Still, he felt a need to explain to them. He decided to tell the orderly they were from his mother’s funeral. His poor condition, he said, stopped him from going. But then his recovering mind finally pieced together that the orderly or nurse had never met his mother. She could have been any of the older women in the photographs from the funeral. They wailed, as was the Iranian way, as if their own sons had died. Perhaps the orderly and the nurse were suspicious. The more he worried it, the less he could see clearly through his fears.

He was not quite recovered enough to enjoy his new deceptions. It was easier to find comfort in pettiness. The orderly insisted on wearing white, even though Hoseyn told him it was unnecessary. It made him feel like an invalid. The orderly was fidgety, a bossy African. That was a strange joining right there. Most bwanas were implacable. This one was irritable. He was squat, calling to mind a circus performer. Because he was wall-eyed, Hoseyn had to fight feeling embarrassed in his presence. He wondered if this was a residue of the drug that had made him appear dead, because usually he’d tease and mock such a defect to make it okay. Maybe he was just too tired. It had only been a week.

The nurse warned Hoseyn that he would have personality changes, but they were temporary. There was a list of potential medical issues, and every so often Hoseyn felt the nurse checking him for them. The guy meant to be unobtrusive. He was obvious. At least that part of Hoseyn’s brain was untouched.

The nurse wore blue jeans and the kind of belt most Iranian men wore, made of lacquered leather clasped behind a rectangular plate of chrome. Hoseyn hated it. He wasn’t sure why. He thought that perhaps the origin of this belt’s supreme irritation might be solved during his convalescence. It must have had some association that was unpleasant. He couldn’t remember what it might have been. The nurse also wore a fitted dress shirt with his blue jeans. It was hard to determine which infuriated Hoseyn more, the belt or the shirt. Perhaps it was because, worn together, they made a man look like he was in a disco. He had wanted to tell many men that this style was American and from the 1970s. They were dressed like American men when the Shah was in power. They thought they were being anti-Western. They were so long inside Iran that their own appearance said things they didn’t understand.