Rooftops of Tehran (15 page)

At dinner, Mr. Mehrbaan confirms that he was a prisoner for eighteen years. He talks about his experiences there with a great sense of dignity and pride. I’m fascinated by the effortless way in which he expresses himself. Almost two decades of imprisonment have taught him to be patient with himself, his thoughts, and the articulation of his memories. They broke his right leg several times, which is why he limps. They burned him with cigarettes, and poured salt on his wounds. They beat him every day for information about men and women he never knew.

Mr. Mehrbaan talks about the night they took him away. It was his wedding night, and the guests had just left when the SAVAK raided his house. Mrs. Mehrbaan cried and begged for mercy. This was their wedding night. Could they not wait one day? What had he done to deserve such a cruel punishment?

The crime, she was told, was too serious to be discussed.

It was revealed later, however, that Mr. Mehrbaan was corresponding with some of his comrades in the Bolshevik party in Russia. He was also accused of distributing Marxist literature among university students in Tehran. Mr. Mehrbaan asked the judge at the trial to show him the law that prohibited communication with the Russians. He also asked for evidence that his distribution of the literature in question had caused anyone any harm. The military judge denied both requests and sentenced him to life in prison. His sentence was later reduced to eighteen years. No reason was ever given for the decision.

No one knew where he was or what was happening to him for three years. Everyone was convinced that he was dead, except his mother and his bride. Then one day they were granted permission to visit him in prison. He looked weak, tired, and subdued. He had not shaved in ages, his long hair looked dirty, as if he hadn’t showered for months, and he had lost at least fifteen kilos. He begged his wife to divorce him because he was never going to get out of prison. She cried and said that she was going to wait.

“Love is more faithful than an old dog,” says Mr. Mehrbaan.

His story, and the dignity with which he speaks while recalling the darkest moments of his life, touch me. He talks about a period of time when they injected him with drugs, such as morphine, three times a day, then stopped to watch him suffer the withdrawal. He wished he were dead.

The night goes on. The men talk and the women are in the kitchen. I go to the other room with my head full of thoughts about Mr. Mehrbaan. I turn on the TV and watch
Bewitched.
Is life in America really the way it’s portrayed on these television shows? Are people so superficial? Do men really walk around in their suits at home? Are there men like Doctor and Mr. Mehrbaan in the United States, men who sacrifice their lives for the cause they believe in?
I Dream of Jeannie
and
The Six Million Dollar Man
follow
Bewitched
. I think of the character of Jeannie, a woman from the Middle East played by Barbara Eden. I look at Mrs. Mehrbaan, also a woman from the Middle East, and wonder why Americans don’t make movies about Middle Eastern women like her. Eighteen years is a long time to wait for someone, especially when there’s no hope of his release. Of course, Jeannie waited in a bottle for two thousand years before Larry Hagman found her. Why do Middle Eastern women have to wait so long for their men? I wonder if I’ll be able to live in the United States. Doctor used to say that these shows are designed to keep people preoccupied with “the irrelevant.” Their ability to entertain keeps their viewers from questioning anything, slowly but surely eroding their intelligence. He complained that these shows have caused the Americans to slip into a political coma. “They are tragically uninformed of their government’s unfair and oppressive behavior in other countries,” he always disapproved bitterly.

The Devils That Broke the Windows

It’s been over two weeks since I’ve seen Zari, and I’m beginning to feel antsy. Something inside weighs me down, something I can’t control. Up until now, I used to think I was in command of my fate, but loving Zari has changed all that. She’s captured my heart like a ruthless invader, and I’m a slave to thoughts and feelings that don’t originate from my conscious self. My mind wanders to where I don’t direct it, and I have anxiety attacks that don’t seem to have an origin. I’m dying to see Zari, to talk to her, to stare into her eyes, to sit with her under the cherry tree, to hear her talk about
Suvashun
, and to watch her soak her feet in the
hose
. I’m desperately in love, and I feel desperately guilty about it.

A few nights after the Mehrbaans’ visit to our house, my father gets a call from Mrs. Mehrbaan. She informs him that Mr. Mehrbaan has been arrested again. Four SAVAK agents showed up at three in the morning and searched their home for hours. They didn’t say what they were looking for, but they kept telling Mr. Mehrbaan that he’d be finished if they found it. She is certain that Mr. Mehrbaan did not make any contact with his old friends since his release. “Why, why must it be like this?” she wants to know. She isn’t sure she can handle the pain of separation from her husband this time. Have they not already paid for whatever mistake Mehrbaan made as a young man?

“You should have seen the look on his face,” Mrs. Mehrbaan cries out. “He was so sad, so angry, desperate, helpless. Oh, God.” She begins to bawl.

My mother talks to Mrs. Mehrbaan, too. She cries on the phone while telling her old friend to stay calm. “This must be a mistake, or maybe they are trying to scare him. He’ll be released soon. You’ll see, they’ll let him go.”

My father looks utterly frustrated. Mr. Mehrbaan has been suffering from a heart condition, and the stress of jail could be dangerous to his health. Only yesterday Dad took Mr. Mehrbaan to the hospital for an angiogram. The doctor said that Mr. Mehrbaan needed to change his diet, start regular exercise, and stop smoking. “Of course, you can forget about all that when you’re in prison,” my father says bitterly.

Dad lights a cigarette and starts to think. I sit down next to him. “I wonder if he met Doctor while in prison,” I say quietly.

Dad looks up and stares at me for a little while. I think he suddenly realizes that we’re suffering the same pain. “You should have asked him,” he says, gently.

“I didn’t want to take away from the time you had together.”

Dad puts his arm around my shoulder and pulls me toward him. “You aren’t a child anymore. You can engage in adults’ discussions. You should’ve asked him about Doctor.”

I begin to roll my sleeves up and then down. Dad reaches over and stops me. “What’s wrong?” he asks.

“I’m sorry about Mr. Mehrbaan, Dad,” I say. “It must’ve been tough being away from him all those years. I know that not seeing Ahmed or Doctor for eighteen years would probably kill me.”

“It was tough,” Dad admits.

“How did you and Mr. Mehrbaan meet?” And before he has a chance to respond I add, “And, Dad, how come all these years you never said anything about him?”

Dad shakes his head. “I don’t know if I’ve got good answers for your questions. He just disappeared from our lives. He was supposed to be locked up forever, you know. Sometimes it’s easier not to think about things you can’t do anything about.”

Dad smokes his cigarette like it’s his last one. It makes me wish I could have one, too.

“Your friendship with Ahmed reminds me so much of what Mehrbaan and I meant to each other,” Dad says. “He was my best friend for a long time.” He takes a big puff on his cigarette. “He took a big risk for me once. You know, the kind of thing I suspect you and Ahmed would do for each other.”

I’m all ears and I think Dad can tell. He says that he and Mr. Mehrbaan have been friends since high school. Their families lived in a small town called Hashtpar in northwestern Iran. After high school, the two of them were drafted into the army and served two years together in a cold, mountainous area close to the Iraqi border. At the time, my father was in love with my mother, and the idea of being separated from her for two years did not suit him well. He craved her, dreamed about her, and wished they were together. Thank God Mehrbaan was there, or he would have lost his mind. Some days, he would go through the motions of living without remembering how the day had passed. Some nights, he would wake up to find himself sweating, angry and annoyed. Of course, all of this was unbeknownst to those around him, including Mr. Mehrbaan, who knew of his situation, but didn’t know the extent of his suffering.

They were housed in a huge barracks where the men slept in two-story dormitories. There were at least ten buildings in the barracks and a total of two hundred and fifty to three hundred soldiers. Once the soldiers were in bed, they were not allowed to leave the buildings until dawn. Each soldier had night duty at least twice a month, guarding the area from nameless “intruders” who, in the forty-year history of the barracks, had never bothered to show up. The guards normally slept while on night duty, except on the nights when they knew their old corporal, a serious military man, might be around to check up on them. The punishment for those in violation of the barracks rules, whether sleeping on duty or walking around after lights out, was severe, and involved spending days, if not weeks, in the slammer.

My father’s sleepless nights, combined with the frustration of being confined to his bed in those old damp buildings where he could hear the mice eating the columns supporting the roof, became too much for him. In addition, he didn’t have much in common with the men in his squad. One soldier used to carry a piece of green cloth in his pocket that his mother had rubbed against the grave of a religious figure to keep the demons away. This soldier knew a great deal about common superstitious beliefs, and spent considerable time teaching his comrades about them. “If you accidentally point a knife at someone, stab the earth three times, or that person’s blood may drip from the tip of that knife someday,” he would say. “If you ever pour water on a cat, wash your hands three times at the same time each day for three days, or you may get a cyst on the tip of your nose.”

One night, my father decided to take a walk around the campground. He needed to be out in the open and temporarily free of the rules and regulations that seemed so absurd to him. The superstitious soldier was on guard duty that night. Without Dad knowing, the old corporal was also awake. As my father was walking, the old corporal, hiding in the dark, blew his whistle. Dad started to run, followed by the corporal and a couple of soldiers nearby. Soon other guards were coming from all directions, running with their guns and whistles and relying on flashlights that weakly illuminated the ground half a meter in front of them. The old corporal began to cuss loudly, shaking his fists in the air, brandishing his gun, and ordering the guards to capture the intruder alive because death without torture would be an unsuitably gentle punishment for a coward like him.

They formed a big circle to ensure that the intruder did not escape. “Watch the gaps between you!” the corporal screamed, over and over. “Keep your eyes open and arrest this trespasser.”

Not in their wildest dreams had the guards thought an intruder might actually invade their campground. Their serious, bent postures, nervous strides, the ambivalence with which they held their guns, and the frequency with which they looked to the left, to the right, and back again all conveyed their excitement.

The soldiers in the dormitories were up now, too; everyone was pushing for a spot at the windows.

The guards were closing in on my father. He didn’t care if he was arrested and imprisoned, but he didn’t like the idea of losing to the old corporal. In a desperate effort to buy more time, he ran up to a jeep that was parked nearby and crawled under it. Then he crawled back out just long enough to pick up a large stone and throw it through the window of a dormitory a few meters away in order to divert the soldiers’ attention.

A couple of the guards ran toward the dormitory, but the majority stayed their course and continued zeroing in on my father’s location. All hope was lost, and my father was about to crawl out from under the jeep and give himself up when a man in the distance screamed, “I’m over here, you bastards! You are a bunch of stupid fucking morons!” And with that came the sound of a window breaking a few meters behind where the corporal was standing. My father recognized Mr. Mehrbaan’s voice. His old pal had come to his rescue, and he broke into a smile as he watched the soldiers run confusedly toward the sound of Mr. Mehrbaan’s voice.

“He’s over there, you jackasses!” the old corporal screamed. “How did you let him break through the circle? You pack of idiots. You should have been exempted from serving in this man’s army! Run, run! Close in on him, don’t let him get away!”

The soldiers ran from my father’s hiding place. One even walked right by the jeep, but didn’t bother to look under it. My father could see the shadow of Mr. Mehrbaan running in the dark. He stopped as a number of soldiers began to close in on him from the other side. He ran to his left, back to his right, then disappeared. My father crawled out from underneath the jeep, picked up a stone, and aimed it at the window of a building close to him. A group of soldiers was standing by the window in their undergarments, watching what was definitely the most exciting event of the year so far. My father gestured at them to move away from the window, and they scattered. He threw the stone, and the sound of shattering glass sent a jolt through the bodies of the guards, who were sure they had the intruder trapped this time.

“Come and get me, you stupid fucking morons!” my father echoed Mr. Mehrbaan. “Didn’t you see me walking right by you? You are a bunch of blind bats! God help the country you’re trying to defend.”

The old corporal went berserk. He aimed his gun at my father’s voice and fired a shot. Everyone ducked, including the guards who were standing next to the old corporal. The bullet shattered a window on the second floor of one of the dormitories. Someone from inside the building cried out, “I’ve been shot! Blood’s running down my legs, look!”