by Andy McNab
‘There a problem?’
‘He wants to know what a foreign-defence reporter is doing at IKIA – a civilian airport.’
‘Not entirely civilian.’ I pointed to the military-transport aircraft I’d seen alongside the northern perimeter fence when I landed. I could still see them there, way in the distance. As a piece of point-scoring, it wasn’t up to much but it bought me a few seconds. ‘I came here to find you.’
He took a step backwards. ‘Me?’
‘Your website. It’s pretty well known in defence publishing circles back home. My magazine has been meaning to approach you for a while. IranEx gave me the opportunity to look you up. I take it that you’d be happy, Ali, if we could agree the right terms, for us to reprint some of the pictures that you post on the web, maybe even write some articles for the magazine?’
Ali looked at his mates, then at me. ‘You are offering me a job?’
‘A contract, possibly. But let’s see how good you are.’ I gave him a smile. It wasn’t going to be much of a test. ‘An aircraft, white private jet, took off from here a short while ago. Do you know what make it was?’
I liked his enthusiasm a lot more than the scowling glances I got from his mates.
‘Sure. A Dassault Falcon 7X.’
‘What can you tell me about it? Does it have a history here?’
Again, the beanpole interrupted him. This time, the conversation between the three got heated. Whatever was being said, Ali was clearly in the minority.
‘Is there another problem?’
Ali pulled a face.
I pointed at the beanpole. ‘What’s up with him?’
‘He wants to know why a foreign-defence journalist is interested in a commercial aircraft. A corporate jet, of all things. This has nothing to do with the military, he says. Perhaps he is right.’
‘I’m interested because it’s registered to a Russian aerospace company that’s exhibiting at the show – at IranEx.’
Ali smiled. ‘You mean, a Russian missile company that’s exhibiting at IranEx.’
‘You know about this company?’
‘There’s not much I don’t know about the aerospace business, Mr Manley.’ He beamed. ‘It’s my hobby. You could say it’s my life. Why else would I be up here?’ He flung his arm around the expanse of tarmac and desert as another 747 rumbled down the runway.
He stopped playing helicopters and pointed towards a low building faintly visible through the dust of the construction work on the other side of the airport; the building I’d seen the Dassault parked in front of when I’d touched down yesterday. ‘That’s M3C’s own private terminal. From the air-traffic movements of its corporate jet fleet, it is very obvious to us that M3C is doing a lot of business with my country. We are not stupid. If we posted the movements of M3C aircraft on our website, we’d find ourselves in a lot of trouble.’
‘You have data?’
He smiled. ‘We see everything that flies in and out of this country.’
The other two shifted uncomfortably.
‘I’m doing a story on this company, Ali. Aircraft and the weapons that can take them out the sky, that sort of thing. I need to know where that jet has been over the past few days. It gives the article a bit of excitement – you know, international company jetting around the world, that sort of thing. Did you see any of the people who boarded the plane?’
Ali shook his head slowly. ‘No, it was on a pan the other side of their terminal.’ His voice went up an octave. ‘But isn’t the 7X a great bird? It only entered service in 2007. This is the very first one we have seen in Iran.’
It was still as hot as an oven and we’d been standing out here long enough.
‘Ali, I’d like you to show me everything you’ve got on that jet.’
‘I can show you its flight paths on my computer at home.’
‘Let’s go, then. Where do you live? The magazine will pay you, of course.’
He smiled again. ‘That’s good, Mr Manley, because I drive for a living. And, to be honest, it’s not much of a living right now.’
64
He lived in a southern district of Tehran; a journey, he said, that would take us around an hour from the airport. We drove there in his sparkling white Paykan. He told me proudly that it was nearly fifteen years old, but it looked almost new. His father had lovingly maintained it. The taxi really belonged to his dad, but now he was ill and Ali had had to interrupt his studies at Tehran University to drive it and help make ends meet.
He seemed like a decent enough lad. As we left the airport behind, I apologized for the trouble I’d caused him with his mates. They’d gone one way in the car park and we’d gone another. When they’d parted, you could have cut the atmosphere with a knife.
As we drove through the desert on the southern approaches to Tehran the rift still seemed to hang in the air like smog.
After a long silence, Ali finally sparked up. ‘Do not feel bad, Mr Manley. The thing that unites us is our mutual interest – planes, aerospace, technology. We get on, but they are not like me. There are – how do I say? – differences between us.’
‘You’re all geeks like the rest of us, aren’t you? What’s not to like?’
‘I am a Kurd, Mr Manley.’
‘A Kurd and so a Sunni, eh?’
With both hands on the wheel he shrugged and smiled.
‘Not much going for you here, is there?’
He shook his head slowly. ‘A minority in my own country, Mr Manley. Qasim and Adel, on the roof, do not feel this way themselves, but their families certainly do. Their fathers do not like them to spend time with me.’
‘Know the feeling, mate.’
‘I do not feel Kurdish. I consider myself an Iranian, a proud Iranian. But not everyone looks on me the same way.’
‘Know that feeling too, Ali. Almost like being invisible sometimes, yeah? They want to get in your taxi because they want a lift, but don’t really want to be seen with you…’
We passed another poster of Bush with vampire teeth. Ali kept his eyes on the road, glancing occasionally in the rear-view. ‘Do you believe Iran will go to war with the West?’
It was already, but in a cleverer way than he was thinking. ‘Dunno, mate. You?’
‘Our economy, Mr Manley, is deteriorating and unemployment is a disease. I believe it is one of the key reasons why our rulers are spoiling for a fight with the West. When your world is falling apart, it is always preferable, is it not, to blame someone else? Especially Great Britain.’ He looked across to me for some encouragement.
‘Always. It’s what people do.’
He liked that. ‘My father always says that if you trip over a stone you can be sure the British man put it in your way.’
It was a fair one. The Brits had been the main colonial power in the region for two hundred years. There was bound to be a lot of resentment. I’d be pissed off too.
‘My father says that you are more cunning than the Americans and you use them as glove puppets. That’s why Bush is on all posters and no British man.’
‘I don’t think we’re that clever, mate.’
‘Maybe, but I believe that our government is determined to have a war with the West and that there is very little that ordinary Iranians can do about it.’
‘Sounds like you’re not much of a fan.’
‘We Iranians lost over six hundred thousand people in eight years of war with Iraq, and millions more were injured. The war was not started by Iran – it was Saddam Hussein. He invaded Khuzestan province. In the name of Allah, in the name of Holy War, the mullahs sent millions of Iranians to the front.
‘I studied history at university, Mr Manley. I know about conflict – trench warfare, poison gas, wave upon wave of young men cut down by machine-gun fire. So I think Iranians should have had enough of it, but the lessons of the past are easily forgotten. I am not afraid of you, Mr Manley, but Qasim and Adel are. They believe what they are told – that Israel and the West want Iran’s destru
ction. When they see a foreigner, it frightens them. They think foreigners bring trouble for them. You’re not going to bring trouble for us, are you?’ He turned to me.
‘No, mate. I’ve got enough of my own.’
He smiled. ‘That’s good, Mr Manley, because my father was a warrior in the war and I would fight also for my country. I may not be a fan of my government but I would never do anything to hurt Iran.’
‘Call me Jim.’
We pulled off a main drag and manoeuvred our way down a cobbled alleyway, narrowly avoiding the people walking on both sides of us. This wasn’t the London-, New York- or Paris-priced part of town. There was no pavement. Waste water ran in an open channel along the middle of the street. Tall houses with shuttered windows cut out most of the light.
It was coming up to six o’clock. The modern supermarkets and malls I’d seen in the north of the city had been replaced by holes in the wall – dark, dingy shops that seemed to sell everything from car batteries to carpets.
The people we passed were dressed more traditionally than the Iranians I’d seen in the central and northern part of the city. There were lots of turbans and women in chadors. But I wasn’t getting the stares I’d expected. Just like the housing estate I’d lived on as a kid, it didn’t matter what colour you were or where you came from. The one thing that bonded people here was that we were all in the shit.
‘Where are we?’
‘Bazaar Mahfouz. It is part of the Tehran bazaar. It has ten kilometres of covered stores and alleyways. It is, I believe, what you call a maze and where we live is just a tiny part of it. Jim, you have nothing to fear.’
I wasn’t worried. I felt quite at home in any low-rent area.
He smiled and turned into a narrow cul-de-sac. He parked alongside a wall and switched off the engine. ‘From here, we walk.’ He opened the boot and removed a canvas cover for the Paykan. ‘This is the Kurdish-Sunni part of town. Everyone leaves us alone here.’
That made my day. With luck it would keep Majid off my back.
I helped him pull the cover over the roof, then followed him out of the cul-de-sac and into a covered alleyway lined with yet more shops.
65
As we walked past the concrete blocks, turning left, then right every few metres or so, we passed all kinds of traders. On one street they sold nothing but carpets; on another, books were all the rage, including a lot of English textbooks.
The election posters in the shop windows round here were all of Mousavi, greyer hair and beard than Armoured-dinner-jacket, and with a steady gaze behind wire-framed glasses instead of the president’s squint. Green rubber wristbands in support of him were on sale everywhere.
‘Like I said, this is the Sunni part of town. Our president does not get any support from here.’
‘Who do you think will win?’
Ali just shrugged. ‘Even if my sister’s vote makes the difference and Mr Mousavi wins, it will not matter. The president will be re-elected, of course. No election will change anything. That can only be done by the Supreme Leader. He decides everything.’ He smiled and pointed at one of the posters. ‘Even who can stand for election.’
I started off trying to memorize the route, but soon knew I’d be in trouble if the shit hit the fan. After several more twists in the journey, I was completely lost. Traders at every corner tried to sell me a hundred and one things I didn’t want, from flip-flops to melons.
We ducked into another tiny alleyway and passed a cafe with a handful of tables spread under a patched awning. The lads were all linked up to a hubble-bubble. There was hardly room to pass by and my nostrils filled with applewood smoke.
An old man sweeping shit out from under the chairs caught Ali’s eye and waved. Ali waved back. They gave each other a burst of Farsi.
We walked on. I glanced back over my shoulder. ‘What’s he on about? Me?’
‘No, just chit-chat, but a little bit formal. We have to be formal – respectful – with people older than we are. He is my father’s friend. We used to come here to meet him for a breakfast of fried egg and meatballs in the days before my father became ill.’
Talk of food made me hungry all of a sudden. I hadn’t eaten since about six this morning.
‘When I could eat no more, my father would drive me to Mehrabad airport in the Paykan so we could watch the planes taking off and landing. This, for me, was the perfect day.’
Ali told me that his family had lived in the bazaar ever since his great-grandfather had crossed the border from Iraqi Kurdistan. He’d made a fortune trading sugar. The family had built a large house in the bazaar on the proceeds and Ali was old enough to remember what it had been like when his grandfather had still owned the entire building.
The Shah had tried to break the power of the bazaris by building roads through the district. He’d failed, because the bazaar was too big in every sense of the word. At the time of the Shah, almost half of the country’s retail economy had pumped through its streets and alleyways and over the years the bazaris had branched out into new disciplines, like money-lending and banking.
After the revolution the mullahs had decided the bazaris were getting above themselves so they encouraged the growth of shops, supermarkets and banks in the central and northern part of the city. That way they’d fucked up the bazaris’ power base and managed to achieve what the Shah had failed to do.
Under Ali’s grandfather, the family business had collapsed. To pay off his debts, the old boy had converted their home into apartments, selling off every floor except the top one, which was where Ali now lived with his father and his sister. Life, clearly, wasn’t easy.
We emerged into a courtyard and Ali pointed to the large, red-brick house opposite. It had an ornate double door for an entrance and big balconies with carved stone pillars rising to the fifth floor. It looked like a Venetian palace. ‘This is where we live, Jim. Come.’
He pushed open the door. Inside, dim electric light fizzed from a bare bulb hanging from the flaking painted ceiling. Rubbish littered the cracked marble floor. There was a rank, putrid smell – either the rotting rubbish in the bins I could see under the stairs, or perhaps something had died.
There was an ancient lift, too, but it had jammed fast between two floors and looked like it had been there since the time of the Shah. The lift well, as we passed, seemed to be the main source of the stench.
Ali climbed the stairs ahead of me, our footsteps echoing off the walls as we made our way to the fifth floor.
‘Jim, it would please me greatly to work on your magazine.’ He started taking the steps two at a time. ‘And my sister Aisha would be so happy!’
Halfway up, Ali’s mobile beeped. He pulled it out of his pocket and flipped it open. ‘The signal is so bad here that I only pick up messages when I am on the second floor.’ He stopped to read the message, swore under his breath, then broke into a run.
I called after him, but he was already half a floor ahead of me, taking the steps in threes. I didn’t catch up with him until we reached the apartment door. ‘Ali?’
He was breathing hard and fumbling in his pocket for his keys. ‘It’s my sister, I-’
The door was opened by a girl in her late twenties, with heavy kohl-laden eyes and long dark hair. She wore frayed jeans and a T-shirt with a photograph of Bono just about to swallow a mike.
She glanced at me and cut away just as quickly to focus on Ali. She spoke fast, pulling him into the apartment as she did so. There was a look on her face – one that I knew from years of soldiering and a whole lot more of shitty times.
Somebody was either dead or dying.
66
I followed them along a dark corridor into a room with tall French windows. Dirty full-length net curtains blew into the room. There was a double bed with a large carved headboard set against the far wall. A ceiling fan that wobbled on its axis above it pressed the sheets against the outline of a body. Despite the open window and the fan, the room remained sweltering. Voices drifte
d up from the street below. The melons and flip-flops were still on special offer.
Ali jumped onto the bed and pulled back the sheets. His father was curled in the foetal position, a bag of bones in a pair of stained pyjama bottoms. Every inch of his sweat-covered skin seemed to be scarred with short, angry red welts, like someone had turned a sandblaster on him years ago.
The girl knelt by the pillow and mopped his face with a flannel. The fact that he was shivering was the only way you could tell that he was still alive.
The girl lifted one of his eyelids. From where I was, just behind her, I could see that the pupil was as small as a pinhead. His breathing was painfully shallow.
Ali felt for a pulse. His sister stood up and put her ear to their father’s chest. Their eyes met and she gave a small shake of the head before turning to a chest of drawers.
‘Ali, you need help? I am-’
The girl raised a hand to me as he moved back towards the bed. ‘No, but thank you. We know what to do.’
Ali manoeuvred his father into the recovery position.
The girl held a syringe to the light, flicked it with her finger to work the air up, and squirted a small jet of the fluid from the needle.
Ali took hold of his father’s wrist and tried to find a vein. He looked at his sister and shook his head. She just shoved the needle into his arm, below the shoulder joint, and depressed the plunger.
I picked up the box from the top of the chest. The drug was American: Naloxone. They used it for acute cases of heroin overdose. Ali’s sister knew they didn’t need to get a vein up: straight into the muscle would do just as well. They’d been here before.
67
I turned back to see the two of them stroking their father’s wet grey hair away from his forehead. Ali checked his cheap market Casio as he and his sister murmured to each other. If the Naloxone worked, Dad’s pulse would become stronger and his breathing more regular in about five minutes. If there was no visible improvement within ten, there’d better be a doctor in the neighbourhood.
