Camelia (31 page)

“Keep your head down so you don't know where you are,” he had said as we approached the building. I knew exactly where I was. I had come to this neighborhood time after time with my father. We'd park here to go see my uncle at his dental practice. I'd put my little hand in my father's as we'd cross the street. My father took big steps and I took small ones, lagging behind him as we crossed the broad Khiaban-e Sepah.

Now my father wasn't with me, and I had to cross the street by myself. When we stood in front of the house, he'd said, “Keep your face covered. The neighbors have been here for ages, and everyone knows us. I'll leave the door open. You come in a minute later.”

It was a large, old house. There were dozens of pairs of shoes in the entryway. “You have to take your shoes off in a house where people pray,” he reminded me. I took my shoes off by the doormat and carried them with me. In the entryway hung a picture of a young man dressed as a Pasdar. “This is your martyred brother.” He didn't answer. In their large dining room, like in most Iranian homes, there were objects adorning every surface—bowls with birds engraved on them, religious wall-hangings, and a piece of black
fabric in an elaborate inlaid frame. He pointed to the latter and said, “This is a piece of the covering of the Ka'aba.”

We were going upstairs when I stopped on the way up to look at the picture of his children. I dared to ask him again, “What's your name?”

“Same as always. Nothing . . . Farmandeh!” His eyes sparkled from behind the bushy line of his eyebrows.

“Really, I don't know what to call you.”

“Take off your chador and let me see how beautiful you are. Amir. I'm not going to say more than that.” Then he came closer. Too close. I shut my eyes. Even now, I can close my eyes and see every detail of his face. I hated myself for being weak. I wondered why I didn't kill myself. Why would I want to live like that—like a rat? Even now I can't answer that question. I shut my eyes and repeated the mantra I used when I meditated every morning: “Camelia, you are dreaming . . . What's happening to you is only a dream . . .”

 

Afterward, I noticed he was praying under his breath as he tucked in his shirt. He was looking down at me, where I sat on the thick rug. I couldn't hear what he was saying, but I saw his lips moving, and I knew it was a prayer. Then he asked, “Do you want some water?” I nodded, and he went back down the stairs toward the kitchen. I started looking around the upper floor of the house and found another fancy room, obviously used for parties and special occasions. Every corner was decorated with bowls and plates. I shuddered. What else did he want to do with me in this empty house? How many hours would he keep me here? I tried to guess how long his family usually stayed at the cemetery—perhaps half a day? I hoped I'd be allowed to leave sooner than that. But I couldn't tell him, “Please take me home.” I couldn't let him see I was disgusted. I kept myself deep in my role as the perfect lover, pretending
that I couldn't get enough of him either. And I waited, silently making my own prayer, asking God that he'd come back with the water and say, “OK, get dressed and go.”

I heard a commotion below, and he came scrambling back up the stairs. “Where are your shoes?” They were in my hand. He moaned, “My parents came back. On the way, my mother couldn't decide whether she'd turned off the gas or not. When they were halfway there they turned around and came home.” He was trembling. “Oh God, my reputation is ruined. Lord, have mercy, I repent. Go hide under the sofa. Don't make a sound. Don't even breathe till I call you.”

My heart was beating so hard that I could hear its sound filling the room. Would I have to stay under the sofa all day? Two days? As I lay there I thought of my French classes and of all of my mother and father's other efforts to raise a proper, worthy, sophisticated daughter. And now where had I ended up? Under a dull brown couch in a house at the end of one of Tehran's historic back alleys.

After what seemed an eternity, but was about five minutes, I heard his voice. “Come out. Be quick. Put on your chador. They're sitting in the courtyard. Go downstairs and get outside, hurry like the wind! Go down the hill. I'll come in fifteen minutes. Get as far away as you can.”

He stood watch on the stairs. I was sweating as I ran, but I thanked God to be out of there. Fifteen minutes later, his gray Peykan pulled up in front of me.

“That was too close . . . After a respectable, pious life, how close I came to total devastation. Thank God.” He took a deep breath and looked at me. “Why did I fall in love with you?” I knew, but I replied only with a charming smile.

After much coaxing, Amir agreed that I had greater potential to spy for the Ministry outside the country's borders. He agreed to let me go to London and from there to America. In return, I promised him that I'd get the tapes from my interview with Reza Pahlavi, collect information on Manuchehr Mohammadi, and look into the ties between Nourizadeh and Abtahi.

“How are you going to get a visa to America?”

“My friends at the university in America will take care of that, don't worry,” I assured him. In truth, I planned to call Jean from England, and she'd help me secure a visa.

Before he'd allow me to travel to America, Amir ordered my mother and I to go back to the Presidential building on Khiaban-e Jordan to hand over her passport and the title to her car. Only then did I receive my own passport back, which had been confiscated when I was arrested. I had been released from prison on a thirteen-million-toman bond (about $13,000). The deed to my mother's apartment had already been put in the custody of the Revolutionary Court to make bail (it was worth about ten-million and she'd paid cash to make up the rest). Compared to other released prisoners, the cost wasn't that much—Amir had handled everything to let me out relatively easily and quickly.

As he waited with me at Mehrabad airport, he gave me one last warning: “Remember that your family is here. Keep in mind that if you betray my confidence, I will do something that you won't forget for the rest of your life. You will be gone for only ten days.”

In New York, people were passing freely by me, so why didn't I feel free? I traveled to Washington, DC, to tell Reza Pahlavi the truth,
that I had seen Manuchehr Mohammadi in Towhid Prison and that even now I had come to spy on him. I spoke so frankly that I don't know if he was able to believe what I told him. Many of the Iranian friends I'd made on my first trip to New York wouldn't speak to me anymore because of rumors Golriz had spread while I was in prison. I heard that she claimed I'd never even been in Towhid—that it was all a set-up, that she hadn't abandoned me but had instead escaped some trap herself. She thought I was lounging by the Caspian Sea for three months. Her betrayal of our friendship overwhelmed me with anger. But it was as if her gossip had predicted my fate. On this trip, I actually
had
agreed to come to New York to spy for the Ministry of Intelligence. But I didn't intend to give Amir any useful information—I didn't think of myself as a spy at all. I'd only agreed in order to get out of prison and out of Iran. Now I didn't know how I could begin to defend myself and set the record straight. I didn't have the courage to open up and admit to the affair. I felt completely alone with a truth that no one would accept, and I fell into a deep depression. How could I tell anyone about the debasement, the humiliation, and the suffering that I'd endured to restore my freedom?

Jean, one of my few remaining friends, was a great comfort. “Don't go back—you should stay here in America. They'll kill you in Tehran,” she said, tenderly putting her arm around me. “I've been so worried about you.”

“I'm not ready to stay here,” I told her. “I have to be sure that my family is safe.” I remembered Amir's warning and feared for my mother and sister. And I began to think that if I went back home, maybe by some miracle it would turn out that nothing with Amir was really as dangerous as I imagined. I was furious with everyone in New York who'd turned against me. I felt angry at the whole world. A hundred thoughts ran through my mind—and I had only ten days to decide.

On the eve of the new millennium, I stood in Times Square cheering with millions of people around me, witnessing the end of a thousand years. I said to my friend next to me, “I always wanted to be here in New York for the millennium . . . Always. And here I am.” But in the middle of this dream come true, I was pulled backward by the painful love I felt, the role I'd convinced myself to play, and by all the dreams I'd had to leave behind.

I returned to Iran. I returned to my savior. I don't know what kind of shape my mind was in—I was both in love and not in love. My ambivalence was consuming me from within. I would tell my friends and family that I was fine, that I felt normal, but I wasn't fine or in any ordinary state. I was consumed with dread. I'd wake in the night with cramps, my leg muscles tight, and I would be beside myself with pain. I would limp the next day, and when anyone asked, I'd just say I was fine.

In Tehran we faced each other again for the first time in the office in the Club for Creative Literature, as I made my report. He glowed at my return. “You seem to have genuinely repented.” We talked for what seemed like hours. But I didn't have much to tell. I told him that Golriz had completely ruined my reputation. I told him I'd gone to Washington, DC, to speak to Reza Pahlavi and that he really hadn't given any money to Manuchehr Mohammadi. I set the tapes of my interview with Reza down on his desk.

Now he started to grow surly. “Nothing? You're giving me nothing? This is what you meant when you promised you could be a great spy in America? You could have done this in Iran.”

In fact, I couldn't do this anymore at all. I knew I didn't want to work for him—why had I even come back? I wanted to live, and I wanted to get back to my real work, to my life as a journalist.

While I was away, he'd also been traveling. He'd gone with his family to Karbala in Iraq to visit shrines, along with one of the first groups of Shi'a pilgrims after the war. He'd brought me souvenirs, a silver ring and a piece of green fabric, which he told me came from a holy shroud. The green swatch wasn't bigger than his palm. “This ring is identical to the one that I bought for my wife. I think I should go knock on your mother's door soon and ask for your hand. There have been many cases where repented
mujaheds
have married the single brothers who interrogated them. But what are we going to do when this time the brother who has fallen in love with his charge already has a wife and children?”

I wasn't in love anymore. Whatever I'd done—self-deception or self-defense, meditation or role playing—whatever I had told myself to make me
feel
I was truly in love, it was over. It was over as soon as the captain of the plane announced we had reached Iranian soil. At that moment I'd woken up. I changed my mind, and I was amazed at how naïve I'd been to come back and take this risk. Come back for what? To be the mistress of some unknowable, mysterious, nobody of a man? To hide under a black chador, sneaking through the back alleys of Tehran? My eyes were finally opened, but it was too late. By then, the plane was already circling Mehrabad airport. In that moment of clarity, I promised myself I'd plan carefully how I could leave. The love I'd felt disappeared like fog before the sun. Where was I going with this man?

He was still in love, and though I was not, I was still his lover. He called me his Persian miniature rose. . . . He kept asking me, “Are you tired of this job?” and promising that if I was tired of the job or of him, I could simply tell him and he'd release me, that no one would harm me. I wasn't stupid. I wasn't going to say, “Yes, I'm sick of this. Please let me go back to my life,
khoda hafez
!” But I was deeply depressed, and he could see it. I hated being without my real
work as a reporter and instead writing daily reports for him that were full of nothing, of boring details that were less than lies: “I went to a café by the Caspian Sea with Faezeh and her daughter and son, and we talked about sports and my assignments for
Saba
.” He'd shake his head and say, “What kind of a spy are you?”