City of Lies: Love, Sex, Death, and the Search for Truth in Tehran

Pasteur Street, Tehran, 1989

It is Amir’s first trip since the executions. Baba Bozorg – granddad – pummels a decrepit orange BMW through the desert; his tight clench of the wheel does not loosen. No matter how far they seem to drive, sand, rocks and mountains remain framed in the windows like a painting. Baba Bozorg talks occasionally, mindful that his grandson is still mute with loss. Amir listens, but is simply unable to
reply, wishing instead to exist in his own world, where Shahla and Manuchehr are still alive.
Baba Bozorg is unusually optimistic. He is now the only person who talks about Shahla and Manuchehr. At home Shahla and Manuchehr are never mentioned, except when his grandmother tells Amir his parents are coming home soon. That makes everyone angry, apart from Amir. She is hushed up. The whole episode becomes just that – an episode. This is survival. The executions have marked the family out, have branded them as possible traitors and so they must distance themselves from this episode for protection.
When they reach the city Baba Bozorg roars up Vali Asr, spluttering against the traffic until they turn into a side street and park the car. Amir helps Baba Bozorg set up the tent they have brought. They pitch it as near as they can get to the Prime Minister’s office without being told to clear off. The guards are unsure how to react to this incongruous sight of an impeccably suited gentleman and his dumb grandson.
‘Young man, we’re not going anywhere. We are here to see the Prime Minister, and we are not leaving until we see him. Even if it takes 1,000 days,’ Baba Bozorg booms at them whenever they get near.
With the tent pitched, Baba Bozorg strides up to the guards. ‘Now if you could let us know where the nearest hammam is, we could really do with a wash.’
‘Yes sir,’ they reply respectfully, Baba Bozorg’s tall stature and natural authority forcing them into capitulation. Amir feels proud to be with Baba Bozorg when he sees how the guards react to him. Baba Bozorg is his hero. But Baba Bozorg can hear the pity in the guards’ voices, that such a dignified man has been reduced to sleeping in a tent.
In the morning, a guard brings tea; word has spread of the migrant visitors sleeping rough in search of hot showers and justice. Baba Bozorg has brought two folding chairs on which they sit and play backgammon as they wait. Most of the time, Baba Bozorg’s eyes are fixed on the road ahead. His son tried to persuade him to grow some Islamic stubble, the sign of a regime supporter (imitating the bearded Prophet is almost a requirement). Baba Bozorg refused. Anyway, his elegant demeanour does not lend itself well to the fundamentalist look. Of course, he is not wearing a tie, which he always does at home. Sales of ties were banned just after the revolution, and even though it is not illegal to wear them, they are seen as symbols of Western imperialism.
There had been no funeral. No grave. No bodies. Shahla and Manuchehr had
vanished into the hidden recesses of the regime. It refused to release any information, apart from the brutal details of the killing. Baba Bozorg has dedicated his life to finding his daughter’s body. He has written hundreds of letters, made hundreds of telephone calls. He has visited every government office, flying and sometimes driving over ten hours from Shiraz to Tehran, to sit for days in waiting rooms stuffed with people just to make appointments with incompetent secretaries. At the mention of Shahla’s name doors close, telephone calls and letters are unanswered. But still he persists; his anger only intensifies. The more he begs, the more they seem to revel in denying him. Finally he has had enough of wasting time with the lackeys and the tea-makers and the paper- pushers and the petty officials with their ill-fitting suits and unkempt appearances. He has come to speak to the man who was in charge when his daughter was executed. He is going to the top.
For three nights they sleep here, waking at dawn. They keep watch during the day and in the evening they stroll the streets, always heading for Vali Asr where they have a chelo kabab in Nayeb Restaurant. On the fourth day they spot him. He is in a white Mercedes. A mane of thick black hair, a full beard and square- framed glasses emerge. Baba Bozorg jumps up and Amir runs behind him.
‘Your honour, we have been patiently waiting for three days to talk to you. If you could be so kind as to give us a minute of your time, we would be most grateful.’ Polite and firm. The man turns round, and is about to walk away as his eyes rest on Amir. ‘We just want to know where my daughter is buried. Where his mother is buried.’ He nods to Amir. ‘That little boy needs to know where his beloved mother and father are. Please, we beg you, most humbly, with respect, from the bottom of our hearts. We are desperate. Please don’t punish us any more than we have all already been punished.’ Proud voice starts to tremble. ‘She is called Shahla Azadi and her husband is Manuchehr Nikbakht. They were hanged in September 1988 in Evin prison. I have been to every office in the country. I have written every letter that I can write. I just want to say goodbye to my little girl.’
And without even missing a beat, the man blinks into his thick glasses as he taps Baba Bozorg on the shoulder. A dismissive, contemptuous tap. ‘No. I will not tell you. Because they did wrong. Your daughter did wrong.’ He looks Amir in the eye. A dismissive, contemptuous look. And with that the man turns.
The man is the Prime Minister, Mir Hossein Mousavi, under whose rule the executions happened. Amir feels salty tears on his cheeks. Baba Bozorg slumps to the ground. The guards pretend not to notice. The Islamic Republic has no
mercy. Baba Bozorg never writes another letter, or makes another phone call or visits another office again.
The Prime Minister does not know it yet, but he is about to lose his office as a new constitution scraps his role. Mousavi will slip away from politics until he emerges just over twenty years later, as the figurehead and hero of the reformist movement. He will be a beacon of democracy and freedom, his name will be chanted by thousands, by some who are prepared to die for him. He will eventually be arrested himself, and placed under house arrest, for speaking out against the crushing of protesters. The bloodletting during his time will be forgotten and forgiven. Mousavi will say he did not know of the killings.
The mass deaths served their purpose: they struck fear into the hearts of thousands. No more kitchen meetings, no more parties. Back home, Baba Bozorg is too afraid to send Amir to a child psychologist in case the psychologist is an informer. Amir moves in with his uncle and his wife, and assumes a new identity; amoo, uncle, is now baba, father. A little sister is born. Amir finds his voice and starts attending a new school where he also finds a best friend, Afshin. The two boys are inseparable. It does not take long before Amir confides to him: They killed my parents. They hanged them in prison. Amir never sees Afshin again; he does not return to school and his parents lodge a complaint with the headmistress. She calls Amir into her office. ‘You should feel ashamed of yourself, putting us all in danger!’ She is apoplectic. ‘If you ever speak of your parents again, you will never be allowed back here and you will be a sad, lonely little boy, all on his own.’ Amir never speaks about his parents again. Not until he meets Bahar.
It is long after Baba Bozorg’s death that the regime shows mercy and reveals where his daughter’s body lies. Shahla and Manuchehr are together, dumped in a crude trench that is their grave, squeezed in with thousands of others on top of them and below them and next to them. There is no mark, no stone, no sign that this is where their bones lie. It is as though they never existed. But it turns out the wasteland where Shahla and Manuchehr are buried has a name – Lanatabad, Land of the Damned.