Zendegi

It could not have been more than thirty seconds before Martin was finally walking a pace behind her, but his heart was pounding as if he’d sprinted all the way. He spoke quietly in English without wasting time giving his name, trusting her to recognise his voice. ‘Please don’t turn around. You’re still wearing the sash.’

For a second he wondered if his voice had been too soft – he hadn’t wanted to attract curious stares from the shoppers around them – but then Mahnoosh reached to her left side and unclipped the sash, where it was fastened together near her waist. In a sequence of quick movements, she gathered up the swathe of material, sliding it lengthways across her shoulder until it was entirely in her hands.

When she’d stuffed the sash into a pocket of her manteau, Martin finally dared to look up to see if any of the Basijis were watching, but her deft manoeuvre seemed to have gone unnoticed. Then, just as he was contemplating turning around and heading north, one of the men met his gaze for a second, and he realised that he was too close now to flee without attracting attention. He was middle-aged, conservatively dressed, and even if his features marked him as a likely foreigner at least he wasn’t toting a video camera. Far better to brazen it out than to act suspiciously.

He walked on briskly past Mahnoosh and into the oncoming Basijis, trying to prove his clear conscience by giving them no wider berth than he would have offered any other pedestrians, trying to channel the persona of a distracted foreign businessman who’d simply wandered out of his hotel at a bad time. There were ten of them, all with identical green batons, three with pistols. He could smell their acrid sweat. They’d been outmanoeuvred and humiliated, and even if they had no hope now of reliably picking protesters out of the crowd, it would not take much to be judged worthy of helping them work off their frustration.

One of them brushed against his shoulder. Martin said, ‘Bebakhshid, ’ and kept walking. He continued to the next street corner, then looked back. Mahnoosh had passed them too, unmolested. For a moment he considered approaching her, but with the streets full of Basijis it was still too dangerous; she was no longer marked as a protester, but she had no right to be talking to an unrelated, foreign man.

As Martin began climbing the stairs to his apartment, Omar’s wife Rana appeared at her door. She greeted him politely, but it was clear that something was wrong.

‘Have you heard from Omar?’ she asked.

‘No. Why, was he at the march?’ Martin would not have expected to see him there; waving placards wasn’t his style.

Rana shook her head. ‘But he didn’t come home from the shop, and he’s not answering the phone there.’

‘Maybe his car broke down?’ The mobile phone service was still disabled; Martin was about to mention the mesh network he’d seen Mahnoosh using, but Rana would have tried that already if it had been an option. Perhaps the devices weren’t thick enough on the ground to provide a connection out here in the suburbs.

He said, ‘Would you like me to drive to the shop and take a look?’

‘Please, if you could. We’ll come with you, bizahmat.’

‘Of course.’

Martin waited in the open doorway while she fetched her father-in-law, Mohsen, to accompany them; the whole family treated Martin warmly, but there was no question of him going anywhere with Rana alone. He felt a tug on his trousers; Omar’s three-year-old son had grabbed hold of his knee.

Martin squatted down to greet him. ‘Salaam, Farshid jan.’

Farshid frowned. ‘Baba kojast?’

‘Namidunam,’ Martin confessed. ‘Zud be khane miayad.’ He’ll be home soon.

Mohsen and Rana appeared and the three of them headed for the car, leaving Farshid with his grandmother. Mohsen’s English was as patchy as Martin’s Farsi, but Martin worked out that he wasn’t too worried yet: Omar had probably just been called away on business, somewhere with no access to a phone.

As they drove towards the city Martin scanned the radio stations for news. The official news agency had already announced that twenty-seven people had been hospitalised after the march; the hospitals themselves refused to give out figures, and he could no longer guess whether casualties were being downplayed to exculpate the militias, or inflated in order to warn people off.

When they reached the shop it was locked and dark; Omar’s car was still parked in the rear. Rana went inside to look around; Mohsen waited outside with Martin, leaning against the car, smoking. He had lost both legs in the war with Iraq; he had prosthetics, but he needed crutches to get around. After a couple of minutes Rana emerged, distraught. She spoke to her father-in-law, showing him a scrap of paper, then she explained to Martin, ‘He left a note inside the cash register. Someone arrested him, took him away.’

‘Who arrested him?’

Rana shook her head. ‘He didn’t know who they were. Or he didn’t have time to write it.’