Sleeping on the roof in the summer is customary in Tehran. The dry heat of the day cools after midnight, and those of us who sleep on the rooftops wake with the early sun on our faces and fresh air in our lungs.
These are the opening lines of the narrator following a strange prefatory section subtitled “Winter of 1974 Roozbeh Psychiatric Hospital, Tehran.” That section is very short and completely at odds with the tone and mood of the official opening of the first chapter which is subtitled “Summer of 1973 Tehran: My Friends, My Family, and My Alley.” Any time a novel commences with a recollection of sweet youth sleeping beneath the stars and waking to the influx of fresh air into the lungs, you can rest assured that bad things are coming this way. This recollection is the calm before the storm and the only real tonal mystery lies not in whether the story is going to turn dark, but just how dark the turn is going to be. Tehran. 1973. Yeah, it’s going to get very, very dark. (The 1974 scene inside a mental hospital is another pretty strong clue.)
“The Shah is a tyrant, a servant of the Americans, and a puppet of the West.”
The point that transforms Pasha’s halcyon youth on enjoying summer nights sleeping on the roof into a big black bowl of green ox-tails is the arrest and trial of a group of revolutionaries deemed enemies of the state. Golesorkhi is the ringleader and as a result it is he who is given the chance to make the last statement before the public at the trial. Golesorkhi is electric, majestic and emanates with a vitality that makes even seemingly suicidal advice to the presiding judge to take a visit into the underworld seem worth the cost that everyone watching knows is waiting. The narrative trek into a hellish world of their own is determined by exactly who among them views that event in this way and who adheres to the view of the state by which is meant, of course, the dreaded, hated Shah.
“This is an unfair world and unfortunately, in this country, being accused is as good as being guilty. I was lucky to end up with someone who, despite his nokar-like attitude toward the regime, was at least willing to listen. Not everyone is so lucky. Life is not fair all the time. You boys will remember that now, won’t you?”
The defining quote of William Goldman’s The Princess Bride is embodied in the line “Life isn’t fair. It’s just fairer than death.” In Goldman’s ironic masterpiece of comedy, the full depth of harshness of this message is easily lost. (Just watch the movie to see for yourself.) This novel is a far cry from The Princess Bride and the advice doled out by Pasha’s father to his son is significantly darker and solemn. It is a lesson that must be taught to children by fathers of families living under horrendously oppressive regimes. That word “nokar” translates into “servant” though that hardly provides the full dimension of it meaning.
This quote also brings to mind some advice from a recent film which a father transmits to his son. The world-weary acceptance of things being the way they are simply because things are the way they are is not far removed from the equally painful but necessary advice given after the flood by Mr. Kim to his son in Parasite about how the only plan that never fails is having no plan at all.
