The Immortals of Tehran Read online

  The Immortals of Tehran

  Copyright © Alireza Taheri Araghi 2020

  All rights reserved

  First Melville House Printing: April 2020

  Melville House Publishing

  46 John Street

  Brooklyn, NY 11201

  and

  Melville House UK

  Suite 2000

  16/18 Woodford Road

  London E7 0HA

  mhpbooks.com

  @melvillehouse

  ISBN 9781612198187

  Ebook ISBN 9781612198194

  Chapter 1 was previously published in slightly different form in Fifth Wednesday Journal.

  LCCN: 2019957481

  Book design by Richard Oriolo, adapted for ebook

  v5.4

  a

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Agha’s Family Tree

  1

  HMAD WAS A TEN-YEAR-OLD BOY when he was a ten-year-old boy. Never would he have thought, as he played tag with his childhood friends in the village of Tajrish, that he would one day watch his best friend’s father bite off a dead cat’s ear. Ahmad could not have foreseen that he would one day work in a forge, pounding white-hot iron with a heavy hammer. His childhood imagination could never have pictured the trains that sped through tunnels under the big city, in which one grasped for a hanging strap. In short, Ahmad Torkash-Vand could not have fathomed that the fog that shrouded the village that early summer morning would change the course of their history.

  On Ahmad’s sister’s wedding day, the morning fog descended the mountains as if some god had summoned it from the far seas. Many in the village had been in preparations since the marriage was announced by Ahmad’s father one month before. On the Day of the Fog, as it would later be called by those who decided to stay, a knocking woke Ahmad from his sleep. The sound traveled, jerky and anxious, from the front door, across the yard, into the house, along the hallway, and into Ahmad’s bedroom. For a few seconds he thought he had heard the rap in his dreams. His eyes were closing again when the repeated pounding yanked him out of sleep. He sat up remembering his sister’s wedding. His mother had told him the night before that she would leave for the Orchard with the women from the neighboring houses shortly after dawn to prepare for the ceremony. She had asked him to let the chickens out of the coop, scatter some feed, and not forget to get them back in before leaving for the Orchard. That was his only chore for the morning.

  The house was quiet. “Mom!” Ahmad called out toward his closed door. He sprang up from his sleeping pad on the floor to look out the window. Behind the white lace curtain, a fog had fallen so dense he could barely make out anything in the courtyard. With its chain-link fence lost in white, the coop was no more than the ghost of a large cage with blurry wooden posts. The blue hoez that reflected the overhanging elm branches in its calm water every morning had dimmed into an unidentifiable dark patch. Ahmad heard the nervous knocking again and this time Salman’s voice came with it: “Ahmaaaad!” Ahmad was not unfamiliar with Salman’s banging on the door, which often meant play time out in the dirt alleys or outside the village on the mountain trails, shooting pebbles at sparrows with slingshots. But his friend had never come so early in the morning, when it was time to prepare fresh meat for the customers and he had to lend a hand at the butchery. In response to Salman’s shout, the rooster, Ahmad’s favorite in the coop, cried out a hoarse ghoo-ghooli-ghoo-ghoooooo.

  “Coming,” Ahmad shouted as he stepped onto the wide veranda that overlooked the courtyard. The fog was the thickest Ahmad had ever walked into. If he had not already known where the hoez, the flower beds, the coop, and the cauldrons were, he would have lost his way in the limbo of the large yard. “Ahmad, hurry! It’s your father.” Suddenly the fog seeped into Ahmad’s chest. From the pile of shoes and slippers, he threw on the first pair he could find, ran down the four steps into the courtyard, and sprinted to the front door. Salman was restlessly shifting his weight from one foot to the other. Worry shot from his eyes. Without a word, he started running. Ahmad ran after him, along alleys in which fog flowed like a river toward a white sea. In front of him, Salman was a ghost, only half-visible, partially dissolved. Ahmad had to exert himself to catch up with his swift-footed friend lest the fog eat him altogether. He kicked off his slippers. The only sounds were their steps on the ground, and their panting. The rest of the world had gone. Ahmad tried to think what might have happened to his father. He followed Salman around a corner and came to the open area in front of the mosque where a murmuring crowd had gathered. The people close to the entrance were more visible while the ones on the periphery blended into white.

  “Here comes his son,” someone shouted. The people Ahmad could see turned their heads toward him as the crowd parted to let him through. Both metal doors of the mosque were flung open. Usually only one door was used; the second was unlatched only for funerals, marriages, and ceremonies. Surrounded by the onlookers and standing taller than them all, Mulla Ali was waiting close to the door. It was the first time Ahmad had seen the mulla without his white turban. The man’s sparse gray hair was in disarray, as if he had run his hand through it in different directions. He had draped his black cloak over his shoulders without changing out of his striped cream pajamas and white undershirt. Inside the mosque, a few men stood facing the small door in the corridor that opened into the stairwell inside the minaret. The turquoise tiles of the minaret faded into the milky haze before Ahmad could see what was happening up at the crown.

  “Come down, Nosser,” Nemat the Barber shouted up. “Don’t do this to the House of God.” Ahmad felt a hole open in his stomach down which his insides tumbled in an endless fall. It was his father Nemat was calling. The muffled sound of metal hitting something nonmetal was the only reply from the top of the minaret. “Step back! Step back!” shouted one of the men standing inside. Some ran out and others dashed farther into the mosque before something rumbled in the minaret and large chunks of broken brick shot out of the stairwell at the bottom. A flowerpot broke. Ahmad looked around at the faces he saw every day: the grocer; the bathhouse keeper; Mohammad the Carpenter; the baker; Salman’s father, Mash Akbar—a short man with a big stomach—and everyone else. It was hard to make out the faces of the women who were sitting—mostly in white chadors, camouflaged by the fog—on the roof tops witnessing the incident. He could not tell if his mother was among them. Why would she be watching and doing nothing? Salman’s father limped over to him and rested a hand
on his shoulder. “What’s my father doing, Mash Akbar?” Ahmad asked, but before Mash Akbar could answer, there was a gunshot from the top of the minaret: a shot into the fog. Everyone looked up in sudden agitation, although nothing could be seen. Ahmad was afraid. A second shot was fired. Salman covered his ears. Ahmad, too, put his hands on his ears and took shelter behind Mash Akbar.

  Mulla Ali combed his black-and-white beard with his long, bony fingers and looked up at the top of the minaret. “Nosser Khan, come down!” he shouted. “There are no Russians in the sky.” Another shot followed. A man stood next to Nemat the Barber with a sheet tied around his neck, half his head shaved clean and the other half covered in lather. Ahmad had seen him before, but did not know his name. Word had it he once loved a girl who broke his heart by running off with someone else. Now the man lived in a shack in the mountains and came down to Tajrish only to buy necessities, sell wild rhubarb, and shave his head. Nemat the Barber grabbed the man by the arm. “Let’s go,” he said, pulling gently. “Let’s go finish you. The man’s gone cuckoo again.” This he said looking at Ahmad, as if the ballyhoo was the boy’s fault. Ahmad kept his ears covered. There was another gunshot, and more brick came rolling down the spiral stairwell of the minaret.

  “Nosser Khan,” shouted Mulla Ali, “your son is here. Can you hear me? Ahmad is here.”

  Nosser was looking for trouble again; that was what Ahmad’s grandfather, Amin-olla Khan, would have said. Khan had certainly not yet heard what was happening, or else he would already be at the mosque to right things.

  “Khan” was what they called Ahmad’s grandfather. He was not considered the chief of the village, but he had the village in his pocket. He was the owner of several apple orchards in Tajrish and the surrounding villages, in the foot of the Alborz mountain range, north of Tehran. In recent years he had purchased even more land and orchards in the eastern area of Damavand, and it was through his enterprises that years later, the Damavand apple became the most popular variety in the capital city of Tehran, synonymous with quality and taste.

  Khan arrived in Tajrish a newborn in his mother’s arms when his great-great-great-grandfather, Agha, moved the family from the western parts of the country with a scimitar and enough inheritance to buy a small orchard. Khan grew up with a keen sense of business. At the age of seven, when his father died, he took matters into his own hands, and he held the title deed to a new orchard shortly after he turned sixteen. In Tajrish, Khan was second to the village mulla. When the rumor had broken out that his orchards were haunted by jinns, Khan approached Mulla Ali, and it was with the help of the clergyman—who held a red apple in his hand and bit into it in front of everyone—that Khan shed his ominous reputation and persuaded the village people to work for him again.

  Ahmad’s father, Nosser, was Khan’s only son. Khan’s wife was in excruciating pain for weeks before Nosser was due. When the pangs started to throb, she first clenched her teeth, then bit her index finger. When she dropped to her knees clawing the carpet and calling out Khan’s name, he would run to her room with opium. All the women in the house and many of the neighbors gathered in the main house when the due date arrived, saying prayers and reciting verses from the Quran. For five hours, as his wife’s shrieks pierced the night, Khan sat motionless at the walnut desk in his room, twirling the tips of his black mustache and tapping his finger on the wood as if to tick off seconds that passed too slowly. When the screams stopped, he closed his eyes and listened first to the cries of the baby and then to the wailing of the women mourning the death of his wife. He got up from his desk and stood there for a while, tall, in his pressed suit and pants, not knowing what to do. With the back of his hand, he brushed off his lapel, which was not dusty. He straightened his suit, which stood as crinkle-free as black marble. He bent his head and closed his eyes listening to the sad sounds from downstairs. Finally, he took his Astrakhan hat from the hanger, and left his room to see the baby.

  In the privacy of their homes, the people of the village said what they believed: that the sinister birth of the child had taken the life of the innocent beautiful woman. It was with a mixture of fear and reverence that the people of Tajrish regarded Khan and the young Nosser. Khan gave many work in his orchards and helped the poor. He orchestrated a movement to build a mosque in place of the old room where Mulla had laid rugs to use as the public praying room. The money that was collected allowed a dome, but ran out after the first minaret was erected. Hands locked behind his back, Mulla looked at the workers on the scaffolding installing the turquoise tiles halfway up the minaret and thought, Who has seen a mosque with a single minaret? After the mosque was built, Khan stood in the first row of the noon congregational prayer, right behind Mulla Ali. From that night on, that place of honor was established as his. Khan never remarried after the death of his wife, but he had two rooms built by the side of the main house in the Orchard and asked his sister, Malek-Zaman, to move in with her husband and her two little girls. “Malek, consider Nosser your son,” Khan told her sister. He did this to save Nosser from the humiliation of having a stepmother and to give him the love of an aunt, the closest to that of a mother.

  Nosser grew up to be a bully. Taller and stronger than the other boys his age, he ran the fastest and climbed the highest in the walnut trees until the village kids excluded him from their games altogether. Nosser, in turn, harassed his cousins and the others with sticks and slingshots and pinches and ruined their games. His aunt’s husband punished him for his mischief when Khan was not around. One winter night he grabbed Nosser’s arm and dragged him to the small stable at the end of the Orchard where Khan kept his two horses. He tied Nosser to a beam and filled his pants with horse manure before leaving him there for the night. He knew the boy would risk a beating from Khan for being a nuisance if he ever told anyone. But his stronger reassurance was that he knew Nosser was too proud to admit to the humiliation either to Khan or to anyone else. From that night on, every week or two, Nosser spent a night in the stable, his loose pants puffed with the soft, slimy mush.

  Nosser seemed to be growing up much faster than the other kids. With a sparse, fine mustache under his nose, he looked fifteen at eleven. When he was fourteen, he vanished from Tajrish. He walked four hours to Tehran and volunteered to do his military service. “A goat chewed it,” he said when they asked for his birth certificate.

  “You have a big brother?” the officer asked. “Go get his. I need some papers here.” Nosser shook his head. The officer eyed him over for a moment, then slipped him a piece of paper. “ ‘I testify that I’m eighteen years of age,’ write and sign.”

  After serving near the border of Turkey for two years, Nosser returned to Tajrish one day when men were loading a cart with apple crates. Without a word, he picked up a crate and joined in. A little boy dashed off to tell Khan. The cart was not yet half full when Khan came striding through the trees. Nosser stood straight, as if at attention, until Khan stopped in front of him inspecting his son’s khaki uniform, his black boots caked with mud, and his face that looked more mature than he would have guessed: Nosser’s beard, although trimmed, was full, his skin showed the tan that came with sweating work, and his nose had grown twice in size. He stepped forward and opened his arms, but before he could embrace his son, Nosser said, “Father, I have a wife now.” Khan dropped his arms and squinted his eyes. “Her name is Pooran.” Nosser’s voice was starting to tremble. “And she’s pregnant.” Khan’s eyebrows raised. Nosser welled up, but he still held his head high, casting down his eyes to avoid his father’s, staring instead at his pressed suit and pants and sumac tie. Those moments when Khan twirled the tip of his mustache, a frown hovering above his inquisitive eyes, Nosser imagined himself ostracized from his paternal house, wandering the streets of the capital with his pregnant wife.

  “I won’t forgive you,” Khan said, “the next time you leave your wife alone. Why aren’t you with her?”

  Although Iran was official
ly neutral when World War II broke out, Nosser enlisted in Reza Shah’s army and went away again. This Ahmad remembered. He must have been eight, and his sister Maryam eleven. Before Nosser left, there was a ceremony in the mosque. Mulla Ali said prayers in a circle of villagers so Nosser would have a safe journey, shook Nosser’s hand, and lowered his turbaned head to hug him goodbye. In their room Pooran pulled away from Nosser and averted his goodbye kiss. “They’re waiting for you,” she said picking up Nosser’s bag from the floor. Looking into his surprised eyes, she relented. “I owe you a kiss.” Out front in the Orchard, Nosser bent and kissed Khan’s hand before getting into the Ford V8 his father had ordered for him for the occasion. Ahmad and a pack of neighborhood kids ran after the fern-green car in the cloud of dust that the tires stirred and stopped only after the vehicle distanced itself from them on the Shemiron Road, the road that snaked from the foot of the mountains to the capital. Ahmad’s father was gone for a year and a half. He returned with a broken soul.

  * * *

  —

  IT WAS SIX MONTHS NOW since Nosser returned. At first, he had locked himself in his room for ten days. Every day or two he would eat half of the food Pooran prepared and placed at his door in a tray. After the tenth day he opened the door and tried to resume his normal life. He talked less. He bought a hunting rifle and started trekking the mountains in his army boots and pants, coming back every other day with a rabbit that Pooran refused to touch. “Go ahead and do what you want,” Pooran said, “but I’m not doing this and I’m not letting my daughter do this either.” She believed hunting would bring misfortune to a household. It was big enough calamity that her husband killed animals that were meant to be killed by other animals only; she would not have them skinned and cooked in her house. This she announced with such determination that Nosser never again brought game home. Instead he fed his rabbits and quails to the pack of stray dogs that hurried to welcome him near the village, wary not to get too close to the houses and the children who threw stones at them.