Words by Leili Kamali PO ’29, Graphic by Penny Messinger SC ’29

My dad doesn’t tell stories the way most people do. When he tells me of his childhood in Iran, I get little windows into his past. He tells me about the smell of the apricots, and how the sun in Iran makes all the fruit perfectly sweet and tart at the same time. He tells me about listening to Kourosh Yaghmaei play his guitar in the park by his house, about the time he locked the revolutionary guard out of his high school using a bike chain, and how he and his friends sold contra-banned tapes of Pink Floyd and Zeppelin when music was outlawed. These flash-fiction stories are my attempt to connect these stories together in a way that can help me make sense of what it was like to grow up in the wake of a revolution.

Glass House

The night the radio announced his departure through the skies, Maman put a flame up to Baba and burned him from corner to corner, watching the letters and the seals of his memory blacken and disappear. When she was done, little flecks of silver halide floated around the stagnant air of the apartment. The dust settled over the armchairs, bookshelves and doorknobs in a thin layer of brown and grey, blurring where the floors ended and the walls began. 

The night I heard the radio announce his flight above our flowing hair, we danced in the street, kicking up dust until the hems of our Lee jeans turned the color of rust. Syd Barrett sang of bricks. We threw them toward his plane in the night sky.

Why Stay?

The bakery on the corner was closed today. Yesterday it had been the carpenter, before that the comic store. Masoud only realized this when he saw the steel shutter pulled down over the door, a stack of old newspapers abandoned and left to pile up on the front step. He turned to Reza, but his friend only shook his head.

Two blocks down, Ali’s house stood dark, the curtains drawn tightly. The pomegranate tree in the courtyard still had fruit hanging from its branches. They would be sure to swing by again before the end of the week, lest the fruits be left to rot.

Reza answered a silent question: “Last night.”

Masoud turned to Reza. “There’s nothing to do here anymore.” 

“Not without a draft card, and there’s no shot in hell I’m going to Iraq.”

What was there to do? They wouldn’t even let you get a job unless you could prove your name’s in the hat. 

Masoud had stopped asking where his friends had gone. Some had left for London, some for Belgium, some for places they hadn’t decided on until they had already arrived. Others had left in the back of unmarked cars, their names whispered in between neighbors but never spoken too loudly.

Reza sighed as the two reached the end of the street. “Maosud, I’m leaving tomorrow,” he said, trying to make his friend look at him.

Masoud couldn’t meet Reza’s eyes. He hesitated before looking up at his own bedroom window. The curtains were closed.

“It’s time to get the fuck out of here Masoud.”

Packing list

We met the coyote in a cafe one afternoon in October. I wasn’t scared. Or, at least, I wasn’t before I realized the man my father was about to give an envelope of cash looked more like a boy than a man. I couldn’t help but wonder if he had a gun tucked somewhere beneath the oversized trenchcoat that swallowed his little frame. One definitely needed a gun when you’re stood about 5’7 and 125 pounds. On second thought, I hoped he had a gun.

Baba’s eyes burnt holes into the crinkled paper the man had handed him. I craned my neck to see and Baba angled it away from me. Some kind of death certificate by the way he was gripping it.

Later that night, I came back to my room from dinner to find it laying on my desk. Hurried writing was scrawled across the page:

He must pack sparingly in a duffle and grow out his beard for several weeks. He must not bring anything more than what is written below:

Pair hiking shoes. Nothing fancy. Sturdy laces.

Five pairs socks

Bandages

Antiseptic

20,000 rials. Cash. No checks.

Large white cloth, large black cloth

Few apples.

Long pants

Gloves.

Leaving Home

Jiangier heaves wet sobs into his duffle. For seven months, his mother had meticulously folded articles of clothing and placed them into this bag, preparing for the day she would send her son into the opium van. She did this everyday, piece by piece, until the zipper refused to close and she was forced to sew it shut rather than remove a single pair of her beloved’s Lee jeans or a cable knit sweater. Until today. In the early hours of the morning, before Tehran had gotten the chance to awaken, the two boys shouldered their duffles, received millions of rushed kisses from their mothers and fathers, and said goodbye to their collection of pristine Pink Floyd records.

If you had asked the parents only a few months earlier, they would have reassured you: “Don’t be silly! This is a new day for Iran, things will settle.” Alas, the stories of young men taken in the night bounced around the halls of their Shemiran apartments for far too long, smashing into mirrors and striking down ancient Qajar paintings in their path. In the back of the van, as Masoud stared down at his now dusty Timberlands-–the same ones he had worn last year to a class trip down in the creeks of Darband-–he had the feeling that life could not be less settled.

Afghanistan

As instructed, Masoud pulled the shapeless fabric over his head. He watched as even the fraying laces of his Timberlands disappeared under a cloak of black stretchy cotton—-concealed as they had once been under wrapping paper. On the other side of the car, Jiangier dry-shaved his black stubble, and forced a pakol cap over his tall curly hair. They finished dressing and concealed their packs under the back seat. Before they emerged from the humid alley, Jiangier helped Masoud straighten out the top of the burqa, so that only his green heavy-set eyes and thick dark lashes could be seen by the men of the market, and the officers who were sure to stop anyone for their papers.

The two were told to meet the van in an hour by the clocktower, by the exit from the outdoor market. He had to hope the men would not ask his “son” for his identification card-–which neither Masoud nor Jiangier were in possession of— and that they would trust his eyelashes and narrow frame to be those of a true woman underneath the protection of the burqa.

Pakistan

The men told them they must be ready to leave the next morning at half past five. They were instructed to open the door for no one. The boys were happy to oblige. It was the first time Masoud had taken his boots off since he left his mother, his father, and his Pink Floyd records back in Tehran. He would not take them off again until he was safe in Italy, with a crisp bottle of Coca-Cola in hand.

The boy at the front desk offered them oranges and apples-–although offered may not be the right word. He had attempted to anonymously leave a small paper bag outside the door of their single room. Masoud had caught him through the peephole as his hands shook, setting down the bag. He watched as the boy tip-toed away down the hall, and quickly cracked the door open to get a better look at the skinny teenager who had just cured their hunger with his silent offering.

Masoud had just allowed himself to relax his eyelids and drift into sleep when he heard a rustling at the door again. In a haze, he caught sight of the boy once more through the peephole. Putting his ear up against the acacia door, he heard the boy whisper, frantically.

“They’re coming! They know you are here!”

Oranges

“Throw those out,” the coyote instructed him.

“What, these?” Masoud would have laughed if they weren’t sitting 100 metres away from the guard who was about to decide if they were going to make it across the border. What would a guard care if he had a few oranges tucked away?

“Yes, those. Either hide them or throw them out.”

Masoud clenched his jaw, his fingers tightening around the oranges. He thought of his mother, the way she used to peel them in a single perfect spiral, the scent filling their kitchen. He thought of the boy at the hotel in Pakistan, how his hands shook and his whispered warning. He thought of his father, who had placed an orange in his school bag every morning, even when there was no reason to go.

He took a breath, then another. And then, before he could change his mind, he rolled the oranges into the dust beside the road.