Stranger to History

by Aatish Taseer

  I heard her out, then left her office. My only thought was that I would telephone my father later that day, and that I had to convince the operator to connect the call with my dormitory. I hoped my father, like my mother, was better disposed to dealing with important matters in the evening.

  The operator said his colleague would be taking the evening shift, but that he would pass on the request for the nine-fifteen call.

  ‘Operator, one other thing,’ I said. ‘When you connect the call, could you not say where it’s from? It’s a surprise of sorts.’

  The operator didn’t object so I left the slip with him and headed off to my classes.

  It was a difficult day to get through, with a double-science period in the afternoon, during which my thoughts were fixed on the evening call. Practical considerations troubled me most. How would I make sure that my housemistress or friends wouldn’t interrupt me? Would I take the call in the corridor or in the housemistress’s apartment? If a servant should answer, who would I say was calling? How would I greet my father? Surely not ‘Abba’, but by his first name then? I’d never addressed any Indian adult in that way.

  I decided to return to the dormitory early and make some headway with my homework as I was sure it would become harder to do as nine fifteen approached. I met my housemistress on the way and told her I was expecting a trunk call that evening so that I could wish my mother a happy birthday.

  ‘Your mother’s happy birthday today?’ She grinned.

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘Good, good. Please also convey my very best wishes to her. Please feel free to speak in my apartment.’

  ‘Thank you, ma’am,’ I said, sidling off to my room.

  The study hour began, and my two roommates came in. I wished I could tell them of the error I was making. I felt in unsafe hands with the therapist, yet in a day she had reduced the greatest gulf in my life to a tantalising two-hour wait. For all that I didn’t trust her, I was excited and willing to believe. My caution was just fear of disappointment.

  By nine, the study hour was over and I escaped the clamour of the corridors for the quiet of my housemistress’ apartment. In the fifteen minutes I spent by the phone, I took in every minute detail of the apartment, from my housemistress’ shrine to the late Princess Diana to the needlework pastoral scenes, with religious messages.

  At ten past nine, I focused on the task ahead, as if I were doing last-minute revision for an exam. I prayed the call wouldn’t go through. But the operator was following a simple instruction, and the line was connecting as it had before, and the phone rang.

  I answered it, expecting to be flung straight into conversation with my father, but the operator’s voice spoke instead. ‘Call to Lahore, Pakistan. Should I connect?’

  ‘Yes, please,’ I managed, shuddering at the mention of Pakistan.

  Then, as if performing a magic trick, the operator’s voice was gone and a gruff voice at the other end of the line, said, ‘Hello.’

  ‘Salam Olaikum,’ I said, recalling a Muslim friend of my mother teaching me the greeting. ‘Is this Salmaan Taseer’s house?’

  ‘Olaikum,’ the gruff voice replied, with some puzzlement.

  ‘Yes, who’s speaking?’

  ‘May I speak to him, please?’ I asserted.

  ‘Speaking,’ the voice said in English.

  ‘This is Aatish Taseer,’ I said, blushing at my own heroism.

  The voice did not respond. I imagined the comfort of an evening at home ruined.

  Then the therapist’s suggestion came to mind, and I said, aware that I had not banished the flutter from my voice, ‘Is this a good time to talk?’

  ‘No,’ the voice said. Then, as if explaining a hard concept to a child, ‘This isn’t actually a very good time.’

  ‘Will tomorrow morning be better?’ I offered.

  ‘Yes, it will be better.’

  ‘Should I try the office number?’

  ‘Yes, do that. Where are you?’ the voice asked, with sudden concern.

  ‘In India, at my boarding-school in southern India. It’s in Tamil Nadu.’

  ‘OK,’ the voice said, losing interest.

  I said goodbye and hung up.

  The next morning I rushed into the therapist’s office, furious at the disappointment. She was engaged in another one-to-one peer-counselling session, but she asked the person to leave. She listened to every last detail about the sound of his voice, his choice of words, the way he had said goodbye. Then she asked, like a mantra, ‘How has it made you feel?’

  ‘Extremely disappointed.’

  ‘Have you thought yet of why?’

  ‘Yes, I’ve been thinking about this man all my life and I got the courage to call him only to be told that it wasn’t a good time.’

  ‘Maybe it wasn’t,’ she said stubbornly.

  ‘What? Do you mean you think he was telling the truth?’

  ‘Perhaps not, but we have to take people at their word.’

  ‘You think I should call him back?’

  ‘What harm is there? If nothing else, you’ll hear his voice again, which will only affirm that he is a creature of flesh and blood, and not some over-built-up myth.’

  She was an infuriating woman to share a secret with, but she had one unique quality: she was never dissatisfied with an outcome, no matter how far it was from what she expected. It made me want to call my father, if only to throw it in her face.

  Later that day, I returned to the original wooden booth and waited to be put through to my father’s office. My mood was not unlike that of someone calling a customer service or IT help desk for the tenth time. When the number finally rang, I could tell the operator was still on the line. He said, in a heavy south-Indian accent, ‘Hello? Hello? Stand by for trunk call.’

  The voice at the other end was quiet. I said, ‘Hello, can I speak to Salmaan Taseer?’

  ‘Who’s calling?’ the voice said. I recognised its gruffness as my father’s.

  ‘His son,’ I said firmly.

  Then the voice changed. The gruffness was gone and the tone was meek, like a servant’s. ‘He is not in at the moment,’ the voice said, now in Urdu.

  I hadn’t planned for this. ‘What?’ I said, certain that the voice sounded like my father’s, but unsure how to proceed.

  ‘He is out,’ the voice, still servile, repeated.

  The cowardice enraged me and I felt a strange sense of power over the voice. I wavered between pressing on and giving up. Then, a sense of fatigue took over. I made the owner of the voice write down my number and hung up.

  I never found out if it was really my father.

  The Discplinary (sic) Force of the Islamic Republic

  In the Name of God. As Long as a Tourist is in an Islamic country, the Islamic government is responsible to guarantee his safety and comfort. If a Tourist in an Islamic country loses his properties, the government should support and provide him with the lost property.

  Imam Ali, from a sign in a travel agent’s office

  The Discplinary (sic) Force of the Islamic Republic of Iran and Department of Aliens’ Affairs in Tehran had a bad reputation for inefficiency and unpleasantness. I was thinking of going out of town to renew my visa, but as it was about to expire I had little choice. I still had a lot more to do in Iran. I wanted to go to Kurdistan and to the holy cities of Qom and Mashhad. Reza, my vet-friend, and I organised our train tickets to Mashhad at a travel agency on Tehran’s congested south side. Then, to renew my visa, we took a taxi north into cleaner air and chenar-lined avenues, with glass-fronted boutiques and coffee shops.

  In that hour before lunch, the office was empty. I followed Reza in past a guard; we signed our names in a visitors’ book and dropped off the forms. I was requesting a month’s extension but was willing to settle for a fortnight. The man who took them said I could pick up my passport on Saturday, the night before we were meant to leave for Mashhad. It seemed straightforward enough.

  Saturday came and, as instr
ucted, I returned to the Discplinary Force of the Islamic Republic on the long, tree-lined avenue. This time, the office was airless and crowded. The main room was full of Africans, South Asians and Asians standing around for varied consular services, such as visa extension, pick-up and delivery. Many had dazed, puzzled expressions, showing the effects of indefinite waiting. The usual religious decorations and instructions hung on the walls: ‘Honourable aliens, Islamic hijab is necessary,’ ‘Yah Fatima’ in gold letters and a romanticised portrait of Ali’s son.

  In a far corner of the room behind a glass partition, I saw a sign that said ‘Visa Pickup and Interview Box’. A couple of Europeans were standing near it and I made my way over. The man working behind the partition with two stars on his epaulettes was bald, with a moustache and a cold, stern mouth. His eyes darted from person to dossier to person, giving the impression that the two were interchangeable. After a short wait, I handed him my pickup slip. He fingered a few dossiers, then went away, came back and searched again for mine. I saw it before he did and gave him some indication of where it was. He picked it up and scanned its contents quickly. Then his eyes rested on something in it.

  ‘I can give you two days,’ he said blandly.

  ‘Two days?’ I blurted.

  ‘Two days,’ he replied, paying no attention to the emphasis in my voice.

  ‘But I asked for a month.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I can’t help you.’

  ‘But why? Why have I just been given two days?’

  ‘I’m sorry, I can’t help you.’

  ‘But I haven’t even made transport arrangements to leave in two days.’

  ‘I’m sorry I can’t help you,’ he said, then turned to the next person.

  I had prepared myself for a variety of surprising outcomes, but two days was less than my lowest estimate. It would not give me time to travel by land to Pakistan, which was my plan, let alone to the religious cities of Qom and Mashhad. It was hardly any more time than my visa already allowed so I didn’t bother to ask for the two days he offered.

  Panic rose from my stomach. There was so much I still needed to do in Iran! The bald man’s answer didn’t just alter my plans but altered me, bringing me into line with the level of distress in the room. I pushed my way out of the windowless office and on to the street.

  I walked up and down the block, past a pastry shop, and crossed the black metal rails that bridged the clean waterway, bright from light driven in spokes through the chenars above. In the other direction, the incline took the eye past the broad stretch of avenue, culminating in the snow-capped mountains that, despite the dark layers of pollution, gave Tehran an aspect of spring. This strange city could turn like a hologram: at one instant it was spring, greenery and white mountains; at the next, traffic, pollution, black outlines and hazard.

  I was still under the impression that my two-day extension was the result of a bureaucratic accident and could be amended with the help of someone who knew the country and the language. I couldn’t decide who to call. Most of the people I knew in Iran were young and would have no influence. The only older people I could think of were Muhammad Rahimi and his Indian wife, Sita. She had been away since my arrival in Tehran, but had returned in the past few days and I was meant to be meeting her anyway.

  ‘I’m sorry to call you with this, Sita,’ I said, ‘but I have a bit of a problem. They’ve given me forty-eight hours to leave the country. I have a lot of work still to do. Is there any way you can help?’

  ‘Well,’ she answered, perhaps a little put off by the urgency in my voice, ‘Muhammad’s office is always getting visa extensions for people who work for the company. You should have let us know you were doing this. Let me call him and then I’ll call you back.’

  Sita called back within minutes and sounded reassuring. She asked where I was, then said she would have their son, Payam, who I already knew, pick me up and take me to Muhammad’s office, which was off Vali Asr.

  Payam’s arrival was a comfort after the large and inscrutable government apparatus, but the doubt I had sensed in Sita must have been playing on his mind too: had I only been offered a two-day visa because of a bureaucratic error or because I had run into trouble with the regime? In the first case, it made sense to contest the decision; in the second, it would be reckless to do so.

  Muhammad, sitting in his elegant, wood-panelled office, squinting through his gold-rimmed glasses, traced my story back to the flat I was staying in. He was certain that my friend’s links with the press had brought me under scrutiny from the Islamic Republic. ‘Is your friend Iranian?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then be sure he’s an informer,’ he said, with the special confidence he reserved for expounding conspiracy theories.

  ‘He’s hardly ever lived here,’ I protested. ‘I know him from England. He’s only just started to work here. Besides, he’s not even in the country.’

  ‘Be sure he is an informer,’ Muhammad said, shaking his head from side to side.

  We waited for Mr Valaie to show up. He handled Muhammad’s business visas for his foreign employees. He was someone who, Muhammad said, ‘knows how to speak to those people’. I liked the description: it was exactly the kind of knowledge I felt I lacked. I was still more comforted when Valaie arrived. He was a tall, burly man, with a quiet but substantial presence, and wore the short, stubbly beard of the Basiji. He had the appearance of an insider. We recounted to him the morning’s events and he suggested we go directly back to the office and speak to them.

  Soon we were back in the car, finding openings in the giant traffic formation heading down Vali Asr.

  Using back-streets, and side-streets, and outmanoeuvring other cars, we arrived at the Disciplinary Force of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Again we went straight past the bearded sentries into the main room, which had cleared since I’d last seen it. The bald man, with the hard mouth, was immediately visible and I pointed him out to Valaie. Valaie told me to stand back and moved his large, impressive form in a swift, self-assured step toward the man, who was now standing up but looking down. When Valaie approached, he glanced up for a second to take him in, as if he had been expecting him all along.

  Valaie explained himself, then asked, ‘May I take some of your time?’

  ‘I have no time,’ the man replied, and returned to his work.

  ‘Could you just say what the problem is?’

  ‘No, I cannot, and you must not ask me.’

  As soon as he had said this, he moved away from the desk. Valaie appealed to him again as he withdrew. He did not answer, but when the appeal came again, he snapped, in a louder voice so that his other colleagues heard, ‘Two days and don’t ask for an explanation.’

  A woman came up to the desk, like an apologetic wife, and explained politely that a Mr Rashidi had denied the visa; we had to speak directly to him. When Valaie asked where Mr Rashidi was, they said he had left for the day.

  Valaie looked as if he was unused to being spoken to in this way. It was as if a kinsman or relation had insulted him. He advised that we take the two days and try again for more days tomorrow when we came to collect the passport. Since the extension fees were paid and the two days would give me at least one day more than my visa allowed, I agreed. Valaie took the slip back to the counter. This time someone else dealt with him.

  My relief at having escaped the government office, and its bitter disappointments, was so great that it was some minutes before the realisation of what had occurred sank in. I had a two o’clock appointment with Hosseini, who had recently returned from America and was a senior administrator at Tehran University. He was to help me in the religious cities of Mashhad and Qom. Now I was not sure if there was any point in seeing him. I still wanted to complete the trip by land and had already begun to calculate how long it would take me to reach the Pakistani border. Iran’s border with Pakistan, in the southern region of Balochistan, is a heavy smuggling route and rumoured to be dangerous. It was the riskiest part
of the entire trip, and while I could muster the courage to do it in normal circumstances, I wasn’t sure I wanted to cross it if I was already in trouble with the Islamic Republic. I called Hosseini to tell him what had happened. ‘I think I can help you,’ he said. ‘Let’s meet as planned, at the hotel.’

  The Homa had once been the Sheraton. Like many Iranian hotels, it was trapped in the past, a past that was once not a bad present but today showed its backwardness. The lobby was dark, musty, and seemed to reflect the state’s enthusiasm for foreign visitors. Old cutlery and plates from the Sheraton days remained, but the coffee shop was run like a college canteen. The place was teeming with staff, but the service was hopeless. As I entered, the sofas in front of the reception desk were filled with people waiting. None could have been Hosseini so I veered off to the left to inspect the bookshop. It sold soft, old paperbacks, outdated guides for Iran, airport thrillers, James Baldwin’s Another Country, with the Spectator calling him ‘the greatest Negro writer’. If I hadn’t grown up in the frozen socialist days of India in the 1980s, I don’t know if I could have placed the exact year when the clock stopped in Iran. As it happened, it was familiar and stirred a degree of nostalgia.

  When I went back to the lobby, I saw a small, elderly man sitting in a corner with one leg outstretched. We caught each other’s eye and he rose with difficulty, then walked with a limp in my direction. He was clean-shaven and distinguished, and didn’t look like a government man, but his being in a senior position at Tehran University, which had only just received a mullah as its president, made me wonder. But even as these judgements became harder to make in the rest of the Islamic world – people you never expected to be religious, surprising you with their piety – in Iran, the positions became always clearer. As I would come to learn within the next twenty-four hours, Islam in Iran was not religion; it was politics. And my having confused this landed me in trouble.

  I spent a few hours with Hosseini. He told me he had been appointed to a position that dealt specifically with international relations for Tehran University and he would let the people at the government office know I was a former student of his, working on academic research in Iran. ‘But I don’t have a visa for that,’ I said. ‘I have a tourist visa.’