Whirlwind

by James Clavell

  Azadeh had laughed. “My Erikki’s cleverer than your Tommy—when Erikki tried the quilts on our carpet he sighed all night and turned and turned and kept me awake—I was so exhausted after three nights I quite liked the bed. When I visit my family I sleep civilized, though when Erikki’s at the palace we use a bed. You know, darling, another problem: I love my Erikki but sometimes he’s so rude I almost die. He keeps saying ‘yes’ and ‘no’ when I ask him something—how can you have a conversation after yes or no?”

  She smiled to herself now. Yes, it’s very difficult living with him, but living without him now is unthinkable—all his love and good humor and size and strength and always doing what I want but only just a little too easily, so I have little chance to sharpen my wiles, “We’re both very lucky, Sharazad, aren’t we?”

  “Oh, yes, darling. Can you stay for a week or two—even if Erikki has to go back, you stay, please?”

  “I’d like to. When Erikki gets back…perhaps I’ll ask him.”

  Sharazad shifted in the bath, moving the bubbles over her breasts, blowing them off her hands. “Mac said they’d come here from the airport if they were delayed. Genny’s coming straight from the apartment but not before nine—I also asked Paula to join us, the Italian girl, but not for Nogger, for Charlie.” She chuckled. “Charlie almost swoons when she just looks at him!”

  “Charlie Pettikin? Oh, but that’s wonderful. Oh, that’s very good. Then we should help him—we owe him so much! Let’s help him snare the sexy Italian!”

  “Wonderful! Let’s plan how to give Paula to him.”

  “As a mistress or wife?”

  “Mistress. Well…let me think! How old is she? She must be at least twenty-seven. Do you think she’d make him a good wife? He should have a wife. All the girls Tommy and I have shown him discreetly, he just smiles and shrugs—I even brought my third cousin who was fifteen, thinking that would tempt him, but nothing. Oh, good, now we have something to plan. We’ve plenty of time to plan and dress and get ready—and I’ve some lovely dresses for you to choose from.”

  “It feels so strange, Sharazad, not to have anything—anything. Money, papers…” For an instant Azadeh was back in the Range Rover near the roadblock, and there before her was the fat-faced mujhadin who had stolen their papers, his machine gun blazing as Erikki rammed him against the other car, crushing him like a cockroach, blood and filth squeezed from his mouth. “Having nothing,” she said, forcing the bad away, “not even a lipstick.”

  “Never mind, I’ve lots of everything. And Tommy’ll be so pleased to have you and Erikki here. He doesn’t like me to be alone either. Poor darling, don’t worry. You’re safe now.”

  I don’t feel safe at all, Azadeh told herself, hating the fear that was so alien to her whole upbringing—that even now seemed to take away the warmth of the water. I haven’t felt safe since we left Rakoczy on the ground and even that had only lasted a moment, the ecstasy of escaping that devil—me, Erikki, and Charlie unhurt. Even the joy of finding a car with gasoline in it at the little airstrip didn’t take my fear away. I hate being afraid.

  She ducked down a little in the tub, then reached up and turned on the hot-water tap, swirling the hot currents.

  “That feels so good,” Sharazad murmured, the foam heavy, and the water sensuous. “I’m so pleased you wanted to stay.”

  Last evening, by the time Azadeh, Erikki, and Charlie had reached McIver’s apartment it was after dark. They had found Gavallan there, so no room for them—Azadeh had been too frightened to want to stay in her father’s apartment, even with Erikki—so she had asked Sharazad if they could move in with her until Lochart returned. Sharazad had delightedly agreed at once, glad for the company. Everything had begun to be fine and then, during dinner, there was gunfire nearby, making her jump.

  “No need to worry, Azadeh,” McIver had said. “Just a few hotheads letting off steam, celebrating probably. Didn’t you hear Khomeini’s order to lay down all arms?” Everyone agreeing and Sharazad saying, “The Imam will be obeyed,” always referring to Khomeini as “the Imam,” almost associating him with the Twelve Imams of Shi’ism—the direct descendants of Mohammed the Prophet, near divinity—surely a sacrilege: “But what the Imam’s accomplished is almost a miracle, isn’t it?” Sharazad had said with her beguiling innocence. “Surely our freedom’s a gift of God?”

  Then so warm and toasty in bed with Erikki, but him strange and brooding and not the Erikki she had known. “What’s wrong, what’s wrong?”

  “Nothing, Azadeh, nothing. Tomorrow I’ll make a plan. There was no time tonight to talk to Mac or Gavallan. Tomorrow we’ll make a plan, now sleep, my darling.”

  Twice in the night she had awakened from violent dreams, trembling and terrified, crying out for Erikki.

  “It’s all right, Azadeh, I’m here. It was only a dream, you’re quite safe now.”

  “No, no, we’re not. I don’t feel safe, Erikki—what’s happening to me? Let’s go back to Tabriz, or let’s go away, go away from these awful people.”

  In the morning Erikki had left her to join McIver and Gavallan, and she had slept some more but gathered little strength from the sleep. Passing the rest of the morning daydreaming or hearing Sharazad’s news about going to Galeg Morghi, or listening to the hourly crop of rumors from her servants: many more generals shot, many new arrests, the prisons burst open by mobs, Western hotels set on fire or shot up. Rumors of Bazargan taking the reins of government, mujhadin in open rebellion in the south, Kurds rebelling in the north, Azerbaijan declaring independence, the nomad tribes of the Kash’kai and Bakhtiari throwing off the yoke of Tehran; everyone laying down their arms or no one laying down their arms. Rumors that Prime Minister Bakhtiar had been captured and shot or escaped to the hills or to Turkey, to America; President Carter preparing an invasion or Carter recognizing Khomeini’s government; Soviet troops massing on the border ready to invade or Brezhnev coming to Tehran to congratulate Khomeini; the Shah landing in Kurdistan supported by American troops or the Shah dead in exile.

  Then going to lunch with Sharazad’s parents at the Bakravan house near the bazaar, but only after Sharazad had insisted she wear the chador, hating the chador and everything it stood for. More rumors at the huge family house, but benign there, no fear and absolute confidence. Abundance as always, just as in her own home in Tabriz, servants smiling and safe and thanks be to God for victory, Jared Bakravan had told them jovially, and now with the bazaar going to open and all foreign banks closed, business will be marvelous as it was before the ungodly laws the Shah instituted.

  After lunch they had returned to Sharazad’s apartment. By foot. Wrapped in the chador. Never a problem for them and every man deferential. The bazaar was crowded, with pitifully little for sale though every merchant foretold abundance ready to be trucked, trained, or flown in—ports clogged with hundreds of ships, laden with merchandise. On the street, thousands walked this way and that, Khomeini’s name on every lip, chanting “Allah-u Akbarrr,” almost all men and boys armed—none of the old people. In some areas Green Bands, in place of police, haphazardly and amateurishly directed traffic, or stood around truculently. In other areas police as always. Two tanks rumbled past driven by soldiers, masses of guards and civilians on them, waving to the cheering pedestrians.

  Even so, everyone was tense under the patina of joy, particularly the women enveloped in their shrouds. Once, they had turned a corner and seen ahead a group of youths surrounding a dark-haired woman dressed in Western clothes, jeering at her, abusing her, shouting insults, and making obscene signs, several of them exposing themselves, waggling their penises at her. The woman was in her thirties, dressed neatly, a short coat over her skirt, long legs and long hair under a little hat. Then she was joined by a man who shoved through the crowd to her. At once he began shouting that they were English and to leave them alone, but the men paid no attention to him, jostling him, concentrating on the woman. She was petrified.

  There was no way for
Sharazad and Azadeh to walk around the crowd that grew quickly, hemming them in, so they were forced to watch. Then a mullah arrived and told the crowd to leave, harangued the two foreigners to obey Islamic customs. By the time they got home they were tired and both felt soiled. They had taken off their clothes and collapsed on the quilt bed.

  “I’m glad I went out today,” Azadeh had said wearily, deeply concerned. “But we women better organize a protest before it’s too late. We better march through the streets, without chador or veils, to make our point with the mullahs: that we’re not chattel, we have rights, and wearing the chador’s up to us—not to them.”

  “Yes, let’s! After all, we helped win the victory too!” Sharazad had yawned, half asleep. “Oh, I’m so tired.”

  The nap had helped.

  Idly Azadeh was watching the bubbles of foam crackling, the water hotter now, the sweet-smelling vapor very pleasing. Then she sat up for a moment, smoothing the foam on her breasts and shoulders. “It’s curious, Sharazad, but I was glad to wear chador today—those men were so awful.”

  “Men on the street are always awful, darling Azadeh.” Sharazad opened her eyes and watched her, golden skin glistening, nipples proud. “You’re so beautiful, Azadeh darling.”

  “Ah, thank you—but you’re the beautiful one.” Azadeh rested her hand on her friend’s stomach and patted her. “Little mother, eh?”

  “Oh, I do so hope so.” Sharazad sighed, closed her eyes and gave herself back to the heat. “I can hardly imagine myself a mother. Three more days and then I’ll know. When are you and Erikki going to have children?”

  “In a year or two.” Azadeh kept her voice calm as she told the same lie she had told so many times already. But she was deeply afraid that she was barren, for she had used no contraceptives since she was married and had wished, with all her heart, to have Erikki’s child from the beginning. Always the same nightmare welling up: that the abortion had taken away any chance of children as much as the German doctor had tried to reassure her. How could I have been so stupid?

  So easy. I was in love. I was just seventeen and I was in love, oh, how deeply in love. Not like with Erikki, for whom I will give my life gladly. With Erikki it is true and forever and kind and passionate and safe. With my Johnny Brighteyes it was dreamlike.

  Ah, I wonder where you are now, what you’re doing, you so tall and fair with your blue-gray eyes and oh, so British. Whom did you marry? How many hearts did you break like you broke mine, my darling?

  That summer he was at school in Rougemont—the village next to where she was at finishing school—ostensibly to learn French. It was after Sharazad had left. She had met him at the Sonnenhof, basking in the sun, overlooking all the beauty of Gstaad in its bowl of mountains. He was nineteen then, she three days seventeen, and all that summer long they had wandered the High Country—so beautiful, so beautiful—up in the mountains and the forests, swimming in streams, playing, loving, ever more adventurous, up above the clouds.

  More clouds than I care to think of, she told herself dreamily, my head in the clouds that summer, knowing about men and life, but not knowing. Then in the fall him saying, “Sorry, but I must go now, go back to university but I’ll be back for Christmas.” Never coming back. And long before Christmas finding out. All the anguish and terror where there should have been only happiness. Petrified that the school would find out, for then her parents would have to be informed. Against the law to have an abortion in Switzerland without parents’ consent—so going over the border to Germany where the act was possible, somehow finding the kindly doctor who had assured her and reassured her. Having no pain, no trouble, none—just a little difficulty borrowing the money. Still loving Johnny. Then the next year, school finished, everything secret, coming home to Tabriz. Stepmother finding out somehow—I’m sure Najoud, my stepsister, betrayed me, wasn’t it she who lent me the money? Then Father knowing.

  Kept like a spiked butterfly for a year. Then forgiveness, a peace—a form of peace. Begging for university in Tehran. “I agree, providing you swear by God, no affairs, absolute obedience, and you marry only whom I choose,” the Khan had said.

  Top of her class. Then begging for the Teaching Corps, any excuse to get out of the palace. “I agree, but only on our lands. We’ve more than enough villages for you to look after,” he had said.

  Many men of Tabriz wanting to marry her but her father refusing them, ashamed of her. Then Erikki.

  “And when this foreigner, this…this impoverished, vulgar, ill-mannered, spirit-worshiping monster who can’t speak a word of Farsi or Turkish, who knows nothing of our customs or history or how to act in civilized society, whose only talent is that he can drink enormous quantities of vodka and fly a helicopter—when he finds out you’re not a virgin, that you’re soiled, spoiled, and perhaps rained inside forever?”

  “I’ve already told him, Father,” she had said through her tears. “Also that without your permission I cannot marry.”

  Then the miracle of the attack on the palace and Father almost killed, Erikki like an avenging warrior from the ancient storybooks. Permission to marry, another miracle. Erikki understanding, another miracle. But as yet no child. Old Dr. Nutt says I’m perfect and normal and to be patient. With the Help of God soon I will have a son, and this time there will be only happiness, like with Sharazad, so beautiful with her lovely face and breasts and flanks, hair like silk and skin like silk.

  She felt the smoothness of her friend beneath her fingers and it pleased her greatly. Absently she began to caress her, letting herself drift in the warmth and tenderness. We’re blessed to be women, she thought, able to bathe together and sleep together, to kiss and touch and love without guilt. “Ah, Sharazad,” she murmured, surrendering too, “how I love your touch.”

  IN THE OLD CITY: 7:52 P.M. The man hurried across the snow-covered square near the ancient Mehrid mosque and went through the main gate of the roofed bazaar, out of the freezing cold into the warm, crowded, familiar semidarkness. He was in his fifties, corpulent, panting in his haste, his Astrakhan hat askew, his clothes expensive. A heavily laden donkey blocked his way in the narrow alley and he cursed, stood back to let the animal and its owner squeeze past, then hurried on again, turned left into a passage, then into the Street of the Clothes Sellers.

  Take your time, he told himself over and over, his chest hurting and his limbs hurting. You’re safe now, slow down. But his terror overcame his mind and, still in panic, he scuttled on to vanish in the vast labyrinth. In his wake, a few minutes behind him, a group of armed Green Bands followed. They did not hurry.

  Ahead, the narrow street of the rice shops was blocked with bigger crowds than usual, all vying for the small amount for sale. He stopped for a moment and wiped his brow, then went on again. The bazaar was like a honeycomb, teeming with life, with hundreds of dirt lanes, alleys, and passages, lined on both sides with dimly lit open-fronted shops—some two-storied—and booths and cubbyholes, some barely more than niches scooped out of the walls, for goods or services of all kinds—from foodstuffs to foreign watches, from butchers to bullion, from moneylenders to munitions dealers—all waiting for a customer even though there was not much to sell or to do. Above the noise and clatter and bargaining the high-vaulted ceiling had skylights for ventilation and to let light in during the day. The air was heavy with the special smell of the bazaar—smells of smoke and rancid cooking fat, rotting fruit and roasting meat, food, spices, and urine and dung and dust and gasoline, honey and dates and offal, all mixed with the smells of bodies and the sweat of the multitude who were born, lived, and died here.

  People of all ages and all kinds crammed the byways—Tehranis, Turkomans, Kurds, Kash’kai, Armenians and Arabs, Lebanese and Levantines—but the man paid no attention to them or to the constant entreaties to stop and buy, he just shoved and twisted his way through the crowds, darted across his own street of goldsmiths, down that of the spice sellers, the jewelry makers, onward ever deeper into the maze, his hair und
er his Astrakhan hat matted with sweat, his face florid. Two shopkeepers who noticed him laughed, one to another: “By God, I’ve never seen old Paknouri waddle so fast before—that old dog must be on his way to collect a ten-rial debt.”

  “More likely Miser Paknouri’s got a succulent tribesboy waiting on a carpet, the lad’s bum winking in the air!”

  Their banter died quickly as the armed Green Bands passed. When they were safely out of sight, someone muttered, “What do those young motherless dogs want here?”

  “They’re looking for someone. It must be that. May their fathers burn! Didn’t you hear they’ve been arresting folk all day?”

  “Arresting people? What are they doing with them?”

  “Putting them in jail. They’ve possession of jails now—didn’t you hear they broke down the door of Evin Jail and set everyone free and locked up the jailers and now run it. They’ve set up their own firing squads and courts, I heard, and shot lots of generals and police. And there’s a riot going on right now—at the university.”

  “God protect us! My son Farmad’s at a rally there, the young fool! I told him not to go tonight.”

  Jared Bakravan, Sharazad’s father, was in his upper-story, private inner room over the open-fronted shop in the Street of the Moneylenders that had been in his family for five generations and was in one of the best positions. His specialty was banking and financing. He was seated on thick pile carpets, drinking tea with his old friend, Ali Kia, who had managed to be appointed an official in the Bazargan government. Bakravan’s eldest son, Meshang, sat just behind him, listening and learning—a good-looking clean-shaven man in his thirties, inclined to comfortable corpulence. Ali Kia was clean-shaven also, with glasses, Bakravan white-bearded and heavy. Both were in the sixties and had known each other most of their lives.