Non, je ne peux pas faire ça. You should take it back to whomever you took it from. But the professor held the case tighter and closer as he said this.
Fine, I said. Just buy me lunch and a coffee to go, then.
I took the food and went to the back alley. I couldn’t eat in the presence of that dishonest hypocrite. I vowed I would never share a meal with him. Hypocrite. I knew he would soon walk the streets like a lawyer to an office. It is with objects and false acquisitions that he thinks he can assert his ideas and gain respect. Filth. Charlatan. Just like his new briefcase, he is an empty container made of skin-deep materials.
AT HOME I LEAFED through the files from the briefcase. One of the files had papers with a mix of Persian and English, and charts and tables, and what looked like a list of products for sale. I could pronounce the Persian words in the papers but I did not understand their meaning. So I read a few pages aloud, listening to my own voice uttering Persian without having a clue what it meant. I chanted the words like some kind of scripture. Ah ha! I thought. This is what it must be like for the faithful who repeat holy scripture in foreign languages without understanding a word.
Later I went downstairs and walked over to the taxi stand. I asked for Majeed, but no one had seen him. I was about to leave when a cab driver called me back and pointed to the end of the line. I saw Majeed lining up his car.
I walked over to him, opened the taxi door, got in, and slammed the door shut. I handed him the file and asked him, Can you read this? He flipped through the file, smiled, and nodded quietly. He read with attention and silence. Then he looked at me and said, Where did you get this?
Someone’s home, I said.
You stole this?
No, I found it, I said.
Can I keep it? I will read it carefully later and bring it back to you.
Yes, do that. I just want to know what they are selling in these papers. See? Look at this chart here. Allow me, please. You see? Here, starting from this page.
Do you want to go somewhere? Majeed asked me. I can drive you.
No, I live nearby.
Thank you for this, he said. I will look at these papers.
WHEN I TOLD SHOREH about the file she asked me why I had not told her about it immediately, and why I had given the file to Majeed and not to her.
I told her how the lists looked like products for sale. I said: I thought maybe I could bring the taxi driver into the deal for whatever was being sold. Maybe we could do business together somehow. You know, find out where the merchandise is being stored, and acquire it using his car. . I didn’t think that you would be interested in such things, I said to Shohreh.
To change the subject, I told her about my conversation with Sehar, and how the restaurant owner’s daughter wanted to meet her. Shohreh said: Arrange it! Arrange it right away. And next time, you must tell me when the bald man arrives. Does he come in on a regular schedule?
No. And I will tell you when I find out what the files say. His name is Shaheed, by the way.
Shaheed, she nodded. Shaheed, and shaheed (martyred) he is. He tortured me and humiliated me and I never knew his name. Shaheed, she said, and laughed and stopped and hesitated and thought and laughed again, and shook her head.
A FEW DAYS LATER, Shohreh took Sehar shopping. I arranged the encounter between the two. Shohreh met Sehar after school. After shopping, she took Sehar home and put up her hair, painted her eyelashes, and powdered her cheeks, and they both tried on dresses and changed their hairstyles.
Sehar came to her father’s restaurant walking like a diva and talking like a diva. When she asked me to bring her food and tea, she did so with sophistication, politeness, and theatricality. She even used the word “fabulous.”
Later she called me over while her father was in the kitchen. She handed me a few dollars and asked me to go across the street and buy her cigarettes. When I told her that I couldn’t leave the restaurant without her father’s permission, she stood up and walked over to her father and told him to order me to go and buy her chewing gum. The man nodded my way and I took off and got her a pack. We met in the basement, where she was waiting for me. She leaned against the wall like a young high-end prostitute and opened the new handbag she had been carrying since her encounter with Shohreh. I dropped the pack inside. She closed her bag, said, Thank you, darling, and slowly danced her hips up the stairs.
NOROUZ IS COMING, Shohreh said to me that night. You know, when we Iranians celebrate the coming of spring. I am thinking of throwing a party. In Iran we stay up all night, eat, and celebrate. So, next week let’s invite people to my home. Here, you roll it.
I am not good at rolling, I said. My fingers shake.
Give it to me. I will do it. Invite Reza and his band. Let him play some traditional tunes.
Yes, okay, I will, I said.
I saw Reza at the end of my shift at the restaurant the next day. I told him about Shohreh’s party. He was reluctant and noncommittal, as usual. He said that he had not been getting along with Shohreh lately. He felt that she was snubbing him.
It might be a good idea to invite Sylvie and her friends to watch you perform in an informal setting, I suggested.
Reza was intrigued by this idea.
It is always good to be around those people and keep up the contact, I reminded him. Besides, it will be good to show your traditions around those rich folk. Shohreh and Farhoud will dance, and you will play. It will be perfect. You should entertain and extract, my friend. You should put some culture to it if you want to live and shit.
Reza promised to call Sylvie.
THE NEXT DAY, I paid my rent with my money from the restaurant and even bought some groceries, bread and cheese. While I ate, I realized how loud the fridge was. I could unplug it, I thought. It is almost empty anyway. But the cheese would go bad. So I decided to eat all the cheese without any bread and then unplug the fridge.
I lay on my bed and looked at the ceiling. I contemplated and strategized. The idea of conspiring with Shohreh intrigued me. I would help her. And I decided that I loved her. I would give her whatever she wanted. Lately I had an even bigger desire than before to be with her.
I napped, then woke up and took the stairs down to the street. I was tempted to just walk somewhere, anywhere, but I hesitated. I felt indecisive and frozen. I am not hungry, I thought, I am not sleepy, I am neither sad nor curious. I just want the time to pass before I see Shohreh again and my plan springs into action. I just need to decide what to do with myself. Luckily, it was cold, and before too long I had no choice but to move on. I contemplated going to the Artista Café, but I felt disgusted with that crowd — especially the professor, who had tolerated that woman of his from the letters. How petty, how spineless of him to tolerate her neglect, her narcissism, her stupid letters. She had obviously used him for her own escapism.
I could smoke, I thought. I could climb up to some roof and watch the neighbourhood from above. But the last time I had tried this, it took two minutes for the police to come and ask me why I was on the roof. Some lady had complained that I was looking into her bedchamber and called them. It was summer and all I had wanted was to hang out on the roof like millions of people on countless planets do in this universe. Billions of farmers, forgers, waitresses, and housewives stand on roofs and look around and smoke, hang laundry, and contemplate. When I told the policemen that I had always done this, all my life, he replied: Well, here people do not look at each other from their roofs.
I will only look at the stars then, I said.
He forbade me from looking at the stars, and threatened me with jail. Where all you would be looking at is walls and men in the shower, he said, and his partner laughed.