by Salar Abdoh
Having nearly despaired of ever finding work again, Alireza had knocked on one last door—a Jewish-turned-Baha’i vendor of women’s cosmetics and panty hose and undergarments—who took pity on him enough to risk eleven tubes of hand lotion.
“Sell these to whomever you can,” he told Alireza, “and you can keep 10 percent of what you bring back.”
The lotion was heavy and white and aromatic. It came in a toothpaste-type tube and had English letters on one side, Hebrew on the other. It was made in Israel, by a company named Ahava, with minerals extracted from the Dead Sea and avocado and hazelnuts. The Jew-turned-Baha’i had bought the lotion in Tel Aviv and tried to test its market potential by creating an attractive display in his shop and pushing it on every customer who came in, but he had managed to sell only one tube in six months. Alireza sold the rest in half a day.
He sold other items for the Jew-turned-Baha’i and took a larger percentage. Then he started to send for the lotion directly to Israel, rented a stall on Shah-Reza Avenue, and went into business for himself. A year later, he owned a real store. The year after that, he was distributing wholesale to other stores in Tehran. He was still devoted to Golnessa, but he couldn’t spend his days at home anymore and didn’t like it when she used her charms to keep him back. He adored Golnessa, but he also loved being rich and important, sitting in an office behind a desk, and giving orders instead of carrying them out. Like the other men before him, he started to believe the lies she had fed him—that he was special, better, more deserving, more worthy than the rest.
On the days of his visits, Mehdi would stand watch outside Golnessa’s door until Alireza left. Then he would ring the bell and wait, like a wet dog on a cold night at its owner’s doorstep, for Golnessa to let him in. Sometimes she took him into the drawing room, sometimes to her bedroom.
“Come, Shazdeh Koochooloo—Little Prince,” she said as she dug into her purse or picked through a bowl of coins she kept on the table. “Let’s see what we can find for you.”
She called him Little Prince until he was 6'3" and seventeen years old, but as he grew older, she let him stay at the house longer, offered him tea at first, then arrack and opium.
“Sit down, Little Prince, and tell me what goes on outside these walls. My husband doesn’t like to tell stories.”
She never referred to Alireza by name, and it wouldn’t have mattered if she did. Mehdi wouldn’t have wanted Golnessa any less, or thought “the husband” any less worthy of her, because—Mehdi was convinced of this—no other man could love her as much as he did. That he hadn’t already thrown himself at her feet, begged her to go away with him, and promised to carve out his own heart and liver and bring them to her on a platter if she refused him, was only because he was waiting to save enough money to buy himself a real suit and a pair of leather shoes, and to buy her a diamond ring, however small. He had gone from selling lottery tickets to working in a grocery store to (in the mid-1970s when Tehran was teeming with foreign tourists) renting space in the main bazaar and pushing handmade espadrilles and lamb’s wool overcoats with a forced ethnic look. He worked himself to near exhaustion and lived on one meal a day, and still the money he brought home was barely enough to pay the rent and keep his mother and siblings eating. Then he turned seventeen and Golnessa let him into her bedroom one too many times.
Out of Mehdi’s earshot, Donny and Luca debated what they should do with him next. In the long run, they agreed, he would have to “find another position.” He had always been neurotic, but in the past, his other qualities had compensated for this one flaw; clearly, his condition had worsened of late.
While Donny stayed put in the kitchen (“The man’s ill; there’s no telling if he may become violent.”), Luca ventured out with a glass of Gatorade to gather some basic intelligence.
Mehdi tried but couldn’t sit up straight or formulate whole sentences when responding. “Yes, I’m okay.” “No thank you, I don’t need an ambulance.” “Yes, it’s probably just my blood sugar.” “No, I’m afraid I don’t have health insurance.” “Yes, I’ll get a checkup at the first opportunity.”
Back in the kitchen, the Goldberg-Ferraros decided against taking Mehdi to Harbor-UCLA or LA County or any of those hospitals that accepted patients who didn’t have insurance. Even if they managed to get through the traffic, Luca would have to drive for an hour in any direction, then sit with Mehdi in an overcrowded emergency waiting room with legions of people each carrying some other germ. And they couldn’t keep him at their house all day because he would be too much of a liability, if his condition worsened or (who knows?) he became violent. Not that he was able to drive anyway, but by now his car had either been stolen or confiscated where he left it. So Luca put on his own “I’m a producer, it’s my job to iron out the wrinkles, no problem is too big or daunting for me” air, and went back to offer Mehdi a ride home.
You would think they were going to lead him to the abattoir.
He protested and thanked Luca and protested some more, mustered some ungodly strength and stood up and even walked to the door, insisting he would take the bus or hitch a ride, he wouldn’t dream of inconveniencing his employers, especially on a weekend. He relented only when Donny “invited” him to settle down: “I don’t want a lawsuit later because you weren’t well and I let you loose.”
They decided they would wait till the LAPD evacuated the park and cleared the traffic. To make himself less of a nuisance, Mehdi retired to the laundry room where he sat in a corner on the floor like a three-day-old puppy with a head cold, accepted every offer of food and water, but left it all untouched. In between bouts of apologizing to Luca and Donny every time they popped in to check on him, he pulled his legs to his chest, rested his forehead on his knees, and sobbed quietly.
* * *
For ten bitter, desperate months after their first union, Mehdi made a weekly, then daily, pilgrimage to Golnessa’s house in hopes of seeing her again. A decade’s worth of hunger and wanting, of jealousy and suspicion and rage and impotence, had ended, suddenly and oh-so-exquisitely, when she had opened her legs that blessed Thursday afternoon, minutes before sundown, and allowed Mehdi into the shadowy lowlands and savage enclaves of her cold, black flesh. She made love to him only once, then turned away and ordered him to leave. The next time he came calling, she didn’t open the door to him.
That was in 1977. Alireza was hardly at home, too preoccupied with running his ever-thriving enterprise to so much as see Mehdi as he stood, forlorn and frantic, on the sidewalk opposite the house. He watched “the husband” leave early and return late in that metallic-blue, late-model BMW, in the expensive handmade suits and dark, reflective sunglasses, and he—Mehdi—couldn’t help but resolve that “it”—the husband—was to blame for Golnessa’s sudden estrangement. Alireza was older, cleaner, a thousand times more confident and imposing than Mehdi; no doubt he was also a better companion. He didn’t stutter and quake when in Golnessa’s presence, didn’t lose himself so entirely in her arms. He wasn’t a nobody, some little shopkeeper pawning worthless peasant duds in a dusty back alley; he was a businessman with throngs of employees who depended on his good graces and colleagues who wanted to shake his hand.
The longer she held Mehdi at bay, the more determined he became to remove the thing that stood between them. Then the revolution came.
The mullahs ordained that it was every believer’s righteous duty to inform on actual or potential taaghootis—those belonging to the old regime—Zionists, or antirevolutionaries. Revolutionary tribunals were held in improvised courts, no defense attorney for the accused, and a fifteen-minute window in which to read the charges and issue a verdict. After that, the prisoner was taken up on the roof and executed by firing squad.
Throughout the ’70s, Alireza had followed the example of many other wealthy Iranians who believed in the mighty dollar much more than the Iranian rial, and who therefore transferred large sums of money into American banks. Between 1977 and the latter days of ’7
8, when the “disturbances” in the central bazaar in Tehran grew and spread to other parts of the capital and the country, he sold whatever he could of his assets and either sent the money out or used it to buy precious stones that he and Golnessa could easily hide. In 1978, he flew to New York and stashed most of the jewels in a safe-deposit box in an American branch of Credit Suisse. When he came back, he had Golnessa memorize the numbers of all the accounts, then burned every piece of paper associated with them. “In case we have to escape quickly,” he had said.
How difficult would it be, in that atmosphere rife with death and destruction, to convince a tribunal that Alireza, whose father was, after all, a Jew (who says he didn’t become jadid al-Islam only in name? Alireza who had become rich by selling products made in Palestine, thereby enriching not only himself but also the Zionist government; how difficult would it be to convince a mullah that Alireza was a Zionist spy deserving of at least an extended stay in Evin Prison?
Mehdi only pointed the finger. He said everything but the part about Golnessa knowing where their money was hidden and how to access it. Alireza was arrested at home on July 4, 1980. Months later, notice was sent to Golnessa that she was to collect his body at the central morgue where she would be charged the cost of all sixty-eight bullets used to kill him.
He was twenty years old; Golnessa was fifty. He was Muslim; she was Jewish by birth. He had sold out his father, left his aged mother and helpless siblings to beg or starve or sell their bodies, he didn’t care what, as long as he didn’t have to see them again. Any other time in recent history, these transgressions would unquestionably have led to prison time for Golnessa and forced exile for Mehdi. But in 1980, greater crimes were being committed every day in every corner of the country, and few cared about or even noticed that an old woman had chiz-khored yet another young man. Mehdi was released to Golnessa’s tidal wave of fervent worship and reckless lovemaking that left him dog tired and used up and still aching for more. A dozen times a day, Golnessa crooned the ode to God that Mehdi had heard her sing that first night to Alireza.
Na-haa-dam sar-eh sajdeh bar khaak-at,
Tow-raa eyy khodaa man seh-daa kardaam.
She bowed to the Lord and prayed at His feet and called out to Him, faithful penitent that she was, called out because He was “the Reason and the Source, the Key and the Cause.”
He was so content in their little nest together, so awed and humbled by and grateful for the hand dealt him by fate, that it took nearly a year for him to realize that Golnessa walked with a pronounced gait. When he asked, she told him, in more than a rebuke, that nothing she did or felt or was would ever be his business. Somewhere in a past he no longer recognized as his own, Mehdi had heard stories about the mother with atrophied limbs, Golnessa harnessed to a cart, pulling the sick woman like a corpse. But he had not then, and could not now, consider the possibility that Golnessa was anything but perfect, or match the girl in the harness to the paragon of beauty before him.
At eight o’clock Saturday night, Luca half-carried Mehdi into the convertible blue Lexus that came with the producer title at the studio.
“Where to?” Luca tried to sound cheerful, though he dreaded being locked in a confined space with Mehdi at that moment. He smelled of sweat and tears and fabric softener from the Goldberg-Ferraro laundry room. Though he had calmed down somewhat from the morning, he looked like he could easily fall into a new round of hysterics, which would be problematic out on the freeway, Luca thought, so he decided to take surface streets only. He made a big show of focusing his attention on the navigation screen in the car.
Mehdi uttered a name—Pacoima—but no address. Luca had a vague idea that Pacoima was a city, or neighborhood, somewhere in the Valley. He thought he had heard it mentioned in the context of the Latino gangs—twenty and counting—that roamed its streets. He spelled out the name on the navigation touch screen and waited for Mehdi to give a street address.
“It’s far for you,” Mehdi said instead. “And it’s not very safe this time of night.” It was 8:15. “Your car might draw attention.”
In the three years he had worked for Donny and Luca, Mehdi had never given them reason to doubt his honesty. Now, sensing his reluctance to reveal where he lived, Luca wondered if he and Donny had been too trusting.
“Just say it!” he snapped at Mehdi. Luca never lost his temper; that’s how he had managed to survive in the movie business without getting cancer or having a heart attack or stroke. But he knew when to act impatient or angry. That was the other secret to his success.
* * *
Glenoaks Boulevard was twenty-two miles long and stretched from Sylmar through Glendale. Around Van Nuys Boulevard, it ran parallel (and much too close) to the Golden State Freeway. The 11000 block where Mehdi lived was nearly all one- or two-story apartment buildings. A few were overpopulated with immigrant families; most were postforeclosure, in disrepair, and vacant. None was in as bad shape as Mehdi’s house.
The lot, Luca guessed, was at most two thousand square feet, separated from the freeway by a low-rising cement barrier. The front door literally sat on the edge of the sidewalk; the windows were protected by metal bars.
“Just a minute,” he forced half a smile at Mehdi, “I’m going to walk you in.”
He saw Mehdi panic, which was incriminating to him and frightening to Luca. It was bad enough to be in a car with a man who had come unhinged for no comprehensible reason, but to walk willingly into what may well be a deadfall was another story altogether. Luca wrote a text to Donny. He gave the street address, touched send, then wrote a new one: I’m going in. If you don’t hear from me again in 15 minutes, call the police.
Mehdi never knew when he stopped being Golnessa’s lover and became her caretaker. He imagined it happened slowly, during the 1980s when it was just the two of them alone in Darband, in that house with the windows that opened onto the river. The house was all that the Islamic Republic had allowed Golnessa to keep of Alireza’s estate—that, and the jewels she hid on her body when the Pasdars came to evict her from the main residence on Pahlavi Avenue, and the account numbers she had memorized. Mehdi didn’t have to ask what the total was in either tomans or dollars; he was certain there was enough, and that, thanks to Golnessa’s luck, there would be more every year. He had abandoned his own little business without giving it a second thought, decided they would sell the jewels one by one when the need arose, and committed himself to the work of adoring Golnessa in an appropriate manner and to a sufficient extent. He wasn’t about to repeat Alireza’s mistake—to leave a woman with her appetite and ardor alone, give her reason to feel underappreciated, allow other men time and space to get close to her.
There would be no other man in Golnessa’s bed after Mehdi; he was certain of this. He wore the harness willingly and without regret.
* * *
Her right leg was barely functional when they moved together to Darband, so it was easy to overlook the weakness that had begun to spread in the rest of her limbs. By the mid-’80s, she was having trouble crossing the length of a room without holding on to the furniture and using the strength of her upper body to propel her legs forward. They had been married by a mullah as soon as Alireza’s death certificate came through, but she had yet to let Mehdi spend a full night in her bedroom. Nor did he ever see her without her face painted and her nails and hair done, or in a plain dress, or engaged in a domestic activity. In the morning he waited, sometimes till eleven, to take a breakfast tray to her room. She was already bathed and dressed with a servant’s help, but she ate in a chair next to the bed and spent most of the daylight hours at home and with the curtains closed. At dusk she changed into a formal gown and met Mehdi in the dining room. Then her arms began to fail.
The cook had made broiled mutton with saffron rice and sour currants for dinner, but Golnessa’s plate remained nearly untouched, and her hands were folded on her lap. She sat up straight at the head of the table, Mehdi to her left, making small talk about the pi
rated and dubbed DVD of The Godfather, Part III they had watched the previous night.
She must have sensed that Mehdi was about to ask why she couldn’t raise a spoon to her mouth, because she raised the pitch in her voice and fixed him with her green eyes and kept talking till the moment passed. Then she called for the maid to come gather their plates and bring tea. Just when the girl hovered over Golnessa with the tray, Mehdi said, “We’re going to see a doctor this week.”
* * *
A full three years would go by between the night he declared they were going to see a doctor “this week” and the day she finally arrived in a physician’s office. She had lost use of her legs entirely and had to be pushed around in a wheelchair; her arms hung by her side like foreign objects; she could only move one hand. She had a hairdresser come to her three times a week, trained the maid to do her makeup, paid a seamstress to buy fabric and make dresses Golnessa picked out of smuggled European fashion magazines.
To get her to leave the house in Darband and submit to a medical examination by a team of doctors, Mehdi had to fight Golnessa for the first time since he had met her. Until then, he had had no idea just how scared he was of her disapproval, or how completely he relied on her to make every decision for both of them.
She was sixty years old; he was thirty. He had been possessed by her for twenty-two years and would continue to be—he knew this—until his last breath.
The doctors in Tehran had seen other patients with muscular atrophy of the kind affecting Golnessa, but they didn’t have a name for the condition and didn’t believe a cure was possible. Maybe it was MS or ALS, they said; maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it would progress to other parts of the body; maybe it wouldn’t. Maybe the United States would know more; maybe they wouldn’t.
“Immaculate ruins” is how Luca would later describe Mehdi’s place to Donny.