children?” “In a year or two.” Azadeh kept her voice calm as she told the same lie she had told so many times already. But she was deeply afraid that she was barren, for she had used no contraceptives since she was married and had wished, with all her heart, to have Erikki’s child from the beginning. Always the same nightmare welling up: that the abortion had taken away any chance of children as much as the German doctor had tried to reassure her. How could I have been so stupid?
So easy. I was in love. I was just seventeen and I was in love, oh, how deeply in love. Not like with Erikki, for whom I will give my life gladly. With Erikki it is true and forever and kind and passionate and safe. With my Johnny Brighteyes it was dreamlike.
Ah, I wonder where you are now, what you’re doing, you so tall and fair with your blue-gray eyes and oh, so British. Whom did you marry? How many hearts did you break like you broke mine, my darling?
That summer he was at school in Rougemont - the village next to where she was at finishing school - ostensibly to learn French. It was after Sharazad had left. She had met him at the Sonnenhof, basking in the sun, overlooking all the beauty of Gstaad in its bowl of mountains. He was nineteen then, she three days seventeen, and all that summer long they had wandered the High Country - so beautiful, so beautiful - up in the mountains and the forests, swimming in streams, playing, loving, ever more adventurous, up above the clouds.
More clouds than I care to think of, she told herself dreamily, my head in the clouds that summer, knowing about men and life, but not knowing. Then in the fall him saying, “Sorry, but I must go now, go back to university but I’ll be back for Christmas.” Never coming back. And long before Christmas finding out. All the anguish and terror where there should have been only happiness. Petrified that the school would find out, for then her parents would have to be informed. Against the law to have an abortion in Switzerland without parents’ consent - so going over the border to Germany where the act was possible, somehow finding the kindly doctor who had assured her and reassured her. Having no pain, no trouble, none - just a little difficulty borrowing the money. Still loving Johnny. Then the next year, school finished, everything secret, coming home to Tabriz. Stepmother finding out somehow - I’m sure Najoud, my stepsister, betrayed me, wasn’t it she who lent me the money? Then Father knowing. Kept like a spiked butterfly for a year. Then forgiveness, a peace - a form of peace. Begging for university in Tehran. “I agree, providing you swear by God, no affairs, absolute obedience, and you marry only whom I choose,” the Khan had said.
Top of her class. Then begging for the Teaching Corps, any excuse to get out of the palace. “I agree, but only on our lands. We’ve more than enough villages for you to look after,” he had said.
Many men of Tabriz wanting to marry her but her father refusing them, ashamed of her. Then Erikki.
“And when this foreigner, this… this impoverished, vulgar, ill-mannered, spirit-worshiping monster who can’t speak a word of Farsi or Turkish, who knows nothing of our customs or history or how to act in civilized society, whose only talent is that he can drink enormous quantities of vodka and fly a helicopter - when he finds out you’re not a virgin, that you’re soiled, spoiled, and perhaps ruined inside forever?”
“I’ve already told him, Father,” she had said through her tears. “Also that without your permission I cannot marry.”
Then the miracle of the attack on the palace and Father almost killed, Erikki like an avenging warrior from the ancient storybooks. Permission to marry, another miracle. Erikki understanding, another miracle. But as yet no child. Old Dr. Nutt says I’m perfect and normal and to be patient. With the Help of God soon I will have a son, and this time there will be only happiness, like with Sharazad, so beautiful with her lovely face and breasts and flanks, hair like silk and skin like silk.
She felt the smoothness of her friend beneath her fingers and it pleased her greatly. Absently she began to caress her, letting herself drift in the warmth and tenderness. We’re blessed to be women, she thought, able to bathe together and sleep together, to kiss and touch and love without guilt. “Ah, Sharazad,” she murmured, surrendering too, “how I love your touch.”
IN THE OLD CITY: 7:52 P.M. The man hurried across the snow-covered square near the ancient Mehrid mosque and went through the main gate of the roofed bazaar, out of the freezing cold into the warm, crowded, familiar semidarkness. He was in his fifties, corpulent, panting in his haste, his Astrakhan hat askew, his clothes expensive. A heavily laden donkey blocked his way in the narrow alley and he cursed, stood back to let the animal and its owner squeeze past, then hurried on again, turned left into a passage, then into the Street of the Clothes Sellers.
Take your time, he told himself over and over, his chest hurting and his limbs hurting. You’re safe now, slow down. But his terror overcame his mind and, still in panic, he scuttled on to vanish in the vast labyrinth. In his wake, a few minutes behind him, a group of armed Green Bands followed. They did not hurry. Ahead, the narrow street of the rice shops was blocked with bigger crowds than usual, all vying for the small amount for sale. He stopped for a moment and wiped his brow, then went on again. The bazaar was like a honeycomb, teeming with life, with hundreds of dirt lanes, alleys, and passages, lined on both sides with dimly lit open-fronted shops - some two- storied - and booths and cubbyholes, some barely more than niches scooped out of the walls, for goods or services of all kinds - from foodstuffs to foreign watches, from butchers to bullion, from moneylenders to munitions dealers - all waiting for a customer even though there was not much to sell or to do. Above the noise and clatter and bargaining the high-vaulted ceiling had skylights for ventilation and to let light in during the day. The air was heavy with the special smell of the bazaar - smells of smoke and rancid cooking fat, rotting fruit and roasting meat, food, spices, and urine and dung and dust and gasoline, honey and dates and offal, all mixed with the smells of bodies and the sweat of the multitude who were born, lived, and died here.
People of all ages and all kinds crammed the byways - Tehranis, Turkomans, Kurds, Kash’kai, Armenians and Arabs, Lebanese and Levantines - but the man paid no attention to them or to the constant entreaties to stop and buy, he just shoved and twisted his way through the crowds, darted across his own street of goldsmiths, down that of the spice sellers, the jewelry makers, onward ever deeper into the mze, his hair under his Astrakhan hat matted with sweat, his face florid. Two shopkeepers who noticed him laughed, one to another: “By God, I’ve never seen old Paknouri waddle so fast before - that old dog must be on his way to collect a ten-rial debt.”
“More likely Miser Paknouri’s got a succulent tribesboy waiting on a carpet, the lad’s bum winking in the air!”
Their banter died quickly as the armed Green Bands passed. When they were safely out of sight, someone muttered, “What do those young motherless dogs want here?”
“They’re looking for someone. It must be that. May their fathers burn! Didn’t you hear they’ve been arresting folk all day?”
“Arresting people? What are they doing with them?”
“Putting them in jail. They’ve possession of jails now - didn’t you hear they broke down the door of Evin Jail and set everyone free and locked up the jailers and now run it. They’ve set up their own firing squads and courts, I heard, and shot lots of generals and police. And there’s a riot going on right now - at the university.”
“God protect us! My son Farmad’s at a rally there, the young fool! I told him not to go tonight.”
Jared Bakravan, Sharazad’s father, was in his upper-story, private inner room over the open-fronted shop in the Street of the Moneylenders that had been in his family for five generations and was in one of the best positions. His specialty was banking and financing. He was seated on thick pile carpets, drinking tea with his old friend, Ali Kia, who had managed to be appointed an official in the Bazargan government. Bakravan’s eldest son, Meshang, sat just behind him, listening and learning - a good-looking cleanshaven man in his thirties, inclined to comfortable corpulence. Ali Kia was cleanshaven also, with glasses, Bakravan white-bearded and heavy. Both were in the sixties and had known each other most of their lives. “And how will the loan be repaid, over what time period?” Bakravan asked. “Out of oil revenues, as always,” Kia said patiently, “just as the Shah would have done, the time period over five years, at the usual one percent per month. My friend, Mehdi, Mehdi Bazargan, says Parliament will guarantee the loan the moment it meets.” He smiled and added, exaggerating slightly, “As I’m not only in Mehdi’s cabinet but also in his inner cabinet as well, I can personally watch over the legislation. Of course you know how important the loan is, and equally important to the bazaar.”
“Of course.” Bakravan tugged at his beard to prevent himself guffawing. Poor Ali, he thought, just as pompous as ever! “It’s certainly not my place to mention it, old friend, but some of the bazaaris have asked me what about the millions in bullion already advanced to support the revolution? Advanced to the fund for Ayatollah Khomeini - may God protect him,” he added politely, in his heart thinking: May God remove him from us quickly now that we’ve won, before he and his rapacious, blinkered, parasitical mullahs do too much damage. As for you, Ali, old friend, bender of the truth, exaggerater of your own importance, you may be my oldest friend, but if you think I’d
