by Salar Abdoh
This is the first I’m hearing about Nasir deciding to return to Afghanistan. Orzala seems spent and goes silent. Her mother hands her a glass of sugar water, then starts rubbing Orzala’s back and explains how Nasir’s family lives in a village not far from Kabul. Apparently, a month ago Nasir’s father stepped on a mine and died. The family has no one now. So Nasir had to go back. He’d saved a good chunk of money these past few years working in Tehran and his mother has been waiting for him to return and start taking care of her and his younger brothers and sisters.
“I knew if my daughter went back to Afghanistan she’d be miserable. I tried my best to dissuade Nasir. But he wouldn’t listen. He said he had to go and he had to take Orzala and the child with him. I asked him if he’d forgotten how dangerous it is over there. That civil war, when will it end? I told him he was tempting fate. But how could I forget that fate will get you no matter if it’s in Iran or Afghanistan? Look at the hand it dealt us—Nasir’s father gets blown up over there and his son blows up right here. We can do nothing with fate. Nothing, nothing, nothing.”
Orzala stares with dead eyes at her mother, who walks to the stove to make some tea for us.
I ask, “You didn’t really want to go back, did you?”
Orzala turns her gaze to me; it’s a hardened face, filled with intent and resolve. “I’m not an Afghan. I’m Iranian. I grew up here. Here in Tehran. I’m a Tehran resident.”
Orzala’s mother nearly shouts from the stove, “It was this sort of nonsense you said to your husband that made him beat you! What do you mean we’re not Afghans? We’ve always been Afghans. You’re Afghan and so is your daughter!”
The old woman’s words make me focus on her daughter’s face and I pay more attention to the bruise under her left eye. I’d noticed it earlier but imagined it came from the constant crying.
A knock at the door. It’s my husband, Ali. He gives a quick, awkward condolence to both women from the threshold without entering. Then he gestures for me to come out. He practically drags me to the car. “The traffic is something awful. If you want us to get to that address Emily left you today, we have to really hurry.”
In the car he hands me the summary of the medical examiner’s report about Nasir: Death from explosion of fireworks. Nasir, a young Afghan man carrying approximately 3 kilograms of fireworks related to the Chaharshanbe Suri celebrations, was found dead due to the unexpected explosion of said fireworks.
I turn to Ali. “Did you know Nasir was planning to go back to Afghanistan?”
Ali keeps his eyes on the traffic. “Hmm! Maybe that explains a thing or two.”
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing. Look, can you get your laptop out and start putting together Nasir’s story for the paper until we get to that address?”
“I’ll do my best.”
The sun is slowly setting. On every street corner you can hear the pop-pop sounds of fireworks going off. Here and there, behind the railings of house gates, we can also see the little bonfires families have set up for the celebrations. Excited and happy children skip and jump over the flames. My phone rings. It’s Ali’s mom. When I tell her we’re on a job and probably won’t get to her place until late, she offers her usual complaint before hanging up: “What kind of a job is this you two have that you never get a moment’s peace?”
“Your mother was pretty mad.”
“When is she not?”
“She’s right, you know.”
“About what?”
“Our jobs.”
The farther north we drive, the louder and more expensive the fireworks sound. Then, as we get closer to Vanak Circle, block parties off the main streets take over. Teenagers jump over the fires and dance. Loud music blasts out from homes and car stereos. All around us police and basij units futilely chase after the kids. Every block has lookouts, and before the cops can arrive the kids run inside and lock the doors. It’s a festive game of cat-and-mouse with the authorities. First there’s a chase, then locked doors and an empty street; then a police or militia loudspeaker telling the neighborhood that, New Year’s or not, they need to follow proper Islamic etiquette and quit dancing and jumping up and down in the street. I almost feel sorry for the cops. They’re chasing the wind. As soon as they leave one street, the whole block erupts back outside and the dancing resumes. It’s a beautiful thing.
And somehow, despite that circus outside, I still manage to type up the report about Nasir. “My laptop’s battery is almost empty,” I tell Ali.
“No way. You need to e-mail it to the paper for me. You have wireless?”
I nod and do what he asks. Then, as if on cue, my laptop dies as we get to our destination.
We’re late though. Emily’s human rights lawyer friend and some other middle-aged women are there. They look pretty down and appear to be walking back to their cars. Ali asks the lawyer what happened.
“It was useless.” She notices my questioning expression and explains, “This here is the house of the victim and his family. The condemned is set to be executed next week. Emily found these people’s address, got in touch with them, and set up an appointment. I guess they’ve talked long enough with her that they trust her. But only her. They wouldn’t even open the door for me. For us, actually,” she says, pointing to the rest of the women. “They say they’ll only talk to Emily. I couldn’t exactly tell them Emily’s in jail right now. You know?”
She doesn’t wait for a reply before getting in her car. Ali and I stand there for another minute and then he jokes, “What’s the execution for this time? Another unhappy woman feeding poison to her cheating husband?”
His tone irritates me. “What difference does it make what the execution is for? It’s wrong. But if you really care to know, it was over a street fight this time. Three years ago the kid was all of fifteen. He accidentally killed the other guy during the fight. Now that he’s eighteen and of age, the victim’s family wants him dead.”
“Hmm, I really thought it was another husband-killing again.”
“What’s with you? It’s not as if every murder is a husband-killing.”
“Well, it’s just that since yesterday I’ve heard about two of them.”
“Two?”
In the lowest voice he can muster, Ali says, “Yes. The second case is the death of Nasir.”
Now I’m screaming at him, “Nasir killed by Orzala? What the hell is wrong with you? Have you been affected by that bitch Aqdas khanum too? Do you think all Afghans are thieves and murderers?”
“Just kidding. Calm down.” He isn’t kidding, but I let him change the subject anyway. “This is the first New Year’s we’re actually physically together. Don’t you want to get some haft-seen and take it home with us?”
I don’t answer, showing my displeasure. We start driving again, this time toward the Tajrish bazaar where the riot of fireworks is more deafening than anywhere else. Ali jumps out the car and quickly returns with what we need for haft-seen, including a dish of wheatgrass and a pair of goldfish swimming in a small glass bowl.
“Don’t be mad at me, love.”
I still don’t answer.
“I just have one more thing to take care of. We need some arrack.”
Our connection for the booze lives near Tajrish. And Ali is only one of a handful of people who knows his address and can go right up to his door for the stuff. Otherwise you have to call for delivery. On the way there Ali tries to make me laugh. But I stay quiet. My head is spinning with thoughts of Shahla who was hung yesterday and that eighteen-year-old boy who’ll probably be hung next week, and Nasir and Orzala. I can’t wrap my mind around any of this and Ali’s usual calm is just grating on me tonight. So much so that I only notice we’ve been parked in front of the connection’s place when Ali returns with a twenty-liter container of booze which he hides in the trunk of the car to make it look like it’s spare gasoline.
We drive on Moddares Freeway. It’s mostly quiet on the open road and there are far fewer s
ounds of firecrackers. It’s getting past eleven and we’re both silent until we come upon a parked car with its blinkers on. Ali slows down. Loud music is blasting from inside the car. Suddenly the back door opens and we watch in shock as a foot kicks a young woman out. I notice three guys inside the car laughing. The driver gives us the finger, then offers another howl before stepping on the gas and disappearing down the road. For a few moments we linger there watching the girl dust off her clothes. Without a care in the world, she takes out her pocket mirror right there on the freeway to refresh her lipstick and fix herself up.
She finally turns to us and addresses Ali: “Hey, handsome, you already have a nice piece of ass sitting next to you. Get going from here and let me make a living tonight.”
Ali drives.
We can barely look at each other the rest of the way. When we get home there are two police cars parked square in front of our building.
“My God,” I croak, “they’ve probably come for me, Ali. It must have to do with Emily.”
“Damn! And all that liquor in the trunk.”
I try not to blow up at him again. “They might be hauling me to jail and you’re worried about your stupid liquor?”
“My love, they’re not here for you,” he says coolly. “I know what they’re here for. Just keep calm. Act natural.”
Ali parks behind the cops and we wait and watch as one of them slowly approaches our car. He sticks his face into the open window where Ali is already displaying his journalist’s ID.
“Good evening, officer. We live here and I work for the crime pages of the newspaper. What’s happening?”
The policeman takes his eyes off Ali and zooms in on me. “Madam!”
Trying to keep an even voice I manage to bring out one word: “Yes?”
“That fishbowl. Be careful with it. It’s about to spill.”
I utter a barely audible thanks.
Ali speaks: “It’s about that blast this morning, isn’t it?”
“We just arrested someone.”
The gate to Nasir’s building suddenly swings open and out march Orzala and several cops. She is handcuffed and is being led out by a severe-looking woman. Her mother runs behind them carrying her granddaughter in her arms and screaming. Next comes Aqdas khanum. She sees us and hurries triumphantly toward the car and just about pushes the cop out of the way to tell us her news.
“I knew it. I knew it! It was that Afghan whore’s doing. They got a confession out of her already. Her husband was walking down the street with all those firecrackers and somehow she managed to slip a live one at him. All these Afghans are bomb makers. I was sure of it. The poor man didn’t have a chance.”
I whisper to Ali, “You knew about this?”
“I heard something about it at the police station. They were suspicious of Orzala from the start.”
Aqdas khanum and the cop move off. My phone rings. It’s Emily. They’ve let her out. She tells me it was just a simple interrogation. The usual stuff about her having to cease and desist with all that “human rights nonsense.”
The volume on the phone was loud enough that Ali heard it too. He grabs my hand and squeezes it.
“Thank you,” I sigh.
“I guess this is a lesson to take home: don’t mess with a woman’s geography. Orzala will be going where Shahla went yesterday, and for exactly the same reason.
“Ali, please! Don’t start.”
He caresses my hand. “I’m sorry. I won’t. Forgive me.”
We hear several blasts of firecrackers all at once, and when we look up it’s as if a rainbow has just appeared in the night sky. It is so lovely. So beautiful.
PART II
WHEN A WAR'S NOT OVER
THE SHELF LIFE OF REVENGE
BY SIMA SAEEDI
Karim-Khan, Villa
The satellite TV news mentioned it only in passing—several of the surviving mujahedin, across the border at their longtime base camp in Iraq, had just had their heads cut off.
Fariba sat staring for a few minutes in disbelief at a television screen that had quickly gone to other programs, as if a few cut-off heads was no more newsworthy than tomorrow’s weather. Then, leaping out of her trance, she hurriedly got up and turned on her laptop. The Internet might tell her what the television hadn’t, the names of the dead at that camp. Names she might still recall, and maybe even names she’d forgotten among the long list of possibly dead comrades of years and years before.
Yes, she’d find out the truth. But here was the catch: Fariba Tajadod, a woman nearing fifty, was no longer sure if the truth even mattered anymore. And if it did, she was still not sure if this truth was something owned by the dead or by those who had, for better or worse, continued living.
Thirty-two years had passed. Thirty-two years of names. Yet besides her own brother Ali, there was just one other name she’d thought about often: Ahmad Fard. Ali was long dead. Though there had never been a grave to go cry over. But what of Ahmad Fard? Punching in his name in the search box revealed that Ahmad Fard was actually quite alive and well. He was not only alive, he happened to be rather busy writing articles and giving lectures these days. Ahmad Fard, alive! This name would not leave her be. Ahmad Fard had not even had the decency to be among the victims at that accursed camp in Iraq where the last of the vanquished mujahedin foot soldiers had been allowed, first by the Iraqis and later by the Americans, to eke out a miserable living and count their days.
How old would this man be now? Fifty-seven? More or less Ali’s age. Except that Ali’s body parts had long ago been thrown in some unknown ditch set aside for enemies of the state, while Ahmad Fard—Ali’s superior, his mentor, his comrade-in-arms and brother—was all over the Internet, still advising, still lending guidance, still telling people what to think. With a difference, though: today Ahmad Fard mostly talked about peace and “social cohesion,” whatever that meant, instead of telling subordinates how they should be brave and always carry a cyanide capsule and a grenade to quickly kill themselves if they were ever in danger of being caught by the police or the militias.
But what had happened to Ahmad Fard’s own cyanide capsule and grenade? Why was he still alive, and circulating freely in Tehran, when so many whom he’d preached to at one time were dead and gone?
Fariba wanted answers.
No, actually, she didn’t want answers.
The uncertainty had begun again, like the years in jail, when she had been just another political prisoner who had too much time to overthink everything. She noticed that the same e-mail address was underneath all of Ahmad Fard’s articles. Why had she never thought until today to do a simple search for him? She wrote the e-mail address down and began pacing around her living room. The pacing, too, took her back to prison, to solitary confinement, to nights when she prayed that in the morning they’d come with the blindfold for real this time and put her against the wall and finish her off so that this mad ticking of her brain would stop at last. Fariba Tajadod felt tainted. She felt dirty through and through. And she wanted to write Ahmad Fard right now and ask him if he ever felt an iota of this dirt in his soul. Did he ever pace the room like this? Did he ever feel guilty for giving so many people away to his interrogators? Did he also have to take sedatives around the clock to keep himself from going crazy?
Back in those days the revolution was still just a year old; their world had turned into something like a dangerous carnival. The king had abdicated and left the country. And good riddance! Everything seemed possible then and everyone had something to say about what the “possible” should be. Their own house had turned into a revolving door of young men and women full of revolutionary zeal. Fariba and Ali’s father did his best to try to put some restraint on the youngsters’ enthusiasm, but the talk was always of resorting to guerrilla warfare if the religious clerics and their supporters decided to push for an endgame and wipe all the other revolutionary groups out of the picture.
Fariba was only in high school back then—wide-eyed a
nd excited and scared, walking the streets of the pulsating city where on every block adversaries—Communists, Marxist-Leninists, and fundamentalist Muslims—all vied for pieces of territory and listeners’ ears. It was a time of committing to this or that ideology. You had to hurry, choose a side, and worry about understanding it all later. Or, as her brother Ali used to say, “The train is leaving the station soon and if we don’t get moving on, the doors of this revolution will close on us for good.” Fariba worshipped her brother. Her brother who was twenty-two and at the top of his class at the College of Engineering and who had finally decided to throw in his lot with the mujahedin. Ali said that only the mujahedin had the right combination of devoutness and commitment to social justice to stand up to the new bullies—the clerics and their street thugs.
She’d never forget that first time Ali brought Ahmad Fard to their house. The newcomer had big, penetrating eyes that would rest on the seventeen-year-old girl’s face and make her knees weak. She was in love from that first day without even knowing it, in love with Ahmad Fard’s seeming coolness under fire, his sense of command, his maturity, and the way he would not budge on things that mattered. He was the one who was going to guide her brother through this labyrinth of revolution. She felt it, as did many others. But on that day when the introductions had been made with the family and Ahmad was about to take Ali with him to a mujahedin meeting, her father had pointedly asked, “Don’t you think these people you are throwing in your lot with are a bit violent?”
