The cypress tree

198 Pages·2014·1.2 MB·English

by  Mohammadi

For my parents
and in memory of Firooz
‘Somewhere beyond right and wrong is a garden. My Friend, I will meet you
there.’
Rumi
‘Call it [the tree] of Paradise, if you do not know why you should call it the
Cypress …’
Ferdowsi, Shahnameh
Contents
Map
Prologue
Part 1 Home
1 Longing to Go Back
2 Metamorphosis
3 Tehran
4 Shiraz and the Abbasians
5 ‘I wish to go to Iran, to see my much-praised father’
6 The Family House in Abadan
7 New Beginnings
8 Bending on the Branch
9 Khaleh
10 New Iranians
11 Revolution
12 Covering Up
13 God’s Government
14 Escape
Part 2 Exile
15 London
16 An English Boarding School
17 War is Coming
18 Displaced
19 The Mask of Englishness
20 Returning
21 Saying Goodbye
22 Back Home
Epilogue
A Note on the Cypress Tree
Acknowledgements
Dramatis Personae
A Note on the Author

Prologue
‘Nothing. I feel nothing,’ the old man declared, his expression inscrutable.
Here he was, the saviour of the Iranian people, the architect of the Islamic
Revolution: Ayatollah Khomeini, returning triumphant to his country after
fifteen years in exile, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi toppled and fled, two and a
half millennia of monarchy interrupted. And Iran was waiting, holding its breath
to hear what he would say – this old man whose words had undammed rivers of
blood to wash through the streets – on being asked how he felt to be returning to
his country after all this time.
This had been his answer.
This response, squeezed dry of any feeling, provoked silence from the
disenfranchised, poor, illiterate citizens who had brought this man back on a tide
of violence and chaos and longing. There was a pause in homes across the land:
in the sprawling detached houses of the middle classes, smart families wearing
Europe’s latest fashions gathered around state-of-the-art televisions, and in the
mud villages where the population thronged round the ancient set belonging to
the local landowner’s estate manager. For the space of one heartbeat, the country
was stunned.
I was a chubby child of nine addicted to reading and chocolate, sitting on the
floor, a book in my hands. Underneath me lay a carpet of silk and wool flowers
spun into meadows of colour. I hadn’t been to school in weeks, and I could sense
the tension radiating from my parents. I knew that the shah had left the country
and I knew that I had to be careful of what I said when I was out of the house –
my mother had said that there were ears everywhere and though I had not
understood how that was possible, it had silenced me nonetheless. I had felt the
violence on the streets moving ever closer to our home and I knew that every
night more of our friends and neighbours vanished from their beds where they
slept, never to be seen again.
Despite this, I was more bewildered by this thing called a revolution than
scared by it. I thought I understood what was happening: the shah was gone and
the joy emanating from this penetrated even the compound that protected us and
our modern, middle-class lives. Iran would be free! Esteghlal, azadi, jomhooriy-
e Eslami. I had heard the chants on the streets, their insistent rhythms echoing
through the walls: independence, freedom and an Islamic Republic! I understood
even less what this meant but I felt the excitement of it anyway. But as I watched
this man, the author of so much destruction in my world, the cause of so many
murders and disappearances, and listened to him say those words – ‘I feel
nothing’ – for the first time in my young life, true fear entered my heart.
Home
My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil,
this air,
Born here of parents born here, from parents the same, and
their parents the same …
Walt Whitman, ‘Starting from Paumanok’