Steve grinned and said, “That explains it, don’t you think?”
Kella punched him in the shoulder, and Steve laughed as he took evasive action.
After she told him about Farah’s jaunt into town, he said, “That wasn’t smart of her. You shouldn’t have let her go. Just attracting attention to herself brings attention to all of us. If this guy talks to the police, they will investigate. She told him her real name?” Steve shook his head. “That could be a deadly mistake.
“It might not mean much to the younger generation, but it certainly means something to anyone who lived under the Shah. Her father was well known. When Khomeini took over, General Khosrodad was one of the first to be executed, and it was big news.”
“I never asked, but why is she still using her father’s name anyway? I thought that she was married. Isn’t her husband in jail?”
“She took her family name back after it became clear, although the authorities won’t admit it officially, her husband is dead. She’s very proud of the Khosrodad name. She wears it in defiance or to protest his execution in spite of his loyalty to his country.”
“Well, for the remainder of our trip, she should use her husband’s name. This is not the time to be challenging the regime. How old is this guy that she met today?”
They walked toward the rows of wooden frames on which yarn was drying. “Old enough to have been in the Iraq War in the eighties. I’m sure that back in 1979 he was too young to have been up on the news,” Kella said. “In any case, it’s done. Nothing we can do now.”
“I’ll give her a Staying-Alive-101 talk. Try to get her on the right wavelength.”
Kella leaned down and felt a piece of yarn. “I wonder if this is for their own use or if it is commercial.”
Since Steve had no answer, she said, “Speaking of wavelength, we have a message. We are not to transmit messages unless absolutely essential, and never on a preset schedule. Mousavi doesn’t know where in the country we are, but, with time and effort, his people could probably find it. Receiving, however,” she told him, “is not a problem. They asked if we can make our own way to either Khorramshahr, on the way to the border with Iraq, or to the south of Shiraz, the Nayband Marine-Coastal National Park.”
Steve nodded. “That’s what we needed, an aiming point. I’ll talk to Jemshid. We can’t stay here long, even though SENTINEL insists that we’re safe. We’ll be a lot safer on the other side of the border. Mousavi only has six days until he’s supposed to parade us for the world to see on the anniversary of the embassy takeover.”
* **
Behind the long wall in front of Jemshid’s house was a small garden divided by a path that led to the copper studded front door of the house. Jemshid had taken the door from his grandfather’s house, built in the 1800s in what was then the middle of town. From the entrance, the eye had a direct view into a large internal courtyard whose luxuriant colors contrasted with the dried brown dirt of the soil around Yazd.
The refreshing gurgle of a fountain lent the garden a central focus around which the purple and reds and greens were laid out in rough symmetry. The house was arranged for the downstairs rooms to open onto the garden, including the dining room where Jemshid and his family were hosting their guests.
Steve, Kella, Farah, and their hosts were having lunch around a large table. The guests sat facing the garden. Although servants brought the food and cleared the table, Jemshid’s wife Maryam, a smiling and energetic woman in her late fifties wearing black pants and a white blouse, was up and down making sure that all was well in the kitchen.
“It is contrary to the Avestan Code of Zoroastrians to speak at the table,” she had explained at the outset. “Although ours is the oldest religion, we also realize the need to adapt. Besides, we are honored by our guests today and,” she turned to Jemshid who nodded in agreement, “it would be impolite to impose our old ways on them.”
“Where is Naurouz today?” Leila asked.
Maryam, turning to her guests said, “Naurouz is our son. He is supervising some work on the qanats. He should be back later.”
“The qanats are the underground water aqueducts that supply the city,” Jemshid explained. “The Romans built aqueducts, our ancestors built qanats. Yazd men are known for their expertise on building and maintaining them. Naurouz is an engineer and works on modernizing the qanats around Yazd. He has one hundred muqannies working for him. We have over twenty thousand qanats in Iran and...”
“Jemshid,” Maryam interrupted gently. Looking around the table, she said, “Sometimes I think that my husband really wanted to be a professor. Mr. Breton, please help yourself.”
The conversation soon turned to the exorbitant price of tomatoes as an indicator that Tehran’s misguided policies were the cause of the economic disaster in which the country found itself.
“Tomatoes,” Maryam said, “are at least twice more expensive than last year. Two times!” Her eyes large, she looked around the circle at each person. “The president is too concerned with the Holocaust, Lebanon, and the Palestinians. Our quality of life is going down. Everything is more expensive; tomatoes are just an easy example. Frankly,” she admitted easily, “that’s more important to us than all those other issues that make headlines. Too much posturing for the foreign media, not enough action to stop the decline of our living conditions. Things
