The Immortals of Tehran

by Ali Araghi

  Over a year after Ahmad assured his mother of his intentions, the tank ran into the theater. News of the new protests and arrests reminded Ahmad of the Coup ten years before when he himself was on the street hauling Salman’s father to the clinic, the Coup that had put Prime Minister Mosaddegh in house arrest in exile. If everyone stuck to the law, be it the government or those who criticized it or the ones who wanted the Shah gone, none of that would have happened, neither on that day, nor a decade before. The next day, Ahmad stepped to the podium in parliament and made a speech, as always without using the microphone, calling out those who resorted to violence, who demolished public and private property, who gave in to the temptations of illogical wrath in place of embracing the path of reason. Because he could not say anything against the Shah, his speech was understood to be for him. There was enthusiastic applause from the conservative majority, surprised to agree for once with the youngest person ever elected to the parliament. They unanimously condemned the perpetrators and thanked the police and the army for their continued efforts to restore peace and order in those tumultuous times. A widespread crackdown on dissidents began the next day.

  * * *

  —

  THE DAY AFTER AHMAD MADE his speech, Mr. Zia visited him in his house. That meant one thing: the Great Zia did not want to have Ahmad in the rose garden. The girls were at school, and the two men sat in the new armchairs Homa had ordered a few months back. She brought two cups of tea in a tray and read the message in Ahmad’s eyes that said, Confidential. She took her red plastic shopping basket and left the house.

  Ahmad wrote in his notepad.

  The summer had come soon that year. The pedestal fan in the corner scanned the room like a traveler lost in a new city.

  “No one knows what you really meant. There’s nothing out there but your recorded words. And they’re not making Great Zia or even the New Iran happy with the current orientations. And they’re the ones you called sycophants once.”

  Ahmad wrote.

  Hung on the wall that separated the kitchen from the living room were framed photos. In one of them Homa smiled in a boat with her fists closed around the oars. Another was a portrait of a stolid, decorated colonel standing at attention. Mr. Zia flicked a white flake of something off his pants.

  “Yes, a peaceful protest is preferable, and yes, there might have been misunderstandings. But the bottom line is that you suddenly positioned yourself as an advocate of suppression and a supporter of the government and the Shah.”

  The fan was trying to help the air cooler that sent air in from the top of the roof through vents close to the ceiling.

  “You can’t just say you are not this or that, Ahmad. You should have listened and waited. Words mean things. This is not poetry, this is politics. You…”

  Ahmad cut him short by raising a palm.

  I know what Im doing I know what Im saying and the last thing I need is for someone to tell me what poetry is. He held the note before Mr. Zia’s face.

  “Listen Ahmad.” Mr. Zia leaned in. “I know you as a nice man. I know you have a good heart and I know you want things to be better. All I’m saying is that we need to do a little adjustment of our path. You’ll go see them, Great Zia and the others, and things will be okay.” He pulled some folded paper out of his suit pocket. “You say the right thing the next time and everything will be set right, I assure you.”

  Ahmad opened the papers. It was the text of his next speech. He looked at it for a few minutes. Mr. Zia picked up one of the tea cups from the tray and handed it to Ahmad, then held the sugar bowl in front of him. Ahmad set the papers on his lap and took a piece.

  Before Mr. Zia left, the bell rang. Ahmad rose from his armchair and buzzed the door open. Lalah’s high-pitched voice telling her mother and sister how she taught her friend to whistle echoed in the short corridor before she opened the door and ran into Ahmad’s arms. He picked the young one up and kissed her. Leyla said hi to Mr. Zia who had also stood to greet the ladies. “It’s nice to see you again after so long,” she said shaking hands with him.

  “It certainly is,” Mr. Zia answered with a smile, looking at Leyla standing straight in front of him, her light-brown hair pouring over her shoulders on her chest.

  “You don’t remember when it was,” Leyla said, her eyebrows raised as if to say, I knew you wouldn’t remember.

  “Of course, I do.” Mr. Zia put the tip of his forefinger on the bridge of his glasses and pushed up. “A few months ago, at the slopes.”

  “Over a year ago,” Leyla said slightly shaking her head, “the day Dad got the election, in Khan’s house.” Then as if to absolve Mr. Zia of his negligence, she added, “Of course you were too busy for details.”

  The way she talked made Mr. Zia feel he was very close to failing a test. He put his hands in his pants pockets. “Did you have a good day at school?”

  “We sang the ‘Iran the prosperous land’ song,” the younger girl said, still in her father’s arms.

  Leyla said, “I presume you know the education system offers little more than rote.” Mr. Zia nodded with raised eyebrows. Sporadically, on a few occasions before, he had talked to Leyla and he knew she was not an average kid, but he had never had a conversation this impressive with the girl who now spoke twenty years more mature than her age, and seemed to flatter him. He felt his palms sweat in his pockets. “Next week is exams week anyway. It means we should have learned a lot by now.”

  Mr. Zia sensed that this was a hint for him not to keep her too long. “I’ll let you go then and study,” he said, extending his hand. “It was nice to see you again.”

  She put her delicate hand in his. Mr. Zia smiled. Leyla smiled back at him and the green cherries on the tree in the yard ripened into sparkling rubies.

  “I’m bringing another round of tea,” Homa said from the kitchen.

  “That’s not necessary, Mrs. Delldaar,” he called out, “I’m leaving.” Then he turned to Ahmad. “I can’t believe she’s ten?”

  “Nine, nine,” Lalah said still in her father’s arms. “And I’m six.”

  Two days later, Ahmad stood in the parliament and read his dictated speech. In a change of position, he said that the dissatisfaction of people was the result of negligence of those in power in their duties. Forgoing his emphasis on both sides having to refrain from violence and focusing on the regime was not as upsetting for Ahmad as the fact that now he was a mindless, voiceless puppet, who was not even allowed to think. It was to no one’s surprise that the confusion of protesting cries, denunciatory comments, and booing drowned the feeble applause like rumbling waves. At home, Ahmad paced the yard and tapped out phone calls in his room. His plate on the table stopped steaming. Homa warmed the food up and it stopped steaming again, but Ahmad would not go to the table.

  * * *

  —

  THE DISAPPEARANCE OF ABDOO WAS the event that made Salman realize for the first time, and deep in the marrow of his bones, that he was not playing a game. After he left his apartment, he went to a friend’s for the night and called his node, Hooshang. Hooshang had already heard the news and confirmed: Abdoo had been arrested. They arranged to meet near the entrance to Cyrus Park, under the plane trees that clung to their last dried leaves, on a wooden bench by the newspaper stand. In the autumn sun that did not warm anything, Hooshang drew on his short, cheap cigarettes and told Salman it was imprudent of Abdoo to give Salman his real name. “Your phone was tapped,” Hooshang said. “They were coming for you, too.” Both Hooshang and Salman would change their apartments and numbers. Salman would have a new contact node. Salman shook hands with Hooshang and thought, as the short man walked away, his hands in his jacket pockets on the sidewalk that was strewn with shriveled leaves, whether or not he should have told him that Abdoo had known Salman’s real name, too.

  His new node was Mashdee, a sickly, middle-aged grocer with a knit hat on his hea
d and an Azeri accent on his tongue. “Four kilos of rice, please,” Salman said to the man. “Guests are pouring in left and right.” Behind the counter, the grocer recognized the code words, and waited for the final part. “In a burlap bag, if you have one.” The man threw a glance at Salman, pushed the revolver into the grains of rice, and handed the bag to him. In a note tucked inside a folded bill, Salman passed him his address and new telephone number. Back in his apartment, Salman kicked off his shoes and put the bag on the floor in the living room. Then he sank his hand into the rice and took out the revolver. As soon as he held the gun in his hand to weigh it and aim at the lamp and the framed photo and the shoehorn, he felt something against his fingers. Turning the gun over he found his cyanide capsule taped to the grip. Salman detached the blue pill and rolled it in the palm of his hand for a few minutes: light in life and heavy with undefinable possibilities of relief; not a painkiller but a pain-preventer. He sewed inside pouches in his pants pockets and never distanced himself more than an arm’s reach of the pill. He smuggled guns and ammo that came to the grocery shop in gunnysacks of rice. Each time the truck arrived, the second bag was the one with the stash.

  Salman read the news of Ahmad’s controversial speech in the afternoon newspaper. The day before, he had been among the protesters himself. A tea and cigarette after he woke up, he was dressed and ready. The usual fifteen-minute walk to the bus stop took him only eight minutes. He hopped on the red double-decker bus, and two hours later, he was walking within a river of men who punched the air and walked in a slow but constant flow chanting slogans, some holding up placards. Those who did not participate watched from windows and half-open front doors. Soon the crowd got to where the police and army soldiers had blocked the streets ahead, a scene that angered the protestors. They tried to push forward, but dispersed with the warning shots that were fired into the air.

  Salman too ran away and took shelter behind a green Vauxhall Victor parked in a narrow street where a young boy, perhaps still in high school, crouched too. In the short moment when the two waited for things to calm, the boy touched Salman’s arm and pointed under the car. By the tire, sitting on its haunch, holding something between its teeth, was a black-and-white cat. Salman expected the animal to look at them for a few seconds and run away, but instead it got to its feet, turned its back to them, and dragged the thing it was holding in its mouth. There was a sound of metal grating on asphalt. The high schooler lowered his body to look under the car. “What on earth,” he called and, reaching out his hand, brought out a G3. “Let me see,” Salman took the weapon and examined it. It was an army-grade rifle, the kind the soldiers had in their hands on the other side of the demonstrations. “What on actual earth,” the boy said, squatting before Salman, not taking his eyes away from the dark, polished metal of the G3. Salman clicked the magazine out and weighed it in his hand; it was still full. “What do we do with it?” the high-school boy asked, excited. “Who would believe this? Maybe there’s more.” He lowered his body again to check under the car. The cat took a few steps back toward the tire, looked at the two men for a few seconds, then turned and dashed away. “Okay, can I have it back?” the boy asked, getting back to his squatting position, putting his hand on the rifle. “If they catch you with it, you’re done,” Salman said, gently pulling the rifle into his arms. “You think I don’t know?” Now the boy was standing straight.

  “Do you even know how to use it?”

  “I’ll learn.” The boy yanked the G3 from Salman’s arm. “Plus I was here first.” Holding the rifle in his hands, the boy ran toward the other end of the street, away from the demonstration, and out of sight. Salman walked back to the main street, and having heard word that the gendarmes had opened fire a few streets away, hurried in that direction, but by the time he arrived, the wounded had been carried away. He had not witnessed the shooting firsthand that day, but he did see the bending of street signs and breaking of phone booths. He did see a young bearded man, mad with rage, hurl a rock through a sweets shop window and he was there when some men set fire to a school, and so he tried to understand what it was that Ahmad had talked about in his speech. For a few days after the incident, Salman thought about whether the brutality of the regime warranted violent reactions, but when a week later, dissidents were arrested in scores, he came home, pulled from under a pile of newspapers and magazines the paper with the news of Ahmad’s speech, and held a lit match to Ahmad’s photo.

  In Mashdee’s grocery, Salman asked for rice. “Good rice is hard to find these days. I hope, I’ll have some soon.”

  Stories circulated about the SAVAK’s tortures: bleeding welts on soles, metal beds with arm and ankle straps, electric shocks, and specially designed pliers to pull out nails. Salman now obsessively kept his hand on the pill in his pocket as he walked. Soon he even went to bed and woke up feeling for it through the fabric of the pouch as if his life depended on that little, blue capsule.

  The day he was arrested, he had just stepped out of Mashdee’s store with eggs and tomatoes for dinner. They had talked about this and that as Salman fixed Mashdee’s fan that sat on the counter and refused to work faster than a windmill. Salman had his phase tester screwdriver clipped to his shirt pocket. That little screwdriver won 80 percent of his daily bread. He could cut wire with any knife and strip it with matchstick flame, but the phase-tester screwdriver was as indispensable as his thumb. Salman had known, since Mashdee never talked about rice, that the time to fight back had not come. When Salman was done with the fan, Mashdee plugged it in and turned it on—speed one—and the air blew away a newspaper from the counter. Salman did not accept the money Mashdee slid on the counter, and Mashdee said, in return, “Don’t even think about it,” when Salman fished coins out of his suit pocket to pay for the eggs and tomatoes. A bond more personal than that of a shared goal had started to form between him and the aged man.

  Right outside of the shop a car pulled over. Holding a piece of paper in his hand, a man stuck his head out of the window and asked Salman if he could help him with the address. Salman had barely read the first words on the paper when he heard the back doors of the car open and felt someone grab his collar from behind. In a burst of force that erupted deep within, Salman managed to yank himself free and dodge the hands of the agent who had opened the front door and sprung out of the seat. Salman caught a glimpse of the holstered pistol under the agent’s flapping jacket. He sprinted away on the sidewalk as fast as his legs could take him. He knew he could outrun them. At the same time, he was making the plan of his escape: he would dart across to the opposite sidewalk and run against the traffic. He could lose them in the serpentine streets and alleys he had come to know like the back of his hand. For a fraction of a second before he had crossed the street, Salman’s mind wandered back to another sprinting years before through a thick fog toward his friend’s house. Now he was running to save his own life exactly because of the friend he had dearly loved. He pitied himself.

  Then Salman was rolling on the ground. For the rest of his life, and no matter how he tried to remember, he never learned that he had simply tripped on a piece of rock on the sidewalk. If there was a right time for the pill, it was then. First he did not realize what kept him from putting his hand into his pocket, but when he lifted his hand, he saw his forearm had snapped in the middle, as if he had grown an extra elbow. Where was the pain of the broken bones then? Why hadn’t he heard the cracking of the radius? He tried to slide his left hand into his right pocket. The pill slipped out of his pinch a few times. Rolling onto his side to reach deeper, he saw the agents closing in. Sounds mixed in his head. His own panting, the approaching footsteps, the indistinguishable murmur of people crowding to watch the scene. The pill was between his thumb and forefinger. He paused for half a second. Less than that. Could he endure the pain and still live? Spend two, five, ten years behind the bars, but come out one day and walk in the fall again. He would eat ice cream. He would jump in the water. How painf
ul could pain be? But they would not let him off the hook until he had given them all the information to arrest the others: Mashdee, Hooshang, Sara, even though she was not an active member anymore, others who he had never even met. Young boys and girls like him, who might have children of their own. What would happen to Ameer?

  They would not let Salman off the hook. That was what he was most afraid of. The literal hook. Word was around about the hook house, a concrete room with no windows, down in the horrid mazes of some unknown building, where meat hooks dangled from the ceiling, reserved for the tight-lipped to contemplate on the upside down of the world with impaled ankles. That was it. He popped the pill into his mouth, but before he could swallow, they were on top of him. They turned him over. Two hands jerked his jaws open. A third reached into his mouth. Salman tried to swallow, but the fingers that slid down his throat made him retch. He tasted dust and iron and the pill came back out with greenish-yellow bile.

  Once in the back of the car, Salman was blindfolded. He screamed as handcuffs made broken bone grate against broken bone. All along the ride, which seemed never-ending though he later found was very short, Salman repeated: “Not the hook, not the hook. His name is Mashdee. Not the hook.”

  * * *

  —

  KHAN HAD BEEN THERE, TOO, seen it all. With the accuracy of a mathematician, he had predicted the exact day the streets were going to explode. Pooran had blocked his way at the door the night before the tank went through the wall of the theater. The weight of the years was visible in the old man’s face. Despite his efforts to shave his cheeks smooth, wax and twirl the ends of his gray mustache, and dress in a clean, pressed suit every day with his new Astrakhan, despite his evident hope to fight time, Khan had become what he had resisted his entire life: an old man. He walked slower and put more of his weight on his cane. The dull pains in his knees were now as real as the leaves of the trees in his garden, as certain as the dirt in the flower bed.