The Immortals of Tehran

by Ali Araghi

  “Everybody get dressed and come down pronto,” she shouted from the bottom of the stairs. She kept their birth certificates but opened her vault, gave them cash, and sent them away. Before the last one left Madame’s room, the front door was smashed. Men poured in carrying guns and hoisting sticks and pipes. Someone swung a shovel handle at a lamp on the small table in the entrance. A middle-aged man grabbed the girl by the arm and took her away. Glued to her chair, Madame watched as three men came for her, two striding around the desk and one leaping onto it. As they dragged her out, she saw a fourth man emptying a canteen of gasoline all over her office. Years later, Goli turned the pages of The Journal Future, looked closely at the page, and recognized the bloody face of Madame lying on the asphalt, her mouth open and her face streaked with blood. She threw only passing looks at the photos of the storming of the Evin Prison, and so she did not recognize the profile of Ameer in one photo pointing an outstretched arm toward the large metal gates, like an old commander ordering his men to assail the lines of enemy, for those souls behind brutal walls and in underground cells who had been the vanguards of a movement now so close to victory.

  Goli would never see Ameer again; she contented herself with what she had left of him: a boy she called Ameer, as Ameer had once wanted. Neither would she ever see the other women Ameer had been with. She had asked Ameer about them, and knew their names. She knew there could be another Ameer boy somewhere by a mother called Shireen, who once had told her friend, when her son was accepted to college, “I should keep an eye on him. His father was one of those animals who scattered his seeds far and wide. His real grandfather was not much better either. It’s in their blood. You won’t believe me if I told you who he was. You just won’t. I’ll give you a hint: he’s a famous poet.”

  * * *

  —

  AHMAD CELEBRATED THE REVOLUTION WITH everyone else, as a simple man amid the happy honking of horns and dancing and shouting. He went straight to Khan’s house, and hugged his mother free from fear. Within days, many of the generals and top officials of the previous regime were arrested. The revolutionaries were helped by the markings of an unknown group who left distinguishable scratches on the doors of traitors: the agents of SAVAK, the top brass.

  Within two weeks, Pooran invited the whole family to reunite and celebrate. She walked with difficulty, but she could not sit still. With her children and grandchildren taking care of everything, there was not much for her to do. She walked around the house and watched them at work. Leyla, Maryam, and Parveen did most of the cooking. Lalah was pregnant, but strongheaded as she was, she refused to sit and rest. Parveen’s children and Behrooz kicked at a ball in the garden. It would not be too long before they too would have their own babies. Time went fast. Sitting in his wheelchair, with a blanket spread over his lap, Khan watched them from the veranda. Pooran rested her hands on Khan’s shoulders. Fluttering from branch to branch, sparrows chirped in the persimmon tree. Pooran felt a numbing calm settle within her and make her believe that everything was in its place now, and that all the rest could be peaceful. Life did not have to be defined by calamities. It could be uneventful. It could be just like when Khan and Agha sat by the hoez doing nothing. She had her winter. Now she deserved her spring.

  When the guests were gone and the last rays of a bright sunset had turned the sky purple and orange, Pooran took one last look at the garden to make sure everything was in order and saw the ball the children were playing with in the lantanas. She put her slippers on and went down into the garden to pick it up. Walking back toward the house, with the ball in her hands, she saw from the corner of her eyes a metallic flash in the basement. For an instant, she was filled with a paralyzing horror as she made out the dark figure of a man lurking down there, but soon she recognized him. The whole time it took her to descend the four steps and open the narrow doors of the basement, she kept her eyes on him, although her weak vision showed her little of the uniform and the rifle. When she flicked the switch on, Nosser was standing in the middle of the basement, his left arm straight by his side, his right hand clasping the strap of the rusty rifle slung on his shoulder, pointing toward the low ceiling. The mud on his boots had dried into thick clumps, his uniform was dusty, and his young, bony face was dark with a few days’ stubble. He looked at her with hollow eyes in a face void of emotions. “I stopped hoping to see you again,” Pooran said with tears in her eyes.

  “I’m happy,” Nosser said, though he did not seem happy. “Everyone was happy today.”

  Pooran took a step ahead. “Can I hug you?” she asked. Nosser did not answer. Pooran put the ball down on the walnut table and slowly went to her husband, put her hand on his chest as if to make sure there really was someone under that dusty uniform, and then locked her hands behind him. “Am I going to be alone? Do I need a guard again?” Nosser did not answer. The basement felt outside of time. Finally, Pooran detached herself from her husband and said, “Let’s go up and get you cleaned.” She held his hand, but Nosser did not move.

  “Not now,” he said, “but maybe later.”

  The ball had rolled very slowly toward the edge of the table, and now fell and bounced a few times. Pooran and Nosser watched it roll on the floor and come to a rest.

  * * *

  —

  LIKE EVERYTHING ELSE, THE HIGH school Ahmad had taught in was overcome by revolutionary dizziness. The old principal and deputy had fled and half of the students were absent from the classes that met irregularly. One of the teachers who had taken up the responsibilities of the principal nodded and Ahmad returned to work. But before the first real spring came to an end, he was arrested by the Revolutionary Committee on an afternoon that boasted its brilliant sun in a blue sky. It was the same day General Babapoor, the head of SAVAK, was tied to an antenna pole and executed by a firing squad. Two young revolutionary guards, in boots and olive overcoats, approached Ahmad as he walked toward his car after school.

  “Ahmad Torkash-Vand?” the young man asked.

  Ahmad nodded his head.

  “Were you a member of the twenty-first parliament?”

  Ahmad nodded his head.

  “Would you come with us, please, sir?”

  In his confessions after his arrest, General Babapoor had mentioned Ahmad’s speech that preceded a crackdown on revolutionary violence. Ahmad was tried in court and convicted of collusion in the death, torture, and persecution of many civilians and fighters of the Revolution. Ahmad tried, but could not offer counterproof of having written the poem that enabled the Air Force Arsenal occupation, the derailment of trains, and many more acts that harmed the regime.

  “Even if you did write that, sir,” the judge said, “you wrote it for a woman, not the Revolution.”

  Because Ahmad had left the parliament and because his name was found on a SAVAK blacklist, he received a clement sentence of nine years.

  32

  EEBA THOUGHT POORAN was going crazy because she heard her spend long hours in the basement talking to her dead husband. She heard Pooran shuffle down the steps and say things like, “Do you want anything besides water?” or “At least have a seat, dear.” She saved her longer conversations for nighttime. Up on the roof, Zeeba heard Pooran sit in the creaking chair and talk about her day before drifting into memories. Zeeba was worried Pooran would deteriorate into madness, but a few months passed and, besides talking to herself in the basement, Pooran was the same astute woman she had always known, and so Zeeba came to ignore the sounds she heard from the basement and sleep with peace of mind.

  For a year and a half, Nosser did not sit down, except at night when Pooran came and insisted. Then one night, he still would not sit when she arrived, only shook his head, and she knew it was important. “You are leaving, aren’t you.” She did not ask, she knew it. Nosser did not answer, but in his concrete-cold face there was a look of sadness, of tears unable to flow. “Can you sit with me this one last time?”
Pooran asked.

  Nosser rearranged the strap of his rifle on his shoulder. “The Iraqis are coming.” He walked toward the door, stopped before going out, and turned back to Pooran. “Can I take the ball?” He glanced at the plastic ball that had sat in the bookshelf since the first night. “War is dreary.”

  Pooran nodded softly, then got to her feet and took the ball from the shelf. She put her hands on his chest and strong arms, hugged him, and breathed the dusty smell of his uniform. Then she detached herself and waited for him to leave. Nosser opened the door and stepped out. He turned and said, “I love you,” then climbed the stairs, one hand on the strap, one hand holding the ball.

  * * *

  —

  THE FIRST YEAR, THE WAR was only in the west. The second year, Pooran went to the store and bought rolls of protective tape.

  “I want to help,” Khan said from his wheelchair.

  Pooran gave him the scissors to hold and cut the tape for her. The old house had many windows and panes. They took their time. Khan put the scissors down in his lap and picked them up when Pooran unrolled the tape before him with a screech. Within three days there were X’s on all the glass panes of the house, except for the ones Pooran could not reach. The red siren alert sounded over the radio and the two TV channels, but Pooran relied on Zeeba whose ears were more reliable than the alerts. When she heard the bombers in the sky, the girl would hurry down the elevator and put Khan in his wheelchair long before the alarms went off. Panting, the two women took the wheelchair down the stairs and through the narrow door of the basement. The top of the walnut table was the storage space for canned beans, boxes of crackers, a radio, two flashlights, extra batteries, two blankets, three rosewater bottles refilled with drinking water, and clean sheets. One night, Zeeba heard the fighter planes once again whistling in the distance and sprang to her feet as usual. When she rode the elevator down to the yard, though, she heard Khan refusing to get out of bed. Pooran was trying to persuade him.

  “Who are they to scare me in my own home?” Khan’s voice was calm and determined. “I’m lying right here.”

  Pooran took Zeeba’s hand and consulted with her out in the hall. Back in Khan’s room, they threw the sheets off of the old man. Zeeba held his arms and Pooran grabbed his legs. The frail figure thrashed with unbelievable strength, as if his life depended on his resistance. He fought all the way down to the basement, until they laid him on the walnut table. The next morning, Pooran found Khan’s room locked from the inside.

  “This is my house and I’m staying where I want,” he called out. Pooran picked up the phone and called the locksmith. When they opened the door, Khan was sitting on the floor leaning against the wall, legs stretched and spread, polishing his shoes. “Leave me alone,” he said, his head down to his work. “I’m not going to die. Agha’s not dead either. These doctors don’t know their heads from their asses.”

  Pooran stepped forward and stood over him. “Khan,” she said, “I’m not young anymore.” Khan looked up. “It’s hard enough to deal with things as they are. If you don’t go to the basement with us the next time, I’ll take you there and lock you up.” She said that with such certitude that Khan dropped his eyes and resumed brushing his cracked shoe. Pooran took the door key away, and for a week things were normal.

  Majeed came and took the three of them to the park. He pushed Khan’s chair and described to Zeeba the small Ferris wheel—red rings with two blue and two yellow seats—on which the children were riding. He reminded her about the first day they both rode a Ferris wheel, but he did not tell her about his jealousy of the new baby, Leyla, who had attracted all of his mother’s attention at the time. He told Zeeba that there was a moment on that ride when he saw her from behind, sitting by the side of his sister, Parveen, and wondered how could her hair be so yellow? The four of them sat in the shade of an elm tree, Majeed, Zeeba, Pooran on the wooden bench and Khan in his chair, and bought ice cream cones from a man who walked around the park with an ice box strapped over his shoulder. Only three cones; Khan had already dozed off.

  A week later, Zeeba came down shortly after dark to announce another raid. She went with Pooran to Khan’s room, but he was not there. With anxious voices they called his name and searched the house until Zeeba heard a faint rustle from under the bed. When Pooran ducked down to look, he was grasping the legs tight with both hands. After they finally pulled him out and took him down onto the walnut desk, Pooran was almost crying from the pain that throbbed in her back and knees. That was the night that Pooran locked Khan in the basement for two years until the chemical attacks began and it was no longer clear whether the basement was the safest place or the roof. Then she gave up and had Zeeba and Majeed take Khan back to his room.

  “From now on, you can do whatever you want,” she told him.

  Khan looked at her from his bed and said, “I want to see my grandson.”

  * * *

  —

  AT HER NEXT VISIT, POORAN tried to talk to someone in charge at the prison, but the young soldiers barely listened to her. “Immediate family only,” they repeated. She came back home with no answer. Khan looked at her as if he did not quite understand her. “I’m his grandfather. Almost his father.”

  One day, he picked up the small bell from his nightstand and gave it a shake. Pooran rushed in. “I want to ride the Ferris wheel in the park.”

  That weekend, Majeed scooped him from his wheelchair into the crude metal seat and Khan smiled with the laughing children who were amused at seeing the old man. When the wheel stopped at the end of the round and Majeed came forward to pick him up, Khan tilted his head. “Can I go again?” He rode in the sun that sifted through the green leaves of trees and smiled even more. Late that evening, he rang his bell again.

  “I want to see my grandson,” he said to Pooran. The red alert sounded and the whole time the two women waited in the basement, Zeeba could hear Khan through the walls, ringing the bell in his bed.

  * * *

  —

  AHMAD WAS WATCHING A GAME of soccer between young inmates when thunder rumbled in the east. Nothing was in the sky but the yellow disk of the sun pinned to the interminable blue. For a moment, they thought a new type of air raid was underway. Someone said the enemy had bought invisible bombers. Someone else said the new bombers flew so high the eye could not see them. But a few minutes later, a tiny patch of cloud appeared, flying very low, barely higher than the coils of barbed wire along the walls. The game stopped. The guards in the towers and the inmates in the yard watched the cloud slow when it approached the spot where Ahmad was squatting against the wall with Comrade Comrade, a friend in his forties, about ten years younger than Ahmad, with a Stalin mustache. Then it rained. First a few drops and then a shower poured on the two men like a vertical river. Drained into water that puddled on the asphalt, the cloud vanished. Ahmad turned to Comrade Comrade, equally drenched by his side, and mouthed something the man failed to understand.

  “What is it, old man?”

  Ahmad put his dripping forehead on his friend’s wet shoulder and sobbed a silent sob.

  “What is it?” Comrade asked again. Ahmad walked to the nearest dry wall, and wrote with his wet finger,

  Khan has died.

  33

  HMAD WAS RELEASED one year before the end of the war that took eight years to come to no result other than hundreds of thousands of new Iranian and Iraqi graves. Half the faces of the family that waited to welcome him in front of the prison gates were unfamiliar. Those he had known had developed an alien air, the others were new but had the looks of the people who used to come to his readings with a smile that said, I know you so you should know me. The women and girls wore long-sleeve, dark manteaux that came down to their ankles. Pooran was in her usual black chador. Ahmad’s grandson, Behrooz, was a tall thirteen-year old boy. Maryam’s husband had white hair on his temples. A little girl stood by Majeed and Zeeba’s
side who looked like a round hazelnut in head cover.

  Ahmad sat in the front seat of Mr. Zia’s car, his mother, Pooran; his daughter Leyla; and his grandson Behrooz in the back. The rest of the cars followed and the convoy passed through streets that were also now alien. There were cars everywhere, and only a rare, single bicycle dodging between. All women were covered from head to toe. Horns honked. Windows were crossed with wide tape, some with X’s, others with a + as well as an X. All of that sparkled, a strange new city under a generous sun.

  It took Ahmad five years before he managed to start work at a publication house as the poetry editor. In prison he had tried to write, lying in his bed in the dark, but the light that came from the page was so dim that it could not lead him anywhere. He thought he was losing it. Two years before his release, the light died: he wrote a word, there was a flutter, and then darkness. At the publishing house he could barely stand the trends among young poets, the play on words, poetry that pointed to its own poemness, language for the sake of language. His own books were still in the bookstores, selling more than any other poet, but not as many as the years before the Revolution. Fewer people bought books. Fewer people read poetry. Ahmad wanted to create something urgent, something that burned. He wanted to see the light again. He went to his old wardrobe and took out the poems that he had etched on trays. He unwrapped the towels and put his finger on the metal. They were still warm, but in a dull way. He copied the poems out on cardboard. They did not burn. He copied the poems on paper. The words sat on the page, inert.