The Septembers of Shiraz (3 page)

T
he chant of the muezzin fills the cloudless sky above the prison courtyard.
Bismi Allahi alrrahmani alrraheem. Alhamdu illahi rabbi al alameen
—“In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful. Praise be to Allah, Lord of the Worlds.”

Isaac walks along with a few others toward the prison mosque. He has pursued this path already once today. Now, the sun directly above, he knows it must be noon, time for the second round of prayers.
Alrrahmani alrraheem. Maliki yawmi alddeen
—“The Beneficent, the Merciful. Owner of the Day of Judgment.” He stops at a corner shaded by a single poplar. There, clusters of men stand in front of concrete basins, pouring water over their faces, hands, and bare feet in preparation for prayer. He walks to a vacant spot by a basin and removes his shoes and socks. For years he has watched friends, employees, housekeepers perform this ritual of washing for prayer, but somehow he has not retained
all of it, does not know which hand pours water over which, which foot must be wiped clean first. “Thee we worship; Thee we ask for help. Show us the straight path.”

During the morning prayer Mehdi, who occasionally prays at the mosque to ingratiate himself to his captors, had shown him all the movements, but afterward he had been taken for interrogation and has not returned. Isaac tries to remember his cellmate's lesson; the whole thing is like the memory of a dream trying to surface. “The path of those upon whom Thou hast bestowed favors. Not of those upon whom Thy wrath is brought down, nor of those who go astray.” He watches the man next to him gargling water in his mouth and spitting it out, three times. The man turns to Isaac. “What are you waiting for?”

“I've forgotten how it goes,” Isaac says, as though he had once known it, as though the procedures have simply evaporated from his mind, like lyrics of a song.

The man cleanses his nose and nostrils three times, then washes his face from ear to ear and forehead to chin. “How does anyone manage to forget this?” he says as he dips his right arm, up to the elbow, into the running water.

“What's all this talk?” a guard yells from behind. Then, noticing Isaac, he says, “Aren't you Brother Amin?”

“Yes.”

“Nice gesture, Brother, pretending to be Muslim. But it won't change anything.”

“No, sir…Brother. I'm not pretending to be anything. I thought everyone has to attend prayers, that's all.” This is not entirely true, Isaac knows. Like Mehdi, he had hoped
that attending would improve his situation, regardless of his religion. The sun beams directly into his head, dilating the veins on his temples.

“Unless, Brother, you wish to convert.”

“Well, I…It isn't that simple.”

“Then go back to your cell! This incident will be added to your file.”

Another guard takes hold of Isaac's arm and drags him across the desolate courtyard. Isaac pictures the men inside the mosque, down on all fours facing Mecca, bodies bowing to the floor and rising again, prayers forming underneath their breaths. He had always been glad that he did not have to partake in this ritual, did not have to drop everything five times a day to pray. Now he wishes he could have stayed with the others—to kneel and rest his forehead on the cool prayer stone.

When they reach his cell he asks for an aspirin and the guard agrees to bring him one. Alone again, he lets his body fall back on his mattress. The sour scent of blood reaches him from across the room, where Mehdi's soiled bandages are piled up. He turns on his side, faces the wall, where someone has inscribed, “I have a bad feeling today.
Allah-o-Akbar
—God is great…” He has been captured for about twenty-four hours now. Today's date, September 21, 1981. He would like to link to these numbers an event, concrete and retrievable. The one that emerges is nearly four decades old—the night he made love for the first time, to a girl named Irene McKinley.

He was eighteen years old, and was working in Abadan,
at the petroleum refinery. Every morning he would put on his trousers and starched white shirt, slip his feet into the leather oxfords that had made their way from the trash of the well-to-do villas of southern Abadan to the closets of the modest Khorramshahr port where he lived, and hop on the bicycle that would take him six miles south, to the center of the city where the refinery gurgled.

On his way back in the early afternoon he would pedal through the city aimlessly, postponing as long as possible his return to his quarreling siblings and his unhappy mother, and to the void left by a father with an affinity for liquor. This is how he met Irene, on one of those nomadic afternoons, on the breezy September 21 of 1942. She was in a coffeehouse with a group of American soldiers, stationed with other Allies in Iran to transport supplies to Russia. The only woman in the coffeehouse, she drank tea while the soldiers swilled beers, though from time to time one of them would slide a glass toward her and she would take a sip. Isaac found her not beautiful but attractive, red hair tied back at the nape of her neck, ivory-white freckled skin exposed to the fading sun.

As he entered the coffeehouse a dozen or so men were sipping tea, sugar cubes melting in their mouths as they jabbered. Two of them were playing backgammon, their forceful rolls of dice echoing in the carpetless room. Isaac liked seeing the fair-skinned Americans there, loud and lighthearted, tongues twirling as they spoke. He sat at his regular table by the window overlooking a row of old houses, but instead of his regular tea he ordered a shot of arrack. He felt fluid as he
drank it, the chipping teal-colored walls spinning in slow motion, so he ordered another, then a third. He felt everything around him—men, laughter, wooden tables, glimmering glasses, clattering plates, and the girl, the lovely girl with the red hair—blend into a single sensation, a tickling in his stomach, the happiness to be alive, and to be here, in this moment, waiting for the sun to give way to the coolness of the night, when nothing is seen and everything is possible.

He offered to barter a bottle of arrack, which would cost him a few days' salary, for an American military cap. Seeing the effect of the drink on Isaac the Americans found the deal worthy, and already lightened by several rounds of beer, they invited him to their table. Once seated among them he began telling jokes in his broken English. He had never told jokes before, did not know his memory could retain them. The men's laughter gained volume after each punch line, and the girl's smiles, flashed at him sporadically from across the table, fired his momentum. Isaac swilled his arrack. He was grateful to the drink, revered it now more than anything or anyone. He even felt a sudden pang of affection for his drunk father, perhaps for the first time in his life.

He left the coffeehouse with them, American army hat on his head, and along the moonlit streets of Abadan he sang Frank Sinatra's “Shake Down the Stars,” which he had recently added to his record collection. When the lyrics escaped him he simulated the sinuous sound of a trumpet, and the girl sang along, her mellow voice curving against the walls of sleepy homes and reverberating in the dark.

They reached the villa-turned-military-station and the
soldiers playfully bade him farewell. The girl looked at him with glassy green eyes. “Stay with me,” she said. Isaac was speechless. How was it possible that the girl with the coral-red hair, transplanted at this time to this place thanks to some maniacal despot in Europe, wished to be with him, a lanky boy from Khorramshahr? And what right did she have to be so indiscreet, so chancy, so resolute in her request? “Stay with me,” she repeated. Isaac sensed the lightness in his head weighing him down—his limbs, his eyes, most of all his eyes—as though bits of lead were swimming in his blood. He felt an overwhelming desire to sleep.

The memory tickles him now, as though the event had occurred only recently. His headache persists, a steady pounding that refuses to let go of his temples. He ignores it as best he can.

“Get up!” the American girl had said. “You have to leave!” He saw her frantically rummaging through the sheets, producing from the comforter's folds articles of clothing—his trousers, his white shirt now creased and damp, one sock, and his underwear, the sight of which paralyzed him, leaving him lying flat on his back, watching pieces of himself brought together by a stranger's hands. She threw the shirt in his direction.

“You have to go!” she repeated. “It will be daylight soon.”

He despised himself at that moment as much as he had marveled at his charms just a few hours earlier. The event he had fantasized about since the onset of puberty had come and gone. He sat up, slid one arm into the shirt's sleeve, then the other. The moist cotton stuck to his back. The smell of
his own sweat, blended with her pungent perfume, wafted to his nose. He watched her now as she sat on the edge of the bed, her bare back facing him. When she reached for a carton of cigarettes on the night table, he caught a glimpse of her breasts, as though for the first time. He held the swelling between his legs like a prisoner, wished he could release it.

“I'm sorry,” he said. “I am new…at this. But I can do better, I promise.” He felt ridiculous.

She pulled the sheet up with her free hand to cover herself and turned to him.

“Oh, baby,” she said, a cloud of smoke trailing her voice. “Nothing like that. You're not supposed to be here, that's all. You understand that, don't you?”

She explained that she was Lieutenant Holman's secretary, that all day long she shuffled papers dealing with the railroad operation carrying supplies to Russia. He felt better suddenly, could breathe more easily despite the smoke in the room. Yes, he could understand that. Army policy. She was doing good, was helping the global force against the Reich, and he, by putting on his clothes as quickly as possible and vanishing from her quarters, would be doing his bit for the war effort too.

As he dressed he wanted to ask if he could see her again. Instead he said, “How long will your unit be in town?”

“What do you think, this is a circus act?” She laughed. Her voice sounded older to him now, more bitter. “I don't know how long,” she said.

He was all dressed except for the sock missing from his left foot. “Can I see you again?” he ventured.

She paused, inhaled, exhaled. “No, that wouldn't be a good idea,” she finally said.

He scanned the moonlit room for the sock. He cared less about leaving without it than about her finding it, the hole at the toe howling in daylight. He looked under the bed, wiggled the sheets, ran his fingers over his pants.

“Hey,” she said. “What's with the glum face?” She put out the cigarette in a glass; the butt sailed along with a dozen others on the ashen water. She stood, slipped her naked body into a bathrobe. “I tell you what. Let's cut a deal. If you ever come to America, look me up. Irene McKinley, Galveston, Texas.”

He nodded, put on his shoes, forgot about the sock—told himself that one day he would forget about the girl too.

But from time to time throughout his life he had thought of her, even though he could no longer recall her face. From that night on he had come to see himself differently, as someone to whom exciting things could happen. Despite her brief appearance in his life, which did not even end on a particularly cheerful note, she had managed to change him. It is to her that he even attributed the fact that, years later, he was able to win over Farnaz.

 

“H
ERE,” THE GUARD
says. “An aspirin.” Isaac turns around, stretches out his arm to take the pill, and seeing the guard in his black mask standing over him, he remembers where he is.

A
draft blows through his window. It's going to be a cold day, Parviz can tell, too cold for late September in Brooklyn. The reassuring warmth of his comforter makes him think of his mother, of the way he used to sneak into her bed when he was a little boy. As soon as the garage gates would rattle open and the determined sound of his father's car would fill the morning, he would leave his own bed and go to hers, where he would find her warm body, still filled with sleep. “The world is going on without us, my Parviz,” she would say, half sorry, half relieved. “Don't tell anyone we're such lotus-eaters.”

He wishes he could talk to her, but lately no one answers the phone, not even Habibeh. The last time they called him was in late August. It was a sweltering night, and when the phone rang he was chasing a cockroach around his bedroom, cursing and sweating, shoe in hand. He didn't tell them any of this. He told them everything was fine and asked them how they were, and they said fine, everything's fine.

 

H
E WALKS IN
the cool morning, hands in his pocket and coat collar turned up. The university campus is strewn with students perched on steps or clustered on the lawn, but not one has a familiar face. Friendship once came naturally to him. Now he cannot recall how he managed it so effortlessly. His mutation has been insidious, creeping up on him like a disfiguring disease. His proper English—devoid of any slang—is good enough for classes but not for intimacy. And his jokes, when translated, are no longer funny. The world is going on without me, he tells himself.

In class during an architecture slide show he writes a letter to his parents. In the half-dark of the lecture hall he writes that he is doing fine, that school is going well, that his landlord is very nice and takes good care of him. When he is done he looks up. His classmates, half-lit by the projector, are spellbound by the click-click of the transparencies, the professor's monotonous pitch, and the bright images of Californian homes on the screen—the wooden exteriors, the atrium courtyards, the vast expanses of glass overlooking gardens. How clean these homes all seem, how simple and sunny and cheerful, carrying within their uncomplicated lines the promise of docile decades spent in the same town, on the same street, in the same house, but offering no protection against the tedium that accompanies all of that. Looking at the images he realizes that his classmates—congenial and starched and essentially unharmed—are products of such homes.

 

I
N HIS MAILBOX
, that afternoon, he finds an assortment of bills and a letter from his sister, opened once then sealed with tape. He rips the envelope, quickly scans the note, looking for the phrase “Your uncle and the kids are doing very well,” which is the code his parents have set for letting him know that money is being sent. He flips the paper around, holds it up to the yellow-green hue of the fluorescent light, and not finding the phrase, puts the letter in his pocket and descends the stairs to his basement apartment. It occurs to him that he hasn't really read Shirin's note, so preoccupied had he been with the possibility of cash coming his way. Inside the apartment he unfolds the letter, reads it again—this time slowly: “September 8, 1981. Dear Parviz. Started school today. Teachers are nasty. Everything else is okay. I miss you.” Underneath she had drawn a red heart—perfect and symmetrical—and signed her name in English, though her “N” was reversed. He smiles, as though to prove to himself and to Shirin that he is glad to receive the letter, with or without news of money.

He takes off his coat and heads to the kitchen. In the refrigerator he finds a bloated carton of milk, long expired. He knows he should dump it but doesn't. Ketchup, mustard, and beer stare back at him from the icy hollow. He grabs a beer, the ketchup, and the bag of molding potato buns on the counter, and settles in front of the television without switching on the lights. He changes channels but finds nothing except waves of static, which he expected,
something about “poor reception in the basement.” Occasionally a serpentine pattern emerges on the screen—figures distorted as in an amusement park mirror maze—or a sound erupts with no image at all—a sitcom joke followed by a ripple of robotic laughter. Listening to the sitcom he realizes that the same laugh track is used over and over, a man's distinct yelp—not laughter at all—emerging every ten or so seconds. He fills himself with ketchup sandwiches, the sweetness overwhelming, then numbing his taste buds.

Someone knocks on the door, but he ignores it. Then comes his landlord's voice. “I know you are in there, son. Please open.”

Had the voice been more rude, less fatherly, he would go on ignoring it. But he gets up and opens the door, not knowing what excuse he will offer this time. In the hallway Zalman Mendelson stands tall in his black suit and Borsalino hat, his red beard resting on his heavy chest. “Good afternoon, my son. How are you?”

“Fine, Mr. Mendelson. And you?”

“Thank God, everything is well. You know of course why I am here.”

“Yes, Mr. Mendelson. And I don't have it.”

“Well, for two months you haven't paid rent. So what shall we do about it?”

Parviz looks into Mr. Mendelson's blue eyes and wishes he had something to tell him—that money is coming, that he has a plan—but he has nothing.

“You see,” Zalman says. “I have six children, and twins on the way. And I am not a rich man. I am renting you the
basement because I need the money. So when you don't pay me, you get me into trouble.”

“I'm sorry, Mr. Mendelson. My parents haven't sent me money lately. It's not always easy to send money from there.”

“All right. I'll give you a few more weeks. Try to come up with something.” He walks away, but halfway down the corridor, turns around. “By the way, Parviz, I never asked you. Do you have any place to celebrate the Sabbath?”

“The Sabbath? I don't really celebrate it, Mr. Mendelson.”

“You're always welcome at our table, should you change your mind,” Zalman says. He stands for a moment, his hands folded before him. When he doesn't receive a response, he walks away.

Parviz takes a sip of beer. It tastes bitter, like aspirin dissolving on one's tongue before being swallowed. He turns off the failing television, walks to his bedroom, and falls back on his bed, onto a mound of wrinkled clothes he is always too hurried or too tired to clean up. It amazes him to think how these things once took care of themselves: clothes thrown on a chair magically hung themselves in the closet the next day; sheets were changed weekly, towels biweekly; carpets were swept, floors sponged, and mirrors wiped—he has no idea how often but often enough that he hadn't once witnessed a dust ball roaming the floor, as he now does—two tiny globes of lint, hair, and dust gliding in the crevice between his bed and the night table, dancing a playful waltz in the mild wind from the open window.

Above him the ceiling creaks, and he imagines the Mendelson children running from room to room, the older ones carrying stews from the kitchen to the dining room, the little ones chasing one another, all in anticipation of the comfort and suffocation of the family dinner. Having spent a rather miserable year in the university dormitory, sharing a room with a pimply boy from Wisconsin who was fond of hockey and who went to the bathroom with the door open, Parviz had thought that getting his own apartment might be less disheartening. But of the many neighborhoods in New York, all of which had seemed equally daunting and unfamiliar to him, he had ended up in this one, thanks to a little notice at his school cafeteria that read “Kind, loving family renting basement room with private entrance to a considerate student.” When he arrived at the Mendelsons', he was surprised to find that they were Hassidic Jews, those black-robed orthodox Eastern Europeans that his parents joked about, calling them “those beardies from Poland.” One look at Mr. Mendelson's freckled face in the afternoon sun, leaning against the iron railing of his front porch, three children trailing him, and Parviz had thought, No, I cannot live here. But then came the handshake, the laughing blue eyes, the lemonade served by a portly Mrs. Mendelson who said to him, “Call me Rivka, call me Rivka!” and soon he was discussing laundry facilities and garbage disposal.

Yes, the Mendelsons are a kind and loving family, as their ad had said, but they are not his. And besides, there is a moldiness about them, a certain mustiness in their black suits and stockings and wigs. To enter their apartment would
be like relegating himself to a ghetto, where the memories of all the wrongs committed against Jews simmer year after year in bulky, indigestible stews.

He tells himself that no matter how lonely he gets, he will not go so far as to persecute himself by sitting at their table, celebrating a day that to him is no different from any other day.

 

W
HEN HE DIALS
his parents' number, before going to bed, he is relieved to hear Habibeh's matronly voice. “Habibeh, it's me, Parviz.”

“Parviz-agha!
Bah bah
, how nice to hear your voice!”

“How are you?”

“Well.” She clears her throat. “Fine.”

“Is my mother there?”

“No, Parviz-jan. She's out.”

“She's out? It's early morning there, isn't it? What about my father?”

For a while there is no answer and he wonders if the line somehow got disconnected. “Your father,” she finally says, “has gone on an unexpected trip and it's not clear when he'll return. Do you understand?”

“Unexpected trip”—the code phrase for trouble. One could not be sure when wires were being tapped, so families, talking across oceans, or just across town, devised their own secret languages. “Yes, I understand.”

“But don't worry. It's just a trip and he's bound to return. You'll see…And how are you? Are you well?”

“Yes. I'm well.”

“Parviz?”

“What?”

“Ksht”
she says, stomping her foot loudly enough for him to hear. He laughs. That's the sound she used to make when she pretended to engage in karate with him. “Keep up your training,” she says. “I'm becoming a black belt and you'll have to compete with me!”

“Yes, yes, I will.” He laughs.

When he hangs up he turns on all the lights in his room—the naked bulb on the ceiling, the office lamp on his desk, even the small blue bedside light. He sits on his bed for a while, but unable to tolerate the midnight silence of his room, he leaves.

Outside the air is clean, cleaner than in his basement apartment where humidity swells like steam in a ship's engine room. He walks down the dark street, past sleepy homes with deserted porches, each indistinguishable from the next. His neighbors' chimes tinkle in the wind, creating a fairy tale sound that comforts him.

Beyond his neighborhood he finds a pizza shop still open and enters. He asks himself if it is wise to waste a dollar on a slice and he decides that it is. He sits down and takes slow bites, extending the moment as long as he can. Leaning back in his chair, he examines the murals—uninspired scenes of a Venetian gondola, a Sicilian village, a Mediterranean seascape. On the radio Sinatra sings a mellow song, which he recognizes because his father would play the record in his study on weekends. He remembers entering that study as
one would enter a shrine, tiptoeing on the arabesques of the carpet then standing behind his father, waiting for him to feel his presence and turn around. Sometimes he would stand there for as long as five minutes, examining with his six-year-old eyes the paraphernalia on the walls—newspaper clippings with yellow edges, family photographs, greeting cards, and antique swords and daggers hanging like half-moons one beneath the other, from as far back as the time of Cyrus and as recently as the 1920s. The swords intrigued Parviz. The handles—some gilded, others jeweled—made him wonder if they had actually been used by soldiers of the Persian Empire or knights of medieval Europe. That the blades may have once been tainted by the blood of a man, a man now long buried, both thrilled and terrified him. At last his father would turn around and see him there, put an arm around his bony shoulders, open the top drawer of his desk, and pull out a red tin filled with pastel mint candies. To Parviz the mints were magical, and he never asked for them during the week.

 

T
HE LAST TIME
he saw his father, at the airport on that October morning, was also the first time he saw him cry. “May you be happy, my Parviz,” his father had said, his right eye infected, the veins like rivulets spilling red inside it. “Baba-jan, please make sure you see a doctor for that eye,” Parviz said. “It's getting worse.” His father forced a smile. “Yes, yes. You don't worry about me. Just take care of yourself.”

Hugging his father by the gate Parviz felt for the first time a slight curvature in his father's shoulders. “You go on ahead and map out America for us,” his father said, tapping him on the back. “Just don't chew too much gum and don't start wearing cowboy hats.” He then laughed.

On the plane he leaned his head against the oval window and tried not to cry. “They've sent you off because of the war, yes?” an old woman sitting next to him said. He nodded. The war, the draft, the revolution—all of it. “They did good,” she said. “You're the wrong age for this country now. These mullahs will use the last one of you.”

Yes, he was the wrong age for his country. But wasn't his father, also, getting to be the wrong age for this country? He thought of his bloodshot eye, of the bend in his back. As the plane finally took off, he watched the city move farther and farther from him—the houses enclosed inside brick courtyards, the miniature cars trapped under smog, and the Elburz Mountains, shrouded in ghostly white, towering over it all. He saw his father driving home, straining with his bad eye. He saw his mother by the kitchen window, looking up at the sky as though expecting to see his plane fly above, as she often did when someone she loved went on a trip. And he saw his little sister, her tongue blue from eating too many candies, color-coordinating her crayons, ready to charge a fee to anyone who wanted to borrow one.