wives - always the same ones, the loud and bigoted minority, insular, equally bored and boring with their interminable bridge parties, interminable teas - “But, darling, how can you stand anything that’s not from Fortnums or Marks and Sparks” - who preen for an invitation to the British embassy for another stuffy roast beef and Yorkshire pudding dinner or tea party with cucumber sandwiches and seedcake, all of them totally convinced everything English is the best in the world, particularly English cooking: boiled carrots, boiled cauliflower, boiled potatoes, boiled Brussels sprouts, underdone roast beef or overdone lamb as the acme of goddamn perfection….
“Oh, poor Excellency, you don’t look happy at all,” she had said softly. He had looked around and his world was different.
“What’s the matter?” she asked, a tiny frown on her oval face. “Sorry,” he gasped, for a moment disoriented by her, his heart thumping and a tightness in his throat he had never experienced before. “I thought you were an apparition, something out of A Thousand and One Nights, a magical - ” He stopped with an effort, feeling like a fool. “Sorry, I was a million miles away. My name’s Lochart, Tom Lochart.”
“Yes, I know,” she said laughing. Tawny brown twinkling eyes. Her lips had a sheen to them, teeth very white, long wavy dark hair, and her skin was the color of Iranian earth, olive brown. She wore white silk and some perfume and she barely came up to his chin. “You’re the nasty training captain who gives my poor cousin Karim roastings at least three times a day.” “What?” Lochart found it difficult to concentrate. “Who?” “There.” She pointed across the room. The young man was in civilians, smiling at them, and Lochart had not recognized him as one of his students. Very handsome, dark curly hair, dark eyes, and well built. “My special cousin, Captain Karim Peshadi, of the Imperial Iranian Air Force.” She looked back at Lochart, long black lashes. And again his heart turned over. Get hold of yourself, for crissake! What the hell’s wrong with you? “I, er, well, I try not to roast them unless, er, unless they deserve it - it’s only to save their lives.” He was trying to remember Captain Peshadi’s record but couldn’t and in desperation switched to Farsi. “But, Highness, if you’ll give me the exquisite honor, if you’ll stay and talk to me and favor me by telling me your name I promise I will…” He groped for the right word, couldn’t find it and substituted, “I will be your slave forever and of course I will have to pass His Excellency your cousin one hundred percent before all others!”
She clapped her hands delightedly, “Oh, revered Excellency,” she replied in Farsi, “His Excellency my cousin did not tell me you spoke our language! Oh how beautiful the words sound when you say them….”
Almost outside himself, Lochart listened to her extravagant compliments that were normal in Farsi and heard himself replying likewise - blessing Scragger who had told him so many years ago when he had joined Sheik Aviation, after he had left the RAF in ‘65: “If you want to fly with us, cobber, you’d better learn Farsi ‘cause I’m not about to!” For the first time realizing how perfect it was a language of love, of innuendo.
“My name is Sharazad Paknouri, Excellency.”
“Then Her Highness is from the Thousand and One Nights after all.”
“Ah, but I cannot tell you a story even if you swear you will cut off my head!” Then in English, with a laugh, “I was bottom of my class in stories.” “Impossible!” he said at once.
“Are you always so gallant, Captain Lochart?” Her eyes were teasing him. In Farsi he heard himself say, “Only to the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.”
Color came into her face. She dropped her eyes, and he thought, aghast, he had destroyed everything, but when she looked up at him again her eyes were smiling. “Thank you. You make an old married lady happ - ” His glass slipped out of his hand and he cursed and picked it up and apologized but no one had noticed except her. “You’re married?” burst out of him, for it hadn’t occurred to him, but of course she would be married and anyway he was married with a daughter of eight and what right did he have to get upset? For God’s sake you’re acting like a lunatic. You’ve gone mad. Then his ears and eyes focused. “What? What did you say?” he asked.
“Oh. I said that I was married - well, I still am for another three weeks and two days and that my married name is Paknouri. My family name is Bakravan …” She stopped a waiter and chose a glass of wine and gave it to him. Again the frown. “Are you sure you’re all right, Captain?” “Oh, yes, oh, yes,” he said quickly, “You were saying? Paknouri?” “Yes. His Highness, Emir Paknouri, was so old, fifty, a friend of my father, and Father and Mother thought it would be good for me to marry him and he consented though I’m skinny, not plump and desirable, however much I eat. As God wants.” She shrugged then beamed and the world seemed to light up for him. “Of course I agreed, but only on condition that if I didn’t like being married after two years then our marriage would cease. So on my seventeenth birthday we were married and I didn’t like it at once and cried and cried and then, as there were no children after two years, or the extra year I agreed to, my husband, my Master, gratefully agreed to divorce me and now he is thankfully ready to remarry and I am free but unfortunately so old an - ”
“You’re not old, you’re as youn - ”
“Oh, yes, old!” Her eyes were dancing and she pretended to be sad but he could see that she was not and he watched himself talking to her, laughing with her, then beckoning her cousin to join them, petrified that this was the real man of her choice, chatting with them, learning that her father was an important b’azaari, that her family was large and cosmopolitan and well connected, that her mother was sick, that she had sisters and brothers and had been to school in Switzerland but only for half a year because she missed Iran and her family so much. Then eating dinner with them, genial and happy, even with General Valik, and it was the best time he had ever had. When he had left that night he had not gone home but had taken the road up to Darband in the mountains where there were many caf6s in beautiful gardens on the banks of the stream with chairs and tables and sumptuously carpeted divans where you could rest or eat or sleep, some of them esplanaded out over the stream so the water chattered and gurgled below you. And he lay there, looking up at the stars, knowing that he was changed, knowing he’d gone mad but that he would scale any hurdle, endure any hardship, to marry her.
And he had - though the way had been cruel and many times he had cried out in despair.
“What are you thinking about, Tommy?” she asked now, sitting at his feet on the lovely carpet that had been a wedding gift from General Valik. “You,” he said, loving her, his cares banished by her tenderness. The living room was warm like all of the huge apartment, and delicately lit, the curtains drawn and many rugs and lounging cushions scattered around, the wood fire burning merrily. “But then I think about you all the time!” She clapped her hands. “That’s wonderful.” “I’m not going to Zagros tomorrow but the next day.” “Oh, that’s even more wonderful!” She hugged his knees and rested her head against them. “Wonderful!”
He caressed her hair. “You said you had an interesting day?” “Yes, yesterday and today. I’ve been to your embassy and got the passport, just as you told me to do, th - ” “Great. Now you’re Canadian.”
“No, Beloved, Iranian - you’re Canadian. Listen, the best part is that I went to Doshan Tappeh,” she said proudly.
“Christ,” he said, not meaning to, for she did not like to hear him blaspheme. “Sorry, but that’s - that was crazy, there’s fighting going on there, you’re crazy to put yourself in such danger.”
“Oh, I wasn’t in the fighting,” she told him gaily, and got up and rushed out saying, “I’ll show you.” In a moment she was back in the doorway. She had put on a gray chador that covered her from head to toe and most of her face, and he hated it. “Ah, Master,” she said in Farsi, pirouetting in front of him. “You have no need to fear over me. God watches over me, and the Prophet whose Name be praised.” She stopped, seeing his expression. “What’s the matter?” she asked in English.
“I - I’ve never seen you in chador. It’s - it doesn’t suit you.” “Oh, I know it’s ugly and I’d never wear it at home, but in the street I feel better wearing one, Tommy. All those awful stares from men. It’s time we all went back to wearing them - and the veil.”
He was shocked. “What about all the freedoms you’ve won, freedom to vote, to take off the veil, freedom to go where you please, marry whom you please, no longer the chattel that you used to be? If you agree to the chador, you’ll lose everything else.”
“Perhaps, perhaps not, Tommy.” She was glad that they were talking in English so she could argue a little, unthinkable with an Iranian husband. And so glad that she had chosen to marry this man who, unbelievably, allowed her an opinion, and even more astonishing, allowed her to express it openly to him. This wine of freedom is very heady, she thought, very difficult, very dangerous for a woman to drink - like nectar in the Garden of Paradise. “When Reza Shah took the veil from our faces,” she said, “he should also have taken the obsession from the minds of men. You don’t go to market, Tommy, or ride in a car, not as a woman. You’ve no idea what it’s like. Men on the streets, in the bazaar, in the bank, everywhere. They’re all the same. You can see the same thoughts, the same obsession, in all of them - thoughts about me which only you should have.” She took off the chador, put it neatly on a chair, and sat down at his feet again. “From today on I will wear it on the street, like my mother and hers before me, not because of Khomeini, God protect him, but for you, my beloved husband.” She kissed him lightly and sat at
