“What is it, miss? What brings you here?”
“Would you have a coin for me? I want to make a phone call.”
“A phone call?”
“Yes. It’s important.”
He puts his paper under his arm with the two loaves and reaches into his pocket. He pulls out a leather pouch, unhurriedly feels inside it, and hands me a coin. I am still smiling in my hideous way.
“Miss, are you unwell?” he asks me.
“No,” I say, but I see the doubt in his eyes and amend my answer. “I fell over.”
He nods his head, plainly unconvinced. “You should sit down, miss. Over there in the park.”
I look in the direction of his gaze and see a small grassy area and a struggling tree on the opposite side of the road between a half-finished building and a yard where concrete pipes are stored on top of one another.
“I will,” I tell him.
“Would you like some bread?” he says.
“You wouldn’t mind?”
“Why should I mind?”
He tears one of his loaves and hands half to me. It is bread of the sort I have always loved, the crust all bubbled and sprinkled with sesame seeds. Just the aroma of it would be enough by itself to make me drunk.
“Be sure to rest,” the old man says, and nods, as if to reinforce the good sense of the advice he is offering me.
“I will rest, certainly,” I say.
As the old man continues on his way, I hurry to the phone booth, praying that the phone will be one that works. I put in the coin and hear a healthy dial tone, to my great relief. I dial my home number. I know by the light in the sky that it is about eight in the morning. My father will not have left for his shop yet.
My father’s voice flows into my ears. “Ghahramani household,” he says.
“Agha Jun?” I say—my way of addressing my father. “It’s me. It’s Zarah.”
I hear a cry, almost a shriek of pain. “My baby, where are you?” He is talking in Kurdish, the most natural tongue for him, and his most intimate. “I will come. I will come now. Where are you?”
“Ekbatan, block thirty-one. I’m in a phone booth. There’s a little park and a pile of pipes, big pipes. I’ll wait there.”
My father has to ask me to repeat what I’ve said. He is crying loudly and seems unable to stop himself. I tell him again, and a third time. In the background I can hear my mother pleading again and again, “Is it Zarah? Oh, God, is it she?”
“Don’t leave where you are,” my father says. “I am coming now. Baby, you must not leave where you are.”
“I won’t, I won’t!”
My mother’s voice is on the line now, but only for a second before my time expires. All I hear is “Precious …” in Kurdish.
I replace the receiver and walk across the road to the little park.
The sound of my father’s voice, and my mother’s for that bare second, has flooded me with joy. I sit on the seat wailing aloud and wiping tears from my cheeks. Then I glimpse the bread in my lap, and I stop crying and feed chunks of it into my mouth. Between mouthfuls, I give myself over to wailing again. If I were in Paradise, this is what I would wish it to be: fresh bread, tears of joy, and my mother and father hurrying to me.
I clutch my blindfold tightly in my free hand.
Acknowledgments
THE AUTHORS WOULD like to express their gratitude to Ann Dillon for her help and suggestions during the creation of the manuscript and for her valuable research.
All the members of Zarah Ghahramani’s family are especially acknowledged for their patience and loving support; her secondary school and university teachers are asked to accept her gratitude, for reasons that will be apparent to any reader of this book. Finally, Zarah would like to convey her particular gratitude to her husband, who helped restore her love of life.
Copyright © 2008 by Zarah Ghahramani and Robert Hillman
All rights reserved
FARRAR, STRAUS AND GIROUX
18 West 18th Street, New York 10011
Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint the following material: Canción de jinete / Rider’s Song and Casida del llanto / Qasida of the Weeping by Federico García Lorca © Herederos de Federico García Lorca. Translation by Zarah Ghahramani © Zarah Ghahramani and Herederos de Federico García Lorca. All rights reserved. For information regarding rights and permissions, please contact [email protected] or William Peter Kosmas, Esq., 8 Franklin Square, London W14 9UU.
www.fsgbooks.com
Designed by Cassandra J. Pappas
eISBN 9781429922708
First eBook Edition : March 2011
First edition, 2008
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ghahramani, Zarah.
My life as a traitor / Zarah Ghahramani ; with Robert
Hillman.—1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN-13: 978-0-374-21730-3 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-374-21730-0 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Ghahramani, Zarah. 2. Students—Iran—Biography. 3. Women—Iran—Biography. 4. Women prisoners—Iran—Biography. 5. Prisoners—Iran—Biography. 6. Iran—Politics and government—1997– I. Hillman, Robert, 1948– II. TITLE.
DS318.84.G43 A3 2008
365’.45092—dc22
[B]
2007017983
My Life as a Traitor: An Iranian Memoir Page 22
