Chapter 18

I worked hard knitting baby clothes, even though anything connected to babies pained me. I realized that along with the pain were some moments of pleasure in the idea that a mother would like my work and buy it. When I had a little time, I wrote in my notebook, stories which were based on real events or made up. Often, they went in the direction of how accidents or coincidences could irrevocably change the course of one’s life, how illusion and reality were often interwoven, indistinguishable.

Reza, involved with his teaching and writing articles, was always overworked, making it easy to avoid discussions that would lead to disagreements or accusations and doubts—such as Tala’s phone call to him.

One evening he came home, looking uplifted. He said, “Hossein gave us a bonus today. He’s happy that the threats have stopped. Let us eat out tonight. We haven’t done that for a long time.”

We both changed our clothes and left for the restaurant.

On the way to Beheshti restaurant, after we got out of the metro station, we passed Revolutionary Square, crowded with people roaming around, cars racing, and drivers shouting at each other. Billboards showing Sony, Coca-Cola, David Beckham, and portraits of Khomeini were visible beyond the minarets of Friday Mosque.

In the restaurant, we were seated at a table overlooking the Church of the Holy Cross, still preserved after the Revolution that led to the destruction of many buildings and monuments. In its little garden stood a statue of the Madonna, holding a baby in her arms, her face serene. I felt a pang of loss and turned away from looking at it.

We ordered lamb kebabs, Shirazi salad, lima bean and dill rice, and nonalcoholic beer. The waiter brought everything and arranged it on the table.

I noticed two bearded men sitting at a table on the other side of the room with briefcases by their sides, their eyes focused on Reza.

Reza noticed them too. He whispered, “Those men are making me nervous. Let’s leave.”

He paid and we left. Outside, the silhouette of the mountains surrounding the city dissolved and a blade-shaped moon appeared in the sky.

The men followed us as we walked to the metro station. But then they turned around and went in a different direction.

“I guess it wasn’t me they were looking for,” Reza said and sighed with relief.

But when we went to bed, we had a hard time sleeping. The sight of those men lingered with us, taking over our other concerns. Reza tried to calm us down. He said, “We’re overreacting. They realized their mistake.”

We finally fell asleep.

The following day, dusk was approaching as I walked home after doing some shopping—buying a new scarf and tights from a cart that would be less expensive than a shop.

On Jamaly Avenue, a dark cloud of diesel fumes, coming out of old exhausts, hovered in the air, mixing with scents of chive, basil, and parsley from the produce stores. Pedestrians were wandering in and out of shops. On the sidewalk, a man was boiling sugar in a massive pot set over an open fire to crystallize it. A little further, peddlers were hawking a variety of merchandise. “Two toomans for a kilo of freshest mulberries,” “Roasted corn . . . ,” “Flowers that soothe your dear ones’ souls.”

I stopped by the cart that carried vegetables and fruit and bought some. As I was paying, Gholam, the toothless old man, who was there daily with his cart, said, “Reza Agha was just here. A car stopped by him. Two men got out and forced him inside.” Then, staring into my eyes, he said, “Khanoom, it was a black Mercedes . . .”

His remark shook me. The Basij drove Mercedes provided for them by the government. Could they have been those men who were watching us in the restaurant? Just a few weeks ago, a teenage boy living with his family in one of the alleys near us was arrested on some obscure charge. I saw him being handcuffed by two basiji and taken away. His old mother followed them, using a cane. “Please, he’s my only son, my sweet innocent boy.”

What were those men going to do to Reza, where were they taking him? I thanked Gholam and walked home rapidly. In the apartment, I dialed Reza’s office number in case the men had let him go and he was there now. It rang and rang but he didn’t answer. He had told me firmly I should never go to the office to look for him. He took me there only once, after dark one evening. It looked like any modern office, with new equipment and fluorescent lights. The press was in the basement, but the clanking of machines reached the office.

“Can’t people passing on the street hear this?” I had asked.

“The basement has thick stone walls. The sound comes through the ceiling,” Reza said.

Now, as I waited anxiously for his return, I went to his desk to look at notes he had taken for future articles. I found a pile of sheets, compositions written by students in the high school he was teaching at. I figured out what the assignment was: “Write a story about what your dreams are for the future; aim high.” The school was filled with children of liberal, educated parents and Reza wouldn’t get into trouble for trying to lead them to aim for higher education, to think critically, and try to solve problems.

Next to them, I found notes he had taken for articles to write.

Is the architect hired to restore old buildings competent?

Does a country need to “acculturate” and “guide” her people?

Why do two women count as one man?

If Coca-Cola is bad, why is it being bottled in the holy city of Mashad?

Why do mullahs hide satellite dishes at their home but forbid them to others?

Then I reread one of the cuttings of his articles in Ayande, the newspaper he wrote for, always under a pseudonym.

March 5, 2020

Ayande, PROTEST, by Jahangir Le Blanc

On the soccer field, a pop band took the stage. One of the singers announced, “I’m dedicating this song to all the journalists who have been arrested and put in prison and kept under terrible conditions.” The singer had an Iranian flag around his shoulders. The streets near the stadium were packed with police. Members of the Revolutionary Guard Corps, wearing fatigues and holding rifles, rushed into the stadium as the audience began to chant. Many people among the audience were beaten and arrested.

It wasn’t that I didn’t agree with most of Reza’s ideas, but I wasn’t willing to take risks like he was. I took the notes, the cuttings, and some banned books from the shelf on the wall behind the desk and put them all in two shopping bags. My hand was shaking as I carried the bags to the cubicle in the basement, one allowed to each tenant for storage. Luckily, I didn’t encounter anyone.

I had dark images of Reza being taken to Evin, the notorious jail for political “criminals” that stood on a winding road off the expressway. It had iron walls, low architecture, rows of narrow, dank cells inside, and interrogation chambers. When pregnant, Tala and I had gone to Luna Park, one of the parks we were checking out to potentially bring our children to. When we got there, we found out that Luna Park, a little less than a mile from Evin, was the base for shuttle buses taking visitors to the prison. When a prisoner was about to be released, the family had to wait in the park. The sight of the anxious families and all the police around prompted us to leave immediately.

Reza’s sisters had moved to an apartment complex in a newly developing neighborhood where phone lines were not installed yet. Soheila’s husband had a phone in his shop, but that would be closed at this hour. I didn’t have Reza’s friends’ phone numbers. Waiting for him to return home and not being able to reach anyone to ask if they knew the cause of his delay was unbearable.

A knock on the door startled me. I was afraid to open it. Could it be the Basij, coming to search our apartment as I feared? More, louder knocks followed.

“Open up, it’s me.” It was Reza’s voice.

I ran to get the door, feeling a surge of relief.

“The men who were watching us at the restaurant were waiting for me on Jamaly Avenue. I don’t know why they left me alone then, but today as I was coming home, they forced me into their car. They took me to their headquarters, questioned me, and slapped me. Then another guard came in, said something to them, and suddenly they let me go.”

“Have they found out about the newspaper?” I asked, my heart beating violently.

“No, they thought I was connected with a team organizing Tehran University students to demonstrate again,” he said.

“Reza, are you keeping something from me?”

“No, I had nothing to do with any of that.”

“Sooner or later, they’ll find out about the newspaper.”

“Why should I be one of those passive half-dead people?”

“Remember, we picked names meaning ‘happy’ and ‘safe’ for our children. We put happiness and safety above everything for them.”

“Mindlessness, passivity, isn’t happiness.”

“I want a half-normal life.”

“A half-normal life here is being half-dead,” he said, flushing.

“Can’t you at least get work in a reformist newspaper?”

“Those papers are like clubs now. They give work to people they know. You can’t just go through the front door; you have to find a back window to go in from.”

“I don’t want to wait for everyone else in the world to be happy first . . . Reza, do you still love me?”

“What kind of question is that? You know I love you,” he said.

When we finally went to bed my sleep was dreamless, blank, and dark. I woke from the sound of the pool faucet being turned on for tenants to do ablution. I felt the throbbing I used to have in my forehead during the pregnancy. Any day he could be arrested, and we would be torn apart.

Reza wasn’t in bed. I heard him humming a song to himself in the shower. Don’t give up your dreams . . .

He stopped singing and soon he came into the dining room wrapped in his bathrobe.

I served us tea, bread, jam, and cheese, and as we started to eat, he asked, “What happened to my notes and other stuff?”

“I put them in storage. I was afraid they’d come and search.”

“Good. But where are the students’ papers?”

“They are in the drawer.”

He got up. “I have to go to work. My teaching is for the whole week.”

“Are you well enough to work?”

“I think so.”

After he left, conflicting thoughts took over me. Was something wrong with me to criticize Reza for striving to make a change? He and others like him were flickering candles in a dark landscape. But how do you balance self-preservation with self-sacrifice? Where do you draw the line between idealism and strayed, useless expression of anger? Reza was soft-spoken, gentle, and had a sense of humor, but anger churned in the deep well of his existence. When he started a new article, he stayed at his desk all night. He skipped breakfast so that he could work on it. He rushed out of the apartment unshaven, wearing mismatched clothes, in a hurry to share what he wrote with his coworkers. Did he ever truly love me, or were ideals his true love? Even his desire for children was tinged with his ideals. “I want to raise them in the right way.” He tried to influence his sisters’ children, and read books to them that he hoped would make them aware of right and wrong in our society. He had said so many times, “Journalism is my life.”

I was influenced by Baba’s belief in putting the protection of loved ones over chasing after change through protests and activities that endangered them.

One of the few times I actively participated in a political protest was in my last year of high school. On March 8 of that year, Tala and I joined the large number of women demonstrating at Jaleh Square. Some of the women were wearing armbands saying We want freedom of speech or We want equality with men. Tala and I joined a group shouting, Our people didn’t pay for the Revolution with their blood to create a new prison. The Basij appeared and first went to the ones with armbands, beat some of them with sticks, and pushed them toward their cars. Guards began to spray water on us and make more arrests. Tala and I managed to get away.

When we returned home and heatedly told Baba about our participation in the demonstration, he told us, “I’m not a man of action. Even my objection against the shah’s brutal regime was no more than verbal protest and adding my name to petitions. I didn’t take the risk that masses of people who swarmed the streets, protesting loudly, did; some of them were arrested and some executed. That was so that I could be here for my family. I put the protection of my loved ones over idealism. I don’t know if that’s right or not but that’s my preference. My dear Roya and Tala, I loved you and your mother more than my ideals. I wanted to take care of you.”

Did Reza put his idealism above anything else, even my safety? Did he love me the way Baba did, or were his emotions when it came to his love for me faint compared to his ideals? I had no answer to these troubling questions.