The Disciple

He started to speak, tried to understand.

The realization struck him with the impact of a fist. They were speaking English! This was an opportunity to try out his English, which he had acquired three years ago during a monthlong visit by his brother who lived in New Jersey.

“I am Mustafa Abtahi,” he said, the first two words in English.

He said it so fast his listeners looked blank. He said it again, slowly, and when he saw no comprehension moved right along. “Where you from?”

Now they understood. The light in their faces was wondrous to behold. “America,” they said in unison. Then they smiled.

“I will be an American,” declared Mustafa Abtahi with joy in his heart. “When my visa comes. I take the plane. Fly.” Their faces looked puzzled. “Fly,” Abtahi shouted and stuck his arms out and pretended to be an airplane.

Herman Strader looked at the medium-sized, swarthy, bearded man with an unruly head of black hair spouting barely recognizable English and waving his arms and wondered if this was one of those fundamentalist throat-slitters he had been warned about back in Bridgeport.

Iran, birthplace of taxi drivers! Of all the places on God’s green earth-

Suza

They finished with the map, and Suza

She jabbered a while with Mustafa, then finally turned to her husband. “I need a pen and some paper.”

“What on earth for?” Herman Strader asked his wife.

“I am getting his address. I want to send him some English-language instructional tapes.”

Herman knew better than to argue. He gave his wife one of his business cards and a pen. She started to write on one, then realized she had two. She gave one to the Iranian as her husband watched in horror.

God Almighty-they were going to have terrorist cells turning up at their door asking for donations!

Suza

After handshakes all around, Herman grabbed his wife’s arm and escaped the presence of Mustafa Abtahi.

“Are you nuts?” he demanded when they were safely away and marching along the sidewalk. “That guy might be bin Laden’s brother-in-law.”

“My mother’s father came to America from Slovakia when he was twenty-three years old,” Suza

Herman Strader pulled out his cigar, paused to light the damn thing and blow smoke around, then took his wife’s arm and marched on. “Yes, dear,” he said contritely.

The thing about women, he reflected, is that sometimes they are right.

“What do you think of this purse?” Suza

“Look on the bottom,” Herman advised. “It was probably made in China.”

His aunt told Ghasem that his grandfather was in the garden. “He had a bad night,” she said.

Ghasem went through the house and into the garden. Dr. Israr Murad was seated in a wooden chair, watching the birds. They had brought him out in a wheelchair, which was sitting empty a few feet away. Apparently he had asked to be moved to the wooden chair. He didn’t look up at Ghasem’s approach. He only looked when Ghasem squatted so that his face was on a plane with his grandfather and said, “Good morning, sir.”

Now the old man saw him, and his face brightened. “Ah, Ghasem, my wise one.” His voice was a whisper, barely audible. Ghasem sat on the ground. The birds fluttered around, then again went after the seeds, ignoring him.

“Your birds are very tame.”

“I suppose so.”

They sat silently watching the birds as the minutes passed. Ghasem had been too busy to start on the manuscript, and he didn’t want to say that, although he had decided to tell the truth if the old man asked. He didn’t. Ghasem wondered if he had forgotten the manuscript.

Finally Ghasem broke the silence with a question. “Is there an afterlife, a Paradise?”

Dr. Murad seemed to consider the question. He tried once to straighten up, then quit trying. Finally he said softly, “I hope so.”

Ghasem couldn’t resist. “I see you are avoiding the question.”

This comment caused the old man to smile. “Since man realized that he was mortal, he has wished for an afterlife. Dreamed of it. Prayed for it. The prophets all promised it. If they didn’t, no one listened to them and they are forgotten by history.”

“And you, what do you believe?”

He took a deep breath and exhaled. “I do not know. A lifetime of study and contemplation, and I realize I know nothing. Or, at any rate, very little. I want there to be an afterlife. I want to see your grandmother again. I want to see my parents, my brother who died so long ago… I can see their faces sometimes, but I get them mixed up, get the wrong person with the wrong face. Sometimes I am thinking about my wife and the face is my mother’s, and when I see my brother I think he is my father. My head is all mixed up.” He rubbed his forehead with two fingers, closed his eyes for a moment.

When he opened them, he put his hand back in his lap and said, “Life is a miracle. That is the only true thing I know. Everything springs from that one hard fact. When you take a religion that has lasted, one that has appealed to people for many generations, and boil it down, render it to a nubbin, all you get is two things. You should love God.”

Dr. Murad paused. “Love God, but how? Ahh…”

He rubbed his forehead again, shifted his weight in his chair.

“And the second thing?” Ghasem asked when he began to fear the old man had lost his train of thought.

“Be kind, compassionate, merciful to your fellow man. There are all ma

Finally he said, “Everything else is just details.”

He dribbled out some birdseed from the small sack in his lap. After a while his eyes closed, and he slept.

Ghasem crept away.

When the U.S. national security adviser, Jurgen Schulz, arrived at the Mehrabad airport, I was there to meet him. Normally the senior person at the American Interests Section would have been there to meet him, or if he or she was in the hospital dying or recently dead, the number two would go.

Amazingly, the message that arrived yesterday instructed the senior State person, our chargé d’affaires, Eliza Marie Ortiz, to send me, the lowly Carmellini, to carry the great man’s luggage.

Ortiz showed me the message. “You,” she said.

Accustomed as I am to cheerfully obeying orders without question or bitching, I passed up the morning jog that day, put on clean underwear and a clean shirt and drove the State Department’s heap out to the airport. I flashed my diplomatic passport at a heavy-lidded, overweight guard with big lips and a scraggly beard, parked in the diplomat section of the parking lot and wandered into the terminal as jet engines whined and roared and growled their usual insane symphony.

The plane was late. Some Iranian government types, with armed guards circling, waited near the gate. Finally the plane arrived, and people started filing off, first class first, of course. There was a little confusion when they decided some roly-poly guy was the NSA, but I recognized Schulz right off. I gave him the Hi sign, and he nodded at me. Through the interpreter, I was directed to rescue his luggage and take it through the diplomatic line at customs/immigration. With his check slips in hand, I wandered off to baggage claim while the diplomats shook hands. I kept my eye on them, and they marched out and climbed into a stretch limo. Looked like a Chrysler 300.