Camelia (11 page)

He smirked. “Is the Club for Creative Literature building good?”

Was he making fun of me? I knew he wanted to hear my voice again on the outside, to see my attitude toward him after I'd been released. And I knew both of us couldn't wait to face each other for the first time, to look into each other's eyes. My desire mixed with my fear. I was afraid of what the future held, of how far and where
I could go with this man, and how I could control the situation. But though I felt these fears, I didn't want to consider them. I pushed them away.

“At the club, come to the guard post and say that you are Khanum Zarafshan. Keep your face covered tightly. They will show you the way. Good-bye. Be a smart girl, and when you're out of here, always think about that blindfold.”

It was the building where I had spent all my teenage years . . . The office of the literature teachers . . . Our poetry readings . . . How was it possible that this was the secret location of the Ministry of Intelligence?

 

The taxi I had called stood waiting. The girl that looked at me from the mirror today was not the girl I had been yesterday. It was a new face, but I did not want it. I took one last look at myself, then took a deep breath, and tucked the chador in my bag. I couldn't go out with a black chador in front of my neighbors. Drowning in perfume, I got into the Peykan. At Khiaban-e Vozara, took the chador out and muttered an explanation to the driver—“The hassle of government offices”—and put it on so tightly that only my eyes peeked out. I shuddered at the idea of running into any of the fine poets who had been my literature teachers—Agha-ye Sha'abani or Agha-ye Ebrahimi. If I met their eyes, I wouldn't be able to keep up my performance.

I crossed the avenue and stopped in front of the guard post. “My name is Zarafshan. I have a one o'clock appointment.” With total surprise I realized that even the guards were expecting me. They directed me toward the building and the security office inside, but I could have found my way with my eyes closed; I had walked this path hundreds of times on my way to classes. But what was I doing here today? In the security office, a young man with a beard scanned my face, as I kept my head down and wondered at his plastic
sandals. I could only think of the lost pleasant evenings when I'd crossed this hall before.

“Please go in.”

I closed the door behind me. It was heavily padded with leather on both sides, so no sound could escape or enter. My heart was beating furiously. He was standing facing the window with his back to me. I said, “
Salaam
,” and he turned.

I had uncovered my face. The chador was still on my head, and I was wearing a black silk head scarf and an ash-colored overcoat, the top two buttons of which I had undone. Without a word he stared at me in shock. Suddenly, he started screaming at me.“Aren't you ashamed to come here made up like that? I thought you had become a human being! Out! Satan out!” Still yelling, he continued, “Oh God, the man outside, what will he think about all the makeup this one is wearing?”

I was stunned. He marched behind me and opened the door and said something to the little man with the sandals. Furious, he barked at me to go and wash my face.

In the bathroom I turned on the cold, sweet, refreshing water, and watching myself in the mirror, I cried for my foolish mistake. I wiped away the green eye shadow with a paper towel. It wouldn't come off, and there was green up to my eyebrows. But I scrubbed my face the best I could and pulled the chador back on. As I passed the sentry again, I felt that maybe he was laughing. But I didn't look—I told myself I didn't care.

I knocked cautiously before turning the door handle. He had opened the window and was fanning the air with a newspaper. He said he was suffocating from the nasty smell of my perfume, that it had contaminated the whole building with its syphilitic smell. Angrily, he motioned for me to sit. I didn't know how I should react—this was not the scene I had imagined. I kept apologizing, saying I was sorry for not knowing how I should be dressed. I told
him I'd wanted to look fresh and cheerful, not like someone depressed to see him. But my excuses weren't enough to calm him down. He was so angry, he said, “For a minute, I thought it was the devil at the door. I thought I had trained you well. But you've failed.”

Both of us were left with a bitter taste in our mouths. It was a terrible start; I was crying and begging his forgiveness. He told me, impatiently, “It's enough for today, you'd better go. Just go! I will call you tomorrow. And never show up like that again. Is that clear?” I nodded my head and jumped up nervously like a rabbit, then went home to plan my next move.

We were at war. Iran had been declared an outlaw state. Imports from many places were prohibited, and domestic production was not sufficient. There was a shortage of everything from food to clothing, fuel, and even stationery. Many goods were rationed, and the government distributed a small booklet with white pages to be stamped to every family in every neighborhood. Stationery was available only on the black market, but students could present their Basij booklet to the cooperative and receive notebooks, pens, pencils, and erasers for a set government price. The cooperative notebooks had thin paper covers, and the pages were coarse. Our handwriting looked smeared and crowded between the lines. In a word, they were ugly, and I could not awaken any desire within myself to write in them. But a look from my father was all it took—the important thing was to pay attention to schoolwork. “Lots of other children can't afford even these notebooks,” my father would say.

As soon as new coupons were issued, everyone rushed to stand in a long line. Even with the rationing, provisions were scarce, and if the cooperative ran out, you'd have to go to the black market. But in one respect our family was very lucky: Shir-e Pak factory where my father worked was a dairy producer. To get a bottle of milk, people lined up at five in the morning, and even then it was reserved for the very young or the very old. Butter was considered a luxury, and most people never even saw its color for months. We had as
much butter, cream, and milk as our hearts desired. Our neighbors would come to depend on my father, and a few extra sticks of butter or packets of milk were enough to keep us popular.

My friends and I would stand in the bakery line after school. Bread wasn't rationed, but the first duty of bakeries was to produce enough bread to send to the soldiers at the front. Civilians would wait hours to be sold no more than twenty pieces of thin
lavash
each. Iranian food is almost always served with
lavash
, so that was enough for only a few days for a typical family of four. Normally, several members of the same family would wait together to buy enough bread to last the week. My friend Mahtab would hold my place while I ran home to warn both our mothers when our turn was coming up. My mother would give me a twenty-toman bill (two hundred rials) in case she didn't get there in time. We'd read our textbooks in line and ravenously eat the
aluche-ye kisa'i
we had bought from passing vendors, which, in the words of my mother, was “the dirtiest food in the world.” We listened to the other people in line whispering carelessly about the eminent demise of the regime and the numbers of war dead and the news from the Persian-language services of foreign radio stations. Gossip ranged from the rising prices of sugar and
qand
to the rumored illnesses of government leaders.

People used nicknames for all the leaders. Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani was known as Akbar Kuseh (Akbar the Shark) since he didn't have much of a beard, and Ayatollah Montazeri, who was expected to succeed Khomeini was Gorbeh Nareh (the Tomcat), and Khomeini's son was Ahmad-e Gerian (Crying Ahmad) because on days when Khomeini met with the people, he'd stand off to the side with a sad face. Ali Khamene'i had lost the use of one hand when the offices of the Republican Party were bombed, so he was named Ali Yekdast (One-Hand Ali) or Ali Geda (Ali the Beggar) for how he'd gesture with only one arm, his palm upturned like
he was asking for pocket change. But people only complained in the bread line, keeping their grievances among friends. When they wrapped their hot bread in their handkerchiefs and turned into the twists and turns of the alleys, they'd look nervously around to make sure the unsympathetic ears of the “sisters” and the “Komité-lings” hadn't been listening.

They kept an eye on us alley after alley, everywhere we went, and could appear suddenly in shopping centers, in front of girls' and boys' schools, and even at private parties and family affairs. The government jammed the Persian-language foreign radio with ear-splitting noise, but the internal Iranian radio was a pack of lies and propaganda, so ignoring the static, we'd turn our ears every night at eight o'clock to Radio Israel. We would go cautiously into the salon, the room from which the least sound would leak outside. Everyone would squat by the radio listening intently. But there were other ears at work in the dead of night, listening for the familiar music through cracked windows and doors, and suddenly shadows would fall on the walls of the courtyard.

When we had parties, my father would check the street outside every half hour to make sure the Sisters of Zeinab and the brothers weren't about to stage a raid on our house. My mother, my sister, and I would keep our head scarves and overcoats close to our chairs so we could put them on immediately if needed. The words “they're here” would throw a party into disarray, as guests ran for the door. Anyone who'd been drinking would swish cologne around in their mouth, and women and men would quickly separate. But there was never enough time to get rid of corroborating evidence. The armed Pasdars would burst inside and the Sisters of Zeinab would round up the women before they could throw away the prohibited playing cards, alcohol, music cassettes, videotapes—anything that would boost the severity of charges in court. Family gatherings were routinely broken up, but it was especially bad if
mixed groups of young people were caught. Teens caught drinking were in some cases publicly flogged, and girls could be sent to the government hospital for verification of their virginity. Girls who failed the exam were forced into an engagement with whichever boy they'd been caught with. Anyone arrested could be kicked out of their high school or university, and for an extra measure of humiliation, the boys had their heads shaved to the scalp with an electric razor.

It became obligatory for women to wear the
hejab
in the middle of 1981. Shopkeepers put signs in their windows that read, “We reserve the right to refuse service to women without
hejab
.” And menacing jeeps appeared roving around Tehran, monitoring public decency. My father would say, “If you touch your head scarves in front of them, you'll catch their eye. Pretend you don't see them when you're in the street.” I called them “Tripods.”
The Tripods
was a series of science fiction novels—
The White Mountains
,
The City of Gold and Lead
, and
The Pool of Fire
. As a child and as a teenager, I must have read this trilogy a hundred times. Tripods were fearsome three-legged beings that would lay waste to Earth. In the books, these metallic overlords enslaved humans by putting caps on their heads that would make them instruments under the tripods' control. These books inspired me during the gray years of Khomeini's rule. I can still shut my eyes and lose myself in the story, as the hero, a fourteen-year-old boy, escapes and finds his way to other freedom fighters in the white mountains of the north. I'd put the book down on the couch and stare out the sitting-room window at the white Elburz Mountains to the north of Tehran, and I'd ask myself, “Are there freedom fighters waiting up there for me?”

The official names for the Tripods would change over the years, but in essence they remained the same. The squads were first called
Ya Sar-e Allah!
, then their name changed to the Authority for the Detection and Prevention of Vice, then the Vice Squad, the Guidance,
and so forth. My mother tells me that today they're called the Thunder. On the back of their jeeps, “4WD” was written for “four wheel drive,” but they'd say this stood for four slobs (W for
velgard
) whose wives are sleeping around (D for
dawyus
). Two armed Pasdars sat in the front of the jeep and two women in the backseat. One of the Pasdars was the driver, and the other was the guardian of the sisters. When men resisted arrest, the escorting brother would get to shine, dragging the captive into the car and kicking him in the process. In accordance with Islamic law, the sisters couldn't lay their hands on an unrelated man.

We rarely left home except for simple outings to the restaurant Eskan, the arcades of Meidan Argentine, the Surkheh bazaar, and Khiaban-e Jordan. When the ominous white cars appeared, our hearts would throb in our breasts, and despite my father's warning, our hands would unconsciously gravitate to our head scarves. If we were wearing colorful clothing, we'd try to hide behind one another. The sisters, wrapped in chadors, veils, and black gloves, would come crashing down on your head like a nightmare. It was possible that they'd let a glimpse of exposed hair slide, but nail polish and makeup, never. Sometimes they contented themselves with our tears and pleading as long as they didn't find anything in our handbags like cassette tapes or “obscene” pictures of Hollywood movie stars or expatriate Iranian singers, like Fataneh, Moeen, or Andy and Kouros from Los Angeles. We'd beg for forgiveness and put ourselves down a thousand times while listening to their speeches about the fires of hell and how letting one strand of hair show implied disrespect to the blood of martyrs. And if they took you with them . . . The booming voice of my father rang in my ears, “If any of you go with them, you won't ever be coming home.”