Zana Rahimi, the man the Cia knew as Cerberus, lived on the north end of Tehran in the rising foothills of the Zagros Mountains, near Golabdarre Park. Just up the hill lay the headwaters of the Golab Darreh river, which began as a mountain spring but swelled to feed the smoggy sprawl of eight million in the valley below. One of the first homes it passed was his home—a single-story colonnaded house of white masonry.
Along the cobbled street that led to the Rahimis’ was a wide gutter, built in the nineteenth century to irrigate the valley. Here the Golab Darreh gurgled, sluicing over tiered drops of dimpled stone as it made its way downhill to the city. Its stature decreased as it descended, changing from a source of drinking water, to bathing pool, to laundry tub, and eventually, some five miles downstream, to latrine.
All of the guests of the memorial remarked on the beauty of the canal. It reflected in the cold winter sunset, a glowing ribbon of orange wending its way through the terraces as far as the eye could see.
Several had commented that the glowing thread was a sign from God that Sahar had been accepted into heaven. The visiting imam reinforced this with a quote from the Prophet, saying, “When the ruh is taken out, the eyesight follows.”
The normal procedure would have been to bury her immediately after death. It was believed that the ruh, the soul, would be reunited with the body in the afterworld, come judgment day. To mar the sacred body in any other sort of undertaking ritual would be to make it impure in heaven.
But the Rahimis were never afforded that type of funeral, as Sahar’s body had never been recovered. There’d been gloomy memorials of a sort, but they’d been rushed, confusing affairs without proper ceremony. The government had been careful not to dwell on the tragedy and had sent out men to ensure there was nothing too public.
Now that some time had passed, this ceremony was different, marking Sahar’s twentieth birthday. It had been Nadia’s idea, a small act of defiance against the government and a deliberate attempt to keep Sahar’s memory alive. Zana had gone along with it on the condition that the local imams be left out of it, for they were never to be trusted. But once they’d heard of it, there was no keeping them away.
Now, looking at the glowing canal, the imam added that Sahar Rahimi’s ruh, freed from her nineteen-year-old body so many months prior, remained pure. He went on to say that it would certainly be reunited with her intact body, come judgment day. Until then the ruh would be in heaven, freed of its earthly burdens.
Zana Rahimi had listened to all of it dolefully, privately thinking it all nonsense. This ceremony was for closure, because Nadia wanted it. He’d hosted his friends from the neighborhood, his wife’s distant relatives, the clergy, and a few former colleagues from his days at the University of Science and Technology. He’d made the correct motions of public grief. But as far as religion went, he’d only seen it ruin his country.
Nadia had arisen at six that morning to begin the food preparations. She’d made several stews—an eggplant, a mushroom, and a mutton with walnuts. She’d produced a large batch of adas palow, a rice dish with raisins, lentils, and dates.
The cooking had at least given her a distraction. It might even have provided a bit of light in the darkness that enveloped them.
The guests were finally saying their goodbyes. They were hugging the Rahimis, kissing them on each cheek in the Iranian tradition, going on and on about Sahar’s assured ascension. They made their way in a long chain of half hugs and handclasps across the stone tiles of the courtyard and toward the parked cars.
When the last of them had finally gone, Zana strolled about his courtyard in the front of the house, alone, listening to the stream. To block the rising waters of the thaw, there was a built-up section of the bank like a long stone bench. As he stood there taking in the fading sunset, he could see the two Guardsmen sitting there on this bench, watching, the water at their backs.
They were dressed in the olive-green uniform of the IRGC. Per their tradition, they wore thick dark beards and long-billed ball caps.
As the name implied, the Guards had been established shortly after the revolution by Ayatollah Khomeini himself to ensure the regular secular armed services of the shah’s regime remained in check. They’d even fought off a regular military coup in the early days of the revolutionary government.
With the Imam Khomeini’s trust, they’d since evolved to operate all the elite branches of the military and intelligence arms. It was the Guards who manned the barracks at Tabriz. It was the Guards who had launched missiles at the American base in Iraq. It was the Guards who had murdered Sahar.
These two had been polite enough. It wasn’t their fault they had to escort him everywhere he went during his funeral leave. It wasn’t their fault they had to drive him to Tehran and set up a watch station outside his front door.
But it was the fault of their organization that Sahar was dead at all. The cancerous fanaticism that had ruined Zana’s once proud country had grown to take his father, his brother, and now his daughter.
Taking one last look at the river darkening with the dusk, Zana Rahimi turned back toward the front door, ignoring the Guardsmen.