City of Lies by Ramita Navai Read Free Book Online Page B

one of these trips that she bumped into Hassan, the son of a neighbour. He had come to look at football kits in the sports shops on downtown Vali Asr, near Monirieh Square. Away from family and neighbourhood spies, they spoke differently to each other, at once understanding the other’s need to discover a world outside the Meydan. The chance meeting became a treasured weekly tryst. Tahereh started reading
Zanan
, a daring women’s magazine that covered everything from literature to sex and argued for gender equality. Tahereh visited exhibitions and plays. She was a gifted artist; but her teachers were not interested in drawing and painting. Only her parents understood the remarkable talent of their girl, but they had neither the money nor the education or foresight to encourage her.
    Tahereh’s parents were religious and traditional, but they came from a liberal village where men and women celebrated weddings together, where chadors were white and where it did not matter if your
hejab
slipped off your head. Sadegh thought the revolution had been a big mistake and he still lamented the fall of the Shah. He believed that the
hejab
should not be compulsory; it was a matter of personal choice and one’s relationship with God was private. He never drank, but was not against alcohol. He thought modernity was not at odds with Islam. Sadegh also believed that people should be virgins until marriage, but he thought that relations between men and women were nobody’s business but their own. Sadegh soon realized his views did not belong in Meydan-e Khorasan, so he kept them to himself, truths only shared with his wife and child.
    When Sadegh found out about Hassan, he believed Tahereh when she said her honour was intact, but he was devastated that her reputation had been shredded to worthless pieces.
    When Hassan’s mother returned home she was so enraged that she called the police, telling them there was a prostitute in her house. The police took Tahereh to the station and summoned her father. He told the officers his daughter was pure and begged them to release her. They mocked his village accent, and spoke down to him as though he were a simple peasant.
    ‘Your daughter behaves like a whore and you defend her! Where’s your honour? Is that what they do in the villages? They’d have stoned her from where you come from!’ They all laughed, not knowing that life in his northern village had not changed much since the revolution – in some ways it was more liberal than the laws enforced by the police in Tehran. As for Hassan, he got a few hearty slaps on the back from his friends. Only his best friend knew the truth: that he and Tahereh had fallen in love, that they spent their time visiting art galleries and listening to Pink Floyd. They had only ever dared to kiss.
    Tahereh did not notice Somayeh loitering at the corner of the road, waiting for her and her parents to leave. It would not have surprised her; since the episode everyone had cut her off.
    The smell of saffron and buttery steamed rice filled the flat and vats of rich stews bubbled on the stove. Somayeh’s mother, Fatemeh, had been cooking for the last two days. Any morsel of food that passed through her soft, plump hands was transformed into succulent dishes. Fatemeh’s mother had told her that if you kept your husband well fed, he would never leave you to taste forbidden fruit. Fatemeh had learnt her skills from a young age. She was famed for her cooking and their parties were always packed. Fatemeh stirred and fried and washed while Somayeh set out bowls of fruit, cucumbers, walnuts and pistachios. She cleaned the dust off the plastic maroon flowers that were displayed around the room. Even with windows closed, the dust somehow worked its way into apartments and houses across the city, sheeting everything in a fine grey powder.
    Mohammad-Reza sat at the kitchen table playing the
Quest of Persia
video game on the family PC. Haj Agha was watching television. A