The Wrong Man
Nahid Rachlin
Mustafa entered the hotel and went straight to the check-in counter. It was nearly midnight and the lobby was empty. “Can I help you?” the woman sitting behind the counter said in fluent unaccented Persian, though she looked foreign. She must be the American manager, probably filling in for the night clerk. She was one of the few Americans left in Iran, having once been married to an Iranian man. Mustafa had studied the hotel for a whole week, learned about the manager. Every day he hid in a doorway or behind a lamppost and watched. He had struck up casual conversations with guests. Once he had gone inside, at a time when staff members were distracted by various tasks, and he had wandered the corridors.
“Do you have a room for tonight?” he asked.
She looked up at him. “On weekends we rent for two nights only.”
“I’ll take it for both nights then.”
“It’s two-thousand toomans for both nights.”
“No problem.” She filled out a form that she gave to him and wrote down the address of the studio he had rented for a week and had checked out of today. It stood above a gift shop on Ferdowsi Avenue, very close to the hotel. He could feel her eyes fixed on him. Am I standing out, he wondered anxiously. He was wearing Iranian-made imitations of American clothes, a T-shirt with a fake Lacoste label and fake Gap jeans. He had bought the clothes thinking he would blend in better with the hotel guests who were either foreign or Iranians who liked to dress like Americans. Why is she scrutinizing me? “I’ll pay by cash,” he said. After filling out the form and giving it back to her, he took out his wallet, counted the toomans, and put them on the counter. She was still scrutinizing him. It couldn’t be because he paid by cash, he thought. In Iran we almost always have to pay by cash for everything.
“You have an address in Tehran, so what brings you to the hotel?” she finally asked.
“I had some problems in the apartment. There was no water and I couldn’t get anyone to come and fix the pipes at this time of the night.”
“Couldn’t you have found a relative to put you up?”
She is now acting like an Iranian, he thought, asking me personal questions as if she has known me for a long time. “I have no family and no real friends in Tehran,” he said. “I’m from Tabriz. I came to Tehran to attend university.”
“I see. The porter will be here any minute and will help you with your luggage. He went out to get tea.”
“I don’t need help. I only have this.” He pointed to the fake Gap knapsack slung over his shoulder. The knapsack was heavy, but he was holding it in a way that it would seem light.
“Go ahead.” She took a key out of one of the little boxes lining the wall behind her and gave it to him. “The room is right there. Three-oh-two.” She pointed to the corridor stretching behind her.
As he walked down the corridor, he could feel her eyes burning on his back as she sat there behind the counter like a queen. He looked around the room. It was comfortable and attractive. Two bright prints hung on the walls, one of a young woman wearing colorful village clothes and holding a jug on her shoulder, another of a group of children throwing a ball in a park. An Ardabil rug with floral designs was spread on the floor, and the bed was covered by a bedspread with paisley designs. He felt relief from the stark and barren room he had been staying in all last week, in the house where he lived with the other members of the organization. He opened the knapsack and carefully took out his long night robe, which he also wore for praying, and put it on the bed. Then he undressed, stepped into the shower, and turned the water to its highest pressure. It was good to feel the hard drops falling on his skin. Water was always relaxing. No wonder Prophet Muhammad made ablution before each prayer a requirement. It was good for you—it got rid infections and diseases, and it relaxed and cleared your mind. But the division inside him made it hard for him to relax. I never saw myself as a man who does this, he thought, walk into a hotel with a bomb in my knapsack, but here I am. After I accomplish my goal, they will refer to me as a bomber and, of course, that will be an accurate description in some ways. Two voices had been talking to him ever since he accepted this mission. “Don’t go through with it,” said one voice. The other said, “But you have no choice.”
He got out of the shower, dried himself, and put on the robe. He took his prayer rug from the knapsack and spread it on the floor. He had already done his nightly prayers before he checked into the hotel, but he wanted to pray once more when he woke, just before carrying out his mission. He would have to get up at three o’clock to have time for everything—pray, put the bomb in the linen closet on the second floor, and leave the hotel before it went off. He knew precisely where the linen closet was from the detailed picture of the hotel that had been drawn and given to him by Esmail Abadi, the head of the organization. Then when he had gone inside the hotel, he had checked it out. As he had wandered around the second floor corridor, a chambermaid looked at him suspiciously, but then she pushed the cart full of towels and sheets towards the closet and started to put some of them inside of it. He told himself, It would be better to set the detonator now, so I won’t have to do it in the middle of the night when I’ve just awoken and may be disoriented. It isn’t a good idea to put the bomb in the closet now. Who knows, one of the guests might be missing a towel or a sheet and could ask for one, and a maid will go to the closet and then discover the bomb. He knew by 3:30 a.m., a slumber would take over the hotel, and that would be a good time to place the bomb. He tried to think everything through.
The closet was right underneath the room, where Albert Ivanov, the soviet spy agent, disguised as a spokesman for his government, was staying. He had checked into the room the night before. Mustafa had seen him, from his spot behind a lamppost across the street, getting out of a limousine and coming into the hotel. Mustafa had only seen his profile and back, but he knew what he looked like from a photograph of him—tall, straight blond hair, and pale green eyes which reminded him of cats’ eyes. The organization had done meticulous research on Albert Ivanov, all his comings and goings. They were skillful in tracking people, their whereabouts, what they were doing at any moment. But only Esmail had access to all the information. Mustafa, like the other members, just followed orders. Finally, he took out the only item remaining in the knapsack, the bomb, and put it on the bed. He looked at it with awe. Such a small thing, capable of destroying so much. His hands were shaking a little as he set the detonator for 4:00 a.m. Then he picked up the bomb and placed it on the table next to the hotel stationery pad and guest book. He went back to bed and set the alarm clock on the table next to it for 3:00 a.m. He lay down and pulled the sheet over his head, hoping to get some sleep, but it was hard with all the turmoil inside him.
Lying there in the dark, his mind went to his own personal losses. His heart ached with memories of his parents. After they were killed he had gone from being a happy fourteen-year-old with healthy dreams for his future to a desolate, oppressed, lonely adult. A missile launched from a pilotless predator aircraft had mistakenly killed several innocent people, his parents among them, as they were leaving the shrine of Imam Hussein in Iraq where they had gone on a pilgrimage. Then his world fell apart. He and his five younger sisters, unable to pay the rent, had to sell their house and leave. Their father’s carpet shop had to close. Each child went to live with a different relative, scattered all over Iran. He was the only one who stayed on in Tabriz, taken in by an uncle and aunt.
As an only son and the oldest child, he had been the star in his household, the focus of his parents’ and his sisters’ devotion and adoration. He had dreamt of going to the university, becoming a doctor or a teacher, and then putting his education to good use in his hometown. The dream was shattered after his parents died. His uncle, cold and dictatorial, had told him he had better start looking for a job. His cousins, three boys, weren’t much kinder than his uncle. His aunt, a sad, quiet woman, had no say in the household. His father had been the opposite of his uncle—gentle, supportive of whatever he wished to do.
Then he met Esmail Adabi in a mosque far from his uncle’s house, where he went to pray, not wanting to go to the one his uncle and cousins went. He remembered that day so well. While he was praying, he noticed a man sitting in a wheelchair, also praying. When the prayer session ended the man asked Mustafa in a pleading tone if he would wheel him outside. Then he invited him to his apartment. Mustafa was glad to spend a little time with the kindly man in need of help. The apartment was close to the mosque, so they got there in a few moments. The living room was furnished only with rugs on the floor and a few cushions to lean against, in keeping with the Islamic idea of simplicity. An illuminated Qu’ran was set on a wooden stand in the corner. Esmail offered him tea and pastries, which he was able to get from the little kitchenette, wheeling himself back and forth. They talked as they ate, telling each other about themselves.
“Do you swear on the Qur’an that you won’t repeat what I’m going to tell you?” Esmail asked, pointing to the book. Mustafa nodded, suddenly feeling anxious. Esmail began to tell him about the organization. His mission was to fight injustice; vices spread by the SVR, all the way from Russia, through illegal radio stations, pamphlets they smuggled into the country. He had lost the use of both of his legs because of a landmine planted by the SVR in Lebanon, where he had gone to visit an old friend. When Mustafa told him about the way his parents had been killed, Esmail said: “I know about that horrible incident. SVR was responsible for that too. We have to fight the evil force.” Mustafa had no reason not to believe Esmail. Before he left the apartment, Esmail invited him to a meeting in the house, where he said the ten members of the organization lived. Though he himself didn’t live there, he spent a lot of time there, Esmail said.
That was three years ago, when Mustafa was seventeen and still attending high school. He decided to cut classes and go to the meeting. He went once and began to go every morning after that. Esmail lectured, showed them videotaped speeches. The larger scheme of the organization revolved around spreading Islam in other countries. It all sounded harmless to Mustafa—there was no mention of anything destructive. He liked being with the other members. Like himself, they had been bereft of their attachments and what they once had valued. After he had attended those meetings for a month, Esmail invited him to live in the house and devote himself to their cause rather than high school. Mustafa was happy to do that. That would get him out of his uncle’s house and the high school to which he had never adjusted.
Esmail gave the members, all men, a different task and asked them to keep it secret from each other. He said that although they were united, and togetherness was important, they had to do their tasks alone; sharing could create conflict. The tasks assigned were harmless at first. He had been given pamphlets on the importance of understanding the precarious position of Iran surrounded by western hostiles. Education is everything, it preached, understanding leads to solutions. But then one day Esmail called Mustafa to his house again and gave him this task. Esmail showed him how to follow the plan. “This will be a ticket to freedom for you,” he said. “After you accomplish your task I’ll put you up in an apartment of your own and pay for your education for as long as you’d like to pursue it.” Then he frightened him, by adding in an ambiguous tone, “You want to live, don’t you?” A sense of dread had taken over Mustafa. Esmail was covertly threatening to kill him if he didn’t carry out the mission. So he had agreed, thinking maybe somehow he could get out of actually following through. After that, Esmail became really kind to him. He took him to a dentist to fix his teeth which were black and rotting due to years of neglect.
Now, after a week of living away from the house, he could see even more clearly, that he was kept a prisoner by Esmail, that he had been bereft of all choices. Even the way he lived in the house was that of a prisoner. Each member had a tiny, cell-like room with a worn kilim on the floor, a mattress on which to sleep and a blanket for cold nights. The rooms were unadorned and windowless, only naked bulbs hanging from the ceilings provided light. The prayer room and the large kitchen, where they cooked and ate on a rug spread on the floor, and the bathroom, which contained three showers, were no less austere. Members of the organization had no money or belongings. The organization provided a closet full of clothes of different sizes, and the members shared them. It was to foster closeness between them, Esmail said. He only bought Mustafa new clothes when he assigned him to this task. None of the members were allowed to work for a living. All the expenses, the place to stay, the food, were paid for by the organization. Even soap, shampoo, and other personal necessities were provided for them, stored in a large closet. When Esmail had invited him to live there, he had told him he wasn’t allowed to bring any of his personal belongings with him, even photographs. He didn’t have much to bring anyway. But he missed his family albums.
In addition to Esmail, there were several shadowy older men, always dressed in suits, who came to the meetings. One or another was always whispering and laughing with Esmail. They took turns keeping vigil by the outside door so that members wouldn’t leave the house. The members were allowed to go out only in groups and with an escort.
Yes, I have been in a prison for years, in a prison even worse than my uncle’s house. The burden of his regrets finally made his eyes grow heavy, and soon he was asleep.
He woke from a nightmare whose content he didn’t remember. He looked at the luminous hands of the clock. It was only 1:00 a.m. He still had two hours before he had to get up. A yellowish light was seeping into the room from the lamppost on the street. He caught a reflection of himself on the tall, rectangular mirror that hung on the wall across the bed. He had an unsettling feeling that the anxious, lean face with the protruding cheekbones didn’t belong to him. He got up, went to the window, and pulled down the blind to stop the light from coming in. He came back and lay in bed again. The night had quieted down. Only a few cars went by. He could hear the voices inside his own head loudly, giving him contradictory messages. Don’t do it, get up and disconnect the detonator … but you have no choice, if you want to live …
Scenes, the most devastating moments of his life, paraded before his eyes. A call from the shrine, telling him his parents were dead and someone had to come and get their bodies. His calling his uncle to tell him the news. The two of them going to the morgue to bring his parents’ bodies back. The funeral, on a gray drizzly day in Tabriz. Then each relative taking one of his sisters away to live with them. Every time one was leaving, he and his remaining sisters cried. He missed his youngest sister, Parvaneh, the most. She was only five years old at the time; he used to help her with everything. He thought of his uncle’s coldness and cruelty, something he never understood. Then Esmail, an incarnation of the devil, a liar, for one thing. Among his lies was pretending to be crippled. That was his way of getting sympathy from others. Mustafa remembered his shock when he had discovered Esmail could walk. On that day he had taken a chance to sneak out and go to a public bath, the one he used to go to when still living with his parents. It was on the other side of the city from where the organization’s house was. The guard who sat by the house’s door had fallen asleep and so Mustafa left, unnoticed. As he entered the bath’s large, steamy room, he was shocked to see Esmail on the other side, standing while an attendant massaged his back. Then Esmail walked away and sat on the edge of the pool. Mustafa left the bath quickly. Since the discovery, he had lost trust in Esmail. What Esmail stood for or wanted to accomplish became mysterious, incomprehensible. Mustafa began to notice other things. The way Esmail’s face became remote, shut in, out of reach. At times a glint of evil came into his eyes, his whole demeanor. His tone went from a fatherly kindliness to a nasal, resentful, threatening one.
Mustafa no longer trusted what Esmail had told him about the SVR being responsible for the accident that killed his parents. Besides SVR must consist of a complex of people as different from each other as I am from the other members of the organization, he thought. When he stood next to the others, praying or listening to surehs recited from the Qur’an, a glimmer of doubt shone into the darkness of his thoughts. If god existed, why was there so much injustice, inequality, suffering in the world? Why did god enable someone to drop a missile over the shrine and kill my parents while they were paying homage to an Imam? Sometimes he tried to reason the way some of the other members did. “Allah’s will is beyond the understanding of us mortals.” Still, he went on doubting. He prayed without conviction. At times, he skipped it.
He had accepted this task to get himself out of Esmail’s prison, but now he wondered if Esmail would fulfill his promise to let him live on his own, pursue his old dream of getting an education and being of help to people through what he learned. Do I want to kill? he asked himself. The bomb would undoubtedly kill more than one person. Before it goes off, the potential victims might be thinking of what they needed to do tomorrow, contemplating someone dear to them, or just having given birth to a child. Then they will be suddenly shattered into pieces.
What is stopping me from turning off the detonator right now, going to the police and giving myself up, he wondered. I could bargain with them, give them information about the organization in return for a light sentence. But he couldn’t let go of his fear of Esmail. It was as if Esmail was more powerful than the police. He knew that Esmail had every one of his movements watched. Someone might be standing behind the door right now, waiting until he took the bomb into the closet. During the week, staying in the rented room, he was aware of eyes on him. Wherever he went, he had a feeling of a shadow following him. Every time he had looked out of the room’s window, he was aware of someone lurking in the corners of the lane.
A poem he had read so many times that he knew it by heart came to him.
Man is a bowl so finely made that Reason
Cannot but praise him with a thousand kisses.
Yet Time the potter, who has made this bowl
So well, smashes it to bits again.
He got out of bed, took out the sheet of paper on which he had written down the precise plan, and tore it into pieces. He threw them into the wastebasket and felt lighter. Then with sudden willpower, he turned off the alarm and managed to go to sleep.
The next thing he was aware of was a loud explosion and intense pain shooting through him. He saw blood splattered on the wall. Was that his own severed hand lying on the floor? He lost consciousness, and, when he came to, he was being carried out of the hotel on a stretcher. The air was filled with soft dawn light, a contrast to the dark smoke that had filled the staircase and the lobby. He heard shouts of help, help, moaning. It was like purgatory. As he was put inside of an ambulance, he saw two other stretchers already in it with people lying on them moaning. Was either of them Bill Macmillan? No, they seemed to be women.
What happened? The alarm clock didn’t go off. Of course. I turned it off, he thought. The bomb went off in my own room. Because it was on the other side of the room it didn’t kill me. The two women on the stretchers must have been walking in the corridor or staying in the room adjacent to mine.
In the hospital, I will speak to the police and tell them everything. They won’t sentence me to too many years in jail. Once out, I will get a job and go to night school, get married, have a home, and bring my sisters to live with me, if they aren’t married and don’t have their own homes already.
▱
The following afternoon a chambermaid, Zeinab, was sent by the hotel manager into the room that the bomber had been staying in, to do some cleaning up. The major part of the wreckage was already taken care of by the hotel’s male cleaning crew. It had been hell in the hotel since yesterday, with fear and uncertainty hanging in the air. The guests had all checked out. If Lynn, the manager, hadn’t ordered me to go to the room, I would have gone there anyway, Zeinab thought. A few days ago, she had actually passed the man in the corridor as she was putting the linens in the closet. In the dim light, she could barely see him but something about him had caught her attention, made her anxious. Why didn’t I alert Lynn? But what would I have said exactly? Outside the room, she found a wastebasket on the floor among fine shards of shattered glass that the cleaning crew had failed to pick up. She always examined what guests threw away. She found all sorts of things in the wastebaskets—condoms sometimes still filled with semen, blood-filled tampons, torn up nude photographs, cigarette butts, but then some nice things—a lipstick that had barely been used, a pair of slippers, a comb. But today she only found torn pieces of paper. She became curious when her eyes caught a few words on each piece. Were they written by the bomber? She put them in her uniform’s large pocket. After cleaning up she went to her own small basement room. It was narrow and uncomfortable, the rug on the floor worn, the walls yellowish and full of cracks. She sat on her narrow cot and spread the pieces of paper on it.
“Linen Closet.” “4:00 AM.” “Alarm clock 3:00 AM.” “Organization.” “Trapped.” “Shattered.”
Perhaps “shattered,” wasn’t referring to breaking something but to the man’s own shattered dreams. She could certainly understand that feeling. What am I other than a chambermaid, instead of a teacher, the dream that brought me to Tehran, she thought. The alarm clock obviously hadn’t gone off. How strange that a faulty alarm clock changed the course of events and I had a part in it, Zeinab thought. I knew that the alarm clocks in that room and several others, weren’t working. Guests had complained to me about them, but I didn’t bother to report the broken clocks to Lynn, out of … what was it? Anger at the guests who could live so luxuriously? She remembered how often she had felt like doing something explosive. She had even thought of how she could set fire to the hotel. It would take only a match to the oil tank in the basement. Did “shattered” refer to the bomber’s own shattered dream? She felt an affinity with him, saw a mirror image of herself in him. One part of my heart is already scorched black. The black part will get larger and larger if I continue living like this.
She continued arranging more of the pieces. She was filled with more turmoil, as a sentence appeared. I am turning off the alarm. I am not going to carry out the task. Oh, he himself turned off the alarm but not the detonator. Did he forget to do that or did he want to kill himself? The question haunted her, making it hard to sleep.
Nahid Rachlin went to Columbia University Writing Program and then was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. Her publications include a memoir, “Persian Girls” (Penguin), four novels, among them, “Foreigner” (W.W. Norton). One of her stories was adopted by Symphony Space’s Selected Shorts and three of her stories were nominated for Pushcart Prize.