The Last Great Lover in Iran by Mazi Kazemi
Ali Reza pushed open the heavy door to his apartment complex. It was dark in the stairwell and it was dark outside, but the unreliable Tehran streetlights cast the faintest glow over the threshold, illuminating the slick, checkered linoleum. Ali Reza looked up the stairs. How would he walk up six flights? Every night he confronted that question, and every night he failed to come up with a satisfactory answer.
By the first landing, Ali Reza was panting. His palms were sweaty and slick on the banister. As he reached the second landing, he cursed his patients, whose files and folders filled his ancient satchel. He was certain it was finally the night that their weight would send him tumbling to an embarrassing death.
“Ali? What are you doing?” a woman called from the darkness above. Naz Mahin, the widow on the fourth floor, continued. “Why do you work so much?” And then, “It’s because you are Mr. Doctor, of course.”
They played this game every night, and Ali Reza replied, shouting up in faux exasperation, “Khanoom, what does it look like I’m doing?,” and continued his upward trudge.
Naz Mahin clicked her tongue, shook her head, and spoke to the ghost of the superintendent, who might as well have been dead, since no resident had seen him in years. “I’ve been saying we need an elevator for at least a decade.”
Ali Reza finally reached the third landing and looked up at Naz Mahin, who, with hands in fists on her hips, returned his gaze. With the hand that wasn’t gripping the railing with all his might, Ali Reza pretended to shoo her away. Continuing in his false annoyance, he said, “Baba! Move over! You’re in my way.”
She smiled and her tone of voice changed. “Any good stories for me today?”
Ali Reza was not just any therapist. Ali Reza was a sex therapist and, as far as Naz Mahin was concerned, the best and most famous in all of Tehran, though why she believed that Ali Reza could not say. Not that he minded.
“Baba!” he said again.
“Please,” she said.
“Really, today was boring,” which was true.
Naz Mahin sighed and said, “Do you want something to eat? Did you have dinner yet?”
“No thank you. I’m not hungry.”
“I have leftovers that will go straight to dogs if you don’t eat them.”
“I’m truly still full from lunch.”
They continued in that game of taarof, the most Iranian of customs, until Ali Reza was past her and on his way to the next floor.
“Shab bekheir. Shab bekheir, Mr. Doctor.”
Ali Reza at work
Ali Reza sat across from Imam Hosseini and Hosseini’s bodyguard, who stood by the door avoiding all eye contact. Ali Reza sat at his desk, hands clasped, and smiled. He said, “Hello, welcome, welcome,” even though he had already greeted the pair. Years of experience had taught Ali Reza that the imams needed to be treated like patrons at a restaurant. Any discussion of sex or love had to come about as if by accident. The two of them, the Imam and Ali Reza, would need to stumble into the topic like two old friends chatting over a long dinner. The sessions started with Ali Reza offering some bonbons from the glass container on his desk. His late wife had bought those bonbons at Fauchon, in Paris, in 1985. They looked beautiful but tasted horrible, and so had found a home on Ali Reza’s desk, destined to be offered and refused for years to come.
“So, how are you?” Ali Reza asked.
“Oh, you know. Allah keeps me busy. This beautiful country keeps me busy. The people of Iran”—and here the imam stood up and wandered over to the open French windows—“they keep me busy. But they are like petulant children, the people of Iran,” he said, “and they cuss and curse me behind my back. Oh, I know. But I am kind and pretend I do not hear.”
Ali Reza smiled and nodded, mouthing, “Of course, of course.”
“My wife. She is the perfect example.”
That was much faster than normal.
“How can I say this? We live together, of course. We are together. But she is not there. She is a wall, and I cannot break through.”
“You believe your wife is lying to you about something?”
“No, no, listen, aga. She doesn’t lie. She tells the truth, but so little of it that it is almost meaningless. She says, ‘I went to the market and looked for your favorite vendor, but they were not there. I wandered among the other sellers and came home. Time must have slipped away from me, because now you are home, and I didn’t do much else.’ No lies.”
The imam looked down at the floor.
“It hurts,” he continued. “It hurts. I thought I was a good man for her. A righteous man. A husband she could be proud of.”
Ali Reza thought there might be more to the story, but just said, “I understand, Imam. We will work together to fix this.”
Ali Reza at work, later that week
Officer Jahangir sat in the chair across from Ali Reza. The officer’s legs were splayed wide, his balding head hung low, almost between his thighs, and his police cap dangled from the back of the chair. Jahangir rubbed his head and neck and looked up.
“I don’t know how this happened to my daughter. You know”—and he pointed an accusatory finger at Ali Reza for no reason—“she is so smart, much smarter than me and her mother.”
Ali Reza saw where this was going. He knew men like Jahangir. Loyalty and fealty went hand in hand with intelligence and good sense. The world was well defined and circumscribed.
“But now,” Jahangir continues, “she goes out every night with this boy.”
“You know this? You know him?”
“I am a police officer of the state. I have ways of finding things out.”
“And you think —”
“Allah knows what they are doing together,” and he shook his head as if he was remembering his own sins.
That was the closest, Ali Reza knew, that Jahangir would come to discussing his daughter as a sexual being. Regardless, Ali Reza asked, “Have you talked to your daughter? Have you told her that you know and you’re unhappy with her?”
Jahangir scoffed. To discuss it, to acknowledge it beyond the allusions and peripheral comments, was one step too close to accepting it. For Jahangir, a patriotic and pious man, every rule of Allah and law of the state was enforceable and unquestionable. Laws against holding hands. Laws against kissing. Laws against sex. Laws that made living a secret and Ali Reza a sought-after man.
Jahangir was becoming frantic. He pulled out a wrinkled photo of his daughter from his wallet and held it up, making sure Ali Reza got a good look, as if he was on the case of a missing person.
“I could not live if something happened to her.”
The solution was so simple, and Ali Reza wanted to grab Jahangir by the lapels and shout, “Baba, just let the damn kids have relations at home, where they will be safe.” But, first, Jahangir would need to be educated on the naturalness of sexual exploration in the young. He would have to be taught, in the most circuitous and innocuous way, that, yes, it was possible that some of the laws and customs of their great nation went against the natural order of things. Jahangir was not ready for any of that, and their time was up for the day.
Imam Hosseini, every night in recent memory
Imam Hosseini stared at his wife, Yasmine, in the kitchen. His eyelids drooped. His beard drooped. She was talking. She mentioned the market. She talked about their neighbor coming over to gossip. She relayed the gossip itself. While she spoke, Hosseini opened his briefcase and began organizing his files. He found the file he was looking for. A hanging tomorrow. Sodomy. The first man to be hanged for this in a long time. The country had gone soft, but Hosseini would deliver a speech before the deed. Maybe he could inspire the crowd to stay vigilant for more perverse acts.
He realized that his wife’s voice had stopped. He looked at her. She stood in the kitchen with her hands on her hips. Hosseini said, in a voice more severe than he intended, “Baleh?”
She shook her head and turned to the sink.
Naz Mahin at home
Naz Mahin wanted a coffee. She had a machine right there in the kitchen. She had made lattes, cappuccinos, Americanos, mochas, and espressos. She had even once, with the help of her nephew’s internet sleuthing, found a recipe for Dunkin’ Donuts’ pumpkin spice latte. But that afternoon she wanted someone else to make her a coffee, and she wanted to sit with someone while a waiter brought over that coffee, and she wanted to share. Sometimes when she spoke to herself she still expected her husband to reply, but the words just floated away, from the lips of one ghost to the ears of another.
Naz Mahin wanted to talk about her newfound interest in ceramics. Newfound? She still thought of it that way, despite having dived into the art after her husband’s death five years ago. Once she had passed handcrafting, she decided that she wanted to throw. So, while she waited for a small wheel to be delivered, she dabbled in painting. From simple sketches to roomwide impressionist endeavors, she spent hours in her husband’s old study, which she had turned into her art room. After a day in front of the canvas, Naz Mahin wanted a reward, so she learned to cook more than just rice and stew. Her pantry grew, and her fridge was beautiful. It burst with colorful vegetables, spilling over the chilled shelving like hanging gardens.
She lived on the savings of her deceased husband and help from the government. Most people in the building worked late, and when they came home they had no more words left. They spoke in grunts and slipped away as fast as possible. Only the doctor humored her, even when she could see him clinging to the stairway banister for dear life, either from age or from exhaustion. Maybe someday she would be the one at the bottom of the stairs, tired after a long day of revealing herself to the world.
Imam Hosseini, one evening at home
Imam Hosseini started. His wife, dressed in her long nightgown, was nudging his shoulder. Her long black hair was down. Hosseini liked when she did that and thought she still looked like the young girl he had married. Disturbed from a nap in his armchair, all he could manage was a yelp.
“I’m going to sleep,” his wife said.
“OK, OK. I’m coming.”
Hosseini brushed his teeth and watched his wife from the sliver between the bathroom door and the wall. She was reading a novel. She must have reached a moving passage, for she stopped and looked out the window, smiling. Hosseini smiled with his mouth and beard full of toothpaste.
When he left the bathroom, his wife stopped smiling and put her book away.
“Shall I turn out the light?” she asked, already reaching over.
“Not yet, no.”
His wife’s face changed as she saw him crawling over the bed toward her. He pretended not to notice the frown she always tried to hide.
Officer Jahangir at work
Officer Jahangir and his cadet, Giv, confronted the homeless man, Keyvan, for the fifth time that month.
“I’m sick of this asshole,” Giv said. “Let’s throw him in the jail.”
Jahangir just looked at the zealous kid side-eyed.
“Seriously, look at his fucking bag.” Giv was going through Keyvan’s possessions. “He’s got money. Look at these toman.”
Keyvan scratched his arm and looked around wildly. He repeated his chant, well known to everyone who passed his corner. “What is that? What is it? I don’t . . . I don’t . . . I don’t . . . know. OK, I see.” He directed his words at the air, the birds, the sun.
Giv started pocketing the cash, then pushed Keyvan, as if Keyvan were dreaming and all he needed to do was wake up.
“OK, asshole. Let’s go,” he said, smacking Keyvan’s bag.
Keyvan looked with wide eyes at Giv, and raised his hand up, as if he expected to be sprayed in the face. His chant became a mutter, the words still there if one listened closely.
“Giv. Giv!” said Jahangir, who was smoking a cigarette. He shook his head. “What are you doing? Che mekoni?”
Giv held his victim and looked at his boss with surprise.
“Let him go, baba. And give him back his money. Keyvan, Aga needs some help. Let’s get him off Jordan. Oh, and apologize.”
After taking Keyvan to a more secluded street, and Keyvan had muttered his chant with a wave in thanks, the police officers went back to their car.
“Giv, we are the last great noble, righteous men in Iran. We are the ones who must represent the state that is and the state that was.”
“But it’s the law!” Giv snapped. “Sullying public spaces. Public urination.”
Jahangir paused and looked back toward the limping, pathetic figure of Keyvan, as if reconsidering his kindness. He thought of how easily Keyvan could end up in jail, and thought of his daughter Layli. He imagined Layli as a broken version of herself, muttering to passersby. Was that Layli after prison, disgrace, and probably torture? Maybe even death, though that punishment was usually reserved for adulterers. For a moment, it all seemed so unfair, but also so clear, to Jahangir. A father and honorable man protects his children. But she had made her choices, and her sins were far beyond simple vagrancy. How could his daughter, the daughter of an officer of the great nation, do that?
“Our little secret, baba,” and he slapped Giv on the shoulder and back, his smile belying the catch in his voice.
Giv tensed up and watched Keyvan piss on a gatepost.
Ali Reza at work
Ali Reza looked at the man across his desk. Ali Reza clasped his hands on the desk and looked at them. Ali Reza looked out the window and then back at the man. Ali Reza said, “I’m sorry.”
The man, magnanimous through his tears, said, “It’s OK, Doctor. It is not your fault. You tried to help. I tried to help. But he could not live with his shame anymore.”
He looked at a polaroid of himself and another man. They were arm in arm, their lips locked. The man kissed the photo and closed his eyes.
Later that evening
At home, Ali Reza dialed a number he had written down on a piece of paper. A man answered immediately, and Ali Reza, as always, heard the intermingling sounds of the radio playing Googoosh and the hum of the road.
“Allo,” said the other man.
“It’s Ali Reza.”
“Oh ho! Ali Reza! What is new?”
This was the man Ali Reza bought alcohol from. His name was Farhad and, given that he was always on the road, Ali Reza deduced that he had many clients. Yet every time they spoke on the phone Farhad made him feel like his best friend. Maybe that’s why Ali Reza kept using him, despite the fact that Farhad was often slow and out of stock.
“You want the usual?”
A fifth of real Russian vodka. A six-pack of Budweiser.
Ali Reza looked at his own reflection in the window. His face changed. He saw his patient from earlier. He remembered when he had stood in this same living room years before, sipping on a vodka, watching his wife, her reflection in the window, walk up and wrap her arms around him.
“Ali? Ali?”
“Uhh, never mind, Farhad. I think I need to be with people. You know anywhere like that?”
That was the man trying to sell him booze, and Ali Reza was asking about the competition. That was Farhad’s charm.
“Oh yeah, sure, sure. You want to go to one of the hangouts on the mountain? There’s a lot of kids there, but if that’s what you want . . . ”
Students went to drink together on the trails and grottos of the Alborz.
“No, not that. Something more formal.”
“There’s a great house in Elahiyeh. The guy opens it up to the right people. Like me.”
There was a pause.
“I’ll drive you, baba.”
They drove around and around Azadi Square and its massive Freedom Tower, like an Eiffel made of collapsing sand. Ali Reza could never figure out which viewing angle was the best one, the correct one, the one that would finally reveal what the monument promised.
“I hate that fucking thing,” Farhad said.
“Why?”
Taking one hand off the wheel, Farhad counted each sentence on his fingers. “Nineteen sixties they say we are like Paris. Nineteen seventy-one they build this stupid thing. Nineteen seventy-nine . . .” He made a popping sound.
Ali Reza looked down. Once the pause had stretched just long enough, Farhad said, “If I had known it was going to be over so fast, I would have slept with a lot more women.”
Without lifting his head, Ali Reza laughed. He laughed so hard that he couldn’t speak. He laughed as if he couldn’t remember.
Ali Reza was drunk. Somehow, as they had approached the party, he had imagined that he would spend the night talking to a host of people. He had spoken to none, and so had filled the silence with drinks. He stumbled to the door. He looked out a window and saw a beautiful manicured lawn. It was dead quiet out there, not a leaf quivered. The rule of four walls was supreme, surpassing the laws of physics. What happened in that house, as long as it did happen inside the house, was an open secret, but a secret nonetheless.
Beyond the lawn, cars passed. The drivers knew what was going on. They slowed down and waited for a drunk to exit and shout out a slurred address. They would drive the drunk home. Then, a long game of taarof would ensue, ending with the drunk paying a standardized fee that seemed to have emerged from a genuine discussion.
As he was approaching the door, he saw a young couple sitting knee to knee around a small candlelit table in one of the few quiet corners of the house. They sipped beers, and there were folders and papers on the table. Ali Reza recognized the woman. He stared. It was Jahangir’s daughter. And that must have been the boy.
Ali Reza stubbed his toe on the table and swore. The couple looked at him. He pointed at her. “You! Your dad. I am . . . I know him. Aga Jahangir. He loves you very much, you know.” He was becoming maudlin.
The girl’s eyes went wide, and Ali Reza had a moment of sobriety. What had he done?
“Listen, listen . . . I will not say anything. I promise. Look at me. I promise. It is our secret.”
He glanced at the papers.
“What are those?” He couldn’t help himself.
“Hey, man! We’ve been working all day. Can’t you just let us relax?” the boy said. He looked angry.
The girl had gone from scared to annoyed herself.
“These papers,” she said, reaching for them. “This is what I do when I’m away! My father, he doesn’t get it. Arash and I”—she pointed to the boy—“are studying to get into medical school. In London. How could he understand that? I’d rather he think I was sleeping with someone than that I want to leave Iran. Are you happy now? You want to tell him and ruin my life?”
She was right. Ali Reza knew that. He just repeated himself.
“Your secret is safe with me.”
She seemed to understand, and though he couldn’t explain why, Ali Reza left feeling better than he had in a while.
Ali Reza and Naz Mahin, later that night
Ali Reza stood at the bottom of his building’s stairway. He sighed, considered the same questions as always, and started up. It was barely past 10 p.m. He was an embarrassment. Drunk and sleepy before midnight. He remembered partying into the small hours with his wife, going door to door, covering every block and lot of Elahiyeh. A door opened.
“Aga Doctor, you weren’t working late on Friday, were you?”
“Nah! Khanoom! I was having a party.”
He did a little dance on the stairs, and Naz Mahin laughed. It was easy to play a game with her.
He reached her landing, and once again she blocked his way.
“I know I get hungry after I drink, Aga Doctor. I have some delicious leftovers. The best lamb stew I’ve made in months.”
She had her next volley, her next response of taarof ready when he said, “I would love to have some.”
After he had the stew, Naz Mahin offered him a glass of cognac. He stood and drank it at the window, appreciating the different view of the same rolling city. He saw his reflection and then he saw Naz Mahin come up behind him. He turned around and kissed her.
Neither of them had slept with anyone since their spouses had passed. Naz Mahin wasn’t sure if she enjoyed it. Ali Reza kept wondering if he was embarrassing his profession. He didn’t have the energy to go again, and she didn’t seem to want to.
When she slept in his arms, his worries disappeared. Naz Mahin thought, as she drifted off that, next time, maybe they could go to dinner or a café.
Yasmine Hosseini, the imam’s wife, on duty
Yasmine tried, and failed, to suppress a snort of laughter when she looked at her phone. The other imams’ wives, all of them seated in a circle in the elder one’s living room, glared at her.
“Sorry, sorry, continue,” she said. “The stew—lamb, right?”
The woman who had been speaking said, “No, Yasmine, I was talking about my new tea vendor. His product pairs so nicely with the sangak that Farnaz makes.”
“Oh, yes! I love it,” replied another woman, clad in black from head to toe with a chador that almost reached her eyebrows.
As the conversation picked up, Yasmine returned to her phone. In her messaging app, an encrypted escape from prying eyes, she reread the text from a friend. He did it again! it read. How can I stop this man from farting at dinner?, followed by a tongue-out emoji.
The “he” in question was the friend’s husband, old and religious, her own venerable Imam Hosseini. The two women often laughed over their shared fate to avoid the pain of living it. However, as Yasmine tried to subtly pick skinny jeans off her overheated thighs, she felt that the tedium of the biweekly wives’ meeting might finally end her.
“Psst,” said the woman next to her.
Yasmine looked, and the woman pointed to her head. Unlike the other wives, Yasmine did not wear the full chador. Instead, she wore a light scarf over her hair, which still let much of it hang down, just as she wanted. Perfectly legal.
“Thanks,” she whispered, and pulled the scarf half an inch forward on her head.
She let out a long sigh and slid down in the seat as she got into the taxi. The man in front asked, “Long day?”
She had her usual speech ready: “I’ve been on my feet all day, so busy, can’t wait to see my loving husband.”
The man added, “That’s Imam Hajati’s residence, isn’t it?”
Yasmine panicked briefly, worried the man might have taken her exhaustion as a slight toward a man of authority. “Yes, such a gracious and generous man.”
“Yes. Also the most boring person to have ever sat in this cab.”
Yasmine was speechless. She looked into the rearview mirror, as if catching his eyes would reveal the trick, but instead she saw brightness, and the beginnings of laugh lines just like hers. She leaned forward and said in a serious voice, “You can’t be talking about the man who once shared a row with the Ayatollah on a flight to Isfahan, can you?”
“I’ve heard that one every time I’ve driven him, and every time he moves one seat closer. Soon he’ll be in the Ayatollah’s lap!”
Yasmine laughed and, as she composed herself, she said, “Very funny, Mr.—”
“You can call me Ardy.”
Ali Reza and Naz Mahin, later that week
Ali Reza and Naz Mahin had sex twice that evening. In between the sessions, she had led him to her husband’s old study. She had, without a hint of embarrassment, detailed each of her clay creations. Ali Reza asked a question about each one. She told him about her next projects. They started on the paintings, but his hands were around her waist, and they hurried back to the bedroom. They were too tired and content to get up again.
In the morning, they sipped coffee and shared a view out the window. “This is delicious,” Ali Reza said.
“Thank you. By the way, I finally saw the superintendent again. They’re going to put an elevator in.”
Ali Reza made some small comment in response. It didn’t matter what he said. She was happy, and so was he.
That same evening
Imam Hosseini’s wife was not at home. She wasn’t in the kitchen and she wasn’t in the laundry room. With a foolish wave of optimism, Hosseini checked the bedroom. She wasn’t there, either. He called his bodyguard and told him to bring the car back around.
No businesses were open. Hosseini thought back to what his late mother had told him: “A young girl like that wants to go out with her friends, to drink, to sin. Not fit for the wife of an imam.” He hadn’t understood what she meant, but now he did, and through gritted teeth he told his bodyguard that they were going out.
Hosseini directed the bodyguard to Elahiyeh, though neither of them remembered the way, and they circled around Azadi Square. Hosseini knew that he probably wouldn’t find his wife that night, but he felt compelled to look.
“Fucking animals,” said Hosseini, and he pointed out the window to a graffiti scrawl at the base of the tower, right where the white marble touched the dirty pavement. Hosseini stared down that abomination as they circled the tower, looking for the right exit.
He couldn’t talk to the big oaf in the driver’s seat. Hosseini wanted to commiserate with his wife. Unable to do that, Hosseini wanted to hate his wife, but only felt like a failure.
They idled on a street in Elahiyeh. That was definitely a party house, Hosseini had told his bodyguard. How did he know that his wife was in there? Hosseini shushed his bodyguard for asking such an insolent question. They watched people exit. Lonely drunk men. Couples, but they were old, clearly married. No solo women.
Then another couple exited, but they were young. They must have been students because they had backpacks. Disgusting, disgusting.
Hosseini was furious. The couple hugged, and he could see that they were both smiling.
“Follow her,” he said to his bodyguard.
When the black car pulled up in front of Layli, and the huge man exited the driver’s seat, she thought she was going to be raped. Instead, a shriveled old man then exited the back seat and said, “I am Imam Hosseini. Stay right where you are. The police are coming. How dare you. My child, I am so disappointed. We will correct this error. How dare you.”
Layli was terrified, but also confused. What a strange phrasing, she thought, and when she tried to look at the imam, he failed to make eye contact. Hosseini was looking past her, into the night, into the still and perfect gardens of Elahiyeh.
Giv drove his police car slowly down the streets of Tehran. On the dashboard, he kept a photo of his mother. But he had never really met the woman in the photo, laughing with some unknown aunt, her dyed black hair sitting on her head like Napoleon’s hat. It must have been before his dad left, maybe even before Giv was born. It was certainly before she turned into the severe icon of his life, more a lecturer than a mother. What Giv learned from her was that a boy must grow into a Man. A Man, he’d learned, was someone who exercised his power, who kept the order, who kept the weak safe. He wished he could ask his mother who the weak really were, though, and what they needed protection from. When he was enforcing rules and laws that he had no say in, was he being a Man? The paradoxes tortured him.
A call came over the radio. “Giv? You’re near Elahiyeh tonight, right? Can you check something out? We just got a call from an imam.”
“An imam?”
“Yeah, you know. Usual.”
Giv didn’t say anything. The voice, older and more experienced, continued.
“Someone being un-Islamic. Caught in the act. Shame on you. We will punish her, your holiness. Then drop her off at home and get paid for your troubles. Have you never done this before?”
“No,” and Giv’s face flushed at the patronizing tone.
Giv heard the man on the other end yawn.
“Have fun. Make sure you get enough for the Szechuan chicken from that place I like. I left my wallet at home.”
Giv arrived and saw the imam pacing back and forth, his hands behind his back, clearly agitated. A crying young woman was being held in place by a large man in a suit, probably the imam’s bodyguard. The imam rushed up to Giv and said, “Arrest her. Arrest her! She was having relations with a young man, at a party with drinking no less. These are the people we need to make examples of,” and then, with a sudden change of mood, “but not like you, young man, a strong young man in the service of Iran. You need to correct her,” and he pointed back at the woman. The imam’s face was seething with energy, with anger.
Clearly, Giv noted, the imam had no idea who she was. As he approached, Layli’s crying stopped, and he saw something like relief in her eyes. A Man protects the weak.
But then Layli changed, and in her place Giv saw Keyvan pissing on the gatepost. He remembered the sting of embarrassment when Jahangir forced him to apologize. A Man enforces the rules.
Before Layli could say something, Giv raised his hand and slapped her. “You whore. You sinner,” he said.
Turning to the imam, he added, “Do you know who her father is?”
Jahangir at the police station
Jahangir ran past the desks he habitually ignored, staffed, as they were, by silent clerks during the day. Now they were empty, and the station was dark. He reached the temporary jail at the back.
“Layli! Layli!”
She lay curled on the floor, her back to him. She wasn’t dead, thank Allah. She wasn’t making any noise, but he was sure she was crying. He knew when his daughter cried.
“Don’t look at my face, Papa,” she said.
Jahangir wanted to cry, but a man like him did not cry in a moment like this. He found his strength, and his fury.
“What the fuck is going on?”
The imam stepped forward.
“I have learned, Officer Jahangir, that this woman is your daughter?”
“Baleh.” “Yes.”
“She was with a man, drinking, doing horrible things.”
The imam added no further context. He smiled as his words landed with a blunt thud. Jahangir said nothing.
“This is sad,” said the imam, shaking his head and looking down. “Even the daughters of our most beloved countrymen are corrupted. Jahangir, what shall we do? These punishments that Allah has passed down, they are so severe, but a man of Iran, he knows justice must be done. Someone will have to pay.” And as the imam said that word someone his gaze moved between Layli and her father.
Ali Reza at work
Ali Reza’s mouth was open. He did not know what to say to Jahangir, who held his head in his hands, but he wanted to shout, “This has gone too far! I’m just a sex therapist!”
Jahangir continued. “And so now, Ali Reza, I either leave my post or my daughter dies.”
Ali Reza wanted to tell Jahangir what he knew about his daughter, but what was the point? He would be asked why he hadn’t said something days ago, after running into Layli at the party. Was the therapist making it up to let her off the hook? Jahangir would ask. Ali Reza wished he had never kept that secret.
“This is a test from Allah, maybe?” Jahangir asked. “Is this a test of my loyalty and faith?”
When Ali Reza saw that Jahangir did not find the solution obvious, he felt like weeping. Ali Reza tried to insert himself into the conversation. “Do you know what I think you should do?”
Jahangir shook him off. “Baba, this is a choice for me and me alone.”
Ali Reza and Naz Mahin, that evening
Ali Reza stared up the building’s staircase. A door opened.
“My favorite doctor has returned.”
Ali Reza didn’t say anything. He was one floor down from her.
“I love the strong silent type,” Naz Mahin said, and laughed a little nervous laugh.
She blocked his way. Ali Reza was right up in front of her. She looked at him with hooded, bedroom eyes, and Ali Reza looked at the floor.
“Excuse me, ma’am,” he said, and slipped by her.
Ali Reza went room to room and closed the curtains. He turned out the lights and went to sleep.
Naz Mahin was numb. She disrobed and put on a dressing gown. As she was tying it, she finally broke down and wept. She went from room to room, her gown open, revealing her nakedness underneath. Looking out each window, she found nothing and went to sleep.
Ali Reza, for many months
The elevator was installed, and sometimes, as Ali Reza rode it up to his apartment, he missed his treks up the stairs. He wondered if that had been the only thing keeping his expanding stomach in check. Or maybe he was drinking more now. And sometimes, as he watched the floor numbers tick by, he wished it would stop at the fourth floor and she would be standing there.
After that evening when he had rejected Naz Mahin, she had waited for him a few more times, but that one event had broken something in her, it seemed. Her calls down to him were tepid and almost rehearsed. His responses the same. He was thankful when the elevator came to put him out of the misery of trudging past her now closed door each night.
Ali Reza did not see Officer Jahangir again. He did not see the imam again. There were other clerics. One of them liked to leave his windows open to be watched by the old woman who lived across the street. One of them was attracted to his wife’s brother. One of them cried after sex. They came with problems, and usually left with the same problems, but now they could say that they had tried. They could return to their anger at their wives, daughters, mothers, and neighbors. Many of them lied about feeling better, Ali Reza knew, but found the embarrassment of returning to him too much to bear. They recommended his services to other officials, as if passing clients on to him was a bribe to ensure that he would keep his mouth shut. Not that he would ever divulge anything to anyone.
He had kept Layli’s secret. What had that wrought? He’d been too sick over it to try and find out for sure.
Naz Mahin, out and about
Naz Mahin was at a café. She wore sunglasses half the size of her face, and she savored every sip of her coffee, silently confirming that her own concoctions were better. The sadness after her romance had come close to burying her. But one Saturday, no more or less special than any other, she decided that she was finally tired of waiting.
As she watched the busy street, a young couple walked by. Naz Mahin could see their hands trying not to touch, but the woman’s eyes lingered on the man’s when she laughed.
Giv, every night in recent memory
Giv looked at the dirty square rug laid out flat on the pavement in a shady corner of the park. The knickknacks, wrapped sandwiches, and water bottles were still arranged in inviting rows. One of Giv’s subordinates picked up a bottle and drank it down in two big gulps. Then he offered Giv a bottle. Giv shook his head, almost imperceptibly. His expression remained blank.
A gaggle of officers and Imam Hosseini stood in a circle to the side. They loomed over the vendor in the middle, a boy, no more than twelve years old. He was small for his age, as all the young, impoverished street vendors were. The Imam was holding court while the lower-ranked officers nodded along.
“Why do you do something so . . . kashif? What kind of thing is this for a young man to do? Dirtying our beautiful parks. Some time in a cell will set your mind straight.”
“But my parents—” the boy started.
The imam held up a hand and walked away. Then he walked toward Giv. The imam put that same hand on Giv’s chest, and said, “We make a good team, yes? You know what’s right, and so do I. That’s all it takes.”
“Sure.”
As the imam patted him on the shoulder, Giv watched his fellow officers lead the boy to a police car.
Ali Reza at home
Ali Reza looked in his sideboard and was greeted with empty shelves. The thought of facing the night alone, without a glass of something, terrified him. His mind, he knew, would keep looping through the conversations of the day. The sadness that he heard, the sadness that he would hear. He picked up the phone to call Farhad.
Farhad did not pick up his cell phone. Ali Reza tried his home phone. Farhad’s wife answered. How long had it been since Ali Reza had seen her?
“Hello,” she said.
Ali Reza took a deep breath and tried to turn on more appropriate social airs.
“Hey! It’s Ali Reza. Chetori, khanoom? It’s been so long.”
“He’s gone,” she said.
“Hmm?”
“He’s gone. He’s gone. He’s gone!” she wailed. “They took him away one night. No warning, no fines. Just like that, my life is over.”
Ali Reza didn’t say anything. He listened, but also drifted away, thinking of his own relationship with Farhad, thinking how everything good came to an end, always so suddenly, always against his will. Did it have to be that way? Was there nothing he could hold on to? Ali Reza did not even notice when Farhad’s wife hung up the phone.
Naz Mahin, the following evening
Naz Mahin swore that she heard someone shouting her name. When was the last time that happened? She opened her door, and there was no mistaking the voice.
“Naz Mahin! Naz Mahin!” came Ali Reza’s calls from below.
She stepped out onto the landing. There he was. Sweatier, slightly plumper, looking up at her.
Mazi Kazemi likes to write stories and poems about the conflict between our identities, as we perceive them, and how the world responds to, validates, or destroys those self-conceptions. He is from Northampton MA and now lives in Scottsdale AZ, where he is a professor at Arizona State University. His poetry and fiction have appeared in the 34th Parallel, BoomerLitMag, and other venues. Mazi's academic research and teaching are completely unrelated to his creative writing.
