Persian Blues

Tehran, 1978

To Roya

Remember December last year? While Golnaz and her cousins were busy bragging about their American cars, we didn’t know if we should take the shot or just stay put. It’s Christmas now, and I’ve gotten a bit closer to Zarrin. It’s just me and her now—all the others have been transferred to some other facility. There are still roaches and spiders every now and then, but no signs of rats yet. When night falls and the stone floor freezes up like ice, if we sit still on our bed, sometimes we can hear singing a few cells down. The girls next door call it the swan song of a mad woman. Zarrin calls it something else. When I hear it I think of you. 

Remember the secret project we used to work on? Whenever you said a single video game could be revolutionary, I had to fight back a thousand eye-rolls. But it was fun, working on those rudimentary drafts. Picking out the colors for pages after pages of game stages. That was the first time you thought an art major was worth something, wasn’t it? I guess applied mathematics never taught you how to make game screens not look like complete vomit. Somehow you even confused Peruvian blue to Persian blue, and wasted a whole day walking around the art store, complaining your ass off while I waited with piles of unfinished concept art on the apartment floor.

By the way, did I ever tell you I was born American before Doc found me? I guess I didn’t tell you a lot of things. Don’t blame me for that, we both know you couldn’t keep your mouth shut if your life depended on it. After my parents passed away, Doc drove me out to the countryside. I remember there being a farmers market nearby, and on Wednesday they’d sell these brilliant blue necklaces the shop owner called Peruvian Blues. Shop owner said they gave him nothing but headaches—stubborn things simply refused to be sold. Back when I was kid (with ribbons in my hair and all, can you imagine?) Doc said he had to keep me under watch, make sure whatever took over my parents didn’t take over me. He said one word again and again, in between asking me about what happened. Back then I didn’t know what it meant. Now I do. Hereditary, he was afraid it’d be hereditary. Said my mom had been out of it ever since she got off her medication, and my dad never got better. 

Doc was always on the go. We even travelled to France for a short while. Doc said we could stay at his friend’s house for a while before settling down. Ashkan was his name. He had a decent place by the harbor. I remember the salty air, and the neighbors’ colorful windows. I thought I could stay there forever. But one night changed everything. Doc drove me to the airport almost immediately after. I can’t recall much of what happened around that time, but I asked Doc if there was one thing that God didn’t forgive. Doc said blasphemy was the one thing God wouldn’t forgive. He said God forgave me for my parents’ defiance, for my confusion, and said I should learn to forgive if I truly wanted to be closer to Him. So I forgave the man that took my childhood away. I forgave him for the longest time. Doc still kept in touch with Ashkan—he kept his letters stowed away, but I knew Doc still wrote to him regularly.

Then Doc flew me to Tehran, to spread His truth. And there I met you. I remember when we first moved in together. I’d never met someone as eager to share every detail of their life as you. Back then you were taking Intro to Philosophy alongside Advanced Mathematics, and you told me you chose Simone de Beauvoir for your first essay, and I’d listen to you talk about critical analysis and boys and the concept of “otherness”. My hair was short back then, and I never wore dresses, so you just assumed I was a feminist or a lesbian and kept asking if I’d go to Hell if I was both a Christian. I’ll admit, I wanted to punch you for the longest time. But I had to pretend to be nice, so I helped you with de Beauvoir and told you I understood some French, and you told me students here hated the French almost as much as they hated Americans. 

And I still remember that night. I was running low on the blue pills doc gave me everytime he came to TAS, then you brought two guy exchange students into our room without telling me first, and I pulled out my gun and shot the wall because it all was dark and I couldn’t spot you for shit, and you just yelled, “Koskhol! You and your foreign ways!” I’d tell you to stop whoring around, and your face would always turn sour. Freshman year sure lived up to the talk. While you strode around calling me a foreign faggot, I told all your friends you fucked their boyfriends. I can barely count the times I’ve had randos tell me I should go to hell for bringing shit to their pristine country, while you cried and cried into your endless collection of pillows with slap marks on your face. 

It was Christmas back then too, wasn’t it? When you found me sitting outside a closed church near midnight because Doc was away again, dozing off because I didn’t want to fight with you on my birthday. You just sat by my side and waited, and when I woke up, you told me you broke up with your boyfriend, like we were chummy with one another or something. The Virgin Mary was above us, and the crescent moon and star stared at us from across the streets as you poured out your heart. You proceeded to give me the entire epic of how you and him met way before we roomed up together, how you two were always on and off and he cheated on you, so you cheated on him back, and kept doing so as your fights got worse and worse. Then you started crying, said you're sorry for being so dumb, and I just sat by your side in silence. I think I said something to you half-asleep, and your eyes suddenly didn’t seem so heavy anymore, and you just thanked me, and we sat, watching the sun rise above Tehran’s white mountains.

By then, I’d somewhat picked up on it too. On just how alone we both were. Others, I’m sure de Beauvoir would have called us.

After that, we still fought over the dishes, but we’d sometimes walk to class together. You met Golnaz, and Rasa, and Ishtar from Professor Azar’s Gender Studies seminar, said they were the only students in that class, wouldn’t stop talking about them, and before long I’d already gotten used to seeing them all over our cramped apartment. Heated talks about growing unrest in the streets never tired, and I was close to filing a noise complaint against the lot of you. Despite that, I found myself looking forward to Rasa’s strange meat pies, Ishtar’s passionate rants, and all the laughter Golnaz and her antics would bring us. And Brodie too, the meek boy with big blue eyes. How did Brodie and Ishtar start dating again? They were the exact opposite, it’s a miracle how they could be so happy together. Brodie did teach us a lot, I’ll admit that. I never got to thank him for it. His classes actually taught him useful things when it came to game-making, and he was always the one who paid for our rounds in the arcade.

It was second year when I first learned that Ashkan was back from the dead. You took his classes too, even told me you might “actually turn Muslim” if it hadn’t been for the damn government after finishing his lectures, simply because he was such an entertaining presenter. I didn’t tell you at the time. I didn’t know why, I should have, but I couldn’t. I guess I turned a blind eye to countless things, too absorbed in my own life to notice all the little changes that were happening all around us. Then at one point you told me it felt like the whole world was out to get us. Soon, the only place that offered refuge to me was Doc’s church, and you and Ishtar couldn’t go to the mosque next door because the governor decided to tank it down, so you spent your free going to Professor Azar’s place instead, so much so that you began calling her Aunt Azar. I overheard the boys you used to mess around with saying things like we’re suffering from too much freedom, that we’re losing who we are as Persian men and women. Brodie took the brunt of it. You know Ishtar, always out there to cuss out anyone who looked at him the wrong way. So whenever she wasn’t around, I’d listen to all the names they called him, and just pack up our things and tell him to ignore them. But you know Brodie. He felt more than any of us. At that time I thought that’s what made him pathetic. Now I look back and think that’s what made him the best out of all of us.

I talked to Doc about it too. Doc told me an excess of choice tends to lead to suffering. Around that time I was noticing little things about Doc. Little things that I overlooked before. How his eyes would grow tired if they lingered on me for too long. How he talked about certain things being more important than simple pleasures and girly concerns. How he always asked me to help him with church instead of attending school, because he thought I wasn’t suited to it, what with me “not being one of them”. And when they found Brodie’s body out on the coffee house’s front steps, we spent the night in church too. His fingers were missing. Apart from that, I didn’t remember much else about how they found him. Rasa was there too, she threw up when she saw the body, and at some point we stopped weeping and just listened to the sound of students marching, racing, creeping through the streets. Doc came up and offered us some cookies. Only Rasa reached for one. To this day, I still don’t know where Ishtar went after everything. Golnaz’s first cousin said her family moved because it wasn’t safe to be in Tehran anymore. I warned you. Told you to not get too loud during those months. We didn’t talk much for a while after that. I wonder if you noticed. I kept thinking about Ishtar, and something about all the imported glass panes in church reminded me of foreign shores, made me want to escape this rotten city. So I locked myself in and drew. Some days it’d be hazy scenes of farmers markets, some days it’d be the shores of southern France. I must have sent out thirty applications to different art schools, hoping there’d be a way out for me Doc both—there was growing resentment in the way they talked about His teachings at school, I could sense it.

Then Aunt Azar went ahead and got herself in trouble. Heard she was always clashing with Ashkan. I guess since she never learned how to dress right, she never learned how to act right either. If you were here, you’d say the same for me. Before she died like Brodie, I met up with her. I stopped following Doc’s orders for a few days; I guess I was dumb enough to think that just because you idolized her, one woman was enough to solve everything that was wrong with my mind. But you know the woman, she just refuses to speak in anything but riddles. Still, she told me something that I don’t think I’ve ever heard from Doc, nor will I ever hear from anyone else again. She told me that in terms of me as a person, I was “just right”. Just right how, she never cared to elaborate.

I guess that gave me an idea on how to start. The final painting that I did before her death and the trials that would follow. I didn’t tell you this, prior to our goodbyes. I got a letter from France. Beaux-Arts de Paris accepted me. It was because of that painting. I decided I’d paint my life. You, Ishtar, Rasa, Doc, Brodie, Azar, you all were in it. I could have booked a plane and flown right out, leaving everything behind. It might have been Azar’s words. It might have been the fact that I knew they’d rule Ashkan innocent, because nobody stepped up to testify against him. Nobody except for you. 

Hey, I guess there was one thing you never told me. If Golnaz hadn’t told me before she moved away herself, I might have never known. You wanted to escape this country too. You sent out applications all over the world too. Almost as if we were the same person, in spite of everything. To this day I still think about what the future could have looked like had I known.

I didn’t fully understand why at the time. But now I look back, and it’s all so lucid. Azar was six feet under, Ashkan was as serene as a lake, and all Doc did at the time was ask me to forgive. But I never asked Doc if he forgave me. From the second I finished the final strokes on the painting, gold and Peruvian blue, the second I looked at Aunt Azar’s stupid coat and decided to put it on, right down to the second I walked into the courtroom and finished everything. You weren’t there when it happened. Even if everyone had told you, you wouldn’t have believed it unless you saw it with your own eyes, I know. I’ll give it to you clean and simple. I shot Doc. Ended up on the news for about a month. Then it all died down again. Almost as if he never existed. When I stood in that courtroom, I didn’t see Doc. He looked like Doc, talked like Doc, even acted like him, but he was never there.

But in-between our meals, showers, work, he’s there. Khaki pants and gold-rimmed glasses. Like he lives in Heaven, and Heaven’s in the corner of my eyes. But at one point, I’ve come to realize that I no longer believe in Heaven. Even if I see it with my own eyes, it’d always just be a speck behind his lanky frame, and his thinning hair. And he’s dead. He’s always here, and he’s dead. He’s given me everything: a past, a future, a home. You have given me nothing but headaches and uncertainty. 

There’s talk outside my cell of a revolution coming into full swing. But all I get about the outside world comes from hushed conversations. I sometimes think if I had testified just as Doc instructed me to and gone to Paris, and you had shut your mouth and chosen Sorbonne for graduate school, we could still meet up on weekends, chat about how crazy life was back in Tehran, how we despise its noisy streets, and how much we miss them. And we’d still have those drafts in hand, only this time we’d have a clue of what to make of them. We’d have our own problems to face, of course—it’s France, after all—but at least we’d have each other’s company, instead of each other’s contempt.

Zarrin gave me a blunt today. Said she had to sleep with two guards for a box. Wished me a Merry Christmas. She said soon there’d be no more Christmas aside from places where the law couldn’t reach. What did I tell you, the worst of the cynics. We noticed how the next door woman’s songs sounded strangely like the blues, something like a mix between Led Zeppelin and Googoosh. I told her Doc used to love the blues, but he’d just sigh in disappointment if he ever heard it confused with any other genre. Zarrin said if music, like all things in life, didn’t morph and adapt and get challenged and changed, there’d be no fun in it. We sometimes sit in silence, listening to the crazy woman sing. Zarrin and I call it Madwoman Blues. 

Guess what else I learned here. Turns out Persian Blues did exist after all, the colors, I mean. In the sewing houses there are these color patches sprinkled all over the factory. I came across them once. It’s a trio of colors. I’ll be honest, I probably can’t distinguish Persian and Peruvian and whatever-the-hell blues if my life depended on it. But I took those patches with me anyways. I feel like even if I think they’re kind of ridiculous now, they’d be useful to me eventually. Someone took the time to classify them after all. They must have meant something to that someone.

I suppose I’ll see you soon. I wonder if they’re doing a good job tidying the area where you sleep now. You know, sometimes I wonder if things really get as grim as Zarrin likes to imagine, will people from outside our borders listen to our problems? It’s not like they know our language or our names. Somehow, I have hope that they will. I guess some parts of you really have gotten a hold of me. And when I’m free to walk next December, I’ll bring everything to light. I just need somebody on my side. 

Until then, rest well.