A TIME TO BETRAY

by REZA KAHLILI

  The reason I most loved being at my grandparents’ house was that Naser lived next door. Naser and I had been friends for as long as I could remember. We grew up together, played together, went to the same school, and hung around together after classes nearly every day. My grandfather and Naser’s father, Davood, were good friends even though there was a considerable difference in their ages. They enjoyed gardening and bird-watching together. They had pet canaries whose song they could imitate with their own uncanny whistles.

  Davood adored his three children. He always bragged about Naser’s grades and the artistic endeavors of Soheil, his younger son. He regularly claimed that Soheil would be as famous as da Vinci one day. With the birth of his only daughter, Parvaneh, Davood celebrated life anew. Parvaneh is the Farsi word for “butterfly” and Davood gave his daughter this name because she had brought color and beauty to his life. He always took the toddler along when he visited Grandpa. Naser’s mom, on the other hand, was a private woman and rarely joined my grandparents’ gatherings.

  After I ate breakfast, I ran to Naser’s house. We had plans to meet up with our friend Kazem. Naser and I were twelve and Kazem was a year younger; adult gatherings gave us a great opportunity to create mischief and we suspected we’d generate some today.

  When I got to Naser’s house, he was in his yard chasing frogs. I put my head between the bars of the iron fence that surrounded his house and called his name.

  “Come on, let’s go get Kazem.”

  “Wait, I almost have this frog.”

  He was zigzagging, jumping here and there in pursuit. He finally managed to catch the frog, and once he did, he ran toward me. His big brown eyes glinted in the summer sun. His smile widened as he extended his arms to show me his catch.

  I scowled at him. “You’re wasting time chasing frogs, Naser! The guests will be arriving soon.”

  Naser put the trapped amphibian in his pocket with a shrug. “Okay, Reza. Let’s go.”

  He whistled happily as we walked. A fresh breeze from the mountains stirred the tall trees that lined our streets. Water from the snowmelt flowed through a creek that wove and tumbled its way through the thickets of raspberry and blackberry bushes in Grandpa’s backyard, creating a melodic brook in which Naser and I could splash.

  We lived in an upscale neighborhood with lush foliage in the north of Tehran, the capital of Iran. My grandparents’ house was at the end of a long, narrow street lined with gated properties on both sides. You could not see some of the larger homes from the street as tall brick walls or hedges concealed them. On our walk through this area, we always peeked through gates to take in the acres of impressive landscaping, ponds, waterfalls, and swimming pools. I felt very proud to live in a place this beautiful.

  This area was close to the slopes of the Alborz mountain range. Nearby was the Sadabad Palace, built during the Qajar dynasty in the nineteenth century. Reza Shah lived there in the twenties. His son, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, Shahanshah, King of Kings, moved there in the seventies.

  Kazem’s house was only a thirty-minute walk from ours, but in many ways it seemed a world away. In his neighborhood, potholes dotted the asphalt streets, rotted wooden gates marked the entrances in the crumbling clay walls around the small homes, and only a few small trees stood along the sidewalks. The very same creek that ran past my grandparents’ house wound through this neighborhood as well. But where Naser and I used the creek for frolicking, some of Kazem’s neighbors used it for washing clothes.

  Even at our age, it was impossible not to notice the difference in living conditions. Hungry kids sat on the street in torn, dirty clothes with flies buzzing around the dried crusts of dirt on their noses and eyes. Their mothers carried laundry in big aluminum bowls atop their heads. Women traded dried bread and a little change for a bag of sea salt, which the street merchants carried in donkey saddle packs. The merchant used the dried bread to feed his donkey and the change as his sole source of income. And while men in our family discussed whether to purchase American-made or German-made cars, men in Kazem’s neighborhood owned old bikes or, like Kazem’s father, a three-wheeler pickup truck.

  The differences weren’t only economic. Here, the women covered themselves under chadors, unlike the women in our family and many others in Iran who dressed in Western-style suits and fancy dresses, covering their hair with a loose scarf only on special occasions, such as mourning ceremonies or funerals.

  As we drew closer to Kazem’s house, we saw him with his mother escorting Mullah Aziz outside. Kazem’s mother bent over and whispered something to Kazem, who stepped toward the mullah, took his hand, bowed, and kissed it. That was his way of thanking Mullah Aziz for teaching him the Quran. When he spotted us, Kazem didn’t blush. He was not embarrassed to have us see him kissing a mullah’s hand, as Naser and I would have been. In fact, he smiled with pride.

  We’d met Kazem a year before on a hot summer afternoon. Kazem was the local butcher’s son. Despite being only ten then, Kazem worked for his dad after school and during the summertime. Naser and I were playing soccer outside my grandparents’ house along with a few other boys from our neighborhood when Kazem made a meat delivery to Grandma. Afterward, he sat on the curb and watched us play. He was short and skinny and wore his hair so closely cropped that his round head almost seemed bald. His dark, droopy eyes moved with the ball and every time one of us made a bad play, he giggled.

  After this happened a few times, Naser threw the ball to Kazem and challenged him to show us some of his moves. Kazem jumped from the curb eagerly and started bouncing the ball on his feet ten, twenty times without dropping it. Then, in one fluid motion, he kicked the ball above his head and headed it back to Naser.

  Naser and I looked at each other, amazed. Right there, we asked him to join our soccer team. Kazem happily agreed. His only caveat was that he could not play with us during the month of Ramadan because his mother insisted that he fast. I found it hard to believe that any kid would put religious obligations ahead of soccer, but we had no choice but to accept this.

  “Mullah, may I kiss your hand,” Naser said, teasing Kazem, as we made our way back to my grandparents’ house.

  With a grand gesture, Kazem presented his hand to Naser and said, “May God forgive you for your rudeness, son. You shall bow and kiss my hand now.” Then he laughed.

  Naser reached into his pocket quickly and put the frog in Kazem’s outstretched hand. Kazem screamed and pulled away. The frog hopped to the ground and made his escape. Naser had to hold his stomach, he was laughing so hard.

  “What is wrong with you?” I said, slapping Naser on the back. “Why did you do that?” I didn’t like touching frogs, either, so I sympathized immediately with Kazem.

  “Come on, Reza, you coward. You’re both cowards. It’s just a frog.” Naser wrapped his arms around us, giving us a big hug.

  In the middle of this we heard the clop-clop of a donkey. We turned to see Mullah Aziz passing us. His short legs were hanging off the sides of the animal and his sandals were bouncing on his feet. Naser pointed at the hole in the mullah’s socks and the three of us laughed. I knew the mullah was on his way to my grandparents’ home to perform the Rowzeh Khooni. This ceremony was a business opportunity for neighborhood mullahs. They lived in near poverty, so the fee they received for this occasion (the equivalent of a dollar or two) meant something to them.

  Some Muslims, like Kazem’s family, held the mullahs in high regard and followed their teachings closely. However, most people—my family and Naser’s family among them—considered the mullahs nothing more than low-level preachers who helped them practice their faith and meet their moral obligations. Grandpa did not like the mullahs. I once heard him say, “These donkey riders should all be moved to the city of Qom, where they learned all this nonsense. They should be kept in a compound and only allowed to preach there.” And then in a moment of terrible prescience, he added, “God forbid if they ever get the power to rule.”

  As soon as Mullah
Aziz passed us by, we encountered a dasteh, a mourning parade of men in black clothes, marching down the alley carrying banners and singing torturous songs about Imam Hussein’s martyrdom. We sat at the curb and watched as they moved along. The neighborhood women carried big pitchers of cherry sherbet and offered it to the men, who were sweating under the heat. As part of the ceremony, some men struck their chests with their hands and some rapped their backs until they bled with a special chain made only for the parade.

  “What’s wrong, Reza?” Kazem said when he saw my reaction to this. “Why are you making that face?”

  I was nauseous. The funereal singing and the sight of so many backs covered with blood made me gag. I always tried to avoid a dasteh. I would try to stay inside if they came to our neighborhood, though they usually kept to neighborhoods like Kazem’s.

  I avoided answering Kazem’s question because I knew his response to this sight was very different from mine. “We should be going now,” I said, pulling Naser’s shirt. “If we wait here for the dasteh to pass by, we won’t get home in time. And look, Mullah Aziz is also taking off.”

  The mullah had been on the other side of the alley, sitting on his donkey, watching the crowd and playing with his prayer beads. Naser got up, looked toward the mullah, and pulled Kazem by his arm.

  “Let’s go,” he said, pointing down an alley and smiling mischievously. “Let’s get to the house before Mullah Aziz. I know a shortcut. This way, Reza! Kazem!”

  We followed Naser, running. Breathless, we managed to get to Grandpa’s before the mullah.

  Inside the house, the guests were already there. The women sat in the living room and the men sat in the adjacent family room. Some kids were in the yard playing and the smaller kids were inside with their parents.

  “Come on, guys,” Naser said as he noticed the mullah’s arrival. “He’s here.”

  The mullah dismounted his donkey and tied it to a tree at the end of the paved driveway next to Grandpa’s 1955 white Cadillac DeVille. My grandfather loved that car and he made sure his chauffeur kept it in pristine condition. He would have been appalled to see the mullah’s donkey pounding his feet and kicking up dust on the car.

  Mullah Aziz made his way down the potted-geranium-lined path leading to the stairs up to the balcony entrance. While everyone else waited inside the house for the sermon to begin, the three of us hunkered down behind the Cadillac. I still did not know what Naser had in mind, but he seemed ready to burst with excitement.

  Grandpa had opened the double doors to welcome Mullah Aziz. The mullah went inside and quickly took his place in front of the living room mantelpiece under a picture of Imam Ali, the Shiites’ first Imam. Grandma had placed a special cushion for him there.

  “Okay, guys,” Naser whispered. “Kazem, you stay here in front of Agha Joon’s car and make sure nobody sees us. If you see anybody coming, whistle twice. Reza, you come with me.” Kazem agreed to join in reluctantly, obviously uneasy about doing anything that might victimize the mullah. As was usually the case with Kazem, he didn’t volunteer to start mischief, but he didn’t back away from it, either.

  Naser and I crept toward the donkey. I grabbed the bridle while Naser untied the reins. The animal did not move. Naser gave him a kick in the leg; still nothing. I pulled his tail. The donkey turned his head and neighed at me.

  “He isn’t going anywhere,” Kazem said, laughing.

  Naser grabbed a small stick from the ground and hit the donkey on the back. That finally got the animal moving. With the donkey now free of his restraints and running, the three of us chased the hapless beast down the street, roaring with laughter.

  “There goes the Mullah Aziz’s 1965 Donkey-Mobile, down the hill in neutral,” Naser said.

  Once the donkey was gone, we ran back inside, thrilled with our success and determined to appear as innocent as possible.

  Meanwhile, Mullah Aziz was beginning his work. After adjusting his turban a few times, he closed his eyes, lifted his chubby arms skyward, and opened the ceremony with “Besmellahe Rahmane Rahim”—“In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Kind.” Then he began to tell sad stories of the Imam’s martyrdom. The women found this mesmerizing. Within minutes, Mullah Aziz had them crying with his mournful performance. Meanwhile, in the other room, Grandpa was making fun of him and his delivery, whispering to my dad, “The son of a dog is telling the story of Imam Hussein like he witnessed the Imam’s martyrdom himself.”

  With the women in a state of rapture, Mullah Aziz peeked at them surreptitiously. Rubbing his full black beard with his fingers, he moved his eyes around the room until he spotted my two cousins, Haleh and Mina. I learned that they’d earlier caused a stir when they entered the women’s room because they were dressed so conspicuously. Mina was wearing a tight, short, light green dress and Haleh a black lace blouse and a miniskirt. Both girls wore red lipstick, green eye shadow, and rosy blush. As a concession to propriety, they wore thin see-through veils atop their updos. As Mullah Aziz came toward the close of his sermon, he glanced at my cousins again and winked at them. Haleh looked at Mina in shock and they started giggling.

  Naser saw this exchange and wrinkled his nose. Naser had a huge crush on Haleh despite the fact that she was eight years older. “Stupid mullah,” he whispered. “I hope he never finds that donkey.”

  After the mullah’s presentation, the servants offered platters of food on a sofreh, a linen tablecloth spread across the floor. We filled our plates and ate in the yard. The mullah stayed inside, enjoying the large plate of food Grandma had prepared especially for him.

  When we finished eating, we lay on the bench by Grandpa’s fishpond and talked about our next soccer match. The guests had scattered in the yard. Some prepared to leave, some gathered in small groups talking, and some helped clean up. I had nearly forgotten about what we’d done with Mullah Aziz’s donkey when I heard my grandmother’s trembling voice.

  “Reza … ! Reza … !”

  She came over to us, biting her lip, hands on her hips, tapping her foot.

  I looked at Naser and then Kazem. “How did she know it was us?” I whispered.

  I knew I was in trouble, but I would not betray my friends. We had sworn an oath to be friends forever and never tell on one another. I ran back inside and hid behind my grandfather, though I had a feeling that even he was not going to be able to save me this time.

  “Reza! I will give you a good lesson tonight,” my grandmother said with ominous calm. “But now you go with your friends and find that donkey.”

  Though I hadn’t ratted out my friends, she knew all three of us had been involved. She had the authority to punish only me, though, so I would withstand the worst of this. We went out to look for the animal and found him just around the corner by a gutter. He was probably very confused about his master’s whereabouts. We brought the donkey back home, where my grandmother was apologizing profusely to Mullah Aziz for our behavior. This seemed to mollify him, especially when Grandma presented him with a big basket of food and fruit to take home.

  My grandmother could have beaten me for this indiscretion and I really wouldn’t have had any legitimate gripe. But the punishment she chose was far more humiliating than any beating—she made me help the women in the kitchen that night and then she made me clean up the garden the next day.

  “You’ll also be in your room for a few days. No soccer or outside playing,” Grandma demanded.

  “Khanoom Bozorg, that’s not fair!”

  “What you did to that poor mullah was not nice.”

  “But … but we have an important match coming this Thursday. Please, Grandma, I adore you, I do.” I pouted and pressed my eyelids together. She left the room, letting my appeal for leniency go unanswered. The following Thursday, though, I not only played soccer, I also went to see a movie with Naser and Kazem after our game. Kazem insisted we see A Fistful of Dollars with Clint Eastwood even though we had seen it a few times already. We loved American movies, especially Westerns. We each h
ad a favorite American actor. Kazem’s was Clint Eastwood, Naser’s, John Wayne, and mine, Steve McQueen. We even called one another by their names. We loved going to the theater, eating popcorn, and drinking orange soda.

  One thing we didn’t love was that before every movie started, we had to stand up to the picture of Mohammad Reza Shah, which appeared on the screen as the national anthem played. Although that night we got to the movie theater a little late, all of the people in the audience were on their feet to honor the picture of the shah. Naser put his two fingers by his forehead to salute me. I imitated the same motion to Kazem, and Kazem bowed to both of us as we all giggled. On the way home after the movie, Kazem drew his imaginary gun and shot at Naser and me. We acted as though he’d actually shot us and swayed back and forth in slow motion. “Clint, please don’t kill us,” we called as we fell.

  Since the next day was a Friday, that meant it was time for another of my grandfather’s weekly gatherings. Some Muslims continue the mourning of Imam Hussein’s martyrdom for the entire month of Muharram, wearing black clothes and avoiding parties and music. But for most Iranians, like my family, life went back to normal the day after Ashura.

  As soon as everyone arrived this Friday, Grandpa called upon the kids, lining us up in three rows from the oldest to the youngest so we could perform the national anthem:

  Shahanshah e ma zendeh bada

  Payad keshvar be farash javedan

  Kaz Pahlavi shod molke Iran

  Sad rah behtar ze ahde basetan

  Az doshmanan budi parishan

  Dar saye ash asude Iran

  Iranian peyvaste shadan

  Hamvareh Yazdan bovad ura negahban

  Long live our King of Kings