the bank accounts, the debtors’ paper - and all the skeletons. You don’t want us to have equality and the vote because we’d easily work you into the joub and take the best jobs.
The rich lamb horisht and crisped golden rice was delicious, fragrantly spiced just as he liked, and he ate with enjoyment. Mustn’t eat too much, he told himself. I don’t want to get too tired before little Yasmin this afternoon. I never realized how succulent a zinaat could be, or lips so grasping. If she gets with child then I shall marry her and Zarah can rot. He glanced at his wife. Immediately she stopped eating, smiled at him, and gave him a napkin to take the grease and dribbles of soup from his beard. “Thank you,” he said politely and once more concentrated on his plate. After I’ve had Yasmin, he was thinking, after her I can sleep an hour and then back to work. I wish that dog Kia was back, we’ve much to talk about, much to plan. And Sharazad will ha - “Meshang, dearest, did you hear the rumor the generals have decided to launch their coup,” Zarah asked, “and that the army’s ready to take over?” “Of course, it’s all over the bazaar.” Meshang felt a twinge of anxiety. He had hedged as best he could in case it was true. “The son of Mohammed the goldsmith swears his cousin who is a telephone operator at army headquarters overheard one of the generals saying they’ve waited to give an American task force time to get in range, and it’ll be supported by an airborne landing.” Both women were shocked. “Parachutists! Then we should leave at once, Meshang,” Zarah said. “It won’t be safe in Tehran, we’d better go to our house in the Caspian and wait for the war to end. When could you leave? I’ll start packing immed - ”
“What house on the Caspian! We don’t have any house on the Caspian!” Meshang said irritably. “Wasn’t it confiscated along with all our other property that we worked generations to acquire? God curse the thieves after all we’ve done for the revolution and for mullahs over the generations?” He was red in the face. A dribble of horisht went into his beard. “And now…” “Do forgive me, you’re right, dearest Meshang, you’re right as usual. Do forgive me, I spoke without thinking. You’re right as usual but if it pleases you we could go and stay with my uncle Agha Madri, they have a spare villa on the coast, we could take that and we could leave tomorr - ” “Tomorrow? Don’t be ridiculous! Do you think I won’t have enough warning?” Meshang wiped his beard, somewhat mollified by her abject apology, and Sharazad thought how fortunate she had been with her two husbands who had never mistreated her or shouted at her. I wonder how Tommy’s getting on at Kowiss or wherever he is. Poor Tommy, as if I could leave my home and family and go into exile forever.
“Of course we bazaaris will have warning,” Meshang said again. “We’re not empty-headed fools.”
“Yes, yes, of course, dear Meshang,” Zarah said soothingly. “I’m sorry, I only meant I was worried for your safety and wanted to be prepared.” However foul he is, she thought, her insides fluttering, he’s our only defense against the mullahs and their equally vile Green Band thugs. “Do you believe the coup will happen?”
“Insha”Allah,” he said and belched. Either way I’ll be prepared, with the Help of God. Either way, whoever wins, they’ll still need us bazaaris, they always have and always will - we can be as modem as any foreigners, and smarter, some of us can be, certainly me. Son of a dog Paknouri, may he and his fathers be in hell for endangering us! The Caspian! Her uncle Madri’s a good idea, the perfect idea. I would have thought of it myself in a moment. Zarah may be used up and her zinaat as dry as summer’s dust, but she’s a good mother and her council - if you forget her foul humor - is always wise. “Another rumor’s that our glorious ex-Prime Minister Bakhtiar is still in hiding in Tehran, under the protection and roof of his old friend and colleague, Prime Minister Bazargan.” Zarah gasped. “If the Green Bands catch him there…” “Bazargan’s useless. Pity. No one obeys him anymore, or even listens to him. The Revolutionary Komiteh would execute both of them if they’re caught.”
Sharazad was trembling. “Jari said there was a rumor in the market this morning that Excellency Bazargan has resigned already.”
“That’s not true,” Meshang said shortly, passing on another rumor as though it were private knowledge. “My friend close to Bazargan told me he offered Khomeini his resignation but the Imam refused it, telling him to stay where he was.” He held out his plate for Zarah to give him some more. “That’s enough horisht, a little more rice.”
She gave him the crisped part and he began to eat again, almost replete. The most interesting rumor today, whispered in enormous secrecy from ear to ear, was that the Imam was near death, either from natural causes or poisoned by Communist Tudeh agitators or mujhadin or CIA and, even worse, that Soviet legions were waiting just over the border ready to march into Azerbaijan again, and on to Tehran the moment he was dead.
Nothing but death and disaster’re ahead if that’s true, he thought. No, that won’t happen, can’t happen. The Americans will never let the Soviets conquer us, they can’t allow them to take control of Hormuz - even Carter will see that! No. Let’s just hope the first part’s true - that the Imam is going to Paradise quickly. “As God wants,” he said piously, waved the servants away, and when they were alone he turned his full attention onto his sister. “Sharazad, your divorce is all arranged, but for the formalities.” “Oh,” she said, at once on guard, hating her brother for disturbing her calm, sending her brain into overdrive: I don’t want to divorce, Meshang could easily have given us money from all the Swiss accounts and not been so nasty to my Tommy and then we could have gone - don’t be silly, you couldn’t leave without papers and exile yourself and Tommy left you, it was his decision. Yes, but Tommy said it would be for a month, didn’t he, that he’d wait for a month? In a month so many things can happen.
“Your divorce presents no problem. Nor your remarriage.”
She gaped at him, speechless.
“Yes, I’ve agreed to a dowry, much more than I expected for…” He was going to say for a twice-divorced woman carrying an Infidel’s child, but she was his sister and it was a great match, so he did not. “The marriage will be next week and he’s admired you for years. Excellency Farazan.” For a moment both women could hardly believe their ears. Sharazad felt a sudden flush, disoriented even more. Keyvan Farazan was from a rich bazaari family, twenty-eight, handsome, recently back from Cambridge University, and they had been friends all of her life. “But… I thought Keyvan’s going to be ma - ”
“Not Keyvan,” Meshang said, irritated by her stupidity. “Everyone knows Keyvan’s about to be betrothed. Daranoush! Excellency Daranoush Farazan.” Sharazad was transfixed. Zarah gasped and tried to cover her lapse. Daranoush was the father, recently widowed of his second wife who had died in childbirth like his first, a very wealthy man who owned the monopoly for the collection of waste in the whole bazaar area. “It’s… it’s not possible,” she muttered.
“Oh, yes it is,” Meshang said, almost glowing with pleasure, totally misreading her. “I never believed it myself when he broached the idea after hearing about your divorce. With his riches and connections, together we become the most powerful conglomerate in the bazaar, togeth - ” Sharazad burst out, “But he’s loathsome and small and old, old and bald and ugly and he likes boys, and everyone knows he’s aped - ”
“And everyone knows you’re twice divorced, used, you’re with child by a foreigner,” Meshang exploded, “that you go on marches and disobey, your head’s filled with Western nonsense and you’re stupid!” He knocked over some of the plates in his fury. “Don’t you understand what I’ve done for you? He’s one of the richest men in the bazaar, I persuaded him to accept you - you’re redeemed and now you - ”
“But, Meshang, ha - ”
“Don’t you understand, you ungrateful bitch,” he bellowed, “he’s even agreed to adopt your child! By all the Names of God, what more do you want?” Meshang was almost purple, quivering with rage, his fist bunched, shaking it in Sharazad’s face, Zarah staring at her and then him, aghast at his fury as he ranted on.
Sharazad heard nothing, saw nothing, except what Meshang had decreed for her: the rest of her life joined to that little man, the butt of a thousand bazaari jokes, who stank perpetually of urine, fertilizing her once a year to bear and live and bear again until she died in childbirth or because of it - like his other two wives. Nine children from the first, seven from the second. She was doomed. Nothing she could do. Princess Night Soil until she died.
Nothing.
Nothing except I could die now, not by suicide, for then I’m forbidden Paradise and condemned to hell. Not suicide. Never. Never suicide but death doing God’s work, death with God’s name on my lips. What?
Chapter 64
KOWISS BASE: 1:47 P.M. Colonel Changiz, the mullah Hussain, and some Green Bands jumped out of their car. The Green Bands spread out over the base searching while the colonel and Hussain hurried into the office building. In the office the two remaining clerks were in shock at the suddenness of the colonel’s arrival. “Yes… yes, Excellency?”
“Where is everyone?” Changiz shouted. “Eh?”
“God knows we don’t know anything, Excellency Colonel, except Excellency Captain Ayre is gone with spares to Rig Abu Sal and Excellency Captain McIver with Excellency Minister Kia to Tehran and Excellency Captain Lochart went to search for the incoming 212s an - ”
