The Moving Prison by William Mirza, Thom Lemmons Read Free Book Online

you could care to come to my house? We can discuss the matter at greater leisure. After all, this is a very busy place—customers coming in and out all the time.” Ezra gave a small chuckle. “Very good, then. I will look forward to your call.” He gave the caller his home telephone number and hung up. Again he glanced toward the storeroom, but Firouz had his back turned, busily matching invoices with shipping labels. Ezra was ecstatic. Two strokes of good fortune in a single day!
    In the storeroom, Firouz looked again at the classified section of the paper he had purchased while Ezra was out. He had circled one ad: “For Sale: Profitable Business in a Prime Location.”

SIX
    The taxi neared the entrance to Mehrabad International Airport. Two armed pasdars stood on either side of the gate, looking inside each vehicle as it passed through. The taxi slowed. One of the pasdars leaned through the rear window, in Ezra’s face. “Who are you, and what is your business?” demanded the scraggly bearded guard, scarcely more than a boy, his eyes suspiciously flickering between Ezra and the carrying case.
    Just as Ezra opened his mouth to reply, Hafizi spoke from the front seat. “This man is a friend of mine. He and his wife are accompanying me to the gate where I must meet a plane. Please do not delay us—my business is urgent.”
    The pasdar looked at his partner, across the car, and received a slight nod in reply. He stepped back and impatiently waved the taxi through. He glared after them as they drove toward the customs building.

    “Didn’t I warn you something like this would happen? Didn’t I tell you it was unwise to continue seeing her?” Khosrow’s father spoke quietly, but the anger in his tone was unmistakable. Khosrow kept his face lowered, holding the ice pack to his forehead as much to avoid his father’s ire as to reduce the swelling above his left eyebrow.
    “Father,” he said, “what they were doing was wrong.”
    “That is not what I’m saying, Khosrow. No one knows better than I the injustices being committed in the name of Allah and the so-called Imam Khomeini. Believe me, I know what’s going on out there! I deal with it every day at work. It takes all the tact and caution I have to keep my job and stay off the mullahs’ purge lists, to survive the craziness in one piece and keep this family from starvation. I only hope you will learn from this, Khosrow. I hope it can teach you the danger of being conspicuous in times such as these. I have learned that I cannot afford rugged individualism just now. You must learn this too.”
    Khosrow said nothing. His father’s advice was nothing new. Since the tide first began to turn against the Shah, most of his parents’ conversations with each other, with him, and with his brothers had been variations on a similar theme. He suppressed the flare of indignation burning in his chest. It angered him that he was being chastised for taking a stand. What about the thugs who had carved on Sepi’s desk? What were they? Heroes?
    “I know you care for this Solaiman girl,” his father was saying, “but I am not sure you understand the price you may have to pay for your affection. And not only you, Khosrow. Whole families have been blacklisted because of the activities of a single member.”
    The silence that followed was a no man’s land. Khosrow felt the cold weight of his father’s disapproval pressing upon him and knew he was expected to make some apology, some admission of guilt or, at least, of carelessness. He sternly shoved any such words from his mind, his jaw clenched in resentment.
    “Think about what I have said,” his father finished at last. “Perhaps you will one day see that I have your interest at heart.”
    As his father rose and walked away, Khosrow slumped lower in the chair, absorbed in the dull ache in his head and the frustration in his mind. When his mother fluttered into the room and fussed over him a bit, he endured it