first row began running toward the edge of the roof. Behind them, the second row broke to a gallop, and behind them the other two rows. The cats ran the length of the roof, gaining momentum, and at the end sprang up on the short parapet and took a long leap into the air. With four paws hanging, and no control over the plastic wings, they flew off in different directions, ready to pull on the string as soon as the breeze and luck positioned them on top of the soldiers. The soldiers looked up. The officers stood in shock for a few seconds and then gave orders to fire at the flying objects.
The air raid was not very successful. Three of the pilots glided smoothly into the dry plane trees that lined the street and a fourth was unlucky enough to get caught in the power lines, the pilot stuck hanging in the air. The rest were blown by the breeze toward the protestors and the campus. They slowly circled and floated in the air, gradually losing altitude until they landed within the crowd or among the students who, excited and amused, caught them and confiscated the guns. A few cats ran away before people set their hands on them. They could not run too fast, though, or else they would start to take off again, what with the wings still on their backs. There was one pilot—a gray Persian—whose wings took him toward the target, over the line of soldiers. Bullets whizzed past his ears. When he decided his position was right, he jerked the string without taking aim, as if scared. The soldiers fired bullets at him above their heads and moments later, he drifted softly to the ground, lifeless, his long fur drenched in blood, his eyes closed, the string hanging from the holster. A soldier picked him up and turned to his officer. The Persian had killed a soldier.
Ahmad went back down into the street where everything was on the verge of sliding into a whirlpool. Banks were destroyed. Flowers were offered. The picture of the Shah was cut out of the bills; the picture of the Ayatollah taped in its place. It was the last day.
He later heard how, to purge the city from the filth of the regime, a group of revolutionaries got in cars, revved the engines, and set off for New Town, the neighborhood in East Tehran where the brothels had been built. Madame started to take things seriously only after she heard the news of the Shah’s departure. She had heard muffled shots in the distance, more frequently than the days before. It was about two in the afternoon when she called her girls.
“Everybody get dressed and come down pronto,” she shouted from the bottom of the stairs. She kept their birth certificates but opened her vault, gave them cash, and sent them away. Before the last one left Madame’s room, the front door was smashed. Men poured in carrying guns and hoisting sticks and pipes. Someone swung a shovel handle at a lamp on the small table in the entrance. A middle-aged man grabbed the girl by the arm and took her away. Glued to her chair, Madame watched as three men came for her, two striding around the desk and one leaping onto it. As they dragged her out, she saw a fourth man emptying a canteen of gasoline all over her office. Years later, Goli turned the pages of The Journal Future, looked closely at the page, and recognized the bloody face of Madame lying on the asphalt, her mouth open and her face streaked with blood. She threw only passing looks at the photos of the storming of the Evin Prison, and so she did not recognize the profile of Ameer in one photo pointing an outstretched arm toward the large metal gates, like an old commander ordering his men to assail the lines of enemy, for those souls behind brutal walls and in underground cells who had been the vanguards of a movement now so close to victory.
Goli would never see Ameer again; she contented herself with what she had left of him: a boy she called Ameer, as Ameer had once wanted. Neither would she ever see the other women Ameer had been with. She had asked Ameer about them, and knew their names. She knew there could be another Ameer boy somewhere by a mother called Shireen, who once had told her friend,