A Door between Us

by Ehsaneh Sadr

  “You see!” Heydari crowed in triumph.

  Ganjian came forward and clapped Sadegh on the shoulder. “Okay, my friend,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  Sadegh looked a bit lost in thought but stood up. He and Ganjian said their goodbyes to Heydari, who was standing tall and proud. Azar’s spirits sank a bit at the realization that she would soon be alone with this man. But she comforted herself with the knowledge that she could bear anything so long as her children were safe.

  Ganjian stepped out of the room, and Azar heard him address her son. “You ready to go? How was the ice cream?”

  Azar didn’t hear Hossein’s reply, however. Just as Sadegh was closing the door behind him, the woman in black suddenly called out.

  “Wait! Agha-yoon, Wait!”

  Sadegh turned and opened the door. He and Heydari both looked at the woman in black. Her voice trembled as she spoke.

  “He killed her! Yes! He killed your mother. And there were others. Most of them were traitors. But . . . I’m not so sure. Please, you have to protect me! I wanted it to stop, but didn’t know how.”

  Azar realized Heydari still held the paring knife as he raised his arm to attack.

  “Watch out!” Azar screamed.

  Heydari took hold of the woman’s shoulder with one hand, pushed her against the wall and plunged the knife into the mass of black fabric. He pulled the knife out and brought it down again as he screamed.

  “You liar! How dare you! You traitor! You corrupt stain on earth! You will go to hell for your blasphemy!”

  It was horrific to watch Heydari stabbing the woman with abandon. The man was bloodthirsty. What if he went after Azar next? Or even Hossein?

  Sadegh ran toward Heydari. He grabbed Heydari’s arm and wrenched the woman free. Then Sadegh pushed Heydari back and stood between him and the woman who slumped down the wall to the floor.

  Azar realized with panic that Sadegh thought Heydari would come to his senses once confronted by a colleague. Sadegh still didn’t know, as she had quite painfully learned, that Heydari’s rages didn’t end until he reasserted control.

  “Watch out!” Azar shouted as Heydari brandished the knife toward Sadegh.

  “You stupid, stupid boy,” Heydari raged, spittle frothing from his purple lips. “You’re cut from the same cloth as your whore of a mother. You haramzadeh filth! I’m going to kill you like I killed her!”

  Heydari slashed his knife at Sadegh, narrowly missing his throat, but coming down on his defensive left forearm. Sadegh bellowed in pain as his shirt stained red. He backstepped away from Heydari’s next lunge but tripped and hit the ground. Heydari jumped on top of him, arm raised and ready to attack. Azar couldn’t believe that this little man was overpowering Sadegh, who had at least a head and twenty pounds on him. But Sadegh still didn’t seem to fully recognize the intent and ability of his adversary. As Heydari rained down insults and struggled to bring the knife to his target’s neck, Sadegh’s main focus seemed to be calming the man down rather than defending himself from a deadly attack.

  “Aghaye Heydari, aroom bash! Be calm, Mr. Heydari.” Sadegh said as he grasped at Heydari’s knife hand. Heydari said nothing in response but used both hands and his body weight to push the knife down closer to Sadegh’s chest. Azar screamed as the knife point approached and appeared to pierce Sadegh’s jacket right over his heart. Sadegh, finally seeming to recognize the danger he was in, kicked his feet to try to get some leverage.

  He was saved, not by his own efforts, but by Ganjian, who had returned in the midst of the commotion. He pulled Heydari off of Sadegh and shoved him to the floor. Heydari fell near Azar’s chair and the paring knife, covered in blood, clattered beside him.

  Ganjian hovered over Sadegh, checking his wounds.

  Too late, Azar realized Heydari had risen and was approaching the men. Her scream accompanied the paring knife’s thrust into Ganjian’s side. The big man didn’t make a sound but turned, looking startled. Heydari had pulled the knife out and moved to strike again. Ganjian caught Heydari’s knife hand, and then, with his free hand, delivered a punch to Heydari’s face. Heydari spun, cartoonlike, before collapsing with a thunk on the floor, finally releasing the knife. He might have risen again except that the woman in black crawled toward him, grabbed the paring knife, and buried it in his heart.

  Maziar Bahari, Then They Came for Me: A Family’s Story of Love, Captivity, and Survival (New York: Random House, 2011), xi.

  PART FOUR

  A Year Later,

  Another Wedding

  Governmental brutality and intimidation can withstand the march of history for years, but not indefinitely. Whatever becomes of the Green Movement in the short term, millions of courageous Iranian protestors made clear to the world last summer that their country’s centennial quest for a democracy is an idea whose time has come.

  —Karim Sadjadpour, Iran Expert with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Project Syndicate, June 2, 2010

  CHAPTER 10

  Thursday, June 17, 2010—one year and five days after the election

  Azar couldn’t take it anymore.

  “Dari divoonam mikoni! ” she shouted. “You’re driving me crazy! That’s it! I’m going to drop you off at your grandparents.”

  “Nooooo!” came a chorus of pleading from the back seat.

  “I can’t drive like this with you two fighting back there!”

  “We’re not fighting!” Hossein answered immediately. “We’re playing.”

  “Then why was Muhammadreza whining?” Azar demanded.

  “I was just pretending.” Muhammadreza explained. “I’m the bad guy, and Hossein threw me in jail.”

  “We’ll be good, we promise! Please let us come to the wedding.” Hossein pleaded.

  Azar’s threat wasn’t serious, but she continued to pretend that dropping the boys off was an option, hoping to leverage some assurances of good behavior out of them.

  “I don’t know,” Azar said. “I still remember all the trouble you caused the last time we were at a wedding. I thought you’d grown up since then, but here you are yelling and screaming in the back seat while I’m trying to drive in this traffic. And we’re already an hour late! Grandma’s house is on the way. I’m just going to drop you off there.”

  “No! No! No! No!” Muhammadreza kicked the back of Azar’s chair with each exclamation.

  “Shhh! Stop it!” Azar heard Hossein restraining his younger brother. “You’re just making it worse! Maman,” Hossein addressed his mother now, “We’re sorry. We didn’t realize we were bothering you. We can be quiet, I promise. And I think you know that I’ve grown up a lot since the last wedding. I know how to behave around adults, and I can watch Muhammadreza too.”

  Azar smiled to herself at her older son’s attempts at maturity. Ibrahim would be so proud of them. She couldn’t wait for the three remaining months of his sentence to pass so that they could be a family once again.

  Aloud, however, she kept her voice stern. “Well, I don’t know. Let’s see how you behave on the way there.”

  In the rearview mirror, Azar saw Hossein flash a victory sign to his younger brother. Clearly, the scamp thought he’d won.

  “I can always change my mind . . .” Azar warned, reasserting her authority.

  “We’ll be good!” Hossein promised promptly.

  In the mirror, Azar saw Hossein whispering something to his brother, his ragged right ear clearly visible.

  Yes, Azar thought sadly, he’d grown up a lot more than she would have ever wanted. She wondered, as she had so often since the nightmarish encounter at Heydari’s station, whether that madman’s brutality had affected her son in ways she couldn’t yet perceive. Once again, she cursed herself for not having been more careful. What sort of a mother was she to so casually risk her sons’ well-being for abstract notions like justice a
nd truth? What sort of mother was she to have abandoned her children in the middle of the night to try to save a bunch of useless papers? What sort of person was she to have risked Leila and Ms. Tabibian’s lives by pushing them to look for more documents? What sort of feebleminded thinking had allowed her to imagine she could affect the direction of the Iranian regime? What sort of—

  Stop! Azar commanded the voice in her head that sounded suspiciously like Heydari’s. Even from the grave he seemed to be waging a battle to destroy her, this time with the help of her own psyche. For a time, it had even looked as if he’d succeed.

  In the weeks following Heydari’s final attack, Azar had fallen into a blackness she’d never experienced before. She and the boys moved in with her parents, where Azar, afraid to return to her office, spent most days in bed. Sleep was her only escape from the stream of vicious words and insults hammering into her skull every moment of the day.

  It was her father who finally shook her out of it.

  He’d shuffled into her room one morning and gently pulled the blanket off her face.

  “Dige basse,” he said. “That’s enough. It’s time to get up.”

  “I can’t,” Azar moaned.

  “You can and you will!” her father insisted. “You’re going to get up and be the fighter you are. Your boys need you to be strong.”

  “They’re better off without me. The world is better off without me!” Azar cried.

  “No,” her father gently shook her. “That’s what they want you to think. Azar, my daughter, resistance isn’t only about pouring into the street. Their greatest success is when they can destroy people from the inside and make them turn on themselves and forget who they are. That’s what you need to resist!”

  Her father sat on the bed next to her and stroked her hair.

  “I should have told you more often,” he said in a whisper, “how proud, truly proud, I am of you. There is nobility in the work you have done. Such courage in the way you stood up for those women despite the judgement of other people. Sometimes, it is true, I wished you were a little less brave. But I’ve always been proud. How could you ever doubt that the world needs you? Your family needs you. Don’t let them win!”

  * * *

  Azar parked the car in the hotel’s lot. She opened the door and gathered her chador around her as she awkwardly exited the car.

  “Hossein, bring the flowers.” Azar instructed her son.

  “That’s not fair! Why does he get to bring them?” Muhammadreza objected.

  “I’m the oldest.” Hossein explained with a smug grin as he hopped out of the back and opened the passenger door to take the flowers from the seat.

  He was too slow. Muhammadreza lunged from the back seat over the gearshift to grab the flowers just as Hossein’s fingers closed in on them from the front. A tug-of-war ensued that Azar feared the flowers would lose.

  “Stop it!” Azar hissed.

  The boys ignored her. Azar plopped back onto the driver’s seat and reached across to grab the flowers.

  “Bedesh man! Let go and give them to me! What is wrong with you two? Do we need to go to your grandmother’s after all?”

  “No!” Muhammadreza shouted.

  “Then behave yourselves! I’ll bring the flowers myself.”

  Azar pulled the corners of her chador into her teeth and then exited the car again with the now-bedraggled flowers in her arms. She bumped the car door awkwardly to close it with her hip and then led her boys across the parking lot toward the hotel, doing her best to ignore their continued bickering. They’d better let Ibrahim out of jail soon, or he wouldn’t have any sons to come home to!

  Inside, they walked toward the banquet hall, where a uniformed hotel employee in a blue overcoat and maghnaeh head covering told them where to set the flowers and directed them to the ballroom entrance.

  “The boys can’t go with you,” she said.

  “What do you mean?” Azar asked.

  “They can go in the men’s section with their father,” the woman informed her.

  Her words pinched. Azar wondered with a heavy sigh how Ibrahim would be spending the evening and what type of food he would be eating in jail as she and the boys enjoyed a wedding feast.

  Aloud she complained, “You’ve got to be kidding me. They’re only ten and eleven. My husband isn’t with us tonight.”

  “Sharmandeh,” the woman apologized. “I’m sorry, but the ladies want to be comfortable. I’ve been told that boys school-age or above have to go in the men’s section. Don’t you have any other family here with you?”

  “This is ridiculous,” Azar snapped.

  The woman shrugged her shoulders. “Be har hal, there’s nothing I can do about it.”

  Azar pulled out her phone to call her brother.

  Ali picked up almost immediately.

  “Ali-jaan, are you at the wedding?”

  “Yes,” her brother answered. “Are you here?”

  “Great,” Azar said. “I’m going to send the boys in to you. They won’t let them in the women’s section.”

  Ali groaned. “You brought the boys with you?”

  “What was I supposed to do with them?” Azar asked. “Come on, don’t worry so much. They’ll be good. Besides, I’m not planning on staying long. I just have to make an appearance. If they do anything bad, I’ll take them home immediately, okay? I’m going to send them in now. Mersi, baradaram.”

  Azar hung up and turned to her boys, but they had disappeared.

  “They went in,” the hotel employee told her.

  “To the men’s section, right?” Azar asked hopefully.

  The woman confirmed with a nod. Azar sighed. She stepped into the room adjoining the banquet hall that was the designated area for ladies to remove their coverings and touch up their hair and makeup before entering. Azar handed her chador, manteau, and headscarf to a woman who hung them up and handed her a number in return. Then she stood before the full-length mirror and studied herself.

  With Ibrahim away and her hands full with work and the kids, Azar had little reason or time to dress up. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d worn a gown, styled her hair, or put on makeup. Azar leaned forward to apply lipstick and pressed her lips together to even out the color. Pleased with the effect, Azar wished her husband was around to appreciate her efforts. She closed her eyes briefly as she thought of the one night they’d had together after she’d gotten out of prison. He’d held her in his arms and stroked her hair as he whispered “Beautiful . . . so beautiful . . .”

  “Ejaze midin? ”

  Another lady had entered the small room and wanted to use the mirror.

  “Oh, of course. I’m all finished,” Azar said.

  Azar entered the ballroom. Her heart was warmed to see how nice the room looked. It was a much smaller crowd than Sarah and Ali’s wedding, and there weren’t quite as many predinner treats loaded onto the tables. But the relatively drab ballroom had been transformed with low lights and thick candles glowing from crystal centerpieces. And what Azar could see of the bridal spread at the head of the room looked quite elegant in its display of all the necessary elements without the gaudy extras that had marked the one Mehri Hojjati had fallen onto last year.

  Sadegh and his family had been generous.

  Azar made her way to the bridal spread. The groom hadn’t yet entered the room, so the ladies were busy dazzling one another in the bright, tight gowns they’d purchased for the occasion. Azar quickly found Sarah, who was wearing a low-cut royal-blue sleeveless dress that clung to her belly and accentuated her enhanced cleavage. Azar couldn’t have imagined wearing something so tight this late into her own pregnancies.

  Sarah saw her and came to greet Azar with a kiss.

  Azar embraced her sister-in-law and said, “Look at you! I’ve never seen such a beautiful pregnant woman.” />
  “Oh my God,” Sarah said, gesturing to her belly. “I’m so fat!”

  “You’re stunning, azizam,” Azar assured her. She remembered how huge and insecure she’d felt when she was pregnant with her own two boys. Whatever she thought of Sarah’s dress, Azar wanted to be kind. “Enjoy it. It’ll be over before you know it and then you’ll have a screaming baby boy to take care of.”

  Sarah smiled and squeezed Azar’s hand before letting her go to greet Sarah’s mother and aunt and the rest of the ladies who had now become family. It was nice, Azar thought as she kissed cheeks all around, how the enmity between the families had been smoothed over by the imminent arrival of a shared grandson. Not that Azar didn’t still get irritated by Sarah’s lack of interest in anything serious or her mother’s obsessive worrying about ridiculous things, like whether the baby outfits she was purchasing matched the colors of his car seat. Sarah’s Aunt Mehri also continued to annoy her with her matriarchal dominance, which was supported and enforced by the younger women in her tribe. And the last time Azar had seen her, Sa­degh’s wife had been especially insufferable in her smugness over her perfectly behaved children. In fact, Azar thought as she kissed her, Sarah’s cousin Fatimeh, with her unfailing friendliness and good cheer, might be the only one of the lot that she genuinely liked. But it didn’t matter. They were family. And if there was one thing that religious and respected families like theirs knew, it was how to interact with civility and dignity no matter what you thought of one another. Anyway, it wasn’t as if she had to see them every day.

  Azar ended up on the outskirts of the group, standing next to Fatimeh, who squeezed her hand, pulled her close to her pillowy body, and exclaimed, “Isn’t she the most beautiful bride you’ve ever seen!”

  Azar turned to look at Leila, sitting demurely at the head of the sofreh aghd. Even under a chador, Leila was a pretty girl, but tonight she was something else altogether. This was the first time Azar was seeing her with so much makeup, and of course, in a gorgeous lace wedding gown. But there was something else that added to her allure in a way Azar couldn’t quite identify. She had no trouble agreeing that Leila was indeed the most exquisite bride she’d ever laid eyes on.