Brides of Blood

by Joseph Koenig

  “Which communists are we talking about? These bumblers are no more communist than my daughter. Leila was an Arab chauvinist—as a child she was a Nasserite. This was the basis of the bitterness between us. Leila rejected my communism the way … the way bourgeois teenagers look down their nose at the values of their parents. She was a religious fanatic who voluntarily took up the veil and was allowed to attend school in the Soviet Union because her beliefs were well known to the Komitehmen who watch me all the time. The camp she was assigned to wasn’t run by Tudeh Fedayeen fighters, but by more damn fanatics—the Revolutionary Guards.”

  “How, then, if she was with her unit, could she have turned up slain in north Teheran?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Where was the camp?”

  “Far from the Caspian. More than that she couldn’t say. The girls were brought there for religious indoctrination and instruction in basic military skills.”

  “You heard from her? When?”

  “She called several months ago,” Darwish said, “to inform me that she would be completing her training soon, and was to be given a special mission outside the country. ‘At the cutting edge of the holy war against the infidels’ was how she described it, which I took to mean she’d been ordered inside Israel, or Afghanistan, possibly even the Sudan—someplace where the forces of repression murder each other for the glory of God. She boasted of the importance of her role, that she would accomplish more for her people in twenty-three years than I had in a lifetime. Conditions in the camp were excellent, she said, and her comrades very enlightened. She was lying. Her years at home had not been spent with eyes closed. Leila recognized reaction and superstition for what they were, even as she immersed herself in them. I ordered her to leave the camp while there was still the opportunity. Her answer was that the cause she was fighting for was greater than her comfort. I called her an idiot. She laughed at me. Not an idiot, she said, but a Bride of Blood—whatever that ghoulish title designates. I lost my temper. I told her to go to Israel to be killed with the rest of the fanatics, if that was what she wanted. It was the last we talked.”

  “She must have let something slip about the camp where she was stationed.”

  Darwish started to shake his head automatically.

  “Think!” Darius said.

  “You’ll never find out what happened to her. She was dead when she put on the chador. It was only a matter of time before her physical body ceased to exist.”

  Darius got up to leave. As he reached for the morgue shot, Darwish pulled it away. “I want this.”

  “There are better pictures to remember her by.”

  The photo started to tear. Darius let go, and Darwish smoothed the glossy paper around his daughter’s head. “I burned those a long time ago,” he said. “Like Lear, I expected too much from my child.”

  Darius made nothing of it. His schooling under the reign of the shah did not permit the study of Shakespeare, who wrote too well of the bloody end of vain kings.

  He went out to the car still feeling the pain of the lonely old man wrestling him over the mangled snapshot of his slain daughter. From the flask in the glove compartment he refilled a soda bottle with good Swedish vodka seized just yesterday from an SAS pilot who had brought six cases into Mehrabad Airport looking to turn them over quickly for rare Agra Allower carpets. The bottle was cool against his crotch as he coasted along the switchbacks to the lake shore. Replaying the interview in his mind, he was sorry he hadn’t demanded to speak with Darwish’s wife. What corner of Leila’s personality had been passed down through the Iranian side of the family? Her father’s legacy was a propensity for bad politics and standing fast to their tragic conclusion. The capacity for enduring needless suffering, he suspected, had been inherited from her mother.

  Hamid arrived empty-handed; Ghaffari, minutes later, with two bottles of Mehta’s best evidence. When Farib opened the door, Ghaffari’s lanky body swayed in the light breeze off the balcony, and he said, “You look beautiful today. Beautiful as a bride.”

  Hamid had never been to the Bakhtiars’ before. Made uncomfortable by the occasion he stood on the balcony and looked down at Baharestan Square, at women carrying old bolt-action rifles as they marched eight abreast in front of the Muslim Theological School shouting, “Death to Israel, Death to America, Death to World Zionism.” Darius shut the sliding glass doors, and Hamid walked into a corner of the living room with his hands stuffed inside his pockets to study the Impressionist prints on the walls, and then stare awkwardly at Darius.

  “Yes, Hamid, is there something you wanted to say?”

  “I—It concerns the Darwish case. This is a bad time. It can wait.”

  “Why? What’s better than murder to take our minds off our small problems?”

  “Dr. Baghai called when you were in the Mazanderan,” the criminalist began uncertainly. “The same .25-caliber gun with which Leila Darwish was shot also fired the bullets into the drug addict and his girlfriend in south Teheran.”

  “Does that surprise you?”

  Hamid shook his head, his lips pressed tight. “The findings of the lab on Leila Darwish’s death were not so obvious. In addition to the opiates a poison was introduced into her system.”

  “What kind of poison?”

  “Dr. Baghai didn’t know.”

  “How was it administered?”

  “That was not determined. The lab report came back negative. Samples of her blood were sent to the serology unit at Mehregan Hospital in Isfahan. They didn’t turn up anything either.”

  “It would seem the one thing we know is she wasn’t poisoned,” Darius said.

  “Dr. Baghai says it’s a poison we’ve never encountered before.”

  “A convenient theory.”

  “But all we have,” Hamid said. “And, speaking for myself, an unknown poison is preferable to having to hunt for a means of death entirely new to forensic science.”

  Farib had prepared a lunch of tass kebabs and rice. No one had any appetite, no one but she. Ghaffari put a bottle on the table, and screwed off the cap. As he touched the neck to Darius’s glass, Farib came out of the kitchen, where she was eating alone. “He can’t,” she said, and covered the glass with her palm. “Under the law he mustn’t be intoxicated, or in a rage, when he pronounces the talaq.”

  “But, dear Farib,” Ghaffari said, “how can you expect a sober man to do such a crazy thing? It’s why I brought whiskey.”

  Farib was clearing the table when Darius said, “You’ll have time later,” and assembled everyone on the sliver of a balcony. Below, the parade was over; yellow leaflets fluttered like confetti in the traffic flooding into the square. Hamid and Ghaffari stood against the railing with Darius between them, forming a semicircle around Farib, to whom Darius said casually, as if the idea had just occurred to him, “I make my wife free, upon remittance of her dowry.”

  Farib tugged her veil higher under her eyes.

  The divorce would not become final until Farib had completed three menstrual cycles. By pronouncing only a single talaq, Darius had left open the possibility that they might reunite. A more common form of divorce would have had him say the talaq three times, requiring Farib to remarry before they could be wed again. Darius had offered a three-talaq divorce, but she had declined.

  “I won’t ask for the unused portion of my dowry,” Farib said. “It’s yours to do with as you see fit. So you should not expect any part of your milk fee to be returned.” A milk fee was an amount of money paid to the mother of a bride as reimbursement for the cost of bringing her up. “Nor do you have to pay for my maintenance. My father has agreed to support me until I take another husband.” She backed into the apartment. “One other thing … Don’t forget to inform the authorities we’re no longer married.”

  Watching her walk to the bedroom and shut herself inside, Darius became aware that the holster in the small of his back was funneling sweat into his pants. His face felt hot.

  “Well, tha
t’s done with.” Ghaffari brought out the other bottle, and placed it in Darius’s hands. “What are you looking angry about?”

  “There’s nothing left of her dowry,” Darius said. “Farib and I were agreed that the dowry was a medieval custom, and since we were a modern couple I couldn’t accept any goods from her father for myself. We sold everything, and I opened a checking account in her name from the proceeds. All of it was gone on clothes before we left Washington.”

  The old Shemiran Road was littered with cars butchered for parts by shade tree mechanics and left on the sidewalks to rust. Into the Elburz foothills the cross streets turned plush, and then semirural, mimicking a country village but for prices straight from European capitals. Darius bore east beyond the shah’s summer palace. Slim poplars lined the way to Manzarieh Park on the green flank of Mount Towchal.

  The International Boy Scout Jamboree had been held at Manzarieh the year Darius was fourteen. Somewhere there was a photo of him swaddled in merit badges beside the statue of Lord Baden-Powell that had stood at the entrance to the park. During the war with Iraq an ayatollah had claimed Manzarieh’s nine hundred square kilometers as a recuperation center for Revolutionary Guards. Two hundred youngsters from Muslim and third world countries were installed in a dormitory on the grounds; but none had seen action at the front. They had come to “The Institute” to learn Islam and guerrilla warfare under the tutelage of Hezbollah, the Party of God.

  Darius was struck by the sheer beauty of Manzarieh, which disqualified it as the camp where Leila Darwish had been sent for training. Towchal’s lush slopes were too bucolic to inculcate sufficient ferocity in pampered young women who aspired to the sobriquet Brides of Blood. The mountain remained popular with hikers for its spectacular vistas of the Elburz and the city. For those who forgot the two-kilometer exclusionary zone behind the barbed wire perimeter of the institute, the outer fence was electrified.

  Darius peered inside the main gate at a dozen men kneeling on prayer rugs beside a pond. When their devotions were concluded, they rolled up the rugs and exchanged them for Kalashnikov rifles, which they broke open under the rigorous eye of a Japanese or Korean in an army jacket with red stars on the lapels. A basij, a volunteer from the Foundation of the Oppressed on Earth, came out of the gate house carrying a Kalashnikov at port arms. The banana clip was conspicuously in place. “Go back,” he commanded. “You can’t come in.”

  Darius dangled his ID out the window. The volunteer waved him away without looking at it. This was no embarrassed illiterate, but a disciplined soldier under orders to prevent unauthorized persons from entering. Darius swung into a U-turn. A Mercedes limousine pulled up to the gate house, and the guard went back inside and raised a red-and-white semaphore. Darius continued around into a full circle, cutting ahead of the limo through the open gate.

  Hunched over the wheel, he raced onto the grounds. With outsiders barred from Hezbollah installations, no mechanism existed for reaching the leadership of the camp. His objective was not the school buildings directly ahead, but to create a disturbance that would end in his surrender and interrogation by party stalwarts, who might answer his questions. The Mercedes sped after him, and he swerved aside and fit the Paycon in its square shadow, kept the German car’s thick steel between the Kalashnikovs and himself. Three mullahs in camel’s hair abayahs stared anxiously from the rear seat, making him feel like a bandit heading off a stagecoach. When their chauffeur angled a small revolver at his head, he gave up the chase and stood with his ID in his hands high above his shoulders.

  Guardsmen in black ski masks shoved him toward a building that had been the administration hub of Empress Farah University when the late school for girls had taken Manzarieh for its campus. His wallet and guns were brought inside an office while he was made to wait in the corridor for forty minutes, and then he was bundled into a jeep and driven across the site of the old Boy Scout encampment to a bare field scattershot with craters.

  Deeply tanned men were crouched around a mullah who was rooting in the earth for a metallic device from which half a dozen spines protruded on top. The mullah reburied the object under a thin layer of sand, then dug it up again while the tanned men jotted notes in looseleaf binders. After several repetitions the mullah said a few words in Arabic, and the class cleared out to the edge of the field. The mullah drew a revolver with pearl grips from his abayah and fired at the object in the dirt. Darius covered his eyes as a thunderous explosion lifted a sandstorm that the wind carried into the mountains. All of the men clapped and whistled. Some scratched feverishly in their books.

  The driver of the jeep turned over Darius’s wallet to the mullah. The cleric looked quizzically at Darius as he matched clean-shaven features to the photo in the ID and to the handguns that had been presented to him like a small offering. He dismissed the class, and came over to the jeep. “Manzarieh is off-limits,” he said. “The National Police have no jurisdiction here.”

  “I need to find out about a young woman who was a volunteer at a camp for Revolutionary Guards.”

  “You could have been killed, crashing in—should have—had the basij at the gate been doing his job.” He flipped the wallet shut and returned it to Darius. “Proper channels exist for obtaining information. Contact the Komiteh in your district, and apply through them. All reasonable requests are responded to in good time.”

  “There is no time.”

  “Then the request is unreasonable.”

  “You haven’t heard me out.”

  “It’s enough you weren’t shot. Leave now.”

  The driver floored the jeep, which spun its cleated tires and then lunged forward as Darius leaped out. The driver let go of the wheel to pull his gun. He looked toward the mullah, who shook his head slightly, an economy of motion that Darius was aware could have been horizontal with no more effort than up and down.

  “The young woman was murdered. Manzarieh is only a couple of kilometers from the site in Shemiran where her body was found. Someone here must know about her.”

  “You have just attended a class on the concealment and safe removal of antipersonnel ordnance in rural areas. This is not women’s work. Do you see women in this camp?” the mullah said. “I would have been notified of anything like that occurring close by.”

  “Her name was Leila Darwish. Tell me how to find which camp was hers.”

  “There is nothing I can do,” the mullah said, and began walking away.

  “An innocent woman was tortured and slain.” One quick step was all that Darius took after him; the driver hadn’t holstered his gun. “She deserves a full inquiry into her death.”

  “Perhaps. Or perhaps the kinder deed is to let the matter rest.” The mullah stopped, but didn’t look back. “You had better go before too much is made of your being here. Tonight the basij will talk of nothing but your brazen act. It’s not good … not good for you. I would lock you up, but for—” He turned to Darius. “Do you know me, Bakhtiar.”

  “No.”

  “I am Sheik Javad Salehi. Years ago, I was a student of your wife’s uncle at Faiziyeh, in the disciplines of logic and Persian history. Hormoz was a brilliant teacher, compassionate, a father to his pupils—my good friend to this day. He spoke warmly of his niece’s new husband in America—so much so that sometime later, without meeting you, I voted to reprieve your life after the murder of Ibrahim Farmayan.”

  Salehi waited, and Darius heard the click of worry beads.

  “Not even a thank-you … ?”

  A volley of rifle fire delivered its mournful report through the camp, and after that a single shot.

  “You owe me something,” Salehi continued. “Hormoz used to read to us from your letters from the United States. You were one of the few who adapted readily, yet you chose to return to Iran. Why?”

  “The government invested a good deal of money in my schooling so I could better serve the people. I couldn’t renege.”

  “Others did,” Salehi said. “The government changed.�
�

  “But not the people—not much.”

  “That was not Hormoz’s interpretation. During your typical infatuation with the United States, your wife wrote that you had been offered several jobs with prestigious firms. Her uncle remained unshaken in his faith that you would come back.”

  “Why bring this up now?”

  “Among the most highly regarded faculty members at Manzarieh are our ‘moral preceptors,’ who have spent time in the West, and returned with firsthand knowledge of the crisis afflicting the so-called democracies. The youth must be made to see that the West is strangling on its degeneracy and that, God willing, Islam will triumph in the hearts of men. We would be honored to make a place for you as a moral preceptor that will not interfere with your regular duties with the National Police.”

  Why, Darius wondered, in a ruined economy with raging unemployment was he everyone’s first choice for a job? The Revolutionary Prosecutor, the Bon Yad Monkerat, couldn’t find enough for him to do. Now a place on the staff at “The Institute” was his for the taking. As if Salehi had known he would turn up—as if the Revolutionary Guards wanted him occupied with anything other than the hunt for Leila Darwish’s killer.

  “Is the enemy so seductive,” Darius asked, “that the volunteers have to be taught to hate it?”

  “Our youth grow up enamored of the West from television and movies. They are captivated by its hedonism, including—sad to say—many who wish to bring it down.”

  “My friends also viewed the West with disdain,” Darius said. “Who among us hadn’t had it crammed into his brain that when Islam led the world in science and philosophy Europeans were still living in caves? We came flaunting our spiritual superiority—and were overwhelmed by Americas richness. When we returned home, our guilt boiled over into hatred of the West for opening our eyes to how backward we were. Few of my friends could remain in Iran …”

  “Were they so greedy for material comforts?”

  “Everything they’d been taught to believe appeared as lies,” Darius said. “How could Islam be the final revealed truth of God when life was far better in the infidel West? Those who returned to stay became more Muslim than Muslim to show they rejected the things they secretly craved.”