In the Walled Gardens by Anahita Firouz Page B

month later we were waiting at the same bus stop by Najmieh Hospital, where she worked as a nurse. We boarded the same bus,
     and she talked. Her name was Soghra. I felt her motive for opening up to me was to chastise Jalal. She had lighter skin and
     a frail but cunning disposition, and eventually she started to flirt. She smiled at me; she had a gold tooth and looked like
     a washerwoman. She gave me her address on a lark and said she lived with her parents. “When you call,” she whispered, “say
     it’s from the hospital. Say you’re a doctor.” She couldn’t have callers but had dreams of snagging a doctor. I took the paper,
     registering her nerve, considering her pious background. When she got off the bus, I saw her take out a light blue scarf and
     cover her head quickly.
    I GOT OFF THE BUS the next night near the train station. The man at the greengrocer’s told me to turn left at the intersection beyond the public
     bath. He knew the Hojjati family. But I didn’t stop to chat.
    Dinner hour, with throngs at the traffic lights in the noise and smog and hustle. A vendor in a threadbare jacket dished out
     steaming ruby-red beets from an old rickety cart. Laborers carried home freshly baked loaves wrapped in newspaper, the backstreets
     smelling of fried oil and kerosene and coal.
    We knew doctrines and dialectics, but not yet how to reach the masses. We had no roots here.
    I dipped into narrow back alleys right and left and rang a door-bell. I’d come late to catch them at home. His father opened
     the door. He had dark skin stretched over high cheekbones, a taut and ferocious face. Turkoman blood. I introduced myself
     as his son’s close friend before he let me into a half-lit passage. He called to his wife. A small woman came up and peered
     at me, chalky pale, bird-like and shriveled, her dark chador wrapped at her waist and slung over her head. I recognized her
     from the time in the street.
    The father grilled me. He’d retained the provincial accent.
    “He gave you our address?”
    I equivocated, said I’d come for news of Jalal. “Have you heard anything? Has anyone called about him?”
    He shook his head. “My daughter told us. She saw the shop shuttered and asked on the street. She checked hospitals and police
     stations. Even the morgue.”
    “When did you last see him?”
    “He didn’t want us,” he said gruffly. “He’s an ungrateful son.”
    “Maybe he’s been arrested —”
    The mother started to weep. The father stepped in front of her; I could see he was frightened.
    “What d’you know?” he demanded.
    “Nothing,” I said. “I’m here to see if you do.”
    The mother flinched as if she’d been struck, letting out a small wail. “He’s disappeared. Just like that. Melted into the
     ground! O God, pity him and help us! He’s our one and only. The light of our eyes.”
    Grabbing her chador, she wept, beating her chest lightly with her fist. Her husband ordered her to calm down.
    I asked the father if he’d checked Jalal’s apartment. He didn’t even know where Jalal lived.
    “Can’t you help my son?” the mother implored me.
    “What’re you talking about, woman?” the father snapped.
    She started weeping again. They made a pitiful twosome. I asked if Jalal’s sister could get into his apartment.
    The father squinted, cheekbones rising to engulf wary eyes. “How d’you know her?”
    I said I didn’t. He said she was on night shift at the hospital. I suggested someone search the apartment to remove damaging
     evidence. Not that there was any, I added.
    “Just in case,” I said. Surely SAVAK had already taken what it needed.
    The father didn’t object. I was about to give him his son’s address.
    “You do it,” he said. “My daughter’s always at the hospital. She wouldn’t know what to look for. I don’t have much education.
     Do us this favor.”
    I said I knew Jalal’s landlady and could get into the flat with her latchkey.
    In the alley he took