by Salar Abdoh
“That’s lovely. I suppose that could mean I might die this time around.”
The rain outside wasn’t letting up. It was the kind of weather that made you imagine anything was possible. You could imagine you were a poet. Or a killer. Or both. You could start trouble for yourself. Or else finish something for good.
Isaar came and stood next to me. “The place I want to talk to you about isn’t far from here.”
“Maybe it’s my art gallery?”
“Actually, you only have to look outside to see the job I have for you, Eshaq Lariyan.”
An ambulance from Iranmehr Hospital howled outside and then was gone. I felt a cold sweat envelop me; the only job I could see from this window was the wall of the sprawling British embassy summer grounds directly across the street.
I kept my eyes on those walls until Isaar continued. “I think you got it right. Except it’s a few hundred meters to the south of where you’re looking.”
“You mean at the end of the British grounds?”
“I mean the cemetery for their war dead.”
“It’s been a long time since I dug graves for you.”
He laughed. “But I’m sure your digging skills are still intact.”
“Which one of your beloveds do you need to bury this time?”
He turned away from me and started back toward the pianos. We’d been so still that had some passerby looked up they might have taken us for a couple of mannequins in a display window. “Do you recall that time when all the public statues in Tehran started disappearing?”
“How could I forget?”
“What do you know about it?”
“Is this an interrogation?”
“If you like.”
“All I know is it was three or so years back. They must have stolen a good dozen of them from the parks and traffic circles. I think when the bust of Ferdowsi disappeared, people finally began to make some noise. Actually, a lot of noise.”
“And?” His voice was even and patient. He really did sound like his old interrogator self just then.
“The papers said that the municipality had a project and needed casts of the statues. Some bullshit like that. Soon the statues were all back in their places. Though I have my doubts they were the originals.”
“And why would you think that?”
The redbricks of the British embassy walls stared back at me like a set of bloody teeth and I still hadn’t a clue what the serial theft of Tehran’s sculptures had to do with the British and their cemetery down the road.
I toyed with a cigarette without lighting it. “I heard some rumors back then.”
“Go on.”
“Some thought it was the work of religious fanatics. Type of guys who believe having figures like that in public places is against Islam. Others put the thefts to pros working with somebody high up in the government. But everybody, and I mean everybody, asked the same question at the time.”
“Which was?”
“With all the closed-circuit cameras and all the cops on every street of this city, not to mention the boys from the Etelaa’at and their tentacles in every nook and cranny here, how could anyone just lift a statue in plain sight and not get caught? The question made one imagine the orders to steal the statues went way, way up.”
Isaar said nothing for a minute. I kept my eye on the embassy walls and the little diplomatic police booth where a lone soldier sat staring out. Besides him, there were a couple of other soldiers striding up and down the other side of the street glued to their AK47s. It was at times like this when you imagined anything could happen in this city at any time.
Isaar broke the silence: “There was one other rumor.”
We had arrived at the gist of the matter. I said, “Well, I’m honored that you’ve come to tell me about it.”
He stepped quietly behind my work desk and sat down. “The rumor had it that one of the statues was taken on the direct orders of someone from the British embassy.”
My blood ran cold. Had he, Colonel Said Isaar, come here tonight to order me to take a stolen statue back from inside the British embassy? I tried to keep a calm voice. “Your plan is bound to make a man nervous.”
“But I haven’t told you my plan yet.”
“What I want to know is how the British managed something like this without Sepah and Etelaa’at finding out.”
“Sepah and Etelaa’at both had a hand in it. Or, as it is officially put, corrupt elements therein. When people started asking questions and shit hit the fan, the guys involved were arrested and now we’re just waiting to take the statue back and return it to its place.”
“I thought it was already put in its place.”
“A fake. As you correctly guessed.”
“So why don’t you just go in with your own people and take the thing back?”
“Because thirty-three years ago at the Towhid Detention Center we didn’t place our bet on a Jewish horse for no reason. You are our man, Eshaq Lariyan.”
I took out my handkerchief and wiped the sweat off my forehead. “You still haven’t told me your plan.”
“In the cemetery for their war dead, the English have a grave for a certain William Mason. I’m told the statue is there for the time being.”
“Why there and not inside the embassy?”
“I’m simply given the information. I don’t care about the why and why not. Nor do I care why someone at the embassy would be foolish enough to want a statue off the streets of Tehran. The secondary questions don’t concern me.”
He stood up, buttoned his coat, and moved with purposeful slowness toward the door, as if to allow me time to let things sink in.
I could see his Mercedes had arrived and was waiting for him outside.
“You have two months to plan this out, Eshaq Lariyan.”
I nodded.
“You can get inside the cemetery without much problem. The day I have you down for is a day when the basij will take over the British embassy.”
I could barely talk above a whisper. “You mean the basij are going to attack the British embassy so that I can steal back a statue?”
His thick eyebrows converged. “Steal it? No. They are not attacking the embassy for you. But . . . because they happen to be attacking the embassy on that particular day, you will have a chance to take back the statue for us. And like I said, you got two months to figure out a proper plan.”
“Which statue is it then?”
“The waist-up piece by Mohammad Madadi. They say it’s a masterpiece. Whatever that means!”
The door closed gently behind him. I watched Isaar get in the backseat of the Mercedes, which immediately took off down the wide, wet street like a shark nosing for blood. I knew, of course, about the piece he had been talking about. It was one of two statues that had been stolen from Iranshahr Park and afterward replaced with another fake. A hundred years back the British, who were in the habit of taking everything from everywhere, had appropriated a Qajar painting which had recently sold at a Christie’s auction for some astronomical price. I did not think much of this so-called masterpiece of Mohammad Madadi and doubted that a hundred years from now it would fetch much of anything. But what did I know? All I knew was that whoever had had a hand in this job was probably a bit out of their mind, and now they’d pulled me into the vortex of their madness as well. I realized I had been grinding my teeth this whole time. Then I took a deep breath, loosened my jaws, and my right hand automatically felt for the Chiappa Rhino that was always by my side. I caressed that snub-nosed Italian revolver like you would a pet, or an insurance policy that one should never leave home without.
* * *
The cemetery was an oddity. It was at the very bottom end of the British grounds and only soldiers from their two world wars were buried there. Next to it was a police station which made things slightly complicated. But not enough for me to not be able to pay off someone in there to make sure at six p.m. sharp Jamshid Godarzi and I could cross over into the cemeter
y. I’d been working with Jamshid for a good ten years now. He was the sort of guy who switched jobs the way some men switch women. He tried anything once. And whenever I had a job for him, he would find a way to make it happen. He was dark skinned and thick and wasn’t in the habit of brushing his teeth or taking showers. And he was my go-to guy for a day like this.
The basij had started amassing in front of the embassy by three p.m. I had the gallery closed all day. Now I closed up the piano store too and watched the last of the day’s employees make a beeline for the metro station. A half hour later the chants and shouts of the basij were so loud that you could have taken a machine gun to a man right there and no one would have heard it. They were the usual shouts—the English were faithless, they were treacherous, down with the British imperialists, et cetera. In the past few months the Brits had sided firmly with the Americans against the Islamic Republic and its drive for nuclear power and voted for more economic sanctions. So, it seemed, it was time to let the rabble-rousing basij into the embassy to give the British a taste of how it felt to be besieged. Soon rocks and Molotov cocktails were flying at the embassy doors and walls. By the time the mob broke through the entrance of the place, I was ready. I’d let my beard grow the past two months and with the untucked black shirt that hid the revolver, plus my ugly drab pants, I could have easily passed for one of the apish-looking gentlemen now scaling the walls of the embassy.
I could never think about a job during the last few hours before it began. Today was no different. I sat there watching the developments across the street until a quarter to six. When I finally came out of the store, a woman with wild dog’s eyes and wearing a full chador looked me up and down like she had found her long-lost brother, then she waved the anti-imperialist placard she was getting well paid to carry that day and shouted, “Down with Israel, down with the British!”
I raised my fist in a gesture of complete solidarity and shouted pretty much the same. And then I was running. The smoke from burning Union Jacks was so thick in front of Cinema Farhang that you had to cover your nose and eyes to get past it. I crossed Shariati Avenue and moved inside Dowlat, where a crowd of bystanders was busy taking videos with their cell phones. I’m sure they took plenty pictures of me too—a typical basiji thug running down the street, heading for the cemetery and the police station.
I saw Jamshid waiting for me. He sat quietly behind the wheel of a crane whose hook was already dancing over the wall of the cemetery. As I passed him, Jamshid jumped out of the driver’s seat and began to follow me. He must have already set up all our other tools on the other side of those walls with the crane.
No sign of anyone in the courtyard of the police station.
Jamshid said, “They’re all out there on the street with their stupid AKs and batons and walkie-talkies. But their orders are to just stand and watch while the basij do their thing.”
A lone soldier, looking stoned out of his mind and not paying any attention to us, manned the station booth. I imagined that the guy we’d paid off must have seen to it this kid was well provided for on this historic day. We moved quickly. The area between the first and second floors smelled like something between old tea and a toilet.
Jamshid called from behind me: “You know, these damn British deserve everything they have coming to them. The cowardly bastards.” He laughed. Then he began panting. We reached the third floor where our inside man had said we’d have a way into the cemetery. Still panting, Jamshid added, “One always knows a shit job from the number of stairs he has to climb for it.”
I paused in front of the designated door on the third floor. As expected, the room was empty. Nice leather seats. Too nice for a dump like this place. We moved to the window. Just as our man had said, there was a giant air conditioner we could use as a jump-off point to get over the wall of the cemetery and then inside.
Jamshid gestured, Shall we? And then without waiting for me, he threw all of his 220 pounds out that window. I stood there for a second like a man who had to pull himself out of a mudbath of shit. Then I jumped after him like we were a couple of mad felines chasing each other.
I glanced north of us at the embassy garden. The trees were too tall here and I couldn’t see what was happening on the other side. But the sounds of yelling and glass breaking were unmistakable. There was smoke too. Jamshid said something about how they must have a lot of toys to burn over there, and then the both of us took aim at the grass and threw ourselves into the cemetery.
The gravestones stood like a congregation facing a turquoise-blue dome and a cross. I hurried to William Mason’s stone—dead in 1917, WWI, first grave in the third row. Jamshid trudged up with the dolly, rope, and the ladder he’d placed there earlier with the crane.
“Hurry,” I called, “we only got as much time as it’ll take for them to start and finish their praying.”
And like clockwork, the sound of azan started just then from the main mosque of Gholhak directly across the street from us. I figured all the basij forces inside and outside the embassy would immediately put everything down for their late-afternoon prayer. We were in sync and everything was going as planned.
Jamshid went at it, digging with all he had. Before long we were looking at a safe that seemed to have crushed the casket underneath it. Poor William Mason! The bust sat wrapped in a white cloth inside the box and from my vantage point it resembled anything but the representation of a human being. But what did I know? Jamshid closed the box, knotted the rope around it, and began to work the thing out of the hole.
A voice from behind us called, “Take your time, stupid! Not so fast.”
For a moment Jamshid and I stood nonplussed, looking at each other. Jamshid kept holding the rope.
“You with the rope, keep working. And you, don’t turn around until your hands are up.”
I did as he said. It was another basiji. He stood next to the cross holding a rifle which I’m sure he had “borrowed” from the diplomatic police who were supposed to be guarding the embassy. His facial hair started somewhere below his eyeballs and didn’t end anywhere that I could see. But other than the magnificent beard, with our cheap pants and chafiyes all three of us were dressed pretty much alike for the occasion.
Jamshid gasped and kept pulling.
It felt like it took a year before Jamshid got that box onto the level surface. The basiji took a look at the crane dangling over the cemetery wall and ordered Jamshid to open the box. He came closer and gestured with the weapon for us to stand back. We retreated and watched him looking bewildered at the grave and what was inside the box.
Jamshid whispered, “I bet you he doesn’t even know how to use the damn gun properly.”
“Which is why you and me just might get killed today.”
The fellow turned to us. “The two of you dress like basij and come here searching for treasures?”
“And now there’s three of us,” I replied.
“Is that so? Then let me call my boys in to come and finish our job.”
He took his walkie-talkie out of his pocket. We could hear the prayers ending. This wasn’t good; we’d fallen behind schedule.
“Shouldn’t you be at your prayers now?” I forced myself to ask him.
Jamshid laughed.
The basiji looked nervous, unsure of what he was supposed to do next with us and his newfound treasure. He raised his voice, “Can’t you see the gun in my hand?”
“Look, you can have a share of the spoils too.”
He shut the box with his foot. “Then you’ll take this thing exactly where I tell you to take it. Afterward, you go and get your boss.”
“Listen, son, when I say you’ll have your share, it means only one thing: we don’t have a boss.”
I had his full attention now. He looked excited, scared, and confused all at the same time. I had to act fast. Since he was thinking so hard, I asked if I could light up a smoke.
He nodded.
I pointed to Jamshid. “Can I take it out of his pock
et?”
He came over and forced Jamshid’s arms up with the tip of the rifle. It was getting dark now. As I removed the cigarette and lighter from Jamshid’s pocket I winked, gesturing to one of the sprinkler heads among the yellowing grass.
Jamshid smiled. “Brother, light one up for me too, will you?”
The basiji eyed us with that same look of suspicion and excitement and went and stood over the grave. He too lit a cigarette while still pointing the muzzle of his gun at Jamshid.
“Don’t play with my heart like that, brother basiji,” Jamshid said, laughing.
Again we heard the sounds of breaking glass over at the embassy. I was thinking of Isaar and what he’d do to me if I screwed this one up. Everything hung in the balance, especially for the poor basij fuck who was gawking at us with a face that was turning more stupid by the second. He had a right to look like that and was probably thinking of the fortune that had suddenly fallen in his lap and would change his life forever. The seconds passed and the half-burned cigarette rested between my fingers like a ton of bricks. It hadn’t rained since that night when Isaar paid me a visit at the piano store and the grass looked glorious just then in all its dryness. This was it; I only had to aim correctly for the last time in my life to finish this thirty-three-year contract with Isaar and be done. I flicked the lit butt at the first sprinkler head between ourselves and the safebox. Seeing this, Jamshid started laughing crazily.
The basiji shouted for Jamshid to shut up.
Jamshid flicked his cigarette too. It had been a gamble and I’d hardly expected it to work. But the fire began to catch in startlingly quick time, its smoke drifting inevitably toward that automatic sprinkler head.
I said, “Look, friend, if you don’t do something about that smoke, you’ll soon have to be explaining to your brothers why you’ve been keeping your walkie-talkie quiet all this time.”
I wasn’t sure if he got what I was talking about. Meanwhile, I also had the dreadful thought that maybe the sprinklers weren’t even working. The guy’s face lit up now. He didn’t care about the smoke or maybe didn’t even see it. He began to mumble, “We’ll take the thing where I say we’ll . . .”
