Zendegi

Omar said, ‘For a heroin addict lying in an alley, who knows? But for this, I think he acts like he doesn’t notice. Why make te-rouble?’

Martin pressed the heels of his palms against his eyes. A male paramedic had an excuse to play dumb, but what happened when a female doctor examined the patient more closely? Notwithstanding Khomeini’s ruling, there was no guarantee that a man who took oestrogen and put on an evening gown was going to sail through the segregated medical system without igniting some form of commotion.

‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ he asked Omar. ‘If I screw things up myself, the worst anyone’s going to do to me is deport me.’

Omar looked irritated. ‘I want you here as a witness, but no way you could do it alone. Berim.’

It was a busy night; Omar spent ten minutes in a queue at the reception desk before a polite but harried woman could speak with him. Martin stood at his shoulder and tried to follow the conversation without letting the effort show. Omar said his wife had been in an accident. What was her name? Khanom Jabari: Ms Jabari. Martin’s skin crawled at the audacity of it, but this scenario offered them their only chance. Iranian women kept their family names when they married; Hassan Jabari’s sister would remain Khanom Jabari. If Jabari’s companion was still passing as a woman, it would surely be too risky to register as his wife, so claiming to be his sister was the only respectable option left.

The receptionist typed something into her computer, then glanced up at Omar. ‘Shokouh Jabari?’ She gave a date of birth.

‘Dorost, dorost,’ Omar replied impatiently, as if these details were trivially familiar to him. Martin waited to see if the receptionist would ask Omar to confirm his own name against a recorded next of kin, but she had better things to do. ‘Bekhosh shishom,’ she said. Ward six? Omar was already walking.

Martin caught up with him. ‘Your first wife will be thrilled by this addition to the family,’ he joked.

‘Fuck you!’ Omar snapped back angrily. Martin was startled by the intensity of his reaction, but on reflection he realised that he had no right to be surprised. Omar loathed political and religious extremism, but the DVDs under his counter tended more to Rambo than Transamerica; on this issue he was probably to the right of the ayatollahs. He was here for the sake of political expediency; this was not some humanitarian rescue mission.

At the entrance to the ward, Omar spoke with the nurse on duty; she glanced inquiringly at Martin, and Omar said something that sounded like dayeam: my uncle. The nurse summoned someone else to organise the visit; fifteen minutes later the two of them were led into a small, curtained-off space, where a figure dressed in a baggy grey manteau and a black shawl and head-scarf sat in a wheelchair, one foot bandaged and elevated. For a moment Martin thought there’d been a mistake, but the hospital must have supplied the modest clothing. The angular face beneath the scarf was the face from the emailed image of the crash site.

The three of them were left alone.

‘Salaam khanom,’ Omar greeted Shokouh nervously. ‘Chetorin?’

‘Bad nistam,’ Shokouh replied. ‘Shoma chetorin?’ Martin found it hard to judge how her voice would sound to a native speaker; she spoke quietly in a slightly reedy falsetto, but it was not forced or uneven.

‘Tell her we’re her friends,’ Martin said, ‘or she’ll think Jabari sent us.’ Shokouh looked up at him, startled, and he realised he’d just managed to put that idea right out of her head. ‘Ruznaame negaaram,’ he explained. I’m a journalist.

Omar spoke in a low voice; Martin could follow only a small part of what he was saying. Shokouh replied, heatedly, at length.

‘She wants to go to Europe,’ Omar announced, dismayed. ‘She’ll only come with us if we es-wear to get her to la France.’ On their drive into the city Omar had mentioned safe houses, but his plans clearly hadn’t stretched as far as Paris.

Martin said nothing. He still had the phone numbers of some people-smugglers in Quetta he’d interviewed for a story a few years before, but he decided against offering Omar an introduction; the smugglers had sometimes dealt with Iranian clients, but he doubted that Shokouh would be safe travelling through Baluchistan, even fully veiled in a burqa. In any case, he was meant to be covering this story, not orchestrating it.

‘Maybe there’s a way,’ Omar mused. He sounded doubtful, but then he added decisively, ‘If we do it, we should do it quickly. Before everyone wakes up and knows what they’re missing.’ He spoke with Shokouh again, and they seemed to reach an agreement. He told Martin, ‘I get the-’ He mimed crutches, and disappeared in search of a nurse.

‘Ingilisi baladin?’ Martin asked Shokouh.

‘Very less,’ she replied. ‘Parlez-vous français?’

‘Une petite peu.’ He’d studied it in high school, but by now his French was probably worse than his Farsi.