by Nayeri, Dina
Later someone knocks on the door. Saba ignores it at first. But the banging grows louder, and she puts down the book she is skimming—a highly illegal political one about American government called Electing a President that Dr. Zohreh lent to Ponneh and that Ponneh, too embarrassed to admit that she could barely read high school Farsi, let alone English, asked Saba to read and summarize. She creeps down the steps leading from the front door of Abbas’s house into the yard and wraps herself in a speckled shawl.
She opens the gate to find Ponneh in a travel chador, struggling with two large bags. Saba takes one and shuts the gate behind her. “What’s going on?” she asks.
Ponneh’s face is paler than usual and she looks frightened—or shocked. She doesn’t say hello, and her eyes are wide and dull. She moves mechanically, feverishly, rummaging through the two black bags as soon as they are inside the yard. “We have to hurry,” she says, and digs to the bottom of one of the bags. “Is your car here? You’ll have to drive us.”
“Have you gone crazy?” says Saba. “Where do you think we’re going?” When Ponneh doesn’t answer, she presses. “Does your mother know you’re going somewhere?”
Ponneh still lives in Khanom Alborz’s house. Her mother rants, raves, and grieves daily by her ailing daughter’s bed. She maintains that if her precious eldest child must suffer like this, then the least Ponneh can do is bear a fraction of her pain and wait her turn to marry. Ponneh’s voice is resolute. “We’re going to stop something bad from happening.” She pulls out a video camera from the bag, and then an old photo camera.
To Saba’s ears, her friend sounds so deranged that she wonders if she shouldn’t just take her arm and force her into the house. Ponneh finds a roll of film. She loads the camera and avoids Saba’s worried stare.
“They’re hanging someone today,” she says. “And we’re going to document it.”
“What?” A nervous laugh escapes Saba. She shakes her head and starts toward the house because now she is sure that Ponneh has lost all reason. “You’re insane.”
“Saba, please,” Ponneh begs. “Please, I have to do this.”
“I thought you weren’t involved with them,” says Saba. “You said you didn’t join Dr. Zohreh’s group. I’ve told you that it’s dangerous.”
Though Saba refuses to join the group, she has visited the shack by herself many times now, to be alone, to think of her mother and Mahtab. It is hidden by acres of forest, and in warmer months, it smells like fresh fish and garlic—seaside aromas that no longer frighten her like they did when she was a child but provide an almost sweet sort of ache. From the window on a clear day, she can make out the outline of the sea through the trees. Sometimes she drives down to the seaside. She walks up the boardwalk to a tiny fish house perched precariously on a rocky pier, orders the catch of the day with garlic pickle, and watches the wooden houses hovering above the waves on their tall, slender stilts, like women lifting their skirts as they stand in the surf. The terns fly close to the mountain house and Saba has seen them, with their sinful red mouths, their defiant white feathers against that shock of black on their head. She has even touched one, fed it with her hand until it was scared away by the sound of a car. Saba likes being alone there, in a secret shack in the mountains, sometimes walking toward the sea, eyeing it like a mysterious lost love . . . humming about a dock and a bay.
Ponneh tries to thrust the camera into Saba’s hands. “Look, I need your help.”
“I don’t want to be involved in these things, Ponneh,” Saba protests. She suspects that ever since the beating, Ponneh has allowed Dr. Zohreh’s pamphlets and the photos and other illicit documents into her house. Her behavior, her allegiance to this unknown cause, is almost cultish; she follows the group’s news clips with the loyalty of a teenage movie fan. Saba wonders if she feels cleansed each time she reads their essays, if she imagines herself lurking in a corner somewhere, catching a member of the moral police in some brutal act. Saba feels none of this longing to save the world. Because what will happen after? Will it change anything? Will it be enough to erase the thought that she, Saba Hafezi, wealthy-widow-in-waiting, is not a good person? That she is a disobedient child, an unfaithful soul, a cruel wife to a feeble man? Can it take away those paranoid flashes, when she’s alone in a smoky stupor, that she might be a girl who was so greedy for her own life that she let go of her sister’s hand in the water? Saba imagines herself crouching behind a wall or in a deserted alley, waiting for evidence to send abroad, getting caught and paying for her crimes. Enduring blows like Ponneh did and becoming one of the beautiful things pasdars despise. No, she thinks. She has already paid.
Now Ponneh is staring at the camera in her hands, and all Saba can see is the top of her face and the bridge of her nose. Ponneh begins to shake. “I have to,” she whispers.
Saba takes a step toward her friend. “Ponneh jan, how can you possibly stop this from happening just by taking pictures? Can’t you see that you’re being crazy?” She wants to help, to show Ponneh the importance of being careful. Hundreds of executions happen every year in Iran—maybe even thousands—either in prisons or in public. Though there has never been one around Cheshmeh, and though she has never seen one, Saba knows from her father that when judges choose to hold an execution out in the open, it is often for a moral crime, a weak soul the crowds can judge while bearing witness to what can happen to those who want too much. No one at this event will feel Ponneh’s pain. No one will be her friend. It is best to stay away from such spectacles.
“No,” Ponneh snaps. “No, I didn’t say I would stop the hanging. I said I’m going to stop something bad from happening. And that’s letting my friend die for no reason.”
Saba tries to swallow, but there is something lodged in her throat. She starts to speak, but doesn’t want to ask. “What friend do you mean?” she says finally.
“Farnaz,” whispers Ponneh. As soon as the name is out, her shoulders begin to shake. She fumbles with the camera, then stops and wipes her nose on her jacket sleeve. “They’re murdering Farnaz in public today, for being indecent. For . . .” She trails off, past whispers and on to sickly gasps. “They say she slept with many men and that they had four witnesses. How can that even be? And they said she had enough opium and cocaine to count as trafficking. She doesn’t even smoke cigarettes, let alone— Anyway, it happened so fast and Dr. Zohreh has been trying to get her out, but they made up so many charges. They want to hang her because of her work—” Her knees give way and she reaches for something. “Oh God, it’s my fault . . . maybe they know things.”
Saba puts an arm around Ponneh’s waist and leads her to a bench in a corner behind the flower beds, next to a tree and the guest-room window.
“Was there anything else . . . Did they ever see you with her?” Saba tries to be rational, but there is a tightening in her chest, like wringing out a wet cloth. The familiar sour taste of fear fills her mouth.
Ponneh shakes her head. “I think they only noticed her after she refused a marriage. The man became obsessed, like Mustafa, and started following her everywhere. . . . But she only likes women.” She scratches her thumbnail and mumbles, “I thought you could give the pictures to your video man . . . You know, to show to Americans.”
Saba stares wide-eyed at the two bags. She tries to find comforting words, but she can’t think of a single thing to say. She only has questions. When was this decided? How long has Ponneh known her friend was in trouble? “What’s in the other bag, then?”
“More cameras,” says Ponneh, her face flushed. “I went around collecting them. The first one I borrowed was broken. The next one was old and took bad pictures. I had to go to Rasht to develop them and they came out all black. So I borrowed all these because maybe you know which one is best. You’re always playing with movies and this and that . . .”
Saba squats in the middle of the yard beside the other bag. She rum
mages through the contents and chooses a camera that looks functional. “I don’t know. It’s hard to tell. I only push a button on my VCR. You know I’m no photographer. Besides, you’re not going.”
“It’s two hours away, in a deh closer to Tehran. We should leave soon.”
“Ponneh, do you hear what I’m saying?”
Ponneh sniffles, shakes her head. “What about the video camera? Does it work?”
“Video? You want to get video of an execution? Are you suicidal? There will be pasdars everywhere.”
“I can hide it. Look.” Ponneh slips the discarded video camera under her chador, balancing it so that only the lens is exposed through a slit under her arm. “These rags are good for something.”
Saba lifts herself up. “You can’t save her,” she says.
“It’s not about saving her,” Ponneh snaps, her voice shrill. “It’s about making her death count! What do you know about it, anyway? Even if I couldn’t tape it, I have to be with her. Do you know what it’s like to have her die—die!—for the sake of something I saw as just playing around? That’s the real reason they hate her so much. I have to go.”
There is no arguing with Ponneh. Saba already knows what her friend is thinking. If Ponneh could find some way to dignify the bruises on her own back, to make the experience of being beaten for red shoes mean more, she would happily do it. A silence follows. Ponneh seems to drift into her own private place, Saba thinks of all the ways this day could end—a lashing? One of them in prison, or worse, vanishing from a prison? Maybe Evin, with its ever-silent stone walls that swallow up letters and phone calls from those left behind. Who knows what Ponneh is thinking. Her stare is catatonic, and she whispers Farnaz’s name the way Saba imagined she would do when her sick sister finally left the world.
“It’s all my fault,” Ponneh says, glassy-eyed, her tone cold, prophetic. “She’ll die because of me.”
And now Saba isn’t thinking about Farnaz. She can only hear Ponneh’s words—the grief for the loss of a sort of sister. Soon her mind fills with Mahtab and she knows that Ponneh is right. Why should this be so difficult? she asks herself, trying to trick her body into being braver. She has seen death again and again. She’s the bad twin, the one with the thousand jinns. She can handle the most brutal things, and there is no way she is letting Ponneh do this alone.
When they reach the village, a dusty little town with a police station, town hall, and thatch-roofed store on the same unpaved street, there is no need to ask directions. Every detail of today’s event was carefully arranged, the location chosen to attract just the right number of visitors from Tehran, Rasht, and the girl’s hometown, the square chosen to fit many spectators. Even the air is full of a breathless doom that seems to have been purposely planted there. Dozens of men in loose, rural clothing, jeans, or business suits, and women in black chadors, stand around a crane as it inches back and forth into position in the center of the town square. “Oh, dear God,” Saba whispers when she sees the crane, its clawlike hook swaying back and forth weightlessly, ready to hoist its victim into the air. Saba has never seen a hanging or any kind of execution before. Such things aren’t done in bucolic mountain towns or shalizar villages like Cheshmeh. Saba has no wish to see this now, though so many have come from all over to witness it. On catching sight of the crane, Ponneh, who is lying in the backseat to calm her nerves, lets out a guttural, almost animal sound. They sit for ten minutes so she can compose herself, then leave the car several meters outside the town square, its ground now muddied by the crane and dozens of spectators’ cars.
Both women have donned dark chadors, and Ponneh wears a second layer despite the warmth. They each take a camera, tucking it under their arms. They allow their great robes to billow, so their figures appear large and amorphous—able to contain many secrets without drawing attention. Ponneh has an ordinary photo camera and Saba carries the video camera, having finally figured out how to use it. She grips it in her right hand as her left holds tight to the fabric at her neck. For just a second Ponneh lets go of the folds and takes Saba’s hand. She starts to say something when a dirty green Paykan screeches angrily past them, splashing mud and dingy water on their clothes.
The Paykan comes to an abrupt stop, blocking their way to the square. Saba, shrouded in too much unwieldy fabric, jumps back and clutches the camera. But Ponneh makes no effort to hide the contents of her robe. She knows this car—the one Reza shares with his brother and a friend. She steps out of the way as Reza bursts out, nearly tearing the door from its hinges as he slams it shut.
“Toro khoda, what’s this?” he shouts. “What the hell are you two doing here?”
Some passersby size up the young, clean-shaven boy with dark eyes and continue walking. “What are you doing here?” Ponneh demands. “How did you even know—”
“I saw Farnaz’s name in the paper. No one knew where you went. And look at this, I was right. You’ve come to throw yourself on the fire.” Trying to shame her, he adds, “Very wise, Khanom.”
Saba breathes out, relieved at the possibility that Reza will talk Ponneh out of this.
“Look, I’m taking you both home before anyone gets jailed or lashed . . . or a lot worse.” His eyes dart past Ponneh as he mumbles the last words. Then he glances at her camera.
“I’m staying.” Ponneh pushes past him. “You know why. Let’s go. We’ll be late.”
Reza rushes after her. “Ponneh, please. If they catch you . . . with a camera?”
“It’s nothing!” Ponneh starts to walk away. “People take pictures all the time.”
“Not like this, with the big cameras.” He follows her, always a step or two behind, out of a habit developed in their adolescence when it became dangerous to walk together in public. “This is going to look so suspicious. No one knows you here. You’re two strange women on your own.”
Saba doesn’t wait for Ponneh to answer. Maybe the safest thing is to get Ponneh through this event and leave as quickly as possible. No sense in making a scene. “We’re fine, Reza jan. It’s a public event. The only danger here is being seen with you.”
Ponneh tucks the camera farther into her clothes.
The lines on Reza’s brow deepen. He rests both hands on his head and interlaces his fingers like a nervous player waiting for his teammate to score. He paces near his Paykan, glancing toward the square for signs of the moral police. The crane has stopped moving and the dangling hook is lowered toward the ground. “Okay,” he says. “Okay, here’s what we’ll do. You give me that camera. I’ll do it instead.”
“No, no,” says Ponneh. “This is my friend. I’ll do it.”
“For God’s sake, Ponneh,” he says, “please let me help you.” He takes a deep breath and whispers, “I may be a man, but I’m still your friend.” He waits a moment until Ponneh’s face falls. “Saba, give me your camera.” He forces a smile and holds out his hand. His face is ragged with worry, no longer the hashish-smoking boy she once knew, the football-obsessed youth who obeys his mother and sits in the pantry, drinking and choosing which girl to torment with his fickle love today.
“Thanks, but I’m fine,” Saba responds, thinking that she would feel safer if he stayed. “I can’t exactly show you how the thing works out here in the open, can I?” In truth Saba doesn’t want to let go of the camera. What would her brave sister do now? The Mahtab who clawed her way into Harvard, the Mahtab who wanted to be a journalist, the one who was always the best at things—that Mahtab would never let Reza take over. She would hold on to this camera and capture every detail of today. She would hand deliver the film to the front door of The New York Times and say to Judith Miller, lady reporter, “See? Things aren’t as simple as that, are they, Miss Foreign Correspondent who spent maybe two days in Iran, and both of them in some gherty-perty hotel in Tehran?”
Reza wipes his palms on his thighs. He takes Saba’s hand th
rough the chador. “I’ll be a few steps behind you. I’ll be able to see you the entire time.”
Saba pushes his hand away, takes Ponneh by the arm, and they walk toward the square.
She tries not to lose track of Reza behind her in the crowd. They face the long stretch of road where the prisoner is expected to emerge. From her position on this side of the makeshift scaffold, Saba can see the faces of the curious onlookers. Some of them nod and make room for her, and she hopes they can’t see the camera lens—such a small part of the black, billowing mass of her body, like the gleaming, beady eye of a blackbird overhead. Can anyone be expected to remember the small shapes or colors in the midst of so much eye-catching sameness? Still, the thought of being discovered sends waves of fear through her and makes her pull the camera tight under her arm.
A dirty white van pulls up near the square moments after Saba has settled into place. The crowd of men and women stretches all the way from the crane to the parking lot where the van emerges. They shift and make way, leaning their heads toward an open path where the prisoner will arrive. Saba reaches under her robes and turns on the camera. The red record light shines hot on her forearm, and Saba is certain the whole world can see it, a big red dot coloring her entire body. Still, in these fearful moments, she is a journalist in charge of creating this last gruesome memento for the world. The van doors open and two pasdars pull a screaming girl out of the back. She is handcuffed to a female officer of the moral police, who yanks at her chains and tells her to shut up. The crowd, roused by curiosity and awe, grows louder. Do they feel sympathy for the girl? Maybe they are too full of moral outrage at her crimes. Saba notices that the girl is exceptionally beautiful. Like a pari. Like Ponneh. She feels her heart jump at the sight of the officer, a lumbering black-clad crow of a woman, exactly like the two peasants in her bedroom. Women always do these kinds of jobs—cleansing each other of filth and sin. It is a way of showing the world that it is not by the standards of men that they are judged and found lacking. Saba spots the officer’s hand pretending to soothe the condemned soul. A Basiji hand, a former dallak hand.