Rooftops of Tehran (36 page)

“That would be very nice. Yes, very nice indeed,” she mumbles as she disappears inside.

Ahmed shakes his head and smiles. “My grandma’s stories are getting more creative and amusing. She is an amazing person. Did you know she was one of the first women in her town to do away with the chador?”

“No!” I reply, surprised.

“Most people don’t know it, but she was. And in Ghamsar, of all places! Not the most progressive city in the world.” A sad smile softens his face. “She was the first woman in her town to get a high school diploma. She was rebellious, tough-minded, and hard as a rock. Her parents married her off to my grandpa to get rid of her.” Ahmed smirks. “Grandma didn’t want him, hated him. In fifty years she never said an affectionate word to him, not that he expected it.”

I shake my head. Grandma’s endless dreams of Grandpa remind me a bit too much of my nightly search for Zari in the shadows. I wonder if someday I’ll be wandering around the neighborhood making up stories about Zari being a college professor or saving cats from burning buildings.

“He was a good man, and put up with her patiently,” Ahmed continues. “I think he was the only one who took her seriously. He never complained about her, either. Some of Grandpa’s friends thought he was a weak man. Neighbors in Ghamsar would say that he wasn’t a man at all, that he couldn’t take her in bed and that’s why she was as aggressive as she was. Grandpa didn’t mind, didn’t listen to any of it—but she did. So she had four kids in a row.”

A sly expression creeps over Ahmed’s face.

“I wonder if those were the only times she let him have her.”

I smile.

“Did you know that she’s an atheist?” Ahmed asks.

“No.”

“A woman of her age, with her upbringing in Ghamsar, not believing in God? Can you imagine? She’s lucky she wasn’t stoned to death. My dad says she has never prayed for anything, but that all of her wishes have come true.”

“How?”

“Grandpa,” Ahmed says, lighting up a cigarette. “He was the God she never worshipped, and now she sees him everywhere.”

An Angel Calling

My mother brings up hot tea, but I pretend to be asleep in my chair. She leaves the room without waking me up. I’ve told her that I fall asleep faster when I’m not in bed. Lying in bed seems to shift my brain into hyperactive chaos. I toss and turn and get frustrated, so I end up back in the chair with a book, dozing off after reading only a few pages.

I don’t know what time I really fall asleep, but my much-needed rest is suddenly interrupted by a woman’s cry. I’m not sure where the sound has come from, but I feel the hair on the back of my neck rise. It was undoubtedly the cry of a woman, and it definitely came from outside my window. I want to open my eyes and look outside, but I’m too tired. I listen carefully, only to hear the silence of an undisturbed night. I remember Ahmed’s grandma saying that she heard the girl next door crying.
Your wife misses you. She cries for you every night, like I cry for Grandpa.
A shiver ripples down my spine.

I hear another soft cry, this one from directly outside my window. A chill sweeps through me, and I begin to shake uncontrollably. I open my eyes and look at my watch. It’s four in the morning.

There is another cry. I throw my pillow on the ground and rush outside to the terrace. I’m afraid to look toward Zari’s room, but that’s where my attention is drawn. Her window is open, but the curtains are shut tight. Who’s crying, and why? Is it the Masked Angel? Why would she cry? Does she miss Zari? Maybe she’s homesick and misses her parents. Maybe she’s in love with a man back home and misses him. No, that can’t be; she doesn’t strike me as that kind of woman.

I listen carefully and attentively, but hear nothing more. I sit on the short wall that separates my balcony from Zari’s and wonder whether I should walk up to her window and look inside. A mild breeze moves her curtains; the light in her room is off. Should I cross over? What’s the use? It’s too dark, and I won’t be able to see anything.

The pounding of my heart fills my ears and chest. Suddenly, something moves beneath the short wall on Zari’s balcony. I look down—it’s the Masked Angel. She’s sitting motionless in the same spot where Zari and I used to sit, where I was sitting a few nights earlier dreaming of being with Zari. I want to say something, but my voice has died. I want to walk back to my room before she looks up, but I can’t move, just like the night Doctor was taken away.

Gracefully and silently, she stands up, as if she knew all along that I was there, as if she expected me to be there. She turns toward me. The moonlight penetrates the black lace that makes up the front of her burqa, and beneath it two moist, turquoise eyes shine like stars in a velvet sea of darkness. She breathes gently, and I feel there’s not enough oxygen in the universe to fill my lungs. The Masked Angel is about the same height, maybe even the same shape, although the veil makes it impossible to know for sure. It’s amazing how long a moment of utter stillness can last!

Suddenly a mild wind blows from the south and shifts her black burqa, reminding me of the evening when a piece of night fluttered outside my window. Oh, my God, could that have been the Masked Angel, woven into the darkness of the night, seamlessly riding the shadows, watching me rock back and forth in my chair?

The Masked Angel turns and starts walking back toward Zari’s room. The tail of her burqa drags behind her, collecting dust from the concrete. Her head is turned toward me as she walks away. I want to tell her to stop, but my voice is hiding. She enters the house and closes the glass door behind her. I sit for some time on the edge of the wall that separates our houses. Is the Masked Angel watching me at night? Why? What curiosity draws her to me? What did Zari tell her? Maybe she wants to see how badly I hurt.

Hours go by, but I’m sleepless.

Enshallah

Ahmed wasn’t kidding when he said that no one could break his spirit by beating him up in a stinking jail. He’s more defiant and rebellious than ever. He says what he wants, and does what pleases him. According to Iraj, he openly criticizes the school officials, especially Mr. Gorji, our onetime powerless religion teacher turned maniacal school principal.

“He’s a fascist,” Ahmed told everyone on the school grounds a week or so ago, when Mr. Gorji was standing only a few meters away.

“Who’s a fascist, Ahmed?” Mr. Gorji asked.

“Mussolini, sir. Mussolini was a fascist; Idi Amin is a fascist. There are a lot of fascists in the world, sir. A whole lot of fascists!” Mr. Gorji looked at his rosary, said a prayer, and walked away. “And you’re a fascist, sir,” Ahmed whispers. Mr. Gorji turned around and looked at Ahmed, who smiled as if he was not afraid of Mr. Gorji’s wrath at all.

“What’s he going to do to me?” Ahmed asked Faheemeh, who was worried Ahmed was going too far.

“He’ll make trouble for you, honey,” Faheemeh said, while pleading with me to reason with him. “Don’t you think? Please, tell him to stop this nonsense.”

One day, Mr. Gorji told Ahmed that he needed to get a haircut.

“My barber has left on vacation, Mr. Gorji,” Ahmed sniped.

“Really? Where to?”

“He’s gone to Afghanistan. He’s a drug smuggler, you know!”

Ahmed claims later he could tell Gorji wanted to slap him.

“The length of my hair is none of his business, don’t you think? Who does the son of a bitch think he is? He’s a control freak. Didn’t you tell me once that fascists are control freaks?”

“No,” I said, “you and I talked about anarchy, not fascism.”

“All right, then. I must have read it somewhere. Fascists are control freaks. That should be the definition of fascism in the dictionary.”

Faheemeh pleaded with him to stop. “You’re not going to win a war with your principal, so why do this?”

“Because I hate the son of a bitch,” Ahmed said.

Ahmed’s hatred for Mr. Gorji costs him dearly. The next afternoon Ahmed comes home with his head shaved. Mr. Gorji brought a barber to school and forced Ahmed to get a number-two buzz cut while all the students and teachers watched in disbelief.

“He walked around in the yard, staring into the eyes of the kids who had gathered around us, telling them that he is the ultimate authority at school and that his decisions and commands should never be challenged,” Ahmed recalls. The dejected look in Ahmed’s eyes and the dispirited tone of his voice tell me that he is having a difficult time with the humiliating experience.

“Did you put up a fight?” I ask.

“No,” he says. “I would have lost anyway. There’s no sense fighting powerful people because you will lose. You wait for the right moment to strike back and get even.”

“I’m sorry,” I say.

A few minutes later Faheemeh comes over. She looks at Ahmed’s head with a shocked look on her face.

“What did you do to yourself?” she asks, holding her fingers in front of her mouth.

“Gorji cut my hair,” Ahmed says, forcing a grin.

“How?”

“With a pair of clippers!” Ahmed responds, exasperated. Faheemeh tries to hold back her laughter.

“You didn’t hit him, did you?” she asks.

“No”—he scowls—“but I should have.”

“Well, I’m glad you didn’t,” Faheemeh says. “Did you say anything?”

“Yeah, after he was done, I looked in a mirror and asked if he could bring the sideburns up a little bit.”

Faheemeh puts her hand over her mouth and giggles. Ahmed looks at her with surprise.

“I’m sorry, but you look really funny!” she says, and finally laughs.

Ahmed widens his eyes at me. “She’s laughing!”

I give an exaggerated shrug, hiding my grin.

“She is mocking me!” Ahmed says.

“No, no, no,” Faheemeh soothes, then lets out a loud, boisterous laugh. “I just think you look really cute.”

Ahmed looks at me.

“You do look cute,” I say.

“I do?” he asks. “Really? How cute?”

“Really, really cute,” Faheemeh says.

Ahmed turns back to me, and I nod my head in all seriousness to confirm.

“Yeah, you’re right,” he says, walking around proudly. “We’ll call this the Ahmed Buzz and offer a free one to the kids in the alley. But only the kids in our own alley. Everybody else has to pay.” He looks at me. “Hey, you, you’re my first customer!” He runs inside the house and comes back with a pair of scissors in his hands and starts chasing me around the yard as Faheemeh laughs.

“Come here, you son of a bitch!” he yells. “I order you to get a haircut! Are you disobeying my supreme command? How dare you! You bastard son of a bitch!”

 

 

In the following days, Ahmed tries to avoid Mr. Gorji as much as possible. Knowing Ahmed, I’m sure he’s formulating a plan of attack. Mr. Gorji, in turn, shows up in almost all of Ahmed’s classes and sits in the back observing the teachers and the students.

“Yesterday, Gorji came to Mr. Bana’s geometry class,” Ahmed says. “From the second he walked in, I knew something was up. All the kids knew it, too. They all sat in their chairs with their backs straight, unsure where the ax was going to fall. But I knew. Gorji walked up to Mr. Bana and whispered something in his ear, then proceeded to the back of the room, where he had a good view of everyone. Mr. Bana didn’t seem happy about what he was asked to do. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other a couple of times, nervously looked at Mr. Gorji, walked back and forth in front of his desk, then finally whispered my name and asked me to go to the board. Bana asked me to solve a theorem I’d never seen before.” Ahmed looks down at his feet while touching his shaved head.

“What happened?” I ask.

“I couldn’t solve it, of course. So he gave me a zero and Mr. Gorji walked out with a satisfied smile on his face.”

“I’m sorry, honey,” Faheemeh says.

Ahmed turns to me. “You remember how much we used to hate Mr. Bana? Now we all like him. Isn’t that strange? Gorji makes everyone else look good. It’s like having pain in multiple parts of your body. You only feel the one that hurts the most.”

He then shakes his head, takes a deep breath, and says, “This zealot fraud is making the autocrats of yesterday look like angels of mercy. Isn’t that bizarre?”

“What does Moradi think about all of this?” I ask, referring to our discipline teacher.

“Moradi is totally powerless. Gorji hates Moradi because he likes the Americans. According to Gorji, there’s no nation in the world more deserving of hatred than the Americans, with the possible exception of the Israelis.”

“I don’t want to tell you what to do, but I think you need to find a way to make peace with him,” Faheemeh says.

Ahmed ignores Faheemeh’s comment. “Can you believe that bastard? He’s going to show up in all of my classes and get me in trouble!”

“I’m so sorry, honey,” Faheemeh says, beginning to cry.

“Oh, sweetheart,” Ahmed soothes with a gentle smile on his face, “don’t worry. Please, don’t.”

Faheemeh’s tears have a strong impact on Ahmed because from that day on, he doesn’t say much about his battles with Mr. Gorji. However, I notice that he reads the Koran all the time.

“Becoming religious?” I ask.

“Of course,” he says with a smirk on his face.

I wonder what he’s up to, but don’t dare to ask. One night I hear him reciting verses out loud.

“You memorized all that?” I ask, impressed.

“Yep,” he responds.

“How come?”

“Enshallah—God willing—you will find out soon.” Then he smiles and walks away while reciting another verse.

 

I learn the reason for Ahmed’s preoccupation with the Koran the following day, after school, when I hear the whole story. Mr. Gorji showed up at Mr. Bana’s class, said hello to everyone, recited a prayer, then proceeded to the back of the classroom, where he signaled Mr. Bana to call on Ahmed. Mr. Bana, who didn’t approve of Mr. Gorji’s tactics and frequent visits to his class, looked understandably dejected. Ahmed immediately raised his hand and asked loudly if he could ask a question.