Zendegi

He found Karim in the next room; the data jumped between their phones, then the young man went out into the night. Mehdi showed Martin to the guest room; as he lay down on a mat a couple of metres from where Behrouz was already sleeping he suddenly realised that he’d left his stupid woollen hat on all this time, even through the interview.

The next thing he knew, Behrouz was shaking him awake. Martin squinted at his watch, his eyes narrowed against the glare of the ceiling light. ‘If that’s not four-thirty in the afternoon, I’m going to have to kill you.’ He had a pounding headache and a lump of undigested food in his gut; as he sat up he discovered all the places he was aching from being confined in the freezer-truck the day before.

Behrouz handed Martin his phone, which was showing an image of a very large crowd at the entrance to a building. The picture had been taken at night, and Martin didn’t recognise the location. ‘What’s happening?’

‘That’s the Ministry of the Interior,’ Behrouz replied, ‘just before midnight.’

‘Did they trash it?’

‘I don’t know; at the time this was sent it was surrounded, but not actually occupied. Three people had been shot, but the crowd still hadn’t dispersed.’

‘News travels fast.’ This wasn’t random hitchhiking; Hezb-e-Haalaa must have set up some kind of data relay, stretching between the cities. ‘Thanks for waking me.’

‘I’ve organised a ride back.’

‘Can we get coffee on the way?’ Martin begged.

Behrouz looked dubious. ‘I said we’d be there by five.’

As they hurried through the dark streets, it struck Martin that the only thing preventing Behrouz from doing both of their jobs was the fact that, as an Iranian citizen, he’d face much harsher penalties for writing a story that crossed the line. Behrouz’s written English wasn’t perfect, but a subeditor could easily deal with the occasional minor blemish. And as for the supposedly greater journalistic impartiality of a foreigner, Martin had to admit that ever since he’d swapped clothes with Shokouh in the hospital his own claim on that virtue had been tenuous.

And Omar? What had Shokouh’s rescue cost him?

Martin finally realised that they were heading back to the place where they’d been dropped off the night before. When they arrived, the same freezer-truck was parked there, waiting for them.

He turned to Behrouz. ‘Have you got any decent music on your phone?’

‘Define decent.’

‘Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan?’ Martin suggested hopefully. They’d never talked about music before.

Behrouz grimaced. ‘Do I look like a Sufi?’

‘Do I? I can still appreciate qawwali.’

‘The Sufi-est thing I’ve got is Metallica,’ Behrouz replied pityingly. ‘The rest is hardcore.’

‘So after twenty-five hundred years of Persian culture-’

‘Yeah, yeah. I already had that lecture from my grandmother.’

Martin slipped the driver a hundred US dollars and they followed him into the back of the truck. He tried to get ‘Mast Qalandar’ running through his brain, but by the time he’d been sealed in beside the compressor, ‘Enter Sandman’ was already rising up from the noise.

8

Nasim had stayed late in the lab, running simulations for the finch paper she was co-writing with Redland, so it was almost ten o’clock when she arrived home. Her mother was in the living room, watching the BBC World News channel.

Nasim kissed her on the cheek. ‘Anything I should know about?’

‘Did you eat?’ her mother replied.

‘Not really.’

‘I made khoresht sabzi.’

‘Oh, yum.’ Nasim could smell the delicate fragrance of the herbs; she went into the kitchen and opened the pot. ‘Khoresht sabzi?’ she wailed. ‘When did chicken become a vegetable?’

‘You should be happy,’ her mother protested. ‘I didn’t use beef.’

‘I’m a vegetarian! I told you that! Have you ever seen a chicken photosynthesise?’ Luckily there was a pot of rice, too; careful examination with a fork revealed sultanas, but no fleshy surprises. The rice was still warm; Nasim spooned a small hillock of it – along with what remained of the crisp tadigh where it had browned on the bottom – onto a plate and carried it to the living room.

‘One of my Ph.D. students is a vegetarian,’ her mother said. ‘He eats chicken all the time. Or maybe it’s fish.’

‘If he eats chicken or fish he’s not a vegetarian.’

Her mother sighed. ‘You should be eating beef. Women need iron. You talk to biologists all day, you should know that.’

‘And you’re an economist, so you should know that meat production wastes land, water and energy.’ She had given up meat only three months ago, but Nasim was already disgusted by the thought of eating flesh. ‘Anyway, it’s a personal choice. Imagine how you’d feel if someone tried feeding you pork.’

‘I ate bacon once,’ her mother confessed. ‘Accidentally, at a faculty party; it just tasted like fat drowned in salt. But the rule against pork is completely rational; the diseases of pigs are more communicable to humans. What diseases can you catch from cows or chickens?’