Christopher Bellaigue - In the Rose Garden of the Martyrs

‘Look at the wife, egging him on!’ said our driver. ‘What difference does it make? That poor Buick’s been wounded more times than I have.’ The side of the Buick was discoloured from dents that had been amateurishly smoothed out. The engine was still running. It emitted black smoke.

The taxi driver reached under his seat, pulled out a thermos and unscrewed the cap. He poured a little tea into a dirty glass that rested on the dashboard, swilled it around and poured it out of the window. He filled the glass with tea and, putting it back on the dashboard, closed the thermos and put it back under his seat. Then he held up the glass and said, ‘Please go ahead …’

He was offering us tea. In such instances, you don’t accept. It would be bad form. It’s his tea, but he has to offer it. It would be bad form not to. But he’d be put out if someone said, ‘Yes, I’d like some of your tea.’ No one does. The driver gets to drink his tea and appear courteous at the same time. Both ways he wins.

There was polite murmuring around the taxi: ‘Thanks, but no’ … ‘You go ahead and have some’ … ‘I don’t feel like tea’ … ‘I’ve just had some tea.’

Lies. We’d all enjoy a glass of tea.

The driver took out a packet of cigarettes and we went through the same rigmarole. We felt our breast pockets for imaginary packets of cigarettes. Eventually, the driver withdrew a cigarette from his packet, lit it and settled down to watch. A policeman had arrived at the intersection. He was trying to broker a reconciliation. The driver of the Paykan was a cocky brute, well-built, young enough to be the Buick driver’s son. He danced from one foot to another. Soon, the policeman seemed to make a breakthrough. The youth hugged the Buick driver.

During the argument, the traffic lights at the intersection had turned green several times, at which cars had surged forward from all directions. Lots of them wanted to turn, this way or that, but the Buick and the Paykan were blocking their way. The cars were revving, edging forward, kissing bumpers. Someone would have to reverse. Iranian drivers don’t like reversing. It’s a form of defeat. I felt sorry for the policeman.

He did a good job. He positioned himself in the middle – whistling, gesturing, occasionally giving a winning smile. He was a professional. In a little while, at his prompting, a car edged forward from the middle, and away. Another followed. The knot was untied.

‘Well done!’ the taxi driver murmured, and we moved forward. The protagonists stayed where they had been. They would wait for more policemen, who would take statements and measure angles to determine who was at fault. As we went past, the Buick driver’s wife, a woman in a red scarf, leaned out of the window and shouted at her husband, ‘I should have known you wouldn’t have the balls to stand up for yourself! You, who took the full brunt of the Iraqi attacks! Why don’t you stand firm, instead of letting some beardless chick trample your pride?’

The woman’s husband turned around. His face was full of anguish. His wife wasn’t much older than the Paykan driver.

The taxi driver sighed as we drove off. ‘You’ve got to show them who’s boss from day one. I mean, now it’s too late. He’s let her get out of control, challenge his authority. Nothing he can do now.’

A little further down the road, a man who was sitting next to the woman in the back seat got out. He was replaced by a thin woman who recognized the succulent woman: they were distant relatives. They didn’t seem pleased to see one another. They passed on regards to each other’s families, and extended invitations for tea and lunch.

The thin woman said, ‘Did you get much rain in Tehran?’

‘More than dear Isfahan, I can tell you! You know, what with struggling to combat the illness of my late husband – may God show him mercy – and the demands it’s made on my time and health, this is the first time I’ve been to Isfahan for five years. Oh! My heart burned when I saw the river – dried up like a burned courgette, with the wretched boatmen standing around in the mud, with nothing else to do but pray for rain. I mean, is it possible for a river to have no water? Our river? In this day and age?’

‘They sold our water to Yazd,’ the driver said. ‘They sent it off in a pipeline. Cost a fortune to build. The fathers of bitches.’

We were in a long queue of cars. The driver leaned out, far enough to see past the cars in front. He swung the wheel and pressed down hard on the accelerator. We emerged from the queue of cars, into the oncoming traffic. There weren’t many cars coming; the lights ahead were red. By the time the oncoming traffic started to move, we were elbowing our way into a gap between two cars, now much nearer the traffic lights. One of the other drivers raised his hand, but was too lazy to clench it.

‘I don’t know why everyone drives so fast,’ the fat woman said to her relative. ‘All they do when they get to their destination is drink tea.’

The driver grinned. ‘God forbid, madam, you were offended by my efforts to expedite you to your destination! Or perhaps it was what I said? Do you have Yazdi blood, by any chance?’

‘Lord, no! My parents – may God show them mercy – were from Isfahan, and proud of it. But the president is from Yazd, isn’t he?’ she said slyly. ‘That might explain why they’re allowed to drink our water. The Yazdis have always had it in for Isfahan. I should know; my son married a Yazdi. She won’t even iron his shirts. She says he gets through too many. He gives them to me, my poor darling. Too proud to iron an Isfahani’s white shirt, the Yazdis are!’

‘At least they opened the dam again, in time for the holidays,’ said the third passenger in the back seat. ‘There’s water in the river now, thanks be to God.’

‘Exactly!’ said the fat woman. ‘They were scared the Isfahanis would flay them if they didn’t open the sluices. But they’ll shut the dam again after the holiday, and say there’s no more water. They’ll send it to Yazd instead.’

‘And our poor Isfahani kids will carry on topping themselves,’ the man said. ‘Everyone knows the suicide rate goes up when the river’s dry. It’s bad for the soul.’

The man next to me stirred in his seat. ‘Pardon me, but you’re wrong. The problem is not Yazd, but the farmers in Isfahan province. They’re planting rice along the river banks, even though rice needs more water than almost any other crop. Only an idiot would plant rice when there’s a drought.’

‘And what would you have us eat if there’s no rice?’ the fat woman demanded. ‘You want us to get thin and weak?’

‘We should buy our rice from elsewhere.’

‘Sir, you’d prefer that we eat Pakistani rice that has no perfume? Or that sticky revolting stuff the Turks call rice? You can’t make a respectable polov with that.’

The man sitting next to her said, ‘She’s right; our rice is the best in the world. Everyone says so.’

‘And there’s another thing,’ said the woman, ‘our dear motherland has been dependent on foreigners for hundreds of years. Now you want to put our bellies at the mercy of Pakistan! Everyone knows who’s behind Pakistan: the English! It wouldn’t surprise me if the English had something to do with our water shortage. They always stir up trouble in countries they fear. That’s why they’re the best politicians, and we’ve never been any good.’

‘The English are indeed very devious,’ said the man next to me, ‘but I haven’t heard of them altering the climate.’

The woman snorted. ‘I wouldn’t put anything past them.’ Then she said, ‘With your permission. Mr Driver, I’ll get out here.’

The thin woman said, ‘I thought your brother lived further on.’