A TIME TO BETRAY

by REZA KAHLILI

Akbar, a friend of his, a member of our department and someone who was a good source of mine with a number of contacts in the Foreign Ministry, had told me that Javad was meddling in everyone’s business and that he kept a file on everyone, even though this was beyond his job assignment. I had already experienced his intrusions several times and I had written Carol over my concerns about him. Akbar told me that Javad used the information he gathered to ingratiate himself with his superiors and to gain more power.

  Javad was the youngest of three brothers. The oldest brother had been martyred in the war fighting the Iraqis. The middle brother was paralyzed from a childhood disease. Javad took care of his surviving brother and helped his parents, who were still living in poverty. He’d been rising quickly through the ranks in the Intelligence Unit, primarily because of his devotion to the Islamic government and his willingness to sell out his family members and neighbors. He’d recently arranged for the arrest of a man who lived in his neighborhood whose only crime was whispering to a neighbor about the lack of freedom for his daughters while waiting in a line at a grocery store to exchange his food coupons for some sugar and rice.

  “What brings you here, Baradar?” I asked again.

  “I am planning on visiting an old friend, Abbass, at the Intelligence Headquarters. He studied abroad, just like you. I think he also lived in California for some time. I told him I would bring you along to meet him. Maybe you know each other.”

  “Today?”

  “Yeah. I checked your schedule with Rahim and he said you are pretty open.”

  This caught me off guard and ratcheted up my sense of apprehension. Javad was definitely up to something. Was the man I saw this morning somehow connected to this? I did not know what to say or how to react.

  “Is that a problem?” Javad’s voice had turned threatening. He still hadn’t moved.

  I scrambled for an explanation. “Omid, my son, is sick. My wife wants me to go to the doctor with her.” I felt a little relief as I came up with this story. “Do we need to go today?”

  “Yes, we do,” he said tersely. “Abbass is a very busy man. This is the only time he can see us. I hope your son feels better soon, inshallah. I’ll be in my office. Meet me there in half an hour.”

  Javad stood up slowly, uncoiling, looking as though he were considering devouring me. I felt naked and vulnerable.

  Without another word, he left.

  I went immediately to Kazem’s office. As complicated as our relationship had become, at least in my eyes, and as much as I felt he’d turned into someone very different from the boy I grew up with, I still saw him as a safe harbor. We had a long and deep history together, and that had to mean something. I felt in desperate need of that safe harbor now, so I needed to talk to him. I also wanted him to know that if I didn’t come back, I’d left the grounds with Javad.

  Kazem was on the phone, as usual. I didn’t hear what he was saying, nor was it my intention to eavesdrop this time.

  “What’s up, Reza?” he asked as soon as he hung up.

  “Not much. I just came to say hi. I am going with Javad to the Intelligence Headquarters. He wants me to meet somebody there.”

  “He does? Who does he want you to meet?”

  “I don’t know, some friend of his named Abbass, who apparently went to school in California.”

  “Hmm.”

  Kazem’s expression showed that this was new information to him. I realized quickly that I wasn’t going to accomplish much with this conversation. Kazem couldn’t offer me any kind of security this time. By all indications, he knew nothing of what was going on.

  “I should be going,” I said. “He’s waiting for me. By the way, Baradar Rahim said he would give you the details for our trip to jebheh. Let me know when you have them.”

  In the hallway, I ran into Rahim myself. “Salam, Baradar Rahim.”

  “Salam, Baradar Reza. Javad was looking for you this morning. Did you talk to him?”

  “Yes.”

  “He checked to see how busy you were today, saying he wanted to take you out for lunch or something. Could you come to my office when you get back? I need your help with my computer. It’s acting up again.”

  It appeared to me that whatever Javad’s plan was, it was not coming from my department, as neither Rahim nor Kazem seemed aware of it. That offered me no solace. Regardless of who knew what was going on, Javad could be ushering me to my doom within the hour.

  I needed to talk to Somaya. If Javad’s intentions were as sinister as I suspected, I wanted to hear her voice one more time. As soon as I got back to my office, I hesitantly dialed our home number, not sure how I could explain a call like this. Realizing I was only going to make Somaya worried, I decided to hang up. But before I could, Somaya answered.

  “Somaya jon, it’s me,” I said as I tried to work my way through a lie. “I just ran into my commander and he said there might be a need for several of us to be sent to the fronts right away.”

  Somaya gasped. “Is there going to be a major offensive or something?” She sounded frightened and I felt horrible that I was doing that to her. I didn’t intend to scare her, but I had to give her something to hold on to in case the worst happened to me.

  “Oh, no. Rahim just wants me and a few other guards to be ready for … Hold on a moment. …” I felt somebody was lurking outside of my office. I slowly put the handset on the desk and opened the door. But I did not see anybody. I looked down the hallway, and when I was certain that nobody was around, I shut the door and picked up the phone.

  “I love you, Somaya,” I said, still not knowing what to tell her. I’d called her so impulsively that I didn’t think things through.

  “Reza, you are making me so worried. Is everything okay? You are being very strange. You never call me in the middle of the day. What’s wrong?”

  What if this were the last time I heard her voice? What if Javad and the guy in the khaki pants I saw this morning were decoding my letter at this moment? What if I never saw my son again? These thoughts consumed me and I couldn’t speak.

  “And I love you, too,” she said after a long pause from me.

  In that moment, I realized that all of my strength came from her love. Even as worried as I was now, having such a pure, innocent being in my life brought me joy. “Would you promise me something?” I asked.

  “If you insist,” she responded with a hint of irony in her voice.

  I looked up at the door again and sharpened my ear to see if I could hear anybody. Then I continued. “Should something happen to me, promise me you’ll go to London with Omid and stay with your parents.” She did not say anything, so I continued again. “As I said, I might go to the front today. If you don’t hear from me in a few days, I want you to pack your bags and go to London. Do you promise me?”

  “Reza, you don’t need to remind me how dangerous your work is,” she said with confusion in her voice. “But I don’t understand why they need a computer guy at the front. I am just …” She did not finish and just stayed quiet while I told her one more time how much I loved her.

  Then, as much as I wanted to continue to hear her voice, I realized that I needed to hang up. The Guards could have been listening to this call, further fueling their suspicion about me.

  I met Javad at his office and from there we headed toward his car. I resolved to maintain my composure, trying to convince myself that Javad was acting the way he was simply to test me. After all, according to Akbar, he’d made a profession out of testing people. Meanwhile, my thoughts raced between wondering if the Guards knew about Wally and persuading myself that they couldn’t possibly know.

  We’d barely started driving when Javad raised my anxieties to new levels.

  “Baradar Reza, we are going to Evin Prison instead of Abbass’s office,” he said. “Abbass is at Evin today.”

  The mere suggestion of Evin set my mind reeling. Images immediately flashed of the last time I was there. The sounds of terror, torture, wailing, and gunshots rang
in my ears simultaneously. I thought of Parvaneh, Naser, and Soheil. Unbidden, the thought came of myself as a prisoner there, and I came very close to losing the façade of calm I’d managed to erect provisionally.

  “I am looking forward to meeting this friend of yours,” I said as I straightened my back in my seat. “It’s Baradar Abbass, right?”

  “Yeah, Abbass. God bless him. This morning he told me they had just arrested two pasdar who were working as spies for other countries. It’s hard to believe those bastards thought they could infiltrate us, steal our secrets, and get away with their treacherous acts. We lose our brothers in war, and these sons of dogs sell us out for money to America, Israel, or the Mujahedin. They are going to pay and then pay again.”

  He looked over at me, narrowing his eyes. I could feel the hatred in his voice, the insane need to avenge his brother by bringing down anyone who opposed the regime, and therefore the cause for which his brother had died.

  His mention of the arrest of the Guards sent the pendulum of my thoughts back to the belief that Javad was driving me toward my imprisonment. For the first time since I became Wally, I felt I had reached the end. I was caught. My mind raced to think of a way out. In this frantic condition, I remembered a spy movie I watched with Naser when we were teenagers. In the movie, a spy took cyanide just before he was captured to avoid certain torture. If I had a cyanide capsule on me at that moment, I might have done the same. But such a thing hadn’t come in the “spy kit” provided by the CIA. In this moment, in this car that I believed was delivering me to a future of agony, I felt very alone. I looked out the window, as if something there would provide me with an option.

  “They go to America, and instead of helping their country, they betray us. One of these jasoosa gave away a secret plan about the war and a lot of Basijis lost their lives.”

  Javad’s resentment for me was very personal. If, in fact, he did know that I was a spy, he was equating me with the death of our soldiers and, by extension, the death of his brother.

  I continued to play the role of the faithful Guard. “Baradar Javad, we are fortunate that we have people like Abbass, whose knowledge is building a strong coalition for our Islamic movement. His American education is an asset for us. He knows the Americans better than they know us. He is not a betrayer.”

  Javad glanced at me quickly before returning his eyes to the road. He didn’t respond, and I stayed quiet as well, hoping that doing so would allow my words to sink in with him. If Javad and his cohorts had evidence against me, I knew I was already lost. But that didn’t prevent me from trying everything at my disposal to convince them that they’d misjudged me.

  A short while later, we entered through the main gate of Evin and headed toward the prosecution wing, southwest of the main prison building. Javad knew exactly where to go, probably because he’d spent a great deal of time here. I followed behind him in the long hallway lined with doors on both sides. He then made a left turn to another smaller hallway, stopped on the right side, and knocked on a door. Before anybody could answer, he opened the door.

  Two Guards sat facing each other at desks piled with files and stacks of paper. One Guard gestured for the other to leave the room. Then he got up and approached Javad.

  “Salam aleikom, Baradar Javad,” he said, giving Javad a hug and kiss on each cheek. He reached his hand to me. “You must be Reza. I’m Abbass.”

  I nodded as I shook his hand.

  Tall with broad shoulders, Abbass cut the image of a handsome pasdar in his tailored uniform. Despite his full beard and trimmed mustache, he looked neat and clean, unlike so many of his brethren who cared little for their appearance.

  Abbass’s manner could not have been more different from Javad’s. He casually asked me about my life in Southern California and his manner was affable and gracious. He opened the conversation by saying that he went to school in Los Angeles around the same time I was there. I responded by telling him of my association with Islamic students in LA.

  “Oh, did you know Shahid Baradar Hassan?” he asked.

  “No. I knew a lot of people in the association, but I mostly hung around with Farzin and Mani, who were in charge of most of the meetings. Perhaps you knew them?”

  “Yes, I knew them,” he said, smiling. “They were a mainstay of the association in those days. Did you know that both Mani and Hassan came back and were martyred on the front? Two great shahid. But I never heard anything more of Farzin. Do you know where he is?”

  “No, I’ve lost contact with him. I’m sorry to hear about Mani and Hassan. We’re fortunate to have such devoted baradaran.”

  Abbass seemed to consider this for a moment. “Javad said you took a trip back to America a few years ago. You didn’t see Farzin or contact him then?”

  I told him about the nature of my trip and that I had only a short amount of time to spend with my aunt and help her transition to the assisted-living facility. I mentioned that I’d met with my old roommates, assuming he already knew that.

  We talked about the student association for a while and I learned that Abbass was a committee head of the association and attended some of the meetings on the same days I was there. There was a surreal feeling to this conversation. I’d entered the office believing that they were about to ship me to hell, yet we spoke in a relaxed manner, like nothing more than two people with common acquaintances.

  Javad, however, had a point to press. “Some of those students joined the Mujahedin, and the rest of them are working for Zionist America,” he said sharply.

  As he said that, I remembered that Johnny, my college roommate, had mentioned something about someone named Farhad—I didn’t know anyone named Farhad—who’d joined the Mujahedin with his sister. I now realized that Johnny was talking about Farzin. Johnny told me that Farhad/Farzin had been arrested and killed in Iran.

  So that’s what this is all about. They’re trying to connect me to Farzin with trick questions.

  Javad continued, insisting that all Iranians who studied abroad were criminals and had no decency.

  Impatiently, Abbass turned and said, “Javad, we have many Guards who have been educated all over the world and are serving our country well and with pure belief.” He was obviously offended.

  This exchange only increased the tension in the room from my perspective. I still didn’t know what was going on. Had Javad brought me here to set me up, hoping I’d say something out of nervousness that would indict me? If so, had I already said something to compromise myself? Or did Abbass know more than he was letting on, in which case his friendliness was just a sham before they destroyed me.

  Just as Abbass started to ask another question, a loud knock at the door interrupted us and two tall and well-built pasdar entered the room. Their machine guns were hanging on their backs, and they had small guns at their waists. Their arrival immediately led me to believe that my time of reckoning had come. I felt all my resolve leave me; I was suddenly ready to surrender, to admit anything they wanted to know or confirm everything they already believed.

  Long moments passed with the gaze of these pasdar seemingly boring a hole into me. Then Abbass approached them, handed over a folder, and whispered something to one of them. I had never felt so vulnerable in my life. I was certain that I had failed to meet Abbass’s scrutiny. I stared at the floor, feeling numb; my ears, mouth, eyes—my whole body was senseless. I couldn’t think of anything, not even my son. The image of Somaya’s smile didn’t bring back my strength. Naser’s unjust death meant nothing at that moment. I couldn’t think of any ifs—if I survived this, if I got to go home, if I could just see my family one more time …

  “Okay, then. Come on, we’re going now,” Javad said, tapping my shoulder.

  Resigned to my fate, I got up, thinking I was leaving with the two Guards. That’s when I saw that they were no longer in the room. I had missed their departure in my panicked reverie. Then Abbass got up and rearranged the papers on his desk, grabbed a folder, put it under his arm, and s
hook my hand.

  “I should be leaving as I have to be in my office soon,” he said. He then patted Javad’s shoulder and told him that he would be in touch.

  Still feeling numb, I said good-bye to Abbass, and Javad and I left.

  Back in the car, my senses started to return. “Are we going back to the base?” I asked, still wondering if Javad might be taking me elsewhere.

  Javad threw me an arched eyebrow. “Where else do you want to go?”

  “Nowhere,” I said quickly. “I promised Rahim that I’d fix his computer sometime today. I just didn’t know if you needed to go somewhere first.”

  Javad scratched his mustache with his bottom teeth, rolled his eyes, and kept driving. We returned to the base and I got on with the rest of my day.

  As much as I tried, I couldn’t begin to understand what this experience was all about.

  That night at home I told Somaya that I would be staying in my study to take care of some unfinished work and that I would not be coming to the bedroom at all. I could see that she wasn’t sure what to make of this. I’d rattled her with the phone call earlier in the day, and my explanation when I got home about a delay in our mission to the front hardly seemed to mollify her. But she simply nodded her understanding. I promised myself that I would explain things to her better later, but I didn’t have the strength to do so tonight.

  Alone in my study, I pondered for hours. I’d made any number of monumental decisions over the past few years and it was time for me to make another one—maybe the toughest of my life. I chain-smoked an entire pack of cigarettes, and when I lit my last one, I realized that I knew what I had to do.

  [Letter #—]

  [Date: ———]

  Dear Carol,

  You might be surprised to see that the format of this letter is different—no numbering and no outlines. I was at Evin Prison today. I am not certain as to what happened or what is about to happen.

  I have told you about Javad, the guy who constantly asks me questions. He has connections in the Intelligence Unit and he took me to Evin Prison today. I thought that I would never come out again. He introduced me to a guy named Abbass Karmani. I don’t know who he is or what his exact position is, but he was a member of the Islamic Students’ Association in Los Angeles while I was studying there. He works at the Intelligence Headquarters now. While I was there, two other Guards came in to check me out. I am not sure whether they think of me as a member of the Mujahedin or if they suspect me of spying. But as much as I want to believe the whole thing is a game that Javad is playing to shake me up, I have to be careful.