In the Walled Gardens Read Free

me.
“Ma-has-tee!”
he exclaimed with admiration, embracing me. He wanted gossip about Mrs. Sahafchi’s daughter, whispering about how long it
     would take him to seduce her. I told him he didn’t stand a chance. They were keeping her on ice.
    His blue eyes glistened. “Who’s the lucky man?”
    “He’s being perfected by God!”
    He laughed, exhilarated, quite certain he was nearly perfect himself.
    “You look bored,” he said craftily.
    He seized the last two glasses of champagne from a passing silver tray and offered me one. The embassy, known for stinginess,
     was splurging. They were drumming up business. These were intoxicating times.
    “What’s new?” Thierry said.
    “I could ask you the same.”
    “Houshang wants this port like nothing I’ve ever seen before.”
    Thierry wanted gossip about the Bandar Kangan project on the Gulf. He hadn’t managed to talk to Houshang yet. There are major
     projects worth billions of dollars coming up along the Persian Gulf. The commercial port on the island of Gheshm, the naval
     port at Chah-Bahar, the expansion of Bandar Abbas. But recently we’ve had sudden government cutbacks in expenditures, with
     grand projects like my husband’s new port teetering in the balance. Houshang’s company, in a joint venture with a British
     firm, is the general contractor for Bandar Kangan, an expensive port by the old coastal town of Kangan, with its dusty palms
     and fishing boats and distinctive architecture, three hundred miles from the port of Bushehr. But will it ever get finished?
     Houshang dismisses such questions. Kangan is a dream project. “The navy wants it!” he keeps saying. Like Houshang, the military
     always gets what it wants.
    Thierry was courting us. We were his designated couple from the in crowd, always invited to his elegant dinner parties at
     his home in Sa‘adabad. He wants us to meet his big boss from Paris, due to arrive in Tehran a little before the official state
     visit of the president of France. I’ve heard Thierry and Houshang chuckling about Paris. Maybe he wants to wine and dine my
     husband there, taking him to the best nightclubs so he can whisper about business in Iran, lucrative contracts, insider favors,
     kickbacks to an account in Zurich. He could even foot the bill for the most exclusive call girls of Europe. Not that my husband
     needs help there. Everyone watches a man for his weaknesses.
    Thierry offered me a cigarette. He’d turned sullen. He dislikes women who don’t talk, who don’t shed words like clothing,
     and leave him in the dark. I smiled when I realized how he could prove useful to me.
    Houshang was deep in conversation with the ambassador and two ponderous men. Things were going swimmingly, I could tell. We’d
     make the A list any day now; Houshang can’t think of anything better.
    We were called in to dinner.
    I took Thierry’s arm and whispered, “Be patient.”
    He beamed, thinking his charisma had overcome yet another obstacle. He would boast to his compatriots about seducing the exotic
     locals. Exotic was everything distant that they didn’t understand, nor ever really planned to. But he possessed worldly charms
     and wit and a magnificent education. They’d sent us their very best. I like him.
    The problem with most foreign men is that they’re too blond and too rapacious. They think they can rule the world. Dollars
     and francs and pounds and marks bobbing in their eyes instead of pupils.
    T HE ROADS WERE DARK and quiet all the way to Darrous. Houshang drove fast, not completely sober.
    We’d stopped off at the Key Club after the embassy with the group from London. “It’s important to impress them,” Houshang
     whispered to me after dinner. “They’re already impressed!” I said. “Especially by all the money they stand to make.” But Houshang
     wasn’t listening.
    He cosseted them at the club, plying them with drinks and flamboyant attention. He danced and talked to their wives as if