The sergeant pauses, exhausted. The word Kurd passes over Reza like a dark cloud and leaves him long unsettled in its shadow, and all the laughter is drained from him. The joking among the boys ceases as they listen, city boys curious at this turn in the story that makes them heroes, the tribal conscripts happy to suddenly hear a familiar word.
Ahead now; 1921 comes upon us like a miracle.
He pants.
Our glorious king, Reza Shah Pahlavi, rose out from the Cossack ranks to oust the imbecile Qajars from their ruinous throne and determine our Persia be an inde pendent thing, a solid thing, belonging to no one aside from herself. Not the British or the Russians or the Austro-Hungarians, not the dirty tribes or their imbecile aghas. For his foresight and determination we are most blessed and grateful.
The pacing has resumed and the crimson drains from the sergeant’s face. Some of the cadets stand and clap in a mock celebration that pleases the sergeant, who twists his moustache in delight. The bad feeling churns in Reza, though now he cannot remember the cause. Has he broken a rule? Did he properly make his bed? Are his trunk items in order? Are the buttons of his suit jacket rightly lined? He thinks and checks but knows that the illness in him churns at one word: Kurd. A shadow leans up against Reza’s back and whispers. Yes, Kurd.
The sergeant finishes his lesson.
That’s it . . . ahead now. To you boys. We are a young nation. The shah says we must build an army to stand strong as a column and keep this country together. Now you all stand in history . . .
The air is stifling and warm. On the wall, a map labeled PERSIA, heavily marked with lines and circles, curls in at the corners from the heavy condensation of boy breaths that fills the room. Reza himself is breathless. He perspires from underneath his collar and the nausea stays with him until mealtime, when the boys are in the dining hall to devour the sour stew and onions and easily erase the entire lecture. Reza tries to eat and joke but folds under the weight of a bad feeling he cannot isolate. That night as the cadets gather to wrestle in the stone circle, he takes opponent after opponent and easily crushes them to the ground, in an effort to shake off the black sensation that covers him from within. His fervor does not go unnoticed. A captain who regularly wagers on the matches between boys calls out to Reza, pipe dangling from his lips.
Aufareen, Khourdi. Now that’s a good conscript. Imagine putting that anger to work against the dirty tribes! The shah himself would be proud.
Often, there are inspections. The boys are displayed for visiting statesmen, generals, and on a particularly hot day, the shah himself. The cadets take it as fun and games and stand atop cots and trunks and one another’s shoulders to look out the high barracks windows and laugh as their dignified commanders bustle about with the scrambling gestures and hoarse whispers of children.
The shah. The shah. Look sharp! The shah.
A whistle blows. Cadets wash and dress and stand clean and straight before their beds. Names are called: Jahan Tavainshir, Keyvan Omidi, Darius Khalegi, Fereydoun Jamshidi, and the boys take positions as a young lieutenant points.
Here and here and here.
Reza stands between the Baluch twins. Both have rough faces and large hands but one is thick bodied and the other is thin with a sick coloring in his face. The thin brother sleeps on Reza’s right and in the night he holds one hand to the top edge of his ear, where a large red scab heals, and another hand to his mouth, where his lips suck feverishly on his thumb. Both have skin stained a dark brown and black, marble eyes. The sick one keeps to himself and holds to his wound all day and all night, while the thick twin speaks incessantly in a clacking tongue no one, aside from his wounded brother, can understand.
The whistle blows again. Reza, who stands taller than the two boys by at least a head, keeps a strong posture: hands clasped behind his back and shoulders pushed forward to fill his uniform. The brothers take great care to imitate him but they are weedy in their jackets and crooked through their spines. Across the divide the city boys stand, clean boys, favorite boys, in an immaculate line of square shoulders and stiff lips, each chest pressed out, each heart pledged to serve the new father.
The shah is a tall man. Thick like a trunk through his every part—finger, wrist, neck—and but for epaulets of gold, his uniform is identical to Reza’s. He walks slowly among the silent columns of barracks boys, with his nose held high as if in a perfumed garden. Three generals trail him in a sycophantic symphony of spurs. The shah stops to ask the cadets one by one:
And you, my son, you are a child of which province?
Reza listens to the responses.
Tabriz; Khorramabad; Tehran, Agha Shah; Mashhad; Schomal; Rasht, like yourself, Agha Shah . . .
Very good. A willing conscript, I see, a smart city boy. Here to make your father proud, I am sure.
The shah and his aides stand before the Baluch twin whose ear is missing a large top piece. He approaches the boy and fingers the wound with a gentle touch of his gloved hand.
Conscription?
The boy nods.
And you are a child of which devious province, my son?
Baluchistan.
And your father thought he was more powerful than me?
—
And he tried to resist your conscription and now you’ve been branded a miscreant?
Reza shifts his eyes off the floor. The shah is a rock of a man, enormous and uncut. His nose is smashed to his face and a heavy moustache grows out from underneath the uneven, stony rubble. He sweats a white sweat, thick and visible.
Some things must be done by force, my son, and now you know that, but lest you forget . . .
The shah pinches the injured ear until blood drips onto the cadet’s shoulder. On one side of Reza the thin twin flinches and screams out and on the other side the thick twin shifts in place like a child full of piss.
The shah stops and hands his crop to an attendant commander, who hands him a handkerchief in return. The barracks are still while there is a general collecting and a composing and cleaning of fingers and gloves and the shah takes a step sideways to stand before Reza.
And you, my boy? A child of which province?
Kurdistan.
A Kurd, then?
—
Reza pushes his chest out until its heart beats like a bullet between them.
You are a troubled people. Troublesome . . .
With a shake of his head he moves on to the thick Baluch twin.
And you, my boy, you are a child of which province?
Hastily, easily, the brotherhood disbands. Coagulates of new boys, formed in the sticky classroom and formed in the sweaty bunks and formed in their own happy imaginations, dissolve and the fraternity gives way to an easy enmity made of pointed finger and ha ha ha. What were before boys, simple of mind and manner, are now complications of ascendancy and memory: city boys revel in the sudden recognition of their maman’s clean hands and their baba’s fancy shoes and their cobbled streets and labyrinthine bazaars, while tribal conscripts keep a silent shame for their maman’s ever dusty hair and their baba’s disdain for the shah and the childhood friendships they kept with stars and rain and sparrow’s nests. So starts the segregation: them and us; the other and the I; the sophisticate and the savage; civilized and ingrate; the good and the undesired. At night the barracks come alive with taunts.
Hey, Baluch boy! Go back to your dead dry desert so we can defeat you and make Persia a proud place again.
Peff. I smell a smelly Lur. Does anyone else smell a smelly Lur?
Turkoman, they say your eyes are slits because that barbarian Ghengis Khan fucked all your mothers at once.
And on and on until even commanders join the fun and assign their own subnames. The Shahsevans become the dirt-brains, and the Turkomans rice-eyes, and the Baluchs black skins or, even worse: Arabs. There is identification humiliation enough for all. Some of the conscripts are glad not to understand the Farsi and keep their backs to the sagging cots and their eyes on the ba
rracks’ rusted tin roof. Few, however, are sad as Reza is sad, his sleepy heart broken by the loss of the brother love born so easily between them all on those first days, free of history and the gun-strong determinations of this new state.
The Painted King
See them sleep, these sons of mine.
See them, nestled like loved ones, row after row, barrack after barrack, heads awash in the last brine of boyhood.
See them sleep, my army of sons, each suckled off a different teat and their tongues still wet with prayers to me.
See them sleep, these sons of mine, and though I am now shah, most majestic and supreme, I too was once a boy, sleeping and divine. A boy like them, beaten and bruised by the thick angry hands of a brutish baba, forced to run and hide in the folds of Maman’s belly until found again.
At the turn of the western century I was the punished boy, then the runaway boy, lost to the cold hills of the Caucasus, until finally I was the eager orphan boy who tagged after the Cossack brigades that aimlessly crisscrossed the northern provinces. Yes, I, most indomitable and noble, was once the orphan tagalong who begged of the clear-eyed men: Agha, a jacket, please? Agha, a gun? I am the boy who Commander Sidipovko sticks in the stables to tend the horses and sleep in the hay and wait for him each night. In this time I am a good stable boy; I am a better knifeman; I am the best shot in the garrison and finally the commander’s sergeant, lieutenant and then his topmost captain. One day I am the commander himself and the next day I am minister of war of the Cossack Persian brigades with four thousand men at my call. I am a man partial to spilt blood. I administer war regularly and with great panache, leading armies against the belligerent Qashqai and Lur tribes in the name of a greater notion: nation. My brigades and divisions are successful against Simko, the Bahkriyari in deserts and mountains north and west. My men and I are welcomed in cities with cries of thanks and praise, cheers and claps on the back, for we do the dirty work and in doing so make our glorious Persian past a modern thing, a proper thing, a thing to belong in the world of tanks and war and one-faced fear. Now I am the notorious Commander Reza Khan, boorish and proud, a buxom beast, a king over all I see, and I let loose my two forked hooves to prance over the hearts and heads of whomever I desire. Now I am a figure, face and father. All of it once hidden in the skin of a sleeping boy who was once woken and once loved, now cast out and forever cold.
The Selection
In these years Reza is often chosen. They tell him to stand at the front of the class and hold the rifle in a series of poses and postures: over the shoulder, along the length of the leg, the base at the ribs, barrel out, pointed here and there, always away from the captain and toward the class of boys. He follows instructions and turns the gun at the fifty cadets, who stand stock still and stare at Reza, with his one eye shut and his one eye wide and the infinite one eye of the rifle open at them. The captain lectures alongside and explains the most efficient ways to aim, take shot, aim and take shot again. Reza is told to relax and he ends with the rifle stretched upright, from his feet to his hips, in one obedient line. He has been chosen to brandish the weapon in a mute picturesque way in front of, and at, the other boys and Reza stands, an armed and able example, to cock and load and point and almost shoot, to raise the green of envy up from under the tight collars of the empty-handed cadets.
At night, in the barracks, Reza suffers these selections. With naked backs made of sharp shoulders the cadets keep him out of their circles of conversation and games. In the shower the city boys look down at him and laugh a loud donkey laugh.
Your mother was an ass and your father must have been a heavy horse, you’ve got the parts of an animal, you dirty Kurd, hehehe haw haw haw.
Turkoman and Rashti and Lur and thin Baluch twin say nothing. Of the tribal conscripts only the twins’ thick brother, with both ears intact, tries on the teasing and laughs.
Hehehe hawhawhaw, dirty Kurd, Khourdi is a dirty Kurd.
The viciousness fits him but Reza is unaffected, for he is chosen and favored and taller in height and firmer in muscle. For the sake of the gun he will succumb to the segregation; for the sake of the hold and the cock, the fire and the bang, the hurt or maybe the kill, Reza keeps his fist unclenched and cultivates a thick skin.
The gun has been long kept from him. His baba’s gun was an accidental thing, useless like a toy, covered in dirt, bulletless and painted in rust. But Reza has seen the barracks guns and they are an army unto themselves, to stand upright against the classroom walls, erect when untouched, erect even as the cadets sleep, then still erect as they are held by the eager novice hands. In their lessons the captain manipulates the guns like he would an injured bird, with gestures gentle and small. In his hands they are suddenly shiny, slick with oil, disassembled and reassembled to make obvious the inside and the out. Reza watches the captain work, to see the way his fingers fit and flit about the metal pieces with a rhythm regular and confident, as if the weapon itself was part of his own skeleton, its assured projections part of the captain’s very soul.
In the mornings Reza runs and raises his knees in exercises and in the hot day he sits in the instructional and recites the names of the cities on the map markered IRAN. In the afternoon he wrestles to the shouts and bets of the superiors and holds a boy by the neck until the knuckles of his own hands are white and the boy’s eyes bulge and the face is just a glazed sheen of mud mixed with tears, dirt and sweat. All day long Reza hopes; with every bowed head and dutiful nod he hopes a gun will be given and he will have his own and that it will aim (at them) and fire (in them) and scream (he will) and shout (hehawhehaw-hehaw).
In exchange for a bit of news from the barracks, you may select one.
The captain points to the five guns that spread out like a hand over the colonel’s empty desk. The cylinders of the four rifles reach like fingers and their butts join together in a brown-black-tan palm with the squat and potent handgun arranged to look somewhat like a thumb. Reza is tempted and hungry for the shot, but resists. The colonel and captain reassure him.
It’s only a bit of information.
Just a little news of the barracks, a bit of what words are going around among the boys.
They are at ease in their asking. The captain, with his long face and sunken eyes that forever peer past the boys, and the childlike colonel, who leans up against the wall in his chair, his heavy body delicately balanced in a lackadaisical pose that makes Reza nervous. They take turns in their talking.
I am sure there is something, just a little gossip . . .
I’ve heard from another source there is slander against the shah . . .
That could be dangerous talk . . .
Go ahead, pick one up. They are just tested.
They fire like cannons.
The guns are German Mausers, Russian Mossines, British Lee-Enfields and the slick French Lebels, all traded with foreign armies in exchange for oil and niceties. None new, already rust covered and witness to what fear, hate, blindness and death the three men in the room cannot say. Reza’s eyes grow wet at the blossomed metal flower before him, the skeleton-still hand that waits to be held. The colonel continues, as if to himself.
Now what could these boys say about the shah? After months of the highest-quality military training, who is to complain?
Still balanced in his precarious tilt he looks down his nose at Reza.
Go ahead, pick it up, they tell me you’re well trained. Choose one.
Reza chooses a rifle, the longest and darkest of the lot, and raises it up to his shoulder, where it fits into a socket just below the clavicle. It is more comfortable than any handshake or embrace. The colonel continues.
Now, who could speak such treasonous words, after all we have done for them?
I wonder . . .
Ahhh, ingrates, the lot of them . . .
The voice echoes in Reza’s head and the gun is solid in his hands and he tries to recall the boys, the cold and hollow barracks, the nightly banter, but the gun di
stracts him. It is warm, like he wanted. It is hard, like he wanted. It is almost his, like he wanted. For this gun he has turned a deaf ear to the harangues of the jackal-tongued city boys, held his hands stiffly to his sides, memorized cities and safely separated himself. Now a silence fills his memory and the colonel’s questions hang in the air like laundry out to dry; Reza is close to failing, near losing the one thing he is certain will never break, disobey him or die.
This talk of dissent among them is unexpected . . . a shock, really.
Reza strains to remember a conversation but all that comes is the evening talk of mother’s food and brother’s game and neighbor girl’s smile, sentimentalities foreign to the Kurdish cadet.
Nothing?
The colonel asks.
Come now, Khourdi, you remember nothing?
The captain asks.
Such a shame, you are first selected for the gun, first in your class, they say you are a tribe boy transformed. There has been much talk in your favor. Here, try the handgun.
The captain takes the rifle from him and puts the .45 caliber in his palm and says, in a haughty voice:
A Russian thing.
Instantly, as if he himself has just been shot, Reza remembers the faces of the city boys jeering at the everywhere-hanging photos of the bald, moustachioed and medallioned shah. They are brazen in the raillery and proud to recount overheard conversations between their fathers and city men in dens and hyatts. With the pistol in his hand Reza remembers: My father could do it, and better; this shah is a fake thing. This old man is a fool, hungry for power with no plan . . . Our Iran is run now by the brute child of a peasant, a puppet king on British strings. They say he can’t read. They say he can’t write.
The Age of Orphans Page 8
