And yet it is probably true that my father knew that certain very unwholesome agencies existed to deal with dissenters. He would have heard things, he would have noticed things. He might have accepted the repression of the Communists without too much angst, but I doubt he would have approved at all of the way the clergy was abused—he is, after all, a man of faith. Although I have said that both of my parents were capable of turning a blind eye when they chose to, I meant only that they were blandly negligent in the way we all are. I wouldn’t suggest that my father turned a blind eye in the direction of SAVAK. I have read of certain German army officers in World War II returning from business in the east of the country, and even farther east, in other countries, conquered countries, who were never quite the same again. What they had seen they wished they could unsee. Did my father have an experience of this sort? I don’t think so. It would be more in keeping with his character for him simply to have refused to pry. But whatever the facts, I didn’t accept either my father or my mother as a reliable witness to the shah’s regime once I was old enough to question.
MY FAMILY HAD lived a privileged life, it’s true. So when my father returned to civilian life and established his small electronics business in the bazaar, we were unprepared for a diminished standard of living. The Iraqis attacked and the bombs fell, and my family was in as much danger as any other. The food shortages, the rationing, the squalor—they wrenched us just as they wrenched millions of other Iranians. But unlike most Iranians, we had something to look back on, in a wistful way. We hadn’t been among the millions whom the shah had ignored, those who had largely gone without medicine because they couldn’t afford it, and without basic social services because any welfare there was had to cater to far too many of the desperately needy. And so, with a past of privilege to mourn, my father and mother began to imagine things.
Let me go forward from the war years of the 1980s to the middle of the next decade. I am now fifteen, sixteen. The Islamic Revolution has survived the war with Iraq and consolidated itself all over Iran. My parents may have hoped that the mullahs would just go away, but the mullahs have waited for thirty years to rule Iran and they intend to go on ruling forever. My father grumbles; my mother sighs. One evening as we sit around in the living room, my younger brother working on his homework, my father reading the newspaper, my mother looks up from the banal magazine she has been leafing through to watch a program that has just commenced on television. It is the anniversary of the Islamic Revolution of February 1979, and the state channel is showing its version of the Pahlavi overthrow. Enormous crowds have gathered for the return to Tehran of the ayatollah. And here is the Father of the Revolution himself, raising his hand to the ecstatic crowds. Now the program switches back to scenes of repression under the shah. Brutish policemen chase protesters down the streets. Mullahs are humiliated by Savaki. Mothers gather at the gates of Evin Prison to plead for news of husbands and sons thought to be held inside. The unrelenting voice-over reminds viewers of the lawlessness of the shah’s henchmen. That’s how it used to be, says the announcer. Thank God we no longer have to endure the indignity of living under the rule of a godless despot like Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi!
My mother shakes her head and clucks her tongue as she watches, growing more and more vexed. When she can stand it no more, she begins a long lament for the passing of the Pahlavis. She speaks of the life we used to live, of the happiness we once knew. How much more comfortable we’d been in those days! I listen, but I’m not convinced. My father, watching the celebrations, winces and shrugs and occasionally guffaws. But he says little.
Later that evening, when my mother comes to say good night to me in bed, I ask her about the old days. I know what she will say, of course, but I am interested in testing how far she will go. It’s a little cold-blooded of me, I confess. My mother sits on the side of my bed and looks to the side, then fixes her gaze on the far-off in the way that people do when they recall the past. She speaks of the picnics in the parks, the camping trips, the abundance of food in the market. She tells me of the annual gatherings of senior military officers and their families on the grounds of the Imperial Palace in North Tehran, all invited by the shah as an expression of his gratitude for their diligence and loyalty. Tables are set up in the sunshine under the cedars and spruce. Exquisite food, lovely wine. The nation’s best singers and musicians entertain this congregation of the elite. Acrobats perform breathtaking leaps and tumbles. My mother, who adores social gatherings of this sort involving her whole family, chats happily with her women friends, calls her children to her side, and proudly shows them off, fending off compliments in the superpolite way of Persians while inwardly bursting with pleasure: “You think Zarah is pretty? Oh, perhaps a little. But too thin, surely! Now, your Miriam, why, she is a princess, as fair as any girl in Iran!” The band plays a medley of popular favorites, including Western hits. Such a day! And there stands her husband in his immaculate uniform, the single most handsome male between Kermanshah and Zahedan, from the Caspian coast to Bandar Abbas.
“Oh, Zarah! Oh, darling! Such times! Do you know, Zarah, people were happy then. We were all so happy. We had a king, a good king. Everybody loved the shah and his wife, such a beautiful woman, Zarah! So gracious, so kind. People used to thank the Almighty for their lives. Such happiness, darling! Such happiness!”
I know this is only part of the truth. Some of us were happy, yes, but many, many were not. How could a revolution like Khomeini’s succeed in a land of happy, contented people? Did millions upon millions of Iranians say, “Oh, we’re so pleased with our lives that we want to give up all sorts of freedoms and make our land a pariah among the nations of the world so that we can be happier still?” Hardly. But I let Mom continue her reverie, biding my time and fashioning my put-down. Sometimes I look away from the rapture of my mother’s expression to gaze at the pictures on the walls of my bedroom—a bedroom that is all mine now that my three older sisters are married. A photograph of Kafka with dark, luminous eyes stares back at me from above my bookcase. To his right hangs a painted portrait of Hedayat, the wonderful Iranian novelist. Above these two portraits hangs a Zoroastrian icon, an angel in a circle of fire, one hand raised in benediction. Farther to Kafka’s left I have placed my treasured poster of Michael Jackson moon-walking, copied from the original brought back from America by a girlfriend. On the wall behind Mom hangs a set of shelves on which my travel souvenirs are displayed, for I am an irremediably soppy collector of knickknacks from Iranian destinations: a statuette of Darius the Great from Shiraz, ceramics from Esfahan, a little wooden ship from the Caspian coast. The ornaments and the Zoroastrian icon enjoy the wholehearted approval of my mother, and why not, since these are the very sorts of things she has filled our apartment with. Hedayat she can tolerate, although his subject matter is a worry to her; Michael Jackson makes her nervous; Kafka is alarming.
Mom is still speaking of the glory of the past, delighted to be given the opportunity. Who else can she speak to in this way? My father is hardly likely to listen for more than a minute or two; it isn’t his thing. If he wants to speak of the old days, it is usually to make a political point, comparing suffrage under the shah with the mock-suffrage of the mullahs, who reserve a power of veto over anything the electorate might endorse (and so did the shah, but his vetoes were “more sensible,” whatever that means—but best not mention that). My sisters are prepared to listen to Mom’s rhapsodies off and on, my brothers hardly at all. No, I am the best listener, although my listening this evening is utterly self-serving.
Mom pauses for breath, and with all the egotism of my sixteen years, not to mention the cruelty, I say, “Mom, you’re dreaming! It just wasn’t like that!”
“Yes, darling. It was. I swear.”
“Sure.”
“Every word, darling. It was just like that.”
I gaze at my mother’s face, full of tender concern for me. What will become of a girl who doesn’t wish to believe in such stories? I grimace,
but I know it is unkind to persist. There is no shaking my mother’s convictions about the land of happiness that once was, the land of milk and honey and annual parties on the palace grounds. But in my heart, I say no. Even as I reach out to take my mother’s hand and place it on my cheek, I say no.
This is how treachery begins. This is how I became a traitor. Not by recording all the injustices and lies and hypocrisy and greed in the Iran that I grew up in and putting them into a dossier labeled “The Wicked Land of the Wicked Mullahs” but by doubting. Once you doubt, there is hope. Once you distrust, there is hope. Of what use to anyone are pretty fantasies? And of what use are ugly fantasies? In all of my conversations with kids of my own age who, like me, were fed up with pompous men telling us what to do and think and wear and believe, I never came across one who believed that everything would be rosy if only the monarchy were restored. What, replace one tyranny with another? No.
The tact—grudging tact sometimes—I show when listening to my mother’s reveries is the same tact I employ when either of my parents asks about my involvement in political protest. I tell them a little and withhold a lot. They would be far more anxious about me if they knew that I sometimes organize protest meetings, for example; that my protests go further than standing at the back of a crowd and waving. Or is that tact at all? Perhaps I shouldn’t let myself off so lightly. It is subterfuge. I don’t want them to worry, but even more than that, I don’t want either of them to say, “No more, it’s too dangerous!” If they say that, I won’t obey, and if I don’t obey, I will feel guilty. It seems to me that feeling guilty about fighting for a good cause is too much to ask of myself.
17
I AM LYING on my stinky blanket in my cell tortured by an idea so disturbing that it is making me tremble.
This is the idea: that I am here suffering not because of my splendid political beliefs but because of my capacity for hero worship.
I picture myself arriving at the university on the first day of my first semester. I am frightened but also delighted. Oh, the things I will learn! The people I will meet! How diligently I will study, how devotedly I will honor my teachers! And they will be so impressed with me, my teachers, my professors, my lecturers! “Have you noticed that clever girl in Languages, Zarah I think her name is. Keep an eye on her, she’s going places, that one.” I am too shy to approach anyone at first. I stand around in the square under the London plane tree with my girlfriends and giggle. But if any of the professors pass by, I put on a deeply serious expression and gaze straight ahead, as if some powerful realization about the nature of existence has gripped me.
I soon learn the rules of cool. Do I want the professors to think I’m some bumpkin from the dusty back lots of the country? I wear my scarf a little farther back on my head, allowing more of my hair to show. My scarf itself is far from standard-issue: it’s dark, yes, but it has a pattern of small blue and red dots. I make sure that when I walk in the square or along the corridors I saunter; I try to show my sophistication in my very gait. Whenever I cross the path of the insufferable Basiji, I glance at them with pitying disdain, hoping that my insolence is being noticed by the university’s elite.
Of all the people I hope to impress, Arash is foremost. The well-behaved students, those who have no argument whatsoever with the regime, always look at Arash as if he were likely to snatch them from the bosoms of their families and carry them off to Hell, leaving nothing behind but the echo of his demonic laugh. But to the would-be cool, like me, he is the Gary Cooper of the campus—the guy with that gentle something about him who nevertheless wears a six-shooter strapped to his waist and is ready to face the enemy at high noon. I don’t really have to rely on Hollywood for a comparison: Arash is, in fact, a hero in the great tradition of Persian heroes. He is Rustam in his daring and bravery; he is Darius the Great in his regal disdain for the pettiness of lesser princes; he is Omar Khayyám in his satirical disregard of conventions and protocols; he is Hafez in his romantic swagger.
I adore him.
I gather up all my nerve one day and approach him in the corridor. I stand nearby while he is chatting with other students older than I. An opportunity comes for me to say something that shows whose side I am on politically, and I squeak something out—nothing so arresting as “Death to the mullahs!” but something that is meant to convey my thoughtfulness and also my amazing wit. Arash looks at me with amusement; the older students look at me with mild contempt. Later in the week, I take myself off to a campus political meeting, and Arash is there. When he sees me scurry in and take a seat, he turns in his own seat and smiles at me over his shoulder. I push my scarf a little farther back and put on my most fierce antiregime expression, and Arash laughs out loud. Humiliation runs through me like a white fire, and I feel as if I might burst into tears, but I keep my seat somehow.
With persistence, I come to know Arash better, and he is a little more prepared to tolerate me. I tell him all about my contempt for the regime, and the heights I have scaled in my advocacy of radical change. “Big plans,” he says, still amused. “You know, we don’t expect to change very much. A few little things this time around, a few more next time. You sound like one of those kids who signed up for martyrdom in the war—those kids who couldn’t wait to die for the cause. Slow down, little one.”
So I slow down. My antiregime rhetoric becomes calmer. I tell my friends, old ones from high school and new ones from the university, that “we” (I and all the most senior people in the movement) only want to change a few little things this time around, and a few more next time. We are not firebrands, I say; we are not martyrs. Goodness knows what my friends made of this new posture, but whatever it was, they were kind enough not to tell me.
In spite of adopting this new posture of extreme cool, I still follow Arash around like a puppy dog, stopping where he stops, starting again when he starts. Anyone watching could see how besotted I am. My infatuation is romantic, it’s true, but it’s not that I expect to go to bed with Arash and marry him and raise a big brood of radical children. Women (but certainly not men) are capable of loving to distraction without surrendering completely to the erotic. Or if the erotic complement is there, women can keep it under control, enjoying the sheer thrill of loving with the kissing and embracing left in abeyance. Women cannot love like this forever— sooner or later we want to touch and be touched—but we can maintain it for quite some time.
Now I come to the part of the worship of Arash that distresses me: What if he had been an ugly little guy with great big teeth jutting out of his face who sprayed spittle when he talked? Were not his good looks and Byronic postures part of his attraction? And spiritually, would I have been so besotted if he were indifferent to the suffering of others? Wasn’t it his gentleness that formed such a part of his allure? Was it true, perhaps, that I saw in him the ideal dad, no more handsome than my dad (well, few men are, in all candor) but a dad I could fall for? See, this is the trouble with reading a bit of Freud—you begin to see ten possible motives where there was only one before.
Three days ago I was sick to death of Arash, and brimming with scorn for his birds and poems and his rallying calls. Now I am besotted again. What on earth am I? Just a reed that bends in the wind? Surely there is a core to me? And if there truly is a core to me, Arash should be there, surely. He has been arrested a number of times, so the interrogators will be merciless with him, yet he somehow found the strength to leave me a message of encouragement. If I can’t find the strength for anything else, at least let me honor Arash’s bravery.
I lie here whimpering, then the whimpering ceases and something intense comes into my brain, a focus, a frame that fits around my feelings. I knew what I was doing. I knew I was getting into trouble. I knew it. It wasn’t just Arash—he lent the aura to all that I was experiencing, but he wasn’t the core that the aura surrounds. There is a Zarah at the heart of me. “Because listen, listen!” (I am talking aloud to myself now.) “She knows they have made her weak and broken and pat
hetic, but that is just pain and fear. We all know that pain and fear work. We all know that torture works. What’s the big news there? Okay, you tortured her, she would have said anything to make you stop. She could do the same to you, and so can anyone do the same to anyone else. But if she ever gets out of here, she will be scared, that’s true, and maybe she won’t run out into the streets and start shouting again. All the same, she doesn’t believe a single word of what you want her to believe! She doesn’t believe a single word of it, you liars!”
I am going mad, but it’s lovely. I am as mad as my dear madman. I talk of myself in the third person. I make up little fantasies. Before long, I will be screaming out somebody’s name, the name of some fantasy lover who betrayed me, my Leila.
I stand and put my mouth close to the fan grille. “Sohrab? Listen, do you want to talk about Leila?”
My madman doesn’t answer. Maybe he’s in one of his moods. Such a pity, because now we have an even greater kinship. I’m annoyed that he won’t answer me. I have the feeling that I could say extraordinary things at the moment. My brain is perfectly clear and mad at the same time. Surely that is what happens when you are mad. You believe that you alone can see things clearly, and that those around you live in a fog.
Oh, but that lovely deranged clarity of thought is fading even as I stand here waiting for Sohrab to reply. I am becoming miserable and wretched again. It was only a holiday, the lovely madness.
My Life as a Traitor: An Iranian Memoir Page 14
