Book Review: When Love, Art and Upheaval Collide in Ali Araghi’s The Immortals of Tehran 

Excerpt 1 

In her white wedding dress inside the women’s quarters, Homa watched Ahmad from behind the lace curtain, in his black suit in the circle of men out in the orchard, holding his arms up, swinging to the sides to the rhythm of music, and she did not feel a doubt about the decision she had made. Music slipped out of vibrating strings and throbbing percussive skin, from under restless picks and hands. Great Uncle reached into his breast pocket and threw a fistful of bills into the air, then a second. Children dived to collect the money from under the stomping feet. Seeing this, Khan left the circle and strode away from the celebration. Outside, he motioned for the chauffeur to open the trunk of the white Jaguar. Back at the dance, the crowd split open to let in Khan and his driver boy who carried two sacks under his arms. Khan dug his hand into one and the bills flew into the air. Children ran around trying to catch them as they spun like raining pinwheels. The Great Uncle emptied his pockets and then motioned at Colonel Delldaar for more. As the evening proceeded, more nimble-fingered musicians performed. The cool, fall breeze could not dry sweat off the dancing bodies. Until the last one dropped down panting, Khan and Great Uncle showered bills on the dancers. So much money was dispensed that after the wedding was over and the last of the guests had left, the owner of the orchard spent a sunset to sundown excavating bills from under mud and dirt. 

The last player of the night was Maestro Shahnaz. After the dinner tables were cleared, a humble wooden chair was placed for him in the middle of the open space. The night was calm except for the murmur of the men outside and the chatter of women inside and the chirping of the creatures of the night. The maestro approached his chair with slow, calm steps and sat himself, eyes cast down. He crossed his legs and balanced his taar on his thigh. A silence fell over the wedding as he turned the pick in his hand and took a deep breath, his head bent toward his instrument. With the first strum of his pick on the strings, the dead branches of the trees turned soft and before the end of the overture, green shoots had sprouted on them. Everyone was staring up at trees coming to life in autumn. A few scales into the rhythmic piece, blossoms opened on the leafless branches. The music was almost visible, floating in the breeze, weaving in and out of the plum trees, billowing the curtains into the house, scaling up the women’s legs and wafting around their bosoms. Suddenly happy cries rose from the bride and groom’s room. The bride’s dress had bloomed. Homa’s mother kept picking the blossoms from her veil so she could see. Ahmad smiled at Homa and got up from beside her to look at the maestro through the window. The orchard was carpeted with orange and plum blossoms that grew and fell from the trees. A pinkish-white petal sat on the maestro’s bald head. 

“We’ll be happy together,” Homa whispered in Ahmad’s ear when he sat back by her. Still unable to speak, Ahmad took her hand and gave it a gentle but firm squeeze. “This is a sign,” she said. 

After the wedding, the newlyweds boarded the automobile that Khan had rented for the wedding ride. Parked right outside the orchard, the Jaguar, too, like all the other cars, had grown little flowers on its handles, trunk, and hood. Sitting in the backseat, one ringed hand locked into a ringless one, smiling and calm, Ahmad and Homa circled the streets of the city in the mirth of their unity. Years later, after the Revolution and the Eight-Year War had already become history, when Ahmad walked the streets of the megalopolis of Tehran and saw how people decorated their wedding cars by taping gladioli to the hoods, trunks, and door handles, he felt an urge to write on a piece of paper and show the person nearest him, That’s the doing of Maestro Shahnaz. You should have seen the orchard that night.

Excerpt 2 

Two weeks before the next summer, Majeed was at the theater as the streets were being beaten under the shoes of the people who marched ahead and the boots of the soldiers and officers who would not retreat. The lover on the screen was walking in quiet sidewalks, struggling with the question in his heart: should one leave one’s beloved if one is certain that another man will give her a better life? With every step of the lover on the carpet of the dry, orange, and red leaves, a calm, crunching sound reverberated in the theater. It was at that moment when Majeed felt his seat was shaking, and before he had the time to complain in his head that someone was kicking from behind again, the whole theater trembled. The wall behind the screen fell with a loud rumble, a tank came in through the screen, and Majeed found himself in the middle of the uprising. The tank stopped on top of the debris with a hiss, coughing up a puff of smoke. 

Somehow the screen was not detached from what kept it in place; ripped and crumpled, the white sheet was still hanging behind the tank. Outside in the daylight, people ran back and forth across the street. The hatch opened and the tank driver, a young soldier in a khaki army uniform, scrambled out and jumped down. In shock, he looked around at his tank in the cloud of dust and smoke, the fallen wall, the moviegoers who were running away in panic, and the persistent screen that now displayed a vague shadow show of the commotion outside overlaid by a pale picture of the lover in the leaves. The driver ran toward the back exits where those previously watching the movie were now pushing one another. Majeed, who had sprung up onto his seat at some point, ran and joined the fleeing crowd. 

Resting his palms on the back of the man in front of him for support, while being shoved ahead by scared bodies, Majeed made his way out of the hall and ran up the stairs. The door to the projection booth was left half open. He looked around. The room was empty. He jumped in, turned the projector off, took the reels out, and snapped them into the rewinder. While the rewinder whirred, he collected the other five reels of the movie. From the little window through which the projector shot its beam at the screen, Majeed looked down. Except for some curious people from the street who climbed the rubble to get close to the tank, there was no one in the theatre. Outside the projection room someone ran past the door. When he heard the slapping of the end of the film on the body of the rewinder, Majeed turned the machine off, fitted the last reel in to a case, and snapped the lid closed. Without trying to hide his armful of cases, he walked out of the door and down the stairs. “Hey, hey,” said the box office ticket seller bending over to put his mouth to the opening, “what are those?” 

“I’ve got to see the end,” Majeed said before running away awkwardly, a stack of six-reel cases in his arms. The ticket seller went back to staring at what was unravelling in the street outside his cubicle. Even if he had stepped out, he would soon have given in to exhaustion and lost the young man among the bodies that strove to change history.