“Cousin?”
“He’s a
homafar.
And a bodybuilder. And, I suspect,
Mojahedin
.”
Frank did not want to jump on this last revelation. “You were going to tell me about the
homafaran.
” He would ask about his cousin’s ties to the
Mojahedin
later
.
“Was I?” said Anwar, scraping his pie plate, “Yes. You should learn. A class apart. A rank apart. NCOs but higher in rank than a master sergeant. Only in the air force. The name comes from the
homa,
a mythical bird of ancient Persia. Not a peacock, like the Shah. You should not—this is important—you should not let the
homafaran
know you meet with the Shah.”
“Why not?”
“To them, the Shah represents all the evil, all the corruption, that tears apart our country.”
“Are they right?”
“It goes deeper than one man. But yes, the Shah is at the heart of the corruption.”
“Does it bother you that I meet with him?”
Anwar shrugged. “Does it not bother you?”
“Perhaps it should,” said Frank. “But when we meet, when I talk to him, it’s hard to imagine him being…”
“A killer?”
“It’s hard to imagine.”
“A tyrant? A thief? I know you have to meet with him. You have your job to do. You must learn what you can from him. From us all. I understand. But do not let the
homafaran
know you sit at the feet of the Shah. Remember, they are also
Mojahedin
. Men of the left. They will be the key.”
“To what?”
“To everything.” Anwar curved his hands around a steaming cup of tea. Frank suspected that, like the coffee, its greatest asset was its warmth. “They are highly respected. For their skill. For their training. They are of the people, but they are the key to the world of modern technology that can lead Iran out of the dark ages. They tend to be secular, and yet they are committed to Khomeini.”
“That sounds like a contradiction,” said Frank.
“Uniquely Persian. I, too, love Khomeini. Yet, when he comes, I will have to go.”
“Why?”
“Because his idea of Islam will take us back in time, shut us away from the West, and we need the West. I love him because he is pure of heart and he will drive out all that has made our country corrupt. But when the Shah falls, the
Mojahedin
may be our best hope against the new tyranny. We could have a just Islamic government, with leaders like Shariat-Madari and Ayatollah Taleqani. But religious leaders like Shariat-Madari may not survive the new tyranny. The
Mojahedin
may not survive.”
“Because of Khomeini?” asked Frank.
“Yes,” said Anwar. “Because of Khomeini.”
“And yet you admire him.”
“Uniquely Persian,” said Anwar. “I am Persian. I am Muslim. And even I am devout, not as devout as our friend from the navy, but devout.”
“Munair Irfani. He seems, well … strange. Tell me about him.”
“Name, you know. Rank, captain. I don’t know his serial number. Why call him strange?”
“That bump on his forehead. And the way he stares at me. I thought I’d read somewhere Iranians are very shy about making eye contact.”
“Most Iranians, yes. But in the military we are trained to look directly at our superior officers. To establish trust. And of course to do exactly what they tell us. To establish discipline. But I must admit, even for a military man, Munair does stare at you … hard.” He finished the last mouthful of apple pie. “Truly tasteless. Munair tries to figure you out. He doesn’t understand why you’re here.”
“If he figures it out, ask him to tell me.”
“You mean you don’t know?”
“Not really. I get the feeling there’s so much we don’t know about Iran. That’s one reason, I guess, why we’re here.”
“That would be a very good reason. America needs to know more about Iran. Munair wonders if maybe that’s why you’re here. And he wonders if you can be trusted. So does my cousin, the
homafar
.”
“And…?”
“I told him I don’t know but that I had decided to trust you. My cousin wonders if you are CIA.”
Frank sensed trouble. “What did you tell him?”
Anwar shrugged. “He hopes you are CIA. For reasons he will tell you, if he begins to trust.”
I can guess his reasons, thought Frank. He wants to defect and get a ticket to the U.S.A.
“Sounds interesting,” he said. “What about Munair?”
“Munair wonders if an American can be trusted to understand Islam. He is truly devout. That’s why he has that bump on his forehead. He prays very hard, not just bowing to Mecca but bringing his head to the tiles of the mosque floor when he kneels and bows to Mecca. So hard, so often, he’s raised that bump. He wonders if someone from the West can understand how much our religion means to us. And how much we love Ayatollah Khomeini.”
“You don’t have a bump on your forehead,” said Frank.
“I told you I am not so devout. I love Ayatollah Khomeini because my country needs him, but I am a man of the modern world.”
Frank thought of the demonstrators screaming, “Death to America,” at the embassy gates and of the possibility that some then circled the compound to wait at the back gate in hopes of being admitted to the consulate to apply for an American visa. Like Anwar, uniquely Persian.
“It seems to me Iran will need men like you here. And your cousin. Especially if Khomeini comes, to help keep Iran in the modern world.”
“Iran will need men of the modern world,” said Anwar. “But Khomeini will destroy such men. If I am lucky, perhaps I will be able to go before he comes.”
If you’re lucky, thought Frank, and if you find some American like me to help you.
* * *
The gym smelled like a gym. Sweat and wintergreen and unwashed towels and rancid gym clothes and dust rising from the floor as a heavy barbell crashed, slipping from the wet palms of an overweight lifter who had just completed a series of military presses. The smell of sweat-stained leather bounced off the heavy bag thudded by a chiseled young man in shorts and sneakers. Frank had begun to wonder about the absence of smells in Tehran. Perhaps it was the cold, dry winter air. The stench from the holes in the floor that passed for a bathroom at Supreme Commander’s Headquarters stood out as one exception, and he was sure that in summer the
jube
s must be redolent of the odors of Iran, but now the gutters were frozen over most of the time. Even the smells of the
chelakebab
shop had seemed washed out by steam, but the gym smelled like a gym.
Only a handful of Iranians occupied the gym. No Americans. “That is my cousin, beating up the leather man,” said Anwar.
“Not a man,” said the boxer, who worked the heavy bag bare-handed. “Only a bag.”
Two men thwacked a medicine ball off each other’s bellies at close range. Another, deep in concentration, worked four Indian clubs in an intricate routine. The lifter walked off the strain of his last set of presses.
“These are all
homafaran,
” said Anwar. His cousin gave the heavy bag a reprieve. Frank noticed the bleeding, callused knuckles. “They are also all
Mojahedin
.” Anwar spoke softly. “They think I don’t know that, but I do.”
“You know nothing, cousin.” He turned to Frank and extended his hand. “Welcome, American.” His tone made the greeting sound like
Welcome, Satan
. He stood taller than Frank had realized when he first saw him, bent with such intensity into punishing the heavy bag. Frank guessed him to be six-three, unusual for an Iranian, probably a light heavyweight, with the powerful, sloping shoulders of a boxer and the fine-cut muscular definition of a dedicated bodybuilder. “My name is also Anwar Amini, but you can call me Anwar the Taller.” He smiled and glanced at his cousin. “He is called in the family Anwar the Smarter.”
“And I am called Frank Sullivan. An American with a lot to learn—about
homafaran
and Persia and Islam and Ayatollah Khomeini—and other things.”
It was only as the others stopped exercising, except for the man with the Indian clubs, that Frank noticed the small cassette player on a bench against a far wall playing what Frank took to be popular Iranian music, a female vocalist backed by strings.
“My cousin also tells me you also want to work out.”
“If that’s possible.”
“Of course. American air forces are allowed. This is a good time. Not crowded, as you see. And we are often here.” He hesitated, studying Frank with an intensity matching that of the navy man at Jayface. “Other times you can also come, but be careful. Others, enlisted men, even
homafaran
who are not—not like us—might be unfriendly. Be careful.”
“I will.”
Anwar the Taller turned his back on Frank and crossed the floor to the cassette player. He popped out the tape that had been playing and selected another from a neatly piled stack on the bench. He turned the volume up as the voice of a
muezzin
began the high-pitched wailing of the traditional call to prayer. There was a pause. All the Iranians, except the man still intent on his twirling Indian clubs, stood with folded hands, waiting.
A new voice, equally high pitched, but different, began to speak. The tone shrilled from the tiny cassette player, both strident and strangely flat. Anwar the Taller caught Frank’s eye and glanced toward the cassette with a nod that told Frank this was the voice of Ayatollah Khomeini. Anwar again turned up the volume and approached Frank.
“Even those of us who are of a secular mind recognize his greatness.”
“The tape,” said Frank. “It came from Paris?”
Anwar smiled. “No, not this tape. It is only a copy of what came from Paris. You must understand. These days the Ayatollah’s tapes come from everywhere. The original of this may have been telephoned by the Ayatollah from his base in Neauphle-le-Château and read into someone’s tape recorder right here in Tehran. But the quality of telephone transmission from France is not great. So a cassette recorded there may have come here on a flight from Paris, with a pilot, a steward, someone. But in Mashhad they come through Afghanistan. In Abadan they come through Kuwait. In Bandar Abbas they come across the Gulf, across the Shatt al Arab to Ahwaz. In Tabriz they come from Van in Turkey or even from Baku in Soviet Azerbaijan. Even from Baghdad they come across the Zagros Mountains to Kermanshah and Hamadan and Qom. The people can listen to the BBC, and, yes, they make tapes of Khomeini’s interviews on BBC, and they make copies of those and copies of those copies. The tapes come from everywhere. They come from heaven.
Allah-o akbar
.”
“Allah-o akbar,”
echoed the other
homafaran
.
* * *
Frank had set his cassette deck on their kitchen table and played the tape Anwar the Taller had given him.
“He doesn’t turn me on,” said Gus.
“He turns Iranians on.”
“Well, Hitler turned the Germans on, but there was a difference. I don’t speak German any more than I do Persian, but you hear those old broadcasts of Hitler or see those old movies, you get what it was that got to people. This … this just sounds like a squeaky, cranky old man.”
“Maybe that’s what he is,” said Frank. “But Iranians listen and do what he tells them.”
“Which is?”
“One thing he tells them on here is to take his tapes and make copies and spread them around and make copies of the copies.”
“Did they give you a translation?”
“No, but I taped Anwar, the other Anwar, while he was talking to me. He said this isn’t a new tape, but he wanted me to hear this so we could see how Khomeini gives the marching orders to the
mullahs
and how what he says to do gets done. Someplace on here he talks about the burning down of that movie house in the south … in Abadan when all those people were killed. He talks about the protests two days after that. Says they happened yesterday. We can check the date of the fire, add three, and have a probable date for Khomeini’s tape.”
“Looks like you’re gonna have some heavy cable-writing duty.”
“I already did. A start anyway. Since I was at the base, I checked out our office. Bill Steele was on duty, and he set me up. I drafted as much as I could.”
“I’m impressed. All this and you cook, too. Will you marry me?”
“I don’t think so. But I will fix up something to eat. And I guess anyway we better get into the office early. I’ll need you to check over what I drafted before we arrange to get the tape down to the embassy. Oh, he said we shouldn’t get the tape translated at the embassy.”
“He who?”
“Anwar the Taller, the
homafar.
He said there are leaks, locals who work in the embassy but who love Khomeini.”
“The ambassador will shit.”
* * *
Frank woke the next morning to the cries of the
ashkhalee
man and the rattling garbage cans. I-cash-clothes. I-cash-clothes. I-cash-clothes. He had been dreaming, and part of his dream had been the tall man with a long black beard and black hat and long black coat who made his rounds through the courtyards and alleys of the Brooklyn apartments and tenements Frank had grown up in. It had taken Frank many childhood years to translate the sounds that echoed up the narrow courtyard as
oy-gesh-close.
He thought the words might be Yiddish, but there were no Jews he knew well enough to ask. Though the neighborhood was mixed, the neighbors did not mix. Jews, Italians, Irish, Poles, Germans all walked the same streets, but seldom in each other’s company. The I-cash-clothes man bought used clothes and, at least with the Jewish housewives, exchanged neighborhood gossip.
Ashkhalee
and I-cash-clothes. Who needs newspapers? He thought of his own summers, spent first as a paper stabber, then driving a thick-tired Toro garbage hauler on the beach at Riis Park and quarter-ton garbage trucks to the dump opposite Floyd Bennett Field, and he realized he must have dreamt about that, too, and he thought how every job he’d ever held for very long had been the same job, the same dream. Always the plough and the stars. Finding stuff and one way or another delivering it somewhere else. I-cash-clothes and the rattling of trolley cars on Nostrand Avenue. Reporter. Novelist. Spy. Always looking for a story to tell. Always struggling for the words to tell it. Not a dream, he thought. It’s my life.
Ashkhalee
and the rattling of garbage cans.