to the safe behind the oil painting hanging over the bed, blow that and empty it similarly. Sudden, swift, and violent - if there’s any opposition.
“Dimitri! Look!”
Rakoczy spun around. Coming down the road were hundreds of youths - Green Bands and mullahs at the head. At once Rakoczy roared, “Death to Khomeini!” and fired a burst into the air. The suddenness of the shots whipped everyone into a frenzy, there were shouts and countershouts, simultaneously other guns went off all over the quadrangle, and everyone began to scatter, trampling over one another in their haste, the screams beginning. Before he could stop him, he saw Ibrahim aim at the oncoming Green Bands and fire. Some men in the front rank went down, a howl of rage burst from them, and guns opened up in their direction. He dived to the ground, cursing. The torrent of bullets missed him but got Farmad and others nearby but not Ibrahim and the remaining three Tudeh leaders. He shouted at them and they all hugged the cement as panic-stricken students opened up with carbines and pistols.
Many were wounded before the big mujhadin Rakoczy had marked for execution rallied his men around him and led a charge at the Islamics and drove them back. At once others came to his aid and the retreat became a rout, a roar went through the students, and the rally became a mob.
Rakoczy grabbed Ibrahim who was just about to charge off mindlessly. “Follow me!” he ordered, half shoved Ibrahim and the others farther into the lee of the building, then, when he was sure they were with him, took to his heels in a frantic, chest-hurting retreat.
At a junction of paths in the snow-covered gardens, he stopped a moment to catch his breath. The wind was chill and night on them now. “What about Farmad?” Ibrahim gasped. “He was wounded!”
“No,” he said, “he was dying. Come on!”
Again he led the rush unerringly through the garden, along the street near the scientific faculty, across the parking lot into the next, and he did not stop till the sound of the riot was distant. There was a stitch in his side and his breathing came in great pants, tearing at him. When he could speak, he said, “Don’t worry about anything. Go back to your homes or your dormitories. Get everyone ready for the raid, tomorrow or the next day - the committee will give the order.” He hurried away into the gathering night.
AT LOCHART’S APARTMENT: 7:30 P.M. Sharazad was lying in a foam bath, her head propped on a waterproof pillow, eyes closed, her hair tied up in a towel. “Oh, Azadeh, darling,” she said drowsily, perspiration beading her forehead, “I’m so happy.”
Azadeh was also in the bath and she lay with her head at the other end, enjoying the heat and the intimacy and the sweet perfumed water and the luxury - her long hair also up in a pure white towel - the bath large and deep and comfortable for two. But there were still dark rings under her eyes, and she could not shake off the terrors of yesterday at the roadblock or in the helicopter. Outside the curtains, night had come. Gunfire echoed in the distance. Neither paid it any attention.
“I wish Erikki would come back,” Azadeh said.
“He won’t be long, there’s lots of time, darling. Dinner’s not till nine, so we’ve almost two hours to get ready.” Sharazad opened her eyes and put her hand on Azadeh’s slender thighs, enjoying the touch of her. “Don’t worry, darling Azadeh, he’ll be back soon, your redheaded giant! And don’t forget I’m spending the night with my parents so you two can run naked together all night long! Enjoy our bath, be happy, and swoon when he returns.” They laughed together. “Everything’s wonderful now, you’re safe, we’re all safe, Iran’s safe - with the Help of God the Imam has conquered and Iran’s safe and free.”
“I wish I could believe it, I wish I could believe it as you do,” Azadeh said. “I can’t explain how terrible those people near the roadblock were - it was as though I was being choked by their hate. Why should they hate us - hate me and Erikki? What had we done to them? Nothing at all and yet they hated us.”
“Don’t think about them, my dear one.” Sharazad stifled a yawn. “Leftists are all mad, claiming to be Muslim and at the same time Marxist. They’re anti-God and therefore cursed. The villagers? Villagers are uneducated as you know too well, and most of them simple. Don’t worry - that’s past, now everything is going to be better, you’ll see.”
“I hope, oh, how I hope you’re right. I don’t want it better but just as it was, normal, like it’s always been, normal again.”
“Oh, it will be.” Sharazad felt so contented, the water so silky and so warm and womblike. Ah, she thought, only three more days to be sure and then Tommy tells Father that oh, yes, of course he wants sons and daughters, and then, the next day, the great day, I should know for certain though I’m certain now. Haven’t I always been so regular? Then I can give Tommy my gift of God and he’ll be so proud. “The Imam does the Work of God. How can it be otherwise than good?”
“I don’t know, Sharazad, but never in our history have mullahs been worthy of trust - just parasites on the back of the villagers.”
“Ah, but now it’s different,” Sharazad told her, not really wanting to discuss such serious matters. “Now we have a real leader. Now he’s in control of Iran for the first time ever. Isn’t he the most pious of men, the most learned of Islam and the law? Doesn’t he do God’s work? Hasn’t he achieved the impossible, throwing out the Shah and his nasty corruption, stopping the generals from making a coup with the Americans? Father says we’re safer now than we’ve ever been.”
“Are we?” Azadeh remembered Rakoczy in the chopper and what he had said about Khomeini and stepping backward in history, and she knew he had spoken the truth, a lot of truth, and she had clawed at him, hating him, wanting him dead, for of course he was one of those who would use the simpleminded mullahs to enslave everyone else. “You want to be ruled by Islamic laws of the Prophet’s time, almost fifteen hundred years ago - enforced chador, the loss of our hard-won rights of voting, working, and being equal?”
“I don’t want to vote, or work, or be equal - how can a woman equal a man? I just want to be a good wife to Tommy, and in Iran I prefer the chador on the streets.” Delicately Sharazad covered another yawn, drowsed by the warmth. “Insha”Allah, Azadeh, darling. Of course everything will be as before but Father says more wonderful because now we possess ourselves, our land, our oil, and everything in our land. There’ll be no nasty foreign generals or politicians to disgrace us and with the evil Shah gone, we’ll all live happily ever after, you with your Erikki, me with my Tommy, and lots and lots of children. How else could it be? God is with the Imam and the Imam is with us! We’re so lucky.” She smiled at her and put her arm around her friend’s legs affectionately. “I’m so glad you’re staying with me, Azadeh. It seems such a long time since you were in Tehran.”
“Yes.” They had been friends for many years. First in Switzerland where they had met at school, up in the High Country, though Sharazad had only stayed one term, unhappy to be away from her family and Iran, then later at the university in Tehran. And now, for a little over a year, because both had married foreigners in the same company, they had become even closer, closer than sisters, helping each other adapt to foreign idiosyncrasies: “Sometimes I just don’t understand my Tommy at all, Azadeh,” Sharazad had said tearfully in the beginning. “He enjoys being alone, I mean quite alone, just him and me, the house empty, not even one servant - he even told me he likes to be alone by himself, just reading, no family around or children, no conversation or friends. Oh, sometimes it’s just awful.”
“Erikki’s just the same,” Azadeh had said. “Foreigners aren’t like us - they’re very strange. I want to spend days with friends and children and family, but Erikki doesn’t. It’s good that Erikki and Tommy work during the days - you’re luckier, Tommy’s off for two weeks at a time when you can be normal. Another thing, you know, Sharazad, it took me months to get used to sleeping in a bed an - ”
“I never could! Oh, so high off the floor, so easy to fall off, always a huge dip on his side, so you’re always uncomfortable and you wake up with an ache in your back. A bed’s so awful compared with soft quilts on beautiful carpets on the floor, so comfortable and civilized.”
“Yes. But Erikki won’t use quilts and carpets? he insists on a bed. He just won’t try it anymore - sometimes it’s such a relief when he’s away.” “Oh, we sleep correctly now, Azadeh. I stopped the nonsense of a Western bed after the first month.”
“How did you do it?”
“Oh, I’d sigh all night long and keep my poor darling awake - then I’d sleep during the day to be fresh again to sigh all night long.” Sharazad had laughed delightedly. “Seven nights and my darling collapsed, slept like a baby for the next three nights correctly, and now he always sleeps like a civilized person should - he even does so when he’s at Zagros! Why don’t you try it? I guarantee you’ll be successful, darling, particularly if you also complain just a tiny bit that the bed has caused a backache and of course you would still adore to make love but please be a little
