The Boy in the Green Suit

by Robert Hillman

  But my father’s replies, much less regular than my own messages, only made me sad: ‘Dear Bobby, We received your letter and we are very glad that you are well. It has been raining for a fortnight here so I am not able to get on with relaying those pipes below the pumping station as I need dry weather as there is a lot of digging which is very hard in the rain when the trench keeps filling. Doug Cornish and I went down to the tailrace a couple of night ago and took four brown trout (largest three and a half pounds) which goes to show as I always said that the brown will bite in the rain but the rainbow will not. I didn’t understand what you were saying about the Hotel. Bertie asked about you, you can get that job back when you return if you wish. Kendra asked me to say hello to you. I looked in the Atlas for Iran in the Mid. East, but it isn’t there, as this is an old Atlas perhaps in your next letter you can say where it is, if possible. I had some contact with Arabs in the war and I can warn you to be careful in all your dealings as they are inclined to be very, very tricky and cunning …’

  The sky was blue each day. The sun shone. The city offered a riot of the exotic. At the turn into the market, an aged man in a rag of a turban stuffed the heads of three snakes into his mouth and stood, arms outstretched, while the long bodies of the serpents twisted and lashed. A tribesman down from the hills suddenly commanded his legion of wives and kids to fall to their knees to honour an eagle circling above. A parade of zealots, showing the whites of their eyes, advanced through the bazaar in little bunny hops, the better to torture their feet with the sharp pebbles in their shoes. A group of gaudily dressed women who were said to be Gypsies danced a jig on Pahlevi with their hands cupping their breasts.

  But my father’s letters made the world and its variousness seem utterly beside the point, as if I would know life only by stirring offal in Bertie’s copper. And it seemed I could put aside ideas of love, delight and desire as the husband of a jewelled princess, because Kendra Phillips from fourth form, with her genial freckles and raucous laugh and her three little bad-boy brothers, was the girl who had my number, knew the plain facts about me. Kendra had liked me. My embarrassment had puzzled her. She didn’t see anything mystical or attractively tragic in me at all.

  News from home and the sadness it set working was one cause of distress. The mullahs were another. They were busy about the city each day, turning a censorial gaze on hemlines, hairdos and the tardy piety of the merchants in the marketplace. Their glares did not cause the Shirazis much alarm, but when they glared at me I felt spooked. They scowled at my pointed shoes and long hair, and shouted at me and made broad, sweeping motions with their arms, which I took to mean, ‘Get back to Gomorrah, kid!’ With their brown robes, white turbans and identically barbered beards, it was impossible to tell them apart. I’d escape from one at the end of Pahlevi, and a half-hour later his look-alike would be sneering as I entered the Shiraz Jazz Café at the other end of town.

  Houshang laughed when I told him. ‘Silly people,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry. They’re harmless.’ Waking one afternoon in the hotel’s courtyard where I was sunbaking, I found a pair of them squatting silently beside me. Disgust and lust contended in their expressions. When Reza appeared he salaamed and smiled obsequiously for the mullahs, but turned an exasperated eye on me. The mullahs withdrew slowly, lips pursed and eyes glittering.

  ‘Mister Robert, so bad!’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘This!’ And Reza plucked at my red Speedos.

  ‘I’m sunbaking.’

  ‘No! No no no!’

  ‘Not allowed?’

  Reza glanced left and right before leaning close to whisper, ‘These men cruel. Cruel? You understand?’

  ‘Cruel?’

  Reza mimicked a person wielding a whip. ‘Bang! Bang bang!’

  ‘Oh,’ I said.

  Reza rubbed his behind, then brought his hand to his mouth and blew on it—to show, I think, the heat and pain that would have been concentrated there after a dash of the lash.

  ‘Okay,’ I said, wiser now.

  My students at the Iran-America Society made attempts to educate me. After class, a group of them would walk me along the streets, pausing every so often to make a point.

  ‘Who is this, Mister Robert?’ They were nodding towards a tall, thin young man strolling languidly near the bazaar.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said.

  ‘Beheshti, taking your money.’

  Shamshiri, a cheerful, bespectacled boy of sixteen who had established himself as the cleverest student in any of my classes, rubbed his hands together then cast what I understood to be imaginary dice onto the sidewalk.

  ‘Hoo! Beheshti too smart!’ said Nashi.

  ‘Beheshti is looking for you,’ said Shamshiri.

  ‘For me? Why?’

  ‘For all English persons, for Americans, for Peace Corps. Shiraz people never trust him. Foreign people trust him only.’

  ‘Too smart, Beheshti!’ Nashi said again, admiringly.

  We crossed into the bazaar and found Beheshti settling down to a hookah in a café. My students greeted him gaily then nudged me forward.

  ‘Hi,’ I said, and Beheshti, smiling charmingly, extended a long, white, prehensile hand.

  ‘Give Beheshti ten toomans, Mister Robert.’

  I gave up the ten toomans, reluctantly. The instant the note touched Beheshti’s fingers, it disappeared. He didn’t palm it or manipulate it in any way. He simply made it vanish. My students hooted and slapped their thighs and crooned with amazement. I, too, expressed my surprise. But when I asked for the note back, my students looked at me blankly.

  ‘Your toomans gone, Mister Robert. Beheshti too smart.’

  ‘But I only gave it to him because you told me to!’

  Shamshiri, ushering me out of the café, spoke of the experience as if it were a valuable lesson for me. It was impossible for me to tell whether I was the butt of a joke or the victim of my students’ naivety. I would not have needed any warning regarding Beheshti. He looked to me exactly like the crook he was.

  Next I was required to meet an oddity of a different sort—a man who was said to be the only atheist in Iran. His name had come up when I was chatting with my students. They had wanted to know if I was Jewish, and if I was not—that is, if I was a Christian—how come I didn’t wear a little cross around my neck like every other Christian? I said, nonchalantly, that I was an atheist. It took half an hour to make clear what an atheist was. The students chortled gleefully, as if my stupidity, which had already provided them with so much delight, had just revealed a new and even more thrilling dimension. The idea that there was a god who was not Allah seemed to them complete nonsense, but tolerable nonsense, as if you’d declared yourself a member of the Flat Earth Society. The earth was round, no question, but if you persisted in believing it flat, best of luck to you. But to deny the existence of any god at all was like saying that the earth was not round and not flat, and in fact didn’t exist. A name was spoken. Pissing themselves, my students let me know that here, here in Shiraz, another such atheist dwelt, name of Hakemi, only fellow in Iran stricken in the same way as I was.

  Hakemi was a spectacle-repairer, and worked in his house on the hill near the Parki Saadi. We marched across town to meet him. I was expecting someone witty and ironic, someone with his tongue in his cheek and the twinkle of a lively intelligence in his eye. Hakemi wasn’t like that. He was bad-tempered, shrill and impatient. As near as I could tell, his opening message to my students was that they piss off. They took no notice. Then followed a shouting match, a real treat for my students but obviously trying to Hakemi. Eventually the matter at hand was broached. Here’s our teacher, an atheist and an idiot like you, you silly old bastard, so what do you think about that?—or so I guessed the introduction was made, judging from gestures. Hakemi, who didn’t wear glasses himself but obviously needed to, squinted at me with his beaky nose about
an inch from my face. ‘Jesus,’ he said to me. ‘No Jesus?’

  Now, I didn’t wish to deny the historical existence of Jesus. But translation would be a problem. So I replied, mildly, ‘Jesus, yes, God, no.’

  ‘Jesus yes, God no?’

  ‘Yes.’

  This response seemed, I think, a bit fishy to Hakemi. He stood with his lips pursed and his head cocked to one side, thinking.

  ‘Jesus yes, God no?’ he said again.

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Hakemi,’ he said, jabbing his finger into his chest, ‘Mohammed no, Allah no.’

  ‘Mohammed no, Allah no?’ I said.

  ‘Mohammed no, Allah no.’

  Hakemi looked pleased with himself. He’d established a standard of unbelief that left me looking like a quibbler. But my students had obviously prepared themselves for a more interesting afternoon. Nashi stepped forward, and roused Hakemi all over again. I asked Emmilef to translate.

  ‘Nashi tells Hakemi you are saying God is mad.’

  ‘Me? I didn’t say that!’ But I knew where this nonsense had come from. When I’d told Reza at the hotel that Queen Elizabeth was mad, the comment had become known to all my students. Nashi had decided that what I’d said of the Queen could equally be considered my judgement on the god I claimed did not exist. ‘I said the Queen is mad. Not God. I didn’t say God is mad.’

  Hakemi, however, had seen a way to get his teeth into the seat of my pants. I had been revealed as a mere casuist. He barked back something that sent the students into hysterics. Shamshiri was being encouraged by the others to translate, but he seemed reluctant.

  ‘What’d he say?’ I demanded.

  Prodded, punched and cajoled by the others, Shamshiri finally came through.

  ‘Hakemi is saying you are having no brains …’ (and here Shamshiri touched his temple) … ‘and no … this …’ (pointing at his crotch).

  ‘No balls?’

  ‘Yes. Bollis. No bollis. I am sorry Hakemi is saying this to you, Mister Hillman.’

  ‘Tell Hakemi,’ I said, stung, ‘that I’ve got plenty of balls. Tell him I say no Jesus, no God. Nothing. Okay?’

  ‘No Jesus, no God?’

  ‘Right.’

  Shamshiri, shrugging, gave Hakemi my new position. Hakemi waved a hand at me dismissively, and said something that delighted the students all over again.

  ‘Now Hakemi is saying you are same as a woman, Mister Hillman!’

  ‘I am not!’

  Nashi whispered something to Shamshiri, who then whispered it to me.

  ‘Mister Hillman, say to Hakemi he is monkey face!’

  I might have, but after a few seconds’ reflection I decided it was beneath my dignity to go on with the argument. In any case, Nashi had started his own brawl with Hakemi and was shaping up to punch him. He had to be dragged out of the house by the other students, with Hakemi raining insults on him. I last glimpsed Hakemi standing in the doorway with his arms folded, looking triumphant.

  The students also thought it imperative that I meet a friend of theirs in the National Police, a lieutenant named Rasheef. He was in uniform when I first met him. I did not require the warning they gave me about staying on the good side of such a man. Rasheef, in his early twenties, had the swagger of a schoolyard bully enhanced by his employment in the office of licensed thug. He was a friend of my older male students, boys of eighteen and nineteen, but how they had come to know him so well was never explained. Houshang’s conjecture was that Rasheef had probably befriended them, rather than the other way around. They all came from well-to-do families, and he would have seen advantage in this.

  We met at the home of Nashi’s married older brother, Adeem. In a small courtyard behind tall mud-brick walls, dishes of food were served over a period of hours. I have come to enjoy the sort of food I was offered that day, but it was a hard ask for me, aged seventeen, to keep a smile on my face while washing down fare made from ingredients I had not heard of with a spirit that smelled like turpentine. A bottle of tomato sauce would have made the world of difference.

  A tabor and a fiddle were fetched late in the afternoon. Adeem, a renowned singer, took the stage. I sat listening for an hour or more to what sounded to me like the human voice mimicking the sound of water running down a plughole. The students were blissed-out, but Rasheef became restless. He called for the fiddle, and clowned with it in the manner of a man known to introduce grave reprisals when an audience disappointed him. The students laughed like hyenas. Encouraged, Rasheef asked for his pistol and passed a riotous half-hour cocking the gun against our temples. There was more hilarity to come. He had some ‘sex books’ to show us, which turned out to be a couple of medical volumes. With a great deal of sniggering, Rasheef displayed coloured plates of the female genitalia.

  The next day, my students drove home the lesson of that appalling afternoon: Rasheef, like Beheshti, was a bad man. Signatures of sincerity and insincerity change from culture to culture, of course, and I couldn’t pick either in Iran. Houshang tried to explain to me that attempting to achieve two contradictory aims at the one time was a typically Persian thing to do. The boys, he said, were probably trying to show off their powerful buddy in the National Police, while at the same time warning me to watch out. He said that Rasheef, unlike the mullahs, was properly dangerous. If he shot me in the back of the head and left me in the hills, no one would report finding my body. But why would he want to shoot me in the back of the head? Who could be less harmless than me? ‘He likes you,’ Houshang said. ‘He might ask you to do something for him. Perhaps you will say no. Then he doesn’t like you.’

  ‘Do what for him?’

  ‘I don’t know. The police are corrupt. Rasheef makes friends with foreigners. I don’t know what he wants with them.’

  As it turned out, Rasheef did have a task for me. One evening, after my last class for the day, Nashi nervously asked me to walk with him down to the National Police headquarters. The other students shrank back, shrugging and muttering. But I felt very little apprehension. I had done no wrong. And if Rasheef asked me to do something I didn’t want to do, I would refuse, and maybe he would be surprised at my strength of character and decide not to shoot me. There was also my trump card. I was an Australian. We were a nation of people to whom things did not happen.

  At the police station, Nashi, more jittery with every passing minute, spoke briefly with a burly constable, gesturing towards me as if I had tagged along unbidden. I gazed around at framed portraits of the Shah, which hung everywhere. Rasheef emerged from his office and welcomed me with a smile. He told Nashi to get lost.

  Once in his office, Rasheef himself seemed to me to grow almost as nervous as Nashi. He pointed at an ancient musket mounted on the wall, then took it down and invited me to sight along the barrel. He showed me a curved sword and encouraged me to touch the blade. ‘Shop?’ he said. After a moment’s puzzlement, I said, ‘Sharp’.

  ‘Sharp?’

  ‘Sharp. Very sharp.’

  ‘Very sharp?’

  ‘Very sharp, yes.’

  ‘Very sharp.’

  Rasheef then stood on one foot and raised the polished boot on the other foot.

  ‘Show,’ he said, pointing at the boot. ‘Show. Yes?’

  ‘Boot,’ I said.

  ‘Bood?’

  ‘Boo—t. Boot.’

  ‘Boot. Not show? Boot?’

  I pointed to my own Beatle shoes. ‘Shoe,’ I said. Then, pointing to Rasheef’s footwear, I said, ‘Boot.’

  Rasheef shot me a suspicious glance. Then understanding dawned. ‘Ah!’ he said, throwing his hands up to the ceiling. ‘Show, little, boot—big!’ he looked at me for confirmation.

  ‘Shoe, little,’ I said. ‘Boot, big!’

  He was delighted. He clapped his hands together and chuckled.

  Serious once more, Rash
eef stood before me and put his hands on my shoulders. Enunciating each word so carefully that his moustache was drawn up, then down, then stretched from side to side, he said, ‘You … teaching … Rasheef … the English. Hokay?’

  ‘Sure!’

  He gazed at me in that unreliably sentimental way common in brutal men, spicks and specks of comradely love gathered up and held briefly in a misty film.

  ‘Good!’ he said. ‘Very good!’

  No sooner was I back on the boulevard than Nashi jumped out from behind a tree.

  ‘Ho! Mister Robert! Mister Rasheef no hurting you!’

  ‘Of course not!’ I said.

  As I made my triumphal way down Pahlevi, more and more of my students appeared from the shadows. Shamshiri, looking sheepish, was the first to ask the reason for the summons from Rasheef.

  ‘He wants me to teach him English,’ I said.

  ‘Mister Rasheef will pay you excellent?’ he asked.

  This question reminded me that payment hadn’t been discussed. Something about Rasheef’s manner, as I reflected on it, made me think that money was probably not part of the deal. The mullahs lost interest in me. Rasheef became my pal after a half-dozen vile English lessons during which he mastered the names of all the female body parts.

  Without distractions, my craving for love resurfaced. I’d given up tagging along with Houshang on his visits to Persepolis. The sight of so many classy women stumbling back after a tryst behind a pillar with Houshang was souring my belief in the transfiguring power of love. Sex for these women seemed nothing more than a holiday activity. Then one afternoon in my Upper B class, Shayda Ashadi smiled at me. Shayda was pure poetry—dark-eyed, blushful, heartbreakingly pretty. Also very intelligent. She had written an essay on birds that concluded with the line, ‘A bird is like our heart.’ That line by itself had torn a huge hole in my guts, but the smile was the real killer. I thought, Oh God, she loves me!