I was too blind to discern the faces of anyone from that distance. But I already suspected who they were. I had begun referring to them as Ajooj and Majooj. The TV writers for the Abbas: Sniper Legend and Fist of God television series.

* * *

“You owe us twelve episodes of Abbas. And starting next week. The public demands it!”

Ajooj and Majooj were types from central casting and they were inseparable.

Their ponytails were precisely the same length. Both were stocky in a squarish sort of way, but they comported themselves like art house film connoisseurs who had to write for TV in order to get by in expensive Tehran. They wore “natural” loose fabric clothes, always white, that made them look like vegetarian weightlifters, and they sent their kids to the same expensive after-school language programs. In other words, they had everything figured out, except that they didn’t know how to bring the ratings up for the Abbas television show. I could not easily tell the two of them apart, unless they began to talk. “Italian” Ajooj had spent a few years studying in Milan and faked a preposterous Latin accent while speaking Persian.

I’d known these guys from our university days. They’d gone the way of anyone who has too little talent and studies film­—they’d started a film festival business. But then bigger fish had taken that racket out of their hands and they’d signed on with Iranian television, where you could write about love triangles with zero sex from one season to the next and get paid for it. The Abbas serial was their big break. They’d ridden its crest this far and they didn’t want to lose it so quickly.

I almost wished Mafiha had stuck around. Compared to these guys, at least he understood his own corruption; he took himself with a grain of salt. One time I’d asked him why all of a sudden he was writing antiwar poems and he’d said, with a perfectly straight face: “Because women like it and men can’t argue with it.” Now this very same guy, an editor in chief and art collector, Mafiha the purveyor of peace, was the guy who had my Atia. While I was left with hate e-mails and messages from pacifists who believed that even so much as reporting from Iraq and Syria was tantamount to murder and that I should be blacklisted from the peace-loving literary community.

I said to Ajooj and Majooj, “Did I sign anything that says I owe twelve episodes of Abbas?”

Italian Ajooj spoke: “No, but you will. Because State TV will be at your door and you know what that means.”

“Well, it won’t be so good for you guys either.”

Majooj: “Just write us a few episodes. Give us some bullet points. It’s all we ask.”

“I’ll have to go back to Iraq for research then.”

Ajooj: “You’re not going anywhere. You just came from there. You’ve had all the research you need.”