Brides of Blood (25 page)

Beyond rows of marble stones where the casualties of the Revolution lay buried were glass shrines under Islam’s green flag, and Shi’a’s black, decked with fresh fruit and plastic tulips, the flower of martyrdom. Like the wedding bowers of the dead in Dharvazeh Ghor, they had been erected in memory of young men slain in the war with Iraq, and contained personal mementos, a favorite book, or childhood toy, the simple relics of stunted lives. Outside the cemetery fence, opposite a fountain erupting in torrents of bluish red, Darius parked at a hovel distinguishable from its neighbors by the American flag in fresh enamel on the doorstep. A mullah in a smart abayah and immaculate white turban opened the door before Darius could knock. His beard, sculpted into a perfect silver U, was lightly hennaed. “Come in, please,” he said. “We have been expecting you.”

Darius stepped out of his shoes and entered a living room smaller even than Maryam Lajevardi’s. The cheap carpeting was covered in sofray? on which black ants gorged on spilled sugar. There would be no cassette players hidden in the corners here, no Beatles. A woman whose green silk blouse was pulled above her breast was nursing a girl at least two years old while a boy at her knees ground the wheels of a plastic army truck against a bare spot on the floor. The woman carried her daughter from the room, nearly colliding with Bijan, who had come in wearing natty brown desert fatigues, but was out of uniform in stocking feet.

“It is an honor to have you as a guest in my house,” he said to Darius. “Please, let me bring you tea.”

Darius squatted on a flat cushion beside the mullah with the hennaed beard.

“Ahmad,” Bijan said, “I am proud to introduce you to Darius Bakhtiar, the famous homicide chief for the National Police in all of the district of Teheran.”

Proud perhaps, Darius thought, but not happy. Bijan looked like a peasant forced to serve up his last scrap of food to the emissary of a malignant king.

The mullah jabbed a toothpick in his mouth beside a cigarette with a gold paper filter. He nodded.

“Hojjatoleslam Sayyid Ahmad Sarmadi has been adviser to the Bon Yad Monkerat for many years,” Bijan said. “Without his help and spiritual guidance we could not have taken on the littlest part of our work for the glory of God.”

Sarmadi touched a lighter to the cigarette, basking in Bijan’s praise and then a cloud of blue smoke.

“… He is also my former son-in-law.”

Darius noticed a yellow stain in the hennaed silver. The mullah was in his fifties, older than Bijan by two decades. The little girl ran into the living room clinging to a rag doll dripping cotton batting. “Daddy,” she said, “Fatemeh want to play with Uncle.”

“Not now, my precious. Ahmad and I have important things to talk about.”

Pouting, the toddler started across the room. Bijan wrapped his arms around her, and turned her toward Darius.

“You must meet my children. Muhammad,” he called to the little boy, “say hello to Lieutenant Colonel Bakhtiar.”

The child spun the wheels faster, drowning out his fathers command. “Muhammad is eight, the light of my life,” Bijan said. “His sister, Fatemeh, was two years old last month. She is Ahmad’s former wife.”

Bijan released the little girl, who ran to her brother. The children’s mother came back, tucking a wisp of hair under a burgundy chador. She placed three glasses in saucers on the sofray along with some cookies that gave off the scent of jasmine. Darius clamped a cube of sugar in his teeth and swallowed the scalding tea watching Fatemeh bring an imaginary cup to the frayed lips of her doll.

“Ahmad,” Bijan said, “is a friend of many years. Long before he began to advise the Bon Yad he was welcome at my house. As you see, we live simply, without air-conditioning or any of the luxuries you have in the northern part of the city. Not even a good breeze. In this heat it is inconvenient for my wife to have to put on her chador each time Ahmad visits. So last month, when Fatemeh turned two, we made her seegah for Ahmad. After one hour the terms of the marriage contract expired, and Fatemeh and Ahmad were single again, and free to go their own ways. But Ahmad will be our former son-in-law for all time, and now my wife no longer has to veil herself in his presence. It makes life easier sometimes when we can skirt the rules. But I don’t have to tell you—”

Darius brushed ants away from his feet. “What did you want to see me about?”

“Because of criticism leveled at you from many areas,” Bijan turned squarely toward Darius, “it has been decided by the Revolutionary Prosecutor, Mr. Zakir, to replace you as chief of the homicide bureau. In these perilous times, when the nation is threatened as never before, we must be able to count absolutely on persons in positions of responsibility. Your former membership in the shah’s secret police disqualifies you from this trust. It is unreasonable to argue that you be allowed to continue in your present role.”

“What you’re telling me,” Darius said, “is the Komiteh is purging Homicide.”

“That is not at all the case. Other changes are anticipated gradually, over a period of years, and if God wills it you will be allowed to remain a member of the police and draw a regular salary. Your Lieutenant Ghaffari will be promoted to captain and named the new homicide commander in your place. Since he is lacking in administrative experience, he will report to Hojjatoleslam Sarmadi, who will concentrate his reforms on strengthening the men’s loyalty to the regime.”

Translated, Darius knew, this meant that until the Revolutionary Prosecutor was ready to move forcefully, the pompous ass with the reddened beard would be Zakir’s personal spy in Homicide, harassing the men who didn’t conform to the changing standard of piety, relaying bureau gossip that the resident spy was letting by—who made what joke about the way which ayatollah wound his turban—fabricating the case to bring down the National Police. Now Sarmadi picked up from Bijan, going on how the first order of business would be to issue a volume of the Imam’s sermons to the men and, after they had mastered its elementary lessons, to have them study
Forbidden Occupations: The Prohibition of Seeking Profit in Filthy, Unclean and Dead Things.

“I will demand that investigators be required to take the time for daily prayers,” Sarmadi continued. “Prayer instills a favorable attitude for pursuing their heavy responsibilities …”

Though he had been waiting for the axe to fall, the start of its descent left Darius stunned. And nauseated by the heat, reeling from the withering assault of the Padkis, he shut his ears to what Sarmadi was saying. Why had he been summoned to this inferno when the logical place to fire him was the homicide bureau? Was Bijan so proud of his family, and of the grinding poverty that was proof of his integrity? Or did Sarmadi anticipate a rebellion when he was announced to the men as religious commissar? Still another hypothesis existed, too plausible to put out of mind—Sarmadi’s mind, which Darius feared would elevate it first to strategy and then to bold tactic—that it had been decided to test Darius’s reaction to the transfer of power away from headquarters, where an accident easily could be arranged should he protest too vehemently. Aware, suddenly, that his eyes were starting to glaze, he focused on the mullah, who was standing over him with his hand outstretched.

“We will confer again soon,” Sarmadi said, “to discuss how to facilitate the changes with the least disruption. It was an instructive experience for me to have met you.”

Sarmadi kissed the children on his way to the door, and then Darius heard the roar of a car he hadn’t noticed on the street. Bijan’s wife came back into the living room to clear the dishes and whisk the loose sugar into the rugs.

“Was it necessary for you to have made so obvious your resentment of Ahmad?” Bijan said to Darius. “He is a brilliant marja, a genius when it comes to the application of Islamic law to day-to-day problems, but greedy for the respect due him. He is also a sitting member of the Council of Guardians, its brightest young light, with connections that reach to the seat of power in the Islamic Republican Party, even to the President of the republic. There is nothing he cannot accomplish once he puts his mind to it.”

“His ideas are inane, worse than useless.”

“You will be amazed at how he makes things run better in the homicide bureau.” Bijan laced up black hobnail boots. “… if you are still around. May I ask a favor? My car is out of service. If you are going back near police headquarters I need a ride to Khayyam Avenue, intersection of Panzdah-e-Khordad. I would like to visit my other wives and son.”

Bijan shouldered his Uzi and followed Darius outside. The sun floated in chemical haze over the Paycon, which threw heat like an oven when Darius opened his door. He rolled down the windows and stood with Bijan on the shadeless sidewalk, waiting for the interior to cool.

“You must excuse my wife’s behavior; it was not meant to be insulting. We have not been on the best of terms lately.” Bijan’s tone, not friendly, suggested the casual intimacy of shared experience. “I have been married to Bilqais for nine years. Four years ago, I contracted with another woman to be my seegah, who even now Bilqais does not accept. This is a real temporary marriage, not a sham for convenience sake, like Ahmad and Fatemeh’s.” Bijan pressed his hand against the passenger’s seat, and then slid inside the car. Darius got in after him, sucking air through his teeth as the upholstery burned his thighs. “I have decided to leave my other wife, and take a younger seegah, a widow of the imposed war. I have a year-old boy with my second wife, and would like to keep her, but Bilqais says I cannot afford three households.”

Traffic moved slowly toward a roadblock in the middle of the street. Darius let up on the gas as basijis rushed the car from both sides, teenage boys carrying Kalashnikovs at the knee. It was not uncommon to be stopped five or six times on a short trip through the city and checked for drunkenness and contraband. Unmarried couples found traveling together were at the risk of being whipped on the spot. Bijan poked his head out and snapped at the young volunteers, who waved the Paycon around the line of waiting cars and through the barricade. “… You know how these jealous women are,” he said to Darius.

At a house behind a tumbledown wall covered in revolutionary graffiti Bijan signaled to stop. “I want you to see something,” he said, and lifted the lid on a small silver paper box.

Inside was a bronze figurine of a ferocious lion. Darius’s hand hovered over the open box, but he did not touch the statuette.

“Do you think my new seegah will like it? It is a Lurestan miniature, from pre-Islamic Persia.”

Darius nodded. “I’ve seen one like it at the Archaeological Museum.”

“I saw this one at the museum, too,” Bijan said. “In the gift shop. It is a facsimile, but, for me, exquisite just the same. If I were as wealthy as the shah I would collect the originals for a hobby. And fine Hamadan camel’s hair carpets. No other country has a culture to match ours. None.”

Bijan replaced the top. He was out of the car when he said, “I have been so wrapped up in my selfish concerns that I almost forgot to ask: What did you find out about the murder of the girl in Shemiran? When will you have her killer?”

“I’m the one who was had.”

“I do not understand your meaning.”

“Don’t you? The Revolutionary Guards followed me till I ran down my best witness in Mashad. Then they killed him.”

“A heroin trader, I was told.” Bijan backed toward the house. “It is just as well.”

“You wanted him silenced. You used me as one of his executioners.”

But what was he making a fuss about? Of course he was an executioner. Hadn’t he slain Bijan’s uncle for crimes that also could not be proved? Where was the authority for his protest when he was no different than the gunmen who had taken advantage of him?

“Now
you
don’t understand,” Bijan said. “It is a miserable business, I know, being a homicide investigator, and having to witness gruesome things, but sometimes necessary. You must look at the bright side—soon you won’t have to deal with this kind of unpleasantness. You will put violent death and tortured women behind you, so you can worry about more important problems.” He turned and went away, holding his rifle against his leg like the basijis, but with his hand on the trigger guard. “Problems like women who are alive.”

The grossly overweight girl Darius saw at the door did not seem happy to have company, not smiling until Bijan presented her with the silver box. Not so much a gift, Darius thought, as a bribe, which she accepted without looking inside, as he had taken Rahgozar without first assessing the cost.

T
HE ISLAMIC REGIME MUST
be serious in all things, the Imam had stated. There is no fun in Islam; there can be no fun in whatever is serious. Islam does not permit swimming in the sea, and is opposed to radio and television serials. Islam, however, allows marksmanship, archery, horseback riding, wrestling, and other sports that help to develop military skills.

There were no serials on the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting Network, derided throughout Teheran as mullahvision, which beamed a steady diet of religious programming, wildlife documentaries, and educational shows for children. Occasionally, one of the capital’s two stations interrupted its regular schedule for a major sporting event. Tonight, following
Desert Architecture,
and prior to
Shrines of Iran,
the finals of the national weightlifting championships would be broadcast from the city of Shiraz.

Darius lay on the convertible sofa in his new apartment in the north Teheran neighborhood of Africa, trying to work up enthusiasm for the competition. He was thrilled more with the bottle of Padkis that Mehta had bestowed upon him. He drank and dozed, sometimes glancing at the screen while he toyed with an empty bottle of vodka into which he had poked his big toe, raising and slowly letting it down, going for a world record in the event in his weight division.

Around midnight, the phone rang. As he lumbered groggily across the floor, he skidded in wetness, and knew without looking that he was bleeding.

“Shit,” he said, and bent to knot his handkerchief around his toe. The sound of cheering turned him back toward the screen, where a deceptively slight man hoisted a barbell almost to his shoulders before toppling from the platform. The first sensation of pain cleared his head as he grabbed the receiver. “Shit,” he said again. “Who is it?”