The Iranian customs barrier is a mile or so down the road.
A single light burns outside a ramshackle wooden hut painted white. The countryside around the hut is still black, the sky overcast and moonless, not a single star glowing in the somnolent night. Inside the hut, a radio is playing softly. Music. Odd-sounding stringed instruments. As the truck slows to a stop, she hears two men laughing inside the hut. Jean-François climbs down from the cab. A man in an olive-green uniform comes out of the hut. He is short and swarthy, and he is wearing a peaked cap tilted low on his forehead. He has a thick nose with a pencil-line mustache under it. Jean-François begins talking to the man in French. The man replies in a language Lissie imagines to be Persian, and then shakes his head impatiently, and goes back into the hut. A hooded light flicks on over the entrance door. When he emerges again, he is trailed by a slightly taller man wearing the same olive-green uniform but with different markings on his epaulets; his superior officer, Lissie guesses.
In English, the second man says to Jean-François, “Papers,” and holds out his hand. His attention is caught by the glint of Lissie’s blond hair in the cab of the truck, illuminated by the light the other man turned on. He squints his eyes, cranes his neck for a look into the cab, and still looking at Lissie, accepts the papers Jean-François extends to him. He has a cold; he keeps sniffing as he studies the papers, runs his forefinger under his dripping nose, and finally reaches for a handkerchief in his back pocket and blows his nose noisily before returning to the papers. In English, Jean-François explains that this is his passport, and this is his visa (“Yes, yes,” the officer says), and this his bill of lading, and this his authority to transport farm machinery into Iran, and this his carnet — “Yes, yes,” the officer says, “open the truck for me.”
Jean-François goes around to the back of the trailer, unlocks the padlock there, and opens the doors wide. Farm machinery, just as he’d explained. A tractor and a cultivator. That is all.
“You are going where?” the officer asks.
“Teheran.”
“And returning when?”
“Aussitôt que je... when I make délivrance.”
“When is that?”
“J’attends arriver... I expect arrive Teheran tomorrow.”
“And will leave Iran when?”
“Après-demain. The day next.”
“Close the doors,” the officer says, and comes around the rear of the truck to the cab again. From the driver’s side, he points up into the cab at Paul and says, “You. Papers.”
Paul slides over on the seat and is handing down his passport and visa when the officer says, “Here. Where I can see. The woman, too. You,” he says, pointing to her. “Blondie. Out of the truck.”
The word “Blondie” sends a shiver of unreasoning fear up her spine. She opens the door on her side of the cab, and then starts around the front of the truck to where the officer is waiting under the light. The engine is still running; Jean-François has not turned off the ignition, expecting this stop to be as brief as the one on the Turkish side had been. The headlights pierce the darkness ahead, illuminating the lowered black-and-white-striped border barrier. She feels the heat of the engine as she passes through the headlight beams to the other side of the cab where the officer is now looking at Paul’s passport.
“You have been where?” he says.
“Traveling directly here. Through Europe and then Turkey.”
“Where do you go now?”
“Delhi.”
“To return when?”
“I’m not sure yet.”
“Visa,” the officer says, and extends his hand. Paul gives him the visa they obtained at the Iranian Consulate in Istanbul. He looks at it, nods, says, “Fifteen-day transit.”
“Yes, sir.”
He hands the visa back. “How many cigarettes you have?” he asks.
“I don’t smoke,” Paul says.
“How many cigarettes?”
“None.”
“Whiskey?”
“None.”
“You have narcotics?” the officer asks.
“No, sir.”
“Marijuana?”
“No, sir.”
“Cocaine?”
“No, sir. Nothing.”
“You are American, and no marijuana?” the officer says, and laughs. “Blondie?” he says, and turns sharply to where Lissie is standing near the cab fender. “You have marijuana?”
“No,” she says. “No, sir.”
“Papers,” he says, and holds out his hand.
She puts her passport and her visa on his outstretched palm. He studies both, checks Lissie’s picture against her face, and then says, “Where do you go now?”
“To Delhi.”
“With boyfriend here?”
“Yes.”
“How many cigarettes you have?”
“None.”
“Whiskey?”
“None.”
“Where is your luggage?”
“In the truck. In the... back of the truck.”
“Open the door again,” he says to Jean-François over his shoulder. He looks at Lissie’s passport. “You were born... what is this?”
“December 19, 1951.”
“So you are how old?”
“Eighteen,” she says.
“Eighteen,” he repeats. “Nice, Blondie. Eighteen. Get your luggage.”
She walks around to the back of the truck, where Jean-François has again unlocked and opened the big doors. She pulls out her duffel and carries it to where the officer is now pacing under the overhead light.
“That is all?” he says.
“Yes.”
“One piece?”
“Yes.”
“Open it.”
She unzips the bag for him. He kneels beside it, pokes at it tentatively, and then reaches into it with both hands, feeling, rummaging. She watches silently as he riffles through her several pairs of blue jeans, her dozen or more bikini panties, her blouses and sweaters, her sandals and shoes. He unzips her cosmetics kit and seems fascinated by the array of lipsticks and eye liners. He studies her plastic container of birth-control pills.
“What is this?” he asks.
“Pills,” she says.
“Narcotics?”
“No, no. Birth control.”
“What is that, birth control?”
“You take them so you won’t have babies.”
“This?”
“One every day,” she says, and nods.
He looks at her skeptically, and then studies the manufacturer’s name on the circular container, and then the numbers for the days of the month, and then pops one of the pills out and studies the manufacturer’s colophon stamped onto the face of the pill itself. She thinks, He’s going to fuck up my cycle, the dope. The night air is chill. She shivers again, and zips up the front of her leather fighter-pilot’s jacket. He is trying now to put the pill back into the hole from which he popped it. He gives up, and drops the container and the loose pill back into the cosmetics kit. He zips it closed. He stands up.
“Inside,” he says.
“What for?” she says.
“Search,” he says. “Inside.”
“Search? For what?”
“Narcotics.”
“I have no narcotics.”
“We shall see. Inside.”