Escape

by James Clavell

  ‘It feels so strange, Sharazad, not to have anything—anything. Money, papers. . .’ For an instant Azadeh was back in the Range Rover near the roadblock, and there before her was the fat-faced mujhadin who had stolen their papers, his machine gun blazing as Erikki rammed him against the other car, crushing him like a cockroach, blood and filth squeezed from his mouth. ‘Having nothing,’ she said, forcing the bad away, ‘not even a lipstick.’

  ‘Never mind, I’ve lots of everything. And Tommy’ll be so pleased to have you and Erikki here. He doesn’t like me to be alone either. Poor darling, don’t worry. You’re safe now.’

  I don’t feel safe at all, Azadeh told herself, hating the fear that was so alien to her whole upbringing—that even now seemed to take away the warmth of the water. I haven’t felt safe since we left Rakoczy on the ground and even that had only lasted a moment, the ecstasy of escaping that devil—me, Erikki, and Charlie unhurt. Even the joy of finding a car with petrol in it at the little airstrip didn’t take my fear away. I hate being afraid.

  She ducked down a little in the tub, then reached up and turned on the hot-water tap, swirling the hot currents.

  ‘That feels so good,’ Sharazad murmured, the foam heavy, and the water sensuous. ‘I’m so pleased you wanted to stay.’

  Last evening, by the time Azadeh, Erikki and Charlie had reached McIver’s apartment it was after dark. There was no room for them—Azadeh had been too frightened to want to stay in her father’s apartment, even with Erikki—so she had asked Sharazad if they could move in with her until Lochart returned. Sharazad had delightedly agreed at once, glad for the company. Everything had begun to be fine and then, during dinner, there was gunfire nearby, making her jump.

  ‘No need to worry, Azadeh,’ McIver had said. ‘Just a few hotheads letting off steam, celebrating probably. Didn’t you hear Khomeini’s order to lay down all arms?’ Everyone agreeing and Sharazad saying, ‘The Imam will be obeyed,’ always referring to Khomeini as ‘the Imam’, almost associating him with the Twelve Imams of Shi’ism—the direct descendants of Mohammed the Prophet, near divinity—surely a sacrilege: ‘But what the Imam’s accomplished is almost a miracle, isn’t it?’ Sharazad had said with her beguiling innocence. ‘Surely our freedom’s a gift of God?’

  Then so warm and toasty in bed with Erikki, but him strange and brooding and not the Erikki she had known. ‘What’s wrong, what’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing, Azadeh, nothing. Tomorrow I’ll make a plan. There was no time tonight to talk to Mac. Tomorrow we’ll make a plan, now sleep, my darling.’

  Twice in the night she had awakened from violent dreams, trembling and terrified, crying out for Erikki.

  ‘It’s all right, Azadeh, I’m here. It was only a dream, you’re quite safe now.’

  No, no, we’re not. I don’t feel safe, Erikki—what’s happening to me? Let’s go back to Tabriz, or let’s go away, go away from these awful people.’

  This morning Erikki had left her to join McIver, and she had slept some more but gathered little strength from the sleep. Passing the rest of the morning daydreaming or hearing Sharazad’s news about going to Galeg Morghi, or listening to the hourly crop of rumours from her servants: many more generals shot, many new arrests, the prisons burst open by mobs. Western hotels set on fire or shot up. Rumours of Bazargan taking the reins of government, mujhadin in open rebellion in the south, Kurds rebelling in the north, Azerbaijan declaring independence, the nomad tribes of the Kash’kai and Bakhtiari throwing off the yoke of Tehran; everyone laying down their arms or no one laying down their arms. Rumours that Prime Minister Bakhtiar had been captured and shot or escaped to the hills or to Turkey, to America; President Carter preparing an invasion or Carter recognising Khomeini’s government; Soviet troops massing on the border ready to invade or Brezhnev coming to Tehran to congratulate Khomeini; the Shah landing in Kurdistan supported by American troops or the Shah dead in exile.

  Then going to lunch with Sharazad’s parents at the Bakravan house near the bazaar, but only after Sharazad had insisted she wear the chador, hating the chador and everything it stood for. More rumours at the huge, family house, but benign there, no fear and absolute confidence. Abundance as always, just as in her own home in Tabriz, servants smiling and safe and thanks be to God for victory, Jared Bakravan had told them jovially, and now with the bazaar going to open and all foreign banks closed, business will be marvellous as it was before the ungodly laws the Shah instituted.

  After lunch they had returned to Sharazad’s apartment. By foot. Wrapped in the chador. Never a problem for them and every man deferential. The bazaar was crowded, with pitifully little for sale though every merchant foretold abundance ready to be trucked, trained, or flown in—ports clogged with hundreds of ships, laden with merchandise. On the street, thousands walked this way and that, Khomeini’s name on every lip, chanting ‘Allah-u Akbarrr,’ almost all men and boys armed—none of the old people. In some areas Revolutionary Guards, in place of police, haphazardly and amateurishly directed traffic, or stood around truculently. In other areas police as always. Two tanks rumbled past driven by soldiers, masses of guards and civilians on them, waving to the cheering pedestrians.

  Even so, everyone was tense under the patina of joy, particularly the women enveloped in their shrouds. Once, they had turned a corner and seen ahead a group of youths surrounding a dark-haired woman dressed in Western clothes, jeering at her, abusing her, shouting insults and making obscene signs, several of them exposing themselves, waggling their penises at her. The woman was in her thirties, dressed neatly, a short coat over her skirt, long legs and long hair under a little hat. Then she was joined by a man who shoved through the crowd to her. At once he began shouting that they were English and to leave them alone, but the men paid no attention to him, jostling him, concentrating on the woman. She was petrified.

  There was no way for Sharazad and Azadeh to walk around the crowd that grew quickly, hemming them in, so they were forced to watch. Then a mullah arrived and told the crowd to leave, harangued the two foreigners to obey Islamic customs. By the time they got home they were tired and both felt soiled. They had taken off their clothes and collapsed on the quilt bed.

  ‘I’m glad I went out today,’ Azadeh had said wearily, deeply concerned. ‘But we women better organise a protest before it’s too late. We better march through the streets, without chador or veils, to make our point with the mullahs: that we’re not chattel, we have rights, and wearing the chador’s up to us—not to them.’

  ‘Yes, let’s! After all, we helped win the victory too!’ Sharazad had yawned, half asleep. ‘Oh, I’m so tired.’

  The nap had helped.

  Idly Azadeh was watching the bubbles of foam crackling, the water hotter now, the sweet-smelling vapour very pleasing. Then she sat up for a moment, smoothing the foam on her breasts and shoulders. ‘It’s curious, Sharazad, but I was glad to wear chador today—those men were so awful.’

  ‘Men on the street are always awful, darling Azadeh.’ Sharazad opened her eyes and watched her, golden skin glistening, nipples proud. ‘You’re so beautiful, Azadeh darling.’

  ‘Ah, thank you—but you’re the beautiful one.’ Azadeh rested her hand on her friend’s stomach and patted her. ‘Little mother, eh?’

  ‘Oh, I do so hope so.’ Sharazad sighed, closed her eyes and gave herself back to the heat. ‘I can hardly imagine myself a mother. Three more days and then I’ll know. When are you and Erikki going to have children?’

  ‘In a year or two.’ Azadeh kept her voice calm as she told the same lie she had told so many times already. But she was deeply afraid that she was barren, for she had used no contraceptives since she was married and had wished, with all her heart, to have Erikki’s child from the beginning. Always the same nightmare welling up: that the abortion had taken away any chance of children as much as the German doctor had tried to reassure her. How could I have been
so stupid?

  So easy. I was in love. I was just seventeen and I was in love, oh, how deeply in love. Not like with Erikki, for whom I will give my life gladly. With Erikki it is true and for ever and kind and passionate and safe. With my Johnny Brighteyes it was dreamlike.

  Ah, I wonder where you are now, what you’re doing, you so tall and fair with your blue-grey eyes and oh, so British. Who did you marry? How many hearts did you break like you broke mine, my darling?

  That summer he was at school in Rougemont—the next village to where she was at finishing school—ostensibly to learn French. It was after Sharazad had left. She had met him at the Sonnenhof, basking in the sun, overlooking all the beauty of Gstaad in its bowl of mountains. He was nineteen then, she three days seventeen, and all that summer long they had wandered the High Country—so beautiful, so beautiful—up in the mountains and the forests, swimming in streams, playing, loving, ever more adventurous, up above the clouds.

  More clouds than I care to think of, she told herself dreamily, my head in the clouds that summer, knowing about men and life, but not knowing. Then in the fall him saying, ‘Sorry, but I must go now, go back to university but I’ll be back for Christmas.’ Never coming back. And long before Christmas finding out. All the anguish and terror where there should have been only happiness. Petrified that the school would find out, for then her parents would have to be informed. Against the law to have an abortion in Switzerland without parents’ consent—so going over the border to Germany where the act was possible, somehow finding the kindly doctor who had assured her and reassured her. Having no pain, no trouble, none—just a little difficulty borrowing the money. Still loving Johnny. Then the next year, school finished, everything secret, coming home to Tabriz. Stepmother finding out somehow—I’m sure Najoud, my step-sister, betrayed me, wasn’t it she who lent me the money? Then Father knowing.

  Kept like a spiked butterfly for a year. Then a peace—a form of peace. Begging for university in Tehran. ‘I agree, providing you swear by God, no affairs, absolute obedience and you marry only whom I choose,’ the Khan had said.

  Top of her class. Then begging for the Teaching Corps, any excuse to get out of the palace. ‘I agree, but only on our lands. We’ve more than enough villages for you to look after,’ he had said.

  Many men of Tabriz wanting to marry her but her father refusing them, ashamed of her. Then Erikki.

  ‘And when this foreigner, this. . . this impoverished, vulgar, ill-mannered, spirit-worshipping monster who can’t speak a word of Farsi or Turkish, who knows nothing of our customs or history or how to act in civilised society, whose only talent is that he can drink enormous quantities of vodka and fly a helicopter—when he finds out you’re not virgin, that you’re soiled, spoiled, and perhaps ruined inside for ever?’

  ‘I’ve already told him, Father,’ she had said through her tears. ‘Also that without your permission I cannot marry.’

  Then the miracle of the attack on the palace and Father almost killed—Erikki like an avenging warrior from the ancient storybooks. Permission to marry, another miracle. Erikki understanding, another miracle. But as yet no child. Old Dr Nutt says I’m perfect and normal and to be patient. With the Help of God soon I will have a son, and this time there will be only happiness, like with Sharazad, so beautiful with her lovely face and breasts and flanks, hair like silk and skin like silk.

  She felt the smoothness of her friend beneath her fingers and it pleased her greatly. Absently she began to caress her, letting herself drift in the warmth and tenderness. We’re blessed to be women, she thought, able to bathe together and sleep together, to kiss and touch and love without guilt. ‘Ah Sharazad,’ she murmured, surrendering too, ‘how I love your touch.’

  In the Old City: 7:52 P.M. Jared Bakravan, Sharazad’s father, was in his upper-storey, private inner room over the open-fronted shop in the Street of the Moneylenders deep in the huge bazaar that had been in his family for five generations and was in one of the best positions. His speciality was banking and financing. He was seated on thick pile carpets, drinking tea with his old friend, Ali Kia, who had managed to be appointed an official in the Bazargan government. Ali Kia was clean-shaven with glasses, Bakravan white-bearded and heavy. Both were in their sixties and had known each other most of their lives.

  ‘And how will the loan be repaid, over what time period?’ Bakravan asked.

  ‘Out of oil revenues, as always,’ Kia said patiently, ‘just as the Shah would have done, the time period over five years, at the usual one percent per month. My friend Mehdi, Mehdi Bazargan, says Parliament will guarantee the loan the moment it meets.’ He smiled and added, exaggerating slightly, ‘As I’m not only in Mehdi’s cabinet but also in his inner cabinet as well, I can personally watch over the legislation. Of course you know how important the loan is, and equally important to the bazaar.’

  ‘Of course.’ Bakravan tugged at his beard to prevent himself guffawing. Poor Ali, he thought, just as pompous as ever! ‘It’s certainly not my place to mention it, old friend, but some of the bazaaris have asked me what about the millions in bullion already advanced to support the revolution? Advanced for Ayatollah Khomeini—may God protect him,’ he added politely, in his heart thinking may God remove him from us quickly now that we’ve won, before he and his rapacious, blinkered, parasitical mullahs do too much damage. As for you, Ali, old friend, bender of the truth, exaggerater of your own importance, you may be my oldest friend, but I don’t trust you further than a camel can cast dung.

  ‘Of course these loans will be repaid immediately we have the money—the very second! The Tehran bazaari loans are the first in line to be repaid of all internal debts—we, in government, realise how important your help has been. But Jared, Excellency, old friend, before we can do anything we must get oil production going and to do this we must have some cash. The Pr—’

  The door burst open and Emir Paknouri rushed into the room. He was in his sixties, distraught and dishevelled. ‘Jared, they’re going to arrest me!’ he cried out, tears now running down his face.

  ‘Who? Who’s going to arrest you and for what?’ Bakravan spluttered, the customary calm of his house obliterated, the faces of frightened assistants, clerks, teaboys, and managers now crowding the doorway.

  ‘For. . . for crimes against Islam!’ Paknouri wept openly.

  ‘There must be some mistake! It’s impossible!’

  ‘Yes, it’s impossible but they. . . they came to my house with my name. . . half an hour ago we—’

  ‘Who? Give me their names and I’ll destroy their fathers! Who came?’

  ‘I told you! Revolutionary Guards, Green Bands, yes, them of course,’ Paknouri said and rushed on, oblivious of the sudden hush. Ali Kia blanched and someone muttered, God protect us! ‘Half an hour or so ago, with my name on a piece of paper. . . my name, Emir Paknouri, chief of the league of goldsmiths who gave millions of rials. . . they came to my house accusing me. . . by God and the Prophet, Jared,’ he cried out as he fell to his knees, ‘I’ve committed no crimes—I’m an Elder of the Bazaar, I’ve given millions and—’ Suddenly he stopped, seeing Ali Kia. ‘Kia, Ali Kia, Excellency, you know only too well what I did to help the revolution!’

  ‘Of course.’ Kia was white-faced, his heart thumping. ‘There has to be a mistake.’

  ‘Of course there’s a mistake!’ Bakravan put his arm around the poor man and tried to calm him. ‘Fresh tea at once!’ he ordered.

  ‘A whisky. Please, do you have a whisky?’ Paknouri mumbled. ‘I’ll have tea afterwards, do you have whisky?’

  ‘Not here, my poor friend, but of course there’s vodka.’ It came at once. Paknouri downed it and choked a little. He refused another. In a minute or two he became a little calmer and began again to tell what had happened. ‘The leader of the Guards—there were five of them—the leader was waving this piece of paper and demanding to see me. He told us the paper was
signed by someone called Uwari, on behalf of the Revolutionary Komiteh—in the Name of God, who’re they? Who’s this man Uwari? Who are they—this Revolutionary Komiteh? Ali Kia, surely you’d know?’

  ‘Many names have been mentioned,’ Kia said importantly, hiding his instant unease every time ‘Revolutionary Komiteh’ was uttered. Like everyone else in government or outside it, he did not have any real information about its actual makeup or when or where it meets, only that it seemed to come into being the moment Khomeini returned to Iran, barely two weeks ago and, since yesterday when Bakhtiar fled into hiding, it had been acting like it was a law unto itself, ruling in Khomeini’s name and with his authority, precipitously appointing new judges, most with no legal training whatsoever, authorising arrests, revolutionary courts, and immediate executions, totally outside normal law and jurisprudence—and against the Constitution!

  ‘Only this morning my friend Mehdi. . .’ he began confidentially, passing on the rumour as though it was private knowledge, ‘only this morning, with, er, with our blessing, he went to the Ayatollah and threatened to resign unless the Revolutionary Komiteh stopped bypassing him and his authority and so put them in their place for all time.’

  ‘Praise be to God!’ Paknouri said, very relieved. ‘We didn’t win the revolution to let more lawlessness take the place of SAVAK, foreign domination and the Shah!’

  ‘My poor friend,’ Bakravan said. ‘My poor friend, how you must have suffered! Never mind, you’re safe now. Stay here tonight. Ali, directly after first prayer tomorrow, go to the prime minister’s office and make sure this matter is dealt with and those fools are punished. We all know Emir Paknouri’s a patriot, that he and all the goldsmiths supported the revolution and are essential to this loan.’ Wearily he closed his ears to all the platitudes that Ali Kia was uttering now, stifled a yawn, tired now and hungry. A nap before dinner would do me good. ‘So sorry, Excellencies, so sorry but I have urgent business to attend to. Paknouri, old friend, I’m glad everything is resolved. Stay here tonight, servants will arrange quilts and cushions, and don’t worry! Ali, my friend, walk with me to the bazaar gate—do you have transport?’ he asked thinly, knowing that the first perk of a deputy minister would be a car and chauffeur and unlimited petrol.