Never
Give Money till You Cross the Border: Hasan, 1975 Ask
Hasan, Azad’s best friend, if he left in the day or at night. He’ll say, “The
day. What do you take me for?” Then ask him if he walked or ran. Hasan
knelt in a herd of sheep and crawled across the border into Azarbaijan. A
friend like Ali Obnoxious would ask about the sheep shit, laughing until he’s
wiping tears. “I
had gloves, man,” Hasan would say. “You’re getting on my nerve.” Ali
ran at night. A political defection before the fall of the Shah, his was
punishable by death. A Kurdish guide led him to a strip along the Turkish
border, an empty riverbed where guards at the top of the valley shot without
aim through the night. “Just run. Don’t think,” the Kurd told him. As he ran,
Ali heard the guards’ laughter and the sound of bullets stitching past his
ears. You
Are Seldom Who You Think You Are: Azad, 1976 Azad
was born in Bushehr, a southern province in Iran where people are darker than
the Aryans up north. Folks in Bushehr sing, “Give me a white girl I’ll throw
her away.” Azad isn’t black black; he darkens in the sun to the shade of a ripe
olive. He is sabzeh: green. Writing
for his eighth year Social Science exams, the boy got an itch he couldn’t bear.
Asked to argue who was stronger, China or Iran, Azad said China was a true
world power. If everyone in China peed at the same time, they would drown the
entire world. Azad knew better—everyone did. But if he couldn’t be in the
street playing soccer, he wanted to tell the truth. Just once. When asked to
summarize the history of Reza Shah’s dynasty, Azad started with the king’s
childhood as a stablehand: how people called him Saddle Bags—Palani—instead of
the royal Pahlavi; how his specialty was combing burrs from horse’s tails. Azad’s
parents were called into the school and shown the paper. The superintendent
wondered where he got his ideas. She hoped they did not reflect talk he had
heard at home. Perhaps he was heading down a difficult path. Did they want
their son to languish in a filthy prison? Wasn’t he better off elsewhere? Azad
didn’t want to leave his grandfather, the soccer team, his pet quail. But by
the end of the month, he was living with his aunt in Sacramento, California and
walking to Kit Carson Jr. High where the sound of English filled his ears like
gravel. When the Chicano kids circled him in the parking lot, such angry
children he’d never known. “Fight,” they shouted, and a fist knocked him off
his feet. When the white kids pushed him into his locker and said, “What are
you? Are you white or black?” he knew enough English to tell them, “I am
green.” After
that, they called him Martian Kid. By the time the Shah fled Iran, he’d become
Sand Nigger. Avoid
Bestiality: Ayatollah Gilani, 1979 A
good Muslim avoids bestiality, the Ayatollah Gilani told his weekly viewers on
Iran’s State Channel 7 The Gili Show. Bestiality, he said, is filthy and
unnatural, the lowest sin next to murder in the eyes of God. “If, however, a
good Muslim finds himself in intimate contact with an animal,” the Ayatollah
advised, “prayer and charity may save his soul. The sinner should donate one
sheep to the mosque to help the mullah feed the poor. “A
good Muslim must avoid not only animals,” Gilani continued, a finger raised to
the camera. “A man must not have sexual relations with any person other than
his wife. Extramarital contiguity is unforgivable. Suggested punishments vary:
some mullahs recommend a good public flogging; others call for traditional
death by stoning. “Now.”
The Ayatollah scratched his beard. He flipped a page of the Koran. “Is
unintentional physical contact a sin? If a good Muslim is upstairs in the
shower, for example, and his mother’s sister stands directly one floor below;
and if without warning, an earthquake rocks the house so violently that the
bathroom floor collapses and the man falls onto his aunt, has he sinned in the
eyes of God? Moreover, if as he falls, the good Muslim penetrates the aunt, and
through this act she becomes pregnant, is the child a bastard and therefore
shamed by God? A delicious theological question,” said the spiritual leader,
“which will be explained after a break for station identification.” Your
Head Will Play with Your Tail: Azad, 1980 Howe
Avenue was not a terrible place, despite the freshmen sulking behind their
cigarettes, despite the students tromping the sidewalks with their Doc Martins
and their durable senses of self. In Iran, two of Azad’s cousins had become
beseige, holy warriors, fighting at Satan’s threshold on the border of Iraq.
Enraptured crowds gathered at Khomeini’s official residence, the Ayatollah
waving from his balcony, his hand a wand rising above the cries, casting spells.
In the U.S., Azad had applied for every kitchen and cleaning job from Tahoe to
Davis. After months of applications he was still unemployed. He drank hot water
for tea and skipped meals like every month was Ramadan. When he could not
afford his second semester’s tuition at UC Sacramento, he fell out of status
with Immigration. The notice of his deportation hearing came swiftly as an
earthquake, as unexpected as the students he saw on Nightline, shouting at the
embassy in Tehran, “Death to America. Death to the Shah. Death to Jimmy
Carter.” A
block off Howe, Bud Noyse, Notary Public, opened his front door to Azad. In his
dining room office, he pushed a cat from a chair. The house had the formal
smell of Azad’s grandfather’s house, the blunt fragrance of pencil lead and
bread, old books and dusty rugs. As Bud sat behind a desk and studied Azad’s
passport, Azad’s throat grew thick with nostalgia for the sweet scent of his
grandfather’s French cologne. “I-ran,”
Bud said, pronouncing the word as if it were a subject and a verb. “Your crazy
Ayatuhlla’s got me paying eighty-nine cents for a gallon of gas. What’s the
matter with you people?” “I
pay eighty-nine cents, too,” Azad said. According
to his lawyer, at the hearing the judge would confiscate Azad’s Iranian
passport, order him deported, then grant an appeal under Immigration law that
he would deny at the next hearing, where they would return Azad’s passport and
board him on a plane back to Iran. The notarized copy served as temporary I.D.
Four weeks, Azad thought, six tops, before he joined his cousins at the front. From
the desk drawer, Bud lifted the seal of California, the size and shape of a
large garlic press. As he embossed the copy of the passport, the sound of birds
transported Azad to his grandfather at dusk watering the house, cooling the
yard and bringing together the smell of wood and damp dirt. Starting from the
bottom, he’d work his way up, spraying into the living room as he hosed the
windows. Day after day, his grandmother shouted, “Put on your glasses. You’re
missing the flowers.” “I
hope I don’t see another one of these,” Bud said, handing Azad his passport.
“If you all hate America so bad, what are you doing here in the first place?” When
Azad was a boy, he asked his grandfather why, when the earth rotated, people on
the other side didn’t fall off. His grandfather said, “They fall off all the
time.” “I
don’t hate anyone,” Azad told the notary who dropped, in the boy’s mind, from
the spinning earth. “Why
don’t you take your passport and your notarized copy and go home.” If
he could, Azad would have condensed for Bud the last few years of Iran’s
transformation—the executions of Shah’s lynch men, the torture of dissidents,
the migration of zealous mullahs to the government, the collapse of
universities, the freeze on travel, the enforcement of the veil, the abolition
of art, music, dance, backgammon, soccer. “I’ll
think about it,” Azad said. Outside,
a shiny Sacramento patrol car nosed past Bud’s house like a white sedan of
SAVAK, Shah’s secret police. A student with a backpack strolled toward campus.
Azad followed her down the quiet sidewalk to the crowds on Howe, the students
intent on their espressos and frozen yogurts a reminder of how little would
change were he transported to the Iraqi border, his body martyred for God. You
Can’t Ride a Camel Underground: Roberto Del Franco, 1980 Hasan
kept the forgery equipment in a cardboard box in his closet: an IBM ball with
fonts that matched the California birth certificate Ali Obnoxious borrowed from
his sister-in-law; inkpads and removable alphabet stamps; envelopes and UC
Sacramento letterhead. College transcripts, mostly, Hasan forged for his
friends and his friend’s friends—Iranians and South Americans, a few med
students from Taipei—to prove high grades and receive money from back home.
Years later, when Azad thought of his friend during their college years in
Sacramento, he remembered Hasan as always digging in the box, searching for the
right colored ink, for the date stamp or for a missing rubber letter. Hasan
could duplicate anything on paper, but a birth certificate was a new project
all together. The job had been easy enough, he told Azad, nodding toward the TV
where Ted Koepple announced Day 352 of America Held Hostage. He’d matched the
paper against Ali’s sister’s-in-law, practiced a few signatures, and at the
courthouse, found the name of a baby born roughly the year of Azad’s birth
who’d died before he was issued a Social Security number. “Roberto
Del Franco?” Azad asked, trying out his new name. “Cheer
up. Chicks love Italians.” The
TV was the devil, switching from one inconceivable scene to the next, from a
group of students outside the embassy burning Uncle Sam in effigy, to a team of
soldiers digging a trench against a backdrop of blazing oil refineries. The
camera zoomed in on a dazed soldier, fifteen or sixteen years old. White gauze
wrapped around his head, a can of apples lay absently in his hands. Azad
watched the footage as though it were a home movie, the red stain spreading on
the wrapped forehead his blood; the old man fastening a gas mask over the boy’s
face his own gray-haired grandfather. At
the commercial, he examined his new birth certificate, its gold border and the
forged signature of Attending Doctor. With the fake birth certificate, Azad
could apply for a Social Security number. With a Social Security number, he
could obtain a California driver’s license. With these two I.D.’s, no one would
question his citizenship; he would slip through the deportation noose, past the
clutches of the army in Iran. He felt the possibilities, like gas from an open
can, grow larger than the container itself; escape loomed so certainly, he
didn’t hear Hasan say there was a problem. Azad
flicked his hand like a man bargaining at the bazaar. “Immigration to my big
belly,” he told his friend. Hasan
said, “The mullahs to my left ball.” Azad
rubbed his thumb over the seal of California embossed in the lower corner of
the birth certificate of Ali’s sister-in-law. “You forgot the seal,” he told
Hasan. “That,
my friend, is the problem.” The
Tongue Can No Man Tame: Ali Obnoxious, 1980 “Did
you hear about the Iranian guy who goes to his citizenship interview, sure that
since his English is poor they’ll send him back to Iran? When the Immigration
officer says, ‘Make a sentence using the word socks,’ the Iranian guy says,
‘Let me tinking, let me tinking. Dis contry sucks.’ The officer gives him a
second chance and tells the guy, ‘Try using it in a sentence with the word
walking.’ So the Iranian says, ‘Let me tinking, let me tinking. Dis vucking
contry sucks.’” You
Have Seen the Camel; You Have Not Seen the Camel: Azad, 1980 The
heat of an Indian summer had clamped down, and from the sidewalk, Azad could
hear the emptiness of October: the creak of trees, a distant lawn mower, the
rusty-hinged cry of a grackle, the slow tires of a U.S. postal truck easing
down Bud’s street. No living soul was in sight. Azad wished for the seal, but
he hadn’t planned to break in. From
campus, he had crossed the Guy West bridge and stopped at the diner on Fair
Oaks and Howe to apply for a job. The owner, a solitary cook, waved at the
vacant tables and said that he was out of applications. “You can leave your
name and number on a napkin,” he’d told Azad, who knew by the cook’s clean
apron that it would hit the trash as soon as he left. On a remote chance—a
prayer—he did it anyway, wrote his information and slid the napkin over the
counter. When
the mail truck had cleared the street, Azad checked to see if Bud was home. He
rang the bell, waited while the cat threw itself against the front window. He
knocked on the door and pushed the window frame to see if it was open. A wiry
guy like Azad could slide in, snatch the seal, walk through the house and out
the back where Bud’s yard led to the crowds on Howe. Before anyone noticed, he
could be half way to campus, an answer to his troubles shoved beneath his
T-shirt. But
the window was locked. Azad
hadn’t planned to break in. But the cook’s gnarled disinterest, the sheet of
sweat he moved in, and a surge of hunger pumped him with adrenaline. It
funneled through him and took him to the future, to when he already held the
seal, already passed through the house and left the neighborhood, hit the bridge,
a UC Sacramento student crossing the American River to campus. Not the usual
breaking and entering suspect. Hardly
aware of his hands, Azad lifted a large stone and smashed the window. The
broken glass on the sill seemed a small consideration as he slid into Bud’s
living room, alert more to the blood spurting from his wrist than to the pain
of the cut. He was conscious of his sweat and of his heart, a steady thud so
strong in his ears it sealed him in its banging. From a stack of Noyse Notary
letterhead, he held a stray sheet to his wrist and stepped toward the desk. But
the drawer was locked. In
his worst fears, a patrol car wound through the neighborhood, or the mailman
returned to deliver a misplaced envelope. Four minutes, Azad figured, before
someone passed the house with its smashed window. As if handed to him, a letter
opener the heft of a small dagger stood out on Bud’s desk. Azad wedged its tip
between the desk and the drawer. Forcing the blade, he pictured a wall of
policemen storming the front steps, his body thrown to the floor. He shoved his
weight against the hold and pried the lock like he was cracking ribs. He did
not want to end this way—his blood on the broken glass, a boot on his back, his
face on the floor of Bud’s front room. If
the drawer were a man, he would kill him. With this intent, the wood split, the
drawer opened, and the seal lay inside. He pressed a fresh sheet of letterhead
to his wrist and tucked the seal into his shorts. He felt his body calm and
leave him cool, the way an afternoon settles from a storm. Across the living
room, a large mirror hung above the mantle. In it, Azad saw his dark eyes and
his prominent Persian brow. And he saw what Bud had seen, too: a foreigner from
the land of sand and camels, oil and caviar, rock throwing and hostage taking,
an eye for an eye, a hand for a stolen loaf of bread. Azad left through the
kitchen door as Bud did, perhaps, when he hung shirts on the line. He cut
through Bud’s trees and onto Howe Avenue where he lost himself among the
students cruising the shops, the seal tucked into the waistband of his shorts,
warming against his skin. When
he saw the police lights, he tossed the bloody letterhead over a hedge of
evergreens. The patrol car headed toward him, its siren a shriek. Azad walked
as slowly as was humanly possible. I am not guilty, he thought. I am a skinny
UC Sacramento student. “Dirt on your head!” he cursed like his grandfather as
he stared into the glare of the oncoming car. “Poison of snake!” he said, and
the cops wailed past. A
Year That Is Good Is Apparent by Its Spring: Roberto Del Franco, 1984 The
night Roberto Del Franco graduated from college, Azad’s date snuck him into an
apartment complex pool. For the first time, he had a girlfriend who took off
her clothes. Her skin was halva brown and her smile set a thunderstorm flashing
through his heart. Roberto Del Franco had received a fellowship to study
chemistry at Berkley. For the summer, he had taken a job as a printer’s
assistant. He made the money and Azad spent it. The
graduates left their jeans and T-shirts on the low dive and sank into the deep
end. The pool lights shimmered orange, and before the cops showed, they floated
on their backs, sealed in water above their ears. Azad was aware of his body’s
outline, its displacement of the water, its silent suspension. When he turned,
his girlfriend’s nipples broke the surface of the water. Weightless in the
dark, he believed as he hadn’t in the eight years since leaving Iran that he
was exactly where he was supposed to be. You
Have Eaten a Honey Dew, You Must Deal with the Tremors: Ali
Obnoxious, 1990 “You
lightweights always crying about Iran. I’ll tell you about the guy who wanted
to go back home. “After
the Revolution, my neighbor leaves Tehran for Germany with his wife and their
baby daughter. In Dresden, he gets a good job with the city designing sewers.
He gets a salary, health insurance, a pension. They’re so happy, they throw
away their passports and buy a house. But after five years, he can’t take it
anymore. ‘What kind of racist country is this?’ he says. ‘I want to see my
buddies again. I want to talk Farsi.’ So he gives up everything to go home. His
house. His legal residency. His wife, who stays put, keeps the kid. “He
returns to Iran and works. He makes good money. He sends a bunch of it to
Germany. He lives like a bachelor, hanging out with friends, drinking, thinking
this is the life. “But
after a while, my brother notices our neighbor hanging out with the wrong guys,
doing a bunch of drugs, looking like the King of Death. So he goes to him. He
says, ‘Dude, you’re in some trouble. We need to talk.’ My neighbor is all happy
to see my brother, opens the door wide, says, ‘Yes, talk, but come smoke this
opium with me first.’ So they have a good time. “Eventually,
my neighbor’s face goes red as a pomegranate, and he starts to cry. He says
what a big mistake he’s made. He can’t take it in Iran, anymore. There’s no
life like before. There’s no future. He misses his wife. Hasn’t seen his kid in
a year. So he figures a way. “Since
he has no German passport, he goes to Russia first. He’s there for his daughter’s
seventh birthday, for the New Year, long enough to get a fake Russian passport,
to learn enough of the language to fool Immigration and slip back into Germany
as a Russian citizen. Three months after he arrives, all he has to do is get on
the plane, which he does, and sleep till Dresden. “You
know the rest, right? It’s too good to be true. Sometimes you’re on the saddle.
Sometimes the saddle’s on you. It’s like the old timers in Sacramento, singing
the Shah’s anthem at the Iranian New Year. No matter what you have, you yearn
for what’s been taken. “The
guy who sits next to him on the plane strikes up a conversation. My neighbor
speaks his Russian words, but they aren’t the right ones. The guy asks where
he’s from. My neighbor says he’s from St. Petersburg. The guy says in what
republic is St. Petersburg? Maybe my neighbor panicked. Maybe he got so close
it wasn’t his wife and kid he wanted after all. Either way, my neighbor can’t
cough up the answer. He fakes a stomachache, says it’s sleep he needs, but the
guy doesn’t buy it. Before they’re off the ground, his seat partner asks to see
his papers, and he shows my neighbor his badge. He’s a federal detective, the
FSB. Poor bastard’s back in Tehran before his wife and kid realize he never
made the flight.” You
Can Break the Monster’s Dick: Azad 1992 The
girl at the bar went ga-ga over Azad. She stopped at the corner table where
Hasan and Ali Obnoxious plied him with vodka. She said, “Salamati!” with the
guys, toasting shots to Azad’s new job as chemist at Sacramento Plastics, where
rumors were right that Personnel required no proof of U.S. citizenship. They
toasted farewell to Roberto Del Franco and to the return of a unified Azad
Shapur. The girl asked questions and hung on Azad’s answers: he had come to the
States when he was thirteen; for a Green Card, he would give both eyes so he
could travel to Iran and back. He told her his name meant freedom. After the
Revolution, thousands of baby Azads were born. She listened to Azad like he was
buttered rum, like she could drink his voice. At one point, Azad looked up and
saw that Hasan and Ali were listening, looking at him like he was a carpet they
had made with their own hands. Like he was their fountain of youth. Azad
himself could not entirely fathom his own success. They have a saying for it
back home. He was so happy, he had a wedding in his butt. The
Well Digger Is Always at the Bottom of the Well: Azad, 1998 Every
couple of weeks, Azad rode his Schwinn down the bike path, past the pond the
city called a lake, to the tennis courts his boss paid big bucks to use. At
the rack by the courts, he locked his bike and walked a foot trail that
followed a brook into a deserted woods. At the end of the trail, he took twenty
steps to his right. Under a large, oblong stone, he dug six inches. The earth
gave way easily, as he had been digging in this spot since he had married, over
a year ago. When the leather pouch appeared, his own edges wore away, and he
was overcome with an ecstatic feeling like the one he recognized in his
mother’s voice when he called back home. Inside
the pouch, Azad had wrapped a handful of test tubes, and in each tube, he had
sealed half a dozen joints. He selected one, reburied the stash, then sat on
the oblong stone and smoked it to the end. As the weed hit his blood, he
thought about his wife, whom he both loved and hated for abolishing dope in the
house. He thought about his experiments at the plant that would earn him a
promotion. He thought of Ali Obnoxious who suddenly preferred the nickname Ali
Isfahan. Before long, he wasn’t thinking at all, but breathing the thoughts.
They floated in his blood, and feeling them made him happy. When he closed his
eyes, he was in Tehran, at Park-e-Laaleh, Tulip Park, where no tulips grew. He
crossed Shah Street, now the Avenue of Revolution; he rested in Elizabeth
Square now Jihad Square, though everyone called it Square of Fatemi. After only
a few hits of the joint, there was no here and there, no then and now. In the
woods behind the exclusive tennis courts, Azad was a boy and a man, a father
and a son, dead and alive. He was transported to the crowds on Pahlavi
Boulevard, once as royal as the Shah himself. But the Revolutionary guard had
renamed the boulevard Mossadegh, and when Mossadegh fell out of favor with the
mullahs, Pahlavi had changed again to Vali-Asr. Like a prayer, the dream moved
through his gut: a ride in a cab, Azad naming the streets for the driver. “Take
me to Pah-Mos-Vali-” The cabby’s Turkish accent was clear as the clean water
that lined the footpath. “Dear man,” he said, “you want to go to Pahlavi. I
will take you there.” You
Can Go through the Eye of a Needle, but You Can’t Enter the City
Gates: Azad, 2001 At
the Federal Building, Azad made his way into the heart of the Immigration
offices and waited in a pale room, an American flag in the corner dragging on
the floor. An
Immigration officer, a tall man with dime-sized moles on his forehead and his
cheek, appeared in the waiting room. He approached a Chinese couple and asked
for their INS letter. There was a shuffling of papers. Desperate smiles from
the Chinese man. “How
can we interview you with no invitation?” the Immigration officer asked. He
seemed insulted that they would arrive without it. “All right, go home. We’ll
notify you in six months.” When
the officer left, the two rose from their chairs, the woman bringing her hand
to her face as though to touch a tooth ache. Mole
returned with a clipboard and called Azad’s name. After
he studied the INS invitation, he led Azad to an office at the end of several
winding halls. “You sit in that chair and I sit in this one,” he informed Azad,
who took one of two chairs opposite Mole’s. Mole rubbed his temples, breathed
loudly, said, “Mr. Shapur, this is not musical chairs. I said I sit in this one
and you sit in that one. We have fifteen minutes to complete the interview and
time flies.” He forced a smile, said, “O.K.?” Azad
moved to the appointed chair, waited. Mole
sat behind his desk and opened a manila folder. He skimmed several documents,
moved a pencil from the top of the page to the bottom as he read. “You’ve lived
at 1445 Julliard Drive from August first, 1997 to present. Correct?” “Yes.” “Are
you married?” “Yes.” “Any
children?” “No.” “No?”
Mole flipped through papers, looked across the desk to give Azad a chance to
change his mind. “You
know something that I don’t?” Azad asked. Mole
shielded the paper as he scribbled notes. “Let’s move on, shall we? Are
deportation proceedings pending against you, or have you ever been deported, or
ordered deported, or have you ever applied for suspension of deportation?” “Yes.” Mole
looked up from his folder. “I
was ordered deported in 1980. It’s in your records.” “I
know what’s in my records. I merely want to check your word against your
application for those who make the final decision. Do you understand that?” “I
was just saying—” “I
know you were just saying, but we have many questions to respond to and limited
time. We have fifteen minutes, and we’ve already used up two.” “I’ve
been here for twenty-five years. How can we cover that in fifteen minutes?” “I
understand that life is complex, Mr. Shapur. But believe me. Others have been
here for as long as you. And they have not been deported. Look.” He set down
his pencil, leaned back in his swivel chair. “This is not an adversarial
relationship. I simply pass the information on to those who make the final
decision. You could say I am your advocate. Is that clear?” Azad
nodded. “Very
good. Now we have twelve minutes. Why do you want a Green Card, Mr. Shapur?” “Because
I want to become legal, “ Azad said. “And because I want to travel. If I leave
the country, your people won’t let me back in.” “Of
course. Have you ever been arrested?” “In
New York City. Public intoxication. Iran beat the U.S. two to one, World Cup,
’98.” “Do
you have the release papers from your arrest?” Mole
took the papers Azad handed over the desk. “These are not the papers we need,”
he said. “You’ll have to go back to the Police Department where the arrest was
recorded and ask for ‘certified court dispositions.’” “But
these are official—” Mole’s
pencil hit the folder like a dart. “Mr. Shapur, I’ve been doing this job for
twenty-seven years. I know the correct papers when I see them. You need to
return to the Police Department and ask for the proper documents.” Azad
searched his pockets for a pen, which made Mole raise his voice. “There’s no
need for you to take notes. I’m writing it as we speak.” “Thank
you.” “Look.
I am not the one who was arrested.” He
paused, as though this fact deserved precious seconds to ponder. “Any other
arrests?” “No.” “Think
hard, Mr. Shapur.” Mole leaned again in the chair. Flipped through Azad’s file.
“We have a long record on you.” Azad
did as he was told. He said, “I’m not trying to be deceitful. I honestly can’t
recall.” “I
am your advocate. Is that clear to you? Listen. There’s one thing you need to
know about this country. If you tell the truth, you will be forgiven for just
about anything. Now think back. It’s been awhile. Seventeen years.” “Seventeen
years ago I was twenty-one.” “This
isn’t a math test.” He sighed. He seemed on the verge of combustion. “Does
‘criminal trespassing’ ring a bell?” For
a moment, Azad thought about his murderous attack on Bud Noyse’s desk. He
believed that Mole and the F.B.I. had traced the evidence. And then he
remembered: June, his graduation night; swimming under the orange lights;
Roberto Del Franco at home with his new bachelor’s degree; Azad naked in the
pool; the first signs of trouble the beam of a flashlight, the click of heels
on concrete. “Did
you know there is a warrant out for your arrest?” “You’ve
got to be kidding.” “Warrant
went out in 1985. Court costs for your trespassing arrest were never paid.
$125, outstanding since ’84. You’re lucky the Sacramento Police Department
doesn’t charge interest.” “I
don’t feel so lucky,” Azad said. Mole
appeared genuinely sympathetic. He closed the folder, let the color drain from
his face. “Have
you ever been a habitual drunkard, Mr. Shapur?” “No.” “Ever
advocated or practiced polygamy?” “No.” “Been
a prostitute or procured anyone for prostitution?” “I
don’t have a prayer, do I?” Mole
let out a long breath. “You
have an expression in your country and we have a few in mine.” He closed his
folder with the answers he would send to the people above him. “You have a
snowball’s chance in hell, Mr. Shapur.” Mole
returned his pencil to its holder, said, “You’ve got some things to straighten
out. Thirty days to get your paper work in. I can give you an extension if
you’d like.” “Please,”
Azad said, his voice tired, he thought, as the old Iranians in Sacramento
reminiscing about their lives before the Revolution. “You
can always choose not to apply, in which case, we can not deny your application
and you will not have to wait five years to reapply. On the other hand, we can
deny the removal of your application, in which case the five-year wait
applies.” “I
see,” Azad said, taking the documents from Mole. As
the two men stood to leave, Mole extended his hand to Azad, bent his head in a
gesture of congeniality. “Ours
is not an adversarial relationship, Mr. Shapur. I just pass things along.” “I
understand,” Azad said. “You are my advocate.” Mole
slid Azad’s papers into a drawer. He selected a new folder from a stack on his
desk and followed Azad out of his office. Azad understood that though he walked
a step or two in front of the Immigration officer; if Mole saw him at all, he
saw only the outline of a man. Turning the first corner, Azad’s limbs grew
light as though his muscle and bone had transformed to air. What’s another five
years? he asked himself, the click of Mole’s heels following him through the
maze of halls. It’s just legal residence, he thought, turning into another
corridor, making his way back through time: through his marriage and his job,
through graduate school and the rented apartments. He felt a certain
weightlessness, a transparency that carried him through high school, through
the war and the Revolution, through Kit Carson Jr. High. And then, like water
under the sun, Azad Shapur vanished from the Federal Building and stood once
more in Iran, a boy with a soccer ball wet from his grandfather’s garden hose,
lifted off his feet and kissing the old man’s sweet smelling cheeks. |