if finding words had become a tax his body could not afford, “it was you who was for the law and against disrupting the order, no?” Khan’s sarcasm referred to Ahmad’s speech.
I was, but how long can you bend your head?
Khan held the paper close to his face and moved his glasses. “I can’t read this,” he said. “Write bigger.”
I WAS, BUT HOW LONG CAN YOU BEND YOUR HEAD?
Khan looked at Ahmad for a moment. “Did you see what the cats did to your mother?” he said. “She could have caught pneumonia.”
You said the cats were doing all this and I believed you. If toppling the regime is what they’re after, I’m with the cats, then.
Khan looked closely at the words jammed into the margin of the newspaper. “I can’t read this.”
Ahmad took his notebook out of his inside breast pocket and started writing.
“Why don’t you sit down? You can take that by the desk”—Khan pointed to a chair that leaned against the black, tarred wall—“or sit here on the bed. Do you want me to bring you the chair?”
Ahmad shook his head as he wrote. Khan looked out the window. A sparrow landed in the persimmon three, shaking the snow off the branch. It jerked its small head to both sides for a few seconds before taking flight again. The naked branch quivered, but soon calmed back into the graceful stillness of the tree.
You say the cats want to pull the Shah down, I say let them. I’m going to help them if I can. You say they wanted to kill my mother, I say I don’t know. Why would they want to do that? And even if so, what can I do? What did you do to prevent the cat attack, to hinder the catastrophe?
Khan took the note. His eyes squinted behind his glasses.
“I can’t read this.” He gave the paper back to Ahmad. “You know what, do what you want. I’m tired. Agha told us about all of this in his own way. I denied it. Then I saw it myself. I’ve been trying to make you see it too. You told me once you did, but you don’t. You go and do what you want.”
* * *
—
IN THE PROTESTS THAT FOLLOWED the raid of the prison, Lalah was busy making Molotov cocktails in her friend’s basement. She had taken up Zeeba’s responsibility of filling the heaters, so she could steal oil and have a reason to reek of it when she came back home. The second day after the prison break, she and Shireen made fourteen bottles. When Shireen brought the baskets, Lalah said, “I’m going with you.”
“Don’t get your hopes up,” Sheerin said. “Ebi might not come today.”
“We’ll see,” Lalah answered putting the first bottle in the basket. They topped the bottles with armfuls of parsley that Lalah had bought at the neighborhood fruit and herbs shop. When the sun had just set, they draped chadors over their heads to look unobtrusive and set off. They walked for half an hour eastward, along sidewalks, across a number of streets, through a snowy park, out onto other sidewalks, checking out passersby, looking into grocery stores, electric shops, confectionary stores, clothes shops, and a defunct ice stand, and finally turned into the narrow street where the bottles were to be transferred to the boys. It was rather quiet, but there was no guarantee that eyes were not spying on them from the flanking houses. The boys were sitting in a parked Peykan. The girls walked past them, checking the car from the corners of their eyes. Lalah saw the older man, Ameer, at the wheel and another one of the guys, perhaps Comrade Bijan, beside him blowing into his hands. A little way ahead, they walked between two parked cars and swiftly put their baskets down on the ground, then walked away.
“He was there, he was there,” Shireen said, pinching Lalah on the arm as she often did when her passion for Ameer was too much for her to bear. “What do I do? What do I do? What do I do?”
Although the man had never shown anything but politeness and appropriate behavior, Shireen thought she spotted a desire in his eyes. At Lalah’s suggestion, the girls rushed to the end of the street, turned into the next, and swiftly pulled their chadors off their heads, crumpling them quickly into their shoulder bags. Then they hurried back to where the boys were parked. But the car was