by Salar Abdoh
“Forgiveness is not my style. Can’t you see it? My job is revenge. I’m an instrument of punishment, you animal! I’m an instrument for doing God’s work. A knife is made to cut, and I’m that knife.” Ezzati took hold of the dead girl and dragged her one-handed until she was flush against the far wall. “Take a good look at her. When a sixteen-year-old girl can’t be forgiven for going wrong, how does a vile creature like you imagine himself worthy of forgiveness? Huh?” He came back at Ebram and waved the gun at him. “Did you forget our deal? You were paid well to do a simple job. All you had to do was put them in the back of your cab, dig them a place, and give them a real burial. One meter wide, two meters long, and ninety centimeters deep—that’s what a proper Muslim grave is supposed to look like. What happened? Your last four digs were not even thirty centimeters. Stray dogs found them and pulled them out by their legs. Now everything is blown. I don’t know how they found out about this address, but they did. Now SWAT teams are out there. Any minute they’ll break the door down.”
“No. I swear. There’s no one out there. I was careful. Nothing is blown. You’re sick. That’s what it is. You’re obsessed. If there were police out there, they’d be in here by now.”
Ezzati grabbed at the man’s hair again. “They’re everywhere, you fool. They know their job. They wait for an idiot like you to make a mistake. And idiots like you always make a mistake.”
“Don’t be so hard on me, sergeant. It was just a small slipup today. I got carried away.”
“How did you give away our location? Were you taking speed again? Did you open your big mouth in your taxi and not stop talking? Your whole life’s a mistake, daash Ebram. It’s not just this girl here, you’ve been doing the same thing to all of them. I know, so don’t lie to me.” Ezzati turned, hurried to the bathroom, undid the woman’s cuffs, and pulled her after him. He continued talking the whole time. “The fact is, we all messed up. All of us.” He threw the woman who hadn’t uttered a word all this time alongside Ebram and gave her a venomous stare. “And you too, you’re wrong! The dead have to be washed exactly according to the laws. There’s no choosing how you do it. First it has to be with the cedar, then with camphor, and finally with plain water. This was what you were getting paid for, to do exactly according to the sharia. But you too betrayed me. I’m willing to bet you haven’t washed a single body properly for months and months. All you do is come here and take the money and their jewelry.”
More coughing. Then he was on his knees once again. On his knees just like all those years ago when the Iraqi chemicals had first rained on his regiment during the war.
The woman started again about her sick child. Ebram wept.
Still on his knees, Ezzati pointed the gun at them. “Shut up. Both of you.”
Ebram tried stupidly to protect his face from a bullet that wasn’t coming. “Don’t do it, man. Everyone makes mistakes. Even you. Are you a man or not?”
Ezzati slowly gained control of his breathing and stood up. “No, I’m not a man. If I was, I wouldn’t be so alone right now.”
The other guy suddenly raised his voice, taking Ezzati by surprise. “Stop that! We’re all acting here. We’re all trash. You’re right about that. If you’re going to kill us, go ahead. But don’t for a second imagine Ebram here was a fool. I knew what was going on. Which part of it do you want me to tell you about? The part about the times I found condoms? You didn’t even know how to use the damned things. That’s right, you fucked them while they were alive and I fucked them when they were dead. There’s no difference between us.”
Ezzati cocked the gun. “Liar! You have no right to talk to me like that. I’ll empty this thing in your evil face. I won’t let you put the blame on me.” Ebram didn’t answer back. Ezzati booted him in the ankle. “What’s the story with the condoms? Where are they? Talk!”
Writhing in pain, Ebram shouted back, “Why do you ask me? You already know where they are, they’re in the drawer!”
Half crazed, Ezzati started throwing cans of air freshener from the top of the desk of drawers. It was as if the corpse no longer existed in that room. “I see nothing. What are you talking about?”
“I said inside the drawer, not on top of it.”
Ezzati turned with wild eyes to the woman. “This is all lies. Tell him he’s lying.”
“Like they say,” the woman groaned, “your ass has more shit in it than the two of us combined. Stop acting the part of the holy man. It’s too late for that. I’m sure all that filth I found on her was your own and no one else’s.”
Ezzati’s eyes were bloodshot. “You lie. Both of you are liars.”
He waved the gun wildly at them. The woman screamed and tried to pull herself up onto the bed. “It was you. All you!” she yelled. Then she pointed to Ebram who was still lying on the floor. “This man must have always come to the apartment after me. So it had to be you.”
Ebram echoed what she said. “She’s right. They were always stained between the legs.”
The woman gave Ebram an evil look. She seemed to finally understand the significance of all the talk about stains. “But wait, I washed them. I did wash them.”
“You stopped washing them after the sixth or seventh one, lying bitch. You’re a couple of vultures living off dead bodies. The both of you.”
The woman cried back from the bed, “Yes, it’s true, I found the stains on them. It’s what I do for a living. Been doing it for years. In the beginning you just killed them. But after a while . . . you lost track of who you are.”
The gun shook in Ezzati’s hand. Outside, the sound of pelting rain was wreaking havoc on the windows. Ezzati tried to speak, but coughed instead.
The woman continued as if possessed: “Dirty! Bloody. Full of come. Full of the disgusting monster that you are. You tore them up inside. You! You did it. Not this fool.”
The sound of rain was momentarily lost in the noise of some car crashing to a halt. Ezzati scrambled over to the window and struggled to open it. The howling of the storm assaulted the bedroom like something alive. Ezzati saw that across the street wind had scattered the papers and magazines from the newspaper stand. He imagined the crime pages as they flew up in the air past him. He saw the faces of many girls, some laughing, some crying, girls with brown eyes and blue . . . all of them winging beyond him in a dance of victims until they became just one face staring back at him.
He shuddered. Now he saw that the newspaperman was carrying a machine gun and was hurrying across the street toward the building. The sergeant closed his eyes and watched his life pass before him. He imagined bullets whizzing by. He was back in the war and enemy tanks were approaching his platoon’s position. He shouted to no one in particular, “Take cover! The Iraqis are coming in with chemicals! Everybody take cover now!”
This never-ending cough. Someone had a DShK aimed at them from a window of the building across the street. He was sure of that. The tanks were coming in two columns and behind them were soldiers wearing helmets and gas masks.
He shouted again: “Hurry! The enemy’s on top of us!”
He stuck his gun out the window and fired until he’d emptied the magazine. Now the wheezing in his chest stopped and he wasn’t coughing anymore. He opened his eyes and turned around. The woman lay flat on the bed pressing her hands to her ears. Ebram remained on the floor with a blank face, not moving. The monstrous sound that came next was the apartment door being smashed in. But Sergeant Ezzati paid it no mind. He turned his attention back to the street where he was sure the enemy was fast approaching. He glimpsed the abandoned newspaper kiosk. It was the last thing that Sergeant Major Haj Ali Mohammadi Ezzati-Rad would see on that cold, rainy day in the Shush District of Tehran.
MY OWN MARBLE JESUS
BY MAHSA MOHEBALI
Dibaji
I slow down and stop in front of the kid. He smiles, comes around to the passenger side, rests one hand on the roof of the car, lowers his face into the half-rolled-down window, and gives me the on
ce-over. He has a thick wad of gel in his hair and a farmer’s tanned face. You could tell he’s not from Tehran. Probably made straight for Vanak Circle as soon as he got off the bus from some godforsaken village. I’d say this boy here needs another six, seven months and he’ll shed that smug, stupid gaze and become truly worth the money.
“How much?” I ask him.
He grins. A car passes by and its light shines on his white teeth. “How many rounds?” he asks.
“I want you all night.”
He grins some more and casts a glance at a newspaper stand some two hundred yards down the road. I can’t see the faces of the two guys standing there and they most definitely can’t see me. Later on maybe they’ll be able to testify they saw their friend get inside a Porsche. That’s about it.
He asks, “Just for you?”
“It’s not a party. Just me.”
He opens the door and slithers in. He has a firm body and a sexy little cut right under his chin. I press his window up, do a U-turn to avoid driving past the paper stand, and then step on the gas.
“You still didn’t tell me how much.”
“As much as it gives you pleasure, lady.”
“What if it doesn’t give me pleasure?”
Another one of those stupid grins. One of his gelled locks falls over his face. “Trust me, lady, you’ll be pleasured.”
The kid’s tongue works fast for a beginner.
“Listen,” I say, “across from the park they got uniforms inspecting cars. If they stop us, you’re my husband’s cousin. Understood?”
“Understood.”
“What’s your name?”
“Kamran.”
He’s lying. It suits him better to be called Yadollah. Or some other peasant name like that. A little ways up the road the patrol cars are pulled alongside both lanes checking on late-night partygoers. This may be the trickiest part of the whole evening; I don’t want to have to roll my window down. Still, I push the hair sticking out of my headscarf back in and put on my best mother face. Without the makeup I don’t exactly look like the type to have come out cruising for a hustler. As luck would have it, the patrol decides to shine his light from the sidewalk side where he’s just been giving a hard time to some college-age girls. The kid rolls the window down and the light travels from his face to the back of the car where I’ve strapped in the baby seat on purpose. The baby seat does the trick; the light swings away and we’re told to drive on.
The kid, whom I’ll call Yadollah from now on, says, “Your husband left you or you’re just a widow?”
I turn into Esfandiyar and push on the pedal. “Not in the mood for flirtation, boy. You’ll do me two, three times good and that’s all I require from you. Now roll that window back up.”
He does what he’s told, then slides his ass down on the seat and rests his knees on the dashboard. “Good, because I’m in no mood for another Miss Lonely Hearts either.”
He acts like a professional, but his looks and his village accent give him away. He’s a rank beginner. He probably has some family here and one of them called and said, “Yadollah, put down your hoe and shovel right this minute and come to Tehran. Here’s where the money is.” The two guys by that paper booth must have been his relatives. They stand there making sure he doesn’t get in the wrong car. It’s a dangerous job. Sometimes you’ll get picked up by some girl and end up in a house where six hairy gorillas fall on top of you and dig you a nice new asshole.
I turn on Niyayesh and drive fast. A Camry and a BMW fall right behind me. They can’t see through my tinted windows to know there’s a woman behind the wheel, but it still hurts their manhoods to have the Porsche leave them in the dust like that. The Camry catches up in the tunnel, its driver a shitty little kid probably driving his papa’s second or third spare car. I let him pass for the sake of his wounded pride, then right after the tunnel I squeeze past and leave him in the traffic again.
Yadollah is impressed. “You can drive.”
I turn at the exit of East Hemmat and head up Pasdaran. Bumper-to-bumper traffic here.
Yadollah sits up. “Where are you taking me, love?”
“Nowhere bad. Don’t worry.”
“If we’re going this way, why didn’t you just take Sadr instead?”
“Lately they close Sadr up after nine p.m. If you really lived in Tehran you’d know this.”
“I haven’t been up this way for a while.”
He’s full of shit. There’s not a soul in Tehran who doesn’t know they’ve been building that overpass on Sadr for God knows how long. But it doesn’t matter. We’re stuck on Pasdaran for now and that’s not the worst thing in the world. Weekend nights like this, it’s serious cruising here and getting from one end of Pasdaran to the other can take an hour. That gives me plenty of time to make sure Mrs. Ebtehaj, our neighbor, is sleeping. The woman always sits behind the window sipping her tea, with one eye on her TV and the other on the street. She thinks she’s invisible. The good thing is that the rest of the neighbors aren’t nosy like her, because a single Mrs. Ebtehaj is enough for the entire neighborhood. She sits at her sentry duty till one a.m. every night, then she swallows three or four different pills and goes dead until seven a.m. Her schedule is one you can count on, and tonight I count on her.
A cutie tries unsuccessfully to peek into our car from inside her brand-new Santa Fe. Yadollah starts to bring his window down again. For a second I want to tell him to stop. But what the hell, let him! She can’t see me. He shows his teeth to the girl, who immediately stretches out a hand and throws him a folded piece of paper. The boy takes it, smiles again, and puts the paper away in his pocket. But I can tell from his face he has no clue what’s going on. All around us telephone numbers are being passed from one car to another. Boys to girls, girls to boys. I know he’s dying to ask me who’s receiving and who’s giving money in this situation. It doesn’t enter his mind that these kids are just out here for the hell of it. They take the telephone numbers, call each other and flirt a little bit, and then it’s on to one address or another. They score a little coke and a couple shots of something and get to work. Next morning each to his own, and half the time they won’t even remember each other’s names. I could tell Yadollah all this. Clue him in. I could tell him that Pasdaran on a Thursday night is an automobile club. Or more like those old drive-in movie theaters. Except here you first check out the car to get a sense of the price tag on it, then you look to see if the merchandise inside is any good. Yes, I could tell poor Yadollah all this, but I don’t; I can’t be bothered.
“Look,” I say, “these are all rich kids here. They’re only out for a good time.”
Another cutie stretches a hand out of her SUV and passes my boy a piece of paper. Yadollah takes that too and stuffs it in the same pocket.
“You don’t mind, do you?” he asks.
“Do what you have to. But remember, these girls are not customers.”
“I know.”
He’s full of it again. He doesn’t know a thing. Eventually I pass a couple of Peugeots and make a sharp turn onto South Ekhtiyarieh, a street for people who don’t want to take the risk of being seen by their wives and kids while exchanging telephone numbers. Once I pass the red light on Dowlat, I know I’m home free.
Next door, Mrs. Ebtehaj’s lights are off. Good. And once Naser’s Porsche is parked in front of the house where it can be seen, instead of in our garage, everything is set. A typical weekend night for Dr. Naser Zarafshan, my husband. Except that this weekend the usual gathering is at the house of one of his other friends and not here. Meanwhile, our two kids and I are supposed to be sleeping at my parents’ house, because that is what Dr. Zarafshan has decreed. In fact, I called him just two hours earlier. He barked into the phone that he was heading straight from the airport to the weekend get-together at one of his friend’s. Didn’t say which friend, though, and it doesn’t matter. What matters is that he is physically in Tehran now.
As soon as I open the door,
the stink of one week’s worth of after-party garbage almost floors me. The house is a riot of cigarette butts, unwashed dishes, and half-eaten food left to rot in every room, even the children’s room. You see, the first thing you have to know about Dr. Naser Zarafshan is that this is a man who has an obsession with cleanliness. But his obsession works in strange ways. He will not trust anyone else to clean the house. And when there are servants, he has to closely supervise them and work them to death. Thus the state of the house tonight as Yadollah and I enter it—the sickly combined smell of a garbage truck and a public urinal in Mr. Clean’s house because Naser had to fly abroad right after his party last weekend.
Yadollah throws himself on one of the couches and takes out a pack of Marlboros. “Want one?”
I shake my head. He pulls out his lighter, one of those kitsch numbers that plays a stupid tune when you light it. He pretends to be casual and not at all interested in the house. He doesn’t even ask why the place is overflowing with garbage.
I remove my headscarf and manteau and throw them next to him on the couch. He can’t take his eyes off the black satin nightie I’ve been wearing underneath. He travels down the length of my body, stopping at my thighs. Now he offers an odd look seeing me wearing men’s boots, Naser’s, before returning his gaze to my shoulders and onto the black gloves I’m wearing.
“Come here, baby.”
He seems to have forgotten what he does for a living, speaking as if he’s the one who picked me up. In a firm, even voice I say, “Take your clothes off and go lie on the bed in that room.”
All my life I’ve wanted to say these words in exactly this tone of voice.
He puts out his cigarette in a bowlful of old pistachio shells. “So businesslike so soon? At least give us something to drink before we get to work.”
I move behind the minibar and pour him a whiskey and hand it to him. I pour myself a gin and tonic.
He gulps the alcohol down. “You don’t look like the type, you know.”
