The Immortals of Tehran

by Ali Araghi

  After Ahmad’s reading came the first of a series of plays that would unfold in the course of seven years by Le Troisième, a French troupe that acted in French. The ménage à trois that the male and the two female actors depicted on the stage for two hours was incomprehensible for those who watched it on flickering screens. It was the first time Ahmad was hearing real French spoken and he understood every word of it. All the entries of Sergey’s dictionnaire snapped out of their alphabetical order in his head and rearranged themselves into the chagrin of one woman, the ambition of the other, and the whirling emotions on the stage. The three actors kissing one another goodnight in a shared bed was an outlandishly bizarre scene, the tingling guilt of which stoked the fire of religious indignations. Once again, the man who flew in from beyond the clouds with Ayatollah Khomeini’s speeches came carrying three new tapes in his bag and took a taxi, bound for the Hitachi tape recorder and the three microphones that awaited him in the basement.

  * * *

  —

  WHEN AHMAD RETURNED HOME FROM the festival, Homa welcomed him with a piece of paper in her hand and a beaming face. She had been accepted to the school of nursing at the University of Tehran. Her first semester would start with the beginning of fall. “Who knows. One day I may become a doctor and set your voice right myself.” To celebrate, Ahmad and the girls made her a cake. Homa watched them work in the kitchen. The would-be high schooler, Leyla, was tall enough now to reach the top shelf, her long skirt no longer reached her ankles. Lalah was an inexhaustible hand to Leyla, hurrying to the fridge to fetch things. Her tongue stuck out from between her lips as she concentrated to properly crack eggs or stir the batter. To Homa’s surprise, Ahmad looked at home in the apron. He did not even clean his hands with the apron as she would have guessed, but used the proper kitchen towels.

  Before school started, they went on another trip to Homa’s parents’ villa where the trio of bakers made a bigger cake to celebrate. Homa’s uncles, aunts, and cousins were all there, along with the cousin who chaperoned Homa on those first days at the café. After lunch, the men sat at a table drinking Colonel Delldaar’s homemade vodka and playing cards. “Whatever happened to that friend of yours?” Colonel Delldaar asked Ahmad. “I wish I could have done something for you.”

  With a sense of premonition in his father-in-law’s interest, Ahmad brushed the matter off. He suspected that by asking for news about Salman, he had placed himself in a vulnerable position. If he had stayed in politics, it could have been a threat for his career, but even now he did not want to be on the blacklist of the intelligence service. His poetry was enough to make him fit for any label, from agitator to dissident to leftist. “Wasn’t he your good friend?” Colonel asked while pondering what card to play.

  WAS, Ahmad mouthed.

  “It’s an art, finding the right friend,” The colonel fingered a card, decided against it. “The true buddy.” He slapped a card on the table. “Anyway, if you ever feel like seeing him, they just transferred a bunch to the general section. He could be there.”

  Ahmad was not certain whether this was a trap. Back in Tehran he went to Sara’s house and rang the bell. Her husband opened the door with a smile that was replaced instantly by a look of disgust. The untested but known fact that Ahmad was the father of Ameer, the boy Salar had raised and loved, his boy, had eaten his soul for years. Again Salar forwent the formalities and did not invite Ahmad in. He left the door open and went inside.

  Sara came to the door in a skirt and blouse, a forty-year-old woman, with forty-year-old creases in the corners of her eyes, who did not seem very excited to see her visitor. Ahmad wrote the news about Salman on his notepad and handed it to Sara. Sara’s eyes opened wide, then she quickly regained composure. “Why would they want to trap you?” she asked as if suddenly doubting the veracity of Ahmad’s words. The regime had been after the leftists for years, had not stopped hunting, arresting, and imprisoning them even during what they called leniency. They would try to wring more names out of anyone. Ahmad had been a political poet and had run for the parliament backed by a group not known for their conservatism. He asked her not to go to the prison yet.

  Sara read the note and looked at Ahmad. Packed with more snow, dark clouds were coming from the western skies to replace the lighter ones. “You are a selfish man, deluded in your ambitions,” she said, “and I don’t know why I’ve always loved you.” The confession was so abrupt that it took Ahmad a few moments to deliberate on what he had heard. “See, and you never knew that, because nobody else ever matters to you.” Halfheartedly, Ahmad started to shake his head, but Sara ignored him: “But the real news is that you loved me and you didn’t even know it.” Now Ahmad was shaking his head to categorically deny. “No, this is exactly what I’m talking about. When you come to give news about Salman, you make it all about yourself. We can’t go look for that poor boy because everything is about you.” Not giving Ahmad much time to reply, Sara promised him not to make an inquiry for some time and said goodbye. But once she was back inside, the mere thought of seeing her brother again was strong enough for her to immediately break her promise. She asked Ameer to take her to the prison.

  The notorious Evin Prison had been built a few years earlier in the north of the city, far from any existing building. No one came out of it without having confessed whatever it was he had to confess. Sara waited outside as the heavy metal gate cracked for Ameer to go in. A chilly wind swept the dry snow like sand and fluttered the tail of Sara’s scarf. Sara went back and sat in the car. Soon the gate opened again and Ameer stepped out. Salman was not there; they had to go to the Palace Prison. Once a Qajar king’s dwelling, the Palace Prison was within Tehran and there they found Salman. But, not being an immediate family member, Ameer came back to his mother without having seen him. The snow kept coming down. That was it for Sara. She got out of the car and went in herself.

  In the face of the man sitting on the other side of the glass Sara looked for familiar features, but the only thing she found was the wonder in his tired eyes, the disbelief at what he was seeing before him. She had never seen Salman so thin. His cheeks and eyes had sunken into his pale face, his bulging veins snaked up his bony hand. To Sara’s questions Salman answered, with an overzealous optimism, that everything was fine. He had been transferred only a week before and there were no problems here. He played volleyball in the yard with new friends and he hoped to be released in the near future. The din of visitors and inmates on both sides of the glass echoed in the hall. Salman had to shout. He was hopeful and he wanted Sara to be too. His words were strong but his eyes betrayed so dark a despair that no matter how earnestly he tried to smile, he could not keep it from Sara. Toward the end of the visit, he was starting to come out of the husk that was sitting behind the glass. She was seeing the familiar hand gestures and movements of his head and in those, Sara found hope: he was still her brother, he was mendable. When the time was called, Salman got to his feet to leave.

  “What’s outside like?”

  “It’s been one long winter.” She kissed her palm and placed it on the glass. He did not respond.

  “Will I see you again?” he asked.

  “Every week,” Sara said and for the next nine years, she sat every Friday in that hall that was lit only by the snowy sky through three high, barred windows, telling her brother the stories of people they both knew and of those new to him and that was how the story of Leyla made the rounds, passed through the holes in the glass, and reached Salman, the only person who had called her “ladybug.”

  * * *

  —

  TOWARD THE END OF HER first year in high school, Leyla disappeared. Homa came home from university late in the afternoon to find Lalah home alone. By evening that day, she had called everyone who might know of her daughter. Ahmad went straight to Mr. Zia’s home. Outside the rose garden, he rang the bell and rattled the door by pounding his fist on it, but no matter how long he waited
, the metal gate remained shut. When Mr. Zia did not answer his telephone for two days, Ahmad held his notepad before Homa: Leyla has eloped with Mr. Zia. Homa could not believe that. First she denied the news, then she questioned Ahmad. “So, that’s why you told me to take the kids out of the house?” Ahmad wrote that he had not allowed the two see each other as soon as he suspected. He did not know what else he could have done. She did not know what to think. She felt betrayed, but she was not sure. Hoping for Leyla’s return any day, any minute, she skipped classes and stayed home. Noises from the street sounded like the doorbell. “You didn’t sell her off to that man, did you?” she shouted at Ahmad. He held her in her arms, but she slapped him on the chest and wiggled free. Every afternoon, at the time the high school was dismissed, Homa was standing out front, scanning the faces of the girls who walked out in groups. At first, she would ask them about Leyla. No one had heard of her lately, but some had seen her weeks ago getting into a car, a beige Peykan. Ahmad went to the Great Zia. He had heard the news, but he did not know where his nephew was. Ahmad’s short political career had taught him not to believe the man readily. He went to some of his influential acquaintances. They promised to do what they could, but two weeks passed and no news came.

  Homa cried through the night and frequently during the day, whenever anything reminded her of her daughter. Lalah took up the housework that her mother was neglecting. She reached the top cabinet with a stool. Ahmad cooked when he could, but when he was not around, Lalah turned on the oven and tried simple dishes; she served uncooked lamb for lunch one day and burnt the chicken the next. As soon as school was out, she hurried home. In the evening, she combed her mother’s hair as Homa stared into the distance. Lalah wanted to talk to her mother, but was afraid. Instead she made her tea and watched her drink while doing homework. Ahmad decided that things could not go on like this. He had to leave the house to look for Leyla, but worried about leaving Homa alone.

  * * *

  —

  SITTING IN HER ROOM, ZEEBA recognized Lalah’s voice approaching in a taxi with her mother and father, so she hurried out and gingerly stepped into the elevator to let Pooran know they were close. A few minutes later, holding Homa’s hand and followed by Lalah, Ahmad stepped into Khan’s house and let Homa fall into Pooran’s open arms. Pooran and Zeeba had already prepared Agha’s room for Homa’s stay. Zeeba helped carry Lalah’s suitcase to her room on the roof which would now be used for the first time. In spite of the pain in his knees, Khan walked out into the yard to make his grandson’s family welcome. Mixed with sadness and anguish that he shared with the rest of the family was a satisfaction at the wisdom of building those rooms. “You can stay here as long as you want,” he said pressing his hand on his cane, but standing straight, his chest pushed forward.

  They waded through into the summer. With sunken eyes and a pale face, Homa was a ghost haunting the house. She got out of the bed in the middle of the night and cranked her way up, then climbed up the metal ladder onto the roof of Leyla’s room to crack open Lalah’s door and make sure she was in her bed. Both Ahmad and Lalah would wake from the cold drafts that blew in. During the day, Homa went to the high school and waited outside for her daughter to come out even though the school was closed for the summer. The janitor brought out a folding chair and umbrella, and a hot cup of tea for her. Under a bare plane tree she sat in cold rain or occasional snow. Then she would take the bus back to Khan’s going straight to check on Lalah. One day she went up the elevator and did not find Lalah in her room. She hurried down the ladder to Zeeba’s room and then down the elevator while shouting Lalah’s name, until Pooran rushed into the yard and told her the girl was out to buy bread. Homa ran all the way to the bakery and from that day, Lalah was forbidden to leave the house alone under any pretext. That was how the girl started to grow closer to Zeeba, who taught her how to weave a carpet. Sitting next to one another at the foot of the loom, the two girls tied and cut and combed the colorful yarns one graceful knot at a time. Midsummer snow thawed soft and sloshy, but it did not melt. The search had yielded no results and from that Ahmad concluded that either Colonel Delldaar was not connected to the intelligence service, as Ahmad had suspected, or was just a rat, not high on the organizational ladder; otherwise he would have exerted his influence to find his granddaughter.

  * * *

  —

  POORAN WOKE ONE MORNING TO clattering and running water. She shuffled out of her room and found Homa in the kitchen. Homa turned to her with a weak smile. “I’m so hungry.” She prepared breakfast for the family and returned to her room to study and prepare for her second year at the university. Having known this day would come, Pooran was not shocked. She treated Homa’s reengagement in her work not as worthy of celebration or even mention, but as the continuation of the normal. When fall came, Pooran suggested she should take Lalah to school and back every day, and Homa accepted. The second year began with promise. Homa had surpassed everyone else in her class and after they taped the midterm exam grades on the wall in the corridor, she found herself answering more hellos and greeting more smiling faces. Soon things appeared to be working like the well-oiled cog wheels of a machine, except that at the heart of them was a hollow. The engine whirred fine but futile; it worked, but it was not going anywhere.

  One early winter afternoon, Homa walked over to Ahmad’s desk, patted him on the shoulder, and when Ahmad raised his head from his papers said she was leaving. Where? Ahmad mouthed.

  “Nowhere,” she answered, her face empty, “I’m leaving you.”

  Ahmad shook his head calmly as if answering a question as simple as, Do we have any milk left? When Homa turned away to go, he leaned and grabbed her wrist. What are you saying? You can’t leave, he mouthed with the certainty of disbelief, looking into her face. Something was dead in Homa’s eyes. She tried to wrestle her wrist out of his hand, but she was not strong enough. “Let me go,” she said calmly. Ahmad mouthed things that Homa did not understand. Then she reached for the desk lamp and hurled it against the wall. Soon everyone was gathered in Agha’s room. Ahmad had gotten up from his desk, without letting go of Homa’s wrist. Pooran tried to calm Homa down and make Ahmad let go. She had never seen Ahmad’s face so red. He motioned for everyone to leave the room with such fury in his eyes that no one spoke a word. A short while later, he came out too and locked Homa in, ignoring her banging on the door.

  In the following days, Ahmad wrote notes apologizing for the troubles he had caused, for his failures and shortcomings, but she refused to read them. To his inevitable question of why she had decided to leave, Homa had unconvincing and unspecific answers: “I just can’t anymore”; “I’m tired.” Ahmad would kiss her dead face, as if kissing a tree. I love you, he mouthed, Please, stay with me, he mouthed, but she looked away. Finally Ahmad would grab her lower jaw in his hand, turn her head to face him, and see his mouth form the words I love you and there is no way I’m letting you leave me.

  Homa stayed locked in Agha’s room with the key safe in Ahmad’s pocket. In Ahmad’s mind was a tempest. Without conjuring them, thoughts appeared of how Homa would try to run away when he was not watching. A week had passed when one morning Ahmad stood on the veranda and imagined an escape path from Agha’s window into the yard, up the walls, and down into the alley. The next day, he went out and came back with Oos Abbas and the same welder he had bought some thirteen years before. The passage of time showed in the machine’s dents and scratches and flaked paint, just as in the wrinkles on the blacksmith’s face and in the slight slouch of his back. They talked as the old man welded bars across the window. Before he left, he shook Ahmad’s hand. “I don’t know what you’re keeping in that room, my boy, but something tells me you’re making the wrong decision again.”

  For a month, Ahmad did not let Homa out of his sight. At night, he locked the door from inside before climbing onto his side of the bed, now with the permanent view of Homa’s back. When she had to be out
in the yard or the house during the day, Ahmad left the door open to keep a nervous eye on the front door. He could not concentrate. Paper after paper he crumpled up and threw out. He turned his head toward the door and trembled with the cold wind that howled in and the snowflakes that landed on his writing and melted on his face. Soon he would get up and find Homa in the house. He would sit on the floor in the corridor outside of the kitchen, in the living room outside of Pooran’s room, outside every door his wife was behind. Homa took all this without resistance or complaint, without showing the slightest intention of flight. When locked in Agha’s room, she delved into her textbooks and read as if there was nowhere she wanted to be but inside the heart and kidney and stomach, within the rib cage. Three days a week, she walked with Ahmad to the bus stop and took the double-decker to the university. She would walk with him to her class and come out two hours later to find him standing in the corridor, like a naughty boy who had been expelled by his teacher, awaiting his fate at the principal’s office. Sometimes she would find him gesturing to a group of students who had recognized the big poet. But as soon as she stepped out, he cut the conversation and left the eager youths without waving goodbye. Across the snowy campus they walked toward the street that, in ten years, after the Revolution, would be named Revolution Street. A few new bookstores had recently opened next to the older ones.