Among the Ruins Page 5

  This was a question Rachel preferred not to answer, she wished she’d been more discreet. She nodded at Nate, who began to play the untitled composition, his fingers tentative as they worked through the notes.

  “We have sources here, Mr. Najafi. But we’d be in a better position to help if we knew a little more about what your mother was doing in Iran. She couldn’t have expected cooperation from the Iranian government in making a film that documents their abuses. Do you know why she wanted the meeting? Or what she was doing at Evin?”

  Max placed his glass on the table, giving the impression of a man whose strength was held in check, so finely restrained were his movements.

  “Roxana has been in and out of Evin since the stolen election. She was a member of the opposition, one of the first to join the Green Movement. She thought her green bracelet gave her magical powers, powers of invincibility. It didn’t take her long to find out otherwise. The Greens believe in non-violence. The regime takes advantage of that. So of course, my mother was seeking Roxana’s release. When we visited Iran, Roxana would always stay with us. She wanted to be close to us. My mother mentored her, she loved her as if she were her own daughter. They shared a deep love of Iran.” Max’s face clouded over. “And the same independent spirit. They were determined to bring about a change.”

  “Is that why Roxana was imprisoned? Did she protest the election results?”

  The melody Nate was playing raised the hairs on the back of Rachel’s neck, a supernal quality to its dreamlike pianissimo. If she didn’t know better, she would have called it a mild strain of optimism.

  Max answered Rachel with an effort that appeared to cost him something. He was listening to Nate play, his musical sense engaged.

  “She was a protester like many others,” he admitted. “But she also put her talents at the service of the movement.” Pride colored his voice. “Roxana is a musician in her own right—we worked closely together, shaping each other’s music. She was tired of ‘Yar-e-Dabestani’ as an anthem, so she wrote her own songs for the movement. The entire nation was lifted by her music. Everyone knew—knows Roxana.”

  Rachel looked at the initials inscribed on the piano’s fallboard.

  MN

  RN

  Max Najafi, Roxana Najafi. But why the name Max? It didn’t sound like an Iranian name to Rachel. When she asked him, he scowled.

  “I want nothing that belongs to Iran, nothing that comes from the mullahs. My father called me Mahmood, you should call me Max. I left Mahmood behind with my father.”

  “Where is your father now?” Rachel asked.

  “I don’t know, and I don’t care.”

  “Your sister didn’t come to Canada with you?” At the piano, Nate was doing something to the melody, something she wasn’t sure she liked, turning its soft notes dark.

  Max noticed, too.

  “Why did you play that? The piece isn’t finished.”

  Nate let his hands fall away from the keys.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, his gold eyes as languorous as the music he’d played. “I didn’t mean to offend you. The direction of your composition seemed to suggest it. I was thinking of your mother,” he added. “And it just happened.”

  Max looked from Rachel to Nate.

  “I know you,” he said, rising to his feet. “You’re not with the police. You’re Nathan Clare, the writer. My mother spoke of you to me.”

  “Yes,” Nate said. “I’ve come to pay my respects.”

  The fogginess of Max’s grief sharpened into focus.

  “Please,” he said. “You have to help me, Mr. Clare. You can raise the profile of this, I know the government will listen to you—you often work on their behalf.”

  Nate removed himself from the piano. He gripped the hand Max extended to him.

  “Of course, I’ll help in any way I can. I’m just not sure what you think I can do.”

  “The Iranian authorities.” Max’s eyes were wet. “Please,” he said again. “You must ask the Canadian government to insist on a confrontation. You must ask them to have my mother’s body released so we can hold her funeral here.”

  “I thought her body was returned to her family in Tehran.”

  Max nodded in earnest. “It was. And my grandmother and my uncles had a doctor perform an examination. That’s how we learned how she’d died.” He swallowed painfully. “We knew they had brutalized her. But as soon as we made the news public—”

  He lurched away, his back to Rachel.

  The girl in the black dress appeared at the doorway. She murmured in Farsi, a soft-spoken plea of some kind. Max shrugged her off. But when Nate put one hand on his shoulder, he turned back to them.

  “Before I could make arrangements to transport my mother’s remains, agents from the Ministry of Intelligence appeared at my grandmother’s house. They went to the morgue and confiscated the body.”

  His black eyes burned with an impotent eloquence.

  “My mother has disappeared.”

  * * *

  They stayed for several minutes, though Max could tell them little else. Nate made promises to inquire with his contacts in government, while Rachel followed up on Roxana’s status.

  “Anything you can tell me would be helpful. Did your mother mention any letters to you?”

  Max looked surprised. “You know about the letters? What do they have to do with my mother’s murder? It’s clear she was killed by agents of the regime.”

  Nate and Rachel exchanged a glance.

  “We don’t know,” Rachel said with care. “We thought the letters may have been the reason she wanted to meet the Supreme Leader. Perhaps there was something in the letters that would have helped secure your sister’s release.”

  Max shook his head. “No, they were nothing, a tangent. They’ve been missing for many years—letters from a former prime minister of Iran to one of his closest friends, a writer and opposition activist. They had nothing to do with Roxana. If my mother had found the letters, it would have been the talk of the whole country.”

  “Who was the activist?” Nate asked. “Who was the prime minister?”

  From the suppressed excitement in his voice, Rachel thought Nate had some idea of the answer.

  “They were Mossadegh’s letters to Dariush Forouhar. Does that mean anything to you?” Max’s voice ripened into scorn. “Of course not. They’re no more relevant than my mother’s obsession with the Shah of Iran. Before she left for Iran, she requested archival footage of the Shah’s coronation from the library. The coronation was fifty years ago—it has nothing to do with my mother’s death.”

  He moved to a rosewood desk behind the Bosendorfer, rummaging through its drawers. After a minute, his search proved fruitful. He extended the card in his hand to Rachel.

  “I don’t know why it matters, but you’re not the only one to ask about my mother. You should speak to this woman, I told her about the letters and the coronation. But you’ll remember, won’t you? Time is moving against us.”

  Nate bowed his head. He understood what Max was saying—the longer they took to act, the less chance there was of recovering Zahra’s body.

  “You must come back,” Max said. He fingered the sheet music Nate had left on the rack. “I would like to discuss my composition with you, in memory of my mother.”

  Nate promised he would.

  Rachel read the name on the card. She supposed she shouldn’t have been surprised.

  It was Vicky D’Souza, a reporter Khattak knew.

  Rachel realized she should ask if she could search the house for Zahra’s personal effects: a diary or her notes on the sequel to her film. Perhaps she’d written about the letters or the Shah’s coronation.

  Max had taken Nate’s place at the piano.

  Slumped against the music, he began to cry.

  11

  This is a path of long and grave suffering.

  * * *

  I say this in parentheses to myself. They expect encouragement from th
e writer’s child, so to them I’m optimistic. I tell them my cell has a window—it allows me to measure the days. I tell them the world is changing—they’ve been the ones to change it.

  I sing them that same old, pointless song—Roxana’s song—the song that brought us to this pass, like the letters no one will speak of, the letters that were burned.

  I sense your reluctance to act, but this isn’t what I’ve been told of you. I’ve heard you’re a man of conscience. I’ve learned our lives matter to you, you won’t turn the other cheek, although your name is Esa.

  Do my jokes surprise you? It’s not possible to spend one’s life in tears, even in a place as dismal as Evin. My father’s strength infuses me—he died and lived behind these walls, why should I do any less? He’d want me to do more.

  So I look for the light, Inspector Khattak.

  I look for the Light and I find it.

  12

  Naqsh-e Jahan, the pattern of the world.

  Khattak made his way through Naqsh-e Jahan square, the second-largest public square in the world, named for the architectural glories stationed along its perimeter.

  It housed the finest jewels of the Safavid empire, the Masjid-e Shah and the Masjid-e Sheikh Lotfallah competing for glory with the Qaysarieh Portal and the mystifying geometrics of the Kakh-e Ali Qapu, each a monument to the imagination of Shah Abbas the Great.

  Everywhere Khattak’s eye fell, there was beauty. From the turquoise domes inscribed with floral motifs, to the elderly husband and wife feeding stray cats in the alleyways opposite the square.

  Khattak thought of his visit to the tomb of Rumi in Konya, some years before. A blue-ribboned tower had paid homage to the sandy dome above the tomb. And in the building that housed the tomb, a sense of pressure and inclusion, tourists and worshipers entwined. At dusk, he’d played soccer with children in the park across from the tomb, intrigued by the notion that the dead were a welcome presence among the living.

  The Naqsh-e Jahan captured something of that feeling, the centuries inching along, the glories of long-dead empires a commonplace of the present.

  Fountains played in the afternoon light, families thronging the souvenir shops set up on either side of the arcades that ran along the square. Khattak passed through the Qaysarieh Portal at the northeast end of the square, seeking the domed arcades known as timchehs that housed the bazaar’s trades. He was in search of a gift appropriate to a bereaved family, he thought white flowers were befitting. But he wondered if Roxana Najafi’s family were grieving Zahra’s death or only Roxana’s imprisonment.

  Zahra was the former wife. It was unlikely Khattak’s intervention or his questions would be welcome by her ex-husband’s second family. Touka Swan had told him to try.

  He felt a hand tug at his elbow.

  When he turned, a woman was standing in a shaft of light that spilled from the apertures of the bazaar. The woman stepped closer, his vision cleared, and he realized it was the young woman from Varzaneh, the woman with the sickle-shaped scar at her eyebrow, the one who’d blown him a kiss. At once, he was wary of the coincidence.

  She began to walk along the handicrafts lane, moving in and out of broad strips of light that lanced the arcade. She crooked her fingers behind her back, beckoning Khattak to follow. He matched her pace, keeping a little away. She stopped at a display of blue ceramics, locked in a breakfront cabinet. Khattak watched her reflection in a mirror behind the artisan’s head.

  A chic black head scarf had slipped all the way back, a fringe of black hair artfully styled across her forehead. She wore a tight black jacket and matching skirt over her leggings, without a chador, a messenger bag strapped across one shoulder. Her cheeks and lips were tastefully rouged. He was close enough to smell her ambergris perfume.

  She exchanged a few words with the tradesman. He held out a tulip-shaped vase for her inspection. She concluded her bargaining in a matter of minutes, though the vase was too unwieldy to be carried. She smiled at Khattak, indicating he should help her.

  Now they walked along together, the young woman offering her thanks.

  “You’ve been following me?” Khattak murmured in English.

  “Or perhaps your stars have aligned, and wherever you go, the women of the city fall into your arms.”

  She spoke in English as well, teasing him.

  Khattak could think of nothing to say in response.

  She gave him the impish smile again.

  “I hear you’ve been looking for something.” She fiddled with the latches on her bag. “My name is Taraneh, I might be able to help you.” When he didn’t say anything, afraid to commit himself, she went on, “Of course, it’s not me you’re interested in, it’s my friend, Nasreen.”

  Khattak made his face a blank.

  Was Nasreen the woman with mournful eyes? And how had he given himself away when he’d scarcely glanced at her?

  Taraneh unlatched her bag. She took a book from it, its title obscured from Khattak’s view.

  “Don’t worry,” she said airily. “It’s the most natural thing in the world for a man to notice a woman. If it’s any comfort, she noticed you as well.”

  Khattak shifted the package with the vase in his hands.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” he said, a faint color in his face.

  She grinned. “Of course you do, but that’s a matter for another time. Take the book, Inspector Khattak, and give me the vase. But be careful with it, won’t you? It’s not the kind of thing you should carry around.” She nodded at his jacket. “It’s far more dangerous than your little book of poems.”

  Her hands brushed his as she made the exchange, quite deliberately, Khattak thought.

  He looked at the title of the book.

  It was a hardbound translation of the sociologist Ali Shariati’s famous essay.

  On the Plight of Oppressed People.

  He looked up.

  “Did you send me the letters?” he asked, his voice sharp.

  Taraneh’s smile acquired a fixed quality.

  “You were looking for this,” she repeated. “If you want to talk about the essay with like-minded friends, you can find us at the Hezar Jarib dovecote on Saturday. We’re always there, just after dawn when the light is best. Ask the gatekeeper to let you in, he’s happy to accommodate tourists.”

  She took the vase from him and disappeared down the arcade. Within minutes, she was lost to view but not before he’d heard her whisper.

  “I’m a messenger, Inspector Khattak. I don’t know of any letters.”

  He moved out of the light of the main arcade, finding his way to the embellished entrance of the Qaysarieh Portal, a symphony of blue tiles against the faded stone. When he opened the book Taraneh had given him, rose petals fell into his hands. He let them flutter to the ground, searching for another letter. Something shifted within the book.

  Keeping his shoulder to the wall, Khattak shielded the contents of the book with his hands. A thin plastic sleeve peeked out between the pages. It contained a flash drive. He closed the book with a snap, slid it inside his jacket pocket, shifted away from the wall, and ambled away. He found himself in the lane of the carpet-sellers, scanning the crowd.

  He stopped for a drink of pomegranate juice, then turned down another aisle. No one followed. He purchased a mother-of-pearl box from a nearby vendor, declining an invitation for tea with a smile, his heart beating fast.

  Taraneh knew his name and his profession, just like the author of the letters.

  None of it had been a coincidence, perhaps not even the drive to Varzaneh. It was possible someone had told Nasih to suggest the bus ride through the desert to Esa. Just as it was possible Nasih knew who was leaving the letters at the guesthouse. The young women at the mosque in Varzaneh, poised inside his line of vision—planned, also—but why?

  He felt the weight of Shariati’s book in his breast pocket, and understood its significance. Shariati had been a sociologist of religion, whose views were often described as a
branch of liberation theology. A prominent intellectual of the twentieth century, Shariati had been an advocate for social change, until his mysterious death in exile in London. He was an enormously popular teacher; his lectures had politicized a generation of students who yearned for a modernist reading of Islam, but his thoughtful critique of his own society had earned him an eighteen-month prison term in solitary confinement.

  Shariati’s writings were among the most widely known of his period, eloquent in the religious argot of his society, while influenced by his studies in the West. To Shariati, the struggle for a just society was meant to be ongoing—it hadn’t ended at the battle of Karbala in A.D. 680, with the martyrdom of Hossein—the most significant figure of Shia Islam.

  Hossein had refused to bow to the tyranny of Yazid, the corrupt usurper of the caliphate, and he and his family had been killed at Yazid’s order. To invoke the battle of Karbala, as Shariati had done, was to be conscious of suffering wherever it took place, and to take up the struggle in Hossein’s place.

  Every day is Ashura, every place is Karbala.

  Shariati’s adoption of this maxim had led to his life of imprisonment and exile. On the Plight of Oppressed People was his most personal essay, morally exacting, lyrical in expression.

  Why had Taraneh given it to Esa?

  Touka Swan had told him someone would contact him, she may have sent Taraneh to him, without mentioning the young woman during their meeting. She may have been testing his interest in Zahra’s death, or his commitment to resolve it—a re-working of her earlier threat.

  He had to remind himself of the dangers of intercession. He had lied to the Iranian government by omission and could easily be deemed a foreign agent. There were others languishing in Iranian prisons whose actions were more innocent than his own.

  He re-traced his steps through the gardens, the scent of wisteria hanging heavy. The visit to Roxana’s family would have to wait. First he had to see what was on the drive.

  And as always at such times, he wished Rachel were with him.