Free The Septembers of Shiraz by Dalia Sofer Page A

the sink, her stomach sending small aftershocks throughout her body, had said, “Yes. Would you?”
    Now, having regained her composure, she regrets her decision, born out of a passing moment of weakness. Habibeh’s presence, which she had hoped would bring her comfort, now seems to her a liability.
    â€œWhat do you want?” a guard says. His face, greasy and pockmarked, gleams in the sun. A transistor radio on a small table next to him is broadcasting a sermon. Next to it is a box of sweets, flies hovering above it.
    â€œI am looking for my husband, Brother,” Farnaz says. “Would you tell me if he’s here?”
    â€œYou’re wasting your time. We don’t give out such information.”
    â€œBrother, please. I just want to know if he’s alive. For three weeks I’ve had no news of him.”
    The man sizes up Farnaz, then looks at Habibeh. “And who’s this?”
    â€œI’m a friend,” Habibeh offers.
    He stands for a moment before unlatching a ring of keys from his belt. “All right. Wait here.” He opens the gate and disappears behind it.
    â€œYou see, khanoum, it’s good that you brought me!” Habibeh says. “He liked the idea that someone like you would have a friend like me.”
    The second guard watches them as they wait by thegate, his rifle hanging from his shoulder, his black beard so thick that it darkens the entire southern hemisphere of his face. So much hair, Farnaz thinks—rough, dirty hair growing feverishly on chins and cheeks and necks throughout the country, like noxious weeds. From the radio comes the cleric’s sermon, “O God, destroy infidelity and infidels. O God, destroy your enemies, the Zionists.” The open lid of the box of sweets flaps in the wind.
    The gate opens and the first guard reappears. “Come in,” he says. Habibeh nods under her chador, mumbling to herself, “ Basheh, dorost misheh —It will be all right.” The guard leads them to a desk where an official writes their names and the purpose of their visit. A woman then steps forward and runs her hands over Farnaz’s body, beginning from the shoulders and working her way down—the arms, the breasts, the waist, the thighs, the calves, the ankles, and the feet, and, at the end, shoving her hand between her legs and leaving it there, pressing her middle finger, slowly, against the fabric of her pants. Farnaz flinches, but when she sees the guard and the official watching her, she loses her voice—forgets, even, that she has one.
    A blindfolded man is brought in. He is thrown against the official’s table and told to state his name. “Vartan Sofoyan,” the man says, and Farnaz, standing next to him, gasps; he is a pianist, and was once a frequent guest at Keyvan and Shahla’s parties.
    â€œYou know this man?” the guard yells.
    â€œNo.”
    The man stands erect. His long fingers, which she hadonce so admired, rest on the desk, anchoring him in his blindness.
    â€œThen why the gasp, Sister Amin?”
    â€œIt’s the blindfold, Brother…. It startled me.”
    The pianist’s shoulders droop slightly. She wonders whether he recognizes her voice. Years ago, when he had just returned from the Vienna Music Academy, Keyvan and Shahla, who had met him at a reception in Tehran’s Rudaki Opera House, invited him to one of their dinners, and he had charmed the guests with his renditions of Rachmaninoff and Debussy. He was Armenian, tall and thin—as Farnaz imagined a pianist trained in Vienna should be—and she had been taken with him from the moment she saw him. When he found out that she liked singing, that she had, in fact, taken voice lessons until the age of eighteen, when her father decided that it was no longer appropriate for a young woman to sing in public, he asked her to accompany him as he played Debussy’s “Il pleure dans mon coeur,” based