saw a flicker of panic cross her face, but she recovered her composure rapidly.
‘Forgive me,’ she said, ‘but I think you misunderstood the question. What it means is the religion of his paternal grandfather…’ She gave Martin a frank, appraising look, then decided it was definitely worth adding, ‘or great-grandfather, or so on, as far back as necessary.’
‘Are you sure about that?’ Martin had no wish to blow the matter out of proportion, but it would be good to know whether there was an official policy defining atheists out of existence, or whether he was just facing a flustered individual who didn’t know how to handle this minor anomaly.
‘When we ask if children are Kurdish or Arabs,’ the woman replied, ‘the fact is, they are all Iranians, and we simply mean the ethnic group of their ancestors. So it is completely logical and consistent to apply the same reasoning to the question of religion.’
Martin had to admire the ingenuity of her argument. Most likely this woman had no discretion in the matter and she was simply trying to spare them all from the bureaucratic hell that would arise if the computer rejected their registration.
‘My son’s paternal ancestors were Christian,’ Martin conceded. The woman looked relieved and recorded his answer on the form.
‘Which denomination?’ she asked.
Martin honestly had no idea. ‘The Church of Saint Coltrane,’ he said. The woman started writing; when she paused halfway through he added helpfully, ‘Kaf, vav, lam-’ She looked up. ‘I know how to spell Coltrane. I was just wondering whether you meant John or Robbie.’
As they walked away from the office across a small playground, Javeed asked, ‘Why did you make that lady angry?’
‘I don’t think she was angry,’ Martin replied. ‘We just had to decide the right thing to put on the form.’
Javeed looked sceptical, but he let it drop. ‘Where’s my grandfather?’
‘My father died before you were born. And my mother too.’ Javeed flinched a little; Martin had told him this many times, but it was starting to cut a little deeper. ‘They had very happy lives, so you shouldn’t be sad for them.’
‘What about Mama’s father?’
Martin steeled himself. ‘He’s still alive. He’s living in Tehran.’ Again, this was old news, but each repetition carried new weight.
‘So why don’t we visit him?’
‘Because he’s angry with Mama.’
Javeed pulled a face, part incredulous, part anxious. ‘Still?’
‘Yes.’
‘And her mama? She’s still angry too?’
‘Yes.’ That seemed to sting even more. Martin put a hand on Javeed’s shoulder. ‘I know, it’s hard not to be sad about that, but Mama’s very brave about it, so we should be too.’
Javeed turned to Martin, suddenly tearful. ‘If you get angry with me, will you leave me alone?’
‘Ooh, ooh, ooh.’ Martin lifted him up and held him in his arms. ‘That’s never going to happen. Never ever.’ Martin carried him all the way to the car, ignoring the growing twinges in his back. ‘Come on, no more crying. Remember what I promised you today? We’re going to Uncle Omar’s shop.’
Javeed recovered instantly, all thoughts of abandonment forgotten.
As they walked from the car together Javeed tried to break free and run ahead, but Martin kept an iron grip on his hand. Ahead of them, three motorbike riders were pushing their way through the pedestrian throng, and though they never had a chance to build up much speed they were easily arrogant and inattentive enough to knock over a small child. As they passed, forcing Martin aside and almost into the gutter, he drew Javeed close to him and resisted the urge to stick his elbow into the face of the nearest rider.
Once the shop door had closed behind them he relaxed, and Javeed ran to embrace Omar gleefully. Then Omar’s son Farshid started wrestling with him, lifting him over his head and turning him upside down. Javeed screamed with delight.
Martin greeted Omar. ‘Javeed just registered for school,’ he explained.
‘Ah, so you’re a big man now? Big scholar? Big sportsman?’ Omar threw some punches at Javeed’s upside- down torso; Javeed flailed back at him, emitting strange martial arts noises from one of his computer games. Omar turned back to Martin. ‘How’s business, Martin jan?’
‘Not bad. You know Iranians; they’re never going to stop buying books. How’s the shop?’ Martin could only see half-a-dozen customers browsing the aisles, but whenever he’d been here at lunchtime the place was packed.
Omar gestured proudly at a new display of cyber-ketabha: two-hundred-sheet e-paper bundles with the look and feel of paper-backs. Each device could store a million volumes’ worth of text. ‘I already sold sixty of these this month.’ He beamed. ‘You’re right, Iranians love books.’
Martin feigned indifference and went to flip through a bin of old Blu-rays, marked down to clear. He lifted a disc out and held it up. ‘You know Vin Diesel’s making a comeback?’
‘Really?’
‘It’s called The Chronicles of Kulos. They’re shooting it right now in the Negev Desert.’
Javeed had managed to get free of Farshid and was now looking around the shop with a determined frown. ‘I promised he could choose something for less than fifty thousand tomans,’ Martin said. Omar scowled, offended. ‘Let him choose anything! You don’t have to pay.’ Martin scowled back; he didn’t doubt Omar’s generosity, but he was struggling to instil some sense of restraint in Javeed.
Javeed was staring at a big cardboard pop-out display of various spin-offs from the
LOLCat Diaries movie. The original lame tagline, ‘I CAN HAZ BLOKBUSTR?’ had been ingeniously amended by the insertion of a caret mark pointing to the word ‘GAME’; layered in front of this was a cut-out image of a dishevelled cat with its limbs splayed awkwardly, one paw on a joystick, bearing the caption ‘IM IN UR CONSOLE MESSING WITH UR WORLD’. The distributors hadn’t bothered trying to translate any of this; half the movie’s dialogue had been dubbed into Farsi, but the rest had been left as a kind of anti-lesson in English. Martin watched with a sense of resignation; having caved in once over the movie itself, he now had nobody but himself to blame.
But Javeed didn’t turn to him and inquire tweely, ‘I can haz LOLCat game?’ Apparently the attractions of a contrivedly cute animal speaking a dialect of TXT from the formative years of the current generation of DreamWorks executives had a limited half-life, even for a five-year-old. Instead Javeed announced, ‘I want to try Zendegi!’
To his credit, Omar said nothing. Martin thought it over. He’d never been in Zendegi-ye-Behtar himself, but he’d read reviews; there was some good content, and plenty that was suited to children. There was Hollywood schlock too, if you really wanted it, but it wasn’t compulsory.
He said, ‘If Uncle Omar’s got time, and there are spare machines for both of us. If not, we’ll come back another day. All right?’
Javeed caught the warning tone in the last sentence. He replied placidly, ‘Yes, Baba.’ Then he stood very still and waited for the verdict.
Omar led them upstairs. Eight of the spherical VR rigs – known rather grandly as ghal’eha, or castles – were inflated and opaque, but two were unoccupied. Martin found it a little creepy that the things blacked out when in use; it gave them an air of private peepshow booths, however innocent the actual content being conveyed. But then, it would have been even creepier to be standing inside one, blind to the world, knowing that anyone in the room outside could observe your every move. As they walked between the rows of occupied castles, Martin glanced down and saw a familiar logo on the base of one machine: a triangle with the letter S for each edge. How could he not love anything from Slightly Smart Systems?
First they had to sign on for the free trial; Omar took them to a desktop computer in a corner of the room and went through the formalities. Martin chose English and Farsi, and gave their real first names as identifiers; there was no requirement to supply a unique nickname.
‘You want to look like yourself?’ Omar inquired. ‘Or somebody else?’
Martin hesitated. Some protective instinct made him wonder if he should disguise Javeed’s appearance, but from what he’d heard that didn’t seem to be the usual practice. Omar showed Javeed a few predefined icons –
