After the post office they went to the hospital to check on Jamshid. The nurse told them he was making remarkable progress but the doctor thought it was too soon for him to have visitors or go home. They could return tomorrow.
They strolled the streets for a while and then went to a bazaar, a huge labyrinthine place with myriad shops displaying gold, clothing, leather goods, carpets, fabrics, copper and silver, and many other types of merchandise. War had damaged sections of it but it still was functioning. As dusk approached Karim bought dinner from a chelo kebab restaurant to take home to his aunt. They ate in the courtyard, lit by a lamp and a full moon dangling close to the fruit trees.
Later as Karim took a shower in the tiled covered bathroom in the courtyard, with the moon and the stars winking at him, he felt an intense happiness—as if nothing mattered other than the beauty of this moment.
Chapter 21
Jennifer opened the intricately latticed metal gate of the mosque and went inside. For an instant she was distracted by the beauty of a wall at one side of the courtyard, covered with tiles, each with a peacock design on it. On the other side stood a row of rooms, but only one of them showed signs of life, with voices coming from it. As she went closer she could see, through its half-open door, a group of children sitting cross-legged on a rug and a woman in the middle of the room facing them, a large Koran on a wooden lectern open before her. She was reading lines from the Koran and the children were repeating them after her. Jennifer felt a pang in her heart as she spotted Darius, who looked lost and confused. She knocked on the door and the teacher motioned to her to wait. She stood there, trying to control her impulse to walk in and snatch Darius away. She waved at him, but he didn’t see her.
She couldn’t bear waiting. She knocked again. The teacher came to the door.“Yes?” She wore a gloomy expression, accentuated by her all-black clothes.
“I’m Darius’s mother.”
“His mother?”
Jennifer was aware of being scrutinized by the woman.
“Mommy, Mommy.” Darius had gotten up and was coming toward her. Jennifer picked him up in her arms and kissed him. His skin felt hot. He clearly had fever. Fear shook her.
“I’m going home with my mommy,” Darius told the teacher.
“Do your prayers at home properly,” the teacher said to him, and then to Jennifer, “Will you make sure he does?”
Jennifer ignored that and walked with Darius to the gate. Her throat was constricted, her knees weak. As she reached the gate she glanced back at the teacher hovering in the doorway, watching them.
She paused at the busy main street and looked at the bus schedule back to Teheran. Shoot, she had just missed the 4:30 bus, the last one today. She decided to check into a hotel for the night. If she went back to Batul khanoom’s house some argument or resistance on Darius’s or Aziz’s part could create obstacles. Meanwhile she had to get something to bring down his fever. “Did your grandma give you the pills I got for you?” she asked him.
“No.”
Maybe he didn’t remember or the pills weren’t working or Aziz had not given them to him. Could she possibly get some without a prescription if she convinced a pharmacist that Darius had fever? She noticed a drugstore nearby and went in.
A middle-aged, stern-looking man was standing in the back. She said to him urgently, “My son has fever and I don’t have the penicillin his doctor prescribed for him with me. Is it possible for you to give me some without a prescription until I see his doctor again tomorrow?”
“‘How could you forget his medication?” the man accused her.
“I didn’t forget, please can we have …”
“Let me see.” He got a thermometer and took Darius’s temperature. “He has fever all right.” He disappeared for a moment and returned with a jar. “Here are a few pills. Take the thermometer too.” He was staring at her. “Are you Russian?”
She hesitated. “Yes, thank you so much for your help.” As they waited by the curb for a taxi or a bus to come by, the nightmare of the pasdars swept over her again. She pulled the chador over her face so tightly that even her eyes were almost covered. Behind them stood a public bath with a loincloth hanging on the door, where men with wet hair and flushed cheeks were going in and out. In a hall next to it a group of men, naked to the waist, their arms so muscular that they looked swollen, were holding large wooden weights resembling bowling pins and swinging them in harmony to music. She recognized the national anthem: “Oh, Iran, oh land of jewels. .. .”
“Woman, this isn’t for your view.” A bearded man was standing right behind her, his face pinched with disapproval. She turned away from him and moved closer to the curb. Finally a taxi stopped and they got in.
“Will you take us to Hotel…” What was the name of the hotel she had passed in the bus on the way to Batul khanoom’s house?
“Do you want Baghi Hotel?” the driver asked.
“Yes, please.”
In a few moments they reached the hotel. In the lobby she tried to assess it and was relieved to see families sitting on the sofa and in the armchairs and that it was decorated in a homey way, with tapestries on the walls.
She asked the clerk, “Do you have a room available for one night, for the two of us?”
“We have one left, you’re lucky.” He called to a teenage boy in uniform standing in a corner near a stairwell, “Mohsen, take them to room twenty-five.”
The young boy came over, took Jennifer’s overnight bag, and they all went up the stairs to the room. “If you need food or anything let me know and I’ll get it for you from a restaurant outside.”
“Darius, what do you want to eat, chicken, a salad?”
“I’m not hungry.”
Jennifer ordered food for both of them anyway. She had a longing for a drink, strange since she rarely drank anything alcoholic, a glass of wine occasionally with dinner, a gin and tonic when offered one at social occasions. But of course it was out of the question, particularly for a woman, to ask for an alcoholic drink in this Islamic country.
She looked around the room. It was bare, modest but clean, and the bathroom had a shower and a tub in it.
In a few moments the porter brought up the food—grilled chicken, bread and rice and doogh—and arranged it on the table in the corner.
“Could you get us a taxi for seven in the morning?”
“Yes, khanoom” he said politely. Jennifer paid him and he left.
“Eat just a little, honey,” she said to Darius. He took only one piece of chicken and she herself ate very little, having no appetite. Then she filled the tub for him, making the water rather cool, hoping it would bring down his fever. As she took his socks off she noticed Aziz had applied henna to the soles of his feet and his toenails. It made them look so strange. She knew the color wouldn’t wear off for weeks.
Then she took him out of the tub quickly, unable to decide if a cool bath would only make him worse. She put her extra shirt on him since he had no other clothes than those he had been wearing. She tucked him into one of the twin beds.
It was getting dark outside. The voice of a muezzin calling people to prayers rose above the dying noises on the street.
“Are we going to pray?” Darius asked crankily.
“You don’t have to.”
Darius looked puzzled, but soon he closed his eyes and fell promptly to sleep.
She filled the tub again and got into it herself. She lay there a while, hoping to calm her nerves, which felt like they were on fire.
After her bath she picked up a magazine lying on the mantle, next to a Koran, and looked through it. Most of the pages were full of advertisements for local shops, doctors, hotels. The maktab was mentioned in it. “For the best religious training, bring your children to us,” it said.
She began to wonder about Aziz’s reaction when she went to the maktab and found she had taken Darius away. Dismayed, angry. It would serve her right. She couldn’t forgive Aziz for what she had done.
She was very tired. She went to the window and pulled down the shade. One of the panes was broken and covered by brown paper. She went to bed in her underwear.
“Mommy,” Darius called, his voice heavy with sleep. “Are you there?”
“Yes, dear, I’m here in bed, right next to you.” She reached over and, finding Darius’s hand, squeezed it.
Darius fell asleep again. Jennifer tried to imagine them back home, in their own beds. But in this hot little hotel room, in this ancient town, her other life seemed frighteningly unreachable. She fell into a twilight state. She heard a knock on the door and then another. Her whole body stiffened. Could it be the pasdars? But how would they track me down here? Still, panic-stricken, she pulled the sheet tightly around her. There was more rapping, then footsteps receding.
Chapter 22
Jennifer and Darius did not reach Teheran until two o’clock because of a long delay on the bus. They went to a small restaurant next to the bus station and ordered food and drinks. When they were finished she thought she would go to Aziz’s house first so Darius and she herself could wash up and change before going to the doctor’s office.
When they got to the house the door was locked. She rang the bell several times but there was no answer. She wondered if the electricity had gone out. She knocked on the door, but again no one responded. Where could everyone have gone? It was so rare for all of them to be away from the house that she didn’t even have a key. She felt like smashing something. She knocked at the house next door where Azar’s friend Latifeh lived. Latifeh opened the door.
“I tried to get into the house but no one answered and I don’t have the key. I wondered what happened to everyone.”
“You don’t know? There’s been an accident. A telegram came just this morning. Monir khanoom took Azar and Zohreh and left for Babolsar, where the men are staying. It sounded like there was only some damage to the car, nothing too serious.”
“I hope that’s all it is,” Jennifer said, thinking about how one disaster followed another. “Do you by chance have a key to the house?”
Latifeh shook her head.
“Do you know if they’re coming back tonight?”
“I doubt it, they left at noon.”
“Is there any way I could get in? Do you know of a locksmith nearby?”
“No locksmith would unlock a door without the owner’s permission. Once when I locked myself out, they wouldn’t make a new key for me without my mother’s consent, even though I live here. But you’re welcome to stay with us.”
There was a shout from the inside. “Latifeh, Latifeh, what’s taking you so long, you’ve left me in the middle of… God break your legs for walking away from me.”
“I’m sorry I took you away,” Jennifer stammered.
Latifeh was blushing. “My mother just doesn’t like me to leave her side for even a moment.”
“Mommy, Grandma said if we pray all the time everything will be OK,” Darius said as they walked away.
Jennifer didn’t reply.
She was surprised to find Bijan Daneshpoor alone in the reception room with no sign of patients, no nurse or receptionist.
“Oh, it’s you!” he said, looking surprised. “It’s my day off. I came back to get something .” He didn’t have his white jacket on, and the top buttons of his shirt were open.
It occurred to her that there was a physical resemblance between him and Karim—the broad shoulders, the hair on the chest, the closely cropped beard, something about their eyes, although the doctor seemed a few years younger than Karim.
“How is he, any better?” the doctor asked, looking at Darius.
“I’m afraid not. He still has fever. The penicillin doesn’t cut it out completely though it does help to bring it down.” Darius was leaning his head on her shoulder and was looking at the fish gliding in and out of a tangle of weeds in the tank.
“Did he take it all?”
“I’m not sure. He was away from me for a night, with his grandmother in Qom.”
“What were they doing in Qom?”
Jennifer wasn’t sure if she should talk in front of Darius. But then, in desperate need to pour out her problems, she said, “His grandmother took him there without my permission, so that they could pray at the shrine for his recovery.”
“Oh, that kind of superstition. Sounds like what my mother would have done!” He added, more pensively, “The test for the strep was negative. I should take a blood sample in case of malaria or hepatitis. Since the war, with stagnant, contaminated water collected in demolished buildings, we’ve seen a few cases of both. But don’t worry, I doubt if it’s either of those or his fever would be much higher. But still it’s good to be cautious.” He proceeded to take a blood sample from Darius’s arm.
Darius began to cry.
“Poor little boy,” Jennifer said, tears gathering in her own eyes.
The doctor put a Band-Aid on his arm and said, “Finished.” Then he labeled the sample.
Jennifer rolled down Darius’s sleeve and he wandered to the fish tank.
“When I went to pick him up from his grandmother’s I got arrested by a group of pasdars,” Jennifer told the doctor. “You’re serious? What for?”
“My hair was showing, then when they found out I was an American, they became suspicious.” Her voice cracked. “I escaped.” She still could not shake off her fear. She imagined them speculating where she might be, how she had escaped, cursing under their breath, blaming the woman who had accompanied her to the bathroom, searching for her everywhere.
“Escaped? Amazing. How?”
“Through the bathroom window of a mosque, where they took me to wait for an ayatollah. I still can’t believe I got away.”
“You’re really lucky. You’re in a country that views America as its enemy, the source of all its problems. There’s some truth to that…. I’m sorry, I don’t mean to upset you. You were so brave to come to Iran to begin with in these turbulent times.”
“No, no, it isn’t that. I just have no place to stay tonight,” she said, panic attacking her. She thought of Latifeh’s offer but she had her invalid mother to worry about.
“You don’t have a place to stay?”
“Everyone has gone somewhere and I don’t have a key to the house. My husband and his uncle went on a trip and now their car has been wrecked.” She could not help adding, “if that’s all it is.”
“It hasn’t been easy for you here,” he said, patting her arm sympathetically. “Why don’t you come to my house instead of a hotel? It’s safer, for one thing, and cheaper.”
He said this naturally as if there were nothing unusual about it.
“I couldn’t…”
“Why not? You and your son can have a room and your own private bath. I have a big house all to myself and a live-in servant.”
“You’ve been so kind. By the way, they gave me exit visas promptly because of your letter.”
“Connections are everything here. I happen to know Mobarek, who’s in charge of giving exit visas.”
“So it was your signature on the letter that did it.”
“Shall we go to my house now?”
Her resistance was breaking down. She could not face looking for a hotel. The thought of it made her feel vulnerable, desolate. Anyway she wanted to stay as close to this doctor as possible because of Darius.
Bijan gave her a jar filled with round pills and a cup of water from the sink. “Give one to him now, one tonight, and one in the morning, and continue until we know the result of the test. It’s chloroquine, in case he has malaria. It won’t harm him if it turns out to be something else. We don’t have a satisfactory medication for hepatitis as yet. Let me lock up and then we can go.”
She gave Darius a pill and the water. The doctor’s matter-of-fact manner made her more comfortable with the idea of spending the night at his house.
Chapter 23
Jennifer, sitting with Darius in the backseat of Bijan’s car, felt rathe
r dazed, numb. Bijan drove rapidly, keeping pace with the mad rush of the early evening traffic.
After about half an hour of driving, he pointed to a house. “Here we are.”
The house was set in a garden, on a narrow, cobblestoned street with a view of the Alburz Mountains. He unlatched the gate and drove inside. Water was flowing from a fountain into a blue-tiled pool in the center of the garden. The air was filled with a sweet fragrance from blossoming trees and shrubs. He picked up her overnight bag and led the way onto a veranda and then a bedroom. “You and your son can sleep here,” he said, putting down the bag, and then he gave them a tour of the rest of the house.
The house’s architecture reminded her of Britta’s house, a mixture of traditional and modern—columns on the porch, latticed windows, along with an American-style kitchen and bathrooms. Pottery and other decorative objects lay everywhere—a pair of blue Mexican candleholders, a small jade lion. “I used to do a lot of traveling, when it was easy” He pointed to the jade lion. “I brought that back from Japan.”
Bijan’s unpretentious, casual manner and way of dressing had not prepared her for this luxurious house. Anyway, it was too large for a single man. In a strange way it made her feel uneasy with him. What am I doing here? The question passed through her mind as if she had been brought there blindfolded.
“How about a drink first before my servant has dinner ready? Vodka, wine, apple juice, doogh?”
“I could really use a glass of wine,” Jennifer said. She turned to Darius, “Do you want some apple juice?”
“No,” he said stiffly. He was sitting close to Jennifer, with his head resting on her lap, looking glum.
Bijan left and came back in a few moments with a glass of apple juice and two glasses of wine and put them on the table before them. “I brought you apple juice anyway,” he said to Darius. “Won’t you have some?”
Darius took a peek at him and then hid his face on his mother’s lap.
“I make my own wine,” Bijan said. “I experiment with different grapes. This is with a white grape from Khasvin.”
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