“I’m so sorry,” David said.
“It’s okay,” Birjandi responded. “It hurts now, but soon enough we will walk hand in hand in paradise, reunited forever. I cannot wait.”
David was moved by the man’s devotion to his bride. “What was her name?”
“Souri.”
“A red rose,” David said. “That’s a beautiful name.”
“As was she,” Birjandi said. “Her heart, anyway. Her voice. The touch of her hands. The smell of the flowers she would pick in the morning. I never had the joy of seeing her. But then again, I didn’t need to see her to know her. All I could do was listen to her speak, but the more I listened, the more I knew her, and the more I knew her, the more I loved her. Someday, when we meet in paradise, I will finally get to see just how beautiful she really is. That will be something, won’t it?”
“It will indeed,” David said. “May I ask how old you were when you met?”
“I was sixteen; she was seventeen. My mother hired her to tutor me in Arabic, because her family was originally from Najaf, in Iraq. We married the following year.”
“It was an arranged marriage?”
“Of course, though we did our best not to seem happy about it.”
“Why’s that?”
“We were afraid if our parents knew how in love we were, they would force us to marry someone else!”
David began to laugh but quickly covered his mouth.
“It’s okay, son. I still laugh about it myself. I still savor each and every memory with that woman. I can remember our entire first conversation, the day we met. And I can remember our last. I can tell you how her hand felt as I held it at the hospital, sitting beside her cancer-ravaged body. I can tell you what it felt like the moment she breathed her last breath and slipped into eternity, leaving me all by myself. I’m not going to, but I could.” The old man’s voice had grown thick as he was overcome with emotion.
Moments passed slowly in silence. Then Dr. Birjandi asked an unexpected question. “Her name is Marseille, right?”
David’s heart stopped. “Pardon?” he said, hoping he hadn’t heard the man right.
“The girl that you love,” the old man continued, “her name is Marseille; am I right?”
In shock, David didn’t know what to say.
“Your real name is David,” Birjandi added. “David Shirazi.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about,” David stammered. “You must have mistaken me for someone else.”
“So you’re not the David Shirazi who fell in love with Marseille Harper on a fishing trip in Canada, who was arrested for beating up a boy who thought you were an Arab? You weren’t recruited by a Mr. Zalinsky to be an agent for the Central Intelligence Agency?”
Stunned, David rose to his feet without thinking. “Who are you?” he demanded. “Why are you accusing me of such lies?”
“You know they’re not lies,” Birjandi said gently. “And I’m not accusing you of anything. I’m just telling you what God told me to tell you.”
David’s mind was reeling. “The Twelfth Imam told you all this?”
“No.”
“Then I don’t understand.”
“I don’t follow the Twelfth Imam,” the old man said.
David was more confused than ever. “What are you talking about? No one knows him better than you.”
“That’s why I don’t follow him.”
David scanned the empty room, looking from side to side and listening carefully for any sign that they were not alone. What was going on? His mind scrambled to think how best to handle such a bizarre and dangerous breach of identity. What options did he have? If he’d been compromised at levels this high up and was about to be seized by Iranian intelligence, there wasn’t much he could do. He had no weapon, and the old man didn’t seem like a promising hostage. It was unlikely he could successfully run. In the absence of another viable alternative, maybe he should find out as much as he could and try to control his emotions. He needed to think clearly for whatever came next.
“Now, just sit down,” Birjandi said. “Take a deep breath. Be patient. You are in no danger from me. And I’ll explain everything. It will take some time, but it is vitally important that you listen until the end. I will give you the information you seek and point you in the right direction. But first I need to tell you a story.”
76
“I have been blind from birth,” Birjandi began. “But I was always a devout Muslim. My father was a mullah. So were most of my forefathers, going back several centuries. So I was raised in a very devout environment. But my parents didn’t force me to believe. I wanted to. Growing up, I loved to hear my parents teach me the Qur’an, especially my mother. She would read to me for hours, and when she stopped, I would beg her to read more and to answer all of my questions. She insisted I study Arabic because she wanted me to hear and understand and memorize the Qur’an as my heart language.
“By the time I was nine or ten, I would often go to the mosque by myself, praying and meditating for hours. I couldn’t see the trees and the flowers and the colors of the world. All I had was my own inner world. But I knew Allah was there, and I wanted to know him and make him happy.
“Souri, my wife, was even more devout than I. She memorized the Qur’an faster. She prayed longer. She was smarter. By the time we graduated from high school, she was fluent in five languages. I knew only three.
“We got married right after high school. I went to college and then to seminary. I was going to be a mullah, of course. It was not anything forced on me. I wanted to spend my days and nights learning about God, teaching about God. And Souri was at my side every step of the way. She read my textbooks to me. I dictated my homework to her. She typed my papers. She walked me to class. We did everything together.
“With her help, I always got high marks on my exams and papers. When I graduated from seminary, I was first in my class.”
David’s heartbeat was slowly returning to just above normal. He tried to sound calm. “Was eschatology your main focus?”
“It was, and with Souri’s assistance I wrote a thesis that was later published in 1978 as my first book, The Imams of History and the Coming of the Messiah.”
“It became a huge best seller.”
“No, no, not initially.”
“Really?” David asked, perplexed. “On the cover of my copy, it says, ‘Over one million copies in print.’”
“You’ve read it?”
“Absolutely-it was riveting.”
“Well, that’s very kind,” Birjandi said. “Yes, the book did become popular in Iran and around the world, but that happened much later. The first printing was only about five thousand copies in Tehran and another few thousand copies in Iraq because there were a lot of Shias there. But you have to understand that Khomeini rose to power in 1979, just a year after the book was published. And from that point forward, it was illegal to discuss the Twelfth Imam. Well, not against the law per se, but severely frowned upon, especially in Qom and especially in academia.”
“Why?” David asked.
“Very simple. Khomeini was threatened by it. He wanted people to believe that he was the Twelfth Imam. He never claimed to be, mind you-not directly-but he certainly didn’t discourage people from thinking it. That’s why he insisted that everyone call him Imam Khomeini. Before him, no one ever dared call a religious man imam. Among Shias, that title was reserved for the first eleven special descendants of Muhammad and, of course, for the twelfth and last. Religious leaders were called clerics, mullahs, sayyids, ayatollahs-but never imams.”