The Moving Prison Part 4

Ezra sat in front of the desk, pensively cleaning his fingernails as he stared out the front door. He started and looked at Nijat.

"Pardon me, Aga, could you repeat your question?"

Nijat smiled. "Again you are very preoccupied, my friend."

"I'm sorry," Ezra gave a weak smile and spread his hands. "I seem to have a great deal on my mind these days."

Thoughtfully Nijat nodded. "Indeed, Aga Solaiman. I asked how much you paid for the s.h.i.+pment reflected on this latest manifest." He indicated the stack of papers in front of him.

Ezra squinted as he tried to recall the figure. "Five million tomans," he said, finally, "or thereabout. Of course, that was paid several months ago. I am expecting another s.h.i.+pment from Ciba-Geigy within another month or so, for which I can furnish order forms. Its wholesale purchase price was around three million tomans, so the value of the two s.h.i.+pments would be close to ..." Again he squinted one eye at the ceiling, in calculation. "Eight-point-three million. Wouldn't that be about right?" he asked Nijat.

Nijat nodded, rubbing his stubbly chin. "I would say so, Aga. Or close to it. Do you have a sales ledger?"

"Of course," said Ezra. "Look in the bottom desk drawer, on the right."

Nijat shuffled around in the drawer. "Ah, yes. Here it is." Sliding the manifests to one side, he laid the scarred, black leather-bound ledger book in front of him. He turned a few pages and pursed his lips, nodding in approval. "By the way, Aga Solaiman," he asked, glancing up at Ezra, "which set of books is this-the actual sales or the figures you use for tax reporting?"

Ezra leveled a steady gaze at the other man. "I don't keep two sets of books, Aga. The figures you see in that book are the actual figures." Ezra held his eyes until Nijat shrugged in acceptance and returned his attention to the ledger.

The bell over the door jangled, and both men looked up. Firouz stood there, momentarily startled by the sight of Nijat huddled behind the stacks of paper on the desk.

"Come in, Firouz," beckoned Ezra. "I want to introduce you to Aga Ameer Nijat." Cautiously, Firouz approached the two other men.

Ezra glanced at Nijat before speaking, "Aga Nijat is-a business a.s.sociate of mine. Aga Nijat, this is Firouz Marandi. He has been with me here for three years." Firouz, his eyes downcast, nodded briefly at the other man.

Not to be trusted, thought Nijat. Standing, he said aloud. "Aga Solaiman, I believe I have seen enough for now. I will call you within a day or two to continue our discussion."

"I will eagerly expect your call," said Ezra, rising to show Nijat to the door.

When they had reached the doorway, Nijat turned to Ezra. "Tell me, I seem to remember a little restaurant in this area which used to serve an excellent chelow kabob. Is it still open?"

"If you mean the small open-air cafe around the corner, yes," answered Ezra. "Perhaps you would care to meet for lunch sometime?"

"Good idea," returned Nijat. "I'll call soon." He left, and the bell rattled as the door closed behind him. Ezra turned around. Firouz was staring at the pile of doc.u.ments on the desk. He glanced up, saw Ezra watching him, and quickly turned to go toward the storeroom.

Khosrow looked at himself in the hallway mirror, shaking his head at what he saw. A rumpled young man stared back at him-a far cry from his neatly pressed appearance of only a few weeks before.

This was the accommodation he had made to his father's wishes, to at least try to avoid looking like a Westerner. He had convinced himself that it did no one any good for him to get killed over the cut of his trousers.

His family had made the expected adjustments. When his mother and sisters went out, they wore the drab chador. His father had begun allowing his beard to grow out, and had removed the portrait of the Shah that had hung in the living room for as long as Khosrow could remember. Mother had bought a portrait of Khomeini, but his parents, despite their anxiousness to avoid trouble, had not yet been able to bring themselves to hang it.

A part of Khosrow was ashamed of such compromises. To knuckle under, to abandon loyalties when they became untimely-wasn't this the mark of cowardice? Was that what the Islamic uprising was teaching him-that he had no true convictions?

He thought of Sepi Solaiman, and he turned away from the mirror. Sepi was by far the most difficult question he had to answer for himself. He was quite smitten with her, but ... could his father be right, after all? Could he afford the luxury of indulging his feelings in these difficult times?

Again he felt the angular fists of his boyhood friends as they cuffed and slapped him, heard the cruelty in their voices as they taunted him for defending an infidel. These were not the faces he had known, not the voices of boys he had played soccer with on bright afternoons. These were young, vicious strangers who attacked him-their faces masks of mob fervor, their voices darkened and curdled by the simplistic hatred of the pack. That had hurt worse than the blows-that the friends.h.i.+p of years and innocence should be so casually swept away by the torrents of hatred flooding his country. He had thought friends were friends. It was a hard thing to learn that this wasn't always so.

His conclusions were very troubling to Khosrow. It was so unfair. Why should anyone else care that he had feelings for a girl of another faith? Why did the world have to intrude on his emotional territory? Why couldn't they all just mind their own business? He felt the old resentment boiling up within him.

And yet ... why couldn't he make up his own mind about what to do? He looked at himself a final time and turned away in disgust. Grabbing up his schoolbooks, he slouched out the front door.

Moosa snorted as he tossed the newspaper onto the kitchen table. "Whom does the Shah imagine he is fooling?" he demanded loudly. "Vacation, indeed! In the streets the barefooted ones chant, 'Death to the Shah!' What does he do? Climbs aboard his Learjet and flies away to a carefree holiday in the Alps!" Moosa shook his head in disgust as he sipped his coffee.

"What would you have him do," asked Esther bitterly, "publish the news that the rightful king of Iran is afraid for his life and is fleeing the country with his family while there is still time?" Angrily she punched and slapped the bread dough between her hands, her back to her son. "He cannot depend on his army or on his own secret service. Would it be better that he stay here to die at the hands of the mullahs? Or escape and perhaps return when the country comes to its senses?"

Moosa heard the resentment in his mother's voice, but her obstinacy galled him. "Mother, this country won't come to its senses. Why can't you accept the fact? Better that you get out and come to America. There, at least, you don't have to be so careful about being Jewish. Iran will soon belong to the mullahs and the Islamic fanatics. Why not leave while you can-like the Shah?"

Esther whirled about, her jaw clenched. "Moosa," she grated, "you may have learned to think like an American, but I have not. This country has existed for over thousands of years, and for all of that time has been governed by a king. Your promised land across the ocean has been there barely 200 years." She glared at him until his eyes dropped guiltily. "So watch your mouth," she continued. "Others remember and cherish what you have apparently forgotten." She stalked past him, wiping her hands on her ap.r.o.n.

Sepideh stood by the stairway in the main hallway, feeling hostile stares slide across her as the other students pa.s.sed. She was afraid to come back to school, but her father told her she would be all right. She wasn't so sure, but he seemed to feel it was important that she maintain a normal routine-avoid unusual appearances, he said. So here she stood, feeling very conspicuous.

The surge of Islamic fervor became more apparent each day. Some of the boys were allowing their scant whiskers to grow, and several girls wore chadors to school now. One of them pa.s.sed her, the loose black cloth of the shapeless garment swis.h.i.+ng about her ankles. From within the folds of the garment, the guarded eyes of the girl stared at her as she walked past. Sepi s.h.i.+vered. Right now she would almost welcome the chador; at least it offered a veil of anonymity. Better than being exposed and vulnerable, as she was now.

"Good morning, Sepi."

She whirled about. Khosrow smiled back at her.

"Why must you always sneak up behind me like that?" she demanded.

He chuckled. "I like seeing your eyes when you're surprised."

She squinted at his face. "Are you letting your beard grow?" she asked suspiciously.

Khosrow shrugged, looking away. "Everyone's doing it. Why not?"

"Next I suppose you'll be asking me to wear a chador."

He glanced back at her, then away, saying nothing. A long, awkward silence limped past.

"Well ... we'd better get to cla.s.s," he managed, at last.

Sepi held out her hand. Glancing up and down the hall, Khosrow hesitantly took her hand as they walked toward their cla.s.srooms. Sepi looked at him questioningly, but he stolidly kept his eyes ahead.

EIGHT.

The first day of February sparkled with the crystalline clarity of midwinter. Sunlight glinted from the wings of the Air France jetliner as it banked to make its final approach to the runway at Mehrabad Airport.

Thousands of people, crammed into the terminal building or peering from cars parked w.i.l.l.y-nilly along the expressways around the airport, anxiously followed the plane's graceful, slow-motion descent as its wheels reached from the underbelly of the aircraft, then touched the tarmac. All across Iran, millions of eyes were riveted to television screens, millions of ears anxiously turned toward short-wave radio broadcasts from the BBC, as every nuance of this moment was recorded for posterity. The airliner, now taxing toward its berth, carried the triumphant rebel. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. The victor returned to Tehran to claim his prize.

Devout Muslims rushed toward the aircraft, even before it had fully stopped, hoping to catch their first glimpse of this man whose voice they had heard for so long, yet whose face they scarcely knew. A cheering, jostling crowd greeted the stooped, white-bearded old man who made his way carefully down the steps from the plane, lifting him gleefully onto its shoulders, parading in triumph toward the van waiting to carry him to the first of many speaking engagements. Along the route of Khomeini's entourage, hordes of the s.h.i.+te faithful packed the roadsides. For the poor, the devout, and the revolutionaries, this was a day of delirious joy.

Others, watching from greater distances, witnessed Khomeini's triumphal entry with fear and trepidation.

"I have dreaded to see this day," intoned Abraham Moosovi, from the armchair where he sat. A group of friends gathered before the television in Ezra Solaiman's study, witnessing the arrival of the Imam, as Khomeini was now being styled. "And yet," continued the rug exporter after a thoughtful pause, "I find that I am also strangely relieved. At least the waiting is over. Now we know for certain who will run the country."

Ezra looked gravely at the other man, then at the somber faces of the rest of the group. "What you say is true, Abraham," he said. "And yet I cannot help thinking that things may get worse before they get better. We may look back on the days before this and remember them fondly."

Some of the women wept softly. All felt the stomach-churning malaise of apprehension. No one knew what Khomeini's first acts would be. It was within his power as Imam to declare a jihad, if he chose. Against whom would the new de facto ruler of Iran direct his first a.s.sault? The Christians? The Baha'i? The Jews? For all his faults, the Shah had been able to protect the religious and ethnic minorities in Iran. But he was gone. They watched as their new leader, clad in a black camel-hair robe and turban, delivered an emotional speech to a huge crowd gathered at one of the city's largest cemeteries.

"In the name of Allah the Merciful and Compa.s.sionate," Khomeini began, standing beside the grave of one of the hundreds of s.h.i.+tes slain during the uprising. Pointing to the gravestone, he shouted at the admiring throng, "Is this the meaning of 'human rights'?"

The crowd's roar filtered through the speaker of Ezra's television set, filling the room. Khomeini was making an obvious reference to the issue that had helped alienate the Shah from his American protectors.

"Never again," the Ayatollah continued, "will an innocent Muslim die at the hands of the traitors of Islam." Another huge cheer ripped through the increasingly zealous crowd. "Never again will this land be ruled by infidel ideologies. Never again will Iran be ruled by a monarch."

"I would not want to be sitting where Bakhtiar is today," remarked another of Ezra's guests. Appointed prime minister by the Shah before his departure, Shahpur Bakhtiar was charged with the hopeless task of seeking a coalition with the antiroyalist factions. The most optimistic gave him weeks; the more realistic allowed scant days before the tides of anarchy swept aside the last vestige of the Pahlavi regime. Already the crowds in the streets chanted death slogans with Bakhtiar's name attached. "He will be brought down for no reason other than his a.s.sociation with the Shah," agreed another. "And for this crime he will have no defense."

"I have heard people say that the army is defecting en ma.s.se," said Moosa, seated by his father. "Barracks are being looted. Rifles are for sale in the covered bazaar at ridiculously low prices, and there is no control whatsoever."

"The war has only begun," mused another. "With the Shah gone, the mujaiedeen and Tudeh will be trying to carve their own pieces from the corpse of this country. We have not seen the end of the bloodshed, by any means."

Another cheer erupted from the crowd on the television screen, as a glum silence fell over the group gathered in the house of Ezra Solaiman.

Ameer Nijat totaled the column of numbers he had written on the notepad, then rubbed his chin thoughtfully as he slowly drew several lines beneath the final sum. Solaiman indeed had a gold mine. As the druggist had correctly calculated, the increase in the market value of his inventory alone was enough to return a decent dividend to a purchaser such as himself.

Nijat leaned back in the chair behind his desk, looking up at the ceiling, which needed paint. He lived in a modest five-room house in an average neighborhood. Years ago he had decided that displaying one's wealth was an invitation to those less willing to work for riches than steal them. But he was a man of more than modest means.

He had started as an apprentice to a printer in Tahbriz. Through the years of hard work and shrewd dealings, he had built up a very profitable printing business of his own, selling it for a large profit at the beginning of the oil boom of the early 1970s. Not that he had allowed his money to remain idle. He had speculated in oil futures and precious metals-both with tremendous success. He knew when to seize an opportunity, and he sensed the Na.s.ser Pharmacy was a plum ripe for the picking.

He reviewed in his mind the salient facts of the business. Solaiman, a Jew, wished to sell his business. The price he asked was reasonable. The inventory, the sales records, the overhead-all were as described.

Nijat glanced down at the day-old newspaper on his desk. Prominently featured on the front page was a large photograph of Ayatollah Khomeini, awash in an adoring throng of supporters. This was the future of the country. Even the children knew it.

So then, whispered Nijat's intuition in his ear, why does this successful Jewish businessman choose this particular moment in history to liquidate his enterprise and reunite himself with his son in America? Could it be because he is anxious not to live in an Islamic state? Could it be that he senses, as does anyone with an ear to the ground, that Iran will not be a pleasant place while the mullahs, repressed for so long under the rule of the Shah, avenge themselves on their real and imagined enemies?

Eventually the fury of the mullahs would blow itself out for lack of a target, and by then Nijat's son would be firmly established as a proprietor of a well-known pharmacy. With his son's education and his own business sense, Nijat failed to see how this could be a losing proposition. Unfortunate that Solaiman did not have what Nijat possessed-the ability to lie low, to remain inconspicuous. Unfortunate, indeed, for Aga Solaiman. Nijat shrugged. Business was business. He picked up the phone and dialed Solaiman's number.

Moosa placed the rial notes on the table beside his empty plate and left the cafe. He walked slowly up Pahlavi Avenue, his eyes scanning the newspaper as he strolled along the sidewalk. In these days, it grew more and more difficult to learn what really went on. The Islamic majority, egged on by the constant propaganda of Khomeini's swelling retinue, gradually tightened its grip. About the best one could do was read the paper and adjust the facts for the blatantly s.h.i.+te slant given to every event.

As he walked, he read the story about a woman who had acid thrown in her face by one of the recently appointed pasdars. In the article, the armed guard was quoted as saying, "The infidel woman refused to wear the chador, according to the Imam's latest order. She had to be punished for disobedience to the laws of decency." The story pointed out that the Imam had decreed that all women, even non-Islamic residents, were obliged to obey the order. If they were seen in public without their heads covered, they were subject to arrest and trial for adultery, since they were presumed to be harlots.

A commotion erupted from one of the shops ahead. Moosa stared at the angry knot of men that boiled out onto the sidewalk. Three pasdars shoved and kicked a man Moosa recognized as the son of Abraham Moosovi. One of the guards gave the fellow a final shove, which sent him slamming into the door frame of his shop. The three armed peasants turned and swaggered away, laughing among themselves. Moosa rushed up to the beaten man.

"Nathan! What have they done to you?" He bent down and grabbed the slumping man around the waist, pulling one of Nathan's arms across his own shoulders. "Let me help you back inside." Slack-jawed, Nathan nodded as Moosa half carried him into his shop.

When he had slumped into a chair, Nathan looked up at Moosa. "You ... you are Moosa Solaiman?"

Moosa nodded, then turned to rummage among the cabinets behind the counter for a rag or cloth.

"I thought you were in America," puzzled Nathan, as he wiped the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand.

"I was, until last week. I came back to help my father leave this crazy country. Why were those pasdars beating you?" Moosa asked, handing a damp cloth to Nathan.

The other man winced as he dabbed gently at his cut face. "Last night looters broke into the shop...." Tiredly Nathan gestured toward the center of the store. Moosa turned to look.

Broken gla.s.s littered the floor. Nathan Moosovi sold jewelry and curios-vases, chinaware, and the like-but all the shelves were thrown about, the wares shattered on the floor or missing altogether. In the back of the store, a jagged hole gaped in the heavy steel door of Nathan's strongbox, cut by an acetylene torch. Moosa did not need to look inside to know that all the jewelry in the box had been pilfered.

He looked back at Nathan. "Who could have ..."

Nathan scoffed at him. "Do you seriously wonder? Who else could have brought an acetylene torch unchallenged into a locked shop? The pasdars are behind this-you can bet your life on it. Give a stinking barefoot a rifle and a t.i.tle from Khomeini, and what do you expect? The ignorant fools have become a law unto themselves, Moosa. I've noticed those three thugs hanging around the area for the past several days now-'on patrol against enemies of Islam,' they said. I suppose they decided they liked some of my merchandise. And since I am a Jew, they saw little harm in taking what they wanted."

Moosa stared back at Nathan, his eyes wide with the enormity of what he was hearing.

"I went to the police-or what is left of them-this morning to report the theft. I told them my suspicions. Do you know what they said?"

Moosa shook his head.

"They said, 'Find the looters and bring them to us, and we will arrest them.'" Nathan snorted in disgust as he stared at the b.l.o.o.d.y rag in his hand.

"I'll tell you this, though," continued Nathan, glaring darkly in the direction the pasdars had gone, "the next time those Muslim goons come in here, they'll find me prepared."

Moosa's eyes asked for an explanation.

"Guns are not difficult to obtain, even for a Jew," said Nathan. "You should think about it yourself, Solaiman," advised Nathan. "You are as Jewish as I."

Moosa looked from his friend's battered face to the ruined shop, then outside to the sidewalk.

NINE.

The huge low-ceilinged customs building was a bedlam of voices, a s.h.i.+fting ma.s.s of bodies. Thousands of men, women, and children stood in long lines before the low counters, attended by the customs officers. Ezra and Esther, their few pieces of luggage slung on straps across their shoulders, moved slowly along the queue. Sepi stood behind them, beside the carrying case. "If only Moosa were here," she began.

"Quiet, Sepi!" admonished Ezra sternly.

Guards behind the counters methodically searched every piece of luggage placed on the counters. Female agents searched the handbags and bodies of the women pa.s.sengers. As far as Ezra could see, not a single article was omitted from the scrupulous inspection. Again he felt the sweat trickling down his temple.

Esther craned her neck above the crowd, anxiously searching the throng by the entrance. "Where is Hafizi?" she asked, "He came in with us, didn't he? I can't find him!" Panic began to unravel the edges of her voice.

After an eternity, they reached the inspection counter. "Place everything you have on the counter," ordered the official in a bored voice. He glanced over the handbags and the suitcases, then more carefully studied the plywood carrying case. "What is in this case?" he asked.

"An antique rug I am taking to my cousin," replied Ezra.

"I do not see an export permit for this rug," said the officer. "Open the case, I want to look inside."