Voices de la Luna

Persian Marchers: A Novel
Chapter Three
Mo H Saidi

It was stygian blank outside and Cyrus could only see the distorted reflection of his face in the oval window. The plane jolted several times as it was approaching the Western suburbs of Tehran. The captain’s voice came from the speaker above Cyrus’s seat. It was during the last year of the Shah’s government in the winter of 1978 that Cyrus traveled to Iran to visit his ill mother who suffered from a severe and worrisome stomach ailment that had caused her weight loss and compromised her strength. On that hastily arranged flight, he arrived at Tehran International Airport without his family. 
     The scratchy voice from the speakers announced, “The airplane is approaching the capital. We are preparing to land. Please fasten your seatbelts.”
     Before long, the plane descended rapidly and soon Cyrus could see the string of bright lights dotting Karaj Highway along the western suburbs of Tehran and then the blue and yellow lights of the airport runways.
     The thought of visiting his aging mother and once again seeing the house where he was born and grew up, made his heart flutter. The blue metal door. The courtyard with a lone oak tree next to the round fount with blue ceramic tiles. The fat pigeons alighting on the edge of the fountain to drink.
     He pulled out his wallet and looked at an old photo of his mother taken some years earlier when she had been in good health and bursting with energy. A silky veil covered her hair, her plump body from head to toe, revealing only her bright face illuminated by a gentle smile framed by a few tendrils of black hair. Her tiny pale hands holding black leather covered Quran. He remembered the early morning hours before the misty gray appeared in the square sky above the courtyard, when his mother would call the children to come to the family room for the breakfast arranged on a white sofreh, which she had spread over the center of the old wall-to-wall Kashan carpet.
     He recalled the small storage nook that he and his younger brother shared as their room until he was twelve. Their mother would enter their cubicle early every morning and gently awaken them. Despite the dim light, he would often notice his younger brother’s red face, embarrassed from yet another perpetual bed-wetting accident. Ignoring his ordeal, Mother would gently move him away and roll up his lahaf and its linen sheet, which were both stained with urine.
     He always loved the way his mother looked at that time of early morning, especially when she was whispering namaz. Her innocent face, like that of an angel, wrapped in a white veil would always exude her sweet demeanor, riant face. After completing her prayers, she would enter their rooms and call them again. She always spoke to them in a soft, gentle voice. In those cool morning hours, her tender and warm hands would touch his cheeks and forehead, and tap softly to awake him. She would implore him to get up, wash up, dress, and get ready for school.
     To feed the large family, his father, a fulltime government employee, a hard-working person who was an edacious eater with

eupepsia—his usual snack: a wrap of fresh loaves of flat bread
dipped in honey; sheep cheese and purple basil—worked long hours and held three jobs. He would leave the house early in the morning and return late at night after finishing his last job of the day, an evening job as bookkeeper for the Gulf Fishing Company.
     On the short Iranian weekends lasting only a day on Fridays and sometimes an additional, precious but short afternoon on Thursdays, his father would turn into a shopper, a handyman, an occasional angler, or a cook. Cyrus would join him on some Friday afternoons, carrying tools while he repaired various bits and pieces around the house.
     Sometimes Cyrus would be the lucky one, chosen from the five sons to accompany his father on an occasional fishing trip to the Persian Gulf; there on the banks of the swollen Karoon river where it merged the Persian Gulf, he would stare in awe at the heap of fish caught in the long trammels that the fishermen had dropped into the murky waters, or he would hang around the bins filled with other fish they caught farther out, in the flat waters of the Shat-el-Arab delta, with the many branches of their drift-seines, their floaters stretching long and far into the glittering mouth of the gulf. Afterwards they ate late meals of freshly caught fish, stewed in a huge pot with spicy herbs, limes, onion, and chili pepper, and served over boiled rice. On the return trip home, he and his father sat next to the driver in the leading truck of a column bringing truckloads of Gulf fish to his hometown of Ahwaz. Depending on the size of their catch, the fishermen might drop one or two baskets of fish into the large icebox in the storage room of Cyrus’s home, and then the family would share their abundance with relatives, friends, and even a few select neighbors.
The plane jolted harshly over the runway, breaking Cyrus’s train of thought.It whirled, slightly scaring everyone, but swiftly settled back onto a straight path and rolled steadily forward. A hearty round of applause rewarded the pilot.

     The squeaking of wheels
     jolted the anxious minds.
     Rapturous response

     vigorous clapping
     the storm of applause
     for the safe landing.

     A whooshing noise filled the passenger chamber and then gradually diminished to a sedating, humming sound. Soon the plane slowed to a stop. Suddenly, the prospect of seeing his mother and revisiting his hometown made blood rush through his veins. His head full of indescribable elation and unknown expectations, he recalled the lines from a ghazal by Hafez that described the joy of coming home:

     Bring all the wine that’s left!
     When we’re dead and wandering in paradise
     we won’t find a place more delightful
     than this . . . .

     It was March 1978, and the air in Tehran was stiff, smoggy, and cold. Cyrus followed the other passengers down the stairs onto the tarmac. Gray and bitter air hit his face. He heaved a deep  sigh and climbed into the transfer bus packed with excited and restless visitors and returnees, full of unknown expectation, fear, and curiosity. The bus stopped in front of a characterless cement building with gray concrete walls. Under the watchful eyes of two armed soldiers guarding the entry, a uniformed airport agent directed the passengers through a small doorway into a low-ceiling hall, where the new arrivals joined two queues that meandered toward a row of security checkpoints. The damp air of the unventilated area was saturated with the smell of unwashed bodies. Lilting Farsi music resonated in the utilitarian space from loosely suspended speakers. Bare walls showed no traces of décor except for the large portraits of the Shah, Queen Farah, and Crown Prince Reza on the wall facing the queues.
     This was indeed a different arrival gate. On his previous trip, all international passengers had been processed in a spacious building with marble floors, high ceilings, and walls decorated with elaborate scenes of Persian history from Firdausi’s Shahnameh. Many miniature paintings and ceramic tablets with the popular quatrains of Khayam had adorned the walls of that edifice. He asked the passenger in front of him about the haphazard look of the current setup. The man was about to answer but seeing some airport agents walking nearby, he did not reply and turned away. Cyrus assumed this plain arrival building was some sort of interim building used during renovation of the main airport hall.
     The line was moving slowly. The young man behind him tapped his shoulder and whispered in his ear, “The roof of the main building collapsed several months ago. Thank God, it happened in the early morning hours.” Cyrus nodded, but the young man was eager to tell him more about how the building had been walled up within a few days and no one could see anything from the outside. The young man raised his eyebrows with an air of skepticism; “The officials claim heavy snow from a severe winter storm caused the structure to collapse, but nobody believes them; that explanation is a farce. Everybody remembers the storm was relatively mild and not a single structure other than the international arrivals building came down that night. Not even a mud hut in the slums!”
     When two airport agents approached, the speaker became quiet and quickly returned to his former position.

The security officer behind the window asked for Cyrus’s passport. Cyrus slipped his Persian passport through a narrow opening, and kept his American passport secure in his breast pocket.
     “Are you Cyrus Sohrabi?” the officer asked.
     “Yes, sir, I am.”
     The official leafed through the pages of the passport and paused several times to check visas issued by different countries. His face froze when he discovered a visa for Hungary; he bent over and inspected it closely. The date of the visa was almost five years ago. He opened a drawer and took out a folder, which had a list of countries that Iranian citizens were forbidden to visit. Hungary was one of them. “I see, you have visited a Communist country,” the officer said.
     “That was for a medical meeting; but it was a long time ago,” Cyrus said, “look at the date!”
     “The date doesn’t matter, this needs to be investigated.”
    “Please, sir, look at the next page!” Cyrus insisted, “The issue was thoroughly investigated during my last trip to Iran and completely clarified.”
     The officer turned the page and saw two notes, one from the Passport Office and the other one from the Iranian Police Department. He grudgingly leafed through the rest of the pages.
 
Images of the scenic drive along the Danube River from five years earlier when he and his family visited Europe marched through Cyrus’s head. They had driven from Rotterdam where he had picked up his voluminous new Chevrolet Impala from the customs and had driven through several European countries including Hungary. Along the way, they had
toured historic monuments, castles, and a few museums. While they

were in Budapest, he had also attended a medical meeting for three
days. Then they had driven back to Frankfurt where he had left his wife and their son with his in-laws. Then he had driven alone all the way from Germany to Iran crossing Austria, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, and Turkey. He had come to Iran for a short visit and had brought the car for his brother-in-law Habib who wanted a big American car with leather seats and automatic transmission.
     Upon arrival, Cyrus had been summoned by the Savak, the Shah’s secret police to explain his itinerary, specifically his trip to Hungary. They wanted to know what he was doing in a Communist country and why he was driving around the countryside visiting old castles and universities. Cyrus had explained to them patiently that the time in Hungary was mainly to attend a medical meeting but the family had added some excursions to historical sights to their schedule. The officials were skeptical and asked him to justify the visits to the historical places.
       “We enjoy visiting castles, cathedrals, and museums, studying old architecture and listening to the music of different countries. Actually it’s because my wife is an edacious reader and polymath who is interested in many subjects, from Greek tragedies to the old gables,” Cyrus had said.
     “What’s a gable?”
     “The section of the wall at the pitched roof.”
     “What’s the big deal about a pitched roof?”
     “I don’t know either, but she enjoys photographing architectural details of historical buildings.”
     The Savak agent suspected Cyrus was covering up something, and he referred the matter to his superior. After the Savak had thoroughly investigated his highlighted maps and receipts, examined his certificate of attendance from the medical meeting and his stack of museum booklets and admission tickets, art books and music records, they cleared him of clandestine political activity and affixed a note to that effect in Cyrus’s passport. But it had taken them quite a while to come to this conclusion, and Cyrus had been anxious the entire time. Involvement with the Savak was no trivial matter.
    
     An utter chaos
     in the abyss of fanatic times
     an old Empire in decline.

     The birthplace, the childhood home
     a visit worth its risks
     Mother’s warm bosom, soft kiss.

While these memories raced through Cyrus’s mind, the security official stamped the passport and waved him through to the luggage area. Passengers were picking up their bags from a big pile of suitcases and carrying them to the customs checkpoint. He saw customs employees rifle through suitcases and peruse books and magazines, searching for political articles. They also estimated the value of all items purchased abroad so they could levy import taxes. The couple ahead of Cyrus argued with the customs agent about detailed valuations for more than twenty minutes before they finally settled on an amount.
     “Welcome to Iran, Doctor,” the agent said. He had seen the word Dr. before Cyrus’s name on the airline ticket. “Please, go on!” He waved Cyrus and his suitcases through with a polite gesture without opening his luggage.
        Cyrus returned the smile with a nod, “Motashakerram.”
      A porter took Cyrus’s luggage, and he followed. The noise of the waiting area, crowded with relatives and friends of arrivals, engulfed him. His sister Maryam was the first to catch sight of him. A wide smile illuminated her face as she hurried forward with a bouquet of flowers and hugged him. Cyrus immediately asked about their mother. His older brother Parviz stepped forward and they embraced.   
     “Mother is at my house. She is fine. You are welcome to stay with us, too,” Parviz said.
     Maryam quickly interjected, “You’ll be more comfortable in my house, Cyrus. You can visit Mom anytime; from our house it’s just five minutes to Parviz’ home.”
        Before Cyrus could reply, Parviz calmly decreed, “It’s up to Cyrus.”
Maryam appeared upset. She was the oldest sibling in the family and by tradition had the first right of refusal to host Cyrus. Noticing that Maryam’s face had grown tight and unhappy and Parviz was annoyed, Cyrus decided to let others decide who should host him in Tehran.
      Fortunately, Parviz gave in quickly, “It’s all right. You stay at her place, Cyrus.”
       Maryam immediately regained her earlier happy mood and thanked Parviz graciously. “After all, my house is your house, too,” she smiled at Parviz.
       Behind them, squeezed among the throng of people in the small arrival hall, Maryam’s son Jamshid and Cyrus’s friend Tooraj, an agnostic Jew who loved poetry, were waiting for their turn to greet him. Cyrus turned to Tooraj, who had been his classmate and bosom friend during their seven long years at Tehran Medical School.
    “You look happy, Tooraj. Life is treating you well!” Cyrus said.
Tooraj grinned, “You haven’t changed much either.”
     They both chuckled. Their camaraderie was re-established in no time.
Jamshid, who was standing next to them disagreed, “Look up there, Cyrus has lost a lot of hair above his forehead.”
     Now everyone except Cyrus laughed.
    “He makes fun of my pilgarlic look too,” said Tooraj. “I think bald is beautiful.”
     People who were trying to get in and out of the hall constantly jostled against Cyrus and his welcome party. Maryam took Cyrus’s hand, “I can’t breathe here. My stupid asthma,” she said, “Let’s leave.” Maryam’s face had become bluish red, almost purple.
    Cyrus grew worried about her labored breathing. “Maryam needs fresh air,” he decreed. The group quickly left the hall and moved toward the parking area.

While Jamshid maneuvered the car through slow traffic, Maryam became herself again; always a gracious hostess, she told Cyrus, “I have prepared a light dinner for you.”
    Cyrus knew her “light” dinners always meant several courses; however, he wasn’t hungry at all and cared little about food at the moment. He was tired and his migraine headache was coming on; he could feel the taste of it, its aura. He looked out the car window, searching for familiar scenes along the road where streetlights illuminated sidewalks, buildings, walls, and trees.
    “Aren’t you hungry?” Maryam persisted. “I have prepared some of your favorite Persian dishes!”
    “I have been fed continually in the plane,” he said, “three big meals during the last 15 hours.” He felt almost nauseated, but knew dinner was obligatory and relented, “Of course, I’ll eat some of your good food.”
    They circled Shah-yad Square where high-powered light beams illuminated an imposing white marble structure supported by four huge, slanted columns; the structure had been erected several years ago as a tribute to the Shah and his everlasting reign. Cyrus noted a faint resemblance to the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.
    They took the main road to the northern part of Tehran where most of Cyrus’s family and friends lived. An endless caravan of cars, buses, taxis, and motorcycles packed the road in both directions, completely ignoring the worn-out lane markings.
    Cyrus turned the window down, hoping to let in some fresh air, but Jamshid warned him, “You’ll get sick; our air is badly polluted.”
      Dark smoke spewing from the decrepit truck ahead of them filled the car. When Maryam began coughing, Cyrus reached for the handle and rolled up the window. Maryam’s cough did not stop for quite a while.
    “I should have brought my medicine,” Maryam muttered, fighting for
air. “My asthma is killing me these days. The pollution. The smog. The

trucks.”
     “Don’t forget about the tanks and armored military vehicles that patrol the streets, attacking the marchers,” Tooraj said. But no one responded to Tooraj’s comment.
      Although their turnoff was only five miles from the airport, it took them more than an hour to get to Maryam’s neighborhood. Jamshid slowed when he passed a crowded intersection with a half ruined building, its scorched walls blackened by fire.
    “This used to be our local post office,” Jamshid explained, “Two nights ago it burned down. And now armed soldiers are guarding the destroyed building shell. A case of closing the barn door after the cows have escaped.”
      “They should have guarded it before the bomb attack,” said Tooraj.
      “How did it burn down?” Cyrus asked.
      “Nobody knows.” Jamshid shrugged his shoulders.
Cyrus was surprised by his nonchalant attitude. “What’s going on in this city?”
       Maryam closed the topic by declaring, “We don’t worry. These kinds of things are not our problem; it’s up to the Shah to deal with it!”
     “It’s all politics,” Tooraj said. “One day, the whole city will shatter into pieces, aflame.”

The father drove the family to Reno Street in his 1948 Dodge Deluxe. The car’s body was made out of tons of sheet metal and chrome, and it had a large hood ornament that pointed the way. The color of the car was about the color of a Charolais bull.
      The ten year old boy in the back seat didn’t know much about Charolais bulls, but one thing he did know about bulls is that they stomped around the pasture like they owned the place and the one at Mr. Stead’s place down the road was about the same size as the Dodge, but it was black not Charolais brown. And the hood ornament on the Dodge was not a bull’s head. It was the head of a ram, one that sported large curled horns.
     The ram’s head was not all that was affixed to the hood. An unpatented, after market modification had been added by the boy’s father. He added this feature because the choke cable that ran from the dashboard to the carburetor had snapped. This low-tech accessory was a large silver washer attached to a wire that ran to the carburetor. The washer fell down from the hood and rested on that ubiquitous chrome grill standard to cars of that era. One of his father’s war buddies laughed out loud the first time he saw it and said that it hung from the hood like an army medal hangs from Audie Murphy’s chest.
      The washer reminded the boy in the back seat of the ring in the nose of Mr. Stead’s bull. Mr. Stead had placed the ring there so he could control that massive hunk of beef that sported balls the size of grapefruits. The boy’s father jerked, twisted and pulled the washer to master the family car’s engine the same way Mr. Stead did to master the family bull.
      In those days the choke was state of the art automotive technology, so before the father attempted to start the engine he would pull the washer a fraction of an inch which moved a stout length of galvanized wire that was fastened to the choke mounted on top of the carburetor. The choke controlled the flow of air that entered the carburetor and was a key to engine performance during the starting process. Once the father had the cable in just the right spot he would walk around to the driver’s door, swing it open and plop down on the mohair seat. Then he would take a drag from the Camel that hung from his lip, blow out the smoke and push the starter button. Simultaneously he would pump the accelerator pedal and offer a silent orison. If the ram tough engine was inclined to rise from the dead, the father would jump out of the car, race around to the front end, grab the washer and gently push the wire back into neutral territory. When the engine failed to start he would repeat the steps until it either roared to life or the battery died. If the engine defeated the father he would exit the car, slam the door, and then pound his fist on the roof and walk away.
      The father did not have enough money to get the choke cable repaired. As a matter of fact he did not have the money to get much of anything repaired which meant he certainly did not have money for family entertainment. So the father was always on the lookout for cheap amusement. That was why he drove the family six miles north to Reno Street where he knew the diversions from
their life of hardship would come free of charge.
     Every town had its version of Reno Street, a skid row blighted by seedy bars, trashy movie theaters, fleabag hotels, and other urban warts. Women there wore bright red lipstick and had rouged cheeks. They cruised the sidewalks and slid their tight skirts onto bar stools to rest their weary bones and talk business with potential customers. Their customers were regular working class stiffs who enjoyed a cold Falstaff and the voice of the fairer sex, but only if the price was right for both libation and sins of the flesh.
The policemen who patrolled Reno Street on foot wore dark blue uniforms and garrison hats with shiny black bills. On weekends the cavalry would show up. Actually the cavalry was not policemen on horseback. They were the shore patrol from a Navy base nearby. The shore patrol wore white hats like Popeye and black arm bands with white letters that read SP. When the policeman and the shore patrol made their rounds together the two of them would swing their billy clubs round and round with the precision of jugglers competing for a spot on the Ed Sullivan show. The first time the boy ever saw the Ed Sullivan show was at Freddy Stead’s. Freddy was his best friend. He wished his family could afford a TV like the Stead’s so they would not have to go to Reno Street for entertainment.
      Sometime he would spend the weekend at his cousin’s place downtown near Reno Street. The boy’s mother had warned him to stay away from Reno Street. She told him he could go anywhere he wanted but he must never go down Reno Street. In fact everything in a six block area around Reno Street was off limits by order of both the United States Navy and the boy’s mother.
      His mother said, “When you’re at Jimmy’s house you stay away from Reno Street and never go into the Reno Theater.”    
      “Why?” the boy asked.
      “Because,” she replied.
      “Because why?” he said.
      “Because I said so, and if you do I’ll know and I’ll tell your father.”
      The boy did what he was told not because he feared his father but because he feared God more than anything in the world. His preacher had said that according to the Word of God if children do not obey their parents they are to be stoned. Now that was something a 10 year old could understand.
      Shortly after dark the family drove across the river, a sort of Dead Sea that divided the city smack dab in the middle. The father turned west off Robinson Street onto Reno Street and the Dodge moved along the row of dilapidated buildings like an amorous bull meanders toward a demure heifer in a rundown feed lot in packing town.
      The mother shouted, “There’s a spot right there.” 
      “Where?” the father asked.
      “Damn it, you missed it,” she said with a sharp edge in her voice. “It’s right there in front of Snell’s Tavern.”   
      The boy couldn’t see much of anything except the car’s fake wood window frames, the ashtray that fit snugly into the rear seat and the mohair rope that ran left to right at eye level. The rope hung loose across the back of the front seat and he used it to get in and out of the cavernous rear seat. It reminded the boy of the rope that an usher uses to control a crowd at a fancy theater downtown. He thought he might like to be an usher when he grew up.
           The father stomped on the brake pedal. The brake fluid rushed through the lines like a speed ball rushes through a junky’s vein. The brake pads shot outward and slammed tightly against the brake drums. Simultaneously the mother placed two hands on the dashboard and the father gripped the Bakelite steering wheel tightly. The boy slid forward on the seat with nothing to stop him except the ashtray and the rope. His fingernails raked the mohair as he slid toward the abyss. The creases his fingernails made were like the streaks he left on the back of Mickey, his short haired terrier, when he raked his fingernails across her back. When he did that Mickey’s hair would flip up and she would kick her right hind leg uncontrollably. The boy tried to kick his legs up and out to brace himself against the back seat but they were too short so he plunged over the edge of the abyss and onto the dirty floorboard.
     The brakes worked fine and the car came to a screeching halt. The father threw the gear shift into reverse, and the fluid drive shifted the gears as smooth as butter. He backed up a few feet, turned the oversized Bakelite steering wheel to the left and pulled into a parking space.
     The brakes and transmission of the Dodge were a testament to the dependable performance and low upkeep of an excellent Chrysler product that had combined engineering excellence, advanced research, and careful precision workmanship by American craftsmen. Unfortunately the choke cable inspector on duty the day the car rolled off the assembly line was on a coffee break and this one made it out the door with a major birth defect. Also the engineers had not given much thought to safety features such as seatbelts, padded dashes, collapsible steering wheels or airbags. Instead they had been concentrating on fin technology.
     The father flung his elbow over the back seat, turned his head and shouted in a solicitous tone, “You all right back there?”
     “Yes, sir, “ said the boy as he grabbed the rope and pulled himself up from the floorboard.
     The family had arrived. Let the fun begin. But before the fun can begin the fans need nourishment. The mother was a walking, talking snack bar. She brought a Tupperware pitcher of sweet tea. The tea was laced with enough sugar to put a healthy man into a diabetic coma. For snacks she brought a block of commodity cheese and a box of crackers with lots of salt on top. She got the cheese from the father’s uncle, Uncle Sam. The cheese was distributed by the federal government, and it was designed to strengthen the nutritional safety need for families like theirs. It was packed in a generic foot-long cardboard carton with government inventory numbers and the words “AMERICAN CHEESE” printed in bold black letters on both sides. It was good-ole made in America, American cheese. The cheese was meant for citizens who had a low-level cholesterol warning light that was blinking like a smoke alarm with a bad battery. This stuff had enough grams of American fat in it to extinguish that light with a single bite. Next she brought out the meat, one-sixteenth inch thick slices of Eisenhower round steak. Well, that was what the father called it because he was a Democrat. But the butcher called it baloney, probably because as a business man he was a Republican.
      Later that evening while watching the comings and goings of the denizens of Reno Street, the family saw a lady leaning against a brick wall next to a hotel. A man walked past her with his hat pulled down low over his eyes and his hands shoved deep inside his pockets. The boy could see her lips move but he could not make out what she said. The boy’s father said, “Watch this.” His mother nodded her head and pursed her lips.
     The man stopped, turned round and walked back to the lady. They spoke briefly for a few minutes and then he offered her a cigarette. She took it. He lit it. She took a long drag, raised her chin and blew out a cloud of smoke. Then she nodded her head and they walked into the James Hotel.
      The boy’s mother said, “Thou shalt not bring the hire of a whore,” and then the mother and father laughed. The boy did not get the joke. He did not know anything about whores, but apparently his mother did and
and this must be serious business because he knew by her first two words
     that she was quoting Holy Scripture. The next morning, after hearing his mother say those Holy Words, he got up before his parents and looked up the word in the only hard-covered book in the house. The book was large and leather bound. It had gilt edges and sat on the coffee table between an ashtray and a silver plated cigarette lighter. He flipped through the tissue thin pages to the glossary in the back of the book. First he looked under H. No luck. Next he looked under WH and there it was. He found eleven citations and he read each one carefully. After reading them he still was not sure what the word meant but he concluded that it was a Word from God that was for adults only.