Читать книгу Escape From Paradise - Majid MD Amini - Страница 8

After hundreds of hours of sleepless nights and countless gruesome interrogations, after they had received a detailed list of her fortune and were absolutely convinced that she had nothing else left, they let her go. Although she was no longer useful to them, she was still warned not to leave the city.

The night following her release, before she had time to dust off her few old pieces of furniture, several Revolutionary Guards woke her up and threw her out into the street. They confiscated her house and everything else that had survived from their previous raid. The homeless Fatemeh who had by now lost all her capacity for independence was forced to share a small apartment with an old friend of her mother’s, whose memories of her as a child were still fresh in her mind.

She had lost her job, her position in society and her purpose in life, which had once defined her identity. In the eyes of the revolutionaries, she had become completely irrelevant – as if she were invisible. Of course, she didn’t know that even in the last regime, a lot of people had traded their identities to join the ranks of irrelevancy – invisibility, so that they could eat better. And she was not aware that the cruel newly-formed Islamic Republic of Iran would fiercely insist on making entire masses of people even more irrelevant – invisible, and, as time would go by, as an unavoidable process for all revolutions, it would “eat its own children”, those who worked tirelessly hard to oil its machine.

Left with nothing else to do except count the days, Fatemeh resigned herself to the passing of long days and sleepless nights, those two cunning elements that seemed heartless thieves of her life. But she kept a small hope alive in her heart, at times insisting to her hopeless self that things would get better, that things would go back to “normal” soon. They never did.

On September 23, 1980, the radio stations and TV channels all over the country announced the unexpected attack of Iraq’s ground forces on the Iranian forces on all fronts: from the port cities of Khoramshahr with the largest oil refinery in Iran, and Abadan, the main oil-exporting pipeline artery of the country in the south on the Persian Gulf, to the northern border cities in Kurdistan province. Although the attack came as a surprise to many Iranians, there were numerous convincing reasons as to why Saddam Hussein decided to embark upon such a lofty military venture. The Shah had supported Mostafa Barezani, the popular and charismatic Kurdish leader of northern Iraq’s insurgence against Saddam Hussein, and that had left deep animosity and resentment in Saddam’s heart against Iranians. Later, when the relationship of Saddam Hussein and the Shah improved to some degree, Saddam Hussein, per the Shah’s request, forced Khomeini and his family out of Iraq. This insult to a spiritual leader of Iran who had led a successful revolution against a tyrant wasn’t going to be easily erased from the minds of the zealot revolutionaries.

That is why, immediately after the revolution, Iraq became the target of the propaganda against Saddam Hussein. The Islamic Republic of Iran, looking at the 60 percent Shi’ite population of Iraq, decided it was the best ground to export its revolution. The province of Khuzistan in Iran, with an ocean of oil reserves under its soil, once militarily conquered and annexed by Iraq, would become the largest oil producing country in the world. Saddam Hussein, like any other dictator in history felt that once he eliminated all his internal opposition and proved to himself that he was loved by all and utterly invincible, he should begin to look outward so that the people of the surrounding countries and ultimately the entire world would know his greatness. Last but not least, Saddam Hussein kept referring to the battle of Ghadesieh, where the ragtag Muslim army of less than thirty thousand bedouins defeated the well-equipped Persian army of about three hundred thousand over fourteen hundred years ago. He promised that history would repeat itself and that he would defeat the Iranian military decisively this time, the same way the Arab army did before. Saddam Hussein perceived himself a great man destined to bring back the glory of the old Islamic empire or the glorious time of the Babylonian kings. And Iran was chosen to pay for his greatness, particularly since Khomeini had ordered the ill-advised purge in the Iranian military immediately after the revolution, leaving Iran defenseless and dangerously vulnerable – a sitting duck. The rich oil fields of Khuzistan were quickly captured by the invading Iraqi army, and both countries, to the delight of the Western countries that sold billions of dollars of arms to both sides, were locked into a long, senseless, devastating, and debilitating war, one that would not only drain their human and financial resources, but would leave irrevocable psychological scars on their people for generations to come. Because of the way the war started, it was apparent that no matter who would be the victor and who would be the vanquished, no one on either side would remain unscathed.

The bad news from all fronts added more misery to the minds of the people recently struck by the lightning of revolution, particularly when Iraq’s missiles kept soaring down from the sky on Iranians.

Fatemeh’s body shook with the deafening sound of sirens that often followed the earthshaking missile explosions.

Toward the end of that winter, when the last embers of her hope for things to return to “normal” gradually turned to ashes, exasperated with constant reports that other entertainers were having the time of their lives on the stages in Europe and North America, Fatemeh decided to leave the country. Besides, now she was certain that the glitter of her glamorous life that had kept her constantly in the spotlight was fast fading, if not already gone. She was sure that she could not go on living in solitude, on the margin of society, with the memories of the past her only companions.

Each time she looked at herself in the mirror, the mirror in which she used to see the image of an imaginary tall handsome young man in a white suit and turquoise-blue shirt telling her how beautiful she was, she now saw an image that reminded her, candidly and coldly, how lonely she was, telling her how fast she was getting wrinkled, grey and old. She would try to ignore his sharp fiery eyes by looking away and closing her ears so as not to hear the harsh words. But each time, the image would pull her back like a strong magnet, telling her, “You must do something about it, Fatemeh, now, before it is too late.”

Certain she wasn’t allowed to leave the country through any airport, border city or ship, she actively looked for a contact. She needed someone in the underground world that she could trust, who had enough goodness in his heart to take her across the border to Turkey. She remembered the doorman of a nightclub where she used to perform, a jack-of-all-trades who, for a price, could provide anything, whom she had always liked and treated nicely and tipped generously in the past. After a long search she finally found him. She asked him to put her in touch with a smuggling ring that could take her across the Iran-Turkish border. Surprisingly, her previous extended generosities to him seemed all but forgotten. He only agreed to help her if she would pay him five thousand Tomans. After much bargaining, begging and tears, silly acting on his part but serious and painful on hers, she ended up paying half the amount before he provided her with the name and address of a man in a five-story building on Karim Khan Boulevard.

Covered by her mother’s black chador, she went to the given address on a cold snowy day in February, and met a bearded man in his late twenties. With shifty eyes, he appeared incurably dishonest. Sitting on a chair across from the man, she removed the chador from her head and the man recognized the famed lady immediately. He asked for a payment of two million Tomans to smuggle her out of the country. His eyes single-mindedly perused her unintentionally half-revealed breast. She had the uneasy feeling she was playing into his hands by the way he was looking at her. She covered herself and tried to evoke his sense of pity by telling him about her misfortunes, the heartbreaking misery she had gone through. She cried and begged until she thought she had touched a small grain of humanity in his stone-hard heart. Every word she spoke was a cry, drawn from her heart.

The bargain was finally settled at fifty thousand Tomans plus one night in bed with her. Having no other assets to help her get through this last obstacle except her tired body, she accepted the offered package.

On the worn-out couch in his office, staring at the ceiling, she hated herself and her world and every man in it when she felt the weight of the man on her and the violent motion of his climax. The man, of course, didn’t see or notice the pain and sorrow in her eyes nor the warm tears that were falling down her face. He was busy enjoying his share of an unbelievable pleasure, a byproduct of the successful revolution that he would otherwise have been able to relish only in his dreams. He walked away proudly, thinking he had possessed the sexy body of the most famous woman in the land, not knowing or giving a thought that he had transgressed the sanctuary of a human spirit and the sanctity of her crying soul.

Later, bewildered and ashamed, she walked home on the empty cold sidewalk. Large fluffy snowflakes kept dancing in front of her red teary eyes, impairing her vision even further. She tried to forget all the remnants of her former self. At that very moment, she wished the happy child named Fatemeh, later the young girl with a heart full of hope named Faty, and at last the exciting and beautiful singer – the sexy woman in her prime named Zee-Zee, had never existed. She hoped she could obliterate their memories from her mind forever.

She borrowed from whomever she could, paid half the amount in advance and arranged for the other half to be paid this side of the border just before leaving the country.

Afterward, with a few seeds of hope germinating in her broken spirit because she would soon be leaving the country, she had nothing to do except wait for April 15, the day she was to be picked up in the lobby of the Jahan Hotel in the city of Tabriz on the way across the border.