City of Lies (4 page)

BANG. It sounded like a bomb. Dariush instinctively dived under his bed. BANG BANG BANG. BOOM. Now he could hear whizzing. He had heard the sounds of all sorts of artillery during training but these were not noises he recognized. Then there was screaming, and what sounded like laughing. As he crept towards the window, he saw an explosion of white sparkles glittering in the sky like a flower. He had forgotten it was
chaharshanbeh souri
, the fire festival.

The Group had sent him during
norooz
, New Year, which in Iran coincides with the first day of spring. The Group had said it was good cover, as it was when exiles returned to visit family. Dariush would just have to bide his time for a while. He read books that Kian had brought round for him, including one of his favourites,
Marxism and Other Western Fallacies: An Islamic Critique
by Ali Shariati.

He took a walk. Hundreds of kids were in the streets, jumping over bonfires they had made in the middle of the road, chanting an ancient Zoroastrian mantra to burn away bad luck and ill health. Packs of boys and girls were playing chase, sparklers in their hands. On Vali Asr firecrackers hurtled up and down the road. The cars were at a standstill, music blasting, people hanging out of the windows. The government had tried to ban
chaharshanbeh souri
; it was a pagan remnant of Zoroastrianism and the regime had declared it un-Islamic. But
norooz
and all that came with it was as culturally important to Iranians as the Islamic festivals; try as the government might, this was one battle they could not win. He stared at the people in wonder, surprised they could be enjoying themselves under the circumstances. He could not understand why there were so many discrepancies between what the Group had been telling them and what was happening in the country. But it was still possible to read the situation through the Group’s prism: these kids were brave, for they were demonstrating audacious disobedience. He watched a group of teenagers down a side street start dancing and clapping; a few were on car bonnets singing and hip-swinging; one of the girls even whipped off her headscarf and waved it in the air as the crowd around her shrieked in appreciation. Dariush realized he was witnessing a mass act of rebellion.

When Dariush was especially chosen for the mission, Arezou said she had never felt so proud. Senior members had recognized his dedication and seen that he was prepared to die in the fight against the Islamic Republic. It did not matter that he had only been a member for a short while, it did not work like that. There were some who had been with the Group for years, had given their money (which they were all expected to do), had offered their services, yet they never progressed up the ranks, never got near the inner sanctum. You had to be prepared to give
all
of yourself to the Group. It was about discipline, sacrifice and loyalty. The Group had sent Dariush from America to Paris, where he met even higher-ranking MEK members. Everybody was impressed by him. He had thrown himself into ideological training, submitting detailed reports on his feelings for the Rajavis and learning their speeches off by heart. That is when it was decided Dariush should be sent to Camp Ashraf in Iraq to prepare for a mission.

Life at Camp Ashraf was strict. His training was intense: handling guns, using hand grenades, making bombs, stalking victims, using bugs and surveillance equipment, shooting targets. The sexes were segregated. Lustful thoughts were reported. Dariush attended obligatory group ‘confessional’ sessions to cleanse the mind; they made Dariush feel closer to his brothers and sisters. There were many like him, who had cut ties with their families. They spoke continually about the wide support they had in the motherland. Nobody seemed to know how many active members were living in Iran, but they assured Dariush there was a big, active network and that once there he would have a dedicated team helping him.

It was the day of the assassination. Dariush had started the morning doing breathing exercises to calm his nerves. It was all planned. He had been following the ex-police chief for weeks. The first morning after the public holidays, he had left the house at dawn, wearing tatty, ragged clothes and a pair of scuffed shoes. He arrived at the ex-police chief’s road just after five in the morning and squatted on the side. Nobody noticed him.

Every day the ex-police chief would drive himself to a small office – unlike when he was the police chief and was driven in a bullet-proof car complete with a security convoy. Dariush thought the hit would be easy. He would strike as his target drove back home from work, in peak traffic.

Kian had found a getaway driver, a young mechanic who was a new member, itching for word of his loyalty to reach the Rajavis. As they left the apartment, the getaway driver put his hand on Dariush’s shoulder, ‘I’m ready to die for the cause.’ Dariush squeezed his hand, ‘So am I.’

On time, the ex-police chief stepped out of the building and into his car. They followed him. His car began to slow as it reached a pile of traffic ahead. Dariush tapped the driver on the back – their signal. He drove up behind the police chief’s car, up very close; Dariush could see the hairs on the police chief’s neck through the window. He shot. He saw glass shatter. He looked back, the AK-
47
still in his hand. There was a splatter of blood. The chief was slumped forward.
Was he still moving?
Then Dariush was in the air. On the ground, with a thud. He could not breathe. Men were pushing down on him, pressing his head into the tar-soaked gravel of the road. His body throbbed. His vision was blurred. How long did it take for him to understand what had happened? A minute, two minutes, ten minutes? He could not say.

He pieced it together: something had hit the motorbike and he had been catapulted in the air. Three police officers had jumped onto him. He had wet himself. He could not see his driver. When the cops made him stand on his feet, guns trained at his head, he knew it was over. The Group had told him:
if they catch you, they will torture you mercilessly, perhaps for years. They will rape you
. He remembered the photos. That is why he had the cyanide capsule in his mouth. It was still lodged there, despite the fall. He bit into the vial. A burst of liquid oozed out. Nine seconds. That is how long they told him it would take. Now it was at least fifteen seconds for sure, or does time slow when you die? Dariush squeezed his eyes tight to concentrate on death. But he was still very much alive. At least thirty seconds. Maybe the Group had been out by a few seconds; they seemed to be out about a lot of things.

‘I said get into the back of the van!’

He opened his eyes. Still alive. Surely it was over a minute now. He took a tentative step forward.

‘He’s on drugs. Seriously, he’s a total freak.’

He did not die on the way to the police station. Not only were their maps old and out of date; so was their cyanide. It must have degraded. Expired. Unlike him, who faced years of torture and rape.

At the police station, they took his handcuffs off and locked him in a small room. Somehow the police had not even frisked him. At least he had gone back to the gun-runner and ordered a hand grenade. It was tucked into his trousers. The minute the officer shut the door on him, he pulled the pin out. Only it went off before he had time to raise it to his head. He saw his own hand fly across the room. And then he fainted.

The judge looked weary. There was a time when he would send hundreds of these idiots to the firing squads or the noose; when the weight of his authority was encapsulated in four short, neat syllables:
hokm-e edam
, death penalty. He looked at Dariush standing in front of him. He was shaking with fear. He had a bandaged stump instead of a right hand. His lawyers said he had been brainwashed. He had repented. He had not killed anyone; the bullet had simply grazed the side of the ex-police chief’s neck. The judge fiddled with his biro as he delivered the verdict.

The halogen strip light buzzes overhead, bathing everyone in a vicious blue light that picks out the hollows of cheeks and darkens circles under eyes. Three families are sitting on plastic chairs in silence, in a shabby office block. Nobody has touched the small cups of tea laid out on the plastic table. Their eyes are fixed on the door. Dariush walks in, wearing jeans and a crisp white shirt. Three men, heads slightly bowed, eyes scanning the room, follow him. The sobbing begins. The three men are soon encircled. Mothers clutch their sons to their chests; one man sinks to his knees; a sister strokes her brother’s hair; a father simply buries his head in his hands, wrists wet with tears. One of the three men has been away for over twenty years. Over and over again he whispers one word:
sorry
.

Dariush watches from the corner of the room, cradling a crude plastic hand that has been attached to his stump. He has witnessed many such reunions, but he still cries every time. The three men he led into the room are former members of the MEK; now they are deserters, like Dariush. The men begin to recount their time with the Group. As the stories of brainwashing and regret tumble, Dariush silently nods. He remembers the beatings and the public confessionals at Camp Ashraf; his comrade was forced to confess to masturbating, which was banned. He remembers the isolation, of not being allowed out of a small compound, and the strict segregation of the sexes – one of the returnees Dariush had helped had not been allowed to be with his wife for fifteen years, even though they were both at Camp Ashraf together. He remembers families of members turning up at the camp, begging to see their loved ones. He remembers being part of the MEK cult.

After his botched assassination attempt, Dariush was sent to a military hospital, where doctors and nurses tended to him with care until he was healthy enough for prison. He had been given a life sentence. It was reduced to eight years. He spent just under four years in Evin prison. He was in the political wing and Dariush’s cellmates were dissidents and students. It was in prison that Dariush was de-programmed, and it was in prison where he learnt the truth about his country, and learnt the lies that the MEK had fed him. He claims that in prison he was never tortured.

Nobody knows why the government did not kill Dariush, why he got such a light sentence. The most likely explanation is that he cut a deal: his freedom for his knowledge of the inner workings of the MEK. The lranian love for a conspiracy theory went into overdrive; some said that Dariush was a regime spy all along. Whatever the truth, it was a cunning move by the government; when the Islamic Republic announced an amnesty on all deserters, dozens returned to the motherland. After Saddam Hussein’s fall, the MEK was no longer welcome in Iraq and conditions in Camp Ashraf deteriorated. Dariush was paraded as a member who had been pardoned by the Islamic Republic of Iran and used as bait to lure others away, a perfect ploy to weaken the Group. As soon as Dariush was released from prison, he helped set up a government-backed charity rescuing MEK recruits and reuniting them with their families.

Once the families leave the office, Dariush locks up and heads home. He is meeting his mother at Yekta on Vali Asr, a café where she used to have milkshakes and burgers in her youth. The place has hardly changed: the same yellow sign and seventies interior. She flew to Tehran after his release, and he persuaded her to stay.

Arezou denounced him as a traitor, as did the rest of the Group. He tried to contact her, to convince her to leave them, but she never spoke to him again.

The day that Somayeh witnessed a miracle was the hottest day of the year. The shade under the sycamore trees on Vali Asr gave no sanctuary. The sun scorched the dark green leaves, burning the road below. The trees’ roots ached with thirst, the
joobs
running above them dusty and dry.

Somayeh wiped bubbles of sweat from her top lip that kept popping up despite the best efforts of the ancient, juddering air-conditioning unit. Her damp fingers fiddled with the combination lock on the briefcase. With six rows of numbers, this was an impossible mission, but she was stubborn. She cried to God and to her favourite imam for help.

‘Oh God, Oh Imam Zaman, I beg you to help me open this case, and I swear to you that I will sacrifice a lamb for the poor every year until I die,’ she said her
nazr
prayer out loud, bruising her fingertips against the metal digits. Somayeh’s
nazr
prayer was in keeping with tradition; she knew that for her wish to be granted she must vow to help those less well off than herself. She always channelled her prayers through Imam Zaman, even though so many believe that the patient and peaceful Abol Fazl, half-brother of Imam Hossein (the Prophet’s grandson), responds to requests the quickest.

And then something extraordinary happened. At that precise moment the numbers snapped into alignment – a gentle click as the lock and God and Imam Zaman all acquiesced. The briefcase popped its mouth ajar.

It was a miracle. Of that, there was no doubt.

It had all started on an equally hot summer’s day a few years earlier. Somayeh was seventeen and in the neighbourhood of her birth, Meydan-e Khorasan, east of the bazaar in south Tehran and as old as the city itself. The day had begun like any other, at six in the morning with her daily prayers. She breakfasted with her beloved father, Haj Agha, sipping her tea as he read the conservative daily
Kayhan
newspaper that he bought on his way back from the baker’s. The
sangak
bread was still warm and pitted with crispy indents where the hot stones that lined the furnaces had cooked it; on it they slathered home-made cherry jam, sweet and sour and red as fresh blood. She then wrapped her black chador round her and walked to school with her younger brother, Mohammad-Reza.

They wound their way through the snaking alleys to the main road. The city was already at full throttle, roaring into the morning. There was never a gradual awakening in this part of town, just a sudden bang of activity that burst onto the streets. A line of shopkeepers were hosing down their patches of pavement. The day’s newspapers were piled in stacks on the ground next to the tobacconist’s stand; the Supreme Leader’s face stared up from some of them, headlines speaking of martyrs, Zionists, blackmail and America:
IRAN’S HEAVY FIST SMASHES THE FACE OF IMPERALISM
and
IRAN’S MILITARY EXCERCISE STRIKES FEAR IN ITS ENEMIES’ HEARTS
.

Meydan-e Khorasan is a small island, and Somayeh had seen its shores slowly eroded by waves of modernity and youth. Shiny marble slabs and glossy stone cladding have risen up from the ruins of old houses, oiled by backhanders to foremen and civil servants to avoid expensive earthquake building codes. Yet religious, working-class values remain at the core of Meydan-e Khorasan; its residents battle to keep social strictures in place. For families like Somayeh’s, religion means living by the words of the Koran and the Supreme Leader’s fatwas to earn a place in paradise. In the knot of streets surrounding Somayeh’s home, most of the women still wear chadors, as they have done for hundreds of years. Somayeh’s family have been rooted in Meydan-e Khorasan for generations: it was the only world that Somayeh had ever known.

At school, the lessons were predictably uninspiring and Somayeh concentrated on her daydreams of life as an actress, an absurd fantasy considering that she was in agreement with her parents that acting was a dubious profession suited to those with loose morals. At break time the girls discussed the latest gossip. They were hooked on the Islamic-approved soap operas, where the evildoers were clean-shaven Iranians with old Persian names like Cyrus and Dariush and the heroes had Muslim names and beards. About half the pupils had satellite television at home and obsessively watched Latin American telenovelas on Farsi
1
, the Dubai-based channel part-owned by Rupert Murdoch. Satellite dishes are all over Iran, from Tehran to rooftops of remote villages, hanging off the homes of those from all classes, secular and religious alike. Even a member of government announced there were
4
.
5
million satellite television receivers in Iran. Somayeh’s father declared foreign television an unnecessary and un-Islamic extravagance, and no amount of pleading could change his mind.

At two o’clock, just before the end of school, the girls were summoned by the headmistress they called Dog-Duck, an angry woman with the face of a bulldog and the waddling gait of a duck.

‘Tahereh Azimi has been expelled for having improper relations with a boy,’ barked Dog-Duck. There was a collective gasp. Everyone knew about the incident, Tahereh had not been to school since it happened, but nobody had been expelled before. It took over five minutes for Dog-Duck to calm the girls. She shuffled her big bottom across the room and launched into a lecture about modesty and God, lying to your parents and the corrupting influence of satellite television. It did not matter that Tahereh Azimi’s hymen was still intact, that she rarely lied or that her family had never owned a satellite dish. The fact that she had been caught leaving a boy’s house while his parents were out was enough to brand her a whore, which is what her teachers, classmates and it seemed most of the neighbourhood intimated. It did not help that Tahereh Azimi was beautiful, a fact that no
hejab
and lack of make-up would ever hide.

Dog-Duck soon ran out of steam, her crusade interrupted by stabs of hunger brought on by the succulent smell of grilled
shishlik
that was wafting through the windows. The girls grouped urgently outside the school gates.

‘She’s a
jendeh
through and through,’ said Mansoureh, spitting out the word
jendeh
– whore – with surprising force. ‘You can see it in her eyes and the way she walks. And she has a collection of
red
headscarves in her room, I’ve seen them. I find the whole thing really quite base.’ Mansoureh’s words triggered vigorous nodding.

‘She’s perverse. Remember her notebook, the one filled with porn,’ said Narges, referring to Tahereh’s pencil sketches of nudes.

Even though all the girls in Somayeh’s year were virgins, a handful had experienced illicit encounters, mostly with their cousins, who were the only males they were allowed to be in contact with. Mansoureh and her cousin had fondled each other a year ago, and afterwards she was convulsed with shame. She took the palliative measure of viciously condemning any turpitude she encountered; she was in a perpetual state of disgust.

‘I always thought it was weird the way she made such a point of telling us all she didn’t like make-up, it was like she was trying to prove something,
hide something
,’ batted Nika, whose real name was Setayesh, which she had deemed ugly and old-fashioned. Nearly half the girls in Somayeh’s class had adopted names they thought sounded more chic than their own.

Jealousy quickly turned to outrage, a more palatable and acceptable response. Tahereh Azimi had broken the rules; but more than that, she had done something that they all longed to do.

‘And I never saw her with a chador. Well, this serves her parents right, because if they don’t even care if she wears a chador or not, how can they expect their daughter not to turn into a
jendeh
?’ said Vista (real name Zohreh) whose
bazaari
father had promised her a nose job for her eighteenth birthday. Vista’s father sold copper pipes, and even though he did not work in the bazaar itself, he was still referred to as a
bazaari
, which usually meant a merchant with strong traditional values.
Bazaaris
vote according to their personal interests and are never seen as any higher than middle-class, no matter how much money they make.

Tahereh’s sartorial habits were carefully dissected. The girls concluded her clothes were suspiciously tame for a girl who sneaked into a boy’s house behind everyone’s back.

‘Just because you wear a red headscarf or you don’t wear a chador the whole time doesn’t mean you’re a
bad girl,’ Somayeh said, too prudish to use the word whore. ‘She just has different values.’

‘Yes,
Western
values,’ said Mansoureh using one of their favourite euphemisms for ‘slutty’. ‘Her parents should move to
bala shahr
, north Tehran, where she can act all
Western
.’ The girls laughed. It was a cruel joke, for Tahereh’s parents were poor and everyone knew they had struggled to keep afloat. Moving to a chichi neighbourhood in north Tehran was about as likely as them buying a second home in Paris.

Somayeh was as troubled by Tahereh’s behaviour as her friends; she was devout and religious; morals mattered to her. ‘Let’s face it, she dressed modestly, and I don’t think there was any ulterior motive to that. But we’re missing the point here, I think we all agree that having sex before marriage is just sinful.
Very, very sinful
.’ The group cooed their approval.

Somayeh had a flair for appearing tolerant without sabotaging her own moral reputation. This made her popular with everyone, not just her own kind. Strong principles, a demure appearance and religious fervour meant that the
Hezbollahi
girls counted her as one of their own, and they were always the hardest to crack.
Hezbollahis
are the most zealous defenders of the regime, using religion and politics to ensure its survival. Somayeh never looked down on the poorer girls. Even the
Western-
looking girls who tried to emulate the uptown girls – and there were only a few of them in this school – did not feel judged by her. But Somayeh did judge them. She avoided being seen with them because she was embarrassed of the image they portrayed. Embarrassed that others might think she was cut from the same (inappropriate) cloth. Somayeh believed the way you clothed yourself was a litmus test for morality. The brighter and tighter the dress and the thicker the make-up, the higher up the
jendeh
scale you scored.

Somayeh and her friends strongly believed that the
hejab
should be enforced. They agreed with the law, which states that if your make-up and clothes are contrary to public decency and you intend to attract attention, you can be arrested and taken straight to court. The sexy excuses for
hejab
being paraded on the streets confirmed their suspicions that a dress code free-for-all would result in a speedy degeneration of morals and would be the undoing of the city. ‘If the
hejab
wasn’t compulsory, these women would be walking around half naked, men wouldn’t be able to help themselves and we’d all be in trouble,’ as Vista put it.

The girls were not to blame for their misogynous views. They had been fed the regime’s line on
hejab
, which was usually touted around the city via huge billboard advertisements, since birth. The government had two basic tactics: to warn of the physical dangers of bad
hejab
(which was judged to be ‘asking for it’), and to disseminate a culture of shame. A recent campaign showed a picture of two boiled sweets, one that had been opened and one that was still in its wrapper. The sweet that had been opened was surrounded by three flies looking ready to pounce. Underneath were the words:
VEIL IS SECURITY
. Some were not so subtle: ‘We ourselves invite harassment’ was the strapline on another advert. Some posters purported to use science. Underneath a picture of a couple of girls looking decidedly
Western
(lashings of make-up; blonde hair falling out of brightly coloured headscarves that were pushed back as far as they would go; short, tight
manteaus
) were the words: ‘Psychologists say those who dress inappropriately and use lots of make-up have character issues.’

Most of north Tehran looked like a whorehouse to Somayeh, but she accepted that it was impossible for all these women to have loose morals. She accepted that they were not as devoted to God as she was. But the Tehran around her was changing so fast, it was hard to tell who was a
real
prostitute and who was not. There was bad
hejab
everywhere. Somayeh also knew that a chador could hide many sins. Her brother had once pointed out a spot near Shoosh Street, at the southern tip of Vali Asr, where
chadori
women were real-life
jendehs
. Poor souls selling their hidden bodies for the price of a
kabab
. Somayeh cried when she first saw their sullen faces and dead eyes.

Somayeh loved her chador, for it was part of her
sonat
, her culture. It symbolized far more than a respect for tradition. The simple black cloth stood for modesty and piety; for supplication to God and a spiritual, ordered world where rules were in place to protect. It was all these things and more. It was her oversized comfy cardigan, hiding her when she had her period and she was feeling bloated. It was her protector, concealing hints of curves from men’s lustful stares. Her favourite look was black chador, skinny jeans and Converse trainers, the juxtaposing of old and new – a dual-purpose ensemble that kept her simultaneously connected to God and fashion. But most of all she wore her chador because of her father, Haj Agha. For him, it was the only acceptable form of
hejab.
‘A girl in a chador is like a rosebud, the beauty hidden inside, making it all the more beautiful and closer to God,’ he would say.

Modesty was a serious business in Haj Agha’s household. The only men who had ever seen Somayeh’s hair or even her bare arms were her father and her brother Mohammad-Reza. In Somayeh’s Tehran, it was inappropriate for even her dearest uncles to set eyes on her slim body. Sometimes, instead of a chador she wore a headscarf and
manteau
, mostly for practical reasons, when she went hiking in the mountains with her friends and on family picnics. Her
manteau
was always loose, below the knee and coloured dark. Underneath she wore the benign uniform of the high-street chain: Zara, Mango, Topshop and Benetton.