Searching for Hassan

by Terence Ward

  “I’m going to cure you, Terry,” he said with conviction and then lifted my small arm and slowly waved the horn over my wounds, whispering a mantra: “Witch away, witch away, witch away …” My three brothers watched spellbound. Every night the sessions continued. After dinner, we would walk into the ice-cold room at the appointed hour, and Dad would make a fire and light a candle. Hassan stood by his side.

  After two weeks, my brothers lost interest in this ritual. But we persisted, my father, Hassan and I. Slowly, my wounds healed and the warts disappeared, never to return. The twisted horn and my father’s chanting baritone had apparently worked. Credo quia absurdum—I believe it because it is absurd—became the family’s unspoken motto.

  * * *

  If a magical aura hung over our enclosed garden, unexpected visitors added to the mood. One day, a group of entertainers entered our garden, a strange tribe we had never seen before. On a whim and with his usual flair for hospitality, my father had invited for lunch the entire troupe from a sizzling downtown hot spot, Shokufeh-no.

  In the kitchen, Hassan cursed, smashing pots and pans around. “God bless your father, but he should have told me all these divaneh, crazies, were coming,” he complained.

  Jugglers, bird trainers, a clarinet player, belly dancers and a white poodle were introduced to us. Out on the verandah, magicians traded tricks, pulling coins out of one another’s ears and returning watches to one and all. French, Russian and Arab chorus girls sat next to the grotto in a cluster as prim and proper as young ladies at Sunday school.

  * * *

  In those halcyon days, Tehran was celebrated as the most cosmopolitan capital in the Middle East. A plethora of private clubs catered to foreigners and upper-class Iranians. Each protected oasis opened its gate onto leafy old estates with lovely gardens, swimming pools and clay tennis courts. Shaded watering holes served cocktails on verandahs to privileged members. It was a life, a friend mused dreamily to my mother, of “tropical nobility.”

  Downtown, there was the elegant French Club, where my father preferred to lunch, far from the brash Yanks. To accommodate the huge U.S. military population that kept mushrooming each year, there was the Officers’ Club, the NCO Club and the Castle Club, which kept soldiers off the streets and in the bars. There was also the British Club, the American Club and the German Club.

  Meanwhile, the Shah’s reliance on Western experts and U.S. military personnel to help create his “New Civilization” led to deep resentment and caused cultural clashes. I knew something was wrong when one afternoon I overheard some drunk marines boasting about beating up “ragheads.”

  In the northern suburbs, the new consumerism and American influence sprouted strange curiosities. In Vanak, an elaborate miniature-golf course with a fast-food drive-in broke cultural ground, as did an American-style diner called the Hot Shoppe. A crystal-white indoor skating rink, the Ice Palace, opened its doors, with Muzak and frigid air that blasted even in August. Downstairs a heated swimming pool with steamed-up windows hid bathers inside. All these places catered to wealthy Westernized Iranians, who often displayed more sophistication than their European or American counterparts.

  Off Shemran Road, the sleek CRC—a glistening bowling alley of cream-streaked marble—reached an even loftier level. Overnight, a beer-swigging working-class sport was elevated in Tehran to refined high fashion. Upstairs at the elegant club, an intimate theater played the latest films. There, in the enveloping darkness, I would first hear Sinatra’s velvet voice singing “Strangers in the Night” and Mancini’s hooting sax theme in Peter Sellers’s Pink Panther. A movie poster for James Bond’s Goldfinger splashed a nude gold-coated torso on the door. It seemed so risqué, so foreign.

  * * *

  In 1963, when civil rights protests culminated in the March on Washington, on August 28, where Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “I Have a Dream” speech, Duke Ellington’s orchestra flew out of New York for its first tour of the Middle East. The orchestra would perform in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Iran and Pakistan, as well as in India. On September 9 in Damascus, the opening night of the Ellingtonians drew seventeen thousand Arabs and Westerners to Syria’s first big band jazz concert. “The applause,” reported Variety, “was mixed with Arabic yells of Ash al Duke, Long live Duke!”

  My father was thrilled about the visit. Our house rang with Duke’s arrangements of “Satin Doll,” “Mood Indigo,” “Take the ‘A’ Train.” But then came the awful news from Dallas: JFK was dead. In Tehran, the shops closed. My parents were devastated. “The bastards,” my father said. “They don’t know when to stop.” The State Department canceled the rest of Duke’s tour. My mother that week took us to a theater in Tajrish to see To Kill a Mockingbird, and we were transported to a sinister, racially divided Alabama town where Gregory Peck, as Atticus Finch, fought his lonely battle for human dignity. What, we wondered, was the story all about? America, my father said. That night, I heard him playing Billie Holiday’s wounded alto over and over again. It was the song “Strange Fruit,” about lynching.

  Far from America’s painful divisive politics, my father and mother enthusiastically embraced the cosmopolitan life in Tehran. Their friends were a diverse set of Western-educated Iranians and diplomats, both foreign and American, who doubled as amateur performers in the Little Theater of Tehran. On summer evenings, as we boys scampered in our garden chasing fireflies, they staged readings in the gazebo of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

  Unlike my parents, Tehran’s American community kept to itself in privileged enclaves behind high walls. The residents lived, worked and played in a world apart, mixing little with Iranians. Among Western expatriates, only the Yankees seemed to dream of returning home.

  * * *

  That year, the Tehran bazaar shut down for another reason. An ayatollah had spoken out in Qom and been arrested. His daring words had reverberated throughout the city: “The Shah is the puppet of America. The Shah must go!” From the closed bazaar, crowds streamed out in protest. Thousands filled the streets. Troops were mobilized. Clashes erupted. Gunfire ripped through the air. In Tajrish, chaos broke out. For three days, school was canceled. “Problems downtown,” my father said. “Stay at home. Don’t go out,” advised Hassan. The city froze. Fatimeh stopped weaving. Mass arrests filled the jails, and the crackdown broke the protests. The ayatollah was placed under house arrest for nine months before being exiled to Turkey and then Iraq. That week in 1963 marked an ominous portent. It was the beginning of the Shah’s fateful countdown with the clergy.

  * * *

  Every September, a rickety school bus appeared at our red gate, and my three brothers and I dutifully rode off to the Community School, in the heart of the city near the Majlis (parliament). Mr. Boghardi, the driver, raced with impunity through red and yellow traffic lights like a bull chasing a matador’s cape. “We have to catch the green,” he would shout, while over his radio, Petula Clark sang about going “Downtown” and the Supremes warned him to “Stop! In the Name of Love.” On the tree-shaded red-brick campus, we found ourselves thrown together in a fruit salad of twenty nations spanning God’s wide earth. Although founded at the turn of the century by American Protestant missionaries as a hospital, our school with its mix of students mirrored the United Nations. Instruction was in English, Persian and French. In every sport except soccer, we predictably lost to our crosstown rival: the overcoached, overtestosteroned, overserious American School.

  Our most celebrated school event obviously had to be the only date everyone could agree on: United Nations Day. Highlighting the event was a noisily merry and endearing kaleidoscope of national dress and flags. Clattering wooden clogs marched beside drooping sombreros; flowing saris and brassy pink turbans glided in front of cocky cowboy hats; soft cotton dishdashas chased silk kimonos; mahogany leather sandals shuffled under earth-colored batik sarongs; dashikis, tartan kilts and astrakhan hats trailed behind pearl-lace-curled bonnets. A week before this “proc
ession of nations,” secret lots were drawn for the flag carriers. No one wanted to bear his own country’s banner. Exotic beauty was the goal. Brazil, I always prayed for. Who wouldn’t? Emerald Amazonian green, a helio-splash of tropical yellow and a cobalt-blue night sky lit with flickering constellations—surely this was the prize. I remember being crushed one year when my flag was announced: Canada, the plain red maple leaf.

  The last vestige of the Community School’s missionary past could be seen on Tuesday and Thursday mornings at eleven. Into the chapel we would reluctantly stream: Kanwarbir, my Sikh friend, to my right; Sara, my Jewish friend, to my left; Ahmad, my Bahai buddy, and Vali, the young aristocrat, right behind. Reverend Lockhart, a Midwesterner, poured such emotion into his sermons that when he was “on” he could transport us to the royal court of Belshazzar and Nebuchadnezzar in ancient Babylon, or to ancient Egypt. Into those colossal cedar walls he bellowed, flames burning the words: “Let my people go!” I looked upon those walls and was shocked to see the same fiery words etched under our vaulted ceiling. Below them stood the unbending trio of Shadrack, Meshak and Abednego.

  Impassioned and red-faced, after each spirited performance, Reverend Lockhart ordered us to stand and sing from the hymnal. One morning he called out, “Page thirty-five, ‘Onward Christian Soldiers.’ ” We jumped up to launch into the song. The piano sounded and, in unison, we all belted out the first word, “On-waaaard,” quickly followed by an incoherent jumble. Instead of “Christian,” a cacophony of “Muslim-Sikh-Jewish-Armenian-Bahai-Buddhist-Catholic-Zoroastrian” ricocheted off the walls. Unfazed, we boomed on, “so-oool-dieeers, march-ing as to waaaar.” The beamed ceiling reverberated and our voices held steady until “with the cross of Je-sus going on before” erupted with more confusion as the names of “Buddha-Mohammad-Singh-Moses” filled the air.

  While Reverend Lockhart waved his arms, trying to synchronize our voices, his embarrassed face reddened deeper with the painful awareness that his young flock were already spoken for and defiantly holding on to their parents’ faith. We were living proof of the Babel of tongues and the scattering of nations. But what the good reverend could not see was the glowing beauty in the chapel on that day. Standing next to Jew, Sikh, Muslim, Zoroastrian, I somehow knew we were united in purpose. Each voice that proclaimed his or her prophet and faith spoke the truth. Each, if you listened closely, echoed the ninety-nine names of God. “There is only one religion,” George Bernard Shaw wrote, “though there are a hundred versions of it.” In honor of my classmates, I could never choose one faith. I could never betray the lesson they taught me that day.

  Seven hundred years ago, the Persian poet Rumi wrote of his God:

  Not Christian or Jew or Muslim, not Hindu,

  Buddhist, sufi, or zen. Not any religion

  or cultural system. I am not from the East

  or the West, not out of the ocean or up

  from the ground, not natural or ethereal, not

  composed of elements at all. I do not exist,

  am not an entity in this world or the next,

  did not descend from Adam and Eve or any

  origin story. My place is placeless, a trace

  of the traceless. Neither body or soul.

  I belong to the beloved, have seen the two

  worlds as one and that one call to and know,

  first, last, outer, inner, only that

  breath breathing human being.

  The eyes of Sara Haim were large, shimmering golden brown pools. Magnified by her Coke-bottle glasses, her doe’s look of innocence gave off an endearing gleam that I hoped she saved only for me. An Iranian Jew, wafer thin in her Scotch plaid skirts and white frilled shirts, Sara was my secret girlfriend in fourth grade. Framed by her short-cropped bangs, her pale skin and dimpled chin glowed. But it was her eyes, radiating with quiet intelligence, that warmed me with a glance. Once, when we sat quietly in her synagogue, she wrote out a poem in Hebrew script, the words of Queen Esther to her king, Xerxes (Ahasuerus). I asked her the meaning; she smiled behind her thick glasses, then turned away in silence. I hid this cherished poem in my small library at home.

  While very smart, she was also terribly shy. An unspoken understanding kept our affection to cautious flirting. When I proposed marriage in the fifth grade, she said she would think it over. Her slender body was so frail that I feared a strong gust of wind would blow her away. When a sudden storm blew across the playground, I would race over to hold her hand until it died down. Although I knew she could fly, I wanted to keep her on earth one more day.

  Whenever Hassan told us stories at night of Leili and Majnoon, the crazy young lovers of Nizami, my imagination turned to Sara. Years later, a rabbi in New York translated Sara’s poem for me. “Love has no age,” he read. By then, her family must have fled Tehran. Where is she now? I wonder. Tel Aviv? Paris? Los Angeles? An aching high wind more violent than we children could ever imagine surely lifted her away.

  * * *

  Unlike the rest of my friends, Kanwarbir arrived each morning at school with three fine rows of braids tucked neatly behind at the nape of his neck. He couldn’t see them, but we could. With his small mousy face, large spectacles and skinny knock-knees, Kanwarbir seemed far too fragile to be a Sikh warrior. I always ran to his defense when our class bully picked on him.

  Eating green sour plums one day, he told me in confidence that soon he would wear a turban. His parents had scheduled the ceremony when he would become a man, and his hair would be wrapped for the first time. While we spoke about the color of the cloth—tangerine, salmon or burgundy—I felt a tinge of jealousy welling up inside me. How grand to enter the classroom of Miss Jose decked out in a flashy lemon turban! Sara Haim would surely be smitten by the sight of me in a turban and finally confess her love. Why had my mother and father never given me one? Lucky Kanwarbir, I thought.

  The first time I was invited to his house, it was for afternoon tea. With a broad grin, Kanwarbir greeted me and led me inside. Pungent scents of coriander, curry, cloves and incense mingled in the living room. Before sitting down to chat, he showed me a small altar perched on a corner shelf. On it were silver-framed photographs of turbaned family members, uncles and grandfathers, all handsomely bearded and mustachioed.

  Dressed in a flowing rose sari, his mother served us steaming cups of dark tea while my friend pulled out his collection of Tintin books, and we began reading together. When his mother called him, I paid no mind. Hers was a language I couldn’t understand. The cartoons in front of me had swept me away. I was following Tintin, Hergé’s red-headed Belgian reporter, into the Himalayan ice fields of Tibet to hunt for the footprints of Yeti, the abominable snowman.

  Time passed. The setting sun cast a faded light into the room. When I looked up, I was alone. I wondered where my friend was. I began to look for him, but had no luck. The house was completely silent. I slowly began to climb the staircase. Nearing the top, I could hear a woman’s soft whisper. I glanced into a bedroom to my left and saw two silhouettes seated on the carpet.

  The sun’s dying rays of gold streamed over them. Kanwarbir faced the light. His pigtails were undone and a stream of long black silky hair spilled down his back like a waterfall to the floor. With her long delicate fingers, his mother lifted his hair and stroked a brush through it, ever so slowly.

  I felt nervous, I felt ecstatic. Was it wrong to witness this moment of privacy? I couldn’t pull myself away. This silent image, intimate and tender, held me frozen in place. Her left hand moved with eyes of its own through her son’s mane. Her right hand brushed his silky hair, pure and unviolated.

  I watched my fragile little warrior, Kanwarbir, the lion cub, being groomed at day’s end. His entire life was in front of him. A turban would soon crown his head. Each stroke of his mother’s hand ran through his hair and down his naked bronze back. Gracefully, she dipped her brush under the nape of his neck and lifted strands out toward her until, in slow motion, they fell in an arc like an unfolding
Japanese fan. The gold dying sun glinted through his hair. How long I stood transfixed, I’ll never know. When dusk’s light finally gave way to darkness, I tiptoed back downstairs. In the incense-filled room with its altar, I waited quietly for my friend to descend from his lair.

  Twenty years later, I learned that just after we left Tehran, Kanwarbir had a dreadful accident. Hanging from the monkey bars at recess, surely trying to prove himself, his grip slipped and he fell. When he woke, he heard the doctor whisper that his spine was broken. Tragically, the rest of the lion’s days would be spent in a wheelchair.

  * * *

  Another beloved classmate Vali hailed from the Farmanfarmaian “Givers of Orders” clan: an aristocratic, wealthy family descended from the deposed and defanged Qajar dynasty. His uncles were known for their cosmopolitan flair and their aggressive business practices, which led to vast fortunes. At his house, Vali showed me his collection of gold coins, which were thrown freely by the hundreds at family weddings. Under the Islamic regime, this wealth would make his family a target for persecution. Before that happened, Vali emigrated with most of his family. Unfortunately, his uncles Khoddadad and Rashid, who remained behind, were imprisoned during the Revolution. Although sentenced to be executed, Khoddadad was freed, thanks to a former tea boy who remembered him for his kindness. A Revolutionary Guard allowed him the chance to flee across the border into Turkey. Rashid was freed four years later.

  Living next door to us was Ali, the angry, brooding son of our part-time gardener, a future Robespierre destined to finger those to be put up against the wall for Komiteh firing squads. Both Ali’s and Vali’s families, in the revolutionary turbulence, were fated to struggle over power and money. Feudal allegiances and religious obedience divided the classes, and many sought revenge. The best metaphor for the divide between rich and poor could be seen in the journey of water. In our gully passed the pristine mountain-fed water that flowed into the street channels, called jubes, of north Tehran’s wealthy, wending its way mile after mile through the city that washed, cleaned, drank and dumped garbage in it, until the water finally arrived, turbid and brown, in south Tehran, carrying cholera and infection. Begging was a way of life there, and eye disease was rampant. On Fridays, my mother joined a young woman from the Pasteur Institute to deliver rice and medicine to the shantytowns gripped by poverty. Their visits were a drop in the ocean.