by Salar Abdoh
“I’m that man. You can trust me.”
“Yes, I know I can.” Pretty Boy stuck his hand out.
Lotfi took the hand. “And what about your father?”
“It’s time he saw some things differently about me. I love my wife, in my own roundabout way. I don’t want her to go. But I don’t want her to be miserable either.”
There was an easy pause, intimate. And then Lotfi asked, “Do you not wonder how I happened to be here today?”
“It doesn’t matter. What I want to do right now is take this boy home. He’s hurting.”
Lotfi nodded. It was as if all of his life had converged onto that moment. For the first time in years he felt himself becoming a better man. He had transcended something today. The street march, the talk with Aida’s husband, the bloodied boy they’d helped together—it all seemed as if the universe was trying to tell him something: he was earning some serious karma points, for a change.
On his way back to fetch his motorcycle, Lotfi even decided that he would go see his brother’s wife soon and apologize for what he’d done to her.
Backtracking from Kargar Street to Hafez Avenue took unusually long; he had to keep to the smaller streets and avoid the militias. He was excited. He’d stay in Tehran. It wasn’t so bad. He’d have Aida. At the same time, because she was married, he would never have to worry about her insisting that they wed. He’d have the best of both worlds. Maybe he’d write another book now. A real book this time. He’d sit himself down and read the Persian classics at his leisure and then write a historical novel or something. He’d give his life some meaning. He’d honor his brother’s memory.
The speeding car hit him just as he was crossing the turnoff at the bottom of Aban Street. The collision got him on the side and sent him flying in the air and landing hard on the sidewalk. He closed his eyes, unable to move. He felt himself immediately being lifted and thrown into the back of a car. The next time he opened his eyes he was in that empty garage.
A half hour.
Why was his mind intent that only a half hour had passed? Maybe it had been hours and hours. Days even. He was lying flat on that concrete floor and a man was smoking a cigarette, gazing out through the iron bars of the gate to the outside. When Lotfi tried to cough, every bone in his body revolted against it. Pain shot through his right side and he gagged.
The man came and stood over him. “You should have renewed our deal.”
He dragged Lotfi to a wall and made him sit upright. Surprisingly, this lessened the pain at first. Lotfi’s breaths were shallow and fast. Surely he had broken ribs. Did this mean a punctured lung? Did he have internal bleeding? Would he die?
“If we’re near where you hit me, then Aban Hospital is just up the road. Take me to the emergency room and I’ll give you all the money you want.”
The man laughed. Flicking his cigarette butt away, he replied, “Every offer has a time and a place. And you, my friend, have run out of time and places.”
“Why are you doing this to me?” Lotfi’s voice had a gurgle to it. He could feel every organ in his body working double-time to keep him breathing. He had a craving for chocolate all of a sudden. He had paid this nondescript man with the pencil mustache and ridiculous brown loafers a whole bunch of money a half year ago to pay somebody off to pay somebody else off to take away his brother’s wife’s passport and keep her a prisoner in Tehran. Lotfi felt a choking in his throat. It wasn’t from pain, but sadness. What goes around comes around. Doesn’t it? He thought of how Aida would never get to leave Tehran again. He wished he had bought a bottle of wine from the khakham so he and Aida could have drank it together.
The man was talking on his cell phone. “Yes, the last building. You can’t miss it. It’s a new building . . . Yes, you’re almost here. After you pass Aban Hospital, you’ll get to Warsaw Street. After Warsaw, it’s two more short blocks south. Then take a right. I’ll open the garage door.”
So he’d been right. Aban Hospital was just up the road and they were but a stone’s throw from where he’d been hit by the car. He groaned, “You went to her, didn’t you?”
The man turned around. “What? Sure I went to her. I told her if she wanted her passport back, she could pay.”
“And she wanted to know who did this to her?” He was actually crying now. He should have bought a bottle of wine from those synagogue people. He should have written a better book than that stupid Hollywood crap. He should have told his brother not to marry the Cow when there was still time to tell him what not to do.
“Of course she wanted to know who did this to her,” the man answered. “And when she found out, she made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.”
“I’ll pay you triple what she’s paying if you get me to the hospital right now.”
“Stop your crying, man. What’s done is done. Like we say, Eat a whole melon, and accept the shit that comes afterward.”
“I’ll pay you,” Lotfi bawled. “Just get me out of here.”
A car turned into the driveway and the man hurried to open the gate.
She must have had her Jenny Craig diets shipped to Tehran. She didn’t look terrible, although she still had that awful chicken wattle. If anything, because of the dieting, the drooping skin beneath her chin looked more pronounced than ever.
“Leave him here.” She didn’t even bother addressing Lotfi. “They’ll think he got beat up by the police today and crawled in here to die. It’s the best day for it.”
The man went to the car and came back with Lotfi’s knife and the baton. “Look what I found on him.”
She took the baton and played with it. “You think you can handle it?”
“What? You mean with that?” The man pointed to the baton.
“Yes, this,” she said with impatience.
“I don’t know. I mean—”
“Forget what you mean. I’ll do it myself.” Now she faced Lotfi, who had wiped the tears from his face and remained silent. “Don’t you know days like today can be hazardous to your health, Mr. Lotfi?”
“You are an evil woman.”
“All of you Lotfis are fools. Just a bunch of stupid Turks. You’re even more stupid than your dead brother.”
“I should have killed you when I had the chance,” Lotfi murmured.
“What?” she barked.
Lotfi twisted his neck to address the man behind them. “I swear she’ll eventually destroy you too.”
“The lady has class. She’s a dentist.”
“She’s just a dental hygienist, you fool. You’re going to have the whitest teeth in all of Tehran. But that’s all you’re going to have.”
He closed his eyes and heard the click-click of her high heels.
“Enough of your stupidity, Tork e khar, dumb Turk.”
The baton connected over Lotfi’s jaw and he felt the tooth-bridge on the right side of his mouth snap right off. He tasted warm blood dripping over his smashed face.
As he was letting go and keeling over, again he thought of the synagogue wine he never got to share with Aida. “The whitest set of teeth . . .” he whispered with half-open eyes.
“What?” she yelled.
Click-click. Now the Cow with the wattled chin changed her footing to get a good angle for the finish. And Lotfi, seeing the stick come down, thought for one last time of all these at once: red wine, white teeth, Aida.
This story was originally written in English.
PART III
PROPER BURIAL
THE RESTLESSNESS OF A SERIAL KILLER AT THE FINISH LINE
BY JAVAD AFHAMI
Shush
The apartment was on the third floor of a building at the outer edge of Shush. The heavyset officer’s full name: Sergeant Major Haj Ali Mohammadi Ezzati-Rad. Ezzati was a seasoned veteran of the area’s third precinct. Yet in those early hours of the cold, rainy day, just minutes before several SWAT teams from NAJA surrounded the building in question, Ezzati appeared dazed, his presence there a product of the sudden fr
enzy that had come over him as soon as he read the coded instructions from the NAJA central office.
He’d used the cover of darkness to get himself over to the place before the SWATs made their way to the Sirus crossroad. Ezzati hustled up the three floors of the adjacent building, panting and in pain each step of the way. On the rooftop he had to tiptoe on the thin ledge until he was past the emergency door of his target and outside the apartment.
The whole thing had taken him twenty minutes. For a man Ezzati’s age, especially with those damaged lungs of his, it was something of a feat. And it had all started with that coded message from NAJA SWAT to every precinct in the district. Ezzati had been sitting on his small prayer rug in a corner of the communication room, his sleeves rolled up and a Koran in his hands, when a conscript handed him the decoded transmission. One look at the note and Ezzati was rushing to the commander’s office.
Captain Salehi-Moqadam glanced at the note and nodded his head. “Well, well! So they finally traced our infamous Midnight Bat, did they? And where should he be of all places—right around the block at the corner of Shush and Sirus!”
Salehi was a tough-looking, square-shouldered, middle-aged cop with a thin beard. Nothing seemed to ever faze him—not even the news that they had finally discovered the Midnight Bat’s whereabouts.
He went on: “As soon as they uncovered that private little cemetery of his, I knew his days were numbered. It’s just like all those other suspects that came before him. What were their names?”
Still standing respectfully by the door, Ezzati answered, “Sir, one was called the Cinderella of Karaj and the other the Scorpion of Eslam-Shahr.”
Salehi stared back and forth between the Wanted flyers on his walls and a large map of Tehran. “But, you know, this last one could have ended better than this. It’s too bad the Midnight Bat spoiled it for all of us. He shit on everything. He didn’t have to.” Now he turned his gaze back to his subordinate. “You and I understand each other perfectly, Sergeant Ezzati. I think you know what I mean. We were both in the war. We fought for our country. What I’m saying is, it’s not a good thing when the capital of a true Muslim country, a Shia country, should be so riddled with scum. Every single block in this town is named after our war martyrs, men who fought right alongside us and died so our children could live in peace, and yet these same streets are jam-packed with school-age whores and every other kind of garbage you can name. You have an opinion on this, sergeant?”
Ezzati pulled himself a little straighter and answered, “Truth be told, I have no opinion, captain.”
Salehi offered a bitter smile. “Or else maybe it would be easier to just change the names of all our streets again. At least our martyrs could finally rest in peace.” Then, as if he had suddenly caught on to the gravity of the situation, he quickly added, “We don’t have a lot of time, sergeant. Contact Captain Ahmadi and all the other patrols in the area and tell them to pull back on the double. The SWATs will be here in twenty minutes. I don’t want a single patrol car to remain on Shush. Make sure no one leaves the station either. No one! The entire area has to be empty of our cars and uniforms. SWAT will handle it. They’ll probably want to set a trap for him.”
Ezzati waited. His night duty was over. He’d finished his morning prayer and had been ready to go home when the message arrived.
The captain continued, “By the way, tell the duty officer to be sharp. I want all the boys to get what they need from the weapons room. Tell everyone they must remain at their posts. As for you, I want you to stay in the radio room and keep an ear on everything. I have a feeling it’s going to be a busy day. The SWATs might even ask for our backup. I hope to God he doesn’t get away this time.”
Ezzati clicked his heels and was ready to retreat from the room when the captain called out to him: “Look, Ezzati, what I’m asking from you—I mean you personally—is not an order. I know you’re done for the day. But we’re low on men today. Stay awhile. Help us out.”
“Yes sir.”
Ezzati went straight to the top floor of the precinct and told the duty officer what was happening.
Sergeant Ghanbari nodded thoughtfully. He was a big man. A few years younger than Ezzati and all muscle. Not the kind of cop you wanted to run into on the street. He said, “No wonder they call him a bat. He’s been a hard catch so far. I’d love to be there when they finish him. I’ll bet you he’s not the kind to give in without a firefight. They won’t catch him alive.”
The two men walked together to the weapons room. Ghanbari was still talking: “They say the killer buries his victims with all the pomp of a proper Muslim burial. Can you believe that? He digs exactly according to the sharia. I mean, the guy’s precise—two meters long, one meter wide, and ninety centimeters deep, and he faces the bodies toward Mecca. All the corpses they pulled out of the ground were properly shrouded too. The medical examiner says he even washes the bodies with camphor and cedar powder before putting them in a shroud. It’s as if the guy had a whole mortuary to conduct his work. I bet you he even recites the prayer for the dead.”
The weapons room officer had overheard the conversation and joined it. “I have to admit, I kind of like this guy. I don’t like his method. No. But he strikes me as the kind of man who backs his words with real deeds, even if those deeds are the murder of a bunch of disgusting street whores. Are we, after all, Muslims or not? I swear to you, every time I have to go out there on a patrol and bust these bitches, I feel tainted to the core. But the Midnight Bat, he’s a real man. A year and a half ago he began something and stuck with it. And that rumor they say about him lately fucking his victims, I don’t believe it. No one believes it. It’s just misinformation. Character assassination. What this guy did with the cheap cunts of this city, he must have had the heart of a lion to do. That man would never stoop to raping them.”
Ghanbari asked for a Colt 45 and an AK-47 with extra magazines. The other man looked at him doubtfully. “What, you think he’s going to attack the precinct?”
“A man can’t go wrong with a full arsenal.”
The weapons room officer, a thin older fellow who was always telling jokes, smiled. “While you’re at it, why don’t I call central and ask them to send us a fifty-caliber DShK too? After all, a man can’t go wrong going heavy.”
Ghanbari and the other man laughed. But Ezzati remained cold and quiet. He stuck the Colt he had just received in the pocket of his worn military overcoat and went off quickly.
The weapons room officer called after him, “Sergeant Ezzati, you are the man, brother. Your word is my command.”
Ezzati called back, “I’ll tell the sentry myself about the situation.”
Now Ezzati was in the little kitchen of the police station trying to get some water into those useless lungs of his when he saw that Ghanbari had followed him. The duty officer stood there, the AK slung on his back, watching Ezzati who had suddenly fallen into a terrible coughing fit.
“How do you feel?”
“Good enough.”
Ghanbari stepped toward his fellow sergeant. “I’ll bet you’ll be coughing up blood in a minute. Forget the captain’s orders. Go home and rest. We’ll take care of it.”
“I’m going.”
Ghanbari’s gaze remained on his friend. “You’re lying. You have no intention of going home, do you?”
Ezzati turned away.
“Tell me the truth. Where are you going?”
“Give me a break, will you!”
The duty officer blocked Ezzati’s path. “You’re a mess again, man. And it has something to do with that bitch, Zivar. Am I right?” He didn’t wait for Ezzati to answer. “You still haven’t learned your lesson, brother. That good-for-nothing woman is never coming back. And you’re insane if you think you can still have her.”
Ezzati tried to push Ghanbari away, but the guy easily wrist-locked him and pushed him back against the wall.
“How long do you want to torture yourself with that cunt?” Ghanbari’s v
oice rose in anger. “Zivar is gone. Get it? Just pretend she’s dead. She wasn’t yours to begin with. You should have thought about it a lot earlier. Back when you imagined bringing a girl twenty years younger into your house would do you good. Did you think it was a game? You think you can just replace one woman with another? Your wife, now that was a real woman. And Masumeh stayed faithful to you till the last day of her life. But this bitch you brought in to replace her—her head might have been in your house, but the rest of her body was with others. And you still don’t get it.”
Ezzati went into another coughing fit. He could barely breathe.
The duty officer let go of him and pulled back a bit. “Forgive me. I didn’t want to make you upset; I just wanted to talk some sense into you.” He refilled the glass of water and offered it to Ezzati.
He slowly drank the water, still unable to look into his friend’s face. Then he mumbled, “You’re imagining things. I’m all right.”
Ghanbari slung the AK to his other shoulder. “Why can’t you listen to some logic? You’re a wounded war veteran. You don’t even have to be here if you don’t want to. You think it’s some kind of sacrifice showing up at the job every day? For a guy like you it’s suicide. And suicide is a sin. Aren’t you a man of God? If I were in your place, I wouldn’t stay in this godforsaken dump one minute more than I had to. Have you forgotten the Iraqis hit you with chemicals during the war? What do you think that cough is from? It’ll be the death of you. Go home, Ezzati. I beg you to go home.”
“The cough is nothing. I just can’t find the foreign meds for it in the market. All they have is the domestic garbage. But I’ll be all right.”
Ghanbari brought his face close to Ezzati’s one last time. “Go home and rest. Try, if you can, to forget that bitch.”
