The Septembers of Shiraz (4 page)

May you be happy, my Parviz
.

Baba-jan, I am not happy. Where are you?

F
or days her mother's sapphire ring has been missing.

“This was the first present your father gave me,” her mother said the morning she noticed its absence. She stood by her dresser, looked around at her perfume bottles and her Russian dolls—the smallest one at the edge, nearly falling. She kneeled on the floor, ran her hands over the carpet. By the fourth day, when she was convinced that she would not find the ring, she stood again by the dresser and cried. Afterward, she turned around, to the doorway where Shirin stood. “This was the first present your father gave me,” she said, as though she had never said it before.

When the silver teapot disappeared from the dining room console, just two days after the ring, Shirin did not point it out to her mother. The missing ring was causing enough grief, she thought, and besides she feared that she might be the one who was somehow responsible for making these items disappear. She knew she had not taken them, but
was there any way to be certain? She could have destroyed them in her sleep, or maybe she just didn't remember taking them; her mind was acting strange lately.

“I hate to think this,” her mother told her one morning as she drank her tea, “but I'm starting to think Habibeh took the ring. Who else could it be?” Hearing this accusation further convinced Shirin that she was the culprit herself. “No, it can't be Habibeh,” she told her mother. And then, unable to provide an alternative explanation, she said, “It must have fallen somewhere. It will turn up.” She hoped, all the while, that the question of the missing teapot would not arise.

 

S
HE THINKS ABOUT
the ring as she watches the rope ripple in the air, up then down, each end held by one of her classmates. She jumps, once, twice, three times, bending her knees just in time for the rope to glide under her. The fourth time her feet refuse to leave the ground and she stands there, solid, lifting her body only when it's too late. The other girls yell, “Out! Out! You lose.”

She steps aside, the scarf around her head choking her, the fabric rustling against her ears with the slightest movement. She imagines there are tiny elves inside her scarf, crumpling paper against her ears all day long just to irritate her. Just as well that she's out of the game; she's too tired to jump up and down. She walks to the other side of the playground, by the school entrance, where Jamshid the janitor is half asleep in the lunch-hour glare of the sun.
She watches him, a leathery old man, tall and thin, with an uneven beard. She pulls out her uneaten chicken sandwich and hands it to him, then does the same with the banana ripened in her schoolbag since morning. Jamshid snaps out of his afternoon daze and reaches for the goods.

“You're not going to eat these?”

“No. Take them.” The departed ring has taken her appetite with it. And then there is the missing teapot. And finally her missing father, gone now for almost two weeks.

Jamshid-agha accepts the food without qualms. “Thank you,” he says. “But a girl your age should eat her food. How old are you? Nine, ten?”

“Nine.”

“Actually, you're not so young. Nine is old enough to marry. My own wife was only thirteen when I married her.”

Walking around the playground, she remembers her mother's comment as the three of them passed by a nearby school one afternoon. “Isn't this a mini Monte Carlo?” she had said. “All these clusters of children devising their own games, each group with its croupier and gamblers. And in the end, you may leave with a few pretty pink chips, but everyone knows there are no real winners….” Her father had laughed at this. Then he said, “No real winners, maybe, but learning a few tricks sure helps.”

She watches her classmates, these croupiers and gamblers busy with games—the spin of a bottle, the combat of scissors, paper, stone, the flight of balls overhead, the cas
cade of glass marbles below. She decides she doesn't want to play these games anymore.

She leans against a wall, slides to the ground, notices candy wrappers by her feet, sailing on the wind's whim. Looking farther out she finds a sea of litter—more candy wrappers, orange and cucumber peels, half-eaten sandwiches, eggshells, even. She never really noticed them before. Above her the sky is a pale blue, without a single cloud—empty—a stark contrast to the playground. Where could it have gone, that ring? Her father had told her all about sapphires, worn by archbishops in the Middle Ages, believed by Buddhists to protect the wearer from illness and disaster, and said by the devout to have been the stone on which the Ten Commandments had been carved. Her mother always called it her good-luck
ring.
Does this mean she has lost her good luck?

She sees a pair of sneakers approaching her, and she knows it's her friend Leila, because of the Donald Duck sticker on the left shoe. “Why are you sitting on the ground?” Leila says, eating potato chips.

“I'm tired.”

Leila sits next to her, offers her the bag of chips. “Me too,” she says.

“Do you believe in ghosts?”

“Ghosts? I don't know. My father always says
shahidan zendeand
—martyrs are alive.”

“No, I'm serious. Things are disappearing in my house.”

“Disappearing? You must have misplaced them.”

“Yes, probably.” It occurs to her then that her father, too, has simply been misplaced, and that he will one day be returned to his rightful place, in his leather chair in the living room, with his books and cigarettes, sipping the tea that her mother will serve him from the silver teapot, the sapphire ring back on her finger.

I
nside the house, perched on the curves of the Niavaran hills, the lights are on. Farnaz stands outside, thinks of the many dinners she and Isaac had attended here. Shahla and Keyvan, Isaac's sister and her husband, were once known for their parties—for the chef they had hired from Paris and the piano concertos they hosted after dinner sometimes, bringing young musicians from Vienna or Berlin or even, occasionally, introducing a budding prodigy from Tehran. She stands by the iron gate and presses the bell.

“Farnaz-khanoum!” the housekeeper says, unlatching the gate. “What a nice surprise! Come in, come in! You scared us. We thought, who could it be at this hour…”

“I hope they're not sleeping. I should have called first.”

“No, nonsense! Who's sleeping at this hour? It's just, you know, things aren't like they used to be. Everybody's a little jumpy. How's Amin-agha?”

“Who is it, Massoumeh?” Shahla yells from the doorway.

“It's Farnaz-khanoum!”

When they reach the door Shahla says, “You came alone, Farnaz-jan? Where's Isaac?”

“I need to talk to you.”

 

T
HEY WALK INSIDE
, where it is bright and warm. Keyvan, sitting in the living room with his signature cup of black coffee, looks up from his book. A music of soft strings—Mozart—fills the room.

“
Bah bah
, look who's here,” he says, shutting the book. He gets up and takes her hand to escort her to a chair, the one Shahla is so fond of, sensuous and curved, with the S-shaped cabriole and the vine-printed satin fabric, part of their collection of rococo furniture. Farnaz removes her scarf and sits.

“Where's Isaac?” Keyvan says.

“They got him.”

The phrase quiets the room. Mozart's allegro fills the vast space around them.

“When?” Shahla says.

“About two weeks ago. I got a call from your brother, Javad. Apparently someone he knows told him.”

“How awful,” Shahla gasps. “Why didn't you tell us earlier?”

“I didn't want to get you involved. Once they get someone, friends and family become targets too. I haven't told anyone, not even your parents. How could I tell Baba Ha
kim and Afshin-khanoum that their son is in jail? But I knew I needed to warn you. You could already be in great danger, Keyvan-jan, given your father's connections to the shah.”

“Yes, I know,” Keyvan says. “But we can't leave now. My father has asked me to liquidate his houses and belongings before we join him and my mother in Switzerland.”

The housekeeper arrives with a silver tray that she places on the coffee table. On it is the familiar tea set, of yellow porcelain with a garden motif—passed down to Keyvan by his great-grandfather, a court painter during the reign of the Qajar king Nasir al-Din Shah. The set was a present from the king to the artist, upon the king's return from Europe. Farnaz looks at the set, and at the plate of sweets accompanying it—browned madeleines, buttered and plump, made more golden by the soft light of the table lamp—and she thinks, here, on this tray, lie the country's aspirations as well as its demise, its desire for cosmopolitanism and its refusal to see itself for what it has become—an empire that has grown smaller with each passing century, its own magnificence displaced by that of other nations. For what is a housekeeper named Massoumeh, born in Orumiyeh, in the province of Azerbaijan, doing preparing madeleines, that most popular of French pastries?

She remembers the coronation of the shah and the empress some fifteen years earlier, in October 1967. She and Isaac had been invited to the ceremony thanks to Keyvan, whose father was a minister in the government. They had stood with the other guests in the Grand Hall of the Golestan Palace, once the home of Qajar kings, and had watched
the royal family make its way along the red carpet, under the blinding glitter of so many crystal chandeliers—the shah's sisters and brothers, his young son, his wife, and finally the monarch himself. People smiled and curtsied as the procession passed before them. Farnaz, dressed in her silver satin dress bought in Paris, smiled but could not bring herself to actually curtsy. She looked at Isaac, who whispered in her ear, “So much fanfare! They take themselves for Napoleon and Josephine! Somebody remind them our bazaars are still filled with donkeys….” She was annoyed with him for making her laugh at a time like this, when one was to repay the honor of having been invited to such an event with stateliness and decorum. She was irritated with him, also, for shattering an illusion, for mocking what she secretly found enchanting. Standing in that hall, surrounded by the dizzying sparkle of the hundreds of stones bejeweling the crowns and tiaras, with only a few hundred other privileged guests, she felt a certain pride, for the ceremony taking place before her and for witnessing it. She was pleased that the shah had crowned not only himself but his wife as well—the first time in the country's history that a woman had been named heiress to the throne. Still, she knew that later, when talking with Isaac or with people who had not partaken in the event, she would no doubt criticize the whole affair for its excesses.

“Maybe we should forget about the houses and belongings and just get out now,” Keyvan says. He looks pale and thin, his collarbone visible through his cotton sweater—the kind of man, Farnaz thinks, who would not survive prison.

Shahla picks up the teapot and fills the cups. “We can't just leave,” she says as she pours. “How will we sustain ourselves—with love?” She extends a cup to Farnaz but looks at her husband, who glances back at her for an instant before turning his gaze to a painting on the wall, of the Qajar king Nasir al-Din Shah, made by his great-grandfather in 1892.

“This painting alone is reason enough to stay,” Shahla says. “How can you leave all this family history behind?”

He rubs his forehead, resting his fingers on the large, visible veins on his temples. “But what if they arrest me? How will this painting—and all the pages I've written about it in all those useless art magazines—help me in jail? Or this tea set, or that chandelier, or this stupid eighteenth-century chair—what will they do for me?” His voice rises—dusty and trembling—a voice untrained for such a pitch, and strained because of it.

“Shhh!” Shahla says. “You want the whole neighborhood to hear you?” She sips her tea, then helps herself to a madeleine, which she brings to her mouth slowly and with deliberate calm. “Can you even imagine your father's face when he sees us at his doorstep in Geneva, empty-handed?” She takes a bite out of her cake, cupping her hand under it to catch any crumbs. “These mullahs have no reason to come after us,” she says, bringing the matter to her desired conclusion, as she so often did.

“What reason did they have to come after Isaac?” Farnaz asks.

Keyvan stirs his tea absentmindedly. “My only crime is being my father's son,” he says, looking down.

Shahla wipes her hands, then reaches for a cigarette and lights it. “Why all the drama, Professor?” She exhales in her husband's direction, freeing her chest of not just smoke but also acrimony. “Who would you be without your father? And your grandfather and your great-grandfather? Stripped of your lineage, what would you have achieved? You think people would care about your opinions on art if it weren't for your last name? If we leave this country without taking care of our belongings, who in Geneva or Paris or Timbuktu will understand who we once were?”

“H
omayoun…Gholampour…Habibi…” A guard yells out the names as he makes his way up and down the hallway. Since his arrival, Isaac has not heard so many people called at once. From his mattress he glances at Mehdi, who, without looking away from the roach in the corner says, “You'd better get used to it. If you don't hear your name, thank God, if you do hear your name, say a prayer.”

There is commotion in the hallway—metal doors, footsteps, the rattling of keys, sighs, and a man screaming, over and over, “Where? Where? Where?”

“That's Gholampour,” Mehdi says. “He knew his end was near. He'd been talking about it for the past few weeks.”

“How did he know?” Isaac says.

“He just did. One develops a sense for these things. You smell it in your interrogator's breath. You know he's had it with you.”

When the roach passes by Ramin's bare foot the boy gets up and follows it, and grabs it with a clean sweep. “Shall we crunch him or let him go?” he says.

“Why don't we save him for later?” Mehdi grunts. “He may be the best meal we get all day.”

The thought of the insect's crunchy flesh rubbing against the boy's skin nauseates Isaac. He lies back on his mattress, tells himself that as long as he is alive he must find some kind of preoccupation—maybe he can ask the guards for some books, the Koran even. Roach in hand, Ramin approaches. Isaac sees the pair of brown antennae wiggling back and forth through the top of the boy's fist. “Get that thing away from me!” he yells, his voice angrier than he intended.

The boy walks away and unclasps his fist. The roach tumbles to the floor and runs for cover. “I'm sorry,” Ramin says. “Just playing around.” He sits on his mattress, hugs a knee to his chest, and cleans the spaces between his toes with his finger. Isaac almost yells at him again for his repugnant manners, but he realizes that he is not the boy's father and has no authority over him. Here they are equals, both of them taking orders from their captors. Moments later Ramin starts singing, a love song that Farnaz also sang, in the shower sometimes, or while doing dishes. His voice, low and clear, surprises Isaac. He had not thought it possible that so beautiful a sound could emerge from a boy like him. He shuts his eyes and listens. If his days were to end in this place, this boy's voice would be the final sound he would want to hear.

Metal clinks outside. The door opens. “Shut up, boy!” a guard yells. “Singing is not allowed.” Then looking at Isaac, he says, “Brother Amin, follow me.”

Isaac wills himself to sit up. He unrolls his sock and slides a foot into it.

“Brother,” the guard says. “No need for such formalities. Forget the shoes and socks and come with me.”

He stands, one foot cold against the floor. “Don't worry,” Mehdi mumbles. “Sounds routine.” When he is out of the cell he hears Mehdi continue, “May God be with you.”

 

B
ACK IN THE
room where he had been interrogated on the first day, about three weeks ago, he sees a masked man behind the table. When he gets closer he knows it is Mohsen, because of the missing right index finger.

“Are you familiar with the Mossad?” Mohsen says before Isaac has a chance to settle into the chair.

Haven't they been through this? He decides to be firm. “No, Brother, I'm not.”

“No? Last time you said yes.”

“I probably said I've heard of it.”

“Are you arguing with me?”

“No, Brother. I'm just clarifying. Maybe there was a misunderstanding…”

Mohsen throws the file on the table and stands up. “The misunderstanding, my dear Brother, is that you seem to think this is a game.”

“No…”

“Explain Israel then!”

“Like I said, I have family there, Brother. I've been there to visit them.”

“You listen to me,” Mohsen says. “
Shisheye omreto nashkoun—Don't
break the glass of your life. Admit you're a Zionist spy!”

The image of Mehdi's ravaged feet flash in his mind. Is this the beginning of something terrible?

“We'll crush you, don't you believe me? You've lost. So admit it.”

“But, Brother, I have no connection to any political organizations. How can I admit to something I haven't done?”

“Do you have witnesses to show that you're not a spy?”

Demented logic. But Isaac does not contest it. If he turns the tables on his interrogator and asks if
he
has any witnesses claiming that he
is
a spy, then he would be worsening the situation. On the other hand, if he says many people would testify that he has no political connections, he would be putting others in danger. “Brother,” he says. “I am a simple man. My preoccupations are my work and my family.”

“Simple?” Mohsen laughs. “I suppose figuring out all your bank accounts is very simple. Well, I, for one, had trouble following. Transfers from this bank to that bank, withdrawals…I say it takes a pretty sophisticated mind to carry out all those transactions.”

“Sophisticated in business, yes. But…”

“Listen to me!” Mohsen yells. “We'll get it out of you, you know that. Just admit it and get it over with.” He leans
across the table, his masked face an inch from Isaac's. His left iris is a lighter brown than the right, the whites of his eyes a sickly yellow. “We know everything about you. Even how many cucumbers you consume,” he whispers. “News comes to us from outside.”

Isaac wonders whether there really is a news-bearer. A neighbor? An employee? It occurs to him that his brother Javad may have also been arrested; with his loose tongue Javad was sure to slip and say something incriminating. His brother-in-law Keyvan may also be in prison, given his father's connections. Surrounded by his daily comforts, Keyvan is a kind man. But he does not have the resources necessary to withstand pain; he would no doubt say whatever it would take to spare himself. And what about Farnaz? If his wife is, in fact, in the women's block, could she have succumbed to coercion? The thought overwhelms him with guilt. He has always believed that the ultimate test of love is the willingness to die for another. He asks himself if he would die for her. He believes that he would. Is he, then, doubting whether she would do the same for him?

“So?” Mohsen presses.

“Brother, I swear…”

“How terrible that it should come to this,” Mohsen says. From his shirt pocket he retrieves a pack of cigarettes, slips one through the mask between his lips, and throws the pack on the table. “Help yourself,” he says to Isaac as the flame of his yellow lighter ignites the tobacco. “We may be here a long time.”

Isaac pulls a cigarette from the pack. He brings it to his
mouth, waits a few seconds for Mohsen to offer him a light. When no offer comes he removes the cigarette and places it on the table. He feels stupid.

“What's the matter?” Mohsen exhales.

“I…I need a light.”

“Well then, Brother, just ask!” He walks toward Isaac, cigarette in mouth. “And I'd like the same from you. When I ask you for something, I'd like to get it without too much difficulty.”

Isaac nods, brings the cigarette to his lips again. Is this some kind of game? He has an uneasy feeling but ignores it. Mohsen bends toward him now, his masked face inching closer, and only stops when the orange tip of his cigarette meets Isaac's bare cheek. Isaac lets out a cry. His unlit cigarette topples from his lips to the floor.

Mohsen pulls back and exhales, clouding Isaac with a thick puff of smoke, which burns his cheek, as though a hole had been drilled through it.

“You see what you're forcing me to do, Brother?” Mohsen says. “Admit it,
bi pedar-o-madar—you
bastard, admit you are a spy!” He grabs Isaac's hand and turns it around, burning his palm with the cigarette, which he presses with a child's determination to crush an insect. “You're nothing! You hear me?” He stops, brings another cigarette to his mouth and lights it, rips open Isaac's shirt and presses the cigarette on his chest. Isaac tries to breathe; his body contracts with pain.

A kick in the stomach throws him to the floor. A wad of saliva lands on his right eye but he has no strength to wipe it.
It travels slowly along his face, down the bridge of his nose and through the left eye, landing on the concrete floor.

“In this prison, Brother Amin,” Mohsen says, “we are used to getting what we want. Your resistance is pointless.”

 

W
HEN HE IS
brought back to his cell he finds Mehdi polishing a piece of wood and Ramin sleeping. Mehdi glances sideways, at Isaac's feet. “They let you off easy,” he says.

“Yes.” Isaac walks to his bed, removes the one sock. He sits on his mattress, listens to Mehdi's sandpaper shaving off the wood. He feels dizzy. Blisters have formed on his right palm, his cheek, and his chest. He lies on his back, carefully, avoiding all contact between the burns and the mattress.

“You should try to get some honey,” Mehdi says. “I think Gholampour had some. They let him have it because of his low blood sugar. Now that he's gone, you might as well…”

“Honey?”

“Yes. It helps heal the skin after a burn. And it prevents infection.”

Isaac brings his hand to his cheek and touches the blister. It is tender and raw, a semiliquid bulb rising from his skin. The thought of a permanent mark on his face saddens him. But he realizes that “permanent” may not be all that long. “Did you get burned here also?” he asks.

“No. They wasted no time with me. They took me straight for the lashings.” Mehdi stops polishing and ob
serves his wooden creation—an oval vessel, pointed in the front and hollowed out.

“So what are you making with that piece of wood?” Isaac says.

“I'm trying to make a Dutch clog. Before they arrested me I had promised my little girl I would make one for her and we would paint it together. But I'm not very good.”

“No. It looks like a boat.”

“I know!” Mehdi looks at the shoe and shakes his head. “It's a piece of shit, isn't it?”

Isaac smiles, but the movement stretches his skin, reminding him of his blister and his pain.

“Ah!” Mehdi throws the shoe on the floor and lies down. “Enough artistic expression for today. I think I'll take a nap.”

Isaac turns on his left side, tucking his hand under his ear. He looks at the wooden vessel thrown on the floor—this so-called shoe—and sees, under its asymmetrical, jagged shape, the clean intentions of its maker, and the hope, however faint, that he will be reunited with his daughter. He admires Mehdi's defiance, more so because he thinks himself incapable of it.

The image that returns to his mind repeatedly now is Mohsen holding his hand and turning it around, palm upward, as if about to offer him something. In that brief instant before the burn, the two men, hand in hand, could have passed as friends. He wonders what Farnaz would do if she knew what just happened to him. The last time he saw her she was upset with him. It was the morning of his arrest.
In bed she had spooned his body with her own, wrapping her arm around his stomach. He had flung the arm away. When he turned to her he knew it was too late. For some time he had been pushing her away, in invisible degrees. It had started with the flowers. He used to bring her a bouquet every now and then—lilies or roses, and whenever he found them, white orchids, because they were her favorite. But he had stopped and had not even realized that he
had.
“Is there a shortage of flowers also, because of the war?” she joked one night as he came home and found her, as usual, in front of the television. “Flowers?” he said. “The country has been destroyed and you're thinking about flowers?” She shut off the television and looked at him. The sudden silence unnerved him. “How can you say this to me?” she said. “I have been watching the destruction scene by scene. Why do you think I kept insisting we leave, when we had the chance, when everyone else was leaving? Well, since it looks like we are staying, we might as well try to have a normal life.” She picked up her glass and took a thoughtful sip. “So where are my flowers, my dear husband?”

He could not bring himself to say anything; he did not feel he had enough strength left in him for another argument. He decided that if she could convince him they should go, he would pack up. “Fine,” he said, half bluffing. “It's not too late. We can still go. Travel may be restricted but we can run away through Turkey, or Pakistan. So many are doing it. I'll start looking for smugglers.” She was startled, pulled her eyes away from him and looked at the floor. She sat quietly for some time like that, looking down, legs crossed, her slip
per dangling from her right foot. Then she looked up and scanned the room—the sofa, the corner bar, the rugs, the miniatures. She took it all in before shaking her head no.

“You see?” he said. “You don't want to go any more than I do. How can you part with your stuff—your paintings and your china and your carpets?”

She looked up, fire in her eyes. “Whose fault is it that we didn't ship
my
stuff when we could have? I may not be able to live without my stuff, but you can't live without your status. That, more than anything, terrifies you.”

“My
status
? Maybe so. But may I remind you, Madame Amin, that had you not believed that I would one day reach this status, you would never have married me?”

She got up and locked herself in the bathroom, leaving behind her familiar trail of perfume, which gave him a sudden headache. He sat on the sofa and finished her drink. Since the beginning of the riots he had been living in limbo—liquidating assets and sending funds to his Swiss bank accounts on the one hand, but continuing to expand his business on the other. In truth, he had been unable to make a decision. Listening to the sound of running water coming from the bathroom, it occurred to him that his wife's distress might be caused more by the deterioration of their love than that of their country. He promised himself that he would once again do the little things he once did for her—warming her side of the bed while she put on her face cream and brushed her hair, surprising her with a pastry, bringing her flowers. But each night, on his way home, exhaustion would prevent him from making the detour to
the flower shop and he would tell himself, “Tomorrow. The flowers can wait until tomorrow.”