearly pregnant, sat on a divan next to Shalizeh, her hands spread on her knees. Shalizeh stared at the floor with her arms crossed. The moderator spoke again.
“Dorri, are you being held against your will?”
Obviously nervous, Dorri glanced at something outside the range of the camera.
“No, it is my desire to stay in Iran and work for the success of the Islamic Republic of Iran. I reject the accusations of the foreign oppressors who seek to overthrow the democratically elected government of the Islamic people.”
The moderator next spoke to Shalizeh.
“Shalizeh, are you being held against your will?”
Shalizeh licked her lips and turned her head away from the camera. “No”
The camera turned back to the face of the female moderator who began to deliver a lengthy diatribe against Western governments and their efforts to meddle in the internal affairs of Iran.
“Shut it off, I’ve seen enough,” Edward said. He sat thinking about the scene he’d just witnessed. Beyond the obvious fact that Dorri read from a prepared statement, something else nagged at him.
“Rewind it and stop it when it frames Dorri.”
The technician rewound the tape and stepped it frame by frame until Dorri appeared. Edward studied her image. Forcing the painful longing away, he tried to study it with dispassion.
She seemed to sit with an unnatural posture, leaning forward despite her pregnant condition with her hands splayed and prominently displayed. Was she trying to tell him something?
“Can you enlarge her hands?”
The technician manipulated the control and framed Dorri’s hands.
“Enlarge the left hand,” Edward said.
The image shifted and Dorri’s left hand filled the television monitor screen.
“There! Do you see it?” he turned to Emily. “She’s not wearing her wedding ring.”
Emily bit her lip. “It’s not very conclusive, Edward. There are a lot of reasons why she wouldn’t be wearing it.”
Edward shook his head. ‘No. You don’t know her like I do. You’d have to pry that ring off to get her to remove it. Notice the white flesh around her ring finger and the way her hands are displayed. She’s trying to tell us something.”
Emily studied the monitor. “You could be right, Edward, but it’s not likely to make a difference. As soon as the Home Office sees this, the furor over Dorri’s whereabouts will die. She’s obviously safe in her own apartment and she’s staying in Iran, although maybe not by choice. In my opinion this video has just made it much harder to get her out.”
* * *
Dorri remained calm until all of the State Television employees had left her apartment. As soon as the door closed on the last person, Shalizeh collapsed on the divan, weeping. Dorri stood up, ripping off the hated black chador. She reached into her pocket and slipped on her wedding ring.
Removing it had been the only thing she could think of to show that she wasn’t making her statement voluntarily. The ring represented her last link to Edward, the only thing she possessed that he’d given her.
She sat back on the divan, lifted Shalizeh, and held her while she cried. She remembered when she’d been released from the dank room in the basement of her apartment complex.
They’d fed her. The food was plain, but she’d eaten every unappetizing bit of it for the sake of her unborn child. She’d had no way of judging the time, because the cell didn’t admit sunlight, but at the rate her belly swelled it had to be more than a month. She’d almost given up hope and was huddled on the cot when the door opened and a man dressed in Western clothes entered.
“Get up woman. You’re being released from here.”
She felt dirty. They’d allowed her to shower a few times, but she’d had to endure the stares and jibes of the guards while she stood under the spray naked. She’d only had the two changes of clothing and she had to wash them when she bathed. Terrified it was only a matter of time before one of the foul guards raped her, she tried to bathe only when absolutely necessary.
She sat on the edge of the cot. “Who are you?”
The man laughed. “I’m from the government, such as it is, at least the current government.” He shrugged. “Tomorrow, who knows? Your brother exceeded his authority and has been chastised. Since your husband fled Iran you’ve been given into your family’s care and they’ve been instructed to see to you and your sister’s well-being, whether your brother likes it or not.”
“What about my Father?”
“You don’t want to know. Listen to me woman! Don’t talk about it. You’re to be confined to your apartment with your sister. At the moment, the secular authority rules part of Iran. That’s not going to continue if the Ayatollah prevails. Sharia will become the law of the country. You know what that means for women. Just pray it doesn’t happen. Keep your mouth shut. Don’t ask questions about your father. Do you understand?”
Dorri nodded.
The man studied her. “Get your things and follow me. Keep your head bowed and don’t look up.”
“Where am I going?”
He looked annoyed. “To your apartment. This room is in the basement of the complex. It’s not far. Just stay with me.” He threw the black chador to her. “You need to wear this.”
* * *
She’d been confined to the apartment and the common gardens ever since. They had the free run of the complex and a housekeeper to buy food, but venturing out of the building exposed them to the bands of thugs that roamed the city, harassing any woman who they deemed too Western in appearance.
She remembered when the Government Television men had called on them in the apartment.
“You are to appear on the National Television stations and make a statement.”
“What kind of statement?” Dorri had asked.
“A statement we will provide.”
“And what will happen if we refuse to make such statement?” Shalizeh asked angrily.
“You are the daughters of a traitor to the Iranian people.” He gestured to Shalizeh. “And you are the wife of an even viler traitor.” He stood looming over both of them. “The treatment of imprisoned traitors can be harsh and become harsher still if you do not cooperate. Do you understand?”
Dorri laid a hand on Shalizeh to prevent her reply. “We understand. We’ll do as you say.”
* * *
Dorri’s wandering mind returned to her still weeping sister.
“Shalizeh, you must calm yourself. We can’t plan if you’re near collapse.”
&nb
sp; Her muffled voice issued from Dorri’s chest. “I’m not sure I want to live. Didn’t you hear that vile son of a whore? Sanjar’s dead by now. He was my life, Dorri. How can I continue to live it?”
“You have a new son, Shalizeh. You need to be strong for him.”
“My son will never know his father. He’ll grow thinking his father was a traitor and I won’t be able to prevent it. It’s better I martyr myself than to see it happen.”
Her words chilled Dorri. Shalizeh had stubbornly refused to renounce her faith, determined to live or die as a Baha’i. Dorri hadn’t worried about it, because she felt that words meant nothing. No one could plumb the depths of her heart and expose her beliefs. She’d mouth any words to give her child a chance at life. Surely God would understand.
“Shalizeh, your son hasn’t been named. Wait until Sanjar returns to name him. I promise that I will join you and I’ll not give my child a name until Edward returns for me. Do we have a bargain?”
Drying her eyes, she nodded.
Dorri hugged her and silently wept with her.
Chapter 13
London – Summer 1980
Edward knew he’d been drinking and smoking excessively, but his single-minded efforts to rescue Dorri and her sister had come to naught and he drowned in self pity.
Iran had become an orgy of blood-letting and the occupation of the American Embassy had thrown the country into turmoil. It was more a country led by the mobs, than any semblance of an organized society. Without an organized government, it seemed impossible to find someone who could or would take responsibility for British expatriates. What would emerge from the confusion was anyone’s guess, but he suspected that Khomeini would wind up as the victor. His followers were determined to create a new theocratic rule in Iran.
He’d been contacted by Major Owens and now sat in a pub, drinking his second pint of bitters, waiting for his arrival. Just as he’d motioned for a refill, Owens walked in. He slid into the vacant seat of the booth and covered Edward’s mug with his hand.
“We need to talk and you need to be sober while we do it.”