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Back The Double Save as PDF
Chapters (63)
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  63. Acknowledgements

Gessen spread strawberry jam on another scone and took a bite. Heaven. How he’d like to eat the entire pot with a spoon, just like a child. On the ground between the tables, a group of sparrows pecked at the crumbs on the cobblestones. ‘And how are you faring in Professor Kiraly’s absence?’ He couldn’t help but wonder about the boy’s emotional state. Though Farzan wasn’t his patient, he seemed distressed about something. ‘Do you go home often?’

Farzan looked startled. ‘You mean to Iran?’ He shook his head. ‘No, never. I can never go back.’ He fumbled in his jacket pocket and pulled out a packet of cigarettes. ‘You don’t mind, do you?’ He lit one and turned his head to exhale a stream of smoke.

The poor boy’s face was stiff with fright.

‘I did something stupid before I left. It’s nothing, really, but in Iran it’s punishable by death. I thought as long as I was here, I would be safe, but after the thing with Hisham…’

Gessen waited, but Farzan fell silent. ‘What thing?’

Farzan took a drag from his cigarette. ‘Like I said, he disappeared. I thought he might have been deported back home to Iraq, even though he’d received his notice of leave to remain, but the Home Office had no information on him. So I figured he’d been either kidnapped or killed, maybe by someone with a vendetta against the Kurds. But six months after he disappeared, I got an email from him with a photo of a mosque in the background. He said he’d returned home to Kurdistan in northern Iraq, and everything was fine. Sorry that he’d left in such a hurry and didn’t say goodbye. Something about a family matter or his mother being sick.’ He raised his head and looked Gessen in the eye. ‘But I don’t think Hisham sent that email.’

‘Why would you think that?’ As Gessen studied the tremor in Farzan’s hand, the ghost of his old terror came flooding back. The wild hammering on the door late at night. The frantic flight to Switzerland by boat and train, all under the cover of darkness. His mother’s sudden disappearance on a rainy afternoon, not long after he’d been told his father wouldn’t be joining them.