A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea (28 page)

When they reach the village, a dusty little town with a police station, town hall, and thatch-roofed store on the same unpaved street, there is no need to ask directions. Every detail of today’s event was carefully arranged, the location chosen to attract just the right number of visitors from Tehran, Rasht, and the girl’s hometown, the square chosen to fit many spectators. Even the air is full of a breathless doom that seems to have been purposely planted there. Dozens of men in loose, rural clothing, jeans, or business suits, and women in black chadors, stand around a crane as it inches back and forth into position in the center of the town square. “Oh, dear God,” Saba whispers when she sees the crane, its clawlike hook swaying back and forth weightlessly, ready to hoist its victim into the air. Saba has never seen a hanging or any kind of execution before. Such things aren’t done in bucolic mountain towns or
shalizar
villages like Cheshmeh. Saba has no wish to see this now, though so many have come from all over to witness it. On catching sight of the crane, Ponneh, who is lying in the backseat to calm her nerves, lets out a guttural, almost animal sound. They sit for ten minutes so she can compose herself, then leave the car several meters outside the town square, its ground now muddied by the crane and dozens of spectators’ cars.

Both women have donned dark chadors, and Ponneh wears a second layer despite the warmth. They each take a camera, tucking it under their arms. They allow their great robes to billow, so their figures appear large and amorphous—able to contain many secrets without drawing attention. Ponneh has an ordinary photo camera and Saba carries the video camera, having finally figured out how to use it. She grips it in her right hand as her left holds tight to the fabric at her neck. For just a second Ponneh lets go of the folds and takes Saba’s hand. She starts to say something when a dirty green Paykan screeches angrily past them, splashing mud and dingy water on their clothes.

The Paykan comes to an abrupt stop, blocking their way to the square. Saba, shrouded in too much unwieldy fabric, jumps back and clutches the camera. But Ponneh makes no effort to hide the contents of her robe. She knows this car—the one Reza shares with his brother and a friend. She steps out of the way as Reza bursts out, nearly tearing the door from its hinges as he slams it shut.

“
Toro khoda
, what’s this?” he shouts. “What the hell are you two doing here?”
Some passersby size up the young, clean-shaven boy with dark eyes and continue walking. “What are
you
doing here?” Ponneh demands. “How did you even know—”
“I saw Farnaz’s name in the paper. No one knew where you went. And look at this, I was right. You’ve come to throw yourself on the fire.” Trying to shame her, he adds, “Very wise, Khanom.”
Saba breathes out, relieved at the possibility that Reza will talk Ponneh out of this.
“Look, I’m taking you both home before anyone gets jailed or lashed . . . or a lot worse.” His eyes dart past Ponneh as he mumbles the last words. Then he glances at her camera.
“I’m staying.” Ponneh pushes past him. “You know why. Let’s go. We’ll be late.”
Reza rushes after her. “Ponneh, please. If they catch you . . . with a
camera
?”
“It’s nothing!” Ponneh starts to walk away. “People take pictures all the time.”
“Not like this, with the big cameras.” He follows her, always a step or two behind, out of a habit developed in their adolescence when it became dangerous to walk together in public. “This is going to look so suspicious. No one knows you here. You’re two strange women on your own.”
Saba doesn’t wait for Ponneh to answer. Maybe the safest thing is to get Ponneh through this event and leave as quickly as possible. No sense in making a scene. “We’re fine, Reza jan. It’s a public event. The only danger here is being seen with you.”
Ponneh tucks the camera farther into her clothes.
The lines on Reza’s brow deepen. He rests both hands on his head and interlaces his fingers like a nervous player waiting for his teammate to score. He paces near his Paykan, glancing toward the square for signs of the moral police. The crane has stopped moving and the dangling hook is lowered toward the ground. “Okay,” he says. “Okay, here’s what we’ll do. You give me that camera. I’ll do it instead.”
“No, no,” says Ponneh. “This is
my
friend
.
I’ll do it.”
“For God’s sake, Ponneh,” he says, “please let me help you.” He takes a deep breath and whispers, “I may be a man, but I’m still your friend.” He waits a moment until Ponneh’s face falls. “Saba, give me your camera.” He forces a smile and holds out his hand. His face is ragged with worry, no longer the hashish-smoking boy she once knew, the football-obsessed youth who obeys his mother and sits in the pantry, drinking and choosing which girl to torment with his fickle love today.
“Thanks, but I’m fine,” Saba responds, thinking that she
would
feel safer if he stayed. “I can’t exactly show you how the thing works out here in the open, can I?” In truth Saba doesn’t want to let go of the camera. What would her brave sister do now? The Mahtab who clawed her way into Harvard, the Mahtab who wanted to be a journalist, the one who was always the best at things—that Mahtab would never let Reza take over. She would hold on to this camera and capture every detail of today. She would hand deliver the film to the front door of
The New York Times
and say to Judith Miller, lady reporter, “See? Things aren’t as simple as that, are they, Miss Foreign Correspondent who spent maybe two days in Iran, and both of them in some
gherty-perty
hotel in Tehran?”
Reza wipes his palms on his thighs. He takes Saba’s hand through the chador. “I’ll be a few steps behind you. I’ll be able to see you the entire time.”
Saba pushes his hand away, takes Ponneh by the arm, and they walk toward the square.
She tries not to lose track of Reza behind her in the crowd. They face the long stretch of road where the prisoner is expected to emerge. From her position on this side of the makeshift scaffold, Saba can see the faces of the curious onlookers. Some of them nod and make room for her, and she hopes they can’t see the camera lens—such a small part of the black, billowing mass of her body, like the gleaming, beady eye of a blackbird overhead. Can anyone be expected to re member the small shapes or colors in the midst of so much eye-catching sameness? Still, the thought of being discovered sends waves of fear through her and makes her pull the camera tight under her arm.
A dirty white van pulls up near the square moments after Saba has settled into place. The crowd of men and women stretches all the way from the crane to the parking lot where the van emerges. They shift and make way, leaning their heads toward an open path where the prisoner will arrive. Saba reaches under her robes and turns on the camera. The red record light shines hot on her forearm, and Saba is certain the whole world can see it, a big red dot coloring her entire body. Still, in these fearful moments, she is a journalist in charge of creating this last gruesome memento for the world. The van doors open and two
pasdar
s pull a screaming girl out of the back. She is handcuffed to a female officer of the moral police, who yanks at her chains and tells her to shut up. The crowd, roused by curiosity and awe, grows louder. Do they feel sympathy for the girl? Maybe they are too full of moral outrage at her crimes. Saba notices that the girl is exceptionally beautiful. Like a
pari
. Like Ponneh. She feels her heart jump at the sight of the officer, a lumbering black-clad crow of a woman, exactly like the two peasants in her bedroom. Women always do these kinds of jobs—cleansing each other of filth and sin. It is a way of showing the world that it is not by the standards of men that they are judged and found lacking. Saba spots the officer’s hand pretending to soothe the condemned soul. A Basiji hand, a former
dallak
hand.
Ponneh’s chest rises and falls in such deep, fitful arcs that surely her footage is ruined.
“Don’t worry, friends.” A scratchy voice behind them reassures. “They won’t do it.” An old woman leans on her metal cane. She speaks with certainty.
Ponneh turns, hungry for a different story. “Excuse me?” she says.
“They won’t kill her,” says the old woman. “They’ll teach her a lesson she’ll never forget and then we’ll all go home.”
Ponneh swallows and wipes the corners of her mouth with two fingers, nails bitten to the quick. “Do you think so?” she says. She tries to link her arm through Saba’s, then gives up, hampered by the layers between them. “Did you hear that?” she whispers to Saba.
The old lady continues. “I saw the exact same thing happen outside Tehran. They read her crimes. They ask her if she’s sorry. And then, you see the mullah standing over there. . . . He will step forward and say that Allah grants her another chance.”
Though Saba knows the impossibility of this, though she knows how much it costs to bring a crane to this remote village, and how widely the news of this event has spread, and how much the mullah standing by the crane scratching his dirty beard must thirst for some righteous purpose, she allows the old woman’s comment to give her hope. Ponneh too must know all the concrete facts that make this hope foolish. Though she doesn’t read newspapers as Saba does, she has spent enough time with Dr. Zohreh to know. But Saba doesn’t want to think about facts or probabilities now. This whispered possibility sprouts in her heart and grows in seconds, taking over her body so that her sole intention and belief is that today she will photograph nothing more than a public humiliation. She ignores the duty in the mullah’s eye, the high calling—this girl is one of the beautiful things of this world, like the Warhols and Picassos and Riveras shut up in a dark place somewhere, like Ponneh’s red high heels, or a schoolgirl with pink fingernails, or a song called “Fast Car.” She draws the world’s eyes to herself.
The mullah steps onto the platform and nods as the female officer puts a black hood over the girl’s head. “It’s a game,” Saba whispers. Ponneh repeats it. “It’s a game. Farnaz jan, it’s just a game.” The mullah lowers the noose around Farnaz’s neck himself, making sure it is fastened tightly to the hook on the crane. With a wave of his hand, he silences the crowd and reads her crimes from a gray sheet. “. . . actions not in keeping with a chaste life and the laws of Islam, acting against national security, enmity against God, membership in a drugsmuggling organization . . .”
The crowd murmurs. Dozens of shrouded heads and bearded faces look up. Farnaz shivers, sucking the hood in and out of her mouth with each terrified breath.
“She did all that?” another onlooker asks the old woman. Saba strains to hear, every cell in her body screaming to run away or at least step back from the crowd. She can sense Reza listening too, and Ponneh has gone unnaturally still, her body stiffening like a corpse.
The old woman shrugs. “They say they found the drugs in her house. But if you ask me, she angered the wrong man.” She points to the front, toward a bearded man with fiery eyes who watches with anticipation like a creditor watching the confiscation of his collateral. “She was supposed to go to the mullah’s son, but she refused. I think she was friendly with the wrong type. Activists and Baha’is.”
Ponneh bows her head and sucks the tears from her lips. She covers her face with her sleeve and leans on Saba, who can see what her friend is thinking now.
It’s my fault.
“It’s all pretend,” Saba says. She hears Ponneh’s breath, shallow and strained, her camera hand shaking under her clothes. The mullah climbs into the crane operator’s seat. He holds on to his white turban as he is helped up by the driver.
“What is he doing?” Ponneh asks, turning to the old woman again.
“He wants to do it himself,” she says.
“But it’s fake,” Saba reminds her.
The woman seems bored. “He wants to be high up like Allah when he showers his mercy on her.”
The slight sarcasm in the woman’s voice calms Saba a little. Ponneh is shaking harder now, and then Saba hears a thud. Ponneh has dropped the camera. The old woman squints and points to the hem of Ponneh’s chador just as Reza comes bounding toward them. “Excuse me, Khanom,” he says to the old woman, “I thought I had lost my sisters.” He leans down with the casual air of fetching a ball, picks up the camera, and wedges himself between Saba and Ponneh.
“Are you okay?” he whispers to Ponneh. “Let’s go. This will be very bad.”
Ponneh seems unable to take her eyes off the crane. How can a person not look at such a time? How can she not gawk, stifling each blink until her eyes water? She stares straight ahead, maybe thinking that the strength of her gaze is the only thing keeping the mullah from pulling the lever. Saba stands on her tiptoes and scans the crowd behind her for
pasdar
s, her video camera still fixed on the crane and the girl. Then she hears Ponneh gasp and it is done. The crane hoists the girl into the air mercifully quickly, with one hard motion, not slowly lifting and suffocating, the arc of death revealed by a flutter of small kicks, as in most crane hangings. The mullah places the control stick back into the driver’s hand. Farnaz’s body swings in the air, her neck unnaturally extended, her head bent to the right in a distorted, cartoonish sort of supplication, her sneakered feet twisted around each other in a childish demonstration of her fright.
For an instant the crowd is hushed and there is no thought of modesty or caution. Women cry openly. A man takes his wife’s hand. A young girl’s chador slips back and curly chestnut strands sweep her face as she watches death for the first time. Saba struggles to find breath. Did these onlookers hope for a pardon as she did? Did they come here thinking Farnaz would be spared? Some of them must have known, and yet they are all overcome with shock. Maybe some of them do hate her, or they expected the many scars in their hearts to protect them. Or maybe they came to show her she was loved. Reza reaches over and takes Ponneh’s hand. Does he know? Has Ponneh told him, perhaps in a moment of teasing, about how she practices for the day they’re married? He takes Saba’s hand too and they stand in that silent half second, watching, unmoved by the danger to themselves. For the second time, Saba marvels with her friends at this cruel new Iran and takes an unseemly comfort in their threesome, a warming of her heart at the moment of deepest sorrow. This time they are just spectators, everything smells like death and gasoline, and there isn’t a broken high heel to blame.
Though she wants to look away, Saba can’t stop staring. She follows the easy swing of Farnaz’s sneakers; the girlish pink stripe on the side of each shoe sends a wave of nausea through her body. Then she is transfixed by the broken neck, Farnaz’s pretty throat tied off with rope. She takes a gulp of air and remembers what it felt like to almost drown, to swallow mouthfuls of water, to be desperate for breath. Mahtab was there, having the same water forced into her small body, unable to move or fight the sea the same way Farnaz can’t fight the rope or the crane. She imagines Mahtab hanging in the sky—a flash before she is swallowed into the abyss. Now she sees her mother in Evin, marching in a doomed line, helpless in prison clothes, with her head down and hands tied, one of throngs executed en masse. Saba has seen the photos, the grisly lines of hanging bodies. Is her mother among them?
No,
she assures herself.
The Evin rumor was wrong. I saw Maman get on a plane with Mahtab.
The back of Saba’s tongue swells and she reaches for her throat, moved by the urge to scratch. She swallows hard and looks at Farnaz’s frail body again. The image of her sister giving up, dropping to the bottom, forces itself in and is just as quickly replaced by the fisherman’s callused hands pulling them out. They are together again, letting go, then alternately disappearing into the black chasm below and being pulled into a boat.
Mahtab was there. She sang songs all the way back to shore. Where is she now?
Iran has grown a great many blemishes and stains that Mahtab has not seen. She was here just long enough to experience a child’s version of Shomal, seaside games, Norooz bonfires, and wading in the
shalizar
s; then she escaped. She took her bow and exited just in time. But here is something Saba has witnessed that even the Mahtab of Harvard hasn’t seen—maybe the journalist in her would want to see it, and she is imagining the stories of Saba’s life through newspaper clippings, as so often Saba has done for her.
I should leave this place soon,
Saba thinks.
Or maybe one day it will kill me too.