Zendegi

by Greg Egan

  As they ate dinner, Javeed watched the football highlights on TV. Martin didn’t feel obliged to feign interest, any more than he did with cartoons or wrestling, but he knew he’d feel a pang of jealousy when he heard Javeed excitedly discussing the results with Farshid. If he’d had more energy, perhaps he could have faked it, or even developed a genuine passion for the game. When he received his new liver, all these impossible tasks would become easy.

  Javeed’s homework was half an hour of handwriting practice, copying a series of words chosen to illustrate the different forms the same letter took in different positions. Martin sat at the table beside him, offering encouragement, but Javeed didn’t need any help; his writing was already neat and precise, and he seemed to have grasped the concept of initial, medial, final and isolated forms just as easily as a child learning to write English grasped the concept of upper and lower case.

  ‘Okay, bedtime. Clean your teeth.’

  Javeed didn’t want Martin to read him a story; that had been his mother’s job. He just wanted him to sit beside the bed until he fell asleep, and Martin was happy to oblige.

  In the darkness, Martin’s thoughts returned to the splinter he’d been digging at for weeks. When Javeed had been born, Omar and Rana had taken the request to be his godparents very seriously. Omar had brought up the subject of religion, assuring Martin that he was prepared to raise Javeed as a non-Muslim. With the one major sticking point out of the way, Martin had considered everything settled, and he’d never felt an urge to revisit the decision. The whole point of making such arrangements was to put the subject out of your mind: to contemplate the unthinkable once, as an antidote to all future morbid fretting over the consequences if the worst did happen.

  He still believed that Omar was a good man, a good father, a good husband. Over the years Martin had heard him say foolish things about Arabs, Jews, Afghanis, Sunnis, black people, gays, women, and supporters of rival football teams - but everyone in the world talked shit sometimes, uttering outrageous, insupportable libels against some group of people. If Martin could have heard his own lifetime’s worth of ill-considered utterances through someone else’s ears, he was quite sure he would not have emerged as any kind of paragon of fairness and decency. Judging Omar for his lax self-censorship on issues Martin had been trained since childhood to treat as taboo would just be sanctimonious. And as for his crass remarks to Farshid about the woman in the shop, Martin was fairly sure that the rise of his own interest in women had coincided precisely with the point when he’d ceased caring about his father’s opinion on anything. Farshid had probably been cringing inside and mentally humming a tune in the hope of blocking out every word. The only difference between an Iranian teenager and a Western one was that he’d been too polite to tell his father to shut up and stop making a fool of himself.

  And yet . . . even if Omar’s stupefaction in the face of changing public sexual mores really was close to harmless, and even if he could actually have befriended any of the people he’d derided in his loose-tongued moments just as easily as he’d befriended an atheist like Martin, that didn’t really settle the matter. Martin wanted his son to share his own taboos. He wanted Javeed to be upbraided for repeating whatever bigoted, sexist drivel he brought back from the school-yard, not told, ‘I hear you!’ or ‘Isn’t that right?’

  Was it wrong to want to have a lasting influence on his own son, beyond the colour of his hair? Was it sanctimonious to want to pass on his own values? It wasn’t about judging himself a better man than Omar. It was about not being erased from Javeed’s life completely.

  But where did that longing actually get him? What choice did he have? Behrouz did not have Omar’s rough edges, but even if he and Suri had agreed to take Javeed, Javeed barely knew them. He’d be stuck in Damascus, a two-hour flight away from all his friends; learning Arabic would be the least of his problems. And any fantasy involving Australia had the same downsides multiplied tenfold. Martin hadn’t stayed close to any of his cousins; Mark and his wife Rachel had come to Tehran for his wedding, but so far he hadn’t even told them about Mahnoosh’s death, let alone his own condition. Martin could just imagine the awkward silence if he phoned them, out of the blue, brought them up to speed on his dilemma, and then enquired as to whether their house felt empty now that their own three children had moved out.

  Javeed stirred. ‘Mama! Inja bia!’

  Martin said, ‘Sssh, it’s okay.’ If Mahnoosh was beside them she was keeping silent; when he tried to drag her advice out of the aether, all he felt was a vague sense of concern and affection. To have known her for fifteen years was still not to know what she would have made of this mess. She’d gone along with the choice of Omar and Rana, but then, most of her other friends were divorced. Had the prospect of Javeed being raised by anyone but his own parents ever felt real to her? At least once she’d referred to Omar as a sexist troglodyte and Rana as a doormat. But Martin knew she’d loved them both, admired them both. Rana was quiet but strong; you didn’t have to join a Goth band to stick it to the dictators.

  When Javeed’s breathing became slow and even, Martin left him. His back wasn’t too bad, but he was trying to get off the painkillers completely, so he needed to stay up for a few more hours to exhaust himself before trying to sleep.

  He went to the living room and switched on the TV. In his presence, at this hour, it defaulted to the local news channel - though he suspected that unless World War III had broken out there’d be no news all week that wasn’t football, football, football.

  18

  The email read: ‘Could I meet you for lunch today? I know it’s short notice, but it’s important.’

  Nasim replied, ‘Lunch where? I’m a vegetarian.’ The prospect of having to locate a meat-free meal in Tehran was enough to make most people reassess their notion of ‘important’. Online maps weren’t much help; Nasim had stopped publishing locations herself, lest she lead anyone into false hope. Even the establishments where she’d succeeded on occasion were perfectly capable of taking their one suitable dish off the menu on a whim, or adding meat to the recipe without warning.

  Martin responded in thirty seconds, ‘There’s a place that does kuku-ye-sabzi, just around the corner from People of the Book.’

  Nasim had her doubts about how seriously they meant sabzi, but if she’d been too busy to accept the invitation she should have used an ironclad brush-off from the start. ‘Okay. Bookshop at one?’

  ‘Great. Thank you.’

  When Nasim arrived at the shop, Martin was locking up and pulling down the shutters.

  ‘You don’t stay open at lunchtime?’ she asked.

  ‘I only open in the mornings myself,’ he said. ‘There’s a student who comes in and does the evening shift, but I don’t have anyone for the afternoons yet.’

  The place he took her to was a crowded juice bar with three tiny plastic tables squeezed between the wall and the serving counter, but the owner really did whip up a traditional herb-and-vegetable omelette without complaint - and without throwing in a handful of ground beef or diced chicken for ‘added flavour’.

  ‘How’s Javeed?’ she asked.

  Martin took a while to reply. ‘He’s still thinking it through, working out the implications. Every now and then he gets a fresh realisation that Mahnoosh is really not coming back. Before his sixth birthday, we talked about it and he decided to let the day pass. He didn’t want to celebrate without her.’

  Nasim tried to think of something encouraging to say. ‘I’m sure he’s going to be resilient in the long run.’ Her mother had told her that Martin had cancer, but she had no intention of quizzing him about that. Most of their conversations since the funeral had revolved around Zendegi; she was only too happy to help provide the poor kid with some distraction.

  Martin said, ‘Javeed’s godparents, Omar and Rana, are wonderful people. So I don’t want anything I say to be taken as a slight on their characters.’

  ‘Okay.’ Nasim shifted uncomfortably i
n her plastic chair. She had no idea where he was heading. She’d met the couple only once, at Mahnoosh’s funeral, though her mother knew them through mutual friends.

  ‘Omar already treats Javeed like a son,’ Martin continued. ‘I can’t imagine anyone else caring more about his welfare. But some of Omar’s ideas, the way he talks about women, about ethnic groups . . .’ He trailed off. ‘You lived in the States for a while, didn’t you?’

  ‘About twelve years,’ Nasim replied.

  ‘I think you understand what I’m saying. It’s hard work to get all that racist, sexist garbage even halfway under control. Nobody really gets it out of their system. But that’s no reason to give up and say it doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Of course not,’ Nasim agreed cautiously.

  ‘I don’t want Omar raising my son,’ Martin said bluntly. ‘There are things that are important to me that he’ll simply never accept - let alone pass on to a child with any conviction. I know I should be grateful that Javeed has someone like Omar prepared to look after him. But I can’t make peace with it. I just can’t. That’s why I’ve come to you.’

  Nasim felt the blood draining from her face. He was going to ask her to adopt the boy.

  ‘Martin, I—’ She stopped, too flustered to say anything coherent. Mahnoosh had been her cousin, but she’d barely known her, let alone Javeed. If there’d been no one - literally no one else in the world, she might have been prepared to do this, but Martin seemed to be telling her that he wanted to toss aside his loyal and loving friends . . . just because she had a more Western sensibility?

  Martin went on, ‘Last night I saw a replay of the football match in Zendegi between the two Azimis. Each team held the other to a draw.’ He laughed. ‘I was probably the last person in the world to notice what you’ve achieved, to appreciate how amazing it was.’

  Nasim was utterly confused now. Was he trying to flatter her? Praising her technical skills as if that had some bearing on her eligibility for this role?

  ‘But once I saw that game,’ he continued, ‘I knew it was the answer. Javeed’s happiest times with me these days are all in Zendegi. And I don’t think he’d find it strange or frightening; I think he’d just accept it. I think it would make perfect sense to him.’

  Nasim said, ‘What would make sense to him? What is it you’re asking me to do?’ She thought she knew now, but having narrowly averted embarrassing them both with her first misunderstanding, she wasn’t willing to take anything for granted.

  ‘I want you to do for me what you did for Azimi,’ Martin announced calmly. ‘I want you to make a Proxy of me that can live on in Zendegi and help raise my son.’

  After forty minutes the owner of the juice bar started giving them dark looks. There were only so many banana milkshakes Nasim could bring herself to order for the sake of staying put, so they walked back to Martin’s empty shop and sat in the small coffee lounge where patrons were invited to flick through their potential purchases.

  ‘I have some money from my wife’s insurance,’ Martin told her, for the fifth time.

  ‘That’s not the point,’ Nasim replied patiently. ‘It’s not a question of expense. It’s a question of complexity.’

  ‘I’m not asking for anything sophisticated,’ Martin insisted. ‘I don’t expect this Proxy to deliver lectures on moral philosophy; I just want him to have the right gut reaction if his son starts referring to women as whores or Arabs as wild animals.’

  Nasim said, ‘If it were that simple, I could go back to the office right now and crank out an ordinary, scripted Proxy that flew off the handle in response to any list of triggers you cared to spell out. Do you honestly want something that crude?’

  ‘Not that crude,’ Martin conceded.

  ‘So do you really think that a Proxy whose only ability was knowing when to lay down the law - and who became tongue-tied whenever he was challenged to defend his views - would have any impact on your son at all? I’m not talking about high-powered philosophy! I’m talking about debating a six-year-old, or a twelve-year-old, with a more subtle response than “Because I said so”.’

  Martin was beginning to look deflated. He said, ‘I’m going to have to go and pick up Javeed from school.’

  Nasim said, ‘I’m sorry, Martin. You know if there’s anything else I can do—’

  ‘Thank you.’

  In the taxi back to the office, Nasim felt drained. She wondered how many other people had watched Virtual Azimi tenaciously holding his ground against the original - as if this proved them to be perfectly matched mirror-images - and concluded: This is it, my chance to cheat death. Well, if Azimi was hit by a truck, his widow would certainly receive royalties from the game for as long as it remained popular, but most people could forget about a Proxy preserving their earning capacity, let alone anything more personal. Maybe she should have told Martin that, while the match hadn’t literally been fixed, Azimi would have been crazy to hammer his Proxy’s team into the ground; that might have been good for his ego, but it wouldn’t have helped anyone’s bank balance.

  Bahador spotted her as she stepped out of the elevator. ‘Did you hear about the cleric in Qom?’ he asked.

  ‘No—?’ They walked together down the corridor; Bahador wasn’t smiling, so Nasim decided that this probably wasn’t the opening line to a joke.

  ‘Hojatoleslam Shahidi. He just issued a statement denouncing Virtual Azimi as an affront to God and human dignity.’

  ‘An affront? Why?’

  Bahador read from his notepad. ‘ “God’s gifts to us should be shared, and taught, and used freely to delight him, but they must not be made into commodities to be bought and sold.”’

  Nasim rubbed her eyes. ‘Okay, but does he have any actual followers who’ll boycott the game, or is he just another fat fart in a turban, hallucinating relevance and trying to make a headline?’

  Bahador looked around nervously, as if he was afraid someone might have overheard her. ‘I don’t know. I guess we’ll find out.’

  ‘You didn’t SocNet him?’

  Bahador fiddled with the notepad. ‘He does have an Ummah-Space page, but it looks like most of his friends are sycobots.’

  ‘Hmm.’ It had been a while since Nasim’s online outreach job, but anyone who didn’t filter out interest-feigning bots was hardly going to be a formidable organiser. ‘I wouldn’t worry about it,’ she said.

  Nasim spent the afternoon in a videoconference with a developer who was using the Fariba modules in a new game called Murder in Manolos, a gossipy whodunnit set among North Tehran’s Mall Princess cliques. Unlike Virtual Azimi, the novel technology would not be a selling point for the public; the aim was simply to get a smoother result for the non-player characters, with lower development costs.

  There were a few technical hitches in the interface with the modules, but overall the project was going quite well. Nasim watched some demonstration runs; the Fariba-enhanced bit-players seemed at least as lifelike as anyone in an equivalent TV drama. She had added a feature to the library recently that had turned out to be invaluable, a routine called WTFquery(). When one of the Fariba modules generated some potential dialogue, before having the Proxy utter the words you could try out the whole exchange on another (non-identical) Fariba, and see if its neural response classified the would-be contribution as (A) a pertinent observation, (B) witty banter, or (C) a complete non sequitur. Screening out bizarre interjections from the Proxies that would have been the equivalent of stamping ‘idiot robot’ on their foreheads did at least as much for their credibility as anything they actually said.

  Nasim woke to darkness, certain that her father was in the house. Was he asleep in the spare room? Or had he got up to use the bathroom - was that what had woken her? She strained her ears, listening for his footsteps.

  It took a few seconds for her conviction to fade. She could still see the two of them standing in the kitchen together, arguing about her work on the Faribas. In the dream, his hair had turned grey. That small to
uch had been enough to keep her satisfied, to make the whole scenario seem perfectly reasonable.

  She checked her watch; it was just after three. Her alarm was set for five-thirty. She lay still, trying to clear her mind and let her limbs grow heavy, but after a few minutes she decided that it wasn’t going to happen.

  How much had she screwed up her life, she wondered, by trying to imagine her father’s advice, his opinions, his disappointments, his praise? She was sure she would have stayed at MIT in 2012 if she hadn’t felt compelled to return to Iran to prove that his struggle had meant something to her. But the problem hadn’t been some nagging ghost in her head; the problem had been the silence. She’d wanted to live as if he were beside her, to cheat the murderers who’d taken him from her, but she’d never really mastered that act. Her own memories, her own love for him, her own judgement had not been enough.