In the Walled Gardens Read Online Free PDF

them
     around the room, and they laughed and screamed and kicked and fell over giggling.
    It was pitch-dark when I left. I kissed Mother and Zari and the children. The streetlights were on; a dog barked in the distance.
     The new moon was out.

FOUR
    T HE SCHOOL BUS CAME in the morning to take the boys, who both had coughs and colds. I hugged them by the garden gate and they scrambled past
     me, the clinging mother, and rushed off, coats flailing.
    Houshang barely ate breakfast, paging through the local English morning papers, griping about the perpetual shortage of skilled
     labor and cement. We had an argument as he tossed off the paper. I’d failed to perform, to look interested, the night before
     at the club. He thinks I do it on purpose.
    “Why can’t you be more attentive?” he said. “Why can’t you be more — more wifely?”
    The chauffeur drove him downtown. I like to drive myself, to come and go as I please, and I dislike the chauffeur, who’s snoopy
     and whose only loyalty is to himself. My husband treats him like a personal adjutant, but I think he can’t wait to hack off
     the hand that feeds him. He’d betray the lot of us in a moment.
    I had decided Thierry could help Mr. Bashirian’s son and just needed to be persuaded. He’s a well-respected banker, a man
     who commands attention in Paris. One call to a noted journalist there, and they’d come after the story. Young innocent snatched
     off to prison versus oppressive regime with oil money louder than rights. That’s how they’d write it. The story would sell
     itself, turning up the pressure here. There’s no such thing as an objective journalist. They have their own axes to grind,
     blinded by their own civilizations. And I don’t trust the motives of newspapers. They run on abridged perceptions. They see
     us as a stinking oil-rich country lecturing them back, and they can’t wait to burst our bubble.
    Thierry would of course resist at first. He’d resist any sort of meddling that could mean serious trouble. He does big business
     in this country and wants to keep it that way for as long as possible. The story would have to get out without being traced
     back to him.
    I didn’t want to call him but suspected he’d show up at the French Club for lunch. I’d arrange to bump into him. It was short
     notice, but I first called my two best friends, then several others, until I found one who could make lunch at one-thirty.
    As a manager in the division of the High Economic Council in charge of publications, I went from meeting to meeting all morning.
     We commission and publish research papers, analyze government statistics, produce a monthly bulletin and a quarterly journal.
     I was hoping to avoid Mr. Bashirian. I hadn’t a shred of consolation, only bad news. I would tell him soon enough.
    The French Club serves the best lunch in town. At one-thirty, heads turned as Pouran and I were seated by the window. I was
     disappointed; I couldn’t see what I had come for. The garden was strangely nondescript, with towering and anemic fir trees,
     the light bright and hard.
    Pouran had dyed her hair another nasty shade of blond. Her face was gray at midday, despite the makeup. She asked if I liked
     the new color.
    “Wonderful.”
    “I prefer yours. Iraj likes me blond,” she complained.
    She likes to complain because it makes her feel important. We ordered. Friends of my parents’ stopped by our table on their
     way to bridge upstairs. When I turned to flag the waiter, I saw Thierry come in with three men. They passed by us to the main
     dining room, Thierry deep in conversation.
    “He’s ravishing,” Pouran whispered.
    Pouran has been fidgety for months. A cruise in the Greek islands in early September had only piled gold on her, but provided
     no solutions. We lit cigarettes with coffee. Pouran ran through her standard list: our beautiful women; who had a superb figure
     or skin and hair; whose husband was richer and threw bigger