In the Walled Gardens by Anahita Firouz Page A

My
     new recruit, Hossein Farahani, had already proved himself unusually valuable. I had a perfectly located site, and well disguised
     — the back of the auto repair garage off Fauziyeh Square, where Hossein worked. I’d also been charged with finding a property
     outside Tehran, and I’d located a garden in Karaj to house the printing press for our organization — this through an old contact
     of mine, Majid M., a fellow student from my school days.
    Majid and I had come of age during the politically charged days of Mossadeq. We’d sold papers then for all political parties
     without really understanding their differences — Pan-Iranist, Third Force, Iran Party — in Lalehzar and Estanbul. We lived
     in the same neighborhood and attended the same school. Late nights we snuck out of our rooms and ran through the streets scribbling
     nationalist slogans on walls with bits of charcoal, distributing leaflets we pulled out of our socks in the dead of night,
     running ahead of patrols that were sweeping through Tehran to arrest us. Father caught me several times sneaking out late
     at night and threatened to confiscate my bicycle. Always repeating, “A boy shouldn’t be involved in politics.” But it never
     stopped me. Then he threatened seriously, the night I admitted I was there with Majid at the Saadi Theater for the opening
     of
Lady Windermere’s Fan.
That night the Left had sent a young recruit to take a famous journalist and anarchist to the theater to avert a plot by
     the regime’s thugs to assassinate him in the offices of his newspaper
Shouresh.
Majid and I were fascinated by the anarchist and knew the recruit — a high-school student who greatly impressed us — and
     we’d tagged along. Father was furious. He said I was playing with fire, I would be arrested, he didn’t approve of the leftist
     friends I kept. I would burn in their hell! He was going to send me back to the provinces. I didn’t see Majid again, but we
     kept in touch even after he left for university in England. He returned once from Manchester years later when our group was
     reunited and took part in large demonstrations that threatened the stability of the regime and once again failed. Two months
     ago he returned from abroad, sent in across the Kurdestan border to take charge at home. He’s teaching English at the Simin
     Institute. At night he teaches revolution, spewing political idioms in English, which intimidates the guys in the Left at
     home. He’s our connection to the antiregime Confederation of Iranian Students in Europe.
    I looked at my watch. Before leaving for the meeting, I had to scrounge around among my books and files and papers. I had
     an obligation to Jalal since his disappearance. First I had to find his parents, but I’d lost the address.
    Hojjati. There it was, the scrap of paper, in a tin can on the shelf by the tea and sugar. Backstreets near the train station
     with a telephone number. The father was a devout mason from the provinces. He’d thrived in the capital jerry-building in Eshratabad.
     Once, in faraway Semnan, he’d tended sheep around desolate villages, married a first cousin, then apprenticed in town with
     a local mason who beat him. But he’d learned to lay bricks like lightening. One year he’d taken his wife and hitched a ride
     on a truckload of pistachios to Tehran, first living in a hovel south of the city, a hole in the ground covered with sheets
     of plastic. Then he’d moved up, bought a house close to the train station. Khaniabad, off Masjed-e-Qanari, that was where
     I’d find them.
    Jalal never discussed family. They didn’t exist for him.
    His younger sister told me bits and pieces on a crosstown bus. I’d seen her once at Jalal’s shop when I’d come in and overheard
     them arguing in the back. I heard him say, “It’s none of your business.” “You’re a no-good son!” she countered. That’s all
     I heard, and she’d brushed past me, flushed with anger.
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