Then the Fish Swallowed Him by Amir Ahmadi Arian

Author:Amir Ahmadi Arian
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2020-01-29T00:00:00+00:00

TAKE THE BLINDFOLD OFF,” Hajj Saeed said when I entered the interrogation room the next day. I sat down and he put some stapled papers on the tablet. He burped before moving away. His breath smelled like the kebab I’d had for lunch.

“We have so much to do,” he said and coughed and cleared his throat, emitting another wave of half-digested meat smell into the room. “Read these pages.”

Behrouz’s name was on the first page, followed by his introduction of me on my first day at the study group.

“‘Welcome, Yunus,’” I read, hearing my friend’s voice in my head. I had felt the weight of his gaze on my skin. Then he had turned toward the others. “‘For today, I assigned two essays by Georges Sorel.’” I had nodded and smiled, trying to signal that I was satisfied and pleased with this choice. I had never heard the name, but it had rolled off Behrouz’s tongue so naturally he might as well have said “Khomeini” or “Al Pacino.”

I read on, surprised by how many of Behrouz’s remarks I remembered verbatim. Elections, he had said, had become nonsensical carnivals set up by governments to distract workers from their real struggle. He had concluded that political organizing would be pointless if its goal was not dismantling the state.

I turned the page. The first passage was highlighted in garish red.

“Read it out loud,” ordered Hajj Saeed.

“‘Sorel shows that it is paramount in politics to capture people’s imagination, and the best way to do that is to create apocalyptic situations. Just imagine bus drivers stopping work for two days. This city will be dead. People might suffer for a short while, but it’s worth it. They’ll learn to appreciate our power.’”

“From day one,” Hajj Saeed said, “all I asked was that you tell me the truth.” Then he made his familiar show of disappointment: the tense pacing, the paternal throat clearing, the sighing and nodding. “This passage alone is enough to accuse all of you of plotting a strike in advance, which amounts to taking action against national security. So stop pretending that you just stumbled into something without understanding the consequences. Turn the page.”

Mehdi was talking now. “‘You are prescribing chaos.’” I read his words and remembered his smooth voice, his way of containing his anger, betrayed only by the veins sticking out on his neck. “‘With the general strike, you provoke the security forces and tie the hands of the moderates in the system. We need them as allies.’”

“Go to the next meeting,” said Hajj Saeed before I got to the end of Mehdi’s comments. I turned three pages and read the first line. We were discussing The Wretched of the Earth, which Samad had assigned.

Behrouz had once told me that the best sign that you loved a book is that you could remember when and where you were when you read it. When you thought about certain passages, you might even be able to recall what you wore or the position of your fingers on the cover the first time you read them.

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