Among the Ruins

by Ausma Zehanat Khan

  Khattak gestured at the darkroom.

  “It’s someone who knows where you work. Someone close by, a member of your group.”

  “Nonsense,” Darius replied. “The person who had the flash card was in Tehran. None of us have left Esfahan, so it couldn’t be one of us.”

  Khattak didn’t share his confidence. Zahra had somehow been persuaded to visit Evin, knowing the risks involved. Who had convinced her of that? Someone she trusted? And he wondered how well Darius knew any of the others, how deeply he’d pried into their personal histories. The only one he could know with certainty was his brother. And he’d seen the care Ali had taken with Darius, heard the tenderness of an older brother for a younger one who’d suffered.

  Whose idea had it been to join the demonstrations after the election?

  And who was carrying the guilt of that choice now?

  “Darius,” he said, softening his tone. “Please be careful with the photographs. Burn them as soon as you can, don’t carry them anywhere.”

  A glimmer of something troubling rose in Darius’s eyes. Khattak couldn’t describe it. He experienced that sense of oppression again, its echo in the young man’s voice.

  “You also, Inspector Khattak. A passport can be a mirage. If you don’t believe me, ask Zahra. Ask her how safe that Canadian passport made her feel in the end.”

  30

  The Suite

  They brought a sobbing boy into a cell that twenty of us once shared, and they’ve taken me to the Suite as an upgrade. I told the boy to be strong, and he’d find a way to survive. I didn’t believe it, but I told him anyway, what does one act of kindness cost me? Kindness costs nothing, rewards everything, Nasreen says. So now, I find myself in solitary. Fifteen or twenty times a day a guard walks by the window to check if I’m still alive. The cell is six by seven feet, with a ceiling that’s eight feet high. If I could stand, I’d be able to touch three sides of the cell at once. As it is, I spend my first night on the floor, reading the words of everyone who passed through before me. You can get through this. Don’t give up. No one stays here forever. Ya Hossein, ya Hossein. This cheers me up, but not for the usual reasons. Someone still believes in the dominion of Imam Hossein after everything they’ve suffered at Kahrizak. That’s funny. Or they believe Mir Hossein Mousavi has a magical key that unlocks these doors, and that’s even funnier. It’s quiet and clean here, so it’s a little bit like paradise. I don’t know what kind of monsters lurk on the other side of the door, but someone in that pack of wolves cleaned out this cell for me. Maybe it’s one of Roxana’s devotees—she has many at Evin. Maybe they know Zahra loved me because Roxana loved me like her own brother, like Nasreen loves me—we were always in this fight together. And maybe this means something to the wolves.

  Murder and torture are just a job for some, they don’t need lofty convictions.

  31

  The Esfahan City Center was Iran’s largest mall, a sprawling complex that encompassed luxury stores, a theater, a museum, and a hotel. It was also a popular, modern tourist destination.

  Touka’s hip was aching, her leg sore from her march around the mall. Walking prevented further deterioration, the price she paid for mobility. Her limp disarmed suspicion, her gray hair assured disinterest. She’d been a breezy blonde in her day, attractive to men, but those days had ended, a judgment passed on her by others. Though her mind was as sharp, her heart as generous as in her youth, it didn’t seem to signify.

  Khattak hadn’t dismissed her. He’d listened to her with interest and treated her with respect. She hoped he’d been able to make something of the video. Just as he’d seen beyond her limp, she’d seen beyond his tricky reputation—a reputation she’d tried to use against him, only to be shamed by his dignified response. A pawn in someone else’s game, Esa had managed to acquit himself well, tougher than his thoughtful demeanor suggested. He used his natural courtesy as effectively as Touka managed her limp.

  She waved him over, her face lit up by the glow of the Apple store’s windows.

  “What have you learned?” she asked him.

  He told her, slotting the facts neatly into a frame. She found the timeline as intriguing as he did. Zahra’s inquiries in Toronto, her trip to Iran, her meeting with a representative of the Supreme Leader. Her visit to Evin prison with her camera, the letters on her sleeve. And her disappearance and murder.

  He told Touka about the car. She promised to take another look at the video to see if she could track down a plate.

  “Do the letters on her sleeve mean anything to you?” Khattak asked. “Are they a code?”

  “Not one I know of. I’ll send them to your partner, one less communication from you.”

  Khattak told her about the Telegram app and his discussions with the Green Birds. This was more than Touka had hoped for from Khattak’s initial reluctance. The fact that he’d seized the initiative and come up with results were elements of his personal attraction for her.

  “What can you tell me about a man named Larijani? He followed me to the Hezar Jarib and insisted on taking me to the mosque.”

  Touka leaned forward with interest.

  “He’s a low-level functionary. If you do something to trigger his interest, he’ll take it to the next level, and that’s when I would worry. Although—” She paused. Esa waited her out. “Is it coincidence that Larijani was assigned to follow you? I’ve heard rumors about him.”

  “What kind of rumors?”

  “That he’s one of Radan’s men. The kind who carries out his errands.”

  That put a new complexion on things, he thought. It made Larijani a more serious adversary.

  “What if Larijani connects me to the Green Birds, and takes that to Radan? What would happen to them?”

  His concern sounded genuine. Touka wondered at the thoughts behind the disciplined face. Taraneh and Nasreen were attractive young women, but Khattak didn’t seem like the type to get distracted. Perhaps there was something in Nasreen’s moody sorrow to compel him, as it had compelled many men to try and help her—the effortless pull of a beautiful woman’s need.

  She knew of men who’d responded to that need before getting burned by Nasreen’s single-minded focus on her brother.

  Touka resisted the urge to warn Esa. She had no idea if his thoughts had turned in that direction, or if he felt anything more than the natural concern for a group of young people steering their way through deep waters. He should want to be out of this. That he hadn’t yet asked made Touka respect him more.

  “They have powerful connections if they run into trouble. Allegiances are often divided among the ruling elite. The heirs of the 1979 revolution aren’t necessarily enemies of the Greens—look at Mousavi and Karroubi, former revolutionaries. More importantly, the Green Birds have very little contact with me, which is just as well, otherwise they’d be accused of treason and hanged.”

  She attempted caution and reassurance in the same breath.

  “What about you—are you safe?”

  Touka liked the way Khattak’s green eyes warmed up as he asked the question.

  “I have an exit plan, don’t worry. If we were in Tehran, it would be a different matter. As we’re here—”

  She didn’t want to tell Khattak his idyllic days in Esfahan were coming to an end. To pursue the investigation further, he’d have to leave for Tehran. Instead, she brought up the message he’d sent her about the photograph at the ROM, the reason for their meeting at the mall.

  “I’ve been digging into the yacht. It was owned by Mehran Najafi, so it’s a safe bet the yacht is named after Zahra.”

  Khattak’s eyes stayed on hers.

  “Mehran is Zahra’s ex-husband. He’s the father of Max and Roxana.”

  She gave Khattak a moment to digest this.

  “Where is he now?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to find out. He travels a great deal in country. I think it would help if you visited Roxana’s family. Her mother might have that informatio
n.”

  “How does that work with the family under house arrest? Is there a guard on the house?”

  “One of the Green Birds will take you.”

  “I don’t think Larijani has dropped me, and I don’t want to put them at risk. As regrettable as Zahra’s death is, I don’t think it’s worth him connecting us.”

  That was it, Touka realized. That was what she liked about Khattak. He wanted to help, but he weighed this against considerations he believed were of equal worth.

  She eased out of her seat, her hip twinging at the movement. She rubbed at the spot with a surreptitious gesture. Khattak came to his feet and offered her his arm. She smiled her thanks at him, leaning into his strength for a moment.

  She wondered if he would ask about her hip, people usually didn’t. Khattak surprised her again.

  “Is it the result of an injury? Are you in any pain?”

  She shook her head. “It’s a muscular condition I was born with. It doesn’t impede me, I just need time to adjust.”

  She thought she could be forgiven for basking in a handsome man’s attention, but she didn’t want his pity. And it didn’t seem like Khattak had any to offer.

  “What do you think of Iran?” he asked, his tone conversational.

  They strolled through the mall, Khattak accommodating her pace.

  “It’s layered, isn’t it? There’s so much natural beauty, so much architectural brilliance—so much cultural complexity. It fascinates me. What the world thinks of Iran seems ludicrous when you deal with people in your daily interactions.”

  “There are other things beneath the surface.”

  He told her about the letters from his secret correspondent. Touka listened with avid interest.

  “The human rights situation is egregious, I agree. And these kids endanger themselves by acting on behalf of political prisoners, and by spying on the regime. But on the other hand—60 percent of university students are women. The literacy rate is 85 percent. People don’t think about these things when they think about Iran. Did you see that gorgeous bridge in Tehran—the new one, Tabiat?”

  Khattak nodded.

  “It was designed by a twenty-six-year-old woman. What does that tell you?”

  “It’s a country of contradictions.”

  “You seem very much at home here,” Touka observed. And he did. She wondered if that was just his fluency in the language. She was beginning to think it was deeper, something in Khattak’s bones, in how he carried himself through life.

  “My parents’ country of origin borders Iran. I suppose there’s a great deal I recognize, much I’m able to embrace.”

  Touka thought he was the kind of man who would find his place anywhere because of how he interpreted the world. For Khattak, unlike Touka, whose job required it, the world was more than a system of barriers—it was something to lay claim to, a place of common ground. He had an openness to the world, a welcoming in, rather than a fortification of fear against the unfamiliar.

  “Was there anything else?” she asked him. Khattak paused beside the gleaming windows of a men’s store. Touka examined the available choices with interest. Tailored suits, sports coats of the variety that murmured of exclusive parties and dignified hotel lobbies, shirts with starched collars and cuffs. The onyx cuff links inscribed with Persian script were a nice touch, she wondered what they said. The store’s name? Or some absurdly romantic love poetry? She could imagine the entire ensemble on Khattak: shirt, cuff links, blazer. And that silky black hair brushed neatly to one side, just above those winged eyebrows.

  She’d been in Iran too long, she thought with grim humor. She needed the after-hours company of a man, and she needed to stop ogling Esa Khattak in public.

  “Is there a database of some kind I could access? Somewhere I could find out about Zahra’s life in Iran before she moved to Canada? I’d like to know more about the yacht, more about her ex-husband. Why did the marriage break up? How did the photograph end up in the exhibit at the ROM?”

  This was the perfect moment to tell him he needed to return to Tehran. She didn’t think he was ready to hear it.

  “Zahra was born in Tehran, and now she’s died there. You could find that information in Tehran, but not without attracting the attention of much bigger fish than Larijani.” Radan’s name lingered in the air, unspoken. She waited a moment. “Or you could ask Roxana’s mother, Maryam Ghorbani.”

  They moved down the concourse where an enormous glass-walled shop with floors tiled in sparkling quartz offered up a display of the country’s most famous export: Persian carpets. The carpets hung from shining gold rods, arranged by geographical region. The explosion of color and pattern gratified and overwhelmed at once.

  “What can you tell me about Najafi?”

  Khattak stood before a vintage Qashqai Yalameh tribal rug, cleverly lit from below to showcase a painterly palette of purples and blues. The rug had to be worth thousands of dollars.

  “He was an exporter. He had the reputation of being a handler. He could get goods where they needed to go without questions being asked. He was well-connected.”

  “Was?” Khattak picked up on the significance of Touka’s word choice.

  “No one knows where he is now. And no one knows what’s happened to Roxana.”

  Khattak’s reply was grave.

  “Perhaps by backing the Greens, Roxana did something even the best-placed connections couldn’t save her from.”

  It was Touka’s turn to ask him what he meant.

  “You can’t trace Mehran Najafi. Maybe the regime has him.”

  32

  Interrogation

  He’s grunting behind me. He stinks of heroin and sweat. “Do you know what we did to Zahra? The same things we do to you. The mother of a whore, she liked it.”

  Zahra, Zahra Khanom. I would die a thousand times to see you safe.

  33

  Rachel answered the call from Nate on the first ring, cramming her phone against her ear as she hauled a bagful of garbage from her condo to the disposal chute on her floor.

  “Any luck with the coronation video?” she asked.

  “Quite a bit more than I expected. Vicky has a friend who works at Vortex Records. He managed to dig up a bootleg copy of the film.”

  “Did you watch it?”

  “We both did.” He sounded sheepish. “She was actually very helpful.”

  Rachel slammed the door of the chute with more force than necessary.

  “And what did you find out?”

  She was startled by the sound of a helpless cry behind her. Something small and black brushed against her ankles, causing Rachel to stumble over her own feet.

  “I thought I told you to get lost.” Swearing into the phone, she shooed the black cat away from the chute. “Sorry, Nate. I didn’t mean you—it’s this cat that randomly appears on my floor—hang on a sec.”

  She knocked on a few doors along the hallway, the black cat following like a puppy at her heels. None of her neighbors answered. Rachel retreated to her condo, but as she opened the door, the black cat shot through the opening like a bullet. It streaked through the hallway and launched itself onto a sofa. Instead of settling onto a cushion, it made a series of comments as it picked its way along the tight space between the sofa’s backrest and the wall. Its yellow eyes blinked up at Rachel, content.

  The cat could wait. Rachel returned her attention to the phone. She could hear Nate laughing under his breath.

  “Sorry about that. You were saying?”

  “The bootleg copy was missing some of the footage, but in the part we were able to view, the Shah wasn’t wearing his military cap.”

  “A dead end, then.”

  She was watching the cat with reluctant fascination. It had leapt from the sofa to the windowsill, where it began a leisurely grooming ritual.

  “Not quite. Rachel, are you listening?”

  “Yes.” She mumbled into the phone. “I really don’t like cats. But go on. There’s no vid
eo of the cap, but there was something else?”

  “Vicky’s friend told us there are very few copies of The Lion of Persia in circulation. A wealthy Iranian bought out the rights.”

  Rachel’s eyebrows shot up. “Did you happen to get a name?”

  “As a matter of fact I did.” For the first time, Rachel noticed his excitement. “It was Syed Mehran Najafi.”

  * * *

  Rachel pondered this in silence. She wandered over to the window, where the cat pushed its soft, black head into her palm, purring at the contact.

  “This doesn’t mean you can stay,” Rachel warned. But she headed to her kitchen, where she filled a small white saucer with milk. “I’m feeding the cat,” she told Nate.

  “Rachel,” he said, exasperated. “Forget the cat. Do you realize what this means?”

  “Mm.” She was petting the little cat, who had come to investigate the saucer, its fluffed-up tail brushing against her legs. “It means we’ve connected both Zahra and her ex to the video. What we don’t know is why. Did Vicky have any theories?”

  “Not really. She thinks the answer may lie in the part of the video that was missing.”

  “Maybe.” She realized Nate deserved a more enthusiastic response for his efforts. “Thank you for tracking it down, oh, and, Nate—let’s leave Vicky out of things from now on. It doesn’t look like there’s anything else she can give us.”

  There was a brief silence. The cat lapped daintily at the saucer. Rachel reached down to scratch it behind the ears.

  “I’m afraid that won’t be possible,” Nate said, at last.

  “Why not?”

  “Because she’s sitting right here.”

  34

  The Suite

  Joojeh has begun to talk to me, he’s as desperately bored as I am. He pretends to be a villain when the others are around, when we’re alone, he offers conversation with my bread and surplus. A few days in a row, he’s brought me blocks of cheese and tiny little packets of honey. He tells me he admires the peshmerga, the ones at war with ISIS. “Even your women fight,” he says. I shrug one shoulder, the other is dislocated. “I’m Iranian,” I say. “I’m not with the peshmerga.” Joojeh smiles. “You should be, they fight like Rambo.” He hoists an imaginary machine gun across his chest like Sylvester Stallone. I show him my useless arm, he feels bad. I pass out when he shoves it back into place.