The Septembers of Shiraz (11 page)

I
saac stares at his hands—the skeletal knuckles, the dark veins, the fingers he has always regarded as too short for his palms. These hands, he thinks, are his connectors to everyone and everything that exists outside of him. He looks at his feet—anonymous, neither beautiful nor ugly—just feet, doing their job, keeping him upright. How much longer will they remain unlashed? The longer he stares at his hands and feet, the more disjointed they seem, and he wonders if he would recognize them were they to be severed, somehow, after an earthquake, for example, or a plane crash, or another random, unforeseen accident. People reside inside their bodies for decades, but they rarely examine these vessels, and all their intricate, dutiful parts. A house is more easily remembered than a body: one can describe the number of rooms, the glass in the windows, the color of the walls, the tiles in the bathroom.

What will happen to his body if he were to die here? Will they shroud him in linen and place him in a wooden
casket, as his religion demands, or will they dump him somewhere, in a mass grave perhaps? What will become of his faithful hands and his nameless feet, for which he suddenly feels enormous love? Will a
shomer
—“guardian”—sit by his corpse and recite psalms until he is buried? Will there be seven days of mourning in his house, will mirrors be covered, will his son return? Will anyone say Kaddish for him? He brings his right hand to his mouth and kisses it, resting his lips between two bony knuckles.

“Amin-agha, are you all right?” Ramin says.

“Yes, fine.” He is sitting outside with the usual group of prisoners, which now includes Vartan, the pianist, who is not a talkative man, at least not here. Isaac, too, has little to say. These weekly hours of fresh air leave him indifferent. During his first month he would use his hour to breathe as deeply as he could, as if breathing deeper and harder could somehow allow his body to store more oxygen for those remaining one hundred sixty-seven hours of the week. But just as overeating the night before the fast of Yom Kippur does nothing to quell the hunger that inevitably surges during the final hours of that long day of atonement and fasting, so too the deep breaths did little to help him endure those unending days spent in his dank cell. The human body is like that. It needs a constant flow of nourishment, air, and love, to survive. Unlike currency, these things cannot be accumulated. At any given moment, either you have them, or you don't.

“So, Maestro, tell us more about Vienna,” Ramin says. The prisoners have nicknamed Vartan “maestro,” out of
both derision and affection. He has replaced Isaac as the one most picked on by the group.

“I've told you about the city, the cafés, the opera. What else would you like to know?”

“The women,” Ramin whispers. “Are they beautiful?”

“Some may find them beautiful. I found them rather plain.”

“Forget Vienna,” Reza says. “Why don't you tell us about playing music for the shah? What was it like to be the court jester?”

“I was not a court jester. I played at the Rudaki Opera House.”

“Agha-Reza, stop putting everyone on trial, will you?” Hamid says. “Maybe if you had gone to the opera house with your father once or twice you wouldn't be the brute that you've turned out to be.” Once a minister of the shah, Hamid has gone through more interrogations than the others. But he remains convinced of his innocence and optimistic about his future, probably because he cannot afford to be otherwise.

“You think dressing up and sitting in a room with velvet chairs and crystal chandeliers makes you more cultured, Hamid-agha?” Reza says. “You're just like my father, mean-spirited and arrogant.”

“If you think your father is so mean-spirited and arrogant, why did you help him escape?”

“Maestro, did you compose your own music?” Ramin tries to diffuse the tension—the child caught between arguing adults.

“A long time ago I began writing a symphony. But I never finished it.”

“To write a whole symphony, you have to be in love,” Ramin says. “I'm quite sure that's what you need.”

“Perhaps.” Vartan glances at Isaac then looks away. Isaac feels a violent anger rising in him. What did it mean, that glance? Was Vartan telling him that he had, in fact, loved Farnaz, or was he merely clarifying that theirs had not been a love story? He realizes that the answer matters little. There had been
something
, maybe no more than a passing affection, but still something, and he will never know exactly what. For now, they are both here, two condemned men sitting side by side. It is even possible that they will die together, their bodies thrown into the same grave, one on top of the other. Who can predict these things?

The guard Hossein stands a few yards away. He is the most lenient of the guards and usually allows the prisoners to talk, if the discussion is innocent enough. He approaches the group, looks around to make sure no other guards are present, and says, in a low voice, “Executions have increased in the past couple of weeks. If you are taken to interrogation this week, I strongly advise each of you to repent.”

“Repent?” the old man Muhammad-agha says. This is the first time he has spoken in weeks. “Repent for what, Brother Hossein? For what one doesn't believe, or for what one hasn't done?”

“What's wrong with you, Muhammad-agha?” Hossein says. “If you'd start praying and showing that you are a decent Muslim, a believer, they'd let you go. You're an old
man. Why make your final days on this earth more painful than necessary?”

“Because, Brother, my prayers are between me and my God. And in any case, I have nothing to go back to. My wife is dead and my three daughters are in prison.”

“We're all goners,” Mehdi says as Hossein walks away. “I wish that at least after killing us they would pay our families the blood money.”

“Blood money is owed only when a believer accidentally kills another believer,” Hamid says. “Our deaths would be neither accidental nor reimbursable.”

“Even if our families were to get paid, you, Amin-agha, and your friend the maestro, would be worth half the blood money than the rest of us.” Reza smiles. “Are you aware of that?”

Isaac doesn't answer. The blood of a Jew, or a Christian, or any non-Muslim, is not as valuable as that of a Muslim—he knows that of course. But what once seemed to him like one of the many archaic, even amusing, laws of his country suddenly terrifies him. Blood money. An actual tariff placed on people's blood. He looks at Vartan, who is hugging his knees, his torso limp and yielding. What the two of them share, beyond any real or imagined personal history, is a massacre of their forebears—the Jews by the Germans, the Armenians by the Turks—and he wonders if this membership in the club of the slaughtered doesn't create a certain kinship, after all.

“Back in the time of Cyrus and Darius,” Hamid says, “our country was just and generous. Everyone was considered equal. We were a great nation, an empire.”

“Stop the grandiosity, Hamid-agha!” Mehdi says. “That's our problem in this country. We think we're special because once upon a time we were great. Cyrus. Darius. Persepolis. That was a long time ago! What are we now? Now we are barbarians.”

“Not all of us,” Hamid says. “Just a couple of years ago, when the revolutionaries tried to bulldoze Persepolis, the governor of Fars and the people of Shiraz prevented them by force. When they wanted to ban our New Year celebrations, no one would have it. These things are important parts of our Zoroastrian past, and we will hold on to them no matter what regime takes over.”

“That's enough talk!” Hossein says, holding up his rifle. “Your time is up anyway. Go back to your cells. And remember what I told you.”

Walking back to the cell, Isaac wonders whether he could, in fact, repent. Since he is innocent of any crime they may be charging him with, he could repent only for the act of living.

O
n the other side of the office gates there is noise and commotion—footsteps, boxes hitting the ground, car doors opening and closing. When Farnaz presses the buzzer, the noises stop and the gates open with a pained rattle. Standing before her is Habibeh's son Morteza, the office manager, his face flushed, wearing a cap with a sharp visor that accentuates his narrow eyes.

“What's happening in there, Morteza?”

“That's nothing.” He gestures with his head toward the back of the courtyard. Farnaz tries to sneak a look past his shoulder, but except for a large green truck parked inside she cannot see much. “We're transporting the stones and the equipment to a more secure location to protect them from the revolutionaries. We think they may want to seize them.”

“Yes? And how do you know?”

Morteza taps his fingers on the iron gate. “Trust me,
Farnaz-khanoum,” he says with a strained voice. “I want to help you.”

“I'd like to come in.”

“No.” He stands before her, arms folded.

“Where are you taking everything?”

“To a safe place. We will let your husband know as soon as he gets out. Now go home. You must have other things to worry about.” He steps back and shuts the gate.

How is it that a boy like Morteza, her husband's employee and her housekeeper's son, could talk to her like this? And how could the others gang up on Isaac and rob him of everything? Loyalty is so fragile, like porcelain. One crack, invisible at first to the naked eye, can one day shatter the cup.

She calls Keyvan from a pay phone and he offers to come right over. She knows there isn't much he can do in the face of two dozen men. Still there are times when one needs the illusion of authority. In the old days Keyvan, with one phone call to his father, could have had someone like Morteza imprisoned for life. She waits for him on the sidewalk, wishing for a cigarette. Isaac's Jaguar is still parked outside, as if at any moment he may emerge through the gates and take her out for a quick lunch.

Having lived with him for twenty-five years, she has never imagined her life without him—his presence, like the villa he had built for her, offering her great comfort along with much to fret about. When she met him, so many years ago in Shiraz, she had been studying literature. She saw him for the first time in the lunchtime crowd of a teahouse near the university. He sat alone, sipping his drink, his eyes on his
book. Between them was a clear blue pool, terra-cotta vases on its ledge. When he finally looked up and noticed her, she looked away, even though she had planned to smile. The next day she returned to the teahouse, and so did he. Back then she attributed this second encounter to fate; later she learned that he had planned his return in the hope of finding her.

He said, “Is that your parrot up there or is he just following you? I noticed he was here yesterday, also.”

Looking up, she saw an emerald parrot with red feathers in the cypress tree above her table. She interpreted the bird's presence as a good omen, and said, “I thought he was your spy, keeping an eye on me.”

He introduced himself and told her that he was taking a poetry class at the university for the summer. He said he would have liked to study all year, but his work back in Tehran did not allow him to get away for long. She liked his playful eyes, but it was his confidence that most impressed her. It was only years later that she came to think of that confidence as stubbornness—hardness, even.

When Keyvan arrives, he walks with her to the gate and presses the buzzer. Morteza opens the gate, looking more irritated than before.

“What?”

“What's happening in there?”

“I already explained to Farnaz-khanoum. We're taking the gemstones for safekeeping.”

“Where?”

“I have no time for this.” He pushes the gate shut but Keyvan holds it open with his arm. “Look, I am asking you
to leave, nicely,” Morteza says. “This is none of your business. Don't let it get nasty.”

Behind him Farnaz can see Isaac's employees—and others she does not recognize—walking back and forth, loading the truck. But it isn't just gems they are taking—it's radios and leather chairs and file cabinets and telephones. She reaches into her purse, grabs a small can of hair spray, and presses the nozzle toward Morteza's face. Morteza cries out and collapses to his knees, vigorously rubbing his eyes with his hands.

When they walk in, all activity stops. The men stand still, some cradling boxes, others holding tables in teams of two, all of them looking down.

“What's going on here?” Farnaz demands. No one answers. The only sound in the courtyard is an occasional curse from Morteza. A few seconds into the silence a man she recognizes as Siamak from accounting resumes carrying a chair toward the truck. Slowly others follow, and commotion continues as if she weren't in the courtyard at all. One man makes his way over to Morteza with a glass of water to wash his eyes.

In the corner by the small fountain, Farhad, a stonecutter, stands idle, one hand resting on his belly, the other holding a cigarette. He looks on calmly, removed from the action. He smiles at Farnaz and looks down. She walks to him, stopping several times in order to avoid collision with the men. “Can you explain this to me, Farhad-agha?”

He takes a long, pensive drag, then empties his lungs with a sigh. “I'm sorry, khanoum. Things have gone awry. I
tried to talk sense into them, but there was no use. They said I'm blind to all the exploitation that has been going on for years. They said…”

“Exploitation? These people were all unemployed gypsies when Isaac hired them. He took them in, paid for their education, gave them salaries they probably didn't deserve. This is called exploitation?”

“Well, we weren't exactly gypsies, khanoum. We may have lacked education, but we…”

“I'm sorry. I didn't mean it like that. Especially not about you. I just don't understand how they can do this, how they can forget everything he did for them.”

Farhad takes another drag and shrugs. “That's how it is now,” he says. Quietly he adds, “I'm sorry.”

Across the courtyard Keyvan is tangled in a conversation with Morteza. “This isn't right,” he yells. “He hasn't even had a trial yet.”

“Trial?” Morteza laughs. “If you think there is going to be a trial you're going to be very disappointed. In any case, all we are doing here is protecting his assets, but arrogant idiots like you mistake our kindness for thievery.”

“Come on, Morteza,” Keyvan hisses. “It's clear what this is.”

“And what if it is? What are you going to do about it?”

“Morteza,” Farnaz interrupts. “Why are you doing this? Was my husband ever bad to you? Did he ever refuse you anything?”

“You see, khanoum,” he says, looking at her with eyes still red and teary from the hair spray. “You fail to under
stand. And I mean this sincerely. This isn't about one man. It is about a collection of men—men who turned their backs to injustice, men who profited from a corrupt government, men who built themselves villas and traveled whenever they pleased to places the likes of me have never even heard of. God has answered the prayers of the weak. God answers the call of the faithful, not of sinners. God…”

“Since when are you so ‘faithful'? Just a couple of years ago you would show up in your tight jeans and borrow our car to pick up one of your five girlfriends. You think that beard makes you a man of God?” Farnaz realizes that all activity has come to a halt and the men have gathered around, like spectators at a school brawl. “Farnaz-jan, Farnaz-jan—that's enough,” Keyvan whispers in her ear, over and over, but she lets his words pass through her. She cannot stop. “And since when is stealing people's possessions the call of God? You are all hypocrites who have suddenly come into power, and you don't know how to handle it.”

“Shut up, you dirty Jew!” Morteza thunders. “I tried to be respectful but you won't allow it. So I'll call you by what you are.”

There are murmurs around her now—some praising Morteza, a few admonishing him. She turns to the wall to hide her tears. Strings of ivy have crawled down the bricks over the years, like a carpet coming undone. The screeching of desks, the thump of boxes, the aborted single ring of a telephone as it lands in the truck, all buzz behind her in a frenzy. The day has turned cold. Keyvan places his hands on her shoulders. She feels the boniness of his long fingers and
is startled by how different they are from Isaac's stronger grip. He leaves them there a long time, and she lets him. He wraps his scarf around her neck and guides her out of the courtyard.

When they arrive home he helps her up the stairs and sits her on the bed. He kneels down, removes her shoes, leans her body against the pillows. He prepares tea for her, offers her an aspirin with a glass of water. He sits beside her and rubs her forehead, and she dozes off, her bed drenched in sunlight.

She wakes up disoriented and cold. The room is dark, predicting the anxiety of a long night to be spent alone. She sits up, hopes to find Keyvan somewhere in the room, but sees no sign of him, except for his scarf still wrapped around her neck.

Behind the closed door of her bedroom, Shirin and Habibeh talk in low voices. She wonders how much Morteza confides in his mother. Is it time to let Habibeh go? But who would care for Shirin? Farnaz doesn't feel capable of doing it by herself—not now. Lying there, listening to her daughter, she sees her own mother, standing by the stove, ordering Farnaz to finish cleaning the house in preparation for Sabbath, or for this or that holiday. She hears her father, remembers how he would stand at the head of the table on the eve of Sabbath, one hand holding the prayer book, the other the cup of wine, reciting the prayers with a sad baritone that hushed everything before him—the sparkling dinnerware waiting to be filled with stew, the crystal glasses expecting wine, and his radio, which remained on whenever
he was home, reporting on the war in Europe and the arrival to the throne of the new shah, the so-called “spineless” son of the deposed Reza Shah.

She recalls how after her Friday chores she would accompany her father through narrow unpaved streets to buy sweets. It was on one of these walks, when she was about Shirin's age, that she had told him that her best friend Azar's father was making the hajj—the pilgrimage to Mecca—and that upon his return he would receive the much-coveted title of hajji.

“Baba, will you be taking this pilgrimage also?” she had asked him.

“No, Farnaz-jan,” he had said. “We are Jews. Jews don't make the hajj.”

“Then how can we become hajjis?”

“We don't.”

“That isn't fair. How can we become holy?”

“And since when, may I ask, are you so interested in being holy?”

“I just want to know that I can become it if one day I decide to.”

“I see! It's like insurance. All right. I'll tell you how. We can study the Torah. We can become rabbis.” Then he had repeated his oft-said line, “The Jews, you know, are the chosen people.”

“Chosen by whom?”

“Chosen by God. We are his special people.”

“But don't the others think they are chosen also?”

“Every religion has its own beliefs, its own version of what happened.”

“If there are so many versions, how can we know which one is true?”

He had looked up, sighing. “If you were born a Jew, then you believe the Jews' version. That's how it works!”

They had walked for a long time without talking, her hand inside his, her ankle twisting every now and then. The answer did not make sense to her. It was like saying, well, if you live in this house, then this is the nicest house on the block. If you live in the next house, then that one is the nicest house.

“Are Jews still Iranians, Baba?”

“Of course. The Jews have been in Iran for a long time—before the time of Cyrus, even. And they lived happily here for centuries, until they were declared
najes
—impure. That's when they lost their businesses, their homes, their belongings. They had to move into the
mahaleh
, a kind of ghetto. And because it was located at the lowest point of Tehran, when it rained all the filth and squalor of the city ended up there.”

She imagined living in this gutter, in a one-room house with her parents, the city's excrement flowing into their soup bowls.

“Did you live in the
mahaleh
, Baba?”

“No. By the time I was born the government liked the Jews again.”

“How come this government liked the Jews and the other ones didn't?”

“So many questions, Farnaz-jan! So many questions. Come, let's get our sweets and forget about who likes the Jews and who doesn't.”

They walked inside the shop, and as her father selected pastries, she caught a glimpse of herself in the back mirror. People always said how pretty she was, how beautiful she would grow up to be. Looking at her reflection, she thought, How do the ghettos and squalor of the Jews concern me? Years later, when her parents emigrated to Israel, she stayed behind. “Why should I leave?” she had said. “This is my country, and I am very happy right here.”

But this has become a country of informers, she thinks. To survive, one must either become one—or disappear.