For a miserable moment I had nothing to tell to my son, no words formed themselves at my lips. I simply stood there mere centimeters away, my son’s mouth partly open, his eyes blinking the water from them as he waited for what might happen next. It was Nadi who acted decisively: “Do not be afraid, Esmail,” she said as she moved past him and began to drain the water from the bath. “Your father is a colonel, a genob sarhang. That man in our home is not even sergeant. Your father will easily take care of this business.” She told to him to wash his face and clean his teeth, she would prepare him a bed in the bath. Esmail paused a moment, his eyes still upon me.
“Yes, joon-am. Clean yourself and rest. I have seen one hundred men like this; they are desperate for something so they use their pistol at the last moment but they are always bluffing. Do you understand? He does not intend to do anything he says.”
“But Bawbaw—”
“Shh, shh, you clean and use the toilet—your mother will not look—and you rest. I will handle this man.”
Esmail began to wash his hands and face at the sink and Nadi brushed past me to wipe dry the bath, her eyes upon me only a moment, narrow and shining, and I of course thought this was rage, rage at me for leading us all into this locked washroom. But her hands were trembling and she lowered herself to her knees and began wiping the bath in abrupt jerking movements, and I thought of the small bird Soraya discovered at the base of a tree, attempting to flap its broken wing but gaining no distance from where it began. Nadi prepared the bed for our son, directed him to it, and she said nothing more to either of us. She extinguished the light and lay upon the floor, turning her back to me with no apology. I knew her fear of Mr. Burdon, of what he may do, was so great she could not speak without betraying it to our young son, so I forgave her her rudeness. But I did not forgive her her fear.
She had less of it as Bahman drove us through the burning streets of the capital city before dawn, down darkened alleyways past the trash of American and French hotels, away from the main boulevards where students and bohemians, farmers and cargars burned effigies of Shahanshah and Empress Pahlavi, an offense that only months earlier would have brought torture and execution upon their entire family. In the rear of the limousine, Nadi held our infant son while my daughter of ten years sat upon my lap, her face pressed to my chest as she wept. I held her with one hand only, for in the other was the. 45-caliber pistol given me by the American officer. Bahman drove us directly onto the tarmac at Mehrabad, past the lighted windows of the guard booth. The soldiers were obedient, waving us through immediately, but their faces appeared quite still, as if they were beginning to understand they may be the brunt of a cruel hoax. The jet engines were already roaring in the darkness, and I was afraid for my children’s ears, especially my infant son’s, as we hurried with them up the portable stairs to the aircraft. My copilot’s wife and children were wrapped in blankets amongst their trunks and boxes and luggage. Nadi left the baby with the khonoum, Soraya with the other children, and my wife followed me back into the night, into the cry of the engine and the smell of jet fuel, to the tarmac, where Bahman handed to us our belongings from the limousine, only three trunks and four pieces of luggage. That is all we took with us of our lives. But Nadi did not complain. With both hands she carried a heavy suitcase and climbed the stairs to the plane while Bahman and I followed with a trunk, its leather handle cutting into my palm. Even then she was dressed stylishly, in a khaki safari suit, the jacket’s many pockets full of anything she could carry from our home: earrings and necklaces, diaper pins, small kitchen utensils, a handful of French coins her father had given her as a girl. She helped me with the remaining two trunks, and once inside the aircraft, as I lifted the canvas flap to enter the cockpit, she squeezed my hand then pressed to my face her palm and fingers, her gavehee eyes full of gratitude.
But what if she had known then, at that moment, the revolutionary government would not collapse but grow more strong? That our names and those of all our friends and acquaintances would be placed upon a death list? That we would never return to our country, to our families, to the houses of our birth? Would she have been grateful still? Even for that one moment? For only in this bungalow did Nadi’s old happiness begin to emerge once again. She was free of the pooldar acting of the Berkeley Hills; we were upon our own small hill with a widow’s walk to view the sea, our daughter was newly married, and Esmail left the home early each morning to ride his skateboard joyously down the long hill of the street. I was no longer a garbage soldier with the rough hands of a cargar, my head and face burned by the sun. And she no longer had to lie at the dinner parties of the Berkeley pooldar, to lie with all her teeth and tell to the wives of surgeons and lawyers and engineers, “My sarhang has been playing tennis all day in the sun, golf as well.” Because I had become an investor in real estate, a man who might once again provide an escape for his family, is this why Nadi invited me twice to share her bed?
But at this moment, in the dark, her back is turned. If I rest my fingertips upon her shoulder, she will pull away, for I know she is awake. “Please,” to our captor she said. “My husband is only good.” Perhaps Burdon understood this as a positive comment on my character, a wife attempting to expose only her husband’s best side, the side she perhaps loves most. But this is not what Nadereh was saying at alclass="underline" Please sir, my husband has only his good intentions remaining. He is nothing any longer. Nothing. And so I am nothing. Please sir, have pity upon us for we are nothing now. Heechee. Nothing.
Nadi is the lamb who wishes to sleep only with the lion. And now the weak lamb cannot sleep, for not only does she fear this tall thin policeman, but she fears she has lied to her own son as well, that his father is not capable to handle this man in his house.
“Bawbaw?” my son whispers, his voice thick with congestion from the nose.
“Yes, joon-am.”
“I want to move back to Berkeley.”
The muscles in my neck feel quite rigid. I close my eyes and inhale deeply, letting the air escape slowly, but no relaxation comes. Esmail turns over in the bath. “That was a good place, Bawbaw.”
“Why do you say this? What was good about it?”
“We had an elevator and a pool. Maman-jahn liked to sit by the window and see San Francisco. It was good, Bawbaw. Nobody wanted to take it away from us. All our friends are there.”
“I have no friends there. Those people were not my friends.”
“But you had parties with them all the time.”
“That was for your sister, joon-am. That was to help your sister complete her hastegar, to find a good husband. Now she has found one and we will not go back there.”
“But where will we go, Bawbaw?”
“We are going nowhere.” I stop speaking and in the darkness I regard the pale white of the locked door. I speak only in Farsi. “We stay in this bungalow until we are able to sell it, then we will have enough money to go many places, joon-am, to do many things.”
“But that cop,Bawbaw. He told us to leave.”
“I do not care what he told to us. He is no position to threaten anyone, Esmail. And I am quite finished with being forced from my home by thugs.” This is a word in Farsi Esmail does not know, and he asks me to explain it.
“Thugs: these are people who hurt others merely to get things they want. Criminals, Esmail. Bad people.”
My son is quiet for many moments, and I am grateful for the silence, the peace. Tomorrow I will pretend to do as Lester V. Burdon instructs, and when my family and I are safely away, I will report Mr. Burdon to his superior officers. I will press charges and he will lose everything, and we will sell the bungalow at a profit, then go where he cannot find us.