Divided Loyalties

by Nilofar Shidmehr

  The accumulating force of this grudge jolts me back to the present. I am still waiting at the Valiasr intersection facing the City Theater. The man in the peaked cap is still hiding my view of Aazin; all I can see is Arman. He has gained weight, and his clean-shaven cheeks, which used to seem hollow even under his beard, are fuller. The red reflection from the traffic light still illuminates his long forehead, summoning once again my memory of him onstage years ago. As on that night, I have a sudden urge to be seen by him. If I move just a few steps to the left, and his gaze slants to the right, just slightly, I can catch his attention.

  And then what? My fingers clench again, and I wish I had my stress ball in my pocket so I could squeeze it forcefully, the way I’ve done every night for months. It was Mehrdaad who suggested I try practicing with the stress ball, after I told him that my boss at the video production company — where I work as a camerawoman in addition to being the daytime secretary — had warned me he wouldn’t tolerate any more blurry shots. But the camera continued to shake in my unsteady fingers, and my heart raced every time I remembered the day Arman left. I dislike my job and would let it go if I had a better option, but the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting Company would not hire me, given my association with a political prisoner. I wasn’t allowed to apply to a government office to become a civil servant either. My theater degree was not useful. Filming weddings and parties was the best job I could get.

  A familiar unsteady feeling is coming upon me now. I hide behind the tall man with the hat and try to calm down as I continue to watch the couple from behind. Aazin is still holding Arman’s arm, but she lets it go and starts rummaging in her bag. At the same time, the light turns green and I move along with the crowd. When I glance back, I notice that Arman and Aazin have remained in place. I try to resist the flow of people pushing against me and driving me forward, and I end up close behind them. Holding the chador tightly around me, I shut my eyes and listen to the rustling of clothes and the stamping of feet. It is as if I am standing on an ancient battlefield, refusing to take action amid the clash of swords and shields around me. Trying to stand straight, I open and close my fists every time somebody bumps into me. Then I let my hands go slack. I remove my armor and bare my breast to be stabbed. Dying on that battlefield, my life plays out before me.

  * * *

  You, Arman, were on the phone with the woman whose name you would not reveal. Yes, for hours you’d talk on the phone with her. For seven months. Early every morning when I left for work, you were in a deep sleep, tired from being up late on the phone. All day at work I could think of nothing but the woman on the other end of the line. When I could not bear it any longer, I started calling in sick so that I could stay home and watch you on the phone, giving advice to Mehrdaad’s girlfriend.

  “She needs my help,” you said. I knew that her relationship with your best friend was on the verge of ending.

  “But this is not your business,” I said.

  “It is,” you answered. “The suffering of people has always been my business. Prison didn’t change that. I am still a Fadai-ye-Khalgh. You know well that I always stood up for what I thought was right. Can’t you remember who you are married to?”

  How could I not remember? I was the one who prayed every day for you to survive, the one who waited ten years for you to be released, waited for the man you’d changed into. During the first two years of your imprisonment, when you were held in Evin Prison, every time I came to visit I expected to hear that you had been executed. We women waited in the cold in a long line along the prison’s wall.

  One time, a woman in the line received news of a death and began crying loudly. We begged her to keep quiet and to cry under her chador. They would cancel visits if we didn’t keep order in the line. When she didn’t stop, a few women circled tightly around her, holding onto her hands while she clawed at her face. They fixed her chador over her disheveled hair, covered her face with the edge of their own black chadors, and held her up so she would not collapse. When it was clear that she couldn’t remain standing, the women took her and her children out of the line.

  I had taken the arm of many women and walked them away from that high cement wall with the barbed wire on top. I thought that a day would arrive when the others would escort me out of the line and, if I tried to bang my head against the wall, would fix my hijab and tell me that I should go home. I knew that you wouldn’t get a proper burial, and that they’d force me to keep quiet about your death. I feared I would be forbidden to receive your belongings: your clothes, toothbrush, watch, wedding ring, or any other small thing you’d left behind. You see what I had to endure, not only the fear of your death but also not knowing where you would be buried?

  Throughout the years — the years during which they moved you from one notorious prison to another, first from Evin to Ghezel Hesar, and later from Ghezel Hesar to Gohardasht in Karaj, farther from Tehran — I stayed up the night before every visit and prayed to God to keep you alive. I never told you about my prayers. I knew you would scold me for trying to believe in God. You said God was the product of the imagination of the oppressed, those desperate ones who rely on supernatural powers to save them.

  “You and I depend only on ourselves for our liberation. Remember?” You would look me straight in the eye and I would nod my head.

  One day when you still were in Evin, a man from the prison called and told me to show up at the southeast parking lot of Luna Park. I knew that several families had been told to go to the amusement park to receive news about their loved ones; since most of the “news” was about executions, the authorities didn’t want a commotion in front of Evin. I thought they wanted to give me your belongings. That’s it, I told myself as I hung up. My prayers were all useless. God does not exist: my Arman is gone, shot dead, like the others.

  The amusement park was closed for the winter. As instructed, I arrived at the gate next to the control tower at noon. A crowd of families had lined up before me. When it was my turn, a man with sleepy eyes, sitting in the booth, asked my name and checked in a book. He told me to go to the barracks, a short distance behind the booth in a protected area, to get the news.

  “What news?” I asked.

  The man shrugged.

  My hands started trembling; I was sure I would soon receive a bag holding your belongings.

  A few others who entered the gates before me rushed forward to the barracks, but I was too dizzy to move fast. I stayed in the cold for a while, gazing at the empty green, yellow, and red seats of a roller coaster in the distance. I had ridden on those seats as a child. My father used to take us to Luna Park every summer when we came to Tehran for holidays. I always chose a green seat; my brothers, red seats; and my sisters, yellow. As I started walking again, I imagined children on the seats, their joyful screams echoing in the forlorn and chilly chamber of my mind. The colors blurred together and my head started to spin. To prevent myself from falling, I mustered all the energy left in me and quickened my pace toward the building a hundred yards in front of me. It was crazy to be thinking, exactly at that moment, how much I wanted to have a child of my own. Crazy because I was already old, and here I was about to find out you were dead. I laughed out loud.

  I was still laughing as I opened the door to the building and entered a waiting hall. Immediately many heads turned toward me. Distressed and concerned eyes — eyes that belonged to people like me, who were filling up the room — glared at me in surprise and terror. I am sure they all thought I was crazy. A few were sitting on the benches set on the two sides of the large room, a few were standing, and a few were gathered around a heater on the right side. Like me, each woman was clad in the only hijab permissible, which was a black chador. At the end of the room, opposite me, was a small office. Its door opened and I heard a hoarse male voice shouting, “Shut up or I’ll have you lashed.” The owner of the voice emerged, charging at me like a wild animal. The man was full-bearded an
d looked like guards I had seen at Evin. He raised something that looked like a motorcycle’s brake cables in the air. Later, I found out his name was Haji Karbalayi; he was a warden famous for his cruelty. His furrowed brow and bloodcurdling shout sent a shiver running through my body. He stopped halfway, turned, and went back into the small room.

  As he left the scene, a few voices came alive and bid me to come in. “Close the door, the warm air is drifting out.”

  As I stepped in, a teenage girl with dark circles under her eyes standing next to the heater waved at me. “Come here.” She gave me her place to warm myself and then started pacing the room impatiently. I stopped following her movements when I began to feel dizzy again.

  Just as I began to warm up, the door of the small room opened again. An old man with a navy-blue woolen hat stepped out, hugging a black bag and trembling as badly as I had been a few minutes before. He reminded me of your father, who passed away suddenly soon after you were arrested. The room went quiet and everybody turned to the old man. The woman who had given me her place by the heater ran to him, her arms outstretched. “Baba . . . Baba.” Her feet tangled in the hem of her chador and she stumbled a few times over the short distance. She wrapped her arms around her father, who cradled the bag as if it were a dead child. He burst into tears. “They killed him. May God take revenge on them on behalf of us. May God restore justice in this country.”

  “Shut up, you jackass. Take your cries and curses outside.” The bearded man came out of the small room, holding the same cable with which he’d threatened me. He raised it and brought it down toward the old man and his daughter, lashing the air. The blow was hard enough to make the old man’s hat fall off. “Your son was an infidel, a kaafar. We cleanse our Islamic society of garbage like him.”

  He then called another name. An old woman came forward, her face as white as a shroud. I jumped at the sound of the bearded man’s marching steps as he walked her into the room he was using as an office and slammed the door behind him. The father and daughter left in shock.

  A chilling silence settled on the hall, enveloping those of us who remained. It was as if all the warm air had drifted out of the room with the old man and his daughter. We all shuddered for a while, even those of us who stood by the heater and held our hands over it. I was dead sure all of us were rehearsing the same tragic scene in our minds: coming out of the small room embracing a black bag. I was right. People started chatting under their breath again. “Murderers. They’ve brought us here to throw in our face the news of the death of our sons, daughters, brothers, and sisters. If we dared to protest, they’d kill us too and nobody would know it.” I trembled the whole time I stood there waiting while other visitors were called into the small room and came out with black bags and ashen faces like leaves that had survived on autumn trees until winter.

  When my name was called, to my surprise, my body felt numb. I didn’t want to cry or laugh. I sat across the desk from the bearded man, who was obviously indifferent to the news he was about to deliver. He glanced down at my wedding ring.

  I was a corpse. No news — even news of a death — could shake a corpse.

  I came back to life only when I heard the man say that there had been a mistake. He told me I should go back to Evin to visit you. But not today. Next week.

  This was a miracle, I thought. You were alive, and my own death was not real; it was just a near-death experience. Laughter poured not only from my open mouth but from every pore of my body. The man threw me out; he shouted something about fixing my chador, about me being a whore, about sending me to the same place as you, Arman, where we could be finished off together. But no matter what he said, or how many times he hit the back of my chador with his cable, he couldn’t scare me anymore. As I walked out of the building, the joyful children in my head screamed with excitement, like children do when a roller coaster pauses at the summit before suddenly plunging toward the earth. I even saw a girl on a green seat, eyes aglow.

  My heart made a spontaneous prayer of thanks. If Khoda could save you, He could also bless us with a child after you were released. For the next week, while I was waiting to come to see you, I did the New Year spring cleaning ahead of time. I brought the old stereo back from the storage. I sang along with your favorite music and danced. I was over the moon.

  My happiness lasted only until my first visit. You had lost a lot of hair and had become so thin I could barely recognize you on the other side of the glass. As I sat down, the phone almost fell from my hand. You didn’t even pick up yours. You clenched your teeth and grabbed your knees, rocking your body back and forth. A bulky prison guard stood over you. I avoided his pestering stare. I didn’t want him to see in my eyes that I pitied you. You looked nothing like the capable actor who had always played our lead, the compassionate man in whom women confided, or the political Fadai hero you’d once been.

  Even though seeing you this way was hard, and even though you rarely talked to me during the visits, I kept returning to Evin to be carried through its dingy corridors filled with stuffy air to sit face to face with you and give you hope to stay alive and sane. I couldn’t abandon you. You had no one in the world other than me, and the rumors were that many prisoners, especially the deserted ones, committed suicide or went mad. My parents asked me to go back to Shiraz and stay with them, but I refused. I stayed alone in Tehran so I could visit you. Rent cost me almost everything I had. I became thinner each time I saw you until I was nothing but skin and bone. Just like you.

  I had to bite my lip to keep from crying. Like a man on a cross, your body was diminished and your head drooped, projecting your receding hairline. Sweat oozed from your full-grown beard and shone on the long brow that rubbed against the glass between us. Your skin was jaundiced. Your bones shook as you tried to utter names I didn’t know but assumed to be executed inmates. The guard told you to shut up. Many times, the phone slipped from my hand as I cowered in pain on my side of the glass. I held my breath to prevent the screams echoing in my head from escaping.

  Later on, in August 1988, they cancelled all visits for more than a month. It was around the time the war with Iraq ended. People in the streets were happy because their worries had finally come to an end. I, however, grew more worried every day. Why was I not allowed a visit? I took the bus and went to Gohardasht Prison in Karaj, where they had moved you six months earlier. They told me to go back home and not to worry. “We are doing renovations in the prison,” they said. “When they are done, you can come for a visit.” I did not trust them. I came home and searched for the phone number of the wife of one of your friends, Ahmad. I knew Ahmad was also in Gohardasht. What she told me was horrifying. News about what was happening inside the prisons had already spread among the families. I was the only one who did not have a clue; I was the only one who was out the loop for so long.

  Since the war with Iraq was over, Ahmad’s wife told me, the regime wanted to clean the prisons of their remaining opponents before starting fresh — a new era. She began to cry as she shared the details: they asked the prisoners if they believed in God and the Prophet Mohammad, if they still had faith in Islam. If a prisoner said no, he was finished, even if he was serving a previous sentence. Her constant sobbing made it difficult for her to speak: “For a month now, huge meat trucks have been brought to carry the bodies to Khavaraan.” It was the first time I heard the name of the deserted place several miles outside of Tehran where they dumped the bodies of dozens of hanged prisoners into mass graves.

  After I hung up, I went straight to the closet to pull out a prayer rug I’d brought back with me from Shiraz when I went for my father’s funeral. Shuddering under my white chador, I prayed all night that you would not be as stubborn as those who continued to deny Khoda’s existence — that you had faith in something bigger than yourself or your ideas, something that would keep you alive. Maybe even something like my love. Maybe you wouldn’t mock the goddess of love the same way you mo
cked God.

  While you were incarcerated, I avoided everybody’s calls, even those from my own parents. I cut ties with my brothers and sisters. I could not answer their questions, could not tell them what was happening to you. Then came the news of my father’s death and I had to reconnect. I saw my siblings at the funeral in Shiraz. They gazed at me as if it were my fault that our father had died so soon and unexpectedly. They were waiting for me to apologize to them for marrying you; only divorcing you would count as a proper atonement. When I remained silent, they gazed at me as if it were I, not father, who was dead. Recently, I heard from Auntie Mahin that they told everyone I had behaved boldly at Papa’s funeral, wearing a green headscarf as if I were at a wedding. I did not explain that Baba had asked me, years ago, to wear green at his funeral. He had told me that green was my color. Arman shared his opinion. My siblings also said that I was the only one who had not shed tears. I could not remember if this was true.

  I came back home lonelier than ever, but still I did not lose faith. I hoped that you would survive for me, showing, after all, that God exists. I wanted you and I wanted a child with you. I believed that Khoda would save you. And he did. Not you, but the man they turned you into. Your body was half of what it had been; I could easily have lifted you up in my arms. But I was forbidden to even touch you. I had to wait until you came home.

  The first few weeks after your release, you wanted to sleep alone. You had no strength to hold me, so I held you, silently. Your face, with that long forehead I used to adore, had shrunk to the size of a baby’s face — the baby I desired to have with you. You resisted my embrace. You said that your body hurt. You could not sleep.