Elaine invited me to dinner at her apartment. She’s been getting sweeter on me ever since Afghanistan. I think she was impressed by my battle with Tyler, like I was defending her honor or something. Maybe I didn’t do so bad. I was actually winning – for about five seconds.
I came with one bottle each of Chateau Rezaiyeh and Chateau Sardosht. A red and a white. I’d paid black market prices for the wine, as all the liquor stores have been torched. I had the evening all planned – romantic dinner, conversation, wine. Curfew hour slips past and Elaine says:
“Gee, Bob, looks like you’ll have to spend the night.”
I arrived with high hopes. Elaine’s apartment was very sensuous, with fantastically complicated Persian carpets on the floor and hanging on the walls. When I produced the wine, though, she said:
“Gee, Bob, I don’t drink anymore.”
She’d been hitting the bottle too hard lately, she said, and had quit cold turkey. So, I popped the cork on the Chateau Rezaiyeh and drank solo. The discussion turned to my resignation.
“What did they say when you quit?” Elaine asked.
“I had to see the big boss and the school director,” I said. “They were cool.”
“They’re worried, though,” Elaine said. “We all are. What about your senior instructor?”
“Pete? That son of a bitch!” I said. “He as much as accused me of being a candy ass. At least I could finally tell him to get bent.”
Elaine laughed. “It’s about time somebody told off that pompous wind bag.”
“What about you?” I said. “The company pays your air fare out, what more do you want?”
“I’m thinking about it,” Elaine said. “I’ve sold off a few things already.”
The dinner “conversation” mostly concerned Elaine’s recollections of her many affairs, especially a fling she’d had with a black American guy in Tehran. He’d once been a street hustler and pimp in the States and was now working at some foreign company.
“Don’t forget,” she said, “I’ve been taught by a pimp.”
How was I supposed to react to that? Swirl my wine and say, “Oh, really?”
Her fooling around days were over, she said. She wanted that “special man” in her life to love and care for. Somebody who’ll be there for her permanently.
That sort of left me out in the cold, since I’ll be leaving tomorrow. Talk about waving a water jug in front of a guy who’s dying of thirst!
Why was she telling me all this, did she have me mixed up with Dear Abby? People tell you the damnedest things. Reminds me of a garage sale I went to back home where a set of illustrated sex encyclopedias was offered.
“I used to be interested before I had my kids,” the woman running the sale told me. “Now, I’m not interested any more.”
It was a pleasant meal, anyway. Much better than the starvation rations Tyler and I have been eating lately. We were just beginning dessert when the doorbell rang. An American woman came in with two Iranian laborers and hauled the dining room table right out from under us.
“I sold her the table,” Elaine explained as we moved into the living room. “Sorry, Bob, I didn’t think she’d be picking it up yet.”
Two small boys came in to watch the workmen hook ropes around the table and lower it out the window to a truck two stories below.
“These are your kids?” I asked the woman.
“Yes,” she said, “we came in from the States last week.”
Unbelievable! The roof is caving in on the whole country, and people are still arriving. An unaccompanied woman with young children, no less.
I left in time for curfew, taking my extra bottle of wine with me.
56. Tehran Madness
From the DAS ROAD diary, by Bob West
The next morning, Tyler and I took a bus to Tehran and settled into a little hotel downtown. It wasn’t a bad joint. Nice neighborhood, too, with upscale shops, restaurants, etc. A large, fancy tourist hotel shared the same block as our place. Another building was going up nearby, with big cranes and construction workers climbing around. You’d never know a revolution was going on.
I was too burned out for sight seeing and just loafed around our hotel. My flight was leaving the following afternoon, and we planned to head out to the airport plenty early. Tyler looked really down, as if his favorite puppy had just died.
“I’m glad for you, Bob,” he said, “but I sure hate to see you leave.”
“Well, let’s keep the party going, then,” I said. “Come with me. Paul says there’s a good market for English teachers in Bangkok.”
Tyler shrugged. He’s been using that shrug a lot lately. And other new gestures, too, like drumming his fingers on table tops.
***
The next day all hell broke loose. Just as we were preparing to leave our room, the sound of an angry mob drifted in from the street.
“What’s going on out there?” I said.
The answer came with a huge explosion that nearly knocked us over. My ears rang as if the Jolly Green Giant had smacked me alongside the head. We ran outside, me with my two miserable suitcases and Tyler with his camera.
The lower stories of the big tourist hotel belched flames and thick black smoke.
“Look at that, Bob!”
Tyler snapped away with his camera.
“Let’s go!” I yelled. “Before the whole place blows up!”
People ran about the street; some screamed, some cheered. No cops or soldiers anywhere. I was scared to death. Compared to this, the demonstration in Seoul had been a picnic.
People stuck their heads out from the top stories of the hotel and cried for help.
“We have to save those people!” Tyler shouted.
Stinging smoke blew our way and tears poured from my eyes.
“We can’t get near the place!” I was coughing my lungs out now.
Tyler wasn’t listening to me, though. He looked around the street, up at the screaming hotel guests, at the fire. I thought he was about to bolt into the flaming lobby.
But then a crane rumbled up from the construction sight and raised a cargo pallet up to the trapped people.
“See? They’ll get ‘em out,” I said. “Let’s go!”
We ran down the street trying to avoid the mob. Tyler grabbed one of my suitcases before I could have a coronary. We spotted an empty taxi and made for it. The driver saw us coming and tried to wave us off.
Tyler yanked open the front passenger door.
“Mehrabad Airport!” he cried.
“No! No!” the driver said.
Tyler flung two 1,000 rial notes onto the seat. The driver picked them up. He held up a finger.
“One more, give me!”
I tossed in another 1,000 rials. The driver held the bills up like a poker hand, trying to decide. Then he shook his head.
“No!”
Tyler snatched back our money.
“Damn, now what?” he said.
We looked around the street like a couple of hunted rabbits. Fires were burning in other parts of the city, sending columns of smoke into the sky. The Iranian driver of a nearby car called out to us.
“Mister! Where you going?”
“Mehrabad Airport!” we shouted.
“Come!” the man said.
Nobody was making us a better offer, so we piled in. Somehow the driver maneuvered around the mayhem and got us out of the downtown.
“You going America?” he asked.
“Yes,” Tyler said.
No sense trying to explain our complicated situation further.
“Good,” the driver said. “Time for all American go home. Back to President Jimmy Carter.”
Tyler and I exchanged glances.
“The Shah, very bad,” the driver said. “Very, very bad!”
Oh please, I thought, just get us to the airport in one piece!
And he did. He even refused to take any money. Then he vanished, like he’d been a guardian angel or so
mething.
The terminal was jammed with frightened people trying to get out of Iran. We fought our way through the crowd to the counter. Thank God, my flight had not been canceled! A few hours later, I shoved myself onto my plane along with the capacity crowd. A last handshake with Tyler.
“I’ll leave the light on for you,” I said. “Come as soon as you can.”
The desperate crowd of people swept me along. I didn’t hear Tyler’s reply.
As we winged our way towards freedom, I looked down for a last view of Tehran. A thick cloud of smoke covered the city.
57: Descent
Pride is always hard pressed by ruin and shame. – Notre Dame de Paris, Victor Hugo
A massive death machine is on tour. Violence in Esfahan, then in Tehran, then Kermanshah, Tabriz or some other city. Then it’s our turn again. Demonstrators rush into the gunfire wearing burial shrouds.
Things have moved rapidly downhill since Bob left, as if, Atlas-like, he’d been supporting the heavens for us, and now that he’s gone the sky is falling. Winter tightens its icy grip.
Our group of foreigners taking the bus to the army base this morning is very grim, our expressions matching the weather. We stand separated from each other at the bus stop. Even the cold wind blowing off the Iranian plateau fails to make us cluster.
Young Iranians zip past on motor bikes making obscene gestures. Somebody throws a rock at our bus when it finally arrives to pick us up. The armed guard looks indifferently down at us through the wire mesh covered window.
We drive past burned-out restaurants, liquor stores, and banks with their windows smashed and file cabinets thrown out on the sidewalk. Esfahan looks like it has suffered an air raid. Troops in armored vehicles guard the intersections amid heaps of smoldering refuse.
After crossing what was once a bustling city, we pass through the army base gate and enter the desert. An Iranian army officer boards to check ID cards. He walks slowly down the aisle, glancing first at the card, then at the person holding it, like God weighing your soul.
This trip through the desert was once my favorite part of the morning. The sun used to ride over the hills in a huge fireball. Now the land is cold and empty, the sky overcast. The bus crashes into a pothole. The driver unleashes a torrent of Farsi profanity and motions us to get off and walk the last fifty yards.
Out on the barren ground, we fall into a synchronized shuffle, moving our feet and brief cases in a weary cadence. I try to break stride but can’t. I look down, half expecting to see leg irons.
Like all armies, the Iranian one has many recruits from ethnic minorities. Tension has worsened between the students of Persian heritage and those of other backgrounds. A fight breaks out in my classroom when one student calls another one a “Turkish donkey.”
After the Lieutenant hauls away the combatants, I drill my remaining students on the vocabulary pair increasing / decreasing. I use an example from the textbook.
“Is the population of Tehran increasing or decreasing?” I read.
“Increasing,” one student answers.
“No, decreasing!” another shouts.
He stands up and turns his fingers into an imaginary machine gun.
“Pow! Pow! Pow!”
The understaffed teachers’ room is very depressing when I shuffle in after class. Rolf has quit and headed back to West Germany, joining the avalanche of fleeing expatriates selling cars and household fixtures for a song. His record player now sits in my apartment.
The condescending smirks of the “everything’s gonna be okay” crowd have disappeared, replaced by subdued, hunted expressions.
Pete took over our group after Rolf left. The smug attitude got wiped off his face soon enough. A gun battle erupted in the kuche in front of his house near the bazaar. A helicopter hovered overhead, and a roof top sniper traded shots with it. Pete cowered inside the empty water cistern in his kitchen praying that a stray bullet wouldn’t find him.
He got the hell out of Iran pretty quick after that.
So, nobody is in charge of our group now. No matter. The whole country is like that. We go about our business as best we can, improvising as required. The latest missive tacked to my apartment door reads:
O, CURSED YONKY,
YOU KNOW ABOUT SHAH MONARKISM AND HIS GENERAL MASSACRES, BUT WHILE ALL LIBERAL PEOPLE CONDEMN THE EXECUTIONER, YOU AND YOUR DOMNED PRESIDENT SUPPORT HIM.
THIS IS WHY ALL THE IRANIAN PEOPLE HATE YOU.
VIVA ISLAM!
Very little to misinterpret here, spelling errors notwithstanding.
The newspapers are on strike, and the only reliable reports come over BBC radio or in outdated American magazines. Contact with the outside world is difficult due to the Post office and telecommunication strikes. Periodically, a batch of our letters is hauled out to the US by special pouch and posted there. No matter, I haven’t been writing much lately. Communications with Julie have petered out.
Home life is a downward spiral of electrical shut offs, food and fuel shortages. My apartment is cold as a tomb most days. Cars are disappearing from the streets, especially American-owned ones which are being fire bombed one after another.
The army compels motorists to demonstrate their loyalty by displaying pictures of the Shah on their windshields, even if it is only a bank note. Pictures of Khomeini are held in reserve for times when the revolutionaries control the streets.
A Kafkaesque atmosphere of collapse and ruin is taking hold. The exodus of foreigners gains momentum. Our training operation is falling apart, however much the management tries to keep a brave face. The circumstances have a horrid fascination – they tempt you to assume an inflexible stance of stubbornness, machismo, and stupidity. But I don’t believe that I have fallen victim to this.
So, why do I remain? Well, the money is good. A desire to witness history in the making? That, too. But the core reason has revealed itself to me only gradually.
I can’t leave as long as Jon Glass is still in Iran. I know he’s here, even though I have not heard from him since before the Afghanistan trip. I can feel his presence, somehow. He’s biding his time, waiting to see who is worthy enough to stay here with him.
I’d quit the Peace Corps, I’d failed in love. I’d even flopped in the death business. Without staying behind and meeting the Jon Glass challenge, my whole experience in Iran would be just another fiasco.
If I leave now, I’m beaten. For the rest of my life, whenever I’m faced with a tough challenge, I’ll know that I failed the big test when it came.
Then, weeks after Bob’s departure, Jon finally calls.
Chapter 58: Bar Incident
Darkness was cheap, and Scrooge liked it. – A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
The evening is tense and menacing as I enter the bar. The sight of Iranian soldiers in a big Russian-built armored vehicle out front does not lessen my unease. This is one of the few American watering holes left, a GI type bar not at all to my liking. I take a seat at a side table.
Since so many of the family men have cleared out with their dependents, the percentage of stag jerks among the American ex-military types has increased exponentially. Like that trio at the bar who are ogling the pretty Vietnamese girl serving drinks.
When these guys weren’t visually undressing the bartender, they speak among themselves. I make no attempt to overhear. They are probably discussing the latest rumors, food and fuel shortages, confrontations with Iranians. The revolution dominates conversation these days, even the lowest level ones.
Why does Jon insist on these ‘kickoff’ meetings? It’s not like we ever discuss anything. He merely presents his latest plan, take it or leave it. Maybe that’s his rationale, to see if I’ll back out.
I order two beers, setting one out for Jon and sipping the other one myself. Then I bury my nose in an outdated American magazine, tuning out the environment as much as possible.
The magazine contains speculations about “Who Lost Iran?” The Carte
r administration receives much blame. As if this huge, complicated nation had ever been ours to lose in the first place.
Some minutes pass before I hear fingers drumming on the table. I jerk my head up to see Jon sitting across from me. I cannot suppress a flinch.
I scarcely recognize him. The beard is gone and most of the hair, too. The overhead lights play along angular cheekbones and a crew-cut skull.
Relieved of its moderating hair, Jon’s face looks harsh, his eyes even more intense than previously. For an instant, I think that Charles Manson has appeared in his shave-headed iteration. The word Mephistophelean pops into my mind.
“Been here long?” he says.
“A few minutes.”
Jon nods, dismissing the topic, and hoists his beer. He drinks straight from the bottle, disdaining the glass the Vietnamese girl had provided. His sweatshirt sleeves are pulled up to the elbow, and the tendons of his powerful forearm ripple as he drums the fingers of his free hand on the table.
A big, ugly American guy, quite drunk and slinging a large belly, enters the room and approaches the bar.
“Gimme a beer, sweetheart!” he tells the bartender.
He seems a younger version of the ex-mil I’d seen at the Jolfa Hotel – the fat, old sociopath who was still soldiering on in his private W-A-R and madder than hell that he can’t kill somebody and get away with it.
Jon turns to glance at the newcomer, and I notice a long, scabbed-over graze running across his profile, like a dueling scar.
“What happened to you?”
Jon touches his face lightly. “You mean this?”
“Yeah.”
“The troops fired on the demonstration last night. They took out the Iranian guy right behind me. All I got was this scratch.”
“You were in a demonstration?”
“Yeah, a few.” Jon shrugs. “I thought it would be interesting.”
I attempt to conceal my shock behind my beer glass. An awkward silence descends which I try to fill with conversation – about the revolution, of course.
“What do you think about this ‘Islamic Republic’ Khomeini wants to establish?” I ask.
Jon shrugs again.
“He’s going to win, you know,” I say.
“Could be,” Jon says.
He crosses his arms and leans back his chair, a faraway look in his eyes.
“It’s the chaos, man,” he says.
“It’s got to end soon,” I say. “This can’t go on much longer.”