In the Walled Gardens

by Anahita Firouz

  THEY HAD LIED about watching the building, or at least about how long they had been there that night. I’d spent about forty minutes in Jalal’s flat, and if they were already parked at the corner, they would have seen the lights going on and off. They hadn’t. They’d arrived after nine, making it sound like they were there night and day, watching.

  Jalal’s two rooms were modest. The place didn’t look like it had been touched in weeks, a fine layer of dust on everything. An un-made bed, several melamine dishes in the cupboard, the table in the kitchenette with a half-empty bottle of Ettehadieh vodka and two rickety chairs, dirty dishes in the sink, and on one of the two electric burners, a small pot of desiccated Turkish coffee. There was one picture, of Forough, plastered inside the door of his closet. A dead woman, killed long ago in an accident. “Our first sensual rebel since Eve!” Jalal said. He admired how her famous poems had gone against everything, her intimate torments, daring confessions, her dramatic death. Dark hair, penciled eyes, hair piled up. You’d think she was actually his lover.

  Jalal was in his prime, proud of his razor-sharp insight, his analytical powers. He had a keen and fiery intelligence and an unfailing knowledge of people, nearly eerie. In the early days when we’d first met, after watching him for a while I had finally invited him to join our restricted circle. We had started as politically active students in the electrifying days of Mossadeq and the National Front and nationalization of oil, terminated by the CIA-engineered coup against Mossadeq. We were indelibly marked by those events.

  We were Jalal’s first stop along the Left. I was his mentor then, and he was an eager and restless novice. In those days I wrote about liberation movements like the Algerian War of Independence and submitted to certain magazines until I got censored. Jalal would bring his writings, ask for advice, then get all worked up when I edited them. He detested being criticized. A feverish writer, he was attending Tehran University for a degree in sociology, always arguing with his professors. And forever casting around, shopping for doctrines and ideologies that could measure up to his appetite. Then he disappeared.

  Later when he called Mother and Zari and left a message for me, he’d already completed his military service and owned the coffee shop. He kept a picture of Che in the cash register under all the bills with the imperial picture. Che this, Che that, he kept saying. Che! The Perfect Man. He needed money and started borrowing from me but always paid me back. All the while he kept up the front, talking about being enrolled in a graduate program — he was out of the shop so often — though he was vague about this to everyone. I knew it was a lie. Militant, atheist, he was sophisticated for the son of a shepherd and bricklayer. Very disdainful of his lower-class family and peasant heritage, which went against what he preached.

  We had arguments. Jalal hated how I accused the new generation — his — of being rootless. Of not knowing anything about its political history. Of being shut out, cut off. He much preferred arguing that great big engine of history — class struggle. Or lecturing about the struggling masses, though his concern seemed aloof and perfunctory. He knew our group had connections with Marxists in Europe from the Confederation of Iranian Students there and in the progressive National Front. But we had avoided the old mold of a Leninist party structure. We kept small — a political association, recruiting and training. We maintained a shrewd and disciplined group, secular intellectuals intent on proving our ideological independence. Unlike the pro-Moscow Stalinist Tudeh Communists, whom we distrusted. They always use the same old bankrupt tactics — forever clobbering the regime but also clobbering every other ideological and liberation movement in sight. Jalal tried them and every notch along the Left. Then he started touting Safai Farahani’s book on the necessity of an armed uprising instead of studying Hegel and Marx, growing ever more militant, insisting on the relevance of Maoist radicalism in the Middle East. He preached armed insurrection. I said he would crash and burn. He said revolution was blood! No bureaucracy, but straight from the gut. He was typical of the Radical Left, reckless and half-baked, furiously outdoing himself to be more revolutionary than anyone else.

  I surveyed his room. If they had wanted his stuff so badly, they would have come and taken it as evidence. I poked under the mattress and threadbare rug, in the closet, where he had a few items of clothing, and in the space behind the adjoining metal bookcases. I found a black plastic comb there. I went over the place inch by inch, but there were no personal scraps, no family pictures, just an antiseptic life. I sat in the kitchenette and stared.

  That’s when I saw the newspapers, a stack of old papers in the corner. Jalal never read Kayhan or Ettela‘at. “I’ll never pay to boost the circulation of mouthpieces for the regime!” he said. Both of us ran and circulated underground papers. I bent down and moved the stack, peering at the tiles. The caulking around several of the tiles had worn away. I took a knife from a drawer, tapped the tiles, then pried one up. The floor had been slightly hollowed out underneath, but there was nothing there. I sat down again, thought back. He liked looking out his kitchen window to the back alley — a man standing above the world surveying it from his perch. One thing was clear — he burned to change the world. One time I got up to the fourth floor and found his door slightly ajar — it mustn’t have been closed properly and had blown open — so I walked in. He was standing by the open window and whipped around suddenly. I’d caught him off guard. He detested being caught off guard.

  I got up from the kitchen table and went over to the window and looked out as I had so many times before. There wasn’t much to see except rows of small windows set into the dark brick wall of the building facing his and the one at the end. All the windows had drawn curtains, electrical lights filtering through here and there. The occupants didn’t like facing a drab and narrow back alley. I opened the window, stuck my head out, saw sky and walls of brick. I looked down at the back alley. What had Jalal been doing at his window that day? I pushed down on the ledge and leaned out farther to try to see what he’d seen. Then just as I was pulling back in from the window, I noticed the corner of what looked like a metal box right under the ledge. I leaned over to see it better. It was the size of a satchel, with a protruding lid, like a mailbox. Easy to miss, the way it was placed just under the ledge with only a corner sticking out, nailed into brick. Some sort of utility box, maybe for electrical wires, except it had a lid and no wires leading into it and was in an impractical and inaccessible place. It couldn’t have much of a purpose, all the way up on the fourth floor where you couldn’t even reach it with a ladder from the alley. I felt around, lifted the lid, and stuck my hand in, half expecting to touch electrical wires. I felt plastic and tugged a little. A plastic bag. I squeezed what seemed like a wad of papers, then pulled and grabbed the bag with both hands to make sure it wouldn’t slip down into the alley. A taped plastic pouch full of papers. I ripped off the tapes, dumped the contents on the kitchen table, and a mishmash of typed and handwritten pages fell out. An ingenious way to hide documents, suspending them outside in an innocuous metal container resembling a utility box that no one could reach.

  I closed the window, went through the stack. Handwritten papers, typewritten pamphlets. Revolutionary titles — treatises on how to topple the regime. Manuals, instructions, insurrectionist theses. I leafed through. Here, the inner workings of an ultraradical organization. Procedures for an Armed Struggle. Epic of Resistance. What Must Be Done Now? A Revolutionary’s Execution. Today All Heroes Are on the Left. The texts were underlined in red here and there, annotated with Jalal’s very own handwriting in the margins. He had edited and inserted, using some of my very arguments to attack other groups like ours on the Left. The stapled sheets of lined loose-leaf were covered with longer commentaries by him. Still a lousy writer, overblown, intellectually sloppy, but animated. Here was evidence SAVAK killed to find. Marxist-Leninist edicts capping directions on how to make explosives, a report on assembling eight hundred grenades in a garden outside Tehran in Karaj and how they
were distributed by motorcycle, the rigors and advantages of Cuba’s guerrilla tactics versus Maoist China’s theoretical courses, how to attack and disarm policemen in the street, how to blow up banks and government offices and military installations. Invaluable underground documents. They would use them against Jalal, both the Right and Left. Jalal had said the Tudeh Communists, another underground party, rather than the state, were the ones spreading the most vicious lies and rumors against his group. I shredded everything to pieces, burned them on the bathroom floor, and flushed the ashes down the toilet.

  TEN

  I WAS RUSHING to make the lecture at the Institute for Social Studies and Research and then get home in time to catch the children before their bedtime. To my surprise Mr. Bashirian was waiting by my car in the parking lot. Brown raincoat, tweed beret, hovering. His face was suspended with sorrow, aging.

  Smiling feebly, I endured guilt and remorse. He had started clinging to me. Of course I couldn’t blame him. He couldn’t let go. I was beginning to dread our unexpected meetings. Nothing positive came of them for his son except the bond Mr. Bashirian and I were forming.

  He apologized in that most considerate manner of his for de-laying me after work, but he had news. They’d come to the house the night before. They’d turned it upside down. Of all Peyman’s books they had taken his copy of A Guide to Khorassan by Shariati. But it was just a guidebook! Then they’d taken away Peyman’s collection of photos.

  “The travel albums?”

  He nodded, wringing his hands, wondering what they wanted with endless pictures of tiled domes and villagers and caravansaries in deserts.

  “They’re looking for something specific,” he said. “I’m sure, I’m sure.”

  People from work were going by. We were attracting attention, so we decided to walk. Up by the light, we headed north, the street thick with traffic. I didn’t tell him I’d talked to Father. What was there to report except promises? So I repeated what I’d said before.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “He’ll be home in no time.”

  “First I consoled myself by saying it was a mistake. But he’s still not home. That can only mean bad news.”

  He tormented himself like this each day. From what he’d gathered, they’d taken Peyman in a day of rioting at Aryamehr. A crowd of students had gone on a rampage, breaking windows and furniture on the pretext the cafeteria food was contaminated and inedible. Everyone knew it was an excuse. They wanted the right to form associations for debate and politics and sports, prohibited by law. A special unit of the army had been called around midday. They’d driven up Eisenhower Avenue, turning in at the gates. Soldiers had poured out, rounding up students and forcing them into trucks in the front courtyard. The professors had retreated to their offices as usual and locked their doors.

  “Last night, did they say anything?”

  “They kept me in my bedroom,” he said.

  For a moment I felt his pain catch my throat, as if he’d passed it to me, beyond words, beyond the smallest gesture. His eyes fastened to hope like a man drowning. His son had become a phantom, burning brightly at the extremity of his vision.

  “I don’t understand,” he murmured, shaking his head.

  He thought back, told me about the time Peyman had traveled into the mountains of Kurdestan with a friend from the Literacy Corps. About his trip to northern Azarbaijan, then Gilan, and through the rice plantations of the Caspian. A week in Yazd one winter. Khorassan was the last journey — I’d seen those pictures at his house. And the summer he’d traveled south to the Gulf to visit a friend in Ahvaz. In that searing heat, they’d traveled the coast from Bandar Bushehr to Bandar Abbas — they were young, after all.

  “What does he like?”

  “Mountain ranges and desert, out-of-the-way places. He likes children.”

  “He has a girl?”

  “He only studies.”

  They’d taken what they thought of as evidence. So they were building a case, a verdict, we reassured ourselves. They’d contact him any day now, permitting him to see Peyman finally after all this time.

  “I can’t thank you enough,” he said again in the street. “You’re the light in a dark room.”

  I cringed at such gratitude, even before I came to know the fate that was to befall his son.

  THIERRY CALLED the office several days later and said we should talk. Where better than his house up in Sa‘adabad, say around six-thirty? I equivocated when he said “house,” suggesting a public place. But he said he was having drinks at home for some French businessmen staying at the Hilton before taking them to dinner. If I didn’t mind. ...I decided to make the best of it.

  The maid opened the door.

  “Mrs. Behroudi,” she said, her tight-lipped smile implying disapproval.

  I was a married woman who’d come alone to the home of a foreign bachelor.

  To my surprise I found I’d arrived before the other guests. Thierry had said they were coming at six-thirty. He breezed into the living room with goodwill and vitality, wearing an open shirt, chinos, and loafers — no attire for business guests and dinner. He kissed me on the cheeks, took my hand, brushing his lips over it, lingering. I pretended not to notice.

  “And your guests?” I demanded.

  “We’re meeting at Chez Maurice later. My secretary got things muddled. Hope you don’t mind. What will you have?”

  I asked for tea by the sliding glass doors facing his pool and garden, trying to overlook the compelling possibility he’d never planned on having anyone else there but me. He spoke about his house, the luxury of living abroad, pouring himself a Scotch over ice. Wandering, I admired his collection of carved Buddhas and jade figurines from the Far East, though I’d seen them before when Houshang and I had been invited to his dinners. Thierry flopped on the large sofa, arms splayed, features poised with effrontery and luster. An introduction to trouble, if I’d ever seen one.

  “Seen Pouran lately?” I asked.

  “Only when you’re around!”

  I stayed by the window, pulled out a cigarette, lit it before he could get over.

  “You’re fast,” he marveled.

  I smiled. “Efficient.”

  The maid brought tea, then turned to him.

  “Moosio Dalembert, r-reean doploo?” she asked in a funny accent, smiling at Thierry coquettishly despite her apparent prudery and advanced age.

  He’d inherited her from his predecessor. In broken Persian he said, in the most elaborate way, that he was dining out and dismissed her. They’d crossed languages, displaying skills for my sake. It was a bit of theater. We heard the front door slam as she left.

  I could see why she had greeted me that way. He’d never told her to expect nor prepare for any other guests.

  I took the armchair by the window, as far away from Thierry as possible.

  “Tehran’s an ugly city,” he said. “But — it has timeless charms.”

  “Spoken like a colonialist!”

  He laughed, excited at the possibility of being outwitted. It prolonged the seduction.

  “Thierry, look —”

  “Efficient again?”

  He sauntered over to my armchair, stood over me. He was being impossible. Looking straight in my eyes, he said just above a whisper, “Come on, you know how I feel. Stop fighting it.”

  I dragged on my cigarette, asked if he’d made a decision about Peyman Bashirian. He walked away.

  “Your record on human rights is atrocious,” he declared.

  “It isn’t mine!”

  “See! There’s no upper class less committed to the very regime it depends on. It’s — disgraceful.”

  Now that there was to be no seduction, he was making his points, one by one.

  “At the slightest rumble they’ll all desert ship,” he said, eyes glinting. “Like rats.”

  He wanted to get even. But I’d come for a favor, not to argue fine and arguable points. The regime didn’t rule with or through us, nor any parti
cular social class.

  He poured himself another drink, saying his boss was coming in from Paris. He said he had an offer: he’d help me if I’d help get Houshang to use his influence in favor of Thierry’s bank. I paused, then accepted, pausing for his sake, not mine. The French admire reflection.

  He told me to write up what I knew about Peyman Bashirian’s case there and then. He’d contact a newspaper and a human rights organization in Paris as I’d requested. He went into the next room and took a white sheet and pen from the desk by the window. I said I preferred dictating; he could take notes.

  “Really!” he said. “Who’d recognize your handwriting? I won’t tell.”

  I shrugged. I had obligations. Still, I’d just avoided even committing the account of my friend’s son to paper. My inbred discretion was craven. A telling milestone, I thought with resentment and contempt. I grabbed the pen and paper and wrote.

  “Either way, you’re playing with fire!” he assured me.

  His culture, like mine, thrives on heightened emotion and theatrics.

  By the door he tried to kiss me on the lips, but I turned my cheek.

  “I want you,” he whispered.

  In the street I laughed at his ambitions.

  I TOLD HOUSHANG ABOUT the banker’s reception in the car. The invitation had been hand-delivered that day. He shrugged it off, exasperated at something else. We were on our way home from a reception for yet another visiting trade delegation, this one from the Far East. I longed to be home with the children. I never man-aged to spend enough time with them. With bumper-to-bumper traffic, the drive uptown was taking forever.

  Houshang kept honking at cars cutting in left and right, griping about letting off the chauffeur earlier than usual, and about how a deputy minister had snubbed him at the reception. “The idiot has an inferiority complex!” he said. He was exasperated with the new snags each and every day at the Ports and Shipping Organization.