“Oh, Tommy,” she continued in the same rush, feeling his arms tighten even more, “will you marry me, please please please?” “But we are mar - ”
“Say it, oh, please, please say it!” She looked up and saw he was still pale and smiling only a very little but that was enough for the moment, and she heard him say, Of course I’ll marry you. “No, say it properly, I marry you, Sharazad Bakravan. I marry you I marry you I marry you,” then hearing him say it and that made everything perfect. “Perfect,” she burst out and hugged him back, then pushed away and ran over to the mirror to repair her makeup. She caught sight of Lochart in the mirror, his face so severe, unsettled. “What is it?”
“You’re sure, sure about the child?”
She laughed. “Oh, I’m sure, but the doctor needs proof, husbands need proof. Isn’t it wonderful?”
“Yes … yes, it is.” He put his hands on her shoulders. “I love you!” In her head she heard the other I love you that had been said with such passion and longing, and she thought how strange that though her husband’s love was sure and proven, Ibrahim’s was not - yet Ibrahim’s was without reservation whereas, even after her wonderful news, her husband frowned at her.
“The year and a day have gone, Tommy, the year and a day you wanted,” she said gently and got up from the dressing table, put her hands around his neck, smiling up at him, knowing that it was up to her to help him: “Foreigners aren’t like us, Princess,” Jari had said, “their reactions are different, training different, but don’t worry, just be your own delightful self and he will be clay in your hands….” Tommy‘11 be the best father ever, she promised herself, irrepressibly happy that she had not melted this afternoon, that she had made her announcement, and now they would live happily ever after. “We will, Tommy, won’t we?”
“What?”
“Live happily ever after.”
For a moment her joy obliterated his misery about Karim Peshadi and about what to do and how to do it. He caught her up in his arms and sat in the deep chair, cradling her. “Oh, yes. Oh, yes, we will. There’s so much to talk ab - ” Jari’s knock on the door interrupted him.
“Come in, Jari.”
“Please excuse me, Excellency, but His Excellency Meshang and Her Highness have arrived and are waiting to have the pleasure of seeing you both when convenient.”
“Tell His Excellency we’ll be there as soon as we’ve changed.” Lochart did not notice Jari’s relief as Sharazad nodded and beamed at her. “I’ll run your bath, Highness,” Jari said and went into the bathroom. “Isn’t it wonderful about Her Highness, Excellency? Oh, many congratulations, Excellency, many congratulations…”
“Thank you, Jari,” Lochart said, not listening to her, thinking about the child to be, and Sharazad, lost in worry and happiness. So complicated now, so difficult.
“Not difficult,” Meshang said after dinner.
Conversation had been boring with Meshang dominating it as he always did now that he was head of the household, Sharazad and Zarah hardly talking, Lochart saying little - no point in mentioning Zagros as Meshang had always been totally disinterested in his opinions or what he did. Twice he had almost blurted out about Karim - no reason to tell them yet, he had thought, hiding his despair. Why be the bearer of bad tidings?
“You don’t find life in Tehran difficult now?” he said. Meshang had been moaning about all the new regulations implanted on the bazaar. “Life is always difficult,” Meshang said, “but if you’re Iranian, a trained bazaari, with care and understanding, with hard work and logic, even the Revolutionary Komiteh can be curbed - we’ve always curbed tax collectors and overloads, shahs, commissars, or Yankee and British pashas.” “I’m glad to hear it, very glad.”
“And I’m very glad you’re back, I’ve been wanting to talk to you,” Meshang said. “My sister has told you about the child to be?”
“Yes, yes, she has. Isn’t it wonderful?”
“Yes, yes, it is. God be praised. What are your plans?”
“How do you mean?”
“Where are you going to live? How are you going to pay for everything now?” The silence was vast. “We’ll manage,” Lochart began. “I int - ” “I don’t see how you can, logically. I’ve been going through last year’s bills an - ” Meshang stopped as Zarah got up.
“I don’t think this is a good time to talk about bills,” she said, her face suddenly white, Sharazad’s equally so.
“Well, I do,” Meshang said harshly. “How’s my sister going to survive? Sit down, Zarah, and listen! Sit down! And when I say you will not go on a protest march or anything else in future you will obey or I’ll whip you! Sit down!” Zarah obeyed, shocked at his bad manners and violence. Sharazad was stunned, her world collapsing. She saw her brother turn on Lochart. “Now, Captain, your bills for the last year, the bills paid by my father, not counting the ones still owing and due, are substantially more than your salary. Is that true?”
Sharazad’s face was burning with shame and anger and before Lochart could answer she said quickly in her most honeyed voice, “Darling Meshang, you’re quite right to be concerned about us but the apar - ”
“Kindly keep quiet! I have to ask your husband, not you, it’s his problem, not yours. Well, Cap - ”
“But darling Mesh - ”
“Keep quiet! Well, Captain, is it true or isn’t it?”
“Yes, it’s true,” Lochart replied, desperately seeking a way out of the abyss. “But you’ll remember His Excellency gave me the apartment, in fact the building, and the other rents paid the bills and the rest was for an allowance to give to Sharazad for which I was eternally grateful. As to the future, I’ll take care of Sharazad, of course I will.”
“With what? I’ve read your divorce settlement and it’s clear that with the payments you make to your previous wife and child there’s little chance you can keep my sister out of penury.”
Lochart was choked with rage. Sharazad shifted in her chair and Lochart saw her fear and dominated his urge to smash Meshang into the table. “It’s all right, Sharazad. Your brother has the right to ask. That’s fair, he has the right.” He read the smugness under the etched handsome face and knew that the fight was joined. “We’ll manage, Meshang, I’ll manage. Our apartment, it won’t be commandeered forever, or we can take another. We’ll m - ” “There is no apartment, or building. It burned down on Saturday. It’s all gone, everything.”
They gaped at him, Sharazad the most shocked. “Oh, Meshang, you’re sure? Why didn’t you tell me? Wh - ”
“Is your property so abundant you don’t check it from time to time? It’s gone, all of it!”
“Oh, Christ!” Lochart muttered.
“Better you don’t blaspheme,” Meshang said, finding it hard not to gloat openly. “So there’s no apartment, no building, nothing left. Insha’Allah. Now, now how do you intend to pay your bills?”
“Insurance!” Lochart burst out. “There’s got to be in - ” A bellow of laughter drowned him, Sharazad knocked over a glass of water that no one noticed. “You think insurance will be paid?” Meshang jeered. “Now? Even if there was any? You’ve taken leave of all your senses, there is no insurance, there never was. So, Captain: many debts, no money, no capital, no building - not that it was even legally yours, merely a face-saving way my father arranged to provide you with the means to look after Sharazad.” He picked up a piece of halvah and popped it into his mouth. “So what do you propose?”
“I’ll manage.”
“How, please tell me - and Sharazad, of course, she has the right, the legal right to know. How?”
Sharazad muttered, “I’ve jewelry, Tommy, I can sell that.” Cruelly Meshang left the words hanging in the air over the table, delighted that Lochart was at bay, humiliated, stripped naked. Filthy Infidel! If it wasn’t for the Locharts in our world, the rapacious foreigners, exploiters of Iran, we’d be free of Khomeini and his mullahs, my father would still be alive, Sharazad married properly. “Well?”
“What do you suggest?” Lochart said, no way out of the trap. “What do you suggest?”
“I don’t know.”
“Meanwhile you’ve no house, very substantial bills, and soon you’ll be jobless - I doubt if your company will be allowed to operate here very much longer; quite correctly foreign companies are persona non grata.” Meshang was delighted that he had remembered the Latin phrase, “no longer needed, wanted, or necessary.”
“If that happens I’ll resign and apply to fly choppers for Iranian companies. They’ll need pilots immediately. I can speak Farsi, I’m an expert pilot and trainer. Khomeini… the Imam wants oil production brought back to normal immediately, so of course they’ll need trained pilots.” Meshang laughed to himself. Yesterday Minister Ali Kia had
