Stranger to History (21 page)

Nargis wanted me to meet another friend, called Desiré. We drove over to her flat later that evening. Desiré was always in trouble with the regime, and within minutes I could see why: she was eccentric and outspoken. I could barely make out her features because her flat was in darkness. The whole place was lit with dim ultraviolet light. The walls were painted white and mauve, and the seating consisted of several fat saffron-coloured cushions. All the colours glowed. On the wall there was a huge painting from the Hindu epics of Krishna driving Arjun’s chariot into war. Incense sticks burnt in the fireplace, a wide-screen Panasonic TV sat darkly on one side of the room, and under a reading lamp, the only real light, a DJ’s mixing equipment was laid out.

Desiré was dressed in a red, sleeveless vest and tight beige tracksuit bottoms that followed her legs closely to the knee, then flared. Her hair was short, but with bleached dreadlocks tied into it. In another country, she might have gone to music festivals and raves, or hung about on beaches in Goa, been at Burning Man, or known full-moon parties in Bali, but in Iran the tyranny of trifles had made something of her. She was far too essential to their programme to be ignored and she, as if addicted to the attention, violent as it was, couldn’t get away. They picked her up all the time, sometimes just for laughing in a public place. But the most recent episode had been the most serious.

Desiré spoke in a torrent of chaotic accented English, stray laughter and impassioned exclamation marks. ‘So many times! So many times, I’m telling you!’ she cried, when I asked her if she’d been picked up before. ‘But the thing is that every time I knew how to get away. I look like a foreigner, I don’t look that much like an Iranian, and so many times I would start pretending that I am French, that I am Indian maybe, too. I knew how to bribe them and talk to them, but this time it wasn’t talkable.’

‘Why did they come?’

‘Because my friend and I, we wanted to go and party in Shemshak.’ The place she spoke of was a ski resort north of Tehran. ‘And my friend, she wanted some drugs, you know, and there was this guy who used to always come and give it to her. But this time he arrived at her house with the police because they had taken him.’

‘This is the dealer?’

‘Yes, they took the dealer and came to my friend’s house, and they were there waiting when I arrived, waiting, talking, speaking to my friend. My friend had called before to say, “Come pick me up and we’ll go party in Shemshak for my birthday.” So I went to pick her up and suddenly I come in and see this guy with a gun to my head.’

‘Was your friend also in the room?’

‘Yes, they were searching her house when I rang the bell.’

‘She didn’t call to say don’t come?’

‘She couldn’t! She can’t! They don’t let you do anything. So, anyway, they’re standing there all rough and tough. You see, most of these people, they grow up in these houses without their mother and father . . .’

‘Orphanages?’

‘Yes. Or even if they have parents, in their . . .’ she paused in search of the right word ‘. . . culture, beating a woman is very easy. From the time a boy is a little boy, the father says, “Beat your mother,” so he starts beating his mother, his sister, anybody. So, beating us is nothing for them.’

‘Did they beat you?’

‘Of course!’ she said, with near-jubilation. ‘Once we were in Shemshak. Nargis was there.’ Nargis, sitting on a saffron cushion, looked over. ‘We were walking,’ Desiré continued, ‘it was night time, and we were going from my house to Nargis’s house. I had a car, but I just felt like walking. And a car, not even a Komiteh car or a police car, just a white Pride, came near us. We saw them, but thought they were these guys who say things to girls. OK? Suddenly we see four big guys come out of their car and come to take us. They take one of my friends and they want to put her in the car. She was like, ‘
Aein
,
aein
. . .’ She emitted a girly nasal noise to indicate that she had put up no resistance. ‘But I wasn’t . . . I said, “Leave me alone! Don’t touch me! Don’t touch me!” I wanted somebody to help us because I didn’t know these were police.’

‘Were they Basiji?’

‘No, no! They were so clean, in their white shirts, nothing. Normal people. I tell you, after that night I was scared of everybody because those men were so normal. You might even party in front of them.’ Desiré said ‘party’ with special emphasis, drawing out the word, as if the world was divided into people who partied and people who didn’t. ‘We didn’t know where they were from! I was scared that these were people who wanted to steal us and rape us, you never know! I was screaming, “Show me your paper, show me something,” and they were like, with their big batons, beating us! Nargis was funny,’ she chuckled. ‘She’s big, you know, so when they wanted to put her in the car, I was screaming, “Nargis, don’t get in, don’t get in!” So she put her hands up and they were pushing and pushing, but they couldn’t get her into the car.’ Desiré laughed out loud, and for the first time I could make out her features, her strong, square jaw, her red lipstick, her light, tanned skin. She was right: she could have been from anywhere. ‘And they were beating me and beating me like hell!’ She said it with so much energy and lightness that it didn’t feel real.

‘With a baton?’

‘Yeah, with baton. I swear if I didn’t do this,’ she said, raising her arms over her head, ‘I would be dead because my arms were black. Suddenly I saw Nargis was getting away and the baton guy was going to hit her on the head. I jumped in front of him because I thought maybe it would hit me somewhere but not on the head. So I jumped in front of him. I screamed, “Don’t touch her, don’t beat her,” and I went in front of the Komiteh. Nargis was smart, she used that, and she started running. Running and running! The Komiteh was yelling, “Stop, stop,” and she was running. I was yelling, “Run, Nargis, run, Nargis,” and – and, oh, stupid Nargis! After running, she comes back! Running back! I said, “What the fuck is she doing? She’s coming back!”’ Desiré was reliving every second, laughing now, sipping vodka and cranberry juice with ice, standing in front of her refrigerator. ‘She came running back to me, screaming, “Listen, listen, your car is there, I saw your car.” I said, “Fuck the car, just run, man, run.” And she was worried about my car!’

It was disturbing to hear Desiré speak this way. There was something hard and desensitised about her. She seemed to boast, her voice full of bluster; her eyes were frazzled and glassy.

‘What did they want?’ I asked, hoping to ground her story a little.

‘It was a football thing,’ she answered. ‘Everyone was celebrating in the streets. There were so many people in the street and, oh, I think it was the time the Americans came into Iraq and TV programmes started to say something.’ She meant the American-based Iranian TV channels that broadcast anti-regime propaganda to the Islamic Republic. ‘And they [the regime] said, “Fine. Wherever we go, we’re going to do this.” And that was one night in Shemshak that they did this.

‘They knew that Shemshak was an easy pick-up for them. Anyway, Nargis ran away, I don’t know, but she ran away. Me, I was getting beaten because I made her run away. They beat the shit out of me. I was numb. I said to myself, “Just cover your face and head.” Their boss was down there and they were taking all the young people and they were beating them. They beat so many people that night, it was like, I can’t tell you, it was like a disaster! They would scream, “Whore, you mother-fucker whore,” and I was saying, “Oh, I get it, it’s because your mother was a whore that you think I’m a whore. Don’t fucking beat the shit out of me.” And he would beat the shit out of me.’ She laughed uproariously.

‘I said to one of them who was beating me so hard, “Do you have a mother? Do you have a sister? Do you know that beating a woman like this hurts so much? Don’t, please, have mercy on me!” And he wouldn’t have mercy. I was bloody and down on the floor.’

‘They must have given some reason? What do you think was their reason?’

‘Nothing. They didn’t have any excuse. They never have any excuse.’

‘If you had to say . . .’

‘They just wanted to show, “What’s going on here? It’s like Europe here? What is it? What is this? Girls and boys walking in the street, very cool, it’s not possible here. You’re not allowed to have fun. You have to always cry, beat the shit out of yourself and be in misery so they would love you.” You’re not even allowed to look nice. I had a nice picture of myself, I gave it for my passport. They gave it back! They said, “This picture looks nice, we don’t take it.” And they took such an ugly picture and they put it in!’ Desiré laughed.

The regime was the biggest figure in Desiré’s life; it seemed to consume her.

‘I tell you,’ she said, ‘when they beat me, they pulled me on the floor because I couldn’t walk any more. They dragged me by the hand and put me in the car. It was a bus full of young people crying.’

They had put up roadblocks and were stopping cars, making people get out. They went from door to door, raiding chalets.

Nargis and Desiré said the police took thirty busloads of people to Tehran that night. Influence in Shemshak got Desiré off the bus, and one other thing, the horror of which must have registered on my face, because she said, with some anger, ‘I am not a young person. Why? What did you think?’

I tried in the half-light to see her face more clearly. I had put her age somewhere in the late twenties, perhaps early thirites. But now as I looked closer, I could see that her skin was slacker than I first thought, and lined. She was forty with a son of twenty. It was not that she looked young; it was that her growth was stunted. She was an absurdity. She dressed and behaved like a teenager. Her whole life had been given to fighting for the right to party.

Coming back to her original story, I asked her what happened after the gun was removed from her head. ‘Did they take you to prison?’

‘No,’ she answered. ‘They told me to give names of people. And they had this electric thing, this shocking thing. They would put it to me and ask me to give names. I would say I don’t know any names. They would say, “No?” and shock me. “If you want us to free you, you have to give somebody’s name.”’ Desiré claimed she gave no names so they took her to her house and searched it.

‘Did they find anything?’

‘Of course, of course,’ she smiled, more sedate now, ‘grass, drink, satellite. Whatever’s good in life is not good here in Iran, man. My house was not good! When I was in court, the guy was saying to the judge, “Judge, you have to see her house. I have to go and film her house and show you. If you see her house, you will give her six months in Evin.”’

She was referring to Evin Prison, renowned for its cruelty both under the Shah and during the Islamic Republic. A trial of sorts followed, in which Desiré was allowed neither lawyers nor family. When her father came looking for her, he was told falsely that the trial was over and that his daughter had been given six months in Evin.

In the courtroom, Desiré was accused of making pornography and of living as a kept woman. Her accusers’ vendetta was so obvious that the judge became suspicious. ‘What do you want?’ the judge finally said. ‘Do you want me to stone her? Do you hate her so much?’

Five minutes later, Desiré’s father walked through the door, furious at having been lied to. By this point Desiré had already spent four days in jail.

‘They didn’t try to get you out earlier?’

‘You can’t,’ she said. ‘Four days is nothing. That’s the preprison. The real prison is Evin.’

‘What were the four days like?’

‘Oh, fine,’ she said. ‘It was dirty, there were druggy people, heroin people, vomiting everywhere. We were all in a small room, we slept together. The sheets were smelly and dirty, everyone was smelly and dirty. I was able to take a
hijab
, which was like a kimono, and I would crawl into that at night so that nothing would touch me.’

When she came out of prison none of her old friends would see her. They hung up the phone when she called.

‘Why?’

‘They were scared.’

‘Of what?’

‘That I would give their names. And because my best friend told everybody that I had given her name. She wanted to run away from Iran and needed an excuse. Afterwards I said to her, “What were you thinking? How could you do this to me?” She said, “I thought your ass was on it so a little bit more wouldn’t matter.”

‘“What?” I shouted. “Do you know that little bit more was the worst part? You have to take pain away from me, not give me more!”

‘So I stayed home. I started not to call people. I started not going anywhere because I would go places and people would be uncomfortable. They would think I was working for the government. Because most of the time when they take you, if your punishment is a lot, they make you work for them instead. In this way you never know if your friend is an informer or not. Everybody becomes an informer. You have to be scared of everybody.’

I believed Desiré when she described this as the worst part, and yet I couldn’t help but feel sympathy for her friends too. Not everyone was capable of Desiré’s heroism, and one of the most treasured aspects of a state that didn’t brutalise and spy on its own people was that it allowed people without a hero’s courage to live with dignity, without the guilt of having betrayed friends from fear. Heroes, then, were saved for when they were needed, for truly heroic acts, and Desiré’s heroism, if it was real, would not have been squandered on the freedom to ‘party’.