What was she trying to tell me now?

“Atia, you can either tell me or not tell me who the lucky coauthor is. It really doesn’t matter. It’s not my concern.”

“Dodonge.”

“Him?” My voice cracked. “The charlatan of the Syrian front?”

“It’s not what you think.”

“It never is. But what do I think, my dear Atia?”

Just then Mafiha appeared by the exit. He looked our way, smiled, and went to the elevators without stopping. I felt nothing.

Atia said, “You think I sold out!”

“There’s nothing to sell. Everything has already been bought and sold in this country. I know a lot about that. I’m an art reviewer, don’t forget.”

“You also write about war.”

“Oh that! I guess I lost my way for a while. I would ask you what their book is about, these two brilliant gentlemen. Let me guess: one of them is prowar and the other supposedly against it. Wait! Is the book some sort of debate then? Like a meeting of two great minds debating a subject?”

“Yes.”

“Ah, well. These guys really do know how to catch a tailwind.”

“Saleh!”

“What?”

“There’s something else.”

“I’m listening.”

“The Citizen is being bought out.”

* * *

I’d already done six art reviews for them. This would be the seventh and last before the Citizen changed hands and we all left en masse. This sort of thing happened so often that Atia and I and the others were used to it. Some merchant or politician with ten thousand kilos of dirty money under his mattress would come in and buy out wherever we worked. Then he’d oversee everything we did because he wanted the paper as a platform for his political ambitions. Sooner or later, working at the journal or newspaper or publishing house would turn to shit and we’d all leave anyway. The only good thing that came out of this was that we were savvy now and did not linger until things turned nasty. We left immediately.

This was going to be my last review. The show was being held at Tehran’s Modern Art Museum. I gave Mafiha the slip and went alone on opening day, even though I was almost certain Miss Homa wouldn’t be there for him to try to hustle. Miss Homa never came to these things.

I was wrong. She was there, waiting.

“You have been avoiding me.”

“Miss Homa, it’s not every day someone asks you to kill them.”

“Is this what I asked of you?”

That day I’d visited her, she’d said she wanted me to take her to Iraq. To Karbala, to be specific, so that she could die there. But she wasn’t sick or dying, I’d reminded her. She’d smiled to that. Then I saw the halo, like the ones I saw hovering over every single martyr-to-be that I’d come across in my life. That certain shimmer that tells you the person is ready to go. At first I put it to the blindness of that left eye. That world of exquisite dancing lights which sometimes softened the blows of life. Even when Atia had told me that the Citizen was being bought out and that Mafiha and Dodonge were coming out with a book on war and peace together, I’d observed how much better it was at times to be half blind that way. Not fully, but just enough to see the world through a prism that took away its ugliness a little. As if one were looking at it all through one of those kaleidoscope tubes we used to twist and turn when we were kids.