The Increment: A Novel - By David Ignatius Page 0,14
microwave oven when the phone rang. He didn’t like to answer it anymore at home, for fear of who it might be. But when the recording of the answering machine clicked on, he recognized the voice and picked up the receiver.
It was his cousin Hossein. The bitter one. He had served with the Revolutionary Guard for so many years; he had done everything they asked of him, and now they had thrown him away. You could hear it in his voice. They had taken his balls away. His wife was visiting her sister, Hossein said. He wanted to go out and have some fun. Go to a restaurant, maybe meet some girls. There was a little slur in his voice, as if he had already started drinking, or maybe smoking opium or taking pills—it didn’t make any difference once they took your balls away. The young man said he was tired; he’d had a long day at the daneshgah, the “university,” which was his euphemism for where he worked. But Hossein wouldn’t hear of it. He was urging, almost pleading for company. He said that he would pick up his cousin outside the apartment in Yoosef Abad in fifteen minutes. The young man agreed; anything to get Hossein off the phone before he said something really stupid that someone might overhear.
Hossein had a jar of home brew in his car. It had the sharp, acidic taste of raw alcohol, masked with some orange juice. The young man said no at first, but then he took a swig. He wanted obliteration and escape tonight, as much as Hossein did. He looked at his cousin; he still had the hard, pitted face of a Revolutionary Guard, but the eyes had gone soft. He was rotting from the inside out. Now there was nothing for him to do but drink and be angry; eventually he would make a mistake, and they would destroy him for good. Hossein did not know how to live inside a lie; that was his problem. He had actually believed in the revolution, and now that it had expelled him, he didn’t know what to do.
They cruised the streets for a while in Hossein’s green Peugeot, crawling up Vali Asr Avenue in the slow traffic that allowed them to look at the pretty girls in the streets. They knew how to be sexy, even in their scarves and cloaks. They were wearing spike heels, the daring ones, so that their legs were long and tight and their asses swayed from side to side. The girls could watch Fashion TV on the pirate satellite stations, so they knew how to move like models. The boys could watch it too, and jerk off when they showed lingerie and swimsuits.
“I want a woman,” said Hossein. He was drunk. They had finished the first bottle of home brew and started a second.
“Do you want a disease, too?” asked the young man. “Because they go together.”
“You are too careful. What’s the matter with you? Have you been visiting Qazvin?” That was an insult. Iranians liked to joke that the men of the city of Qazvin, northwest of Tehran, were all homosexuals.
“Fuck you, my dear cousin,” said the young man. “We’ll go wherever you want.”
Hossein drove to a little coffeehouse called Le Gentil on Gandhi Street, a few blocks over from Vali Asr. He said there would be pretty girls there—foreign ones, which meant girls who maybe would fool around. But when they arrived the tables were filled with couples, and the few single women drew back from them. Hossein still looked too much like a Revolutionary Guard. That was his problem. He wanted to be a rebel now, but he still looked like a soldier of Allah. Hossein went out to his car to smoke some opium. When he came back he was talking too fast.
“They screwed me, you know that!” Hossein growled. “They can shit on their beards, for all I care.”
“Shhh!” said the young scientist. “Of course I know that, but keep your voice down. You never know who’s listening, even in a gherti place like this.”
“They screwed me,” Hossein repeated. “I did everything they asked me to. I did more than they asked me to. Nobody understood the imam’s line better than me. Nobody felt the blood of the martyrs like me. But then they screwed me.”
“Hayf,” said the young man. A shame. “It was wrong what they did. Everyone knows that. You must get over it. Move on, cousin.”