Camelia (5 page)

 

Khomeini had moved residences from the Madresseh-ye ‘Alavi to the religious city of Qom but found it was too isolated from the capital. In April 1980, Imam Jamarani, who led prayers at the Jamaran mosque, suggested to Mr. Khomeini that he take up residence in Jamaran, the birthplace of my mother. How my mother's heart sank! The village lay among the foothills of the Elburz Mountains and could not be accessed from the north. It seemed like a safe place in the uncertain political atmosphere—quiet, unspoiled, with a pleasant climate. In the mornings, roosters crowed, and the scent of hot fresh bread wound its way through the earthy garden lanes. Crystal clear waters flowed from springs deep in the mountains into the little street canals. The local people were simple and fervently religious. Khomeini found the choice admirable, and he rented Imam Jamarani's house and cheerful garden. My mother was furious with Imam Jamarani, who was my grandmother's
rezai
brother. A
rezai
is like a foster sibling in Islam. When Imam Jamarani and
Mader-jan
were babies, my great-grandmother nursed them at the same time, so Imam Jamarani became
Mader-jan
's
mahram
.

In Jamaran, many villagers took great pride in Khomeini's arrival, while others feared for their safety. The Pasdaran welded seven bolted iron gates along the street that led to Khomeini's home and issued special passes to local residents. Jamaran had become a restricted area. Though we luckily didn't need to pass through the seven gates to visit my grandmother, we still had to stop at the main checkpoint. When the guards would start questioning us, my mother would light up like a wild rue seed in a fire. Putting up her chin, she'd answer sharply, “To my mother's house, with your permission!”

Then we'd have to be searched. There'd be bearded men wearing the green uniforms of the Revolutionary Guard sticking their hands in our purses and handbags. We'd have to keep calm and call these provincial sentries “brother.” Finally, they'd tell my mother to fix her
hejab
and wipe off her lipstick. This was all it took for my mother to explode. My sister and I would plead with her—we knew that being arrested by the Imam's guards was very dangerous and would be a serious headache. But she ignored us and would rain down a torrent of abuse on whichever guard had his turn that day. “If you just turned Muslim and just started going to prayer, we are from a long line of God-fearing Muslims! And if you are Muslim, why are you looking at my face? Lower your head and fill out the pass!” My heart would break into palpitations. Sometimes we'd drive off with her wailing and cursing all the way to my grandmother's courtyard. But sometimes the brothers would call headquarters on the wireless, planning to arrest us and send us to the Komité. In the face of these threats, my mother's voice just grew louder and shriller.

Usually one of the local business owners with some clout would arrive on the scene to save us. He'd tell the brothers that my mother grew up there and that she had kids to look after and an aged mother sitting at home. Then he would turn to my mother and say, “Zahra Khanum, simply arrange your
hejab
a little bit. This brother was only looking out for your own good. Just offer your praise to Allah and Mohammed and Mohammed's line.” By that time, the news would have reached
Mader-jan
, and we'd meet her walking up to the checkpoint in her white prayer chador. She would anxiously ask my mother, “What's all this fuss you're making? Keep your head down and come and go quietly. Do you want them to throw you in the corner of some prison somewhere?” My mother, still smoldering, would say under her breath, “I was fine. That stinking trash!”

I knew in my heart that the days of warmth that I remembered from before the revolution were never coming back. I didn't believe any longer in the tomorrows my uncle Bizhan and my parents kept promising.

I had arrived at the rendezvous half an hour early and sat in the courtyard of the offices of
Zan
looking at the flowers and the persimmon trees. It was autumn, and although it was only the middle of the day, the air was dark and moist after the heavy morning rain. Ashen clouds were spread across the Tehran sky. Water droplets, left over from the rain, dropped one by one from the points of the daisies' petals. I took a pack of Marlboro Menthols out of my purse and looked to make sure no one else was around. The first time I had officially bought a pack of cigarettes was three weeks before, the day after I was released from prison.

The café owner had smiled at me when I bought them. He hadn't seen me for a few months, and he shook his head in delight. He certainly would have read about my release in the morning edition of
Aftab-e Yazd
. My mother didn't know I'd started smoking—I would lock the door to my bedroom and secretly blow the smoke out the window. Majid, a co-worker of mine at
Zan
, once told me that I would meet all the requisites of a professional reporter if I added cigarette smoking to my repertoire. Fine, but today I had a cigarette in my hand, and I felt less like a newspaper reporter than ever.

I drew the tart Shemiran air into my lungs as I took deep drag after drag and slid the slimy leaves back and forth on the ground under my feet.
Zan
, my former workplace, was now shut down. No one else was in the courtyard. Not even Hossein Agha the gardener, who was always rearranging the flowerpots, moving them this way and
that. He was undoubtedly sitting in his room heating up his tea. He'd passed so many years in this courtyard that he'd grown old here. Early in the morning, he would transfer the blossoms from one bed to another with a trowel, or he would clip leaves and extra branches with his shears. At the start of the revolution, the owners entrusted all of it to him and fled. Maybe Hossein Agha hadn't been able to escape because he was lame in the left leg, or maybe he didn't want to run. The property was confiscated by Khomenini's new government and sold off at auction. The new owner had rented the building out to Faezeh Hashemi, the owner and editor in chief of
Zan
, with Hossein Agha in tow. When the newspaper was still running a few months back, he'd bring me a fistful of fresh, wet, white jasmine on a saucer nearly every morning and set it on the table, and I'd drop a handful of bonbons into an empty vase for him.

No trace remained of the previous summer's bustle. Everyone had left. After my release, I'd returned like a lost pigeon to stare in shock through the window at the old office with its overturned chairs. Now
Zan
had become my secret meeting place.

At least twice a week in the afternoon, I'd creep silently into the building like a shadow, and a few hours later, I'd go home.

My guest during these afternoons was a man in his thirties, medium height, with full-bodied, wheat-colored hair. He had a bony jaw, eyebrows that flowed into each other, and sparkling black eyes. To the guards, he was simply Agha-ye Muhandes (Mr. Engineer). Nothing more. In this way, I explained away the presence of this mysterious official appearing with a briefcase several times a week. When we were alone, I called him Farmandeh, which means Commander. He wouldn't tell me his real name.

With his eyes fixed on the stone walkway, he'd ring the bell of the guardhouse and enter with a “
Salaamu aleik
.” He wanted to be seen as little as possible. He'd place his black bag on the ground beside him, and I'd immediately motion for Farhod to bring us tea. Along
with Hossein Agha the gardener, two guards also remained from when
Zan
was housed in the building: Farhad, an Afghan, and Ali, from Kermanshah. Both were my devoted friends and confidants. Whatever their feelings were about these comings and goings, they asked no questions, not even why I wore a chador. The usual procedure was that the day before a rendezvous, I would get in touch with Farhad to be sure the office would be empty. Agha-ye Muhandes always worried about an unexpected appearance by Faezeh. He said Faezeh knew him.

I sometimes thought about killing myself. I was tired. I didn't know what to do or whom to turn to for help. As I walked up the steps toward the editorial offices, I faced my own image in the glass window, a barrier between me and the old days. I felt no connection with the person I saw. It was not anyone I had ever known before.

The newspaper building was completely dark and silent. The great chandeliers were without power but I could see through the half-open slits in the dusty broken shutters. The crows in the courtyard were hard at work pecking at the orange persimmons. I was filled with regret, remembering my co-workers. Everyone had packed their things up quickly and left. But there was a drawing by our cartoonist, Nik Ahang Kowsar, still posted on the wall above my desk. It had been a joke for the benefit of the office, a caricature of me, extremely busy, talking on ten phones, with a hundred sheets of paper in my hand. Under it was written “
Al-hasood la yasood
” ( Jealousy gets you nowhere).

 

Farhad opened the door of the public relations building across the courtyard and called to me. “Miss Entekhabi, Agha-ye Muhandes has arrived.” A little shudder ran through my body.

I took my chador out of my bag.

 

The day after my release, my mother, my sister, and I had gone
down to Khiaban-e Zartusht to pick out material for a chador. It wasn't a hard decision; I chose a light fabric, just thick enough. The shopkeeper who cut the piece congratulated me. With the cloth wrapped up in a bag, we took a taxi straight to my paternal grandmother's house. Her name was Parvin, so I called her Maman Bozorg or Maman Pari. She'd been a successful seamstress in the old days. Forty years ago, her tailoring school on Khiaban-e Amiriyeh was bustling with the most chicly dressed women in Tehran. When I was a child, I would often play there. There was a display case full of cloth flower decorations, handmade by my grandmother, and another with tiaras and bridal bouquets. Each flower was a masterwork of beauty and craftsmanship. And my grandmother's fine floral hand embroideries on tablecloths and cloth napkins were exquisite worlds unto themselves. There were wardrobes filled with evening gowns and jeweled and sequined dresses, and there were half-sewn wedding dresses on mannequins. We weren't allowed to touch anything. But on Fridays, after our elaborate noontime lunches, a general naptime was enforced. The pillows and bedsheets were brought out of the walk-in closet, and everyone had to rest until four. While everyone else was sound asleep, my cousin Elham and I would get up, quiet as mice, and creep upstairs to the tailoring shop. We'd open the wardrobes full of dresses . . . fabric . . . threads and needles . . . and the displays of flowers and bridal hair clips. . . . Time and time again, I pinned them to my hair and stood in front of the mirror looking at myself from behind and from the front, standing away and up close.

But that day I wasn't coming to my eighty-year-old grandmother, now living in a small apartment in the north of Tehran, for evening finery. I wanted her to fashion the piece of black cloth into that pyramid they call a chador. It was a simple matter. I stood at the table where she ate her lunch and draped the cloth over my
head. My grandmother looked worried.

“Maman Pari, I've been swallowed by a black cone,” I joked, hoping to cheer her up. She seemed to understand that if I needed a new chador for “official” visits, it meant that the Ministry had kept a hold on me—that I wasn't really free yet. My mother interrupted, “No, it's like people who have epilepsy. They draw a line around you to keep Satan away.” Then we all laughed.

 

The cigarette fizzled on the soaking wet ground and went out. I murmured to myself, “May Satan keep away from me . . . ,” and threw the black chador around myself and headed toward the public relations building. Agha-ye Muhandes was waiting.

When I came to the prison, I chose names for the guards so I could tell them apart. Each group started their shift at nine in the morning and finished at nine in the morning the following day. They were employees of the Ministry of Intelligence and were not permitted to disclose their names to the prisoners. They referred to themselves as nameless soldiers for the Imam-e Zaman, the Imam of Time, who, according to the Shi'a faith, will reappear to guide the faithful at the apocalypse. I chose names that suited their shapes, appearances, and ages. The interesting thing was that they took a liking to my names and started calling each other by them. Zohreh and Monir and Taibeh were on one shift and Leila and Humaira and Hajiya Khanum were on another.

“Well! What do we have here? So at last it's come to the chador? There isn't a single proper chador in your whole house! What, now you're Muslims?” Leila mockingly held the hem of my chador to show off its fine knit to Humaira, the half-wit, and Hajiya Khanum. It was a chador of fine black chiffon with raised velvet
roses.