Rooftops of Tehran (12 page)

I was once watching a Hollywood film and noticed the restraint Americans exercise during funerals. I asked my father why we were so demonstrative and mournful as a people when dealing with death.

“This is a topic deserving of scholarly attention,” my dad said. “But you’re right. We are different. The intensity of our mourning has historic roots. A recurring theme in our history has been the massacre of our people, in what are now forgotten genocides at the hands of invaders like Alexander of Macedonia, the barbarian who burned down Persepolis; the Arabs, who brutalized our nation for hundreds of years; and Genghis Khan, who in the thirteenth century slaughtered nearly three million of our citizens. Mourning has become a very important aspect of our culture.” Then he put his hand on my shoulder. “When our child is butchered in front of our eyes, we bawl as if our soul wants to escape our body. When we’re violently wronged, we shriek. That’s the gift of history to us, son.” He shook his head and rubbed his temples. “Our only recourse in the face of unpardonable evil has been to wail inconsolably. I think, even now, we unconsciously identify death with oppression.”

So life goes on in our alley, but at a slower pace. Or at least, that’s how it seems. Time may be the most precious commodity humans possess, but it’s a real drag when it crawls by. I think what makes time precious is the speed with which it passes.

Zari doesn’t come into the yard anymore, Ahmed is still in Ghamsar, and I can’t stand being around Iraj, who’s forever babbling on about his stupid inventions. My father makes several attempts to talk to me about Doctor, but I avoid him in any way I can. I don’t know what I might say if I start talking about the events of that night. I close my eyes and imagine those last few moments on the roof again and again, and each time I duck before the agent sees me. But then I open my eyes and want to scream with pain. I decide that I need to start reading again. Reading is the best diversion for me. I read a lot of Darwin and Freud. I realize that there is more to these thinkers than Mr. Gorji, our religion teacher, talked about last year. I can’t remember how he got on the subject, but he told us that Freud was a pervert and Darwin was an atheist, and we should never read their work. The next day I started my search for books with the pervert’s and the atheist’s names on them.

The works are great, but I have a hard time staying focused. I wish I could see Zari, but I feel guilty even thinking about her now. I obsess about Doctor instead, and wonder if he knows that my carelessness gave him away. If I could write him a letter, I would tell him that I’m sorry, not just about the night he was arrested but for falling in love with his fiancée. I’m sorry I couldn’t be like Humphrey Bogart in
Casablanca
. I didn’t know he was wanted by the SAVAK. Of course, I knew that he was a Marxist, and I had prayed after the night of the roses that he would never get caught. If I knew he was coming home, I would have waited for the agents in the alley, and acted as his decoy, running in a different direction to make the agents chase me instead of him.

Oh, God, I hate myself. I hate myself more than I hate the bastard whose evil smile keeps me awake at nights. Again I close my eyes. Again I try to relive the moment when the man with the radio spotted me on the roof. Again I duck before he sees me—but reality remains unchanged. God, if only I could go back! I hate the finality of time.

I go to the roof for a few minutes, and when I look at the alley, I realize that the energy has been drained from our neighborhood. I study the shadow of the tree that my father planted in the yard the first day we moved in, and it doesn’t seem to move. Most of the kids just sit around and talk. No one plays soccer anymore. Parents don’t want the SAVAK back in the alley. They’ve told their children not to talk to anyone about what happened on Doctor’s night, but kids don’t understand enough to be scared. “Rebellion is sometimes a beautiful thing,” I heard Doctor say, once. I wonder if dictatorial regimes could survive if adults were more like children. Would anyone dare to take someone’s kid away in the middle of the night if we all rebelled against authority and control? I remember Doctor saying that anarchy is the precursor to order, and realize that I have no idea what anarchy means. I decide to go to the library and look for a book on the subject. Books are always a great diversion for me.

When I return, I see Iraj and a couple of other kids debriefing Ahmed on the events of Doctor’s night. He’s obviously upset. When the two of us are alone, he asks me how I’m feeling. To my embarrassment, tears run down my face.

“Why’re you crying?” Ahmed seems shocked. He has heard many times the story of how I didn’t cry when I broke my shin in three places.

“I gave him away,” I say. “I didn’t duck in time. The son of a bitch blew me a kiss. I’ll find him and kill him someday.”

Ahmed tries to calm me down. He wants to know everything that happened the night Doctor was arrested. I go through it all, just as I have many times in my thoughts in the last five days. I can’t stop crying as I tell him the story.

“Didn’t they tell you?” I beg him. “Didn’t they tell you that I gave him away? Who knows? Please, tell me.”

Ahmed swears that no one has even mentioned my name in relation to that evening.

“That doesn’t change the fact that I gave him away.” I hide my face in my hands.

“And did you make them chase him, too?” he asks forcefully. “Look, the clock didn’t start ticking at the moment the agent saw you on the roof. They were already looking for him. We don’t know where he was all summer, what he was doing, who was watching him. What do you think, they just showed up here, waited for you to look into Zari’s yard, and then jumped him? The search for him must’ve been going on for some time.”

I wipe my tears off, sniff a couple of times and say, “I just feel so bad.”

“Don’t,” Ahmed orders stoutly. “Doctor’s ordeal has nothing to do with you. You can’t be held responsible for his education and upbringing and what has gotten him to the point of being a Marxist and on the hunt list of the SAVAK.” Then he lights two cigarettes and gives me one. We sit quietly for a while.

“Why’re you reading this?” he asks when he notices my book on anarchism. I tell him about Mr. Gorji’s characterization of Darwin and Freud, my contempt for authority, my desire for everyone to defy dictatorship and my lack of familiarity with a political theory known as anarchism. Ahmed looks at me like I’m drunk. He obviously doesn’t have a clue what I’m talking about. He reminds me that our religion teacher also warned us about the evils of masturbation, and wonders if I’ve been shining my little pickle in defiance. I laugh my head off. It’s the first time I’ve laughed since they took Doctor away.

 

School starts in less than ten days, and I’m not looking forward to it. No one knows where Doctor is, or what is happening to him. Faheemeh visits Zari every day. They have become the best of friends. Ahmed stays away. He knows this is not the time for romance. Faheemeh comes to the roof to talk to us for a few minutes. She says that Zari cries all the time because she is worried about Doctor’s physical and emotional endurance under torture. Then Faheemeh puts her arm around my shoulder and says, “Don’t worry, sweetheart. Everything is going to work out okay.”

Deep down, I’m dying to find out if Zari ever asks about me, but I suppress the need with all my determination. Like Ahmed, I too know it’s best to stay away. The neighbors say that Doctor’s mother has aged a thousand years since his arrest. Her hair has turned gray, her face looks wrinkled, and her hands tremble all the time. She can’t open her mouth without crying. She spends most of her time outside the Evin Prison, begging the guards to tell her if her son is okay. Doctor’s father keeps quiet. Two agents showed up at their home one day and told him that the worst thing he could do for his son was to attract attention to his family. “Just wait this out,” he was told, “or you’ll never see your son again.” Doctor’s father has a desk job with the city now. He has learned how to write with his left hand. So he goes to work every day and pretends that nothing has happened to the son he loves more than life itself.

 

 

Ahmed asks me to define anarchism for him. I do but not in great detail and not enthusiastically.

“Do the world a favor, okay?” Ahmed mocks.

“What?”

“Don’t ever become a teacher. You suck at it.”

Then he tells me that he has a brilliant idea that will blow life and energy back into the alley. It’s about anarchy, he says, and when I insist on knowing more, he adds he still has no idea what anarchism is so how can I expect him to explain it?

I laugh and leave him alone.

We organize a get-together in the basement of my house. About fifteen boys our age show up from all over the alley. Iraj walks in carrying a circuit board that’s attached to a wheel, which turns every time he flips on a switch. He says he’s experimenting with power efficiency. “If we conserve energy, we won’t have these frequent blackouts in Tehran,” he says. As usual, everyone ignores him.

Suddenly, Ahmed makes his grand entrance. He is dressed as a professor, wearing his grandmother’s spectacles and his late grandfather’s black robe. He’s carrying a long ruler behind his back. Everyone begins to laugh. He shakes his ruler in our faces and orders us to shut up. We laugh louder as he gets more and more animated. He begins his lesson by informing us of today’s topic: masturbation. He tells us that he has a doctoral degree in masturbation from a university in Paris, and that he has published numerous articles and books on the subject. The laughter gets louder every time he says the word “masturbation.”

He silently looks from the left to the right of the room from underneath his round spectacles with his arms folded, then demands to know who masturbated last night. No one raises his hand. He walks up to me, hits me with the ruler for being a liar, and demands to see the palm of my right hand. I oblige, and he grabs my hand and shows it to everyone in the room.

“Look how soft the palm of his hand is. You know why? Olive oil, that’s why he has soft skin. Isn’t that right?” he asks as he looks at me from over his spectacles. Laughing, I say yes, and he hits me again with the ruler. He peers around the room as everyone waits to find out who his next victim will be. He spots Iraj.

“Show me your hand!” he screams.

Iraj shows the back of his hand as he doubles over with laughter. Ahmed hits him in the head with the ruler.

“The palm of your hand, you moron.”

Iraj shows him the palm of his hand.

“Soap?” He feels Iraj’s hand. “Too dry to be soap. This idiot is using laundry detergent.” He hits Iraj again. “Can you imagine how dry the skin on his penis is? Take your pants off, we want to see.”

Iraj holds on to his belt and shakes his head no.

“Do you want to see?” Ahmed asks the class.

“Yes! Yes! Yes!” everyone screams.

Ahmed pauses briefly, and then adds, “What’s wrong with a dried-up penis, you ask? What happens to leaves when they dry up?” He bends over and stares into Iraj’s eyes.

“They fall off, sir,” Iraj replies.

Ahmed starts hitting Iraj over and over with the ruler, uttering the warning one word at a time.

“That’s . . . what’s . . . going . . . to . . . happen . . . to . . . your . . . little . . . penis . . . if . . . you . . . keep . . . masturbating . . . with . . . laundry . . . detergent . . . you understand?”

Iraj shakes his head yes. He’s laughing so hard he can’t utter a word.

“I can’t hear you!” Ahmed screams.

“Yes, sir!” Iraj finally gasps.

Ahmed is a master performer. He keeps quiet while pacing away to give everyone time to laugh this out. As everyone settles down Iraj asks, “Would dishwashing detergent be better, sir?”

Ahmed flies toward him, the ruler flashing. I’m laughing so hard I can’t see through my tears. Ahmed hits Iraj over and over. He finally walks away from him and positions himself at the head of the room.

Then he shares with us his “state of the art” masturbation technique. He takes a banana out of his pocket, peals it, and carefully cuts the skin into little pieces. Then he takes one piece, places it between his thumb and his index finger, and pretends he’s masturbating. He tells everyone that banana is a nutritious food excellent for counteracting blindness that results from masturbation. I laugh so much I think I might puke.

When everyone leaves and Ahmed and I are alone, I tell him that he was brilliant and that the kids in the alley really appreciated his attempt to lift their spirits. We laugh at the idea that mothers up and down the alley will find it strange that their sons have such a craving for bananas that evening.

“When Doctor gets out,” I say, “I’ll tell him what you did, and how much it helped cheer everyone up.”

“You do that,” he says with a smile.

I study him for a while. I want to ask him why he thought his lesson was about anarchism, but I think I know, so I keep quiet.

My School and My Teachers

The first day of fall is the first day of school in Iran. That first day always feels different than all the other days of the year. The streets are crowded with boys and girls of all ages. Everyone seems purposeful and preoccupied with the thought of spending all day in class. Kids look more disciplined and more intent, even cleaner than usual, as if their mothers took the utmost care in preparing them for the day.

Iraj, Ahmed, and I walk to school together. Iraj blows his nose loudly into a white handkerchief and tells us his father thinks that Americans should be held responsible for the fate of all the revolutionaries arrested, tortured, and murdered by the government of Iran. Then he stops and looks inside his handkerchief, raising his eyebrows as if he’s impressed with what came out of his nose. He folds the handkerchief and puts it in his pocket.