The Immortals of Tehran

by Ali Araghi

  I don’t want you to ruin her with your stories, Ahmad mouthed to Agha one day. “But she reminds me of you and Khan,” Agha said, “when you were her age.” His voice trembled as he talked. And you ruined us both. I won’t let your stories haunt my daughter for the rest of her life.

  * * *

  —

  THAT NIGHT AGAIN SLEEP WOULD not come to Khan. He lay still in his bed, the blanket up to his chin, staring at the tarred ceiling. He uttered maledictions to the devil and closed his eyes, but an awareness in him flung his eyelids back open. He took his cane and got to his feet to look around the house, tearing through the fragile texture of the night, peeping at those sleeping in their rooms, lingering to make sure he heard them breathe. Wobbly and shaky, the elevator squealed as Khan worked the handle. He checked on Zeeba and Nana Shamsi from behind the window. They were lying in their beds in the moonlight. Khan turned back and stood there on the roof for a while looking up at the sky. Hands locked on his cane, he walked back and forth and thought. After a few minutes, he went toward the edge to take the elevator and it was then that he glanced down at the yard and saw something. It was floating in the hoez, still as a log and not much larger. It was Agha. Through the leaves of the persimmon tree, Khan could see moonlight shining on his unmoving body, a halo of glistening water surrounding him. He hurried onto the elevator and cranked his way down. Agha’s back and haunch were above the water, but not his head. Khan knelt by the hoez and rested one hand on the edge. The body was too far from his reach. He used his cane and tried to bring Agha closer to him, but the body only seesawed gently in its place without gliding any closer. Khan turned his cane around. He could barely breathe. Holding the wet tip in his hand, he reached the handle out for Agha. Khan inched forward, stretched his arm as far as he could, and finally the lion caught Agha’s pants. He pulled and heaved the cold body out of the water. He rolled the old man over on the edge of the hoez. Agha’s wet face gleamed in the moonlight, his permanent smile beaming at Khan. “Agha! Agha!” Khan called, panting for air. His throat burned. He could not believe that Agha would never open his eyes again to ask for something in his high-pitched voice. “Agha! Agha!” he called, his eyes starting to tear. But the old man opened his eyes. “Are you okay?” Khan asked. Agha blinked, but said nothing. “Can you see me? Can you hear me?” Agha’s lips parted. “Who would have thought, son.” Water dripped from his wrinkled lips. “I’ve become a fish.”

  From that night on, Khan locked Agha’s room himself every night. “This madness has to stop,” he said to Agha before closing the door.

  “Nothing can be stopped,” Agha said, “I have been around long enough to know that much.”

  19

  ETERMINED TO NOT ONLY PREDICT and spot the next turbulence the cats would cause, but also to prevent it, once again Khan descended to the basement, and to the maps that he had left untouched after Leyla had been born. More diligent than ever, braving a weariness that crept up the marrow of his bones, he set out recording what he witnessed. So determined was he in those days that he spent nights out sitting on doorsteps. He came back in the morning, with bloodshot eyes, to Agha pounding on the locked door.

  “Give me the key,” Pooran said, “or I will have that door smashed open the next time he needs to relieve himself.”

  Pooran spoke with such boldness that Khan handed over the key and walked to his room like a sleepless apparition whose only occupation was to keep a close eye on the streets so that in the course of the next years, he would witness the signs of something even graver than the Coup he had predicted before.

  * * *

  —

  THE THIRD BOOK OF POETRY sold more copies than the first two combined. Controversy arose more and more in literary circles. For the first time, someone hailed Ahmad “the Rumi of our times,” because of the rebellion in his poetry, “an iconoclast who shattered the idol of a thousand-year tyranny of predetermined poetic forms.” The critics who previously deemed him not worthy of wasting ink on decried his work as a blind copy of the contemporary French poetry, which had “nothing to do with our people and their poetic palate.” One paper called him “the Dumb Poet whose nose is long enough to poke into politics.”

  “You should do what you used to in the café,” Homa said one night. “I think it was beautiful. I miss those days.”

  Like the first time, it took Homa’s charms to bring Ahmad before an audience. From that day on, he would stand in front of his listeners at his readings with his papers in his hand, mouthing his poems. Sitting on a chair behind him someone would read the words out loud and those who went to the events would soon forget the lag between the sound and Ahmad’s lip movements. At a reading organized by Dust and Blood, a magazine with thinly veiled leftist proclivities, Ahmad mouthed a short but fiery piece. He had placed the narrator of the poem in a dark and cold prison with no hope of ever being freed.

  After the reading, a young man, almost as old as Ahmad, in a fedora and a suit, pressed to perfection, rose from his seat and walked up to him. The man’s thin eyebrows above a pair of round glasses gave his shaved face a vaguely feminine radiance. “Zia,” he introduced himself as he shook Ahmad’s hand. “Can I have the pleasure of inviting you to coffee?” He was the nephew of a former member of the parliament, Great Zia, and the central figure of a small group of moderate critics who, although retired from the legislation, had kept his leading role and planned to have someone in the next parliament. “Poetry is what holds this world together, in my humble opinion,” Mr. Zia said. “And good poetry”—he took a sip of his coffee—“we should feed on it.” From then on, he was present at all the readings, and when Ahmad started to preface his poetry with short introductions that revolved around the issues of the country, Mr. Zia offered to look at them beforehand. “When you grow up with an uncle whose least important guest is a parliament member or a minister”—he touched the bridge of his glasses with his forefinger—“you have no choice but to develop a sense for these things.”

  Three years later, at the dinner table, Mr. Zia would ask Ahmad if he had ever thought of running for parliament. Ahmad would pour himself a glass of yogurt drink and slowly nod his head.

  * * *

  —

  NEWS OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL ATTACK against the Shah ricocheted across the country. The gunman had missed his royal target but left two holes in the door and a small spiderweb crack in the windshield of the automobile that carried His Majesty out of the gates of his palace. Most peculiar was the fact that, though the guards opened fire at the men in the car, they had managed to escape unharmed. Before long, word began to circulate that the car had been made impenetrable to bullets because of a spell the shooter used. Haji the prayerwright’s name came up on every mouth again. More people than ever sought him out at home.

  To every client who mentioned the incident, Haji would say, “That was not me. But these things are all in the books.” He would finger the Bic pen hanging around his neck with a thick string and repeat: “One reads with one’s heart and these things are all in the books.” There was no initial government reaction to the rumor, but a week later, Haji disappeared. The government blamed the assassination attempt on the dissidents, specifically clandestine off shoots of the communist parties that, as the radio announced, were changing strategy to resort to acts of armed violence.

  “SAVAK is flexing its muscles,” Salman said to Abdoo over tea. Abdoo was a dark-skinned medical student at the University of Tehran who came from a poor family in a small village on the coast of the Persian Gulf where “you put fish in the pan and the pan in the sun, and voilà!” Abdoo was a friend and a member of the Tudeh Party who had devoted himself to teaching kids in poverty. He traveled to the farthest villages of the South and taught multiple grades in the same room or tent. With the harvest season beginning and the kids becoming busy in the fields, Abdoo had come back to Tehran.

  “If you ask me,” Salman said, “they’ll kill
the prayer man.”

  Abdoo disagreed. “True, there’s no punishment for regicide but execution, blah blah, but the Shah has enough trouble as is, my friend. They’ll keep him nice and warm, maybe for a long time. That Haji man has made himself some reputation. They can’t kill him, and that, in my humble opinion, is a sign of atrophy. If they meant to, his body would be rotting in the ground by now.”

  It came to pass more quickly than Abdoo expected. Within a month the radio announced that His Majesty had granted clemency to the offender. The grandeur of the country and well-being of the people of this land were the only things nonnegotiable and uncompromisable in his royal opinion. Everyone who walked on this soil had to be ready to make sacrifices for a better future, including His Majesty.

  Salman picked up the phone and called Abdoo, his first sentence ready on the tip of his tongue: Damn you, Abdoo, you were right! If the announcement was actually true, the Shah’s atrophy was more critical than what Salman had thought. He sensed a change in Abdoo’s tone, an almost imperceptible trembling. It was as if he was talking not with the words he said aloud, but with a second set that Salman did not hear, but should have. As soon as he hung up, Salman took his wallet, packed his documents in a brown attaché case, and left his apartment. He called Abdoo a few more times from public phones, but Abdoo did not answer, and Salman decided it would not be prudent to keep calling.

  * * *

  —

  IN WEEKLY MEETINGS WITH AHMAD, Mr. Zia talked about the logistics of approaching his candidacy. They met in Mr. Zia’s large rose garden where he walked with his hands clasped behind his back and admired the flowers. Every now and then he would bend over and pat one on the side, a strange thing to do, Ahmad thought, as if to gauge how healthy the flower was by how fast it swung back and forth in response to his tap. “My wife gets the credit for the palette.” Cordoned off in patches of the same color, the roses blushed from white toward red. Mr. Zia spent longer among the whites. One day, after the attempt on the Shah, he pulled a sheet of paper from the pocket of his suit and handed it to Ahmad. “I have reserved columns for tomorrow,” he said. Ahmad unfolded the paper. The note said that in a public notice, Ahmad Torkash-Vand, scholar, poet, and public speaker, had condemned the attack and expressed hope that the law would bring the culprit to justice. Ahmad lifted his head with a questioning look.

  “The editors are waiting for my call,” Mr. Zia said.

  Ahmad raised his eyebrows. He would not endorse taking up arms against what he deemed wrong, like Salman did, but Ahmad did not find any urge in him to condemn that attack either. Violence had to be castigated, but so did the rule of the Shah, which had grown more autocratic after the Coup. Joining and forming armed militia was the wrong solution for the right cause. He had not thought Mr. Zia would stoop to aligning himself with the pro-Shah majority.

  “How far do you think you’ll go if you hold your head up too high?” Mr. Zia asked. “Here’s your first lesson, Ahmad: always find the right ass to kiss.”

  Ahmad thought for a few moments and convinced himself that if he succeeded to reach the parliament, he could work to make things right in the right way. But the road there would not be free of obstacles. Mr. Zia’s strategy was another wrong way to achieve the right thing. He nodded his head.

  “The big ass,” Mr. Zia said, “always the safest. We should play a game of chess someday.” He patted Ahmad on the shoulder. “I bet you’re a tough one.”

  To shift his public image from poet to politician, Ahmad wrote speeches to accompany the readings that Mr. Zia arranged. In the course of six months, poetry waned from the events altogether. “Want their votes?” Mr. Zia said. “Tell them about sacks of potatoes. You know what I mean.” That’s economy, Ahmad wrote. “Politics and economy sleep in the same bed.” With over half a year until the elections, the rehearsing began. The dinner with Mr. Zia’s uncle and a group of merchants from the Tehran Bazaar was boisterous and interspersed with laughter. Lamb and chicken kebab were served. Haj Mohammad, who had the monopoly of hydrogenated oil, questioned the likelihood of a rookie getting in. “We’ll work on it,” the uncle replied. “You enjoy the thigh.” Not convinced, the merchant turned to Ahmad. “Tell me, why should I spend my money on you?” Ahmad took his pen and wrote on the merchant’s hand: Because you don’t want to regret missing your opportunity to help a future member of the parliament.

  Great Zia leaned over, looked at the merchant’s palm, and let out a hearty laugh. “Convincing, ain’t he?”

  When the next weekend Ahmad and Mr. Zia stepped out onto the veranda to talk in the garden, a man in threadbare clothes was standing uncomfortably at the beginning of the path into the rose patches. His long face had borne innumerable lashes of sunshine and his worn shoes were caked with mud.

  “Look who’s finally here,” Mr. Zia said with a smile. “Say hi to your voice, Ahmad.”

  In response to Ahmad’s questioning look, Mr. Zia threw an arm around his shoulders and called out to the man, “Say something, Hushem.”

  With nervous uncertainty, the man answered, “What should I say, sir?”

  The words came out of his mouth so sonorous and strong that the yellowing leaves trembled and fell from the trees above their heads. A dog started to bark in the distance.

  “What do you say to that?” Mr. Zia squeezed Ahmad’s shoulder. “Have we done well or not?”

  * * *

  —

  MAN WITHOUT VOICE

  WILL SPEAK FOR THE PEOPLE

  Pooran saw Ahmad’s picture in an open newspaper in Khan’s room. A small picture for a small politician. She took the newspaper from the desk and clipped the picture out with scissors. Sitting straight in a suit, the knot of his tie tight and neat, his hair slicked back, and his head turned to look at the reader, her black-and-white Ahmad was now a big man. “Thursday, 6:00 p.m., Danesh Sports Club,” said the text in the newspaper under the empty rectangle.

  After lunch on Thursday, Pooran got ready, threw her chador on her head, and took the bus. In a small arena with high, narrow windows and a few rows of concrete platforms for seats, chairs had been arranged to face a low stage. More than half of the seats were taken and a noisy traffic of organizers and guests—men clad in pants and suits and women in dresses and high heels—walked around, their confused chatter echoing down from the high ceiling. She sat herself in the back row as a bout of applause and whistling rose. She looked around and saw Ahmad walking toward the stage. Ahmad stepped up and raised his hand as a sign of greeting and gratitude. After the last isolated clapping subsided, Ahmad started: “My dear brothers and sisters, we are gathered here today because we all love our country.” The voice boomed around and rattled the windows. Pooran saw the man who talked instead of her son and soon lost interest in the voice of the stranger. She did not hear Ahmad’s words, but watched him speak with one hand clasping his lapel like a pin. She could see a few strands of white hair on his temple. Nostalgia enveloped her like a blanket on a snowy night and murmured in her ear reminiscences of her baby Ahmad as he played hide-and-seek in the Orchard with the other kids, as he climbed the short trees and reached for the apples on the higher branches. Nosser was with her then, if distracted and not there in spirit most of the time. Ahmad’s holding of the lapel, his looking directly into the eyes of his listeners, and his speaking with a borrowed voice, was nothing that had come from Nosser. That was Khan.

  After the speech, Pooran approached the group that had gathered around Ahmad. Mr. Zia was the first to see her. “Can I help you, madam?” he asked stepping forward. Pooran walked past him. The group of men and women split to make way for the chador-clad woman who stopped right in front of Ahmad.

  What are you doing here? Ahmad mouthed with a hesitant half smile.

  “Why?” she asked. “Are you ashamed of me?” Before Ahmad opened his mouth, she continued. “I don’t want you to do this, Ahmad. This is not you and I h
ope you won’t get elected. I wouldn’t vote for you if they let me vote, and I will tell everyone I know not to vote for you.”

  Back in her house, Pooran brought a chair and sat by Khan and Agha in the yard in the evening breeze that swung the branches and fresh leaves. Like the two old men, she stared at nothing specific, but what surrounded her: the orange tree, the rosy tendrils of the grapevine reaching for something to twist around, the goldfish swimming in the hoez now twice as large since when they swirled in the bowl on the New Year table. This family and their silences, she thought. They were impossible. She got to her feet and cranked her way up to the roof where Zeeba stopped working at the loom to greet her without turning her head. Halfway done, the rug boasted arabesques and floral motifs in brilliant colors. Staring through the loom at the soul of the rug, the girl picked the right hue by rolling the twines between her thumb and forefinger. “It’s time I find you a good husband,” Pooran told her. Standing by the girl’s side, Pooran looked at her golden hair gleam in the last of the daylight that the lace curtain sifted into the room.

  “No one takes a blind girl,” Zeeba said tying a knot around the warp.

  Pooran stroked the girl on the head and said, “Any man will be lucky to have you.” But she sensed disbelief oozing out of her wounded words, wafting through the air to the girl who was now already a year or two past the age she could have become a wife. She was barely recognizable from the little girl who had run her fingers on the knocker and said she liked the house. What was Pooran doing with her life all those years as this girl’s breasts grew so full?