Rooftops of Tehran (5 page)

“Of course,” I said with a smile, deciding right then and there that I wanted to be just like him when I grew up: kind, smart, visionary, and yes, idealistic, too. At that moment Zari walked up to us with a tray of cool drinks. “You must be thirsty,” she said to me, her voice a sweet sound that hummed in my ears. “I’ve been watching you. You haven’t had anything since you walked in the door.”

She has been watching me? Wow!
Then I heard Doctor’s voice telling me to drink up. It seemed as if his words suffered a delay between his lips and my ears because my heart had stumbled and was caught so completely by the sound of Zari’s voice. Looking at Doctor, I wondered how I could so faithfully and simultaneously admire and envy him.

Doctor has had to work to help support his family since he was twelve years old, when his father suffered a debilitating accident in the machine shop where he was in charge of heating metal for processing purposes.

“One day, at the end of a double shift, my father was so tired that he fell asleep for a few seconds,” Doctor told me once, his eyes filling. “His right hand was burned so severely that it had to be amputated the second he arrived at the hospital. Years before that day, when I was just a kid, he used to get severe migraines. When I’d ask him what I could do to make his pain go away, he’d smile and ask me to kiss his forehead. As soon as my kiss had landed, he’d jump up and down and say that the headache had disappeared.” Doctor shook his head with a sad smile. “He’d thank me and give me a coin. That’s when he started calling me Doctor. For a long time I thought my kisses could cure him, so every night he was in the hospital after the amputation I sat by his bed and kissed his heavily bandaged arm while he slept.” Doctor massaged his forehead, as if to work the worry from his skin, then added, “They fired him for being careless, after twenty-five years of loyal labor. That’s capitalism for you.”

 

Watching Doctor argue politics and religion—the only two topics he gets passionate about—is like imagining the majestic and serene Mount Damavand belching smoke into the sky. He hates the Shah and the
mullahs
, the educated religious officials. “The Shah is a dictator and a puppet of the West,” he says, “and I’d rather kiss a rattlesnake on the lips than shake hands with a mullah.”

Doctor’s hatred for the mullahs is so deep that he was reluctant to summon our local clergyman to carry out his grandfather’s funeral ceremonies. “Why do we need him?” he kept arguing with his father. Eventually, however, he had to give in to his parents’ desire for a traditional funeral. At the time, Doctor was a freshman at the university and I was in the tenth grade. Seeing how distraught he appeared over his mission, I offered to go along with him, and he eagerly accepted. The mullah was a middle-aged fat man with a big belly and a thick salt-and-pepper beard. He had a white turban wrapped around his shaved head, and wore a white shirt and black pants under a chestnut brown robe. He seemed genuinely sympathetic to Doctor’s loss, and wanted to know how old the deceased was, how he died, who was mourning the death of the poor man, and so on. I had heard such horror stories of the wicked ways of the mullahs from Doctor that the friendly vibes coming from this gentle, good-natured man left me pleasantly surprised. As he was collecting information about the deceased, he suddenly dropped his gaze and asked Doctor, “Now, how old did you say your grandma is?”

“Sixty-two,” Doctor answered, hesitantly.

“Not very old,” the mullah noted, trying to appear casual. “Who will take care of her now? She has so many years ahead of her, the poor, lonely lady.” He put his right hand on Doctor’s shoulder and, with one of those looks that adults give kids when teaching them a lesson, said, “You know, my son, when God closes one door he always opens another! Now, where did you say your grandma lives?”

Doctor’s face stiffened with rage. He batted the mullah’s hand from his shoulder and turned on his heel to march out of the mosque. I hurried to follow, and heard Doctor cursing under his breath. “Fucking prick!” he spat. “He’s trying to pick up my grandma. If he even
thinks
about her, I’ll rip the turban from his ugly head and strangle him with it.”

 

 

Doctor could be sentenced to many years in prison if the SAVAK—the Shah’s secret police force—catches him with his collection of government-banned books. One day, we are walking home from a bookstore when I tell him about how my father used to keep banned books in a little vault he had built in the closet.

“When I was six years old, the SAVAK raided our house,” I say. “My mother tried to stop them from entering the yard, but they pushed her out of the way. My dad was reading in his study, but when he heard the commotion he dropped the book on the floor and ran from the room. Instinctively, I picked up the book, walked into the vault and shut the door behind me. I have no idea why, except maybe because my father used to call the vault ‘our secret’ and made me promise not to tell anyone about it.”

The bright smile on Doctor’s face encourages me to finish the story.

“The agents searched the house for a couple of hours, but didn’t find anything. They left empty-handed, and since then my father doesn’t keep banned books in the house.”

“I’m glad you didn’t run out of air in there,” Doctor says in a worried tone.

“I don’t remember it getting bad at all,” I say.

Doctor takes his glasses off and puts a gentle hand on my shoulder, speaking softly. “Has anyone ever told you that you have
That
?” I must look thoroughly confused. “You’ve never heard of
That
?” he asks, surprised.

I shake my head no.

“It’s a priceless quality that’s impossible to define, really,” he explains, “but you recognize it in the actions of great people.”

Showering friends and strangers with inflated but disingenuous compliments is a customary tradition in Iran called
taarof
, but looking into Doctor’s eyes, I don’t think he’s
taarof
-ing.

Some great person I am
, I think, as the heat of embarrassment is joined by the heat of shame climbing up my chest and neck,
secretly desiring my friend’s fiancée and itching to use my new boxing skills to break the face of some bully
.

Sensing my unease, Doctor changes the topic. “You know how they caught the gang, don’t you?” he says, referring to the group of young men and women who have been arrested by the SAVAK for plotting to kill the Shah. “They were looking for illegal books in the home of one of the members and found the plans.”

I nod, aware that for weeks now the media has been promising that a sensational trial will be broadcast live on television, the first time in our history that an event like this is being shown on TV. Most of the time the fact that the opposition even exists—the Toodeh party, the Communists, the Islamist Marxists—is denied, or those groups are referred to as
kharab-kars
—subversive activists, terrorists, and people who commit appalling acts in the name of politics. According to the media, Iran is a unified nation in the service of the King of the Kings: the Shahanshah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. Acknowledging the existence of political opposition is considered blasphemous by the SAVAK. One may as well deny the existence of God. So despite the arrests, the tortures, and the incessant suppression of the opposition groups, adulation of the Shah continues as if the country is a model state for democracy.

“People say that the gang members will cry and beg for forgiveness on live television,” I add, “and then the Shah will pardon them in an orchestrated attempt to make him look like a benevolent, merciful leader.”

I see a strange expression spring to life on Doctor’s face, almost a sneer. He shakes his head and says, “But the circus and its ringmaster may be in for a surprise.”

In the alley, Doctor and I find Ahmed’s grandmother wandering around as if lost.

“Have you seen my husband?” she asks, peering sweetly at us.

Doctor and I exchange a look, knowing that her husband died two years ago.

“No, I haven’t seen him for a while, Grandma,” Doctor says. “Is there anything we can do for you?”

Grandma pauses to think. “It’s very strange,” she muses. “No one has seen him since we buried him a couple of years ago. Have I ever told you how my husband and I met?” Both Doctor and I have heard this story a million times, but we smile and shake our heads no. Grandma describes again how she met her husband at a party in the American embassy, and even though he was married to forty-three other women at the time, he fell in love with her and divorced all of his wives to marry her. She says he remained faithful to her until the day he died trying to save a cat from a burning house.

“What a beautiful story, Grandma,” Doctor says. “He must really have loved you, and he certainly was a brave, compassionate man.”

“Yes, he was a brave man,” Grandma echoes, as she shuffles away. “He was a compassionate man.”

Doctor and I tip our chins to our chests, both aware that Ahmed’s grandfather never visited the American embassy, didn’t have forty-three wives, and definitely would not have risked his life to save a cat because he hated them passionately.

That night a number of our family and friends come over for dinner to watch the trials with my parents and me. The house buzzes with excitement and anticipation. The alley has emptied by the time the judge’s gavel announces the start of the proceedings.

The accused take the podium one by one, most of them confessing and begging for the Shah’s pardon. They read their testimonies from prepared documents whose words are carefully chosen to ensure that any mention of the royal family is respectful. Some of the gang members weep openly, appealing to the queen as the mother of the nation. “Help your unruly children to be forgiven,” one woman cries out. “You’re a mother, have mercy on my children.”

I roll up my sleeves with quick, efficient jerks, then press my clenched fists to my mouth as I watch their faces on television. Each accused manages an expression of polite distress; most are clearly terrified, while others seem to have already left their bodies and the whole situation behind.

Golesorkhi, the group’s leader, is the last to stand and testify. His name means “the red rose.” His likeable face, medium height and build, square jaw and thick mustache make him look like a young Maxim Gorky. He takes his jacket off, rolls up his sleeves with slow, deliberate thrusts, and walks to the podium.

“This court is an illegal institution,” he yells, his fist crashing down on the podium with such force that we all jump in our seats. “The Shah is a tyrant, a servant of the Americans, and a puppet of the West.”

My breath has caught in my throat, making it hard for me to swallow. I sit up straight and busy my hands with turning my sleeves back down, but the very air in the room seems to be carrying an electric current.

“Is he not afraid of dying?” one of my dad’s friends murmurs. “They’ll torture him to death tonight, pull his nails from their beds with a pair of pliers, then cut off his fingers and toes one at a time.” He stops when my father fixes him with a warning look, suddenly aware that the women in the room are in tears. The judge orders Golesorkhi to be quiet, but he will not be silenced.

“You, sir, may go to hell,” Golesorkhi says, chin high and eyes unblinking. “People, take note of what he looks like,” he shouts, addressing the whole room. “Make sure he is identified everywhere as a crony of the greatest dictator alive.”

“It’s about time someone stood up to these bastards,” Dad whispers, careful not to look over at me. Not that he has to, because the space between his beating heart and mine feels taut, as if they’ve been tied together with a string.

My mother is crying. “He’s so young,” she wails, “not a day over thirty. His poor parents, his poor wife!”

Golesorkhi’s testimony is stopped abruptly by the judge and the broadcast is terminated. The screen goes black, and then crackles back to life with a repeat episode of an American soap opera called
Peyton Place
.

I retreat to the roof without bidding our guests good night, knowing that Ahmed will spend the evening trying to soothe his family, probably making jokes and doing impressions that will soon have everyone clutching their sides with laughter.

The night is well into morning when I finally close my book and stand up with a sigh. I had hoped that reading would take my mind off Golesorkhi’s explosive tirade, but the words on the page look foreign and I have to read every line twice to drown out his voice booming in my head. Most of the windows are dark, but I can feel that I’m not the only one who is too agitated to sleep.

I decide a walk might calm my mind, and make my way out into the alley. I am stepping slowly and methodically, hands in my pockets, willing my thoughts to slow when the silhouette of a man crosses swiftly through the pool of yellow light cast by a streetlight ahead of me. His head is covered with a hat, and he is working quickly to glue something to the wall. He dips a brush into a small pail, then strokes a large X on the wall and slaps a large piece of paper up, moving quickly up the alley. I creep forward to look, and see a poster with a red rose at its center.

“Golesorkhi,” I say out loud, clapping my hands over my mouth when I hear how my voice rings out.

The man turns, startled; his face is painted black, his round glasses glittering.

“Doctor?” I whisper, squinting.

He freezes, and I know we’ve both stopped breathing. Reactions flash in his eyes—fear, regret, conviction, anger? After a moment that feels like a month, he runs away without answering, and I’m left with a pounding heart to add to my racing mind.

 

The next morning the neighborhood wakes up to walls papered in red roses.

“Who put these up?” everyone wants to know.

“What does it mean?” another person asks.

“Oh, the Red Rose,” some people say, understanding.