In the Walled Gardens by Anahita Firouz

got all tied up renting a van to move our mimeograph machine,
     and then we got stuck in traffic and got there late. We left a watchman at the corner, then couldn’t find parking. We backed
     the van into the narrow side street, double-parked, and went in. Panicky that they would hit any minute, we frantically swept
     through our two-room basement to salvage our files, dragging out the mimeograph machine, rushing up and down the stairs, ignoring
     one of the neighbors, who came out on his landing to ask questions. One of our guys finally threatened him, and they started
     to quarrel and I had to pull them apart. “You’re crazy!” I hissed, dragging him away. “They’ll get here any minute!” We first
     packed the van, which was obstructing the street, repeating our escape plan as we did, then we shoved everything else in the
     car and took off, narrowly escaping.
    One week later we met at a brand-new location in Pamenar. As soon as we got in, the clique of three stood up and went on a
     diatribe about betrayal and blood and revenge. “They’re so full of shit it’s unbelievable!” I whispered to Dr. Hadi. They
     were the graduate students from the cities of Tabriz and Mashhad, always shrill and dogmatic and belligerent. They continued
     all night, keeping the upper hand as the hours progressed with veiled threats, pretending they had special information about
     how we’d been betrayed. They started interrogating us one by one like a military tribunal, bragging all the while about their
     greater commitment and purity of purpose. “We brought you new blood!” they cried. Then they turned to me. They had disliked
     me most since that winter when I’d come up against one of them for the editorship of our paper and won out.
    That night they took their revenge and started grilling me like a criminal, disassembling my life, denouncing my background
     and family and loyalties. I was bourgeois, I wasn’t committed, I was impure, I was an equivocator. I didn’t follow the code
     of behavior and reasoning they upheld. “Where is your burning dedication to absolute revolution?” they yelled. I was always
     equivocating. I was an agitator, a revisionist, a renegade. I said, “The only absolute I feel is a revulsion for you. You
     reason exactly like the regime you condemn!” At this they got so outraged they resorted to hysterics. They threatened to search
     my home, confiscate my papers, denounce me to the Left as a traitor. “Wait and see what they’ll do to you then!” one of them
     shouted. “They’ll shoot you in the street!” “The hell with you,” I said. “You’ve turned into SAVAK yourself! Learned well
     from the very power we detest. It’s our own methods that have become detestable.” I went home, I didn’t care what they did.
     We had forsaken all democratic principles and turned ugly and demagogic and dictatorial. Years of painstaking work, and we
     were about to crash and burn! We were our own worst enemy.
    I stayed away. The others sent me private messages, which I ignored. I was already planning another group, making a list.
     After a month, one night several of them came knocking at my door. They said we’d had a crisis, bad blood, but it was over.
     The clique from the provinces had splintered off and the rift was complete. They made promises. We had a history together,
     shared a vision, we couldn’t throw it away. One week later we hammered things out. The upheaval had forced us to reassess
     everything and finally change the way we did business. We split into four sections of nine, redid our chain of command, the
     arrangement of our cells. Any key member could start another cell of nine, but only the few at the top knew the arrangement
     of our network and key contacts. I was asked to head our youth group, reorganize, and find a place for its headquarters.
    That night I could finally report at our ten o’clock meeting that I’d found a safe house downtown for our youth group.