Rooftops of Tehran
Mahbod Seraji
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1 - Summer of 1973 Tehran
Chapter 2 - Faheemeh’s Tears and Zari’s Wet Hair
Chapter 3 - Summer of 1973 Tehran
Chapter 4 - Suvashun
Chapter 5 - Summer of 1973 Tehran
Chapter 6 - Vignettes of Love
Chapter 7 - One More Story, Please
Chapter 8 - End of Summer 1973 Tehran
Chapter 9 - The Anarchist
Chapter 10 - My School and My Teachers
Chapter 11 - In the SAVAK’s Prisons
Chapter 12 - The Devils That Broke the Windows
Chapter 13 - The Cost of the Bullet
Chapter 14 - Autumn of 1973 Tehran
Chapter 15 - The Rosebush
Chapter 16 - The Width of the Alley
Chapter 17 - Prove Your Innocence
Chapter 18 - Autumn of 1973 Mazandaran
Chapter 19 - Doctor’s Candle
Chapter 20 - A Kiss
Chapter 21 - Lighting a Candle for Doctor
Chapter 22 - Winter of 1974 Roozbeh Psychiatric Hospital, Tehran
Chapter 23 - Ahmed’s Star
Chapter 24 - The Color of Age
Chapter 25 - Caged Souls
Chapter 26 - The Eyes of an Angel
Chapter 27 - Shade in Shadow
Chapter 28 - An Incurable Disease
Chapter 29 - An Angel Calling
Chapter 30 - Enshallah
Chapter 31 - That Is All
Chapter 32 - Another Dawn
Chapter 33 - One More, Please
Chapter 34 - In the Silence of the Night
Dear Reader:
READERS GUIDE of Tehran
Praise for
Rooftops of Tehran
“Rooftops of Tehran is a richly rendered first novel about courage, sacrifice, and the bonds of friendship and love. In clear, vivid detail, Mahbod Seraji opens the door to the fascinating world of Iran and provides a revealing glimpse into the life and customs of a country on the verge of a revolution. A captivating read.”
—Gail Tsukiyama, author of The Street of a Thousand Blossoms and The Samurai’s Garden
“In his haunting debut novel, Mahbod Seraji brings humor and humanity to a story of secret love in the brutal last days of the Shah. Set against the background of repression that launched the Iranian revolution, Pasha and Zari’s story shows that love and hope among the young thrive even in the most oppressive of times. Seraji is a striking new talent.”
—Sandra Dallas, author of Tallgrass
“Rooftops of Tehran combines a coming-of-age love story with a compelling tale of struggle against dictatorship. You learn a lot about Iranian culture while coming to understand characters with universal appeal. This would make a great movie.”
—Reese Erlich, author of The Iran Agenda: The Real Story of U.S. Policy and the Middle East Crisis
“Rooftops of Tehran evoked many memories, along with tears and smiles, of starry nights on rooftops, long-lost loves, and intense, passionate feelings of anger at the injustices and the absurd excesses of the Pahlavi regime.”
—Nahid Mozaffari, editor of Strange Times, My Dear: The PEN Anthology of Contemporary Iranian Literature
“Rooftops of Tehran takes an uncommon and refreshing view of Iran and reveals how an American immigrant is born out of a young foreigner’s desperation for self-determination and social freedom.”
—Susanne Pari, author of The Fortune Catcher
“What a profound pleasure to discover such solid storytelling and splendid prose in a debut novel. With the voice of a poet, Seraji has told a universal tale of love, loss, and ultimately of hope. It is this hope, most of all, that will linger long after the last page is turned. Thank God for authors like Seraji, who show us that no matter how distant apart our worlds may be, in the humanness of our hearts, we are all united.”
—William Kent Krueger, author of Red Knife and the Cork O’Connor series
“A stirring story about the loss of innocence, Rooftops of Tehran reveals a side of Iran understood by few Westerners. An ambitious first novel—full of humor, originality, and meaning.”
—John Shors, author of Beneath a Marble Sky and Beside A Burning Sea
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First published by New American Library,
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First Printing, May 2009
Copyright © Mahbod Seraji, 2009
Readers Guide copyright © Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2009
All rights reserved
REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Seraji, Mahbod.
Rooftops of Tehran/Mahbod Seraji. p. cm.
eISBN : 978-1-101-04661-6
1. Tehran (Iran)—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3619.E7356R66 2009
813’.6—dc22 2008031902
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Acknowledgments
Thank you to Marian Clark, Tim and Sue Ellen Kane, Sudi Rafian, Kevin Daniels, Kim Levin, Nancee McVey, Laura Hubber, Mojgan Seraji, Mehri Safari, Kamran Heydarpour, Donnell Green, Debbie Shotwell, Nancy Fallah, and Mauni Seraji for your enthusiastic cheers during the course of my writing this book. Each of you, in your own unique way, made me believe that I had a story worth sharing.
Stephanie Howse: my heartfelt gratitud
e for your keen perspectives and insights, and for the ways in which you keep helping.
My dear Sepi: Your insight helped me unravel Pasha better than I ever could by myself. And thanks for cheering me on all the away to the end.
Thank you to my agents, Danielle Egan-Miller and Joanna Mac-Kenzie of Browne & Miller Literary Associates, for your faithful determination, for never giving up, and for being the catalysts for a life-changing experience. Thanks, too, to Alec McDonald for your editorial help and to Mariana Fisher for your early enthusiasm.
And finally, to Ellen Edwards, my gifted and diligent editor: Thank you for taking a chance on me, and for taking on the responsibility of sharing my book with the rest of the world. Working with you has been the ultimate learning experience.
Winter of 1974 Roozbeh Psychiatric Hospital, Tehran
I hear someone’s voice chanting, and the repetitive verses lap like water at the edge of my consciousness.
If I had a book, I would read it.
If I had a song, I would sing it.
I look around until I see an old man standing a few meters away chanting in a steady, empty tone. The place does not look familiar to me. The blue robe that covers my body, the wheelchair I am sitting in, the sunlight creeping between the shades that warms me—all feel strange.
If I knew a dance, I would dance it.
If I knew a rhyme, I would chant it.
If I had a life, I would risk it.
If I could be free, I would chance it.
Outside in the yard, men of all shapes and ages shuffle around in blue robes. There is something peculiar about each of them. They look lost.
Suddenly a surge of emotions fills my chest and rushes into my throat. A little nurse with a kind, full face that resembles an apple runs up to me and plants her hands on my shoulders and screams, “Help me out here, help me out!” A man in a white uniform runs over and tries to hold me down.
“Stay in your chair, honey. Stay in your chair,” Apple Face shouts, which means I must be moving. I focus on sitting still, and look toward the old man on the far side of the room. He is gazing at me as he frantically repeats his mantra:If I had a horse, I would ride it.
If I had a horse, I would ride it.
If I had a horse . . .
I am taken to a room with a bed, and Apple Face says, “I’m going to give you a sedative to make you feel better, darling.”
I feel a pinch in my arm, and suddenly my head and arms become unbearably heavy and my eyes slide shut.
1
Summer of 1973 Tehran
My Friends, My Family, and My Alley
Sleeping on the roof in the summer is customary in Tehran. The dry heat of the day cools after midnight, and those of us who sleep on the rooftops wake with the early sun on our faces and fresh air in our lungs. My mother is strictly against it, and reminds me each evening, “Hundreds of people fall off the roofs every year.” My best friend, Ahmed, and I trade hidden smiles with each warning, then climb the stairs to spend our nights under stars that seem close enough to touch. The alley below settles into a patchwork of streetlight, shadow, and sound. A car hums slowly down the deserted street, cautious not to wake anyone, as a stray dog in the distance releases a string of officious barks.
“I hear your mother calling,” Ahmed mumbles in the dark. I smile, aiming a good-natured kick that he easily rolls away from.
Our house is the tallest in the neighborhood, which makes our roof an ideal spot for stargazing. In fact, naming stars for our friends and the people we love is one of our favorite pastimes.
“Does everyone have a star?” Ahmed asks.
“Only good people.”
“And the better you are the bigger your star, right?”
“Bigger and brighter,” I say, as I do every time he asks the same question.
“And your star guides you when you’re in trouble, right?”
“Your star and the stars of the people you love.”
Ahmed closes one eye and lifts his thumb to block out one of the brighter stars. “I’m tired of looking at your big fat face.”
“Shut up and go to sleep then,” I say, laughing, letting my gaze relax into the velvety emptiness between each pinprick of light. My eyes travel down the sky until they rest on the familiar rise and fall of the Alborz Mountains, which serpentine between the desert and the blue-green Caspian Sea. I get distracted for a moment trying to decide if the darkness is black or so deeply blue that it just appears inky in comparison.
“I wonder why people are so unabashedly afraid of the dark,” I ponder, and Ahmed chuckles. I know without asking that he is amused by my eccentric vocabulary, the product of a lifetime of heavy reading. My father pulled Ahmed and me aside one day and asked me, in front of family friends and relatives, what I thought life was about. I promptly said that life was a random series of beautifully composed vignettes, loosely tied together by a string of characters and time. My father’s friends actually applauded, much to my embarrassment. Ahmed leaned over and whispered that I would soon be inaugurated as the oldest seventeen-year-old in the world, especially if I kept saying things like “unabashedly” and “beautifully composed vignettes.”
Ahmed and I have just finished the eleventh grade and will be entering our last year of high school in the fall. I look forward to the end of preparatory school as much as the next seventeen-year-old, but this lively anticipation is tempered by my father’s plans to send me to the United States to study civil engineering. Long ago, my father worked as a ranger, protecting the nationalized forests from poachers who cut down the trees illegally for personal profit. He now works in an office, managing an entire region with an army of rangers reporting to him.
“Iran is in dire need of engineers,” Dad reminds me whenever he gets the chance. “We’re on the verge of transforming ourselves from a traditional agricultural country to an industrial one. A person with an engineering degree from an American university secures a great future for himself and his family, in addition to enjoying the prestige of being called ‘Mr. Engineer’ for the rest of his life.” I love my father, and I would never disobey him, but I hate math, I hate the idea of becoming an engineer, and I would hate being called Mr. Engineer. In my dreams I major in literature and study the philosophy of the ancient Greeks, evolution, Marxism, psychoanalysis, Erfan, and Buddhism. Or, I major in film and become a writer or a director, someone who has something worthwhile to say.
For now I live with my parents in a middle-class neighborhood. We have a typical Iranian house with a modest yard, a large guest room, and a hose—a small pool in the front yard. In our neighborhood, just like any other in Tehran, tall walls separate houses that have been built connected to each other. Our home has two full levels, and my room occupies a small section of the third floor, where a huge terrace is connected to the roof by a bulky mass of steel steps. Ours is the tallest house in the neighborhood, and has a southern exposure.
“I wouldn’t live in a home with a northern exposure if it were given to me for free,” my mother states repeatedly. “They never get any sun. They’re a breeding ground for germs.” My mother never finished high school, yet she speaks about health issues with the authority of a Harvard graduate. She has a remedy for every ailment: herbal tea to cure depression, liquidated camel thorns to smash kidney stones, powdered flowers to annihilate sinus infections, dried leaves that destroy acne, and pills for growing as tall as a tree—despite the fact that she stands an impressive five feet tall in stocking feet.
The peace of each summer night fades with the noises of families starting their day, and our alley bustles with kids of all ages. Boys shout and scuffle as they chase cheap plastic soccer balls, while girls go from house to house, doing what girls do together. Women congregate in different parts of the alley, making it easy to tell who likes whom by the way they assemble. Ahmed has divided these gatherings into three groups: the east, west, and central gossip committees.
Ahmed is a tall skinny kid with dark fea
tures and a brilliant smile. His strong but slender body, bold, broad jaw, and bright hazel eyes make him the picture of health, according to my mother’s expert opinion. He’s well liked in the neighborhood, and funny. I tell him he could become a great comedian if he took his God-given talent more seriously.
“Yes, more seriously,” he replies. “I can become the most serious clown in the country!”
I’ve known Ahmed since I was twelve years old, when my family first moved to the neighborhood. We met for the first time at school when three bullies were beating me up. All the other kids stood by and watched, but Ahmed rushed to my aid. The boys were tall, big, and ugly, and despite our heroic attempts we both took a beating.
“I’m Pasha,” I introduced myself after the fight.
Ahmed smiled and reached over for a handshake. “What was the fight about?” he asked.
I laughed. “You didn’t know? Why did you help me?”
“Three to one! I have a problem with that. Of course, I knew they’d still take us, but at least it wasn’t as unfair as three guys thrashing one.”
I knew right then that Ahmed was going to be my best friend forever. His gallantry and upbeat attitude won me over instantly. The experience bound us together and prompted my father, an ex- heavyweight boxing champion, to start teaching us how to box—much to my mother’s dismay.
“You’re going to make them violent,” she would complain to my unsympathetic father. To make things right, every night after dinner she would hold out a glass of amber liquid that smelled like horse urine on a hot summer day. “This will reverse what your father is doing to your temper,” she assured me, while forcing me to drink the nauseating brew.
