the packing, Khan offered, he could send for people.
“No,” Sergey said and kept his ear to the speaker as if he had no interest in the conversation and would rather be left alone to engage with more pleasant themes. Khan suggested Sergey get to work sooner rather than later, since time was short. Mulla and his followers would be there any minute. “I haven’t danced in a whole goddamn year.” Sergey got up from his chair, took Khan’s hand, and put it on his own shoulder. Khan saw the empty bottle on the floor by the runner. He sat the Russian back in his chair, but Sergey jumped to his feet and held out his hand. Khan did not take the hand. Sergey raised his arms sideways and started a little dance on his own. Unmoving as a cross from waist up, his legs crisscrossed like scissors cropping hair in a hasty cut. “You’re old, Khan,” he said. Khan turned the radio off and held Sergey by the shoulders. “Listen to me,” he shouted into his face.
“It’s all in here,” Sergey tapped his index finger against his temple and danced on and on until Khan heard the sounds: the villagers were in the Orchard.
* * *
—
CROWDING IN FRONT OF HIS small house like three nights before, the villagers were offended at the audacity of the Russian. Khan came out, not knowing what exactly to tell them. He tried to keep things under control. He said the automobile had been late and as soon as it arrived their guest would be on his way, no later than an hour after noon. At that moment Sergey flung the door open and appeared with a pistol in one hand and a full bottle in the other. His large stature almost filled the frame. His round, white face was blushed even more than moments earlier when he was dancing. Ahmad watched from a distance and knew Sergey had drunk his magic water. The late afternoon breeze swayed a lock of the Russian’s blond hair over his broad forehead and drifted through the supple branches of apple trees that flaunted their young shoots. “It’s about time,” Sergey shouted at the people with his accented Persian, “everyone went home. Enough of the farce. I don’t want to hear a word about this anymore.” Then he said something that no one understood. The sounds were familiar to Ahmad; he knew it was not French. “That flag up there, do you see that flag?” Sergey pointed to the Russian flag on the roof with the gun. “It says this is Russian territory and you don’t get to decide about it.”
Even Khan was taken by surprise. “Mr. Blokov,” he said, “that flag, you put it there with your own hands. It doesn’t mean…”
“Damn right,” Sergey cut in. “Russian puts up Russian flag, Russian takes down Russian flag. Now away with you.” He went in and slammed the door behind him.
Khan could only watch as the men broke the door and raided the rooms. Two shots were fired inside, but before Khan had time to wonder if Sergey had killed anyone, new sounds came from the other side of the Orchard. Russian soldiers had arrived in Tajrish in ten army vehicles, not unlike the trucks that brought food, and marched into the Orchard. Women shrieked and escaped inside. The men in Sergey’s room poured out and ran for their lives. The villager on Sergey’s roof was riddled with bullets before he could uproot the flagpole. By the time Sergey could open his bloody mouth against the shooting pains of his broken ribs, the soldiers had searched every inch of the Orchard and rounded up Khan and everyone else in front of the house. Norooz the Gardener raised his voice in protest. A soldier walked up to him, put his bayonet against his heart, and pushed the blade in. They put Sergey on a stretcher and sent him off to Tehran. Khan and his family were released. The soldiers spread out into the village. Sporadic gunshots echoed in the winding alleys of Tajrish for four hours. Before sundown, the drivers started their vehicles, the roar of which slowly faded out as the dust settled back down on the dirt road that, in the years to come, would be an asphalt street lined on both sides with overarching plane trees in the heart of a city so big that neither the dead nor the living residents of the village of Tajrish could