Rooftops of Tehran (22 page)

“If I knew a way, I would find it.”

“What does that mean?” I ask.

He sits there and stares at me with his sad black eyes that seem to be turning gray. His gaze is kind, and I am not afraid of him anymore.

“If I knew a song, I would sing it,” he murmurs.

“Maybe someday you can tell me what that means, and why I’m here.”

The old man says nothing.

“I can’t figure it out,” I whisper. “Is any of this real?”

I wait for a reaction from him, but he just stares at me.

“I don’t feel connected to anything. It’s like I just came into this world from another place, but I can’t remember the place I came from, either. It seems as if I’m neither here nor there, not living but not dead. Is this what people mean when they say someone has lost his mind?”

The old man still doesn’t say anything. I can’t keep my eyes open, but I want to understand his cryptic chants. I want to know how he feels, what he thinks, why he is in my room, but I am too tired.

I can’t tell how much later it is when I hear Apple Face talking to my parents in the hallway.

“What’s going to happen when he remembers?” my father asks.

“It’ll be devastating,” Apple Face answers. My mother starts to cry, and I wonder about this thing I am supposed to remember that will be so devastating.

We continue our trip toward the province of Mazandaran, zigzagging up the dangerous roads of the Kandovan and down toward the north, where you can smell the heady salt of the Caspian Sea from miles away. Fifty kilometers per hour is the maximum speed you can travel through these mountains, even if you are the best driver in the world. My grandfather used to say that the Nazis built the winding Kandovan road to lacerate the much-detested “SS” shape into our psyche. The Russians tried to stop them, but they failed as they always do when faced with the brutality of the Western powers.

These roads are so treacherous that hundreds of people die every year trying to navigate them. According to one of my uncles, as a future engineer I’m destined to build the four-lane highway that will connect Tehran to Mazandaran, saving thousands of lives in the years to come. Throughout the journey, we see people stopped on the shoulders, cooling off their overheated radiators and snapping a picture or two of the breathtaking scenery—valleys and canyons that engrave the belly of Mother Nature.

We finally reach the village, our destination, but the gravel road makes it impossible to drive very fast. The people in the village look at us curiously, and some wave as we drive by. I’m reminded of Doctor, who was intrigued by the lives of people in small villages, always talking about building roads, digging wells, and bringing electrical power and other technologies to these remote areas.

The houses are built on the slopes of the mountains, and most of them look small and worn down, thanks to their rusted tin roofs. The whole village consists of a couple of small grocery stores, a coffeehouse, a cheese-yogurt shop, a bakery, a butcher shop, a public bathhouse, and a mosque—all conveniently built around an unusually large square. It takes us less than three minutes to drive from one side of the village to the other. The smell of burning wood and cow dung sears the inside of my nose. There are horses and cows on the road, and we have to stop frequently to let them cross. Ahmed has never been to this part of the country, so he watches everything with quiet curiosity.

We stop outside a big house surrounded by tall walls, its main entrance gated by gigantic metal doors. My father gets out with a smile on his face. Soon, a man—Mr. Kasravi, an old friend of my father’s—comes out to greet us. “Don’t let his easy demeanor fool you,” my father whispers. “He is a very important man.”

I remember Dad and Mr. Mehrbaan talking about him. He is the richest man in the village, a landowner who also raises cattle and sheep. He spends part of his time in Noshahr, a city by the Caspian Sea, where he owns various stores and a large motel. His wife, Goli Jaan, a simple-looking woman, rushes out to greet us. Soon, servants and maids hurry toward us, dragging a sheep behind them. I know what comes next. I try not to look when they slaughter the poor creature under our feet. Out of the corner of my eye I see the animal struggling and wonder if he knows we are responsible for his ill fate.

Mr. Kasravi shakes my hand and embraces me as if he has known me for years. He asks me if I remember him, and I politely say no. He says that I used to call him “Uncle Kasravi” when I was very little. My father smiles, and adds that I used to call Goli Jaan “Aunt Goli.” Mr. Kasravi shakes hands with Ahmed and welcomes him to his humble dwellings.

“You’ve grown so much,” Goli Jaan says to me. “Look at you! You’re a man now.”

We are taken to a room designed for guests. Goli Jaan brings in a crystal bowl full of big red and green apples, oranges, and grapes. “Everything is from our own garden,” she says proudly. “Please help yourselves. This is much better than the stuff you get in Tehran—fresh off the trees. I picked them myself just a few minutes ago. Go ahead, please eat.”

Mr. Kasravi is tall, dark, and around fifty. He has an animated voice, and tends to repeat himself at the end of each sentence. It is almost impossible to listen to him with a straight face, especially with Ahmed around to pass amused looks to.

“So how are you, my friend? Really, how are you?” Mr. Kasravi asks my father. He and Goli Jaan have a son, Mustafa, who is around my age, as well as a four-year-old daughter named Shabnam. Both children are sitting on the floor on opposite sides of their father’s chair. Goli Jaan finally sits down and asks about my mother: how she’s doing, what she looks like now, if she still looks young for her age, why she didn’t come along. Then she tells me how wonderful my mother is, and that she loves her and misses her a lot.

“Yes, she does,” Mr. Kasravi confirms. “She always tells me that she misses your mom a lot.”

Ahmed looks at me and covers his upper lip with his lower one to hide his smile. An elderly maid brings in tea. Goli Jaan insists that we drink our tea before it gets too cold. “This is Lahijan tea, the best in the world,” she urges.

“What makes Lahijan tea the best in the world?” Ahmed asks in a whisper. “I always wondered about that.”

“The taste, the aroma, and the Persian pride,” I whisper back.

Ahmed smiles.

“I’m extremely excited to have you in my humble dwelling, and can’t wait to show you around, really, I can’t wait,” Mr. Kasravi says. “Things have changed a lot around here,” he tells my father. “Things aren’t like they used to be, not at all like they used to be.” Then he turns to Ahmed and me. “Do you know how to ride a horse?”

We both shake our heads no.

“Mustafa will be happy to teach you, very happy to teach you,” he says as he looks at his son. Mustafa smiles and nods to let us know that he agrees.

“They’re great athletes,” my father says. “They will learn in no time.”

Predictably, the adults begin to talk about the past. Mr. Kasravi turns to me and says, “Your father was a rebel, definitely a rebel. I always thought he would end up in prison and I would have to pull strings to get him out.”

Dad shrugs his shoulders and mumbles, “Everything changes when you marry and have a child.”

Then he talks about Mr. Mehrbaan. “He was our hotheaded radical,” Mr. Kasravi remembers soberly. “We used to call him Karl because he reminded us of a young Karl Marx. It’s tragic that he has spent most of his life behind bars. . . . Very tragic.” Then Mr. Kasravi looks at Ahmed and me. “I also heard about your friend Doctor. I’m so sorry. I really am very sorry.”

After tea we go to Mr. Kasravi’s stable, where he has already picked a horse for each of us. Mustafa helps Ahmed and me get on our horses. I thank Mustafa, but he doesn’t respond. He just smiles and walks to his own horse.

Riding a live animal, controlling it with the reins and seeing the world from that high up, feels weird to me. I glance at Ahmed. He’s holding the reins tightly, his body seems tense, and his face looks anxious. “Don’t they have bikes?” he whispers.

We ride our horses through the village square. The path we travel is uneven, obviously beaten out by hooves and the wheels of
droshkies
—horse-drawn carriages, cars, trucks, and tractors traveling in and out of the village through the rainy season. Here and there we hear a rooster crowing, a dog barking, or a cow mooing.

We ride out of the village and head toward the hills. Mustafa rides ahead of everyone else. Every once in a while, he stops, turns around, then looks at us and moves his right hand to indicate a march forward.

“What do you think he’s doing?” I ask Ahmed in a whisper.

“He’s scouting for Indians,” Ahmed responds with a smirk. “I hear Cochise got tired of getting killed by John Wayne in those damn Zionist movies, so he finally said fuck it, and moved to this region.”

I try not to laugh out loud.

Ahmed and I have a hard time keeping ourselves balanced on our horses as they climb the slopes. I hear Ahmed mumbling profanities under his breath, a grin on his face. Mr. Kasravi and my father ride a few steps ahead of us, but far behind Mustafa.

“Get to know your horses and let them get to know you,” Mr. Kasravi advises us over his shoulder.

Ahmed bends over and whispers in his horse’s ears, “Hi, I’m Ahmed. What’s your name?” I tell him to stop fooling around.

When we get to the top of the hill, Mr. Kasravi points to the village and says, “That’s the oldest square in our region. It was built about three hundred years ago. There is something special about that square, don’t you think?”

I look back at the square, trying to figure out what’s special about it.

“You do know why they used to build squares in the centers of most Iranian towns and villages, don’t you?” he continues.

“Yes,” I respond.

Ahmed shoots me a surprised look.

“In the old days, everything happened in the squares, happy occasions as well as dreadful events,” I say. “It was a gathering place.”

My father shakes his head in confirmation. I think I notice a flash of pride in his eyes. Mr. Kasravi smiles, encouraging me to continue.

“The square was also where they punished the criminals so people could watch and learn: entertainment and education. Education because torture was used to deter potential criminals, and entertainment because people came from all over to watch these events.”

Mr. Kasravi seems utterly impressed with my knowledge. He shakes his head and says that I’m right. Then he speaks of the cruel punishments administered to thousands of people during the Qajar regime. “This was the most disgraceful period in our beloved country’s history. It was the Qajars and their backward policies that kept Iran from developing into a modern country. We could have been a superpower in the world, yes, sir, a superpower.” He takes a big puff on his cigarette.

Ahmed leans over and whispers to me, “Where the fuck did you learn all this shit?”

“Books!” I whisper back. He immediately turns his head toward the square. He knows I’m scolding him again for not reading.

“So what do you know about the Qajars?” Mr. Kasravi asks.

“There were seven kings in the dynasty, starting with Agha Mohammed Khan of Qajar and ending with Ahmed Shah, who was overthrown by the father of our current king in the 1920s,” I say. Then in a confident tone that surprises even me, I add, “I agree with you, Mr. Kasravi. The Qajars’ incompetence ruined Iran during their two-hundred-year rule.”

Mr. Kasravi looks at my father and nods. I throw a sideways look at Ahmed, who shakes his head and whispers, “Son of a bitch.”

“My father knew neighbors, relatives, and friends of the family who were beaten, flogged, and hanged in that square,” Mr. Kasravi says, genuinely upset. “I wonder why no one has burned the place down, why no one has driven a bulldozer over it. Maybe I should do that, yes, maybe I should.”

The pensive look on his face makes me wonder if he’s truly contemplating driving a bulldozer through the square.

“People forget how bad it used to be in this country. Did you know we had no prisons until the Shah’s father overthrew the Qajar dynasty? Did you know that?”

I shake my head no.

“You dumb-ass son of a bitch!” Ahmed murmurs, as if feeling deep disappointment.

“No prisons, no prisons at all. Imprisonment was a totally foreign concept in our culture, a totally foreign concept. They’d cut people’s hands off, amputate their legs, cut off their ears, and then kill them or release them. That’s how criminals were punished.”

“Wow,” Ahmed whispers.

“Over six thousand prisons have been built in Iran since the Shah’s father took over fifty years ago. People think that’s bad, but I think it’s better than having a few million people punished and humiliated in public. Penal torture and the public humiliation of criminals had to stop, it just had to stop. Even criminals have a right to dignity! I would’ve died if I saw Mehrbaan tortured and beaten in public,” Mr. Kasravi says.

I suddenly realize the purpose of our trip. My father had no business to conduct here. Mr. Kasravi is giving us a history lesson, justifying what is happening in our political jails by comparing it to the abhorrent atrocities committed under the Qajars.

It’s not proper to get mad at your father, but I feel a burning sensation in the pit of my stomach. I slow my horse to separate myself from the pack while thinking: Is abandoning public torture in favor of torture behind prison walls a great leap toward modernization and democracy? Did Mr. Mehrbaan feel less pain when the SAVAK agents were putting out their cigarettes on his chest, arms, and buttocks? I increase the distance between us even more by pulling back on the horse’s reins.

The sun is out, but I can smell the scent of coming rain as clouds roll in off the sea. We soon reach a pristine mountain stream, where we water our horses and rest for a little while before heading back to Mr. Kasravi’s house.