Brides of Blood

by Joseph Koenig

  “We are not policemen. Our talents are in other areas. Maryam Lajevardi had vanished, and we needed you to locate her. Obviously, we couldn’t tell you why, so we said it was the dope we wanted. The Komiteh had begun pressing us, they thought we were stalling. Then you tracked down Rahgozar, and for my partners and I it could not have come at a better time. You could have taken forever looking for Maryam, as long as there was progress for us to report.”

  “But I found her,” Darius said. “The Komiteh doesn’t need you much longer.”

  “It infuriated us. What right do you have to put us under this kind of pressure? If we don’t come up with the mycotoxins soon, we will be in the same sorry spot as you are now.”

  Baraheni had returned wheeling a cart on which a bulky object was hidden under a white cloth.

  “What’s this?” Ashfar asked him.

  “Something I picked up on Firdowsi Street.” Baraheni whipped away the cloth from a samovar whose brass urn was badly in need of polish. He started a flame that burned with hard, blue light.

  Darius felt the boiling samovar already strapped to his back. Baraheni let some water run out of the spigot onto the back of his hand. “Soon it will be ready.”

  “After reasoning things calmly,” Ashfar resumed, “we came to realize what an advantageous position we are in to be this close to the mycotoxins. Who can say what avenues of opportunity will open up when we have them in our possession? Like Maryam Lajevardi, we view them as a once-in-a-lifetime chance to become extremely rich. It would be a pity if Iran does not meet our price. But we have no control over that.”

  Darius had not stopped staring at the samovar, which began to emit gray puffs of steam and to chug like a pocket locomotive.

  “It’s time,” Baraheni said.

  Darius’s chest was hammering with a violence that made torture a secondary concern. Praise Allah, he thought, for small victories. Ashfar produced two glasses from the cart, and polished them with the fluffy towel until the last water blemish had been erased.

  “I apologize for not having fine china to serve you,” he said as he filled them. “These will have to do.”

  A guard entered with a woman wearing a tattered prison chador. The hood pulled low over her forehead did not conceal masses of blonde hair, the greenish glow of moist eyes.

  “I don’t expect,” Ashfar was saying, “that introductions are necessary …”

  15

  SHE REMAINED WHERE SHE was without uttering a word until the two of them had been left alone. When she came to him she was limping. Seeing how he was watching her, she hiked the chador around her ankles to show that she had lost one sandal. “They haven’t hurt me,” she said. “Not yet.”

  He relaxed a little then, a little more after snuffing the flame under the samovar.

  “I was worried about you.”

  “I’m well enough,” he told her.

  “They came for me as soon as you left Sharera’s. Six of them,” she blurted. “They stormed inside, and brought me straight here. I’ve been scared out of my wits ever since.”

  “That’s good,” he said.

  “Is it?”

  “You haven’t lost them.”

  His brief replies were a kind of torture. She wanted long, rambling statements to neutralize her terror, answers for questions she hadn’t raised, one on top of the other, a masculine voice to swaddle herself in.

  “You can’t believe what it’s like in the women’s wing,” she said. “A day, an hour doesn’t go by that a girl isn’t raped before my eyes.”

  “You’re safe. The fanatics wouldn’t dare touch a Bride of Blood.”

  “Why not?”

  “If they were to rape a girl who was a virgin, they’d go to hell; while any girl who dies pure will spend eternity in heaven. They didn’t carry you off to Evin to give you a free pass to paradise.”

  “They have a way around it. All female prisoners are declared corrupt on earth and automatically made wards of the court. The judges decree the girls to be the guards’ temporary wives, so they can be raped legally without the fear of hell and executed immediately after. It works out neatly for everyone concerned,” she said bitterly. “Don’t you think?”

  A slight tremor in her voice embarrassed her. She paused till she had overcome it. “There’s one guard, a foul, repulsive fellow, who already calls me his Mrs.”

  “Are you going to tell them?”

  “Tell them what? To go to hell?” Flustered, she tasted the tea, and spilled it into the pitcher.

  “Where the mycotoxins are.”

  “I’ve said it a million times.” Her voice broke with emotion she couldn’t disguise. “I don’t know where. I just don’t know.”

  Darius squinted into the lights where the microphones in the torture rooms customarily were secreted. After so many days in Evin Maryam would know that every breath, every scream, was recorded for analysis. The most revealing questioning took place between the formal sessions with interrogators in the conversations among the prisoners that were monitored. For what audience was she performing now?

  “You may save yourself from pain,” he told her.

  “You’ve surrendered.” Her face tightened with anger. “Or else never stopped working for them. Nothing has changed. You’re here to frighten me into talking.”

  “I’m trying to help you.”

  “That’s what they say: it will help my cause to give them everything they want. I’m glad I don’t know. They can torture me to death, and still they won’t find out.”

  It was an impassioned recitation, and he allowed himself to slip into character with it. He dropped his voice to a whisper the microphones could not hear. “Keep up your courage. Your ordeal won’t be long.”

  “Is that so? Who’s going to save me? You? You mean if I tell you what you need to know you’ll put in a good word for me?”

  “The grave,” he said.

  “That’s not very comforting.”

  “It’s honest, though. Unlike you—”

  “You despise me,” she said.

  “Evin has made you paranoid. Personal feelings don’t enter into any of this.”

  “But you do. You look at me like the guard who wants to rape me and kill me.”

  “Had you been truthful, neither of us would be in danger today.”

  “How can you say that? I saved your life.”

  “… Did what?” He spoke loudly, but didn’t care how much of what he said went on tape.

  “I know even less than I let on to them.” Maryam kept her voice low. “If they suspected how little, they’d have no use for either of us.” Turning her back, she went away from him, and Ashfar and Baraheni rushed inside as though they were foiling an escape attempt.

  “I trust you enjoyed your reunion,” Ashfar said.

  “We have nothing to talk about,” Maryam said.

  Baraheni had gone to the wall for a cable. “We may be able to provide a topic for discussion.”

  Maryam’s expression did not change as Ashfar pushed her to the whipping bed and straightened the straps. Darius had underestimated her. He had never known a woman impervious to the threat of torture. Not until three guards burst in and buckled him to the mattress instead of her did she abandon her look of inviolability.

  “Have you seen anyone undergo Islamic whipping before?” Ashfar asked her. “For some, witnessing pain is more difficult than experiencing it.”

  Maryam shook her head. “Don’t, please—”

  “It is in your hands. We cannot chance the death of the one person we know can give us what we want. Unfortunately—unfortunately for him—as long as you are alive, he is expendable.”

  “I can’t—”

  The cable slapped against Darius’s spine, and a scream caught too late rattled around the tiles. Worse than the pain was his humiliation. His sciatic nerve was the target of the next blow, and he fought the reflex to empty his bladder. Baraheni was using every gram of strength, swinging the cable in a high,
overhand arc, and then snapping it down, showing off for the girl.

  Maryam averted her eyes. Ashfar took her by the shoulders, held her so close to the bed that the breeze from the whip stirred her hair.

  “… Sorry,” Darius thought he heard her say. “Sorry I didn’t trust—”

  “You might consider how you would stand up to the same treatment,” Ashfar said to her. “Darius Bakhtiar, as is well known, is a man of unusual courage. Not everyone maintains a stoic posture for so long on the whipping bed.”

  Darius would have argued that it was the image of himself that he carried like a millstone around his neck that was all that kept him from pleading for mercy. And if Baraheni were to remember the samovar, there was nothing he wouldn’t do or say. The whip crashed into his feet, and he felt himself slipping into the unconsciousness that was the lone refuge within reach.

  “You have …” he mumbled.

  Ashfar raised his palm, and Baraheni stopped the cable in mid-stroke. “Did you say something?”

  Darius turned his head toward the microphone in the lights. Somewhere Bijan would be listening.

  “You already have the mycotoxins,” he said. “I brought them to your place myself. Why are you doing this to me?”

  The whip came down again, still harder. After that, Darius didn’t have to know a thing.

  He was drowning. Cold water washed over his face into his nose and mouth. His body had quit hurting everywhere except his lungs, which threatened to burst inside his chest. He measured his life in the seconds that he could hold his breath.

  “He’s stopped breathing,” a young woman scolded. “He’s dying. Somebody, please do something …”

  He listened, but no one came, and he opened his eyes to see why. A girl about twenty years old was bent over him close enough to kiss. A wet rag in her hand was dripping onto his throat. When he brushed it aside, she turned away. A torn prison chador did not completely conceal the flowery Qashqa’i blouse she had on underneath.

  He raised himself onto an elbow, but as he tried to sit up he was pulled onto his back. His left hand traced a chain that tethered his right arm to a radiator. He refilled his lungs with deep draughts of air tainted with the medicinal smell of the hospital.

  “You were unconscious for a long time,” the girl said. “It worried me to see you like that. The doctor is very busy, there was no one to attend to you. I asked for some water, but all they could give me was a wet towel.”

  Darius looked at the long line of wounded prisoners behind him. How long had he been allowed to wait now that he needed prompt medical attention? He took the rag from the girl, and wrung it out over his head. The water that ran into his eyes was pink. “Who are you?” he asked.

  The girl kept her face away from him, showing a pallid, aquiline profile. “Nahid.”

  He knew the name, had heard it mentioned recently, but his head still felt as though he were underwater, and he couldn’t remember where.

  “I have been accused of adultery,” she said, “but am innocent. Almost every day I am beaten while they put words in my mouth to repeat to them. I don’t understand what they want.”

  “Do you know—” Darius stopped to consider he might still be dreaming. “Do you know an officer of the National Police by the name of Ghaffari?”

  “I know a Mansur Ghaffari,” she answered cautiously. “He is my fiancé. But he is not a policeman, nor is he married, as they say. He is a traveling salesman.” Nahid covered her other cheek with her hand, and looked at him with both eyes. “How are you acquainted with Mansur? Is he all right?”

  “They are torturing you for his sins.”

  “You are mistaken,” she said firmly. “Mansur is clean and blameless.”

  The young doctor, Kashfi, called the girl into the clinic.

  “Your injuries are worse than mine,” she said to Darius. “You can go first.”

  Darius shook his head. “You’ve already been too kind.”

  Nahid was inside less than a minute before she returned clutching a foil packet of aspirin. As she brushed by him, Darius saw that the right side of her face was swollen and discolored, and hung from shattered bone like a mask that had worked loose. Kashfi came out after her, and told a guard to unlock Darius’s shackles. Sensation in his legs ended at the knee. He grabbed for his feet, which were ice cold, and bloody, but at least were still attached to him.

  “Help me bring him in,” Kashfi said.

  The clinic consisted of a single bed, an examining table, and several cabinets stocked sparsely with rudimentary medical supplies. The guard sat Darius on the table, and Kashfi raised his dead legs. From a brown bottle he applied a clear liquid to Darius’s soles with a worn cotton swab. Darius felt nothing at first, then coolness, then a welcome burst of pain.

  “You cannot tolerate any more, Lieutenant Colonel Bakhtiar,” Kashfi said. “They have cut deeply into your arch. Tell them you need more time between sessions.”

  “If it’s all the same,” Darius said, “I’d rather not prolong my stay.”

  Like Nahid, Kashfi avoided looking at Darius as he applied the dressing.

  “What are you doing in Evin,” Darius asked him, “when you could have a pleasant posting at the morgue?”

  “I did not become a doctor to attend to the dead. I requested the Ministry of Health to let me come here to fulfill the requirements of my residency.”

  “The one difference I see,” Darius said, “is that in Evin the corpses still hobble about.”

  Kashfi’s eyes flashed, but he didn’t smile. “I believed I could provide care to people who most needed it.”

  There was no tape left in any of the cabinets. Kashfi knotted the bandage while looking into the corridor, where the line of patients extended around the corner.

  “But this is not what I envisioned,” he said. “How am I helping anyone by enabling them to stand more pain? What they have me doing is in opposition to everything that attracted me to medicine. I have asked for another assignment; even the morgue is preferable. But as I have already been moved once, it is doubtful they will rule favorably upon my request. I, too, am Evin’s prisoner.”

  “If you’re serious about helping the living,” Darius said, “help me.”

  “I could have you walking in days if they would stop whipping you.” Kashfi patted Darius’s toes. “I am a good doctor.”

  “I need help now, help in getting out.”

  “I have no influence here.”

  “Get word to Dr. Baghai that I’m in Evin and want to see him.”

  Kashfi ran the water in a small sink, and his eyes darted toward the ceiling. Darius did not have to be told that a microphone was secreted there.

  “Were they to find out even that I had met you before, and did not report the fact, it would be very bad for me.” Kashfi dropped his voice, which was cloaked by the gushing faucets. “Really, I would like to help you, if I could.”

  When Darius tried to stand, Kashfi did not assist him, but watched with neither pride nor satisfaction as he balanced on his bandaged feet.

  “You did a fine job,” Darius said.

  Kashfi shrugged. When he shook Darius’s hand there was an extra packet of aspirin in it.

  “Oh, you who believe! Do not take the Jews and Christians for friends; they are friends of each other; and whoever amongst you takes them for a friend, then surely he is one of them; surely Allah does not guide the unjust people.”

  A dirge of sermons and prayer from the reigning ayatollahs blared from Evin’s loudspeakers all day long. Like most other prisoners, Darius had learned to shut his ears to the bombardment. The commentary on the surah Al Maidah of the holy Qur’an warning against the perfidies of the infidels was a favorite of the authorities, and the volume was turned up whenever that portion of the tape was played.

  Waiting alone in the interrogation room, he had to clap his hands over his ears to blot out the racket. It was two days since his last session with Bijan, and he hadn’t expected to be q
uestioned again so soon. His feet were still swollen so badly that he couldn’t fit them in his shoes; sitting too long in one spot was an ordeal that kept him constantly shifting position. A guard called to him, “You have a visitor,” and Ghaffari came inside and assumed Bijan’s place at the desk. They sat looking at each other in silence until an anxious frown broke across Ghaffari’s face, and he said, “I worry about you, Darius. I do.”

  “Is that why you worked so industriously to make a place for me here?”

  “I also worry about Sharera and Shahla. Sometimes, even about myself. When you don’t give a damn about yourself, how can I put you ahead of my family?”

  “Guard!” Darius shouted. “I want to go back to my cell.”

  No one came. The door closed, muting the attack on the Jews and Christians.

  “I have nothing to say to you, Mansur.”

  “No? Then maybe you’ll listen for once. Immense pressure is being brought to bear against me, and on others as well. The Komiteh don’t care who they hurt. It will go better for everyone who ever knew you if you talk.”

  “I don’t know anything. You can tell them I told you that.”

  “I did. Many, many times. They said the answer was unacceptable.”

  “Unacceptable? How can the truth be unacceptable?”

  “You’re being naive. Do you believe the truth is special to them? When it is not their truth it loses its usefulness and becomes heresy. Their truth is the revealed truth of God, but it has been revealed only to them. There are things they have to find out. That you don’t have the information is besides the point. You must provide it.”

  “So you’ve come to ask me questions I can’t answer. You’ll do well in your new job.”

  “I don’t owe them any favors.”

  “No, I don’t suppose you do. You were the spy in Homicide. You fed them everything.”

  “You still don’t see,” Ghaffari said. “They know everything from the start—what we think, how we respond to any situation. All the stuff that’s gone inside our head for a dozen years, they put there. Detail sometimes eludes them—as it does now—but eventually they have it, too. They know who we are better than we do ourselves. It’s the function of the Revolution to decide what we must be.”