by Terence Ward
“At night, I pray for my teacher, Ustad Ardabil, who taught me Koran in Tudeshk when I was small. I also always remember a woman who helped me when I was seven years old. I used to work as a shepherd in Tajrish. This woman saw me passing one day with the sheep. I was very dirty, with my clothes torn. She called me inside her house and washed me in her pool. She washed my hair, my clothes. I never knew who she was, her name. And I never saw her again. Why does she do such a thing? Maybe she’s dead now, but I always pray for her.
“I’m nobody, just a simple man. I ask why does God do this for me? You see, I know why you come.” He paused and looked up at the moon. “Not even brothers do what you did. I told this story to one of my friends, and he began to cry. I say that thirty years ago I worked for your mother and father and they left far away. Then they came back, over the ocean and across the desert. I told him it’s very hot, the desert’s very hot, and they came. He said, ‘Oh, I can’t believe this.’ ”
He plucked at a blade of grass, searching for the word in English to explain.
“Mojezeh, Fatimeh told me yesterday.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Like when the man is dead and Jesus makes him come back, this is mojezeh.”
“Back from the dead?”
“Yes.”
A shiver went down my back. He looked each of us in the eye. “Delam barayeh shoma tang meshavad, I really missed you.”
12. Video Nights in Imam Khomeini’s Tomb
This time either Islam triumphs or it disappears.
—AYATOLLAH KHOMEINI
Drink until the turbans are all unbound
Drink until the house like the world turns around.
—HAFEZ
Our suspicions that Vaz was a spy were laid to rest. Not only had he spent the past three days in his room with a stomach flu, but we concluded that the only skullduggery that he could ever hope to master was his Inspector Clouseau buffoonery. Kevin, feeling a tinge of remorse, brought Vaz some apples from Hassan’s house. Perhaps it was Kev’s lingering certainty that he had passed on his New York bug to him. In a Florence Nightingale moment, Kev asked him the secret to living in Iran.
“Beating the system is easy,” Vaz explained. “You just have to know how to do it. I know many people who can. For them it’s easy.”
He reached for an apple, then sat back to take a bite.
“Not for me, unfortunately,” he confessed. “But for them it’s easy.”
Over the past week, I had taken note of some of his sayings, under the heading The World According to Vaz.
On trust, he advised: “Sometimes you have to lie to build trust, like when a girl asks, ‘How do I look?’ ” On working for the secret police: “Sometimes you work for them and you don’t even know it and they don’t even pay you.” On being a guide: “I only use the baba system. I don’t bother with names, guidebooks or dates. I talk to the babas, you know, the old men who hang out at the sites. I just ask them and translate. What more do you want?” On his conversation strategy: “I always disagree. It makes things more interesting, don’t you think?” Describing my father: “He’s the strong, silent type, more or less.” When a waiter in a café asked him to tell my mother to put on her headscarf, he shot back: “Why? Do you think I’m with them?” On girl watching: “You only get to look at the face to satisfy yourself, but sometimes it’s enough.” His favorite quote about the Shah: “A lie is halfway around the world before you’ve got your boots on.” And his quote from Khomeini: “This time either Islam triumphs or it disappears.”
* * *
In the neighborhood of Julfa, long renowned for its vibrant Armenian-Christian community and its red wine, we found the magnificent cathedral of Vank. Its chandelier-lit interior revealed a Safavid-inspired star-studded dome and Italianate frescoes depicting the Last Judgment.
A disoriented Vaz, who had been roused out of bed for the visit, stood silently to one side. As an Armenian Christian, he embodied the character of a religious minority by blocking out any unsavory questions of persecution. Did he use humor, like the foolishly clever Mullah Nasruddin, to deflect conversation until he had made up his mind what to reply and how much to reveal?
Staring up at the gold stars, he repeated, looking perplexed, “Terry, I still don’t know if Armenia is a country, a culture, a language or a religion.”
Armenia, in fact, was all of those. A people whose ancient nation was the first to embrace Christianity, in the third century, Armenians were among the most talented and cultured citizens of the Middle East. Their tragic geography—wedged in the southern Caucasus Mountains between Ottoman, Persian and Russian empires—had subjected them to centuries of suffering and dispersal.
Julfa dates from the early seventeenth century, when Shah Abbas brought as captives two thousand Armenian families from a town that straddled the northern border of Persia. He entrusted the Armenians, known for their business acumen, with building commercial links for his all-important silk trade. He also rewarded them with religious rights.
In only fifty years, these merchants established a network stretching from the English Channel to the South China Sea, placing Isfahan at the center, with entrepôts all over Asia. These Christian traders from Persia had been crucial to the early British penetration of India.
The portly, charismatic and Oxford-educated Right Reverend Goriun Babian, wearing his black robe, kindly invited me into his residence and offered me fresh coffee from Lebanon.
“Technically, this diocese extends much farther east,” he explained. “It comes from the halcyon days. Actually my title is Bishop of Isfahan and India. Ahh, India.
“Meanwhile, back here at the ranch,” the bishop unexpectedly said with a smile, “you should know that the Armenian Church remains stronger under the minarets of Islam than in the melting pot of the West, where our values are vanishing, not simply because of social assimilation. In 2005 we will celebrate our four hundredth anniversary in Isfahan. But who knows what the future has in store?”
He sat pensive for a moment, then spoke of Madonna, appearing onstage practically naked, wearing a cross. “A sacrilegious act and she becomes an icon of the masses,” he said. “I don’t understand where Western culture is going. After seventy years of communism and capitalism, we’ve reached the same exact point: God is dead.”
Another cup of coffee arrived. “And as Nietzsche said, if God doesn’t exist, then everything is possible. When values of basic dignity are lost, and the exception becomes the rule … well, you get my point.”
Looking at America through his prism of piety, I could only agree: there was much backsliding to answer for.
* * *
It was evening. In Hassan’s living room, my mother and father sat at opposite ends of the dining table with their four sons, in their prescribed places like the old days. In the kitchen, Hassan was working his alchemy again for our last dinner. And in supreme taarof style, our hosts would not eat with us.
“Yet another delicious meal from Hassan!” my mother saluted. “Twenty-nine years, and here we are where we left off.”
“All my lads in place,” Dad concurred. “Now, Kev’s got a toast.”
Kev stood. “Here’s to Richard, long may he reign. He brought us great joy, he brought us great pain. He enhanced our tourist lives again and again. Whether heaven or hell, low or high, Rich will make sure that you tour or die!”
“I suffered so,” Rich confessed melodramatically. “From one five-star meal to another. My pants no longer fit. I’m dying.”
“I can’t eat any more,” Chris wailed. “Wooooah!”
“Get ready. Our new motto? Eat or die!”
“A warning for any American tourist traveling to Iran.”
I offered another warning: “Expect to suffer from excessive hospitality.”
“It’s hard,” Kev agreed. “You come back looking like Orson Welles.”
“So,” Chris asked, “where are the terrorists?”
My father said, “I’ve
searched everywhere for one of those guys, but not a bit of luck.”
Donna looked up to share news. “Hassan has made a huge picnic basket for our trip tomorrow.”
“Thank God!” Kev exclaimed.
Fatimeh entered with serving plates. “Have more, please!”
“I can’t say no!” Rich cried in mock pain.
“Delicious fish, delicious sauce,” I said.
“What kind of fish is it?” Kev asked.
“Whitefish, very tasty, from the Gulf. Here, have one.”
My father playfully placed two fingers above his head, Great Satan style. “So, I’ve got to put my horns up like this.”
“Pat, don’t do that,” my mother pleaded. “You’re too old to be acting this way.”
“Nah!” chaffed Fatimeh. “Not American people, but government is bad!”
“Pat, stop it!” My mother pulled his hands down as he grinned at us all.
“Things will be better, Fatimeh,” my father said. “I’m going to fix it all when I get back to Berkeley.”
“Dear Fatimeh, all our children are healthy, that’s all that matters,” my mother said, changing the subject just as Hassan entered with a tray of pomegranate duck.
“The rice is to die for, Hassan,” I said.
“Here’s the fesenjan!” he announced.
“Oh, my God,” Rich cried again. “I just can’t say no!”
“We love Isfahan, Hassan,” I said, spooning his pomegranate sauce onto my rice.
“Then you should stay with us,” he said. “We don’t have a bed, but we have mattresses.”
“You should see what we have in the van,” my mother said. “Foam pads ready for any floor.”
“You can all sleep here,” Hassan said. “Last summer we had Ali’s and Maryam’s families staying here at the same time.” He smiled heartily.
“Iran’s like that,” Fatimeh explained. “When the family comes, we stay together all night.”
With all the serving plates emptied, Fatimeh left the room, then reappeared.
“Oh, we got lemon meringue pie!” Rich cheered.
Kevin’s eyes brightened.
“When we go to look for our old house in Tehran,” Dad said, “we’ll close our eyes and remember these tastes.”
Hassan spoke about his old job at the Kowsar Hotel. “Sometimes five groups of fifty people or parties would come, and I cooked ten lambs and twenty fish.”
“So your pots were this big?” Rich opened his arms wide.
“Yes, very big,” Hassan exclaimed. “Like the ones we saw in the bazaar. If I fell in it, I couldn’t get out!”
We all laughed.
“I’m very happy I’m not there now,” he went on. “One more day in that kitchen and I would be dead.”
“So our coming here was good timing?” I asked.
“Yes, yes. If you had come one year ago, I would not be free. Each Nowruz the hotel had a big buffet. It was the busiest time.”
“So you could never leave?” Mom asked.
“No, we worked twenty hours a day. For twenty-five years, I spent every Nowruz working.”
“This is the first year you spent New Year’s with your family?”
“Yes!”
“And then we arrived a week later?”
“That’s right.”
“So, after thirty years, it was perfect timing.” Mom smiled.
“But you’ve never stopped cooking,” Dad said.
“I like to cook for family!” Hassan laughed as Fatimeh entered with a rosewater rice pudding. “You know, years ago Fatimeh told some friends if they wanted to find a husband for their daughter, don’t even think of a cook, because she’ll never see her husband.”
“That’s right,” Fatimeh said. “Every night after his work, Hassan came home so late. But when I cook, he always says, ‘Oh, that’s not good.’ ”
“He did win the award as best chef in Isfahan,” my father said in his defense. Dad pointed at Hassan’s framed award, which hung next to a color photograph of the holy mosque in Mecca, bathed in early morning light. We toasted Hassan with our Zam Zams.
“You see, Fatimeh,” my mother diplomatically said, “in the end it all worked out.”
“Yes, Donna.” She sighed with her warm smile. “Yes.”
* * *
The next morning, I woke with the sun and headed alone for Hassan’s house.
“Allo!” Hassan opened the gate with a shovel in his hand. Dirt covered his shoes. He had been digging in his patch of earth.
“Looking for the treasure?”
He smiled. “I have it here.” He reached down and pulled off the bud of a magenta snapdragon for me.
I studied his tiny garden while he worked. Violet and saffron pansies and his prized snapdragons lined both walls. All of it was hard-won land fought over in battles with Fatimeh, who objected to dirt and mud being tramped into her immaculate house.
“If she could,” he said, “she’d pave over the whole yard.”
I watched him turn the precious soil. He told me that he had removed one row of tiles to plant his flowers and greens, to bring forth color and life.
“People say I’m crazy because water is so expensive, and it costs me twice as much to grow vegetables than to buy them in the market. Fatimeh says, ‘These are my gifts to Hassan.’ She doesn’t understand why I care so much. Women only think of the house, of practical things.”
He took the hose and motioned for me to turn on the tap. He had dug little trenches to trap water for the sprouting greens. Twelve rows, to be precise. Apple blossoms burst from the branches of an ancient trunk, whose bark peeled and cracked during tortuously hot summers. He sprinkled the vibrant snapdragons.
“You remember these at the old house?” I asked.
“Of course! Flowers I must also water. These I cannot eat. But I enjoy them so much. They are my prayer to God,” he said, handing me another snapdragon. “ ‘If you turn your heart to the continent of love,’ our poet Saadi says, ‘then you will see that the whole world is full of flowers and beauty.’ ”
“But now that you’ve retired, what will you do?”
“I would like to get some sheep and just be a shepherd. Anywhere, even in Tudeshk. But that’s not possible. Fatimeh doesn’t want to hear that. I’m a simple man. I don’t need anything, just to walk in nature with my sheep. That’s all.”
“A shepherd?”
“That’s right.”
“What about a small farm?”
“Here in Isfahan, land is too expensive. Sheep are best for me. But Fatimeh won’t let me do it. She wants to stay here on Bi-sim Street.”
All Hassan dreamed of was to go back to a simple life. Working in a garden with his beloved flowers or wandering as a shepherd with his flock, as he used to do in his first job as a boy of seven. Either would be enough for him.
I heard my name, a faint voice calling.
“It’s Fatimeh. She wants you.”
Leaping onto the porch, I slipped off my shoes and padded through the spotless hallway and then into the sun-drenched living room, but saw no one.
“Come, Terry, I want to show you something.” Fatimeh was calling from under the kitchen. I followed her voice down the stairs and into her spacious, orderly basement. I found her, pointing to an ironing board and a chest of drawers. “This your mommy gave us.” The legs of the board were strapped into wooden blocks, repaired carefully over the years. I recognized the pale yellow chest Dad had crafted by himself.
“And also this fridge.” In a country that ingeniously repairs and recycles the simplest possessions, the thirty-year-old refrigerator was still running.
“You see, Terry, we have everything we need.”
She led me upstairs and guided me through the precious objects on the finely carved wooden shelves that lined one wall of the living room. Each shelf was protected by a delicate strip of white lace. There sat our old coffee pot with its plastic filter, now very fashionable in its fifties des
ign; two decorated glass bowls and a small red flower vase; and two identical jade-green porcelain teapots that I vaguely remembered.
Fatimeh pointed to a tall cobalt-blue mug and laughed. “That,” she said, “was your daddy’s beer glass.”
Mementos of our shared life together. I studied each one as if they were windows onto a regained childhood.
Still now, I realized, each evening as my parents sat in their Berkeley home to watch the news, their feet resting on Fatimeh’s ivory-and-indigo carpet, ten thousand miles away in Isfahan at dawn, Fatimeh began her day by opening our old fridge that held Hassan’s breakfast cheese.
Even though Hassan and Fatimeh’s life, like that of many other Iranians, had improved greatly, their demeanor had not changed. I felt like a youngster looking now at Hassan tending his flowers. His weathered, cracked hands could not conceal the years of toil.
His face, unlike Fatimeh’s, had lost the looks of the handsome Persian I remembered. Now his skin was darkened and worn from two decades of exposure to steaming cauldrons of fire and heat. Grueling times on the frontlines, caring for and feeding young boys in battle, had also taken their toll.
We had been divided by opposite worlds, a political divide that cast two peoples as enemies. Our life apart had to be threaded back together. Our bond could be sealed only by weaving our disparate experiences into a common prayer.
To hear Hassan say “my son,” to hear Fatimeh echo those same words, poured rain on parched soil. The edges of cliffs folded over, the harsh precipice eroded, and earth filled the chasm that for so long had split my heart. What was once a gaping divide disappeared.
* * *
Leaving the Abbasi Hotel, our van resembled a Bakhtiari encampment made ready for migration. Hussein, a former ambulance driver during the Iran-Iraq War, was our new driver; patient Nasrollah had already headed back to Shiraz, his hometown. We had grown accustomed to his taste in music and his road warrior spirit. Reluctantly, we had waved him off. Hussein’s van was less roomy and much noisier. Everything, including my mother’s wheelchair and our bazaar booty, had to be squeezed into the back, behind the seats, and lashed on top, along with Fatimeh’s two carpets, destined for Richard’s young sons.