Time dragged on, and still she couldn’t see him. She was parched and weak and dizzy. Her blouse stuck to her chest; the square spun. Maman was right. She should have eaten. She could barely move now that there were so many people around her and in the entire square. She was trapped.
Finally the armed police arrived, and Roya felt a wave of relief. Thank God. But to her surprise, they didn’t even try to disband the mob. They just joined it. Every ounce of energy drained from her as she realized the police units were in on it. Everything Bahman had feared was coming true. The police were colluding with anti-Mossadegh protesters to attempt another coup, to try to finally oust the prime minister. The prime minister whom Bahman and Baba and so many others loved. The prime minister they believed was their democratic leader, who had the courage to stand up to foreign powers wanting their oil, whom the people had elected with the hope of achieving democracy. Bahman would be sick to see this scene. Where was he? She hoped to God that he was safe.
Time ticked on. No sign of Bahman. She had to move from her spot in the center; she couldn’t just stay here hemmed in by the mob. Maybe she could go to the side where the crowd was thinner. Maybe Bahman had just arrived and was stuck there, unable to get to her. She wanted to make her way out, but the throng of people kept her trapped. She pushed and shoved, moving inch by inch, but not making any genuine progress. Panic welled inside her. She wanted to scream, to run away.
Suddenly someone grabbed her shoulder. “Roya!”
She turned to see who had called her name. His hair was stuck to his head with sweat. He panted and was wrung out with anxiety. Her vision blurred, but when it cleared, she realized it was Mr. Fakhri. His eyes were raw with a desperation Roya had never seen before.
“Oh, thank God! Mr. Fakhri! Have you seen—”
“Roya Khanom, please listen to me. . . .” He clutched her shoulders with both hands now, wild with an urgency that frightened her. She had never seen him outside of his cool, clean shop except for the night of their engagement party, when they’d both witnessed Mrs. Aslan’s sad meltdown. Here, under the burning sun and amidst the crowd, he seemed almost feral, a mad version of the quiet man who had handed her poetry books and abetted her correspondence with the lover whom she sorely needed to see right now.
“I just need to find Bahman,” she shouted above the noise.
“Roya Khanom, I need for you to please know something—”
His voice was drowned out by gunshots. Shouts filled the air. The smell of sulfur stung her nostrils. From her peripheral vision, she saw two tanks at the edge of the square. It couldn’t be. She shook off Mr. Fakhri and swerved to see better. The bastards. Soldiers stood on the tanks aiming rifles. And a few people stood with them on the tanks waving pieces of paper that looked like money.
Did her body swivel slowly? Or swiftly? Did she stare at the soldiers just one second too long? What made her shake him off and twist around to see the young, uniformed soldiers on top of their tanks surrounded by men and women waving money? Why did she loosen herself from Mr. Fakhri’s hold? Why did she turn? Why did she let go of him?
Why did she get away?
Next to her she felt something shift, slump, sink to the ground.
“Mr. Fakhri!” He lay on the ground, writhing. Blood spread across his chest. She squatted down and grabbed his arms and screamed, “He’s been shot, he’s been shot!”
A few people formed a circle around her and Mr. Fakhri. She was watching a girl kneel by a man shot in the crowd. It was happening to someone else. It couldn’t be happening to them.
Shouts and warnings and noise all around. Two rivulets of blood streamed from Mr. Fakhri’s eyes and ran down his face. She touched his soaked shirt, his bloody torso.
Suddenly she was shoved aside. A man straddled Mr. Fakhri’s body and pumped his heart with both hands while other men and women hovered and bustled and tried to help. In the midst of the din—so loud it swallowed all noise and grew into a kind of silence—she heard only one sound clearly, crisply. The tear of cloth. A melon-colored piece of someone’s clothing was wrapped around Mr. Fakhri’s upper chest, around his heart. Soon it was soaked red.
Only Mr. Fakhri’s eyes moved. Even with blood streaming, he looked over. Not at her, not at the man bent over him trying to save his life, not at the group of people holding on to him, chanting prayers for him. Mr. Fakhri’s eyes looked to the left of the square, toward the embassies, toward the street that held his shop.
Roya followed his gaze. Maybe it was gunpowder or her own blurred vision from tears, but she thought she saw a cloud of smoke rise from that direction. Before she could be sure, the man pumping Mr. Fakhri’s chest collapsed over him. “He’s gone!” he cried. An older man near them rocked back and forth and chanted prayers.
After several minutes, a few men quietly lifted Mr. Fakhri, hoisted him up into the air, and carried him above their heads.
In this way, Roya and a small group carrying Mr. Fakhri with his heart wrapped in melon-colored cloth left the crowd. In shock and silence, people made way for them. At other spots in the square, the mob was parting for others who were carried out in the same way. What had started as something of a joke, a game, a boisterous show, a performance with jugglers, had ended in this: a demonstration, a riot. It had brought out police and soldiers. And it had killed the stationer.
“Take him to the hospital!” a woman yelled as Roya followed the small procession out of the crowd. “Every single one of these unjust deaths needs to be recorded.”
To be recorded. With a pencil and a pad. On clean sheets of paper.
She tried not to throw up.
Sirens wailed and police shoved their way through. The core of the crowd moved northward despite the chaos.
When their small group exited the square and turned right to head toward the hospital, Roya stopped. She had already given Mr. Fakhri’s name and occupation to the man who’d tried to save his life. The others had insisted that she go home. They had told her this was no place for a young girl. Thank you for the information, we will make sure to have it rightfully recorded. The family will be notified. We’ll make sure of it. Now, you, young girl, go home. This is no place for a young lady. You’ve seen enough.
Trash cans set on fire dotted the side streets as she made her way to the corner of Churchill Street and Hafez Avenue. Broken windows in office buildings, shards of glass on the ground were a kaleidoscopic horror. Nauseated, Roya forced herself to go in the direction of Mr. Fakhri’s gaze during those last minutes of his life.
When she got to the street that held the Stationery Shop, the windows of the small market nearby—near where the beet seller would sometimes drop his mat to pray at noon—were black holes. The roof of a newspaper kiosk near the shop was bathed in smoke. And the building that housed the shop itself danced in flames so high that they looked like they could swallow the sky.
Roya stood in front of the shop, numbed by fire. The licking flames danced and soared. She was drained of movement, energy, feeling. It was too late. They could do nothing. From a distance she heard the wail of a firetruck. They’d come. They’d try.
But flames consumed the walls, the windows, the roof, the beams of support.
Crinkled, blackened pages of books fluttered out of the flames. They floated in the air, suspended for a minute, and then dissolved as black ash when they hit the ground.