The Luminous Heart of Jonah S.

by Gina B. Nahai

  For years, John Vain had relied on Brady McPherson to bankroll his extravagances and raise money for his friends. At last count, he owed the bank $1.8 million, which had alarmed Elizabeth to no end and, in John Vain’s opinion, needlessly.

  “If ever the bank wants its money back,” he told her every time he borrowed more, “I have the house and the restaurant.”

  McPherson had told John Vain that to qualify for a loan, the applicant’s assets must be as significant as the amount of money he borrowed. He had also said that, in his capacity as manager of the loan department, McPherson could see to it that the verification process was quick and unintrusive. Taking his cue from this, John Vain had let his imagination fill not only his own but also his friends’ lists of assets. In the early ’80s, when most Iranians were totally unfamiliar with the concept of borrowing in order to fund purchases, because every transaction in Iran was done entirely in cash, John Vain had the applicants sign blank forms and let McPherson fill them out.

  Later, when Elizabeth warned him that making false claims to a bank to qualify for a loan was called mortgage fraud, that it was against the law, punishable by up to thirty years of imprisonment, he reasoned with utter sincerity that “whatever it’s called, it’s good for everyone: the bank gets its unholy interest, Brady makes his commission, and the rest of us invest the money and watch it grow.”

  Many did invest, but John Vain only spent. This worked out well enough until the fire eliminated part of the collateral against which John Vain had borrowed, and brought attention to his entire portfolio. Suddenly, higher-ups in Bank United’s headquarters wanted to see proof of all the riches McPherson had so creatively dreamed of and which John Vain so assuredly swore by.

  * * *

  Alarmed by the prospect of being found out by the bank for his loose lending standards, McPherson cut off the line of credit and asked for repayment of the principal.

  “Borrow hard money,” he urged. “Sell your house. Whatever it takes, before I lose my license and you go to jail.”

  John Vain wasn’t ready to believe the inventory of doom and gloom that McPherson laid out for him. Nor did he think for a moment that all the heretofore affable and deferential bank employees who had dined free at Lucky 99 and enjoyed a thousand other tokens of John Vain’s generosity would suddenly stop answering his calls. It’s true he wanted to pay the bank, but it wasn’t fear that motivated him to honor his debts as much as shame—the possibility that anyone might doubt his integrity or ethics, or that Elizabeth might see him as less than a successful businessman, that she might lose respect for him, tire of their friendship.

  He took every pain to keep the extent of his financial troubles hidden from her; he scrambled to borrow from one bank to pay another and found that the rules had become much more stringent. He tried to borrow from all the friends to whom he had lent or given money over the years, and found most of them unable or unwilling. He put his house on the market and sold it for less than the original purchase price. He sold all his rugs and furniture, his car, his collection of gold watches. He paid the bank as quickly as he could but the total of what he owed never seemed to shrink.

  “And it’s not just you!” McPherson yelled on the phone till his voice broke. “It’s all the loans you brought in, all those forms you had people sign and me fill out. If you default, we’re all fucked—you, me, your friends who borrowed from me, all because you were too stupid to have insurance.”

  __________________

  Until the recession of 1992, the “old money” people in the exile community expected and received the kind of deference and admiration, the they’re-special-because-they-deserve-to-be aura, they had possessed in Iran. Everyone else—the professional and working classes—scurried about to make a living. They were blessed in that they had no public image to conserve, no pretensions to justify. The rich didn’t have it so good.

  Whether they had left Iran with no money at all, or managed to save some of their assets, the taaghootis of yesteryear still had the burden of keeping their aabehroo which, in their case, was defined largely by their wealth. The aristocrat who had never worked a day in his life, the child of the ghetto who, under the shah, had worked and sacrificed and risen to unimagined heights, the men and women who had married into money and quickly forgotten that it was someone else’s riches they were boasting about—all had the burden, in America, to prove they were still worthy of popular worship.

  Before they had established a source of income, many taaghootis bought expensive houses and rented penthouse offices. To one-up the competition or keep up with it, they bought second homes and weekend cars, threw lavish parties, sent their kids to private schools and universities. They paid for everything the only way they knew—all cash. And they conducted business the old way as well: on a handshake, or merely by trust, with the other person’s aabehroo as the main guarantee.

  Later, when their cash began to run low, American bankers introduced them to the magic trick called “credit” that enabled them to spend money they didn’t have. While the taaghootis borrowed and spent and borrowed more, those other Iranians, the middle- and working-class types who had started with little or no capital, who saved and invested like the proverbial bird in winter, emerged as a cash-rich, if not yet socially savvy, outwardly cultured and urbane group.

  Among the taaghootis, the general impression was that “people you never heard of, whom you would not have trusted to shine your shoes in Iran, have somehow struck gold.” In reality, the “gold” was nothing more than the ability to adapt to difficult circumstances, to sacrifice and be patient, expect a great deal of themselves and their children, earn first and spend no more than what you can afford.

  So the old money consoled itself with its good name, and learned to reckon with, if not entirely embrace, the new arrivals. Family pedigree or personal reputation be damned, the banks want their money back or they’ll foreclose on your house, who cares what the guy did in Iran? That world has died and is not coming back.

  This is what Raphael’s Son had been waiting for.

  __________________

  Later, when she gave up a promising career in law for the sake of exposing Raphael’s Son’s perfidy in her supposed book, Angela claimed that the start of the Ponzi scheme dated back to July 1992, two years after the fire at Lucky 99. That is when Raphael’s Son, having followed the trajectory of John Vain’s misfortune (though some might say he had it coming), hired the first and only employee of R.S. Soleyman Enterprises, with the explicit intent (so Angela believed) of making him a scapegoat for the fraud of the millennium.

  When Raphael’s Son found him, Eddy Arax had been in the United States for six years, working in gas stations and greasy burger joints and dry-cleaning stores and anywhere that would hire an illegal with his background. A few scuffles a year with random clerks at government offices aside, Eddy was a law-abiding citizen. His extended stay in the country was justified, he believed, because by any reasonable measure, the INS should have given him political asylum and a green card instead of a tourist visa: the wreckage that was Eddy’s face was a gift from Saddam Hussein, in one of the many chemical attacks he launched against Iranian soldiers as well as citizens, during the decadelong Iran-Iraq War. Those weapons, the world would later learn, were developed with help from the United States where President Reagan, eager for Iraq to defeat Iran, did not deem the attacks “a matter of strategic concern.” If Reagan’s government could help Saddam kill a hundred thousand people with mustard gas, Eddy figured, it could also hand out a green card or two to the surviving victims.

  He was not a bad tenant of his place of exile, but he was desperate for a white-collar job with regular hours, even if—especially if—he could do the work from home while caring for his mother. And yet, when he received his first and only offer of such a job, Eddy’s immediate reaction was to declare that he would rather die with grease stains on his hands than spend an hour working for—Yes sir, some things are not easily overcome, e
ven in America—Muhammad Jadid al-Islam.

  * * *

  They had run into each other at Raffi’s—the Persian restaurant in Glendale where Eddy was a busboy and Raphael’s Son a very unpopular patron. To be ambushed (as Eddy saw it) by old acquaintances, people who had known him in Iran where he had a respected family and a normal face, was what Eddy dreaded most in LA. To be discovered by someone he had wanted to avoid even in Iran, while he scurried about with piles of dirty dishes in his hands and tomato and kebob stains on his apron, was about as painful an incident as he could fathom.

  But to have that same creature offer him a job he needed urgently, and to know this was the only game in town, no one else would hire Eddy, which is why Raphael’s Son wanted him—they both knew this . . . Well, sometimes a man must eat the land mine if only to spare himself the agony of living one more day with the fear of his next step being his last.

  __________________

  Raphael’s Son had been a thorn in Eddy’s side since they were both in elementary school in Tehran and competing for the top prize in the annual exams. Some years, he beat Raphael’s Son by half a point in the tests; other years, Raphael’s Son robbed Eddy by just as small an advantage. On those occasions Eddy was convinced that the school’s administration had granted Raphael’s Son a point or two that he didn’t deserve, because he was a bastard and the principal felt sorry for him, and also because Eddy was Armenian.

  Eddy’s father, Rasmik Araxamian, was a bookkeeper for the Metropole Hotel on Vanak Avenue from the day it opened till it closed in the weeks leading up to the revolution in 1979. Rasmik had written all the checks and collected all the revenue, paid off the tax men and the bureaucrats, caught the cheaters and the thieves within the company. In the United States, his position would come with the title of CFO—chief financial officer—and a handsome compensation; in Iran, Rasmik was a lowly hessab-dar—keeper of the accounts—a designation that applied to anyone who could use an abacus (and, much later, a basic calculator) and take note of simple financial transactions.

  The fact that Rasmik could beat any old calculator in speed and accuracy up to six figures did not afford him the kinds of advantages some take for granted in the West. Nor did it result in an impressive salary. Rasmik’s wages never quite kept up with the rate of inflation. Like any white-collar employee with a long history of honest service, he collected certain benefits: the gift of a house when he was ready to get married; a wedding reception paid for by the boss; his children’s private school tuition. Still, the real source of glory for a man like Rasmik was not financial: it was in the fact that he had crossed over from his working-class background to the ranks of daftaris—office workers—that he presided over a major financial concern, and, most of all, that he was known for his honesty and trustworthiness.

  Integrity and honor, Eddy always thought, were the crumbs that remained after the rich had gorged themselves at the feast of prosperity. These, they threw at the help.

  * * *

  It wasn’t just the few fractions of a point that Raphael’s Son got unfairly that Eddy held against him. Over time, the bastard’s advantage had come into play in much more significant ways.

  In the established social hierarchy of Iran over the centuries, Armenians, though considered infidels and outsiders, were ranked slightly higher than Jews but far lower than any Muslim. Then came the shah and the oil money and the Zionist whatever-it-was, and suddenly the Jews who until yesterday had been “untouchable” were lording it over the Armenians. The shah liked them and they adored him in return. They also liked to study, which meant they became doctors and architects and all those things that a developing country needs and is willing to pay for. Unlike the Armenians, who had a homeland before they were chased out of it, and a language that they insisted on keeping alive, the Jews thought of themselves as Iranian. They had been in Persia—and, when the name changed, Iran—for 2,700 years and did not intend to leave. The minute they were given the chance, they were all in a hurry to shed the ghetto and become “integrated” within the larger Iranian society. The Armenians, on the other hand, kept right on counting the days till someone, somehow, gave them back their beloved Armenia.

  When the war with Iraq began, the Jews who wished to avoid going to the front had places to escape to—Israel, Europe, the United States. Either that, or they could afford to bribe officials and get their young children off the list of conscripts. The Armenians had to choose between Iran under the mullahs and Armenia in the Soviet Union.

  As far as Eddy knew, Raphael’s Son had remained Jewish in Iran until the shah fell and most of the rich and powerful Jews took off for the West. The minute power shifted to the mullahs, he dropped the Jewish thing and became a seyyed.

  Eddy, on the other hand, was given the choice of going to the front or to Evin Prison. When he came back, disfigured and damaged from the war, his father took one look at him and dropped dead on the spot from grief.

  * * *

  At Raffi’s that day, Raphael’s Son let Eddy have his say, then smirked and threw one of his business cards on the table next to the now-empty plate of kebob and white saffron rice with sumac powder.

  “I remember you have a good memory,” he said, as if Eddy had not declined the offer. “I’d need you to keep the numbers in your head.”

  __________________

  Five months later, having lost his busboy position at Raffi’s after one too many altercations with the patrons and the rest of the staff, Eddy called the number on Raphael’s Son’s business card.

  “I figure the only thing worse than working for you is to be homeless and starving with my sick old mother,” he said by way of accepting the job offer.

  Six dollars an hour, which Raphael’s Son explained was really minimum wage if you factored out the taxes Eddy would have had to pay if he were legal. Eddy could work from home “until I find a bigger office. The catch is, I keep the written records; you memorize what I tell you.”

  Right then, Eddy knew he should back out, hang up the phone, and make a Will work for food sign out of a piece of cardboard and go stand on a street corner in Beverly Hills, where the average daily income of panhandlers, a newspaper had recently announced, was $120. He knew he should run away then, and he knew every day for the next two decades, but that’s how great mistakes are made, one day at a time.

  “So you know,” he told Raphael’s Son, “I’ll let you fuck me in the ass because I don’t have a choice, but I won’t be a part of anyone else getting raped if I can help it.”

  His first assignment was to call John Vain.

  __________________

  Raphael’s Son was sitting at his desk with his shoes off and his shirt collar unbuttoned when he glanced up and saw a tall man in cowboy boots standing in the doorway. It was nine a.m. on a Wednesday. The Iranian stores on Westwood Boulevard south of Wilshire were just opening, but the restaurants and bookstores and hair and nail salons were still closed. Raphael’s Son had come to the office because he had been up since five and feeling restless in his tiny apartment, but he didn’t expect visitors. He had the radio on a weather and traffic station and was working on a crossword puzzle in a Persian-language newspaper he had bought at the rose-water-and-pistachio-nut ice cream place down the street. He had left the door open for air, so his first thought was that the cowboy must be looking for some other office. Then the man walked in, extended a hand, and said, “Mr. Soleyman? I’m John Vain,” and Raphael’s Son thought, This is how fate comes calling.

  * * *

  He had heard about John Vain’s troubles at the Iranian Orthodox (never mind the term was an oxymoron) temple recently founded by one of the many ambitious young rabbis competing for souls and pocketbooks on the West Side. This rabbi, the son of a well-known gambling and drinking man, had chosen to forget that Iranians were not Hasidic. He went around in a big black hat and long black coat, preached about the sin of drinking nonkosher bottled water during Passover, and had already fathered eleven children and
was nowhere near done. Raphael’s Son had started to attend his temple after the fiasco at Sinai Temple, and he discovered that the congregation was much more accepting and inclusive. All he had to do was show up at the shul, and even though he clearly had no idea what was going on or how to read the Torah, they liked thinking that a Conservative Jew (you might as well say gentile) had seen the light and was eager to become one of them. They were also much easier to please: a hundred-dollar contribution, scoffed at and disdained in the fancy temples, was appreciated in this storefront-with-plastic-chairs establishment.

  Since the fire, John Vain’s fortunes had been the subject of much speculation among the more religious Jews who (let’s face it, the man never said no to anyone) were concerned that an easy and fertile source of fund-raising might have dried up. The first time he overheard two men talking about it, Raphael’s Son blurted out, “Hagh-eh sheh”—“He deserves it.” When he saw the men’s puzzled faces he was tempted to explain, then thought better of it. To admit he had been ridiculed and humiliated by the staff and patrons of Lucky 99, he realized, would only diminish him in the eyes of his new acquaintances. This is what Raphael’s Son had learned while his mother dragged him from door to door in search of empathy and justice. For years, he had tried to open her eyes to what was so patent to him—that people liked to identify with the victor; they may feel pity for the wronged, but if given the choice, they would choose to belong to the winning side.

  So he didn’t explain the cause of his animosity toward John Vain, and thereafter made sure he kept his mouth closed every time he heard mention of him, but privately, he relished the talk of financial ruin and possible prosecution. He even drove by the site of the restaurant a few times, in daylight and at night, just to see the devastation and imagine the hurt it must cause John Vain and, he imagined by extension, Elizabeth. That’s why he had Eddy call John Vain.