The Collected Stories

apogee.

‘Are you going on the tour?’

He turned to look at her, surprised that she was English. She was thin and would probably not be very tall when she stood up, a woman in her thirties, without a wedding ring. In a pale face her eyes were hidden behind huge round sunglasses. Her mouth was sensuous, the lips rather thick, her hair soft and black. She was wearing a pink dress and white high-heeled sandals. Nothing about her was smart.

In turn she saw a man who seemed to her to be typically English. He was middle-aged and greying, dressed in a linen suit and carrying a linen hat that matched it. There were lines and wrinkles in his face, about the eyes especially, and the mouth. When he smiled more lines and wrinkles gathered. His skin was tanned, but with the look of skin that usually wasn’t: he’d been in Persia only a few weeks, she reckoned.

‘Yes, I’m going on the tour,’ he said. ‘They’re having trouble with the minibus.’

‘Are we the only two?’

He said he thought not. The minibus would go round the hotels collecting the people who’d bought tickets for the tour. He pointed at the notice on the wall.

She took her dark glasses off. Her eyes were her startling feature: brown, beautiful orbs, with endless depth, mysterious in her more ordinary face. Without the dark’ glasses she had an Indian look: lips, hair and eyes combined to give her that. But her voice was purely English, made uglier than it might have been by attempts to disguise a Cockney twang.

‘I’ve been writing to my mother,’ she said.

He smiled at her and nodded. She put her dark glasses on again and licked the edges of the air-mail letter- form.

‘Microbus ready,’ the boy from downstairs said. He was a smiling youth of about fifteen with black-rimmed spectacles and very white teeth. He wore a white shirt with tidily rolled-up sleeves, and brown cotton trousers. ‘Tour commence please,’ he said. ‘I am Guide Hafiz.’

He led them to the minibus. ‘You German two?’ he inquired, and when they replied that they were English he said that not many English came to Persia. ‘American,’ he said. ‘French. German people often.’

They got into the minibus. The driver turned his head to nod and smile at them. He spoke in Persian to Hafiz, and laughed.

‘He commence a joke,’ Hafiz said. ‘He wish me the best. This is the first tour I make. Excuse me, please.’ He perused leaflets and guidebooks, uneasily licking his lips.

‘My name’s Iris Smith,’ she said.

His, he revealed, was Normanton.

They drove through blue Isfahan, past domes and minarets, and tourist shops in the Avenue Chaharbagh, with blue mosaic on surfaces everywhere, and blue taxi- cabs. Trees and grass had a precious look because of the arid earth. The sky was pale with the promise of heat.

The minibus called at the Park Hotel and at the Intercontinental and the Shah Abbas, where Normanton was staying. It didn’t call at the Old Atlantic, which Iris Smith had been told at Teheran Airport was cheap and clean. It collected a French party and a German couple who were having trouble with sunburn, and two wholesome-faced American girls. Hafiz continued to speak in English, explaining that it was the only foreign language he knew. ‘Ladies-gentlemen, I am a student from Teheran,’ he announced with pride, and then confessed: ‘I do not know Isfahan well.’

The leader of the French party, a testy-looking man whom Normanton put down as a university professor, had already protested at their guide’s inability to speak French. He protested again when Hafiz said he didn’t know Isfahan well, complaining that he had been considerably deceived.

‘No, no,’ Hafiz replied. ‘That is not my fault, sir, I am poor Persian student, sir. Last night I arrive in Isfahan the first time only. It is impossible my father send me to Isfahan before.’ He smiled at the testy Frenchman. ‘So listen please, ladies-gentlemen. This morning we commence happy tour, we see many curious scenes.’ Again his smile flashed. He read in English from an Iran Air leaflet: ‘Isfahan is the showpiece of Islamic Persia, but founded at least two thousand years ago! Here we are, ladies-gentlemen, at the Chehel Sotun. This is pavilion of lyric beauty, palace of forty columns where Shah Abbas II entertain all royal guests. All please leave microbus.’

Normanton wandered alone among the forty columns of the palace. The American girls took photographs and the German couple did the same. A member of the French party operated a moving camera, although only tourists and their guides were moving. The girl called Iris Smith seemed out of place, Normanton thought, teetering on her high-heeled sandals.

‘So now Masjed-e-Shah,’ Hafiz cried, clapping his hands to collect his party together. The testy Frenchman continued to expostulate, complaining that time had been wasted in the Chehel Sotun. Hafiz smiled at him.

‘Masjed-e-Shah,’ he read from a leaflet as the minibus began again, ‘is most outstanding and impressive mosque built by Shah Abbas the Great in early seventeenth century.’

But when the minibus drew up outside the Masjed-e-Shah it was discovered that the Masjed-e-Shah was closed to tourists because of renovations. So, unfortunately, was the Sheikh Lotfollah.

‘So commence to carpet-weaving,’ Hafiz said, smiling and shaking his head at the protestations of the French professor.

The cameras moved among the carpet-weavers, women of all ages, producing at speed Isfahan carpets for export. ‘Look now at once,’ Hafiz commanded, pointing at a carpet that incorporated the features of the late President Kennedy ‘Look please on this skill, ladies-gentlemen.’

In the minibus he announced that the tour was now on its way to the Masjed-e-Jame, the Friday Mosque. This, he reported after a consultation of his leaflets, displayed Persian architecture of the ninth to the eighteenth century. ‘Oldest and largest in Isfahan,’ he read. ‘Don’t miss it! Many minarets in narrow lanes! All leave microbus, ladies-gentlemen. All return to microbus in one hour.’