Authors: Ramita Navai
Bijan slid a stack of greens across the table, the Chief’s monthly hush money. The cloudy water in the hookah pipe purred as it bubbled up. He drew in a mouthful of smoke.
‘They’re going to raid Chahar Dongeh soon. Don’t have any details yet,’ said the Chief.
‘Shit. How long d’you think I’ve got?’
‘At least a week.’
Bijan took out another wad of notes from his jacket pocket.
‘Much obliged.’
Bijan had moved on to drugs and he had set up a meth lab in a disused warehouse in Chahar Dongeh, a small, ragged industrial town just south of Tehran. As the country’s economy was flailing in the wake of stricter sanctions, the illegal drugs trade was booming. Sanctions were not new to Iran; they started when the US froze Iran’s assets during the hostage crisis over thirty years ago. The Europeans soon joined in, punishing Iran for its nuclear enrichment programme (which it has always maintained is for peaceful energy purposes). Oil exports were slashed to a third, and as sanctions triggered inflation, the poor and vulnerable were predictably affected. The price of some foods more than doubled in a year; staples like Tabrizi feta cheese, fruit and meat became unaffordable for so many. But the price of drugs had barely changed. Iran’s meth empire was expanding at an astonishing rate. It was easy and cheap; the chemical needed to make crystal meth was legal and, as the Islamic Republic was one of the highest importers of the chemical in the world, there was lots of the stuff around. The head of the anti-narcotics unit had just declared that Iran was the fifth-highest consumer of crystal meth in the world. Bijan’s operation was growing by the day.
In Iran,
sheesheh
has become the most popular drug after opium, heroin coming in a close third, not least because
sheesheh
is cheap – a gram costs about five US dollars. Bijan’s dealers in Tehran sold
sheesheh
to all types, including rich girls who used it to keep their weight down and trainers who bought it for their athletes. A champion wrestler had been banned for life after having tested positive for D-methamphetamine.
Bijan was now sending some of his guys to sell in Malaysia and Thailand. The average price of meth pills in Malaysia was at least fives times more than in Iran, and Iranian meth labs and dealers were setting up shop all over Asia – a move Bijan was considering.
When Bijan started to make good money, he realized he needed a legitimate business, a front. He opened a car wash that had a surprisingly high turnover. If any of his friends hit hard times, he sent them to work at the car wash. It was the perfect cover. Bijan knew he had to be careful. The government was fighting its crystal meth problem with vigour. The previous year, Tehran’s governor had announced that
145
crystal meth labs in Tehran had been busted; by the first three months of this year, the number was already at seventy-seven. The authorities also claimed to be arresting thirty drug dealers and addicts every hour.
Now he had been tipped off by the Chief, Bijan would shut everything down for a few weeks and start up again somewhere else. He needed to see the Kurd in Gomrok, but first he would stop off to see his best friend Kambiz.
Early-morning rush hour had smeared the air with thick smog; it hung low, obscuring the city that rose up behind Bijan and stretched out in front of him. The pollution was so bad this morning that schools had been closed.
He walked along a litter-strewn road, past a homeless junkie in a red coat rifling through an overflowing bin. Kambiz was sitting in his glass-fronted office, full of old furniture, bags of rice and knocked-off silverware. He was leaning back in his chair behind his paper-scattered desk, feet up, watching a small television attached to the wall opposite him;
Jumong
was playing, a South Korean drama series about one of the ancient kingdoms of Korea that had been a nationwide sensation.
‘You lazy bastard, when you going to actually do some work?’
Kambiz jumped up, laughing, ‘At least I haven’t turned into a fat old bastard.’ He pinched Bijan’s stomach. The best friends could not have looked more different: Kambiz was muscular with slicked-back hair and always wore a suit. Bijan had a big belly, a balding head and always wore T-shirt, jeans and trainers.
After Japan, Kambiz worked for the Kurd before getting in with some human-traffickers, arranging Iranians to be transported all over the world. He found the work depressing, and, crucially, the profit margins were getting smaller. He then got involved in the kidnap and ransom game, targeting rich businessmen. Nobody knew exactly how many people were getting kidnapped, because more often than not the victim’s family were too scared to call the police and only too willing to hand over mounds of cash for the speedy release of their loved one (another plus point). One group had made a million US dollars on one businessman alone.
Bijan had never been tempted by the kidnapping business, and he was not averse to lecturing Kambiz on the immorality of taking someone’s freedom. When Kambiz argued with him, reminding him that the guns and the drugs Bijan sold were robbing people of their lives, Bijan would start shouting in self-righteous rage, defending his work. Kambiz would laugh hysterically; he enjoyed winding Bijan up. ‘You’re a tart with a heart but no goddam brain!’ he would say to him.
‘You sorted out the mess?’ asked Bijan.
‘No, and it ain’t looking good.’ Kambiz was shaking his head.
For the last few weeks, Kambiz’s group had been holding a middle-aged carpet merchant hostage, chained to a radiator in the basement of a building that belonged to Kambiz’s uncle. The carpet seller’s family were not paying up; instead they kept trying to negotiate the price down. Kambiz was scared it was a police ploy, that they were biding their time.
Bijan gave Kambiz the news about the impending raid in Chahar Dongeh as Kambiz’s nephew had started working in the meth lab.
‘I’ll tell him to stay away. Send my love to the Kurd.’ The men hugged and Bijan stepped back onto the road. He bought a newspaper from a kiosk to check the pollution levels, which were reported daily. Today there were no figures. The previous evening, the Supreme National Security Council had sent a fax to every newspaper in Tehran banning them from disclosing the pollution levels for the next two months of
Azar
, December, and
Dey
, January, when the toxins in the air were at their most concentrated, winter’s cloud cover not allowing the pollution to escape. Journalists had been warned:
Siah-namaaee nakoneed
. Do not blacken the Islamic Republic.
Tehran’s pollution seems to worsen every year. Not only are there too many cars, but the sloping valley with mountains on each side is a perfect trap for the fumes and smoke. Because the country has limited capacity to refine its own oil and petrol imports have been hit by sanctions, cars in Tehran run on low-quality, poorly refined fuel.
Bijan waded into the filthy air. He walked past a wall daubed with graffiti:
FUCK
was scrawled in English, and beside it in Persian:
IN MEMORY OF JAPAN
. Two teenagers in hoodies with long black ‘emo’ haircuts stood in a doorway selling bags of
sheesheh
. He turned into Gomrok, where his criminal career had begun. During the Shah’s time, the bordellos of the red-light district of Shahr-e No had stood here, next door to one of the city’s most exclusive cabaret clubs, Shoukoufeh-ye-No. The area had brimmed with underworld bosses, pimps, pickpockets and revellers. Like many men of his time, Bijan’s father liked to recall how he lost his virginity to a Shahr-e No prostitute. After the revolution, the brothels were bulldozed and burnt down and some of the working girls were executed. But Gomrok had retained an edge; an undercurrent of illegal activity still surged through the road, even if it had officially gone legit. Now motorbike showrooms have replaced many of the original shops on Gomrok, but a batch still remain, a long parade mostly selling army surplus goods. They are stuffed with gas masks, desert boots, gloves, Russian army uniforms and rucksacks with
MADE IN KNOXVILLE, USA
labels. Some of them sell second-hand trainers and shoes, freshly stolen from outside mosques while the owners are busy praying.
A dozen shovels were propped up in front of the Kurd’s shop; they had last been used to dig trenches during the war with Iraq. Between white and black hard hats, yellow wellington boots and a stack of traffic cones, the Kurd was sitting on a three-legged stool. He was a short, small man with a silken white beard and pale crinkled skin; he wore a khaki parka and a skullcap on his head. A gas stove was burning in the middle of the shop for heat, in the back a chicken was clucking. The shop smelt of cigarettes and lamb
kabab
, two of Bijan’s favourite smells.
‘Hello sunshine, how you doing?’ Bijan kissed the Kurd on the cheeks. The Kurd hugged him and gave him a glass of strong black tea.
When Bijan was kicked out of Japan, Kambiz had sent him to see the Kurd. The Kurd had a network of nephews and cousins who smuggled guns over from Iraq, but as they had become increasingly involved in fighting the Turkish government with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, known as the PKK, the Kurd started hiring new gun-runners. It was dangerous work – the penalty for smuggling illegal firearms is death – but the money was excellent. Bijan’s family had known the Kurd all their lives. Everyone trusted the Kurd and Bijan was known to be trustworthy. He started making monthly visits to Baneh, a town in Iranian Kurdistan, not far from the border with Iraq. Sometimes he travelled on horses or mules across the mountains, other times he was hidden in the back of trucks. He would return to Tehran with all kinds of weapons and bury them in his mother’s garden, where the Kurd would send buyers. Mostly they were drug lords and gangsters, but there was the occasional bent cop and
basiji
gone wild.
‘I heard what happened to Behrouz last night,’ said Bijan.
‘Bet you haven’t heard about the Farshad boy though,’ the Kurd chuckled. He always knew the news before anyone else did.
‘Don’t tell me they already got him?’
‘Yep. The cops found his body a few hours ago. They’d chopped off his dick and shoved it in his mouth.’ Bijan grimaced. ‘Any of the Radan boys been arrested yet?’
‘No, and they won’t be. Everyone knows Behrouz deserved it.’
The Radans were a band of ten brothers who had all followed the family tradition of selling opium, which now costs
3
,
600
,
000
to five million tomans a kilo, depending on quality (about
1
,
200
US dollars to just over
1
,
600
dollars). As well as having close ties to several high-ranking policemen, the Radan brothers had links with influential Baluchi tribal elders in Sistan and Baluchestan, the wild-east province that borders Afghanistan and Pakistan. Twice a year the Radans would drive through the desert, load up a truck with giant slabs of opium and bring it back to the city. They had begun selling to a small-time dealer called Farshad who had grown up in the neighbourhood. Bijan remembered playing football with him as a kid. Farshad was a good goalie but a sloppy dealer, leaving a litter of evidence behind him. But his real downfall was greed. He had evaded paying off the necessary officials on whose radar he had flashed up. What made it worse was that he was not arrested on his own patch, but in the suburbs of Tehran Pars, in the east of the city. Farshad only had a small amount of drugs on him, so the police agreed to cut him a deal if he gave them some big names; he promptly grassed on the Radan brothers. Based on the information Farshad gave, two of the Radan brothers were given death sentences. Farshad had chosen to forget their rule. When dealing with the police, the boys had one rule: the No Rule. In Iran, the ‘no’ gesture is a backward tilt of the head. With the No Rule, you had to imagine the tip of a sword was touching your chin as you were being questioned. If you said yes, your head would fall on the sword.
‘The Chief told me they’re going to raid Chahar Dongeh. He says we’ve got a week. He doesn’t know any more than that, but the boys have to go underground. I’ve been to see Kambiz, he says hello.’
‘Love that kid. I’ll send word to the others.’ Neither the Kurd nor Bijan ever used their mobile phones or emails for serious business.
‘I’m going to go there today. Make sure everything’s out and clear.’
‘They may be watching it already. I worry about you.’
‘Don’t worry
amoo
, you know how careful I am. Let them watch. There’ll be nothing to see and everyone’s sweet.’
Bijan’s father had died when he was thirteen; the Kurd treated him like a son. Now that Bijan was making good money, he made sure the Kurd and his family were looked after.
‘In case the heat is on, we should hide the next consignment, it’s due tonight,’ said the Kurd.
‘What you got?’
‘A dozen Colts.’ The Kurd had been shifting military stock and industrial equipment for thirty years; but the real money he made was from illegal arms sales. He could sell a Colt for anything from one and a half to two million tomans. A hitman along with a Colt cost ten million tomans, but the Kurd had never been involved in that part of it. If customers ever asked him, he shrugged his shoulders. But, like everyone else involved in this business, he knew who did it; a few of them hung out at the tea house.
‘No problem
amoo
, tell them to take it to
maman
’s house.’
Bijan’s mobile rang. It was Asal.
‘The women still got you by the balls.’ The Kurd winked.
‘Just the way I like it!’
The Kurd tried to shove some notes into Bijan’s hand, but he refused, kissing him on the head.
Bijan was late for Asal and she would not be happy. He did not have time to go home and pick up his car, so he stepped out onto the road to flag down a taxi. The pollution was getting worse as the day wore on. The acrid smell of old petrol and regurgitated car fumes burnt his lungs. Everyone’s organs were struggling to digest the poisonous particles that stuck to the city; they were praying for a breeze to nudge the dangerous fog out of the valley.