| Qassem Farshad had taken the deal he was offered. Discipline against him had been decisive and swift. In less than a month he was delivered a letter of reprimand for his excesses during the interrogation of the American pilot, followed by an early retirement. When he had asked if there was anyone else he might appeal his case to, the administrative officer who'd been sent to deliver the news showed him the bottom of the page, which held the signature of the old man himself, Major General Mohammad Bagheri, chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces. When Farshad received the letter, he'd been on suspension at home, at his family's country residence an hour outside of Isfahan. It reminded him of Soleimani's home in Qanat-e Malek. It was peaceful there, quiet. Farshad tried to settle into a routine. In the first few days he hiked his three miles each morning and began to sort through boxes of notebooks he'd kept throughout his career. He had an idea to write a memoir, maybe something that would be instructive to younger officers. However, it was difficult for him to concentrate. He was afflicted by a phantom itching in his missing leg, something he'd never experienced before. At midday he would break from his attempts at writing and take a picnic lunch to an elm tree that sat in a field on the far end of his property. He would rest with his back to the tree and have a simple lunch: a boiled egg, a piece of bread, some olives. He never finished his meal. His appetite had recently waned, and he would leave the remains for a pair of squirrels who lived in the tree and who, with each passing day, edged closer and closer to him in search of his scraps. He remembered and then re-remembered his last exchange with the old general, how Soleimani had wished him a soldier's death. Farshad couldn't help it; he felt as though his outburst in Bandar Abbas had let his father's old friend down. On the other hand, striking a prisoner had never before been grounds for dismissal for a Revolutionary Guards officer. In Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Syria, and in Palestine, all through his career, intelligence work was often done with fists. He knew many who'd ascended into positions of high command by virtue of their brutality alone. But Farshad's superiors had expected more from him. They had told him—in no uncertain terms—that he was the most junior person they could trust. And he had betrayed that trust. Although they might have thought that Farshad had momentarily lost control of himself in the presence of an impertinent American flyer, it was more profound than that. Farshad hadn't lost control. Far from it. He had known exactly what he was doing. He had known exactly how important this American was, even if he hadn't understood every detail. What he had known was that by beating this American to a pulp, he was pushing his country closer to war with the same alliance of Western powers that had killed both his own father and the old general. Perhaps neither would be disappointed in me after all, thought Farshad. Perhaps they would be proud of me for taking our people one step closer to the inevitable confrontation with the West that our feckless leaders have long avoided. He thought of himself as seizing an opportunity that fate had thrust before him. But it seemed to have backfired and cost him the twilight of his career. For days and then weeks, Farshad kept to his routine and eventually the phantom itching in his missing leg began to subside. He lived alone in his family's empty home, hiking his three miles, taking his walk at lunch. Each day, the pair of squirrels who lived in the tree came ever closer, until one of them, whose fur was a very rich shade of brown and who he assumed to be the male (as opposed to the female, whose tail was snowy white), had plucked up enough courage to eat from the palm of Farshad's hand. After lunch he would return home and write through the afternoon. At night he prepared himself a simple dinner, and then he read in bed. His existence was reduced to this. After a career in command of hundreds and at times thousands of men, it surprised him how he enjoyed being responsible for himself alone. No one stopped by. The phone never rang. It was only him. So the weeks passed, until one morning he noticed that the single road that bordered his property was filled with military transports, even the occasional tracked vehicle. Their exhausts belched smoke. Beyond the line of trees that partially screened his house he could see them stuck in a traffic jam of their own creation as officers and noncommissioned officers barked orders at their drivers, trying to move things along. They seemed in a frenzy to reach their destination. Later that morning, as Farshad was leisurely filling a notebook with his memories, the phone rang, startling him so much that his pen skipped across the page. "Hello," he answered. "Is this Brigadier Qassem Farshad?" came a voice he didn't recognize. "Who is this?" The voice introduced itself quickly, as though its name were designed to be forgotten, and then informed the brigadier that the General Staff of the Armed Forces had ordered a mobilization of retired and reserve officers. Farshad was then given the address of a mustering office. The building was in a nondescript part of Isfahan, far from the military's power centers in Tehran where he'd spent much of his career. Farshad finished transcribing the particulars of where he was to report, leaving his notes on a scrap of paper. He felt tempted to ask the voice for details about whatever incident had precipitated this mobilization, but he decided against it. He thought that he knew, or at least had an instinct. When Farshad asked if there was anything else, the voice said no and wished him well. |
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