“No one knows I am here.”

He had a way of withdrawing when he spoke, as if afraid he might get hit or run over. He was in his early thirties. I imagined during his military service he’d been the butt of everyone’s jokes. They wouldn’t have bullied him exactly, but they certainly would have made him pay for loving books and not being manly enough. He’d probably spent a lifetime being scared but chance had finally brought him a job working for State TV. He was indistinct enough that even State TV, which vetted your great-great-grandmother before refusing you a job, had taken him on. He was the invisible man incarnate. But one thing had led to another and now he was considered a martyr. His family would continue to draw a pension from his loss. He was at last good for something to them. All that French and Persian literature he’d studied! It took faking his own death to be appreciated in his motherland.

“Do you realize how much trouble you’re in?”

“I swear, Agha Saleh!”

“No need to call me sir. Just call me Saleh. How do you know me anyway?”

“I used to read some of your dispatches.”

I was about to drill into him again while, as they say, the oven was hot. But Miss Homa who’d been quiet so far, stopped me.

“Can’t you see he is scared, Saleh? What do you want from him?”

I watched Proust and felt a pang of guilt. Maybe I’d been around men like Interrogator H and Cleric J and the Defenders of the Holy Places for too long. Hard men. I wasn’t being fair to Proust. I stood up and asked Miss Homa if I could help myself to her bar where there was an array of liquor. When I came back to them they were quietly talking, as if they’d known each other forever. I’d been hoping for this, but to see it happen so quickly was still odd.

“Well?” I said.

Miss Homa looked at me. “Mr. Daliri here tells me—”

“Just call him Proust,” I blurted impatiently.

“Proust?”

I nodded.

There was a look of shock in Proust’s face, but he said nothing for now.

Miss Homa said, “Fine. Proust tells me that on the way to my house you told him he must leave Iran and never come back. Is this true?”

“Miss Homa, if they find this guy here, they’ll—”

“I know, I know. He told me all about his recent martyrdom.”

“They’ll provide him with new identity, some money, even a job, and all he has to do is go back to Iraq and start a new life.”

Proust shrugged hopefully. “It’s not like I had a great life here. I hated my job. We made propaganda documentaries for stupid television.”