13

The sun was gazing down on the homeless people and rental children in the shantytown, and there was no cloud in the sky to cry. Half-naked boys were playing soccer with a plastic ball on the bare ground in front of the shacks, but there was no goal post and no goalie.

By the time she reached Fazlollah’s mother’s shack, Hasti was soaked in sweat. A horde of women and children surrounded the trash pile. Fatemeh saw her and shouted, “Hey, Aqa Bak’s fiancée, go in. I’m coming.” Hasti sat on the stack of bedding. The sheet was different; a rug had been spread on the floor of the shack. Mother and son entered with a sack full of treasures: cucumber skins, eggplant peelings, mushy zucchinis, marred apples, a half-mushy melon, and a muddy bouquet of plastic roses.

Hasti addressed Fatemeh Sabzevari. “Sister, go tell Leopard Abbas to come here.”

“Leopard Abbas is in Sahand’s shack. Haji Ma‘sum should take you there.”

Haji Ma‘sum entered wearing a different suit.

“My darling, Hasti Khanom, why didn’t you come to my place? But today, I don’t have any opium. I swear by the black stone of the Kaaba that . . .”

They set off together. “I must see a man called Puria,” Hasti said. “I have a message from Aqa Bak.”

“Of course. Is Aqa Bak well? Happy? What time is he coming tomorrow?”

“He can’t come tomorrow.” It slipped from Hasti’s tongue that tomorrow’s operation had been canceled, and she immediately regretted the slip.

“Why was it canceled? We’ve recruited so many people. The clubs are ready, gasoline tins, bricks. Leopard Abbas will pour gasoline on the cars in the street, Sahand will strike matches, and we, men and women, will pour in and smash windows and furniture. We’ll shout, ‘We want houses. We want bread and water.’ It will be impossible to stop. We’ll create a doomsday.”

Leopard Abbas did not have the majesty of a leopard, nor was Sahand as grand as Sahand Mountain. Sahand said in Turkish that he didn’t know Persian, but Leopard Abbas said that he would call Puria Khan.

When Puria Khan appeared, Hasti saw that he was none other than Salim Farrokhi. She was shocked.

Morad had told her to wear a scarf, and she had done so. Hasti said hello, and the sun shone in Salim’s blue eyes, making them glitter and the pupils sparkle, his eyes framed by eyelashes as if adorned with black kohl.

“Who would have thought to see you here?” he said.

“I have a message for you from Morteza and Baktash.”

Together, they went into a narrow side path where several chickens and a rooster were pecking at the dry ground.

“What is Baktash’s real name?” Salim asked.

“Don’t you trust me?”

Salim responded that in business of this kind, one should not trust anyone.

“Are you mad at me?” Hasti asked. “But how can one go out to a restaurant after listening to such a sad narrative and weeping . . . ?”

Salim smiled and recited a line of Parvin E‘tesami’s poetry, “No hard feeling remains.”

“But you didn’t even phone me.”

“I asked, ‘What is Baktash’s real name?’”

“Morad Pakdel.”

“How do you know him?”

Hasti explained that they were studying in the university at the same time, and that he is a friend of Shahin’s, and . . .

“So, what’s the message?”

“Morad and Morteza have sent a message that the Day Zero operation has been exposed. Stop tomorrow’s action.”

“Where are they themselves?”

“I don’t know exactly; in a house in the vicinity of Ferdowsi Square.”

“Let’s go to the peacemaking ceremony and tell Aqa Sheikh Sa‘id.”

On the way to Sahand’s shack, Salim explained that the three of them had been in the shantytown when one of the Persian speakers had said that Baktash’s fiancée, who he thought was Farzaneh, had come and taken both Hadi, whose leg was broken, and Morad, who was sick, to the hospital . . . Probably Morad had recovered and had warned Shahin Khan . . . Hasti thought, Who said that he had warned Shahin?

They approached Sahand’s shack, with Leopard Abbas, Sahand, and Haji Ma‘sum behind them. Haji Ma‘sum and Leopard Abbas knelt, sat back on their heels, and placed their hands on their knees next to several other men sitting the same way. Sahand joined other men who were sitting on the floor in the same position; young and old, strong and weak, they didn’t know what to do with their hands. Aqa Sheikh Sa‘id was sitting cross-legged at the end of the room, his back toward Salim and Hasti, who were standing by the door. Sahand’s shack had a carpet, and a plate of candies had been left in the middle of the carpeted floor. On the white walls, several pictures of a Seyyed the likes of which Hasti had seen in Fatemeh Sabzevari’s shack . . . some of them black and white and one in color.

Fazlollah entered holding the bouquet of plastic roses that had been washed, and he offered it to Salim. Salim said, “Put it next to the plate of candies.” Fazlollah put down the bouquet and left.

“Allegiance to the Prophet . . . ,” Aqa Sheikh Sa‘id said. “God of the universe gives revelations to the prophets, and they announce them to the people . . . Shake each other’s hands today, and tomorrow demolish the house of tyranny over the heads of the tyrants. God of the universe, God of genies and humans, says, ‘O those who will drink the nectar of martyrdom tomorrow in order to meet God . . . ’”

At Aqa Sheikh Sa‘id’s request, everyone said loudly, “Peace be upon the Prophet,” and the men stood up. First, Leopard Abbas and Sahand shook hands. Then each put his right hand to his lips and then to his forehead in a gesture of respect. The other men and Haji Ma‘sum did the same. Haji Ma‘sum offered the candies to everyone. The plastic roses had been stepped on.

When the men had left, Salim whispered something in Aqa Sheikh Sa‘id’s ears, and he came toward Hasti. He had his head down and prayer beads in his hand. He looked fatter than he had the day of the street narration. Hasti repeated what she had told Salim.

Aqa Sheikh Sa‘id responded, “The blood of the martyrs is boiling and summoning the blood of others.”

“But,” Salim said, “our friends’ lives are in danger. If the people move tomorrow, this danger will threaten many lives, even your own.”

“So be it.”

“But wasn’t it agreed that the clergy and the intellectuals would work hand in hand . . . ?”

“It’s too late,” Aqa Sheikh Sa‘id said. “We’ll stay here tonight, recite many prayers together, and ask Our Glorious Master to . . . We’ll pass all of them under the Quran.”

“If everyone prays until morning, they won’t have the energy to attack on the street. It was Baktash, Morteza, and Hadi who taught them not to bend to anyone and not to lower their heads in subservience—that they are no less than anyone else.”

“This is the command of God, the Magnificent, and I, the lowly servant of God, obey the orders of My Glorious Master.”

“Aqa Sheikh, have you forgotten what these three people have done in the last few weeks for the people of this shantytown? They found them jobs, gave them electricity, improved their economic status . . .”

“These are worldly matters, not those of the afterlife.”

“But one of them has broken his leg working for these people, and the other has become sick . . .”

Aqa Sheikh Sa‘id thought and said, “If you don’t want to come, don’t come.”

Later, when Aqa Sheikh Sa‘id was executed in prison, Salim remembered him clearly, saying that in one of their conversations he had spoken about the beliefs of the masses, and how far those very beliefs had taken the barefoot Arabs! But Morad considered the strike of the textile-factory workers the turning point in the struggles of the ill-fated people of Iran. And as always, Hasti couldn’t decide which one was right!

Salim told Hasti to wait at the street corner until he brought the car that he had parked by the clinic.

Before reaching the bare land in front of the shacks, Hasti heard the women shouting, “Hey, Aqa Bak’s fiancée! Hey!” The women ran and reached her, and the children followed. Hasti felt sick to her stomach. But she didn’t budge. The women had tied their chadors at their waists, crossed the ends, and knotted them behind their necks; some had clubs in their hands, and some bricks . . .

“Aqa Bak’s fiancée,” Fatemeh Sabzevari said, “is Haji Ma‘sum telling the truth?”

“What is he saying?”

“He’s saying that your fiancé has been arrested and everyone has been exposed.”

“Yes.”

“You walk ahead, and we’ll follow you. We shouldn’t waste time.”

“But the operation is tomorrow,” Hasti said. “You must listen to the cleric.”

One woman stepped out from the crowd and screamed, “Street or no street, he must tell us today what to do. We’re fed up!” It was not clear from where Aqa Sheikh Sa‘id appeared. He faced the women and said, “Tonight is the night that we pray. Tomorrow, with God Almighty’s help . . .”

Salim opened the front door of the car for Hasti. Then he sat behind the wheel and started off. As he made a U-turn, he asked, “Other than the few people we met, did anyone else see you?”

“All the women and children of the shantytown saw me, and I was so scared!”

“Of what?”

“Of the wrath of the proletariat who are not even proletarian.”

Salim bit his lip, and Hasti continued, “And of the fact that you too have gotten involved in political activity.”

“For now, I am the liaison between the clerics and the intellectuals.”

When they arrived at Jaleh Crossroads, Hasti suggested that they go have lunch together at the Plan Organization cafeteria. Salim replied that there was still a lot of time until noon.

“Then you can come to my office to have coffee and rest,” Hasti said. “After that, I’ll take you to show you the ministry’s handicraft workshops. And now that there are no hard feelings between us, ‘We will mend the garb rent by separation from the beloved.’”

Salim agreed, but he didn’t seem to notice the poem that Hasti had turned into prose. “If need be,” he said, “Morad can come to our place to hide.”

At Hasti’s office, Fakhri was introduced to Salim. Fakhri extended her hand, but Salim didn’t shake it, and Fakhri pouted. She went to her own room, and the tick-ticking of the typewriter . . . The servant brought Turkish coffee. Hasti had not sat at her desk, but rather on the chair beside the armchair in which Salim was sitting. She was busy scheming: how could she fix herself in Salim’s heart again? Salim stood and put the empty cup on the table. He paced the room, squeezing his reddish-brown beard in his fist. It was as though he was no longer present in Hasti’s office. His eyes weren’t magical anymore. Even light didn’t move in his eyes because, just like his mother, he was squinting.

“Is your back aching again?” Hasti asked.

Salim ignored the question. “Tell Shahin Khan to go visit Morad. If he needs to change his place, call me and tell me, ‘The button collection has arrived from India.’ I’ll go with Shahin Khan to pick him up.”

Hasti said to herself, Shahin Khan. Shahin Khan. Shahin who has received his BA, presented himself for his mandatory military duty . . . now at officer’s training. “Forward, march! Halt! Left face. Right face. Present arms. Order arms . . .” No, he is out of it. Let him march.

Salim sat at Hasti’s desk and begged her, “Hasti Khanom, for God’s sake, don’t get involved.”

“I heard you when you said that politics is ephemeral and that what will most likely endure is art.”

“But you came today.”

“Today I was a messenger. I have sworn on the Quran to step aside.”

And in her heart, she said, If only Morad lets me . . . although it’s my own fault, especially now that Farzaneh has become a nightmare for me. She was surprised that Salim paid no attention to her swearing on the Quran, no more than he had to the poem that she had turned into prose.

Salim asked permission to make a few calls. Hasti stood up and dialed zero to get an outside line. “The telephone isn’t tapped, is it?” Salim asked.

“What is a tapped telephone?”

“I mean, no one is recording the telephone calls, right?”

“No way. This is a government ministry. Also, the minister is a son-in-law of the shah, and his ministership is eternal.”

“Nothing is eternal.”

Salim dialed.

“Tell your guest to come to the phone.”

. . .

“Puria.”

. . .

Salim made the guest understand that he will pick him up at night and that it is necessary . . . What if this guest is Farhad Dorafshan? What if he reveals that Morad’s fiancée—in the eyes of the residents of the shantytown—is none other than Hasti? And that Hasti has taken him to the hospital . . . ? Whatever will be, let it be. Is it in my hands?

Salim dialed again.

“Taji, ask my mother to come to the phone.”

Long silence . . . While that mountain of flesh moves.

“Hello, Mother dear. How’s your heart?”

. . .

“Mother dear, don’t wait for me for lunch. Tell Taji to clean the fountain room and arrange a bed . . . I have a guest today.”

. . .

“Yes, that’s him.”

. . .

“Why should you be worried, Mother dear? I’ll have lunch with Hasti Khanom. Would you like to speak to Hasti Khanom?”

Hasti sent her regards. She even said, “I kiss your hand, Mrs. Farrokhi.” How much buttering up? she thought. Changing the poem to prose. Offering to mend the clothes that are rent from separation from the beloved. How far can one go?

Salim held his head in his hands, lowered it, then raised it and leaned on the arm of the chair. Then he closed his eyes, his hands on the arms of the chair.

Hasti knew that he was resorting to the “meditation” to which he had taken refuge from his back pain in Hasti’s house one night. He had told Hasti, “In your view, I was spacing out.”

Hasti sat at her desk and started to draw his profile. The image that had imposed itself on Hasti’s mind was Salim with closed eyes and extended arms picking the one and only bergamot orange of a huge tree. The monster was also sleeping beneath the tree.

To draw Salim’s hands, she tiptoed toward him. Long pink nails—she was tempted to kiss his nails. But Salim’s peace with respect to the earth and the heavens would have been disturbed. When Salim came out of that state, Hasti asked, “You didn’t bring me a bouquet of flowers?”

“No, bergamot girl.”

Hasti sat next to Salim. “That’s strange. I was just drawing the image of a bergamot orange.”

“The bergamot orange on top of your heater has probably dried out.”

“No, it hasn’t. I let Grandmother make jam with it, so that one night when you come . . .”

“It didn’t say, ‘Ouch!’?” Salim thought and continued, “Hasti, I’m frightened, too.”

“What are you afraid of?”

“I’m afraid of not understanding Iran’s situation correctly.”

“No one does. It seems like Iran is a soccer ball that anyone who arrives, kicks. They don’t let it get close to the goal.”

“And how many intellectuals are there?” Salim continued. “Five hundred thousand? A million?”

“And what’s worse, most of them are no more than Don Quixotes. Don Quixotes of the Third World.” Hasti didn’t know from whom she had stolen this expression. From Hamid Enayat? From Simin . . . ? Or perhaps Bijan Ganjur had said it.

“And yet the government’s crackdown is directed more toward the intellectuals and the leftists, who don’t know where they stand with God . . .” Again, he took his head in his hands and moaned, “They will burn this house down.”

“Perhaps they will build a better house.”

He paced the floor and asked, “Hasti Khanom, have you seen the processional mourning groups on Ashura—when they march in the streets chanting and mourning the martyrdom of Imam Hossein? Each group has a leader. The Turkish group, the bazaar group, the Arab neighborhood, Pachenar district . . . When the time comes, however, they will merge and stand behind each other like a roaring flood. The intellectuals are not united . . .”

He stood in front of Hasti and said, “In order to know a nation, one should see who they respect.”

No, Salim was not a Don Quixote. But at what conclusion had he arrived? The conclusion that he has become part of the essence of existence.

Both were silent until Hasti couldn’t take it anymore. “Isn’t it dangerous that you give refuge to dissidents in your house?” she asked.

“Not really. No one has noticed that I am in Tehran. In addition, my father . . . Hasti Khanom, why should I hide it from you? After supporting Mosaddeq and being disappointed by politics, my father became nothing but a button merchant, a womanizer, and a dependent of the royal court. O God, what can I say? My heart is breaking.”

On the way to the ministry’s handicraft workshops, Salim poured out his heart to Hasti. It was Mr. Farrokhi who had imported from England all the beads, pearls, and women’s dress ornaments for the celebration of 2,500 years of monarchy and for the coronation festivals. “I used to pursue the orders myself,” he said. “I would ask, ‘What are all these beads and spangles and ornaments for?’ My father would tell me on the phone, ‘It’s none of your business.’ And now he has won the bid for the royal army buttons.”

“The army buttons?”

“They want to change the buttons of the officers’ and soldiers’ uniforms. They think everything else is perfect, and that now they have only this one thing left to fix!”

When they arrived at the inlay workshop, a tour leader in front and the tourists behind him were all coming out of the building. Old, young, beardless, bearded, women, men, with cameras around their necks, without cameras. An old woman was asking the tour leader, “How much is three thousand tomans per month in dollars?”

The tour leader didn’t know.

“Four hundred something,” Salim said.

The old woman was surprised. “Despite all this delicate work?”

They went to the carpet workshop. A Bahadori-design carpet was half finished. Two women wearing the regional clothes of Kermanshah and Qasemabad were sitting at the loom tying knots. The plan caller was singing out, “Two red . . . three blue . . .” Colorful balls of wool were hanging over the top of the white threads as though they were paints on the palette of an artist.

The tour leader was explaining in his peculiar version of English that Iranians weave flower gardens as carpets and cover the floors of their rooms with them. He added that the Japanese do the same thing with flower decorations. Hasti was gazing at Salim, who seemed to be deep in thought. Did it mean that he wasn’t listening?

In the pottery workshop, after the tour leader pointed to the electric kiln and said that electric kilns give a uniform heat to the pots, his words attracted Salim’s attention. “God created humans from dry clay like pottery clay, and the potter imitates God’s work in making pots. That is, he gives the clay shape, soul, and life so that it will be a tool in the hands of someone who himself has been created from soil and who, for prostration to God, lays his forehead on the ground.”

Salim added, “And the fact that Omar Khayyam spoke so much about the potters’ workshop and said that in the end we will all become clay for potters is because Nishapur—Khayyam’s birthplace—has been one of the most important centers of pottery.”

At the mention of Khayyam’s name, there were whispers in the crowd of tourists.

The tour leader said that he would take them next to the ministry’s shop to buy souvenirs. He informed them that there is a 20 percent discount for tourists. After that they would go to a traditional teahouse for Iran’s national dish, chelo kebab . . .

Hasti said to Salim, “Why don’t we go eat nontraditional food?” She recited a line by Khayyam: “‘The outcome of the potters’ workshop is not only this,’ O Salim Khan.”

Look who was giving courage to whom!

The Plan Organization cafeteria was quiet. There was no sign of the head of the harem and the pretty ladies, nor of amateur singers. Hasti’s eyes fell upon Mardan Khan, who was drumming with a knife on the table. The servant brought coffee and put it in front of him. If Mardan Khan came to their table, perhaps he could help. And Mardan Khan did come. But even he behaved himself in the face of Salim’s distinguished bearing. As they were shaking hands, he said that he had heard good things about Mr. Farrokhi from Mrs. Ganjur.