up his sleeves. He disappears.
He’s standing in front of the sink in the bathroom. He runs his right hand, soaking wet, down his face. He dribbles a little water over his widow’s peak. He drags his wet right hand down his left forearm (from a point not higher than the elbow). He drags his left hand down his right forearm (from a point not higher than the elbow). He lifts up his legs, one after the other, and rubs the tops of both feet (right foot with right hand, and left foot with left hand).
He comes into the sitting room. He says, ‘If I saw someone doing something suspicious, I’d immediately write a report on him, and if someone didn’t have a beard I’d skip school and follow him. There was one guy in my street and I thought he was a leftist. Three Fridays in a row I followed him. Each time, a man with a beard rode by on a bicycle – the same man, each time. Naturally, I thought he’d been sent by God to help me in my investigation. And later I found out; no, he was a guy who lived in the neighbourhood, who happened to have a beard.’
He kneels.
At Mr Zarif’s all-boys school, some of the female teachers believed that the Revolution had happened in the name of freedom – freedom of speech, thought, behaviour. (They had mistaken liberty – which means liberty from moral corruption and Godlessness – with a morality.) They took part in demonstrations that forced the Imam to back down on a decree that female civil servants cover their heads and wear shapeless clothes. There they were, persisting with their hip-hugging skirts and high-heeled boots.
The art teacher had cropped her hair, taking as an example one of the cops in Cagney and Lacey – Mr Zarif couldn’t remember which. The Cagney and Lacey woman had favourites among the older boys. People whispered about what she got up to with her favourites.
(Mr Zarif stands, head bowed. He whispers: ‘In the name of God the merciful and compassionate. Glory and thanksgiving be only to the God of the universe, who is merciful and compassionate and lord of the day of retribution. We worship none but you, and request help from none but you. Guide us along the right path, the path of those whom you have made secure, not the path of those who have lost their way. In the name of God, the merciful and compassionate, say that God is one. God needs nothing. He was not born, and did not procreate, and no one is like him.’)
The ideologues were saying that the Revolution required several steps; the Shah’s flight had been the first. Now, they said, it was the turn of the Communists and liberals and Westernized fun-lovers. There was a dangerous group, the People’s Mujahedin, which claimed to have reconciled Islam with Communism; the Prophet, they said, had been the first Marxist! (Later on, the Imam was to christen this group the Eclectics and, later still, the Hypocrites.) There were kids at school who daubed hammers and sickles on the playground wall. The head of the revolutionary committees said, ‘We must purify society in order to renew it.’ The question was: how?
One day, in a mosque that was known for its fervent and revolutionary congregation, Mr Zarif came across a group of people who had the answer. They were older than Mr Zarif – most of them were in their early twenties – and they called each other ‘brother’. They wore trimmed beards and kept their shirts untucked. Even on hot days, they never rolled up their sleeves. One or two of them wore silver rings, with a star in the middle. Some of them had the piebald Palestinian scarf, the kaffieh, around their necks, and mentioned the Bekaa Valley in conversation. They grinned when Mr Zarif asked them whether they had spent time in Lebanon. Some of them seemed knowledgeable about automatic weapons and explosive devices.
(Leaning forward, hands on knees: ‘The most elevated God is clean and pure.’)
They were lovers. They loved the truth. They loved God and the Prophet. They loved the Imam and the clerics around him. They loved the Imam Hossein and the Imam Ali. More than anything, they loved their enemies – the liberals and Marxists, the Americans and the British agents. And the Zionists, of course. They would destroy them with their love.
They said they took orders from some clerics in Isfahan. (The clerics seemed to take their orders from people close to the Imam.) They were doing useful work: spreading propaganda, harassing opposition groups, encouraging citizens to denounce apologists for the former regime. Some of them were members of the Revolutionary Guard. Others were linked to the revolutionary committees. Some, Mr Zarif guessed, were members of an unofficial action group, called Hezbollah, though they were coy if asked.
(Kneeling over, forehead on a tablet of baked earth from Karbala: ‘Great God is clean and pure.’)
One by one, they and their allies were getting into the local bureaucracy. There was an increase in trimmed beards in the municipal corridors. There were more chadors. The Imam’s supporters were making life difficult for civil servants who didn’t say their prayers, or failed to turn up for indoctrination classes. The secularists had a choice: change your ways, and your appearance, or get out.
One Thursday evening, they let Mr Zarif join them in a small room next to the mosque. One of the younger lads picked up a microphone that was attached to an amp and started singing about Hossein’s martyrdom. He had a fine voice. The others gathered in a tight circle, near the singer, and knelt inwards. In time with the lament, they brought their arms high above their heads, and down again, so that their hands thumped against their chests.
Gradually, the lament got faster. The arms rose and fell faster, like the pistons of a locomotive. Someone turned off the light and the men took off their shirts; their torsos glistened in the street light that came in from the window. Faster and faster, the lament went, until the singer’s voice cracked; he started sobbing into the microphone. Inside the circle, the arms were rising and falling more swiftly; when the hands hit the chests, they made the sound of bones hitting hide. Drops of sweat fell off the end of Mr Zarif’s nose. His arms ached. His chest felt raw.
Everyone was shouting: ‘Hosseinhosseinhosseinhosseinhossein!’ and hitting their chests as hard as they could.
After it was over, someone turned on the lights. Mr Zarif blinked. Everyone had red splotches on their chests. The room was humid. The lads put on their shirts. Then someone brought in tea and biscuits. Someone cracked a joke.
(Standing up, hands out in supplication: ‘God! Favour us in this life and the next, and save us from the torment of hell.’)
After they had tea, one of the men came over to Mr Zarif and introduced himself. He asked some questions, about Mr Zarif’s political and religious convictions, and the situation at his school. Mr Zarif gave him what seemed – from the man’s reactions – to be satisfactory answers. The man asked Mr Zarif to monitor the Communists, and the Mujahedin, at school. These groups had seized arms from armouries in the chaos that preceded and coincided with the Shah’s flight. Their paymasters in Moscow were trying to take advantage of the situation, to suck Iran into their zone of influence.
(Sitting on his heels, hands on knees: ‘In the name of God, on him be praise and glory. I bear witness that God is one and that Muhammad is his servant and Prophet. Greetings and the benediction of God on Muhammad and his followers.’)
The following week, Mr Zarif and the other members of the gang followed the Communist kids. They found out where they lived, and discovered that their dads wore big moustaches, and called one another ‘comrade’. Some of the dads worked at Isfahan’s big iron works, which had Russian managers. One or two of them socialized with Russian families. The Russian families were poor and ugly.
One day, a couple of men arrived at the school to start political indoctrination. The men told the kids how to think about God and the Imam, and America and the Zionist Entity. When the principal saw that Mr Zarif was a friend of these men, he conceived for him a shaming fear. A kid of fifteen had become more powerful than he was.
Mr
