“It’s never been this bad,” he muttered. “What the hell’s the holdup for?” “It must be another accident,” Azadeh said, very unsettled. “Or road works. Should we turn back - the traffic’s not so bad that way?” “We’ve plenty of time,” he said, encouraging her. “We’ll be out of here in a minute. Once-through the town we’ll be fine.” Ahead everything was slowing again, the din picking up. The two lanes were clogging, gradually becoming one again with much hooting, swearing, stopping, starting again and grinding along at about ten miles an hour, street stores and pushcarts encroaching the roadway and straddling the joub. They were almost at the exit when some youths ran alongside, began shouting insults, some foul. One of the youths banged on his side window. “American dog…”
“Pig Amer’can…”
These men were joined by others and some women in chador, fists raised. Erikki was bottled in and could not get out of the traffic or speed up or slow down nor could be turn around and he felt rage growing at his helplessness. Some of the men were banging on the hood and sides of the Range Rover and on his window. Now there was a pack of them and those on Azadeh’s side were taunting her, making obscene gestures, trying to open the door. One of the youths jumped on the hood but slipped and fell off and just managed to scramble out of the way before Erikki drove over him. The bus ahead stopped. Immediately there was a frantic melee as would-be passengers fought to get on and others fought to get off. Then Erikki saw an opening, stamped on the accelerator throwing off another man, got around the bus, just missing pedestrians who carelessly flooded through the traffic, and swung into a side street that miraculously was clear, raced up it and cut into another, narrowly avoided a mass of motorcyclists, and continued on again. Soon he was quite lost, for there was no pattern to the city or town except refuse and stray dogs and traffic, but he took his bearings from the sun’s shadows and at length came out onto a wider road, shoved his way into the traffic and around it, and soon came onto a road that he recognized, one that took him into another square in front of another mosque and then back on the Tehran road. “We’re all right now, Azadeh, they were just hooligans.” “Yes,” she said shakily. “They should be whipped.”
Erikki had been studying the crowds near the mosque and on the streets and in the vehicles, trying to find a clue to the untoward hostility. Something’s different, he thought. What is it? Then his stomach twisted. “I haven’t seen a soldier or an army truck ever since we left Tabriz - none. Have you?”
“No - no, not now that you mention it.”
“Something’s happened, something serious.”
“War? The Soviets have come over the border?” Her face lost even more color. “I doubt it - there’d be troops going north, or planes.” He looked at her. “Never mind,” he said, more to convince himself, “we’re going to have a fine time in Tehran, Sharazad’s there and lots of your friends. It’s about time you had a change. Maybe I’ll take the leave I’m owed - we could go to Finland for a week or two…”
They were out of the downtown area and into the suburbs now. The suburbs were ramshackled, with the same walls and houses and the same potholes. Here the Tehran road widened to four lanes, two each side, and though traffic was still heavy and slow, barely fifteen miles an hour, he was not concerned. A little way ahead, the Abadan-Kermanshah road branched off southwest, and he knew that this would bleed off a lot of the congestion. Automatically his eyes scanned the gauges as he would his cockpit instruments and, not for the first time, he wished he was airborne, over and out of all this mess. The gas gauge registered under a quarter full. Soon he would have to refuel but that would be no problem with plenty of spare fuel aboard. They slowed to ease past another truck parked with careless arrogance near some street vendors, the air heavy with the smell of diesel. Then more refuse came out of nowhere to splatter their windshield. “Perhaps we should turn around, Erikki, and go back to Tabriz. Perhaps we could skirt Qazvin.” “No,” he said, finding it eerie to hear fear in her voice - normally she was fearless. “No,” he repeated even more kindly. “We’ll go to Tehran and find out what the problem is, then we’ll decide.”
She moved closer to him and put a hand on his knee. “Those hooligans frightened me. God curse them,” she muttered, her other fingers toying nervously with the turquoise beads she wore around her neck. Most Iranian women wore turquoise or blue beads, or a single blue stone against the evil eye. “Those sons of dogs! Why should they be like that? Devils. May God curse them forever!” Just outside the city was a big army training camp and an adjoining air base. “Why aren’t soldiers here?”
“I’d like to know too,” he said.
The Abadan-Kermanshah turnoff came up on his right. Much of the traffic headed down it. Barbed-wire fences skirted both roads - as on most of the main roads and highways in Iran. The fences were needed to keep sheep and goats and cattle and dogs - and people - from straying across the roads. Accidents were very frequent and mortality high.
But that’s normal for Iran, Erikki thought. Like those poor fools who went over the side in the mountains - no one to know, no one to report them or even to bury them. Except the buzzards and the wild animals and packs of rotten dogs.
With the city behind them, they felt better. The country opened up again, orchards once more beyond the joub and the barbed wire. The Elburz Mountains north and undulating country south. But instead of speeding up, his two lanes slowed even more and congested, then reluctantly became one again, with more jostling, hooting, and rage. Wearily he cursed the inevitable roadworks that must be causing the bottleneck, shifted down, his hands and feet working smoothly of their own volition, hardly noticing the stopping and starting, stopping and starting, inching along again, engines grinding and overheating, noise and frustration building in every vehicle. Abruptly Azadeh pointed ahead. “Look!”
A hundred yards ahead was a roadblock. Groups of men surrounded it. Some were armed, all were civilians and poorly dressed. The roadblock was just this side of a nondescript village with street stalls beside the road and in the meadow opposite. Villagers, women and children, mingled with the men. All the women wore the black or gray chador. As each vehicle stopped, papers were checked and then it was allowed to pass. Several cars had been pulled off the road into the meadow where knots of men interrogated the occupants. Erikki saw more weapons among them.
“They’re not Green Bands,” he said.
“There aren’t any mullahs. Can you see any mullahs?”
“No.”
“Then they’re Tudeh or mujhadin - or fedayeen.”
“Better get your Identity Card ready,” he said and smiled at her. “Put on your parka so you won’t catch cold when I open the windows, and your hat.” It wasn’t the cold that worried him. It was the curve of her breasts, proud under the sweater, the delicacy of her waist and her free-flowing hair. In the glove compartment was a small, sheathed pukoh knife. This he concealed in his right boot. The other one, his big knife, was under his parka, in the center of his back.
When at last their turn came, the surly, bearded men surrounded the Range Rover. A few had U.S. rifles, one an AK47. Among them were some women, just faces in the chador. They peered up at her with beady eyes and grim disapproval. “Papers,” one of the men said in Farsi, holding out his hand, his breath reeking, the pervading smell of unwashed clothes and bodies coming into the car. Azadeh stared ahead, trying to dismiss the leers and mutterings and closeness that were totally outside her experience. Politely Erikki passed over his ID card and Azadeh’s. The man accepted them, stared at them, and passed them to a youth who could read. All the others waited silently, staring, stamping their feet in the cold. At length the youth said, his Farsi coarse, “He’s a foreigner from somewhere called Finland. He comes from Tabriz. He’s not American.”