Salar Abdoh
No freedom fighters
"Yeah, in Lebanon. Ninety to Ninety-two. I've paid my
dues, helped the brothers."
February 16, 2000
The Iranian
Excerpt
from chapter 1 of The
Poet Game by Salar Abdoh (Picador, 2000).
Abdoh was born and raised in Iran. During the revolution his father
had to leave the country quickly, as he was on the original list of fifty
or so people who were to have been executed. He was the owner of the Persepolis
soccer team. He died a few months after moving the family to the U.S. in
1979.
"I kind of raised myself since the age of fifteen," Salar
says. " I traveled around the U.S., didn't finish high school, worked
odd jobs, brawled a lot, got sent to juvenile hall a few times, lived in
abandoned buildings. At some point in the mid eighties I decided to shape
up. Got my degree, went to U.C Berkeley, majored in Near Eastern History
and Literature. Then left for the Middle East. Lived in Iran during the
early Nineties. Traveled around in Asia. Came back to the States. To New
York. Joined my brother, Reza Abdoh's theater troupe, Dar-A-Luz, as a writer.
After Reza's death in 1995, I went and got my Masters in Creative Writing
and English Literature at the City College of the City University of New
York. Currently I teach English at the City University and just published
my first book, a thriller called The
Poet Game."
The Libyans who surrounded him were humorless fellows. It was nothing
to get restless about, Libyans were notorious for this. In early 1992,
when the Office had penetrated the inappropriately named 'Lightning Battalion'
in a northern Tehran suburb, he'd come in contact with a lot of these so
called Exchange Students from various Arab countries. The Lebanese were
hotheads, the Syrians were cautious, old hand PLO guys were capable of
degenerating in a flash, the Egyptians could be serious and smart, yet
also egotistical and clownish. But the Lemons, as the Libyans were called,
were a breed apart. No talk, little action. And definitely not the kind
of freedom fighter you'd want to cover your back in times of trouble.
One of the Libyans said something in Arabic and nodded at the direction
of the cemetery they were passing. Sami had seen it from high up when the
plane had been circling over Kennedy Airport. From this vantage point the
sprawling graveyard had a certain authority to it, but from the plane it
had appeared as something indecent and incomplete. He thought: how is one
supposed to explain this idea to a Libyan brother? Then he wondered if
he shouldn't say something for the sake of politeness. Neither of the men
in the back responded, however, to his comment about being hungry. Finally
the one in the passenger seat, a fleshy character who seemed to be the
boss turned to face Sami.
"It's Ramadan. You don't eat."
The finality of the statement should have piqued him, but he didn't
feel up to it. You usually had two sorts of Arab operatives to deal with:
one set acted as if having an agent from Iran was like having the Prophet's
own right-hand man at the helm, while the other lot were pugnacious and
sneering, treating the Persians as if the ancient battle of Qadissiyah
between the two races had never ended. For the time being Sami was content
to exert little effort. A more energetic emissary might already have been
collecting brownie points trying to please these boys. He tapped the fat
Arab who had addressed him. "What?"
"You speak my language?"
"What, Persian? That's not funny."
"Then I'll say it in English: fuck you; I'm going to eat anyway."
The fat man gave a shrug and the ones in the back shifted uncomfortably.
The car sped along a wide street. Sami read 'Jamaica Avenue' on a street
sign. For no reason that he could think of, seeing this sign made him think
of Winston Churchill. There had been a street in Tehran called Churchill,
the name of which they'd changed after the revolution. He wondered why
somebody would want to call a street in Brooklyn, Jamaica. He could ask
the stonefaced Lemons -- Limu in Persian -- but he doubted if it would
instigate conversation. He settled back into the seat, wondering if somebody
was going to offer him a cigarette so he could refuse -- but no, it was
Ramadan, month of fasting, and they probably expected him to pray alongside
them. This wasn't a comforting thought. They passed a traffic light as
a Jewish man was getting into his car. This caused stirrings of tension
in the car, like the push of a wrong button. The driver of the car, a dark-skinned
young fellow with Berber features, muttered something under his breath.
"I always knew I should have learned Arabic when I had the chance,"
Sami said. Without turning around the fat fellow up front repeated the
tail-end of Sami's sentence, "When you had the chance."
"Yeah, in Lebanon. Ninety to Ninety-two. I've paid my dues, helped
the brothers."
There was more silence while they turned into a side street. Then the
big fellow started to ask him about dues. "What is dues? You speak
well English? How come?" But he didn't stop for an answer. The four
of them slid out of the car at the same time. Sami followed.
It was a three story red brick building with a black iron-gate that
opened to the side of the first floor. The street was nicely tree-lined
and brown-skinned kids played in it. For a second he was scandalized at
the apparent amateurism of these people; was this an Arab neighborhood?
But then he heard the staccato exchange of Spanish. And soon he was even
more relieved as a Chinese woman went pushing a stroller on the other side
of the street. This made him recall how little he really knew. Until last
week he'd been back to working on one of the Colonel's pet projects in
Tehran, mostly translating reveal-all memoirs of this and that Western
intelligence service. For internal consumption of the Office of course.
As if any agency worth a dime would let its real secrets be given away
that easily. Nevertheless, it was a job and it beat chasing Interior Ministry
guys all over the city.
A big breasted light-skinned man with a goatee and a Bokhara cap opened
the door, looking rather too self-consciously pious. An American, Sami
guessed, searching for Islam's regimented enlightenment.
He found himself in a small room with a barred window boarded up from
the outside. A floor mat and an old yellow blanket had been thrown in a
corner for him to sleep on. A Koran lying atop a short stool. A few plastic
clothes-hangers in a closet with no door. This was evidently intermission
time. How long it lasted was up to the Libyans. He was a house guest without
a key, being welcomed to Brooklyn, New York. He'd been incarcerated before,
but only during routine Office exercises. What was not so easy to figure
was whether this too was an exercise or not. So on the second day he began
to delve into the Koran they'd provided him with out of sheer boredom,
readying himself for the long haul. They probably had him under some sort
of observation, though he couldn't tell how. He gave a name to the man
who had received him inside the house -- Hazrat, or Prophet -- just to
fix his face in his own mind. Hazrat set a food tray for him without saying
a word -- at an hour which Sami guessed to be dusk -- two days in a row.
On the third day Sami tried to break the ice. "Your hospitality is
beginning to weigh on me, brother," he whispered in a sarcastic voice.
The hesitation took the form of Hazrat setting the tray by the door,
and then arranging and rearranging its position as if it was less food
than an offering. Sami reached for a piece of sweet date -- they were splurging.
"Are you scandalized at me, brother?" he asked as the other was
leaving the room.
They didn't give him much of a chance after that. When the door burst
open it dawned on him that old Hazrat had forgotten to lock it. Not that
he would have tried to get out. Stretching over on the mat he said in Persian,
"Fellows, if you treat your friends like this I'd hate to visit you
at home in Tripoli."
A runt of a Libyan with bushy eye-brows began to yell in Arabic and
frisk through his clothes. Two other men stood around, pretending to debate
something among themselves. This was the shake-up that Sami had been expecting
for some time. He let himself be manhandled until a carefully shaven man
wearing a pale blue suit appeared outside of the door.
"Tell the fuck to either shoot me or give me a cigarette,"
Sami said again in Persian.
The man in the doorway stepped closer and answered also in Persian,
"But Mr. Amir, you don't smoke cigarettes."
Sami muttered something about the fact that now they were getting somewhere.
The runt shook him again and the man who had answered him in Persian said,
"He says you've come here to spy."
"Well, we all have to get to America somehow."
