There was nothing he could do about it, Najjar knew, besides informing the world and staying in prayer. But for some reason the story made him miss Sheyda and their child all the more, and he got down on his knees and pleaded with God to reunite them soon.
13
“Let’s go, let’s go. We’re almost there,” David insisted as they entered the city limits and raced through the ghost town that Qom now was.
As instructed, Torres pushed the pedal to the metal. And why not? There were no cops. There was no traffic. There were no pedestrians and seemingly no activity of any kind. The streets were empty. The sidewalks were empty. Not a single child could be found on the playgrounds. Not a single shopper browsed in the stores. It was surreal.
David had been to Qom just a few days earlier — on Thursday, in fact — to meet Javad Nouri. He had met the aide to the Mahdi at the Jamkaran Mosque, in a suburb of Qom. On that day, as on every day, the city had been wall-to-wall people, and the streets had been clogged with every kind of car and truck and cab and motorcycle imaginable. Now everyone — all of it — was gone. The entire population had gone into hiding or had fled the city completely, probably fearing the possibility that one of the Israeli missiles would be nuclear and kill everything within a fifty-mile radius. David had never seen anything like it, and the entire bizarre situation gave him the creeps.
However, when they reached the entrance to Haqqani Street, where Abdol Esfahani’s parents lived, everything changed again. Normally there would be nothing particularly noteworthy about Haqqani Street. Like many neighborhoods in this part of Qom, it was lined on both sides with cherry trees not yet in bloom bracketing small, two-story, single-family homes, typically owned in this neighborhood by Shia clerics and seminary professors and some of Iran’s more prestigious intelligentsia. The homes had well-manicured lawns with gorgeous rosebushes out front and varying arrays of tulips and forsythias and chrysanthemums. But this was not a normal day.
To David’s surprise, the street was clogged with people looking and pointing and covering their mouths in shock. Torres slowed the car, and David peered down the street. Once again he could smell jet fuel and smoke, sharper and more pungent than any other place he had been. Smoke was billowing from a house halfway down the street. Flames were shooting twenty or thirty feet in the air. And suddenly he realized what had happened. The Israeli fighter jet they had seen falling from the sky had crashed here. And now, amid the wailing and shrieking of neighbors and onlookers and their children, David heard sirens approaching in the distance.
“Stop the car,” he ordered and jumped out once Torres had pulled over. “I’m going to find Esfahani. The rest of you find a place to park on the next street. Then fan out into the crowd in a way that allows you to see his parents’ house from all sides. Be discreet, and don’t talk to anyone. None of your Farsi is near good enough.”
Before Torres could object to the plan, David was sprinting, checking house numbers on both sides of the street until through the thick, black, billowing smoke he could make out the number 119 just two doors down from the house that had been demolished by the burning fuselage of the F-16. He was making his way around the crowd when a secondary explosion from the plane erupted to his left, sending him flying through the air and smashing onto the gravel street. Flames were now shooting a good forty or fifty feet into the air. Molten metal from the plane and burning embers from the house were landing everywhere and starting new fires.
David pulled himself back up and wiped the soot from his face. He wondered whether the Israeli jet had more ordnance on board, bombs or Sidewinder missiles that were now cooking in the flames and preparing to blow and take out the entire neighborhood. And it was then that he saw the roof of the Esfahani home ablaze.
Bolting for the front door, he started shouting for the Esfahanis and pounding as loudly as he could on the door, but it was clear no one could hear him. He could barely hear himself. He tried the handle, but the door was locked. He tried kicking it in but to no avail. He looked around. There was no one near him. The crowds that had come to gawk were now screaming and running away. But the sirens were getting closer, and David did not want to be around when the police or the army arrived. He had done nothing illegal, necessarily — nothing obvious or immediate, anyway — but he still didn’t want to be interviewed or interrogated or slowed down in any way. But he absolutely had to find Abdol Esfahani, if he was really there. Or had he come and gone already? Had he already gotten his parents out and left for a safer place? After all this, was David too late?
Determined to get into the house and find out for sure one way or another, he worked his way around to the side of the house, peering through windows but seeing no one. When he got to the back door, he was fully prepared to pull out his Glock 9mm and blow through the lock. There was no one watching, and few would care even if they were. Any observers would likely assume he was a member of the secret police. But to David’s surprise, the door was not only unlocked; it was open.
With the top of the house now completely ablaze, David calculated he had only a few minutes before the entire roof collapsed into the second floor, trapping and burning alive anyone who might be up there. So without hesitation he rushed into the ground floor, scanning for any movement, any signs of life.
“Abdol! Abdol Esfahani!” David yelled. “Are you here? Is anyone here?”
The house was rapidly filling with smoke, making it extremely difficult not only to breathe but to see.
“Hello! Is anyone here?” he yelled again.
With no sign of anyone in the kitchen, the dining room, the living room, or the first-floor bathroom, David raced up the first few stairs, continuing to shout at the top of his lungs, when suddenly, to his shock, he found himself staring up into the bleary, bloodshot, and terror-filled eyes of Abdol Esfahani. Over his shoulder he carried an older woman, clothed in a brown chador, who looked at least eighty years old, if not older.
“Reza?” Esfahani asked, stunned.
“Yes, it’s me, Abdol. I came to help you save your parents,” David replied.
Esfahani just stood there, paralyzed, trying to make sense of this. “How did you—?”
“No, not now,” David shouted as another explosion erupted nearby. “Is that your mother?”
“Yes, yes.”
“Then let’s go, get her outside. This place is going to blow any second.”
“But my father is upstairs too.”
“Just go,” David shouted. “Get your mother out. I’ll go for your father.”
Esfahani started choking violently.
“Go, go — don’t wait,” David shouted, and Esfahani finally began moving. “Take her out the back, and get her as far away from the house as you can. Is she breathing?”
“I’m not sure,” Esfahani admitted as he came rushing down the stairs.
“I’ll be there in a moment,” David said. “Now run, and don’t stop.”
When he saw that Esfahani was listening and doing what he told him, David scrambled up to the second floor, dropped to his knees, and pulled part of his shirt over his nose and mouth, trying to find some decent air. But breathing was not his main problem. In his haste to get Esfahani and the man’s mother out of the house, David had neglected to find out which room the father was in. He could hear the fire roaring above him. Ashes and pieces of burning lumber were already falling from the ceiling, which was clearly about to give way at any time. David crawled down the hall and peered into the first bedroom. He couldn’t see a thing, so he sucked in a big gulp of air, jumped to his feet, and began feeling his way across the bed and along the floor only to find no one there. He moved to the hall, dropped to his stomach, and again took several short breaths.