Chapter Thirty-Two

ILAM PROVINCE, IRAN

Thirsty. Zari was so thirsty. The roof of her mouth felt leathery, her tongue thick. She had a headache from it and from time to time she became dizzy.

She had been living in the Land Cruiser, hiding in the wadi during the day, because a woman at the wheel of a car would draw too much attention in daylight. At night, she drove enough to see her father’s house was still occupied by Pasdaran and that the road leading to Nassiri’s summer home was practically an armed camp.

But the Warshowsky compound, despite its gate being shut, was dark. At least it was dark on the night after their escape, when she finally gathered the nerve to drive by it.

Now it was the second night and she had found no water in the wadi, not even when she scraped in the earth. Her thinking dulled. She stumbled when she walked more than a few feet. And the Land Cruiser was down to its last few liters of fuel. So she drove to the back of the Warshowsky compound and crept to the back gate.

It was locked.

Zari stifled a moan. She needed water. She forced herself to think.

Of course. When she and Nadia were girls, when they used to sneak out in the evening, they always hid a key.

Where? Where did they hide it?

Zari knew and she did not know. It was as if the thirst robbed her of some of her senses. She leaned against the wall next to the gate, keeping herself on her feet. She prayed and she looked to the stars as she did.

Then she saw the lintel.

That was it. The lintel over the gate was a beam of thick, heavy wood, and Nadia found a crack in it, just big enough to hide a key.

Raising herself on her toes, Zari felt in the dark and found it, a rounded bit of metal that felt like the edge of a coin. She worked it back and forth until it loosened and then she drew it out. The key.

Praying the Warshowskys had not changed the lock in all those years, Zari felt for the lock and put the key in. She tried to turn it, but it would not budge.

She did not weep because she had no tears. Her body was consuming every bit of moisture within it. She tried turning the key the other way. The lock resisted for a moment, then it opened.

Moaning in a combination of joy and the pain of dehydration, Zari pushed the gate open and stumbled the few feet to the door leading to the secret basement room. It was unlocked and she made her way down the steps in the dark, one step at a time, felt her way in the dark and found the door to the bathroom. Her hands fell upon the tap in the sink, and she turned it. Water, cool and fresh, splashed in the darkened sink and Zari lowered her face to it and splashed it on her dusty lips. Pushing her hair out of the way, she drank, each swallow returning life to her parched body.

ONE HOUR LATER, ZARI had bathed. She was still afraid to turn on any of the room lights, for fear of calling attention to the compound, but by the light of a small candle, she made her way to the room that had once been Nadia’s.

Zari was banking on the fact that Olga was sentimental, and she banked correctly. Nadia’s mother had saved her clothes; they were no longer in the closet, but they were boxed away in cedar boxes in her room, and Nadia and Zari had always been the same size. She found a blouse and a skirt, and put them on.

With her thirst slaked, food was the next order of business for Zari. She found her way to the big main house’s kitchen, opened the refrigerator, fumbled to find the switch that turned the light back off, and used her candle to select what was left of a round of roast beef and carry it to the big wooden kitchen table.

She found a butcher’s knife and carved off a slice of beef, rolling it and eating it cold, just as it was. It was sprinkled with cracked peppercorns and there was horseradish on the crust, and she was certain she had never tasted anything better. She sliced off a second thin slice and rolled and ate it cold as well.

Zari was just carving a third slice when she heard it; the creak of the wood floor underfoot.

First she froze, feeling the hair rise on the back of her neck, feeling dizzy, her stomach tight and queasy. She grabbed the knife, peering into the shadows from whence the sound came. Then she pinched the wick of the candle, and pushed silently back from the table.

Holding the butcher’s knife before her like a sword, Zari squatted, turning first one way and then the other. She imagined Pasdaran closing in on her, the grasp of huge, hairy hands on her wrists, her ankles, her neck. She imagined a rifle aimed at her in the dark.

Summoning her courage, she spoke, in Farsi: “Who is it?”

No one answered.

“I have a gun,” she lied. “I’ll use it.”

Still no answer.

“Olga?” Zari asked hopefully.

“Miss Zari?” It was an old man’s voice: Farsi, but with a Russian accent.

A small flashlight came on in the hallway leading to the kitchen. Zari hissed and pointed her knife at it, but the man aimed the flashlight at himself and the old woman at his side.

The knife drooped from Zari’s hands.

“Nikolai,” she said. “Kristina.”

Zari began to weep tears of relief. She knew these people from her girlhood, from her visits with Nadia.

The old man and woman were the Warshowskys’ housekeepers. They came with the family from Russia as teenagers and kept the house and its grounds for three generations of family. Now they were old, and mostly they oversaw Iranians that they hired from the village, but they lived at the compound; it was their home as much as it was the Warshowskys.

Zari put her hand out to her side. The room began to spin around her. She heard footsteps coming toward her and felt hands, old but strong, catching her as she fell.

WHEN ZARI AWOKE, SHE was in the basement room, where a table lamp cast a roomful of light.

“It is all right,” the woman, Kristina, said to her in Farsi. “This room has no windows. It was built for times such as this. Rest. You are exhausted.”

“Olga,” Zari said. “Is she here as well?”

Kristina shook her head. “No, child. She is not.”

Zari tried to sit up. She became dizzy again and allowed Kristina to push her back to the pillow.

“The Pasdaran took Mrs. Olga,” Nikolai, the old man, told her. “We were in town, buying salt and flour, and we saw the trucks here from the road so we drove by. We hid in the village with a family that works for us and I drove by every few hours until I saw that the Pasdaran had gone. We came here, but first we talked to the people in town. They told us someone saw the soldiers taking Mrs. Olga into the old school, that they have her there. So we came here, closed and locked the gates, and we dare not show a light near the windows.”

Zari raised her head. “How many Pasdaran?”

“Twenty or thirty,” Nikolai said. “Too many, dear child. That is why we are here. There is nothing we can do. There is nothing you can do. We cannot save her.”