by Ali Araghi
“I’ll make you some breakfast,” she said to Ahmad as if she had been expecting to find her son sitting in the hall at that early hour. “You look hungry.”
The lines in her face were more pronounced than Ahmad remembered. She walked slowly, and it seemed she exerted herself to stay standing. The slouch in her back had grown more pronounced, making her a smaller mother than the he had last seen, as if she was starting to shrink to nothing.
Khan had lost the power in his arms. Lying in his bed, he turned to Ahmad and smiled. “Now that the family is together again,” he said, sitting up, “we can have a good breakfast.” When Ahmad pulled the wheelchair close to the bed and threw back the sheets, a sour whiff of urine rose to his nostrils from a large, wet spot that darkened the front of Khan’s pajamas. Khan looked down and his face turned with the force of a suppressed sob. He pressed his palms over his face and pulled the sheets back over him. From his wardrobe Ahmad took out fresh pajamas and put a hand on Khan’s frail shoulder, but Khan hid under the sheets and refused to come out until Zeeba walked in.
“I’m going to make you an egg,” she said, “the way you like it.”
“Ahmad,” Khan said from under the blanket, “you go out.”
Ahmad walked out of the room and let Zeeba change him.
“Last time they came for you was two months ago,” Pooran said in the kitchen. “Maybe they stopped looking.”
Ahmad gave her the phone number of the mechanic’s shop and emphasized that she should never call from the home line.
Two hours past midnight, Zeeba and Ahmad helped Pooran and Khan onto the elevator. The moon shone from behind a thin screen of clouds. Ahmad kissed his mother and held her in a long hug. Then he put an imaginary telephone handset to his ears. “From the booth,” Pooran said, nodding calmly to assure Ahmad again that she would be prudent. Ahmad turned to Khan. “When will you come next?” Khan asked. Ahmad shrugged his shoulders. “Okay, go now.” Khan was too proud to show his feelings. He turned his head to look out over the white city where yellow lights shone in a haze that hovered lightly above burdened roofs. Ahmad drew closer, stepped around to be in front of Khan, but, like a stubborn little boy, he turned his head the other way. “Khan!” Pooran scolded. “I’m not looking at him until he says when he is coming.” Ahmad held up two fingers. In his peripheral vision, Khan saw them, forming a V. “Weeks?” he asked, a little doubtful of his optimism. Ahmad shook his head. “Months?” He still was not free of the fear he would be wrong. But Ahmad nodded. Khan looked relaxed and satisfied. He opened his arms. Ahmad leaned forward and hugged him, then turned to the girl whose blue eyes were unmoving. He wanted to thank her and tell her she was what held the house together. He looked at her for a moment, not knowing what to do. At last, he put his hand on her arm and gave a gentle squeeze. Zeeba put her hand on his. “It will feel quiet without you,” she said. Ahmad gave another gentle squeeze to her arm, but Zeeba also heard him nod slightly, then she heard his footsteps as he jumped over onto the neighbor’s roof. She also heard the footsteps of a cat walking on the edge of the roof of a nearby building, but did not notice when the cat stopped walking and sat on her hinds. Paws pressed together in front of her, and tail curved behind her on the snow, she looked up, with green eyes, at the sky where the pale light from a full moon sifted through thin clouds to shine on her shimmering, black fur.
Zeeba took Khan downstairs and put him in his bed, then she washed the dishes and went up to her own bed. She tried to close her ears to the sounds of the night and banish Majeed from her mind. He would come in the morning to shovel the yard and roof and sneak into Zeeba’s room, which was now easily done, with everyone gone from the house and with the Railways Company in a state of inactivity. Following the latest sabotage of the tracks, the government ordered a temporary cancellation of all train transit until the tracks were inspected and secured, but soon after, a new cassette had flown in and the Railways workers had gone on strike. So Majeed spent half of his days at work not working and the other half with his camera in the streets. He had taken hundreds of photographs of the protests and succeeded in selling a dozen to journals and newspapers. When a year later Cinema Rex was set on fire, he told Short Poet there was now no going back. From then until the end of the Revolution, Majeed stole nine feature films from movie theaters. In one of the fires, he came out with a blistering arm, sprinting away from the theater doorman into the protesting crowds. He screened the films in his private theater, for himself alone, for his friends, and twice for Zeeba. He put a chair for her right in front of the screen at equal distance from the two speakers and watched her smiles, her frowns, and the raising and lowering of her eyebrows. He sat behind her and whispered into her ears the actions of the film when there was no dialog. When the actors talked, he hugged her neck from behind, and slipped his hand down her dress. She pushed her feet into the floor and tilted the chair back, certain that there was someone to catch her from behind. Majeed went to each new film with his portable tape recorder. The next day, on Khan’s roof, he would pass the tape to Zeeba.
“This one is wrapped in green,” he said. “The ribbon is green too, only a little lighter, say pistachio.”
Years later, when Majeed was at work, Zeeba would play the tapes over and over again and watch the films in her head. Her daughter liked to look at her father’s photo albums. “Tell Mommy which one you are looking at now, Anna?” Zeeba asked. With a lisp, saying the S by putting the tip of her tongue between her teeth, Anna described those in the photo and told her mother about the people running and shouting and about the cars and buildings, but she quickly turned the pages to the pictures she liked best, from the week before the Shah flew away. “Are you looking at the kitties?” Zeeba asked, even though she knew. “Under the Jeep,” Anna started, putting her little finger on the felines she found in each photo, “there is a kitty that is green because he has played with the paint and turned over the bucket and the tire is green and the kitty is green.” She turned the page. “Two kitties in the trash can. One is like looking at the other and she says, ‘Why is your hair standing up?’ And he says, ‘Why, don’t you see there is fire in the trash can behind you?’ And she says, ‘It’s okay, we can jump out and go swim in a pool and eat strawberries.’ ”
She turned the pages. Anna always ended with her favorite image, taken on the very last day. It showed an army soldier with a helmet on, his hands clutching his G-3, surrounded by a group of boys who could not be over twelve. Standing in front of the soldier, a woman was inserting the stem of a rose into the barrel of the rifle. The boys were smiling. No one seemed to have noticed the camera or the orange cat that stood on top of three rows of sandbags behind the group, holding up its tail straight. It was not the only photo of people giving roses to the soldiers, but it was the only one in which a cat was looking directly into the camera. “Mrs. JeeJee says, ‘Oh, no, boys, don’t pick the flowers.’ And the boys say, ‘We picked the flower because this gun needs flowers.’ Mrs. JeeJee says, ‘Okay, but next time buy from the shop.’ ” “Where did the boys pick the flowers, Anna?” Zeeba asked. “From the park.” Majeed had knelt down and zoomed in on the scene. It was a simple shot. Right before he pressed the button, the cat had jumped up from behind the makeshift bunker and peered deep into the lens.
Ahmad had seen them everywhere, too. The cat in the blazing tire was only the beginning; from then until the day the Revolution claimed victory, he saw so many that he stopped counting. He saw two cats shot out of an open door holding burning sticks in their mouths and galloping across the sloshy street. On the other side, they snuck into the basement window of a building which Ahmad later learned was the court archives where prisoners’ records were kept, and minutes later the flames roared through the windows of the basement that turned into a furnace. He saw two cats dragging two punctured gunnysacks with their teeth while a third played around, rolling in the snow, like it had lost its mind, only to later realize
that the salt they scattered had melted enough ice for throngs of protesting feet. He saw a cat with a red-hot screwdriver in his mouth run under an army Jeep and poke a hole in a front tire making it unusable. But nothing compared to the last day of the monarchy.
All through the city—and across the country—people were out. At any major square Ahmad would have seen the fall of the regime firsthand, but that last day he came out of the mechanic’s shop and walked toward the University of Tehran. Some shops were still open, but as Ahmad drew closer, there were more closed blinds. The streets became crowded with people apparently wandering around, hurrying toward indistinct destinations. Cars tried to veer past the unpredictable human flow. People talked to each other, passed on news that no one could confirm as true or false. “Look at that, look at that,” Ahmad heard a young man say to his friend with amused, short laughter, and when he looked, Ahmad saw somewhere around ten cats on top of a car, clinging low to the bars of the cargo rack as if headed for the battlefield.
An ambulance wailed past, in the opposite direction of the university. Ahmad walked on. Now there were some women, too, both those in chadors and others in pants and coats. A group of young boys and girls a little ways ahead in the street walked hand in hand as a sign of unity. A blue pickup passed and the back of it, too, was full of cats. Before Ahmad lost sight of it, the taillights went red, and the vehicle stopped at a barricade in the street. The hitchhikers leapt off and disappeared among the parked cars.
Past the barricade—a heap of trash: broken chairs and furniture, crumpled plastic cans, a piece of metal railing—the farthest person was two steps away and there was certainly no driving in those streets. Slogans rose from various corners and swept through the proceeding crowd. Fists went up and shouts rang out. Shots echoed across the city, but no one knew in which direction the bullets were flying.
When they were close, Ahmad realized that from what later became Revolution Square to the closed gates of the university was a no man’s land. To the east of the gates, the soldiers stood in rows with rifles in hands. To the west and south were throngs of shouting people. In between, the bravest charged at the soldiers. Feeling less vulnerable behind fences and bold with the no-uniform-on-campus law, the university students shouted out slogans, threw rocks, and shook the bars.
There was barely any snow left on the ground, all melted by salt or soles. People punched the air and stamped their feet. If the officers in the distance had anything to say into their megaphones, it was impossible to hear over the din. Ahmad squeezed through the crowd toward the front line. Warm blood surged in his veins. White smoke from fires in the middle of the street blurred the view and separated the people from the soldiers. Then, more tires on fire, this time three, came rolling through the crowd. Near the gates of the university, the cats dashed out and let the tires drop to their sides making a barrier between the people and the army Jeeps ready to ram through the people. Farther ahead, behind a few stacked sand bags, a young man sheltered, lying on his stomach in a flower bed and pointing his rifle toward the soldiers.
Tear gas was fired. Ahmad ran back. Holding rags to their mouths and noses, two boys sprinted toward the fuming cans, grabbed them, and threw them back. More than once, a cat leaping out of the street ditch snatched the bellowing can faster than anyone and zoomed toward the soldiers in a zigzag to dodge bullets. Ahmad threw a few stones as hard as he could and immediately lost track of them in the air. He walked ahead, ran back. He saw young people melting to the ground, blood-red circles growing on their chests from the bullets that came out of the white curtain of smoke, past which one could not see. He saw a rifle fixed in place in the railing of a small first-floor balcony, its barrel aimed at the soldiers and two cats operating it. One had an eye closed, and looked, with the other, through the front and back sights. The cats could not move their weapon; instead they waited for a target to position himself in front of the rifle. The second cat was ready to fire: he was lying by the side of the rifle like the Sphinx, resting his black paw on the trigger. Ahmad lingered to see them at work when they fired a shot. The cat taking aim was brown, had his paws slung on the stock like a gambler at the tracks leaning against the railing following his horse. He held his tail up straight. The other was tricolor, lying on his stomach, relaxed except for the paw on the trigger. It happened in a fraction of a second: the brown tail came down and the black paw pulled the trigger and a loud bang rang out with from the muzzle. Kicked back to their feet, the two cats lay back in place, ready for their next shot.
News came by the hour: the people occupied the national television stations, soldiers joined the people ten at a time, waiting for the opportune moment to detach themselves and taking off their uniforms as they ran to the opposite side in undershirts.
Two hours after noon, the soldiers in front of the university were still resisting. After a round of bullets was fired, Ahmad ran back and turned onto one of the branching streets, and it was there that he saw a company of cats of all colors running into the open door of the six-story building on the corner, last in a row of buildings of more or less the same size that formed the southern edge of the main street. There was something about those cats, their lean, lithe build, the way they ran strong and confident, that made Ahmad follow them. None of them turned a head to check anything in the street: they were a focused line, hurrying to do something they knew well.
The corridors were dark but for weak streams of light from small windows. Ahmad ran up the stairs following the soft footsteps of the agile felines, until he went through a metal door onto the roof. The cats jumped over the short parapet that separated the roofs of the adjacent buildings. Ahmad ran after them, and a few roofs ahead came to a stop. He could see what the cats were planning to do, one roof ahead from where he stood. About twenty cats stood in a line, sitting on their hind legs, tails slowly swaying. On their turn each cat stepped forward and stood still on all fours to get strapped with a pair of black plastic wings. At that moment, Ahmad realized: those cats were going to fly. Or at least try.
A three-legged black-and-white and a fat tabby carried the wings from piles on either side of the installing station. The pilot cats stepped into the straps of the right wing, which the black-and-white fastened with the help of the tabby. Trying with difficulty not to lose his balance on one hind leg, the black-and-white pushed on the velcros to make sure they were secure. Then the tabby got a left wing from the pile on the left and installed it with the help of the black-and-white.
Ahmad hurried to the edge of the roof, bending over so as not to be seen, and looked down. They were very close to the line of soldiers, almost on top of them. He dashed back to the separating parapet to watch. In that moment, several cats in line noticed his presence, turned their heads, and watched him for a few seconds, but then turned back to their work, perhaps deciding Ahmad would not be a problem. When all the pilots had their wings on, the tabby opened the lid of a wooden case. Inside were guns, small handguns no bigger than half of Ahmad’s palm; he recognized a semiautomatic Beretta among the different kinds. The winged cats stood in line again and Ahmad realized that the strapping on the right side had something like a holster where the tabby and the black-and-white fit the guns in place. A miniature string and pulley system made it possible for the pilots to pull the trigger by yanking one end of the string in their mouths.
A siren wailed in the distance. The cats were ready, their guns pointing straight down, the ends of strings in their mouths. Ahmad ran to the edge of the roof, again keeping his head low. He wanted to see it all. The cats stood in rows of four—Ahmad could count them now: there were sixteen—bodies lowered, ears flat, and the tips of their wings almost touching. Then as if by a silent order, the first row began running toward the edge of the roof. Behind them, the second row broke to a gallop, and behind them the other two rows. The cats ran the length of the roof, gaining momentum, and at the end sprang up on the short parapet and took a long leap into the air. With
four paws hanging, and no control over the plastic wings, they flew off in different directions, ready to pull on the string as soon as the breeze and luck positioned them on top of the soldiers. The soldiers looked up. The officers stood in shock for a few seconds and then gave orders to fire at the flying objects.
The air raid was not very successful. Three of the pilots glided smoothly into the dry plane trees that lined the street and a fourth was unlucky enough to get caught in the power lines, the pilot stuck hanging in the air. The rest were blown by the breeze toward the protestors and the campus. They slowly circled and floated in the air, gradually losing altitude until they landed within the crowd or among the students who, excited and amused, caught them and confiscated the guns. A few cats ran away before people set their hands on them. They could not run too fast, though, or else they would start to take off again, what with the wings still on their backs. There was one pilot—a gray Persian—whose wings took him toward the target, over the line of soldiers. Bullets whizzed past his ears. When he decided his position was right, he jerked the string without taking aim, as if scared. The soldiers fired bullets at him above their heads and moments later, he drifted softly to the ground, lifeless, his long fur drenched in blood, his eyes closed, the string hanging from the holster. A soldier picked him up and turned to his officer. The Persian had killed a soldier.
Ahmad went back down into the street where everything was on the verge of sliding into a whirlpool. Banks were destroyed. Flowers were offered. The picture of the Shah was cut out of the bills; the picture of the Ayatollah taped in its place. It was the last day.
He later heard how, to purge the city from the filth of the regime, a group of revolutionaries got in cars, revved the engines, and set off for New Town, the neighborhood in East Tehran where the brothels had been built. Madame started to take things seriously only after she heard the news of the Shah’s departure. She had heard muffled shots in the distance, more frequently than the days before. It was about two in the afternoon when she called her girls.
