We knew that we didn’t have very long to stay here, in one place. The peasant, village boys who made up the lower ranks of the religious police would soon begin scouring the riverbanks for signs of illicit behaviour, jostling for bribes to avoid a trip to the police station. The spoiled, unmarried girls were perhaps even worse. Unloved and unclaimed, they roamed the pavements in groups three or four strong, arms locked and giggling in vicious whispers. The only way to have any privacy or to elude the threat of arrest was through a routine of constant movement – coffee shops, small shaded parks, and quiet tea houses. Each day became a circuit of stolen moments, whispered conversations and hands snaked together.
Sometimes we were lucky and could manage an hour. The man who ran the halim shop let us monopolize a table at the back for as long as we wanted, eating his dense, turmeric-stained purees from a flat, styrofoam tray. At the beryooni shop we were less fortunate, its owner regarded me from over his scorched iron cooking drum and told Vahid he didn’t want any trouble. Thrusting warm, oily packets of sheep’s stomach fried with cinnamon and almonds into our hands he shooed us away, forcing us to eat from our laps perched on some ruined, forgotten building. Luckily for us in Esfahan there were many such places, and if we kept perfectly still the elderly men and women who lived in the quarters that we frequented at night could be reliably counted on to pass us by, keeping us in the shadows of their diminishing eyesight.
The worst was the goodbyes each night. It was then that I understood that I loved him. I fetched an overnight bag from his belongings kept under my bed – a clean t-shirt, a toothbrush, barbari spread with honey from Ali’s kitchen. We’d meet in the side alley near my guesthouse and say goodnight for hours before he’d begin the two hour journey from shared taxi to shared taxi, to reach his uncle’s apartment on the outskirts of the city. One night, we listened to the patrol of Ali’s footsteps, the creak of his door, the eventual turning off of the lights in the corridor and spent the night in my bedroom. It was our second sex together, on the mattress on the stone floor.
“Yesterday I had your dream and I dreamt that you were my wife,” Vahid said. “That you loved me the most and we were peaceful together.”
He was interrupted by a loud shriek. “Listen to how romantic they are speaking!” exclaimed a chubby girl with a loud mane of hair who gestured in our direction. Her cheeks were streaked with violent rouge and she had tiny, cheap-looking diamonds glued into her eyelashes. The group of girls behind her erupted into peals of exaggerated laughter and I fought the urge to smack the satisfied grin off her plastic, doll-like face.
